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by EILEEN JOY
We are beings who can neither live nor die without artful signification.
~L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, "The Liberal Arts of Psychoanalysis"
. . . the work is to keep moving, but also to keep living . . .
~Aranye Fradenburg, "(Dis)continuity: A History of Dreaming"
~L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, "Living Chaucer"
. . . obscure
forces are at work
like a radio left onOn the outskirts of
identical cities.
~Ben Lerner, "Doppler Elegies"
Like a radio left on, in the poet Ben Lerner's parlance, on the outskirts of identical cities -- and also, like the strains of a Lushlife Project downtempo "Budapest Eskimos" soundtrack emanating from a diamond mine -- Aranye Fradenburg's work has operated as a groovy and "obscure force" in medieval studies for the past 20 or so years as a powerful and palpably explicit influence upon work in Middle English literary [especially Chaucer] studies, especially those inflected by psychoanalytic and symptomatic and "discontinuist"/non-alteritist historicist approaches to the Middle Ages. Her work has also operated as a potent and insistent voice [not always fully registered or acknowledged as such in our field and beyond] on the "arts" of living, on eudaimonia [flourishing], on the importance of pleasure/enjoyment [in its lighter and darker valences], on sentience/sensation + the "feeling" arts, on techniques of living + care of the self, and most especially, on the "living on"-ness of the always-traveling, transitive, open-ended, and non-linear signifiers and processes of signification that enable [and sometimes disable] the inter-subjective formations between various actors, living and dead, past and present, so crucial to our desires, to our sufferings [passions], to our ability to affiliate with and relate to others, and thus, to living our [shared] lives, for better and worse. It should be mentioned, too, that one of the "obscure forces" that Lerner speaks of in his "Doppler Elegies" [in addition to death and catastrophe] is love, a subject which has played no small role in Fradenburg's intellectual, and I would also say, political-humanist concerns. One could go further and say that, like Lerner, Fradenburg has been our scholarly poet of the "obscure forces" at work, not only in our field, but in our lives.
Fradenburg has been a particular hero of mine for insisting, over and over again throughout her writings, that, in all times and places, we misunderstand ourselves, and therefore, unknowing -- and the self-fictionalizations [some constructive, some destructive] predicated upon that unknowing -- have to be taken into account, whether we are studying the past or just trying to understand ourselves and our own experiences. As she put it so eloquently in Sacrifice Your Love, with regard to medieval studies, we "cannot confine the work of knowing the Middle Ages to replicating, however hopelessly and/or heroically, medieval cultures' self-understandings. We also should explore how medieval cultures, like all others, may have misunderstood themselves" [pp. 77-78]. And with regard to our own self-understandings, and in a way that is resonant with many of the discourses circulating in the university today under the aegis of object-oriented philosophies and various strains of post/humanist thought, Fradenburg wrote in the same book,
. . . the effect of subjectivity is produced by the interplay of insentience with sentience.This excerpt is part of a much longer and very complex discussion having to do with the alienation produced by labor, modes of production [scholarly and artistic], aesthetics, courtly love, desire, libidinal economies, the Law, enjoyment, sacrifice/loss, political ethics, and community, and I can't do justice to all of that here. In any case, Fradenburg's theoretical project in this book, especially with regard to, say, Chaucer studies and medieval chivalric literature and culture more broadly [in its broadest temporal dimensions, then to now], is well known and registered across so much scholarship that has been done since this book and under its influence. My own continual return(s) to the passages cited above have more to do with my own interest in and use of Fradenburg's thinking, which, of unconscious necessity or intention, is highly idiosyncratic and personal. So, for me, these passages have long operated as watch-phrases for my own work, where I have striven to always keep in mind the unavoidable blind spots and "obscure forces" of everyone's understanding of everything, including ourselves. Scholarship of medieval literature, or any literature, really, for me, becomes a valuable project of tracing productive errancies and sites of incoherence and crafting creative critical approaches that, in Eve Sedgwick's memorable formulation, aim to be "additive and accretive," desiring "to assemble and confer plenitude on an object [such as a text or textual object or author-object] that will then have resources to offer an inchoate self" ["Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading," in Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, pp. 27-28]. This has something to do as well with what Bryan Reynolds has called a transversal poetics that defies "the authorities that reduce and contain meanings," and that seeks to "understand and empower fugitive elements [in texts and other artifacts, and in particular spaces] insofar as doing so generates positive experiences" ["Transversal Poetics and Fugitive Explorations: Theaterspace, Paused Consciousness, Subjunctivity, and Macbeth," in Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations, pp. 1-26]. And this sort of work might be crucial for the future, if we agree with Frandeburg [and I do] that,
The telescopes that help us see the stars, the buildings that house the shelters that are our bodies, are insentient; and yet we extend sentience through them. But the more we make the machines and products that extend subjectivity into the world, the more insentience is part of us, or we are part of it. Forces are at work within us that do not "mean" anything; parts of ourselves cannot account for themselves. The work cannot account for itself, or disclose anything about itself, or even be questioned. [p. 13]
To be able to anticipate, plan, project a future or into a future, we have to not know for sure, because we have to suspend judgment even while exercising it, knowing that we don't know (everything). Ethics—and ultimately psychoanalysis—emerges from a willing of this suspension, a paradoxical knowing of non-knowing. ["(Dis)continuity: A History of Dreaming," in The Post-Historical Middle Ages, ed. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Frederico, p. 96]I must admit that I was drawn to write this post because, partly due to my own personal project to spend some time over the next few years re-visiting Foucault's late writings on the "care of the self" and biopower [because of THIS, THIS, and THIS], I have been returning [a lot] recently to Fradenburg's 2002 book Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer, where I have been struck both by how apropos to our moment and compelling this book still is [10 years later, and gee, 10 years isn't that long ago, anyway, but we have a tendency to "forget" stuff all of the time in our scholarship] and also by how Fradenburg's entire oeuvre seems to continuously circle back [with important renovations of thought] to this earlier book's project to draw attention to the important inter-relations between embodiment and signification, between pleasure and virtue [where "virtue" is seen to have something to do with world-building], between subjectivity and Otherness, and between art and what she calls, in her essay "Living Chaucer," the "living process" [p. 64; see below for full citation]. It feels timely to me, therefore, to spend some time now thinking about Fradenburg's trajectory of thought over the past ten years or so, especially as it culminates, or expresses itself, in this essay.
I offer one cautionary note here, therefore, to say that I am not attempting in this blog post to offer a comprehensive account of Fradenburg's whole body of work, nor to assess all of its merits [of which there are many] in relation to the larger field of medieval studies. As with other blog posts I have written in the past, here I merely celebrate the originality and importance of a scholar who has urged me [successfully] to think, and also to feel, differently -- about my field, yes -- but more importantly, about the world in which I live. Over the years, I have come to value and to gather close to me, with a certain ardor, the work of scholars who have helped me, not just to think, but to live more creatively [more on which, below], and in this sense, Fradenburg joins Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman, Lauren Berlant, Jane Bennett, Leo Bersani, Kathleen Biddick, Judith Butler, John Caputo, Thomas Carlson, Iain Chambers, Jeffrey Cohen, Michel de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, Carolyn Dinshaw, Michel Foucault, James Earl, Cary Howie, George Kateb, Anna Klosowska, Jonathan Lear, Emmanuel Levinas, Michael Edward Moore, Martha Nussbaum, Bill Readings, Joan Retallack, Claude Romano, Eve Sedgwick, and Simone Weil as writers who always hover nearby in my study. This list is highly personal, of course [I admire and am influenced by many scholars beyond these, but these authors stand out for providing to me what, for lack of a better term, I will call my spiritual reservoir, or my traveling scholar-gypsy companions]. The work of some of the scholars in this list also stands out -- for me, anyway -- for their attention to and care for the role of the humanities and the university, and of creative thought more generally, in relation to personal and social life, and thus has also been crucial to me and others in relation to the projects of the BABEL Working Group. Fradenburg, along with Bennett, Nussbaum, and Readings, is particularly noteworthy in this regard. When reading Fradenburg closely, no matter what the specific texts or subjects under close scrutiny [Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, the Knight's Tale, Troilus and Criseyde, whatever], what she seems to always be talking about is something she says more explicitly in her essay, "Group Time: Catastrophe, Survival, Periodicity" [in Time and the Literary, ed. Karen Newman, Jay Clayton, and Marianne Hirsch], that "enjoyment is the matrix of knowledge, and knowledge is not diminished thereby." Further, "Interpretation and explanation are activities central to libidinal structuration and vice versa. . . . We thereby reclaim our technical work [the humanities] as the work of desire, and desire as that which makes the world" [p. 232]. I feel an important link here as well with the work of Jane Bennett, who has written so eloquently of the importance of enchantment and affective propulsions for ethical life [see, especially, her book The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, Ethics].
Fradenburg has become one of our most important advocates for the importance of the "liberal arts" [and of literature/the fine arts/creativity/confabulation/play, especially] to personal and more broadly social "thriving" [this goes way beyond medieval studies, I might add, which is why I also think she should be read more broadly outside of our field] and thus, Fradenburg's recent essay, "Living Chaucer," published in Studies in the Age of Chaucer [and originally presented as a plenary address at the 17th Biennial Meeting of the New Chaucer Society in Siena, Italy in 2009], feels like both the consummate culmination of her career's various theoretical trajectories thus far, while it also offers [within the context of her more recent forays into neuroscience and evolutionary biology] a striking and enlivening departure for a couple of reasons -- first, because she moves closer than she has in previous work to embracing the value and necessity of shared minds [and thus, for all of their precariousness and dangers, somatic-affective community-assemblages], and second, because she also articulates more forcefully than she has before that literature/language is not ONLY a signalling system that only-always defers/devolves to other signalling systems [which are therefore in a continual Derridean slippage that, perhaps, never admits of a Real, or is always pointing to the ways in which language can only ever be falling away from that Real -- blah blah blah, I'm so tired of/bored by these theories of lack/non-coincidence between language and everything else], but may actually have the power to change history, and even more so, possesses a presence that is not negligible with regard to how we are affected by the past [or even to how we understand and negotiate our "selves" and our experiences in the present; with respect to aesthetics, I am also reminded here of Hans Gumbrecht's beautiful little book, The Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey]. As Fradenburg herself puts it in "Living Chaucer,"
undead life seems more apt a description of the signifier's mode of existence (as Derrida himself thought) than does simple absence or nonexistence. I wrote in Sacrifice Your Love about this form of ''being-as-signifier'': given how susceptible we are to the signifier's designs, there is more connectedness than we think between living subjects and dead letters. Nature's signifiers vary in their realizations, but something, a shape, insists. [p. 44]
all fiction corresponds to an absolute reality—not of existence, but of desire that calls fiction into being, performed by the authors and manuscript makers; and continuing desire for it performed by the readers, a desire that sustains the book's material presence across the centuries. That desire is incorporated in an existence. It is the backbone of an identity. It is an essential part of the bundle of motives that lie behind all that the body does. A part essential because it is retrievable, but also because it is privileged: art reveals more of life than life does. [p. 7]I am reminded of when I was at University College Dublin in June of 2009 for a 3-day seminar devoted to the work of Leo Bersani, and on the first day, when we were revisiting the span of his career's writings prior to Intimacies [reading Bersani "retrospectively"], at one point, I got extremely excited during the discussion of Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit's essay on Terence Malik's film The Thin Red Line [in their co-authored book Forms of Being], an essay I absolutely love and have made use of in my own scholarship [see HERE], and one of the seminar's participants said something to me that, in my memory of it, went something like this, "But, Eileen, why are you getting so excited about this? After all, we're talking about a text, and what we do is talk about texts, and this is not about life. You're acting like we're supposed to read Bersani for life." And I was like: um, we're NOT supposed to read Bersani -- and let's face it, theory more generally -- for LIFE? Fuck: how come no one TOLD me that? It was a funny moment [and one that, serendipitously, led to a marvelous friendship-bonding moment with Michael Snediker, who was also there], but also one that convinced me more than ever: um, yeah, theory is for life: DUH! We read theory -- whether Derrida, Foucault, Bersani, Jane Bennett, Graham Harman, Roland Barthes, Fradenburg, and I could go on -- for life: for LIFE, bitches! So I relate this anecdote to also say: Fradenburg's scholarship isn't just about Chaucer or medieval literature or even psychoanalytic approaches to literature more broadly; it's about life, it's about how we, in her own words,
need knowledge of how to do things every day in every way in our real environments; and we are not yet very close to eliminating the contingency and changefulness of living. When it comes to talking, listening, courting, negotiating, playing basketball, playing the violin, making peace, leading an organization, the humanities teaches us how to live successfully—how to adapt to, and (re-)create, our circumstances, by seeing more keenly, hearing more polyphonically, interpreting more humbly, richly and carefully, speaking to each other more persuasively, and much, much more. ["The Liberal Arts of Psychoanalysis," The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 39.4 (2011): 589-609]Relationality, intersubjectivity, aliveness, resilience, care of the [confabulated] self and also of others, playfulness, healing, the arts of living, and thriving seem, increasingly, to be the key watchwords and concerns of Fradenburg's work, and at the same time, the so-called "literary" mode is still central to these concerns, such that,
Interpretation and relationality depend on one another because all relationships are unending processes of interpretation and expression, listening and signifying. In turn, sentience assists relationality: we can't thrive and probably can't survive without minds open to possibility, capable of sensing and interpreting the tiniest shifts in, e.g., pitch and tone. ["The Liberal Arts of Psychoanalysis"]Although it may seem, that in some of her recent writings, Fradenburg has been turning more toward psychoanalysis + cognitive studies and away from a concentrated focus on medieval literature, per se, her essay "Living Chaucer" tells a different story about a long and warm relationship with Chaucer in which the "literary friendship" Fradenburg feels for Chaucer "is an attachment his work actively solicits, to a degree and in ways unique to his corpus but consistent both with premodern and contemporary understandings of the signifier and its role in intersubjective, hence also political and social, process" ["Living Chaucer," p. 41]. Therefore, Chaucer's poetry is central to Fradenburg's thinking on something she has written eloquently about before in numerous pieces, and expressed in her recent essay "(Dis)Continuity: A History of Dreaming," where she writes that, "we all live in many different times; different times live on in us and our practices" [p. 88], and therefore, with regard to literature [Chaucer's poetry, for example] and its role in personal and social mental life, we might say, following Fradenburg, that it enables a "shared attention," which is a form of sociality productive of progressive change in history. Literature is also, by its very nature, playful, and thus crucial, as Fradenburg writes, to the sorts of becomings that enable important psychic transformations:
Play values experimentation. When we play, we are more open to the new, from within and without. We become ''neophiles'' and innovators, making active use of our imaginations. Playing and pretending are crucial to the becomings of living creatures, to adaptation and behavioral flexibility; . . . Play teaches ''vital skills''; it is transformative and transforming. We can neither thrive nor survive without it. And it is highly contagious, a powerful medium of affect transmission. ["Living Chaucer," p. 57]This resonates with Joan Retallack's argument -- with which I am in hearty agreement -- that, "To become adult in our culture (which for most of us means to become compliantly productive) is . . . to be increasingly disabled for the kinds of humorous and dire, purposeful play that creates geometries of attention revelatory of silences in the terrifying tenses that elude official grammars" [The Poethical Wager, p. 62].
Perhaps the most important aspect of Fradenburg's "Living Chaucer" essay is its emphasis on the idea that authors, texts [and the textual objects enclosed and projected therein], and readers form somatic-affective [and thus, inter-subjective] assemblages and signifying networks over time, and what this means is,
Chaucer's words ''live on'' because the patterns they create really do change our minds and bodies. I believe this viewpoint to be a helpful alternative to our perennial question about whether we are representing the past rightly. Whatever representations of the English past we fashion, they are all in part the result of changes wrought in us, consciously and nonconsciously, by living with Chaucer. The signifiers of the past are in us, whether we understand them ''rightly'' or not; we will never be certain what they mean, but we will certainly have been possessed by them. And our possession by (and of ) past signifiers further transforms their range of meanings. [p. 45]Further, "symbols enable living process. Or, to put it another way, living is an art" [p. 45], and literature forms one very important component of what might be called shared sentience [something I argue for myself in work on reading vis-a-vis various object-oriented philosophies], one that would be [and this is the more implicit thrust of the essay, I believe] woefully impoverished and less able to transform itself in positive, open-ended ways, without poetry, without literature and other fine arts. Those of us who work in the humanities, it seems to me [and urged by Fradenburg's and others' thought], must never stop laboring and fighting to stress this point, which might also be put like this: Living is an art; the arts are crucial for living. Our scholarly work, also -- and this cannot be stressed enough -- is also an art, if we could just better grasp and practice this fact. We do not just study and write about the literary arts, but rather, extend and reinvent and multiply them in "our own words" [at least, I want to believe this and have written more about this HERE, HERE, and HERE].
"Living Chaucer" is extraordinary for the way in which it brings together neuroscience [with its concepts of neuroplasticity and mirror neurons], evolutionary/behavioral biology, studies of animal communication, psychoanalysis [Freud on mourning and melancholia, Winnicott on play], and medieval philosophy, among other subjects, to ultimately argue for literature, and Chaucer's poetry especially, as a form of therapeutic care and counter-melancholic "working through," enabled through a shared attention that is always about the process more so than the end, or finish, of anything. Chaucer himself, through his poetry, is a kind of "premodern psychologist" whose continual suspension of so-called final meanings creates what Fradenburg describes as a "friendly" liminal clearing in which so-called self-knowledge can really only be accessed communally, or in the company of good listener-conversationalists with a predisposition to welcome the Other [like Chaucer and his narrators!]. Through Chaucer's art, we undo our isolation and move closer to the sort of fellowship so crucial for living, and for thriving [together]. As Fradenburg herself puts it, in what for me is the most moving line of the essay, and worth bracketing here [twice! -- see above],
What enables us to risk change is the feeling that we are understood and (therefore) accompanied. [p. 60]In the final analysis, as Fradenburg herself avers, play and shared attention are so important to so many species, including humans, that they may even be an end in themselves. We might also call this learning, or the university: the endless [playful, but also at times, sorrowful] processes we must commit ourselves to, with their open-ended [Chaucerian] mutliplicity of perspectives, and their cultivation of the [non-utilitarian] arts of life which may have more to do with personal and social well-being than we have previously imagined. For this, and many other reasons, Fradenburg's work hails us to this inter-temporal pedagogical-artistic project, and asks us, not just to innovate our scholarship accordingly, but to reclaim the humanities itself as the site of care and healing, and thus, of love itself, especially when we understand love [as I do], in Lauren Berlant's terms, as a form of "emotional time," where "it is possible to value floundering around with others whose attention-paying to what's happening is generous and makes liveness possible as a good, not a threat" [Lauren Berlant, "Starved," South Atlantic Quarterly 106.3 (2007): 440]. Fradenburg's work is itself that sort of generous attention-paying, by which we are enriched, and yes, enlivened.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Satsuma marmalade had been on my to-do list for ages when I learned of a marmalade competition being held within walking distance of where my mother's family lived in Cumbria (England) for centuries. How could I resist? I immediately gathered my fruit and walked down to the shops to buy new lids for my half-pint canning jars. One must always use new lids for water-bath canning.
Making marmalade is a bit of work, no question. Is it worth it? That's a matter of opinion, but to me, yes. The flavor is brighter than any marmalade you can buy, and just look at it. Satsumas are a winter fruit, but doesn't Satsuma marmalade look like sunshine in a jar? I also made a batch that I cooked longer to make a caramelized, dark marmalade with an entirely different flavor.
"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor." ~ D. H. Lawrence
You don't even need any special equipment really. I haven't had a big canner with a rack and all that in years. All you need is a big pot with a folded kitchen towel in the bottom (see the recipe for more details). Since it's impossible to get the wax and pesticides off the peel of conventional fruit, and marmalade is all about the peel, do use organic Satsumas and Meyer lemons.
Through much experimentation, I've come up with what I think is really the easiest, least messy and complicated way of making marmalade. You will see many recipes that have you measure the boiled fruit and water mixture to determine how much sugar to use. Fuhgeddaboudit! Just weigh your fruit whole and use an equal weight of water and sugar. Two pounds (907 grams) of fruit? Then two pounds of water (that's 1 quart, or 32 fluid ounces) and two pounds of granulated sugar (that's 4 1/2 cups) and be done with it!
Also, do not listen to the experts who tell you not to stir the boiling marmalade "because it will cause crystallization." It won't; but if it would, who cares? It would be preferable to having the marmalade stick to the bottom of the pan and burn, am I right? You have to gently stir it occasionally (then frequently, then almost constantly at the end) to keep it from sticking to the bottom. If it sticks to the bottom, it will burn and fuse to the bottom of your pan like the highest-quality, guaranteed-not-to-chip-or-peel black paint. (Don't ask me how I know this, just trust me.)
Marmalade seems to be one of those things people either love or hate. But even if you hate store-bought marmalade, you should try homemade. It's an entirely different matter! Tell me your views on the subject (and whether you're a Paddington Bear fan)!
Satsuma and Meyer Lemon Marmalade (water-bath canned)
(Makes 4 half-pint jars)
1 1/2 pounds Satsumas
1/2 pound Meyer lemons
1 1/2 quarts water
2 pounds (4 1/2 cups) sugar
1 Scrub the fruit well. Peel the Satsumas (you can just pull the peels right off). Cut the peels into short (aiming for 1/3-inch, some will be 1/4-inch, some will be 1/2-inch), very narrow* strips. Coarsely chop the peeled Satsumas; no seeds (pips) to remove. Halve the lemons lengthwise, slice them crosswise very thinly, remove the seeds and cut each slice into 4 pieces. Cutting the fruit on a plate helps contain the juice.
* Just how narrow? Well, in marmalade there is fine-cut, medium-cut and thick-cut. There doesn't seem to be any agreement on specific measurements, but I'm going to give you my definitions: fine-cut 1/16-inch or 1.5-mm, medium-cut 1/8-inch or 3-mm, thick-cut 3/16- to 1/4-inch or even up to 8-mm. I was aiming for fine but got something between fine and medium.
2 In heavy, wide, nonreactive 4-quart pan (I use my 5.5-quart Le Creuset French oven for a jam kettle), combine fruit, peel and water. Bring to a full boil. Boil, uncovered, for 7 minutes; no need to stir. Remove from heat, cover and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours. Refrigerate for 8 hours or for a day or two.
3 When ready to make the marmalade, get your jars ready. Get out canner (or large pot deep enough that water will be 1 to 2 inches above the tops of the jars), two kitchen towels, 2-cup glass measure, thermometer, jar lifter, tongs, half-pint jars, new lids, bands. Put a saucer in the freezer for testing the doneness of the marmalade.
4 Put a folded kitchen towel in the bottom of the large pot (unless, of course, you have a canner with a rack). Fill 2/3 full of water and begin heating the water. Heat extra water in a teakettle or saucepan. Submerge clean jars and new lids in the hot, but not boiling, water. They'll be hot in about 10 minutes, but just keep them below simmering until ready to use.
5 Bring fruit mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil gently, uncovered, about 20 minutes, or until peel is tender. No need to stir at this stage. (If I didn't use the weight method, I would then at this point in the process measure the mixture, pouring it into a 2-quart glass measure, return it to the pan and stir in a cup of sugar for each cup of fruit mixture. But if you're doing the weight method, just stir in 4 1/2 cups of sugar all at once until dissolved.
6 Bring mixture to a full rolling boil (big bubbles all over the pan that cannot be stirred down), stirring frequently. Keep it boiling hard for about 30 minutes, or until it registers 220 degrees, stirring occasionally, till the end when you will need to give it a gentle stir pretty much constantly. When done*, remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes (keeps the peel from sinking to the bottom of the jars).
Note: *Doneness can be difficult to determine. There are several tests recommended by various experts. I've tried them all, and they don't work for me. In my experience, they all result in overcooked marmalade. I cook it until it's 220 degrees and "looks right." If the marmalade has thickened and darkened a bit and it's 220 degrees, have the courage of your convictions and take it off the heat. After you've made it a few times, you'll get a feel for it.
7 Do one jar at a time. With tongs, remove a jar and lid from the water. Using the 2-cup glass measure, ladle the hot marmalade into the hot jar, leaving 1/4-inch headroom. Stick a knife or something (I use a chopstick) into the filled jar right next to the glass in about 4 places to release any air bubbles. Check the headspace measurement again and add more marmalade if needed. Wipe off the top of the jar with a damp towel, carefully place the lid and screw the band on (but don't tighten it). Repeat for all the jars. Put the water back on the heat.
8 Return filled jars to the water bath, adding enough hot water to have water 1 to 2 inches above the tops of the jars. Jars must be upright and not touching. Heat to a gentle boil, covered, and set timer for 10 minutes. Adjust the heat to keep the water at a simmer. After 10 minutes, move the pot off the heat and take off the lid. Let the jars sit in the water for 15 minutes. If you're not using a rack with handles in your "canner" and don't have a jar lifter, just ladle out some of the water so you can lift the jars out with an oven mitt. Remove the jars and set them on a kitchen towel on the counter. The lids will make a popping sound when they seal, so just count the pops as the jars start cooling. Leave them undisturbed for 24 hours. Then, if you lost count of the pops, check the seals by pressing on the center of the lids; they should be a bit concave and not move. Properly sealed jars are ready to be stored in the cupboard. Any jars that did not seal should be stored in the refrigerator.
Note: You might also like my Strawberry Freezer Jam and Peach Freezer Jam.


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Tax is an issue of good corporate governance and responsible business practice.
This discussion paper, written jointly with ActionAid and Christian Aid, proposes what 'good' looks like in responsible corporate tax behavior, and contains a wide range of positive behaviors and actions companies can undertake to go beyond legal compliance and result in significant gains for developing countries.
Companies, too, will benefit because responsible tax behavior helps mitigate risk and is in companies' own long-term interest. The best companies – and their investors – recognize that their success is inseparable from the success of the society in which they operate.
This paper will be of great interest to companies and investors seeking to place tax management squarely at the heart of responsible and truly sustainable business.
Finance, private sector, taxation, corporate responsibility, multinational companies


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So You Want to Start Your Own Graphic Design Business: Ways to Generate More Income
Do I need to say it out loud? Generating income is the main reason you started your own graphic design business. You need to pay your operating expenses, pay your employees, and, most important of all, pay yourself[md]enough to buy groceries, buy clothes, and pay the mortgage. Beyond covering your basic operating and living expenses, maybe you'd like to go on a cruise once in a while, contribute to the relief efforts in Haiti, build up an emergency fund, or support the fight against cancer. Whatever your reasons, generating more income is a primary concern in any business.
In this five-part series, I've been offering advice about how to start your own graphic design business and run it successfully. In this final article, it's time to look at ways you can generate more income.
Raise Your Prices
One of the quickest and easiest ways to generate more income is to raise your prices. If you've been charging the same prices for a year or more, it's probably time to go up (unless you had your prices set at the top of the range initially). Raising prices can be tricky. You don't want to raise your prices so high that you lose existing clients, and you don't want to "price yourself out of the market" when it comes to getting new clients. Before you raise your prices, do a little research to see what others are currently charging for services.
One way to raise prices is to make subtle changes. For example, if you charge $70 an hour, you could raise your hourly rate to $75 but start billing in increments of 20 minutes. So if you do 1 hour and 10 minutes of work for a client, you bill for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Another way to raise your prices subtly is to keep your base prices the same and raise the prices for the bells and whistles. So the base price of a five-page website remains the same, but the price of creating photo galleries goes up.


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Washington's National Football League team was called many names during a Monday symposium and press conference at the Ritz Carlton in Georgetown, but "Redskins" was not often one of them.
Throughout the morning, phrases like "Washington's football team," "the R-words," and "our hometown team" replaced the team's proper name. And that's because the event, which was hosted by the Oneida Indian Nation, was focused on bringing attention to the their "Change the Name" movement and urging the NFL, whose fall conference meeting begins Tuesday in the same hotel, to drop "Redskins" from the capital's franchise.
"The Oneida Nation has a vested interest in the league being a unifying force in communities throughout America," said Ray Halbritter, representative of the Oneida Indian Nation. "This name is not a unifying force. It is a divisive epithet."
Since the beginning of the football season, the Onieda Nation has been sponsoring advertisements that urge the Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to change the name, which they consider a racist term. Over the weekend, even President Obama showed support for the movement against the name, telling the Associated Press that if he was the owner he would seriously consider a name change due to its offensive nature. "All these mascots and team names related to Native Americans, Native Americans feel pretty strongly about it," Obama told the Associated Press. "And I don't know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real, legitimate concerns that people have about these things."
Synder has said before that he will not change the name, which the team has carried since they came to Washington in 1937. A representative of the Redskins issued a statement that said the name is not meant to disparage. "We at the Redskins respect everyone," the statement by Lanny Davis read. "The name 'Washington Redskins' is 80 years old—it's our history and legacy and tradition. We Redskins fans sing 'hail to the Redskins' every Sunday as a word of honor not disparagement."
Team representatives also cite polls that suggest Americans, and American Indians, do not consider the term offensive. A 2004 Annenberg Public Policy Center poll said 90% of American Indians did not feel the Redskins team name was offensive. In April, the Associated Press conducted a telephone poll that showed 4 in 5 Americans did not think the name should be changed.
But Halbritter, and many of the other panelists, who included Congresswomen Eleanor Holmes Norton and Betty McCollum, said these citations are a distraction. "It's all rubbish," McCollum said. "And it's a corporate spin to keep their profits flowing."
Michael Friedman, a clinical psychologist, said the NFL has also show an "unbelievable disregard for decades of research," which he said has shown the use of stereotypical and degrading images have a negative affect on the people they represent, regardless of whether the image is seen as positive or not. Friedman added that their disregard equivalent to the NFL saying, "the American Medical Association has said that concussions are damaging, but we did a poll of several people and they said that it was okay."
Another panelist, Kevin Grover, the director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, and a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, said there were other reasons to change the name. "We are anxious for people in the United States to connect themselves to the native heritage of this country," Grover said during the question and answer portion of the event. "But using us as mascots is not the appropriate way."
Though NFL officials were invited, a spokesman for the organization confirmed to TIME, they were unable to attend due to their fall meetings. In an email statement, Brian McCarthy, vice president of communications for the NFL said, "We respect that people have differing views. It is important that we listen to all perspectives."
That statement reiterates what NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell said during an interview on a Washington radio program in September, where he told the hosts the NFL needs to start listening to fans, especially those who express offense to team names like the Redskins, moving away from his previous stance on the name. "If one person is offended, we have to listen," Goddell said, before adding. "Ultimately, it's Dan's decision."
Members of the American Indian community are hopeful that the name change will come soon. McCarthy confirmed to TIME that a representative of the organization is scheduled to meet with members of the Oneida Nation on Nov. 22 in the NFL's New York office and Adolpho Birch, the NFL's senior vice president of labor policy and government affairs, suggested to Peter Carmen, the COO of Oneida Nation Homelands, that the two groups meet sooner either in Manhattan or in Verona, NY, where the Oneida Indian Nation is based.
Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne and Hodulee Muskogee advocate for American Indian Rights, told reporters after the panel that like racial epithets before it, the term redskins will not "be permissible in polite society, even for bigots," for much longer.
She said the name change might even change the luck for the troubled team, which has started this season losing three out of four games. "Something has to be done to bring some luck back to Washington team, they haven't won a Super Bowl since we filed our lawsuit in 1992," Harjo said. "[They have] changed everything except the team name. I would look at it as a matter of luck. Change the name and get back to the Super Bowl."


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WENCHANG, China (AP) — China launched an ambitious mission on Tuesday to bring back rocks and debris from the moon's surface for the first time in more than 40 years — an undertaking that could boost human understanding of the moon and of the solar system more generally.
Chang'e 5 — named for the Chinese moon goddess — is the country's boldest lunar mission yet. If successful, it would be a major advance for China's space program, and some experts say it could pave the way for bringing samples back from Mars or even a crewed lunar mission.
The four modules of the Chang'e 5 spacecraft blasted off at just after 4:30 a.m. Tuesday (2030 GMT Monday, 3:30 p.m. EST Monday) atop a massive Long March-5Y rocket from the Wenchang launch center along the coast of the southern island province of Hainan.
Minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft separated from the rocket's first and second stages and slipped into Earth-moon transfer orbit. About an hour later, Chang'e 5 opened its solar panels to provide its independent power source.
Spacecraft typically take three days to reach the moon.
The launch was carried live by national broadcaster CCTV which then switched to computer animation to show its progress into outer space.
The mission's key task is to drill 2 meters (almost 7 feet) beneath the moon's surface and scoop up about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of rocks and other debris to be brought back to Earth, according to NASA. That would offer the first opportunity for scientists to study newly obtained lunar material since the American and Russian missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Chang'e 5 lander's time on the moon is scheduled to be short and sweet. It can only stay one lunar daytime, or about 14 Earth days, because it lacks the radioisotope heating units to withstand the moon's freezing nights.
The lander will dig for materials with its drill and robotic arm and transfer them to what's called an ascender, which will lift off from the moon and dock with the service capsule. The materials will then be moved to the return capsule to be hauled back to Earth.
The technical complexity of Chang'e 5, with its four components, makes it "remarkable in many ways," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College.
"China is showing itself capable of developing and successfully carrying out sustained high-tech programs, important for regional influence and potentially global partnerships," she said.
In particular, the ability to collect samples from space is growing in value, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Other countries planning to retrieve material from asteroids or even Mars may look to China's experience, he said.
While the mission is "indeed challenging," McDowell said China has already landed twice on the moon with its Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4 missions, and showed with a 2014 Chang'e 5 test mission that it can navigate back to Earth, re-enter and land a capsule. All that's left is to show it can collect samples and take off again from the moon.
"As a result of this, I'm pretty optimistic that China can pull this off," he said.
The mission is among China's boldest since it first put a man in space in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the U.S. and Russia.
Chang'e 5 and future lunar missions aim to "provide better technical support for future scientific and exploration activities," Pei Zhaoyu, mission spokesperson and deputy director of the Chinese National Space Administration's Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center told reporters at a Monday briefing.
"Scientific needs and technical and economic conditions" would determine whether China decides to send a crewed mission to the moon, said Pei, whose comments were embargoed until after the launch. "I think future exploration activities on the moon are most likely to be carried out in a human-machine combination."
While many of China's crewed spaceflight achievements, including building an experimental space station and conducting a spacewalk, reproduce those of other countries from years past, the CNSA is now moving into new territory.
Chang'e 4 — which made the first soft landing on the moon's relatively unexplored far side almost two years ago — is currently collecting full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, information vital for any country that plans to send astronauts to the moon.
China in July became one of three countries to have launched a mission to Mars, in China's case an orbiter and a rover that will search for signs of water on the red planet. The CNSA says the spacecraft Tianwen 1 is on course to arrive at Mars around February.
China has increasingly engaged with foreign countries on missions, and the European Space Agency will be providing important ground station information for Chang'e 5.
U.S. law, however, still prevents most collaborations with NASA, excluding China from partnering with the International Space Station. That has prompted China to start work on its own space station and launch its own programs that have put it in a steady competition with Japan and India, among Asian nations seeking to notch new achievements in space.
China's space program has progressed cautiously, with relatively few setbacks in recent years. The rocket being used for the current launch failed on a previous launch attempt, but has since performed without a glitch, including launching Chang'e 4.
"China works very incrementally, developing building blocks for long-term use for a variety of missions," Freese-Johnson said. China's one-party authoritarian system also allows for "prolonged political will that is often difficult in democracies," she said.
While the U.S. has followed China's successes closely, it's unlikely to expand cooperation with China in space amid political suspicions, a sharpening military rivalry and accusations of Chinese theft of technology, experts say.
"A change in U.S. policy regarding space cooperation is unlikely to get much government attention in the near future," Johnson-Freese said.


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Twenty years later, a movement grows to build an intellectual case for tolerance and respect for pedophiles — whom B4UAct calls "Minor Attracted People"
This award-winning documentary "ChickenHawk: Men Who Love Boys" was produced in 1994. It was directed by Adi Sideman, who allowed NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) members (and leaders) to speak in their own words, describing their evil actions and thoughts involving boys.
Note how Leyland Stevenson, the über-creepy former NAMBLA secretary whose interview is at the center of this film, clsims that the boys are looking for sexual contact with men. This is the central and sickening rationale of all "boy lovers."
More than two decades ago, I met Stevenson in the course of Americans For Truth's predecessor, Lambda Report's, efforts to expose NAMBLA and pro-pedophile groups worldwide. AFTAH's and LR's investigative reporting inspired a 1994 American law barring U.S. taxpayer funding to any international organization with pedophile connections.
History note: NAMBLA was once allowed to march in homosexual "pride" parades.
One thing NAMBLA is right about: pederasty–sex between men and boys–has ancient roots and must be included in the history of (male) homosexuality.
Building sympathy
Two decades after the release of "ChickenHawk," there is a growing effort afoot to encourage tolerance and a type of respect for pedophiles–renamed (note the softening language) "MAPs" (Minor-Attracted People"); see this B4UAct.org website. The "MAP" advocates are using the same strategies to gain recognition and build acceptance for this perverse "identity" as homosexual and "transgender" activists used to normalize their deviant identities and behaviors.
That means, in part, portraying adults whose "orientation" includes desiring sex with children–as a kind of "victim"; see B4UAct's commitment to "stigma reduction" for MAPs (pedophiles/pederasts). That's a very hard sell to Americans, but we would never doubt the tenacity of sexual revolutionaries in attempting to achieve it. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
WARNING: Some offensive sexual descriptions, but film is mostly interviews and shows nothing sexual in nature


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Technical Paper
Development of a Computationally Fast Equilibrium-Equivalent 4-Stroke SI Engine Model
A set of algebraic equations has been developed to replace the iterative thermochemical equilibrium subroutine in zero-dimensional and quasidimensional engine modeling codes. These equations allow calculation of the equilibrium composition given only the equivalence ratio and the fuel characteristics, thereby allowing the composition calculations to be performed external to the iterative main loop. This technique results in a decrease of the required computational time by up to a factor of 13, dependent upon the equivalence ratio and the fuel. The predictions of the equilibrium-equivalent code agree with those of a traditional equilibrium code within 2.5% for the four fuels examined (CH4, C3H8, C2H5OH, and i-C8H18) for compression ratios between 5 and 12:1, intake manifold pressures between 50 and 100 kPa, and equivalence ratios from 0.5 to 1.5. A technique for including constrained equilibrium to account for freezing of CO oxidation during the expansion stroke is also presented.


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Aw Yeah Mego Meet 2015!
Skokie Here We Come!
Skokie, IL – December 12, 2014 – Mego Museum in conjunction with Aw Yeah Comics is pleased to announce that Mego Meet 2015 will be held June 5th and 6th at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Chicago – North Shore Conference Center. Registration information for vendors and attendees will be posted on the Mego Meet 2015 page at megomuseum.com in the coming weeks.
For the past ten years, the annual Mego Meet made its home in Wheeling, WV. It was clear after Mego Meet 10 that maximum density had been surpassed in Wheeling and that a change of venue was in order. The move to Skokie, IL. will allow for easy access for those travelling by plane, as well as provide a myriad of options for family entertainment. The facilities at DoubleTree offer award-winning guest rooms and event space for presenters, vendors, and attendees.


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Odor Removal
From Pets, Urine, Vomit, ...
Stop! Before you use a commercial product that may damage your carpet or upholstery, call the experts at (828) 484-2835. Many stain and odor removal products are not designed to remove certain types of stains from certain types of fibers. Steam Master Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Inc has specialized in odor removal from area homes and businesses since 1989. There is a science to proper odor removal. Some companies camouflage the odor, only to have it return in a couple of days. Call the company that will neutralize and removes it!
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Effective Odor Removal
Besides the horrible smell, pet urine and vomit can cause permanent damage to your carpet and upholstery fabrics. Removal of stains and odors, whether from pets, kids, or a crazy weekend, is a science, and Steam Master Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Inc technicians are highly skilled in odor and urine removal. The pH of "fresh" urine is between 5 and 6, which is on the acidic side. Once dried, urine becomes more alkaline, with a pH of 10 to 12. Fresh urine is the easiest to clean. Prompt clean up is ideal, as warm, acidic urine breeds bacteria. As the urine dries, the ammonia can cause a permanent stain on your carpet or upholstery.
Don't Neutralize Odors, Remove Them
The odor and urine removal experts at Steam Master Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Inc will tell you that water can actually WORSEN the odor associated with urine. This is why pet owners experience stronger odors on humid days. Steam Master Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Inc technicians will REMOVE pet urine stains and NEUTRALIZE the odors by utilizing specialized enzymes that consume the odor-causing bacteria and removing all of the alkaline salt deposits that dried urine leaves.


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Does Accutane Work?
Many of our clients have been on Accutane (isotretinoin); but what's surprising is that so many of them have been on it for two or three courses to get their acne under control. One client admitted to having gone through the Accutane regimen seven times. Some of them didn't get any benefit at all; however most of them experienced significant clearing, but to their dismay, started breaking out again within months of stopping the medication. So, how disappointing is that?? They took huge health risks (again and again) for only a short term benefit? I don't think most people know what the risks really are from taking "the tane," so that's what I would like to talk about here.
Roche Holding AG, pulled Accutane acne medicine from the U.S. market after juries awarded at least $33 million in damages to users who blamed the drug for bowel disease. Many have been relegated to using colostomy bags for the rest of their lives. This is just one of the multitude of side effects attributed to Accutane. Let's talk about the others.
The FDA posted an alert in 2005 that said all patients taking accutane
should be closely watched for serious symptoms including:
- depression
- suicidal tendencies
- sadness
- short tempers
- anger
- loss of social interaction
- psychosis
- loss of motivation
- changes in appetite
If any of these symptoms begin to appear, the patient is advised to stop taking accutane and to seek professional advice. In 2002, a director for the FDA told a congressional committee that they received over 3,000 reports of adverse psychiatric symptoms and over 170 reports of suicide attempts connected to the use of Accutane.
There is such a high risk of birth defects, miscarriage and fetal death, that women of child bearing age are only allowed to get a one month supply (even though the prescribed regimen is for 5 months) and cannot receive another until the doctor has determined that the woman is not pregnant and is on at least two forms of birth control.
Is Accutane Dangerous?
Accutane can cause other severe and even tragic side effects and psychiatric problems, including:
- Crohn's disease
- central nervous system injuries
- skeletal damage
- liver damage
- cardiovascular injuries
- bone and muscle loss
- ulcerative colitis
- pancreatitis
- immune system disorder
- depression
- suicide
Heard enough? Well how long after you've gotten off Accutane are you going to feel confident that you've dodged the bullet and haven't caused irreparable damage to your body. Will the side effects show up in months, years, twenty or thirty years. Who knows?
The easiest and most efficacious way to get rid of acne is to use the right products for your type of acne in the right way, none of which have side effects more than maybe some dry skin every now and then. Even the cases of acne that Accutane works best for, inflamed acne, is the easiest to control with products. I know that most people suffering from acne just want to be done with it and have tried every product under the moon. They may be using some good products, but it is mainly how the products are used that makes the difference in clearing your skin and not. Coaching clients in how to use safe products correctly is what Houston Acne Specialists excels in; and helps people to get better results than Accutane, often in less time.
**If you are at the end of your rope and are desperate enough to consider taking it, please call or email us first to let you know what your alternatives are. We have a safe and effective way of getting rid of acne!
© Face Reality Acne Clinic


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Mont Royal's "demented" bike path closed down
The van is driving on the uphill-direction side of the "demented" bike path.
(photo La Presse)
The uphill-direction bike path has now been removed.
This van is traveling on the now-gone lane of this demented bike path.
The disaster-in-waiting that was the wrong-way bike-lane up the fast and busy downhill-diesction side of Remembrance road on Mont Royal that Velo-Quebec actually called "demented" has been changed into a downhill-direction-only one-way bike lane.
This puts a wrench into the gears of the plan to connect the new cote-de-neiges recreational path with the entrance to the park at Beaver Lake (Lac aux castors). On the other hand, it will probably save a few lives. The planned rebuilding of the Remembrance/Cote-de-Neiges intersection pictured in the last photo from an autoroute style high-speed overpass into a normal street-level intersection will provide the sane solution to cross this road where everyone speeds at a velocity vastly over the posted speed limit (our suggestion: since this road runs through a park, make the speed 30 km'h and start collecting the speeding fines).
For once the city acted fast once everyone realized a big mistake had been made. Now, about those other mistakes, like:
- the top of this same road at Camelien Houde where the wide paved-shoulder has been replaced with a no-shoulder/anti-cyclist cement curb?
- the anti-cyclist changes to Circuit Jacques Villeneuve race track in Parc Drapeau on Ile-Notre-Dame?
- the premature ending of the Cote-Sainte-Catherine bike path at Villeneuve street and not continuing a mere two more blocks to Mont Royal avenue? Like the narrowing and removal of the open half-lane beside parked cars on the newly rebuilt and narrowed St-Laurent boulevard?
- the premature seasonal closing of the Route Verte #1 bike path link from Montreal island to the south shore across Parc Drapeau?
- the removal of the walk signal as integral part of the traffic light cycle along the Cote-Ste-Catherine bike path?
We still have a way to go before "bike-friendly" is considered an important road-safety design criteria at the Montreal Roads department.


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I hate writing (and reading) posts about why there are no posts, so this won't be one of those. I also don't like going to WoW blogs for some escapism, and winding up reading posts about children and the wonders of raising them, so this won't be one of those either. Suffice to say that I don't have a lot of free time. I write about what I'm doing in my life, and I don't feel like redesigning the entire site layout to transform it into a "wonders of scripting in Python and managing print quotas on a wide scale with third party tracking software".
There are three things I gotta get off my chest real quick, though, and 66.6% of that is WoW related, so here goes:
1) Volatile Air. Really? If you don't know, Volatiles are the new "motes" or "Eternals" of whatever element. Volatile Life can be gained in abundance by herbing. Earth and water, while not as common as Life, can be got by mining. All can be farmed from non elite mobs (outside of instances) with an average droprate of 15% for Earth and Fire, 14% for Air, and a 19% droprate for Life (life is intended to be the most abundant, more on that in a sec).
Pretty standard, right? Except that no direct gathering skill that can obtain Air. Oh, but wait, there is. Engineers used to be able to roam around the maps and suck motes of air out of gas clouds since BC. The Zap-Throttle mote extractor no longer works, but there's a replacement that kicks in while an engineer is herbing, skinning, or mining. You have a chance to extract bonus Volatile Air during that process, assuming you have one of three possible tradeskill combinations.
Engineers who took Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, Inscription, Enchanting, Leatherworking or Tailoring are out of luck.
This is the first time a trade skill perk has required a second tradeskill be present to function at all.
Yes, there are tradeskills that play off of each other (Mining and Blacksmithing), or even some that require another alt or guildie to help you out (Enchanters needing rods, Leatherworkers needing Enchanted Leather), and there are some professions that are naturally suited to play off each other (Jewelcrafting's super gems going in a bonus socket provided by Blacksmithing), but never has there been a "if you're a tailor, you can sew these patterns in your cloak, but only if you're also a scribe".
There's an Alchemy transmute on a 24 hour cooldown that will transform 15 Volatile Life into 14-16 other Volatiles, but you can't predict what they'll be until you do it (which is tied to the same cooldown as the much more lucrative Truegold xmute, which incidentally requires 10x Volatile Air).
So this is basically me bitching that I can't use my engineer to feed Airs to my two xmuters, like I can use my Warlock who's "farming specced" (mining / herbing) to feed them Life, Fire, Earth, and prospectable ore and Pyrite bars.
I don't really see this changing, as they'd need to implement gas clouds, and they basically just got lazy and were like "fuck clouds, just give the herbs and mining modes a chance to proc Air motes, zzz". My Engineer isn't mining or herbing, so... gg.
2) Honeycrisp Apples. This is the 33.3% of the post that isn't about WoW, but OMFG run out and eat one of these if you haven't. They're hands down the best fucking apples on the planet, and I'm a man who loves me some apples. I had a friend who lamented to me one day that orange juice would never be the same anymore after she drank a glass on Ecstasy. That orange juice was the most amazing glass of orange juice she ever had, and whenever she drank orange juice now it paled in comparison.
Honeycrisp apples are like that. Granny Smith? Fuji? LOL AS IF. Get me some Honeycrisps or GTFO. They've actually been genetically engineered or something to be as delicious as possible, which might freak some people out, but screw that. I'm a big fan of technology, and if we can make super apples that stay crispy and taste like the flesh of God, then hell yes. Sign me up.
3) I miss my guilds. All of them. I'm in some crap guild now called "Chillin Villians", which in and of itself is embarassing. I have to stand around Orgimmar with that under my name. I joined it because it was going to be doing rated BGs, which sound interesting, and I knew I wanted to be in SOME guild for the perks like mount speed and bonus XP / gold while leveling. I haven't interacted with any of these putzes in my time in the guild, and actually find myself digging through my friends list and finding old arena-mates to prospect my ore or whatever.
I dare not leave, until I have something else lined up because of said perks. Guild membership is something that directly relates to gameplay, which is what they intended. Good! But, for someone who's becoming super casual as a result of just having no time to play (farming specced warlock at 82, main priest at 81, no one else even logged in for choosing talent specs yet), I feel like if I'm NOT in a guild at all (even one that I don't interact with and chose a ridiculous name), I'm shooting myself in the foot.
Trade has become full of people advertising guilds that don't care who you are at all. We're becoming families of strangers, but we get welfare checks from the government of WoW for banding together and toughing it out, all while still totally alone.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Oh Hai
13 comments:
If you preform the alchemy transmutation in Uldum, it'll always be volatile air. This comes from a blue post explaining that where you preform it has an effect on what the result is.
- December 18, 2010 at 11:49 AM
- Rich said...
Interesting.... But it's odd the tooltip says specifically that you won't know what the xmute will produce....
- December 18, 2010 at 11:58 AM
welcome back ixobelle been a long long time
- December 18, 2010 at 2:24 PM
- Klepsacovic said...
In my experience the mote extractor was most useful while I was out farming (mining) anyway. If anything I'm surprised that it works with non-mining gathering. But your point remains: this is totally new. I wonder what the next steps are.
- December 18, 2010 at 4:31 PM
Nice to see you back!
- December 19, 2010 at 5:20 AM
- Rich said...
Klep: yeah, I can see that being the case, where you're out for one thing and pick up another, but I would go out "farming" with just the extractor, and while not as effective as my lock, I could pull in materials of a different kind (motes). I guess it made engineering a weak version of a gathering skill, in addition to it being what it is already, so maybe I was having my cake and eating it too.
Nearlight and david: <3 - December 19, 2010 at 8:31 AM
- Griddlebone said...
Wb Ixo!
I'm not sure about the future consequences; I mean, it could be another experiment or it could be something they just didn't think about and threw on last-minute. Speaking of that, I've noticed the level of polish in this expansion go down considerably; the cutscenes especially feel pretty half-arsed most of the time. - December 19, 2010 at 2:26 PM
- Tesh said...
"Trade has become full of people advertising guilds that don't care who you are at all. We're becoming families of strangers, but we get welfare checks from the government of WoW for banding together and toughing it out, all while still totally alone."
A natural consequence of incentivizing guild membership. As I've argued so many times before, you cannot force socialization, it will always backfire. It has to happen because people want to be together, not because they get shinies if they play nice.
Oh, and good to hear you're alive. Did I tell you the story about my kids lately? I'm sure I have some slides around here somewhere to get you caught up on the last few weeks. - December 19, 2010 at 7:18 PM
- Isey said...
ha - I was just revisiting your site to say 'come back to the interwebs' and here you are.
Coolest guild name ever. How do I sign up? =) - December 20, 2010 at 2:28 PM
- Kiryn said...
My fiance and I haven't played WoW since last summer and don't really intend to come back for Cataclysm any time soon, but I still stay subscribed to a few WoW-related blogs.
Our first reaction to reading this post was to go out and find some honeycrisp apples. OMG you're totally right. These are the best apples I've ever had. Any other apples will forever be disappointing. - December 21, 2010 at 10:01 AM
- River said...
Good to see you back....But I'm sorry Golden Delicious are superior apples.
- December 22, 2010 at 12:46 PM
- Sage said...
Oh, and companies can sue you into the ground for illegally using their seeds. This is equivalent to your plants being converted, because hey, you must of grabbed some seeds from somewhere.
It gets dirtier from there. Either farmers lose their property, they fight an insanely long legal battle, or they become a snitch for GMO companies.
Anyone who fights is harassed (people park by their property and watch them, threats on their life, alienation from their whole area). At it's base, it is, right now, a land grab. Later, it could be worse. - January 11, 2011 at 11:26 AM
I love wow. I always end up playing all night. I take this energy shot called DynaPep, helps me stay up and focused. I even found this coupon code 10MAR11 that I used at http://www.evolutionnutritionproducts.com
- March 22, 2011 at 3:54 AM


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Under All is the Land
Informative and entertaining witticisms pertaining to all Real Estate and it's related realms. The commentary should be thought provoking within an informal environment. Statistics regarding local real estate are frequently provided as a guide to assess long and short term trends. Generally associated with all forms of Real Estate and Property development in America throughout its history.


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Are you from a school?
Do you want to organise exciting and special activities to improve STEM education? Do you want to benefit from STEM Education programme of leading companies in Europe? Do you want to share your innovative ideas and original actions to tackle STEM subjects and careers with your pupils in the classroom and outside of the school?
Are you from a company?
Are you actively engaged in reducing the STEM skills gap? Are you willing to develop your STEM Education strategy? Do you want to give visibility to your leading edge resources on STEM careers and education? Are you interested to collaborate closely with education actors?
We want you for STEM!
During STEM Discovery Week on 22-29 April 2016 we celebrated the opportunities business-education collaboration offers to schools and companies to improve STEM teaching, learning and careers.
During STEM Discovery Week, teachers, industries and students got involved & supported the STEM Alliance, organised their own STEM events, participated in the STEM4You competition and engaged in the European online event.
22 to 29 April was STEM Discovery Week, celebrating STEM Careers and studies!
Read more about the STEM Alliance vision
People participated in STEM Discovery Week by submitting their STEM-related event to be featured on our event map!
Click here to download our guidelines for communicating the campaign!
Organise your event
STEM Discovery Events Map
Browse through STEM Discovery events and see what's happening soon in your country! Fill out the submission form, and your event can also be featured on our map!


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The ScummVM team, in close collaboration with Nayma soft (the legal rights owner) and DotEmu, is happy to announce support for Tony Tough in our development branch. The title is available for purchase from DotEmu.
However, the game was tested only on Windows and Linux, so we would like to announce our usual testing period. Please grab the game from your attic or purchase it from DotEmu, test it with a daily build and submit your bug reports to our bug tracker.
We would also like to take this opportunity to announce the affiliation program with DotEmu: By buying games through this link or by using the banner on the right side of the page, you will be supporting ScummVM.


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SEEMO Condemns Physical Attack on Montenegrin Journalist Olivera Lakic
SEEMO Condemns Physical Attack on Montenegrin Journalist Olivera Lakic
VIENNA, Mar. 8, 2012 (edi) – The Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI), strongly condemns the brutal physical attack on Olivera Lakic, an investigative reporter with the Podgorica-based daily Vijesti. When she opened the door of her apartment building, at 9:30 PM on Mar. 7, 2012, a man approached Lakic and hit her several times in the head. The journalist was hospitalised. Her life is not in danger. The perpetrator escaped.
This was not the first time that Lakic had been threatened. In February 2011, she reported on illegal labelling of tobacco products. Both she and her family received threats. Two men are currently on trial for threatening her.
While SEEMO applauds the fact that the director of the Montenegrin police, Bozidar Vuksanovic, has taken a personal interest in the case, and arrived on the scene of the attack, the organisation recalls that this is not the first attack against Vijesti. Most previous cases remain unsolved.
As SEEMO wrote in July and August 2011, four clearly marked cars belonging to Vijesti were set ablaze, in three separate attacks. The perpetrators have not been found.
On Sep. 24, 2010, Zeljko Ivanovic, one of Vijesti's founders, and several other journalists, received death threats by mail.
On Aug. 5, 2009, Mihailo Jovovic, editor of Vijesti, and Boris Pejovic, a photojournalist, were physically attacked by the mayor of Podgorica and his son while documenting their alleged illegal parking in town. The mayor's son used his gun to threaten the journalist. Jovovic was treated in hospital for a head injury.
On Sep. 1, 2007, Zeljko Ivanovic was physically attacked by several assailants near a restaurant, where the newspaper was celebrating its 10th anniversary. Ivanovic was injured and received medical treatment. Although the perpetrators of this attack were found, the masterminds remain at large.
Despite the prompt condemnations of the previous attacks, Montenegrin authorities have not been effective in creating an environment in which journalists can work free from pressure.
"Considering the frequency of attacks against Vijesti journalists and property, I am led to believe that this daily is a direct target," said SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic. "I call on the authorities to find the person who beat Olivera Lakic as well as all those responsible for the previous attacks. Montenegro aspires to join the European Union. In a democracy, journalists should not be beaten or threatened, and any perpetrators should be found and prosecuted.


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This job posting is no longer active.
Location: Aurora, CO, United States
Category: Nursing Professional
Job Type: Full Time
Job ID: 173178
Date Posted: May 1, 2024
Location: UCHealth Anschutz Inpatient Pavilion, US:CO:Aurora
Department: 36-bed surgical unit, specializing in the highly acute care of Solid Organ Transplant, Thoracic Surgery, and Hepatology
FTE: Full Time, 0.9, 72.00 hours per pay period (2 weeks)
Shift: Nights or Rotating D/N
Pay: $55.00 per hour plus travel package/stipend
13 week assignments available – extension options
Minimum Requirements:
At UCHealth, We Improve Lives
Job Duties:
We improve lives. In big ways through learning, healing, and discovery. In small, personal ways through human connection. But in all ways, we improve lives.
UCHealth invests in its Workforce.
UCHealth offers their employees a competitive and comprehensive total rewards package:
UCHealth always welcomes talent. This position will be open for a minimum of three days and until a top applicant is identified.
UCHealth recognizes and appreciates the rich array of talents and perspectives that equal employment and diversity can offer our institution. As an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer, UCHealth is committed to making all employment decisions based on valid requirements. No applicant shall be discriminated against in any terms, conditions or privileges of employment or otherwise be discriminated against because of the individual's race, creed, color, religion, gender, national origin or ancestry, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, genetic information or veteran status. UCHealth does not discriminate against any "qualified applicant with a disability" as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act and will make reasonable accommodations, when they do not impose an undue hardship on the organization.


text: P. D. EASTMAN wrote and/or illustrated many beloved children's books, including Are You My Mother?, Go, Dog. Go!, and The Best Nest. After training at the National Academy of Design, P.D. worked at Walt Disney Productions and Warner Bros. Cartoons. He enlisted in the army in 1943 and served in the Signal Corps film unit, which was headed by Theodor Geisel (who would become known to the world as Dr. Seuss). Geisel later approached him to write for his new Beginner Books series at Random House, resulting in the publication of P.D.' s first book, Sam and the Firefly.


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Updated October 9, 2022 at 1:14 PM ET
BERLIN — German authorities say a malicious and targeted act of sabotage caused a three-hour halt to all rail traffic in northern Germany on Saturday morning.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said cables vital for the country's rail network were intentionally cut in two places, causing a sudden halt to all rail traffic, both passenger and cargo, in the northern part of the country.
Transport Minister Volker Wissing said the affected cables are "essential for handling railway traffic safely." He said Germany's federal police were investigating the incident.
Federal police said the crime scenes were in a Berlin suburb and in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, German news agency dpa reported.
"We can't say anything today either about the background to this act or the perpetrators," Wissing said. "The investigation will have to yield that."
While the motive for the incident was unclear, it came a day before a state election in the German state of Lower Saxony where German chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party is on track to retain power and the Green party is seen as doubling its share of the vote.
The disruption caused alarm in the wake of last month's acts of sabotage that ruptured the two main natural gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany underneath the Baltic Sea, an incident that spurred NATO and the European Union to stress the need to better protect critical infrastructure.
Material from The Associated Press was included in this report.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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DMT 6" Dia-Sharp Kit
- 4 grits on 2 combination stones(Extra Coarse/Coarse and Fine/Extra Fine)
- Free wood case
- Stones measure 6" x 2"
- SAVE Over $50 Off List Price!
This Special 6" DMT Diamond Kit in Wooden Box is the Least Expensive Way to Purchase all 4 Grits.
This DMT 6" x 2" Dia-Sharp Diamond Kit is a tremendous value. It includes 4 grits (Extra Fine/Fine and Coarse/Extra Coarse) on two double-sided stones and a free hardwood base. We've never offered all 4 DMT Diamond Stone grits at such a low price before. Each grit has a purpose so we felt it was important to offer them all at a reasonable price.
This kit eliminates one of the most common sharpening mistakes (only getting 1 or 2 finer grits). The "wisdom" of this mistake goes something like this, "you can save a few bucks by only getting a fine stone because you can just spend more time on the fine stone." In theory it is somewhat true but in real world situation it is a bad practice for two reasons. First, an extra coarse stone sharpens much faster (more than 10 times as fast) as a fine stone so you can maintain your angle easier over a shorter number of strokes with the extra coarse. Second, asking a fine stone to do the work of a coarser stone will put unnecessary wear on your fine stone (defeating the long term savings of omitting the coarser stone purchase). The pricing of this kit will encourage even the most ardent penny-pinchers to reconsider their position.
The Dia-Sharp stone feature DMT's continuous diamond surface. This means the entire stone is covered in diamond. This surface allows you to sharpen pointed tools without any chance of catching it the recesses of an interrupted diamond surface.
Unlike larger 8" stones, the 6" stones are intended to be more for the space and value conscious. If you have a set of pocket knives, the 6" size is plenty large. If you have larger knives or tools, we recommend the larger 8" stones.
The wood case is a great additional feature of this kit. The case serves two purposes. The first is to keep your stones safely organized when not it use. A spacer is included to keep the stone nested without rubbing together. The second is to act as a base for sharpening. The bottom of the case features four rubber grips so your stones will be well secured while sharpening. The base also lifts the stone up off your table for extra knuckle clearance when sharpening knives.
This kit contains quality DMT Diamond Stones. These stones are made is the USA. Don't let the price fool you, these are high quality stones.
All stones made in the USA.
Q. What are the options for individual 6" Dia-Sharp stones?
A. The 6" Dia-Sharp stones are available individually in both double sided and single sided varieties.
For other frequently asked questions see our DMT and Diamond Stone FAQs.


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Why Buy Hanes?
This beloved American brand has been dressing men in underwear, t-shirts and socks for generations. Men rely on the high-quality fabrics, comfortable construction, durability and value of the brand. Collections span a wide range of sizes and styles, so men of all shapes, sizes and taste can find exactly the right pieces. And convenient multi-packs make it easy to stock up.
Hanes underwear for men is an American original. Everyone knows the name and probably every guy has Hanes men's underwear, be it socks, t-shirts or just plain briefs. The Hanes brand is popular for very simple reasons: it's a great value, the underwear is comfortable, the fabrics are quality and the styles are classic.
Unique to the Hanes men's underwear is their Hanes ComfortSoft waistband. This waistband doesn't bite or dig in. Rather it's extremely comfortable to wear because the elastic is wrapped in a very soft cotton. The result is a waistband you don't even think about all day. This ComfortSoft waistband can be found on Hanes boxers, boxer briefs and briefs.
Continuing with the ComfortSoft name, Hanes now offers ComfortSoft undershirts too. Their breathable and soft all cotton t-shirt line include the basic Hanes t silhouettes. Hanes crewneck t-shirts may be the most popular, but you can also find Hanes v-necks, tanks and a-shirts. These Hanes t-shirts also come in fashion colors and the best-selling Beefy-T cut special for your big guy.
Hanes underwear is the king when it comes to solving a simple problem in a big way. Just look at their tagless program. For years,we have all suffered the annoyance and irritation of a tag at our neck - it either stuck out or scratched us along our collar line. Than, Hanes came out with their tagless tops and bottoms. Changing those tags to printed or embossed information on the inside of the garment became an "aha" moment for many. So today, most people think of tagless when they think of Hanes Men's underwear. It was a simply brilliant marketing strategy.
A key to shopping for Hanes underwear is understanding the Hanes collections for men. First there is the Hanes classic underwear which is just that--classic. Comfortable, cool and made in all cotton, this underwear is now tagless and sporting the ComfortSoft qualities as well. Hanes Men's Classics underwear is always the most comfortable and of premium quality. Next you have the Hanes Tagless collection consisting of tops and bottoms without any tags anywhere. As Hanes likes to tout, they ditched the itch. And finally, as was mentioned above, there is the Comfort Flex collection of underwear. This group is mostly bottoms such as Hanes briefs, boxers and boxer briefs, but all have a comfort waistband that moves with you and won't pinch or bind. Hanes' mens contour pouch underwear and sports performance underwear are popular choices for men everywhere.
The marketing strategy of multi-packs by Hanes also needs to be stressed. They understand that men and the women who shop for them like to buy in bulk. Why sit in a store and count out how many you want? Instead grab a 3 pack, or 4 pack. In fact, Hanes has make it even more simple where you can buy a week's worth of underwear in their 7 pair packs. At HisRoom we get the pack mentality too. We go out of our way to offer many men's multi-pack underwear solutions.
Hanes® is a proud member of the Sara Lee Corporation family of brands and is the largest brand of apparel in the world. Hanes is also the underwear category leader with more than half of America owning at least one piece of Hanes underwear. It has become number one by focusing on comfort, fit, and durability.