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Pakistan for Bush
By John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari*New Republic
July 7, 2004
(Click here for a follow-up to this article)
Late last month, President Bush lost his greatest advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even with the president on the critical question of whom voters trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely as a result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq, Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive 21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even as the president's poll numbers were sliding, his administration was implementing a plan to insure the public's confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda.
This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.
This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But THE NEW REPUBLIC has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)
A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
The Bush administration has matched this public and private pressure with enticements and implicit threats. During his March visit to Islamabad, Powell designated Pakistan a major non-NATO ally, a status that allows its military to purchase a wider array of U.S. weaponry. Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan--who, the previous month, had admitted exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya--declaring Khan's transgressions an "internal" Pakistani issue. In addition, the administration is pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns about the country's proliferation of nuclear technology and lack of democratic reform.
But Powell conspicuously did not commit the United States to selling F-16s to Pakistan, which it desperately wants in order to tilt the regional balance of power against India. And the Pakistanis fear that, if they don't produce an HVT, they won't get the planes. Equally, they fear that, if they don't deliver, either Bush or a prospective Kerry administration would turn its attention to the apparent role of Pakistan's security establishment in facilitating Khan's illicit proliferation network. One Pakistani general recently in Washington confided in a journalist, "If we don't find these guys by the election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear mess up our asshole."
Pakistani perceptions of U.S. politics reinforce these worries. "In Pakistan, there has been a folk belief that, whenever there's a Republican administration in office, relations with Pakistan have been very good," says Khalid Hasan, a U.S. correspondent for the Lahore-based Daily Times. By contrast, there's also a "folk belief that the Democrats are always pro-India." Recent history has validated those beliefs. The Clinton administration inherited close ties to Pakistan, forged a decade earlier in collaboration against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But, by the time Clinton left office, the United States had tilted toward India, and Pakistan was under U.S. sanctions for its nuclear activities. All this has given Musharraf reason not just to respond to pressure from Bush, but to feel invested in him--and to worry that Kerry, who called the Khan affair a "disaster," and who has proposed tough new curbs on nuclear proliferation, would adopt an icier line.
Bush's strategy could work. In large part because of the increased U.S. pressure, Musharraf has, over the last several months, significantly increased military activity in the tribal areas--regions that enjoy considerable autonomy from Islamabad and where, until Musharraf sided with the United States in the war on terrorism, Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in the nation's 50-year history. Thousands of Pakistani troops fought a pitched battle in late March against tribesmen and their Al Qaeda affiliates in South Waziristan in hopes of capturing Zawahiri. The fighting escalated significantly in June. Attacks on army camps in the tribal areas brought fierce retaliation, leaving over 100 tribal and foreign militants and Pakistani soldiers dead in three days. Last month, Pakistan killed a powerful Waziristan warlord and Qaeda ally, Nek Mohammed, in a dramatic rocket attack that villagers said bore American fingerprints. (They claim a U.S. spy plane had been circling overhead.) Through these efforts, the Pakistanis could bring in bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or Zawahiri--a significant victory in the war on terrorism that would bolster Bush's reputation among voters.
But there is a reason many Pakistanis and some American officials had previously been reluctant to carry the war on terrorism into the tribal areas. A Pakistani offensive in that region, aided by American high-tech weaponry and perhaps Special Forces, could unite tribal chieftains against the central government and precipitate a border war without actually capturing any of the HVTs. Military action in the tribal areas "has a domestic fallout, both religious and ethnic," Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri complained to the Los Angeles Times last year. Some American intelligence officials agree. "Pakistan just can't risk a civil war in that area of their country. They can't afford a western border that is unstable," says a senior intelligence official, who anonymously authored the recent Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and who says he has not heard that the current pressures on Pakistan are geared to the election. "We may be at the point where [Musharraf] has done almost as much as he can."
Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal areas may be a good idea despite the risks. But, if that is the case, it was a good idea in 2002 and 2003. Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they know: This year, the president's reelection is at stake.
Massoud Ansari reported from Karachi.
About the Authors: John B. Judis is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Spencer Ackerman is an assistant editor at TNR. Massoud Ansari is a senior reporter for Newsline, a leading Pakistani news magazine.
Click Here for a Follow-up Article


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New Manchester United manager David Moyes made several changes to his coaching team this week but who will the former manager bring in to strengthen the playing staff?
Here are five possible players Moyes could bring in to improve United's attack, suggested by talkSPORT:
1. Gareth Bale (Tottenham Hotspur)
The Premier League's top goalscorer from last season and PFA Player of the Year winner, Bale is one of the few forwards who would make United stronger.
The Wales international has regularly hinted at his desire to play Champions League football in the upcoming campaign and, yet to agree an extension to his Tottenham contract, Spurs could be forced into accepting a deal.
2. Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid)
The return of the Portuguese superstar to Old Trafford would be a dream move for many United fans.
Whilst the Red Devils would need to shatter their transfer record to bring Ronaldo back to his former club, the final month's of Jose Mourinho's spell with Real Madrid was marred by rumours that the 2008 FIFA Ballon d'Or winner had become unhappy.
But could Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement ruin negotiations?
3. Robert Lewandowski (Borussia Dortmund)
The Polish striker has been linked with a move to north west England throughout his standout season in the Bundesliga .
Lewandowski netted 24 German league goals, including a 12-match scoring streak, and sparkled for Dortmund on their route to the UEFA Champions League final.
4. Marouane Fellaini (Everton)
With 12 invaluable domestic goals, the attacking midfielder was the cornerstone of David Moyes' Everton team last season and is currently tipped to follow the Scotsman to United's Carrington training ground in the coming weeks.
Fellaini is also the vital element of a national side desperate to impress in next year's World Cup, yet the Belgian has been deployed in a midfield role for club and country of late.
5. Edinson Cavani (Napoli)
Europe's most sought-after starlet has also been linked with Manchester City, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain - which perhaps serves to prove what a worthwhile signing Cavani could become.
The Uruguayan's immense talent, although United appear to be behind the rest in the pursuit of the player.
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subset: commoncrawl


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It was a 2012 boys' water polo season packed with success from a number of area teams with three squads — Pasadena Poly, La Cañada and Glendale high — reaching their respective CIF Southern Section division championship games.
Only the Panthers realized their dream and won the Division V title with a 12-10 win over the Nitros after having reached the final stage and coming up empty the two previous years. Players from Poly, Glendale and La Cañada, which fell to M.L. King in the Division III final, 14-9, were recognized when the All-Southern California and California-Hawaii All-American water polo teams were unveiled on Jan. 13.
Spencer Rogers of the Panthers, Chase Borisoff and Symeon Stefan of the Spartans were both named All-American, while the Nitros' Arman Momdzhyan was an All-American honorable mention. Those four were also elected members of the All-Southern California team, along with Poly's Kelly McGee.
"It's really cool, especially considering Poly is in a lower division and to be recognized by coaches of higher divisions and throughout the state for my accomplishments," said Rogers, who was a sixth-team All-American and third-team All-Southern California selection, respectively. "It's really cool."
Rogers, a three-year varsity player, said the Panthers progressed each year in their pursuit of a CIF title. It was "more of a fluke" when they reached the final in 2010, he said, while the 2011 squad realized they had a good chance to win it all.
"We were expecting to win everything and to come up short again in the championship game really hurt," said Rogers, who's the first Poly player to be named an All-American since Timmy Gilfillan in 2009. "None of the guys gave up and we pulled together and tried to do it one more time. The way we played together as a team and how we got along contributed to us being able to do it and knowing that none of us wanted to feel as bad as we did when we lost both times."
Rogers has had a number of opportunities to relive this past season, as he was named the Division V and Prep League Most Valuable Player in the offseason after he put up 117 goals, 57 steals and 51 drawn ejections in 2012.
McGee was a sixth-team selection for the All-Southern California team after scoring 39 goals, 30 assists and 42 steals, while earning first-team All-CIF and all-league honors.
Now the goal for Rogers, a junior, and Poly is to reach the title game for the fourth consecutive season.
"That would be unreal and that's what I want to do," Rogers said.
La Cañada Coach Devon Borisoff said being named All-American carries great weight as a Spartan, as every water polo player receives a personal banner for the year they earned the distinction that's hung at the school's pool.
"It's very prominent and everyone sees it," he said. "It's a huge goal for everyone to make All-American and get one those banners. I know it's something I always thought about as a 10, 11-year old."
Chase, Devon's younger brother, was in complete agreement.
"I can guarantee you almost every senior on the team this year knows all the people who made All-American and by what year," said Chase, who racked up 108 goals, 135 assists, 47 steals and 78 drawn ejections this year. "In practice, you kind of zone out and look at them. I've always wanted one of those banners my whole career, I'd rather have a ring on my finger, but this is still good."
Chase and Stefan were awarded with All-CIF first-team and Rio Hondo League co-Player of the Year honors in their senior campaigns. Stefan, a utility, piled on a team-high 142 goals and 62 assists.
Chase, the reigning All-Area Boys' Water Polo Player of the Year, was a seventh- and fourth-team All-American and Southern California selection, while Stefan was a ninth-team All-American and fifth-team Southern California member.
"It's nice to get All-American, but it really shows a team effort because you only get it if your team does really well," said Chase, a senior. "We did well as a team this year and were put in a position to get this award."
Momdzhyan was named the Pacific League Player of the Year for the Nitros, who won consecutive league titles. The driver tallied 136 goals, 22 assists and 25 drawn ejections and was also an All-CIF first-team member.
"I am kind of happy, and I kind of think I deserve it a little bit since I worked really hard and my team worked really hard," said Momdzhyan, who was elected to the All-Southern California sixth team and All-American honorable mention. "It's good we're getting the recognition."
The Nitros standout junior said the awards won't make him complacent, but motivate him, especially the honorable mention.
"It's nice but it's not going to stop me from working," Momdzhyan said. "I don't want just honorable mention; I want to be up there with all the great names."


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The Kreutzwald Hotel Tallinn is located close to the National Library of Estonia at Toenismaegi, one of the most famous landmarks of Tallinn, and has taken its name from the former name of the library, the Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald State Library.
The hotel is located in a historical limestone building and was completed in 1953, the same period the State Library was named after Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, an outstanding public figure of the National Awakening Period of Estonia in the 19th century and the author of the Estonian national epic poem, "Kalevipoeg".
The hotel recently completed a throughout the renovation, which has retained the buildings' historical authenticity and at the same time added a firm measurement of innovative design and modern comfort to the historical ambiance.
After the renovation, the hotel now has a total of 65 comfortable and stylish rooms and suites: 32 standard rooms, 18 ZEN rooms, and 15 ZEN deluxe.
You can enjoy our Unique Breakfast at the remarkable La Cucina Restaurant & Pizzeria Napoletana which is also open for all day fine dining, casual meals and drinks. You can indulge yourself at our newly opened ZEN SPA with Japanese pool, steam sauna and experience a variety of different vitalizing and rejuvenating massages and body treatments. Or relax in the Kreutzwald Library Lounge with a delightful pot of tea and a good book from the library. And in the summer you can enjoy the atmosphere of the Summer Terrace – an exiting oasis in the middle of the city.
Your home away from home


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Shinedown Guitarist Zach Myers Checks in From Rock on the Range
Shinedown have had much success with their latest album 'Amaryllis,' which includes their radio hit 'Bully' and the new single 'Unity.' Loudwire had the chance to catch up with the band's guitarist Zach Myers backstage at Rock on the Range today (May 19) and he talked about the songwriting process for the album.
Myers also talked about fellow bands like Adelitas Way, New Medicine and Halestorm, his musical inspirations and artists he would like to collaborate with, as well as the organic health items that are on Shinedown's tour bus.
What's going on next for your guys after Rock on the Range?
We go to Philly tomorrow, then we go home for nine days and then go to Europe for two weeks, home for two weeks. We do a little touring on the July festivals in Canada and then we start Uproar in August.
Touring in Europe like that and touring over here, do you notice any discernible difference between the audiences in Europe and the American audiences? Any weird stuff you guys pick up on?
I love America, I'm from America, I'll never leave here but the crowds over there are awesome. They show up at 8 o'clock in the morning and they're there all day and they are the most die-hard and they all do this bounce thing and they sing and it's just amazing, man.
You guys have done so many tours and been onstage so many times, there's probably a million weird things that have happened but what is – so far, maybe in the last two or three tours, the weirdest thing you've seen on tour, that's like a shocking, show stopping moment?
We played a show one time and it was like 20,000 people and this kid in a wheel chair got lifted up and was crowd surfing in the wheel chair and then all these other people in wheel chairs started, it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. The fact that the unification of those people, helping those people out was really cool.
For you, what are some of your musical inspirations and whom would you most like to collaborate with?
Collaborate would be U2, that's my favorite band of all time. I've become friends with Dave Grohl and he's such an amazing guy, I'd like to collaborate with him too. Influences are Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix for me, Adam Duritz from Counting Crows as a song writer, Ed Roland from Collective Soul, Jimmy Page, people like that.
Even though you're immersed on inside the music industry, are there concerts that you get excited to see?
Yeah, mostly smaller band, that not a lot of people have heard of though. This guy Ryan Bingham from Texas, he wrote all the music for 'Crazy Heart' I'm a big fan of his, a lot of country music - Brad Paisley, I love Brad Paisley so I get excited for that. Van Halen just canceled the show in my hometown and I'm friends with Wolfy the bass player, I was gonna go but they canceled it so I'm bummed out. I was excited for that.
Now that Shinedown's obviously established and rocking it out, have you had any moments where you have a band that's up and coming, have you ever taken any under your wing and help them out?
Yeah. we do that a lot -- Adelitas Way, New Medicine. I love New Medicine, one of my favorite new bands, so we did that with them. Halestorm, we did that with Halestorm for years, we let Halestorm tour with us before they even had a record out.
What is Shinedown's song writing process like, do you guys get the lyrics first and then add music or do you do the music first, how does that usually go down?
You know it's different at times. Brent [Smith] will come with a lyrics or me or Eric [Bass] will have a piece of music. Brent's a riff hummer like Brent wrote the riff to 'Sound of Madness' without even playing guitar so that's how it works sometimes. I wrote the riff to 'Bully' we were talking about what we were gonna write about and I was sitting there just having a conversation just kind of noodling around the guitar and Brent was like "That, let's write that" and that's how 'Bully' got written.
What is your take on the whole landscape of the digital music scene? Shinedown's been one of those bands at the tail end of how the music industry was [before] and then the explosion of the Internet. What do you guys feel from a band perspective is different, more challenging, what's going on with that?
We got so lucky, this record - out of the gate we sold 105,000 records the first week, which is unheard of nowadays for a rock band. We still love the physical record, we came from the end of that era so it is what it is, I love the physical record, I get the sight of digital, I get that but it'll all come back around – like how people collect vinyl now, CDs will be the cool thing in 10 years. They'll be like, all these guitar kids will be like "Oh these are super rare."
What do you guys do to wind down? What are some of the nerdiest stuff Shinedown does behind the scenes?
My drummer's gonna kill me, my drummer plays Magic cards. My little brother works for us, he's on production assistant so they play Magic cards together. We play video games, we have a big dressing room case with a 60 inch flat screen and every gaming system in the dressing room, I play mostly sports games, 'NBA 2K,' 'Madden,' 'Tiger Woods.' Barry [Kerch] plays 'Halo' and 'Call of Duty' and stuff.
What is the weirdest thing on Shinedown's tour bus?
We're all pretty healthy so probably like organic peanut butter or these weird pumpkin spice granola bars. Yeah we're pretty lame man. We use to be a lot more fun, we're not anymore.
Interview by Andy Green.


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All right everyone: don't forget that Monday, 13 November, brings Mixology Monday 9: Bitters. So open your new bottle of Fee Brothers Lemon, dust off that fernet or amaro in the corner of your bar, and get mixing!
Edited to add: When your entry is ready, either leave a comment on this post, or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text: Mark Hahn wrote: > what do you have against switches? *someone* has to do the switching, Nothing personally ;-) There is the cost issue especially when the clusters get larger and you need multiple switches (node + spine) swtiches to complete the fat tree. I guess I had blindly assumed that switches, in general, were the cause of some the latency - therefore by removing this component would also remove that part of latency. Your succeeding comment addresses my false intuition. > computation". compare this to something like myrinet, where switching is > done by 16 or 32x crossbar units. not only fewer hops, but think also of I didn't know that these switches operate like that. Do Quadrics and Infiniband switches perform similar functions? > practical factors, I believe: latency and packaging. bisection bandwidth > seems to appeal to a lot of people, but I'm not sure why. n-dim tori I have had the luxury of testing an SCI 2D torus cluster and found latency performance to be exceptional. In fact this has been most limiting factor for the major application (Fluent) running on our cluster. Upon performing some performance profiling I found Fluent scales signficantly better on it than the gig/e network currently implemented. I have not had the oportunity to evaluate any other interconnect hardware so I can not comment on their performance. From the documentation on vendors websites I believe it will give similar improvements to Fluent scalability. This is why I was asking the question - torus vs. (fat) tree? Looking for reasons other than performance. This topic follows an earlier post I submitted to the list about choosing a high-speed interconnect. The consensus was that I should first determine whether I even need one, which I have done, and my conclusion was that it will benefit our hardware/software combination greatly. I have some results which I will post soon. Thanks, Chris Sideroff


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Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Ever since he was a child, Jasmin Bambur dreamed of going to the Olympics. In college, he played competitive handball and was close to making the national team that would take him to the big games.
But Bambur's life took an unexpected turn one winter night 10 years ago, when he fell asleep at the wheel of his car. He suffered a severe spinal cord injury, making him a paraplegic at age 20.
"With this accident, that dream just got crushed, and I never believed that I would be able to get to Olympics again," said Bambur, a native of Serbia.
This week, Bambur has become the first Serbian to compete in the Paralympic Games, a set of elite sporting events for disabled athletes that lasts from March 12 to March 21. The competition in Vancouver, British Columbia, includes skiing, wheelchair curling and ice sledge hockey. Bambur is competing for the Serbian Disabled Ski Team in a number of Alpine racing events.
Watching the Paralympics on television or on the Internet helps show newly disabled people that they have the potential to become active again in a variety of recreational activities, said Dan Humphreys, sports specialist at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the hospital where Bambur underwent rehabilitation for his injury.
The Paralympics are "examples of the pinnacle of athletic achievement for people with physical disabilities," he said.
"What I try to do is show them, try to get them in the mindset of thinking of what's possible, not what can't happen," he said. "A lot of things that inpatients deal with is, immediately they start to think [about] what they're not going to be able to do."
Bambur remembers feeling depressed during his first months at the Shepherd Center, which specializes in treatment, research and rehabilitation for spinal cord and brain injuries. Therapists explained that he would be able to play sports, but he didn't believe them.
"I just told them: 'Leave me alone. I just want to not be a part of anything," he said. "I was just kind of avoiding everybody, didn't want to do anything, didn't talk much. I was kind of always in pain. It was a really horrible time in my life."
His view brightened when a therapist brought a photo album of herself with her husband, who was in a wheelchair, doing everything from riding camels to skiing.
Bambur didn't think much of it until the following week, when the man from the photos, a Paralympic gold medalist, came to meet him. Bambur realized that this man's disability was more severe than his own but that the medalist was "having a ball."
"I was like, 'if he can do it, I can do 10 times better,' " he said. "Next morning, I was like, 'I want to go to the gym. I want to go outside and do whatever it takes.' "
The Shepherd Center sponsors 11 sports teams that allow people with disabilities to engage in activities recreationally or competitively. There's usually some type of adaptive equipment involved, such as a special wheelchair for basketball or a chair that attaches to skis.
The cost of the extra equipment can be prohibitive, Humphreys said, with specialized chairs costing thousands of dollars. But the center and other organizations raise money for such equipment.
Ryan Barnett, who was a professional cyclist before an injury left him paralyzed in May 2008, turned to skiing as his sport of choice after coming to the Shepherd Center. He hopes to go to the Paralympics one day and currently skis with the U.S. ski team's developmental team.
Being back in elite athletics has also allowed him to develop everyday skills in terms of navigating the world in a wheelchair as he travels to competitions. He has enjoyed meeting others who have been competitive athletes in wheelchairs for decades and learning from their experiences.
Unlike Bambur, Barnett said he did not feel frustrated or depressed after his accident -- he was hit by a car while cycling -- mostly because he felt so lucky to be alive. For the first part of his recovery, he did not think about athletics, but when he and his wife went to watch Atlanta's Peachtree Road Race, she suggested that he might like to try wheelchair racing. He now races and skis.
"Life rolls on," he said. "It doesn't matter that you're in a wheelchair. It's really important to stay active."
Like Barnett, Bambur had tried skiing before his injury but never practiced it professionally until after he became disabled. Nearly 10 months after he was hurt, Bambur went on a trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, through the Shepherd Center. It became the start of his skiing career.
"I immediately fell in love with skiing because there were no more wheelchairs, and I was completely free, and I was able to do everything I was doing before. You can jump; you can stop; you don't need help from other people," he said.
Bambur does not find skiing as a disabled person much different than regular skiing. Able-bodied skiers must adapt themselves to their equipment and environment, he said.
"I just adapt myself further to accommodate myself to be able to ski again," he said.
Barnett, though, doesn't feel like he's getting as much satisfaction out of athletics these days as he did as a cyclist, partly because he had cycled at such a high level, was more recently injured than other competitive athletes and has high expectations for himself.
"It certainly gives me a lot to shoot for," he said. "It's been real fun to see my times get better and better, and certainly my racing has come a long way in the past six months. I'd like to get to the top. It'd be fun to go race all of the biggest marathons in the world."
Since he met the Paralympic medalist from the photos, Bambur felt able to jump back into normal life.
"I went back to school, graduated from college, got a job, married. I have a baby on the way right now," he said. "Life is still possible; it's just what you make out of it. It's not what's thrown at you."


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Vanity Fair Print: Fred Archer 1881
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I am so honored and elated to be a part of this incredible project and I know everyone is going to fall madly in love with this show! Also I get to work with my hero Tina Fey!! It's a dream come true!
4 thoughts on "Margaret Cho to Co-Star in Fox's Tina Fey Comedy"
This will be a great show and you and Tina Fey together, oh that is just gold!
ERMEGERD that's bloody fantastic news, congratulations! Well I am guaranteed to watch and love this, you and Tina? It's got to be excellent now! YAY, best news of the day!
Wow, Margaret Cho and Tina Fey – the killer combination. Very excited!


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How to Use the Images Drawing 1
Drawing 1
Questions for Photos 4 and 5
1. Why do you think Madam Walker would have used the portraits shown in Photo 4 in advertisements? Do you think they were effective? Why or why not?
2. How does Photo 5 differ from the images in Photo 4?
* The photos on the screen have a resolution of 72 dots per inch (dpi), and therefore will print poorly. You can obtain a high quality version of Photo 4, and Photo 5, but be aware that each file will take about 30 seconds to load with a 28.8K modem.


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Take control over your data! Whether you're a novice or an experienced database user, this course will show you how to harness the full power of Microsoft Access 2010.
In these practical and project-oriented lessons, you'll learn how to use this award-winning MS Office software to create and customize tables. You'll build relationships between your tables to eliminate redundancies and slash data entry time. And you'll discover how to achieve huge reductions in data entry errors by setting default values, creating validation rules, and building input masks.
In addition, you'll find out how to make your database more user-friendly with custom data entry forms, smart lists, and other sophisticated controls. You'll learn how to retrieve exactly what you need from your database with powerful queries and reports, and you'll even start automating routine tasks with labor-saving macros.
By the time you've finished this course, you'll know how to create an effective database for any information you need to store, document, and manage—at home or on the job.
Laurie Ann Ulrich has been writing about and teaching people to use Microsoft Office for more than 15 years—including personally training thousands of students, writing hundreds of training manuals, and authoring or co-authoring more than 25 introductory and advanced books on subjects including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access. Her most recent publication on Microsoft Access is Access 2010 for Dummies.
In addition to writing and teaching, Laurie runs her own firm providing training, marketing, graphic design, and web development services to clients throughout the world, with a focus on helping growing companies and non-profit organizations build their brand through effective promotions, outreach, and education. She is also active in several environmental organizations in her area.
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Despite stumbling in the crucial month of December, discount retailer Target (NYSE:TGT) relieved shareholders on Thursday by saying it expects to meet or beat the conservative end of its fourth-quarter earnings outlook.
Continue Reading Below
Shares of Minneapolis-based Target rallied about 3% on the profit guidance, which comes a day after a cautious analyst note kept the shares from participating in a 300-point surge on Wall Street.
Target said its same-store sales were essentially flat in December due to "softness" during the first three weeks of the month. Wall Street had been anticipating slight growth of about 0.8% for last month.
Net retail sales increased 0.8% in December at Target to $10.1 billion.
Still, the retail giant eased jitters by saying it expects fourth-quarter EPS to meet or "somewhat exceed" the low end of its prior forecast, which would top expectations.
After reporting third-quarter results, Target projected EPS of $1.45 to $1.55 and non-GAAP EPS of $1.64 to $1.74. By comparison, Wall Street has been forecasting non-GAAP EPS of $1.50.
"Similar to November, profitability for December benefited from our continued focus on achieving an appropriate balance between price investments and driving sales, combined with thoughtful inventory management," CEO Gregg Steinhafel said in a statement.
Looking ahead, Target anticipates growing January same-store sales in the low-single digit percentage range after sales stalled in December.
Wall Street cheered the news, driving Target up 2.86% to $60.50 ahead of Thursday's opening bell. The stock has rallied 15% over the past 12 months, but retreated on Wednesday after Jefferies (NYSE:JEF) downgraded it to "hold" from "buy" and slashed its price target to $59 from $74.


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ECE 695A Lecture 17R: Review Questions
Additional materials available (3)
Licensed according to this deed.
Published on
Review Questions:
- What is wrong with using C-V measurement methods exclusively for NBTI and HCI degradation?
- Why do people like to use C-V techniques? What method would you use for HCI measurement?
- HCI does not relax. Why would you still want to use on-the-fly type methods? (Hint: Think about Drain temperature)
- How is it possible that dμ/μ is not universally negligible?
- What are DSO, PGU, SMU?
- Why are the defect capacitance and substrate capacitance occur in parallel? Would the same happen in Flash memory?
- Of the methods discussed, which one is Poisson-based and which one is based on continuity equation
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
EE 226, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN


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Creed doesn't come wrapped in cellophane.
Look at this image!
I stole this image from another thread here because it serves my purpose, and because my digital camera doesn't hold a charge, I don't know how to connect my dumbphone to the computer, and my iPod touch is a gen 1 without a camera.
I believe I have identified this as a fake.
See, I just bought a bottle of Royal Delight and the packaging is identical to this aside from the size and writing color (mine's gold). It's REALLY good packaging and the bottle, sprayer, and cap seem flawless. Okay, not flawless, as the cap is slightly loose and the back of the bottle seems to have a lot number scraped off, but I think that's part of the ruse.
Anyway, I've been wearing it for 3 days straight and I noticed that the fragrance didn't have the same "ZING!" that I thought it was supposed to have. Well, as luck would have it, I had my old, empty Perfumed Court sample still around (guilty of hoarding), so I compared and CONFIRMED the difference, and it's unacceptable. Look, you can talk about batch variations, reformulations, and "old stock" until you're blue in the face, but differences like this are criminal. In fact, it might even be worse than the difference between vintage and new Anteaus'.
People have claimed that fragrances like Royal Delight (and Original Santal) aren't popular enough to be counterfeited, and, excuse my language, but I say HORSE HOCKEY.
So let's all take a good long look at the pic up top and understand that you don't need to know French to spot the grammatical error. It basically says "Supplier of King A, of Queen B, of King C, and of Queen D, of King E.
The "AND" is placed before the second to last item in the list. Anyone familiar with all Latin based languages knows that this is incorrect, but a native Arab speaker may not know that, and I understand that these fakes are made in the middle east (there is a bit of Arab script on the bottom of the box).
Unless there is something unique about French that I am unaware of, this is a fake. And no, I'm not being paranoid, my nose has been telling me it's a fake for a few days.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about this, but I really don't think I am, and believe me, I REALLY want to be in denial, or at least my wallet really wants me to be in denial.
Creed doesn't come wrapped in cellophane.
The bottle of Original Santal in the picture is authentic, i'm willing to bet your Royal Delight is too. I highly doubt counterfeiters would bother faking Royal Delight. You have no reason to believe they're fake. Stop being an alarmist.
My VIW and SMW has the same text as the image. The rest of my Creeds do not. All of my Creeds have been purchased from Fragrancenet and for all of them, they smell authentic, bottle looks authentic, and I am satisfied.
If it smells legit, it's legit. Now why the text discrepancy? I have no idea.
It basically says "Supplier of King A, of Queen B, of King C, and of Queen D, of King E.
You don't have to speak French to read the mess on the top of the box. Just know that "de" means "of" and "et" means "and"
I'm out of my element here, but I suspect the days of GREEN FRICH TWEED are over and in order to spot a fake you have to be freaking Colombo
If you look at the commas, what it is saying is "of the emperor Francois Joseph and the emperess Sissi of Austriche-Hongre". Kind of like "of the King and the Queen of England". Nice try though. NOT FAKE.
"I am a robot and I like cheese"
Top 5:
1. Axe Kilo
2. Lectric Shave
3. Vicks Vapor Rub
4. Febreze Pour Homme
5. Preferred Stock
So the question is: does Creed feel that, "aw, fuck it," is the proper attitude for a fragrance with an MSRP of $250 USD?
And the other question is: what is the US government hiding at area 51?
Looks like the real thing to me.
I smell marshmallows!
It appears to be genuine to me. I have several boxes from Creed, yes I keep the boxes, and some of them had Arabic writing but are authentic. Additionally, fragrancenet and many other retailers ad cellophane to the boxes in order to preserve them new. I would not worry about your box.
There have been numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes over the years in creeds shoddy packaging. I pointed one out to the official distributor 5 or 6 years ago and he confirmed that all boxes in his warehouse had it.
Nothing to worry about.
Your bottle could be very old and poorly stored?
If they were to fake a bunch of RDs, they should be on the market somewhere in fairly large amounts, because they aren't going to have a lot of buyers for it !
Visit my huge swap page: http://www.basenotes.net/threads/211...-ml-Gotham-etc
Or visit my Sales page: http://www.basenotes.net/threads/211...o-make-offers!
Samples, etc. for Sale at my Crystal Flacon page: http://flacon.ambaric.net/viewtopic.php?t=282
My fragrance blog: http://bigslyfragrance.wordpress.com/
I was hoping it was fake because I was going to traipse on down the the Neiman Marcus in the ghetto (New York is stupid, don't ask) and grab me a real one. Buy now everyone has confirmed the horrid reality that I cannot get a good bottle of Royal Delight, PERIOD.
woe is me
Send it back to fragrance net saying the juice has gone bad
I'm pretty sure Royal Delight is at the bottom of the list of Creed frags to fake. There's more money to be made with Green Frich Tweed, Silver Montana Water, or Original Santana.
"I am a robot and I like cheese"
Top 5:
1. Axe Kilo
2. Lectric Shave
3. Vicks Vapor Rub
4. Febreze Pour Homme
5. Preferred Stock
I've read every post in this thread three times now to make sure I didn't miss anything. I have not seen a single mention of two of the most obvious questions to be asked. Do the lot numbers on the box and bottle match? Is the lot number a verifiable Creed lot number? These questions are all over countless "is my Creed fake?" threads. Seems to me this is something to be checked immediately if you suspect any problems. I own several authentic Creeds bought online from a trusted source a few years ago and a couple do have the so called grammatical error on the box. The only one that didn't have a lot number on it was a one ounce bottle of Green Valley. It smelled the same as a later bottle I bought that did have a number. I wasn't too worried about a one ounce fake to begin with. In this case everything in this thread seems to indicate that it's authentic, so check the numbers and post the results. Then we should know for sure.
I just read for a fourth time and I see you say it seems to have a number scraped off the bottle. I have heard of some grey market sellers doing this with authentic bottles because they aren't authorized dealers.
Last edited by Profumo Saggio; 2nd December 2012 at 09:46 AM.
I don't have a signature fragrance. My signature changes a little bit every day, why shouldn't my fragrance?
Also, I think we can all agree that buying from a non-authorized dealer and saving a few bucks is never worth the hassle and worry involved (ie. wondering if it's fake, if it's gone bad, if it's old stock, etc). Just buy from an authentic source next time.
I got a bad bottle from an online source once and I'll never bother buying Creeds online again.
OP, I can take more, detailed, pictures if you'd like. I have the OS out of the cellophane.
My MI and Himalaya bottles have the text as shown in the first image and they are authentic.
Also, there is NO lot # on the box AND the lot # on the bottle just seems wrong. It's barely legible and the first characters might be "F," which, as we all know, would not be correct for an actual Creed. Also, I have a genuine Original Vetiver and the lot # is ENGRAVED. Good luck getting that thing filed off without annihilating the bottle's appearance. And another thing, the lot # is not on the bottom lip, but just above it and to the right. That also doesn't agree with what my OV tells me.
Okay, I don't really want to waste any more of you good peoples' time with this. I'll tell you what. One day this week I'll pop in to Neiman's on the home and do some smelling. My nose will know the answer. If what there I smell resembles what purchased, then I will capitulate and declare myself an ass. However, if what I smell resembles my old Perfumed Court sample then I shall buy a bottle and come back to the thread to do the "I told you so" dance.
There is always one such thread on the first page of Male Fragrances.
Even if they could duplicate the bottles and boxes perfectly (which they can't), they would still have to make the fragrance smell similar which they can't. They're too cheap to put an actual designer fragrance such as Cool Water in a GIT bottle.
Some day's you're the statue and some days you're the pigeon.


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MyTwoCensus Investigation: Concerns About The Political Makeup Of Complete Count CommitteesThursday, December 10th, 2009
After reading a report in the Austin Republican Examiner (featured below), MyTwoCensus is extremely concerned by the fact that Complete Count Committees are not always bi-partisan entities with independent non-political voices also serving in leadership capacities. As there have been concerns about a lack of participation in the 2010 Census by Republicans, a charge being led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), it is all the more important for Republican voices (in this instance) to be present on Complete Count Committees, so rumors about the goals of the 2010 Census and accusations of bias will not exist. While Travis County, where Austin, Texas is located, consistently votes Democratic (64% for Obama compared to 35% for McCain in 2008), there is no good reason why Republicans are not serving as chairs or on the board of the Austin Complete Count Committee.
MyTwoCensus urges any readers who are aware of other instances in which one political party controls a municipal, local, regional, or state Complete Count Committee to please report these problems to us.
Here's the original op-ed that prompted this investigation:
Are Democrats hijacking the Austin census?
By Brandon Lighton
Census time is upon us yet again, and thankfully we still have at least one government enterprise that has not yet become explicitly partisan. Oh, wait…
"Mayor Lee Leffingwell and County Judge Sam Biscoe joined members of the citizen driven Complete Count Committee to launch the 2010 Census efforts on Monday, November 30, 2009 at City Hall.
The 2010 Census Complete Count Committee is Chaired by Judge Eric Shepperd, Constable Bruce Elfant and Alejandro Ruelas, Managing Partner, LatinWorks."
So we have the Democrat mayor of Austin and a Democrat County Judge overseeing this operation. But thats okay, right? We still have the committee membes themselves to maintain the integrity of the census. So let's take a look at those committee members:
Eric Shepperd – Democrat Judge, County Court at Law, Place 2
Bruce Elfant – Democrat Constable
Alejandro Ruelas – Finally, someone who isn't a candidate. Someone who can balance out the partisan bias of the other committee members. Oh wait, he's a Democratic Party donor. Oops.
So we have a Democrat mayor, two Democrat judges, a Democrat constable, and a Democratic Party donor to boot. Sound like a recipe for a fair and accurate census to you?
This is just another step in a long trend of Democrats politicizing the census, starting with the Obama administration's decision to take over the census itself instead of allowing a nonpartisan group to do it like the other 43 presidents have done. When the 2010 census comes out and Democratic constituencies have miraculously gained ground in Austin, at least try to act surprised.


text: KANEOHE NEIGHBORHOOD BOARD BLOG – This blog exists to encourage citizen participation in government. The Neighborhood Board maintains it, and we welcome your input. Contact information for Board members is available through the Member Directory link on this page. To add your voice to a post on this site, go to the bottom of the post and click on the link with the word "comment" in it. All viewpoints are welcome, but please be constructive.


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Bears coach Marc Trestman and quarterback Jay Cutler are taking the lead in establishing an ethical culture in Chicago's locker room. Plus, a new Dr. Z award, 10 things I think and my annual Father's Day book recommendations
SALISBURY, N.C. — Notes from the last pre-vacation MMQB—including Marc Trestman the people person, Jay Cutler the leader, and the first annual "Paul 'Dr. Z' Awards" by the Pro Football Writers of America—on the eve of tonight's 55th annual National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Awards ceremony in this real-life Mayberry.
Good news, Bears
Lots of talk about locker-room culture these days, and lots of energy spent by teams trying to ensure there's never another Dolphins/Incognito affair. But I give special points to Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman and quarterback Jay Cutler for their efforts. And I'm learning more and more about how wrong we were that Trestman was some X's-and-O's monk who couldn't deal with players on a human scale. That's one of the most misleading assumptions in recent NFL years.
Another example: Trestman and Cutler recently flew to New York to meet with the league's new values-meister, Dov Seidman, to exchange ideas about fostering a more ethical culture in the locker room. I've heard of players and coaches working on football in the off-season, and maybe even on better forms of leadership. But for a coach and his top lieutenant in the locker room—who has never been considered a classic locker-room leader—to get on a plane and spend a day working on new techniques and dialog … that goes beyond the call of duty. Trestman and Cutler should be congratulated for it.
"I got a tremendous start in the way a locker room was run when I coached for five years in Canada," said Trestman, whose first head-coaching job was with Montreal of the CFL. "In our locker room, everyone should feel safe. For some of the guys in Chicago, it was kind of new to them. There'd be no hazing. Lovie Smith had a great group of players—a great group—and he did a great job with them. There were some subtle things I wanted to add. I wanted to keep growing."
Trestman didn't want to be specific about what he, Cutler and Seidman discussed, other than to say he "wanted to find out what else we could do to keep growing." Seidman wouldn't confirm the meeting, but it's clear from a pro football source that they bonded and had a discussion Trestman and Cutler will use as a building block in their locker room.
Seidman, CEO of the LRN Company, which works with businesses to stress principled performance, addressed club and league officials at the annual meeting in March, and has remained an adviser to the league. He's bullish on the impact of the one-hour meetings for all 32 full squads this month (I wrote about this last Monday), to kick off discussion of culture change. "You don't just flip a switch on something like this," Seidman said. "It's about a journey. It's about progress. I think teams are figuring out there's a new way to win, and that includes caring for the player as a person, a father and a husband. Creating a locker room full of people who can be themselves can help you win."
* * *
One of the best gestures I've seen in a long time.
A couple of times a year, a few us get together for lunch in New Jersey with Paul Zimmerman and his wife, Linda. Paul, as most of you know, was felled by a series of strokes in November 2008, and he remains unable to speak substantively or write. Last Wednesday we invited Ken Rodgers, who wrote and produced the tremendous Dr. Z tribute piece for NFL Films last fall, "Yours truly, Dr. Z," to the meal. The piece won a Sports Emmy for "The Dick Schaap Outstanding Writing Award."
Rodgers came to lunch and brought with him an Emmy—for Paul. The gold statuette sat on the table in front of Paul throughout the meal. He beamed. Rodgers choked up a couple of times talking about Zim and the experience of doing this wonderful story. "My favorite moment," said Rodgers at one point, "was listening to an old interview of Paul with him in the room, and thinking how emotional it would probably make him, and I look at him, and he's rolling his eyes as if to say, 'Blah, blah, blah. Just shut up, will you?' "
A very good lunch, with good company, including Matt Millen and wife Pat—who are regulars at these affairs, with my wife Ann and me, and Linda's friend Barbara. And the Flaming Redhead, of course. "Geez,'' said Linda. "What to say about Ken … He certainly is carrying on the Steve Sabol tradition. We were heartbroken by the passing of Steve, but Ken certainly channels his spirit and intelligence. We've made a lifetime friend."
Now, speaking of Dr. Z …
The inaugural Dr. Z Awards are announced.
The Pro Football Writers of America gives out awards annually to deserving players and executives in the NFL, and this year our group is adding an award to recognize assistant coaches. It's long past time that career assistants, who don't make the Hall of Fame and most often work deep in the shadows of their head coaches, are memorialized for what they do. PFWA leaders Ira Miller and Dan Pompei pushed to honor Paul Zimmerman in conjunction with the award, seeing that Zim for so long chronicled these men in the shadows and was constantly drawing attention to the previously invisible work of so many of them. So the PFWA decided to christen the award "The Paul 'Dr. Z' Zimmerman Award" for lifetime achievement for NFL assistant coaches.
The inaugural class of four winners:
- Howard Mudd, who worked for 39 years as an NFL offensive line coach with eight teams.
- The late Fritz Shurmur, a veteran of 24 years as an NFL coach, 20 of them as a defensive coordinator.
- Ernie Zampese, a 24-year NFL assistant and one of the architects of the modern passing game.
- The late Jim Johnson, a master of the disguised blitz, a 23-year assistant and defensive coordinator.
"For gosh sakes, this is unbelievable," said Zampese, now living in retirement in San Diego. "It's flabbergasting. To be included with those other three men who were such great coaches, I am incredibly stunned. Thank you."
"I'm very flattered," Mudd said. "I also really appreciate the award being named after Paul. When he interviewed me, he was fixated on my troops. I appreciate how he saw the game. I'm quite taken aback. This is such an elite group."
Mudd was a three-time Pro Bowl guard for the Niners in a seven-year NFL career in the '60s. In 1974, he started coaching the offensive line in San Diego, and he went to coach lines in San Francisco, Seattle, Cleveland, Kansas City, Seattle again (developing Hall of Famer Walter Jones in the process), Indianapolis (for the first 12 years of Peyton Manning's career) and Philadelphia before retiring after the 2012 season. Well, not exactly retiring. He volunteer-coached the Mount Si High School offensive line in North Bend, Wash., last fall. "I was as proud of those as any guys I coached in the NFL,'' Mudd said. He's best known for his 12 years with the Colts—particularly for his patch job in 2008, when Indy had Manning coming back from tricky summer knee surgery and a dangerous infection, and center Jeff Saturday was hurt, and Mudd had to get rookie Jamey Richard ready to play one of the most complicated center positions in football, with all the changes Manning makes at the line. The Colts won 12 games. "My mantra—and I hope they put this on my gravestone—was, 'Do a few things, and do them extraordinarily well.' "
Shurmur, a college center at Albion (Mich.) College, broke into the NFL in 1975 with Detroit as defensive line coach, after four seasons as Wyoming's head coach. He was defensive coordinator for Detroit, New England (breaking in Bill Parcells to the NFL in 1980), the Rams, the Cardinals and Packers before dying in 1999 at 67 of liver cancer. In 1996 his Green Bay defense stifled San Francisco, Carolina and New England—holding them to an average of 16 points—in the Packers' Super Bowl run. He was best known for his defensive adjustments. In 1989 he invented a 2-5 defensive front with the Rams when injuries ravaged the front, using different combinations of safeties and linebackers in the middle. He often used a "big nickel" package, with safeties playing a more prominent role in coverage and nickel rushes instead of corners. "Fritz was one of the first to employ a nickel on a full-time basis," Parcells said Saturday. "He was creative in many ways, one of the coaches who really knew how to fit the talent he had to the best scheme for them. And he was a tremendous defensive line coach. Tremendous. Very demanding. Those defensive linemen, he was on their ass. When I got to New England in 1980, Fritz taught me to two-gap. I just think he's one of the best I've seen in the business, and he was very important to my career." Ask Barry Sanders about Fritz Shurmur: In a 1994 playoff game against Shurmur's Packers, Sanders was held to -1 yard on 13 carries.
Zampese has the distinction of running for the winning touchdown as a USC tailback against Notre Dame in 1956 (bet you didn't know that) and being hired for two of his early coaching jobs by John Madden and Don Coryell. "A lot of times in my career," he said, "I was in the perfect spot. You go to work for Don Coryell, and he just lets you do what you do; he lets you coach." Coryell put him in charge of the Charger receivers from 1979 to 1983, and San Diego was the most explosive offense in football, with Dan Fouts throwing to a bevy of great wideouts and to tight end Kellen Winslow. Zampese brought lots of motion and shifting to the offense. Each of those five seasons, San Diego had the number one passing offense in the NFL. "He's the best offensive coach I know," Coryell once said. His quarterbacks—Fouts, Jim Everett, Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe (in New England in his stop as coordinator, in 1998 and '99)—were always among the league's most prolific. Aikman swore by him. "I had some great quarterbacks who ran the offense great," Zampese said. "It comes back to being in the perfect spot so many times. In Dallas, what a great position that was to be in, with such great offensive talent."
Johnson was still in full bloom at 68 when cancer of the spine killed him five years ago. He brought pressure with the best defensive coaches in recent history. Over his last nine years as Philadelphia defensive coordinator, his Eagles were second in the league with 390 sacks—yet only two of his pass-rushers (Hugh Douglas and Trent Cole) went to a Pro Bowl. Said one of his protégés, former Eagles assistant John Harbaugh, when Johnson died: "He saw potential and developed it. He made me believe I could coach at this level. In football, he was a pioneering and brilliant strategist, changing the way defense is played in the NFL." Johnson figured out ways of disguising pressure and bringing it against different teams with different players—and none of the 11 men on defense was out of the pressure mix. His Eagles once sacked Ben Roethlisberger nine times in a game; his last Eagle defense held the Giants and Vikings to 25 points in eight quarters in two road playoff wins in the 2008 season. He did his best work with the Eagles, but he also coached Arizona, Indianapolis and Seattle in an NFL tenure that dated to 1986.
That's a first-class first class of Dr. Z award winners.
The Fathers Day Book Section
My annual look at books I'd recommend for dad/brother/uncle/grandfather/male friend/male whoever, with Fathers Day just six days away, is a bit abbreviated this year. It should include one I never got to but had recommended very highly to me: "Redeployment," by Phil Klay, a series of stories about our troops trying to figure out their meaning and roles in chaotic Iraqi and Afghan theaters, which I'll be reading on my vacation this summer. That does you no good now, but maybe you could get it for dad as a Labor Day gift once I report back. A few I'd recommend:
A Good Walkthrough Spoiled: The Best of Mike Tanier at Football Outsiders, edited by Aaron Schatz (Football Outsiders). Non-fiction.
So Mike Tanier, who works for Sports On Earth now, is one of the best football writers alive. Some of you might not know him. I urge you to change that. Read Mike, and you'll learn a lot about football, and a lot about irreverence, and a lot about things you never thought of when you watch football. "Football Outsiders" is the longtime passion of Aaron Schatz, a football geek with a smart streak in him, and he saw some brilliance in Tanier, then a high school teacher (who once taught a high-level math course to Joe Flacco in New Jersey), and the marriage was a good one for the eight years they worked together. This volume is Tanier's greatest hits. I picked out one chunk from a prescient story by Tanier about Jerry Rice's rookie season, written in 2006, but with an eye on 1985, when the Niners started 6-5, and Rice had 10 drops in 11 games, and there was pressure on Bill Walsh to take some of the kid's reps away and give them to vets Freddie Solomon and Dwight Clark.
Wrote Tanier:
Rice spent so many years as the league's distinguished veteran that it's shocking to imagine him as a jittery rookie, one false move from the bench. It seems unfathomable that he was once Santonio Holmes or Chad Jackson … Walsh saw the future; its name was Jerry Rice. But he also had the present to worry about, and his team was struggling to stay in playoff contention. "Walsh has made a lot of critical decisions in his seven years as coach of the 49ers—some brilliant, some not so brilliant," [beat man Charles] Bricker wrote. "If the 49ers fail to make the playoffs this season after winning the Super Bowl, he might be severely judged by sports historians for his use of Solomon and Rice." … Just days after his head coach defended him, Rice had his worst game as a pro. In front of 57,000 fans in a Monday night game at Candlestick, Rice dropped three more passes. The Niners won, 19-6, thanks in part to a 27-yard touchdown catch by Solomon … [But the next week against the Rams] by the end of the game, Rice had 10 catches for 241 yards and a touchdown. The 241 yards broke a team record. Ironically, the Niners lost the game, but Rams defenders knew what Walsh knew: Rice was special. "I think the nickname that man's got, 'All-World' or whatever, is deserved," said Rams free safety Johnny Johnson after the game. "The man's got unbelievable speed and a great burst." Local writers who advocated for Rice's benching suddenly changed their attitudes. "Somebody say 'I told you so,' and get it over with," Kristin Huckshorn wrote in the Mercury News.
By Christmas, Rice the disappointment had become Rice the viable Rookie of the Year candidate. Fellow receiver Eddie Brown took the AP honors, but Rice was named the NFC Rookie of the Year by UPI.
The struggles of 1985 aren't even a distant memory. They are a forgotten footnote for most fans. Only diehard fans, and perhaps Rice himself, truly remember that for a few months, his name was synonymous with dropped passes. We can't judge Rice's critics too harshly. Most of the things that were said about Rice at the time were true. There were times when he hurt the team. The 49ers might even have won one or two more midseason games if Solomon had a larger role in the offense. Now, Rice is retired, Walsh is battling leukemia, and the Niners are preparing to move to the suburbs. It's a fitting time to remember the glory days. But we must always remember them as they really were. Rice didn't start his career with one foot in Canton. He really had one foot on a banana peel for most of his rookie season. The next immortal, the player we'll be writing about in 20 years, is probably battling for his job right now, dropping passes or fumbling and having personal crises on the bench. Jerry Rice remembers. And we remember.
Perspective, thy name is Tanier.
Sycamore Row, by John Grisham (Doubleday). Fiction.
I never get tired of John Grisham. I believe this is the 28th Grisham book I have read, because it is the 28th book he has published (not including his teen-book series). And I do believe my least-favorite of them all was the one about the football player who went to play in Italy, "Playing for Pizza." The rest of them, mostly taut courtroom thrillers, have this kind of hold on me: I start it one night, reading in bed, and then try as I might, one of the next three or four nights I read until 3 or 4 in the morning, ruining my night's sleep. It's always worth it.
This book I flew through—a four-nighter. It piggybacks Grisham's first book, "A Time to Kill," the book I've always thought was Grisham's paean to Harper Lee, about a small-town southern lawyer defending a seemingly guilty black man and getting ostracized by the community for doing so. In "Sycamore Row,'' the richest man in his Mississippi county, the same setting for Grisham's first book, hangs himself because he doesn't want to suffer through terminal cancer. He leaves a will that shocks his family and the entire county, and dredges up one of the worst hanging stories there ever was, and leads to a harrowing cleansing, and if I tell you much more, I'll be spoiling a typically spellbinding Grisham tale.
Missing You, by Harlan Coben (Dutton). Fiction.
Coben is just as riveting a writer as Grisham. Unlike Grisham, he varies his tales, and often they're more modern, dealing with 2014 stuff. This is a very good story with lots of tributaries, but the central one is about a third-generation New York City cop, a woman named Kat Donovan with lots of tragedy in the family. Her grandfather the cop committed suicide, and her father the cop was murdered, and that is part of the story. But the main part is finding her ex-fiance on a dating site she's signed up for, and finding out he's part of the disappearance of a women in a case she's investigating, and then finding out it may all be a catfishing scheme. Sounds crazy and far too nutty to be coincidental. But as usual with a Coben book, he fits things together seamlessly.
By my count, there are eight separate stories happening in "Missing You." Good writers tie them together so you look forward to the tying-up of loose ends on one story as you're getting pulled into the second and the third and the fourth. I'm not a daily reader or what anyone would call an avid reader. But of the authors I read, Coben is the best at making six or eight tributaries flow into one body of water sensibly. And with a racing pulse at the same time.
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little Brown). Fiction.
If you have a voracious reader on your list this Fathers Day, Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel clocking in at 771 pages is sure to satisfy the appetite. Tartt tells the story of Theo Decker, who, at 13, is taking refuge from a rainstorm in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art when a terrorist bombing takes place. Theo's adored mother is killed and he is instructed by a dying man to save The Goldfinch, a small painting on display there by Dutch painter Carel Fabritius. For the next decade or more Theo is both thief and caretaker of the painting that his mother loved.
As many reviewers have pointed out, the book reads like a 21st Century Dickens novel with its collection of memorable characters, class struggles and winding plot. There is the kindly Hobie, a furniture restorer who takes Theo in and teaches him the business; the wealthy, eccentric Park Avenue family of a friend who also gave him a home for a time; and Theo's gambling, alcoholic father and his drug-using girlfriend who take him to Las Vegas, where Theo and his new friend Boris spend their adolescent hours smoking pot, eating pizza and committing petty crimes. All this before Theo grows up a drug-addicted, swindling antique dealer who eventually finds himself entangled with Russian mobsters and international art thieves before finding redemption. It's a compelling and beautifully written novel that covers tremendous ground while examining the complex inner life of an adolescent boy and the meaning of art and its ability to shelter us from loneliness and even grief.
There's only one Pulitzer winner on this list. And it can't be recommended more highly.
Tigers vs. Jayhawks: From the Civil War to the Battle for No. 1, by Mark Godich (Ascend). Non-fiction.
Godich, a senior editor at Sports Illustrated and a friend of mine, is a Mizzou alum, and I never understood his nutty affection for Tiger football 'til I read his excerpt from this book in our magazine last fall. Particularly the 2007 game between the teams, which has to be one of the craziest stories in recent college football history. Two teams that weren't in the preseason Top 25 (47 teams got at least one vote in the poll; Kansas wasn't one of them) were playing to be the number one team in the country in a late-November game, and playing to be one step closer to being in the race for the national championship. Also, this was the first time in 60 years that Kansas City had hosted the game; a longtime dream of the late Lamar Hunt was to play the game at Arrowhead Stadium every year.
The scenes from the day of the game are cool. Like this one, at the Missouri hotel: "At the Marriott, the Mizzou players were soaking in ESPN GameDay. For the first time, the magnitude of the game truly hit them. Defensive tackle Lorenzo Williams walked into safety William Moore's room. The defensive players always played spades on game day, but there they all were, staring in disbelief at the TV set. The comment on ESPN that the winner at Arrowhead would ascend to No. 1 in the BCS was lost on exactly no one. "Dog, we're not playing spades today," Williams recalls one teammate saying. "I said, 'No, we need to play spades. If we keep looking at this, we're going to drive ourselves crazy. Let's do our normal thing. Get the spades game going. Let's not talk about it. Shut it up and move on.' "
It's a good and quick read, particularly if you, like me, have zero education on one of the underrated rivalries in sports.
* * *
A few words about my schedule for the next month or so.
I'll be taking two weeks vacation starting tomorrow, then returning to work for one week, for some unique coverage of Canadian football during the week of June 24. We're going to cover the opening week of the Canadian Football League season, assuming the players and owners have their labor (or should I say, "labour") situation straightened out, and they seemed close to a resolution on Sunday. Assuming the league is playing in week one, we'll be covering it at The MMQB. When that coverage ends on July 1, I'll be away until July 17.
I will be writing Monday Morning Quarterback, live from Regina, Saskatchewan, on Monday, June 30. The Saskatchewan Roughriders, defending Grey Cup champions, open their season on Sunday, June 29 (assuming they're not on strike), and I'll be there. Unless I screw it up, my MMQB on Monday the 30 ought to be a CFL spectacular. I'm looking forward to my time in Canada. And for you Winnipeg fans, you'll have Jenny Vrentas at your opener on Thursday, so treat her well.
As is our usual custom, we'll have replacement "Monday Morning Quarterback" columnists for four of the next five weeks. San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis will write one, and Chicago coach Marc Trestman will write another to kick off our Canada Week festivities; Trestman, as noted above, coached the CFL's Montreal Alouettes for five years before taking over the Bears last year. Oakland first-round pick, Khalil Mack, is slated to write another one of the MMQBs, with Rich Eisen of NFL Network rounding out the fearsome foursome. Looking forward to reading what they've got to say.
* * *
And a few words of thanks.
I am privileged, and humbled, to accept the National Sportswriter of the Year award tonight here in Salisbury, home of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. I'll be here with fellow honorees from all 50 states—friends like Mike Klis from Denver, Bob Kravitz from Indianapolis, Mike Vaccaro from New York (if he's not at game three of Kings-Rangers), Hal McCoy from Dayton, and Jim Wyatt from Nashville will be honored as state winners. Rick Reilly and Marv Albert will be inducted into the Hall of Fame tonight, while Doc Emrick is recognized as 2013 Sportscaster of the Year. (He'll definitely be in New York for the hockey and be honored in absentia.) I'm grateful to so many people and institutions for the honor, to Sports Illustrated for giving me the platform I have, and for allowing The MMQB to take shape in the last year; to those in the NSSA membership who voted for me when so many great writers were nominated; and to you, the readers who make it possible for me to do this job. Thank you all.
Also, thanks to Time Inc. for recognizing the work we're doing at The MMQB. We were honored at the annual company awards ceremony Thursday with The Henry Luce Award for best work by a blog in the Time Inc. empire—specifically for the 14,000-word series and video we ran last December on a week embedded with an NFL officiating crew. It's one of the most interesting stories I've ever worked on, and it proved to me that you can still, in this age of overwhelming NFL coverage, find original projects to educate and entertain people about pro football. Thanks to John DePetro for traipsing around the country with me and producing such strong video work—to ref Gene Steratore's home in southwestern Pennsylvania while he agonized over grades from a previous game, to back judge Dino Paganelli's AP history classroom near Grand Rapids to show the real lives of the crew, to umpire Wayne Mackie's housing job in New York City, to the day-before-the-game meeting at a Chicago airport hotel, and to crazy game 150, the storm-interrupted Ravens-Bears game at Soldier Field. Thanks to the editor, Mark Mravic, who worked long hours to put the piece together and made it look so good and read so well. And thanks to the staff at The MMQB for creating the kind of place that emphasizes new thoughts and new ideas in a business in which originality has become so challenging.
Quotes of the Week
"They respect me as a human being, and as a football player. All the older guys, all the older vets, are showing me the ropes so I can see how the program is run. Chris [Long] is a great mentor. So is Robert Quinn. I'm telling you, they get after it. I've got to compete. I've got to step my game up to compete with this defensive line. I thought our defensive line at Mizzou was pretty tough. This is a whole new level—the speed, the strength, the everything."
—St. Louis seventh-round defensive end Michael Sam, on his fellow defensive linemen, after one of his first on-field practices Friday with the Rams, to a group of about a dozen media people in St. Louis.
"They know if you're going to be tested and when you're going to be tested. It's too easy to do right to keep doing wrong. We don't need that pub."
—Giants safety Antrel Rolle, after safety Will Hill was suspended for the third straight season because of a positive substance test and then waived by the team, and after cornerback Jayron Hosley was suspended for the first four games of 2014 because of a positive test. Said Rolle: "You can't really count on Will being able to help us out if he's being suspended repeatedly, season after season."
Thank you.
"I talk to those two guys all the time. Every time I hear something that drives me crazy, I say, 'Sorry George. Sorry Vince.' I say that probably 20 times a day. There's s--- going on now that those two would roll over in their graves about."
—John Madden, nodding at a photo of Vince Lombardi and George Halas behind the desk in his office in Pleasanton, Calif., in an interview with Dan Pompei of Sports on Earth.
Pompei wrote a really interesting story about a man in the twilight who seems as vital as ever.
"The time I spent with him, I don't think I would have been able to be at this point so quickly, if he hadn't been such a great mentor with me and help me along.''
—San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who signed a six-year contract worth up to $126 million last week, crediting former 49ers quarterback Alex Smith with a good mentoring job in Kaepernick's first two years with the team.
Stat of the Week
"We are going to be running back by committee,'' Seattle offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell declared the other day, praising the backup to Marshawn Lynch, second-year back Christine Michael thusly: "He has breakaway speed and power behind his pads."
Perhaps. But Michael's record is, at best, spotty. His 2011 season at Texas A&M ended with a torn ACL, his 2012 season was truncated because he had trouble in the A&M spread offense, and his rookie year in Seattle was plagued by poor blocking; he carried only 18 times as a rookie.
The stat: In his past three seasons, two in college and one in the NFL, Michael has a total of 255 carries.
In his past three seasons, Marshawn Lynch has 285, 315 and 301 carries, respectively—more each season than Michael had in his past three combined.
Factoids of the Week That May Interest Only Me
At the Philadelphia Eagles' rookie dinner Friday night at Del Frisco's in Philadelphia—as Tweeted by second-year guard Lane Johnson—the rookies footed the bill for a $17,747.86 dinner. Among the purchases:
A $3,495 bottle of wine, Screaming Eagle 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon.
$20 for five ginger ales.
$187 for 27 bottles of water.
Hope those signing-bonus checks for the rooks cleared.
Bud Grant coached in six Grey Cups, the championship game of Canadian football. All six Grey Cups pitted his Winnipeg Blue Bombers against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Tweets of the Week
I had a 31st-round grade on Johnny Manziel, think the Padres reached
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) June 7, 2014
In his last season playing baseball, as a Kerrville (Texas) High School junior five springs ago, Manziel batted .416 with seven homers and 35 RBI. The Padres took him in the 28th round of the MLB draft on Saturday.
We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.
— CIA (@CIA) June 6, 2014
I like it when New York plays Los Angeles in sporting events because it's guaranteed that one of them will lose.
— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) June 5, 2014
Tremendous is from Kansas.
I haven't heard a discussion of cramps this intense since 8th grade health class.
— Jane McManus (@janesports) June 6, 2014
The ESPNNewYork.com writer after the LeBron James/cramps controversy in game one of the NBA championship series.
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think I'd love to hear what an NFL locker room, or a big-league locker room in baseball or basketball or hockey, would say to a coach who said this publicly: "We cannot win our league this year, because we are not at that level yet." U.S. soccer coach Jurgen Klinsmann said to Sam Borden of the New York Times: "We cannot win this World Cup, because we are not at that level yet." In the last few days, since I derided Klinsmann for saying we cannot win an athletic competition that we, as one of 32 World Cup teams, begin to compete for starting next Monday, I've heard all of the theories about why he said it. They are, in no particular order:
• It's reverse psychology, done to make his players mad at him for giving up, thus creating an us-against-the-world-including-our-coach ethos on the team.
• It adds to the Impossible Dream nature of what the U.S. team is facing.
• It's a common European way of motivating players. By saying it's impossible to win, the players will somehow feel they have nothing to lose and be able to play with relaxed minds.
• It takes the pressure off the players by having all the focus and criticism on the coach who says the team has no chance before the biggest soccer tournament in the world.
My point is simple: It's absurd for a group of players, who have been practicing and drilling and (I'm sure) watching all kinds of video on first-round foes Ghana, Portugal and Germany, to hear from the man leading them into the World Cup that they have no chance to win. I'd love to hear what Herb Brooks would have thought of that form of "motivation." The U.S. opens World Cup play a week from today against Ghana. I'll be watching, even though we don't have a chance.
2. I think Bruce Arians has no prejudice against playing rookies, and he certainly wants to improve his deep receiver speed from 2013, and he has been more impressed with third-round wideout John Brown of Pittsburg (Kans.) State with his 4.34-in-the-40 speed and his quick pickup of the Arizona offense … all of which leads me to believe if you're drafting your fantasy football team in June, taking a late-round risk on Brown would be a smart idea on a deep roster. The Cardinals, so far, love him.
3. I think Dan Marino, embarrassing non-lawsuit and all, still likely will be hired by the Dolphins for what will begin at least as some sort of ceremonial/advisory role in the front office. Look for Marino to write a letter to commissioner Roger Goodell, and to the Dolphins, explaining his side of how he never intended to sue the league over the head-trauma issue. With all the goodwill Marino has built up over the years with the NFL office and the Dolphins, I'd be surprised if his misstep of last week will cost him a job.
4. I think one of the things that would discourage the NFL from putting the 2015 draft in Arlington, Texas—at the Cowboys' stadium—is how empty the place would seem for the rounds after the first. I believe the Cowboys could put on a great show for round one. Maybe 50,000 fans, and some good electricity. But the problem with any venue is what happens when the picks are guys the fans have never heard of. Whoever holds the draft next year will have to be sure it can account for the significantly smaller crowds on days two and three (and day four if there is one) by sectioning off the draft room with curtains or whatever. That's why, as one league operative told me recently, a venue like McCormick Place south of Soldier Field is so attractive. It's the kind of convention center location that can contract and expand depending on the number of people on hand. Even if Jerryworld puts up barriers, it's likely still going to look cavernous.
5. I think the biggest reason to like Colin Kaepernick's contract—if you're a fan, if you're the team, and if you're a competitive player who thinks nothing should be handed to him—is that he'll get very rich if he's a good-to-great NFL quarterback over the next six years. If he's just okay, or he slumps over the next two or three years, the Niners can get out from under an onerous deal and start over at the position without being weighed down by Kaepernick guarantees.
6. I think Rahim Moore of the Denver Broncos deserves some praise this morning. Moore suffered from a potentially catastrophic incidence of compartment syndrome, which Joan Niesen wrote so eloquently about for The MMQB. Then Moore talked about it to the Denver press, and a local runner in Denver was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with compartment syndrome last week. The runner is remaining anonymous for now, but a relative, who also wished to remain anonymous, reached out to me to explain how Moore, once he found out about the patient, wanted to visit him immediately in the hospital. Moore did, last Thursday night. "Rahim prayed with him and inspired him,'' the relative said. "He dropped what he was doing at 10 o'clock at night and came to the hospital and delivered a message of hope. We are just normal people. We had no expectations that he would come when we notified the Broncos about the situation. But he did. We are overwhelmed. People should know this—they should know what a good person Rahim Moore is." And so now you hear the testimony about Moore.
7. I think the funniest headline of last week was one about Andrew Luck not being concerned about Colin Kaepernick's new contract. People: Andrew Luck is not concerned about much of anything that is outside his Colts universe, and he certainly isn't concerned with what anyone else's contract is. He knows when it's time to sign a contract, he'll get what the market rate is for a player playing his position at whatever level he's playing at the time. For him to worry about something like that would be incredibly anti-Luck.
8. I think Monica Seles would be one heck of a first lady of Buffalo football.
9. I think when word leaks out of spring practices that a player is not in top shape, the translation is: The guy's been dogging it this off-season, and this is his warning. That's what I thought when the Bucs sent word that Da'Quan Bowers, a second-round pick three years ago, wasn't in good shape at team activities last week. Bowers has played just 1,009 snaps in a disappointing three-year career so far. This has to be his do-or-die season in Tampa.
10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:
a. That Belmont was really, really fun to watch.
b. I understand the owner of California Chrome being upset that a fresh horse running his first Triple Crown race beat his horse, running for the third time in a little over a month. But saying it's a "coward's way out'' is beyond bush league. Playing by the rules is cowardly? As SI.com's Tim Layden reported, Belmont winner Tonalist was sick and didn't qualify for the Kentucky Derby, so obviously he didn't sit out to conserve energy for the long Belmont.
c. That Maria Sharapova win over Simona Halep at the French Open was a great sports event. I was sure Halep was too powerful for Sharapova early in the third set, but Sharapova proved to be a great champion.
d. The A's are really fun to watch.
e. Great job, John Romano, on your Don Zimmer column in Tampa Bay. You've got to read the ending, folks. You'll say, "How do you not love Don Zimmer?"
f. Of course, I'm the same guy who watched Zim's most ignominious moment (not including the 1978 playoff game at Fenway) with Don Banks at a bar in Indianapolis and howled with stunned laughter when Pedro Martinez threw him to the ground by his head—one of the craziest sights I've ever seen in sports.
g. Bet you didn't know (unless you read my Tweet the other day) that Zim homered off Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal and Robin Roberts (four times) in his major-league career.
h. Coffeenerdness: I give up. I can't drink any drip coffee but Italian Roast. I am officially the snobbiest coffee snob of all time.
i. Beernerdness: Always happens this way—it's hot out, it's near summertime, and I move from heavier to lighter in beer selection.
j. Great opening—would you expect anything less?—from Doc Emrick at the start of Stanley Cup game two Saturday, with a shot of downtown L.A. and Staples Center: "THIS is the city … Los Angeles, California." If you're a viewer of a certain age, that was Emrick channeling his inner Jack Webb, and "Dragnet."
k. Two comments on "All The Way," the Broadway play that's heavy on the history of Lyndon Johnson's early presidency and the election of 1964: Though there were tedious parts and a three-hour play could have easily been two hours and 15 minutes, there were spellbinding segments that made the play enjoyable and worthwhile. And Bryan Cranston, the "Breaking Bad" guy, is so good as LBJ. What an exhausting role. How does he play that role twice in one day when there are matinees? I can't imagine the yelling and screaming and energy a man expends playing that part for six hours in one day. No wonder he won the Tony Award on Sunday night for best actor. ("All the Way" won for best play.)
l. Think of this: Cranston plays LBJ at 8 p.m. Friday, at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and at 2 p.m. Sunday. That's four times in the span of 45 hours. Just watch Cranston's exertion level and tell me that's not an incredible task—particularly for his vocal cords.
The Adieu Haiku
Kaepernick got paid.
Sort of—but it's a good pact.
Play well, get rich. Good.


text:
Author Notes: This recipe was inspired by food "up-cycling" at a few of our local restaurants. Using cucumber and citrus skins and rinds to flavor the table water in spring and summer adds just a little somethings more and makes for a truly refreshing, intriguing drink.
I wanted to see what might happen if I took it one step further, infusing the flavors of cucumber and citrus (in this case orange,) along with a hint of lemon thyme into a basic simple syrup. What I came up with is a new take on savory/sweet, herbs/fruit, vegetables/citrus in an old favorite: Italian Soda. Great for a warm summer evening! —Pastry Ninja
Makes: about 3 cups syrup (16 1.5 fl oz doses)
Orange, Cucumber & Lemon Thyme Simple Syrup
Skins of 1 medium Organic cucumber
tablespoons fresh, crushed lemon thyme
organic navel orange quarters
1 1/2
cups white sugar
tablespoon Light Honey
cups filtered water
Orange, Cucumber & Lemon Thyme Italian Sodas
1 1/2
ounces simple syrup
ounce Limonciello [optional]
ounces club soda or sparkling water
Freezer Frosted Galsses
shaved cucumber, orange slices for garnish
Orange, Cucumber & Lemon Thyme Simple Syrup
- Start by washing your herbs, fruit, and veggies to remove any dirt and dust from the skins. Since we're using whole ingredients, skins/leaves intact, ORGANIC INGREDIENTS ARE MUCH PREFERRED. Any toxins that can exist in the whole foods will most likely exist in the skins and leaves and can be easily transfered into your syrup... no fun.
- In a medium sauce pot over low heat, combine sugar, water, and honey. Stir to dissolve.
- Skin your cucumber, slice your orange into quarters, strip and lightly muddle your thyme leaves.
- Turn your heat up to medium and add cucumber skins, orange 1/4, and thyme leaves to the sugar water. Bring your mixture to a medium simmering boil and cook until the syrup goes transparent (about 2 minute). Let the mixture cool 2 minutes.
- Strain the cooked syrup through a fine wire sieve to remove large solids and whole pieces then again through layered cheese cloth to filter out any remaining particulates. This syrup can be canned via a traditional boiling method and will keep, once opened for 3 - 4 weeks in the fridge.
Orange, Cucumber & Lemon Thyme Italian Sodas
- Frost your glasses in the freezer 1 hour prior to using them.
- Fill glasses half way with ice and a few cucumber shavings.
- Top ice with your simple syrup and limonciello [optional] then fill with sparkling water. Garnish with an orange slice. Serve on a warm, breezy summer evening, garnished with friends and family!
- This recipe was entered in the contest for Your Best Soda Fountain Recipe
More Great Recipes:
Cucumber|Honey|Lemon|Orange|Thyme|Fruit|Make Ahead|Serves a Crowd|Father's Day|Easter|Mother's Day|Spring


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Mesmerizing Stories in Sanskrit from the past - 2012