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February, a month that really raced passed us! It was a bit of a busy month for us and as I knew there were plenty of things that needed my attention this month I decided to tackle this month's Daring Bakers' challenge quite early in the month. Here we are - the last day of February already and it's time to reveal the decadent creation this month.
We only needed three ingredients to make the challenge this month and I was also relieved that it seemed fairly straightforward to make.
The challenge, hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef, was a Chocolate Valentino cake, which is basically a rich flourless chocolate cake. A recipe created by Malaysia's eccentric chef - Chef Wan. Our extra bonus challenge was to make any ice cream of choice that would pair well with the cake.
The flourless cake recipe has only three ingredients and after I read the instructions, I went away to ponder on how I could play around with these ingredients.
"The finished cake will taste exactly like the chocolate you use" was the sentence from the instructions that stuck to my head. Currently I am really enjoying discovering all the fantastic flavors the Lindt Excellence series offer and one of my favorite is the A Touch of Sea Salt bar.
The bar contains a 47% dark chocolate blend and 3% sea salt crystals. Now it does not sound like much of sea salt but once you have tasted the piece of this chocolate you will experience the sea salt crystals melting on your tongue. Simply delightful. However, I only used approx. 200g of this chocolate, for the rest I used a 70% dark chocolate bar (also from Lindt) to give the cake more moisture and richness.
The cake has a bit of a fudge-brownie like texture, dense, rich and gorgeously moist in taste, making it a perfect dessert to enjoy in smaller bites. I decided to bake the cake in my square spring form to cut it in smaller bite sized squares. The decoration was a simple creamy chocolate butter frosting I have made on several occasions for cupcakes and muffins. You will find the recipe here.
- The Monthly Mingle this month is partying on the beaches of the Caribbean. Come join me for a fun filled time with great food.
- All you need to do is cook up a Caribbean dish and bring it along to the mingle. Your dish could win a spectacular prize too.
- Submit your entries using the easy MM Submission Form
- All details can be found here.
Deadline: March 9th, 2009!
Recipe: Flourless Chocolate Cake
Recipe adapted from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan
Printable version of recipe here.16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separatedMethod
- Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
- While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
- Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
- Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
- With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
- Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
- Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.
- Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C.
- Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
- Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.
Note about the chocolate I used:
I used approx 200g Lindt Excellence A Touch of Sea Salt and 255g 70% Cocoa bittersweet chocolate.
With the cake taken care of my attention turned to the ice cream. I have been playing around with several flavor combinations recently and one product I love experimenting with is saffron.
I thank my mother for always supplying me with some of the best saffron I have ever cooked with. She usually buys delicate Kashmiri or Persian saffron strands from her favorite spice shop in Dubai and along with Iranian yellow raisins, pistachios and other nuts I get my little luxury packets in regular intervals. I had just received one of these packets with two delicate silver boxes filled with the beautiful spice and straight away I began imagining all kinds of desserts.
I have always loved our Indian ice cream style dessert Kulfi, in particular Kesar Kulfi, Saffron kulfi. Using this as my inspiration I decided to combine the Kashmiri saffron with the flavor of South Indian coconut.
Besides the vivid yellow saffron gives this ice cream it adds an enticing yet subtle flavor to the custard, pairing beautifully to the exotic taste of coconut milk.
Generally I find it extremely tedious to photograph ice cream, however this time was almost impossible. I found it hard to resist licking the spoon and had to keep taste-testing again and again - just to make sure it still tasted as good as it did the last time I checked.
Recipe: Saffron Coconut Ice Cream
Printable version of recipe here.250 ml unsweetened coconut milk
160 ml heavy cream
60g Muscovado sugar
1/2 teaspoon saffron strands
- Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a gentle boil.
- Reducing the heat simmer the mixture for approx. 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, cover and allow the mixture to come to room temperature. Then place for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight, in the refrigerator .
- Once thoroughly chilled, freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker according the manufacturer's instructions.
- Scrape out any saffron threads that might be sticking to the bowl. Transfer to a freezable container and freeze till ready to use.
Serving suggestions:
- If you are making this ice cream on it's own (without the flourless chocolate cake) you can add pistachios or almonds to the custard. For an extra big flavor gently toast the nuts. Place the custard into the ice cream maker and allow it to churn for a while. As it thickens throw in the nuts nuts.
- Grate some fresh coconut over the top - it adds a beautiful texture to the ice cream.
Yet another challenge I really enjoyed. The simplicity and the endless possibilities made this a special challenge. Soeren and Tom both enjoyed the chocolate cake with the hint of sea salt extremely. It was dense and rich and the smaller serving bites made it perfect for a tiny decadent treat. I personally loved the ice cream. It was an exclusively luxurious indulgence and while it paired really well with the chocolate cake I was quite happy with an extra helping of the ice cream. I loved the color contrasts of both the creations.
Would I make this again?
Oh yes. The cake is easy to whip up and gave no hassles so I see this as a great dessert option for on-the-spur-of-the-moment chocolate cravings. I love all the possibilities one has with it. Using a different chocolate flavored bar or another serving variation you could sell this as a different dessert every time you serve it. The ice cream will definitely be made again in my kitchen. I was very pleased with the texture, flavor and color. The next time I will do a little more playing around and add a few nuts etc.
What did I learn from this challenge?
That 3 ingredients give you a rich and decadent dessert with enticing endless possibilities!
With this I wrap up my own 3 years blog anniversary celebration week. Hope you enjoyed the Wholegrain power breakfast, which kicked off the party week and the party cake Coconut White Chocolate Mousse with Strawberries on Coconut Joconde to really get us going. There will be quite a few changes ahead this year and these changes will certainly effect the way I cook and blog. It will be fun and exciting so I hope you will stick around and carry on supporting and motivating me as you have for the past three years!
Thank you to the handsome Dharm and adorable Wendy for February's moist, chocolaty, rich, and fudgy challenge. To see more flourless chocolate cakes with 1001 ice cream flavors please visit my fellow Daring Bakers.
You might like these ice cream ideas from WFLH:
Crème Fraîche Strawberry Basil Ice-Cream | Cherry Semifredo Cake | Apricot and Nutty Pistachio Ice Cream |
Daily Tiffin Reading Tip:
- Vegetarian Food Pyramid - Barley written by Dhivya
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2009 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First


text: Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya's fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services.

subset: commoncrawl


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Motiva Sans is a clean sans serif with true italics. Sporting Light, Regular and Bold weights, it comes with essential Open Type features such as small caps, caps to small caps, tabular, lining, oldstyle figures, fractions as well as extended language support.
It performs well in printed and digital environments. The italics are more cursive than the average sans serif design and provide very good contrast to the their roman counterparts.
Font Family:


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The Sounders' "bogey" team, as coach Sigi Schmid refers to a lopsided rivalry, is over as regards the San Jose Earthquakes. Lamar Neagle scored goals in the 28th and 54th minutes and Mauro Rosales drove in a free kick to win 4-0 Saturday at the Clink — a season high and the most goals Seattle has scored in 12 MLS games against the Quakes.
The triumph broke a four-game losing streak to San Jose, including the first meeting this year between the clubs, and lifted Seattle (3-3-3) out of the basement of the MLS West, where they have been for the season's first 2½ months, to sixth place.
The Sounders are 3-0-2 in their past five, and the turnaround from the dismal start put a smile on the face of coach Sigi Schmid.
"There's a lot of pride in that locker room and there was a lot of disappointment when we didn't get off to the start we wanted," he said. "We had a little bit of a distraction called the Champions League, as well, that held our focus and we accomplished some things there. We were the first U.S. team to knock off a Mexican team in a head-to-head, and I think that can't be minimized as to how big that was.
"And we were right there — we were one goal away from possibly advancing to the finals. We did well there. I just think the guys know they're quality, they know they're better than that, and since that game, everybody's sort of been very determined about turning it around."
The Quakes (3-4-5), winners of the 2012 MLS Supporters Shield, continued their rocky start. They have yet to win on the road, where the Sounders have been since April 13. Seattle was 2-0-1 in those games and Saturday gave the 38,380 supporters on hand their first glimpse in 2013 of an MLS home win.
Neagle, from Federal Way, began the scoring when he steamed goalward after Mauro Rosales deflected down from his chest a cross from Eddie Johnson. Rosales sent the ball away from goal but Neagle redirected it from 14 yards so sharply that goalie John Busch hand no chance even though he put his hands on the ball.
Busch was a solo victim again in the 44th minute when Rosales received a free kick following a yellow-card foul on Rafael Baca, who pulled down Brad Evans from behind. Rosales' shot from 23 yards sailed up and over the defensive wall and bent just inside the near post beyond beyond Busch's reach. The shot made up for an earlier miss for Rosales when his diving header in front of an open net sailed wide left.
The 2-0 halftime lead went to 3-0 nine minutes into the second half when Neagle scored again. He corralled a high service and dribbled past three defenders before left-footing a worm-burner that just skimmed the inside near post before finding net.
Neagle was coming off a one-game suspension after a red card for fighting, so he felt the need for some make-up.
"Whenever that happens you feel like you've let your teammates down a bit and let them out to dry," he said. "So coming back I had a lot of adrenaline and wanted to prove that I was supposed to be there."
Obafemi Martins, the heralded designated player, was a 65th minute substitute and scored during stoppage time when he regained the ball after he was dispossessed by a San Jose defender and fired from seven yards.


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Red Sox lead the Angels 2-0
Rays lead the White Sox 2-0
Dodgers lead the Cubs 2-0
Phillies lead the Brewers 2-0
Phillies (2)/Brewers (0) at 6:30The AL is off today.
Cubs (0)/Dodgers (2) at 10
First of all, thank you to the hacktastic Angels hitters for making six outs against Jonathan Paplebon on only 21 pitches. And 13 of those pitches were to the final two batters. After Chone Figgins's triple, the next four LAA hitters saw 1, 2, 4 and 1 pitches. Excellent strategy! The Angels' roster is now 2-for-48 (.042) against the Bot.
J.D. Drew said he
absolutely ... thought at some point I was going to have shut it down and just watch the team through the playoffs. ... [M]y legs are coming back underneath me and I'm trying to grind out at-bats, play good defense...More on Drew. ... Jason Bay is enjoying the playoffs. ... Jacoby Ellsbury has a 20-game hitting streak, including the regular season and ALDS.
Where was Manny Delcarmen last night? I cannot find any information on whether he was ill, hurt, in Tito's doghouse ... nothing. Amalie Benjamin notes that
Going to Justin Masterson out of the bullpen instead of fellow righthander Manny Delcarmen in the eighth inning of Game 1 demonstrated how far Masterson has come this seasonwhich is certainly true, but it doesn't explain why Francona chose to not go to him in the final three innings last night.
Lots of fun facts here, including
Dating to the ninth inning of Game 5 of the 1986 American League Championship Series, the Angels have led in just seven of the past 94 playoff innings against the Red Sox.That's only 7.4%.


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I contacted Dr. Fuhrman right away and asked about the Pixie-Vites. You can visit the Disease Proof blog to read his response.
Here's a quote:
The reason why the Vitamin D in Pixie Vites is not vegan and made from wool (please note it is not made by killing animals) is because that form of D is twice as absorbable as the vegan type and many kids do not eat a whole Pixie Vite and only take a small portion of one. I did not want to short change some kid by not supplying them with adequate D, so I let that one non-vegan ingredient slip by (since it is made from a by product of wool manufacturing).


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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposal includes major increases in taxpayer funding to subsidize vouchers for primarily religious schools, the Freedom From Religion Foundation charges.
The governor's budget includes a $73 million increase for voucher schools and a new $21 million program for a statewide "special needs" student voucher system. The special needs voucher program is not supported by any special education group in the state. Under the terms of Walker's plan, the amount of a school voucher would increase by 8.6 percent for K-8 schooling (up to $7,050) and 21.9 percent for high school students (up to $7,856).
The state currently allots an average of $4,899 in general aid per student to public school districts. The new voucher program would extend beyond Milwaukee and Racine into nine school districts: Beloit, Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Sheboygan, Superior, Waukesha and West Allis-West Milwaukee. The expansion would be the largest since vouchers were introduced in Milwaukee in 1990.
"Funding religious and private schools should not be done on the public's dime," said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "Voucher proponents are trying to chip away at Wisconsin's constitutionally created system of public education. It is alarming that some politicians want taxpayers to increasingly subsidize religious institutions."
In Milwaukee, more than 21,000 of the current 25,000 enrolled voucher students attend religiously affiliated schools. In the newly created Racine program, 10 out of 11 schools are religious. If vouchers are extended, parochial schools stand to gain the bulk of the $94 million budgeted.
Roots to spread
The encroachment of vouchers into nine new school districts, with the potential for others to be added, will provide fertile ground for voucher schemes to grow across the state. Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, who opposes the measures, said, "This is phase one of a wide-open school voucher program for the state."
Caps on enrollment and income limits as part of Wisconsin voucher programs have regularly been broadened. Initially, enrollment will be capped at 500 students in the first year and 1,000 students in the second year. The original voucher program in Milwaukee in 1990 was capped at 1 percent of enrollment, which equaled roughly 1,000 students. The Legislature uncapped enrollment as part of the 2011-13 state budget, which had been set at 22,500 students.
The proposed expansion into Green Bay comes despite strong local opposition in 2011 and 2012 to the possibility of a voucher program there. Walker took action to limit voucher expansion into Green Bay last year, signing into law a bill that prevented vouchers beyond Racine and Milwaukee. The proposal to include Madison schools has also been widely criticized.
No accountability
FFRF has long objected to the lack of public accountability for voucher programs. "Where public money flows, public accountability must follow," Gaylor said.
In an editorial last month, FFRF Staff Attorney Patrick Elliott highlighted two low performing voucher schools, the Clara Mohammed School and Carter's Christian Academy. In 2011, few students in either school tested proficient in reading or math by state standards.
Both schools have a religious focus, with Clara Mohammad School teaching "a Qur'an-guided journey toward active global citizenship" and Carter's Christian Academy using fundamentalist Christian instruction materials that are "presented from God's point of view."
Despite the low performance on state exams, enrollment at both schools has increased. Elliott said, "Parents will continue to send their students to these schools, whether for religious reasons or because they mistakenly believe school leaders are up to the task of providing a sound education."
Misguided political effort
The $21 million special needs voucher plan is indicative of the motivation behind voucher expansion. Special needs advocates have said private vouchers would take away funding from public school programs and would not provide any assurances that private schools would meet the education needs of students with disabilities, as public schools are mandated to do by federal law.
"Special needs vouchers are a product of calculating politicians and lobbyists who want taxpayer money to flow to parochial schools. It's not coming from concerned parents," said Gaylor.


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'Stuck In The Middle ' MP3 Download (Audio), Music Video (Mp4) & Lyrics
BABYMONSTER has emerged as a shining star, and his latest release, "Stuck In The Middle," is proof of his musical prowess.
This soul-stirring track takes listeners on an emotional journey, exploring themes of self-discovery and the emptiness that can linger behind even the most successful facades.
BABYMONSTER's lyrical and musical talents but also invites us to reflect on our own life's journey.
Stream And Download Stuck In The Middle By BABYMONSTER Mp3 Below:


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Blood Test: Thyroglobulin Antibodies (TgAb)
Article Translations: (Spanish)
What It Is
A thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb) test is used to check blood levels of antibodies the body has made against the compound thyroglobulin. Thyroglobulin is a protein produced and used by the thyroid gland (the small, butterfly-shaped gland in the neck) to make the hormones triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4), both of which help control metabolism and growth.
Ordinarily, a healthy immune system wouldn't make significant levels of antibodies against thyroglobulin, because it's not "foreign," but rather a necessary component of thyroid functioning.
Antibodies are proteins made by the immune system to fight bacteria, viruses, and toxins.
In autoimmune diseases, however, the immune system malfunctions, mistakenly attacking healthy organs and tissues as though they were foreign invaders. In people with certain thyroid-related autoimmune conditions, the blood level of thyroglobulin antibodies may rise.
Why It's Done
The thyroglobulin antibodies test is used primarily to help diagnose autoimmune conditions involving the thyroid gland. The test may be ordered when a child has symptoms of a thyroid disorder, including thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid) or goiter (an enlarged thyroid), or if tests to check blood levels of T3, T4, or thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) showed abnormalities.
No special preparations are needed for this test. On the day of the test, having your child wear a T-shirt or short-sleeved shirt can make things easier for your child and the technician who will be drawing the blood.
The Procedure
A health professional will draw the blood from a vein, after cleaning the skin surface with antiseptic, and placing an elastic band (tourniquet) around the upper arm to apply pressure and cause the veins to swell with blood. A needle is inserted into a vein (usually in the arm inside of the elbow or on the back of the hand) and blood is withdrawn and collected in a vial or syringe.
After the procedure, the elastic band is removed. Once the blood has been collected, the needle is removed and the area is covered with cotton or a bandage to stop the bleeding. Collecting the blood for the test will only take a few minutes.
What to Expect
Collecting a sample of blood for this test is only temporarily uncomfortable and can feel like a quick pinprick. Afterward, there may be some mild bruising, which should go away in a few days.
Getting the Results
The blood sample will be processed by a machine, and results are commonly available after a few days.
The thyroglobulin antibodies test is considered a safe procedure. However, as with many medical tests, some problems can occur with having blood drawn, such as:
- fainting or feeling lightheaded
- hematoma (blood accumulating under the skin causing a lump or bruise)
- pain associated with multiple punctures to locate a vein
Helping Your Child
Having a blood test is relatively painless. Still, many children are afraid of needles. Explaining the test in terms your child can understand might help ease some of the fear.
Allow your child to ask the technician any questions he or she might have. Tell your child to try to relax and stay still during the procedure, as tensing muscles and moving can make it harder and more painful to draw blood. It also may help if your child looks away when the needle is being inserted into the skin.
If You Have Questions
If you have questions about the thyroglobulin antibodies test, speak with your doctor.
Note: All information is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.
© 1995-2024 KidsHealth ® All rights reserved. Images provided by iStock, Getty Images, Corbis, Veer, Science Photo Library, Science Source Images, Shutterstock, and Clipart.com


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jj no 3
Secretly Canadian/Sincerely Yours
jj is Joakim Benon and Elin Kastlander, a duo from Gothenburg, Sweden. Kind of like a secret, jj has a bit of a hushed appeal and this pair are beyond enigmatic. Without the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter or Myspace it's hard to find any information on them, somehow taking you back a decade to when that was commonplace.
Having released jj no 2 in 2009, they became an underground sensation, you know the type – a friend tells a friend, tells a friend and so on and so forth. But, that doesn't speak for the music. The vocals are wistful and dreamy combining an amalgamation of morphing sounds ranging from lo-fi pop, strings, synths, African rhythms, and even a bit of hip-hop.
jj produce clear-cut songs that have a definitive vision resulting in a sense of calm and clarity. Because of their unique sound, it's hard to draw comparisons. In fact, jj speak from themselves. If you want to hear something that's not run of the mill, check it out. For more information visit:
Finnegan Durfee


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The Seahawks couldn't do a thing with Minnesota's marquee running back Adrian Peterson, who ran for 182 yards and two touchdowns Sunday, but Seattle had more than enough to handle the Vikings otherwise, scoring a 30-20 victory at CenturyLink Field behind Russell Wilson's three touchdown passes and another 100-yard rushing performance by Marshawn Lynch.
The Seahawks improved to 5-4 and snapped a two-game losing streak. Minnesota fell to 5-4.
The Seahawks have won their first four home games for the first time since 2009 and four consecutive games at any point in a season at home for the first time since 2007.
Seattle's defense entered the game allowing 3.7 rushing yards per play, but couldn't handle Peterson, the NFL's leading rusher, who averaged 10.7 yards and scored twice. Peterson popped a 74-yard run on Minnesota's first possession and the Seahawks were pretty much at his mercy the rest of the way.
"He's a heckuva running back, everybody can see that. I'm just glad we could shut them down in the second half," said Seahawks WR Sidney Rice. "It was a huge win for us. I'm look forward to coming back next week and doing it again."
"He's a big time player," said CB Marcus Trufant. "Overall, he's been doing it for a long time. He makes plays a lot of guys can't make. He put on a show today, Fortunately, we were able to slow him down in the second half."
Peterson had 144 of his 182 rushing yards in the first two quarters, but Minnesota was forced into a passing game in the second half.
"He's a great player, but we didn't have to give him that much," said head coach Pete Carroll.
Fortunately for Seattle, which has scored on its last six trips to the red zone, including five touchdowns,Minnesota had no passing game, holding Christian Ponder to just 63 yards, 2.9 yards per pass attempt. The Seahawks sacked Ponder three times.
Wilson didn't have whopping numbers — he completed 16 of 24 for 173 yards — but threw two touchdown passes to Golden Tate, another to Sidney Rice, didn't throw an interception and finished with a passer rating of 127.3, his best single-game mark of the season. That 127.3 would have been better, but his receivers dropped four passes.
"Russell did a fantastic job," said coach Pete Carroll. "All in all, it was a great day. It was the kind of day we needed to start the second half. Hopefully, we can continue as the second half continues."
"It was huge win for us today. We finished the game with the football, which was key," said Wilson. "The key for us now is to go 1-0 every week and look at every week like it's a championship week."
Lynch, the league's No. 2 rusher entering the game, didn't have a big run (long of 23 yards), but he mashed out 124 yards and scored a touchdown. It was Lynch's third consecutive 100-yard game, helping the Seahawks to a 385-287 advantage in total yards.
The game started out looking like a Minnesota romp. The game wasn't a minute old when Peterson, shaking off Alan Branch in the backfield, ripped off a 74-yarder to the Seattle one-yard line. Two plays later, Peterson scored his fifth touchdown of the season.
On Minnesota's next possession, the Seahawks knocked the ball loose from Percy Harvin and Marcus Trufant recovered on the Vikings' 17-yard line. After Lynch ran to the 11, Wilson threw a six-yard TD pass to Tate, his fourth of the season, to tie it at 7.
Wilson threw his second TD, to Rice, with 3:15 to play, after Rice, taking a pass from Wilson, threw 25 yards to TE Zach Miller to the Minnesota 11. That set up the Wilson-to-Rice touchdown that gave Seattle a 14-7 lead.
Peterson finished off Minnesota's subsequent 80-yard drive by scoring his second touchdown at 11:46 of the second quarter to tie it at 14. That run pushed Peterson over the 100-yard mark at 105.
Minnesota went up 17-14 on Blair Walsh's 36-yard field goal following a drive in which Peterson shredded Seattle, his long gain of 24 giving the Vikings a first down on the Seahawks' 44 and his 15-yard run taking it to the 29.
Wilson had a 22-yard completion to Miller with less than a minute to play in the half, setting up his third touchdown pass and Tate's second. But Kevin Williams blocked Steven Hauschka's extra point and Seattle took a 20-17 lead at halftime.
The Seahawks mounted an impressive, nine-play, 72-yard drive in the third quarter, highlighted by a leaping, first-down catch by Tate, and a 23-yard run by Lynch that gave Seattle a first down on the Minnesota 10-yard line. After an offsides penalty on the Vikings, Lynch scored his fourth TD of the season, giving Seattle a 27-17 lead.
Immediately after Seattle took a 27-17 lead, Peterson had a 28-yard run that set up Walsh's 55-yard field goal, cutting Seattle's lead to 27-20.
The Seahawks reached Minnesota's 16-yard line midway through the fourth quarter, but a loss by Lynch and a sack of Wilson gave the Seahawks a third-and222. Hauschka kicked a 40-yard field goal for a 30-20 lead.
The Seahawks remain at CenturyLink Field next week to host the New York Jets. The Seahawks have a bye the following week.
Art Thiel of Sportspress Northwest will have a column coming up shortly.


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There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?
San Francisco is a classic example of a city unexcelled in its liberalism. But the black population of San Francisco today is less than half of what it was back in 1970, even though the city's total population has grown.
Severe restrictions on building housing in San Francisco have driven rents and home prices so high that blacks and other people with low or moderate incomes have been driven out of the city. The same thing has happened in a number of other California communities dominated by liberals.
Liberals try to show their concern for the poor by raising the level of minimum wage laws. Yet they show no interest in hard evidence that minimum wage laws create disastrous levels of unemployment among young blacks in this country, as such laws created high unemployment rates among young people in general in European countries.
The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today.
Liberals have pushed affirmative action, supposedly for the benefit of blacks and other minorities. But two recent factual studies show that affirmative action in college admissions has led to black students with every qualification for success being artificially turned into failures by being mismatched with colleges for the sake of racial body count.
The two most recent books that show this with hard facts are "Mismatch" by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., and "Wounds That Will Not Heal" by Russell K. Nieli. My own book "Affirmative Action Around the World" shows the same thing with different evidence.
In all these cases, and many others, liberals take positions that make them look good and feel good — and show very little interest in the actual consequences for others, even when liberal policies are leaving havoc in their wake.
The current liberal crusade for more so-called "gun control" laws is more of the same. Factual studies over the years, both in the United States and in other countries, repeatedly show that "gun control" laws do not in fact reduce crimes committed with guns.
Cities with some of the tightest gun control laws in the nation have murder rates far above the national average. In the middle of the 20th century, New York had far more restrictive gun control laws than London, but London had far less gun crime. Yet gun crimes in London skyrocketed after severe gun control laws were imposed over the next several decades.
Although gun control is not usually considered a racial issue, a wholly disproportionate number of Americans killed by guns are black. But here, as elsewhere, liberals' devotion to their ideology greatly exceeds their concern about what actually happens to flesh and blood human beings as a result of their ideology.
One of the most polarizing and counterproductive liberal crusades of the 20th century has been the decades-long busing crusade to send black children to predominantly white schools. The idea behind this goes back to the pronouncement by Chief Justice Earl Warren that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
Yet within walking distance of the Supreme Court where this pronouncement was made was an all-black high school that had scored higher than two-thirds of the city's white high schools taking the same test — way back in 1899! But who cares about facts, when you are on a liberal crusade that makes you feel morally superior?
To challenge government-imposed racial segregation and discrimination is one thing. But to claim that blacks get a better education if they sit next to whites in school is something very different. And it is something that goes counter to the facts.
Many liberal ideas about race sound plausible, and it is understandable that these ideas might have been attractive 50 years ago. What is not understandable is how so many liberals can blindly ignore 50 years of evidence to the contrary since then.


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Image courtesy of this Let's Play |
Possibly more than you might think.
The problem with writing ancient civilizations is striking the right balance between "our ancestors weren't stupid" and "they probably didn't know all the mysteries of the universe now lost to us, either". This post is on the former issue.
The image for this post came from a video game called Wild Arms. The characters are invited to a festival that will celebrate ancient knowledge in a way that only a steam-punk fantasy setting built on the ruins of a lost technologically advanced world can: by throwing a bunch of rusted metal into a nearby public park and posting signs about how mysterious it all is. One of the "exhibits" on display is a skeleton, which is "found in several places" but its "use is unknown". Unknown. To an agrarian community who make their living slaughtering sheep in between being menaced by random encounters of goblins outside the city walls. Huh.
The Wild Arms example is, I think, probably satirical, but that doesn't mean that Stupid Ancestors don't show up in a wide variety of writings. Stupid Ancestors have been invoked to claim that a divine authority would be needed in order to make some of the biologically sensible claims in the Bible, like the fact that if you lose too much blood, you die. You'd think that a people who work with sharp farming implements in between slaughtering livestock and very occasionally going to war with their surrounding neighbors could have worked that out on their own, but no, Stupid Ancestors it is.
And then there's the book I reviewed last year that I really wanted to enjoy, but the author was apparently so terrified of including any detail that might be wrong, that she went overboard and gave almost no details whatsoever. (I couldn't even tell if the characters wore clothes.) What was worse, though, was that her ancient peoples were all possessed of not a single ounce of skepticism: the main villain shows up and takes over their society simply by virtue of the fact that he claims God exists and sends him direct divine communication to boss people around. When the one person who opposes the villain mysteriously winds up dead when spending time alone with him, these innocent flower children don't for a moment consider the tragedy to be anything other than the sheerest of coincidence. Stupid Ancestors strike again!
The hardest part about overcoming Stupid Ancestors in writing is trying to imagine what our life would be like if it were completely different. For instance, I've never seen a skeleton before, outside of models in school and in shows on television. If you took my schooling and my television watching away from the equation, I wouldn't know what a skeleton looks like! And thus... Wild Arms.
The problem with this, of course, is that characters aren't created by taking yourself and subtracting bits away. Everything that is subtracted has to have something added to take its place, and these new sources of knowledge will change what your character does and doesn't know. Cut out modern medicine and you're going to have a race of people without a germ theory, perhaps, but they're also going to have a touch of experience treating all the open wounds that the EMTs and emergency personnel are no longer handling for them. Cut out grocery markets and they might not know much about high fructose corn syrup, but they may know a thing or two more about how to grow vegetables or kill a rabbit.
This is scary for an author. It's hard enough to build a plausible new world without trying to think up how every little aspect affects every character's life and inner knowledge. The good news is that in some ways, you don't have to. The key isn't "sit down and map out everything that every character knows", but rather "look back over what I've said they do and don't know and sanity check it". You can have characters interested in a skeleton without making them Stupid: make it a medical display ("we don't know how it works, but we know it's a part of us"). You can have easily duped characters without making them Stupid: give them reasons for why they can't cope with the harsh reality of the situation.
In other words, the key to avoiding Stupid Ancestors isn't rewriting your story to have different events, but rather rewriting specific areas to justify the events that come before and after. Your characters can behave essentially the same as before, but for different reasons than outright stupidity. And, really, all you need in order to do that is to write them from a perspective that has the same raw intelligence that the rest of us -- and most of our house pets -- were born with.


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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
And I'm Robert Siegel.
In this part of the program, we're going to hear about seafood, specifically about the two words that are changing the way many of us buy our seafood: Certified Sustainable.
BLOCK: The movement to sell seafood that can be fished without doing harm to the species or the environment is no longer limited to high-end grocery stores. Wal-Mart, Kroger's, even McDonald's are getting into the act, selling wild caught seafood with those magic words: Certified Sustainable.
SIEGEL: The Marine Stewardship Council gives its seal of approval to fisheries that they say help protect the oceans. The MSC is also a prime example of an important trend: private groups, not the government, telling consumers what's good or bad for the environment.
BLOCK: Many environmentalists say the MSC is a good idea. But as NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports, even some of its supporters warn you don't always get what you pay for.
DANIEL ZWERDLING, BYLINE: Come with me for a moment to a supermarket and you'll see why this program for sustainable seafood is so compelling. You'll also learn that shopping for so-called sustainable seafood is trickier than you might like.
I'm meeting an executive from Whole Foods at their store near Ground Zero in New York. It's like a temple for food. There are mountains of fruits and vegetables and chocolates and olive oils. And look at the seafood counter; there are shiny whole fish and fragile filets and mussels and clams and shrimps - they're all nestled in beds of ice.
CARRIE BROWNSTEIN: I'm Carrie Brownstein. I'm the Global Seafood Quality Standards coordinator. And we're here to talk about seafood sustainability.
ZWERDLING: She says companies like Whole Foods have to move to sustainable seafood. Fish and shellfish caught in the sea are the only major foods left that people still get in the wilds. Brownstein cites a recent study from the United Nations. It warns that almost 30 percent of the world's fisheries are over-exploited, which means that people are fishing them faster than they can rebound. And most of the other fisheries are near their limit. So, push them any more and they could decline.
BROWNSTEIN: We can't just go out and find more fish to catch.
ZWERDLING: You're convinced people need to be worry about seafood and the oceans.
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, people need to be careful. People need to be careful. And I think that retailers like Whole Foods and other companies can play a huge role in making a difference for the oceans.
ZWERDLING: So, Whole Foods has promised to sell as much seafood as it can that the Marine Stewardship Council says is sustainable. There are other groups that decide which seafood's good or bad for the environment. For instance, one rates them green, yellow or red, like traffic lights. But the MSC system is the most expensive. They say they've certified more than $3 billion worth of seafood.
Brownstein points to the fish with the blue MSC logo.
BROWNSTEIN: We have a number of MSC-certified fish here right now. We've got halibut, king salmon, Chilean sea bass...
ZWERDLING: The logo is an abstract fish with a check mark.
BROWNSTEIN: ...and swordfish.
ZWERDLING: And the logo proclaims the words...
BROWNSTEIN: Certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.
ZWERDLING: In other words, the MSC promises that If you buy this seafood, you won't contribute to over-fishing. And you won't be killing off other life in the sea, whether it's dolphins or coral.
A mother has just parked her baby stroller at the seafood counter. Rebecca Weel says she depends on the MSC and Whole foods to tell her what to buy.
REBECCA WEEL: I want to feel that I'm doing the right thing without putting too much effort into figuring it out on my own.
ZWERDLING: Now, if you see two fish, one says MSC-certified sustainable and the other one doesn't...
WEEL: I would definitely choose the sustainable one over the not-sustainable one.
ZWERDLING: Are you willing to pay any more for fish that's sustainably certified?
WEEL: I would personally, yes.
ZWERDLING: Brownstein wouldn't give details, but she said that Whole Foods does charge more for some seafood that's labeled by the MSC. So, ocean specialists say you might be troubled to hear something that Whole Foods and the MSC are not telling you.
GERRY LEAPE: In our view, we would prefer they didn't use the word sustainable.
ZWERDLING: Gerry Leape helps oversee oceans programs for the Pew Charitable Trusts. He's worked with the MSC for more than 10 years on their official advisory council. And I asked him...
When one of our listeners goes to the supermarket and they see that MSC label - this seafood is sustainable - can they believe it's true?
ZWERDLING: That's a long pause.
LEAPE: It is a long pause. You can't believe across the board that it's necessarily sustainable.
ZWERDLING: Or ask a biologist named Susanna Fuller. She co-directs the Marine Program at the Ecology Action Center in Canada.
When I go to the supermarket and I see there's fish with a blue label - certified sustainable - and other fish that aren't, should I buy the MSC fish?
SUSANNA FULLER: You know, I - you - you know, you're - it's a gamble.
ZWERDLING: To understand why many environmentalists say it's a gamble, I joined a research trip one morning off the coast of Nova Scotia.
ZWERDLING: Remember the MSC swordfish, back at Whole Foods? The chain gets some of it from the swordfish industry right here in Canada's waters. Just last spring, the MSC labeled it certified sustainable.
ART: My name is Art. My first mate here is Kyle. If you're going to get sick, if you're going to get sick, come out here and throw up out here. Do not throw up inside.
ZWERDLING: We're on a 34-footer called Dig It. And we're heading straight into the Atlantic Ocean. The scientist who's leading this expedition is Steve Campana. He doesn't study swordfish. He runs the Canadian government's Shark Research Laboratory, near Halifax. His studies are one reason why many environmentalists around the world say you can't trust the MSC label.
Most swordfish boats are called longliners. They let out up to 40 miles of fishing line, dangling with a thousand hooks. And studies show those hooks accidentally catch tens of thousands of sharks every year. Campana says, especially blue sharks. They're called bycatch.
STEVE CAMPANA: One average, from what we've seen over the years, the swordfisherman catch about five blue sharks for every one swordfish. So that suggests that it's not really a swordfish fishery that happens to catch sharks, it's a shark fishery that happens to catch swordfish.
ZWERDLING: That's one way of putting it. This should be crucial information for the Marine Stewardship Council. Their rules say that a fishery is not sustainable, if it's depleting the population of target fish. That's not the case here, studies suggest that the swordfish themselves are in good shape. But the MSC rules also says that a fishery is not sustainable if it causes too much damage to other animals in the sea.
The Canadian government appoints and finances an agency that studies disappearing wildlife. And the agency warns that the kinds of sharks the swordfishermen accidentally catch are threatened or endangered or of special concern. I told my mother the other day that I was going to come out on this boat. And my mother said, why do I care about sharks? I like eating the swordfish.
CAMPANA: Sharks are, well, they're, they're the king of the food chain. So they are the equivalent of the lions on the Serengeti Plains of Africa. And if you suddenly wiped out all of the lions, undoubtedly, you would find very strange things happen to the ecosystem there, probably unpredictable things.
ZWERDLING: So, a lot of scientists and environmentalists told us, we don't get it - how can the MSC say the swordfish industry is sustainable? We'll come back to that question in a moment and to this research boat. But first, a quick history of the MSC. Let's go back to 1992.
ZWERDLING: One of the most important fisheries in the world had collapsed. Canada's cod industry had been worth an estimated $700 million a year. CBC Television announced their government was dealing with the crisis by making cod fishing illegal.
MICHAEL SUTTON: Thousands of people thrown out of jobs, the closure of the cod fisheries.
ZWERDLING: Mike Sutton ran the oceans programs back then for the World Wildlife Fund.
SUTTON: I mean, it was so bad in some of these coastal communities, they had to - the government had to send in suicide prevention teams.
ZWERDLING: Sutton says the collapse of the cod industry shocked people. They finally realized the oceans are in big trouble. And Sutton says the crisis proved something else: the government agencies around the world that were supposed to protect the oceans were often doing a lousy job.
SUTTON: We were not only trashing out marine environment, but we were ruining the character of coastal communities that had existed on fisheries for centuries. So we needed to do something drastic.
ZWERDLING: Sutton and his colleagues said, we have a solution. Since government officials aren't protecting the oceans, let's convince industry they have to do it. Sutton met with executives at Unilever. They were one of the biggest seafood suppliers in the world.
SUTTON: My pitch to Unilever was, the future of their frozen fish business is at stake. Overfishing is not only bad for the environment but it's really bad for business because it means that they're not going to have fish in the future the way they have them today.
ZWERDLING: And in 1997, Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund joined hands. They set up the Marine Stewardship Council. So, the MSC was a balancing act between industry and the environment from the day they opened their doors. The headquarters are down the street from St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
RUPERT HOWES: MSC has a global vision. We want to see the global oceans transformed onto a sustainable basis.
ZWERDLING: That's the man who runs the MSC, Rupert Howes. These offices could be a software company. They are designer chic, lots of glass, hardly anybody wears a tie. The MSC is registered non-profit.
HOWES: Okay. MSC employs about 100 people around the world. We have 12 offices globally. On this floor, we have over here our fundraising team...
ZWERDLING: And here's the MSC's basic idea. More and more food companies want to look green, right? Some want to help the environment. Some want to attract customers. But when it comes to seafood, those executives don't know which fishing companies are plundering the ocean and which ones are doing a good job, so the MSC system studies it for them.
All food companies have to do is offer seafood with a blue MSC label, certified sustainable - and they can probably tell consumers, hey...
HOWES: We care where our fish comes from. We care how it was fished.
ZWERDLING: And as more and more food companies sell seafood with the MSC label, fisheries that don't have it will think we better get certified, too, or we're going to lose business to our competitors. Howes calls this the MSC's theory of change.
HOWES: The theory of change is very, very simple. If we could use a certification and labeling program to create an incentive for fisheries to improve the way they fish the oceans, we could catalyze real and lasting change in the way the oceans are fished.
ZWERDLING: But it turned out that during the MSC's early years, the American Food Industry wasn't excited about sustainable seafood. In fact, Michael Sutton, who helped create it, says the MSC almost went bankrupt. The MSC's budget comes partly from foundation grants and part of it comes from getting licensing fees from businesses that sell seafood with the MSC label.
So as long as many supermarket chains weren't promoting it, the MSC wasn't getting much money. But starting in 2005, the MSC and its supporters sent a series of delegations to Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters of Wal-Mart, and everything changed.
ZWERDLING: That's a Wal-Mart company video. Mike Sutton and the other delegates helped convince Wal-Mart's executives to make a promise. Wal-Mart would sell as much seafood as possible that's certified sustainable in all their American stores.
SUTTON: We had to get Wal-Mart and the significance of their commitment, of course, is that once Wal-Mart made a commitment to the Marine Stewardship Council, every other major retailer had to follow suit because none of them wanted to be less progressive than Wal-Mart.
ZWERDLING: Target promised to go sustainable. Kroger and Costco promised, too. The problem was the MSC had not labeled enough seafood sustainable.
SUTTON: Overnight, the demand far outstripped the supply and so the suppliers had to catch up.
ZWERDLING: Listen to this fact. Since Wal-Mart embraced sustainable seafood in 2006, the MSC system has certified at least seven times as many fisheries as it did during the same period before. And critics say they've compromised their standards to do it. And that brings us back to Steve Campana. He is the government scientist on the research boat off the coast of Halifax.
CAMPANA: We are hoping to get some satellite tags onto blue sharks.
ZWERDLING: Remember, studies showed that the Canadian swordfish boats accidentally catch five times as many sharks as swordfish. The swordfishermen generally release most of those sharks, but until Campana came along, nobody had really studied what happened to the sharks after the fishermen let them off the hooks. So about six years ago, Campana started tagging a random sample of sharks with a satellite gizmo before the swordfishermen let them go.
On this particular outing, Campana's not on a commercial swordfish boat. He's on a charter that does sport fishing. He's also studying how that affects sharks. The captain has tossed out a fishing line with a chunk of mackerel on the hook.
CAMPANA: We have a shark. Yeah, baby.
ZWERDLING: The shark's really thrashing.
CAMPANA: Yep.
ZWERDLING: They haul a blue shark up on the boat. It's about five feet long, wild eyes. Two men hold it down.
CAMPANA: The flipper just knocked his hat off.
ZWERDLING: They record the vitals.
CAMPANA: Sex? Female.
ZWERDLING: Female. Then Campana jabs a tube into the skin. It looks like a turkey baster with a barb on the end, which attaches to the shark.
CAMPANA: They're not like mammals. They're not like people. They don't feel pain the same way.
ZWERDLING: The tracking device will record where the shark goes, how long it stays there. And then, about 10 months from now, the tube will pop off the shark and float to the surface and it'll beam the information by satellite to Campana.
CAMPANA: All right. So the satellite tag's in. Good to go here.
ZWERDLING: And they ease her back into the ocean. This shark looks okay for now, but Campana's studies show that up to 35 percent of the sharks caught by swordfish boats die within days after they're caught. Add it all up and Campana's findings suggest that Canadian swordfish boats accidentally kill almost two sharks for every swordfish they catch.
Other studies estimate that the populations of major kinds of sharks in the North Atlantic have plunged 40 percent, even 60 percent in just the past few decades.
CAMPANA: Any time you see, you know, consistent declines like that and the fact that all of these large sharks seem to have declined all over the world, for them all to be declining, it's just a worrisome pattern.
ZWERDLING: Campana published some of his major findings back in 2009 and they couldn't have come at a worse time for Canada's swordfish industry because only a few months before, the industry's president had gone to the Marine Stewardship Council. He said, we want Canadian swordfish to be certified sustainable.
Now, here was a troubling study about bycatch by one of the government's top researchers. The industry president didn't buy it.
TROY ATKINSON: I had a disagreement with the results. They were not close to what the industry felt was reality.
ZWERDLING: You're basically rejecting the findings of, you know, one of the most respected shark scientists.
ATKINSON: Yep, I am.
ZWERDLING: Troy Atkinson runs the Nova Scotia Swordfishermen's Association. It's based in Halifax. They catch most of the swordfish exported from Canada. Atkinson says, there are some studies out there that conclude that blue sharks in the North Atlantic are doing great.
ATKINSON: We're sometimes portrayed as a bunch of cowboys out to harvest the last buffalo, you know. We're portrayed as, you know, some of the worst in the world. And it's just not correct.
ZWERDLING: You're saying that your swordfish fleet could be catching or killing more blue sharks and the oceans would still be healthy.
ATKINSON: Correct. Yes, that is indeed the fact.
ZWERDLING: Actually, the evidence is contradictory. It suggests that scientists don't know for sure what's happening to sharks across the Atlantic. For instance, the optimistic researchers that Atkinson cites who say that blue sharks are doing great, they acknowledge that their conclusions are highly uncertain - their words - because they're based on all kinds of assumptions and incomplete data.
On the other hand, studies that show that blue sharks have sharply declined focus on a limited region. So some scientists and environmentalists were dumbfounded last year when the Marine Stewardship Council added up all this confusion and they proclaimed Canada's swordfish industry is certified sustainable. Is it sustainable?
FULLER: No, no. It's not at all.
ZWERDLING: That's Susanna Fuller again, from the Ecology Action Center in Halifax. The Center joined forces with other groups like the Sierra Club, Oceana, the Shark Research Institute and they denounced the MSC. They said a small amount of Canada's swordfish is caught with harpoons and we're all for that. But 90 percent of the swordfish comes from longline boats, which studies show catch tens of thousands of sharks. How can the MSC call that sustainable?
FULLER: It's so egregious. We said, you know, why are you guys doing this because we're trying to actually help get some trust behind that label? And by certifying this fishery, you are just, like, undermining a whole bunch of consumer trust.
ZWERDLING: The analysts who evaluated the fishery for the MSC system agreed that the swordfish boats do kill large numbers of sharks and they agreed that the optimistic studies on sharks are uncertain. Still, they concluded that when you put all the evidence together, it is highly likely, their words, that there are plenty of blue sharks left in the sea. The analysts also said that other countries kill way more sharks than Canada's swordfishermen do, so Canada's only a small part of the bycatch problem.
We asked the head of the MSC in London what he thinks about bycatch. Rupert Howes. Suppose you said to your family, listen guys, every time we eat a swordfish here in our house, the fishermen who caught it killed two sharks and just dumped their bodies in the ocean. How would your family react to that?
HOWES: It's a very good question and I think it illustrates a key feature of the MSC program, which is the fact that the program is premised on science and evidence. That fishery has met the MSC standard. We are not saying that shark bycatch doesn't matter. What we're saying implicit within the labeling of that fishery is, the shark bycatch of that unique individual certified fishery is safe. It's within ecological limits.
ZWERDLING: Back on Dig It, off the coast of Canada, I ask the scientist who is studying the sharks, Steve Campana, given all your studies that show that the swordfish industry is accidentally killing huge numbers of sharks, how can the Marine Stewardship Council say that this swordfish industry is sustainable?
CAMPANA: That's an excellent question and I don't have the answer to that.
JIM BARNES: Well, I don't know why he ducked that one. Well, I think the answer's obvious.
ZWERDLING: Jim Barnes is a lawyer. He runs an international coalition of 30 environmental groups. He says ever since the Wal-Marts of the world said they want sustainable seafood, it's been a blessing for the sustainable movement and a curse.
BARNES: The bottom line is that there are not enough truly sustainable fisheries on the earth to sustain the demand. The retailers and wholesalers all want access to this kind of label because they're trying to, you know, make money with their consumers. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. That's how the world works.
ZWERDLING: Jim Barnes, are you saying that the MSC system is rushing to certify seafood as sustainable when they know it's not, at least partly because they need to fill the seafood counters of Wal-Mart and other huge chains?
BARNES: Yes, in some cases, they're doing that. I'm not down on Wal-Mart at all, don't get me wrong. But to get on line with big chains as your goal leads you down a path that I don't think the originators of the MSC intended.
HOWES: If you really want to contribute to the transformation of our economic systems more generally, you've got to engage with the big guys.
ZWERDLING: The MSC's president, Rupert Howes.
HOWES: And therefore, I absolutely welcome Wal-Mart's commitment. That will drive change. And so your question about will that overload the MSC system? No.
ZWERDLING: Howes says there's no way the MSC could label problem fisheries just to satisfy demand, because, he says, the certifiers evaluate every fishery based only on scientific evidence. But Howes says, you also have to realize, this is the real world. There is no such thing as perfection.
HOWES: We want to see oceans fished sustainably forever. We're not going to achieve that by becoming a small niche organization that engages with a handful of perfect fisheries.
ZWERDLING: Even the biggest critics told me that the Marine Stewardship Council has accomplished some important things and they say maybe here's the most important, the MSC has helped get people to think about sustainable seafood. Back when the MSC got started, not many people did. But NPR conducted a survey for this story with a company called Truven Health Analytics.
The results show that almost 80 percent of Americans who eat seafood regularly said it is important or it's very important that their seafood is sustainably caught. Daniel Zwerdling, NPR News.
SIEGEL: Our story was co-reported by NPR's Margot Williams. Tomorrow, critics say the MSC can make a positive difference when it honors its original goals. Meanwhile, you can learn more about the pros and cons of sustainable seafood at NPR.org.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.


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Just a few more days to Christmas! I really love this time of year. I just can't help it. The merry spirit absorbs me completely, sucking me into all it's glittery glory. The crisp cool air is radiating making my nose and cheeks tingle. I feel elated as I walk down the cobblestone streets, the shop windows decorated in sparkling tinsel and colorful baubles. It's all so cliché, I know but I just love it.
I adore the old Santa ringing away on the golden bell wishing everyone "A HO! HO! Christmas!" I just cannot get enough of the perfumed bouquet that lingers in the air at this time of year. It's a gorgeous mix of gingerbread, spices and mulled wine. Foraging for gifts at the over-crowded stores makes me laugh - "Didn't know there were so many people in Weimar!"
I will sing along loud to Last Christmas by Wham! for the hundredth time while standing in a queue, never allowing those funny glances make me miss a beat. Often those funny glances turn into smiles as people begin tapping their feet to the tune. Between wrapping paper and ribbons, I search for ideas for Christmas dinner. Duck or turkey, mousse or parfait? And yes, I just love all that Christmas baking!
Cookies, cakes, pralines and truffles - oh the glee for a foodie like me! I do not need an excuse to have the oven on almost 24/7 right now. Hec I spent the whole day making the Daring Bakers' challenge yesterday and felt totally exhilarated. I even find myself hotter with chocolate covered lips rather than fire engine red colored lipstick. And yes, Last Christmas is still buzzing from the radio!
All this week I am sharing my Christmas cookie craze with you. Besides, the ginger shortbread, I also make vanilla kipferls and these delicate marzipan and almond kipferls almost every year.
Marzipan has a sweet deliciously nutty taste. These cookies are made almost entirely of marzipan. There is no flour just the pure luxury of marzipan, coated in almond slices, baked gently to a perfect golden color and finally dipped in rich chocolate - how can anyone turn this down? That is why these make the perfect gift for friends and family. I double the recipe to have enough for everyone.
Keep in Mind!
- Monthly Mingle theme this month World of Spice Cookies
- Deadline January 5
- Bake delicious cookies sweet or savory highlighted by a spice
- One lucky winner will win the cookbook a Field Guide to Cookies
- Come on over and join us. Details here.
Recipe: Marzipan Almond Kipferl Cookies
Printable version of recipe here.500g Marzipan paste
150g sugar
2 egg whites
1 tablespoon zest of an organic lemon
10 drops bitter almond oil
100g blanched almonds, thinly sliced
200g bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Line a cookie sheet with baking paper.
In a bowl mix together the marzipan paste, sugar, egg whites, lemon zest and the bitter almond oils to a smooth dough.
Set a bowl of water next to you. Place the almond slices on a plate. Dip your fingers into the water, tear some of the marzipan dough and form 6 cm rolls. Coat the marzipan rolls with the almond slices and then form crescent shaped cookies. Place on the cookie sheet. Continue in this way until you have used up all of the dough. You should get about 40 crescent cookies.
Bake the cookies for approx. 12-15 minutes or until golden. Take out and allow to cool on a rack.
In the meantime melt the chocolate in a double boiler or a water bath. Place your cookie rack over a sheet of baking paper. Dip both ends of each cookies into the chocolate and place on the rack. Allow the chocolate to set and dry.
Tip: You can make variations on this cookie by:
- coating the kipferls in shredded coconut instead of the almond slices.
- adding a hint of cardamom powder to the chocolate for a lovely flavor
- Each oven works differently and while my oven bakes these cookies perfectly at 200 degrees C, I would advice you to keep an eye on the marzipan kipferls after about 8 minutes. If you notice them getting too dark reduce the heat to approx. 175 degrees C.
- The consistency of the dough should be thick, pliable and easy to shape. If you are finding that your dough is a bit runny, add some more almond paste. The eggs I used to make the marzipan kipferls were medium sized, giving me the right amount of egg whites for the cookies. If your eggs are larger I would advice you to start with one egg white and then if required add the other a little at a time until you think the dough has reached the right consistency.
- Stored in air-tight cookie containers these kipferls will last for 2 weeks.
Nutty, sweet, chewy and simply heavenly - if you like marzipan this is your cookie folks! They are so easy to make with big time flavor. As it is with all things delicious - one is never enough. Soeren loves taking a few in his lunch box and Tom nibbles them at the university while writing his dissertation. As for my friends they just can't wait till December comes around - because they know I'll be coming around to deliver batches of marzipan almond kipferls, singing Last Christmas.
Sending lots of hugs over to Anita of Dessert First for sending me my own personal autographed copy of Field Guide to Cookies: How to Identify and Bake Virtually Every Cookie Imaginable. I'm raring to try several of the cookie recipes!
I am not the only one enjoying the Christmas cookie baking month. There is a cookie craze taking over the blogesphere and you'll find several events focusing on cookies. Besides the Monthly Mingle - World of Spice Cookies, Susan is hosting the second edition of Eat Christmas Cookies and Sharmi is having her big Holiday Cookie Baking Event. I'm sending both these ladies a few of these marzipan almond kipferls to nibble on.
You might like these treats from WFLH:
Rich Chocolate Mocca Brownie Bites | Lime Kisses | Orange Nougat Treats |
From around the blogs:
- Herb Cream Cheese Crackers with Buckwheat, Oatmeal and Za'atar - Passionate about baking
- Lenguas de Gato Cookies (Cat's Tongue Cookies) - Apple Pie, Patis, and Pâté
- Greek diples - Kalofogas
Daily Tiffin Reading Tip:
Menu For Hope: 15-24 December 2008
- An annual fundraiser to help the UN World Food Program
- Bid on prizes from December 15 - 24, 2008
- One virtual raffle ticket is US$ 10
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End Ecocide in Europe!
08 Jan 2014
Slow Food and Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity have joined an important initiative, 'End Ecocide in Europe', which is calling for cases of serious environmental destruction to be recognized as a crime.
'End Ecocide in Europe' is a European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), a democratic tool that enables EU citizens to propose amendments to European law and participate directly in the development of EU policies. Unlike other petitions, an ECI legal authority to influence politics. According to the initiative, if at least one million EU citizens from seven different countries support a petition, the proposal must be discussed at European level.
The petition is calling for the introduction of direct criminal liability for individuals and companies responsible for ecocide, defined as "extensive damage to, destruction or loss of ecosystems of a given territory."
The proposed directive will be applied in cases of ecocide within the EU, but also in other countries if caused by European companies or citizens. Ecocide caused by the import of goods or services in Europe, or funded by European banks or financial institutions will also be included.
Today we live in a world where "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment" is only recognized as a war crime (Article 8.2 of the Rome Statute), meaning that during times of peace, companies and individuals are free to destroy the planet without any legal consequence. We believe it is time to put an end to this absurdity.
Vote to protect our natural habitat: http://www.endecocide.eu
To verify your identity, it is necessary to provide your address and date of birth when signing. In some countries, such as Italy, it is also compulsory to provide an ID number.
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Learn how you can restore ecosystems, communities and your own health with our RegenerAction Toolkit.


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Sudanese Gen. Mustafa al-Dabi told reporters Wednesday that he had seen "nothing frightening" during his first visit to the Syrian city of Homs this week.
The general is leading an Arab League mission aimed at monitoring whether the Syrian government is living up to its promise not to violently strike back at anti-Assad regime protesters — or is killing scores of them every week as activists and U.N. human rights officials say.
Videos posted online (warning: they are graphic) raise serious doubt about whether al-Dabi can maintain his "nothing frightening" view much longer. They show, as The New York Times' The Lede blog details, scenes of what appear to be Arab League monitors surrounded by anguished and angry Syrians — including some who brought the dead body of a young boy to show to the delegation.
The monitors, NPR's Deborah Amos adds from her listening post in Beirut, "have been caught up in the dynamics of the uprising." As she says, on Wednesday in Homs they "ran for cover from gunfire, justified their work to angry residents and examined a dead child displayed for them on the hood of a car."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Orthodox Peace Fellowship
The Orthodox Peace Fellowship of the Protection of the Mother of God is an organization dedicated to the active pursuit of peace as taught in the Gospel of Jesus Christ from an Orthodox Christian perspective. The OPF is pan-Orthodox in scope and places great emphasis on peacemaking in all areas of life, including opposition to abortion, pro-active work among the needy and orphans, as well as praying and working to root out the causes of violence in homes, parishes, between states and in the world.
Unlike similar peace fellowships of other religious traditions, the OPF is a non-political and non-partisan organization. Instead their work centers in three main areas: theological research, publications, and practical assistance in conflict areas. They produce a quarterly journal entitled In Communion.
Current leadership
- Michael Bakker, President
- Hanna Bos, Vice President
- Jim Forest and Nancy Forest, Co-Secretaries
Advisory Board:
- Archbishop Anastasios (Yannoulatos) of Albania
- Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia
- Bishop Basil (Osborne) of Sergievo
- Elisabeth Behr-Siegel, deceased
- Fr. Anthony Coniaris
- Fr. Stephen Headley
- Fr. Thomas Hopko
- Fr. Heikki Huttunen
- Frederica Mathewes-Green
- Fr. John Matusiak
- Fr. Sergei Ovsiannikov
- Fr. George Papademetriou
- Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, deceased
- Dr. Albert Raboteau
- Philip Tamoush
- Fr. Steven Tsichlis
- Fr. Theodoor van der Voort


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Receive for Free - Discover & Explore eNewsletter monthly with advance notice of special offers, packages, and insider savings from 10% - 30% off Best Available Rates at selected hotels.
View Most Recent EditionSpecial Offers
Celebration Package
The best things in life are free. At Curio, that includes a complimentary drink upon arrival and in-room breakfast for two. So grab your friends or significant other—it's time to get away in style.
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So, no matter what the occasion—whether it's just the two of you celebrating your love or a whole group of friends vacationing together—have the time of your life at Curio, A Collection by Hilton.
The Celebration Package is offered at participating hotels. Book Plan Code RP. Limited availability; advanced booking required. Rate will vary by property, length of stay and by date. Availability and rate will be confirmed at time of booking. Rates are based on double occupancy and do not include resort/service fees, taxes, incidentals or gratuities. Rate, taxes, applicable dates, advance deposit, credit guarantee and reservation cancellation policies may vary by hotel; please inquire at time of reservation. Not valid for use during convention or meeting dates. Access to health club where available; excludes spa services. Food and beverage portions of offer do not include applicable gratuities and taxes, or alcoholic beverages. Full American breakfast includes eggs, breakfast meat such as bacon or sausage, toast, juice, coffee and breakfast potatoes. On stays beyond one night, buy one lunch or dinner entrée and receive a second one of equal or lesser value at no additional cost.
*Sparkling wine included in package only where permitted by law to those of legal drinking age; non-alcoholic sparkling cider may be substituted upon request.
†Celebration Package is subject to availability at participating hotels. One breakfast certificate per hotel stay only. One entrée certificate per hotel stay only to be used at the hotel's designated restaurant.


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The New England Patriots weren't the only losers on Super Bowl weekend in Indiana.
With much of the world focused on Indianapolis hosting the big game, a local jury on Saturday convicted Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White on six felony counts, including theft and voter fraud — a crime he was supposed to prevent as the state's top election official.
White, a Republican, was accused of lying about his home address on voter registration forms in order to continue receiving a stipend for serving on his town's council. To comply with state law requiring the removal of convicted felons from office, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a fellow Republican, appointed White's deputy as an interim replacement.
The irony is that White has been an outspoken defender of controversial voter identification laws, which are purportedly aimed at stamping out the kind of fraud he was found guilty of committing.
Voter ID laws have been a favored initiative of Republican lawmakers in many states. Opponents, mainly Democrats and voting rights advocates, say voter fraud is rare and that the true intent of the laws is to suppress voter turnout.
Indiana has played a pivotal role in the matter because its own voter ID law survived an important challenge when it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2008.
Predictably, critics of voter ID laws are crowing. ThinkProgress.org's Josh Israel pushed back on the claim that voter ID laws prevent election fraud:
"Though actual cases of voting fraud are so rare that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, one Republican official in Indiana has proved that lightning can strike himself."
White has denied any wrongdoing. In his first public response to the verdict, he told Fox News the prosecution failed to provide the jury with full instructions. He also called the verdict a "travesty" and a "perversion":
"I found out that Indiana is a land of men and not of law...What I think happened yesterday was a total miscarriage of justice and a perversion. The law allows me to do everything I did and the jury did not get all the law."
The Indianapolis Star reports White is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 23 and that each count carries a term of six months to three years.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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A privacy lawsuit between the North Carolina Department of Revenue and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was settled on Wednesday, and the state agreed to stop requesting its residents' personal information through Amazon.com.
Since 2003, the state has asked Amazon for detailed records of what North Carolina customers were purchasing on the site in order to collect sales use taxes, which amounted to about $50 million. Amazon gave this information to the state without including the customers' personal information such as their name and address, but the North Carolina Department of Revenue started to demand this information as well, which led to the legal battle.
The American Civil Liberties Union joined Amazon in their fight to protect customer information when the online retailer refused to violate the privacy of its customers.
"The N.C. Department of Revenue does not need access to private customer records that reveal which specific customers in North Carolina have ordered which specific books, music or movies in order to complete its audit of Amazon and collect any taxes owed," said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. "We are pleased that the public's First Amendment rights have been upheld by this settlement, which prohibits the department from seeking this kind of information from Amazon or other Internet retailers in the future."
A representative for the North Carolina Department of Revenue argued that the state was never really interested in its citizens' buying patterns.
"The case between the North Carolina Department of Revenue and Amazon has long been twisted into something it is not," said Beth Stevenson, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Revenue. "Bottom line, this is about fairly collecting the tax that is due to the state of North Carolina and nothing more. The Department has always maintained that we do not need – or want – titles or similar details about products purchased by Amazon customers. The department voluntarily destroyed the detailed information that Amazon unnecessarily provided and offered them the opportunity to comply with the state tax laws moving forward.
"The lawsuit on this particular issue could have been avoided altogether if not for the aggressive stance Amazon took to avoid compliance with North Carolina's tax laws. There would have never been an issue of customer privacy if Amazon would simply collect the North Carolina sales tax that others already do."
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled last October that the North Carolina Department of Revenue had overstepped its boundaries with its request for personal information, and noted that there is "no legitimate need" for them to have such information.
"The fear of government tracking and censoring one's reading, listening and viewing choices chills the exercise of First Amendment rights," said Pechman.
According to Rudinger, Amazon was not part of the settlement, and it was unclear whether Amazon's lawsuit regarding the state's audit was pending on appeal.
In addition to Amazon, the North Carolina Department of Revenue is also facing lawsuits from many online travel companies such as Travelocity.com, Travelscape, Hotels.com, Trip Network Inc. and Orbitz due to the state and counties' tendencies to "arbitrarily change the contracts" they have with hotels in North Carolina.


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New on the LA County Channel
Rep. Kamlager-Dove & Project Angel Food mark a milestone
Triple A: Finally, some SoCal cities drop below $5 a gallon
New survey: "Without LGBTQ people, LA would just be traffic"
Sheriff Luna expected to march in this year's WeHo Pride Parade
WeHo City kicks off WeHo Pride with José Sarria Drag Pageant
West Hollywood in brief- City government in action this week
WeHo will kick off 2024 Pride Season on May 22, Harvey Milk Day
WeHo's Rainbow Neon Dog gets public art dedication
RuPaul's Drag Race Queens hit the Beverly Center
LA Pride Parade announces grand marshals, KABC 7 to broadcast
LA's lost an iconic entertainment reporter, Sam Rubin dies at 64
Los Angeles Tourism joins with LGBTQ+ folks to celebrate Pride
Ricky Martin will be the headliner for 2024 LA Pride in the Park
Top five events during Palm Springs Pride Week Nov. 2-5
Proposed HIV sculpture slammed over its resemblance to body part
Palm Springs police investigating attack on trans woman
Palm Springs police arrest gay dating app predator
Longtime LGBTQ+ journalist & editor Thomas Senzee dies at 54
LGBTQ+ clubs targeted in San Diego pellet gun attacks
'Christmas Bags of Hope' event to support homeless kids
Apparent arson attack against San Diego queer women's bar
San Diego LGBT Center marks 50 Years with anniversary gala
Grieving San Diego mom blames bullying for 14-yr-old son's suicide
L.A. County Fire Dept. Lifeguard Capt. sues over Pride flags
US sanctions Uganda parliament speaker
A year after Safe Harbor in Maryland, TurnAround & sex trafficking
Trying to avoid LGBTQ+ issues, schools denying basic sex-ed
NH federal court strikes down 'banned concepts' curriculum law
Latin America elections challenges, opportunities for LGBTQ people
Indian government committee to study rights for same-sex couples
South Sudan refugee camp is 'not a safe haven' for LGBTQ+ residents
Canada ends ban on gay sperm
Out in the World: LGBTQ+ news from Europe & Asia
Trump found guilty on all counts, sentencing scheduled for July 11
Anti-trans Democrat loses Texas primary to queer woman
Effort to put measure limiting trans youth's rights on Calif. ballot fails
Libertarian Party nominates gay presidential candidate for 2024
2024 Texas GOP convention: Republicans call for spiritual warfare
L.A. Pride and WeHo Pride: A Tale of Two Cities
For a Lost Soldier…
Journalists are not the enemy
The nation's highest honor & rightly so to a 'Mom,' Judy Shepard
Remembering Columbine 25 years later, a reporter's tale
Kenya seeks ban on intersex lowering hormone levels to compete
Actor Richard Dreyfuss mocks trans people in misogynistic rant
Queer 'TV Glow' a surreal horror gem
Architecture junkies will love new book on funeral homes
NFL kicker Harrison Butker doubles down on his extremist remarks
'Interview with the Vampire' returns in triumph
Watch 'Feud,' if you like glam and wit doused with betrayal and regret
Rough and sexy 'Open To It' explores lighter side of polyamory
'Fellow Travelers' mixes queer love, politics for sexy history lesson
Kardashian carries her weight in 'AHS: Delicate'
Meet the non-binary star of Dan Levy's 'The Big Brunch'
The annual LA Times 101 list is here at last
Hit Instagram smash burger pop-up Chris N Eddy's debuts in Hollywood
LA's comeback, a lesbian community leader has a starring role
West Hollywood's 'Out On Robertson' official launch
Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle announces 2023 award recipients
Monsters of the American Cinema
Fat Ham, a Queer Black spin on a Shakespeare classic
Gay playwright- "Marilyn, Mom, & Me" is his most personal play yet
New play Arrowhead: a minefield of queerness, feminism, & identity
It's game, set, and mismatch in unfulfilling 'Challengers'
'Housekeeping for Beginners' embraces true meaning of family
After 25 years, a forgotten queer classic reemerges in 4K glory
Trans filmmaker queers comic book genre with 'People's Joker'
The Voice crowns its very first LGBTQ winner with Asher HaVon
Here is the Earth Day anthem we forgot we needed
Raw & resolute, Damez brings the intersectional image we need
Bold and beautiful, R&B's Idman gives us a risk we want to take
Tyler Childers' sweet gay love story: 5+ GRAMMY nominations
'Mean Boys' raises questions of life, death, and belonging
Rob Anderson knows you think he's annoying
Out CBS reporter Jon Vigliotti recounts covering a warming planet
New book offers observations on race, beauty, love
Meet Howard Uni's first trans student body president, Jay Jones
Is Connecticut a 'safe haven' for trans youth?
"Our Queer Life" chronicles the diversity of the LGBTQ+ experience
The world 'isn't much different today'
"White's case is not an anomaly or an exception within the system, but rather the norm- the world needs to know what's been going on"


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Domestic Car Repair


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South African writer Nadine Gordimer, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1991, died Sunday at the age of 90. Gordimer merged the personal and political to create a compelling portrait of the injustice of life under apartheid.
She was born in 1923 to a mother whose family came to South Africa from Britain and a Jewish father who had lived under oppression in his native Lithuania. But she didn't learn her politics at home; rather, as she moved out into the wider world — first at university in Johannesburg — she took in what was happening in her country under the government-mandated system of apartheid.
Neville Hoad, an English professor at the University of Texas, Austin, first read Gordimer when he was a university student in South Africa. "She traveled in social circles in Johannesburg that were very much politically engaged," he says. "But I also think she was an astute observer of, you know, everyday experience in Johannesburg in those years. And if you were paying attention, you couldn't help but notice the injustices of apartheid."
Gordimer's first novel, 1953'sThe Lying Days, is the story of a young woman who, like Gordimer, comes from a small mining town and begins grappling with apartheid when she has an affair with a social worker. Gordimer, who wrote 15 novels, continued to explore the effects of apartheid in books like A World of Strangers, The Conservationist and A Sport of Nature. A passage from that last book, told from the heroine's perspective,reads:
"At night I sat out in what the darkness reverted to the miner's garden. ... The frogs throbbing on and the sea hissing. I'd walk down to the beach. Nothing. Nothing but gentleness, you know how the Indian Ocean seems to evaporate into the sky at night. In the middle of my witness of the horror of this country, I experienced the white man's peace. I did."
Hoad says her ability to capture the contradictions of daily life in South Africa is what made her work so crucial. "She's the most important South African writer of the 20th century for explaining to the English-speaking world what life under apartheid was like."
Gordimer was a member of the African National Congress and an associate of Nelson Mandela's, but she was never imprisoned, though several of her books — including the Booker Prize-winning Burger's Daughter — were banned by the government.
Still, Gordimer didn't define her work as political. In 1991, after winning the Nobel literature prize, she told NPR, "I've never written anything with the idea of persuading people or exposing something. I've just written about what I've sensed, what is there, what I've learned. And if there's a message, it's what people read from it."
Farrar, Straus and Giroux's Jonathon Galassi has been Gordimer's U.S. publisher since the late 1980s. He says, "The thing that's most remarkable about Nadine as a writer was her honesty. She wasn't trying to present a political platform, but she was reflecting in her work what she sensed. She drew from what she knew firsthand and she transformed it. That's what fiction does. But it was very accurate. Her radar for human politics was super acute."
As astute as her political observations were, Galassi says, Gordimer's real genius was her insight into the way people interact with one another. "She will go down in history as a great writer about human relations — race, sex, politics, class. And I think she'll be read forever," he says.
In announcing her death, Gordimer's family said she "cared most deeply about South Africa, its culture, its people, and its ongoing struggle to realize its new democracy."
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Get the most out your security systems with a maintenance service from Superior Surveillance Solutions. With a team of specialist communication and security engineers working, we can provide your business with a maintenance service plan that best suits your business needs and requirements.
We offer rapid response to security maintenance issues to help ensure minimal downtime of your security systems.
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Out of the sample Brien maple products the one that I was looking forward to the most was the maple sugar. I had never used maple sugar but I had been wanting to for a while. I had also found the the perfect recipe to try the maple sugar out with on all recipes ; maple snickerdoodles . These maple snickerdoodles are pretty much just snickerdoodles that use maple syrup in the cookie dough for flavour and they are rolled in a maple sugar coating. Like most cookies the maple snickerdoodles were really easy to make, taking almost no time at all and they turned out great! They were nice and crispy on the edges and soft on the inside but they were full of amazing maple flavour all the way through. What a great way to satisfy a maple craving! Luckily I still have some more maple sugar to enjoy and experiment with.
Maple Snickerdoodles
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup maple sugar
- Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon in a bowl.
- Cream the butter and sugar in another bowl.
- Beat the egg and maple syrup into the butter and sugar.
- Mix the dry ingredients into the wet.
- Mix the white sugar and maple sugar in a small bowl.
- Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and roll the balls in the sugar mixture.
- Place the balls on a baking sheet.
- Bake in a preheated 350F/180C oven until golden brown and cracked on top, about 8-10 minutes.


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NOAA to East: Beware of coming 'Frankenstorm'
Published 1:00 pm Friday, October 26, 2012
An unusual nasty mix of a hurricane and a winter storm that forecasters are now calling "Frankenstorm" is likely to blast most of the East Coast next week, focusing the worst of its weather mayhem around New York City and New Jersey.
Government forecasters on Thursday upped the odds of a major weather mess, now saying there's a 90 percent chance that the East will get steady gale-force winds, heavy rain, flooding and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Halloween on Wednesday.
Meteorologists say it is likely to cause $1 billion in damage.
The storm is a combination of Hurricane Sandy, now in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North. They're predicted to collide and park over the country's most populous coastal corridor and reach as far inland as Ohio.
The hurricane part of the storm is likely to come ashore somewhere in New Jersey on Tuesday morning, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco. However, this is a storm that will affect a far wider area, so people all along the East have to be wary, Cisco said.
Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, mostly from the hurricane part, he said, and the other parts of the storm will reach inland from North Carolina northward.
Once the hurricane part of the storm hits, "it will get broader. It won't be as intense, but its effects will be spread over a very large area," the National Hurricane Center's chief hurricane specialist, James Franklin, said Thursday.
One of the more messy aspects of the expected storm is that it just won't leave. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say. Weather may start clearing in the mid-Atlantic the day after Halloween and Nov. 2 in the Northeast, Cisco said.
"It's almost a weeklong, five-day, six-day event," Cisco said Thursday from NOAA's northern storm forecast center in College Park, Md. "It's going to be a widespread serious storm."
With every hour, meteorologists are getting more confident that this storm is going to be bad and they're able to focus their forecasts more.
The New York area could see around 5 inches of rain during the storm, while there could be snow southwest of where it comes inland, Cisco said. That could mean snow in eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and the Shenandoah Mountains, he said.
Both private and federal meteorologists are calling this a storm that will likely go down in the history books.
"We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting," Cisco said.
It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. With some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear.
Some have compared it to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but Cisco said that one didn't hit as populated an area and is not comparable to what the East Coast may be facing. Nor is it like last year's Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowstorm in the Northeast.
"The Perfect Storm only did $200 million of damage and I'm thinking a billion," said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private service Weather Underground. "Yeah, it will be worse."
However, this is several days in advance, when weather forecasts are usually far less accurate. The National Hurricane Center only predicts five days in advance, and each long-range forecast moves Sandy's track closer to the coast early next week. The latest has the storm just off central New Jersey's shore at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.
As forecasts became more focused Thursday, the chance of the storm bypassing much of the coast and coming ashore in Maine faded, Cisco said.
The hurricane center's Franklin called it "a big mess for an awful lot of people in the early part of next week."
NOAA's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center: http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/index.shtml
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/