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Another guest article, this time from Sue Knaup from OneStreet.org, out of Arizona. Sue is also an associate member of the European Cyclists Federation and is a member of their helmet committee.by Sue Knaup
Bloodletting seems a distant absurdity to us and yet, just a few hundred years ago, we lost George Washington because he trusted its rhetoric over logic when he agreed to it as treatment for a nasty cold. With only a few quiet voices protesting the countless deaths caused by bloodletting, the practice continued well into the 20 th century. Today's bicycle helmet promotions and laws hold an alarming resemblance to the pronouncements used by the bloodletters. When an illogical practice is presented as the only means of safety and dismissal of the practice is equated to certain death, even the most brilliant leader can succumb to its absurdity.Myths about helmets charm countries most where bicycling is not commonplace. In these countries, helmet rhetoric has escalated to the point where those not familiar with bicycling believe that if you so much as swing your leg over a bicycle without wearing a helmet you will smash your head open. In such places, those who ride a bike without a helmet are chided by onlookers at every turn for their reckless, irresponsible behavior.Where did these chiders get their information? Most helmet propaganda is originally published by insurance companies, health practitioners and government agencies who have avoided countless law suits by blaming bicyclists in crashes for not wearing a helmet, sometimes even when their injuries or death did not involve injuries to their head.While many studies have shown that bicycle helmets do little to prevent major head injuries beyond minor skull fractures and lacerations (Curnow 2001), a few poorly executed, misleading studies are the only ones to have reached mainstream distribution. The most common bit of jargon of them all is that "cycle helmets prevent 85% of head injuries and 88% of brain injuries" when in fact, where helmet use is high, there has been no detectable reduction in head injuries. See this link for a good overview: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1027.html .
Helmet rhetoric that sets bicycling out as far more dangerous than it is, is the greatest hindrance to programs for increasing bicycling. A great deal of truthful yet catchy promotions will be necessary to counter this noise. Remember, bloodletting was "common sense" for 2,000 years! One of the best examples for illustrating the truth is this fun quiz on the dangers of bicycling: http://www.bicyclinglife.com/SafetySkills/SafetyQuiz.htm
Mandatory helmet laws often follow the spread of bicycle helmet rhetoric, adding the weight of the law to the idea that bicycling is more dangerous than any other form of transportation. In fact, as you will have found in the above quiz, if these laws took a realistic approach to their attempt to prevent head injuries, all pedestrians and car drivers would be required to wear helmets as well. And, it seems, a law requiring the wearing of helmets inside the house would also be a good idea.Helmet laws also present another barrier to potential cyclists who already see many barriers to starting cycling. Mandatory helmet laws add to this list and thus prevent many new riders from starting. These laws have also been proven to decrease numbers of current cyclists thus increasing the potential for crashes by hindering safety in numbers. This theory has been proven to show that a motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling when there are more people walking or bicycling (Jacobsen 2003).Bicycle helmets may provide some protection against minor skull fractures and lacerations, but they do not prevent major brain trauma that happens within the skull. In fact, because bicycle helmets are soft which increases friction in certain crashes, unlike motorcycle helmets, some studies have shown that they can cause neck and brain injuries from rotational motion ( V J M St Clair, B P Chinn. 2007 ).
So, in minor crashes, bicycle helmets can assist in preventing minor injuries, though the potential of their doing harm in a major crash must be considered. Like bloodletting, which, in retrospect was found to have unintentionally benefitted a few lucky survivors because they were later discovered to have high blood pressure, helmets have surely prevented nasty gashes and painful skull fractures.Bicycle helmets can be a good choice for someone concerned about minor head injuries as long as they understand their helmet's limitations for preventing major head injuries, not unlike choosing to wear knee pads and gloves. However, some studies have shown that helmeted bicyclists take more risks than those not wearing a helmet ( Pless IB, Magdalinos H, Hagel B. 2006). Thus, whenever a potential helmet benefit is mentioned, the potential of a helmet causing neck and brain injury, as well as this risk compensation, must always be included for bicycle helmets to be presented in a truthful light.
Another important point to understand is that helmets do not prevent crashes. Improved road and pathway conditions, driver and bicyclist education, better protections for cyclists and increased numbers of bicyclists through safety in numbers, prevent crashes. Too often government officials, health practitioners and insurance companies grasp at helmet laws as a quick and cheap solution that removes them from liability and the responsibility of providing quality provisions for bicyclists.Helmet laws and overblown promotions also set in place a ready-made blame-the-victim reaction. Each time a helmetless cyclist is in a crash, their bare head becomes the focus even if the driver deliberately hit them and their injuries were not head related. Remember that whenever one of these laws is presented, it is from a knee jerk reaction, either to a recent crash or fabricated rhetoric, usually by officials seeking to avoid liability, framing the argument as making crashing safer.Let's replace our helmets with thinking caps. If we can agree that increasing bicycling is in the best interest of our people and our planet, it's time to shift our promotions and policy efforts away from the illusion of safer crashing and into reshaping our communities into places where everyone knows the safety of bicycling.Sue Knaup is the executive director of One Street , an international nonprofit organization that serves leaders of organizations working to increase bicycling. Most of her work involves coaching these leaders past common pitfalls so they can focus their energy on increasing bicycling.Find out more at http://www.onestreet.org.
For a compilation of 16 studies on helmet efficacy see: http://www.onestreet.org/pdf/Bicyclist- & -Driver-Ed-helmet-efficacy.pdf .
Find a comprehensive study on safety in numbers here: http://www.onestreet.org/pdf/Safety_in_Numbers_JacobsenPaper.pdf .
Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Sue Knaup Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Article Source: Bicycle Helmets - Today's Bloodletting


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WASHINGTON – Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) and Co-Chairman Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), will hold a hearing on Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. in room 340 Cannon House Office Building. The hearing, entitled "Freedom of the Media in the OSCE Region," will focus on trends regarding freedom of the media in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) participating States, including developments in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Although press freedom remains an essential ingredient for healthy, functioning democracy, journalists continue to face significant challenges in their work in numerous OSCE countries, such as murder, abduction, beatings, threats or even acts of intimidation. In many other cases, restrictions may be more subtle, and include a variety of tools ranging from censorship and lawsuits to restrictions on access to paper and ink.
On June 22, 2007, Congressman Hastings and Senator Cardin sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, raising concerns about efforts to limit media freedom in Russia. In addition, Congressman Hastings, Senator Cardin, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ) sent a letter to President Bush on the eve of the June 2007 summit in Kennebunkport, Maine, calling on him to raise the issue of media freedom with President Putin. The crackdown on independent journalists in Azerbaijan has also drawn repeated criticism from the OSCE's Representative on Freedom of the Media who was cited in H.Con.Res.183, introduced by Congressman Hastings on July 12, 2007.
Hearing Witnesses Include:
Ms. Fatima Tlisova – A Russian journalist residing in the United States since March 2007, Ms. Tlisova was subjected to violent physical attacks and intimidation as a result of her reportage from the conflict-torn North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation.
Ms. Nina Ognianova, Program Coordinator, Europe and Central Asia Programs,
Committee to Protect Journalists
Ms. Paula Schriefer, Director of Advocacy, Freedom House

subset: commoncrawl


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Banks aren't the big jobs machines they used to be.
One after another, major financial firms are trimming their payrolls. In first-quarter earnings announcements this month, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley revealed that they have slashed more than 31,000 jobs, or 3.5 percent of their combined workforce, in the past year. For three of those banks, it was the second straight year of cutbacks. And the pattern is being repeated at banks around the world.
Layoffs in the depths of the financial crisis were to be expected. But four years later, and at a time when many banks are reporting higher or even record earnings, the cuts are unsettling to an entire industry.
The losses are an unwelcome reminder of the meltdown and its lingering effects. A slow, halting recovery has kept loan demand in check. Low interest rates are crimping profits from lending. New regulations have extinguished old sources of revenue, and compliance is expensive. The cuts also reflect advances in technology that have made bank tellers more expendable.
Steven Mann, chairman of the finance department at the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business, says many of his students have given up on banking jobs.
"In 2005, 2006, 2007, I'd ask, `Do you want to go work at a bank?' and the answer was always yes," he says. "Now the answer is no one. They want to be in the treasury department of General Electric."
The industry's rhythm now veers more toward cost cutting than freewheeling.
Those higher earnings? They're not because business is gangbusters. They're because banks have been forced to make do with less.
Citigroup's new CEO Mike Corbat, hired to turn around a bank that has struggled since the financial crisis and beforehand, says that examining costs and improving efficiency should be "business as usual," and "not just an annual event."
What makes the situation especially harsh is that there were signs in 2010 and 2011 that banks would start hiring more people. Banks added about 45,600 positions in the U.S. in 2010 and 2011 combined, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. In the previous two years, they shed more than three times that many jobs.
Then last year, job growth was essentially flat. Some observers worry that the turnaround won't ever happen. The industry's total U.S. workforce of 2.1 million is 105,000 less than it was at its peak in 2007.
It's a far different mood from the pre-crisis years that were fueled by risky trading and complicated investments that eventually backfired. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, banks added more than 50,000 jobs per year.
Now Citigroup is cutting back in lower-growth countries, like Greece and Spain. Germany's Commerzbank and others are laying off branch workers as customers gravitate toward online banking. Barclays is exiting businesses with "reputational risks" after some of its bankers were caught manipulating global interest rates.
Even JPMorgan, generally considered one of the nation's strongest banks, is retrenching. It will cut a net of 17,000 positions, or 6.5 percent of its staff, over the next two years, mostly in the unit that deals with troubled mortgages.
Banks have always cut and added jobs to navigate the varying fortunes of the economy. So it's difficult to discern whether the industry is permanently shrinking, or if this is just a temporary downward move in a cycle that will turn around again.
"It's just hard to know how things will shake out," says Phillip Swagel, a Treasury official in the Bush administration who now teaches economics at the University of Maryland.
To be sure, there are places where the banks are expanding. Wealth management is a hot area because it can provide a steady source of income, based mostly on fees, rather than the spectacular gains—and losses—of trading. Banks are also rushing to hire compliance workers, to help ensure they're in line with stricter regulations that came out of the financial crisis.
"There are three or four federal regulatory bodies that could walk into a bank store at any moment," says Marc Hutto, founder of recruitment firm Reveal Global Intelligence in Charlotte, N.C. "Banks are hiring as fast as they can for these audit and compliance roles."
Among the recent announcements:
- Cutting Costs: Bank of America has been trimming staff under a program announced in 2011 called "Project New BAC," which includes slashing 30,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce. Morgan Stanley has been trimming jobs under its "Office of Re-engineering." The latest round in January homed in on investment banking and senior-ranking workers, with the bank slashing 1,600 jobs, or nearly 3 percent of the workforce.
- Slimming Down: Switzerland's UBS has been cutting jobs and saying it wants to create a simpler bank, which includes getting rid of "excess management layers." In investment banking, it has shaken up the top ranks and exited businesses "that have been rendered uneconomical by changes in regulation and market developments."
- Under New Management: In December, less than two months after Corbat took over as CEO, Citigroup announced it would cut 11,000 jobs, or about 4 percent of its total. The bulk comes from consumer banking, but the investment bank and operations and technology have also been hit. Corbat likes to say that the bank will be a "maniacal allocator of resources."
- Mortgages Improving: As mortgage losses stabilize, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have slashed the units that service troubled home loans.
- Replacing Tellers: Most big banks are cutting branches because they're expensive to maintain and customers don't visit as often. For the branches that remain, new technology is making human tellers less necessary, with machines counting cash and ATMs dispensing exact change. JPMorgan, Netherlands-based ING and others are cutting positions in their branches as customers get increasingly comfortable banking online or by smartphone.
If there's no pattern to the job cuts, they are knitted together by a common theme of the industry's shifting landscape.
Antony Jenkins, appointed CEO of Barclays last year after the bank's interest rate-fixing scandal, in February laid out a turnaround plan that included exiting risky businesses, cutting jobs and slashing the proportion of revenue that the bank spends on salaries and bonuses.
"We need to accept," he says, "that society's expectations have changed."
(AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.)


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Last June, Anthony Rapp settled in at the home of his good friend and fellow actor Camryn Manheim to watch the Tony Awards. The New York natives were both in Toronto working, and Manheim had invited Rapp and his boyfriend over to partake in the beloved theater geek ritual. But for the first time, Rapp — a working actor since he was 9 years old, and most famously part of the original cast of the musical Rent — felt something he'd never experienced before with the Tonys: dread.
And that's because the host that night was Kevin Spacey.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Rapp is publicly alleging for the first time that in 1986, Spacey befriended Rapp while they both performed on Broadway shows, invited Rapp over to his apartment for a party, and, at the end of the night, picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, making a sexual advance. According to public records, Spacey was 26. Rapp was 14.
For years, Rapp, now 46, told no one about his experience, and he has never spoken with Spacey since. But as Spacey's star began to rise through the 1990s and 2000s — including a Tony Award, two Oscars, a decadelong run as the creative director of the Old Vic theater in London, and six seasons and counting on the hit Netflix series House of Cards — Rapp's frustration, anger, and incredulity with the sexual boundary he said Spacey crossed with him grew as well. Seeing Spacey now, "My stomach churns," Rapp said. "I still to this day can't wrap my head around so many aspects of it. It's just deeply confusing to me."
Representatives for Spacey, now 58, did not respond to numerous phone calls, emails, and a letter detailing the allegations. However, after this story was published, Spacey posted on Twitter that he did not remember the encounter with Rapp.
"But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior," Spacey wrote.
"This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are other stories out there about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy," he continued. He also acknowledged for the first time publicly that "I now choose to live as a gay man."
After the accusations leveled against Harvey Weinstein sparked an unprecedented conversation about sexual abuse and harassment in the entertainment industry, Rapp said he feels compelled to come forward.
"And not to simply air a grievance," he said, "but to try to shine another light on the decades of behavior that have been allowed to continue because many people, including myself, being silent. … I'm feeling really awake to the moment that we're living in, and I'm hopeful that this can make a difference."
When Rapp first met Spacey in 1986, he was a couple of months into the Broadway run of Precious Sons, starring Ed Harris and Judith Ivey, for which Rapp was receiving significant praise. At the same time, Spacey was enjoying his first major break with a supporting role alongside his idol Jack Lemmon in a revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Both productions were earning enough critical attention that the casts were attending celebratory events. "It was at one of those events where I met Kevin Spacey for the first time," Rapp recalled.
He was meeting a lot of actors during that period, enjoying the time-honored custom of late-night, post-show gatherings at which many different Broadway casts would eat and mingle. Rapp had relocated from Joliet, Illinois, with his mother Mary for the run of the play; he'd even taken the semester off from school. Sometimes his mother would accompany him to those events, but sometimes she'd let him go alone.
Rapp said he encountered Spacey again at one of those post-show functions, when a 17-year-old friend from Joliet was visiting him in New York. "And he was like, 'Hey! Hi! Come join us!'" Rapp said. Spacey then invited both boys to join him at the popular nightclub Limelight, even though, as Rapp explained, "I looked younger than 14."
"I don't know how— We got in through the front door," Rapp continued. "We didn't have to show ID. And we sat with him in some VIP area." Rapp noted that he had no memory of being offered alcohol — "It was just a fun night just talking and hanging out," he said — and at some point, Spacey invited him to attend a party he was hosting a few days later at his Manhattan apartment.
He went, gladly, and alone. Rapp said he honestly cannot recall what he told his mother — who died from cancer in 1997 — about the party, but he stressed that the idea of him attending a party held by an adult Broadway actor did not seem like a cause for concern. "I imagine that I might be opening my poor late mother up to some criticisms for how she parented, but, you know, it was a different era," he said. "I went to work by myself. I would walk to the subway, and go to the theater by myself."
When he arrived at Spacey's apartment, Rapp quickly realized that he was the only nonadult there — which, again, did not worry him, since he so often had found himself in similar situations as a child actor. The bigger issue: "I didn't know anyone," he said. "And I was quickly kind of bored."
Rapp said he ended up wandering into the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, and watching TV well past midnight.
"I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually."
At some point, Rapp said he turned to see Spacey standing at the bedroom door. And that's when he first realized that everyone else had left the party. They were alone.
"My memory was that I thought, Oh, everybody's gone. Well, yeah, I should probably go home," Rapp said. Spacey, he recalled, "sort of stood in the doorway, kind of swaying. My impression when he came in the room was that he was drunk." Rapp doesn't remember Spacey saying anything to him. Instead, Rapp said, "He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don't, like, squirm away initially, because I'm like, 'What's going on?' And then he lays down on top of me."
"He was trying to seduce me," Rapp said. "I don't know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually."
Rapp recalled this all happening — Spacey appearing at the door, coming into the room, picking him up, and putting him on the bed — in one clumsy action, with Spacey landing at a slight angle on top of him. He said Spacey "was, like, pressing into me," and that he remembers Spacey "tightening his arms." But while he can't recall exactly how long Spacey remained on top of him, Rapp said he was able to "squirm" away after a short period.
"It was a frozen moment. In terms of fight or flight or freeze, I tend to freeze."
"It was a frozen moment," Rapp said of the entire encounter, with a deep, exasperated sigh. "In terms of fight or flight or freeze, I tend to freeze."
After pushing Spacey off him, Rapp remembered he was able to step into the bathroom and close the door. "I was like, 'What is happening?'" he said. "I saw on the counter next to the sink a picture of him having his arm around a man. So I think on some level I was like, Oh. He's gay. I guess. Then I opened the door, and I was like, 'OK, I'm going to go home now.' He followed me to the front door of the apartment, and as I opened the door to leave, he was leaning on the front door[frame]. And he was like, 'Are you sure you wanna go?' I said, 'Yes, good night,' and then I did leave."
As he walked home, "My head was spinning," Rapp said. "I have a memory of turning around and [thinking], What was that? What am I supposed to do with it? What does it mean?"
He paused. "The older I get, and the more I know, I feel very fortunate that something worse didn't happen," he said. "And at the same time, the older I get, the more I can't believe it. I could never imagine [that] anyone else I know would do something like that to a 14-year-old boy."
In the days following the party, Rapp said he considered reaching out to Spacey to talk about what had happened. But he never did, and he has no memory of ever telling his mother about it, either. For Rapp, if he had told her right away, it would have meant a larger discussion about his own sexual orientation at 14, and he wasn't ready to do that.
It was at first, however, relatively simple for Rapp to set aside his experience with Spacey. For one, Rapp said his training as an actor, even at 14, had taught him how to slough off traumatic events. As it happens, there is even a scene in Precious Sons that calls to mind Rapp's encounter with Spacey, in which Ed Harris's character drunkenly mistakes his son (played by Rapp) for someone else, climbs on top of him, and makes a sexual advance. Rapp doesn't know if Spacey ever saw him in the play, but, he said, "Looking back, I think that on some level my system was kind of weirdly accustomed to the action [of having a man crawl on top of me], because it had been happening in the play."
"It was this thing that happened, and I locked it away."
For another, at the time, Spacey was just one of hundreds of unknown theater actors with zero presence outside of New York, and Rapp hoped he'd never see Spacey — or have to relive the experience — again. "It was this thing that happened, and I locked it away," he said.
But then, when Rapp was 16, he went to see the 1988 hit movie Working Girl with Melanie Griffith. Just nine minutes into the film, Rapp was shocked to see Spacey, his face on the big screen as a cocaine-snorting, champagne-guzzling Wall Street trader attempting to lewdly seduce Griffith in the back of a limo.
"I literally jumped out of my seat, like somebody had jolted me with a cattle prod," Rapp said. "It was this double whammy of, like, wait a second, that guy. And then it was coupled with the fact that his character was coming on to Melanie Griffith drunkenly. … It was a profound jolt to my system."
As Spacey's career blossomed, Rapp could no longer pretend like he didn't exist. He cannot recall precisely the first person he told about his experience, but he knows he started around the time he costarred in the 1990–92 Broadway production of Six Degrees of Separation, the same season Spacey gave his Tony-winning performance in Lost in Yonkers. (One of Rapp's former boyfriends confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the actor shared his experience with Spacey around 1990, when they were both 18. Another friend, actor Erin Quill, confirmed Rapp first told her about Spacey around 1992. And five other friends of Rapp's have confirmed that they've heard the story from him through the 1990s and 2000s as well. Rapp and I have been friends since 1999, but he only shared the allegations with me in recent weeks.)
The full weight of what Spacey's success would mean for Rapp finally hit him while he was shooting the 1993 feature film version of Six Degrees. One day at lunch, Rapp looked over to see Spacey sitting just a few tables away, visiting someone he knew. Once again, Rapp froze. Once again, he said his mind raced with the question, "What am I supposed to fucking do here?"
"It started to occur to me: What am I supposed to do if I ever work with him?"
The man who Rapp said had made an unwanted and unwarranted sexual advance toward him when he was a boy had come to his workplace. "I certainly didn't want to make eye contact with him. And I wasn't close with anybody on the set that I could share the experience that I was having in that moment," Rapp said. "It felt like I was trying to disappear." In his solitude, a whole new set of distressing questions began to hit him.
"It started to occur to me: What am I supposed to do if I ever work with him?" Rapp said, his voice rising. "What am I supposed to do? What do I do?!"
Throughout the 1990s, Spacey's fame only continued to grow, and with it, Rapp's outrage. When Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for 1995's The Usual Suspects, Rapp remembered openly sharing his story about Spacey with the people at the Oscar party he was attending. (Rapp's brother Adam said he was at that party, and confirmed this happened.)
Compounding Rapp's frustration was that he had already been out publicly since 1992, when doing so was acutely political — and professionally hazardous — for a working actor. "At that time, I wanted to scream to the rooftops, 'This guy is a fraud!'" Rapp said.
"No one's personal life is in the public interest," Spacey said in 2010. "It's gossip, bottom line. End of story."
Spacey's sexual orientation has been a matter of public fascination and speculation for decades, starting with an infamous October 1997 Esquire cover story with the headline "Kevin Spacey Has A Secret." Spacey addressed the rumors in a 2010 interview with the Daily Beast by saying, essentially, that he will never talk about his sexuality. "I have not given up my right to privacy," he said. "It's just a line I've never crossed and never will. … No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story." Still, when he twice joked about "coming out" when he hosted the 2017 Tony Awards, it was widely interpreted as poking fun at himself.
The rumors about Spacey haven't been limited to his sexuality. On Oct. 13, former television news anchor Heather Unruh went viral when she tweeted, "The #weinsteinscandal has emboldened me … I was a Kevin Spacey fan until he assaulted a loved one. Time the dominoes fell." (Unruh declined to elaborate when asked for comment. BuzzFeed News also asked Spacey's representatives about this allegation, but as with Rapp's allegations, BuzzFeed received no response.) Rapp is the first to go on the record bringing allegations against the actor.
Since that night in 1986, the two men, to Rapp's memory, have only ever interacted one other time, at the 1999 Tony Awards. Rapp was performing on the show with the cast of the revival of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Spacey was nominated for his performance in the revival of The Iceman Cometh. During a break in rehearsal before the telecast, Rapp used the restroom, and just as he was leaving, Spacey stepped through the door, and met his gaze.
"It was that thing that I've always wondered over these years: Does he remember?" Rapp said. "Does he know who I am? Does he have any recollection? Is there any feeling about what happened? Does he regret it? I don't know anything about what his relationship is to what happened. He looked at me, and I thought I saw some form of recognition, and I quickly looked away. I passed him and went out the door."
Rapp felt "relief," he said, that he had avoided having to confront the man he said had violated him 13 years earlier. "In retrospect I'm very grateful that I wasn't alone with him," he said. "Then I don't know what the fuck I would have done."
"Part of what allowed the Harvey situation to occur was that there was this witting and unwitting conspiracy of silence."
Between that encounter and Spacey winning the Oscar for Best Actor the following year for American Beauty, Rapp was riled up enough to speak about what Spacey did to him in a Q&A with the Advocate in 2001 — "I was bored, so I was in his bedroom watching TV and didn't know everybody had left, and he came to the bedroom and he picked me up and lay down on top of me" — with Spacey's name redacted from the story. (Bruce Steele, then the executive editor of the Advocate, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Rapp was talking about Spacey.)
Rapp said he even met with a lawyer, who told him there was no case worth pursuing. So he put it away again, sharing his story with close friends whenever Spacey's name would come up. But then the Weinstein story hit, and the cumulative effect of woman after woman coming forward to share their stories of harassment, coercion, assault, and rape compelled him to tell his story. "Part of what allowed the Harvey situation to occur was that there was this witting and unwitting conspiracy of silence," Rapp said. "The only way these things can continue is if there's no attention being paid to it, if it's getting forgotten."
If you have information or tips, you can contact this reporter at firstname.lastname@example.com or send us an encrypted message over Signal at (646) 379-1975. You can learn more about how to reach us here: contact.buzzfeed.com
He also hopes to work within the industry to create infrastructure to prevent predatory behavior, and give victims more recourse to safely speak out. "In 1986, these things weren't talked about very openly very much, except for maybe in an after-school-special kind of way," he said. "There's so much more openness about talking about these issues, and so many people are coming forward and sharing their stories. The oxygen in the room is there for us to really do something about it."
While Rapp is ready, even eager, to speak out and help effect change within his industry, he remains deeply conflicted about what it might mean to speak to the man who was supposed to be his peer and, instead, violated him.
"If I were ever in any sort of weird situation where suddenly, like, I was at a party, and there's Kevin Spacey, and I'm with a friend, and he comes up to us, what would I do?" he said. "I have no idea. To this day, I don't know what I would do." ●
This post has been updated to include Spacey's response.


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And now, The Opinion Page; in fact a first, an Opinion Page series on the latest round of arguments on taxes and spending that have come to national attention under the ominous term the fiscal cliff. At the moment, the White House and congressional Republicans are at an impasse, and if that sounds familiar, that's because they arrived at a similar stalemate last year. When a subsequent supercommittee failed to reach agreement, the clock started ticking.
Unless the president and Congress make a deal by midnight New Year's Eve, cuts take effect across the board on what's called discretionary spending. That's effectively everything, except Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. At the same time, the tax cuts approved under President Bush expire. Many economists believe the combination of tax hikes and spending reductions would trigger a new recession, which would mean a lot of job losses. This year, we'll hear from two analysts, then from a House Republican and a Senate Democrat.
We begin with Robert Kuttner, founder and co-director of The American Prospect. In an opinion piece for The Huffington Post yesterday, he quoted Winston Churchill who said that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they've tried everything else. At long last, he argues President Obama is doing the right thing. Bob Kuttner joins us now from member station WBUR in Boston. Nice to have you back on the program.
ROBERT KUTTNER: Neal, always a pleasure.
CONAN: And what's the president doing now that's different?
KUTTNER: Well, the president is being fairly firm. He realizes that he has public opinion on his side. Most Americans do not want to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare. Most Americans seemed to agree with him that taxes should be restored - tax rates rather should be restored to the Clinton-era rates on the top 2 percent rather than rates going up on everybody else. And so knowing that he has public opinion on his side and knowing that what's he's proposing I think is sensible economics, the president is hanging a lot tougher than he did during his first term having just won re-election.
CONAN: And so elections matter. This is one thing the president did run on - criticized him for not running on big ideas, but this is something he campaigned on all across the country, taxes have to go up on the rich.
KUTTNER: Yes. And I think the politics and the economics cut in the same direction. That is, it's better for the economy if you raise taxes on the top 2 percent than if you raise them on everybody, and it's also very good politics. So for once, the Republicans in the Obama era seemed to be painted into a corner where their remedy is unpopular politically, not necessarily very smart economically, and the president seems to be in a position where he's going to try and make the most of this.
CONAN: Well, you've been listening to the other side's arguments, as have everybody else, and that is, wait a minute, we don't need to raise tax rates. We can close loopholes and make up the money that way.
KUTTNER: Here's the problem with that. If you close loopholes - and, of course, that can mean anything and nothing. But one of the popular ways of so-called closing loopholes is you limit the total amount of deductions to something like 25 or 30 or $50,000, and that sounds good, but the problem with that is you end up raising taxes on the upper-middle class, the professional class, and very, very wealthy people end up paying almost as low a tax rate as they do now. Very, very wealthy people are where much of the money is, so you get more money by raising the top two rate brackets than you do by capping deductions, and you cut further down the income stream if you cap deductions.
CONAN: Capping deductions on things like your mortgage, for example.
KUTTNER: Exactly. And one way, by the way, of closing loopholes that would hit the very rich would be to tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income or at least at a higher rate than they are now. The reason that Mitt Romney paid a much lower rate than most Americans and Warren Buffett pays a lower rate than his secretary is that most of the income of the very, very wealthy is dividends, capital gains, other income on capital whereas most income from ordinary people is wages and salaries. So that would be a loophole that I would certainly favor closing. Obama, by the way, has proposed, I think, $600 billion of loophole closings in addition to over a $1 billion - I said billion. I mean trillion. As Everett Dirksen famously said, billion here, billion there, pretty soon, you're talking about real money. So the president wants to put the top two brackets back to what they were under Clinton, which was a very successful economic era. And then in addition to that, he wants to close some loopholes to raise about another $600 billion so that he doesn't have to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Now the need to have some reforms in Social Security and Medicare long term, that's something that almost everybody agrees upon. But I think the strategy of the Republicans and the strategy of the business leaders behind the group Fix the Debt has been to blur all of these separate issues into one grand bargain. I think it makes more sense to separate them. The question of long-term reform of Social Security, long-term reform of Medicare should not be jumbled up with a fairly straightforward question of whether to let the Bush tax cuts expire on the top 2 percent and how to prevent these automatic tax increases, spending cuts that were really imposed on President Obama by the Republicans in the 2011 budget deal as the price of letting the debt ceiling go forward.
CONAN: Well, more on that in a minute. But if you listen to someone like Grover Norquist of the anti-tax campaign or anti-tax increase campaign, he would say we need to make a grand bargain because if we don't tie that middle class tax cut to everything else, to cuts in Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, the Democrats will never do that.
KUTTNER: Well, Grover Norquist's 15 minutes may be up. I mean, the problem with this pledge that he has extract from Republicans that you can never vote for a tax increase is that you often vote for tax cuts because you need to do that to stimulate the economy. Then when the crisis passes, if you try to restore tax rates to what they were pre-crisis, you say, oh, no, that's violating Grover's pledge, that's a tax increase. So that's playing kind of cute, it seems to me. And I don't think the logic holds that you have to tie these changes in tax policy to reforms in Social Security and Medicare or the Democrats will never do it because they're two completely separate things.
Social Security is really in rather good shape long term if we can just get job growth up. After all, Social Security is financed by taxes on payrolls. If you get wage growth, payroll tax receipts go up, and the Social Security year of reckoning recedes further and further into the future. Medicare is a very tricky, complicated, byzantine program that is affected by the rate of health inflation in the rest of the economy. But the idea of having a kind of a midnight grand bargain where you slash Medicare, slash Social Security, and that's the price for the Republicans reluctantly agreeing to a tax increase on the richest 2 percent of Americans, I think that's bad politics and it's bad policy.
CONAN: Well, then, if they don't agree, and you need the House of Representatives to go along and there's a lot of people there in the House of Representatives, Republicans who say they will never do this no matter what, if they don't agree, then you go over that fiscal cliff. And, well, cliff is probably an inexact term and these cuts don't go in effect immediately or they don't have to. And the tax increases don't go into effect immediately or they don't have to. But in any case, the markets are likely to react very badly. A lot of people are likely to lose their jobs.
KUTTNER: Well, I think President Obama is willing to play hardball this time because public opinion is very, very much on his side. And the more you smoke out what the Republicans are really for, they are for sparing the richest 2 percent of people any tax increase, and in exchange they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. About 20 percent of Americans agree with that position according to the public opinion polls. The more Obama smokes out the fact that that's really their position, the more public opinion drives them to change the position. And if these tax increases and spending cuts buy for a few weeks and markets decline for a few weeks, it's really not the end of the world. So the president has a very, very strong hand. And the only question, I think, that worries liberals like me is whether he's going to fold a very strong hand.
All the indications are based on Secretary Geithner's comments on the talk shows is that the president likes having the strong hand, likes having public opinion on his side, likes being the defender of Social Security and Medicare, likes taxing the top 2 percent rather than raising everybody else's taxes and that he's not going to fold a strong hand. So this is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.
I think what worries me a little bit is the endgame where the Republicans reluctantly agree to raise taxes on the top 2 percent and they say to the president, hey, this was very, very hard for us to back down on a core position. Now what are you going to do for us? And then at that point, the pressure will be on Obama to throw them some kind of a good-sized bone on Medicare and on Social Security. I'm not worried about the tax hike. I'm more worried that Social Security may get thrown into this, to inappropriately bad politics, bad policy in order to consummate this grand bargain, which never should be a grand bargain. These are separable issues.
CONAN: Social Security, as you say, is more solvent for more years than any other part of this if you believe that the Social Security Trust Fund actually exists. It's been raided by previous Congress. It's a fiction, they say.
KUTTNER: Well, it's a buffer. Most of what pays for Social Security does not come out of some giant trust fund. Your Social Security taxes, my Social Security taxes pay for the retirement checks that go to your parents and my parents and other people's parents. But for the most part, the system is in balance for at least 20 to 25 years. And if we can just get wages back up so that more money comes in in the form of payroll taxes it will be in balance for many decades. The trick here is to get a recovery going, not to create austerity for the sake of saving Social Security, which only makes Social Security's balances that much worse.
CONAN: We're talking to Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect. You can find a link to his op-ed that was published in The Huffington Post at our website. Go to npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. We'll be talking with other analysts with a House Republican and with a Senate Democrat this week about the fiscal cliff. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And, Bob Kuttner, the politics if you go after the fiscal cliff, if everybody sticks to their guns and nobody gives up, after the fiscal cliff, you're not talking about anybody voting for tax increases. You're talking about people who's trying to vote for tax cuts, and you're not talking about spending increase - spending cuts. You talk about spending increases.
KUTTNER: Well, we're talking about - if the president has his way, we're talking about tax increases on the top 2 percent, and we're talking about leaving the present rates at their current level. That is, if you do nothing the Bush tax cuts expire on January 2. What Obama proposes is to have them revert to the pre-Bush rate for the top 2 percent and have them stay low for everybody else. So he's not talking about an additional tax cut. He's just talking about...
CONAN: No. I'm saying after January 2, he would be.
KUTTNER: No. After January 2...
CONAN: He would say restore the Bush cuts for the middle class?
KUTTNER: Well, but the Bush cuts for the middle class are currently in existence. They would never have gone away.
CONAN: They wouldn't be after January 2. They would've expired.
KUTTNER: Right. But for fiscal '13, they would be exactly the same as they were for fiscal '12. They would just stay put. And he is basically saying he might not have agreed with it at the time, but now that Bush lowered tax cuts on the bottom 98 percent, the economy is so fragile that he doesn't propose raising those to the pre-Bush levels for anybody except for the top 2 percent. I actually think that's pretty good economics. And I think - what I worry about, what Paul Krugman worries about, what some other economists worry about is that if you go to austerity prematurely, if you go to belt-tightening before the economy is in a robust recovery - and I think by definition, if unemployment is still almost 8 percent and it's much higher when you count people who want full-time jobs but can't find them - if you tighten everyone's belt at that point, you run the risk of kicking the economy back into a recession.
It may not be as big a cliff as the fiscal cliff, so-called. But it's still too big a cliff for what the economy can withstand right now. So I think we ought to be placing our money on what is going to create a strong recovery and not on belt tightening.
CONAN: But again, if Republicans fail to agree, you will go over that fiscal cliff and then the markets will react. You will go into another recession. And a lot of people will lose their jobs.
KUTTNER: Well, absolutely. And the fiscal cliff was a gun that was put to the head of both parties, in particular the Democratic Party, to force them to agree to cuts that they otherwise would not agree to. I mean, the fiscal cliff is sometimes treated in the media as if it were a kind of asteroid about to strike the Earth. It's not a natural catastrophe. It's an unnatural catastrophe. It's a catastrophe that was created as a strategy by the Republicans in 2011 to create this artificial day of reckoning when you would put pressure on the Democrats to agree to tax policy and social insurance policy that they otherwise would not go along with.
And what's interesting is is that this has mostly backfired on the Republicans. It has brought to light the fact that if the Republicans had their druthers, they would cut Social Security, cut Medicare in order to preserve lower taxes for the top 2 percent. It turns out that's monumentally unpopular. And that's why the politics cut in President Obama's direction.
CONAN: They say they would also do it to start paying down the debt, and that is pretty popular.
KUTTNER: Well, in theory, it's pretty popular. But if you say to people, would you like to take a cut in your Social Security and your Medicare in order to pay down the debt, most people would say, no, thank you. And I don't think it's good policy. I mean, I think when you have a very fragile economy, if you can get their economy - the economy into a strong recovery, the recovery will start paying down the debt. That's what happened after World War II. We had a much, much higher debt-to-GDP ratio.
And, you know, in 1945, they did not appoint a Bowles-Simpson commission to target the debt ratio in 1955. They said, how can we make sure we don't sink back into the Great Depression when we have 12 million GI's returning home? And instead of tightening everyone's belt, they doubled down on government spending with the GI Bill, with the Marshall Plan, with highways, with housing. And the prosperity after World War II lowered the debt ratio. So it seems to me rather than obsessing on the debt ratio, we should be focusing on how to get a strong recovery going, put people back to work so that they are paying taxes again. Those tax dollars can go to defray the debt.
CONAN: We just have about a minute left. What's your best guess?
KUTTNER: My best guess is that we briefly go over the cliff, that President Obama sticks to his guns, that the Republicans are forced to back down on taxes and that in order to feel that that gesture is reciprocated, President Obama - and I hope this doesn't happen, but I think it will - will rediscover his inner bipartisan and will give some moderate concession to the Republicans that he really doesn't want to give with modest cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
And by the way, you can get a lot of savings in Medicare without cutting benefits. The first thing I think he ought to do is change the law so that Medicare can negotiate bulk discounts with drug companies the same way that the VA and Medicaid can do. This was prohibited as part of President Bush's Medicare drug benefit. That would get you almost $300 billion. That's a lot of savings.
CONAN: Bob Kuttner, co-founder, co-editor of The American Prospect, a senior fellow at Demos. You can find a link to his column at our website at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. With us today from member station WBUR in Boston, thanks, Bob.
KUTTNER: Pleasure, Neal.
CONAN: Tomorrow, more of our conversations on the fiscal cliff, and we'll talk with retiring U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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The violin that was played by the bandmaster, Wallace Hartley as Titanic sank has been found according to a British auction house. They have put it up for sale.
Hartley's violin was believed lost in the 1912 disaster, but auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son say an instrument unearthed in 2006 and has undergone rigorous testing and proven to be Hartley's.
"It's been a long haul," said auctioneer Andrew Aldridge, explaining the find had initially seemed "too good to be true."
The auction house spent the past seven years and thousands of pounds determining the water-stained violin's origins, consulting numerous experts including government forensic scientists and Oxford University.
The auction house said the rose wood instrument has two long cracks on its body, but is "incredibly well-preserved" despite its age and exposure to the sea. It estimated the violin is worth six figures.
Survivors of the Titanic have said they remember the band, led by Wallace Hartley, playing on deck even as passengers boarded lifeboats after the ship hit an iceberg.
Hartley was one of the 1,517 people who perished when the Titanic struck an iceberg 350 miles (565 kilometers) south of Newfoundland on April 15, 1912.
Some reports at the time suggested Hartley's corpse was found fully dressed with his instrument strapped to his body, though there was also speculation the violin floated off and was lost at sea.
Henry Aldridge and Son said it researched the violin's story with a Hartley biographer as the instrument underwent forensic testing, uncovering documents that showed Hartley was found with a large leather valise strapped to him and the violin inside.
The violin apparently was returned to Hartley's grieving fiancée, the auction house said, and later ended up in the hands of the Salvation Army before being given to a violin teacher and ultimately Henry Aldridge & Son.
Testing by the U.K. Forensic Science Service showed corrosion deposits were considered "compatible with immersion in sea water," while a silver expert studied a plate on the violin's neck to determine if it fit the time profile.
Henry Aldridge & Son said the violin will go on public display at the end of the month at Belfast City Hall, less than a mile from where Titanic was built.


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Pear & Almond Frangipane Tartelettes
It's been a week of catching up here since New Year. Catching up on family, catching up on friends, emails, snail mail, thank you notes, love notes. The holidays have been so busy and wonderful that every bit of everyday is truly dedicated to organizing. At the end of the day, feeling both mentally spent and elated, we welcome a little break and a treat.
It does not have to be anything fancy or sweet. Sometimes it's just a slice of bread and some honey, a couple of cookies, a piece of bread and a cracker, etc… Sometimes, it's a treat I made specifically for a tea break. Sometimes, like the other day, it was pulling ends and pieces together to make something utterly scrumptious: Pear and Almond Frangipane Tartelettes.
On New Year's day I made all the traditional Southern foods since my in-laws were coming over such as ham, black eyed peas, collard greens, biscuits, etc..I also added one of my family's traditions by making a galette des rois with gluten free puff pastry. I know I was a few days early, but that's how it goes in my family because of everyone's travel and work schedule during the holidays. At least, we make time to gather, eat a piece of galette and have a glass of Champagne to toast the new year.
This NY Day, I made more frangipane than I actually used in the galette so I parked it the fridge. I did consider eating it with a spoon as it was if you must know. There is something about frangipane that is just creamy enough and rich enough to make me forget reason…
It took a couple of extra days and I had all the elements necessary to make proper (read dignified) use of the frangipane. Some very ripe pears, some pastry dough saved over from making quiche and these little tartelettes were born. We barely waited until they were cool enough to share one during a little mandatory work break.
I am just very sad we are both starring at the last one right now! Have a great weekend!
Pear and Almond Frangipane Tartelettes:
Makes six to eight 3.5-inch tartelettes or one 9-inch tart
For the crust:
5 tablespoons (70gr) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 egg yolks
pinch salt
1/2 cup (80gr) superfine rice flour
1/2 cup (60gr) millet flour
1/4 cup (30gr) sorghum flour
1/4 cup (40gr) corn starch (or tapioca flour)
2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup cold water or milk
For the frangipane:
1 stick (115 gr) butter, softened
1/3 cup (115gr) honey
1 cup (100 gr) ground almonds (blanched, slivered, whole, your call)
2 eggs
1/4 cup (60gr) heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
3 medium pears, cored, halved and thinly sliced (I left the skin on but feel free to peel them before hand)
Prepare the crust:
In a mixer, whip the butter on medium speed until light and airy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time and beating well after each addition. Mix until incorporated. Add the salt, and all the different flours, and mix briefly. Add some water or milk, one tablespoon at a time if the dough feels too dry. Dump the whole mixture onto a lightly floured (use more rice flour) board and gather the dough into a smooth ball. Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
Preheat oven to 350F and position a rack in the center.
When the dough is nice and cold, roll it out on a lightly floured board or in between two sheets of plastic to fit your prefered pie pan or eight 3.5-inch tart rings. If the dough tears while you roll or/and transfer into the pan, just patch it with your fingertips. Line the dough with a piece of parchment paper, fill with pie weights or dy beans and par bake for 10 minutes until almost partially baked. Remove the weights and parchment paper. At this point you can refrigerate the baked crust for up to 5 days before using. Let cool while you prepare the filling.
Prepare the frangipane:
Place the butter, honey, ground almonds, and the eggs in a large bowl and whisk until smooth (can also be done in a food processor). Add the cream and cardamom but stir in it instead of whisking not to emulsify it or it will rise while baking.
Assemble and bake:
Divide the frangipane among each tart rings, add a few slices of pears right on top (no need to push them through) and bake for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
We like ours with creme fraiche and a bit of vanilla sugar.


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In hopes of slowing down a flood of motorists speeding to the Department of Defense structure coming to fruition on the citys West End, Rep. Jim Moran (D-8) included language in the Defense Authorization bill last week that would limit the number of parking spaces available at the facility.
The bill passed the House last Friday.
Residents and commuters have been wary of the prospect of more gridlock since before construction began last year on the Washington Headquarters Service building that will bring 6,400 workers to the city in an area without a Metro station.
According to the language, the cap could be lifted if Congress approves a traffic management plan to mitigate congestion at nearby intersections and if the Department of Defense constructs access roads and ramps to alleviate congestion.
The Pentagon gave short shrift to transportation planning at the Mark Center. The site never should have been chosen because we had other options with Metro access, Moran said. Were going to push every button and pull every lever to mitigate the consequences of the Defense Departments mistakes.


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Today's Extra-Special Highlight: DanShanoff.com-BurntOrangeNation mash-up NCAA Tournament spectacular! Scroll down below this post for the first half of my Tournament-obsessed email exchange with Peter Bean. Then, check back on Burnt Orange Nation early this afternoon for Part 2! (Yeah, it's long, but what else are you doing today besides similarly obsessing about the brackets?)
On to today's Quickie:
It is the Question(s) of the Day:
"How's your
"How's your
"How's your
"How's your
"How's your
"How's your
"How's your
"How's your
With less than a day before the Tournament begins, everything is focused on the brackets. YOUR brackets. Your friends' brackets. The experts' brackets. Maybe even my brackets.
Yesterday, my picks were unveiled to a Wall Street Journal Online audience. (Did you see them? Here's a link.)
My Final Four:
Biggest Risk, Round 1:
VCU over Duke
Winthrop over Notre Dame
Biggest Risk, Round 2:
Georgia Tech over
VCU over Pitt
Creighton over
Biggest Risk, Sweet 16:
Georgia Tech over
Southern Illinois over
Biggest Risk, Elite Eight:
Other than that, I'm fairly conventional.
So I've put my pool fortunes behind five "Defining Choices":
(1) A VCU team I'm picking mostly because they're opening with Duke and I'm suckered in by the "this year's George Mason" question (when I should be focusing on the oft-cited Quickie foundation of the "regress-to-the-mean" principle).
(2) A Georgia Tech team I'm picking mostly because I had them in the Final Four in my PRESEASON picks.
(3) I've got So.
(4) I've got
(5) And I'm behind
There you have it: Five defining choices that will make (or, more likely, break) my bracket.
So: What were YOUR bracket's Defining Choices?
DON'T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR THE "DAILY QUICKIE READERS" GROUP OF THE ESPN.COM TOURNAMENT CHALLENGE! (And don't forget to scroll down for the Shanoff-BurntOrangeNation mash-up, Part 1!)
By the Wednesday before the NCAA Tournament, the rest of the sports world is either temporarily irrelevant or simply ignored. Still...
NBA: Bernie Bickerstaff is headed out as coach of the Bobcats, per Michael Jordan's edict. So: Who will MJ pick to replace him? A few guesses: (1) Billy Donovan, (2) Doug Collins, (3) Larry Brown, (4) Anyone else with UNC ties, (5) Um... Leonard Hamilton?
MLB: Sammy Sosa racks up two more hits. Hilarious. You HAVE to root for him, don't you?
File-it-away Quote of the Day: "I want to 100 percent stay in
NFL: This Lance Briggs thing – are you with him or would you rather have him STFU? Seems to me that slapping him with the "Franchise" tag is within the Bears' rights, whether he likes it or not. Play the one year, then walk away, if he feels so strongly about it.
(And don't forget to scroll down and keep reading for the Shanoff-BurntOrangeNation mash-up, Part 1!)


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Think of all the places you can find fresh fruits and veggies this time of year. Roadside stands and Farmer's markets are everywhere and in full swing. But what about local corner stores? It may not be the norm to grab an apple on the go from a convenience store, but five local stores have jumped on board the Healthy Corner Store Project and their owners are making some changes to provide healthy choices to their customers.
The Healthy Corner Store project exists to address some of the healthy food availability issues in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Our hope is give residents easier access to healthy foods in their own communities.This way, areas that are considered food deserts have healthier options to choose from, and will ultimately have better health outcomes.
This is all done by providing the stores things like signage, shelving, advertising, and even holding events like healthy food tastings in order to better promote the new items.
Two taste testings are coming up on Wednesday July 16th. The first is at Parker's Stop & Shop from 11am-12pm and the second is at Rebecca's Store from 3:30pm-4:30pm.
The stores that are currently in the network are:
The Healthy Corner Store Network is made possible thanks to the Forsyth County Department of Public Health, Wake Forest University, the CDC's Community Transformation Grant, and the Gramercy Research Group.
For more information about the Healthy Corner Store Network, contact Lynne Mitchell at email@example.com or 703-3110.
Download a map of the Forsyth County Food Insecurity's


text: If you hear a grinding or squealing sound when the pedal is applied, you probably need new brake shoes or pads. Brakes shouldn't make any noise as they operate. Even if the actual problem turns out to be something minor, the only safe assumption is this one: noisy brakes are unsafe brakes. Postponing service is unsafe and could raise the cost of repairs later. If your brakes are making noise, get them inspected or serviced right away.


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In this image taken from video provided by KABC-TV, the cabin in Big Bear, Calif. where ex-Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner is believed to be barricaded inside is in flames Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013. Credit: AP
© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
New Details: Dramatic Standoff With Alleged Cop Killer Christopher Dorner Ends in Flames at Cabin
February 12, 2013
"We have reason to believe that it is him."
Redlands Police officers man a blockade near the entrance to the San Bernardino National Forest in southern California after Christopher Dorner, a fugitive ex-Los Angeles cop sought in three killings, engaged in a shootout with authorities that wounded two officers in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear Lake, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013. Credit: AP
BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. (TheBlaze/AP) -- The manhunt for the former Los Angeles police officer suspected of going on a killing spree converged Tuesday on a mountain cabin where authorities believe he barricaded himself inside, engaged in a shootout that killed a deputy and then never emerged as the home went up in flames.
A single gunshot was heard from within.
If the body of Christopher Dorner is found inside, as authorities suspect, the search for the most wanted man in America over the last week would have ended the way he had expected - death, with the police pursuing him.
Thousands of officers had been on the hunt for the former Navy reservist since police said he launched a campaign to exact revenge against the Los Angeles Police Department for his firing. They say he threatened to bring "warfare" to officers and their families, spreading fear and setting off a search for him across the Southwest and Mexico.
"Enough is enough. It's time for you to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed," LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said at a news conference held outside police headquarters in Los Angeles, a starkly different atmosphere than last week when Dorner was on the loose and officials briefed the news media under heavy security in an underground hallway.
A short time after Smith spoke Tuesday, smoke began to rise from the cabin in the snow-covered woods near Big Bear Lake, a resort town about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. Flames then engulfed the building - images that were broadcast on live television around the world. TV helicopters showed the fire burning freely with no apparent effort to extinguish it.
Watch some of the raw footage below:
"We have reason to believe that it is him," said San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman, adding that she didn't know how the fire started. She noted there was gunfire between the person in the cabin and officers around the home before the blaze began.
Until Tuesday, authorities didn't know whether Dorner was still near Big Bear Lake, where they found his burned-out pickup last week.
Around 12:20 p.m. Tuesday, deputies got a report of a stolen pickup truck, authorities said. The location was directly across the street from where law enforcement set up their command post on Thursday and not far from where Dorner's pickup was abandoned. The owner of the vehicle taken Tuesday described the suspect as looking similar to Dorner.
A warden for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife traveling down Highway 38 recognized a man who fit Dorner's description traveling in the opposite direction. The officer pursued the vehicle and there was a shooting at 12:42 p.m. in which the wildlife vehicle was hit numerous times and the suspect escaped on foot after crashing his truck.
After holing up in the cabin, there was a second gunbattle with San Bernardino County deputies, two of whom were shot. One died and the other was expected to live after undergoing surgery.
"We're heartbroken," Big Bear Lake Mayor Jay Obernolte said of the deputy's death and the wounding of his colleague. "Words can't express how grateful we are for the sacrifice those men have made in defense of the community and our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families."
The man believed to be Dorner never came out of the cabin, and a single shot was heard inside before the cabin was engulfed in flames, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
The official later told the AP that a charred body was found in the burned cabin and reiterated that even after Los Angeles and San Bernardino authorities disputed it in news conferences. The official requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
Earlier, a SWAT team surrounded the cabin and used an armored vehicle to break out the cabin windows, the official said. The officers then pumped a gas into the cabin and blasted a message over a loudspeaker: "Surrender or come out."
The armored vehicle then tore down each of the cabin's four walls, like peeling back the layers of an onion, the official said.
Police say Dorner began his run on Feb. 6 after they connected the slayings of a former police captain's daughter and her fiance with an angry Facebook rant they said he posted. Threats against the LAPD led officials to assign officers to protect officers and their families.
Within hours of the release of photos of the 6-foot, 270-pounder described as armed and "extremely dangerous," police say, Dorner unsuccessfully tried to steal a boat in San Diego to flee to Mexico and opened fire on two patrol cars in Riverside County, shooting three officers and killing one.
Jumpy officers guarding one of the targets named in the rant shot and injured two women delivering newspapers Thursday in Torrance because they mistook their pickup truck for Dorner's.
Police found weapons and camping gear inside the charred truck in Big Bear. Helicopters using heat-seeking technology searched the forest from above while scores of officers, some using bloodhounds, scoured the ground and checked hundreds of vacation cabins - many vacant this time of year - in the area.
A snowstorm hindered the search and may have helped cover his tracks, though authorities were hopeful he would leave fresh footprints if hiding in the wilderness.
Dorner's anger with the department dated back at least five years, when he was fired for filing a false report accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill suspect. Dorner, who is black, claimed in the rant that he was the subject of racism by the department and fired for doing the right thing.
He said he would get even with those who wronged him as part of his plan to reclaim his good name.
"You're going to see what a whistleblower can do when you take everything from him especially his NAME!!!" the rant said. "You have awoken a sleeping giant."
Chief Charlie Beck, who initially dismissed the allegations in the rant, said reopened the investigation into his firing - not to appease the ex-officer, but to restore confidence in the black community, which long had a fractured relationship with police that has improved in recent years.
One of the targets listed in the manifesto was former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan, who represented Dorner before the disciplinary board. Dorner claimed he put the interests of the department above his.
The first victims were Quan's daughter, Monica Quan, 28, a college basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, 27. They were shot multiple times in their car in a parking garage near their Orange County condo.
Dorner served in the Navy, earning a rifle marksman ribbon and pistol expert medal. He was assigned to a naval undersea warfare unit and various aviation training units, according to military records. He took leave from the LAPD for a six-month deployment to Bahrain in 2006 and 2007.
He left the service on Feb. 1.
This story has been updated.
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text:
Silver bling flats featuring a rhinestone embellished design.
UPPER: Vegan Leather
LINING & SOCK: Vegan Leather
OUTSOLE: Rubber
Size Chart
Size Chart
Shipping & Returns
Shipping & Returns
- Exchange can be done within 15 working days from date of purchase
- Customers may get a refund within 4 working days of purchase provided the product is in original packing and all tags attached.
- No exchange/ refund possible without sale invoice.
- Used products are not refundable/exchangeable/claimable.
- 1 month free service warranty for footwear only, after that repairing will be charged.
- No service warranty for sales/promotional items.
- No exchange/no claim/no refund on sales/promotional items.
- Accessories are neither exchangeable nor refundable.
- Claim / repairing processing time is 15 working days only.
- Our refund policy procedure typically requires 5 to 10 working days for processing.
- In the event that a customer cancels an order without providing a valid reason after completing an online payment, a cancellation fee of 10% of the total order value will be applied.
- LOGO has the authority to cancel orders for any reason, such as out of stock, pricing errors, or credit card payment declined. Once the order has been shipped, a shipping confirmation will be sent with tracking information.
For queries, complaints and suggestions.
- Cities of Pakistan: 3 to 5 working days
- International (outside Pakistan): 10 to 15 working days
In case of sale, natural disasters, strikes, extended public holidays, etc. deliveries might be delayed.
Care Instructions
Care Instructions
Men shoe care instructions
Men's leather shoes can be a valuable investment and proper care is essential to ensure they remain in top condition. Here are some care instructions to help you maintain the quality and longevity of your men's leather shoes:
1.Clean your shoes regularly: Use a soft brush or cloth to remove dirt and debris from the surface of your shoes. For leather shoes, use a specialized leather cleaner that's formulated for the specific type of leather used in your shoes. Leather conditioner should be used to hydrate and keep the leather from drying out and breaking.
- Condition your leather shoes: Apply a leather conditioner to your shoes to help keep the leather soft and supple. This can also help prevent cracking and drying out.
3.Use shoe trees: Shoe trees can help maintain the shape of your shoes and prevent creases from forming. Insert them into your shoes after wearing them to help them maintain their shape.
- Polish your shoes: To restore the gloss and color of your leather shoes, use a high-quality shoe polish. Apply the polish to the leather with a soft cloth and buff it in circular motions. Let it dry completely before putting it on.
- Properly store your shoes: Keep your leather shoes in a cool, dry spot away from direct sunshine and heat. To keep their shape and prevent creasing, stuff them with shoe trees or newspaper.
- Using your shoes in difficult conditions: Wearing your leather shoes in harsh weather conditions, such as rain or snow, can harm the leather. Avoid wearing them on rough or uneven surfaces, which might result in scuffs and scratches.
- Avoid extreme temperatures: Avoid exposing your shoes to extreme temperatures, such as direct sunlight or heat. This can cause the rubber sole to crack or the leather to dry out.
Women shoe care instructions
follow these care instructions to keep them looking clean and well-maintained:
- Clean your shoes regularly: Use a soft brush or cloth to remove dirt and debris from the surface of your shoes. For leather shoes, use a specialized leather cleaner that's formulated for the specific type of leather used in your shoes.
- Condition your leather shoes: Apply a leather conditioner to your shoes to help keep the leather soft and supple. This can also help prevent cracking and drying out.
- Protect your shoes from water and stains: Apply a waterproofing spray to your shoes before wearing them in wet conditions. Use a stain protector to keep your shoes looking clean and new.
- Store your shoes properly: Keep your shoes in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight or heat. Store them in a shoebox or on a shelf to prevent damage.
- Rotate your shoes: Wearing the same pair of shoes every day can cause them to wear out faster. Rotate your shoes every other day to give them time to rest and recover.
- Repair your shoes when needed: If your shoes are showing signs of wear and tear, take them to a professional shoe repair shop to have them fixed. This can save you money in the long run by extending the life of your shoes.


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Want to watch the ball drop tonight but don't have cable or a TV antenna? You can live stream the entire countdown online or on your phone.
GigaOm runs down the best places you can watch the celebration, the most notable being the official live stream (which starts at 6 PM EST). You can watch the live stream online or download the official app for Android or iOS and stream it straight to your device. Hit the link to read more, and enjoy your New Year's celebrations!
Where to Watch New Year's on Times Square Live Online and On Your Phone | GigaOm


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Now, a piece of fiction inspired by the Titanic's fateful voyage. In the weeks leading up to the anniversary of the famous shipwreck, a cluster of books have been released looking back on the voyage. But the book that caught the eye of NPR's Lynn Neary is invented. It's the story of a fictional shipwreck that occurred two years after the Titanic. It's called "Lifeboat." Here's her report.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: When writer Charlotte Rogan was growing up, here family had a sailboat. Her father liked to compete in races, and he took those competitions very seriously. Charlotte remembers that as a young child she and her sister were too small to help. They were expected to make themselves scarce and not fall overboard.
CHARLOTTE ROGAN: And I have such vivid memories of sitting with her in a dripping puddle with the wind rising, the gale coming. We were supposed to stay out of the way, but how that was done as the weather deteriorated was really unclear. So I kind of could empathize with Grace battling the elements and being surrounded by people who were stronger than she was.
NEARY: Grace is Grace Winter, the narrator of Rogan's new novel "Lifeboat." A newly married young woman, Grace and her husband are first-class passengers on a transatlantic voyage when an explosion threatens everyone on board. What happens after that says Rogan is very different from what happened to the survivors of the Titanic.
ROGAN: The tragedy of the Titanic was that there were not enough lifeboats. But if you made it into a lifeboat, you were rescued four to six hours later. These people are not rescued. They're the same sort of people; they're traveling from England to America on a luxury steamship that sinks. So in a way you could say my story takes up where the Titanic left off.
NEARY: Rogan says she got the idea for the novel when she picked up some of her husband's criminal law books one day and began reading some of the cases.
ROGAN: And I was completely captivated by two cases about shipwrecked sailors who were later put on trial after being rescued. And that sort of moral dilemma of people who find themselves beyond the reach of any legal authority, beyond the reach of any kind of hope of rescue, is their only course of action. It's their only moral course of action to quietly die if it becomes a question of killing some to save others.
NEARY: As the story begins, Grace is on trial for something that happened aboard the lifeboat, though it's not clear what crime she may have committed. Her attorney asks her to write down what happened on board the small overcrowded vessel.
Early on, one of the ship's sailors, Mr. Hardie, takes control, determined to do whatever is necessary to protect those already on board. At one point, two men grab onto the boat, expecting to be rescued.
ROGAN: (Reading) On Hardie's orders, the oarsman sitting nearest him beat one set of hands away before beginning on the hands of the blue-eyed man. I heard the crack of wood against bone, then Hardie raised his heavy boots and shoved it into the man's face eliciting a cry of anguished surprise. It was impossible to look away and never have I had more feeling for a human being than I had for that unnamed man.
NEARY: Most of the passengers soon divide into factions: those who trust Hardie's brutal but effective leadership and those, mostly the women, who are comforted by the matronly and morally upright Mrs. Grant. Grace never quite commits to either. Though Rogan never describes what she looks like, it becomes obvious that Grace is very beautiful and often tries to use that to her advantage as the situation grows more desperate.
ROGAN: She definitely is manipulative and, and charming. I think that she kind of watches and waits and sees her opportunity. She's also, I'm not sure if spoiled is the right word, but she's, you know, a bit entitled. But there are things about her that I admire. I don't judge her and I think part of thing that allows me to do that is the way that I got to know her, which was sort of the way the reader gets to know her, she sort of revealed herself to me over time.
NEARY: Although it is Grace who tells the story of what happened on the lifeboat, her own role in the events is murky and she remains something of an enigma right until the end. Rogan says she deliberately left some things to the reader's imagination.
ROGAN: It's such a fine line of how much to reveal and how much to hold back and, you know, you risk frustrating your readers if you don't tell enough, but I think you also risk alienating them if you have the last few chapters devoted to tying everything up in a neat package. So my bias is don't explain everything. I'm sure that's, you know, you know, there will probably be readers who say, oh, I wish she had said more.
NEARY: But one thing is crystal clear about Grace: she is a survivor. And Rogan is crafty as she portrays that instinct to do what it takes to make it off the boat alive.
ROGAN: Well, I do think that people have a very, very strong survival instinct. You know, we wouldn't be here having populated the earth the way we've done if we didn't. So I think it is very, very hard to know who of us is so altruistic that we would give up our lives for a stranger. I think that person is quite rare.
NEARY: It is easy, says Charlotte Rogan, to sit back in a warm, safe room, sure of what you would do it a desperate situation. But those moral certitudes may become unhinged in a leaky lifeboat adrift at sea.
Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Am I right, Christin C.?
What's that? Ah, Robyn N. wants me to up the ante! Ok, how about a horse/cow mash-up cupcake cake?
No matter where you go, that eye will be watching - aaaallllways waaatching....
Check out the icing depth, too; most impressive.
Oh, but look! We have another contender entering the ring!
That thar's a mighty small pho-to for such a gee-gantic Wreck, Brio. Yeehaw! This buckaroo may only work out his front legs, but them fillies shore don't complain. (This concludes my attempt at a Texas drawl. Y'all.)
Allison's trying to get ahead (get it? A head?) with this sporty specimen:
Heh. That startled expression makes him look like he just inhaled that baseball Hoover-style.
But the undisputed winner has to be this one from Celeritas:
You would think that every horse head cake would come served on a pillow, though, wouldn't you?
Oh, wait - looks like I spoke too soon:
Ewww. I'm all for movie references, Erin M., but that's definitely an offer I can refuse.
NOTE: If this post looks familiar, there's a reason for that. And if it doesn't, that means you don't check CW first thing every morning, and should be ashamed of yourself. Hmph. Call yourself a Wreckie, do you? Where's your sense of Wrecky loyalty? Where's your pride? Where's the frickin' remote? (Seriously, I lost it. Have you seen it?)