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Celebrating A Birthday With Lemon Vanilla Cupcakes
I don't make cupcakes very often. Rarely. As in four times a year maybe. I have nothing against cupcakes. I am as picky with them as I am about any small bite I make, bake or eat. They'd better have a higher interestingness to frosting ratio for me to pay attention. In about everything I do, I go straight for the good stuff. I skip the fluff (rhyming unintentional) but today is special. It's my dad's birthday!
Joyeux Anniversaire mon p'tit papa!
I wasn't going to say anything or blog about it but I know I have written Mother's Day posts and birthday posts to my maman before, made macarons and cakes for my brother, shared a tear with you reminiscing about my grandparents but never about my father. Time to fix this wouldn't you say? Note to my family: don't expect a post per family member's birthday or it would be the only thing people would read. I'd rather make lemon curd instead, ehehe.
My father. The unsung hero of this blog seems like! Without diving into the melodramatic, allow me to put down in writing a few things about him. These cupcakes made me think of him in many different ways. They are soft like his hugs. Tangy like his sense of humor. Creamy like…well if I say love, it sounds tacky, right? Well then, be it. Now that years have softened him. Or he's always been a softie but spent a great deal of effort hiding it? I don't know. All I know is that he deserves to be in the spotlight for a little while. If only on his daughter's site.
To know my father, Jacques, is a gift I hope many more people would experience. To say that I am 50% my father and 50% my mother is no understatement. I am as reserved as I am public. I am as righteous as I am mischevious. I am as poised as I am exuberant. I am as leveled as I am dramatic (my dad being the first of all these adjectives).
My father lost a lot in his life. He's also gained the never ending respect of his family by the way he's always conducted himself. I could give you a few very sad sad stories to illustrate this point but like him I'd rather look on the brighter side of things so here goes the moment I realized at 6 years old that my dad would always be a "put your money where your mouth is" kind of guy. That story that makes us laugh a great deal now even if I get red cheeks every time it goes around.
I call it "the day I got (justifiably) whipped back into shape for misbehaving".
One evening my parents had an important dinner on Base (my father is a General in L'Armee de L'Air), my brother Thierry was put on babysitting duty of my brother Arnaud and myself. Everything was just dandy until I thought it'd be hilarious to throw peas across the table with my spoon, catapult style. My brothers got quiet. My father looked at me straight in the eyes and said "you do that one more time and you will get spanked. Bare bottom." For my father to say that, you know I had crossed some major line. I looked back as straight as I could hold it, lifted my fully pea-loaded spoon and catapulted them across the table.
Silence fell upon the room. My brothers were looking at me like as if I was a green alien with red antennas. Without flinching my dad commanded me to come see him after I was done with my dinner. Going up the stairs to meet my fate felt like the 12 steps up to my room suddenly were 120. Five minutes later, I was sporting my father's hands neatly and naturally tatooed on my derriere. The one and only time this would ever happen.
However difficult it was for him (and he told me so years later), he was right. We both had to own it. He did gain my respect and my trust forever. Different times, different ways. Let me end by saying that this blog is not the place to have a "how to raise your child, slapping-no slapping" argument. This is just a story of why every time I see parents counting to 3 and then 3 more I think about that day almost 30 years ago. Not sure it would have worked the same with my brother though.
Note to my dad: it had the desired effect but no need to slap me to get your point across anymore. Bringing me chocolate will, ahaha!
My father is one heck of a man. He's resilient and patient. He wrote a novel. He paints beautiful sceneries that my mom frames. He's patient. Yes, I know. I've said it just a second ago but that's because I debited a lot of my "father's patience" credit this past year without collateral. He did not say a word and let me find my way and establish myself in my work. I hope that being too busy to call as promptly as before is a good indicator that I am paying him back rightfully. I hope so.
I love you Papa! Hope you spend the rest of the week celebrating, you deserve it.
Cupcake liners from Bake It Pretty.
Lemon Vanilla Cupcakes:
Makes 24
Note: for non gluten free readers, replace the sweet rice, millet, sorghum flours and cornstarch with 3 cups all purpose flour. Omit the xanthan gum.
I use sucanat for the lemon curd which gives it a bit of a molasses taste and a darker color but regular sugar works the same.
For the cupcakes (adapted from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc At Home):
1 cup superfine sweet rice flour
1 cup millet flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 tablespoons coconut oil (solid stage preferably)
2 1/2 cups sugar, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups milk
6 egg whites (use the yolks in the buttercream)
For the lemon curd:
zest of 2 lemons
1/2 cup (125ml) lemon juice
1/4 cup sucanat (or sugar)
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
For the buttercream:
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 vanilla bean
Prepare the cupcakes:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly butter 24 cupcake liners.
Sift together all the flours, cornstarch, gum, baking powder and salt. Reserve.
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, coconut oil and 1 cup sugar at medium speed until pale and thick. Add the vanilla, then the dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with the milk. Transfer the batter to a separate bowl and wash your stand mixer bowl very well.
In that clean bowl, whip the egg whites to a foam at medium speed. Increase the speed and slowly add the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, until you get a glossy and firm meringue with stiff peaks.
Fold 1/3 of the whites into the flour batter to lighten it and then fold in the rest carefully not to deflate the meringue completely.
Divide in between the prepared cupcake liners and bake for 20 minutes.
Let them cool completely. In the meantime, prepare the curd and buttercream.
Prepare the lemon curd:
In a heavy medium saucepan, stir together the lemon zest, juice and sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat. In a small bowl, beat the egg and egg yolk to break them up. Beat some of the lemon mixture into the eggs to temper. Scrape the mixture back into the saucepan and cook stirring constantly until it thickens up, about 5 minutes. Remove the curd from the heat, let cool five minutes then whisk in the butter slowly, one tablespoon at a time. Let cool completely before using.
Prepare the buttercream:
Place the yolks in a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment.
Bring the sugar and water to 238F in a medium saucepan set over high heat. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the egg yolks and continue to whisk until cold. Change to the paddle attachment and beat in the butter, one tablespoon at a time. Split the vanilla bean open and scrape the seeds out. Add to the butter mixture. Continue to beat for a few seconds until completely smooth.
To assemble:
With a pairing knife or the large opening of decorating pastry tip cut a whole in the center of the cupcakes. Fill with lemon curd and top the hole back with the cupake piece you just cut. Frost as you like either with a straight or star tip or just by "spatulating" some buttercream on top.


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Other segments from the episode on September 5, 2013
September 5, 2013
Guest: John Bradshaw
TERRY GROSS, HOST:This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Cats have come a long way from being the animals given the job of catching mice to being treasured as adorable creatures that snuggle with us in our beds. This relatively new arrangement is creating new issues for cats and for the people who live with them. My guest John Bradshaw has studied the history of domesticated cats and how the relationship between people and cats has changed. He's the author of the new book "Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet." It's a follow-up to his book "Dog Sense."
He's the foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol in England. As an anthrozoologist, he studies the interactions between people and animals. He's also the former science chair for the International Association of Human-Animal Interaction Organizations.
JOHN BRADSHAW: Thank you for having me on.
BRADSHAW: Well, I think cats are much less demonstrative animals than dogs are. And it's kind of not their fault. They evolved from a solitary animal that has never had the need for a kind of sophisticated social repertoire in the way that the dog, having evolved from the wolf, kind of had that ready-made.
So their faces are just not terribly expressive, and some people read into that that they're kind of cynical and aloof and all those sorts of things. But I don't believe that for a moment. I think cats show by their behavior, even if it's a bit more subtle than a dog, that they really are fond of their owners.
BRADSHAW: I don't think cats are after our warmth, particularly. I mean maybe on a very cold winter's day they might be, but they've got pretty good fur coats of their own. I don't think sitting on a lap is necessarily only good for the warmth aspect, in fact maybe the opposite. It may actually be that they get too warm.
No, I think they're there in the same way that they would lie up against another member of their own species, another cat that they were particularly friendly with. I think they're there to show that they are our friends and that they are completely relaxed around us.
BRADSHAW: Well, the purr is popularly thought of as being indicating comfort and contentment, and it can be that. But signals like the purr, because it is a signal, it's giving out a message, and it's trying to get you to do something, and they don't evolve just to convey emotions, not in the animal world, anyway.
What we think cats are doing here is essentially just trying to reassure the person or the cat who's hearing the purr that they are no threat and that ideally they would like you to stay still and help them do something.
So it starts off with kittens purring to get their mothers to lie still while they're suckling, and it goes on into adulthood. And then it can be combined with other sounds. So some cats will have a very kind of loud and slightly uncomfortable purr when they're wanting to be fed. They'll charge around the kitchen making this kind of loud purring noise, which has been named the solicitation purr.
And the sound of it is distinct from the regular purr. And it means hang around and feed me. And then there is also a purr that cats will do when they are in deep distress, either very unhappy about something or indeed in pain, and will purr, you know, in situations when they're clearly not comfortable or contented.
But again, it's a signal to the animals, the people around them to pay attention and try and help them.
BRADSHAW: Well, they've adapted remarkably well, I think. I mean, there are still many cats around the world that are kept for their mousing abilities, their abilities to keep farmyards clear of mice and rats. And then suddenly in the last 50 or 60 years or so, we've started keeping cats in cities. We've started to have our own methods of keeping mice and rats out of cities. We don't need the cat to do it anymore.
And so now we've kind of turned around and gone actually we'd rather you cats didn't do that. We don't like it when bloody corpses come dragged in through the cat flap. We don't like it when the conservationists say look, cats are causing a nuisance and maybe even proper damage to wildlife populations.
The cats need some time, I think, to catch up.
BRADSHAW: Well, I think it's - first of all is to realize that the cat, I don't think he's giving you a present. The cat is merely bringing some prey back to the place it feels safest before it decides whether to eat it or not; and of course in the majority of cases they don't.
BRADSHAW: Here's a mouse that I am actually not going to eat because now I've got it home, I realize it's not very tasty, and I'd rather you opened some cat food for me. I think, you know, that tends to be the scenario. So I don't think that the cat is donating the mouse to you insomuch as abandoning it as something that it's, kind of, can't really remember why it killed it in the first place.
Well, I think there are a number of things that can be done. None of them are going to be 100 percent effective, but together they go quite a long way. I think the first thing is ensure that if you're getting a kitten, you get a kitten from a place where the mother cat has not gone hunting. So it's not such a good idea to go out and get a kitten off a farm, where the mother has brought the kittens up and has already presented them with half-dead mice as a kind of lesson in how to - you know, what's good to eat and how to hunt, because those lessons certainly affect the likelihood that the kitten will go on to start hunting when it grows up to be a cat itself.
You can feed it the best possible food you can. I mean, almost all of the commercially available cat food nowadays is nutritionally adequate, and that's not something that's always been true. I mean, it was only 40, 50 years ago that we actually understood really what the cat's nutritional needs were and how unusual they are.
So now we have good quality cat food that should satisfy every cat. They don't need to go hunting. And we do know that cats fed on poor-quality food or scraps or whatever, do go hunting a lot more, and they hunt a lot more seriously, too, because they really feel this need for the protein that hunting will give them.
So good quality food, and then keep the cat in at times when it may need to go hunting. I mean, some people keep their cats indoors, and I think that's fine. Sometimes it's not a cat that's got used to the outdoors. If you have an indoor cat, it's not going to be given the opportunity to hunt.
If you let your cat out, maybe not let it out at times when the wildlife is most vulnerable. Fit a good quality quick-release collar with a bell on it. That's been shown to have some effect on hunting success.
All of those things put together, I think you'll end up with a cat that hunts very little. I mean, the surveys that we've done recently show most pet cats that are well-fed only catch something about once every two weeks.
GROSS: Well, there's actually a big controversy now about outdoor cats, and a lot of neighborhoods, even in cities, people get very upset when they see a cat hunt a bird. And a lot of people are demanding that their neighbors keep their cats indoors so as not to hunt birds or kill birds. And I wonder what the level of controversy surrounding that is like in England, where you are.
BRADSHAW: Well, it has been quite severe. The kind of damage that they do, I think there's two aspects to it. One is that people don't like to see that kind of thing going on, and that is really a question of what particular people, you know, like or dislike.
Then there's really the question of whether cats really cause a problem to wildlife. Now that is still very much open to argument, but here in the United Kingdom, it's pretty much agreed that there is no significant problem due to pet cats. And I think this is the crucial distinction, is a well-fed pet cat is unlikely to cause any significant damage.
It may occasionally upset somebody by catching something, but in terms of, you know, how many birds there are going to be next year and the year after, really there doesn't seem to be any significant impact at all. Feral cats that do not have owners and are not regularly fed are a different matter, and I think they can be a real problem. And so I think the argument boils down to, well, what do you do about feral cats. What do you do about discouraging people who feed feral cats on, I think, the mistaken idea that they deserve it, when those feral cats are actually causing significant problems for lots of birds and small mammals.
GROSS: How much is a cat's play a reflection of the cat's hunting instinct?
BRADSHAW: Well, the research that we've done suggests that it's almost indistinguishable, that everything that a cat does when it's playing seems to be a part of its normal hunting behavior. And this is - you kind of see dogs do this a little bit, but a lot of dog play and a lot of play between dogs and people is a much more social thing that the dog is kind of using a toy as a way of interacting with person, and the toy is, in some senses, irrelevant, it's just a piece of equipment that the dog uses.
In the case of a cat, we're not - we've never really found any particular significance to the human being. You know, if you're holding a piece of string with a mouse on the end, the cat is not so much interested at you, which the dog probably would be, but interested in the mouse on the end.
So for example cats prefer to play with toys that in some way look like prey. They've got feather on, or they're furry. They're about the right size for the sort of thing that the cat would safely be able to prey on. If you produce rather larger kind of fluffy toys for cats, they start to react towards them as if they were rats and could bite back, which clearly the cat must know in some respects the toy can't do, it doesn't have any teeth.
But nevertheless, they adapt the way that they actually play with a toy in just the same way as they would adapt their hunting techniques when they were hunting a rat. Cats play more intensely when they get hungry, which is the exact opposite of what you'd expect. You'd expect them to just be begging for food. But no, give them a toy when they're hungry, and they'll attack it in a way that - with an energy that they probably wouldn't use when they're less hungry.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is John Bradshaw. He's the author of the book "Cat Sense," which is a follow-up to his book "Dog Sense." He's the foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol in England. Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more about cats. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and we're talking about cats. If you're just joining us, my guest is John Bradshaw, and his new book is called "Cat Sense." It's a follow-up to his book "Dog Sense." He's the foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol in England.
One of the toys that has been popular in my house is reflection games. So it could be like chasing light. So it could be the reflection of, say, a CD box, you know, one of those plastic boxes on the wall - the reflection on the wall. Or, you know, those laser light toys, where it's like a little wand with a laser pointer. And so you can project the laser light, a little round dot, onto the wall, and you move the, you know, you move the wand around, which moves the light around, and the cat chases the light.
And it can chase it on the wall and jump onto the wall or chase the dot on the floor. And cats seem to just go wild over this. They seem to love it. And yet it seems like it would be the most frustrating game in the world because it's light: you can't capture it. It fulfills none of the functions you've described. There's no fur or feathers. You can't change the smell. You can't dismember it. It's just a little circle of light.
Why do cats go so crazy over it, and what do you think of that as a game for your cat?
BRADSHAW: Well, I think you see the same sort of thing in a more natural situation in the fall, where cats go crazy over dried leaves blowing across the ground, and you might equally argue, what on Earth is the point of that. I don't think there's a cat in the world that thinks that a dried leaf is going to be good to eat.
What we think is going on here is that it's not really - the cat doesn't think it's hunting, but what you're doing is tapping into some peculiar things about cats' vision. You know, we look at cats, their eyes are in the front of their head. They're actually about the same size as ours, which is quite remarkable given, of course, that the cat's head is that much smaller than ours is.
But those big eyes are there for good night vision. But the eyes are not wired up to the brain in quite the same way as ours are. The cats have some kind of color vision, but very little, and they don't see the world as a sequence of TV pictures like we do.
They do have some of that. They obviously do build up images of what's around them. But a lot of what their eyes are picking up on is movement. And they have lots of specialist nerves that pick up on movement: downward, sideways, diagonally, things getting larger, things getting smaller and especially in the peripheral vision, around the sides.
And these are all things which presumably evolution has given the cat in order to make it an effective hunter, so that it can follow a little animal that's running through cover just by very slight movements of the grass above it or whatever. So what we're doing with these light games is tapping into this very early stage of the hunting sequence. So the cat never gets to catch anything, obviously, there is nothing there to catch, of course.
But the game, if you like, is in the - is in triggering these parts of the brain that would normally be used to detect the movement of a mouse through the grass.
GROSS: One of the things you write about in your book is your concern about cat breeding. You know, you write that dogs for quite a long time have been bred for certain characteristics and for certain abilities. They've been bred to herd sheep, or they've been bred to hunt, or bred to be good companions or to run fast; whereas cats have been bred to compete in cat shows, or to look a certain way and be sold to people who want that look.
What are your concerns about the future of cats and the traits that they're being bred for, and what would you like to see us do?
BRADSHAW: Well, I think we have not - nobody, really, has focused on the idea of breeding a cat, which is a good companion. Some of that has happened in dogs, but, you know, most of our cats are descended from hunters and animals that we encourage to hunt that we kept for their very hunting ability. And so we need to somehow turn that down a little bit.
I mean, some of it can be done by possibly a little bit of training by giving them other outlets for the hunting. But ultimately, I suspect that the cat will only be ensured a future in an increasingly crowded planet if we can generate an animal which really doesn't feel the need to hunt.
I mean, there's no physiological need why they have to hunt nowadays. Cat food is good stuff. They could live their wholes lives on it. And so hunting is now a nuisance as far as cat ownership is concerned, at the very best. So I think that's something that we need to do, and also I think we need to breed a cat which is simply more tolerant of other cats.
If indeed, you know, cats are highly stressed, as I believe they are, by contact with some of the cats around them. Not all of them, some of them they will get on with, but there'll pretty much always be one they don't. Then a cat which is just a little bit more laid back around other cats will not only be a happier cat, but also probably more rewarding as a pet.
And I think neither of those things really are being concentrated on at all, in terms of cat breeding. I mean, those people who are breeding cats are breeding them for shows. They're breeding them for their appearance, and as a consequence, there's a lot of inbreeding going on. And there are more of these diseases appearing within cats that we've already seen in pedigree dogs, due to simply too much breeding for a particular appearance and not so much for behavior.
So I think the - in a way we almost have to start again, think about the cat in the 21st century. What do we want cats for, what kind of a cat do we want, and start again from there.
GROSS: You know, so many people get their cats from shelters, and so many of the cats in shelters - well many of the cats in shelters are the offspring of feral cats. And so many housecats are neutered. Are we breeding cats who succeed on the streets, more so than we're breeding cats who are successful domesticated pets?
BRADSHAW: Well, I think we are accidentally favoring the cat that lives on the street, because it's the cat that lives on the street who produces offspring. Many of those, you know, do sadly die of injury or disease or whatever, but some of them end up in rescue, the lucky ones, and then become pets.
Now if we're going to neuter a large majority of our pet cats, that means that the most successful cats, and the most successful cats that are best adapted to living in people's houses, never leave any offspring. And so where the next generation of cats comes from is from cats that are - whose parents, anyway, were adapted to living on the street.
Now that's OK for a while, and I'm not saying there's an imminent crisis, you know. It's over the horizon. But it's going to be there. I think that cats are going to become very, very slightly less friendly with every generation. And eventually we're going to come to the point where cats become less attractive, less appealing, because they're much harder to socialize.
At the moment you can do a huge amount, probably everything you need to, by handling the kittens and treating them the right way. I'm just hopeful that we won't ever get to the point where some kittens really just don't respond to handling in the same way that wild kittens don't. The kittens of wild cats don't respond to handling. They just go wild again, eventually.
GROSS: John Bradshaw will be back in the second half of the show. His new book is called "Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with John Bradshaw, author of the new book "Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet." It's a follow-up to his book "Dog Sense." Bradshaw is an Anthrozoologist - which means he studies the interactions between people and animals. He's the foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol in England.
You, in your book, not only write about domestic cats, you write about feral cats. And you've worked with feral cats. Tell us about the feral cat community that you worked with.
BRADSHAW: I've particularly worked with feral cat communities where the majority of the individuals are neutered. I mean it's often not possible to neuter all of the, but this is a humane method for control of feral cat colonies, which has been recommended in the U.K. now for an upwards of 30 years, and I think it's becoming adopted worldwide as a humane way of keeping the numbers of feral cats under control without having actually to go out and kill them, which is previously what used to happen.
One of the things we were intrigued by was whether these communities would stay together. I mean just to backtrack to fully breeding unneutered feral cat colonies, which I've also studied, but which has been studied by many other people around the world. They are essentially matriarchies; they are female based alliances between mothers and daughters, and possibly even female cousins - if the colony gets big enough - where a lot of things, including the nursing and care of kittens, our shared. And males really don't kind of play a part in that very much. They tend to be much more solitary and they're much more competitive. It's very much an alliance between females.
If you neuter a female cat, then you take away the reason for it to get together with other females in the first place. And so one of the questions we wanted to answer was, you know, do they just simply give up and become solitary again now that they find that they can't breed? And the answer is no, they don't. In fact, to the opposite really, they stay together despite the fact they're no longer actually raising kittens together, and are quite often joined by males - which now having been castrated and no longer need to spend a lot of time fighting one another and in competition with one another. So these neutered feral colonies are usually very harmonious - even when they're not socialized to people - these are, you know, not necessarily cats that anybody could go in touch. They've never really come to trust people. They didn't meet people when they were kittens and while they may get some food from people, they're not necessarily very trusting.
GROSS: So although you found that some feral cats are actually very sociable to each other, you also say that often humans are fooling themselves when they think oh, I'm out of the house for a long time everyday at work, my cat needs company, so I'm going to get another cat and bring it home as a companion to my cat. And your cat actually might not like the idea of a new cat in the home very much. So can you compare the kind of social adaptation in feral communities with how a solitary cat at home is going to react when a friend cat is brought in?
BRADSHAW: Feral colonies well, first of all, they're natural accumulations of cats. What they're normally based around is one of the cat having kittens in an area where there's plenty of food. And so there's no real incentive for the female kittens, particularly, to leave. She may drive her male kittens away to prevent inbreeding, but she's often very tolerant to her female kittens so they will stay. The next year they will themselves have kittens and the whole lot will start raising their kittens together. And that's the nucleus of a feral colony.
Sometimes unrelated females will try to join. Many times they will be rejected, chased away. Sometimes though, for some reason, and we don't really know why, they will be accepted. And so you get several females who are not related collaborating and helping one another out. So what you see there in the feral colonies is the product of not only just evolution - the evolution of the cats social abilities - but also a lot of trial and error, that cats that don't get on with the group leave, cats that tried to join the group and don't get on with them are thrown out, and so on.
What we do when we try and add to a household, take one cat and then add another one, is we want that to work first time. And sometimes it does work in the same way that sometimes an outsider can join a feral colony. But often it doesn't work so well - at least not if the owner doesn't take some precautions and does the whole thing gradually. And there's a well-established way of introducing two cats together. It's not entirely foolproof. It's not guaranteed to work every time. But you can greatly enhance the probability that two cats will get on with one another if, for example, they're introduced to each other's smells, first of all, and not literally physically face-to-face. That if you're maybe getting a cat from a shelter that you take some bedding from the cat's bed in the shelter, take it back to your house, put it in front of your existing cat, let the cat sniff it. It won't take too kindly to it to begin with, but after a day or two it may get used to it. Then when you keep the cat home you can keep them in different parts of the house and do the same thing, exchange the owners between the two. Which is very much how cats learn about other cats; they'll probably smell them before they ever see them in the wild, so this is a very natural way of doing introduction. And then do the introduction, the physical introduction, when they can actually see one another with some kind of partition in between. So that if any kind of, you know, one cat does decide to go for the other one, it can't have any nasty effects and certainly, no lasting effects on the cats so that they can get used to one another very gradually.
I think where it goes wrong is when people just kind of think well, these are two cats, they're both cats, they must get along. You know, I'm a person, I get along with other people, cats should get on with other cats, and leave them to get on with it. And usually well, certainly, commonly what happens is the two cats get some sort of stalemate going between them where neither of them really likes the other, but they somehow carve the house up between them. And trouble only starts when say, there is one litter tray they have to share - which they won't like to or there's only one food bowl, which they have to essentially compete over. So for people who've got two cats already who might not seem to be getting along too well, if you just allow them, you know, give them two of everything and they'll sort it out between themselves, nine times out of 10.
GROSS: How many cats have you had at the same time?
BRADSHAW: I've had about six or seven at the same time, including kittens. But they've all been, I basically for most of my life had one family of cats. So that they've, all the kittens, all the younger cats have grown up with the older cats. And that's mimicking, if you like, the feral situation, where kittens grow up in an environment where all of the - or most of the adult cats are already getting along together, and so they, kind of, they take their cue from that, that's the way they would they would they start behaving themselves. Cats are...
GROSS: So ideally, if you want two cats, should you get two cats from the same litter?
BRADSHAW: Ideally, yes. But it doesn't always work. I mean I have to say, you know, I've got friends who've done that - gone out and done that. Eight times out of 10 probably it does work, but sometimes for some reason the two decide they don't like each other. You know, cats are unpredictable. I mean I think that maybe that's part of their charm, but unlike with dogs, there's, kind of, no rules.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is John Bradshaw. He's the author of the book "Cat Sense," which is a follow-up to his book "Dog Sense." He's the foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol in England.
Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
BRADSHAW: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is John Bradshaw. He is the author of the new book "Cat Sense," which is a follow-up to his book "Dog Sense." He's the foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol in England.
GROSS: I think one of the issues you have to face if you're getting a kitten is whether you're going to have that kitten declawed or not, and that's becoming increasingly controversial. So let's start with a description of what actually happens when a cat is declawed.
BRADSHAW: Well, the operation involves essentially taking the ends of, you know, what we would call our fingers off. And I have a personal experience of this. I had the end of one of my fingers crushed in an accident many, many years ago, and for years afterwards - it was restored to some extent by the surgeons, but not completely. And for many years afterwards I got phantom pains in that finger. Which I knew, you know, I'm a human being and I could look at my finger and go, I know that's a phantom pain. I know it's not real pain. It's annoying and it's distracting, but I can live with it.
I think, you know, people, war veterans who have whole legs injured or amputated in that way, it's a much more serious problem. But I think if I'd had eight of those then, and I was a cat and I couldn't really understand what had happened to me, I suspect I would have not been happy about it. It's a...
GROSS: I have to say until I read your book I never thought of the possibility that cats would have phantom pain in the part of the paw that was amputated, you know, during the declawing process. I never used to think of declawing as amputation. I thought of it as taking the nails out.
BRADSHAW: Yeah. No. Surgically, it's more than that, because you have to take out the whole bit where the claw grows from, rather than just the claw itself. And the cats will loose claws and re-grow them quite easily. It's a, you know, a natural thing that they have evolved in order to be able to keep hunting even if they damage a claw. So there is that possibility and I think there is some evidence that this may actually - from veterinarians - that this may actually - be the case. But there's an ethical issue as well, I suspect - which, you know, is reflected in the codes of practice over here in Europe where declawing is illegal. I mean the veterinarians are not allowed to it.
GROSS: It's illegal in Europe? Really?
BRADSHAW: Yeah. Yeah. They're not allowed to do it. It's regarded as being a mutilation...
GROSS: Wow.
BRADSHAW: ...of the animal. So...
GROSS: But here's the thing. Let me give you give you an example of my neighbor who got this adorable little kitten a couple of years ago. And the kitten - she wasn't sure whether she would have the kitten declawed or not. But after a while, you know, the kitten would lay in bed with her and would paw her face a lot, you know, affectionately but still this young woman was afraid that the kitten was going to accidentally claw her eye or seriously scratch her face. And at that point she decided, just for my own safety, I love this kitten but I need to get declawed. And what would you say about that?
BRADSHAW: Well, the use of the claws in a social context, as you're describing, is something that mother cats teach their kittens not to do. I mean, you know, kittens as they grow up will play roughly with one another. They'll quite quickly find that if they play roughly with their claws out or with an adult cat, they get a swipe around the head and they don't do it again - or at least after a couple of times they don't do it again. So it's something that the majority of cats can learn quite easily. This is not, you know, they'll try at it, but if they're told off them though quite quickly learn that this is not something you should do. I mean if it's an established habit in an adult cat, that's something rather different. But in a young cat that's still learning about the world and had to interact with people and so on. When things like that happen to me I have just imitated a cat, which is to do a dry spit - if you like - if that's, if you just...
GROSS: You spit at your cat?
BRADSHAW: I don't actually spit, but you make the...
BRADSHAW: ...noise that mother cats do when they're telling kittens off. And cats really take notice of that and they'll tend not to do it again. They understand that signal.
GROSS: Do it again so I can get what you're doing.
BRADSHAW: You can just go...
BRADSHAW: ...at the cat. So you're not actually spitting at the cat but you're making a spitting noise which imitates what the mother cat does and that will dissuade the cat. If that's not enough, a carefully aimed water pistol is a great way, and painless for the cat way, but uncomfortable way of persuading a cat not to do something. Provided you catch it in the act. I mean like all kinds of animal training, if you're going to produce a nasty stimulus, whether it's a noise the cat doesn't like or a brief jet of water, the only way it would work is if the cat is actually doing the same thing that you don't want it to do when the particular, when that punishment - which is what it is - arrives. If you do it afterwards, the cat won't understand.
GROSS: Well, how can you explain to the cat that it's the claws that's the issue and not the proximity of the cat? That it's one very specific part of the action - the claws?
BRADSHAW: By only doing it when the claws are out. And as I say, my experience has been that because mother cats - it's something that kittens kind of almost expect mother cats to be training them to do. And so if you can train the cat not to do it that way. I've never had a problem with cats scratching me like that and I think that's part of the reason. The other reason, of course, is that many of my cats have grown up, have been born in my house and so their mothers have done the training for me. And it is, I think, more common - that kind of behavior is more common in kittens that are taken away from their mothers too young at six or seven weeks. So a little bit later, leave them a little bit later and their mothers will do the job.
GROSS: What a lot of people are facing with their cats and dogs now is that their pet is elderly. And now we have a lot of options dealing with that - a lot of medical interventions that previously were only available for humans, and not too long ago even humans didn't have the options of things like CAT scans and chemotherapy and, you know, interventions that can really prolong an animals life but are also very expensive.
And so if you have a pet now, you're faced with some very difficult choices at the end of the pet's life of, like, how much money are you going to invest in keeping your pet alive? Can you afford to do it? Does it mean your children aren't going to go to college if you keep your cat alive? I mean, honestly, this is the kind of choices that people with pets have to face now.
And I wonder, you know, as an anthrozoologist, if you have any thoughts on that, because the end of life means something really different now.
BRADSHAW: Well, I think there's a danger in over anthropomorphizing, over-humanzing our cats. There's an issue of quality of life and an issue of quantity of life. And quantity of life is something that means a great deal to us humans, because we have a concept in our minds of our lives and how long they have been and how long we would like them to go on for.
Everything that scientists have found out about animals like cats so far is that they don't have that concept. They live in the here and now. And so simply prolonging an animal's life for the sake of it, I don't think you're doing the animal any favors. I think the animal does not understand what you're doing for it.
What it will understand in its own particular way is what its quality of life is. Is it in pain? Is it in discomfort? Is it constantly having to be hospitalized and kept in a strange environment that it doesn't understand? And it's a very difficult decision, and I wouldn't for a moment want to minimize the difficulty of it, but I would always boil - what it always boils down to for me: Is the animal having quality of life?
And if it is not, then I - my decision, my personal decision, has always been to allow the veterinarian to euthanize the animal, provided the veterinarian is content that that is the best way forward. Rather than spending money prolonging life for what I could, I think, rationally say would be my own selfish ambitions for that animal, rather than taking cognizance of the way the animal feels about the world.
I think we have to acknowledge that our cats are cats - they're not little furry people - and make the decisions for them. We've brought them into the world, in some senses. We've nurtured them throughout their lives, and I think we have a responsibility to make sure that they end their lives in as content a state as possible.
GROSS: Have you ever had any regrets about euthanizing one of your animals, and thought after the fact: I did it too soon?
BRADSHAW: I've never regretted - no. I have not regretted having any of my animals euthanized. There have been one or two instances where I thought it probably should've been last week, but I was too emotionally involved. I was willing to let the veterinarian have one more try when the veterinarian was perhaps a little bit ambivalent about whether the one more try would work.
It wouldn't be more than, you know, a few days, but sometimes, you get into a situation where you're trying to help a blind, senile animal with kidney failure, and you just don't want to let go. And I think I'm probably as guilty as anyone else of prolonging that slightly.
But, you know, again, you just have to stay back - sit back and think: If I was a cat and I lived in the here and now and I didn't have any idea that death was final - because I don't think they do - then what would I want for myself? And then, you know, answer that little voice in your head and obey it.
GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. It's really been a pleasure.
BRADSHAW: Thank you for having me on.
GROSS: John Bradshaw is the author of the new book "Cat Sense." You can read an excerpt on our website: freshair.npr.org. We're using this as an opportunity to give the FRESH AIR cats their moment in the spotlight. We've posted pictures of our cats on our blog, which you can find on Tumblr at nprfreshair.tumblr.com. Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews Superchunk's new album, which has the provocative title "I Hate Music." This is FRESH AIR.
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. The new band Superchunk has a new album called "I Hate Music." Superchunk formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1989 and became an important force in indie rock. In addition to leading the band, singer-songwriter Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance cofounded their own company, Merge Records, which became one of the most successful independent labels ever with acts that included Arcade Fire, Spoon and the Magnetic Fields.
Our rock critic Ken Tucker has a review of the new Superchunk album.
SUPERCHUNK: (Singing) I hate music. What is it worth? Can't bring anyone back to this Earth. I'm feeling the space between all of the notes, but I got nothing else, so I guess here we go. Cram into the back of a van. Oh, yeah. All of our friends with no plan. Oh, yeah. Someone (unintelligible). What does it take to put up with me? Oh, my God.
KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: I hate music. What is it worth? Can't bring anyone back to this Earth, says Superchunk on its new downbeat-but-upbeat album. It's the kind of sentiment you imagine someone blurting out with bitter spontaneity. It's not really music the band hates. It is, among other things, a death they're mourning, the despair and grief their music is bearing witness to.
The album is dedicated to a close friend who died last year, but more broadly speaking, "I Hate Music" wants to explore various kinds of loss: of innocence, of youth, of friendships, of passions that struggle and sometimes fail to survive.
SUPERCHUNK: (Singing) Everything the dead don't know piles up like magazines, overflows. And everything that she won't see just swirls around, comes down and buries me. Oh. Do you like this place? Do you like this sound? Do you like this taste? Oh, yeah. You're not around. But you are still the window we are looking out, a prison and a lens and a flood and a drought. Oh, oh.
TUCKER: Throughout this album, Mac McCaughan pushes his middle-aged adenoids into ever-more plangent tones, even as the guitar work of Jim Wilbur maintains a ferocious denial of the doubt that lurks within most of the lyrics. This creates a sparky tension in the music. The voice sometimes fights against the instruments. At other times, the downer vibe triumphs. And occasionally - as on this song called "Low F" - they achieve a lovely unity.
SUPERCHUNK: (Singing) Brace me. Brace me. Stand me up and race me. You found the sun while I'm collapsing under the shade tree. Staring at the flowers painted on your floor. Well, I've been down here before. And you caught me singing, said can you meet me down at low F? And I missed the question, but you had my answer yes, yes.
TUCKER: What will keep us upright, goes a line in that Superchunk song. And the answer, a few lines later, is love, with the typically Superchunkian afterthought: at the risk of sounding obvious. The band need not fret about that. Obviousness is a quality the band has avoided for more than 20 years now. Indeed, this is one of the few bands to have emerged from the early '90s whose work has actually improved as its members have gotten older and wiser.
In 2010, after a nine-year gap in Superchunk albums, they released one of their best ever: "Majesty Shredding." And there are a number of superlative moments on this new one, including "Low F" and this wonderfully vivid road song "Trees of Barcelona."
SUPERCHUNK: (Singing) Never were a festival crowd. Indeed (unintelligible) into the early morning smiling and tired, but filing in wire. Drunk and absorbent, so happy, so happy again with that flow. (unintelligible) streets made modern. They glow and glow while children like locusts hold it in their own with the 5,000 hopes and the Chevy and the bombs. Will they carry me? They fly out behind, and the world splits our mind, flying through Barcelona.
TUCKER: The final song on "I Hate Music" is called "What Can We Do?" which finds Superchunk in one of its periodic quiet moments. It has a lyric about the negativity and pessimism that the band feels surrounding them, even as the pounding drums of Jon Wurster slam out a denial of those sentiments. When joined by the guitars and a soaring vocal, that drumbeat becomes a heartbeat, a sign of the enduring health and vigor of Superchunk.
GROSS: Ken Tucker reviewed Superchunk's new album "I Hate Music."
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Our programs and centers deliver in-depth, highly relevant issue briefs and reports that break new ground, shift opinions, and set agendas on public policy, with a focus on advancing debates by integrating foundational research and analysis with concrete policy solutions.
When major global news breaks, the Atlantic Council's experts have you covered—delivering their sharpest rapid insight and forward-looking analysis direct to your inbox.
New Atlanticist is where top experts and policymakers at the Atlantic Council and beyond offer exclusive insight on the most pressing global challenges—and the United States' role in addressing them alongside its allies and partners.
A weekly column by Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe, Inflection Points focuses on the global challenges facing the United States and how to best address them.
UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine's politics, economy, civil society, and culture. UkraineAlert sources analysis and commentary from a wide-array of thought-leaders, politicians, experts, and activists from Ukraine and the global community.
MENASource offers the latest news from across the Middle East, combined with commentary by contributors, interviews with emerging players, multi-media content, and independent analysis from fellows and staff.
Econographics provides an in-depth look at trends in the global economy utilizing state-of-the-art data visualization tools.
In the News
September 19, 2016
By Faysal Itani
Read the full article here.
Related Experts: Faysal Itani


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How to Make a Business Facebook Page
What do you think of when you see Facebook? Probably a place to share status updates, photo albums from this year's vacation, pictures of the kids on their first day of school—that kind of thing, right?
While Facebook is the undeniable leader in connecting people, it's also a gold mine for small businesses thanks to its community-minded features. If your small business doesn't have a Facebook business page, you could be missing out on a huge audience of potential customers.
In this blog post, we'll go over why you need a Facebook business page and how to set one up today.
Let's Talk Numbers + Benefits
First, the facts:
- More than 3 billion people across the globe use social media.
- On average, those people spend about two hours per day on social media.
- Facebook has over 700 million active users and more than 50 million business pages.
- 80% of small businesses are already using the platform.
- 93% of consumers' purchasing decisions are influenced by social media.
If your business isn't already on Facebook, that means you're missing out on a channel that your potential customers (and possibly competitors) are using heavily. Next time you're on Facebook and feel curious, check out some of your favorite brands—they're likely already on Facebook and active almost every day, posting new status updates, sharing relevant articles or interacting with their followers. They understand the benefits of maintaining an active social media profile, including:
Making their business or brand personal.
Interacting with your customers on Facebook ads a human element that can help you build rapport and credibility.
Boosting their SEO efforts.
Staying active and posting regularly will catch Google's eye and signal that you should rank higher in search results.
Beating their competition.
Your competitors are likely on the platform, as well, and having a Facebook business account puts you on equal footing. If your competitors aren't on Facebook, you're ahead of the game!
Building their credibility.
Facebook makes it easy for your customers to leave recommendations on your business page. That's word-of-mouth advertising your whole community can see.
Saving money.
Unless you're paying for ad campaigns, promoting your business on Facebook is completely free. That can amount to a huge return on investment.
All of these benefits amount to more exposure for your business and a chance to win over more potential customers, turning those social posts into jobs. Not bad for a free platform, huh?
How to Set Up Your Facebook Business Page
Luckily, Facebook makes it easy for you to do what your favorite brands are doing! You can make a Facebook business page for your small business today. Watch the video below and follow our instructions, and you'll have a Facebook Business Page ready in a matter of minutes.
1) First, log in to your personal account and visit the home page.
2) On the left side, under Explore, click Pages.
3) Click on Create Page in the upper-right corner.
4) Choose the Business or Brand option and click Get Started.
5) Fill out the basic business information, such as business name, category, address and phone number.
6) You can skip the next two prompts and come back to them later—or you can go ahead and do them!
That's it! Now you can start filling out your business page with pictures, your hours and calls to action to get your potential customers to get in touch. Remember: it's important to stay active if you want to reap the benefits of having a business page. Post content relevant to your industry at least twice per week to boost your SEO campaign and stay at the forefront of your potential customers' minds. That can include posting news articles, idea boards, project suggestions and upcoming specials and promotions.
You've Got Options
Keep in mind that these regular posts aren't the only methods of engagement Facebook offers. With a Facebook business page, you'll have access to a variety of paid ad campaigns, including:
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These paid campaigns aren't required to engage your potential customers effectively, but they can certainly boost your reach! You have tons of options for promoting your business on one of the world's most popular social media platforms, and it all starts with creating a Facebook business page.
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We offer social media management and social media advertising services. If you're busy and don't have time to post regularly or want an expert to handle your image or video advertising campaign, we can help. Click the button below to start a conversation with one of our digital marketing pros.


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Ford Focus
1. How does the transfer to Alba work?
You order a transfer on our website and make an advance payment | |
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Our driver meets you at the airport arrival with a sign displaying your name | |
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You make the balance payment to the driver |
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To book a transfer, fill in the form on our website. You can also contact the Bycar operator on WhatsApp. We provide a wide range of vehicle types from economy to premium. You can reserve individual or group transfer.
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Write to firstname.lastname@example.com | |
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Send a message to WhatsApp or Viber |
4. Payment for the transfer to Alba
How to pay for the transfer:
The transfer price includes:
5. Taxi from Innsbruck Airport to Alba
You can take a taxi to get from Innsbruck Airport to Alba. When you leave the airport building you will see a lot of cars, so catching a taxi is easy. No doubt, getting to the hotel by a taxi is more comfortable and much faster than using public transport.
Getting a taxi, it is important to remember:
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Experienced English-speaking drivers | |
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9 years of experience | |
We work in 8 countries in Europe |


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The prophecy of Samuel, the Lamanite, to the Nephites.
Comprising chapters 13 through 15.
Chapter 13
Samuel the Lamanite prophesies the destruction of the Nephites unless they repent—They and their riches are cursed—They reject and stone the prophets, are encircled about by demons, and seek for happiness in doing iniquity. About 6 B.C.
1 And now it came to pass in the eighty and sixth year, the Nephites did still remain in wickedness, yea, in great wickedness, while the Lamanites did observe strictly to keep the commandments of God, according to the law of Moses.
2 And it came to pass that in this year there was one Samuel, a Lamanite, came into the land of Zarahemla, and began to preach unto the people. And it came to pass that he did preach, many days, repentance unto the people, and they did cast him out, and he was about to return to his own land.
3 But behold, the voice of the Lord came unto him, that he should return again, and prophesy unto the people whatsoever things should come into his heart.
4 And it came to pass that they would not suffer that he should enter into the city; therefore he went and got upon the wall thereof, and stretched forth his hand and cried with a loud voice, and prophesied unto the people whatsoever things the Lord put into his heart.
5 And he said unto them: Behold, I, Samuel, a Lamanite, do speak the words of the Lord which he doth put into my heart; and behold he hath put it into my heart to say unto this people that the sword of justice hangeth over this people; and four hundred years pass not away save the sword of justice falleth upon this people.
6 Yea, heavy destruction awaiteth this people, and it surely cometh unto this people, and nothing can save this people save it be repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, who surely shall come into the world, and shall suffer many things and shall be slain for his people.
7 And behold, an angel of the Lord hath declared it unto me, and he did bring glad tidings to my soul. And behold, I was sent unto you to declare it unto you also, that ye might have glad tidings; but behold ye would not receive me.
8 Therefore, thus saith the Lord: Because of the hardness of the hearts of the people of the Nephites, except they repent I will take away my word from them, and I will withdraw my Spirit from them, and I will suffer them no longer, and I will turn the hearts of their brethren against them.
9 And four hundred years shall not pass away before I will cause that they shall be smitten; yea, I will visit them with the sword and with famine and with pestilence.
10 Yea, I will visit them in my fierce anger, and there shall be those of the fourth generation who shall live, of your enemies, to behold your utter destruction; and this shall surely come except ye repent, saith the Lord; and those of the fourth generation shall visit your destruction.
11 But if ye will repent and return unto the Lord your God I will turn away mine anger, saith the Lord; yea, thus saith the Lord, blessed are they who will repent and turn unto me, but wo unto him that repenteth not.
12 Yea, wo unto this great city of Zarahemla; for behold, it is because of those who are righteous that it is saved; yea, wo unto this great city, for I perceive, saith the Lord, that there are many, yea, even the more part of this great city, that will harden their hearts against me, saith the Lord.
13 But blessed are they who will repent, for them will I spare. But behold, if it were not for the righteous who are in this great city, behold, I would cause that fire should come down out of heaven and destroy it.
14 But behold, it is for the righteous' sake that it is spared. But behold, the time cometh, saith the Lord, that when ye shall cast out the righteous from among you, then shall ye be ripe for destruction; yea, wo be unto this great city, because of the wickedness and abominations which are in her.
15 Yea, and wo be unto the city of Gideon, for the wickedness and abominations which are in her.
16 Yea, and wo be unto all the cities which are in the land round about, which are possessed by the Nephites, because of the wickedness and abominations which are in them.
17 And behold, a curse shall come upon the land, saith the Lord of Hosts, because of the people's sake who are upon the land, yea, because of their wickedness and their abominations.
18 And it shall come to pass, saith the Lord of Hosts, yea, our great and true God, that whoso shall hide up treasures in the earth shall find them again no more, because of the great curse of the land, save he be a righteous man and shall hide it up unto the Lord.
19 For I will, saith the Lord, that they shall hide up their treasures unto me; and cursed be they who hide not up their treasures unto me; for none hideth up their treasures unto me save it be the righteous; and he that hideth not up his treasures unto me, cursed is he, and also the treasure, and none shall redeem it because of the curse of the land.
20 And the day shall come that they shall hide up their treasures, because they have set their hearts upon riches; and because they have set their hearts upon their riches, and will hide up their treasures when they shall flee before their enemies; because they will not hide them up unto me, cursed be they and also their treasures; and in that day shall they be smitten, saith the Lord.
21 Behold ye, the people of this great city, and hearken unto my words; yea, hearken unto the words which the Lord saith; for behold, he saith that ye are cursed because of your riches, and also are your riches cursed because ye have set your hearts upon them, and have not hearkened unto the words of him who gave them unto you.
22 Ye do not remember the Lord your God in the things with which he hath blessed you, but ye do always remember your riches, not to thank the Lord your God for them; yea, your hearts are not drawn out unto the Lord, but they do swell with great pride, unto boasting, and unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities.
23 For this cause hath the Lord God caused that a curse should come upon the land, and also upon your riches, and this because of your iniquities.
24 Yea, wo unto this people, because of this time which has arrived, that ye do cast out the prophets, and do mock them, and cast stones at them, and do slay them, and do all manner of iniquity unto them, even as they did of old time.
25 And now when ye talk, ye say: If our days had been in the days of our fathers of old, we would not have slain the prophets; we would not have stoned them, and cast them out.
26 Behold ye are worse than they; for as the Lord liveth, if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil.
27 But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet.
28 Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.
29 O ye wicked and ye perverse generation; ye hardened and ye stiffnecked people, how long will ye suppose that the Lord will suffer you? Yea, how long will ye suffer yourselves to be led by foolish and blind guides? Yea, how long will ye choose darkness rather than light?
30 Yea, behold, the anger of the Lord is already kindled against you; behold, he hath cursed the land because of your iniquity.
31 And behold, the time cometh that he curseth your riches, that they become slippery, that ye cannot hold them; and in the days of your poverty ye cannot retain them.
32 And in the days of your poverty ye shall cry unto the Lord; and in vain shall ye cry, for your desolation is already come upon you, and your destruction is made sure; and then shall ye weep and howl in that day, saith the Lord of Hosts. And then shall ye lament, and say:
33 O that I had repented, and had not killed the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out. Yea, in that day ye shall say: O that we had remembered the Lord our God in the day that he gave us our riches, and then they would not have become slippery that we should lose them; for behold, our riches are gone from us.
34 Behold, we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle.
35 Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land.
36 O that we had repented in the day that the word of the Lord came unto us; for behold the land is cursed, and all things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them.
37 Behold, we are surrounded by demons, yea, we are encircled about by the angels of him who hath sought to destroy our souls. Behold, our iniquities are great. O Lord, canst thou not turn away thine anger from us? And this shall be your language in those days.
38 But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head.
39 O ye people of the land, that ye would hear my words! And I pray that the anger of the Lord be turned away from you, and that ye would repent and be saved.


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You cover your mouth with your hand, but it's too late. The people at the next table in the lunchroom already heard. As you turn back to your soda, you think: Where did that burp come from?
A burp — sometimes called a belch — is nothing but gas. When you eat or drink, you don't just swallow food or liquid. You also swallow air at the same time. The air we breathe contains gases, like nitrogen (say: NY-truh-jen) and oxygen (say: AHK-sih-jen).
Sometimes when you swallow these gases, they need to get out. That's where burping comes in! Extra gas is forced out of the stomach, up through the esophagus (say: ih-SAH-fuh-gus, the tube for food that connects the back of the throat to the stomach), and out of the mouth as a burp.
Some kids find that drinking soda or other carbonated beverages makes them burp more. Can you guess why? If you're thinking that it's because these drinks contain extra gas, you're right! The gas that makes the drinks fizzy is carbon dioxide (say: KAR-bon dy-AHK-side), another gas that can bring on big burps.
Sometimes eating or drinking too fast can cause indigestion, which can make a person burp because this can send extra air into the stomach. The same thing happens when you drink through a straw: extra air in = more burps out.
Burping is almost never anything to worry about. Everybody does it at least once in a while, and it's very unusual for burping to mean something is wrong in a kid's body.
It seems like the only people who can get away with really loud burps are little babies — their parents cheer when they burp because it means that the babies won't feel the extra gas in their stomachs and cry. But unless you're tiny and bald, it's probably a good idea to be polite when it's time to burp.
So what can you do if you're around people and you feel a burp coming on? Try to burp quietly and cover your mouth. Of course, whether your burp is loud or quiet, saying "excuse me" can't hurt either.


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6 large potatoes
2 tsp canola oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 (10-ounce) package frozen baby lima beans, thawed
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Bake or microwave potatoes in their skins until tender but still firm. When cool enough to handle, peel and cut potatoes into large cubes.
Heat oil in an extra wide skillet or stir-fry pan over medium heat. Add onion and sauté for 10 minutes, stirring every 2 or 3 minutes. Stir in potatoes and lima beans and continue to sauté for an additional 5 minutes or so, or until potatoes are golden and lima beans are tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then transfer to a serving dish. Sprinkle the top with parsley and paprika and serve.
Each serving contains about 250 calories, 6.5 g protein, 5 g fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 46 g carbohydrates, 6 g fiber, and 45 mg sodium.
To make this recipe gluten-free, use only spices or condiments that are gluten-free. Read food labels carefully and contact the company if you have any questions.
Reviewed Date: --


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PRODUCT DIMENSIONS (inches): 1.5 x 2.5 x 2.75
We Accept Payoneer Payments
Privacy Notice
This privacy notice discloses the privacy practices for RDJ Life. This privacy notice applies solely to information collected by this website. It will notify you of the following:
What personally identifiable information is collected from you through the website, how it is used and with whom it may be shared.
What choices are available to you regarding the use of your data.
The security procedures in place to protect the misuse of your information.
How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information
Information Collection, Use, and Sharing
We are the sole owners of the information collected on this site. We only have access to/collect information that you voluntarily give us via email or other direct contact from you. We will not sell or rent this information to anyone.
We will use your information to respond to you, regarding the reason you contacted us. We will not share your information with any third party outside of our organization, other than as necessary to fulfill your request, e.g. to ship an order.
Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email in the future to tell you about specials, new products or services, or changes to this privacy policy.
Your Access to and Control Over Information
You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number given on our website:
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We take precautions to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and offline.
Wherever we collect sensitive information (such as credit card data), that information is encrypted and transmitted to us in a secure way. You can verify this by looking for a lock icon in the address bar and looking for "https" at the beginning of the address of the Web page.
While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, billing or customer service) are granted access to personally identifiable information. The computers/servers in which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.
Most orders will be shipped within 24-48 hrs. of receipt, although it may take up to 4 business days to ship some orders, depending on factors such as how busy the warehouse is at any given time, etc. NOTE: We begin processing orders at 6am Eastern time Monday-Friday. Orders received after 6am Eastern time will not begin processing until the following business day. For example, if we receive your order at 9:30am Eastern time on Tuesday, it will begin processing Wednesday at 6am. The 24-48 hour processing time begins when an order enters processing, not when it is actually placed.
As we ship large quantities of merchandise daily, occasionally an item you order may have run out. As our stock is replenished daily, any item that is not on hand usually will be back in stock within 1-4 days. In this situation you may experience a brief delay in shipping your order, but all orders generally ship within 4 business days (Saturday and Sunday excluded). In the event that we cannot fulfill your order within that time, we will notify you.
Every order is equally important to us, and we ship every order out just as quickly as we can. However, if you must have your merchandise by a certain date, we suggest you place the order early enough to avoid disappointment if your merchandise does not arrive on time. We do not accept returns of shipments because they did not arrive by a certain date.
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Items purchased from us may be returned within 30 days of receipt for refund or store credit. Please note the following policies related to returns:
-To be eligible for return, items must be in the same condition they were received in, with all boxes, components, instructions, parts, etc. included. Also, no price stickers, etc. can be affixed to the items. Items returned not meeting this criteria will be returned to the sender or disposed of.
-All returns must be accompanied by a return authorization number. Please call or email us for a RMA number BEFORE sending your return. Returns not accompanied by RMA number will be refused.
-Returned items are subject to a 15% restocking fee.
-Items purchased more than 30 days ago are not eligible for return. Many items we sell come with a manufacturer's warranty. After 30 days, please contact the manufacturer directly for warranty service.
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For information on items damaged in transit, please see "Shipping Information" section for procedure to follow.
In the case of defective items or wrong items shipped, etc., any merchandise returned to us must be accompanied by a return authorization number. This number will be furnished to you at the time the return is authorized, and must be on the address label or prominently marked on the box. ANY MERCHANDISE RETURNED TO US WITHOUT A RMA# WILL BE REFUSED AND RETURNED TO THE SHIPPER AT THEIR EXPENSE. Please note that defective items returned to us will be exchanged for another of the exact same item. We are unable to exchange defective items for different items, unless the item returned is no longer available.
Office hours are 8:00am-5:00pm Central Time, Monday-Friday
Emails are answered within 24 hours. Emails submitted after business hours will be answered the next day.
RDJ Life
Dora MO 65637


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Shambhala Vision
Creating enlightened society
"An enlightened society would be based upon the most deep, simple, and natural principle," says Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the living lineage holder of the Shambhala teachings and author of The Shambhala Principle. "That society would have an unequivocal and deep sense of confidence. This confidence would not be based upon competitiveness or arrogance, nor would it be tinged with paranoia. The society would be awake, and enriched by the most inexhaustible principle."
Shambhala Vision is rooted in the principle that every human being has a fundamental nature of basic goodness. This nature can be developed in daily life so that it radiates out to family, friends, community and society.
According to the Shambhala tradition we are living through an age of greed and aggression. We harm ourselves, each other and our planet.
The Shambhala teachings offer an antidote to this crisis. This was the basis of the legendary Kingdom of Shambhala, a society that fostered the inherent goodness of its people. Shambhala Vision tells us that we can experience a natural source of radiance and brilliance in the world, which is the innate wakefulness of human beings.
From this deep, profoundly human foundation, it is possible to extend that out and create what the Shambhala tradition calls "enlightened society." This vision offers possibilities for a radical paradigm shift – not a utopia, but a culture in which life's challenges are met with kindness, generosity and courage.
The most extensive public presentation of Shambhala Vision is presented in The Shambhala Principle by Sakyong Mipham.
In action, Shambhala is both a spiritual path of study and meditation that helps us work with our minds, as well as a path of serving others and engaging with our world. These vital and timely teachings open the door to the compassionate care of ourselves and others.
"Although the Shambhala tradition is founded on the sanity and gentleness of the Buddhist tradition, at the same time, it has its own independent basis, which is directly cultivating who and what we are as human beings. With the great problems facing human society, it seems increasingly important to find simple and non-sectarian ways to work with ourselves and to share our understanding with others. The Shambhala teachings or "Shambhala vision" as this approach is more broadly called, is one such attempt to encourage a wholesome existence for ourselves and others." – Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, author of Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior.


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Editor's note: What's the source of content on your website? Is it your products; your services? How about the story behind your products and/or services? Sarah Doody writes a wonderful article on story telling that might be what your content needs:
"There's a movement sweeping business, design, and communication right now. But it's not a newtechnology, and it has nothing to do with people, patterns, or processes. What it has everything to do with is you and your story.
Storytelling has quickly become one of the most talked about topics in user experience and beyond—to the point that it's almost cliché. Most of the ideas presented around storytelling are focused on simple reasons why storytelling is important and some marginal tips for telling a better story. The problem there is that we're a step ahead of ourselves. We've gone straight to how to tell the story of an experience or a product and skipped over the crucial element ofwhy we're telling these stories in the first place. Before we focus on how to tell the stories about the products, businesses, and experiences we create, we need to first ensure we are making the right products—creating the right stories and experiences for people to participate in.
We've all seen new products described this way: "It's like Pinterest for _________." This type of comparison is so rampant that there are actually websites like Nonstartr and IsThisForThat dedicated to making light of the trend. Entertaining tho it may be, this represents an underlying issue with the state of innovation and how it's affecting the quality of the products we design and create.
In The New York Times article "The Creative Monopoly," David Brooks writes about a course that Peter Thielis teaching at Stanford's Computer Science Department. A key theme, according to Thiel, is that we often confuse capitalism with competition. "We tend to think that whoever competes best comes out ahead," Brooks writes. "In the race to be more competitive, we sometimes confuse what is hard with what is valuable. The intensity of competition becomes a proxy for value."
Today, too many products are derived not from truly solving a problem, but from repurposing existing products in some slight way. It makes sense. It's often easier to extend an existing idea rather than embark on the journey of mining a new one. But, if we truly want to make great experiences and products for people, we need to stop focusing on competing and start focusing on creating—creating products that are extensions of our own personal stories.
Ron Conway gave an excellent talk at Start Up School 2011 that focused on the qualities of a defining entrepreneur. A key trait he mentioned was that product visionaries must "own the mind of the consumer." Conway cited people like Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Mark Zuckerberg as having the gift of intrinsically knowing what their customers are thinking before they do.
So how do you own the mind of the consumer? How do you own their story and create a great experience? I believe that to successfully own the mind of the consumer, you first must be the consumer. What you create must stem from your own personal story. You must live and breath for the experience, product, or business you are creating.
What people don't realize about the creation process of great products is that, most often, these ideas are rooted deep in the life story of their creators. Twitter is one of my favorite examples of a product being completely birthed from someone's life story. I recently listened to Jack Dorsey give an address to the Stanford Technology Ventures Program called, "The Power of Curiosity and Inspiration." I never realized the power of a personal story so clearly until I heard him speak about the influence that his life experiences had on the idea for Twitter.
Dorsey grew up in St. Louis, and has always lived in a city. Of his childhood he said: "I was surrounded by this urban atmosphere, and I just loved it. My first love was the city … it was a joy and wonder to me … that love and obsession was made most tangible by maps. I became obsessed with maps. I would wonder what was happening at a particular intersection or area."
Dorsey went on to talk about getting his first computer and learning to program because he wanted to draw a map on the computer screen. Once he was able to do that, he used a CB Radio to access police scanners so he could see in real time what was happening in St. Louis—visualizing the pulse of the city as it lived and breathed.
Dorsey followed his passion for maps and cities by getting a job at the biggest dispatch firm in the world, where he wrote software to visualize New York City. He quickly realized that what was missing from these visualizations was actual people. So he created a prototype that allowed him to receive an email on his Blackberry and send it out to an email list. However, once it was built and he sent his first message, he realized two things. First, no one else cared and second, no one could respond. So he put it aside—great idea, not so great timing.
In a quest to understand consumers better, he went to work for a company called Odeo that, at the time, was focused on podcasting. However, according to Dorsey, no one at the company was excited about podcasting, nor did they want to be consumers of it. So the team challenged themselves to dream up something they'd really like to be working on. Dorsey presented his messaging prototype, and that was the beginning of Twitter.
I love this story because it provides such an authentic demonstration of the power of your personal story and the impact that your personal life experiences can have on the quality of the experiences you create for others. Before you can own the mind of the consumer, the idea must first own your mind—your story.
Recently, Michael Skok (an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist) wrote an article for VentureBeat that speaks to the notion of the product and experience you create being an extension of you and your personal story.
"At the center of that value proposition is you. What problems do you understand uniquely well? What can you deliver uniquely well? What sort of disruptive business model can you bring to bear?" he writes. "Be true to yourself and play from a position of strength. A little self-awareness can go a long way in crafting a value proposition with power."
Last year I became fascinated with the idea of product stories and wrote about the idea of why storytelling should be applied to the product development process. Since then, I've watched the topic of storytelling spread across industries. I've spoken with technologists, filmmakers, venture capitalists, professors, and designers alike. Everyone is talking about storytelling. It belongs to no single industry—it has no borders. It carries power and passion and can evoke the empathy and emotion required to create a personal connection. I've become obsessed with the power of story. When it comes to the quality of the experiences and products we create, ultimately, if we aren't creating the right story, then it doesn't matter how well we try to tell it.
I don't have a magical process for understanding your personal life story and identifying how it can influence what you make. But what I do know is that to see people's stories, we have to stop being distracted by looking at each other and getting caught up on the thrill of competition. We exert too much energy trying to compete on execution. And, although there's certainly opportunity there, we're missing out on a chance to truly invent and to be inspired by the experiences and interests that we know best—our own.
So today, take some time out to consider your personal story. How can the passions, interests, and experiences in your life provide unique perspective? What has your journey afforded you to be an expert in? How have the challenges that you've faced equipped you with a deep understanding of a problem that needs to be solved? What experiences have influenced you the most? What ideas own your mind—from childhood until now? Study your personal story and allow it to help you create a better story for the people who use the experiences and products you create today and the ones you have yet to imagine."
Sarah Doody is a NYC based user experience designer who specializes in product and brand development. She is passionate about working with early stage start ups - turning their vision into tangible product stories and developing engaging user experiences. Sarah can be reached on Twitter @sarahdoody.
To see the full article click here.
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