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The cultural genome: Google Books reveals traces of fame, censorship and changing languages
Just as petrified fossils tell us about the evolution of life on earth, the words written in books narrate the history of humanity. They words tell a story, not just through the sentences they form, but in how often they occur. Uncovering those tales isn't easy – you'd need to convert books into a digital format so that their text can be analysed and compared. And you'd need to do that for millions of books.
Fortunately, that's exactly what Google have been doing since 2004. Together with over 40 university libraries, the internet titan has thus far scanned over 15 million books, creating a massive electronic library that represents 12% of all the books ever published. All the while, a team from Harvard University, led by Jean-Baptiste Michel and Erez Lieberman Aiden have been analysing the flood of data.
Their first report is available today. Although it barely scratches the surface, it's already a tantalising glimpse into the power of the Google Books corpus. It's a record of human culture, spanning six centuries and seven languages. It shows vocabularies expanding and grammar evolving. It contains stories about our adoption of technology, our quest for fame, and our battle for equality. And it hides the traces of tragedy, including traces of political suppression, records of past plagues, and a fading connection with our own history.
As the team says, the corpus "will furnish a great cache of bones from which to reconstruct the skeleton of a new science." There are strong parallels to the completion of the human genome. Just as that provided an invaluable resource for biologists, Google's corpus will allow social scientists and humanities scholars to study human culture in a rigorous way. There's a good reason that the team are calling this field "culturomics".
The project began back in 2007, when the duo published a paper showing that verbs become more regular over time. From Beowulf to Harry Potter, the past forms of many irregular verbs have taken on the standard "-ed" suffix, in a way that fits a startlingly simple mathematical formula. On wrapping up the project, they marvelled at how hard it was to collect the data in the first place. Michel says, "We realized that the study of the evolution of culture needed something like a genome, a dataset so powerful that it would enable such analyses to be done rapidly, on any topic, not just irregular verbs. And we noticed that some of those really obscure books we used… had meanwhile popped up on Google Books. We put two and two together."
Getting Google involved wasn't hard. Lieberman-Aiden reminisces, "From the earliest stage, they realized that this had a lot of potential. We talked with them, the door was opened to advance the project some, we showed results, the door opened further. Eventually the door was just open."
The team eventually worked with a third of the full corpus, selecting those books that were dated most accurately and scanned most crisply. They ended up with over 5 million books published in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew, and dating back since the 1500s. Together, the texts include 500 billion words (represented in the word cloud above with the most common ones like 'a' and 'the' removed). As Michel writes:
"The corpus cannot be read by a human. If you tried to read only the entries from the year 2000 alone, at the reasonable pace of 200 words per minute, without interruptions for food or sleep, it would take eighty years. The sequence of letters is one thousand times longer than the human genome."
Rather than expose the full texts to the public (and themselves to copyright infringement), the team Aiden have simply tracked and stored the frequency of billions or words, or sets of words, over time. The result is a "big table" that you can download and explore at www.culturomics.org. Otherwise, you can play around with Google's real-time browser. In the meantime, here are some of the best results:
Contrary to warnings about its imminent demise at the hands of teenagers and Americans, English is booming. In the last 50 years, its vocabulary has expanded by over 70% and around 8500 words are being added every year. The team worked this out by scanning the corpus words for solo words that turned up at least once per billion. They took random samples and culled any non-words ("l8r"), typos and foreign words. By the end, they estimated that English had 544,000 words in 1900, rising to 1,022,000 in 2000 (see above left)
Dictionaries aren't keeping pace with this rapid change. Over half of the words added to the American Heritage Dictionary in 2000 were already part of the English language a century ago. There are plenty of missing words too. The current Oxford English Dictionary only has 615,000 solo words, and even proper nouns and compound words can't explain the gulf between that and the million-plus count from the corpus.
Instead, it seems that modern dictionaries aren't very good at including rarer words. Both the OED and Merriam-Webster comprehensively list words that are found once in every hundred thousand words, but they only had a quarter of one-in-a-billion words (see above right). Missing words include technical words like 'aridification' (the process by which a geographic region becomes dry) and obscure ones like 'slenthem' (a musical instrument). This hidden lexicon may be rare but it's also massive, accounting for around 52% of the English words. The majority of our vocabulary isn't documented in the big dictionaries.
All of this started with verbs, and the new corpus allowed Michel to study their evolution on a grand scale. He found that over the last 200 years, 16% of irregular verbs have become more regular. In the past, 'chide' would have become 'chid' or 'chode', it now simply turns into 'chided'. Common verbs are more resistant to change. Michel writes, "We found 'found' 200,000 times more often than we finded 'finded'." For comparison, 'dwelt', which is 10 times rarer, is only 60 times more common than 'dwelled'.
Some groups of verbs are ripe for regularisation, especially those with past forms that end in –t (burn/burnt, smell/smelt, spoil/spoilt). The US has led the charge in this area and while the –t versions have more staying power in Britain, they are losing ground there too. Every year, "a population the size of Cambridge adopts 'burned' in lieu of 'burnt'".
Some verbs, however, buck the trend. In 1800, you would have 'lit' your candle as you 'woke', just as a modern person would, but in the intervening years, people who have 'lighted' their lamps when they 'waked'. Meanwhile, 'snuck' has appropriately snuck into the language since the 1920s. Around 1% of the English-speaking world makes the switch from 'sneaked' to 'snuck' every year. Again, the US is leading the way; as Michel dryly notes, "America is the world's leading exporter of both regular and irregular verbs."
Farewell history, we hardly knew ye (Back to top)
When the team looked at the frequency of individual years, they found a consistent pattern. In their own words: "'1951' was rarely discussed until the years immediately preceding 1951. Its frequency soared in 1951, remained high for three years, and then underwent a rapid decay, dropping by half over the next fifteen years." But the shape of these graphs is changing. The peak gets higher with every year and we are forgetting our past with greater speed. The half-life of '1880' was 32 years, but that of '1973' was a mere 10 years.
The future, however, is becoming ever more easily ingrained. The team found that new technology permeates through our culture with growing speed. By scanning the corpus for 154 inventions created between 1800-1960, from microwave ovens to electroencephalographs, they found that more recent ones took far less time to become widely discussed.
15 seconds of fame, 14 seconds, 13… (Back to top)
The corpus allows you to chart the rise and fall of people, as well as verbs and dates. Michel and Lieberman-Aiden found that today's stars, at the height of their celebrity, are more famous than their historical predecessors, but they're being forgotten more quickly. The team took every one of the 740,000 people with their own Wikipedia pages, removed those who share a name, and sorted the rest by birth date. They did the same thing with the
They found that in the early 19th century, celebrities started rising to fame at the age of 43 and it took 8 years for their prominence in books to double. By the mid-20th century, they were starting at 29 and doubling in just over 3 years. However, while the spotlight upon them is more intense, their time in it is briefer. Celebrities tend to peak in fame at the ripe old age of 75 (remember, this is measured by their mentions in books). A century ago, it took 120 years after that for their fame to halve; now, it takes just 71.
Help, help, I'm being suppressed… (Back to top)
The absence of words can be just as informative as their presence – they can represent the cultural fingerprints of censorship and suppression. There's no shortage of examples. Tiananmen Square became massively more common in English books following 1989, but the frequency of the equivalent characters in Chinese texts remained stable. The names of the Hollywood Ten – a group of alleged Communist sympathisers – were mentioned far less often in English texts after 1947.
This repression was never clearer than in Nazi Germany. The corpus carries the traces of the Nazis' politics, as they banned and burned the works of authors and artists. Jewish artist Marc Chagall became increasingly prominent in English books since 1910 but his presence in German ones plummeted after the mid-20s. He was almost entirely absent between 1936 and 1944. He wasn't alone.
The names of artists, writers, political academics, historians and philosophers all became increasingly rare among German texts during the Third Reich, while the names of Nazi party members became six times more common (above middle). None of this is surprising in a historical context, but in the future, the corpus could help to identify victims of censorship in a rapid way, for current or recent events.
This is but the beginning. "The paper is kind of a zoo," says Michel, "whose exhibits are meant to show the variety of themes that one can explore and the variety of methods that prove useful." Many of the analyses depended on a starting list (e.g. of verbs or famous people) that were equally tough to put together in the first place. Others relied on far simpler searches.
'Men' and 'women' are converging in frequency, especially since 1960. 'The Great War' fell after 1939 as it took on a new name: 'World War I'. Peaks in 'influenza' match those of previous pandemics. 'Steak' has been part of English literature since before the 1800 but 'ice cream' only started becoming common after 1850, and 'hamburgers' rose after 1920. And finally, in Michel's own words, "'God' is not dead; but needs a new publicist" (see the slideshow at the bottom)
'Evolution' became increasingly common after 1859 when Darwin published On the Origin of the Species, but it started to decline after 1910… that is, until 'DNA' started its meteoric rise in the 1950s. Did the double helix reignite public interest in this most important of concepts? Meanwhile, even though Galileo, Darwin and Einstein have all stayed at respectable levels, it's Freud who has truly stormed into public recognition.
As more books are added to Google's corpus, from different periods of history and in different languages, the value of the data will grow, ironing out any possible biases in the books included within. However, as Lieberman-Aiden says, "Books are not representative of culture as a whole, even if our corpus contained 100% of all books ever published. Only certain types of people write books and get them published, and that subclass has changed over time, with the advent of things like public literacy." Eventually, they'll have to digitise "newspapers, manuscripts, maps, artwork, and a myriad of other human creations."
Mark Liberman from the University of Pennsylvania (and author of the esteemed Language Log blog) thinks that the corpus certainly opens new avenues for research, but comparisons to the Human Genome Project aren't quite apt. He says, "The "culturome" is not a very well-defined entity. There isn't any overall consensus about how to identify the elements that make up a "culture", or how to inter-relate them, or how to determine whether a piece of text describes one of them."
There's also an issue with attitudes among people in the field. "Biologists were already convinced that genes and genomic variation were key to understanding problems in their field," he adds. "Social scientists and humanists do not now work with large digital text collections, and relatively few of them now believe that they should do so."
Finally, Liberman says, "Few questions come down to things that can be measured in terms of simple word frequencies," although he notes that the authors have found some interesting ones. But he says that the real value will come from analysing how words fit into the meaning of their sentences – a far harder task. "You can do this sort of thing by combining sampling techniques with human annotation, or by developing automated "taggers. [And] the whole collection will be available for researchers to process as they please, which will allow others to attempt more difficult sorts of analysis."
Reference: Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1199644
A note on language: This was one of the most well written papers I've ever had the pleasure to read, full of wit and flair. I've highlighted papers from these researchers before for exactly the same reason and they haven't disappointed this time round. It's vexing for a science writer, really – when you could just as well edit a paper down for length rather than translating it, it makes you question the future of your profession!
More on language:
- New languages evolve in rapid bursts
- New Nicaraguan sign language shows how language affects thought
- Guerrilla reading – what former revolutionaries tell us about the neuroscience of literacy
- The evolution of the past tense – how verbs change over time
- Bacteria and languages reveal how people spread through the Pacific
- Language evolution witnessed in lab experiments
More interesting/amusing/silly searches:
- Sex and love
- Aluminum and aluminium
- Television, radio, internet and newspaper
- Pirate, ninja, robot and zombie
- Schizophrenia and hysteria
- Correlation and causation
- Faith and reason
- Various dinosaurs
- Dude and bro
- Swear words
- Utopia and apocalypse
- Tortoise and hare
- U2 and Beatles
- Awesome and cats
- 'It all went wrong' and 'We can fix it'
- War and peace
- Capitalism and communism
- Terrorism
- Global warming, climate change, acid rain, ozone layer, deforestation
Comments (35)
In the Tiananmen graph, you see a big surge in the Chinese use of Tiananmen after 1976, the year of the April 5th Tiananmen Incident, with apparently got very little western press. With the 1989 Tiananmen square protests, exactly the opposite happened.
What do you make of the small spike in "Freud" in about 1825 – before the time of Freud surely??
I would like to see the patterns of words being paired with other (redundant) words. Examples: refer back, permeate through, overall consensus, ATM machine, where [is it] at, left-hand turn, etc.
Then there are some redundancies that arise as retronyms, like "conventional oven", and, in science fiction, "ground car".
They should also compare the regularization of noun forms to those of verbs (antennas vs. antennae, for example).
Looks like you got the DOI wrong.
Great post!… will have to re-read several times to take it all in… don't know how you found the time to bring this all together so quickly and so well!
try fight,talk,sit,sleep,eat since 1700. interesting….
Here's another interesting one:
This one is interesting:
I compare AOL, Online, Gopher, FTP, Google and see that Gopher peaked in 1995, while AOL and FTP in 2003, and s sharp takeoff of Google in 2002
This data has to be viewed in its proper context. We're talking about published words, which is just a slice of the entire picture of the language. So, for example, when we're talking about a word explosion–the addition of 8500 words a year–remember that we're seeing 8500 new words appearing IN PRINT a year. It doesn't mean we're inventing new words at that rate. Could it not be that what we're seeing is a cultural leveling effect in what is published? In 1900, the published word was quite narrow, as were the audiences. Today we have a wide scope of published works for consumption across social strata: academic works, reference, popular fiction, how to, self-help, graphic novels, a booming children's market, and of course People Magazine.
3. pconroy Says:
December 16th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
What do you make of the small spike in "Freud" in about 1825 – before the time of Freud surely??
Beethoven's Ode to Joy was composed in 1823. Is not "Freude" part of its name in German. But was it famous enough for even a small spike so soon?
Beethoven's Ode to Joy was composed in 1823. Is not "Freude" part of its name in German? But was it famous enough for even a small spike so soon?
There are similar patterns in the medical literature (titles and abstracts), particularly with dates.
Interestingly, women are uniformly mentioned more than men.
Ed, this post is made of win! I'm going to have some fun with this. I can't wait until they add newspapers to the corpus.
You are fastly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. Keep up the great work.
(PS…google spell check doesn't recognize "bloggers" but it does recognize "blogger"?!)
Straight vs Gay from Stonewall onward
That's fascinating – and was pointed my way by an acquaintance in Science Marketing with Cambridge University.
I'd thought to subscribe – but couldn't. I live in England – the natural and spiritual home of English. So do I take it that English is now only for the 'Merkins? That's 'cultural colonialism'…..
Try "all your base"
Try "John, Paul, George, Ringo"
Poor Ringo…never gets any love
(sorry…don't know how to post URL's)
Straight vs. Gay vs. HIV from Stonewall onward
The u2/beatles one is clearly wrong (what, did nobody mention The Beatles during Beatlemania?), and I realized this is because of case sensitivity. See this for the correct (and vastly different) results.
I found this interesting;
It compares vaccination, small pox, measles, and polio. From it you can guess when outbreaks of e.g. measles or polio happened.
Interesting that "evolution" increased after publication of On the Origin of Species, because that work never uses the word (search the text in Project Gutenberg). It was freighted with connotations Darwin wanted to avoid, even if he did use words like "evolve".
Hi, I'm Melanie, PhD Biochemistry, always wanted to be a science writer, but never did well with deadlines. More power to you! I found your blog in 2008 when I left my post doc to start working in science ed/learning technologies, and I was really happy to see that explaining science to non scientists was being done so well. And frankly very happy that I could keep up with real science through your blog without slogging through the data myself. Your post on ballerinas' movements becoming more extreme was the first one I remember–and after 10 years of fruit flies and TB, it was really refreshing!
I am working on Immune Attack 2.0. Our hypothesis is that 9th graders and the public can learn complex molecular biology by playing a video game. It's free to download immuneattack.org. And a lot of great science games are at mygameiq.com.
I am also concerned, as you are, that actually doing science is such a hard row to hoe… like the tweet you just sent out about the lead author of the breakthrough of the year paper going into finance instead of physics. I've been telling all the science ed people who will listen: It may be true that 9th graders steer clear of science because they think its "hard", but also because it doesn't make money. Sure, some scientists get rich, but generally, scientists are 32 years old, post doc-ing for $40,000 and looking at a 1 in 9 chance of becoming a professor. Is there any doubt why our high school students don't go into science? And, influence in our society requires money. How will scientists influence society if we are in labs 12 hours/day, broke and are less likely to be invited to be on boards of trustees, or to be able to afford to run for public office… etc. This is why your blog and other science blogs are so important: you influence people's thinking about science.
I think the only way you could improve this blog is by actually showing up in my office with coffee while I read it! Thank you for giving science a good name. I also love that you've included a dedication to your wife.
Thank you!
This tool is case sensitive. Re-try with the Beatles instead of beatles!
Here are some nice ones:
@ sam (#10): try adding "fuck" and "sex" to the mix.
I wonder what happened from 1800 to 1810? Apart from better sampling on the Ngram's side, especially for American English.
Now I'm *really* interested in the first decade of 19th century.
You blink for a second, and off goes your non-bias.
I wonder if they have a list of all the books that made it into the dataset somewhere? They should, it's not too useful otherwise. :/
But you can't say there aren't various fun anomalies.
This new tool can be used by any company, group or agency. Some discussion from a Navy point of view on the Navy Reads blog about the Navy Professional Reading Program and related books: Navy Reads. "Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean" reveals dominance shift after Battle of 1812; Navy Core Values: "Honor, Courage, Commitment"; etc. Historians, researchers, planners and communicators rejoice… despite the anomalies.
I've been wondering about the post-2000 trends as well. After doing a *lot* of ngram searching, I've found quite a few which have unusual rising trends, as well as those that have unusual falling trends. While sampling bias is still likely an issue, I'm not wholly convinced it's not cultural. Let's not forget that the entire world order rearranged itself in the 1990s
Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here are some nifty visualizations of the ngram peak year & frequency of a number of "Good Things". I'm dubbing them 'memeograms'. Enjoy!
Great post, and a much better overview of the research than that written by the NYT. I'm having a lot of fun checking out some of the ones you've listed, as well as formulating my own. It's actually becoming somewhat addictive, so I've started a side blog to collect a few.
Your interpretation of what this project signifies in terms of the story of our culture and collective imagination is right on.
Great article, and like drcharles mentions, much more representative of the interesting research than other articles I've read.
At the risk of throwing any possibility of self effacement to the wind….I wrote a thought piece on Ngram Viewer, how some data can be interestingly manipulated, and suggestion of what the tool could mean for the scientific method.
I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts!


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Moving Tips
Organization is an important part of having a incident free move. Based on our experience we have composed a list of moving tips to help assist you in the planning of your move.
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6 yummy shades are in each palette, the 3 eyeshadows on the left side are all matte, and the other 3 on the right side, are all shimmery shades. Comes with a tiny brush and applicator.
They have 4 palettes of this kind: vanity (browns), pride (blue/teal), lust (purples), and greed (smokey/neutrals). Wet N Wild also has other palettes that have 3 or 8 eyeshadows. There's a lot of buzz that these are great dupes of some of MAC eyeshadows, I found a helpful link here that breaks what its a dupe of HERE.
I will be doing looks in the coming days from each palette to really give them a good test drive.
***The swatches below were done in ONE swipe, dry (no base, nothing). ***


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Join the celebration
Discover the capability of HUSQVARNA VIKING® DESIGNER RUBY™ sewing and embroidery machine.
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text: Boulder County Parks and Open Space web specialist Nik Brockman has been working with Trevor Mendelow, president of View Into The Blue, to improve the camera that allows Internet users to watch the ospreys that nest at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. The new, higher resolution camera will rotate 360 degrees, tilt up and down, and zoom in on the birds, which tend to arrive in late March. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/bocoospreycam.


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SAT Math Quiz 5
Thank you again for completing this quiz.
SAT Math Quiz 5
Thank you again for completing this quiz.
The SAT Test is a standardized exam that is used by U.S. colleges in their admissions process. The SAT Test serves a similar function to the ACT in that both are used by colleges and universities as a factor in admissions.
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Some questions are from the following sources:
Erik Jacobsen at www.erikthered.com/tutor
From the New York State Education Department. "High School Regents Examinations". Internet. Available from www.nysedregents.org; accessed 8/29/2011.
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Last month, a pop song rose up the charts and quickly became number one on both the iTunes and Billboard Top 100 lists. That song, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, quickly also became the soundtrack to an Internet meme—that is, an idea that spreads online ("I Can Has Cheezburger?" is one of the more famous). More than a dozen athletic teams recorded themselves dancing and lip-syncing to the song (many in vans, spurring a Romney and Obama spoof). Many more groups joined in on the fun, recording videos and posting to YouTube. One of the more recent to join in is Sesame Street. That's right, a widely recognized nonprofit organization has created a parody so that it can propagate a meme.
Whether it's "Call Me Maybe," "Sh*t People Say," or any other meme that comes along, here are three guidelines you can use to decide when and how to get your nonprofit involved in an Internet meme.
Why meme at all?
Why would an organization even consider participating in something like this? It's fun, for one. Just watch Sesame Street's video (above) or the Harvard baseball team's. Everyone involved in an organization and everyone online is, actually, human, and fun is a good thing.
But beyond that, contributing to a popular meme can help make your brand and even your staff more visible. It shows some of the personality of your organization beyond the brick and mortar. You can also leverage participation in a meme to build connections and get new supporters.
That said, having fun, gaining visibility, and making connections with new supporters happens only if you do it right.
Three guidelines for nonprofits
1. Above all else, don't compromise your values and mission. For some organizations, that means never participating in any of this Internet hokey pokey, and that's OK. For others, it means being aware of what the root of the meme is, why people are remaking and remixing the content, and how your community will respond. With the "Call Me Maybe" example, the song is very popular and many people in the Sesame Street community have heard it (a lot of Sesame Street supporters are parents that grew up with the show and support it as adults). The Sesame Street show teaches basic lessons through stories of characters in typical situations and common scenarios. The meme video uses the same formula, changing the words to the song and using the well-known Cookie Monster as the lead character.
2. Stick to your voice. You don't want to get visibility and make new connections using one message, tone, or personality, and then surprise them once they join your email list, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, or follow you on Twitter with something altogether different. Just as Sesame Street did, use the meme as a chance to tell the story you want to tell, showcase the character (or people!) you want in the spotlight, and do it all in the voice you've established at your organization. Neither Cookie Monster nor Sesame Street would ever really sing the words as they are written to "Call Me Maybe," but the "Share It Maybe" lyrics are aligned with the lessons (sharing is good!), the character, and the voice of the show.
3. Plan for it to spread. We're great at planning our communications regularly (or at least we try), and you can't release something a little out of the ordinary without some planning too. In the Sesame Street video, the logo is overlaid on the video footage and linked (via YouTube's link overlay option) to Sesame Street's subscribe channel. There is also a segment at the end of the video that promotes the channel, encourages people to subscribe, and points to more videos. As the denizens of the Internet are wont to do, they created a still image of the Sesame Street video and added text to capture the spin on the meme from Cookie Monster's lyrics—in this case, "they" was Mashable, which created the still to promote the video to its fans on Facebook. This meant fans could share it on social media sites like Facebook, where it's easy to share images. Since the SesameStreet.org logo appeared throughout the video, it also appeared in the still, so even though the folks at Sesame Street couldn't necessarily follow where fans were sharing the photo, it still drove people back to the organization. I suggest creating a still before sharing the video to ensure that the URL and message are correct. Whatever medium the meme is using, plan to integrate your branding and links (as appropriate) ahead of time, just like you would with a campaign video or image.
The results of doing it right? Just 24 hours after it posted, Sesame Street's "Share It Maybe" video had more than 1,780,000 views!


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We have a variety of fully furnished, beautifully decorated 3, 4, 5 and 6 bedrooms pool homes. These rental homes each have their own private screened pool. Many of these vacation homes feature choice amenities like games room, spa and access to a community pool, tennis courts and golf course. With the convenient location and the extra space afforded by these private homes to budget-conscious families and groups, why stay in a hotel room if you can have all of these and much more for less? By staying in one of our Florida villa rentals, you get more freedom and privacy than other luxury hotels at only a fraction of the price. Book secure online now and save!


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EMILY's List looks beyond abortion
EMILY's List, the advocacy group for Democratic female candidates, is launching an initiative this week to show the effect the historic number of women in Congress have had on policy.
The Impact Project is also aimed at positioning Democratic women candidates as more than just single-issue players going into the midterm elections. Following the historic congressional gains of women in the 2012 cycle, EMILY's List urged female politicians to embrace broader agendas that go beyond abortion rights.
Story Continued Below
"Women in Congress lead on all sorts of initiatives and issues, not just women's issues," EMILY's List President Stephanie Schriock said in an interview.
The effort, first described to POLITICO, will include a series of events in Washington, will push the message to its 3 million members and have it carried by surrogates and on social media platforms.
The endeavor — which will be chaired by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) — is part of a pitched battle being waged by both parties for highly valued female voters.
Democrats have had a clear edge among them, but in the past few months, prominent Republican operatives have launched firms and PACs in an attempt to close the gap. This month, Marlene Colucci, a former aide to George W. Bush, launched RightNOW Women PAC to address the disconnect between the Republican Party and female voters.
EMILY's List, which has seen its membership jump six-fold since 2010, is playing a big role in many high-profile races this cycle, including backing Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes's challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis's campaign and Georgia Senate candidate Michelle Nunn's effort.
EMILY's List helps only pro-choice Democratic women, but it's the bipartisan efforts of all 20 women in the Senate that are widely credited with helping to move major legislation in the past Congress.
The women — four are Republicans — hold a group dinner every other month and have looked for ways to foster more collaboration and break the gridlock in Congress.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski credits Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski — the dean of female senators — with suggesting at one dinner that the group had a real opportunity to take a leadership role on legislation to strengthen laws that crack down on how the military handles sexual assaults. A bipartisan group of female senators then started meeting regularly to tackle the contentious issue. Although they didn't agree on every provision, the women have been recognized for having a significant effect on the National Defense Authorization Act, which the president signed in December.
They also joined forces in pushing the Violence Against Women Act to passage, and they were credited with helping to fashion a compromise to end the government shutdown.
"Having 20 female senators has made a huge difference in what we can get done," Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich) said in an interview. "We are not monolithic — we come from different places. But we know how to reach across the aisle."
"We are really good friends and when people talk about the days of old and they miss the days that people used to work together, that's what we've got going with the 20 female senators," Klobuchar said at POLITICO's Women Rule Summit in December. "Those friendships and the trust we have are genuine."
"We made U.S. history when there was finally a traffic jam in the United States Senate women's bathroom," she added with laughter.
EMILY's List has this year endorsed about 30 pro-abortion-rights female Democratic candidates in state and federal campaigns. In May, the group launched its "Madam President" campaign to push the notion of putting a woman in the White House, targeting 2016 battleground states. While Hillary Clinton has not announced her plans for 2016, EMILY's List has made no secret of its support for her potential candidacy.


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Advanced Placement Policy
These policies (see the table of advanced placement equivalents) are in effect for students entering Ithaca College in the 2005-2006 academic year. They are subject to change at any time.
In the School of Humanities and Sciences, general elective credit is department specific and may be used to meet distribution requirements. Students may apply up to six course-specific credits of AP (Advanced Placement), IBO (International Baccalaureate), or CLEP (College Level Examination Program) toward their general education requirements. See "General Education in Humanities and Sciences" in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
For additional information about Ithaca College's advanced placement policies, contact Charlotte Richardson in the Office of the Registrar, 220 Job Hall, phone 607-274-1210. Ithaca College's ETS School Code is 2325. Scores must be sent directly to the Office of the Registrar, 220 Job Hall, Ithaca, NY 14850-7013, before credit is granted.
Advanced Placement (AP) Equivalents
In all schools, scores of 1 or 2 (and in some cases 3) will not be awarded credit. Scores of 3, 4, and 5 are awarded credit as indicated below.
*Students may not receive credit for both Virgil and Latin Literature.
A. Ozolins, Office of Creative Services, 15. July, 2005


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Looking for a nearby lake or pond to fish in? Through agreements between Oklahoma municipalities and the Wildlife Department, these areas offer excellent "Close to Home" fishing opportunities in metro areas.
In addition to state fishing license requirements, some municipalities require daily or annual city fishing permits. Check with local officials for details on cost and permit vendor locations. Phone numbers for city offices are listed below.
Close-to-Home Fishing waters have the following additional restrictions:
• Fishing is limited to no more than three (3) rods and reels per person, with no more than three (3) hooks per line (treble hooks are considered one hook). No other fishing methods are allowed, except noodling is allowed in the North Canadian River from the NW 10th Street bridge downstream to the MacArthur Street bridge in OKC.
• All largemouth and smallmouth bass caught must be released (returned to the water) immediately after being taken; no harvest is allowed.
• Channel catfish and blue catfish have a combined daily limit of six (6); no size limits apply.
For all other species, consult the statewide regulations.
Oklahoma City (405) 297-1426:
• Crystal Lake (6625 SW 15th)
• Dolese Youth Park (5105 NW 50th)
• Edwards Park (1515 N. Bryant Avenue)
• Kids Lake (3200 W Wilshire Boulevard)
• Kitchen Lake (5501 SE 119th)
• Route 66 Park (9901 NW 23rd)
• South Lakes Regional Park (4210 SW 119th)
• Zoo Lake (2101 NE 50th) east shoreline only
Choctaw (405) 390-8198:
• Choctaw Creek Park (NE 23rd Street and Harper Road)
• Ten Acre Park (NE 10th Street and Choctaw Road)
Del City (405) 671-2868:
• Eagle Lake (3405 E Reno)
Edmond (405) 216-7641:
• Hafer Park (1034 S. Bryant Avenue)
• Mitch Park (1501 W. Covell Road)
• Bickham-Rudkin Park (450 E. 33rd Street)
El Reno (405) 262-4070:
• Legion Park (620 S. Reno Ave.)
• Southern Hills North (2710 Faith Ave.)
• Southern Hills South (2810 Faith Ave.)
Enid (580) 554-1536:
• Meadowlake Park (Corner of South Van Buren St. & West Rupe Avenue)
• Government Springs North Park(300 South 5th Street)
• Crosslin Park (1600 block West Purdue Avenue)
• City of Enid Water Works (1400 block West Chestnut Avenue
Guthrie (405) 282-2773:
• Mineral Wells Park (Division and Mineral Wells Circle)
• Highland Park (Warner Avenue and N. Drexel Boulevard)
Harrah (405) 454-2951:
• Heritage Park (1374 N Church Avenue)
Jenks (918) 299-5883:
• Veterans Park Pond (E 101 and Elm)
Lawton (580) 581-3400:
• Elmer Thomas Park - Lake Helen (I-44 and NW Cache Road)
Moore (405) 793-5090:
• Little River Park (700 SW 4th) (Closed for repairs)
• Buck Thomas Pond (1903 NE 12th)
Mustang (405) 376-7739:
• Wild Horse Park SW 59th and Mustang Road)
Norman (405) 366-5472:
• George M. Sutton Urban Wilderness Area (12th Avenue NE and Rock Creek Road)
• Norman Lions Northeast Park (1800 Northcliff Avenue)
• Griffin Community Park (1001 E. Robinson)
Yukon (405) 354-7208:
• City Park (2200 S. Holly Street)
• Welch Park (615 Annawood Road)
• Robertson Activity Center (1200 Lakeshore Drive)


text: Beef Checkoff Studies Consumer Demands June 13, 2013 05:55 AM Tweet TAGS: Marketing, Overseas December 18, 2014 By Drovers Editors Email — Diane Henderson, Beef Board Price, food safety and product quality are the most important demand drivers on which the beef industry should focus to have the most compelling effects on beef demand in the long term. Other key drivers include health, nutrition, social aspects and sustainability. This statement is a result of "Beef Demand: Recent Determinants and Future Drivers," a newly released study commissioned by the Beef Checkoff Program to summarize the current knowledge of consumer demand for beef and identify the best opportunities for the industry to influence demand positively. "Consumer demand for beef is one of the most important and widely discussed, yet poorly understood, concepts affecting the beef and cattle industry," the report notes. "It is imperative that the beef industry recognize what drives consumer demand, what expectations are for the future, and assess the industry's ability to adjust practices to target evolving consumer preferences or to influence important demand determinants." Authors of the report include Dr. Ted Schroeder, professor of livestock marketing, and Dr. Glynn Tonsor, associate professor of livestock marketing, both at Kansas State University, in addition to Dr. James Mintert, assistant director of Extension for Agriculture and Natural Resources at Purdue University, who prepared the report at the request of the checkoff. "The information gathered and analyzed for this comprehensive report is almost invaluable to the beef industry, in general, and to the Beef Checkoff Program, in particular," said cattleman Ted Greidanus, a member of the Cattlemen's Beef Board and chairman of the Joint Evaluation Committee that commissioned the research for the checkoff. "Not only does it have the ability to help more producers understand the true meaning of strong beef demand – which has the potential to improve their bottom lines – but it provides a detailed road map for checkoff leaders in identifying how to leverage every checkoff dollar to its most effective and meaningful degree possible," Greidanus said. "Members of the Cattlemen's Beef Board and directors of the Federation of State Beef Councils will be asked to use the information in this report in making decisions about how to invest checkoff dollars in Fiscal Year 2014 and beyond." Understanding beef demand While recognizing that understanding beef demand and how to affect it is a daunting task, the report's authors note that it also is critical to the industry's long-term viability. One very important point in developing strategies to grow beef demand will be clarification about the role of per capita consumption in beef demand. Per capita consumption is, in effect, per capita availability of beef, so it offers little information regarding beef demand when considered independently of prices, the economists note. Demand, on the other hand, effectively refers to the quantity of beef that consumers will purchase at one given price, with all other factors held constant. (Chapter 5 of the report explains beef demand concepts in detail.) "While it is tempting to focus on market share, per capita consumption, or other product volume flows to monitor demand, this can be very misleading," Dr. Tonsor said. "Demand can only be accurately measured by assessing the combination of price and quantity. Demand is a key component of economic signals (prices) sent throughout the entire supply chain. " Given the state of the cattle industry's supply, that understanding of beef demand vs. consumption is particularly critical. "As the industry is entering a period of declining per capita supplies (and hence consumption), these clarifications are important," the report notes. "It is entirely possible for per capita consumption to decline and beef demand to increase. In fact, this is what the industry experienced the past two years. That is, per capita beef consumption fell in 2011 and 2012 relative to prior-year volumes … (while) beef demand increased." Looking forward to the next three years, USDA projections include falling per capita beef consumption in the U.S. until 2015, at which time increases are projected following cow-herd expansion. If per capita consumption falls as expected, demand could still continue upward if consumers continue to be willing to pay higher prices for beef. (Chapter 6 of the report provides a related summary of the macroeconomic environment in which the beef industry operates.) What is important to consumers? The research identifies seven broad attributes as particularly consequential demand factors that the beef industry, through the Beef Checkoff Program, likely could influence. These became the central focus of the determinant study: beef price; food safety; product quality; health; nutrition; social aspects; and sustainability. Price, food safety, and product quality rose to the top of all other attributes – both for ground beef and steak. Because the checkoff cannot control price, the researchers identified food safety and product quality the two key attributes that the checkoff can and should influence. "There are a multitude of things, in addition to demand strength, that influence beef prices," said Dr. Mintert, "including things that affect cattle and beef supplies – such as feed costs, land costs, energy prices, new technologies, beef packaging and processing costs, and interest rates – all of which are beyond the control of individual producers or the beef industry as a whole." With that in mind, the research gathered and ranked issues affecting beef purchases, both according to consumer responses and industry researcher responses, and found general agreement between the two. Food safety, product quality and form, and price were the three highest-ranking factors in both consumer and expert assessments, whereas social aspects and sustainability were ranked lowest, with nutrition and health ranked between the two. (Chapter 3 of the report summarizes consumer input about beef purchases.) Consumers indicated similar rankings for ground-beef and steak purchasing decisions. On average, safety, freshness, taste and health were most often selected as "most important" factors, while convenience, origin/traceability, and environmental impact were most frequently identified as "least important" factors in their beef-buying process. What can the checkoff do? From the milieu of research, data, and surveys of producers, consumers, economists, meat scientists and other industry experts, the researchers prepared five key recommendations for checkoff leaders to consider in making decisions about how to invest checkoff dollars, as summarized on page 15 of the summary report: 1. First and foremost, continue to invest in food-safety enhancement and assurances. Consumers demand it, and there is considerable opportunity to positively improve beef demand in the future. 2. The industry needs high-quality products that offer consistently excellent flavor, color, tenderness, juiciness, etc… and that is offered to consumers in forms they prefer/demand. While development of new products is an important dimension of this, consistency and integrity of product labels is another important component. The checkoff's recent participation in updating Uniform Retail Meat Identity Standards (URMIS) names for red meat sold at retail is a perfect example of astute response to consumer demands for consistent and recognizable names of cuts at the meat case, the report notes. 3. Price has been for a long time, and remains, an important driver of consumer purchase decisions. But beef experts indicate that they see little opportunity during the next 10 years for the industry to influence beef prices significantly, especially relative to competing protein prices. Consequently, their recommendation on this front is that the industry work to embrace efficiency-enhancing technology development and adoption that does not negatively impact, and ideally enhances, product quality and safety attributes." 4. Give continued industry attention to health and nutritional aspects of beef. Beef's advantages with respect to protein content … and perhaps iron and zinc, appear to be opportunities for the industry to continue to develop and promote with consumers. This suggests an opportunity to target younger shoppers with specific positive health and nutritional messages. 5. Social and sustainability issues – including consumer skepticism about production technology, perceptions that technologies degrade product quality, safety, nutrition, concerns about animal handling, etc… – should not be ignored, as the industry must be vigilant and prepared when these issues arise. Investments to address social and sustainability issues likely will have a lower demand-enhancement payoff than investments in other key areas, though responding to these issues might remain a 'cost of doing business.' "Many important demand determinants provide opportunities and challenges for both individual firms and the collective industry," Dr. Schroeder said. "Producers and individual firms are encouraged to take special note of the role they can play in advancing beef demand. Furthermore, industry representatives managing increasingly tight checkoff budgets can use recommendations of this study to help prioritize demand-enhancement investments." "Beef Demand: Recent Determinants and Future Drivers" is available on the MyBeefCheckoff.com website at this link, under the "Evaluation" link on the left side of the page, or directly at Demand Determinants 2013. The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA approval. Back to news


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Okie Noodling
Okie Noodling Previous Broadcasts
KQED Plus: Mon, Feb 25, 2013 -- 11:00 PM
For Oklahoma fishermen, there's nothing quite like the thrill of catching a 60-pound catfish with their bare hands. For hundreds of years, they've been diving into creeks, rivers and lakes, in search of bank-dwelling catfish. These murky waters are home to the wild world of noodling. This program captures the excitement of a sport that has hooked three Oklahoma families for generations. The award-winning documentary chronicles the fishing tradition from its roots as a Native American hunting practice to its present-day status as a sport with its own distinctive sub-culture. It includes a colorful cast of characters who impart their philosophies, techniques, horror stories and passion for the sport.
Repeat Broadcasts:
- KQED Plus: Tue, Feb 26, 2013 -- 5:00 AM


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10 2
About this Remix
Swurlii's take on Ben Phipps - Mrs. Mr. Hope you enjoy!
Posted 1 year ago
Owned by 14 & 9 Records
There is nothing here yet!
Be the first to leave feedback on this song.
Remix Contest
Ben Phipps - Mrs. Mr. Feat. Lizzy Land
by 14 & 9 Records
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This contest is closed and the winners have been announced.
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Fred Armisen leaves SNL
Fred Armisen has confirmed he has left "Saturday Night Live" after 11 years.
Armisen dispelled any doubt about his exit in an interview posted Monday by comedy website Splitsider.
"SNL" often doesn't announce its cast changes, but the show's season finale in May concluded with a farewell for Armisen and Bill Hader.
Armisen says he felt as though his departure from "SNL" was "obvious" considering in his last sketch he sang "It's been a lovely night with you" as British punk rock character Ian Rubbish. He was accompanied by several friends and musicians including Carrie Brownstein, his co-star on the IFC sketch show "Portlandia."
Armisen says he left partly because "Portlandia" was demanding more time and because "it felt like a very healthy, good time to do it."


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mdb1958 wrote:Didnt look like either of those two teams wanted to run at those defensive tackles and when they did I didnt see much success.
Not sure where your getting steaming pile from.
From watching his interaction play after play with the tiny, small school offensive linemen tasked with blocking him. Watching them more than hold their own against his minimal effort. Also, you provided an analysis of the defense and not the player.


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Lisa Godenick necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 188 diseños de 50 diseñadores freelance.
Our Company (to be established June 2010) stands for: Information. Knowledge. Action. Now! (IKANOW). This acronym represents the process that our new software tool will take the user through. The product will mine data to process information from the internet. Then transform into useful knowledge available for the end user to support a decision and enable effective action immediately (now!)
We are starting up an exciting new technology product (software) company. We have developed a product line that drastically enhances how we search the internet to discover information to analyze a situation, or predict the likelihood of an outcome.
Our company will provide commercial products that use a combination of open source coding and proprietary software development to automate and expedite the time to information intelligence.
We will be providing our software as a service on the internet so that users may purchase the applicable package and have ready immediately. Additionally, our software will be available as an appliance.
This is a brand new product and company(spun off of an existing company) so it will all be a new market for us.
The target audience is wide and varied because our products could be used by any company with an Analyst position,but below is a list of our primary audience:
Intelligence Community (Department of Defense)
Law Enforcement
Financial Industry
Insurance Industry
Health Care Industry
Emergency Management Industry
Because the target audience is so varied, I would focus on a leading edge design that targets 'analysts' and top decision makers in the industries.
Let your mind run free!
The spelling on the logo can be all upper case, lowercase or a mix (IE: IKANow).
The company name is in the the process of registration, so please incorporate the 'r' symbol into the logo, where you see fit.
The logo may also appear on hardware appliances (Servers, computers, etc), should be able to print on this in addition to web and materials (or have varied versions to allow this.
Prefer the primary color is not blue.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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8:00 pm
Call The Midwife "S2 E2" The Nonnatus community is rocked when the Kelly family's newborn son dies in unexplained circumstances. Cynthia, who had attended the birth, comes under intense scrutiny from the police and the pregnant women of Poplar. Despite reassurances from her friends and colleagues, Cynthia questions her own abilities and the strain takes its toll on her work and health.G
9:00 pm
Masterpiece Mystery! "Endeavour, Series I: Rocket" A royal visit to a family-owned munitions factory begins as a proud occasion for the people of Oxford but the joy ends when an unpopular fitter is murdered during the visit. Thursday and DS Peter Jakes lead the investigation while Morse is given routine tasks. Chief Superintendent Bright frets that he needs the case to be solved quickly. Morse meanwhile delves into the family's murky past, as well as his own.G
10:30 pm
New Tricks "Lost In Translation" New DNA tests are conducted on charred remains of an unidentified male corpse discovered in a forest in 1996. The results reveal a family link to a Home Office fingerprint analyst who is an Albanian refugee. Team members are drawn into a world of immigration loopholes, Albanian gangs and family feuds.G
11:30 pm
British Antiques Roadshow "Dartmouth 1" Fiona Bruce and team weigh anchor at the Britannia Royal Naval College for a day of evaluations. Some special finds include a relic from HMS Victory, a mystery device once used to make explosions, and perhaps the largest piece made by Faberg? seen on the show.G


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There are plenty of places to pick up a hamburger down Costa Mesa's Harbor Boulevard. The Habit Burger Grill served up one more Wednesday with the grand opening of its newest location.
Tony Serritella, Habit's chief operating officer, couldn't help but smile when two customers told him this burger trumped those offered at Five Guys and In-N-Out Burger — all three establishments are within two-and-a-half miles of each other off Harbor.
"That's why we're here, and that's what we love to hear," Serritella said while taking a break from a busy day at the restaurant at 1510 Adams Ave.
It's the 14th of 17 new restaurants the Habit will open this year with the final three coming to Irvine, San Clemente and La Cañada-Flintridge.
In a time when many businesses are cutting instead of expanding, Serritella credits the Habit's success to the right formula: quality food made with tender love and care by a helpful, friendly staff with an ambience unique to the casual burger industry.
"We think that we can be the best," he said. "If you can do it not just good, but be great at every burger you're going to get people to keep coming back."
Twin sisters Blaire Melatti and Brooke Lorenz were certainly convinced to give the Habit another taste. They'd visited the restaurant at its Huntington Beach location about two weeks ago and Melatti, who works right across the street from the Costa Mesa location, was convinced to go again.
"I've just been watching them put it together and knew it was coming, so we've just been waiting for it to open," she said.
Before the Habit officially opened in Costa Mesa, it raised a total of $3,520 in a trio of two-hour benefits for three different local organizations — Share Our Selves, Girls Inc. of Orange County and the Estancia High School football team — on Sunday and Monday.
"It went great; we had a steady stream of people coming from 12 to 2 p.m.," Estancia football booster board member Chuck Perry said. "We had people in line the whole time."
One hundred percent of the sales raised at the Habit Sunday for SOS and Girls Inc. and Monday for Eagles football went straight to the organizations. A total of $1,349 was raised for Estancia on Veteran's Day. Girls Inc., which strives to inspire girls to be strong, smart and bold, and SOS also walked away with more than $1,000 each — $1,128 and $1,043, respectively.
"It was actually better than we expected it," said Alisa Driscoll, Girls Inc.'s communications and events coordinator. "It definitely raised more money for us than our traditional fundraisers with restaurants."
SOS provides safety-net services to the homeless and low-income populations in Orange County, and its director of marking and special events, Elizabeth Evans, said any extra money is welcome during the holiday season.
"It's always great to see new businesses in the area," she said. "We are appreciative of the opportunity, especially at this time of the year around the holidays. We see a spike and increase in the use of our services."
Twitter: @TCNShortallhttp://twitter.com/tcnshortall


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Unit 4: Organizing Atoms and Electrons—The Periodic Table
Unit Overview
As scientists discovered more and more chemical elements, they began developing systems to organize the elements by their chemical properties, leading to the modern periodic table. Through its organization, the periodic table makes clear the underlying chemical and physical trends among the elements. These characteristics—reactivity, atomic radius, electronegativity, and density—are linked to the distribution of electrons around the nucleus. The periodic table—undoubtedly the most important and useful document in chemistry—is being continually updated even today as scientists strive to create new manmade elements in laboratories.
- Introduction
- History of the Periodic Table
- A Tour of the Periodic Table
- Atomic Mass, Atomic Number, and Carbon-12
- The Orbital Structure of the Atom
- Electron Configurations
- Effective Nuclear Charge and Size
- Ionization Energy and Ionic Radius
- Forming Compounds
- Electronegativity
- Naming Compounds
- Conclusion
- Further Reading


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Bergevin, Murray, Shero announced as finalists to be NHL general manager of the year
NEW YORK – Marc Bergevin of the Montreal Canadiens, Bob Murray of the Anaheim Ducks and Ray Shero of the Pittsburgh Penguins were named Monday as first-time finalists to be the NHL's general manager of the year.
In his first season as an NHL general manager, Bergevin guided the Canadiens to the Northeast Division title. Montreal was also the league's most improved club this season, earning the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Murray oversaw a Ducks team that had its best regular-season finish. Anaheim won the Pacific Division winner and No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.
Shero helped lead the Penguins to their first Atlantic Division title since 2008 and the No. 1 seed in the East. Key additions solidified Pittsburgh's roster.
Voting for the award was conducted among the league's 30 general managers and a panel of NHL executives, print and broadcast media. The winner will be announced during the Stanley Cup finals.


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Things are a bit crazy right now with getting ready to move. Bryan will be starting law school this fall in Rhode Island, so in July I will be moving back east to be with him. I'll be flying to New Jersey (where he is currently living) for a about two – three weeks and then we'll be heading up to Rhode Island together (into a place we have yet to find!). I have no job lined up either and I have my fingers (and toes) crossed that the search will be a bit easier once I'm actually there and can see what is around us.
I will not being bringing any of my furniture with me, just packing up some boxes to ship across the country. I"ll be selling all the big things (or I hope to see them anyway!!). The most important things for me to ship are my kitchen things: my pans, knives and of course my awesome KitchenAid! The trick is to try and figure out how to ship that and my wine and wine rack. Hmmmm lots of bubble wrap?
With all of that going on and trying to save money and have enough to ship all the boxes, money is umm a bit tight right about now. This week I have been trying to make meals that either make good left overs or use ingredients that can be used in several meals. So far this week it was ground beef tacos made with the Trader Joe's GF taco seasoning (I don't follow the directions on the back and add tomato paste…I like the spice in it) which last night turned in to nachos. Tonight will be the Thai Chicken and Noodle Salad. The extra chicken will be used either in a grilled chicken salad or something of the sort. I also have lined up some ham steak with a baked potato which will then be made into a ham and cheese frittata – YUMMM
One of my favorite magazines and websites is Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Magazine. I just packed all mine up to ship next week so I've been searching online for recipes to adapt and came across this one that sounded and looked really good…and it tasted great!! Very light, full of flavor and refreshing. This would be a great meal on a hot summer night. Sadly this isn't a great dish for Bryan because of the onions but I'm sure I can make it with out it and it taste just fine. I made a few alterations to the original recipe (my alterations are in red) to make this gluten free.
Thai Chicken and Noodle Salad
Serves 4
- 1 1/4 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced crosswise
- Spicy Asian Dressing -see below
- Coarse salt
- 3 1/2 ounces Chinese rice noodles, broken in half if long (I used the thick rice noodles instead of the thing ones, I think it worked well)
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, such as safflower (I used coconut oil – tasted great!!)
- 2 carrots, sliced into ribbons with a vegetable peeler
- 1 English cucumber, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
- 1/4 cup fresh basil, torn
- Bean sprouts, chopped peanuts, fresh mint leaves, red-pepper flakes, and sliced scallion greens, for garnish (optional)
- Place chicken and half of dressing in a resealable plastic bag (reserve remaining dressing). Marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes (or refrigerate overnight).
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook noodles until tender. Drain, and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking. Transfer to a platter.
- In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Working in batches, cook chicken (do not crowd skillet) until cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes; transfer to platter on top of noodles.
- Top with carrots, cucumber, and basil. Drizzle with reserved dressing, and sprinkle with garnishes, if desired.
Spicy Asian Dressing
- 4 thinly sliced scallion whites
- 2 minced garlic cloves
- 1/2 cup soy sauce (gluten free soy sauce)
- 1/2 cup rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons light-brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
- 1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste (or 1 minced canned anchovy) – (I didn't have either so I left it out)
- 1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
This is my second attempt at using my coconut oil in a recipe but I have one more to attempt this weekend so keep checking back.


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Yesterday, I noted that the race for Governor of Virginia has been a statistical dead-heat for several months, but with Republican Jerry Kilgore consistently a few points "ahead" of Democrat Tim Kaine in the polls. However, the latest Rasmussen poll shows Kaine two points up on Kilgore, still within the margin of error. The breakdown is Kaine 46 percent, Kilgore 44 percent, Potts 4 percent. Potts is a break-away Republican. He had only 2 percent support in the last Rasmussen poll.
Meanwhile, the Washington Times speculates that national Republican woes are contributing to the apparent erosion of Kilgore's position. That may be true in the Washington D.C. suburbs, but I doubt it's much of a factor state-wide. Kilgore's main handicaps are a popular Democratic governor and the presence of Potts.


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EXCLUSIVE: Rabbi Mendel Morosow, a Crown Heights Lubavitcher, speaks to COLlive about his "intuitive powers" used by thousands - including rabbis and mashpiim, and why he kept them secret for years.
By A. Bakaleynik for COLlive.com
R' Mendel, how did you discover this "intuitive" or "empathic" healing powers?
For many years, my wife and I had no children. We went to all kinds of doctors, including highly recommended experts on alternative medicine. A homeopath noticed I could sense the effects of the remedies he was suggesting, and asked whether I could sense details about him and his family. With great reluctance, I described what came to mind, and he said I was right on target.
How did you feel about it?
I was the biggest skeptic! I come from a rational, intellectual background. But I began to see it was true; I really could discern things about people, feel the root of their problems and how they might be helped.
Did you notice this ability before?
Actually, throughout my life, I seemed to pick up on people's moods or feel their aches and pains, without realizing what it was. I didn't realize it was the states of other people that I was experiencing. I thought it was me.
That must have been strange...
It was indeed confusing. I understood various situations intuitively, but learned not to talk about it, because others laughed at me: How could a youngster know things that required real life experience? So I learned to keep my mouth shut.
When did you start actually developing this talent, instead of hiding it?
That homeopath asked for my help in order to get a better reading of some of his clients. Sometimes he asked me to use my energy to "deliver" a remedy to them.
How does this work in practice?
When I "tune in" to people, I sense things about them. I might see an image, or actual words run through my mind. Sometimes I just "know" something – I have no idea from where. For instance, I may see a place or object, or feel some emotion.
What sort of problems can you help?
I've helped with all sorts of problems: health, emotional issues, shalom bayis, chinuch, parnassa and business decisions, and many shidduchim issues. Of course, if it's a serious health issue, I tell them to visit a doctor, as well.
When you get a call, how do you approach the issue?
My approach is two-fold: First, I ask the person to describe his or her problem in brief. Then I "tune in" to see what might be causing it. Even if it's a health issue, sometimes it has a psychological or emotional basis.
Can't you tell automatically what the problem is?
I could, in theory, but people may have several issues, and it's best when they tell me which one to focus on. Also, using intuition requires mental energy, which I would rather save for addressing the problem itself.
What comes next?
After identifying the source of a problem, I get a sense of how to fix it.
And how do fix it? What do you do in actuality?
It can be any of a few options. It could be as simple as recommending a change in routine or advice that an outsider might think of commonsense. Often I feel something is wrong in the tefilin or mezuzos, so I advise getting them checked by an expert sofer. Or I focus energy on a problem to correct it.
A spiritual technique?
No. I don't feel that my intuition itself is ruchnius and never did any training or took any courses or studied "healing." Rather it's an ability to "pick up" and understand reality, like radio waves traveling to a cell phone – definitely something physical, not spiritual. Various themes discussed in Chassidus may make this easier to understand, but the actual ability is not necessarily spiritual.
Have you had Halachic concerns?
I have asked Rabbonim whether I may use this ability and talent. Those of them familiar with the concept told me I'm allowed to use it, especially in order to help people. However, I try to keep away from sensing the future, as that can get complicated from a Halachic point of view.
Do you have reservations about giving advice on what to do about serious matters?
Naturally, dealing with serious personal issues is a huge responsibility, and I can't honestly accept responsibility for people's life decisions. I can only ask leading questions, give suggestions and encouragement, and hope to point people in a good direction.
For example, a client once traveled overseas, where he checked out certain properties with an eye to investment. He called me – giving the places nicknames, because I don't need addresses – and I told him something bothered me about one property, which seemed to be on the border between neighborhoods. My client returned to check on it in the evening and discovered that, although it was in a good neighborhood, it was close to a bad one, and at night it became a noisy hangout, with music blasting and neighbors complaining the noise disturbed their sleep. When he told me about another place, I felt it to be full of sunshine, with young couples moving in, a neighborhood that was up and coming. He found that too to be true.
But wouldn't anyone with real estate buying experience have noticed all that?
Indeed, and many of my ideas turn out to be plain common sense. The difference is that for an expert in the field it's common sense, while with me it's pure intuition. Besides, that investor lived far from those places, so he wouldn't have time to check them thoroughly. He might have missed the clues, so he was glad he had asked me.
How many people have approached you for advice?
Over the 10 years I've been doing this, I've probably had thousands of cases, including thousands involving tefilin and mezuzos. I have helped many, many members of the worldwide Lubavitcher community, as anyone can ascertain by asking around. My clients have included prominent rabbonim from communities around the world and mashpiim. Rabbi Manis Friedman, for example, has referred people to me.
How much time do you spend with clients?
Usually it's up to the individual. Some need just a few minutes, especially if they get straight to the point and immediately follow my advice, in which case they soon see results. Others need more time, particularly if they don't immediately follow my advice, in which case they'll keep coming back. I also work over the phone, which adds a layer of privacy and helps people feel more at ease. After discussing the problem with them, I may continue thinking about them, sending them "energy" to help with the problem. At the beginning of Likutei Diburim, the Rebbe RaYYaTz explains that thinking about someone can help him.
What is your success rate?
Boruch Hashem, I have been blessed with abundant success. I've never taken the time to measure it in exact numbers, but great numbers of people feel they have been helped and their problems resolved. The fact that I get many referrals from previous clients is the best testimony.
Can you give examples of your success?
I have hundreds of stories, some of them really amazing.
A teenager once told me his ankle gave him constant severe pain, for which he needed an operation. From across the table, I focused energy on him for a few minutes, and he told me the pain was getting less and less, until it disappeared. When I met him a year later, he told me the pain had never returned, and he no longer needed any operation.
At a L'chaim [engagement party], I had a farbrengen with some bochurim. One mentioned that he suffered from gout, which caused him constant acute pain in his leg. For a few minutes, I focused energy on him and the pain disappeared. He was skeptical about it and didn't believe he would long remain free of pain. But when I met him again over a year later, he reported that, "strangely enough," the pain had never returned!
A few years ago, a man aged around 60 was limping painfully. He had had a knee-cap replacement, and needed another one on his other knee. I focused energy on his problem several times, at personal meetings and during phone conversations. Since then, his pain has disappeared and he hasn't needed a replacement for his other knee.
Give us an example about tefilin.
One man often experienced sudden blackouts, causing him to lose consciousness, fall down and get hurt. It wasn't epilepsy, said his doctors, but they didn't know what else it could be. As I spoke to him, an image of tefilin came into my mind, then the kesher of the shel rosh [knot of the head tefilin]. I asked whether he placed the kesher on the correct part of the head. He replied that he did, but added that, six years earlier – which happened to be when his problem started, of course – someone in shul, not a Rov or sofer but just a well-meaning person, had told him to change where he placed it. I advised him to check with an expert. As soon as he changed back to his original placement of the kesher, his blackouts stopped. That was the first time I advised resolving a problem by ensuring correct observance of tefilin or mezuzos.
So it was your mind's image of the kesher that helped resolve his problem?
Yes. People may not realize that problems with tefilin and mezuzos involve more than just the written text.
For example, the Alter Rebbe (in his Shulchan Aruch and Siddur) points out a common problem: In the lower area of the tefilin shel rosh, glue is used to keep the parts of the bayis together. But often, while the tefilin are being formed and the glue is still wet, it can spread upwards between the four compartments, where it can render the tefilin non-kosher. In my experience, about 70% of tefilin have this problem, and most soferim aren't trained how to check for it and fix it.
Also, the batim of tefilin have to be perfectly square, but many are not, and not all soferim always check for this. Also a small scratch in the black paint of some parts of the retzuos [tefilin straps] can be very serious.
Another problem with tefilin and mezuzos is with the two tagin [short vertical lines attached to a letter] on top of every lamed letter. According to Halacha, the tag on the right should extend slightly higher than the left one. Kabala explains the underlying reason for this: The right tag represents chessed [kindness] and should therefore be higher than the left one, which represents gevura [severity or judgment], in order to ensure that the flow of Divine kindness overwhelms any possible "judgments."
A lot of soferim usually don't look for this problem unless specifically asked to do so, because it's time-consuming. But when it's not fixed, it can have a negative effect on the wearer and his loved ones. In fact, every detail of tefilin can affect not only the wearer but his wife, young sons and unmarried daughters.
Often I advise someone to recheck even several times for problems with tefilin and mezuzos, because, as in any other field, not all soferim are equally thorough.
Can you give an example of a case about shidduchim.
A certain girl was already beyond the usual age for shidduchim, yet nothing was moving for her. I asked if their home had a balcony. Yes, and their balcony had two sets of doors. I advised bringing a Rov to check whether the mezuzos were placed correctly. He found them to be on the wrong sides of the doors. They were changed, and the girl became engaged within a few months.
Placement of mezuzos can make a huge difference for shidduchim, health and other areas. When an expert is invited into homes to check on mezuza placement, he finds problems in over 90% of homes, in my experience.
What advice would you give people in general?
People often create their own problems through excessive worry and fear. My intuitive energy approach can help with that, but I also advise people to increase their emuna and bitochon in Hashem. When negativity is removed, healing takes place, parnassa flows, health blossoms, and relationships heal. As the Zohar says, "When someone is happy, it opens up all the Divine sources Above."
Thanks for speaking with us
It is my pleasure. I can be reached at TheHelpingRabbi.com