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May Justice Be Served: One Mom's Career In Sex Law, Part 2
One day in the early 1950s, my father's folks loaded their kids into the car and took off down a central Indiana road for a picnic. My dad's mom sat in the front seat, holding three month old Beverly, in her arms. As they turned a corner, an oncoming car smashed into them, killing baby Beverly.
Today would we even consider dismantling the child safety seat laws just because some guy fervently believes they are the work of the devil?
No way.
Yet very soon now, the Supreme Court will decide whether your boss can take birth control out of your health coverage simply because he disapproves of it. The boss in this case, Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, believes that modern birth control destroys life.
He is wrong. Birth control saves lives. His whole, twisted claim makes me yearn to dust off my power suit and start cross- examining.
If only Supreme Court lawsuits worked like fantasy football. I'd summon two ancestors, Lucy and Sarah, from their humble graves atop a grassy knoll on San Juan Island, a few miles from the farms where they lived and toiled.
Both women pumped water by hand, rising at dawn to milk the cows, churn the butter, gather the eggs, tend rows of vegetables, and scrape their knuckles to the bone scrubbing on a washboard so their children could go to school in clean clothes.
Farm chores grew harder the winter Lucy's youngest nearly died of pneumonia. Tenderly cradling him with one arm, she nursed him as she pumped water or stirred a simmering pot with her other arm.
At night, Lucy quizzed her daughter on multiplication as she darned socks or re-purposed the wool fabric of old coats, turning it inside out, stitching together a new, smaller garment. A few island families paid $1 for each dress or coat she sewed. She stashed away every precious bill to buy new school shoes for her four children.
Sarah saved the nickels she earned selling eggs to buy Christmas presents for her kids. She prayed they would have a better life, maybe even go to college.
If only Lucy and Sarah could testify, they would brandish bottles of Lysol and turpentine, and speak of the dozens of sickening ways they used these poisons, in desperation, to prevent more pregnancies. In tears, they would hold up the knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors and coat hangers that women of their era plunged into their wombs, crying, "We were already stretched so thin caring for the children we had. We just couldn't afford any more."
To this day, Lucy's kids remember how their mom lay bedridden, vomiting and writhing from these horrors. Lucy was the lucky one. As her newborn cried and bill collectors came knocking, Sarah took one last, gruesome attempt at avoiding pregnancy. As a result, she died of infection.
Five little girls were left to navigate the dark waters of the Great Depression without their mother's love.
Modern birth control would have saved Sarah's life and helped both mothers, and their children, and millions more like them, enjoy far better health. Shockingly, in the U.S. 500 women/year still die from pregnancy itself, and globally pregnancy is the leading cause of death for women age 15-19.
That is why #4- All of the above, is the correct answer to the quiz: Of the Greatest Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century, which of these made the Top 10 List?
- Seat Belts
- Antibiotics
- Family Planning (birth control)
- All of the above
Kudos to all who participated!
In other words, birth control (i.e. condoms, diaphragms, the Pill and IUDs) ranks right up there with seat belts, child booster seats and antibiotics on the Top Ten List of Greatest Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century.
Now quick, could someone persuade members of the Supreme Court to reflect on this list, and what it stands for-- an entire century of our ancestors' real life experiences--before they decide whether bosses should be able to thwart their female employees' access to birth control?
After all, condoms and diaphragms existed in Mary and Sarah's day. But a few powerful men blocked women's access, declaring it the crime of obscenity for anyone to buy or sell contraception.
Every era has a few powerful men obsessed with controlling women's bodies. The boss in Hobby Lobby is simply re-branding the same old phobia of those who sent Sarah to her grave.


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How Long Should You Wait to Work out After Eating?
work out after eating
How you space out meals during the course of the day might not make a big difference in the calorie department. But it has huge implications on your workout performance. Not only can ineffectively fuelling your body hinder your performance. Eating too much before exercise can interfere with your goals. When it comes to eating before exercise, it's all about timing.
No matter what time of day you choose to exercise, make sure to plan your workout two to three hours after your meal. Going overboard with too much food right before a workout will leave you feeling sluggish and can lead to stomach discomfort. The last thing you want is your workout habits to hinder your digestion process.
If it's been a few hours since your last meal; then most experts agree that you should eat a small snack. Eat one hour before your workout to properly fuel your body. A combination of carbs and a little protein, all under 200 calories, will do the trick. If you're not sure what constitutes a good choice, then check out these healthy pre-workout snacks for inspiration. And if you're going for an early workout session; then remember that exercising on an empty stomach — even when you first wake up — isn't ideal. It might feel tough to eat first thing in the morning. But fuelling your body with proper nutrients is essential for your workout. Consider one of these light breakfast snacks you can enjoy an hour before your morning workout.
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If you're unable to donate to one of the many organizations set up to help the people of Haiti, or if you have sent in your donation but are still feeling helpless and would like to do more, please check out The Extraordinaries site. You can volunteer a few minutes or a few hours by viewing and tagging photos which appear on image support sites. Be forewarned that some are graphic. You can help in one of these ways:
(quoted from Beextra.org)
1) The Image Tagger: —"Sort through news photos coming out of Haiti and categorize (tag) them with keywords like "adult, child, alive, deceased." Never before has there been a system that can bring together thousands of photos from across the web and have them sorted by live human beings (no computer could ever know that there is a teenager in a photo).
2) The Matcher: — We've engineered a system that matches faces of missing people to faces in photos coming from Haiti. The goal is to help desperate families find their loved ones. Volunteers use the matcher to look for a missing person in images that have been tagged with the image tagger.
3) The Search Engine: — As volunteers tag images, they are fed into the Extras' "search engine". This system allows families to search through images taken post-earthquake in Haiti, and specify certain characteristics. For example, if a family is looking for their missing mother, they can use the search engine to find images that volunteers have tagged with "adult" and "female." Their mother might be in one of those photos.
If you think you can offer your assistance for this project, please click over to The Extraordinaries and get started. You may just be instrumental in reuniting someone with their family.
Thanks for listening and now on to the Posts of the Week.
The icon/award to the left here is yours for the taking if your blog post has been named as a Post of the Week - either as top post or as a runner up, today or in past weeks.
Other wonderful posts in no particular order are:
Faces of Haiti and More Faces of Haiti
by Sue
at Photowannabe
Molly Hightower a Shining Light
by Grayquill
at It's just So Homer
Another Frothing Allegation
by Leah
at The Goat's Lunch Pail
Have You Ever Seen a White Deer?
by Rochelle
at Adventures in Nature
by Cabo
at Hey Cabo
by TSannie
at The Tombstone Chronicler
I Found This Title in the Clearance Bin
by TattyTiara
at Tatty Tiara
Success Redefined
by Kelly H-Y
at Cross Your T's
Winter Wonderland
by Russell
at Iowa Grasslands


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UPC Code: 50694877


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BOSTON — It was one of those small shocks that come unexpectedly in the wake of a death. Just days after the country had buried Ted Kennedy, Cardinal Sean O'Malley took to his blog to defend himself from critics attacking him for presiding over the funeral of a pro-choice senator.
The cardinal called for civility and then went on to explain how he'd used the occasion to lobby one of the mourners: the president of the United States. He told Barack Obama that, yes, the Catholic bishops wanted universal health care but "we will not support a plan that will include a provision for abortion or could open the way to abortions in the future."
Is there an etiquette for lobbying at a funeral? Unseemly is too mild a word. This politicking during a national outpouring of loss for the last of the Kennedy brothers, a time when tens of thousands of Americans of every religion lined up to say their farewells, was a warning sign.
The Conference of Catholic Bishops was ready and willing to scuttle their longtime support for universal health care in order to roll back women's access to abortion. They were prepared to make common cause with Republicans whose only interest was to defeat Obama.
Out went the careful construction of a congressional bill that was written to be "abortion-neutral." Out went months of careful negotiation. Under intense pressure led by the bishops, a last-minute maneuver forced many in the House of Representatives to choose between a bill that left reproductive health on the cutting room floor or no bill at all.
So, with the Stupak-Pitts amendment hanging from it like an albatross, a bill was passed that would cover millions of uninsured Americans but also strip millions of American women of reproductive health converge. To the uncompromising went the victory.
Is this how it goes these days?
By Monday, the president who had campaigned saying that "reproductive care is essential care" was back reminding legislators that "this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill." Some senators were insisting that cooler heads would prevail in their chamber. More than 40 pro-choice representatives who had reluctantly voted for the bill signed a letter threatening to oppose any version that came out of conference committee with these same restrictions.
But the balance and the burden shifted. It's now abortion rights supporters being told they must make further concessions or lose health care reform altogether. And, as Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette said, "a lot of the people are angry. They feel like the liberals and progressives always cave in because they want the bigger goal. We have to draw the line somewhere."
Where exactly do you draw a line when the opposition keeps moving it? How do you compromise with those who are uncompromising? These questions are too common in our polarized climate, but the stakes are even higher in this debate.
If pro-choice Democrats turn back reproductive rights, it proves that they can be rolled by intransigent opposition. And once rolled, it's all downhill.
If they vote against the bill and it is defeated, they become the allies of those enemies who want Obama to meet his Waterloo. Without health care reform, the president's momentum slows to a crawl.
We are always told that the perfect is the enemy of the good. After a Senate luncheon billed as a health care pep talk, Bill Clinton said, "It's not important to be perfect here. It's important to act, to move." But is the "imperfect" also the enemy of the "better than nothing"?
Universal health care was the cause of Kennedy's life. Four Democrats are vying for his seat here. The one woman, Attorney General Martha Coakley, said she would vote against any bill that further restricts reproductive rights. Rep. Mike Capuano dismissed her as naive and then flip-flopped into agreement. The other two have said they would reluctantly put reform first.
But it's fair to ask: What would Teddy do? In public, after all, he was best at framing moral issues so that even abortion opponents might feel compelled to put health care at the top of the 'life' list. In private, he was expert at wrestling his colleagues onto common ground.
As Coakley says, "I can't believe that we are now reduced to saying the only way we can get good health care is by taking steps backward on women's rights. It's a false choice."
She's right. Now we'll see if this false choice becomes the final choice.


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Peter Boyer
Peter Schweizer
Despite his populist posturing, the president has failed to pin a single top finance exec on criminal charges since the economic collapse. Are the banks too big to jail—or is Washington's revolving door at to blame? Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer investigate:
• Obama's 2009 White House summit with finance titans, in which the president warned that only he was standing "between you and the pitchforks"
• Why, despite widespread outrage, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows
• Attorney General Eric Holder's lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance's worst offenders
• How Obama's trumpeted "task force" for investigating risky mortgage lenders—announced in this year's State of the Union speech—is badly understaffed and has yet to produce any discernible progress
With the Occupy protesters resuming battle stations, and Mitt Romney in place as the presumptive Republican nominee, President Obama has begun to fashion his campaign as a crusade for the 99 percent--a fight against, as one Obama ad puts it, "a guy who had a Swiss bank account." Casting Romney as a plutocrat will be easy enough. But the president's claim as avenging populist may prove trickier, given his own deeply complicated, even conflicted, relationship with Big Finance.
• Obama's 2009 White House summit with finance titans, in which the president warned that only he was standing "between you and the pitchforks"
• Why, despite widespread outrage, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows
• Attorney General Eric Holder's lucrative ties to a top-tier law firm whose marquee clients include some of finance's worst offenders
• How Obama's trumpeted "task force" for investigating risky mortgage lenders—announced in this year's State of the Union speech—is badly understaffed and has yet to produce any discernible progress
With the Occupy protesters resuming battle stations, and Mitt Romney in place as the presumptive Republican nominee, President Obama has begun to fashion his campaign as a crusade for the 99 percent--a fight against, as one Obama ad puts it, "a guy who had a Swiss bank account." Casting Romney as a plutocrat will be easy enough. But the president's claim as avenging populist may prove trickier, given his own deeply complicated, even conflicted, relationship with Big Finance.
Obama came into office vowing to end business as usual, and, in the gray post-crash dawn of 2009, nowhere did a reckoning with justice seem more due than in the financial sector. The public was shaken, and angry, and Wall Street seemed oblivious to its own culpability, defending extravagant pay bonuses even while accepting a taxpayer bailout. Obama channeled this anger, and employed its rhetoric, blaming the worldwide economic collapse on "the reckless speculation of bankers." Two months into his presidency, Obama summoned the titans of finance to the White House, where he told them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."
The bankers may have found the president's tone unsettling. Candidate Obama had been their guy, accepting vast amounts of Wall Street campaign money for his victories over Hillary Clinton and John McCain (Goldman Sachs executives ponied up $1 million, more than any other private source of funding in 2008). Obama far outraised his Republican rival, John McCain, on Wall Street--around $16 million to $9 million. As it turned out, Obama apparently actually meant what he said at that White House meeting--his administration effectively would stand between Big Finance and anything like a severe accounting. To the dismay of many of Obama's supporters, nearly four years after the disaster, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.
"It's perplexing at best," says Phil Angelides, the Democratic former California treasurer who chaired the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "It's deeply troubling at worst."
Strikingly, federal prosecutions overall have risen sharply under Obama, increasing dramatically in such areas as civil rights and health-care fraud. But according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering organization at Syracuse University, financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows. They're down 39 percent since 2003, when fraud at Enron and WorldCom led to a series of prosecutions, and are just one third of what they were during the Clinton administration. The Justice Department says the numbers would be higher if new categories of crime were counted
"There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI," says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who, as a government regulator in the 1980s, helped clean up the S&L mess. Black, who is a Democrat, notes that the feds dealt with the S&L crisis with harsh justice, bringing more than a thousand prosecutions, and securing a 90 percent conviction rate. The difference between the government's response to the two crises, Black says, is a matter of will, and priorities. "You need heads on the pike," he says. "The first President Bush's orders were to get the most prominent, nastiest frauds, and put their heads on pikes as a demonstration that there's a new sheriff in town."
Putting a Covington partner--he spent nearly a decade at the firm--in charge of Justice may have sent a signal to the financial community, whose marquee names are Covington clients. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions that pay for Covington's legal advice, some of it relating to matters before the Department of Justice. But Holder's was not the only face at Justice familiar to Covington clients. Lanny Breuer, who had co-chaired the white-collar defense unit at Covington with Holder, was chosen to head the criminal division at Obama's Justice. Two other Covington lawyers followed Holder into top positions, and Holder's principal deputy, James Cole, was recruited from Bryan Cave LLP, another white-shoe firm with A-list finance clients.
Justice's defenders point out that prosecuting financial crime is a complicated matter requiring the highly specialized expertise found in the white-collar defense bar. But some suggest there is also the potential for conflicting interest when the department's top officials come from lucrative law practices representing the very financial institutions that Justice is supposed to be investigating. "And that's where they're going back to," says Black. "Everybody knows there is a problem with that." (Two members of Holder's team have already returned to Covington.) A spokesperson for Covington was not available for comment. (Newsweek uses the firm as outside counsel.)
Justice's inaction regarding the big Wall Street firms is not for a lack of suspicious activity. Three different government entities exhaustively examined the practices that contributed to the financial collapse, and each has referred its findings to the department for possible criminal investigation. One such matter involved a 2007 transaction by Goldman Sachs, in which Goldman created an investment, based on mortgage-backed securities, that seemed designed to fail. Goldman allowed a client who was betting against the mortgage market to help shape the investment instrument, which was called Abacus 2007-AC1; then both Goldman and the client bet against the investment without informing other clients (whose investments were wagers on its success) how the securities included in the portfolio were selected. These uninformed clients lost more than $1 billion on the investment. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with securities fraud "for making materially misleading statements and omissions" in marketing the investment. The SEC, which conducts only civil litigation, referred the case to Justice for criminal investigation.
A year later, in April 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin, after a two-year inquiry, issued a fat report detailing several transactions, including Goldman's Abacus deal, that Levin and his staff believed should be investigated by Justice as possible crimes. The subcommittee made a formal referral to the department (as did the federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, chaired by Phil Angelides), and Levin publicly stated his view that criminal inquiry was warranted. Goldman executives, including the firm's chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, started hiring defense lawyers.
Meanwhile, Obama's political operation continued to ask Wall Street for campaign money. A curious pattern developed. A Newsweek examination of campaign finance records shows that, in the weeks before and after last year's scathing Senate report, several Goldman executives and their families made large donations to Obama's Victory Fund and related entities, some of them maxing out at the highest individual donation allowed, $35,800, even though 2011 was an electoral off-year. Some of these executives were giving to Obama for the first time.
Justice insists that political operations such as fundraising are kept strictly distanced from the department, in order to avoid even the appearance of political influence. But the attorney general and his team are not unfamiliar with the process; Holder was himself an Obama bundler--a fundraiser who collected large sums from various donors--in 2008, as were several other lawyers who joined him at Justice.
It would be a leap to infer these Goldman contributions were made--or received--as quid pro quo for dropping a criminal investigation. Still, the situation constitutes what one Justice veteran acknowledged is a "bad set of facts."
Maintaining public faith in the justice system is one of the reasons why people such as Angelides continue to call for a rigorous criminal investigation into Wall Street. "I think it's fundamental that people in this country need to feel that the justice system is for everyone--that there's not one system for those people of enormous wealth and power, and one for everyone else," he says.
In July 2010, three months after the SEC charged Goldman in the Abacus case, the agency reached a settlement with the firm. Goldman agreed to pay $550 million, but admitted no wrongdoing. The agency touted the amount of the fine as the biggest ever--but to Goldman it was a relative pittance. The fine amounted to about 4 percent of the sum that Goldman paid its executives in bonuses ($12.1 billion) in 2007, the year of the Abacus transaction.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Goldman executives were feeling optimistic that the Justice inquiry would not result in criminal charges against the firm, or its executives. Goldman declined to comment on the case, as did the Justice Department. But spokeswoman Alisa Finelli said, "When we find credible evidence of intentional criminal conduct--by Wall Street executives or others--we will not hesitate to charge it. However, we can and will only bring charges when the facts and the law convince us that we can prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Holder, speaking in February at Columbia University, said that while "we found that much of the conduct that led to the financial crisis was unethical and irresponsible ... we have also discovered that some of this behavior--while morally reprehensible--may not necessarily have been criminal."
Midway through his State of the Union speech this year, President Obama announced plans "to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis," and he vowed again to "hold accountable those who broke the law."
That portion of the speech had a familiar ring. In November 2009, Attorney General Holder, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side, announced the creation of another special unit--the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force--that was similarly charged with investigating securities and mortgage fraud that contributed to the financial meltdown. Since its creation, that task force, which critics say was drastically under-resourced, has produced not a single conviction (or even indictment) of a major Wall Street player related to the financial disaster.
Some who heard the president's State of the Union speech thought they discerned a hidden purpose behind his new "special unit"--the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, as it would be called. The day before the president's speech, state attorneys general from around the country met in Chicago with Justice officials to discuss a proposed national settlement with five major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, over questionable foreclosure practices. The administration was pushing the settlement, as were the banks. But a handful of attorneys general were resisting the settlement, believing it gave too much away to the banks--including protection from mortgage-related investigations that were still unfolding. These holdout state officials were supported by a coalition of activists, who argued that the banks would never make meaningful concessions--such as the reduction of principal on underwater mortgages--unless they faced the threat of investigation.
One of those activists, Mike Gecan, of the Industrial Areas Foundation, says he was disheartened when he heard Obama's speech, and the news that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would be co-chairing the new "working group." Schneiderman, who is in the tough-guy mold of his predecessors, Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, had been a leader of the state holdouts; now, Gecan feared, Schneiderman had been co-opted by the Chicago Way. "I'm from Chicago, I've seen this game played my whole life," he says.
Gecan's view seemed vindicated two weeks later, when Obama announced that the settlement had been reached.
Nearly three months later, it is not clear what, if any, progress the "working group" has made. The unit was only promised 55 investigators, attorneys, and support staff--a tiny fraction of the resources afforded to similar groups investigating the S&L and Enron/WorldCom scandals--and it is not clear that even that commitment has materialized. "I think what happened is what usually happens: the administration rope-a-doped," says Gecan. "There's no office, there's no director, there's no staff, there's no space, there's no phone."
Last month, Gecan wrote an op-ed article for the New York Daily News, calling upon Schneiderman to quit the group in protest (Schneiderman's office did not respond to requests for an interview). In the meantime, Gecan said, he will work to bring pressure on Obama. "There's a little presidential campaign that's going to start, and we're going to make this issue central to this campaign," he said.
It may be, as the attorney general points out, that Wall Street was greedy, stupid, and immoral, without actually breaking any laws. But the powers of the Justice Department are immense, and a more aggressive prosecutor surely could have found cases to make. Black, the UMKC professor, says the conduct could well have violated federal fraud statutes--"securities fraud for false disclosures, wire and mail fraud for making false representations about the quality of the loans and derivatives they were selling, bank fraud for false representations to the regulators."
The absence of prosecutions, and the fact that the cops on the beat hail from the place that represents the banks, does not sit right with many who hoped Obama would fulfill his promise to hold Big Finance accountable. The left's frustration fuels the Occupy movement, and chills the Democratic base. And it gives Romney, the career capitalist, an opening he is avidly exploiting.
Through last fall, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates; employees of Bain Capital donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to Romney, who founded the firm. By this spring, however, resolution had come to the GOP contest, and Wall Street could see a friendly alternative to Obama. While most of Romney's contributions so far come mainly from the financial sector, Obama's donations from Wall Street have dropped sharply.
But this turn may yet help Obama, playing into the Romney-as-plutocrat theme. Just the other week, the Republican candidate quietly slipped into a fundraiser at the home of hedge-fund king John Paulson, who made a killing shorting mortgage futures (including about $1 billion on the Abacus deal). The Obama campaign pounced. Obama may yet fully liberate his inner populist--that Obama who in 2010 in an off-Prompter moment uttered a sentence that made blood run cold on Wall Street: "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Peter J. Boyer joined Newsweek/Daily Beast after spending 18 years as a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he wrote on a wide range of subjects, including politics, the military, religion, and sports. Before joining The New Yorker, Boyer was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and a television critic for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition." As a correspondent on the documentary series, Frontline, he won a George Foster Peabody Award, an Emmy, and consecutive Writers Guild Awards for his reporting. Boyer's New Yorker articles have been included in the anthologies The Best American Political Writing, Best American Science Writing, Best American Spiritual Writing and Best American Crime Writing. He is at work on a book about American evangelism.
Peter Schweizer is the William J. Casey Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2008-09 he served as a consultant to the White House Office of Presidential Speechwriting and he is a former consultant to NBC News. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, Foreign Affairs, and elsewhere. His new book is Throw Them All Out.


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SET 1: Axilla > Punch You in the Eye > Roggae, Birds of a Feather, Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley[1] -> Chalk Dust Torture[2] > Lawn Boy, Mike's Song -> Frankie Says > Weekapaug Groove
SET 2: Who Loves the Sun?[3], Sweet Jane, Rock and Roll[3], Cool It Down[3], New Age[3], Head Held High[3], Lonesome Cowboy Bill > I Found a Reason[3], Train Round the Bend[3], Oh! Sweet Nuthin'[3]
SET 3: Wolfman's Brother[4] -> Piper > Ghost
ENCORE: Sleeping Monkey > Tweezer Reprise
Add a Review
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And since we're entirely volunteer – with no office, salaries, or paid staff – administrative costs are less than 2% of revenues! So far, we've distributed over $2 million to support music education for children – hundreds of grants in all 50 states, with more on the way.


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HRT: A 'Complex' Risk-Benefit Profile
By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Reviewed by F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE; Instructor of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse
The breast cancer risk seen with combination hormone therapy in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial persists in the long run, but estrogen alone may protect against it, according to long-term follow-up.
Over 13 years, the combination of estrogen and progestin (Prempro) was associated with a 28% increased risk of invasive breast cancer, comparable with the 24% greater risk seen in the original reporting of the trial, according to JoAnn Manson, MD, DrPH, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues.
Conversely, null results for breast cancer with estrogen alone (Premarin) in women seen during the intervention who'd had a hysterectomy turned into a 21% decreased risk of the disease in long-term follow up, the researchers reported in the Oct. 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Although there were no significant cardiovascular effects in the long run, outcomes seemed to be worse with a longer time since menopause for women on the combination hormone therapy, and younger women did better than older ones on estrogen alone, they reported.
"Menopausal hormone therapy has a complex pattern of risks and benefits," the authors wrote.
"Although hormone therapy remains a reasonable option for the management of moderate-to-severe menopausal symptoms in early menopause, the findings from the WHI don't really support the use of hormone therapy for long-term chronic disease prevention," Manson told MedPage Today.
In 2002, the estrogen-plus-progestin arm of the WHI hormone therapy trial was stopped early, after an average follow-up of almost 6 years, because its risks were found to outweigh its benefits.
Halting of the estrogen-alone arm followed shortly after in 2004 over safety concerns as well.
Together, the two trials enrolled 27,347 postmenopausal women, ages 50 to 79, at 40 centers in the U.S. Those who still had a uterus were randomized to placebo or to estrogen-plus-progestin, while those with a prior hysterectomy were given either placebo or estrogen alone.
To assess whether those risks persist over time, Manson and colleagues followed the women through Sept. 30, 2010, for a mean total of 13 years.
About 80% of patients were followed through that time, but less than 4% of these women still used the therapy after the trials had officially ended.
Combination Therapy Arm
For combination therapy among women who still had their uterus, Manson and colleagues found that the increased risk of invasive breast cancer persisted during the 13 years of follow-up (hazard ratio 1.28, 95% CI 1.11-1.48).
A nonsignificant increase in heart disease also persisted, and while there didn't appear to be any effects by age, there was a trend for a difference by time since the onset of menopause.
Specifically, there was a significantly higher risk of coronary heart disease among women who were more than 20 years past menopause onset, as well as a significant difference by time since menopause onset for myocardial infarction (MI), the researchers reported (P=0.02).
Most of the other risks and benefits seen with combination hormone therapy during the intervention phase appeared to attenuate during the long-term follow-up, they found.
The initially observed 98% increased risk of pulmonary embolism fell to a borderline significant 26% (95% CI 1.00-1.59) increased risk, and a significant stroke risk persisted, but fell from a 37% increased risk to a 16% increased risk, they reported.
A reduced risk of hip fracture continued over 13 years (HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.68-0.97), and Manson and colleagues also saw a lower risk of endometrial cancer that didn't appear in the earlier part of the trial (HR 0.67, 95% CI 0.49-0.91).
Estrogen-Alone Arm
Women with a hysterectomy who were treated only with estrogen didn't have any significant effects on coronary heart disease or invasive breast cancer in the intervention phase, but during the 13-year follow-up, the drug seemed to significantly protect against breast cancer (HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.65-0.97).
Given that this vastly differs from the increased risk of breast cancer with combination therapy, the researchers said this "points to a determinant influence of progestin on the breast epithelium."
For coronary heart disease in this group, there was a nonsignificant trend for lower risk among younger women, and benefits for younger women in terms of MI became more pronounced over time, they reported (P=0.007).
Also, the 35% increased risk of stroke fell to 15% during the 13 years of follow-up, Manson and colleagues wrote.
There were no effects at all, for either group, in terms of all-cause mortality, they added.
Manson and colleagues concluded that although hormone therapy "is a reasonable option for the management of moderate-to-severe menopausal symptoms among generally healthy women during early menopause, the risks associated with hormone therapy ... preclude a recommendation in support of its use for disease prevention even among younger women."
Manson also told MedPage Today that the findings may assist clinicians in "improving individualization of the decision-making process" for women who are candidates for hormone therapy, adding that more information is needed on different formulations on hormone therapy and lower doses, as well as different routes of delivery such as the transdermal route.
"There is some evidence from observational studies that lower doses and transdermal estrogen may have a lower risk than the oral route at higher doses," Manson said, "but we don't have large randomized controlled trials with head-to-head comparisons, so much of this evidence remains inconclusive."
In an accompanying editorial, Elizabeth Nabel, MD, also of Brigham and Women's Hospital, agreed that hormone therapy has a "complex profile of risks and benefits."
"Even though short-term use of hormone therapy may be useful for menopausal symptom relief," Nabel wrote, "long-term use of hormone therapy for chronic disease prevention is not warranted."
A former director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Nabel noted the importance of the role of publicly-funded research in helping to better understand complex issues that change practice.
For original article click here.
The WHI was funded by the NHLBI. Wyeth-Ayerst donated the study drugs.
The researchers reported relationships with Novartis, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Educational Concepts Group, Merck, and the Ologen Collagen Matrix Study.
The editorialist reported no conflicts of interest.
Primary source: Journal of the American Medical Association
Source reference: Manson JE, et al "Menopausal hormone therapy and health outcomes during the intervention and extended poststopping phases of the Women's Health Initiative randomized trials" JAMA 2013; 310(13): 1353-1368.
Additional source: Journal of the American Medical Association
Source reference:Nabel EG "The women's health initiative – A victory for women and their health" JAMA 2013; 310(13): 1349-1350.


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met rx Most Amazing (and Ridiculously Simple) Trick For Stiff-Legged Deadlifts You Will Ever Read In Your Life! by: Nick Nilsson The stiff-legged deadlift is one of the best exercises you can do for your hamstrings. The only problem is, it can also be one the hardest exercises to perform properly. For years, I tried to feel my hamstrings working when I did the stiff-legged deadlift. I knew it was the best exercise to work the hip extension function of the hamstrings but I never succeeded in feeling my hams work until I came up with this simple technique. Let me tell you, the very rep of the very first set I used this technique on, I could feel my hamstrings like never before! It was like a revelation. It was also extraordinarily simple. I guarantee if you've never had success with stiff-legged deadlifts, you will definitely have it after applying this technique. The trick? Elevate your toes on weight plates while you do the exercise. That's it! It's very simple but very elegant in the way it addresses the kinesiology and anatomy of the hamstrings. I will explain exactly how to set it up and the mechanisms of why it works so incredibly well. How To Do It: Set two 25-pound weight plates on the ground butted up against each other (one for each foot). They should be right beneath the barbell you will be using for the exercise and placed side-by-side so you can set your feet on both of them. Stand in front of the barbell with your feet half on the plates and half off. The front parts of your feet will be on the plates and your heels will be on the ground. Use the weight plates to brace your feet up so that your toes are up in the air and your feet are flexed up (known as dorsiflexion). At the end of this article you will find a link to a picture of how to set up this exercise. Bend over and grasp the bar at about shoulder width with an overhand grip. Keep your knees locked but slightly bent while doing this exercise and keep a tight arch in your lower back. Look directly forward while you are coming up and going back down. This will help you to keep an arch in your lower back. Squeeze the bar off the ground slowly and deliberately, coming up only until your upper body is slightly above parallel. Any higher and you'll start to lose tension in the hamstrings and throw it on your lower back. The real value of this exercise lies in the stretch at the bottom anyways. Come down slowly, being absolutely sure to keep the arch in your lower back. As you near the bottom, stick your butt out and try to raise your toes as high up as possible. This dramatically intensifies the stretch you put on your hamstrings. Hold that stretch for a moment or two then reverse the direction without bouncing. Repeat this for 5 to 7 reps. At the end of the set, place the barbell down gently then get ready to grab onto something for support. If you've done this technique correctly and intensely, your hamstrings will probably feel like jelly and you might find yourself prone to falling down suddenly (this is not a joke - I can't tell you how many things I've had grab onto to catch myself on after doing a hard set of these)! Why Is This Technique So Effective? The reason this toe-raising technique is so effective for the stiff-legged deadlift comes straight from biomechanics and anatomy. The stiff-legged deadlift exercise places the most tension on the hamstrings at the bottom, stretched position. Therefore, in order to maximize tension on the hamstrings, we must maximize the stretch on the hamstrings at that point. In the standard stiff-legged deadlift, this is normally accomplished by simply bending at the hips. But this is not the greatest anatomical stretch that can be put on the hamstring muscles. As you may or may not know, the muscles of the calves are tied in with the hamstrings. Therefore, placing a stretch on the calves also places more stretch on the hamstrings. This is what the weight plates accomplish - they raise your toes, putting a stretch on the calves, which then puts a greater stretch on your hamstrings. By stretching the hamstrings at both the hip joint and the knee joint (from stretching the calves), you literally force your hamstrings to activate strongly during the stiff-legged deadlift movement. The difference is quite amazing! Try it for just one set and I promise you'll never go back to doing it the standard way ever again! For a photograph of how to set this exercise up, visit: http://www.fitstep.com/Misc/Newsletter-archives/issue9-hamstring-tip.htm
http://www.gomeetings.com |
Doctors On-the-Net Medical Presentations MD Meet |


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erect2planet - Man Page
Extract a stereographic 'little planet' from an equirectangular image
erect2planet equirectangular.tif
Generates a suitably sized stereographic .pto project from a 360 degree equirectangular image. Input is in any image format understood by hugin, output is in square TIFF format with a field of view of 253.7398 degrees (this places the horizon halfway between the centre and the edge).
The output filename is derived automatically from the input filename with '-sgraphic.pto' appended. Existing .pto files will not be clobbered but will be updated when input images change size.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
See Also
perl, Panotools::Script
Bruno Postle <bruno AT postle.net>


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Instead of the conservative motto: "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: "Abolition of the wages system!"With that sentence Karl Marx concluded the second part of his address on the topic of wage-labor, prices and profit to the Central Council of the International Workingmen's Association. To the end of his exposition, Marx appended three proposed resolutions, the last of which proclaimed:
Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.In his address, Marx refuted the wages-fund doctrine of classical political economy, four years before John Stuart Mill famously recanted his defense of the doctrine in reply to William Thornton's critique. Three years later, the final nail was hammered into the coffin of classical political economy with the publication of Thomas Brassey's Work and Wages, whose conclusions Alfred Marshall predicted "will be found to exercise a very complicating influence on the theory of Distribution."
Before Mill recanted the wages-fund doctrine, it had been the chief "scientific" weapon for denying the legitimacy of trade unionism and the possibility of raising real wages through collective action. After Mill recanted the doctrine, the chief propaganda weapon against unions, higher wages and shorter hours became the claim that the unionists clung to a version of the discredited wages-fund doctrine. This supposed mistaken belief was eventually given the name of the Theory of the Lump of Labour.
In short, until around 1869, unions were wrong because they didn't subscribe to the wages-fund doctrine. After 1870, unions were wrong because they did subscribe. One things was certain. They were always wrong no matter what they believed.
June 27, 2015 is the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Marx's call for the abolition of the wages system -- a fitting occasion for renewing that call. .
We do not forget that we are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that we are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that we are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. We shall not, therefore, be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. We understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon us, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" we inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword: "Abolition of the wages system!"


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Welcome to BPP
The Benelux Patent Platform is a large-scale project implemented for the Benelux countries (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxemburg) in the field of patents. It constitutes a set of IT applications and infrastructure for supporting the establishment, processing and tracking of each of the key patent elements throughout all the stages of the patent life-cycle.
You can benefit from the BPP today, using its available eRegister online services. MyPage online service has not been launched yet and it will be soon available.


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Plant remains link farming to landscape damage in Peru
A study of food remains from ancient settlement sites along the lower Ica valley in Peru, confirms earlier suggestions that farming undermined the natural vegetation so badly that eventually much of the area had to be abandoned.
A research ream led by the University of Cambridge looked for evidence of wild and domesticated foods from settlement sites spanning roughly 750 BC to 1000 AD. They found that, in less than two thousand years, the valley inhabitants had gone from subsisting on gathered foods, through a period of intense agriculture, and back again to a largely subsistence diet.
This confirms earlier evidence suggesting that, by removing too much of the natural vegetation to make way for crops, the farmers exposed the land to flooding and erosion that eventually made it impossible for them to farm at all.
"The farmers inadvertently crossed an ecological threshold and the changes became irreversible," says Dr. David Beresford-Jones of the University of Cambridge.
Though the area looks barren today, the remains of native huarango trees, and patches of buried soils, show that this wasn't always the case. Previous work by the research team, including landscape surveys and pollen analysis, had revealed what looked like a sequence of increasingly sophisticated agricultural development, landscape clearance and abandonment.
In this new study, published in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, the researchers took samples from the rubbish, or midden, mounds of ancient settlements along the lower Ica valley, dating from between around 750 BC to AD 900.
They used water to wash away the sediment from the samples, in a process called flotation, to leave behind a mixture of plant and animal remains that shed light on the changing diet of the valley's inhabitants.
The samples from the earliest dates had no evidence of domesticated food crops. Instead people lived on snails, together with sea urchins and mussels gathered from the Pacific coast, an eight-hour journey to the west.
By the last century BC, finds of pumpkin seeds, manioc tubers and maize cobs suggest that people were now growing a significant proportion of their food, and a few hundred years later there is evidence for much more intensive agriculture, with a wide range of crops including maize, beans, pumpkins, peanuts and chillis.
But 500 years on, things seem to have turned full circle. The middens are once again full of marine and land-snail remains, together with wild plants but no domesticated crops.
Farming wouldn't have been possible without the natural huarango woodland, which literally held the floodplain together, physically anchoring the soils and protecting the ground from erosion, and maintaining fertility by fixing nitrogen and moisture into the soil.
But as more land was need for crop production, it looks like so much of the woodland was cleared that this balance was upset irretrievably. The cleared ground would have been exposed to El Niño flooding, erosion from which irrigation canals were left high and dry, and then to one of the world's strongest wind regimes.
The pattern seems to be confirmed by indirect evidence for human practices – known as proxy evidence. For example, in the more recent samples the researchers found weeds that like to grow in disturbed ground, which can be a sign of farming even when crops themselves aren't present. Similarly, more recent samples contained more grass remains, indicating that the landscape was becoming more open, rather than wooded.
A good example of such proxy evidence is the Indigofera shrub, parts of which provide an intense blue dye. Indigofera seeds are common finds at Early Nasca sites, dating to between 100 and 400AD. Textiles from this period are easily recognizable by their lavish use of this distinctive color. But the researchers found no evidence for the plant in later periods – a scarcity reflected in the increasingly rare use of the dye itself. Indigofera thrives in the shade along water courses so its decline suggests that the woodland was disappearing. Today it does not grow at all in the lower Ica Valley.
"By itself this evidence of the human ecology gives us snapshots of what was happening at different places and times across the valley settlements," explains Beresford-Jones. "But read together with other evidence it supports our earlier conclusions about the pattern of human-induced landscape change here."
This story is republished courtesy of Planet Earth online, a free, companion website to the award-winning magazine Planet Earth published and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
More information: David G Beresford-Jones, et al. 'Two millennia of changes in human ecology: archaeobotanical and invertebrate records from the lower Ica valley, south coast Peru'. Veget Hist Archaeobot 2010, 20:273-292. doi:10.1007/s00334-011-0292-4
Provided by PlanetEarth Online


text: Part-time jobs are often held by current college students so that they can avoid racking up insurmountable levels of student debt. In our most recent State of College Hiring Report we discovered that over 80% of college students work part-time while in school. These jobs include everything from being a barista at Starbucks or a retail assistant at Gap to working as contract web developer or research assistant in a lab. Our study also showed that students and recent grads with professional work experience of any kind have a much better chance of getting hired full-time in a professional entry-level job after college. When searching for part-time jobs, look for one with a good deal of flexibility so that you can more easily manage your class schedule. Ideal part-time roles offer the opportunity to work on a team, as teamwork and communication experience is often one of the most sought-after skills by employers. Use the part-time job search tools below to start exploring the thousands of opportunities out there for you.


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OXSLING is everything you love about our original cocksling designs but it's made from our brand new PLUS+SILICONE™ composition.
Our PLUS+SILICONE™ combines the strength and stretch of TPR with the warmth and softness of smooth silicone; guarantee your junk has never felt anything like it.
Each opening on OXSLING is reinforced with a thick ring that grips your meat and pushes your nuts down and away from your body.
The super soft material and multi-ring design create the sensation of a hand gently squeezing your shaft and sack.
OXSLING's versatile shape can be worn multiple ways for a different fit and feel. Wear the smaller ring facing downward for a tighter fit on your ballbag or flip it towards your body for more pressure on your cock or shaft.
The eye-catching embossed OX lettering lets you rep your favorite toy brand while showin' off your best assets…
Original design copyright OXBALLS®
PLUS+SILICONE™ TPR/Silicone blend, non-toxic…and phthalate free.
LUBE SAFE: Water-based or silicone.
CARE: Wash after use in warm soapy water, air dry. Store toys separately: we recommend breathable cloth pouches or cotton socks.
Stats (Approximate): Width: 2"/ 5.08 cm
Height: 2.25"/ 5.72 cm
Main hole circumference: 4"/ 10.16 cm
Shaft hole circumference: 3.5"/ 8.89 cm
Ball hole circumference: 4.25"/ 10.80 cm
Weight: 1.2 oz


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Pueblo bonito Rose is the sister reosrt to Pueblo Bonito Los Cabos. they are located right next door to each other. Guests can enjoy the amenities at either resort. Or take a free 20-minute shuttle up to Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach on the Pacific. Enjoy owners privileges at all three resorts. Pueblo Bonito offers an all-inclusive package that you can use at all three resorts! Visit any Pueblo Bonito, and the first thing that will strike you is the location. Each property has been carefully selected overlooking a breathtaking expanse of shoreline, beach and sea. Step inside and you'll discover Mexican, Spanish, Roman and Greek architectural influences, however no two resorts are alike. And no expense has been spared importing art, statuary, antiques, furniture and draperies that enhance the theme of a particular property. Each is unique within its own atmosphere of tranquility that is both exotic and upscale. Select from junior, luxury, and tow bedroom Royal Suites suites, and you will find all richly appointed in colors that invite you to stay. Families or friends traveling together will enjoy an abundance of room with a minimum of two queen beds, and in luxury suites, an additional queen sofa sleeper. The Royal Suite has one king bed, two queen beds and a pull-out sleeper sofa. And with fully equipped kitchens, an interior terrace, and an exterior balcony or patio
We have some floating weeks in a one-bedroom Luxury Suite, and a Junior Suite that is usually available for New Years Eve week or the week after that, depending on the Pueblo Bonito timeshare calendar. The floating week has a Monday or Friday ;check-in, and is available year-round, except for the last three weeks of the year. New Years Eve week has a Monday check-in only. This is a very popular week that books early in the year.
Junior Suite Floorplan $1100 per week - $1250 Christmas or New Year's Weeks
Luxury Suite Floorplan $1500 per week
Also Available is a two bedroom Royal Suite - $1750 per week Week 11, which is March 15-22, 2013 and March 14-21, 2014
To see more pictures of the resort, and to view their normal "rack" rates go to http://www.cabovillas.com/properties.asp?PID=30
Go to the resort's website: http://www.pueblobonito.com/.
Read what other travelers have to say aboutPueblo Bonito Rose at TripAdvisor


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Spirulina is a blue-green algae known for its high protein level and dense nutrient content. It is one of the world's most well-known health supplements and has been consumed for centuries.
Our Organic Spirulina Powder is rich in essential amino acids lysine, methionine, cysteine, threonine, and phenylalanine which are crucial for supporting regular body functions. Furthermore, Spirulina has very high levels of iron, beta-carotene, and B vitamins.
Spirulina is the perfect addition to your favorite smoothies and smoothie bowls.
Ingredients: 100% Spirulina Powder (Arthrospira platensis).
Manufacturer Country: USA
Product Amount: 0.26lb (120g)
Gross Weight: 0.27lb (125g)
Suggested Use: The recommended starting dosage is ½ teaspoon a day, gradually increasing to 3 teaspoons, taken with food or around an hour before mealtimes.
Warning: Keep out of reach of children. Do not use if the safety seal is damaged or missing. Store in a cool, dry place.
The Food and Drug Administration has not evaluated these statements. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.


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All the SIGs will be running for the 2023 season. To learn more, attend the information session on February 7, 2023. To register for a SIG, click on the link below for the program you have chosen. The sign up link is at the bottom of the page. You must be logged in to this site to access the sign up link.
Every spring, the New York Cycle Club offers hundreds of its members the opportunity to participate in our free progressive training programs, the SIG (Special Interest Group) and STS (Spring Training Series). Both programs―run by experienced ride leaders―will jump start your season and explore the wonderful cycling available in New Jersey, Rockland, Westchester and beyond, as well as welcoming you into the community of NYCC.
The SIG
Designed for cyclists of all levels, the SIG is an immersive training series that teaches the skills required for safe group riding via 8-12 consecutive weekend training rides that increase in speed and distance. First formed in 1986 with 40 riders, the SIG has become the signature program of New York Cycle Club with thousands of cyclists having participated over the years.
The SIG is offered at A, B and C levels. Many NYCC members have participated in sequential SIG programs (i.e. riding in the C-SIG then the B-SIG the following year; the A-SIG then A-Classic) in order to build upon their skills. While NYCC members pay no fee to participate in the SIG program, we ask all SIG graduates to "pay it forward" by leading at least one NYCC club ride later in the year or by volunteering for a club activity.
Which SIG level is best for you? This chart provides an overview of how the A-Classic, A, B and C SIG programs compare to one another.
For detailed information about each SIG program and instructions on how to register for one, click the buttons below.
Please note: you may register for only one SIG or STS program. Select the level that most closely matches your cycling experience, fitness level and availability based on the information provided (in the first few weeks, SIG captains may move participants to another SIG level they judge more suitable). You may not repeat a SIG program from which you have graduated; admission for returning participants who did not complete a program in a prior year is at the discretion of that program's captain(s). Participants are expected to attend all rides.
The STS
The STS is for experienced cyclists who have graduated a SIG program or possess equivalent group riding skills and want to improve their strength and endurance through a graduated training program. STS rides offer no instruction; they are simply a series of organized group rides with the friendly support of like-minded cyclists. This year the STS programs will be offered at each of the A, B & C levels, with an additonal "R" level targeted toward proficient A & B cyclists who are interested in randonneuring. Click the buttons below for more information.
Please note: you may register for only one SIG or STS program. Leaders of any STS series may turn away riders that they find lack the required skills and/or threaten the safety of the group. For those considering joining the A-STS, it is highly recommended that you read NYCC's guidelines on Pacelines .


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A group of families, residents and supporters are taking a proactive approach to bringing a new public elementary school to serve downtown neighborhoods, even helping the city to identify possible sites for the proposed educational institute.
The newly established Downtown Schools for Boston focuses on neighborhoods that currently have no primary schools, including Back Bay, Beacon Hill, central Boston (Downtown Crossing, Downtown North, Government Center and the Financial District), Fenway/Kenmore and the West End. Its mission includes adding public elementary schools in downtown neighborhoods, as well as capacity to existing schools; enabling more children to attend Boston public schools and helping more families stay in downtown Boston; and supporting efforts to improve the quality of downtown public schools, according to the group's Web site.
"Over the past 10 years the number of children ages 4 and under living in the downtown neighborhoods has grown by over 20 percent, and more and more families would like to stay in the city and send their children to a Boston Public School close to their homes," said Ania Camargo, one of the leaders of Downtown Schools for Boston. "Our effort emphasizes all the downtown neighborhoods coming together for a common goal, and we want to do everything in conjunction with Boston Public Schools and the city."
Earlier this month, Downtown Schools for Boston requested that the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) include an alternative for a public elementary school in the scope of its review for 40 Trinity Place, a 33-story hotel and residential complex slated for the Copley Square area. This was among 30 possible locations for a school that the group's site committee has already identified, Camargo said.
State Rep. Marty Walz, who is working closely with Camargo and other Downtown Schools for Boston leaders, said, "I have for many years advocated that BPS should open a school in the downtown neighborhoods to serve the families that live here. We also now have renewed momentum and signs that the mayor and superintendent of school may be supportive of our goal."
City Councilor Mike Ross also voiced his strong support for Downtown Schools for Boston, adding that the group's efforts could soon make the longtime dream of opening a new public elementary school to serve downtown neighborhoods a reality.
"Ania has shown tremendous leadership in this broad-based collaborative effort to coordinate people in support of downtown schools," Ross said. "This has already gained momentum, as well as the attention of the School Department and the Mayor's Office… and should hopefully result in a downtown school as soon as possible."To learn more about Downtown Schools for Boston, visit www. downtownschools.org.


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Help finding the best transitional living programs for troubled young adults from New Mexico
We provide parents with professional help and assistance in finding the perfect transitional living program for troubled young adults in New Mexico. Young adults who are struggling to transition from adolescents to adulthood are looking to transitional living programs for help. These programs are becoming more and more popular because they work. All too often kids are dropping out of college, losing their job, and failing to live on their own. They are returning home to live in their parents basement. They have no ambition, they sleep all day, struggle to find and keep work, playing video games or staying out all night partying. They are going no where and their substance abuse issues are scaring the daylights out of the parents. These troubled young adults are stumbling, stifled, paralyzed, shutdown and shut off. However, for parents who still have a college fund there is an answer. Transitional living programs for troubled young adults from New Mexico are providing miracles. If you are a parent of a struggling young man or young woman, call TTS. We can help you get a discount, scholarship, or insurance funding in the best transitional living program.
The problem with some residential treatment centers for troubled young adults from New Mexico is this… they are very clinical, and to a psychiatrist or a therapist everyone has a mental disorder, a deficit, and a mental illness. Essentially, at a residential treatment center everyone is mentally ill but the truth is somewhere in the middle. Meaning, not all troubled young adults need clinical therapy. That is why we recommend transitional living programs over residential treatment centers. The truth is that most young people make mistakes, make poor choices, and sometimes we become dysfunctional people due to a series of poor choices and bad lifestyle mistakes. The truth is, most young people from New Mexico who are depressed are totally normal. Most troubled young adults are depressed because they have made many poor choices over a period of time, and they are depressed because they are normal. Anyone who makes poor choices over and over again should be depressed.
Transitional Living Programs are designed for 18 to 24 year olds from New Mexico
Most Transitional Independent Living programs are designed for 18-24 year olds needing a safe, supportive environment as they transition into adulthood. Many offer access to 12-step programs and may have a psychiatric/dual diagnosis component as well. Some of the best transitional living programs for young adults are residential group homes. They offer educational support by connecting students into the local community college, college or university, or online options. Volunteering, employment, community service and reintegration into the general community should be major program components. Many programs operate on a home-based residential model and can transition the young adult to a community-based independent living apartment model after they have demonstrated their ability to remain responsible.


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Just as they do in their communities, Elders play an integral role in providing counselling and support to the students at NVIT. In addition to their role in the classroom, resident and community Elders are available for individual or group counselling sessions. To meet with an Elder, or to invite an Elder to an activity or event, students can either drop by the Elder's office on the main floor of the NVIT campus, or request assistance from one of the Advisors to arrange an appointment. Merritt Campus Elders' Office Phone: 250-378-3350
Vancouver Elders' Office Contact: 604-602-3432


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Dec 29, 2016
On Ron's Amazing Stories this week we take a look back at the year that was 2016. Our OTR story has an estranged woman who hates yellow wallpaper, a short bit about a lazy woman who meets ten fairies and of course another five minute mystery.
We have a very strange, unsettling...
Dec 15, 2016
On Ron's Amazing Stories we will travel with the Brothers Grimm from the German countryside of the 1800s to the bloody battlefields of Gettysburg, with JDR Hawkins author of the Civil War Novel, A Rebel Among Us!
David Summers never expected any of this…not in a million years. He...
Dec 8, 2016
On this episode of Ron's Amazing Stories titled, Gigantopithecus, a UFO crashes in a family's backyard. The story is expertly narrated by John Dehner. Also, we tell the true story of a camping trip gone very wrong, and we have another five minute mystery. So, press that play button!
What is it? It...
Nov 17, 2016
On this episode of Ron's Amazing Stories we have The Bigfoot Grafton Case. That might be enough for most shows but not the RAS. We also present a brand new segment called, In the Public domain and to round things out have a short story about a cute little shipwrecked alien.
Nov 10, 2016
On this episode of Ron's Amazing Stories we have a big show for you. To start things off we have a five minute mystery with some new news. Then we play a Raymond Burr western that tells the truth about the Buffalo Hunters. We follow that up with a short-story from none other than O. Henry! Sound like fun? Does to me...


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Find food that fits your pet's needs
Find a dog food that fits your pet's needs
Find a cat food that fits your pet's needs
How smart is your dog? If your pooch knows enough to keep from ruining the carpet and generally to keep out of trouble, you might think he's as smart as he needs to be, and haven't thought of giving him a dog IQ test. A dog intelligence test can give you an idea about his trainability and problem solving skills. Keep reading for the scoop on dog intelligence, and how you can administer an IQ test to your pup.
The Science of Dog Intelligence
While your dog's IQ will make no difference to how much you love him, for those looking to adopt a new pooch, dog intelligence test scores can help to indicate traits of temperament and trainability. This can not only help prospective dog owners select a dog that's a good fit, but also give them an idea of what to expect from their new dog.
However, it's important to keep in mind that when it comes to the parent/pet relationship, dog intelligence is highly subjective, says Today. While your dog might not excel at the reasoning and problem-solving skills indicative of a high IQ, he might possess other talents that nevertheless convince you he's a genius. Additionally, obedience is not necessarily a sign of intelligence.
On the other hand, some scientists think that studying dog intelligence can help provide insight into human intelligence. A group of British researchers are working to devise a reliable dog IQ test that they hope will make it easier to study the link between intelligence and health, says Scientific American. While dog intelligence seems to be mapped similarly to that of humans, dogs don't engage in any lifestyle activities that might hamper their IQ scores, like humans sometimes do. By testing the IQ of a large number of border collies that all came from similar farming backgrounds, the study determined that even within breeds, the intelligence of individual dogs can widely vary. Researchers hope that by developing an accurate dog intelligence test, they'll be able to study the link between IQ and overall health and life expectancy without any of the variables that hinder similar studies with human subjects.
Different Types of Dog Intelligence
Dog intelligence comes in two basic varieties, says Today. There is "instinctive" intelligence, which is the type of intelligence and natural ability that is inherent to a breed or type of dog. This is the type of intelligence that makes terriers generally good at hunting small animals, bloodhounds good at finding things via scent, and border collies excellent at herding sheep.
The other type is "adoptive" intelligence, which is a dog's ability to learn. This category includes learning to perform certain tasks, socialization, and language comprehension. A dog may be stronger in one category of intelligence than the other. But just as a human who can rock a Mozart concerto on the piano is no better or worse than someone who can calculate the square root of pi without a calculator, a dog that is stronger in adoptive intelligence is no better or worse than one that shows more strength in the instinctive intelligence category. So, when conducting an IQ test on your dog, keep in mind that he may have natural talents and skills that the test doesn't take into account.
Dog IQ Test
Below are some tasks that you can do with your dog to test his IQ. These tasks are designed to evaluate a dog's ability to learn and retain information as well as his capacity for reasoning and problem solving. A scoring system is also provided so you can determine where your pooch falls on the dog IQ scale.
Task One: Place a large towel or blanket over your dog's head. This task will provide insight into your dog's ability to solve problems.
Scoring: Give your dog three points if he figures out how to free himself in under fifteen seconds, two points if it takes fifteen to thirty seconds, and one point if it takes more than thirty seconds.
Task Two: Place two or three empty buckets or cups upside down in a row. While your pup watches, place a treat under one of the containers. Distract him for a few seconds before allowing him to look for the treat. This test will help determine how well your dog can learn and retain information.
Scoring: Give him three points if he goes straight to the container hiding the treat, two if he checks one empty container before finding the right one, and one point if he checks both wrong containers before locating the treat.
Task Three: In a room where your pup has a favorite spot to lounge, send him out of the room and then rearrange the furniture. This task is designed to test his reasoning and cognition.
Scoring: Let your dog back into the room. If he goes right to his favorite spot, give him three points. Give him two points if he takes a short time to investigate before finding his spot. If he gives up and picks a new spot, give him one point.
Task Four: Underneath a piece of furniture (low enough to the ground that only your dog's paw will fit), place a treat within paw's reach. This task will test your dog's reasoning and problem-solving skills.
Scoring: Give your pooch three points if it takes him under a minute to reach for the treat using only his paw. If he tries to fit his head into the space first, or uses both his nose and paws, give him two points, and one point if he gives up entirely.
Task Five: At a time when you don't normally take your dog for a walk, pick up his leash while he's watching. This task tests your dog's ability to make and retain associations.
Scoring: Give your dog three points if he immediately gets the hint and becomes excited; two points if you need to walk to the door before he gets the message that it's time to go somewhere; and one point if he doesn't seem to understand what's going on.
Task Six: This one takes a little extra work on your part. With a piece of cardboard five feet wide and too tall for your dog to see over when standing on his back legs, build a barrier by attaching each end of the cardboard to a box big enough to support it. In the center of the cardboard, cut a rectangle about three inches wide that starts about four inches from the top and ends about four inches from the bottom. Toss a treat behind the barrier, allowing your dog to watch where it falls through the window you cut into the cardboard. This task will help measure reasoning and problem-solving ability.
Scoring: Give your dog three points if he takes 30 seconds (or less) to figure out he needs to walk around the barrier to get the treat. If he takes longer than 30 seconds to figure it out, give him two points, and one point if he tries to climb through the window or bulldoze his way through the barrier instead of going around.
- More than 15 points: Congratulations! Your dog is a genius.
- 13–15 points: Your dog's not Einstein but he's still a smart cookie.
- 9–12 points: Your dog won't be the class valedictorian but he'll get by okay.
- 5–8 points: Your dog might need some assistance figuring things out and getting things done.
- 1–4 points: It doesn't take brains to give cuddles and kisses—that's all that really matters, right?
Dogs that do well on these types of tasks tend to be highly trainable and make great candidates for service dogs. But again, these tests aren't infallible. Some dogs are simply stubborn, and their lack of cooperation probably has nothing to do with their intelligence. Some also say the smartest dogs are the ones that wait patiently for their owners to fork over a treat that they don't have to work for. But even if your dog is not the sharpest tool in the shed, that does nothing to diminish the love and loyalty he has for you.
Contributor Bio
Jean Marie Bauhaus
Jean Marie Bauhaus is fiction author and freelance writer and editor living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She writes frequently about pets and pet health in her home office, where she is assisted by a lapful of furbabies.


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Strong Enough, an all-new sexy standalone from USA Today Bestselling author Melanie Harlow and David Romanov is LIVE!
Strong Enough
by Melanie Harlow & David RomanovGenre: Contemporary MM Romance
Publication Date: June 19, 2017
Read Today!
Amazon US | Amazon UK | iBooks | Nook
ADD to Goodreads
I wasn't looking for Derek Wolfe.
I wasn't looking for anybody. All I wanted was to start a new life in America. But when I found myself stranded here with no place to go, he came to my rescue, offering me a place to stay.
He's smart, successful, and sexy as hell—I can barely sleep knowing he's right down the hall. And when the chemistry between us explodes one night with fierce, fiery passion, it's hard to deny there's something real between us.
But he does.
He says he was drunk. He says it was a one-time thing. He says he's not into guys and what we did meant nothing.
He's lying. Because it happened again, and again, and again. And it's better every time.
I know we could be good together, and I want the chance to try, but I'm done hiding. If he's not strong enough to admit the truth, I'll have to be strong enough to walk away.
About Melanie:
Melanie Harlow writes sexy, emotional romance about strong, stubborn characters who can't help falling in love. She's addicted to bacon, gin martinis, and summer reading on the screened-in porch. If she's not buried in a book or binging on Netflix, you might find her running, putting a bun in someone's hair, or driving to and from the dance studio. She lives outside Detroit with her husband and two daughters. Melanie is the USA Today bestselling author of the HAPPY CRAZY LOVE series, the FRENCHED series, MAN CANDY, AFTER WE FALL, IF YOU WERE MINE, and the sexy historical SPEAK EASY duet, set in the 1920s.
Connect with Melanie:
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About David:
For David Romanov, STRONG ENOUGH is to a great extent autobiographical. Born in Russia and raised in Europe, he landed in the United States at the age of 24, where he learned a lot about cultural differences between East and West. David firmly believes in 'The One' and learning through love. When he isn't traveling or educating Melanie in Russian culture, he enjoys books and the company of his husband and dog in Los Angeles.


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White/Midnight Navy Altro
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Deciding To
To Buy
Choosing A
Real Estate
Real Estate
Time to
Go Shopping
Go Shopping
Inspections &
Inspections &
Moving In
Here are some factors to consider when choosing your real estate professional:
- Look for a full-time agent one who has experience completing transactions similar to yours.
- Interview a few agents: Are they familiar with the area in which you are interested?
- Ask how much time the agent will have for you, and if they are available at night and on weekends.
- Ask about their credentials and education: A good agent will continually strive to improve and gain knowledge of the latest real estate trends and hold the highest designations in their respective fields of expertise.
- Does the agent return your calls promptly? Time is money when attempting to buy a property.
- Ask for a list of properties they have sold or a list of references.
- Choose an agent who listens attentively to your needs and concerns.
- Pick an agent, with whom you feel comfortable.


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"I will sing of mercy and justice; to You, O Lord, I will sing praises. I will behave wisely in a perfect way.
Oh, when will You come to me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will not know wickedness.
Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy; the one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, him I will not endure.
My eyes shall be on the faithful of the land, That they may dwell with me; he who walks in a perfect way, he shall serve me. He who works deceit shall not dwell within my house; he who tells lies shall not continue in my presence. Early I will destroy all the wicked of the land, that I may cut off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord."
Psalm 101


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Please download Java(tm). Located in a beautiful rural setting on the edge of Belfast, the Old Orchard Self Catering Accommodation has recently been converted to become a luxury home from home that sleeps six people. It is NITB Certified with an official Four Star rating.
It provides three ensuite bedrooms, one double downstairs and twin and double bedrooms upstairs. All three are finished to a very high standard with the downstairs bedroom having an ensuite wetroom with bath. The property enjoys stunning views over the Castlereagh and Craigantlet Hills and beyond to Scrabo Tower.
The first floor sitting room is equipped with a television and a DVD player, a small selection of books and children's games, seating for six people and a wood burning stove. All fuel is provided at no extra cost.
Downstairs has a very well equipped kitchen with electric oven/hob, fridge freezer, dishwasher and microwave. A clothes washer/drier is situated in the utility area and there is drying space in the airing cupboard. A dining room completes the downstairs area, with an open fire (again all fuel provided), table and chairs for six people.


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Stolen Spirit (PSI Sentintels, Book One) is only 99¢ through September 15th!
And with all eight volumes of Sexy To Go are on sale through September 27th for 99¢ each, this is a great opportunity to check out the short, sizzling stories before Volume 9 comes out at the end of the month.
Find them all here on Amazon (also available elsewhere): Pamela Moran