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All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men sat down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices-voices of men, women, and children-resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.


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What's in a name? A great deal, if you suffer from one of the most awful long-term diseases that is widespread: chronic fatigue syndrome.
That name infuriates the patients, maybe 1 million in the United States and 17 million worldwide. It also infuriates the small but dedicated cadre of doctors and researchers who have made the disease and its casualties their concern.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta picked the CFS moniker in 1988, although the term myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) is still in use in Europe and elsewhere, and is favored by patients.
The new name fast became despised because "it trivializes the disease and misleads people," in the words of Leonard Jason, professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago. Certainly it brings to mind chronic whiners and everyone's everyday fatigue.
Part of the misleading, as Jason and numerous other medical professionals have claimed, is that the name has allowed governments and psychiatrists, especially in Britain, to sweep a plethora of psychological diagnoses into the tent. This, it is alleged, obscures the central unsolved mystery of CFC and its AIDS-like misery. And it hugely diverts government funding away from serious biomedical research. Jason and his colleagues believe that the most promising lines of investigation — pathogens, including a retrovirus called XMRV — are being under-researched in the process.
Although it has been around for centuries, and variously labeled, the modern concern with the disease dates to a major outbreak at London's Royal Free Hospital in 1955. That outbreak was big enough — nearly 300 — to worry public-health officials.
Its appearance in a cluster at the hospital suggested that it was contagious. Then, as now, there was no treatment and no clue as to the path of the contagion: Was it airborne or food-borne? How about contaminated surfaces? Were bodily fluids involved? Was there a genetic link?
None of those questions have been answered. What is known is that the disease appears in clusters and, more often, in isolated cases. It has spread in families, making it frightening; but the spread is occasional, not automatic.
The next major event to get the attention of health professionals was in Nevada at Incline Village, a resort on Lake Tahoe, in 1985. At over 300 cases, it proved too big to ignore, finally attracting attention from the CDC as well as state public-health authorities.
The CDC sent two young epidemiologists to investigate the outbreak—Gary Holmes and Jon Kaplan. They estimated sufferers at perhaps 20,000 throughout the United States, a majority women of whom were women.
In the same year, a second outbreak occurred in Lyndonville, a farming and manufacturing village in the northwest corner of New York state, with 216 cases out of a population of fewer than 900. Lyndonville only had one doctor, David Bell. He has followed the disease's progress tirelessly, becoming somewhat of a Nelson Mandela in the field.
Over the years, the disease kept on popping up around the country, attracting distinguished researchers in its wake. In 1987, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Anthony Komaroff published a report about increasingly significant numbers in his Boston practice — the first evidence of what is now a quarter century of his CFS research. Dr. Nancy Klimas, an immunologist and AIDS expert at the University of Miami, found her clinic flooded with sufferers from the new disease and soon found their immune systems showed strange characteristics.
The numbers were clearly overflowing the CDC's estimate, but no one yet realized the extent.
Then entered Jason and his team of researchers at DePaul University. They studied the disease in society from a psychological point of view and found in 1990 that there were about 1 million sufferers in the United States.
They also found that the disease was caused by an unknown pathogen but was not psychological in nature, and that the cure rate was extremely low. Additionally, they and other researchers found that one of the prevailing symptoms was immune system suppression.
For most patients, CFS is a one-way ticket to hell. The affliction is acute and mostly incurable. Horrifically, it takes away even life's littlest pleasures.
According to many interviews and hundreds of e-mails I have received since first covering the disease, sufferers are hit first with symptoms of what seems to be flu. Sometimes there is a short, deceptive remission — sometimes two or three. Then the pattern emerges of collapse after every exertion, especially exercise. Finally, it is full onset: There are no more normal days, only different degrees of weakness, pain and other symptoms. Doctors term the disease relapsing and remitting. That means you might have weeks, months or years of slightly better days, and then stretches — often years, sometimes decades — of almost total helplessness. It is goodbye to the life you have known; to work, to hobbies, to lovers and spouses, to everything short of hope.
Deborah Waroff, a gifted New York author and securities analyst, is typical in the devastation of her life. Before Waroff was a skier, a sailor, a passionate squash and tennis player. Now the aloneness of the disease weighs her down. Very old friends — some from her days at Harvard, a few from childhood, a handful from work — sustain her with telephone calls, when she can answer the phone, and some come by. Nonetheless, the brutal loneliness is always there.
Waroff was first felled at the end of July 1989. Her engagement calendar grew full of forlorn cancellations for dinners, parties and meetings. One day in 1991, a bad headache arrived that lasted three days; after that, it came again and again.
Gradually, with help from a caring doctor, Waroff began to find medications and methods that would allow her to work a few hours a day. Pushing herself with sheer willpower to complete a chore would exaggerate her symptoms — more mixed-up speech, stumbles and almost falls, dizziness, rising fevers. Afterward, she would be immobilized for days.
Then things got worse.
In September 2003, Waroff woke up to find that she was too weak to fill out a simple form — just to renew library books – and fax it. That was the beginning of month after month of near-death incapacity. "I was as weak as you can imagine. I lay on the couch, its high back and sides making me think how much this was like being in a coffin, inert, my consciousness flattened by illness. I was too weak to read and often too weak to watch television. I would turn my back to the screen and let the sound wash over me, not taking it in."
CFS, like AIDS, suppresses the immune system. Typical symptoms include tremendous fatigue that is unrelieved by sleep, as well as flare-ups of herpes- family diseases (like HHV-6 and Epstein-Barr), swelling of the lymph nodes, muscle ache and other pain, dysphasia (the inability to use the right words) and general cognitive failure, nausea and faintness.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey, once a professional gardener in Maine, was felled by CFS. Unable to leave her bed for more than a year, she filled her days by watching a single snail in a terrarium make its fascinating way though life.
When she was feeling somewhat better, Bailey studied the snail through the wonderful work of the 19th-century naturalists — that special breed of romantics who studied by watching, rather than by dissecting in the lab. The result is the well-reviewed and sweet book, "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating."
The most famous person to have CFS, and to have managed in great adversity to be productive, is Laura Hillenbrand who has over time written two incontrovertible bestsellers, "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" and "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival."
Hillenbrand's achievement is Herculean. She seldom is able to leave her home in Washington, D.C. In a recent interview, she told the story of how she had to leave her own wedding because she was so sick.
Statistically two-thirds more women are afflicted than men. But I have heard from a lot of men, including a medical doctor and a young man, who was thrown out by his father who accused him of malingering, being lazy and not wanting to work. His plight is terrible, as is the plight of other people who do not have the intellectual capital or financial resources to do anything but suffer in isolation. Insurance companies drop coverage routinely, and many doctors misdiagnose or are influenced by psychiatric arguments.
Recovery, like that of DePaul's Leonard Jason, is rare. If it does not occur within the first two years, it is unlikely to occur at all. Usually only the young and well-supported socially are able to regain a good part of the health they once had.
The beacon of hope in this wasteland of human wreckage is a private institute in Reno, Nev. Affiliated with the University of Nevada, it is called The Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI). It was founded and funded by Harvey Whittemore and his wife, Annette. Their 33-year-old daughter, Andrea Whittemore Goad, has been a CFS sufferer since she was 11.
The medical establishment has been cool to WPI; and NIH turned down all six research grant applications it made last year. But 1 million very sick Americans are cheering for this frontal attack on CFS, which they prefer to call M.E./CFS in deference to the older, less trivializing name.
While these things are argued, the life in limbo that so many endure is described by Waroff this way: "You know the trouble with this disease? All this time goes by with nothing in it. You don't get a chance to put anything in it. It's just empty time."
Squabbling Experts, Suffering Patients
As with other investigative science, the search for a cure for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is riddled with controversy, accusations and suspicion. The patient community believes, with seeming unanimity, that the medical institutions have failed them globally – namely America's Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Britain's National Health Service (NHS) They argue that the CDC discredited the disease, following the first big U.S. outbreak by giving it a misleading new name, chronic fatigue syndrome, and then shirking on research.
Among the alleged perfidy, the CDC first under-counted the number of U.S. sufferers at 20,000 and then over-counted them at 4 million. The count is crucial because when it was too low, resources were starved. And once it was set too high, test results became skewed because the CDC was including legions of clinically depressed people and others with psychological ailments, probably none of whom had CFS.
Nowhere is the counting more important than trying to establish whether it is the retrovirus XMRV that is the guilty pathogen in CFS. If the count is wrong and the patient cohort include people who have been misdiagnosed, the studies become a nonsense.
That is partially the case in Britain, where the NHS has been predisposed to treat CFS as a psychological disease and to dismiss studies which find XMRV in patients as contaminated, in particular by mouse DNA, which is present in the air of many laboratories that use mice in tests.
But the privately funded Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) in Reno, Nev. claims that they have never used mice and have guarded carefully against this possibility. Among the numerous test methods they used to thwart contamination, they hunted down antibodies to XMRV in patient blood, which cannot possibly have any connection to contamination. As WPI president Annette Whittemore points out, the real lab work includes finding genuine patients and extracting the elusive markers such as XMRV antibodies, making the work conclusive.
A recent article in the distinguished British medical journal, The Lancet, advocated cognitive therapy for CFS, such as improved diet and regular, paced exercise. The Internet lit up with denunciation. The consensus was that this was therapy for people who suffered from depression, not CFS.
The bottom line: This kind of commonsense therapy may help some, says Dr. David Bell, who has had more hands-on experience with CFS patients than any other medical professional, but it is not a cure or a breakthrough. What little is known is that different therapies work temporarily for different people: Deborah Waroff in New York has had some relief with ozone blood therapy; others, like Andrea Whittemore Goad in Reno, with Ampligen, an experimental drug; and still others with various immune-system boosters.
Those and other issues were debated at a NIH-sponsored conference, entitled "State of the Science," on April 7-8. — Llewellyn King
This article was previously published by RealClearPolitics.

subset: commoncrawl


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The pros and cons of letting furnished holiday accommodation.
When furnished holiday property is let on a commercial basis for short periods, the owner can benefit from certain tax reliefs which wouldn't otherwise be available to residential landlords, providing certain conditions are met.
However, there are also several disadvantages associated with letting property as holiday accommodation whether or not the furnished holiday letting conditions are met.
Myth busters
The property doesn't have to be located in a recognised holiday area to qualify as a furnished holiday letting.
It may be situated in most parts of the UK, asides from the Isle of Man or Channel Islands, or in another country within the European Economic Area (EEA).
The furnished holiday letting business can be conducted through a company, by an individual, or by a partnership, but some tax advantages are only open to individuals and partnerships.
For example, capital gains tax (CGT) is not paid by companies, so the reliefs relating to CGT are not relevant to companies.
HMRC regards furnished holiday lettings as a trade, which qualify for the following tax reliefs that don't apply to other types of lettings:
Increased pension contributions
The profits are treated as earnings for pension contributions, so increased pension contributions may be made for the business owner.
Capital allowances
These can be claimed for the cost of fittings and equipment installed or used within the property, as well as for the cost of equipment used for running the furnished holiday letting business.
Reduced capital gains
Capital gains made on the disposal of the furnished holiday letting properties may be:
- entrepreneurs' relief: charged to CGT at a reduced rate
- rollover relief: deferred so the CGT is paid on a later sale
- holdover relief: transferred so CGT is paid by the next
Joint ownership
Usually, profit for tax purposes is split in the same way as ownership. So if you own 50% of a property you will pay tax on 50% of any profit.
However, due to furnished holiday lettings being treated as a trade, there's more flexibility so that profits can be split in different proportions which can be a useful tax planning tool.
For the advantages to apply, the pattern of lettings must satisfy these conditions for the tax year (accounting year for a company) or for the last 12 months prior to disposal for CGT purposes:
- it must be let furnished and on a commercial basis
- it must be available for short-term letting for at least 210 days
- it must be actually let on short-term lets for at least 105 days.
'Short-term' means not occupied by long-term tenants, classed as those who stay longer than 31 days.
However, the property may be let to one tenant for longer than 31 days and still qualify providing the total lettings that exceed 31 days do not amount to more than 155 days of the tax year.
If the conditions are not met for a tax year, after taking into account the following average and grace period elections, the income is taxed as normal residential property income.
If you let more than one property as a furnished holiday letting, you can average the days of short-term lettings across all your properties to determine whether the third condition (above) is met across your entire business.
This averaging exercise can allow all your properties to qualify as furnished holiday lettings where some properties easily meet the 105 days' let condition and others do not.
The periods of short-term lettings for properties in the UK can't be averaged with periods of short-term letting of properties located abroad in determining this election.
Grace period
The threshold of 105 days of actual letting may not be achieved in some years, in which case you can use the 'grace period' election.
This allows a property to qualify as a furnished holiday letting if it qualified in the previous year.
The property must be available for short-term letting for the full 210 days in the year for this election to apply.
You can make the grace period election for up to two consecutive years.
Overseas properties
Properties let in other EEA countries can qualify if the furnished holiday letting conditions are met.
The EEA countries comprise all 28 member states of the EU plus Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland.
This extension of the furnished holiday letting rules to properties located in other EEA countries is likely to cease when the UK leaves the EU.
Profits and losses arising from overseas properties must be calculated and reported separately from furnished holiday lettings in the UK.
Capital gains tax reliefs
Entrepreneurs' relief
Where all or a substantial part of your business is disposed of, entrepreneurs' relief can apply if the conditions were met in the 12 months prior to disposal.
This relief will allow up to £10 million of gains to be taxed at 10%, rather than 18% or 28%.
HMRC is unlikely to agree to a claim for entrepreneurs' relief on the disposal of a single property out of a business that includes several furnished holiday letting properties.
Rollover relief
Properties used for furnished holiday lettings qualify as business assets for rollover relief.
Where a gain arises on the disposal of a property, that gain can be rolled into the cost of a furnished holiday letting acquired in the four-year period which starts 12 months before the disposal.
In this way, CGT is not payable on the gain until the replacement property is sold.
Similarly, where a gain has arisen on the disposal of assets from a different business, the gain can be rolled into a property acquired for use as a furnished holiday letting.
Holdover relief
When you give valuable assets to a relative, other than your spouse or civil partner, CGT will be payable as if the asset had been sold at market value.
However, the gain arising from business assets, including properties used as furnished holiday lettings, can be passed on to the new owner of the asset.
Any CGT is then deferred until the new owner disposes of the property and is not payable at the time the property is gifted.
Letting of all holiday accommodation is standard-rated for VAT purposes, whether or not it qualifies as a furnished holiday letting.
As such, where the landlord is VAT-registered, 20% VAT must be added to the fees charged.
The landlord must register for VAT when the total value of fees charged for holiday lettings plus the value of other VATable sales made exceeds £85,000 in any 12-month period.
Care should be taken if the furnished holiday letting owner is also self-employed and making taxable supplies.
In this case, turnover from the sole trade and the furnished holiday letting must be taken into account to determine whether the VAT threshold has been breached.
Business rates
Where a property in England is made available for letting on short-term lets for 140 days or more per year, it will be subject to business rates rather than council tax.
For properties in Wales, the property must also be let for 70 days or more a year for business rates to apply.
Different rules apply to properties in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where small business rates relief may be available.
Planning restrictions
The planning regulations vary across the country.
In London, planning permission is needed if the property is let for short-term lets for 90 days or more in a calendar year.
Where the property is held as leasehold, the lease agreement may prohibit short-term sub-letting.
Private use
Where a furnished holiday letting property is used by the landlord's family for no charge, any capital allowances claimed in that tax year must be restricted for private use on a just and reasonable basis.
This restriction should also logically be applied to the annual expenses for the property, such as local property taxes, power and water charges.
If the property is within a company, a benefit in kind could arise which will need to be reported to HMRC under the P11d regime.
We can help with all of your business and personal tax and financial planning needs. For a strategic review of your finances, please contact us.
This guide was written specifically for Smart Accounting clients. Some of the information contained in this guide might not be applicable if you do not have a business managed by Smart Accounting. By necessity, this briefing can only provide a short overview and it is essential to seek professional advice before applying the contents of this article. No responsibility can be taken for any loss arising from action taken or refrained from on the basis of this publication. Details are correct at time of writing.


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For What It's Worth will be two years old on December 15th - but let's celebrate all month shall we??
Fourth Prize:
Fourth place prize is for US Only - and you need a Kindle or e-reader with the ability to read Kindle books for this prize.
*International entries ok for prizes 1 - 3, as long as The Book Depository ships to your country.
Fourth place prize s US only.
*Just fill out the Form below and I'll announce the winner on January 1st!
This giveaway has ended
Winners announced HERE


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KYIV, Ukraine — Here's a widely held view of Russia's war: Russia had a more powerful army and expected a quick victory. It didn't think Western powers would intervene. Yet a poorly planned military campaign led to a fight much tougher than expected.
To be clear, we're not talking about Russia's current war in Ukraine. We're talking about Russia's war in Crimea in the 1850s.
Even if you're not familiar with the Crimean War, you know some of the monumental figures who emerged from it, like Florence Nightingale and Leo Tolstoy.
But this isn't just history. That long-ago conflict is still relevant today. For starters, when Russia fought the Ottoman Empire in 1853, the focal point was Crimea — the very same territory Russian President Vladimir Putin seized in 2014 when he first invaded Ukraine.
During the first Crimean War, The Economist magazine — the same one that's still going strong — wrote a scathing piece in 1854 on Russia and its leader, Czar Nicholas I.
"That vast state is in great measure composed of spoils which she has torn from surrounding nations," The Economist wrote. "Her frontier provinces are filled with injured, discontented hostile populations ... many of whom wait, with patience and desire, the blessed day of emancipation and revenge."
Sounds a lot like Ukraine today.
"There are very distinct parallels. And I think Putin has probably overstretched himself in the same way that Nicholas I did," says Orlando Figes, a British historian and the author of The Crimean War: A History.
"Nicholas, who wanted to counteract the influence of liberal democracy in Europe, came up with the slogan, 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationalism,'" says Figes, who's upcoming book is The Story of Russia. "That might just as well stand for Putin's ideology. This is a war backed by the Orthodox Church. He is an autocrat. He sees himself as a bulwark against liberal principles coming from the West.''
Professor Vladislav Zubok, a Russian historian at the London School of Economics, has a similar take.
"It's a classic case when history does definitely rhyme," says Zubok.
He notes that Russia had a huge army in the 1850s but planned poorly for the Crimean War.
"Very quickly after the outbreak of the war, it turned out that Russia was so weak that it couldn't even properly supply the troops on its own territory," Zubok says.
Much like today, where Russia has suffered recurring logistics failures since invading Ukraine in February.
Nicholas I also thought Western powers would not interfere with his war against the Ottoman Empire, which he called "the sick man of Europe." He was stunned when Britain and France joined the fight against Russia.
"He could not imagine that the leading powers of Europe would turn against him," Zubok says. "He definitely provoked the Crimean War by his arrogance, by his wrong assumptions about Europe and other powers. And he essentially blundered his way into this war."
Britain and France aren't fighting in the current war. But recently, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron were among five European leaders who took trains to Kyiv and stood side-by-side in solidarity with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"Putin did not believe that the Europeans and the United States would together push back against what Russia was doing," says Angela Stent, a Russia expert at Georgetown University. She's met many times with Putin during his more than two decades in power, and is the author of Putin's World.
"He also didn't believe that Europe and the United States would agree on these very tough sanctions. So he was wrong on a number of counts," she adds.
Of course, the Crimean War was also filled with folly. A disastrous British military operation was immortalized by Britain's Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his epic poem, the Charge of the Light Brigade, which includes these enduring lines:
"Forward the Light Brigade
Was there a man dismayed
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."
Tennyson wasn't alone in turning tragedy into art. A young Russian artillery officer, Leo Tolstoy, drew on his experience when he later wrote War and Peace.
And Florence Nightingale became one of the most famous women in the world as she ushered in a new era of military medicine by using more sanitary methods to treat wounded troops.
Decades later, in 1890, she made a recording about her time in Crimea and the place where she set up her field hospital, Balaklava.
"When I am no longer a memory — just a name — I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life," she said. "God bless my dear old comrades of Balaklava and bring them safe to shore."
The war did, however, further damage the reputation of Nicholas I. He died in 1855, while the fighting still raged. His 30-year rule left Russia isolated, impoverished and badly in need of reforms.
Russia lost the Crimean War a year later and was forced to accept humiliating terms.
Russia pledged not to place warships in the Black Sea — where it desperately wanted to project naval power.
Today, Russia is projecting naval power in the Black Sea. In an escalating crisis, some 20 Russian warships are blockading the southern coast of Ukraine, keeping the country from exporting its abundant grain to the world.
"I think this is again a historical continuity," says Georgetown's Stent. "Russia trying to dominate the Black Sea. The goals haven't changed that much."
Russia has long portrayed itself as a leading military power. Putin recently compared himself to Peter the Great, the czar who expanded Russian territory through conquests in the early 1700s.
So its current invasion of Ukraine comes as no surprise to Volodymyr Viatrovych, a prominent Ukrainian historian.
"This is, of course, an imperial war," says Viatrovych, who's also in Ukraine's parliament and is a member of the armed forces who helped defend Kyiv in the early days of this war.
"Russia today acts as an empire. It is intending to expand. They're trying to take land that they perceived to have belonged to them in the past," he says.
While Russia has had many military triumphs, he says its overall record is decidedly mixed.
"If we look throughout the course of history, not only the 20th century, but also the 19th century, Russia lost more than it won," Viatrovych says.
Russia was part of the winning side in World War II. But it was defeated by Japan in a 1904-'05 war, had an abysmal showing in World War I that helped pave the way for the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Union lost a war to rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"Russia, has really built this myth of being a global superpower," says Viatrovych. "But what we've seen since the invasion of Ukraine is that they are not a superpower."
Russia's current leader loves talking about his country's historical conquests. He's much less forthcoming on its defeats.
Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent. Follow him @gregmyre1.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Today he posted about "tyrannical DMs" and about the nature of GM/player sharing an experience in a game.
What really got my goat was this comment.
"I actually think that the day of the tyrannical DM has passed. That style suited some of the old versions of D&D, or perhaps suited the age at which many of us played those versions, but I think people (both players and DMs) have moved past that. I, personally, haven't had any recent experiences with tyrannical DMs. Conversely, I've had three in the past four years who are extremely open to shared control, both of the world and its evolution and of consequences/roleplaying (shared narrative).
So my take is that the situation may still exist for some folks, but it's beyond what I've experienced in the last 5 years (with one exception and he had no returning players after session 1)."
Allow me to rant for a moment.
Why is it that someone who admits that they've not had any experiences with bad DMs, and (from the context of statements) hasn't played in the hobby long, can make such a damn stupid generalized statement about how old school somehow makes a bad DM?
Funny, I want someone to tell Dave Arneson that he's tyrannical. Based on what I've read from interviews and his Q/A posts, I think after he gets done laughing his ass off, he'll gleefully "admit" to it and then go on running his 30-odd year campaign. Old school style. 'Cause, yannow, he's from an age that spawned tyrannical bad DMs.
"Bad DMs" can happen, no matter what the version or style or type of game. They happen because people are either exercising their issues/problems at the gametable, or they just are not good DMs, or they are inexperienced and making all the common mistakes that everyone makes at the table. This stereotype that old school somehow makes it easy to be a bad DM is about as stupid as saying that 3E/4E makes it easy to be a bad powermongering player.
I may not like the feel or play of 3E/4E, but I have no doubt that many of the fine people that I share the blog space with are excellent players in that version who have an honest love of the game. Just as I've personally experienced many, many people who run/play old school and have the same honest love and enjoyment. I also have no doubt that there are plenty of jerks and simply bad DMs who can screw up any game. That "age" has hardly passed - I watch it happen in all walks of life.
If someone is going to blandly and blindly post crap about aspects of the game, why not experience it first and get empirical data?
I don't go around slinging shit on games that I don't know about - hell, I want to play them so I can learn and form opinions. I've never played Amber, Fudge and other diceless games, but I also don't support or refute stereotypes about them. I've experienced 3E/4E and I have my opinions based on my experiences. Does that mean I'll turn down a 3E/4E game with people who I know I'll have fun with, because of a stupid stereotype? No. It might not be my "go-to" game, but at the same time, I'm not going to persist a stereotype about it. And I don't believe anyone else should.
Man, I should not read posts before having a few cups of coffee.


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crispy spiced braised duck
- 1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
- 2 teaspoons fennel seeds
- 2 teaspoons cumin seeds
- ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon chilli powder
- 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
- cracked black pepper
- 6 x 350g duck marylands
- 5cm piece ginger, sliced
- 1 bulb garlic, halved
- 2 sprigs curry leaves
- 2 cups (500ml) chicken stock
- Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F). Place the mustard, fennel and cumin seeds in a small frying pan over high heat. Cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute or until fragrant.
- Place in a mortar and pound with a pestle until lightly crushed. Add the turmeric, chilli, salt and pepper and mix to combine. Place in a large roasting tray, add the duck and toss to coat. Set aside for 30 minutes.
- Add the ginger, garlic, curry leaves and stock, cover with aluminum foil and cook, turning halfway, for 1 hour 45 minutes–2 hours or until tender. Increase temperature to 220°C (425°F), remove the foil and cook skin-side up for a further 15–20 minutes or until the skin is golden brown and crispy. Serves 6.
donna hay team
Hi Sofie, we would suggest that you can serve the duck with rice or naan breads. Enjoy! The dh team
sofie vdd
Looks amazing! What would yo serve this with?


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2007 Riesling, Spätlese, Oberhäuser Brücke, Dönnhoff, Nahe, Germany
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An assertive nose of limes and spring flowers from this, one of the oldest and most established of Helmut's vineyards. Long and seductive, this is as bright and refreshing as it is satisfying.
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About this WINE
The Nahe River flows north into the Rhine at Bingen – located at the western end of the Rheingau. The best wines from the Nahe have been described as having the Rheingau's elegance, the Rheinhessen's body and the Mosel's acidity.
There are several outstanding producers in the area, with the most celebrated being Helmut Dönnhoff. He produces some of Germany's finest Riesling wines from the world-famous Niederhausen and Schlossböckelheim vineyards. Several of his notable wines also come from the less-well-known Norbeim and Oberhausen vineyards.
His Kabinett and Spätlese wines are exceptionally rich with complex, with intense mineral overtones. They are delicious when young but have the potential to improve for up to 10 years, with the top wines lasting even longer.
Unlike many German regions, the Nahes production is focused on quality rather than quantity: 57% is QmP (equivalent of Appellation Contrôlée), 41% QbA (equivalent to Vin de Pays) and only 2% Tafelwein (Vin de Table). The climate is mild and balanced with lots of sun, moderate rainfall and very little frost; the region is also protected against cold winds by the Soonwald and Hunsrück Mountains. All this enables the grapes to have a long and dry ripening in late summer.
One of the smaller German wine regions, covering 4,300ha, Nahes extraordinary range of soil types is second to none. The entire rock cycle of igneous (volcanic), sedimentary (sandstone, clay, limestone) and metamorphic (slate) rocks can be found here. For this reason, the region is able to produce quite diverse wines from relatively few grape varieties: Riesling wines of great finesse and a light spiciness, fragrant Müller-Thurgau with floral hints and full-bodied and earthy Silvaner. The most important districts are around Schloss Böckelheim in the upper-middle Nahe, and Bad Kreuznach in the Lower Nahe. However the Rhenish slate at Bretzenheim and volcanic soils around Monzingen and Merxheim that yield fresh, steely Rieslings can also be very good.
Riesling's twin peaks are its intense perfume and its piercing crisp acidity which it manages to retain even at high ripeness levels.
In Germany, Riesling constitutes around 20% of total plantings, yet it is responsible for all its greatest wines. It is planted widely on well-drained, south-facing slate-rich slopes, with the greatest wines coming from the best slopes in the best villages. It produces delicate, racy, nervy and stylish wines that cover a wide spectrum of flavours from steely and bone dry with beautifully scented fruits of apples,apricots, and sometimes peaches, through to the exotically sweet flavours of the great sweet wines.
It is also an important variety in Alsace where it produces slightly earthier, weightier and fuller wines than in Germany. The dry Rieslings can be austere and steely with hints of honey while the Vendages Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles are some of the greatest sweet wines in the world.
It is thanks to the New World that Riesling is enjoying a marked renaissance. In Australia the grape has developed a formidable reputation, delivering lime-sherbet fireworks amid the continental climate of Clare Valley an hour's drive north of Adelaide, while Barossa's Eden Valley is cooler still, producing restrained stony lime examples from the elevated granitic landscape; Tasmania is fast becoming their third Riesling mine, combining cool temperatures with high UV levels to deliver stunning prototypes.
New Zealand shares a similar climate, with Riesling and Pinot Gris neck to neck in their bid to be the next big thing after Sauvignon Blanc; perfectly suited is the South Island's Central Otago, with its granitic soils and continental climate, and the pebbly Brightwater area near Nelson. While Australia's Rieslings tend to be full-bodied & dry, the Kiwis are more inclined to be lighter bodied, more ethereal and sometimes off-dry; Alsace plays Mosel if you like.


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Fat Facts
- 7/16/2008
- Categorized in: Nutrition
This is part one of a four-part article.
I had a lot of unanswered questions and confusion about the whole subject of fats, especially with all the new forms of essential fatty acid supplements that have recently come on the market such as CLA, DHA, etc. So, I did what I always do when I'm having trouble understanding something, I did some research. When I found the information I was looking for, my confusion started to clear, and my next thought was, I'll bet a lot of other people are confused about this issue, too. So I decided to write this article to share what I've learned.
I'll explain the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats, the difference between monunsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats and the difference between omega-3, omega-6 and omega-9 fatty acids. I'll also explain transfats, conjugated linolic acid (CLA) and other fats and fatty acids, good for us and bad for us. So, if you've been confused about fats, you've come to the right place. Let's start with triglycerides.
The fats we find in foods are found in the form of triglycerides. You've probably heard of triglycerides because we have them in our blood. So, when you hear someone talk about having a high level of triglycerides on a blood test, that simply means they have a lot of fat in their blood.
Triglycerides are composed of three fatty acids attached to one molecule of glycerine as shown on the right. When we digest fats, the body breaks the bond the fatty acids have with the glycerine. That's the job of the lipase (fat digesting) enzymes from the pancreas. The bile secreted from the liver has the purpose of making these fats water soluble so they can be absorbed and transported through the bloodstream. So, for starters, if your pancreas isn't secreting enough lipase enzymes and/or your liver and gallbladder aren't providing sufficient bile, you're not going to get the benefit of the fats you consume. This includes any fat supplement you take, such as flax seed oil or omega-3.
Understanding Saturation
Now, you've probably all heard that there are three basic kinds of fatty acids—saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. What's interesting is that I got a clearer understanding of this from a cookbook than I did from any of the more "technical" references I looked at. In Alton Brown's book, I'm Just Here for the Food, he compares fatty acids to a line of shoppers, each having two hands which can hold shopping bags. The shoppers are arranged in a long line like you'd find at the checkout counter.
Saturated Fats
In fatty acids, the shoppers are carbon molecules and the shopping bags are hydrogen atoms. So, if all the shoppers in the line have a shopping bag in each hand, the fatty acid would be saturated. There's no more room for any hydrogen atom shopping bags. I don't have the cute illustrations Alton had in his book, but chemically, it would look something like this:
Each of the C's represents a carbon molecule (one of our molecular shoppers). Each carbon molecule shopper is tied to the molecule in front of it and the molecule behind it by a chemical bond (represented by the little lines.) Each carbon molecule shopper has two arms, each of which can hold a molecular shopping bag. This is represented by the H's which are the hydrogen atom shopping bags.
When all the shoppers have a shopping bag in each hand (i.e., all the carbon molecules are holding onto a hydrogen atom) the fat is said to be saturated, because there are no more bonds available for hydrogen atoms.
One completely saturated fatty acid is called steric acid. Steric acid is the primary fatty acid in oils like coconut oil. It is also a primary component of animal fats. A high quantity of steric acid (saturated fatty acids) in any fat will make it solid at room temperature. It also makes the fat more stable in cooking and less likely to go rancid (for reasons we'll explain shortly).
Steric acid makes good fuel for keeping the body warm (which is why Eskimos can get away with eating a lot of saturated fat), but it isn't good for other jobs where the body needs different kinds of fatty acids. See, because they are more solid, saturated fats help to harden cell membranes. This is good up to a point, but if cell membranes get too hard, things have a hard time getting in and out of the cell.
Since the brain is composed primarily of fat, it's good to be a "fat head" because the right kinds of fats make you smart. But, if our diet is too high in saturated fat, then being a "fat head" won't be a good thing because we'll also be "hard headed," meaning it will be hard for ideas to move in and out of our brain. (I'm only partly joking, because I really believe that the wrong kinds of fats will reduce intelligence, while the right kind will increase it.)
Unsaturated Fats
Continuing with our analogy, our line of shoppers don't like having empty hands. So, when two of the shoppers don't have a bag, they hold hands with each other instead. In chemical terms, this means that when two carbon molecules don't have hydrogen atoms attached to them, they form an additional bond with each other. Chemically, this is called a double bond. Any oil where two of the carbon molecule "shoppers" aren't holding their hydrogen molecule "bag" is unsaturated. Chemically, this looks something like this:
As shown in the above diagram, two of our carbon molecule shoppers don't have hydrogen molecule shopping bags. So, they form a bond with each other instead, which is represented by the double line between them. They are holding hands with each other instead of holding a hydrogen molecule shopping bag. This always happens in pairs (you don't find just one shopper missing a bag).
Monounsaturated Fats
In the above diagram, only one pair of carbon molecule shoppers don't have bags, so there is only one double bond. This makes the fatty acid monounsaturated. ("Mono" meaning one and unsaturated meaning there is room for two more hydrogen atoms.) The primary advantage of monounsaturated fats is their stability for cooking, but they are also liquid, so they won't harden tissues as much. Oleic acid (illustrated above) is a monounsaturated fatty acid which is found in high quantities in olive oil and canola oil, which is why these oils are typically recommended for cooking by nutritionists.
Polyunsaturated Fats
Now, if there is more than one pair missing hydrogen atoms, the oil is polyunsaturated. (Poly means many.) Polyunsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. In these fatty acids, there is more than one double bond, so more than one pair of shoppers are holding hands rather than holding a shopping bag. Chemically, this looks something like this:
All the fats we eat are actually a mixture of all three types of fatty acids, in varying proportions. For example, coconut oil is 92% saturated fat (i.e., steric acid), 6% monounsaturated fat and 2% polyunsaturated fat. Olive oil, on the other hand, is considered a monounsaturated fat because it is: 15% saturated, 73% monounsaturated (i.e., oleic acid), and 12% polyunsaturated. Safflower oil is a polyunsaturated fat because it is 10% saturated, 13% monounsaturated and 77% polyunsaturated.
Most nutritionists believe that saturated fats are "bad" and monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are "good." Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. Since all fats contain all three types, the body probably needs some of each. Also, recent research is showing that unrefined coconut oil (even though it is saturated) has many health benefits. So, after doing a little more research I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon and say, "saturated fats are bad for you, period." There are other factors.
Essential Fatty Acids
Here's where I really had a breakthrough in my understanding of fats. All essential fatty acids are polyunsaturated fatty acids. That's why polyunsaturated oils are so important. We need these polyunsaturated essential fatty acids to keep tissues and cell membranes pliable and to perform numerous other functions which saturated and monounsaturated fats can't perform. The reason why polyunsatured fats keep membranes pliable is because they aren't "straight." The unsaturated bonds cause bends in them as shown on the right.
But polyunsaturated fats have a problem. Because their carbon molecules aren't saturated with hydrogen, their shoppers have free arms which are available to grab things they shouldn't. That's what turns oils rancid.
As these free arms grab hold of various chemicals in the environment the oil develops an "off" odor and taste. Polyunsaturated oils, having the most free arms, are the most prone to going rancid. And rancid oils don't just taste and smell bad, like any spoiled food, they aren't good for you either.
Hydrogenated Oils and Transfats
The commercial answer to this problem has been the hydrogenation of oils. Hydrogenation simply means that the oil is bombarded with hydrogen in the presence of heat and some chemical reactors, which cause the molecular shoppers who don't have hydrogen shopping bags to pick up a hydrogen molecule.
The problem is that this process adds hydrogen molecules randomly, rather than in the controlled manner nature does. This results in transfatty acids, which look something like this:
Now, instead of the shopper holding hands on the same side, they have to cross over to the other side. This configuration confuses the body and causes a lot of problems, because it changes the molecular shape of the fatty acid.
Continue reading part two of this series: The Omega Factor


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How Sports Vision Training Can Help You Ski Like a Pro
Research shows that more than 80% of what we learn comes via the visual system. That percentage goes up even more when you are talking about sports, because the eyes direct the movements of the body. Sports vision training can help you ski like a pro.
What is Sport Vision Training?
Sports vision training is a regimen of visual exercises aimed at improving the visual skills necessary to excel at various sports. Through a series of specific and comprehensive tests, a sports vision optometrist can determine the functioning of each of your visual skills.
Sports vision training programs develop skills like hand-eye coordination, visual reaction time, dynamic visual activity, peripheral vision, eye tracking and focusing.
Necessary Visual Skills for Skiing
Excelling at skiing requires several visual skills. When these skills are improved, they can make you a better skier:
- Contrast sensitivity – the ability to distinguish between an object and its background. This is critical for skiing. You must be able to see every shadow in the snow, so you know when to turn and anticipate changes in the snow or mountain conditions.
- Depth perception – the ability to quickly and accurately judge the distance and speed of objects. Good awareness of space is so important when skiing. It allows for higher speed and increased safety.
- Reaction time – how quickly a person perceives an anticipated visual event and how quickly they can react to that stimulus. The faster you see it, the faster you react, the faster you move.
- Peripheral awareness – the ability to see things out of the corner of your eye. Skiers need to be able to see obstacles and other skiers at the edges of their visual field. When we are stressed or our adrenaline is running high, we tend to shut down our peripheral vision. Being awareness of obstacles and other skiers can give you a competitive edge and boost safety.
- Gross visual-motor skills – the ability to coordinate is fundamental for taking every turn exactly as planned. When your vision and motor skills are perfectly aligned you can be in complete control of your movements.
- Focus control – training your eyes to maintain simultaneous focus and quickly shift focus from near to far. As you speed downhill, what was far away a second ago is suddenly right in front of you.
There are many visual skills that apply to sports, and they are all essential. Learning your strengths and weaknesses in each of the visual skills listed above and following the right plan can make you a better and safer skier.
Contact Grand Developmental Vision Institute to book an evaluation of your visual skills and to learn more about sports vision training.
Our practice serves patients from Winnipeg, Selkirk, Portage La Prairie, and Brandon, Manitoba and surrounding communities.


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Chowan River Patriot
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. " - Ronald Reagan
The blog for talking about North Carolina happenings, especially around the Inner Banks... and the Patriot Blog site for humor, guest columnists, education and religion.


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It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
With September closing up and many new Scrypt ASIC manufacturers getting ready to start shipping their mining hardware things are heating up with the currently available miners and in order to keep the users interest we need to see new prices. One of the most significant things about the Innosilicon A2 miners, a thing we have noted in our reviews of their products, is that they are pretty expensive or actually were. We know that the company is using 28 nm technology for their chips and thus achieves higher performance with lower power consumption, but up until recently the price of the hardware did not justify the difference in power usage compared to other alternatives available with higher power usage. The good news is that apparently Innosilicon has finally decided to lower the prices by also making available new miners, making them a more attractive option and finally able to compete with ZeusMiner for example price wise for the same or similar hashrate while still offering lower power usage.
The new A2 MINI Terminator is available for $789 USD and offers 35 MHS Scrypt hashrate with a power consumption of about 350W. Unlike the old A2 Mini miner however the new model does not come with built-in power supply, though there is still a Raspberry Pi controller built-in into the miner, so you need to also buy a PSU for this one. The other new miner is the A2 MEGA Terminator currently available for $2499 USD. This miner offers 110 MHS Scrypt hashrate with less than 1100W power usage as the device comes with built in 1100W power supply and a RPi controller like the A2BOX miner that we have already reviewed. With the new A2 miners the price per 1 MHS comes at about $23 USD for a complete solution ready to be used out of the box (adding a PSU for the Mini miner as well). So if you are currently considering making an investment in Scrypt ASIC hardware that is currently available you might want to take a look at the new Innosilicon A2 miners.


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Jamie Lipeles, DO, became an obstetrician/ gynecologist because he knew it would offer an opportunity to get to know and bond with his patients and their families. "It's a very personal field of medicine," says Dr. Lipeles, who is affiliated with Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center - Torrance.
He has built strong relationships with his patients, continuing to follow them over the years and often attending birthday parties and other significant events for the children he delivered. But one aspect of his profession troubled him: cesarean sections. "I noticed there were negative perceptions and a lot of fear around C-sections," he says. "And as I started to look at the process, I realized there were a lot of aspects that could be modified or eliminated to make the experience much more pleasant for patients."
Following about five years of research and study, Dr. Lipeles designed a Gentle C-section, or "Gentle C" experience that has been adopted at Providence Little Company of Mary Torrance. The approach recognizes that even if a woman gives birth via surgery, she and her family can still experience the more tranquil environment and personalized elements typical of natural childbirth. These include taking an active role in the birthing process and having immediate access to her baby following birth.
Redondo Beach resident Lauren Trenkle appreciated the approach when she gave birth to her daughter Parker at the medical center in June of 2016. She chose the music that played during the procedure—the mix included the Beatles, Coldplay and Ben Harper—and had her husband, ear, nose and throat physician Geoff Trenkle, by her side in the operating room. Lauren could view as much or as little of the procedure as she wanted because the medical center uses see-through drapes instead of the normal opaque ones. "During the surgery Dr. Lipeles talked me through what was happening," says Lauren. "I felt involved and included instead of separated from what was going on."
The Gentle C procedure recognizes the value of letting mothers and their babies bond as quickly as possible. Normally nurses immediately whisk babies delivered via cesarean section away to clean them and place them in a warmer. "I discovered that practice left moms feeling like their babies were being taken away from them right away," says Dr. Lipeles. "It was needlessly robbing them of the immediate contact with their babies."
Thanks to the Gentle C, that didn't happen for Lauren. Instead, Parker was immediately placed on her chest, where nurses gently performed cleaning and warming, and a neonatologist briefly examined the baby. "It's a little more work for the staff, but it pays off so much for the mother and baby," says Dr. Lipeles. Lauren couldn't agree more. "I had waited nine months to meet my child and wanted to see her right away," she says. "It was an amazing feeling to experience the feeling of her skin on my skin. I believe that immediate contact established an emotional bond that will last forever."
Another advantage, Lauren says, was that she was barely aware of the second part of the surgery—being sewn back up—because she was so deeply focused on her baby. She was able to begin breastfeeding in the operating room and receive guidance from any of the LDR (labor, delivery and recovery) nursing staff, all of whom are trained in lactation support.
Dr. Lipeles notes that the term Gentle C-section is used widely but can mean different things at different hospitals. A unique aspect of his approach is the focus on decreasing postoperative pain. This is accomplished through.
- Avoiding cutting through muscles
- Implanting a catheter that can deliver local anesthesia directly to the wound area, and
- Using specialized equipment that makes it easier to deliver the baby through the womb in a way that is gentler to both mother and baby
The internal organs remain in the abdomen and the uterus is not brought outside the body as is done in a traditional cesarean section. Less displacement of mom's internal organs means she experiences less cramping and pain afterwards. "I only used Tylenol and Motrin after my C-section," says Lauren. "I had a prescription for stronger pain medication but didn't need it." Dr. Lipeles estimates that 80% to 85% of his cesarean section patients forgo narcotic medication thanks to the steps he takes to decrease postpartum pain.
Lauren, anxious to return home, had her cesarean section on a Sunday morning and left the hospital Monday evening. "Friends who heard I was having a C-section warned me I'd be bedridden for three weeks, but that didn't happen." "I had a toddler at home," she adds, referring to Parker's older brother, Hudson. "Within the week, I could pick him up. And even before that, I could get in and out of bed, get to the bathroom and get down the stairs. It made a big difference to be able to do these things for myself and be an active person in my family, rather than being isolated upstairs in bed."
Looking back on her experience, Lauren expresses gratitude to Dr. Lipeles and to the nurses and staff of Providence Little Company of Mary Torrance. "They were so good at being attentive without being overbearing. They were friendly and comforting and that really put me at ease." "C-sections are still seen as somehow taboo," says Lauren. "Even though it was a medical necessity, it was still a desirable option because of how it was handled. I got to have the experience that gave me a bond with my child and recover really quickly."
Throughout our system, Providence doctors, nurses and caregivers are helping more women like Lauren overcome their fears of delivering their babies by cesarean section. The Gentle C approach truly puts women in control, and eases the path to recovery.
If you have a story you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you in the comment section below.
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Jon Pardi Might Have a Very Unusual Gift for His Wife This Christmas
Jon Pardi wants to get his wife what for Christmas?
Newly married, the country singer is already dreaming up big plans regarding a holiday gift for his bride, Summer Duncan. And, truth be told, it's exactly what Summer has requested this Christmas: A cow.
But not just any cow. What Pardi's partner wants is a very particular type of livestock called a Highland cow. They're an endearingly furry and usually docile breed of cattle that originated in the Scottish Highlands.
That's how Pardi put it to Taste of Country Nights when he recently stopped by for an interview. Asked if he already had a Christmas present planned for his wife, the singer fessed up about the uncommon gift idea.
"I was supposed to go look at this cow," Pardi tells hosts Evan and Amber. "[Summer] really wants a Highlander cow. I don't know if you know what a Highlander cow is, but they're big, fluffy cows, and they're very tame. Basically, they're really great in a petting zoo, and she really wants one."
But the "Heartache Medication" performer isn't entirely convinced it's the right idea.
"We'll see," Pardi quips of the possible livestock purchase. "It's just one more thing I gotta do. Then I gotta build the damn pen, build a little shed for him, run water, and like … you can't just buy a cow."
He humorously continues, "Then you gotta get him a buddy, that's the other thing. So it's either gonna be a donkey, or a miniature donkey… I would like a goat."
Either way, the cow sure would make an apropos gift from the musician who still works on the farm during the day. In fact, when Pardi's picking up farming supplies, he often hears his own music in the store. "I go to Tractor Supply quite often, and my song will be playing, and I'll literally be checking out," Pardi explains. "And nobody knows [it's me]."
But in an impressive show of restraint, the country music star doesn't let the employees or fellow shoppers know that it's him singing on the radio. He just "humbly smiles and kinda laughs."
"But I love hearing my songs at Tractor Supply," Pardi adds.


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Addressing global data availability challenges
Panel remarks by Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB,at the Eurofi Financial Forum 2015,Luxembourg, 10 September 2015
It is a great pleasure for me to participate in this panel alongside such distinguished fellow speakers. I will share with you my views on remaining data gaps. The closing of those gaps is essential for the ECB's conduct of monetary policy and the effective implementation of the ECB's micro-prudential, macro-prudential and financial market oversight functions. I will also briefly touch on the important subjects of data sharing and data transparency.
However, let me first point out that there are a number of ongoing international initiatives aimed at improving the information frameworks on which key policy decisions are based. These have largely been driven by the Data Gaps Initiative (DGI) launched in April 2009, which supports several G20 projects, such as bilateral and multilateral surveillance, and initiatives focusing on global systemically important financial institutions. [1]
As a member of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics, the ECB has been deeply involved in the development and implementation of these recommendations and strongly supports the second phase of this initiative (DGI-2).
In this context, I would like to mention three important achievements. First, the ECB has introduced new statistics on securities holdings. These provide very detailed insight into who holds which securities in the euro area. [2] Second, earlier this year, the ECB, together with the BIS and the IMF, published a "Handbook on Securities Statistics". This enables the collection of better securities data by clarifying concepts and providing guidance on the harmonised presentation of securities data. Third, the recent ECB regulation on supervisory financial information, which will gradually extend reporting requirements to entities that have not yet been reporting on the basis of FINREP, is one example of where we have closed a data gap and increased the consistency of data at the same time.
Despite this encouraging progress, serious data gaps, inconsistencies and inefficiencies still exist in several major policy and supervisory fields. Allow me to briefly mention a few key examples.
In the field of credit, significant data gaps still exist. The availability of complete and granular credit register information and corresponding risk parameters is critical in order to assess the concentration of exposure throughout each banking group across relevant dimensions. The absence of this information makes it difficult for supervisors to perform stress tests without collecting additional ad hoc data (as in the case of the European Banking Authority's stress test). Such additional data requests place a large burden on banks, but also on the supervisors tasked with handling and ensuring the quality of these ad hoc data. Furthermore, those ad hoc requests have long lead times and limit supervisors' ability to react quickly to changes in the financial environment. Thus, credit register information improves overall monitoring and the ability to react in a changing environment.
There are also large remaining gaps in the field of derivatives, where the ability to monitor the size of derivatives markets and the interconnections between financial market infrastructure (FMI) participants is key if we are to successfully assess the risks across them, especially considering the global nature of these markets and the fragmentation of the FMI landscape worldwide. Data are widely available, but they are fragmented and reported in a non-harmonised way.
In the area of bank funding, we are still missing a timely and comprehensive overview of a bank's access to different funding sources in the money markets and the conditions under which a bank is able to finance its activity.
We definitely need to gain more insight into the shadow banking sector. This sector is continuing to expand and increase its share of financial intermediation, including as regards lending to the real economy. More comprehensive reporting and reliable data on shadow banking entities and activities will be required in order to extend the macro-prudential framework to cover the shadow banking sector. The forthcoming EU regulation on securities financing transactions will be very helpful in this respect.
From a policy perspective, there is also a need to have sufficiently long time series for macro variables, such as credit growth, but also for micro data (including bank-specific information), in order to be able to identify the build-up of financial imbalances.
In addition to critical data gaps in terms of scope, there are also plenty of data inefficiencies and inconsistencies caused by a lack of harmonisation and standardisation. Where harmonised identifiers do exist, they have not been globally implemented, as in the case of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI). This contributes to the current inability to properly integrate and aggregate existing data in a comprehensive manner and the lack of a consistent overview of inter linkages and concentration risks in the banking sector and other parts of the financial system. To this end, standardisation and harmonisation efforts need to be stepped up, as demonstrated by the ongoing work of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). [3] When developing globally harmonised identifiers, such as Unique Transaction Identifiers (UTIs) and Unique Product Identifiers (UPIs), we should rely, wherever possible, on data standards that already exist (e.g. ISO standards). These efforts are critical to ensure national, regional and global aggregation where needed (for example, in the case of globally systemic banks and data on derivatives). In addition, the compulsory use of these standards for reporting and wide access to a minimum set of standardised identifiers for all stakeholders is key
The issues that I have mentioned clearly show that there are serious data gaps in some areas. Meanwhile, in other areas, data are available, but we have the issue of data sharing and data transparency. A wide variety of authorities are involved in collecting data, and efforts are needed at the level of authorities requesting data. Stronger coordination will, over time, facilitate the integration of data, which are often requested on the basis of a stovepipe approach and governed by separate legal frameworks. As a result, underlying concepts, definitions and standards can all vary from dataset to dataset, making the combining of data very labour-intensive and subject to all kinds of misinterpretation and overlaps. This endeavour requires political commitment from all stakeholders. It also requires that authorities collecting data share relevant information with other authorities.
I fully acknowledge the existing constraints and barriers that may currently hamper data sharing between authorities, such as data confidentiality and the different mandates of market supervisors, regulators and central banks. However, I think that sharing data among policy-makers and supervisory authorities is essential. Understanding interconnectedness in the global financial system and identifying sources of systemic risk were key motivations for establishing the Financial Stability Forum in 1999. [4] Sixteen year after the Tietmeyer Report, and one crisis later, we're still not there. We need to establish a "circle of trust" bringing together certain authorities among which data should be shared more easily. [5] Authorities have a duty to overcome the obstacles that are currently preventing the sharing of data and endeavour to use harmonised data wherever possible.
I am sure the panel will explore these issues in more detail during our discussions.
[1]As early as April 2009, the finance ministers and central bank governors of the G20 called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to identify major financial and economic information gaps that needed to be filled. As a result, a few months later, in September 2009, the IMF and the FSB presented the report that would launch the Data Gaps Initiative. G20 leaders have pledged to close data gaps to support financial stability, with those gaps including: data measuring the build-up of risk in the financial sector (e.g. financial soundness indicators and coverage of risk transfer instruments, including data on the credit default swap markets); data measuring financial network connections (particularly for systemically important global financial institutions) and identifying the activities of non-bank financial institutions. It is important to note that these gaps do not relate solely to banks and insurance companies. Data gaps are also prevalent in the non-regulated sector.
[2]The ESCB's Centralised Securities Database contains reference data on millions of individual securities. These reference data are linked to a granular database on securities holdings, which allow policy-makers to assess "who holds what" when it comes to securities. The main euro area sectors and the 26 largest banking groups holding individual securities are covered. A legislative process aimed at extending the collection to cover all groups under the ECB's direct supervision is under way.
[3]See Financial Stability Board, "Feasibility study on approaches to aggregate OTC derivatives data", September 2014, and the consultative report by the CPMI and the Board of IOSCO on "Harmonisation of key OTC derivatives data elements (other than UTI and UPI) – first batch", September 2015.
[4]"While the national authorities, the IFIs, the international regulatory bodies and the central bank groupings each gather and assess data on segments or the whole of the international financial system, and regularly monitor aspects of financial system stability, none has the breadth of information or the capacity to formulate a complete assessment of evolving risks. In view of the many sources from which systemic risk can arise, better procedures are needed for systematically pooling and efficiently using the information available to these bodies in their assessment of domestic financial vulnerabilities and global conditions." in Tietmeyer, H. "Report on international cooperation and coordination in the area of financial market supervision and surveillance", Bank for International Settlements, 11 February 1999.
[5]The recommendations for the second phase of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative include Recommendation II.20 on the promotion of data sharing by G20 economies, which includes an increase in "the sharing and accessibility of granular data, if needed by revisiting existing confidentiality constraints".
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So as your hostess for the Finish-A-Long, I have the privilege of sharing my finishes from my Q2 FAL List - which is here - first. Unfortunately, there are no finishes on my list, not a single one - oops!
Let's look at my list:
1. Pickle Dish Quilt - this is to be a wedding present for the oldest and the wedding is this weekend. It will be late, but luckily he won't care. I tried my best, but things got in the way. It will be on the Q3 list.
2. Grannie square quilt - not done, but looking great so far.
3. Emerald Irish Chain: There is no good excuse for this one, it is now 4/5 quilted, I just set it aside for a day or two and it is still set aside.
4. Low Volume Quilt with circles on it. I did not do a thing on this one, sigh. I want it for the beach in August, so I best get on with it soon.
5. Octagonal Orb quilt for Siblings Together, with blocks from the Always Bee Learning bee. I have all the blocks now, I am just completing the piecing on the last one to make 12. This quilt is top priority next week, it is going to London with me in July - there is considerable motivation to finish it. The pattern for these blocks is by Elizabeth Hartman and the tutorial is here.
I hope you have done better than me. I think each of these will be on my Q3 list together with a couple of other projects, there is more time to sew in the summer for me. And clearly I need the FAL, now more than ever.
Now it is your turn, link up your finishes. This is from last time:
How do I link up my finishes? Do I need one link for each finish?
- Please link one blog post or flickr picture for each finished item.
- If you like, you can link up older blog posts where you first showed off your finished item, you do not have to write a new post for each finish.
- It is nice to see one end of quarter post letting us all know how you did overall, so feel free to use this post to link one item and then link older posts for the rest of the finishes. Please
- Please ensure that at least one your end of quarter linked posts contains a link to your original Q2 FAL list so that I can check to make sure your finishes are of things on your Q2 list. It is even easier for me if all of the linked posts link to that original Q2 list. If you are linking flickr photos, add a link to the originally linked flickr photo in the photo description. And yes, I do check, Rhonda can be a bit of a taskmaster you know.
I can't wait to see how many beautiful projects you have finished and gotten out of your sewing rooms this quarter. Oh, and you can start getting together your Q3 lists, the link for posting that list will open on July 8 and you will have a week to link up your Q3 list. Don't forget, we have great tutorials coming this week, in between the link ups - it is going to be a fun week.
Tomorrow is Canada Day, a holiday in Canada. Enjoy!


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Witch at Large: Ruminations from a Grey Perspective
Seeing Paganism in terms of being a movement, explorations of our history, societal context, comparisons to other religious movements, and general Pagan culture.
As a product of the counterculture, I tend to mistrust and avoid institutions. I suspect this is a common attitude among "first generation"[1] NeoPagans in the U.S. We found existing institutions, be they religious, educational, or governmental, to be oppressive, unfulfilling, and irrelevant to the conditions of the world in which we found ourselves.
Let's face it: established religions such as Christianity in its many forms, were created and gained ascendency in other times and places. There was no threat of nuclear annihilation, no looming environmental degradation, no water shortage, no organ transplants, no vaccinations against such diseases as smallpox and polio. Those religions addressed the concerns of the peoples in other times and places. Further, few of these religious institutions adapted to changing circumstances. Nowadays some are trying to be more relevant, often by adopting practices, such as involving lay people in their rituals and dancing during worship.
In the years since Paganism has become visible, particularly in academia and interfaith, we have gained credibility in the wider world, and although we remain a religious minority,[2] we have not done much in the way of establishing lasting institutions.
There was a time when I was still too close to that against which I was rebelling and too chafed by the institutions I was escaping that I resisted any talk of Pagan institutions. Sam Webster has convinced me that by creating institutions, we will have a lasting legacy that will survive our individual lives.
The institution to which I've devoted the most time and energy for the last 12 years or so is Cherry Hill Seminary, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I find intellectual discernment to be in short supply, drowned out by the noises of UPG (unverified/unverifiable personal gnosis) woowoo.[3]
Peter Dybing has been a beacon for those wishing to offer support to those in crises around the world: victims of natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, fires, mega-storms and the like. He has called for Pagans to think about disaster relief funding.
Smaller institutions like CoG do maintain disaster relief funds, never very big.
Most Pagans do as I do, and contribute to existing institutions that were created to address certain crises, like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. And to other nonprofits related to environmentalism, the pursuit of peace, seeking cures for specific diseases. I'm comfortable that those institutions are established, organized, funded, and run more efficiently than any smaller Pagan organization could be to achieve their stated goals.
Having said all that, I come to the subject that is the immediate incentive for this post.
I have been meeting with the Wiccan circle at San Quentin State Prison. This service has led to my encountering
Federal law mandates that all inmates in any prison in the country be afforded religious worship and counsel of their choice. This is what allows this circle to meet. The Wiccan circle at San Quentin meets in what is called the minority faith chapel, which is shared with Spanish-language evangelical Christians, practitioners of Ifa,[4] and others. Our "chapel" is a fairly dismal place that we try our best to decorate when we meet.
So here's my problem: financial and other support for the few Wiccan inmates. It's obvious that mainstream religions, particularly some Christian sects, have a much easier time doing their thing. They appear to me to be given priority over minority religions as to meeting space, resources, and time.
Christians have the Gideons distributing Bibles. Depending upon their particular Christian sect, inmates are provided with missals, rosaries, images, and all manner of study and meditative literature. Jewish inmates have Torahs and Muslims the Koran. Abrahamic inmates have access to a plethora of Abrahamic literature. And although we Pagans have no "book," per se, we do have plenty of books and other writings.
Prison libraries, like those in our communities, experience the frequent disappearance of Pagan or Craft-related titles. The Jewish chaplain at San Quentin, who supervises our particular minority faith, and thereby me, has offered to keep books in her office and lend them to individual inmates. This is not ideal, but it's better than nothing.
Individual Pagans have helped me set up this ministry by donating books they've written. For instance, Christopher Penczak sent me two of his books, which I will use to the extent I can[5]
The previous incarnation of this circle were devoted specifically to Isis and Ra. Wishing to provide these men with meaningful materials, I bought the newly published tenth anniversary edition of Isis Magic, by M. Isadora Forest. If this book proves helpful, I will see if I can get a copy donated to the small Pagan library in the Jewish chaplain's office.
I am also considering providing them with two of Ivo Dominguez, Jr.'s books, Spirit Speak and Casting Sacred Space, in addition to exploring other books and sources.
Currently I bring in photocopies of a page or two each time – a meditation, a drawing or chart, an image and/or prayer, a song. This isn't the most efficient way to provide them with literature, one reason being that I myself have limited resources and copying costs can add up.
I'm aware of at least two recent publications created to address the training of Pagan inmates, but I'm unsatisfied with them and do not wish to use them. One is more formal and "high episcopagan" for my taste and the other lacks a cohesive approach. Therefore, I'm seeking sources harmonious with my approach and talents. Bear in mind that inmates cannot have such things as candles and incense in their cells, nor can they have any images of the divine that are unclothed. They are, for instance, allowed to have a deck of Tarot cards, but most Tarot decks show at least a breast or two and therefore don't meet prison restrictions. I understand that Raven Grimassi has designed a deck specifically for inmate use and will check this out further.
* * * * *
Circling back to the notion of Pagan institutions: Now that I've lived considerably more than half my life – I'm glad to be around and am hoping to reach 100 – I'm thinking about legacies. What are we Pagans leaving our children and grandchildren in terms of our religions? We already know that our Mother Earth is changing in a direction that's not conducive to life as we know it. Not meaning to be a doomsayer, just stating the obvious. Climate change, however, is a topic for a different discussion. In the meantime, assuming we adapt – and I really believe that Pagan values, perspectives, and minds have much to offer in the search for solutions – what kind of institutions, if any, are we leaving our descendants?
[1] By "first generation" I mean those boomers and pre-boomers who grasped whatever threads of Pagan practice and thought they could find, wove them into a fabric of their making, and grew to become contemporary American Paganism. Many were disillusioned or unsatisfied by the religions in which they were reared, or came from secular or mixed-religion families. Some of these threads were tied to older traditions, such as Gardnerian Wicca, in Britain; however, in the main, we self-determined out of many sources (mythology and folklore, ethnic and familiar customs, environmentalism, feminism, and the zeitgeist in general.
[2] It's fine with me if we remain a minority religion. We do not seek converts as many of the mainstream religions do. I don't hold growing our numbers as a goal. Paganism is not for everyone, but for those of us like myself to whom it matters, we are entitled to equal treatment and a voice in our communities and governments.
[3] I am in no way putting down UPG; I consider it akin to mysticism/the mystical experience. However, since it is so personal, idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and cannot be recreated, UPG does not allow the kind of rational analysis that other religious phenomena permit.
[4] Strictly speaking, a divinatory system found in Yoruba and other African diaspora religions.
[5] Inmates are not allowed candles, for instance, and many of the exercises in Christopher's books employ candles. I, and we (inmates and myself) have to adapt as much as we can.
Thursday, 05 December 2013
I could donate a couple copies of my books. I went through an evolution around this, too, Aline. And came out with a strong commitment to building Temples and congregationalist associations- to collect and hold and develop cultural capital, even more than material goods. To develop beyond an elementary level we need seminaries, Temples, and communities not based on the enthusiasm of individuals but centred on institutions. Good or bad, the individualist only can do so much.
Saturday, 07 December 2013
Aline: At your request I'm reposting my comment from FB slightly edited) that was in response to another person's request for info about temples, etc., open to the public in the US : Sekhmet Temple in Indian Springs NV,: Goddess Temple of Orange County, Irvine CA; Mother Grove Goddess Temple, Asheville NC; Ashland Goddess Temple, Ashland OR; Goddess Temple of Lakewood OH; Isis Temple at the Isis Oasis, Geyersville CA; Maetreum of Cybele, Palenville NY (which recently succeeded in a court battle). Most of these have attained tax exempt status. I try to keep an updated list on http://goddess.judithlaura.com/links.html where I also include some in other countries. Glastonbury Goddess Temple at goddesstemple.co.uk also has a list of Goddess temples in other countries. In addition to these temples, the Open Hearth Foundation in Washington DC recently opened a Community Center to serve people of many Pagan paths.
· Marissa Bomgardner likes this comment. -
Sunday, 08 December 2013
I think we need more books on the subject of practice in a prison setting. Most ceremony and practice can be done with little or nothing on hand, the important point in the person and intent. Sending in books that imply that yo can't do anything with out a lot of props is going to be frustrating for the prison Pagan. As there are more exprisoner Pagans, they are the very ones that may be the best to advise in writing what can be done with what is allowed within a prison setting. Meanwhile the rest of us can continue the fight to get them at least on par with prisoners of other religions as far as rights and practice. But she is right in suggesting we are at the loin where some organization is necessary to take care of things and raise funding for good projects.
Tuesday, 10 December 2013
Institutions are important and Pagans need to raise their collective "self-esteem" and step out into the world holding their heads high. Volunteering is great and necessary and in time we should also be serving as "staff," whether that be prisons, hospitals, or other venues for "ministry." We cannot do this without our educational institutions and Cherry Hill Seminary is doing it right. Good blog post!
Tuesday, 10 December 2013
I believe that people vote with their wallets. They vote to buy Pagan bling and to go to short-term Pagan communities / festivals more so than to long-term institutional commitment.
For lots of reasons - but in that we are no different than the Christians. http://biblicalstewardship.net/statistical-research-on.../ - the average Protestant adult gives her church $17 a week. The key differences are accumulated capital (many years of giving adds up) and tax advantages and bequests (in Canada no Wiccan or other Pagan body is a charity but also as small New Religions we haven't had many elderly adherents die and leave our few institutions bequests). The difference is temporary - in fifty or a hundred years, if our institutions can be responsible stewards, they will have a solid financial footing.· Marissa Bomgardner likes this comment. -
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