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political commentator * author * publisher * bookseller * radio presenter * blogger * Conservative candidate * former lobbyist * Jack Russell owner * West Ham United fanatic * Email iain AT iaindale DOT com
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Two Faces of Douglas Alexander
"Transport Minister Douglas Alexander said: "Research shows that talking on a mobile phone while driving affects your concentration and ability to react to dangerous situations. It's impossible to do two things at once and do them well."
How could one possibly disagree with Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for Transport, Secretary of State for Scotland, Chief organiser of Labour Party elections in Scotland...
23 comments:
Ah but neither of the first two is a real job. he's basically paid out of the public purse to campaign to cover Tony Blair's backside in Scotland. Thankfully, he's no better at that than he would be if other people weren't doing his other two jobs and he had to try to do them.
- January 24, 2007 8:00 pm
In the case of Mr. Alexander, the two things he cannot do at the same time are talk and keep his brain in gear!
- January 24, 2007 8:10 pm
did you see the evening standard tonight then?
- January 24, 2007 8:11 pm
- Iain Dale said...
No, why, was this in it?!
- January 24, 2007 8:13 pm
unfortunately so, great minds think a like
- January 24, 2007 8:23 pm
Also being discussed on Croydonian's blog.
- January 24, 2007 8:41 pm
He best do a good job In Scotland
- January 24, 2007 10:29 pm
Libertarian mong. Drivers talking on mobiles kill people quite regularly. The most horrific being the lorry driver a year ago who ploughed into the back of standing traffic on the M4 at 60mph. Police investigators found no evidence at all of breaking. Witnesses saw him engaged in phone conversation and his co-driver who survived confirmed it was hands-free. He killed 4 people and injured 18 others. One of the dead was a 19-year old girl and the another a 7-year old boy. But it's sound Tory policy to support this, at least according to Iain Dale. And the Daily Mail.
- January 24, 2007 10:51 pm
please read the bottom two lines of Iain's front page it's called political irony
I think everybody already agree's with what you have said. - January 24, 2007 11:35 pm
A deaf friend and I once sat in a stationary traffic queue while signing a long (BSL) conversation above our heads from adjoining cars. How does that freak out nulab's compulsive - obsessive neurosis? Exactly how could the police prove that rubbing under our noses and scratchng our ears was a conversation?
It's theoretically possible for BSL signers to have a primitive conversation of sorts using facial expressions only.
Police officers in my experience do not do signing. Once when I was stopped by two police officers because one of my headlamps had blown, they both blushed to their navels when I replied to them in BSL - and indicated is should beggar off.
I'd very much like the police to explain how they and their cameras aim to distinguish between hearing aids and hands free mobiles.
I can see some interesting human rights cases on the cards for nulab:) - January 24, 2007 11:39 pm
You lot don't get it do you? By including both hand held and hands free mobiles the powers that be will be able to get everyone (cf TV Licences), without patrolling anywhere. Marvellous.
- January 25, 2007 12:18 am
Dr John Reid said...
If you hadn't voted them in you wouldn't have 3000 other laws in the last 10 years to worry about. - January 25, 2007 12:58 am
Nothing to do with politics everybody knows that if you need multi-tasking a bloke ain't your best bet!
- January 25, 2007 1:32 am
Great catch, Iain. Now do a post about how this contributes to unemployment...one man, how many jobs? Surely the backbenchers would like to see him throw one or two of these roles their way...could you possibly incite an uprising among the political classes? I might even hook up the tv for that!
- January 25, 2007 2:07 am
Just a test:
18 doughty street link...change to Wordpress!!! Change to Wordpress!!! - January 25, 2007 10:07 am
Luckily the man/ boy is a luaghing stock in Scotland.
By the way has anyone else noticed the irony of the 'Britishness' classes being taught only in schools in England? Because broadcasting isnt devolved we have to watch English / British news - and because the English / British meeja are completely ignorant of the consequences of devolution issues like this are routinely ignored. Funny that.
Happy Burns Night, Gus @ www.1820.org.uk - January 25, 2007 10:21 am
You know, despite my Conservative roots, I'm quite looking forward to the SNP stuffing Labour up North. Do you think when they drag Tony and his vile wife out of number 10 they will throw him staright into a Prison Van or maybe they can lead him through the streets kicking his arse all the way....(although Cherie will probably be trying to sell signed phtos)
- January 25, 2007 10:30 am
Douglas is part of a forlorn hope strategy by No 10. If he wins in Scotland Tony gets to renew his blagging rights over Brown. If he loses in Scotland then Brown is dead in the water anyway.
That is why Tony won't go until after the May elections. Brown is stuffed either way. - January 25, 2007 10:34 am
And from today's Glasgow Herald, when New Labour score an own goal, both the Tories and LibDems are sat back in the changing rooms:
Voting for prisoners
EDITORIAL COMMENT January 25 2007
The cadaver stirs. Since the Forfeiture Act of 1870, convicted offenders sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and accused people held on remand, have suffered the additional punishment of civic death, which involves the loss of citizenship rights, including the right to vote.
It has been known for some time that the blanket ban's days were numbered. Another nail was hammered in the coffin yesterday when the Court of Session, hearing the appeal of a former prisoner denied the vote in 2003's Scottish Parliamentary elections, ruled the prohibition was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This followed a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in 2005 that banning John Hirst from the polls while serving a life sentence for manslaughter had breached his right to participate in free elections.
There is a public debate to be had about lifting the ban and the case for and against, as well as the practicality of, limiting it to certain categories of prisoner. Electoral law is the responsibility of the Westminster government and it set the consultation ball rolling last month. This will run until March. Then the detail of how the law is to be changed will be worked out. The timetable is too tight to lift or restrict the ban before May's Scottish Parliamentary elections.
If these elections are incompatible with the ECHR, as the Court of Session has ruled, what are the implications? There are two. The first is to postpone the elections until the law is reformed. That is clearly a non-starter, given the unacceptably disproportionate impact the convention would have on a free election, which is, after all, democracy in action. The other is to press ahead with the poll and face up to the consequences.
These have already become apparent. Lawyers intend to seek an interim interdict against Scottish Executive ministers to stop the elections. If that fails, they will try for compensation for prisoners whose human rights were denied by the continued ban. Based on an earlier compensation award fought in Europe on similar grounds, the bill could be some £7m to the taxpayer as there are about 7000 prisoners in Scotland. There is, on balance, a case for enabling prisoners to exercise the franchise. Giving prisoners the vote could help with their rehabilitation and demonstrate to them that they can effect change. The community in its entirety votes government into power and its authority, as the legislature, is undermined by disenfranchising certain groups. But we have grave reservations about compensating prisoners who are disenfranchised. Given the likelihood that many will not be on the voters' roll, there would not be grounds for blanket compensation.
Compensation has been paid to prisoners forced to slop out while sharing a cell: a degrading, dehumanising and outdated practice. A voting ban is antiquated but neither degrading nor dehumanising. It seems insultingly vexatious to seek to put a monetary value on it.
Was this another example of the Westminster machine paying scant attention to Scottish interests after evidence of the marginalising of Holyrood's officials by their Whitehall counterparts in Europe? It looks that way. The Union dividend, trumpeted by Labour on both sides of the border during recent days, has been undermined as a consequence. Could Scottish ministers have done more, earlier, to avoid what has become a damaging embarrassment for the Holyrood administration in the run-up to May's poll? Given the executive's record in adhering to the ECHR, why were alarm bells not sounding louder among officials and their political masters? The eye was taken off the ball.
If the Tories are proving to be so ineffective in opposition, surely this is a good indication that they would be as equally ineffective in office... - January 25, 2007 10:47 am
You also forgot constituency MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.
Douglas's only claim to fame (notoriety?) is authoring a memo in 1998 saying that Labour should "engender fear" in the Scottish people to win the 1999 Scottish Parliament elections.
[Sarcasm on] Obviously a visionary with a lot to offer. [Sarcasm off] - January 25, 2007 11:29 am
Why can't Solicitor Douggie alexander get his MSP Sister to do his Scottish stuff ?
- January 25, 2007 11:49 am
Voyager - Wendy has the brains of her brother but sadly also the charisma, the political nous and the rhetorical verve too!
"Why can't Solicitor Douggie alexander get his MSP Sister to do his Scottish stuff?"
Oh - and cos he's Secretary of State for Scotland! Bt as feartie said his raft of policies involves trying to make Scottish people think their newborn will be born two-headed under an independent Scotland.
Happy Burns Night, Gus @ www.1820.org.uk - January 25, 2007 1:36 pm
I heard that trying to keep the union together and running the Home Office "affects your concentration and ability to react to dangerous situations. It's impossible to do two things at once and do them well."
- January 27, 2007 9:18 am


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Last week I decided I was overdue for some homemade ice cream, so I sat Joey down with The Perfect Scoop and told him to pick out a recipe. His choice? Well, it wasn't this one. I'll get to his next week. It just so happened that I had about a pound of plums, perfectly ripe and just waiting to be eaten, and wouldn't you know that David Lebovitz has a recipe for plum ice cream.
David suggests pairing this ice cream with a raspberry or blackberry swirl, which I think is a fabulous idea. I even had some of both in my fridge, but I was crunched for time and skipped it. I would love to try it out though! I added a step to strain the puree to get rid of the skins before chilling. I just thought I'd prefer it smooth. I also decreased the sugar just a tad, since the plums I used were really really ripe. And since I didn't have any kirsch, I added a bit of almond extract instead.
We really enjoyed this ice cream. Its a bit of an unusual flavor, but it tastes very rich and smooth. Caroline and my niece both really loved it as well - and I'm sure it had nothing to do with its brilliant purple hue.
One Year Ago: Oatmeal Raisin Ice Cream and Shrimp Quesadillas
Plum Ice Cream
adapted from David Lebovitz, The Perfect Scoop
makes about 1 quart
- 1 pound plums (about 6-8)
- 1/3 cup water
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 tsp almond extract or kirsch
Puree in a blender or food processor with the cream and almond extract until smooth. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a medium bowl, and cover with plastic wrap.
Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions.


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The opinions expressed are solely those of the author. E-mail email@example.com.
Latest Article|September 3, 2020|Free
::Making Grown Men Cry Since 1992
4 min read
The special session of the Legislature accomplished in four days what was impossible in 30: reaching an agreement on how to plug a $600 million gap in next year's budget. Legislators did it because the pressure was on—and because a lot of preliminary work was done the week before. That work at least provided a starting point for heavy negotiations.Another reason we got it done: A special session operates under a different set of rules. Those rules made the session a boring spectator sport but allowed the haggling necessary for the final compromise.There was a minimum of posturing, showboating, finger-wagging and blame-flinging, all of which usually eat up enormous amounts of lawmaker time. (Note that I didn't claim none of such childishness went on, only that it was held to a minimum.)Ordinarily in the Senate all tax measures are routed to the same committee, Corporations and Transportation, also called "Corpse." All tax increases croak in this committee. They probably would have perished even during this year's dire fiscal emergency, so forceful is the inertia in Corpse against ever raising taxes, any taxes.That committee's meeting room is populated by two dozen or more leading corporate lobbyists, men and women who are paid very well to make sure no new taxes survive. So mechanized is the process of killing tax measures in Corpse that by now lobbyists don't even give explanations for their opposition; they simply stand in orchestrated succession to indicate which groups they represent. Then the committee members vie with one another for the privilege of making the tabling motion (or they settle for seconding it), which drives the final stake through the tax bill's heart. All this funereal procession lacks is lugubrious organ music and black veils for the mourners.The package of tax measures that finished the Legislature's work could only have reached the Senate floor alive and kicking by bypassing Corpse entirely, an approach that is possible during a special session. This infuriates the corporate lobbyists, but in dangerous times you sometimes have to jettison superfluous personnel.The question of how to raise taxes is not multiple choice. Legislators don't get to fill in a bubble next to their preferred option and then tally which proposal receives the most backing. With that approach, increasing income tax for high earners would have easily carried the day since a great many Democrats liked the idea. It was by far the individual tax with the most support; no other proposition came close. Unfortunately, it takes 22 votes to get any bill through the Senate, and while raising the income tax had the most fans, it didn't clear that threshold.Instead, what happened was a search for a combination of taxes that, when packaged together, would corner that magic number. And remember, not one of the 15 Republicans in the Senate could be expected to vote for a tax hike of any kind.So the Democrats jockeyed back and forth, trying to find that serendipitous combination, which, however grudgingly, might draw 22 votes. They reached that plateau with a measure that eliminates a deduction benefiting mostly high-income earners. With that, the Democrats held their noses and voted for the entire package—along with an enhanced low-income rebate program so low-income taxpayers can recoup some of the gross receipts taxes they pay during the year.The total revenue from new taxes amounts to $230 million. With budget cuts of $170 million (on top of last year's cuts of $300 million) and the addition of $200 million of federal "stimulus" money, the budget hole was spackled. If a good compromise is one that no one is happy with, then the state budget for 2011 fits that definition like a fine, silk glove. Republicans are disappointed that more of the mythic "governmental fat" wasn't liposuctioned away. Conservative Democrats are disappointed that an income tax measure and a cigarette tax were included in the package. Progressive Democrats are sulking that the regressive tax on food was partially restored, and that a one-eighth of a cent increase in the gross receipts tax (sales tax) was added. An unhappy compromise, indeed, but one that state government is holding its breath over, praying it will survive the governor's desk.


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But you can't discount its finale, which arrives after a brief discussion about the bond ("the tissue," someone says) that connects a mother to a child and just what it takes to rip it asunder or make it disappear completely. (Notice it's not between father and child; the movie makes the case that that particular connection is too easily corrupted and obliterated.) The rest of the world has forgotten that Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) had a son named Sam. In fact, her best friend (Friends' Jessica Hecht), her therapist (Gary Sinise), even her husband Jim (played by ER's Anthony Edwards) insist he never existed at all. But Telly, branded a nut by her loved ones, knows otherwise. Why? Because he wasn't just there, in a nursery or on a playground swing or in some picture kept in a scrapbook, but because he was once inside her.
How that message is finally revealed is at once subtle and jarring; you're simply not expecting it in the midst of a movie that constantly flies off the rails and threatens to devolve into a mediocre X-Files episode. But it's explicit nonetheless, and even a little poignant. Would that it were in a more substantive movie less concerned with scaring you than with moving you.
Until that finale, Telly spends the whole film searching for nine-year-old Sam (Christopher Kovaleski), whom she believes died in a plane crash 14 months earlier. No one else acknowledges his existence, but we know otherwise, because we've seen the towheaded child in flashbacks, on videotape, in newspaper clippings; we've been in his room, where Telly lingers every day to sort through his belongings. We've even seen Sam in a picture with his mother and father, till one day he vanishes from the snapshot, à la Marty McFly's family in Back to the Future. Other pictures are altered, and Sam vanishes completely from the video. "They were always blank," insists Jim, who tells Telly she's suffering a nervous breakdown after delivering the child stillborn. Jim and Sinise's Dr. Munce try to make Telly believe hers were all manufactured memories born of horrific trauma -- "paramnesia," Munce says, during which the memory can deceive you into believing hallucinated fantasies really occurred.
For a few minutes, The Forgotten acts as though it wants to be taken seriously, suggesting it could have been a moving meditation on grief and longing and the devastating power of remembrance. Ruben and screenwriter Gerald Di Pego, who wrote the hankie-wanky Message in a Bottle, depict Jim and Telly's marriage as strained to the point of broken; she can't leave the house, he can't tolerate her moping, and each seems lonelier with the other than when apart.
But because this is Julianne Moore making a Hollywood movie and not one of her forays into indiedom, the audience never doubts that her memories are real; this isn't based on a Jorge Luis Borges short story. Besides, the paramnesiac story line is ditched very, very early, and we've already seen the coming attractions in which the roof gets sucked off a house while Moore and Dominic West (as Ash Correll, who forgets and then remembers he, too, lost a daughter in the same crash that took Moore's kid) are interrogating a bad guy. So we know going in this isn't the stuff of existential, emotional drama, but the makings of familiar sci-fi, in which something wicked this way comes...but from where?
If you're in a generous mood, you might be tempted to view The Forgotten as a devious makeover of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with Moore in the Melinda Dillon role and Kovaleski as the kid who vanishes into parts unknown. The Forgotten doesn't have the same generous view of the government Steven Spielberg's movie did, nor does it share its sense of wide-eyed wonder and optimism. Spielberg was all about warming the heart, while Ruben prefers instead to squeeze it with cheap thrills and tiny frights, none of which are more effective than a masterfully shot scene in which federal agents crash their car into Telly and Ash's getaway ride. Ultimately only Moore, with her eyes always half-damp and voice half-cracked and body language half-mad, keeps the movie on the ground, when it too often threatens to fly into the thin air, where the audience would laugh it off the screen. She's a real mother, a force to be reckoned with in a movie that begs to be forgotten.


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Today's classic tale was originally published in Il Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile in 1634, translated by John Edward Taylor in 1847.
There were once two sisters, named Luceta and Troccola, who had two daughters, Marziella and Puccia. Marziella was as fair to look upon as she was good at heart; whilst, on the contrary, Puccia by the same rule had a face of ugliness and a heart of pestilence, but the girl resembled her parent, for Troccola was a harpy within and a very scare-crow without.
Now it happened that Luceta had occasion to boil some parsnips, in order to fry them with green sauce; so she said to her daughter, "Marziella, my dear, go to the well and fetch me a pitcher of water."
"With all my heart, mother," replied the girl, "but if you love me give me a cake, for I should like to eat it with a draught of the fresh water."
"By all means," said the mother; so she took from a basket that hung upon a hook a beautiful cake (for she had baked a batch the day before), and gave it to Marziella, who set the pitcher on a pad upon her head, and went to the fountain, which like a charlatan upon a marble bench, to the music of the falling water, was selling secrets to drive away thirst. And as she was stooping down to fill her pitcher, up came a hump-backed old woman, and seeing the beautiful cake, which Marziella was just going to bite, she said to her, "My pretty girl, give me a little piece of your cake, and may Heaven send you good fortune!"
Marziella, who was as generous as a queen, replied, "Take it all, my good woman, and I am only sorry that it is not made of sugar and almonds, for I would equally give it you with all my heart."
The old woman, seeing Marziella's kindness, said to her, "Go, and may Heaven reward you for the goodness you have shown me! and I pray all the stars that you may ever be content and happy; that when you breathe roses and jessamines may fall from your mouth; that when you comb your locks pearls and garnets may fall from them, and when you set your foot on the ground lilies and violets may spring up."
Marziella thanked the old woman, and went her way home, where her mother, having cooked a bit of supper, they paid the natural debt to the body, and thus ended the day. And the next morning, when the Sun displayed in the market-place of the celestial fields the merchandise of light which he had brought from the East, as Marziella was combing her hair, she saw a shower of pearls and garnets fall from it into her lap; whereupon calling her mother with great joy, they put them all into a basket, and Luceta went to sell a great part of them to a usurer, who was a friend of hers. Meanwhile Troccola came to see her sister, and finding Marziella in great delight and busied with the pearls, she asked her how, when, and where she had gotten them. But the maiden, who did not understand the ways of the world, and had perhaps never heard the proverb, "Do not all you are able, eat not all you wish, spend not all you have, and tell not all you know," related the whole affair to her aunt, who no longer cared to await her sister's return, for every hour seemed to her a thousand years until she got home again. Then giving a cake to her daughter, she sent her for water to the fountain, where Puccia found the same old woman. And when the old woman asked her for a little piece of cake she answered gruffly, "Have I nothing to do, forsooth, but to give you cake? Do you take me to be so foolish as to give you what belongs to me? Look ye, charity begins at home." And so saying she swallowed the cake in four pieces, making the old woman's mouth water, who when she saw the last morsel disappear and her hopes buried with the cake, exclaimed in a rage, "Begone! and whenever you breathe may you foam at the mouth like a doctor's mule, may toads drop from your lips, and every time you set foot to the ground may there spring up ferns and thistles!"
Puccia took the pitcher of water and returned home, where her mother was all impatience to hear what had befallen her at the fountain. But no sooner did Puccia open her lips, than a shower of toads fell from them, at the sight of which her mother added the fire of rage to the snow of envy, sending forth flame and smoke through nose and mouth.
Now it happened some time afterwards that Ciommo, the brother of Marziella, was at the court of the King of Chiunzo; and the conversation turning on the beauty of various women, he stepped forward, unasked, and said that all the handsome women might hide their heads when his sister made her appearance, who beside the beauty of her form, which made harmony on the song of a noble soul, possessed also a wonderful virtue in her hair, mouth, and feet, which was given to her by a fairy. When the King heard these praises he told Ciommo to bring his sister to the court; adding that, if he found her such as he had represented, he would take her to wife.
Now Ciommo thought this a chance not to be lost; so he forthwith sent a messenger post-haste to his mother, telling her what had happened, and begging her to come instantly with her daughter, in order not to let slip the good luck. But Luceta, who was very unwell, commending the lamb to the wolf, begged her sister to have the kindness to accompany Marziella to the court of Chiunzo for such and such a thing. Whereupon Troccola, who saw that matters were playing into her hand, promised her sister to take Marziella safe and sound to her brother, and then embarked with her niece and Puccia in a boat. But when they were some way out at sea, whilst the sailors were asleep, she threw Marziella into the water; and just as the poor girl was on the point of being drowned there came a most beautiful syren, who took her in her arms and carried her off.
When Troccola arrived at Chiunzo, Ciommo, who had not seen his sister for so long a time, mistook Puccia, and received her as if she were Marziella, and led her instantly to the King. But no sooner did she open her lips than toads dropped on the ground; and when the King looked at her more closely he saw, that as she breathed hard from the fatigue of the journey, she made a lather at her mouth, which looked just like a washtub; then looking down on the ground, he saw a meadow of stinking plants, the sight of which made him quite ill. Upon this he drove Puccia and her mother away, and sent Ciommo in disgrace to keep the geese of the court.
Then Ciommo, in despair and not knowing what had happened to him, drove the geese into the fields, and letting them go their way along the seashore, he used to retire into a little straw shed, where he bewailed his lot until evening, when it was time to return home. But whilst the geese were running about on the shore, Marziella would come out of the water, and feed them with sweetmeats, and give them rose-water to drink; so that the geese grew as big as sheep, and were so fat that they could not see out of their eyes. And in the evening when they came into a little garden under the King's window, they began to sing—
"Pire, pire pire!
The sun and the moon are bright and clear,
But she who feeds us is still more fair."
Now the King, hearing this goose-music every evening, ordered Ciommo to be called, and asked him where, and how, and upon what he fed his geese. And Ciommo replied, "I give them nothing to eat but the fresh grass of the field." But the King, who was not satisfied with this answer, sent a trusty servant after Ciommo to watch and observe where he drove the geese. Then the man followed in his footsteps, and saw him go into the little straw shed, leaving the geese to themselves; and going their way they had no sooner come to the shore than Marziella rose up out of the sea; and I do not believe that even the mother of that blind boy who, as the poet says, "desires no other alms than tears," ever rose from the waves so fair. When the servant of the King saw this, he ran back to his master, beside himself with amazement, and told him the pretty spectacle he had seen upon the seashore.
The curiosity of the King was increased by what the man told him, and he had a great desire to go himself and see the beautiful sight. So the next morning, when the Cock, the ringleader of the birds, excited them all to arm mankind against the Night, and Ciommo went with the geese to the accustomed spot, the King followed him closely; and when the geese came to the seashore, without Ciommo, who remained as usual in the little shed, the King saw Marziella rise out of the water. And after giving the geese a trayful of sweetmeats to eat and a cupful of rose-water to drink, she seated herself on a rock and began to comb her locks, from which fell handfuls of pearls and garnets; at the same time a cloud of flowers dropped from her mouth, and under her feet was a Syrian carpet of lilies and violets.
When the King saw this sight, he ordered Ciommo to be called, and, pointing to Marziella, asked him whether he knew that beautiful maiden. Then Ciommo, recognising his sister, ran to embrace her, and in the presence of the King heard from her all the treacherous conduct of Troccola, and how the envy of that wicked creature had brought that fair fire of love to dwell in the waters of the sea.
The joy of the King is not to be told at the acquisition of so fair a jewel; and turning to the brother he said that he had good reason to praise Marziella so much, and indeed that he found her three times more beautiful than he had described her; he deemed her, therefore, more than worthy to be his wife if she would be content to receive the sceptre of his kingdom.
"Alas, would to Heaven it could be so!" answered Marziella, "and that I could serve you as the slave of your crown! But see you not this golden chain upon my foot, by which the sorceress holds me prisoner? When I take too much fresh air, and tarry too long on the shore, she draws me into the waves, and thus keeps me held in rich slavery by a golden chain."
"What way is there," said the King, "to free you from the claws of this syren?"
"The way," replied Marziella, "would be to cut this chain with a smooth file, and to loose me from it."
"Wait till to-morrow morning," answered the King; "I will then come with all that is needful, and take you home with me, where you shall be the pupil of my eye, the core of my heart, and the life of my soul." And then exchanging a shake of the hands as the earnest-money of their love, she went back into the water and he into the fire—and into such a fire indeed that he had not an hour's rest the whole day long. And when the black old hag of the Night came forth to have a country-dance with the Stars, he never closed an eye, but lay ruminating in his memory over the beauties of Marziella, discoursing in thought of the marvels of her hair, the miracles of her mouth, and the wonders of her feet; and applying the gold of her graces to the touchstone of judgment, he found that it was four-and-twenty carats fine. But he upbraided the Night for not leaving off her embroidery of the Stars, and chided the Sun for not arriving with the chariot of light to enrich his house with the treasure he longed for—a mine of gold which produced pearls, a pearl-shell from which sprang flowers.
But whilst he was thus at sea, thinking of her who was all the while in the sea, behold the pioneers of the Sun appeared, who smooth the road along which he has to pass with the army of his rays. Then the King dressed himself, and went with Ciommo to the seashore, where he found Marziella; and the King with his own hand cut the chain from the foot of the beloved object with the file which they had brought, but all the while he forged a still stronger one for his heart; and setting her on the saddle behind him, she who was already fixed on the saddle of his heart, he set out for the royal palace, where by his command all the handsome ladies of the land were assembled, who received Marziella as their mistress with all due honour. Then the King married her, and there were great festivities; and among all the casks which were burnt for the illuminations, the King ordered that Troccola should be shut up in a tub, and made to suffer for the treachery she had shown to Marziella. Then sending for Luceta, he gave her and Ciommo enough to live upon like princes; whilst Puccia, driven out of the kingdom, wandered about as a beggar; and, as the reward of her not having sown a little bit of cake, she had now to suffer a constant want of bread; for it is the will of Heaven that—
"He who shows no pity finds none."


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Forgiato Integliato Wheels
Forgiato Original Series
Available Finishes
Forging: B
Forgiato Integliato Wheels are available in the following sizes
The distinctive styling of the original Forgiato line could be responsible for altering the custom car climate forever. The three-piece wheels are crafted from aircraft grade forged aluminum and are available in a multitude of forging options including extreme concave, step lip and convex/big lip and everything in between. As always, the Forgiato line has limitless customization options with finishes including carbon fiber, brushed and pain-to-match.


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$50 MAM Baby Prize Pack Giveaway
September is #NationalBabySafetyMonth. As parents, nothing is more important to us than the safety of our MAM babies. In conjunction with our friends at top baby registry site @Guguguru, we are posting safety tips throughout #JPMABabySafetyMonth to help raise awareness of key things we can all do to protect our babies.
- Focus on Safety: This #BabySafetyMonth, the JPMA is teaching parents and caregivers to properly select and use all juvenile products, the importance of child supervision, following manufacturers' instructions and warning labels, inspection during product use, and monitoring children's growth and development. Visit www.babysafetymonth.org to learn more about properly choosing and using baby products and creating the safest environment for your child!
- Always place baby to sleep on their backs. A recent study by the @AmericanAcademyofPediatrics shows that about 2 in 10 babies are placed to sleep in incorrect positions that greatly increase the risk of SIDS.
Babies should *always* be placed to sleep on their backs. Placing babies to sleep on their sides is just as dangerous as placing babies to sleep on their stomachs, since they are likely to roll over on to their stomachs while sleeping.
- Consider pacifier usage when placing baby down for sleep and remember that the pacifier may not be reinserted once baby falls asleep. Pacifier use is shown to reduce the risk of SIDS. MAM supports the AAP published guidelines for pacifier usage. Check them out here: http://bit.ly/AAPInfantSleepSafetyRead more here if you're interested in more information about pacifiers and how they reduce the risk of SIDS: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/116/5/1245
- Before placing a pacifier in baby's mouth, check to see if there is any damage or signs of weakness. Pull the nipple in all directions and throw away the pacifier at the first sign of damage or weakness. Pay extra attention to your child's pacifier as teeth emerge, which can occur as early as 1 month. Be sure to replace your baby's pacifier frequently – once a month or every two months.Learn more here
- Safe Sleep Guidelines. Many parents and caregivers are unaware of the AAP's recommended Safe Sleep Guidelines and unknowingly put their babies at risk. It's crucially important to make sure anyone who cares for your baby is aware of Safe Sleep Guidelines. @LovetoDreamUSA's Safe Sleep Guide offers helpful tips to help ensure the safest sleep situation for your baby at all times.Visit https://lovetodream.com/sleep-center/safe-sleep-support-practical-advice-for-new-parents-/ to see more on safe sleep.
- Make sure baby's arms and legs are safe in the crib from any risk of being stuck, and even injured in their crib slats. Our friends @breathablebaby offer thoughtfully designed crib liners made of lightweight breathe-through polyester mesh to help keep little limbs inside of the crib without the risk of restricted airflow.
For more information on this safer alternative to crib bumpers visit www.breathablebaby.com.
- Keep an extra eye on baby with a monitor and just like anything else you place in your baby's bedroom, you need to be careful about where and how you use a baby monitor. Place any cords at least 3 feet away from any part of a crib, bassinet, play yard or other safe sleep environment and never position a monitor inside or on the edge of a crib. Our friends @myevoz make wireless video baby monitors that securely connect to iOS and Android devices and allow for you to watch your child virtually from anywhere. The Evoz smart monitors offer patented cry alert technology and allow for data tracking and record keeping as well.
For more information visit www.myevoz.com.
- For stress-free adventures with baby choose a stroller that has a base wide enough to prevent tipping, even when your baby leans over the side. Always secure baby using straps and use the basket underneath. Don't hang purses or shopping bags over the handles as it may cause the stroller to tip. @deltachildren offers safe, stylish and lightweight stroller choices ideal for parents on-the-go.
For more information visit www.deltachildren.com.
- Ensure that your baby's crib meets CPSC standards and that everything in your nursery is free of harmful chemicals and toxins. Check that the crib of your choice is not on the CPSC recall list, here: CPSC Recall List Just as important is ensuring that your baby's crib is placed away from (1) windows, where drafts and sunlight can put your baby at risk, and (2) drapes/blinds, which are strangulation hazards.
Our friends at @Micuna_Usa offer a collection of safe, stylish cribs made of sustainable materials like solid Beech Wood.
Check out their wide variety of cribs here: http://www.micunausa.com/shop-products/.
- Choose a playard with the correct recommended height and weight of the child. The playard, including side rails, should be fully erected prior to use. Always follow the manufacturers' instructions and follow these guidelines for safe use of a playard: https://babysafetyzone.org/safety-tips-bassinets-play-yards-toddler-beds-and-more.
@4moms_hq offers parents a quick, easy, and safe space for their baby to play or sleep wherever they go with their breeze GO playard. The breeze GO meets all relevant playpen safety standards and is intended for playing or sleeping.
Check out more on the breeze GO and other 4moms products here: www.4moms.com.
- MAM pacifiers come in four sizes: newborn, 0-6, 6+ and 16+.
Each size was developed with pediatric dentists and developmental psychologists to provide your baby with the ideal pacifier at each age and stage.
These sizes are recommendations for your baby's maximum comfort and safety; if your baby likes a MAM pacifier that is not the ideal size for his or her age, not to worry! It is still safe to use as long as all other safety guidelines are followed: http://bit.ly/mampacifiersafety .
About MAM – standard setting baby products
MAM combines technological innovation, medical function and contemporary design to develop superior baby care products that support a baby's development from day one. Since MAM developed its first pacifier in Vienna in 1976, it has evolved to become a global authority on baby care product design and quality. Today MAM products are used by families in over 60 countries and on six continents. To find out more and view MAM's baby care range of award-winning pacifiers, bottles, cups, teethers, oral care items, coordinating accessories and gift sets visitwww.mambaby.com.
Follow MAM
Facebook: facebook.com/MAMbabyUSA
Twitter: @MAMBABY
Pinterest: Pinterest.com/MAMUSA
Instagram: mam_usa
And most important Follow the conversation with the following hashtags:
#BSM2018 #BSM #BabySafetyMonth #JPMABSM
In honor of Baby Safety Month, MAM is giving away a $50 Prize pack to one lucky winner.
To enter head below. This giveaway is open to US & CAN only and ends on 9/24 at 11:59pm EST. Must be 18+ to enter. Good luck!


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Helicopter Flight Training Program near Bozeman, MT
If you have envisioned yourself as a career helicopter pilot from Bozeman, MT we are the place to start your career path. Why? If you call the helicopter training program near Bozeman, MT they will tell you everything you want to hear, but not necessarily what you need to hear.
Plus, do you know what questions to ask? If you don't know what to ask how can you know the helicopter training program from Bozeman, MT is providing you with the most important details of their program?
Do you know how to vet a flight training program near Bozeman, MT? How will you know if it is the best option for you? Let us coach you through the process so that when you do contact a training you will know what to ask, what to look for, and properly vet the training before you enroll.
Enroll in the Top Helicopter Flight Training in Bozeman, MT. There are very few more exciting, challenging, or interesting careers. Flying helicopters in Bozeman, MT for a living is a very desirable career.
There are many people who dream of flying helicopters as their life's work, but you had better be prepared to make a tremendous commitment, sacrifice, and to work your tail off for the next 3 to 5 years. There is a great deal that goes into helicopter flight training in Bozeman, MT, and it's not for everyone. Since flight training is expensive, you need to know what you are getting into before you start.
Moreover, helicopter piloting is a competitive job market and only the best-trained pilots from Bozeman, MT compete for the top jobs. The training you choose for training matters.
Call Aviation Schools Online today and speak with specialists and learn more about helicopter flight training, piloting careers, and job opportunities. Know all that you can before you start training.
How Do I Become a Commercial Helicopter Pilot in Bozeman, MT? How Much Does it Cost?
It will cost you up to $70,000 or more to attain your commercial helicopter license through an approved helicopter flight training near Bozeman, MT. With advanced professional helicopter flight training in Bozeman, MT it will cost even more. But Don't Despair.
There are funding and financing options that are favorable to Veterans and college students. With some helicopter flight training inBozeman, MT, you can complete your private pilot rating in as little as 35 hours.
After you've earned a private helicopter license (the first major hurdle to becoming a commercially employable pilot) you can't use your skills to fly professionally (taking photos and flying tours), at least not yet. You need more ratings before you can fly a helicopter for payment. Your next career development step is to earn an instructor's rating (CFI and CFII).
All the helicopter training programs inBozeman, MT will promise you a job, but in reality, there is no helicopter flight training in Bozeman, MT that can guarantee you a job flying helicopters.
Only the best training near Bozeman, MT with the most comprehensive training can prepare you for the job market. Many helicopter training programs will claim that they are the "only training" that offers it's students a job after completing their program. The fact is that this is the standard procedure of the best training in Bozeman, MT Why? Because you need "flight hours" (experience) and the training need instructors.
Looking for the Top Helicopter Flight Training in Bozeman, MT? Aviation Schools Online
Why is ASO concerned about the location of your helicopter flight training program? At ASO our goal is to be the best helicopter training program option for career-minded student pilots coming from Bozeman, MT. If you are interested in career flying helicopters it would be to your advantage to consider enrolling in one of the best flight programs, regardless of location.
There are only a few really good helicopter programs in the United States The truth is that you probably won't find a top-flight school near Bozeman, MT. At least not a program that will lead to a career flying helicopters commercially.
To enroll in one of the very best helicopter programs you may have to relocate. This is true for any prospective rotor wing pilot no matter where they are from. Top-flight training programs are like top engineering schools.
If your dream is to be a mechanical engineer you will have to attend a university that has a top engineering degree program. You won't find a great or even a good job without credentials. Most states have good engineering colleges, but not every state has a top-flight training program.
Student pilots from Bozeman, MT pursuing their dream to fly helicopters will soon come to realize that they will have to relocate in order to attend the best flight training school. If you are from Bozeman, MT and want to attend one of the best helicopter training programs in the country,
If you need help finding the perfect training or need help finding the financing, call us, we can help.
Interesting Aviation Facts for Bozeman, MT for Bozeman, MT
Post Vietnam Era Military Pilot Training: From 1971 to 2004, SUPT-H at Fort Rucker primarily operated as an Army owned and controlled program. In 2004, the training remained at Fort Rucker, but the Air Force mission required changes in the training program and the Air Force assumed ownership/responsibility for conducting SUPT-H.
Helicopter History for Bozeman, MT
Important Safety Issues to consider when choosing a helicopter school: For obvious reasons, safety should be primary concern at any school you are considering attending. It is essential to gain a copy of their accident record and review it thoroughly. Keep in mind that just because a school has had a few accidents does not mean that they should be completely removed from your list of choice schools.


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Your Reputation Is Our Responsibility
Fells Point Wholesale Meat understands that serving your customers a meal they won't forget is important to your business and doing that consistently is how great institutions become legendary.
Along with delivering exquisite cuts of meat and superior wholesale food, we handle every customer with the care and efficiency that have established our award-winning reputation across the Baltimore-Washington area.
When you place an order with us, you'll be confident that the meat you receive is fresh and cut to your customized specifications.
Our professionally trained butchers, production staff and experienced drivers will ensure your order reaches your place of business, on time - every time.
Contact us today at 410-539-5600.
Current Specials


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Alloys Repaired At Your Home or Office
We come to you! Our customised Mercedes mobile repair vans come to your home or office in Alderman's Green, so you don't have to remove your vehicle wheels or sit around a garage.
Trust a local family business to take care of your pride & joy.
This means:
Our mobile alloy wheel repair & refurbishment service operates across the East & West Midlands.
Stuck for ideas? Take a look on our Gallery page.
Wheels2U – Mobile Alloy Repairs – We Come To You
235 Oldbury Road, Rowley Regis, Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom
Tel: 07943 000235 Home: https://wheels2u.co.uk


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Online reviews can make over-the-counter drugs look way too effective
'Evidence-based hearsay' and personal anecdotes overshadow clinical trial results
By Bruce Bower
Here's one good reason why people often take medications and use health products that don't live up to expectations or just don't work — digital word of mouth.
The reviews can be glowing. Take this scuttlebutt about a cholesterol treatment: "I have been using this product for 2 years. Within the first 3 – 4 months my cholesterol was down 30 points. Just got cholesterol tested last week: down from 245 to 196."
That's incredible. It might even be true. But the big picture is alarming: Patients' online reviews of three over-the-counter drugs — two for lowering cholesterol and one for losing weight — greatly exaggerate how well these substances actually work for most people, says psychologist Mícheál de Barra of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Online reviewers portray these medications as working three to six times better than they do in clinical trials that randomly assign drugs or placebos to broad samples of volunteers, he says.
"To learn what works in medicine, you need systematically collected data, usually randomized clinical trials," de Barra says. "It's very risky to rely on observations and word of mouth, whether it's electronic or in person."
Online reviewers probably aren't lying, at least not in most cases. Neither are online review readers unrealistically optimistic about health treatments. The problem is that people who benefit most from a medication are especially apt to post their experiences online. Review readers get bamboozled by a wave of positive recommendations that don't accurately represent how a drug works, or doesn't work, for people in general.
The duping doesn't end there. Direct word of mouth about medical treatments, as well as glowing testimonials about health products in advertisements, also traffic in positively skewed information.
In some cases, science does, too. Researchers have recently raised alarms about the "file-drawer problem," in which studies that find no statistical effects are not published (SN: 5/19/12, p. 26). Published studies reporting positive effects then look unjustifiably bulletproof.
Clinical trials can tilt results in other ways as well. Authors of published trials often fail to preregister details of what they plan to study and how they'll measure it, enabling data manipulation, selective reporting of results and self-serving interpretations of findings. Clinical trials report patients' "average" responses to, say, an anticholesterol drug, but do a poor job of predicting which individuals will benefit from that treatment. "Published evidence from randomized trials is already an amalgam of evidence-based medicine and hearsay," notes Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis.
Online reviews are just old-fashioned word of mouth with a global bullhorn. But they offer one way to quantify the positive bias inherent in so much communication about medical treatments. Patients' medication reviews that include numerical information, such as cholesterol levels before and after taking an anticholesterol drug, represent what Ioannidis calls "evidence-based hearsay." Even if patients' reviews rate treatments with a star system rather than including quantified measures of some kind, those opinions become powerful hearsay evidence for other patients, Ioannidis suspects.
De Barra evaluated 908 online reviews of two cholesterol reduction products, Benecol caramel smart chews and CholestOff, written on or before March 18, 2015. He also assessed 767 reviews of a weight-loss drug, Alli (orlistat), written on or before February 28, 2015.
Benecol reviewers reported a not-too-shabby average cholesterol decline of 45 milligrams per deciliter, versus a small average decline of 14 milligrams per deciliter in nine clinical trials. Respective numbers for CholestOff were 31 milligrams per deciliter and 13 milligrams per deciliter. Alli reviewers reported an average weight loss of about 10 kilograms after taking the drug for three months, versus an average of about two or three kilograms in two clinical trials. That disparity widened slightly after taking Alli for seven months.
Each drug garnered mainly positive reviews, some reporting effects far larger than the average, peppered with a few pans, De Barra reports in the March Social Science & Medicine.
What's particularly concerning is that these three medications displayed small or negligible effects in clinical trials that probably already inflated how well the drugs work, Ioannidis says. So people searching for help in lowering cholesterol or shedding pounds may instead be getting a massive dose of disappointment from online reviews.
Online reviews can also exaggerate a treatment's worst effects, whether real or alleged. Evidence-based hearsay may be particularly catchy online and in person when it's frightening, de Barra suspects.
The anti-vaccination movement provides a potent example, due in part to the success of vaccines. When people face no immediate threat from measles or other infectious diseases, anti-vaccine stories may go viral, so to speak, thanks to misapplied but deeply felt intuitions. Two cognitive scientists, Helena Miton of Central European University in Budapest and Hugo Mercier of the Cognitive Sciences Institute in Bron, France, proposed this scenario in the November 2015 Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
However medical treatments acquire halos or horns, only well-conducted, transparent clinical trials can identify effective medical treatments, such as childhood vaccinations, and their potential side effects, Ioannidis says. But an ominous research trend is gathering steam, he warns. Researchers, professional societies, funders and lobbyists increasingly push to replace clinical trials of randomly selected volunteers with studies of interventions for select samples of people who eat certain foods, take certain drugs or behave in certain ways. The latter investigations may inflate a treatment's effects even more than online patient reviews do, Ioannidis asserts.
Perhaps a new wave of studies showing how evidence-based hearsay misrepresents many medications will be just what the doctor ordered to resuscitate evidence-based medicine, he muses.


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Gatorbeug is based in Australia. We ship daily excluding weekends. Order before 12pm AEDT to ensure your order goes out with the post that same day.
Express shipping: Usually arrives within 2-3 business days.
Standard shipping: Delivery time takes between 5 - 7 business days excl. remote areas.
Note: These timeframes are estimates, and not guaranteed. Refunds for shipping costs are not provided in case of delays by third-party carriers such as Auspost.
The parcel.
We use nondescript packaging, so your parcel looks discrete.
You will automatically be sent a tracking number to the email you supplied when it is collected by the courier. All updates will be sent to that email, if you don't see the emails in your inbox, please check your spam or junkman folder as often the email (gmail etc) will flag the emails as being generated by a website.
Any questions, please use the contact form.


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Mail2World's Web-based Support Ticketing System is an online "support desk" and live chat solution that we provide to our customers for assistance with common problems. The Support Ticketing System gives customers a feature-rich interface where they can easily submit support requests to the Mail2World Support Team. Other features include:
- Ticket support: Customers can report issues using a customized ticket form. Each submitted ticket is directed to the appropriate Mail2World support representative.
- Email parsing: When a Mail2World support representative updates the tickets and performs other tasks regarding an open request for support, the user is automatically notified.
- Customizable ticket views: Tickets can be assigned specific attributes, such as the name of the support representative assigned to respond to the ticket.
- Search: The Support Ticketing System offers a wide range of criteria that can be used to search for a particular ticket.
- Ticket flags and labels: Tickets can be flagged and color-coded to allow staff members to easily sort through and prioritize them according to their criteria.
Online Knowledgebase Helps Users Help Themselves
The Mail2World Support Ticketing System includes a convenient Knowledgebase that offers our users information about the majority of issues they may encounter. Users may save time by searching the Knowledgebase for answers on their own.
Other Knowledgebase features include:
- Quick look-up: Users can search for particular articles using a few related keywords.
- Download articles: Users can print articles or download as a PDF.
- Categories: Articles in Knowledgebase are placed in separate categories to make topics easier to find by users.
- Related articles: Knowledgebase articles also link to related articles.
For more information about Mail2World support, please email


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As weak as the Pirate ownership has been, I was never on board with the Cuban dream. Call it merely a hunch, but I didn't feel that it was the right fit, although that's certainly open for debate. And I never had a firm grasp of how serious he really was about buying it.
But the news I read last night from Dejan Kovacevic in the PG is something that I can believe in. Believe in, back, support, whatever you can do to push it forward, you can bet that I'll be on board.
Both franchises appear to be telling a different side of what happened, but one thing is for sure: the Pirates' and Penguins' head honchos recently had a closed-door business meeting. The Penguins sources are saying Lemieux's Penguin partner, Ron Burkle, made an offer to buy the Pirates. The Pirates are saying it was about another matter, and continue to insist that the team is not for sale.
Bob Nutting is no dummy. His group has been feeding this cash cow on a diet of revenue sharing and broadcasting rights for a long time, and according to Forbes, it is worth about $288 million. For comparison's sake, Kevin McClatchy paid $95 million for the team back in 1996. So basically, in the last decade-plus of strictly losing baseball, the value of the franchise has nearly tripled. One can only imagine what it would be worth with a winner on the field, selling more tickets, more merchandise, and higher local broadcasting rights.
If anyone has proven to know what they're doing in the field of pro sports ownership, it's the Lemieux/Burkle group. What they've done with the Penguins did take a matter of some luck in the draft, but also needed the right touch to finish what the lottery Gods gave them. That's hiring Ray Shero, that's managing the payroll, that's having a fan relation staff second to none. They know Pittsburgh, they know Pittsburgh sports, and they know Pittsburgh sports fans. Having their people in charge of the Pirates could be a dream come true for the long-suffering Bucco fan.
Where this goes from here is up in the air. To have this news come out during PirateFest is probably the worst-case scenario for that organization, but face it, their existence has been worst-case scenario since Sid Bream crossed the plate in 1992. They're used to dealing with bad news.
But from a fan point of view, now that's where this gets interesting. If you thought there was pressure on Pirate ownership in the past, that's going to pale in comparison to what will happen next. Mario Lemieux has been The Best Thing To Happen To Pittsburgh at least three times by my count - he saved the Penguins on the ice, he saved the Penguins from bankruptcy, and he saved the Penguins from moving. And that's not to mention the Stanley Cups and millions of dollars raised for local charities. How there's not 10 statues of this man around town is a mystery in itself.
Bob Nutting? Let's take the high road and say he's not quite as distinguished with the locals. And that league-low $35 million payroll and likely 18th consecutive losing season isn't going to win him many more friends.
This is a story that began months ago, but is only being talked about now. I think it could be one of the biggest developments in Pittsburgh sports history if it actually comes to fruition. Turning around that franchise just might be the impossible. But if there's one guy who we can count on to do the impossible, it's Mario Lemieux.
Lemieux, Penguins co-owner offer to buy Pirates [PG]


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Kiwi Opal Free Form
Kiwi Opal Free Form
Chakra - Heart
Zodiac - Sagittarius & Aries
Planet - Earth
Elements - Earth & Water
Kiwi Opal is seen to assist in strengthening all types of relationships; romantic, friends, family and business, especially when worn in a pendant around the neck, (or tucked into your bra next to your heart). It is sometimes referred to as the stone of change.
Kiwi Opal is a cleansing and rejuvenating stone that promotes emotional recovery and aides relationships. Green Opal has the ability to filter information and reorients the mind, giving meaning to everyday life. Green Opal strengthens the immune system and alleviates colds and flu.
Piece Is Approximately
84mm ~ 210g
*Colors may vary with different screen resolutions. All photos are completely unedited. The product images shown are of the actual product that you will receive.
Follow us on Instagram for more amazing specimens, upcoming shows as well as photos of newly arrived stock @the_crystal_society
Sustainably Sourced
Sustainably Sourced
We source our crystals & minerals from around the world, this enables us to stock a vast range of rare and unique crystals and minerals.
Over the years we have been blessed with an abundance of Quality Natural Minerals from Mother Earth. We personally travel to many far-flung locations to source our crystals and minerals in the most sustainable & culturally sensitive way possible. We work closely with the local miners and their families. This helps the small local family run businesses get a better deal instead of getting pushed out by the large mining companies. When you buy from us you are buying direct from the importer and with every purchase you are helping many local businesses provide for their families and care for their local environment.
Shipping & Route Protection
Shipping & Route Protection
We aim to ship orders within 3 days from time order is placed.
The Crystal Society Pty Ltd is proud to partner with Route, the leader in package protection and tracking solutions. By selecting Route+ at checkout your order will be protected from
damage, loss*, or theft.
Crystals For Every Occasion
At The Crystal Society, we are passionate about crystals and minerals. Our goal is to help you find that unique energy that you have been searching for. It is our fervent hope that our Crystals & Minerals aid you on your path through life.
Highest Quality Crystals & Minerals At Rock Bottom Prices, Sourced Ethically
Vast Range Of Rare & Unique Crystals & Minerals From Around The World
If We Don't Currently Stock Something We Will Do Everything To Find It For You
We Work Closely With Local Miners & Small Family Businesses To Support Local
Exotic Crystals & Minerals From Around The World
The Crystal Societyis Australian owned and operated. We import Crystals, Rocks & Rare Earth Minerals from around the Globe. We are based on the Gold Coast in QLD.
Providing The Highest Quality Crystals At A Great Price
No matter what you are looking for, if we don't stock it we will endeavour to find it for you.


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Method is the soul of business. — OLD SAYING
I AM a business man. I am a methodical man. Method is the thing, after all. But there are no people I more heartily despise, than your eccentric fools who prate about method without understanding it; attending strictly to its letter, and violating its spirit. These fellows are always doing the most out-of-the-way things in what they call an orderly manner. Now here — I conceive — is a positive paradox. True method appertains to the ordinary and the obvious alone, and cannot be applied to the outré. What definite idea can a body attach to such expressions as "[[a]] methodical Jack o' Dandy," or "a systematical Will o' the Wisp?"
My notions upon this head might not have been so clear as they are, but for a fortunate accident which happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and, swinging me round two or three times, d——d my eyes for "a skreeking little spalpeen," and then knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bed-post. This, I say, decided my fate, and made my fortune. A bump arose at once on my sinciput, and turned out to be as pretty an organ of order as one shall see on a summer's day. Hence that positive appetite for system and regularity which has made me the distinguished man of business that I am.
If there is any thing on earth I hate, it is a genius. Your geniuses are all arrant asses — the greater the genius the greater [page 327:] the ass — and to this rule there is no exception whatever. Especially, you cannot make a man of business out of a genius, any more than money out of a Jew, or the best nutmegs out of pine-knots. The creatures are always going off at a tangent into some fantastic employment, or ridiculous speculation, entirely at variance with the "fitness of things," and having no business whatever to be considered as a business at all. Thus you may tell these characters immediately by the nature of their occupations. If you ever perceive a man setting up as a merchant or a manufacturer; or going into the cotton or tobacco trade, or any of those eccentric pursuits; or getting to be a dry-goods dealer, or soap-boiler, or something of that kind; or pretending to be a lawyer, or a blacksmith, or a physician — anything out of the usual way — you may set him down at once as a genius, and then, according to the rule-of-three, he's an ass.
Now I am not in any respect a genius, but a regular business man. My Day-book and Ledger will evince this in a minute. They are well kept, though I say it myself; and, in my general habits of accuracy and punctuality, I am not to be beat by a clock. Moreover, my occupations have been always made to chime in with the ordinary habitudes of my fellow-men. Not that I feel the least indebted, upon this score, to my exceedingly weak-minded parents, who, beyond doubt, would have made an arrant genius of me at last, if my guardian angel had not come, in good time, to the rescue. In biography the truth is everything, and in auto-biography it is especially so — yet I scarcely hope to be believed when I state, however solemnly, that my poor father put me, when I was about fifteen years of age, into the counting-house of what he termed "a respectable hardware and commission merchant doing a capital bit of business!" A capital bit of fiddlestick! However, the consequence of this folly was, that in two or three days, I had to be sent home to my button-headed family in a high state of fever, and with a most violent and dangerous pain in the sinciput, all round about my organ of order. It was nearly a gone case with me then — just touch-and-go for six weeks — the physicians giving me up and all that sort of thing. But, although I suffered much, I was a [page 328:] thankful boy in the main. I was saved from being a "respectable hardware and commission merchant, doing a capital bit of business," and I felt grateful to the protuberance which had been the means of my salvation, as well as to the kind-hearted female who had originally put these means within my reach.
The most of boys run away from home at ten or twelve years of age, but I waited till I was sixteen. I don't know that I should have gone, even then, if I had not happened to hear my old mother talk about setting me up on my own hook in the grocery way. The grocery way! — only think of that! I resolved to be off forthwith, and try and establish myself in some decent occupation, without dancing attendance any longer upon the caprices of these eccentric old people, and running the risk of being made a genius of in the end. In this project I succeeded perfectly well at the first effort, and by the time I was fairly eighteen, found myself doing an extensive and profitable business in the Tailor's Walking-Advertisement line.
I was enabled to discharge the onerous duties of this profession, only by that rigid adherence to system which formed the leading feature of my mind. A scrupulous method characterized my actions as well as my accounts. In my case, it was method — not money — which made the man: at least all of him that was not made by the tailor whom I served. At nine, every morning, I called upon that individual for the clothes of the day. Ten o'clock found me in some fashionable promenade or other place of public amusement. The precise regularity with which I turned my handsome person about, so as to bring successively into view every portion of the suit upon my back, was the admiration of all the knowing men in the trade. Noon never passed without my bringing home a customer to the house of my employers, Messrs. Cut and Comeagain. I say this proudly, but with tears in my eyes — for the firm proved themselves the basest of ingrates. The little account about which we quarrelled and finally parted, cannot, in any item, be thought overcharged, by gentlemen really conversant with the nature of the business. Upon this point, however, I feel a degree of proud satisfaction in permitting the reader to judge for himself. My bill ran thus: [page 329:]
Messrs. Cut and Comeagain, Merchant Tailors.
To Peter Proffit, Walking Advertiser, Drs.
July 10. |
To promenade, as usual, and customer brought home, |
$00 25 |
July 11. |
To do do do |
25 |
July 12. |
To one lie, second class; damaged black cloth sold for invisible green, |
25 |
July 13. |
To one lie, first class, extra quality and size; recommending milled sattinet as broadcloth, |
75 |
July 20. |
To purchasing bran new paper shirt collar or dickey, to set off gray Petersham, |
2 |
Aug. 15. |
To wearing double-padded bobtail frock, (thermometer 706 [[206]] in the shade,) |
25 |
Aug. 16. |
Standing on one leg three hours, to show off new-style strapped pants at 12 ½ cents per leg per hour, |
37 ½ |
Aug. 17. |
To promenade, as usual, and large customer brought [[home]] (fat man,) |
50 |
Aug. 18. |
To do do (medium size,) |
25 |
Aug. 19. |
To do do (small man and bad pay,) |
6 |
——— | ||||
$2 96 ½ |
The item chiefly disputed in this bill was the very moderate charge of two pennies for the dickey. Upon my word of honor, this was not an unreasonable price for that dickey. It was one of the cleanest and prettiest little dickeys I ever saw; and I have good reason to believe that it effected the sale of three Petershams. The elder partner of the firm, however, would allow me only one penny of the charge, and took it upon himself to show in what manner four of the same sized conveniences could be got out of a sheet of foolscap. But it is needless to say that I stood upon the principle of the thing. Business is business, and should be done in a business way. There was no system whatever in swindling me out of a penny — a clear fraud of fifty per cent. — no method in any respect. I left at once the employment of Messrs. Cut and Comeagain, and set up in the Eye-Sore line by myself — one of the most lucrative, respectable, and independent of the ordinary occupations.
My strict integrity, economy, and rigorous business habits, here again came into play. I found myself driving a flourishing trade, and soon became a marked man upon 'Change.' The truth is, I never dabbled in flashy matters, but jogged on in the good old [page 330:] sober routine of the calling — a calling in which I should, no doubt, have remained to the present hour, but for a little accident which happened to me in the prosecution of one of the usual business operations of the profession. Whenever a rich old hunks, or prodigal heir, or bankrupt corporation, gets into the notion of putting up a palace, there is no such thing in the world as stopping either of them, and this every intelligent person knows. The fact in question is indeed the basis of the Eye-Sore trade. As soon, therefore, as a building project is fairly afoot by one of these parties, we merchants secure a nice corner of the lot in contemplation, or a prime little situation just adjoining or right in front. This done, we wait until the palace is half-way up, and then we pay some tasty architect to run us up an ornamental mud hovel, right against it; or a Down-East or Dutch Pagoda, or a pig-sty, or an ingenious little bit of fancy work, either Esquimau, Kickapoo, or Hottentot. Of course, we can't afford to take these structures down under a bonus of five hundred per cent. upon the prime cost of our lot and plaster. Can we? I ask the question. I ask it of business men. It would be irrational to suppose that we can. And yet there was a rascally corporation which asked me to do this very thing — this very thing! I did not reply to their absurd proposition, of course; but I felt it a duty to go that same night, and lamp-black the whole of their palace. For this, the unreasonable villains clapped me into jail; and the gentlemen of the Eye-Sore trade could not well avoid cutting my connection when I came out.
The Assault and Battery business, into which I was now forced to adventure for a livelihood, was somewhat ill-adapted to the delicate nature of my constitution; but I went to work in it with a good heart, and found my account, here as heretofore, in those stern habits of methodical accuracy which had been thumped into me by that delightful old nurse — I would indeed be the basest of men not to remember her well in my will. By observing, as I say, the strictest system in all my dealings, and keeping a well-regulated set of books, I was enabled to get over many serious difficulties, and, in the end, to establish myself very decently in the profession. The truth is, that few individuals, in any line, did a snugger little business than I. I will just copy a [page 331:] page or so out of my Day-Book; and this will save me the necessity of blowing my own trumpet — a contemptible practice, of which no high-minded man will be guilty. Now, the Day-Book is a thing that don't lie.
"Jan. 1. — New Year's Day. Met Snap in the street, groggy. Mem — he'll do. Met Gruff shortly afterwards, blind drunk. Mem — he'll answer too. Entered both gentlemen in my Ledger, and opened a running account with each.
"Jan. 2. — Saw Snap at the Exchange, and went up and trod on his toe. Doubled his fist and knocked me down. Good! — got up again. Some trifling difficulty with Bag, my attorney. I want the damages at a thousand, but he says that, for so simple a knock-down, we can't lay them at more than five hundred. Mem — must get rid of Bag — no system at all.
"Jan. 3. — Went to the theatre, to look for Gruff. Saw him sitting in a side box, in the second tier, between a fat lady and a lean one. Quizzed the whole party through an opera-glass, till I saw the fat lady blush and whisper to G. Went round, then, into the box, and put my nose within reach of his hand. Wouldn't pull it — no go. Blew it, and tried again — no go. Sat down then, and winked at the lean lady, when I had the high satisfaction of finding him lift me up by the nape of the neck, and fling me over into the pit. Neck dislocated, and right leg capitally splintered. Went home in high glee, drank a bottle of champagne, and booked the young man for five thousand. Bag says it'll do.
"Feb. 15. — Compromised the case of Mr. Snap. Amount entered in Journal — fifty cents — which see.
"Feb. 16. — Cast by that villain, Gruff, who made me a present of five dollars. Costs of suit, four dollars and twenty-five cents. Nett [[Net]] profit — see Journal — seventy-five cents."
Now, here is a clear gain, in a very brief period, of no less than one dollar and twenty five cents — this is in the mere cases of Snap and Gruff; and I solemnly assure the reader that these extracts are taken at random from my Day-Book.
It's an old saying, and a true one, however, that money is nothing in comparison with health. I found the exactions of the profession somewhat too much for my delicate state of body; [page 332:] and, discovering, at last, that I was knocked all out of shape, so that I did't [[didn't]] know very well what to make of the matter, and so that my friends, when they met me in the street, could'nt tell that I was Peter Profit [[Proffit]] at all, it occurred to me that the best expedient I could adopt, was to alter my line of business. I turned my attention, therefore, to Mud-Dabbling, and continued it for some years.
The worst of this occupation, is, that too many people take a fancy to it, and the competition is in consequence excessive. Every ignoramus of a fellow who finds that he hasn't brains in sufficient quantity to make his way as a walking advertiser, or an eye-sore prig, or a salt and batter man, thinks, of course, that he'll answer very well as a dabbler of mud. But there never was entertained a more erroneous idea than that it requires no brains to mud-dabble. Especially, there is nothing to be made in this way without method. I did only a retail business myself, but my old habits of system carried me swimmingly along. I selected my street-crossing, in the first place, with great deliberation, and I never put down a broom in any part of the town but that. I took care, too, to have a nice little puddle at hand, which I could get at in a minute. By these means I got to be well known as a man to be trusted; and this is one-half the battle, let me tell you, in trade. Nobody ever failed to pitch me a copper, and got over my crossing with a clean pair of pantaloons. And, as my business habits, in this respect, were sufficiently understood, I never met with any attempt at imposition. I would'nt have put up with it, if I had. Never imposing upon any one myself, I suffered no one to play the possum with me. The frauds of the banks of course I could'nt help. Their suspension put me to ruinous inconvenience. These, however, are not individuals, but corporations; and corporations, it is very well known, have neither bodies to be kicked, nor souls to be damned.
I was making money at this business, when, in an evil moment, I was induced to merge it in the Cur-Spattering — a somewhat analogous, but, by no means, so respectable a profession. My location, to be sure, was an excellent one, being central, and I had capital blacking and brushes. My little dog, too, was [page 333:] quite fat and up to all varieties of snuff. He had been in the trade a long time, and, I may say, understood it. Our general routine was this; — Pompey, having rolled himself well in the mud, sat upon end at the shop door, until he observed a dandy approaching in bright boots. He then proceeded to meet him, and gave the Wellingtons a rub or two with his wool. Then the dandy swore very much, and looked about for a boot-black. There I was, full in his view, with blacking and brushes. It was only a minute's work, and then came a sixpence. This did moderately well for a time; — in fact, I was not avaricious, but my dog was. I allowed him a third of the profit, but he was advised to insist upon half. This I could'nt stand — so we quarrelled and parted.
I next tried my hand at the Organ-grinding for a while, and may say that I made out pretty well. It is a plain, straightforward business, and requires no particular abilities. You can get a music-mill for a mere song, and, to put it in order, you have but to open the works, and give them three or four smart raps with a hammer. In improves the tone of the thing, for business purposes, more than you can imagine. This done, you have only to stroll along, with the mill on your back, until you see tan-bark in the street, and a knocker wrapped up in buckskin. Then you stop and grind; looking as if you meant to stop and grind till doomsday. Presently a window opens, and somebody pitches you a sixpence, with a request to "Hush up and go on," &c. I am aware that some grinders have actually afforded to "go on" for this sum; but for my part, I found the necessary outlay of capital too great, to permit of my "going on" under a shilling.
At this occupation I did a good deal; but, somehow, I was not quite satisfied, and so finally abandoned it. The truth is, I labored under the disadvantage of having no monkey — and American streets are so muddy, and a Democratic rabble is so obstrusive, and so full of demnition mischievous little boys.
I was now out of employment for some months, but at length succeeded, by dint of great interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example: — very early in the morning I had [page 334:] to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines — on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious — signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. Having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham postmarks — New Orleans, Bengal, Botany Bay, or any other place a great way off — I set out, forthwith, upon my daily route, as if in a very great hurry. I always called at the big houses to deliver the letters, and receive the postage. Nobody hesitates at paying for a letter — especially for a double one — people are such fools — and it was no trouble to get round a corner before there was time to open the epistles. The worst of this profession was, that I had to walk so much and so fast; and so frequently to vary my route. Besides, I had serious scruples of conscience. I can't bear to hear innocent individuals abused — and the way the whole town took to cursing Tom Dobson and Bobby Tompkins, was really awful to hear. I washed my hands of the matter in disgust.
My eighth and last speculation has been in the Cat-Growing way. I have found this a most pleasant and lucrative business, and, really, no trouble at all. The country, it is well known, has become infested with cats — so much so of late, that a petition for relief, most numerously and respectably signed, was brought before the legislature at its late memorable session. The assembly, at this epoch, was unusually well-informed, and, having passed many other wise and wholesome enactments, it crowned all with the Cat-Act. In its original form, this law offered a premium for cat-heads, (fourpence a-piece) but the Senate succeeded in amending the main clause, so as to substitute the word "tails" for "heads." This amendment was so obviously proper, that the house concurred in it nem. con.
As soon as the Governor had signed the bill, I invested my whole estate in the purchase of Toms and Tabbies. At first, I could only afford to feed them upon mice (which are cheap), but they fulfilled the Scriptural injunction at so marvellous a rate, that I at length considered it my best policy to be liberal, and so indulged them in oysters and turtle. Their tails, at a legislative price, now bring me in a good income; for I have discovered a way, in [page 335:] which, by means of Macassar oil, I can force three crops in a year. It delights me to find, too, that the animals soon get accustomed to the thing, and would rather have the appendages cut off than otherwise. I consider, myself, therefore, a made man, and am bargaining for a country seat on the Hudson.
[S:1 - WORKS, 1856] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Tales - The Business Man (reprint)