text:
Story highlights
- Obama suggested Washington Redskins consider changing the team name
- Roxanne Jones: As a sports fan, the president can weigh in -- and he's right
- She says Redskins name is hurtful and damaging to Native Americans
- Jones: It's time to get on the right side of history and change the 80-year-old name
The audience was tense. Tempers were heated. Tears were seen and blows were nearly thrown. We needed a referee.
This was not the pre-fight press conference weigh-in for a Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao boxing match. It was a panel discussion between African-American and Native American journalists from across the country to consider whether the Washington Redskins name was racist. But the conversation at the Unity Journalists of Color convention, which included more than 6,000 media professionals, got nowhere.
Black journalists accused their Native American counterparts of showing racist videos during the panel of ranting black fans cheering for their beloved football team, including extensive video of the team's then-beloved, now maligned Chief Zee, the African-American man (Zema Williams) who's been the team's unofficial mascot for 35 years.
"Black people are not the only Washington fans in the stadium," I argued then. "Where are the other fan faces? And why is this a racial issue?" Our Native American peers yelled back, a few of them in tears, that we were being insensitive and ignorant for not understanding that the Redskin name was hurtful and damaging to their community.
Nothing changed. Everyone left the workshop insulted and insistent they were on the right side of the debate, including myself. And we never found common ground. That was nearly 20 years ago.
So it was refreshing earlier this week to hear President Obama, the nation's commander in chief and a sports fan, weigh in saying he'd think about changing the name if he were the owner of the team.
"I don't know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real legitimate concerns that people have about these things. ... I don't want to detract from the wonderful Redskins fans that are here. They love their team and rightly so," the president said to The Associated Press.
I thought back to that Unity meeting and knew his words rang true. And I remembered several of my colleagues who, over the years, have tried to get me or others in the newsroom to feel their pain. And honestly, I just never gave it enough thought.
But no longer can I justify my years of indifference to the sports moniker. The name must change. Let's toss it in the trash heap along with other now offensive -- but once widely used -- monikers such as Sambo, darky, dago and kike.
And if you or team owner Daniel Snyder, who insists he'll never change the team name, are a bit insulted, that's the whole point. It is exactly what my Native American colleagues struggled to tell us for as long as I can remember.
Predictably, many Redskins fans are livid that the president would jump into this fight. They are hypocrites. They're not the only people who can have an opinion about this matter.
U.S. politicians are sports fans, too. Some of them have been quite engaged with popular sports conversations. President Ronald Reagan brought "The Gipper" to the White House. Obama participates in the annual March Madness bracket frenzy.
For any fan, sports are among the most uplifting things about life. It's the one place we can escape the worries in the grownup world and enjoy our childlike enthusiasm for the games. None of that feeling goes away with a name change in Washington.
Supporters of keeping the team name can see only tradition and honor of the franchise. Some are defensive -- rightfully, I believe -- about anyone saying they are somehow intentionally being malicious.
Lanny J. Davis, an attorney for the Redskins and an Obama supporter, said in an e-mail to the media that fans don't intend to "disparage or disrespect" anyone. "The name 'Washington Redskins' is 80 years old. It's our history and legacy and tradition."
What else could he say? He is paid by the team. But he must know that his argument just makes no sense. The football team's glorious history may indeed stretch back 80 wonderful years, but what intelligent person, or even a diehard football fan like me, could seriously argue that 80 years of entertaining football history could ever compare to the thousands of years that the original Americans have inhabited this land?
It's time to get on the right side of American history.
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Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion.


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Mozilla Firefox
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Flexible with dates ? Search for the lowest available fare for your journey, and book by best price.
Find out our flight schedule to your chosen destination and select our lowest fare available for your travel date
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Okay, hands up! How many of you use mouth wash on a daily basis to enhance your oral hygiene? I have two bottles of Oral B Tooth & Gum Care Mouth Rinse at home but I'm not the one using them. In fact, I rarely use a mouthwash. One, I'm just plain lazy and the other, I hate the taste that lingers in my mouth.
Alcohol content kills bacteria
Actually I hate the taste of mouthwashes because most of them contain alcohol. I see it listed as the third in the ingredient list on the Oral B one. It's not surprising, because like hand sanitizers, the amount of bacteria mouthwash kills depends on the amount of ethanol or ethyl alcohol it contains. I understand that mouthwashes can contain up to 70 percent ethanol and this concentration kills most mouth bacteria.
High amount of alcohol render mouthwash useless?
According to The Times, many mouthwashes contain exceptionally high levels of alcohol which may render the mouthwash useless. "Alcohol can dry out the mouth by drawing moisture from the tissues and slowing the flow of saliva. With limited saliva to flush away or dilute bacteria, it is suggested that rinses that contain alcohol cause germs to become more, not less, concentrated in the mouth – making smelly breath possibly worse. "
Alcohol in mouthwash carcinogenic?
And then there are some experts argue that not only is a mouthwash useless, but it can also be harmful to your health. According to a report on Telegraph, scientists now have sufficient evidence that mouthwashes containing alcohol contribute to an increased risk of the disease that they should be taken off supermarket shelves and labelled with health warnings. The findings, published in the Dental Journal of Australia, suggested that ethanol in mouthwash was allowing cancer-causing substances – carcinogens – to permeate the lining of the mouth. The acetaldehyde resulting from the breakdown of alcohol after swishing in the mouth is also a carcinogen.
Most mouthwashes classified as cosmetic
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), mouth rinses are classified as either "cosmetic†or "therapeutic"; the classification depends on the active ingredients contained in the product. Some are a combination of both but only those that are labeled as therapeutic have been tested and proven to be effective against bacteria. So it seems that most commercially available mouthwashes only provide temporary guard against bacteria as they are classified as "cosmetic".
Mouthwash prevents dental plague
Well, I'm not too familiar with that but I do know that Oral B Tooth and Gum Care Mouth Rinse that I have at home contains Cetylpyridinium Chloride, a clinically proven ingredient which inhibits plaque formation. The product also contains fluoride to protect against cavities. So perhaps that's why my husband's teeth looks better than mine as studies reported by the American Dental Association indicate that antimicrobial mouth rinses and toothpastes have been proven to reduce dental plaque. When used together, flouride toothpaste and flouride mouthwash have been shown in clinical studies to provide extra protection against tooth decay.
Your say
But still, that's not going to get me into the habit of using mouthwash on a daily basis. To me, regular brushing and proper flossing are more than sufficient to maintain my oral hygiene. How about you? Do you have a habit of using a mouthwash?


text:
The city of Baltimore could not be more excited (well, I guess they haven't turned the harbor purple ... yet) for Sunday's Super Bowl which, pits the Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers.
Madison Avenue execs are not so thrilled.
According to Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing expert at San Franciscco's Baker Street Advertising, the game will be short on endorsement talent.
Dorfman sees only two players who could use the game to catapult toward major deals: Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick and Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.
There are caveats on both, though. Kaepernick will be playing his 10th NFL game, so his longevity is a question. Dorfman also wonders how conservative advertisers will view Kaepernick's well-tattooed arms. Still, he's the favorite to be selected to go to Disney should the Niners win.
Dorfman also thinks that Lewis -- who already has major deals with Under Armour, EA Sports, Old Spice, etc. -- remains a controversial figure for most of the country. That's be reinforced by his link to deer antler spray. But Dorfman also points out that Lewis' "raging ego" has hurt his public persona (Former New York Giants receiver Amani Toomer said something similar recently.) Lewis is also retiring, meaning his impact will drop off considerably unless he's schilling for "Advil, Ben Gay or the AARP."
Lewis wasn't selected to utter the famous phrase "I'm going to Disney World!" after the Ravens won the 2001 Super Bowl, as many saw him as too toxic a personality a year removed from facing murder charges. Dorfman doesn't think the recent controversy surrounding Lewis could cause similar reticence from the company, but does believe Disney would prefer a safer choice like quarterback Joe Flacco.
(Of course, Lewis has been rumored to be joining ESPN's staff of analysts. Disney owns ESPN.)
Dorfman sees some potential for the Harbaugh brothers to emerge as a joint endorsement force, though their often brusque manner with the media may hurt their appeal. Still, he imagines a spot in which they're fighting for the last Coke in the refrigerator.
Even Joe Flacco's father says the Ravens' quarterback is dull, and Dorfman agrees. So he envisions Flacco working with Sherwin Williams -- watching paint dry, get it? -- or Red Bull -- the substance reporters must chug to put up with Flacco press conference.
(Quick aside: Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but wasn't Payton Manning once sort of a dull guy? He cultivated his humorous side over time, and maybe with a big contract and secure future Flacco will make the same adjustment. Or maybe he's just boring.)
Dorfman sees Ray Rice as having some potential, since he's charismatic on camera.
Ditto for former Maryland tight end Vernon Davis, who's crafted a quirky person with his love for curling and side work as an artist.
With Michael Oher trying to spin away from the image created for him by the movie The Blind Side, Dorfman predicts few opportunities for Oher. Linemen don't sell. Oher's best bet, Dorfman says, is to the hit the motivational-speaking tour to tell his own version of his up-from-nothing story.
Dorfman also envisions Brandon Ayanbadejo and Matt Birk, who have taken opposite sides on the question of whether gay marriage should be legal, hitting the talk shows to debate the topic. He sees Ed Reed, making his first super Bowl trip in 100 seasons, doing commercials for a company trying to show it stands for persistence and perseverance.


text:
In Chapter: Preface
Author: Ian Darwin ('idarwin')
Published? false
FormatLanguage: WikiFormat
There should be one place to look for information on writing recipes.
In fact there are two.
All the information about what to write and how to word it is
on the page you are now reading.
All information about formatting using our Wiki-subset markup is
[[Wiki Markup Subset for Cookbook Site|here].
This page is a work in progress and will grow;
if you wrote any other O'Reilly Cookbook (or even read one) please feel free to Comment and we'll incorporate the best comments here.
As a general approach, we don't want recipes that show copy-and-paste creation.
Recipes that start off in the form
and continue with a verbatim code dump of MyAbcActivity,
with dozens of lines of imports and with "// TODO auto-generated method" comments left, in sink automatically to the bottom
of the barrel.
Recipes that instruct the reader as to why the Activity has to implement
a given method, and both discuss and illustrate what should be in that method, will rise to the
editor's attention when it's time to choose recipes for inclusion
in the published work.
Here are some general thoughts on Cookbook Recipes. See also the FAQ page (link in the menubar on every page).
Please save your work often. Do not type in a whole new recipe from scratch at one sitting, as the web conversation may time out. Save and re-edit every 15-20 minutes or so.
Although we use Wiki Markup, this is not a true wiki.
The contributor of a Recipe has certain rights over it, including
that it won't be modified by other users. Anybody can comment
on a recipe, and the owner will be notified, but only the owner
and the site editor(s) can make changes to a Recipe.
We hope to add a feature to allow you to let others edit your recipes.
Of course we reserve the right to remove offensive or dangerous content.
The Title should be short, concise, and explain what to the casual reader what the recipe is about. All non-trivial words should be capitalized. Do not end with punctuation.
The Statement of Problem section should be one or two sentences, beginning "You want to..." or "You need to" or "You can't ..." or similar wording. Do not pose it as a question. End with a period.
The Solution section should be one or two complete sentences mentioning either the approach to the solution or the API pieces to use.
The Discussion section should be the bulk of the Recipe, and will (usually) include at least one code fragment.
More to come...
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We are pretty tolerant of code style, but please be consistent.
Indentation - while I am a Unix greybeard and thus use tabs instead of spaces in my code, detabifying your code before you paste it will make it easier to tweak without repasting (but maybe that's a bad idea anyway), because the browsers interpret a single tab while typing as a request to move to the next field. At the very least, use only spaces or only tabs in your code; this will also ensure consistent spacing in the printed edition!
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text:
be all in (one's)/the mind(redirected from be all in my mind)
be all in (one's)/the mind
To exist solely in one's thoughts, rather than in reality. Don't tell me that my worries are all in my mind—you know this can be a dangerous area. Your presentation sounded great, honestly. Your fears are all in the mind.


text:
Forget the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia – an enterprising vicar has completed a sponsored 440-mile 'Tour de Corsica' to raise funds for essential repairs to his church.
The Rev Julian Williams, vicar of Nursling & Rownhams and a keen cyclist, made the ride in aid of St John the Evangelist, in Rownhams.
Early this year, parishioners were shocked to see part of the Memorial Garden, at the east end of the church, fenced off. Following severe winter weather, pieces of masonry had begun to crumble and fall to earth, rendering that part of the grounds extremely dangerous. Church members were even more shocked to find that repairs to the Grade II listed Victorian building would cost around £25,000!
Mr Williams started the fund-raising ball rolling with his sponsored ride, during which he covered more than 400 miles of extremely demanding terrain during a complete circuit of the island, as well as an additional 400 miles "just for fun".
"I had already planned to cycle round Corsica, so this seemed an ideal way to raise some money for these essential repairs," said Mr Williams.
"With sponsorship and other donations the church and local community have already raised over £7,000," said Mr Williams. "Of course, we still have a long way to go and further sponsorship and donations would be very welcome."
Readers can see and hear more about the vicar's trip at "A French Evening" at St John's on Friday, July 11.
Mr Williams added: "People will be bringing and sharing food and drink with a French flavour from 7pm, and we'd love to see you there."
Donations to the church's repair fund can be forwarded to the Parish Office, 27 Horns Drove, Rownhams, SO16 8AH – cheques should be made payable to 'Nursling and Rownhams PCC'.
For further details visit twinspires.org or call the parish office, between 9am and 11am, Monday to Friday, on 023 8073 8293.


text:
Edward Jones continues to shine in surveys of both investors and advisors at full-service firms, according to J.D. Power and Associates. But will that appeal be enough to help the firm nearly double in size to about 20,000 advisors by 2020?
AdvisorOne recently asked Managing Partner Jim Weddle (left) about hitting this target, hiring of former military officers and other developments at the national broker-dealer.
Q: What prompted Edward Jones to aim for 20,000 FAs by 2020?
A: This goal is part of our longer-term vision. In larger organizations like ours it's important to have an identified, longer-term set of goals.
It tells everyone the direction of the firm, it helps to get everyone pulling in the same direction, and it facilitates each associate's being able to link their work to the overall success of the firm. It creates an alignment of purpose.
Q: How is the firm doing this year in its hiring?
A: Our recruiting and hiring pipelines haven't been this strong in terms of both quality and quantity in several years.
We completed the rollout of our new FA Talent Acquisition organization, recruitment strategies and additional hiring screens in the first quarter of the year. Early results are very encouraging.
Retention is higher and performance is better among our beginners, and we believe we will grow by a net 300-400 this year.
Growing from where we are to 20,000 FAs in 2020 will require 5% growth each year in the U.S., and 10% growth each year in Canada.
Q: How and who does the firm recruit?
A: We are targeting career-changers who are employed, doing well, but have a burning desire to be in our business.
We are also very excited about our FORCES recruitment program that targets primarily junior officers who are leaving the military. Our training and compensation program dovetails with GI benefits and often allows those joining us to receive an income supplement for a year based on their military service.
Also, we have increased the size of our FA Career Development Program, which targets top graduates from BA and MA programs and provides them with up to a year of specialized training to prepare them to enter our FA Training program and eventually become financial advisors.
Q: How is the current economic client affecting your results?
A: In this economic environment, many investors realize they cannot do it all themselves. All of this creates a need for trustworthy financial advice.
The need for our personal service has never been greater, and we believe by understanding individual needs and providing tailored solutions we can help individual investors achieve their financial goals.


text:
You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'dorothy day center' tag.
"The calls for food assistance to our Catholic Worker House have tripled this past month, but last Saturday we had only 1/3 our usual number of volunteers show up to deliver the food… In the meantime, besides delivery, we have another problem, and that is food to give out to the poor. Our delivery this month from the Regional Food Bank was half its usual amount. Instead of about 14 tons of food, we received 7 at the Dorothy Day Center… The Printable Flyers are online. They are basic how-to instructions for coping with severely challenging circumstances. We're handing out the full set, since we don't know how far down this is going to go… We're suggesting that people combine households, move in with each other, especially small households with only one or two people. The way things are going, keeping a household going with only one or two people isn't going to work well. Inflation is running up prices, rents are going up, we're headed for a big spike in foreclosures. I've been getting calls from people I know are middle class and even upper middle class about assistance in meeting mortgage payments. We've had to turn all of those down. I tell them to move in with their parents, but there is a lot of denial…. I worry all this will be too little, too late… I wish all this had held off for a couple more years, but oh well, at least we are where we are now and aren't starting from square one." Sound like a report on what's happening today? It's actually an example of "isthisnotagame": it comes from an excellent report submitted back in July by jpeaceokc for the alternate reality game World Without Oil. Happy holidays, everyone. Photo by bella love via Flickr.


text:
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The French National Gendarmerie is an armed force in charge of police missions. Unlike the police, its members are soldiers.
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text:
As loud as we may shout at the TV watching sports or offer our own advice during a talk show, the people on the tube never hear our insights—until now. U.K. based interactive content developer, Live Talkback, used the Adobe Flash Platform and Adobe Creative Suite to engage U.K. audiences during broadcasts with live polling, allowing them to use their PCs and mobile devices to vote during live broadcasts. Live Talkback displays those voting results in real-time, keeping viewers on top of the buzz before, during and after these live events. Live Talkback applications include a "Clapometer," which uses PC and mobile phone microphones to measure audience noise during a show.
An Adobe MAX 2010 award finalist, Live Talkback uses Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Flash Player and the Flex framework because the technologies provide a flexible development environment and an easy integration process, allowing Live Talkback to create the polling tools in a fraction of the time and cost. Popular U.K. morning show, "This Morning," and top soccer club, Liverpool FC, have used Live Talkback to engage with its audiences. "This Morning" received more than 57,000 live votes in a recent live broadcast segment. The company is looking forward to emerging in other markets, namely in the U.S.
To learn more about Live Talkback and how it used Adobe technologies to enhance audience engagement with live broadcasts, read more here and check out the video below.


text:
Shanell (Young Money) - Somebody That I Used To Know
Shanell aka SnL's "Nobody's Bitch" mixtape promo video using Gotye ft Kimbra's song "Somebody That I Used to Know
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A TV screen is typically viewed from about 10 feet away, and while it is much larger than most other Android device displays, this type of screen does not provide the same level of precise detail and color as a smaller device. These factors require you to create app layouts with TV devices in mind in order to create a useful and enjoyable user experience.
This lesson describes the minimum requirements and implementation details for building effective layouts in TV apps.
You should also read Design for Android TV.
Use layout themes for TV
Android Themes can provide a basis for layouts in your TV apps. You should use a theme to modify the display of your app activities that are meant to run on a TV device. This section explains which themes you should use.
Leanback theme
The Leanback androidx library includes
Theme.Leanback, a theme for TV activities that provides a
consistent visual style. We strongly recommend using this theme for any TV app built
with the androidx leanback classes. The following code
sample shows how to apply this theme to an activity:
<activity android:name="com.example.android.TvActivity" android:label="@string/app_name" android:theme="@style/Theme.Leanback">
NoTitleBar theme
The title bar is a standard user interface element for Android apps on phones and tablets, but it is not appropriate for TV apps. If you are not using androidx leanback classes, you should apply this theme to your TV activities to suppress the display of a title bar. The following code example from a TV app manifest demonstrates how to apply this theme to remove the display of a title bar:
<application> ... <activity android:name="com.example.android.TvActivity" android:label="@string/app_name" android:theme="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar"> ... </activity> </application>
Build basic TV layouts
Layouts for TV devices should follow some basic guidelines to ensure they are usable and effective on large screens. Follow these tips to build landscape layouts optimized for TV screens:
- Build layouts with a landscape orientation. TV screens always display in landscape mode.
- Put on-screen navigation controls on the left or right side of the screen and save the vertical space for content.
- Create UIs that are divided into sections, using Fragments, and use view groups like
GridViewinstead of
ListViewto make better use of the horizontal screen space.
- Use view groups such as
LinearLayoutto arrange views. This approach allows the system to adjust the position of the views to the size, alignment, aspect ratio, and pixel density of a TV screen.
- Add sufficient margins between layout controls to avoid a cluttered UI.
Layouts for TV have some unique requirements due to the evolution of TV standards and the desire to always present a full screen picture to viewers. For this reason, TV devices may clip the outside edge of an app layout in order to ensure that the entire display is filled. This behavior is generally referred to as overscan.
Screen elements that must be visible to the user at all times should be positioned within the overscan safe area. Adding a 5% margin of 48dp on the left and right edges and 27dp on the top and bottom edges to a layout ensures that screen elements in that layout will be within the overscan safe area.
Background screen elements that the user doesn't directly interact with should not be adjusted or clipped to the overscan safe area. This approach ensures that background screen elements look correct on all screens.
The following example shows a root layout that can contain background elements, and a nested child layout that has a 5% margin and can contain elements within the overscan safe area:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" > <!-- Screen elements that can render outside the overscan safe area go here --> <!-- Nested RelativeLayout with overscan-safe margin --> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:layout_marginTop="27dp" android:layout_marginBottom="27dp" android:layout_marginLeft="48dp" android:layout_marginRight="48dp"> <!-- Screen elements that need to be within the overscan safe area go here --> </RelativeLayout> </RelativeLayout>
Caution: Do not apply overscan margins to your layout if you are using the
androidx leanback classes, such as
BrowseFragment or related
widgets, as those layouts already incorporate overscan-safe margins.
Build useable text and controls
The text and controls in a TV app layout should be easily visible and navigable from a distance. Follow these tips to make your user interface elements easier to see from a distance:
- Break text into small chunks that users can quickly scan.
- Use light text on a dark background. This style is easier to read on a TV.
- Avoid lightweight fonts or fonts that have both very narrow and very broad strokes. Use simple sans-serif fonts and anti-aliasing to increase readability.
- Use Android's standard font sizes:
<TextView android:id="@+id/atext" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="center_vertical" android:singleLine="true" android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceMedium"/>
- Ensure that all your view widgets are large enough to be clearly visible to someone
sitting 10 feet away from the screen (this distance is greater for very large screens). The
best way to do this is to use layout-relative sizing rather than absolute sizing, and
density-independent pixel (dip) units instead of absolute pixel units. For example, to set the
width of a widget, use
wrap_contentinstead of a pixel measurement, and to set the margin for a widget, use dip values instead of px values.
For more information about density-independent pixels and building layouts to handle larger screen sizes, see Supporting multiple screens.
Manage layout resources for TV
The common high-definition TV display resolutions are 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Your TV layout should target a screen size of 1920 x 1080 pixels, and then allow the Android system to downscale your layout elements to 720p if necessary. In general, downscaling (removing pixels) does not degrade your layout presentation quality. However, upscaling can cause display artifacts that degrade the quality of your layout and have a negative impact on the user experience of your app.
To get the best scaling results for images, provide them as 9-patch image elements if possible. If you provide low quality or small images in your layouts, they will appear pixelated, fuzzy, or grainy, which is not a good experience for the user. Use high-quality images instead.
For more information on optimizing layouts and resources for large screens see Design for multiple screens.
Avoid layout anti-patterns
There are a few approaches to building layouts that you should avoid because they do not work well on TV devices and lead to bad user experiences. Here are some user interface approaches you should specifically not use when developing a layout for TV.
- Re-using phone or tablet layouts - Do not reuse layouts from a phone or tablet app without modification. Layouts built for other Android device form factors are not well suited for TV devices and should be simplified for operation on a TV.
- ActionBar - While this user interface convention is recommended for use on phones and tablets, it is not appropriate for a TV interface. In particular, using an action bar options menu (or any pull-down menu for that matter) is strongly discouraged, due to the difficulty in navigating such a menu with a remote control.
- ViewPager - Sliding between screens can work great on a phone or tablet, but don't try this on a TV!
For more information on designing layouts that are appropriate to TV, see the TV design guide.
Handle large bitmaps
TV devices, like any other Android device, have a limited amount of memory. If you build your app layout with very high-resolution images or use many high-resolution images in the operation of your app, it can quickly run into memory limits and cause out of memory errors. For most cases, we recommend that you use the Glide library to fetch, decode, and display bitmaps in your app. For more information on getting the best performance when working with bitmaps, refer to our general Android graphics best practices.
Provide effective advertising
For the living room environment, we recommend you use video ads solutions that are full-screen and dismissable within 30 seconds. Functionality for advertising on Android TV, such as dismiss buttons and clickthroughs, must be accessible using the D-pad rather than touch.
Android TV does not provide a web browser. Your ads must not attempt to launch a web browser or redirect to Google Play Store content that is not approved for Android TV devices.
Note: You can use the
WebView class
for logins to social media services.


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[psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
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Topic: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try (Read 6114 times)
Posts: 129
[psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
March 23, 2007, 08:05:15 AM »
Previously, I described Psi Run's situation.
1) have a psychic power
2) have been captured by a shadowy organization
3) can't remember their past
4) have just survived a car crash, which has killed their guards
5) are on the run
Characters may choose whatever traits they wish, but they must be posed as questions, since they don't remember anything about their background. Questions can range from "Why can I stare at someone and make them obey me?" to "Why is there a white streak in my hair?" One thing characters do is remember the answers to those questions (as a product of conflict resolution).
MY question is this: I don't want the characters to have comic book scale traits (especially powers), since they are on the run, and need to be vulnerable. What kind of parameters can I set around "trait questions" that would accomplish this?
Thanks, Chris
Iowa Indie Gamers!
Posts: 5574
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #1 on:
March 23, 2007, 10:49:33 AM »
What if the player questions were combined with GM questions and the GM scaled their questions in proportion to the players.
e.g. if the player says "why do I get these brief flashes of what's about to happen" (i.e. something relatively tame by psi standards) the GM might add "why is that grey haired gentleman watching you funny, haven't you seen him somewhere before?"
if the player says "why am I suddenly able to make people's head explode from 100 yards away and disintegrate 10 feet thick concrete walls with a thought" the GM might add "why is a black armored vehicle with a crazy flashing antennae pulling up outside and a dozen armed men in futuristic helmets and body armor surrounding your building?"
In other words if the GM response scales up to meet (or exceed) the player's narration, players will be motivated to keep their narration more modest until such time as it becomes more worth while to bring down major opposition.
Methods like this I think are more effective in the long run than admonishments and boundaries.
Ralph Mazza
Universalis: The Game of Unlimited Stories
Callan S.
Posts: 3588
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #2 on:
March 23, 2007, 12:05:12 PM »
I think rifts style power creep follows trumps though - the GM trumps the player, but the GM's just another person so the player isn't going to just let another person have the last word, so they go to trump them with their next narration.
If they need to be vulnerable, you can do it like with running before - you just made them run, but they decide why. Here you can just say as part of the game text that they just are vulnerable, but they get to decide...what? With running, the question revolved around character motivation. Here you could design it the same way - leave it to the player to write a character motivation and they might write 'But I don't like to control people - it's like raping them' or 'I don't want to explode peoples heads...what am I, some sort of monster? No!'
Or it could be resource management - everytime they use a power, they lose X amount of points in their 'learn about my past' score. As GM you decide what X amount is for each power.
Philosopher Gamer
Posts: 129
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #3 on:
March 23, 2007, 12:14:48 PM »
But I don't like to control people - it's like raping them' or 'I don't want to explode peoples heads...what am I, some sort of monster? No!'
Funny you should mention this...this is a "conflict category" in the game, which I'll be dealing with in another thread.
Thanks for the feedback!
Iowa Indie Gamers!
Posts: 5574
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #4 on:
March 23, 2007, 12:32:06 PM »
I don't know Callan, I think the sort of players who would resort to those sorts of juvenile power trips aren't really the target audience for a game that grants high levels of responsibility to the entire playgroup anyway...I mean there's a reason why a certain demographic of player gravitates towards games like Rifts.
I mean if you trust your players enough to share authority with them to this extent to begin with, than IMO when one of them comes up a somewhat escalated power you trust that their doing it for dramatically appropriate reasons. The GM's scaled response isn't a Trump rule...its a "let me know when you're ready for the big guns" rule. The players know in advance that when they escalate their powers the GM will escalate the threat. Its not a question of punishment, its a question of pacing. Early niether the characters nor the players are ready for the huge climactic showdown. Later on, when they are, the switch to go that way is thrown by the players.
Heroes uses this sort of pacing. Early on in the show super powers were subtle, rarely seen overtly and had limited impact on others. Now...the powers are more obvious and more superish, and the response from the antagonists is greater and greater.
Might not be exactly what Chris is looking for, but I think its an effective method.
Ralph Mazza
Universalis: The Game of Unlimited Stories
Callan S.
Posts: 3588
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #5 on:
March 23, 2007, 05:17:23 PM »
Effective, but probably quite a different path - I think Chris wants vulnerability as a means to some sort of end, rather than the end itself (which is along the lines of looking at power level 1 vs power level 1, then power level 5 vs power level 5, and so on).
Chris, am I reading you right at all? At the mo I kind of see an idea that's like an apple press - the vulnerability helps squeeze something out of the characters and that 'something' is the end your going for.
Philosopher Gamer
Posts: 196
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #6 on:
March 23, 2007, 06:07:06 PM »
Quote from: chris_moore on March 23, 2007, 08:05:15 AM
MY question is this: I don't want the characters to have comic book scale traits (especially powers), since they are on the run, and need to be vulnerable. What kind of parameters can I set around "trait questions" that would accomplish this?
I think another way to keep character powers in line is to give mystery flaws to powers that seem disruptive or too powerful. In an attempt to be different from the other players, it may only be a matter of time before someone creates a powerful that may be to hard to wrangle. "How do I walk through walls?", "Why does my touch vaporize anything I touch?", "Why can nothing hurt me?", "Why can I lift 100 tons?","Why do I ALWAYS know when I'm in danger?" Its bound to happen. Aside from trying to set the scale ahead of time, allowing these powers may not be so bad, if you add reprocussions to their use; the more out of control a power seems, the more flaws you add (surprise the players with them...it'll make it fun). You may even be able to chart out how may flaws you add to a power based on how useful it is.
A character may pick and choose when they use their abilities if it totally drains them, or knocks them out, or something.
I did something like this about 15 years ago, where the players described the power they wanted to have, and I gave it to them; though there was much more to their abilities than they expected. As they became aware of there powers, discovery became a game driver. You may even let them buy off some of their flaws as they become more skilled with using their powers . My experience with this type of story is that the fun runs out when (a) the characters know all there is to know about their powers and (b)when they are so powerful they no longer fear the enemy.
Hope that help, game sounds like it could be very cool. Keep it up,
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Posts: 105
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #7 on:
March 25, 2007, 07:44:45 AM »
That's a good approach Ken: it's always better to make the players question their own limits than to get into an arms race with them over who can narrate the heaviest repsonse to the previous narration!
I think the idea that Valamir put forward is fine for a Wushu-style game where the PCs have cinematic lives and can expect to survive the unsurvivable. For a more rooted, gritty game, its good to give the PCs what they want but then show them that that is not neccessarily what they need.
Caveman-like grunting: "James like games".
Posts: 129
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #8 on:
March 26, 2007, 08:32:38 AM »
Thanks, all!
One of the neat things about the game, in my opinion, is that players may narrate however they wish,
within the established constraints
. So, no matter how powerful they make themselves, they are still On the Run. So I think Valamir's response is my choice for now. It's the GM's and the players responsibility to respond to, "Okay, in light of what just happened, how are you still On the Run?" In my experience, these types of constraints do not hinder, but channel creativity into surprising directions.
The conflict resolution system does that too. Coming soon.
Thanks again, Chris
Iowa Indie Gamers!
Eero Tuovinen
Acts of Evil Playtesters
Posts: 2591
Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #9 on:
March 26, 2007, 10:10:32 AM »
A thought that first comes to me in relation to what Ralph suggested is that the opposite way to having a counterweight balance is to have a self-policed, clearly set policy limitation. Essentially, just say that "characters should have no superhero powers" and be done with it. Of course, it is useful to analyze this further and condence into a more powerful and less vague criterion that does not require familiarity with superheroes. For example:
- The power cannot solve problems, only open new venues for solving them.
- The power will always lose to appropriate experts (soldiers, in case of destructive stuff) expecting it, whatever the power is.
- The power will never reach the national news.
Any of the above examples would work to effectively guarantee that you wouldn't have to scale the power level too high. In addition, this approach allows one to use a resource system where players actually can sacrifice something to momentarily surpass the limitation, whatever it is. Suffering brain hemorrage to blast your enemies is certainly within genre, anyway. You could even have more limitations, or player-set limitations (in the form of questions?) if you wanted, in this case. That might be useful, I don't know.
Otherwise, what Ralph said. It's also useful to make escalation absolutely useless in terms of resources, so power escalation only matters for the theme.
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Re: [psi run] Why can I read minds? second try
Reply #10 on:
March 26, 2007, 01:40:57 PM »
Quote from: chris_moore on March 26, 2007, 08:32:38 AM
Thanks, all!
One of the neat things about the game, in my opinion, is that players may narrate however they wish,
within the established constraints
. So, no matter how powerful they make themselves, they are still On the Run. It's the GM's and the players responsibility to respond to, "Okay, in light of what just happened, how are you still On the Run?"
Yeah, that's excellent. Flip it back to them. "So given that you can now blow up people's heads, how come you're still on the run" may be the only thing the GM needs to say. Let the players come up with the Black Armored vehicle and the SWAT team in the psi-proof body armor.
Ralph Mazza
Universalis: The Game of Unlimited Stories
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This fish dish is normally accompanied by garlic sauce (skordalia) and beetroot. What you see in the photo may look like mashed potatoes, but is the skordalia. The photo shows the fish called galeos, but this is most likely unobtainable abroad, so as it belongs to the cod family, we have given the recipe using cod below. It is very easy to prepare and is similar to fish croquettes.
To make the skordalia and beetroot, please go to a previous post here which gives the recipe.
1 kg fresh cod
4 tablespoons flour
300 ml sunflower oil
Salt to taste
Cut the cod into slices approx. 3cm wide.
Remove the central bone, fold open the remaining flesh and cut it in half.
Salt each of the pieces and sprinkle flour on them.
Deep fry in hot oil for 4 minutes approx.
If you've tried this recipe please rate it!
Eat and Enjoy


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Rams Still Rolling...
Farmingdale State - 95, The Sage Colleges - 55
Farmingdale, N.Y. - With a 30-point performance from senior guard Kim Blakney (Brooklyn, N.Y./Benjamin Banneker), the Rams improved to 17-0, 11-0 in the Skyline with a 95-55 home victory over conference opponent The Sage Colleges (7-9, 5-6). Blakney, who is currently the Division III National leader in points and steals per game, also added nine rebounds, eight steals, three assists, and two blocks today, while knocking down three from long range and sinking 9-of-11 from the free throw line.
Farmingdale State led throughout and held a 13-point advantage at the half, 39-26, before pouring in 56 points in the second to keep the streak rolling. The Rams sank 12-of-15 free throws in the final 10 minutes of the second half, finishing the half shooting 74-percent from the charity stripe. The teams' 17 straight wins is a program record, shattering the previous record of 13 wins set during the 2004-05 season.
As a team, Farmingdale State forced 32 turnovers and had 24 steals with 16 players in scoring. Senior guard Kamaya Miller (Brooklyn, N.Y./Midwood) posted 11 points, while junior forward Quiana Holman (Bronx, N.Y./Hyde Prep), freshman guard Jeanette Zubizaretta (Bay Shore, N.Y./Calhoun) and sophomore guard Kayla Koch (Kings Park, N.Y./Kings Park) scored 7 points each.
For the Gators, sophomore forward Kelsey Frament (Waterford, N.Y./Catholic Central) led with 13 points, while senior guard Carlin DeMarinis (Saratoga Springs, N.Y./Saratoga Springs) finished with 10 points.
The Rams will now face the College of Mount Saint Vincent on Saturday, January 30th at 1:00 p.m. in Riverdale, N.Y. Farmingdale went into triple overtime with the Dolphins in the first meeting of the season, winning 98-96.


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The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
|The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
|Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond
|HarperCollins (UK)
Houghton Mifflin (US)
|6 October 2006
The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide is a reference guide to the life of J.R.R. Tolkien. Compiled by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, it is composed of two tomes:
- The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader's Guide
- The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology
[edit] Unique Tolkien writings
The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide includes many quotes from formerly unpublished or hard-to-find writings of Tolkien.
- Chronology, p.625: quotes from two writings concerning an abandoned preface to 'The Golden Key'. (?Late November 1964-?mid-February 1965)
[edit] From the publisher
Designed to be the essential reference works for all readers and students, these volumes present the most thorough analysis possible of Tolkien's work within the important context of his life.
The Reader's Guide includes brief but comprehensive alphabetical entries on a wide range of topics, including a who's who of important persons, a guide to places and institutions, details concerning Tolkien's source material, information about the political and social upheavals through which the author lived, the importance of his social circle, his service as an infantryman in World War I — even information on the critical reaction to his work and the "Tolkien cult."
The Chronology details the parallel evolutions of Tolkien's works and his academic and personal life in minute detail. Spanning the entirety of his long life including nearly sixty years of active labor on his Middle-earth creations, and drawing on such contemporary sources as school records, war service files, biographies, correspondence, the letters of his close friend C.S. Lewis, and the diaries of W.H. Lewis, this book will be an invaluable resource for those who wish to gain a complete understanding of Tolkien's status as a giant of twentieth-century literature.


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(Reuters) - Janus Capital Group's Intech Investment Management unit said its chief executive Jennifer Young has stepped down. Replacing her is Adrian Banner, who will continue as its chief investment officer, Intech said.
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It's a postcard October morning at Kentucky's Carter Caves state park. Sycamore and hickory have already turned orange, and the sun crests ancient Appalachian slopes against a cloudless sky. With Halloween a few days away, a life-sized Elvis dummy peeks out a visitor center window. Middle schoolers on a field trip are coming down one of the trails, preceded by their laughter.
The idyll is complete but for two details: All but two of the park's caves are permanently shut to the public, and in the parking lot are six researchers in Tyvek bodysuits and gloves, like extras from Outbreak.
The caves are closed, and bodysuits required, because of White Nose Syndrome, a bat-killing disease more virulent than any other disease in the known history of mammals. As the children walk to their bus, I wonder if they'll remember this morning as adults, and tell their own kids about a time when bats lived in caves. "What's wrong with the bats?" a girl asks, her tour guides having kept the day shadow-free. "They're sick," I say.
My answer isn't precisely correct. Had the girl asked Hazel Barton, a Northern Kentucky University microbiologist who's there to sample bat hair and skin, or Brooke Slack, a state bat biologist, she would have learned that Carter Caves' bats are being protected. White Nose Syndrome – WNS for short – hasn't yet reached Kentucky, but its march down the cave-riddled Appalachians passed within 100 miles of where we stand, putting us squarely on the battle's front lines.
At this point, it's a losing battle. Bats with noses dusted by the Geomyces destructans fungus that causes WNS were seen for the first time in early 2006, in upstate New York. One year later, biologists realized that WNS could kill bats in large numbers. By 2008, mortality in major New York and Vermont hibernacula, caves where tens and hundreds of thousands of bats had wintered, was more than 90 percent. Biologists wore gas masks against the stench of rotting bodies. Bones cracked like popcorn under their feet.
By the end of last winter, G. destructans was found in 14 states and two Canadian provinces, and at least a million bats were dead. In August, a high-profile Science study gave computationally modeled meaning to all those dead-bat piles. The little brown bat, more common than any other in North America, the furred star of most every attic and open-window encounter, so numerous as to be considered pests, would be extinct in 20 years in the eastern United States. If by some unexpected miracle WNS mortality dropped from over 90 percent to 5 percent, they might make it to the century's end.
That essential prognosis applies to at least three other cave-dwelling, hibernating bat species, and probably more, though one-by-one tabulations tend to obscure the potential of WNS to annihilate an entire manner of animal being. In sheer magnitude, WNS threatens to dwarf the demise of plains bison or passenger pigeons, the historical benchmarks of American animal collapse. The closest comparison is Chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease now scouring amphibians from much of the planet.
Yet even as the reality of WNS has emerged in the popular press, public and policy reaction has been muted. Awareness and concern exists, but at a fraction of what would likely be displayed if, say, half of America's waterfowl were about to vanish.
Bat conservationists tend to blame this on bats' unfair and untrue reputation as rabies-ridden, hair-tangling rodents. A more fundamental problem, however, is that bats are generally absent from everyday awareness. Most specialize in eating insects at night in the air, an ecological niche both staggeringly enormous and out of sight. Their taxonomic order, Chiroptera – more closely related to primates than rodents – contains more mammal species than any order except rodents, yet most people have never seen a bat up close.
Several thousand hibernate in the old saltpeter mine where Hazel Barton and Brooke Slack and their assistants go. At this point in the season, they'll fly out at night for a last few pre-winter meals. In the daytime they sleep, clinging to walls and cuddling for warmth and companionship.
Barton, a lifelong spelunker with rare expertise in cave microbiology, is interested in fungi that grow naturally on bat skin. By the glow of headlamps the researchers pluck bats from the ceiling with practiced efficiency, swabbing their skin and clipping tufts of hair from which fungal DNA will later be extracted. Slack examines the wings, looking for any signs of the dreaded disease.
This early in the season, it's extremely unlikely that G. destructans growth would be visible. But it's always possible that some spore-carrying survivor from one of West Virginia's WNS-afflicted colonies arrived this season, scars on its wings portending potential doom. The presence of G. destructans was confirmed in West Virginia's largest hibernacula last winter; it also reached Tennessee, Missouri and Oklahoma. Barton and Slack were sure it would reach Carter Caves, as well. Their fears survived for another season.
Despite the researchers' care, the bats start to wake, roused by noise and light and even the ambient temperature difference of our bodies. By the time Barton finishes, many are aloft, circling with the speed and agility of swallows. Their cries reverberate down the narrow hall. Others remain hanging, swaying every so slightly, just enough to make it feel like the walls are pulsing. It's as if the entire cave is alive.
As we hurry out, I ask Barton whether she thinks these bats will stay WNS-free, if they have a chance. Grimacing, she shakes her head.
Treatment Options —————–
Over a few months of taxi and bar conversations about WNS, most people's instinctive response was to imagine a treatment, a drug of some sort, something that can be sprayed on bats to kill the fungus and control the disease.
It's a noble response, rooted in an elbow-grease, can-do spirit and the historical success of relatively straightforward conservation measures like habitat protection and captive breeding, plus an abiding American faith in both medication and technology. Indeed, several groups of researchers, including Hazel Barton and her collaborators, are working on anti-WNS treatments. But if finding a compound that killed G. destructans in a petri dish was enough to stop the outbreak, it would already be over.
In laboratory tests, drug store antifungals like Tinactin and Lamisil kill G. destructans just fine. They're also neurotoxic endocrine disruptors that kill bats, and even at low, sub-lethal doses would tilt the balance towards extinction. It's not hard to do. Unlike most small animals, bats live for decades and reproduce slowly, perhaps because – until WNS – survival was generally assured upon reaching adulthood. There was little need for replenishment. Healthy populations of little brown bats grow at an infinitesimal annual rate of about .008 percent.
Unless a WNS treatment destroys G. destructans while staying on the safe side of that threshold, it will simply substitute for the disease. And if researchers find a physiologically safe compound, it needs to be ecologically safe as well, leaving unharmed the thousands of other fungal species that are the foundation of cave ecosystems.
It's not a trivial concern. When Fusarium solani fungus started to eat the 17,000-year-old cave paintings in Lascaux, France, it was easily eradicated with chemicals. Two years later, an even worse fungus sprouted on the pigments, apparently unleashed from environmental insignificance by the treatments. The same could happen to bats.
After all this, should some safe and balanced compound be found, researchers would need to treat every single bat in every last crack and crevice, all winter long, at outbreak sites. It's conceivable, but would be so logistically challenging and labor-intensive that even successful treatments represent a stopgap measure.
"Is it possible? Theoretically, yes. But the best-case scenario is to slow the spread down, and maybe to protect one very, very special site," says Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist Greg Turner. "Even though I'm doing these treatment experiments, I don't put a lot of hope in finding some miracle cure. There's just too many problems."
Kentucky is on the front lines of WNS, but Pennsylvania is a central battleground. The disease arrived in 2008, and has since spread through the state's eastern hibernacula, with death counts ranging from 80 percent to 99.9 percent. Western Pennsylvania held out longer, but I met Turner as he was driving to Laurel Caverns in the state's far southwestern tip, where WNS arrived last winter.
Together with fellow Commission biologist Cal Butchkoski, Turner is responsible for Pennsylvania's bats. On this morning he's wearing a T-shirt reading, "Bats Need Friends Too," over which he'll later button his Game Commission uniform. For years he and Butchkoski have traveled the state year-round, counting bats in hundreds of caves and mines, painstakingly detailing their movements and habits.
When WNS hit, they already knew what happened in New York, and were ready – not to stop the disease, though cave closures and decontamination protocols probably slowed its accidental spread by human cave visitors, but to study it.
As a result, Pennsylvania has become a giant WNS laboratory. Turner and Butchkoski make observations and gather samples used by dozens of researchers, especially Hazel Barton and Bucknell University bat biologist DeeAnn Reeder. Together they're studying a myriad of basic biological questions that need to be answered before WNS can be understood, much less stopped. And of all their questions, none is more basic than this: Why do the bats die?
Portrait of a Killer ——————–
It may seem strange to still have this question. There is, after all, no shortage of dead bats to study. But the WNS outbreak cast into sharp relief just how much remains to be learned about the basic biology of the everyday world.
In bats, for example, there's no such thing as a blood test of the sort that's routinely administered to people and even our pets, giving a quick chemical and immunological profile of health. The bat immune system is, in Barton's words, "a blank sheet of paper with a black box in the middle."
At the ecological level, what many bat species eat, and even where they live for certain parts of the year, is almost as mysterious. And compared to fungi, bats are well-understood. Barton and Reeder were thrust into the forefront of WNS research not only because they're good scientists, but because they were among the few people studying relevant questions when the disease hit.
Out of all this uncertainty, a picture of WNS has slowly emerged. At its center is G. destructans itself, which had not been identified before the outbreak. Like Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the fungus responsible for chytridiomycosis in amphibians), it violates what had been a cardinal rule of fungal infections: They're not fatal. Its unexpected nature is one reason it took several years for researchers to generally agree that G. destructans causes WNS.
Leading the characterization of G. destructans were researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. They sequenced the fungi's genes, placing it within the otherwise innocuous Geomyces clade, found widely in soil – "myces" signifies fungus, "geo" means "of the Earth" – and describing its physical characteristics, in particular its telltale sickle-shaped spores. They also named it destructans, a straightforward and accurate appellation.
The bats' eponymous white noses are just visible spore growth. The real damage occurs below. G. destructans lives on bat skin, invading hair follicles and sebaceous glands, forming pockets on the surface of exposed wings, breaking through into the epithelium beneath. There it breaks down connective tissue and muscle and nerves into digestible nutrients. Under a microscope, researchers liken G. destructans mycelium to spaghetti wriggling into meat. Another resemblance is the demon worms that consume animal flesh in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.
How this progresses at a cell-by-level level is not known. At the other end of the scale, the chain of transmission between bats – whether it spreads in winter or fall or spring, if animals of particular life stages or habits are the primary vectors – is also uncertain. Also undetermined are the exact origins of G. destructans.
It may have come on a tourist's boot or cargo stowaway bat from Europe, where G. destructans, or something very much like it, has subsequently been found, but in the absence of disease. Their apparent resistance suggests that modern European bats are descended from survivors of a prehistoric WNS epidemic, and G. destructans is "like smallpox arriving in the New World," says Reeder. But it's also possible that American G. destructans differs subtly from European, with some single, as-yet-unspecified mutation just happening to produce a skin-digesting enzyme.
Whatever its origins, G. destructans thrives in the cold favored by cave-dwelling, hibernating bats, which during hibernation cool their bodies to ambient temperatures. Among hibernators in general, this usually involves shutting down energy-intensive immune systems. "Here comes this cold-loving fungus, and it's found immune-suppressed animals. They're like HIV patients. It's a perfect storm," says Reeder.
With the help of temperature-recording sensors affixed to bat bodies and thermal cameras in caves, Reeder and other researchers have found that little brown bats, which briefly wake from hibernation every few weeks when healthy, rise every few days when infected. She suspects that arousal is a form of immune system "rebooting," and that bats with WNS are trying to fight the disease.
Another proposed explanation comes from the USGS researchers, who note the importance of bat wings, which G. destructans reduces to the consistency of perforated tissue paper, to maintaining water balance and homeostasis. Autopsies of WNS-killed bats have found many to be so dehydrated that their tissues stick to researchers' fingers. According to this hypothesis, infected bats wake, and can die, from thirst.
Both explanations could be right. The fungus may also release toxins, or open holes for secondary bacterial infections. Whatever the pathological constellation, waking from hibernation requires a rise in body temperature from 40 degrees to more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Stoking biological furnaces burns quickly through the bats' fat reserves. Looking for food, perhaps, or disoriented by dehydration, many fly outside, giving rise to another defining phenomenon of the disease: Bats flying out of caves in daylight, one by one for weeks on end, dying on the landscape in the middle of winter.
Amidst this carnage are a few cautiously optimistic notes. Field observations and Reeder's work with captive bats suggests that WNS virulence varies by cave microclimate. Reeder, whose lab whiteboard is filled from top to bottom with the upcoming winter's experiments, recently installed a set of environmental chambers that provide fine-tuned control over temperature and humidity for bats inside. If cold and dryness moderate the disease, she and the Pennsylvania biologists will try to manipulate real-world environments, sinking air shafts into hibernacula to create pockets of safety.
Other biologists, including former New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologist Al Hicks, have proposed designing "artificial hibernacula," perhaps in repurposed World War II ammunition bunkers, where transplanted colonies of bats could be monitored and treated.
"You have no choice but to do everything you can do," says Turner. "When you think of yourself as a conservationist in any way, it's not to throw your hands up and say, 'We're fucked.' There's always a glimmer of hope somewhere."
A World Without Bats ——————–
Cal Butchkoski, the other Game Commission bat biologist, echoes Turner. "How do you keep from despair? You have to maintain some hope," he says. But a note of fatalism tinges the voice of Butchkoski, a thoughtful, soft-spoken man whose bat labors stretch back two decades, whose backyard bat colony is still big enough for him to have a mosquito-free beer on summer evenings. "There's just so much we don't know."
On a crisp fall night in Amish farm country outside State College, Pennsylvania, Butchkoski is visiting a hibernacula where WNS was detected last year. He thinks that about half the bats died, though the count's not official. On this night, he and three assistants are seeing what's still alive. With plastic sheeting they seal the cave entrance, a nondescript-looking crevice in a streamside hollow, then cut a window-sized hole. Into the hole goes a harp trap, named for its resemblance to the musical instrument. Bats will hit the strings, and fall into a padded bag at the bottom.
Having set the trap, the researchers walk back to their trucks, and settle into folding chairs to wait. A bat detector relays a static hum from the cave entrance. A full moon rises. I think on a question implicit in the epidemic: What does it really matter if bats die?
There are different perspectives on this question.
One is at the level of organismal empathy. Infected bats undoubtedly suffer, perhaps in a manner people typically associate with larger, more charismatic animals. "It wouldn't surprise me that bats have some sort of rudimentary language," Bill Elliott, a bat biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, told me. "They have sophisticated social interactions. We think our big brains are the ultimate, but going in the other direction is just as good."
Beyond the organismal level is that of species, not just one but a slew. The little brown bat has received the most attention, but the Eastern pipistrelle, Northern long-ear and endangered Indiana bat all appear equally vulnerable. Somewhat more resistant, but still imperiled, are big brown and small-footed bats. Those six species happened to be first in line in the northeast. In the past year, G. destructans was found in three southern species – the cave myotis, gray bat, and southeastern myotis. It remains to be seen how WNS will progress in them.
Altogether, more than half of North America's 45 bat species may fit the cave-dwelling, hibernating WNS victim profile. And if one takes seriously the notion that the natural world is a collective treasure, a living museum several billion years in the making, then bats represent a whole wing of it. Losing half of them in North America is a bit like losing half our jazz musicians, or abstract painters, or novelists. Something unique and unreplicable will be gone.
The same argument extends to certain cave systems, especially in the southeast, where entire ecologies of cave-adapted animals rely on guano as a foundational nutrient source. "The consequences of losing the guano could be dire. It could mean these systems eventually run down," said Elliott.
Not everyone shares conservationist sentiments. But there's a utilitarian argument as well, short and sweet. Bats eat bugs. Lots of them. Little brown bats famously eat half their body weight in bugs each night, more if they're nursing. Many of those insects eat crops.
The bottom-line value of their pest control is methodologically difficult to compute, but Boston University bat ecologist Tom Kunz made an informative try several years ago. In an eight-county region of south-central Texas, where Mexican freetail bats eat cotton bollworms and corn earworms, he calculated that bats save farmers roughly $740,000 annually – about one-eighth of total harvest value – in prevented crop damage and reduced pesticide treatments.
Early in the summer, before the region's farmers typically start to use pesticides, the labor of each individual freetail was worth about $.02 per night. In a region where airborne bat densities are so great as to be visible on Doppler radar, it adds up.
Mexican freetails are probably safe from WNS, but Kunz's figures are instructive. Some variant likely holds just about everywhere bats live. And contrary to the conventional expectation that evolution and ecology will find something else to do the bats' job, their niche will almost certainly stay empty in any human-relevant timeframe. Nocturnal airborne insects are the sole province of bats, a food source they've exploited so completely and efficiently over the last 50 million years as to be without competition.
"There are people who say, 'Well, birds will do better.' No. They're not going to eat the nocturnal insects," says Reeder. And should a few bats prove genetically resistant to WNS, in sufficient numbers that some other environmental circumstance doesn't finish them off, it will still take hundreds or thousands of years to recover.
The agricultural threat alone makes it all the more unreasonable that WNS researchers have been given a pittance of federal support.
The National Science Foundation has essentially ignored the disease. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, through which most WNS research and management is coordinated, spent $2.4 million on the disease last year, or slightly less than it expects to save through upgrades to departmental e-mail and data processing. Congress gave an extra $1.9 million in 2010, but that may have been a one-time event.
As of early November, the Department of the Interior's omnibus appropriations budget, slated for a December vote, contained a $5 million WNS funding request. In this deficit-sensitive moment, however, such "earmarks" are an unpopular proposition.
Winifed Frick, a University of California, Santa Cruz bioinformaticist who with Kunz co-authored the Science paper on imminent little brown bat extinction, described meeting in October with the legislative aide of one prominent Senator.
"She said, 'We've been asked to trim the budget. Unless you can show how this is going to help blue-collar jobs, I don't know how this is going to get through,'" said Frick. "It's a tough budget year. This would be considered an earmark. I get it. But it's frustrating when $5 million is not a lot in terms of appropriations, and would make a huge difference in terms of our project."
It should be noted that Butchkoski's three technicians on the Amish farm count are seasonal contract workers and fit any non-industrial definition of blue-collar labor. But as they check the trap, thoughts of funding and politics are far away. The night's haul is four northern long-ears. They submit graciously to Butchkoski's inspections, opening their mouths in brief protest before settling down on the technicians' thumbs. Their wings prove mercifully free of disease.
"I never thought I'd be so happy to see four northern long-ears," he says. "Now we know they're here. Thankfully, they're still here."
The Start of Winter ——————-
On a rainy mid-November morning, Hazel Barton and Greg Turner and DeeAnn Reeder's students hike to the Durham iron mine outside Bucks County, Pennsylvania. First excavated by Winnebago Indians, then by colonial settlers, it was abandoned in the 19th century and eventually became home to about 8,000 bats.
When WNS hit last year, the researchers scrambled to test an antifungal compound that had shown laboratory promise. By the time they started, though, the outbreak was well underway, and the cages they built had holes. When the researchers came back two months later, the cages were empty, and the bats a brown sludge of decay on the floor. Dismaying results, but inconclusive: Maybe it would have worked if they'd started sooner, or if the bats hadn't escaped.
The researchers have arrived earlier this year, with several new compounds and more reliable equipment. After crawling down a series of sloping, rubble-filled tunnels, they reach a central hallway. On one rust-colored wall, some long-ago vandal has spray painted, "Land of the Bats."
Maybe a thousand bats are still left. Reeder's students pick them from the walls, placing some in coolers for transport back to her lab, where they'll live this winter. Others go into plywood treatment cages. Barton is secretive about the compounds, but allows that one is carvone, the candidate from last year. Three others are derived from antifungals identified by her research as produced naturally on bat skin.
Will the treatments work? "We'll find out when come back in the spring," says Barton.
Many other questions may also be answered by then. How will the southern and western spread of G. destructans play out? Will it be less virulent in warmer climes, in new species with different habits? Will some prove resistant, but carry it even further? Will it cross the Great Plains? Will it spread to the Great Lakes region, where it will almost assuredly be as destructive as in the northeast? In the northeast, will there be signs of resistance?
Asking bat researchers about this winter, two phrases keep coming up: "Holding our breath" and "Waiting for the other shoe to drop."
Several of Barton and Reeder's compounds are aerosols, contained in bottles beneath the bats' cages. To help with dispersal, they've been mixed with oils, aromatherapy-style. Improbably, Durham Mine fills with the scent of almonds. Barton bounds back and forth, peering into the cages. For all her earlier caveats about the limitations of treatment, her voice is full of excitement. As we leave, the cages recede into darkness.
On the drive up, Barton described how, during the trial's first run, she'd expected to return to cages full of healthy bats, with others clinging to the outside, trying to get in. On the ride back, I ask if she still does.
"If I didn't have that hope, I wouldn't be doing this," she says.
Images: 1) Indiana bat inspected by Brooke Slack at Carter Caves state park, Kentucky. 2) Little brown bats in Laurel Caverns, Pennsylvania. 3) A little brown bat with White Nose Syndrome in a limestone mine near Rosendale, New York. 4) Northern long-eared bat examined on a far near State College, Pennsylvania. 5) Little brown bat in a treatment cage in Durham Mine, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. 6) Treatment cage in Durham Mine. All photographs by Brandon Keim. More images can be found on Flickr.
See Also:
- A Visit to a Site of the Batpocalypse
- Feds Criticized in Fight Against Killer Bat Disease
- Bat Disease Threatens to Close America's Caves
- DIY Bat-Saving: Build Your Own Bat House
- America's Most Common Bat Headed for Eastern Extinction
- Controversy Erupts Over Captive Endangered Bat Colony
- Desperate Efforts to Save Endangered Bats May Fail
Brandon's Twitter stream and reporter's notebook.
Thanks to everyone who supported my reporting through Spot.us; and to Hazel Barton, Mylea Bayless, David Blehert, Cal Butchkoski, Jeremy Coleman, Paul Cryan, Scott Darling, William Elliott, Nina Fascione, Winifred Frick, Carl Herzog, Al Hicks, Kevin Keel, Tom Kunz, Carol Meteyer, Marianne Moore, Carol Meteyer, DeeAnn Reeder, Ryan Shipley, Craig Stihler, Greg Turner, Gudrun Wibbelt & Peter Youngbaer.


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Waste heat from burning oil, coal, and gas to fuel everything from cars and homes to power plants in large urban areas provides enough warmth to alter the northern hemisphere's climate at significant distances from the sources of the heat, according to a new study.
Indeed, the researchers say, waste heat's impact may close a gap between the winter and autumn temperatures that climate models project for some regions of the northern hemisphere and the warmer-than-projected temperatures that have been measured for those areas.
Waste heat is distinct from the so-called urban heat-island effect, in which cities are warmer than surrounding rural areas. The urban heat-island effect stems from a city's rough texture, dark asphalt surface streets, and dark rooftops, which absorb the sun's heat and release it back into the air. Essentially cities are recycling locally energy that is already part of the climate system.
Waste heat represents energy added to the system as long-buried fossil fuels are unearthed and burned. Some of the heat is converted to other forms of energy, such as electricity. But no conversion process is 100 percent efficient. So heat also heads out the smokestack or tailpipe.
Averaged over the entire globe, waste heat's effect on warming is tiny compared with the effect from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere as they burn fossil fuel and change land-use patterns, the researchers say.
Where CO2's effect on climate has increased global average temperatures by around 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past century, urban waste heat contributes about 0.01 degrees C to the climate's global average temperature in a given year as a kind of low-level background, the researchers estimate.
Indeed, the effect is so small that, while research on the climate effect of waste heat began some 50 years ago, it didn't get far because modeling at the time put the global average effect on temperatures well within the bounds of natural variability. Moreover the experiments at the time had a few sources spread randomly over the globe.
But highly urbanized regions, such as the US Northeast, the San Diego to San Francisco corridor, western Europe, and eastern China, represent concentrated sources of waste heat.
Taken together, these locations form an "urban-heat archipelago" that spans the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, says Ming Cai, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University in Tallahassee and a member of the team that reported the results Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
This pattern of human development along the coasts has unwittingly put these concentrated heat sources "underneath sensitive regions of atmospheric circulation," says Dr. Cai – either right under the jet stream or under regions of relatively persistent high or low pressure.
The team found that when waste heat in these regions exceeds a certain threshold, the vast column of relatively warm air can rise to set up a blocking pattern – altering the strength of the jet stream at different latitude and the location of its north-south meanders. The effect is most pronounced in winter, when the temperature contrast between the waste heat and surrounding air is the strongest.
The team, led by Guang Zhang, a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., ran global climate models to reproduce the global climate over the past 100 years. In one set of model runs, they included all of the human influences – from increasing CO2 emissions to various forms of aerosols and soot. In a second set, they included the heat from the urban-heat archipelago.
During December through January, Russia and northern Asia warm by an average of up to 1 degree C above what one would expect from global warming alone. Eastern China far beyond the urban areas warms by about 0.5 degrees C. In North America, the US Northeast and southern Canada warmed by about 0.8 degrees C. The circulation changes also can cool other regions by comparable amounts.
Moreover, the modeled wintertime results bore a striking resemblance to the measured temperature record itself.
When the team hunted for a mechanism driving the relative warmth at such distances from the sources, changes in circulation patterns from the urban waste heat showed up across the range of model results.


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Hailed a "cultural phenomenon" by Newsweek and celebrated for years by the likes of This American Life, The Today Show, Esquire, The Onion AV Club, Daily Candy, Entertainment Weekly, and E!, Mortified is a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. Witness adults sharing their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.
After all, where else can you hear grown men and women confront their past with firsthand tales of their... first kiss, first puff, worst prom, fights with mom, life at bible camp, worst hand job, best mall job, and reasons they deserved to marry Jon Bon Jovi.
The largest and longest-running project of its kind, Mortified produces comedic content for the stage, the page, and the web. Its latest book, Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield, is in stores everywhere.
The project began in the late 1990s when founder Dave Nadelberg unearthed a notably awkward love letter and began sharing with friends. Formalizing as Mortified in 2002 with co-producer Neil Katcher, the project has since sifted through thousands of volumes of otherwise forgotten notebooks, photos, and envelopes in an effort crack the lid off our cultural shoebox and expose our inner geek. Participants include a wide range of people, from professional performers (comics, celebrities, singers) to total amateurs (architects, ad execs, salesmen) all in the noble pursuit of self-degradation. Personal redemption through public humiliation. There are a million stories buried in the pages of people's lives. Mortified's mission is to simply help people find them.
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Item #3052
65 days. Buttercrunch is a vigorous grower with a creamy yellow interior, buttery flavor and tender texture. Small heads are perfect for a single-serve salad. Loves moist but not soggy soil. The compact size makes it a good container variety.
This packet sows eight 10-foot rows.
Seedling Image
Days to Emerge:
Seed Depth:
Seed Spacing:
Row Spacing:
When to sow outside: RECOMMENDED. 2 to 4 weeks before average last frost, and when soil temperatures are 60°-70°F. Successive Sowings: Every 3 weeks until 2 weeks before the first fall frost.
When to start inside: 4 to 6 weeks before average last frost, and in summer when soil temperatures are too warm (above 80°F) to germinate lettuce seed. In summer's heat, plant in the afternoon shade of other crops.
Harvesting: Harvest as soon as possible after head forms; cut off at 2" above ground level; new leaves will grow from the center. Individual leaves can also be picked before a head forms for a continual supply. The earlier the harvest, the more tender the crop.
Artist: Donna Clement
Item #3052
1.00 grams
What is Soil?
Soil is a diverse mix of substances, teeming with life and composed of minerals, decayed plant and animal matter, water, and air. It…More…
Have you ever wanted to create a garden journal?
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