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Hampshire College
Education at Hampshire College prepares students to understand and participate responsibly in a complex world. Through its actions and policies the college sets an example of the responsible and creative behavior it expects of its students. As a liberal arts college Hampshire helps students develop confidence in their intellect creativity and values. It encourages their desire to be lifelong learners and their capacity to advance the cause of social justice and the well being of others. The college fosters these attitudes through: a multi-disciplinary multi-cultural curriculum; self-initiated individual programs of study negotiated with faculty mentors; students' active participation in original research; and the diverse communities on campus and off in which learning takes place. Within the college's residential community students encounter and learn to respect difference and appreciate diversity thereby enhancing their capacity to live together well. Through commitment to testing and evaluating new ideas and new approaches to learning national efforts to promote inquiry-based learning and teaching and constructive civic and social engagement Hampshire's actions serve as models for those of its students.
School Information893 West St
Amherst, Massachusetts 01002-5001
Locale: Suburb: Large
Open Admissions: Yes
Sector: Private not-for-profit, 4-year or above
Carnegie Basic: Baccalaureate Colleges--Arts & Sciences
Religious Affiliation: Not applicable
Accrediting Agency: New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Commission on Institutions of Higher Education
Common name(s):
Students & Faculty
Total Tuition $67,114.00
SAT Scores:
25th-75th percentile
ACT Scores:
25th-75th percentile25-29
Note: 25th-75th percentile ranges show the range of scores achieved by the middle 50% of students who were admitted to the school.
Other Requirements:
Degrees & Programs
|African Studies
|African-American/Black Studies
|Agriculture, General
|American Indian/Native American Studies
|American/United States Studies/Civilization
|Animal Behavior and Ethology
|Art History, Criticism and Conservation
|Asian Studies/Civilization
|Biology/Biological Sciences, General
|Chemistry, General
|Classical, Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies and Archaeology
|Cognitive Science
|Communication, General
|Computer Science
|Creative Writing
|Cultural Studies/Critical Theory and Analysis
|Dance, General
|Design and Applied Arts, Other
|Developmental and Child Psychology
|Drama and Dramatics/Theatre Arts, General
|East Asian Studies
|Economics, General
|Education, General
|English Language and Literature, General
|Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies
|Environmental Studies
|Ethnic Studies
|Ethnic, Cultural Minority, Gender, and Group Studies, Other
|European Studies/Civilization
|Film/Video and Photographic Arts, Other
|Fine Arts and Art Studies, Other
|Food Science
|Foreign Languages and Literatures, General
|Gay/Lesbian Studies
|History, General
|International Relations and Affairs
|International/Global Studies
|Jewish/Judaic Studies
|Latin American Studies
|Legal Studies, General
|Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies and Humanities, Other
|Mathematics, General
|Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies, Other
|Music, General
|Near and Middle Eastern Studies
|Neurobiology and Anatomy
|Outdoor Education
|Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
|Physical Sciences
|Physics, General
|Political Science and Government, General
|Psychology, General
|Public Health, Other
|Public Policy Analysis, General
|Religion/Religious Studies
|South Asian Studies
|Sports Studies
|Urban Studies/Affairs
|Web Page, Digital/Multimedia and Information Resources Design
|Women's Studies


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iPhone 6s Adhesive Strips
Choose your model of iPhone 6s:
Parts that work with iPhone 6s:
iPhone 6/6s/7 Battery Adhesive Strips
Use these custom adhesive strips to secure the battery of an iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, or iPhone 7 to the rear case.
iPhone 6s Display Assembly Adhesive
This custom cut adhesive film secures the front screen display assembly to the case of an iPhone 6s.
iPhone 6s Lightning Connector Cable Adhesive
Replace the adhesive area on the flex cable of the lightning connector assembly for an iPhone 6s.
iPhone 6s LCD Shield Plate Sticker
Replace a torn or missing black adhesive cover on the back of the LCD shield plate. This part is compatible with an iPhone 6s.
Device Info
The successor to the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6s was formally announced by Apple on September 9, 2015 and released September 25, 2015. Notable features include 3D Touch, Live Photos, the new A9 processor and M9 coprocessor as well as the Taptic Engine, previously only seen in the Apple Watch. The iSight camera is now 12 MP and sports the ability to shoot 4K video while the FaceTime camera has been upgraded to an impressive 5 MP.
Apple estimates that the iPhone 6s provides "up to" 50 hours of audio playback, 14 hours of talk time on 3G, 10 hours of Internet use on 3G, 10 hours of Internet use on LTE, 11 hours of Internet use on Wi-Fi, 11 hours of video playback and "up to" 10 days of standby time.
There are three models of the iPhone 6s. Model A1633 is sold in the US optionally locked to AT&T or offered unlocked, contract free for several carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint. Model A1688 is sold in the US for Sprint and Verizon or for T-Mobile with a nano-SIM, and for a wide variety of carriers in Canada, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere worldwide. Model A1700 is sold for mainland China.

subset: commoncrawl


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Confessions of a (minor) rock star
Mike Doughty performs at Legacy Theatre March 30
Mike Doughty has been through the ringer. The former lead vocalist for sample-heavy '90s alternative-rock mainstays Soul Coughing ("Super Bon Bon," "Circles") has put a lot of distance between himself and that band in the post-120 Minutes era, releasing a steady stream of solo recordings, all of which retain his trademark acerbic wit and sometimes-dense wordplay while often venturing into more conventional acoustic arrangements. After 10 years, though, the Soul Coughing days are back to haunt Doughty with the 2012 release of his very entertaining, sometimes harrowing, memoir, The Book of Drugs (Da Capo Press), which will figure heavily in his concert Friday, March 30, at the Legacy Theatre.
"Soul Coughing was a dark, dark marriage," Doughty says now, in a telephone interview. "A lot of emotional abuse, it was very toxic. And people just didn't know." Indeed, the anecdotes in Book of Drugs provide many examples of hostility and infighting between the group members, who are never mentioned by name, instead being identified only by their instrument ("The bass player had slipped my journal into his pocket when I wasn't looking"). The story takes on a weird pathos as Doughty describes his disillusionment with the life of a "minor rock star" and increasing alienation from his bandmates, whom he depicts as consistently belittling his contributions to a band whose material and sound he personally envisioned, while they manage to parlay their arrangement contributions into equal songwriting credit. Even more upsetting, though often just as grimly funny, is the gradually devastating but eventually vanquished drug habit that gives the book its title. "I'm kind of stunned at myself for thinking people were going to know all that stuff without me actually telling it to them," he says with self-deprecating wonder.
Doughty's most recent release is The Question Jar Show, a live 2-CD set in which he alternates spirited renditions of some of his strongest material with a smattering of responses to absurd audience queries drawn from the record's titular jar (Sample question: "F—-, marry, kill: Oprah, Janet Reno, Octomom.") but his show at the Legacy will explore a different format. "This show is a bit more of a confessional," he explains. "It's just me solo, and there's a Q & A section but it's kind of code for 'I will tell you gnarly things about Soul Coughing,' as opposed to the more ludicrous aspects of Question Jar. So it'll be songs and readings from the book. I was actually pretty severely anxious about doing a show that had readings in the middle of it, which is something that I've never done before and I was rather terrified, but it's been good."
The acclaimed lyricist's first foray into "literature" has been garnering positive responses, somewhat to Doughty's surprise. "The book has been received very favorably. I was sort of braced for – as I'm always braced for – being smacked in the face with negativity, because I'm just an insecure person. But it's been really great."
Mike Doughty will perform at the Legacy Theatre, 101 E. Lawrence, 8 p.m. Friday, March 30. Tickets are $25 advance, $30 day of show. Doors open at 7 p.m.
For Tickets check out http://www.atthelegacy.com/


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A suicide bomber and unknown gunmen aiming to destabilize Egypt killed nine security men and hit the country's main satellite communications center Monday in a string of attacks, the interior minister said.
The bombing that struck a security headquarters in the southern Sinai Peninsula killed three police officers and injured nearly 50 other people. The body parts of the suicide bomber are still being analyzed to determine who was behind the attack, Mohammed Ibrahim said.
Earlier, masked gunmen pulled alongside a pickup truck full of troops on patrol near the Suez Canal and opened fire, killing six soldiers, security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
"This is an attempt to prove they are still around and are not broken," he said, without specifying which groups are behind the attacks. "They also aim to confuse, to distract" security forces, he added.
Ibrahim said the attack in southern Sinai is believed to be the act of Islamist militant groups, who operate in the northern part of the peninsula and have been squeezed out of there because of ongoing military and security operations against them.
But Ibrahim said an attack in the capital Monday on the country's main satellite communications station in a southern suburb is suspected to be an act of retaliation for the crackdown on supporters of the former president during protests a day earlier that left 50 dead. Most of those killed were supporters of Mohammed Morsi.
He said gunmen believed to be hiding in nearby buildings fired a projectile into a compound housing the satellites. Earlier security officials said they believed rocket-propelled grenades were used in the attack, but Ibrahim said it was unlikely.
The Cairo attack was the first such strike on civilian infrastructure.
Since Morsi's ouster by the military July 3, Egypt has been roiled by unrest, with near daily protests and a surge in attacks on security forces and military troops, particularly in the Sinai.
Authorities are blaming pro-Morsi supporters of seeking to create chaos to discredit the new government. The government declared it is waging a war against terrorism.
Since the popularly backed coup, authorities have detained at least 2,000 Brotherhood members, including most of the group's leaders. It says the detainees would face trial on charges that range from murder and inciting violence to abuse of power and conspiring with foreign powers.
Pro-Morsi supporters deny they resort to violence. But militant groups in Sinai have openly called for attacks against security.
Near-daily attacks against security forces and soldiers in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula have increasingly resembled a full-fledged insurgency, especially in the three months since the ouster of Morsi.
But the region of southern Sinai, which includes the popular diving resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, has been mostly quiet since a series of deadly attacks in 2005 and 2006.
The four-story security headquarters building attacked Monday sustained serious damage, and a top police commander was wounded.
The violence is certain to set back efforts by the interim, military-backed government to revive the economy, especially the vital tourism sector, and bring order to the streets of Cairo, where crime and lawlessness have been rife.
In a sign of increased nervousness, security measures were heightened at Cairo International Airport on Monday, as authorities used explosive-detectors and dogs to inspect vehicles.


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Mark Wahlberg recently talked with The Boston Globe about some his latest projects. Here is the article.
Mark Wahlberg gets into the docu-series biz
By Mark Shanahan and Meredith Goldstein | GLOBE STAFF NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Last week's announcement that Mark Wahlberg is pitching a pilot inspired by the entertaining if shrill sisters from "The Fighter" got us thinking. Why is a millionaire movie star getting mixed up with reality television?
"I've always been as focused on being a businessman as I have been on being an actor," Wahlberg (inset) told us, reached while riding a horse on a movie set in New Mexico. "I'm not the kind of actor who likes to look at himself in the mirror. I enjoy producing because it gives me creative control.
"If a movie or TV show that I make doesn't succeed," he says, "that's on me."
That hasn't happened much lately. "The Fighter," in which Wahlberg played Lowell-bred brawler Micky Ward, received multiple Oscar nominations; "Ted" was the surprise hit of last summer; and the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire," produced by Wahlberg, is must-see TV for the smart set.
So what's the pilot — which follows a handful of young Boston women — about? First, Wahlberg doesn't consider it a reality show, preferring to call it a "docu-series." And he's emphatic that it will have little in common with crass reality TV franchises like "Jersey Shore" and "Real Housewives."
"There are plenty of ways to get a paycheck in this business, but I'm always looking to do something top quality," says Wahlberg. "This is our first venture with a docu-series and we want to do it right. We're not going to be encouraging these girls to cause trouble and get into [expletive]. We want to give them opportunities to really change their lives."
The show, which doesn't have a title yet, will focus on three or four young women who, in Wahlberg's words, "live in the real world." That might mean they struggle with money, jobs, boyfriends, family, or drugs and alcohol. The goal of the show, he says, is to give the women a leg up and see if they can take advantage of the help.
What's interesting is that Wahlberg and his producing partners — Stephen Levinson of Leverage, Bill Thompson of Bill Thompson Productions Inc., and Stephanie Drachkovitch of 44 Blue Productions – didn't assemble the cast in the usual way. Instead of a casting director, they used some of Wahlberg's friends and connections from the neighborhood to find the prospective stars. (The show starts filming in the next few weeks.)
"We put a lot of people on tape," he says.
Wahlberg knows something about the sort of characters he's looking for because he used to be one. As anyone even remotely familiar with his bio knows, before he was a star, Wahlberg was something of a miscreant with a well-deserved rap sheet.
"Look, when I was young, I had people who wanted to help me, but I didn't realize it. I liked the nice car and the good-looking girl," he told us. "At some point, I got out of jail and my brother [Donnie] was able to give me an opportunity. It was a pivotal moment for me.
"With these girls on the show," he says, "we don't want them to fail, we want them to succeed."
The pilot is actually one of two shows Wahlberg is doing for A&E. The other, called "Teamsters," is focused on Boston's Teamsters Local 25. That's already been shot and delivered to the network, but it's not known yet if the show will be picked up.
Asked to explain Boston's apparent pop-culture appeal – there are two other Southie-based reality shows being developed as well as a spate of recent films, notably "The Town," "The Departed," and "Mystic River" – Wahlberg said he's somewhat bewildered.
"I spent eight years trying to lose my Boston accent because I thought it was nails on a chalkboard to people," he said.
Before hanging up, we had to ask Wahlberg, who's shooting a movie called "Lone Survivor," if he knows how to ride a horse. After all, that's not something a guy from Dorchester grows up doing.
"I spent a lot of time on a horse when I did 'Planet of the Apes,'" he says. "But, no, you don't see too many of these in the neighborhood unless a police officer's on it."


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- Home
- News
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- Opinion
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- Features
- Special Sections
- Classifieds
- Public Notices
Medicare is bankrupt. That's the line we always hear, right? Well, apparently Medicare has been bankrupt many times over the successful program's long life, at least if news stories are to be believed. That's right. The Medicare bankruptcy scare has been ongoing since 1969. That's the year the zombie lie began.
I can't claim original authorship of this, but several political blogs around the interwebs have picked up a humorous little tidbit in which someone found stories as far back as 1969 about Medicare being "bankrupt". According to these news reports, Medicare also went bankrupt in 1976, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2008. Of course, none of those predictions materialized, but they were used at the time to try and justify benefit "adjustments", which is just a "newspeak" code word for benefit reductions (do they ever adjust benefits for anything in the other direction?).Now we are being warned once again about Medicare's pending demise, only this time the solution being offered is much more draconian.
Last month, the United States House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republican Party, voted to end Medicare as a government insurance program. Instead, they want to offer vouchers to those 65 and older so they can go buy their own insurance from a private company. Yes, the same private health insurance companies who will cancel your policy if they find out you had acne as a teenager. They want seniors to start paying for 2/3 of their healthcare costs. Where retired people will get this extra 12,000 dollars a year we don't know because they also dynamite Medicaid, but that's the Paul Ryan plan in a nutshell.
To become law, this plan will have to pass the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, and be signed by President Obama. That'll happen just after there is a heavy frost in Hades. However, House Republicans are pushing for major Medicare reforms and benefit reductions in ongoing negotiations over the debt limit. I call it the "You shoot the hostage or I'll shoot the hostage" strategy. Thus far, few Democrats have said that plan is a "non-starter", but today several more jumped on board that train. Hopefully, the Democratic Party will stand strong on this one, which should be a no-brainer.
The private health insurance market isn't working for hundreds of millions of Americans. Costs and health insurance company profits continue to rise and benefits continue to fall. 40 million or so citizens can't buy health insurance at all. But, this is the "market system" that some want to control all health insurance. The Ryan Plan simply hands these companies money and says "here, insure these folks". The plan provides no controls for coverage or costs. It even brings back pre-existing conditions. What 65 year old do you know who hasn't had a single health problem in their entire life? I'm 34 and can't buy insurance. I can't imagine being nearly twice my age and shopping for policies.
What I can't understand is why Ryan and others are cutting the program that arguably works the best at controlling the real problem in healthcare, rising costs. Medicare controls cost far better than the private market. Medicare's 3% overhead costs are far lower than the private market's, which are anywhere from 25-30% depending on the company. Privatizing Medicare through the Medicare Advantage Plan hasn't worked. Medicare Advantage actually costs 17% more than Medicare, which is why President Obama cut the program in the Affordable Care Act, which is where some politicians got that '500 Billion Dollar Medicare Cut' talking point. Yes he cut 500 billion dollars from Privatized Medicare, because it doesn't work!
Someone needs to sit down and come up with a serious plan for our national health insurance problem. We need a solution that isn't ideologically driven like the Ryan Plan or too compromised to be really effective like the Affordable Care Act. Above all, the solution needs to control costs, something neither the Ryan Plan or the Affordable Care Act does.
What we don't need to do is end Medicare.
Bad idea Republicans. Really. Bad. Idea.
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Oct 3 (Reuters) - The outbreak of West Nile virus that has hit Texas and other states remains on pace to make 2012 the second-worst year on record for the disease in the United States, with another 424 cases and 16 deaths reported last week, government figures showed on Wednesday.
So far this year, 3,969 cases of the mosquito-borne illness have been reported to federal health officials as of Oct. 2, up from 3,545 reported the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its weekly update of outbreak data.
The pace of new cases has slowed since late summer, but the total cases reported by the first week in October is still the highest since a record-setting outbreak in 2003, when there were 9,862 cases for the full year.
Outbreaks tend to be unpredictable. Hot temperatures, rainfall amounts and ecological factors such as bird and mosquito populations have to align just right to trigger an outbreak such as the one this year.
A total of 163 people have died from the disease, compared with 147 one week ago. Just over half of the cases reported to the CDC this year have been of the severe neuroinvasive form of the disease, which can lead to meningitis and encephalitis.
The milder form of the disease causes flu-like symptoms and is rarely lethal.
Almost 70 percent of the cases have been reported in eight states: Texas, Mississippi, Michigan, South Dakota, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Illinois and California.
(Reporting by Paul Thomasch)
((email@example.com)(+1 646 303-6092))
Keywords: USA HEALTH/WESTNILE


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Three ladies go to an exotic male strip club.
One friend pulls out a $10 bill, licks it and sticks it on a stripper's left butt cheek.
Not to be outdone, the second friend pulls out a $50 bill, licks it and sticks it to his right butt cheek.
The third friend pulls out her ATM card, swipes it down his crack, grabs the $60 and goes home.


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Halle Berry -- My Fiance Olivier Martinez Has Nahla's Back
Halle Berry My Fiance Has Nahla's Back
After hearing the good news about Halle's stalker being re-captured by authorities, the gang hit up Nobu Saturday night.
Nahla looked pretty comfortable with Olivier ... tightly embracing the guy as he carried her out to the car.
As TMZ first reported, Nahla has issues with the other man in her life ... her father Gabriel Aubry ... telling the L.A. Department of Children and Family Services she's scared of him. Gabriel is now only allowed to see Nahla with a monitor present.
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Coconut De Leche Scrub
Coconut De Leche Scrub
Coconut de Leche creamy and comforting recipe, with warm buttery coconut infused with milky coconut cream and topped with shredded toasted coconut snuggled deliciously with sweet sugar.
The ultimate sweet treat for dry skin! Anasa's whipped Shea Butter sugar scrubs are simply amazing! Gentle exfoliating sugar crystals and luscious Shea Butter are whipped to perfection, and deliciously scented to polish away dead skin leaving you feeling moisturized, smooth and beautifully glowing. Anasa whipped Shea Butter sugar scrubs are the sweetest kind of exfoliation around!
Benefits: Gentle all over body scrub and polisher. Great to use after shaving - no sting! No Need to Lotion after use. Your friends will adore you, and may want to lick your arm - so beware!
How to Use: Generously apply in circular motions. Paying particular attention to rough and tough areas. Rinse off thoroughly and pat dry. No need to lotion after, unless you're in the mood to do so.
Chef Note: Avoid contact with eyes. Not Edible - Do not consume. May cause shower or tub to become slippery


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Even on the bleakest of Beijing's winter days, many corners of the city are lit up with bright colors. These are the corners where the bīngtáng húlù vendors stand, selling their skewers of candied fruit.
The traditional form of bīngtáng húlù 冰糖葫芦 is a skewer of about half a dozen hawthorns that are dipped in a sugar syrup, which hardens into a shiny candy coating. The snack is most popular during fall and winter months, when the hawthorn and its cousin the crab apple are in season. Hawthorns, called shānzhā (山楂) in Chinese, are also used in juices, jams, even alcoholic drinks. The Chinese believe that hawthorns aid digestion, so this is one sugar-ladened treat that you shouldn't feel guilty eating. At least, I don't.
Did I mention that adults love this as much as kids do? It's not uncommon to see adults going about mundane tasks like grocery shopping or commuting home, munching on a shiny fruit kebab with the nonchalantness of a Westerner sipping a cup of take-out coffee.
Bīngtáng húlù can also include hawthorns with walnuts or sesame, crab apples, mandarin oranges, grapes, dried persimmons, even bananas. It's a simple concept that leaves room for loads of variations. The common denominator, of course, is the sugar syrup (sometimes a caramel syrup) that gets so stuck in your teeth that you stop trying to get it out. Instead, you flash that gooey smile to whomever you happen to be eating with, knowing bīngtáng húlù is too good to be just a kid's treat.


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Venturing Portal
From MeritBadgeDotOrg
Current events updated 19 May 08... Check out What's New here!!!
|A detailed summary of the 2008 Boy Scout Requirement Changes are now on MeritBadgeDotOrg, including updated links for recently changed Eagle Scout Award-related forms. (Once announced, BSA Rank changes become effective immediately.)
Venturing is for young men and women who are 13 and have completed the eighth grade, or be 14 years of age and not yet 21. The year-round program provides positive experiences through exciting and meaningful youth-run activities that help them pursue their special interests, grow by teaching others, and develop leadership skills.
Sea Scouts is a separate program. Like the ties between Boy Scouts and Varsity Scouts, there are some ties between Venturing and Sea Scouts. Sea Scouts was organized to address members' boating skills and promote knowledge of our maritime heritage. Swimming, lifesaving, first aid, Coast Guard Auxiliary Sailing and Seamanship, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation courses are taught with the ship by its officers.
- Dec 2013: Boy Scout program and awards will be changed in 2016. Future program updates
- Dec 2013: Cub Scout program and awards will be changed in 2015. Future program updates
Each program level award is divided into four areas, Adventure, Leadership, Service, Personal Growth.
Program Level Awards (new)
- Venturing Award -- Level 1: The first step in any journey is the courage to begin. At this level, the new crew member makes their commitment to join and move forward into the experience of Venturing.
- Discovery Award -- Level 2: The adventure of participating with the crew unfolds, and each Venturer begins to discover his or her interests and talents. As the Discovery Award recipients develop new skills and competencies, their eyes are opened and the world expands for them.
- Pathfinder Award -- Level 3: The Venturer's capabilities and skills expand and with them come increased responsibility for defining their own way forward in life, service to others and formal planning and leadership of the crew toward its goals.
- Summit Award -- Level 4: The highest award of Venturing, the Summit Award, goes to those Venturers who have matured in their personal direction, skills, and life competencies, and who have accepted the responsibility to mentor others and serve their communities in a lasting way.
Expert-level Awards
- Quest Award -- Focuses on the traditions of sportsmanship and lifelong fitness.
- TRUST Award -- Focuses on the principles of religion, community, and tolerance; its purpose is to provide a pathway for personal development in the forms of service and devotion to God.
- Ranger Award -- High-level outdoor/high adventure skills advancement program, training for the skills of an elite outdoorsman.
Other Awards
- Quartermaster Award may be earned by Venturers or Sea Scouts.
See also:
Sea Scouting
Scouter Awards
- BSA Program Info (many answers here)
- Merit Badge Program Outlines (on MeritBadge.com)
- Merit Badge Worksheets
- Forms and Files (on MeritBadge.com)
- Discussion Forums (on MeritBadge.net)
Patch for the
2010 National Scout Jamboree
|MeritBadge.org Portals
|Cub Scouting
|Webelos Den Leader
|Scouts BSA
|Sea Scouting
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Democracy and Civil Society
Intellectuals in Muslims countries often do not see religion as a hindrance to the democratization of their societies. In their view, the main obstacle is instead the fear on the part of the present rulers of forfeiting their power. We a look at the debate in our dosssier more »
Related Topics


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10 Years To Celebrate Giveaway Day 9
Congrats to Melissa…our Day 9 Winner! We have sent you an email 🙂
Hurray! It's Day 9 and we are giving away a $10 GC to TIny Tush! Enter below with the comments listed below, we have one mandatory (easy!) entry and a few bonus entries.
We're almost there…one more day to our big Day 10 giveaway 🙂
Did you know Tiny Tush has a TON of diapering accessories on our site? Check out some below!
To Enter the DAY 9 Giveaway:
****Leave a comment with what you use: pail & pail liner or wet bag!
Bonus Entries:
****Like Tiny Tush on Facebook
***Share our "10 Years to Celebrate Giveaways!" on Facebook. Leave a link to our blog (http://tinytush.com/blog) and tag us (comment here with link back to your status). You can also use the FB Share at the top of this post.
****Follow Tiny Tush on Twitter
****Tweet a unique tweet with @tinytush and our blog address or use "#GIVEAWAY: 10 Years to Celebrate w/ @TinyTush Daily #Giveaways thru 4/28! http://tinytush.com/blog #clothdiapers" (comment with tweet link, can be done up to 3 times per day per giveaway)
****Share our "10 Years to Celebrate Giveaways" on your blog, a message board, forum or any other sites you frequent. Be creative and have fun with it!! Be sure to include a link to http://tinytush.com/blog; please leave a link to where you shared. (+3 entries for each place you share it, no limit to the places you can share-facebook and twitter may not be included in this category)
***Subscribe to the Tiny Tush blog via email. (form below) Leave a comment with "I subscribe!" here.
{Please be sure to fill out the comment box with your email address, not in the written comment, but in the box that says "email address" that way your email is visible to just us!}
Winner will receive a $10 GC to TinyTush.com; Giveaway is open to US residents, 18+, no PO Boxes please; giveaway ends on April 27, 2011 at midnight.


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Licking honey off of one's paws may be the best way to eat it (assuming you aren't being stung by bees).
But if you must pair it with something, yogurt is the way to go – specifically, thick, rich, tart Greek yogurt.
I first discovered yogurt and honey in Greece. In college, I had the good fortune to be able to attend Semester at Sea (a floating campus that travels around the world). One of our stops was Greece. While I don't remember every meal of my journey, I do clearly remember sitting at a cafe in Athens writing in my journal and eating yogurt and honey. That meal sticks out in my mind not only because of the comforting sweet, smoothness of it, but because I was spending the day by myself; it was one of the few times that I have spent a whole day by myself in a foreign country. To this day, yogurt and honey makes me feel independent and free. [Lie Detector: I wasn't by myself the whole day. I actually ran into someone that I knew from the ship and ended up sharing lunch with him.]
A few days ago, I received a complimentary case of Greek yogurt from Voskos. Not surprisingly, the flavor that I was the most excited about was this one:
Random fact: One of Cupcake Project's Facebook fans,
Sara Vogt, says that she uses this yogurt as a face mask.
About the Yogurt and Honey Cupcakes
I was worried that the honey yogurt might be too sweet (I hesitate to say it, but there is such a thing as too much honey). It was not too sweet. The honey yogurt was just as I would make it for myself – minus the dripping honey mess that always ends up all over my counter and sometimes makes its way onto my keyboard. The Voskos Greek honey yogurt got me thinking about making a yogurt and honey cupcake.
The honey cake recipe that I used for these cupcakes is not your traditional dense honey cake that I've enjoyed at Rosh Hashana meals. This honey cake is more of a basic yellow cake that happens to be flavored with honey. On its own, it is unremarkable. But, don't write it off. Just like pound cake is so much better with whipped cream and fruit topping and ladyfingers are nothing special until you turn them into tiramisu, this honey cake transformed to Zeus-like greatness once I added the "frosting". Not only did I enjoy the "frosting" on its own, but it brought out the subtle honey flavors in the cake and actually made the cake better.
Why Am I Putting Frosting in Quotes?
I've made Greek yogurt frosting before (yogurt, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar). But this time, I simply swirled or spread plain Voskos Greek yogurt right onto the cupcake. Then, I drizzled honey all over the cupcake, Jackson Pollock style. So you see, the "frosting" is really just yogurt and honey – so easy and so good!
Field Notes:
- I wasn't around when my mother-in-law tried these cupcakes. When I got home (she was babysitting at our house – she's the best!), she said, "What kind of frosting was that? I LOVED it!" She didn't know to make quotes with her fingers when asking about the frosting because she mistook the yogurt for the real thing.
- Before tasting this honey cupcake topped with Greek yogurt, my friend Bryan Puskar (he requested a full name mention on the blog) asserted, "Given the choice between a cupcake topped with yogurt and a cupcake topped with frosting, I would always choose the cupcake topped with frosting."
- After tasting the honey cupcake topped with Greek yogurt, and recovering from his state of shock, Bryan changed his tune: "If someone offers me a cupcake topped with yogurt or a cupcake topped with frosting, the cupcake flavor will be the deciding factor, not the topping."
I assure you, you will not miss the butter and the powdered sugar when there is honey to be had.
Honey Cake Recipe
Although this post was written in 2010, I updated the recipe in 2015 with lighter cupcakes. If you tried the old version and found it too dense, you aren't alone. I hope you will enjoy the new one!
Yogurt and Honey Cupcakes
Cupcake Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups white whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup honey
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 2 large eggs
- 2/3 cup Greek yogurt
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk or any milk you prefer
Topping Ingredients
- Greek yogurt to taste
- honey to taste
Cupcake Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- In a medium-sized mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Mix in honey.
- Add butter and mix until fully combined.
- In a small mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt, and vanilla extract until smooth.
- Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.
- Slowly add milk and mix on low speed until just combined.
- Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full.
- Bake for 14 minutes and then test to see if they are done. They are done when a toothpick comes out without wet batter stuck to it. If not done, retest every two minutes.
- When the cupcakes are done, remove them immediately from the tins and leave them on a cooling rack (or just on your counter if you don't own a cooling rack) to cool.
Topping Instructions
- Just before serving, pipe or dollop cupcakes with Greek yogurt and drizzle with honey.
Sweet Stands
The single-serving cupcake stand featured in the photos on this post was given to me for review by Sweet Stands. The stands come in three parts and you assemble them yourself. They are super cute and would be perfect to set out at each place setting for a tea party for little girls or a small baby shower or bridal shower.
I'll be giving away a few of these charming stands in an upcoming post, so check back soon!


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Jefferson coach Bolling DuBose said "there ain't a single person outside our locker room that thinks we're going to win" Wednesday against no. 1-ranked GAC in the second round of the state tournament.
DuBose says few believe Jefferson can pull off upset
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The movie sucks. Don't watch it. Just saved you $10. If you want to watch a movie by Paul Thomas Anderson rent Boogie Nights instead.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
Apple's Main Threat
Is not Google. It is not Microsoft. It is Amazon. If Dan Frommer's speculation about the Kindle Phone comes to fruition I think Amazon will claim a sizeable share of the smartphone market. Frommer thinks that Amazon might do what it is now doing with the Kindle Fire 4G LTE which "buying wholesale data capacity directly from AT&T (as it's doing here, and as it does for the 3G Kindle), and charging a lot less for an entry-level smartphone plan than its competition." The Kindle Fire 4G LTE data plan is $50 annually for 250 MB a month of data. That is not a lot of data, especially for a tablet. I use between half a gig and a gig each month. But you can imagine a phone which has LTE that is $299 and instead of paying a combined $50-100 a month for minutes, texts, and data you pay $10 a month for data and use apps for free texting and google voice or skype for calls. The software won't be as nice as iOS and the hardware won't be anywhere near as pretty or substantial but over the life of the contract savings could be between $1k-2k. That will be enough to get a lot of people to think about changing and would be disruptive to Apple, not ruinous, but disruptive.
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Top Republican Party strategist: Michael Steele is a disaster.
Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico: Gay marriage worse than drug trafficking.
"BQ Sex Siren" Trey Songz goes "Bottoms Up": "Oils, a professional massage chair and a delectable kiss to the neck. "
Marine investigated for allegedly appearing in internet gay porn: "Sgt. Matthew W. Simmons [alleged] screen name is 'Christian Jade.' The investigation was prompted in part by alleged evidence Simmons wore his Marine uniform 'in some of these productions.'"
Coming soon: IMAX porn?
Former Delta Airlines flight attendant has filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired because he was HIV positive.
Queens man sentenced to 37 months in prison for trafficking in more than a million counterfeit Trojan condoms "found to burst, leak and lack spermicide."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates to resign in 2011?
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich convicted of only 1 of 24 counts of corruption. Justice Department to retry case.
LeBron James glams up and flexes for GQ.
Stephanie Mills speaks out for LGBT families. "I really do admire the gay community for many things—but especially for adopting children. They really do take care of their children."
Seat-less subway cars debut in New York City.
Gay hotel and nightclub complex for Times Square.
Poll: Chicago is split down the middle on marriage. 42 percent support and 42 percent oppose. Time Out Chicago calls out the Tribune for its biased reporting of the poll.
Omarion's "strange" red carpet ensemble includes capri pants."
HIV poz Texas man sentenced to 15 years after for having unprotected sex with a teenage boy. "He plead guilty to Aggravated Assault with A Deadly Weapon, with the deadly weapon being the virus. [The defense attorney] argued for parole, because the victim's blood tests haven't tested positive for HIV. State prosecutors said the act was like 'pointing a loaded gun at someone, and then it not going off.'"


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|Jesse P. Karlsberg, Aaron Kahn of Paris, France, leads a song at the first Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, Cork, Ireland, March 6, 2011.
On March 3–6, 2011, 150 people gathered at University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, for the first Ireland Sacred Harp Singing Convention. A sacred, non-denominational, group singing tradition associated with the rural southeastern United States, Sacred Harp singing features day- or weekend-long gatherings, where participants sing without an audience from a songbook called The Sacred Harp. The convention in Cork drew a crowd unprecedented among European Sacred Harp singings for its geographic range and provided a group of fifty Irish college students with their first exposure to the emphatic style and spiritual energy that characterizes large Sacred Harp singings.
That Sacred Harp music came to be sung in Ireland in 2011 is both surprising and characteristic. While hundreds of Sacred Harp singings and conventions are held every year in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida—states where this musical form has existed since the mid-nineteenth century—new singings have been held in other areas of the United States since the 1970s, spreading to the United Kingdom and Canada in the mid-1990s, and then to Poland, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic since 2008.
Many participants in the new singings in the United States have viewed them as a revival of earlier, locally lapsed practices. This view ties contemporary Sacred Harp singings in New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest to a history beginning with a movement to revitalize congregational singing in New England around 1700. This campaign led to a wave of singing schools teaching musical sight-reading that spread westward from Boston through the northeastern United States. A pair of New York-based songbook compilers introduced the use of shape-notes in 1801.1 This innovation, designed to simplify sight-reading, was widely adopted by singing masters as other shape note songbooks appeared in the mid-Atlantic, midwestern, and southern states in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Singing schools and shape note singing ended in most areas of the country during the nineteenth century, though songbooks such as The Sacred Harp remained in use in a handful of southeastern states. As individuals from places where singing schools thrived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have come into contact with Sacred Harp music and begun to hold events modeled on southeastern singings, they have imagined their new singings as revivals of these lapsed earlier practices.2
For many, however, participation in Sacred Harp singing is a choice that has nothing to do with family tradition or geographical history. Devotees sing Sacred Harp because they enjoy the music, food, and fellowship; because they find spiritual or religious meaning in the music and the singing context; because they are interested in early American song; or because they seek a social activity that can serve as a meaningful emotional outlet.3
|Alice Maggio, Why there is Sacred Harp singing in Cork, March 13, 2011. Maggio, a singer from Massachusetts who helped introduce Sacred Harp singing to France, represented the hybrid academic and traditional genealogy of Sacred Harp singing in Cork in an illustration for her blog post reporting on the convention.
As Sacred Harp singings have sprung up outside of where the music was long practiced, questions of "tradition" and "authenticity" have become pervasive. Many new singers locate authenticity with prominent singing families from Alabama, Georgia, and Texas who have long histories of Sacred Harp participation.4 In imagining this locus of tradition, ubiquitously referred to as "southern," new singers extrapolate from their knowledge of particular families and locations to imagine Sacred Harp singing as emanating from a white, rural South, excluding other populations and environs.5 Other singers in these new areas evince an academic lineage, tracing their singing's founding to a college course or singing group established by a professor.6
The first Sacred Harp singing founded in a "non-traditional" area was the New England Convention held in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1976, co-organized by Georgia Sacred Harp singer Hugh McGraw, then head of the organization that publishes The Sacred Harp, and Neely Bruce, a professor at Wesleyan University. Bruce, who was born in Alabama, but first encountered Sacred Harp singing while in graduate school at the University of Illinois, attended a number of singings in his home state in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Encountering Wesleyan's strong ethnomusicology program, Bruce began teaching Sacred Harp to students. The success of the first New England Convention7 was partly due to the presence of a busload of singers from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida (recruited by McGraw) who ensured that the Wesleyan convention ran according to the practices associated with southern singings.8 Bruce introduced Sacred Harp music to generations of Wesleyan students, leaving many with an appreciation for songs he favored.9
|Lisa Canny, Grit Glass, and John Hough, Neely Bruce of Middletown, Connecticut, and David Ivey of Madison, Alabama, teach a singing school the morning of the first Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, Cork, Ireland, March 5, 2011.
Sacred Harp singing was introduced to Ireland in 2009 with the founding of a music ensemble at University College Cork (UCC) led by ethnomusicologist Juniper Hill, a former Bruce student. Hill's students soon established a singing at a community art space in downtown Cork called Camden Palace, which quickly attracted non-student participants, some of whom then began attending the UCC singing.10 These singers sought connection with Sacred Harp traditions, peppering Aldo Ceresa, a visiting New York City-based Sacred Harp singer and teacher, in the fall of 2010 with questions about southern singing practices. Hill and her students began planning a Sacred Harp convention, publicizing it through Facebook and the online "Fasola Discussions" Sacred Harp group.
The mixture of academic and traditional narratives and genealogies was evident at the Ireland Convention. Neely Bruce and David Ivey (a renowned Alabama singing master from a prominent singing family) were invited as co-teachers of a singing school. Between seventy-five and one hundred Irish singers attended the Ireland Convention, joined by sizable groups of singers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Poland, as well as a pair of Americans living in France.11
The Ireland Convention—the first large Sacred Harp singing for more than half of the participants—was an exceptionally emotional experience for visiting and Irish singers alike. The visiting singers felt the power of their role in introducing the music they loved so much to this enthusiastic and eager group; this enabled the visitors to rediscover their own love of the style. In the wake of the convention, US singer Alice Maggio wrote of a "constant stream of songs flowing through [her] head" in describing what she called her "worst-ever-post-Sacred-Harp-convention syndrome."12
For many Irish singers, the revelatory experience of the convention had a spiritual dimension. What they at first described as a feeling of unease—that the formal and overtly religious Sacred Harp convention seemed "alien" to or "unnatural" in the Cork context—by the weekend's end had become an experience in which the "overwhelming power" of the music joined with a feeling of being welcomed into an international "family" or "incredible community" of singers.13
The first instance of pan-European participation in a Sacred Harp convention, the Ireland Convention has catalyzed reciprocal travel among fledgling Sacred Harp singing groups in Europe. Reciprocal travel, which helped sustain a plethora of rural southern singings in the wake of massive out-migration during the mid-twentieth century, also came to characterize Sacred Harp singings throughout the United States following the southern bus trip to the New England Convention in 1976. In the months following the Ireland Convention, travel brought sizable numbers of European singers to each other's singings for the first time.14 Reciprocal travel between the United States and Europe has also increased.15 Singers from the United States joined a large United Kingdom contingent in introducing Sacred Harp singing to interested Germans at a pair of singing schools held in Germany in October of 2011. In Cork, the convention cemented the commitment of a core group of singers to the tradition, provided a burst of activity that drew in a new group of participants, and spurred Irish singers to work hard to promote Sacred Harp singing elsewhere in Ireland and to maintain their singing at home.16
|Jakub Lipski, Singers take the parting hand at the close of the first Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, Cork, Ireland, March 6, 2011.
As Sacred Harp singing spreads beyond its mid-twentieth century boundaries, it remains associated with southern singing practices, locations, and families in the minds of participants, even as they adopt the tradition. As singers from the convention in Cork now express their participation in Sacred Harp singing through communication, travel, organizing, and music-making, they model their expression on "traditional" practices that they learned in academic and informal situations. A "joyful" and "fulfilling experience," the first Ireland Convention seems to have catalyzed a new flow of mutual support and reciprocal travel among Sacred Harp singers from across Europe and the United States.
About the Author
Jesse P. Karlsberg is a George W. Woodruff Fellow and doctoral student in Emory University's Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts. Jesse serves as vice president of the Sacred Harp Publishing Company, the organization that publishes the most widely used edition of The Sacred Harp. He is the editor of Original Sacred Harp: Centennial Edition, forthcoming in February 2015 from Pitts Theology Library and the Sacred Harp Publishing Company.
Research for this essay was supported by Emory University's Laney Graduate School. The University College Cork Music Department generously granted permission to include photographs of the convention taken by Lisa Canny, Grit Glass, and John Hough and video and audio recordings of the convention by John Hough and John Prendergast in this piece. Jakub Lipski graciously allowed me to include a photograph of his in this essay as well. My sincere thanks go to Neely Bruce, Aldo Ceresa, Alice Maggio, Michael Walker, and Robert Wedgbury for stimulating conversations about the experience of attending the first Ireland Sacred Harp Convention. Thanks as well to Lauren Bock, Shelley Bock, Michael Moon, Allen Tullos, the staff of Southern Spaces, and two anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting on versions of this piece. Thanks, most of all, to the Sacred Harp singers of Cork, Ireland, for their enthusiasm and warm hospitality, and to the visiting singers who traveled to Cork this March to join in song with their new Sacred Harp singing friends.
- 1. The title itself of William Little and William Smith's 1801 songbook, The Easy Instructor, makes a case for the utility of shape notes in the singing school context.
- 2. See John Bealle, Public Worship, Private Faith: Sacred Harp and American Folksong (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 188–244 for an overview of what some singers have regarded as the "Sacred Harp revival."
- 3. See Bealle, Public Worship, Private Faith; Kiri Miller, Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); and Laura Clawson, I Belong to this Band Hallelujah!: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition Among Sacred Harp Singers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) for extended treatments of these ways of thinking about the spread of Sacred Harp singing beyond the southeastern United States.
- 4. Miller, in Traveling Home, and Clawson, in I Belong to this Band, are particularly focused on Sacred Harp singers' notions of "tradition" and "authenticity."
- 5. Early scholarship on Sacred Harp singing, beginning with George Pullen Jackson's White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes" (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933), ascribed white and rural characteristics to the practice. However, black and white singers have long sung Sacred Harp music in both urban and rural areas across the US South. Though predominantly black singings have been held from The Sacred Harp since before the Civil War, participation has declined since the 1930s. Most contact that newcomers to the tradition have had with long-time southern singers has been with white singers. For more information on black Sacred Harp singing in the Wiregrass region of southeastern Alabama, see Joe Dan Boyd, Judge Jackson and the Colored Sacred Harp (Montgomery, AL: Alabama Folklife Association, 2002) and "Many Harps" in James B. Wallace, "Stormy Banks and Sweet Rivers: A Sacred Harp Geography," Southern Spaces, June 4, 2007.
- 6. Buell Cobb noted the prominence of universities in the resurgence of interest in Sacred Harp singing outside the "traditional" areas in his introduction to the Brown Thrasher edition of his book Sacred Harp: A Tradition and its Music (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989 [1978]), vii–xiv; see also 154, 159. Stephen A. Marini drew attention to the role of academia in the spread of Sacred Harp singing in his review of Miller's Traveling Home in the Journal of Southern History 76 (2010), 795.
- 7. Initially envisioned by Bruce as a one-time occurrence, the New England Convention celebrated its thirty-sixth year in 2011. The convention also established a model for Sacred Harp singings held outside the South, yet patterned on the southern singings. See Annie Grieshop, ed., "Annual Sacred Harp Singings: 2011 Directory," http://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/annual.html, accessed September 28, 2011.
- 8. Practices are outlined at the beginning of The Sacred Harp, ed. Hugh McGraw et al. (Carrollton, GA: Sacred Harp Publishing Company, 1991), 25. McGraw (personal communication; see also Miller, Traveling Home, 52) offers the five most important elements of a Sacred Harp singing: (1) sitting in a hollow square, (2) rotation of song leaders, (3) singing on the note names before the words, (4) breaking for dinner on the grounds at noon, and (5) opening and closing the singing with a song and a prayer.
- 9. Among the songs I learned as a student of Bruce in 2000 were selections he had chosen for an ensemble recording thirty years earlier at the University of Illinois. See Neely Bruce, dir. The American Music Group Volume 4: Hymns, Fuguing Tunes and Anthems from the Original Sacred Harp (Champaign, IL: American Music Group Publishing Company, 1972), 33 ⅓ rpm record.
- 10. Founded by Robert Wedgbury and Barry Twomey, this singing was initially held at the Spailpín Fánach pub in Cork, before moving to Camden Palace. See Robert Wedgbury, "Exploring Voice, Fellowship, and Tradition: The Institutionalised Development of American Sacred Harp Singing in Cork, Ireland and the Emergence of a Grassroots Singing Community" (master's thesis, University College Cork, 2011), 37–39.
- 11. Sacred Harp singing began in Poland in 2008 in the wake of a singing school taught by Tim Eriksen, assisted by me, and organized by his wife Magdalena Zapędowska-Eriksen at an early music festival in the southeastern city of Jarosław.
- 12. Alice Maggio, "Shout On!" Adventures of Aleece (blog) March 13, 2011, http://adventuresofaleece.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/shout-on/. See also Maggio's "Regional Report: First Ireland Sacred Harp Convention," The Trumpet 1, no. 2 (2011), vi.
- 13. See the "Sacred Harp Singers of Cork" group on Facebook, accessed March 8, 2011, https://www.facebook.com/groups/110889371183/ and the Facebook wall, accessed March 8, 2011, http://facebook.com/.
- 14. A handful of Irish singers visited the United Kingdom in April, 2011, for the East Midlands Convention, returning the favor of the English singers who had flocked to Cork in March. While Sacred Harp singings have been held in Poland since 2008, 2011 marked the first year that a sizable group of Polish singers traveled to England for the U.K. Convention.
- 15. Several of the American singers who visited the Ireland Convention have since returned to attend singings in Ireland, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Five singers from Poland traveled to the United States in July 2011 to attend Camp Fasola, a weeklong Sacred Harp singing school and summer camp in Alabama, traveling on to Oregon to visit singers whom they had met at the Ireland Convention. Two Irish singers made a similar trip in September of 2011.
- 16. Wedgbury, "Exploring Voice, Fellowship, and Tradition," 49.


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Communication, Media, & Learning Technologies Design
In the Department of Mathematics, Science & Technology
Welcome to the Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design Program
Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design (CMLTD) Program provides a cluster of degree programs for students seeking to develop leadership capacities in the use of information and communication technologies in education and society. The program applies to all subject areas and serves students, staff, and faculty members who share a commitment as educators to use digital technologies to improve education at all levels.
Degree Programs
Communication and Education (TECM)
The program uses methods of the social sciences, encompassing both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of communication and education.
M.A. / Ed.M. / Ed.D.
Design and Development of Digital Games
An M.A. program that prepares students to design, develop, implement and evaluate digital games in both formal and informal educational settings.
Computing in Education-ONLINE (TECD)
The Online M.A. focuses on the subset of students in the Computing in Education program who teach in K-12 schools or who have an interest in working with technology in schools.
Instructional Technology & Media (TEIT)
Students who have earned degrees in Instructional Technology and Media find positions in education, government, and industry.
M.A. / Ed.M. / Ed.D.
Technology Specialist K-12 Initial Certification (TETS-INIT)
This program leads to New York State teaching certification as an Educational Technology Specialist and prepares candidates to become technology integrators and coordinators in schools.
Technology Specialist K-12, For Certified Teachers (TETT-INIT)
This program leads to an additional New York State teaching certificate as an Educational Technology Specialist and prepares candidates to become technology integrators and coordinators in schools.
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Innovation Award 2019 Hackathon and Project Showcase: Play as a Pathway for All to Flourish in STEAM
April 05, 2019
Two Faculty Members Retire from the Communication, Media and Learning Technologies Design (CMLTD) Program
August 12, 2016
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Capping the renegade wellhead spewing 42,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico will take an unprecedented effort by British Petroleum and federal agencies, who face mounting difficulties to contain the oil spill that threatens both environmental and political disaster.
The explosion, the sinking, and now the spill from the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig couldn't have come at a worse time for President Obama and other proponents of expanding deepwater oil exploration off the US.
Though the accident is largely an aberration for the industry, which has made significant safety improvements during the past 40 years, it has raised tensions in states that could be affected by the president's decision last month to expand offshore drilling.
IN PICTURES: Louisiana oil rig explosion
"If this doesn't give somebody pause, there's something wrong," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist tells the Miami Herald.
"This is really sort of one of the nightmares for all the companies involved, and obviously the people who live along the coast are sort of helpless," says Tyler Priest, an oil industry historian at the University of Houston. "I'm sure it's going to galvanize the political opponents of expanded offshore leasing."
Louisiana's fisheries
The spill endangers the fragile fish and shrimp nurseries of the Louisiana wetlands, which could be affected as early as Saturday. Up until this weekend, the Coast Guard and rig operator British Petroleum remained adamant that the spill could be contained. But environmentalists and lawmakers who oppose more coastal drilling are growing skeptical.
"The explosion, ensuring fire, and continuing spill raise serious concerns about the industry's claims that their operations and technology are safe enough to put rigs in areas that are environmentally sensitive or are critical to tourism or fishing industries," Sen. Bill Nelson (D) of Florida writes in an April 26 letter requesting congressional hearings on exploration safety.
The spill presents a paradox for Louisiana. Avid defenders of the oil industry, Louisiana shoreline communities now face the greatest danger from the spill, which could threaten the region's prolific commercial and sport fishing industries.
"We're very concerned that east of the Mississippi River, based on currents and winds we're dealing with now, this oil will reach the shore," Chuck Wilson, a Louisiana State University oceanography and coastal sciences professor, tells CNN. "That could be a huge environmental problem and a significant financial blow to fisheries."
Deeper exploration, harder cleanups
A blowout on the Ixtoc I rig in 1979 off the coast of Mexico spilled 33,000 barrels of oil a day, threatened the coast of Texas, and took nine months to contain. Technologies and techniques for containing oil spills have improved since then, but challenges have also increased.
The current incident demonstrates the risks and degree of difficulty of the global gambit to go ever further afield into the earth's deep crevasses to find oil. Trying to shut off a well 5,000 feet below the ocean surface has never been done.
"The depth complicates everything," says Robert Bryce, author of "Power Hungry: The myths of 'green energy' and the real fuels of the future." "This is a disaster that appears to be growing by the moment."
Shut out of more traditional exploration fields in developing countries, Transocean, the driller, and BP, the field developer, are at the forefront of efforts to expand the search for hydrocarbons.
Early reports were that BP workers using four remote-piloted subs had managed to jam the 5,000-foot "riser" from the well to the surface, These reports were wrong, with the Coast Guard saying Monday that the leak was not contained, but had, in fact, tripled in size in 24 hours.
The riser is now crumpled like an old garden hose in the Mississippi Canyon, leaking crude from at least two places, and feeding a spill that now measures 80 by 42 miles, more than six times the footprint of Los Angeles.
Attempts to stem the flow will focus on using another semi-submersible rig to drill a "relief" well to depressurize the main wellhead so it can be capped. The company is also already building a kind of "sombrero" dome to contain the oil. BP is also increasing hydraulic pressure to emergency-trigger various valves at the wellhead site to stem the flow, but those efforts have so far been unsuccessful.
BP CEO Tony Hayward remained confident the company could contain the spill before it caused environmental damage. In a statement, Mr. Hayward said better weather "combined with the light, thin oil we are dealing with has further increased our confidence that we can tackle this spill offshore."
Oil rig explosion unmasks 'dangerous myth' of safety, lawmakers say
Why do so many oil spills happen?
Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion shows new risks


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New Haven, Conn. – The Yale men's tennis team will open its 2010-2011 season this weekend at the Princeton-Farnsworth Invitational in Princeton, N.J.
The annual tournament, which consists of five singles draws, will begin Friday and continue through Sunday at Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium and Lenz Tennis Center. In last year's kick-off tournament, Bulldog Matt Hoffman, a freshman at the time, won the D Singles Draw, while fellow freshman Marc Powers won the B Consolation Draw.
Powers, seeded No. 1 in the A Draw, will face Princeton's Matt Siow in the opening round, while Hoffman will also play in the A Draw, opening up against Eugen Brazdil of the University of Pennsylvania. In the B Draw, juniors Joel Samaha and Erik Blumenkranz will both face opening round tests against a pair of Lions from Columbia, matching up with Nathaniel Gery and Kevin Kung respectively. Seniors Ryan Berman and Jordan Abergel both play in the C Draw, opening their respective seasons with matches against Princeton Tigers Dan Richardson and Ryan Kim. Freshman Zachary Dean will begin his collegiate career by playing Penn's Dmitry Bury in the D Draw, while fellow freshman Tommy Ratchford opens against Matty Najfeld of St. John's in the E Draw.
This year's Eli squad should feature a combination of both youth and experience, with three seniors and four freshmen on the squad. For the freshmen – Patrick Chase of Portola Valley, Calif., Kyle Dawson of St. Charles, Ill., Dean of Commack, N.Y., and Ratchford, of Atlanta – the Farnsworth will represent their first college match play. Sophomore John Huang and senior Calvin Bennett round out a well-balanced Bulldog roster.
Alex Dorato, the Cary Leeds Head Coach of Men's Tennis, is looking forward to seeing what his team has to offer.
"As the first tournament of the year, I am excited to see how the freshmen do at the Princeton-Farnsworth Invitational. This tournament will tell us a lot about where we are and what we need to focus on moving forward."
With a healthy contingent of Ivy League foes competing at the Farnsworth (Penn, Princeton, Cornell and last year's Ivy League Champions, Columbia, will all send players to New Jersey), the Bulldogs should get a sense of their spot in the Ivy pecking order after this weekend's slate of matches is completed.
report filed by Alex Milvae '12, Yale Sports Publicity


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Ben Bernanke: No policy shift unless economy sags
(MoneyWatch) Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated today that the risks to the U.S.
economy have increased and that the central bank is prepared to take action if conditions
deteriorate further. Yet he offered no sign in his testimony before the Congressional Joint Economic
Committee that the Fed is prepared to change course at its next monetary policy meeting later this month.
Expectations that the Fed might ease policy were raised this week when three regional bank presidents -- John Williams of San Francisco, Dennis Lockhart of Atlanta, and Eric Rosengren of Boston -- all hinted at a willingness to consider further monetary easing in a bid to boost economic growth. Remarks by Fed governor Janet Yellen also encouraged speculation that Bernanke might hint that the Fed was ready to change in policy.
Bernanke signals no imminent steps to aid economyBernanke likely to be pressed on health of economyWill the weak jobs report prompt action from policymakers
But with Bernanke's testimony, expectations that the Fed will alter its stance anytime soon have been all but eliminated. Instead, the Fed will stay in "wait and see"
mode on the belief that its policy stance is already highly accommodative. Further easing is only called for if the economy begins to show signs of
weakening further or turns downward. The Fed's greatest fear is deflation, and any sign that inflationary expectations are plunging would
likely spur a change in policy.
For now, the central bank believes it has done enough. By contrast, many economists outside the Fed are urging immediate action to help the recovery along and to ensure against future problems related to Europe's ongoing debt crisis or a from a spike in oil prices. There is lag between the time the Fed alters policy and when the change affects the economy, and a wait-and-see approach is risky in that it can cause the Fed to end up behind the curve. Nevertheless, the Fed feels the risks of acting now, in particular the risk of inflation, trump fears about present and future economic growth.
Bernanke also discussed fiscal policy in his testimony, urging
lawmakers to put the budget deficit on a long-run sustainable path without
"unnecessarily impeding the current economic recovery." He cited the "fiscal
cliff" -- the scheduled expiration of tax cuts and a planned reduction in government spending on Jan. 1 of next year -- as an immediate concern, and he is clearly worried about the impact on the
economy if there is a large reduction in the federal deficit while the economy
is still struggling to recover.
Bernanke indicated that the Fed would appreciate help from lawmakers in the short-run in speeding the recovery, previously mentioning the need for increased infrastructure spending. Like most mainstream economists, he is calling for more fiscal stimulus in the short-run, or at least no reduction in what is already being done, and a plan for a sustainable long-run budget. Whether Congress can deliver or not is an open question. Stimulus in the near term is a long shot given the political gridlock in Congress, and the ability of lawmakers to solve the long-run problem also adds a high degree of uncertainty.
But however the budget negotiations turn out, as Bernanke notes it will have consequences for monetary policy, and the Fed would feel more confident in its own abilities if it had more support from Congress.
Overall, the main message from Bernanke's testimony is that the Fed is aware
that the risks to the economic outlook have increased. But the bank is not yet convinced
that current troubles are anything more than a bump in the road, and its worries
about the future are not enough to motivate action.
That may change if conditions deteriorate -- we will have to "wait and see" -- but for now present policy will continue.


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I'm not a huge fan of fruit leathers, but this turned out super good! And, really, you can't go wrong with blackberries, mint and rum.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Eco Hottie of the Week #3
Who: Rachel McAdams
What: Actress
Why: Although I actually didn't know who this person was, I have seen her in a couple movies. More importantly, however, is the fact that she started up a website called green is sexy with two of her pals.
Rachel is trying to lighten her footprint on the earth by supporting tree planting organizations, switching her house to green power and lowering her energy usage. She dreams of one day living in a treehouse and being able to grow her own food.
Quotable: "I don't own a car. In Toronto, my bike is my car."
Thanks to Monica Duke (no relation) for the tip!
If you would like to nominate someone as an Eco Hottie, email me.
6 comments:
- Erikka said...
she is so cute. i have a crush on her even more now. :) i like that you're making being green FUN with this eco-hottie idea.
- March 28, 2008 at 8:32 AM
- asrai said...
Cool I had no idea she started greenissexy.com. She's very cute
- March 28, 2008 at 8:42 AM
- Greenpa said...
Hey, no complaints. She IS "cute" here. I was curious, though, clicked through to her site; there's a couple photos there with what's apparently her real hair color- and she looks more than cute that way- intriguing.
- March 28, 2008 at 10:48 AM
- Crunchy Chicken said...
Yeah, Greenpa, she's in a new movie and her hair is platinum. I like it better brown myself, not that my opinion is of any consequence.
- March 28, 2008 at 11:08 AM
- Carrie Lauth said...
Agreed, she is WAY cuter with her natural dark locks. And she was the gal in The Notebook, among other things.
- March 28, 2008 at 2:16 PM
- Jason C said...
oohh...I like this selection! I do prefer her as a brunette, though.
So delicious...and organic :-)
- March 28, 2008 at 2:30 PM


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Latest News
Killing tiger and hammerhead sharks may become a crime in Florida
Florida wildlife managers, in a move that would be a first nationally, are poised to outlaw killing tiger sharks and three kinds of hammerheads that prowl state waters — but in increasingly fewer numbers.
The idea of protecting "man-eating'' species might perplex some people scarred by one too many Jaws movie marathons but it's broadly supported by marine scientists, environmental groups and even the International Game Fish Association, keeper of all sport fishing records.
Maybe more important, Bucky Dennis, shark hunter extraordinaire, is all for it.
That's one telling measure of how much angler attitudes have changed about the dwindling populations of important, misunderstood predators that have long been butchered for their fins and jaws and displayed on docks as "monster-fishing'' trophies.
Dennis, a fishing guide from Port Charlotte, caught some wicked backlash from the far reaches of cyberspace after he bagged a world-record hammerhead off Boca Grande on Florida's southwest coast in May 2009 — a 1,060-pounder that was likely at least a half century old and probably a pregnant female. Countless e-mailers and bloggers called him heartless, ignorant and other unpleasant, unprintable pejoratives.
Two years later, he won't say he regrets killing the shark, which got him into the IGFA record books for 80-pound test line and was intended to help promote his fishing guide business. But he fully supports a catch-and-release-only rule that would put an end to killing big hammerheads and tigers simply for records — at least the ones caught in Florida's coastal waters.
"There are only so many sharks. I'm not out there to kill them and hang them up all the time,'' he said. "If I do that, I'm hurting the industry. I want my customers to catch them. I want my kids to catch them.''
The new rule, up for final approval on Wednesday during a meeting of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Key Largo, would add four new species — tiger sharks as well as scalloped, smooth and great hammerheads — to 23 sharks already off-limits for harvest in state waters, which extend three miles off the Atlantic coast and nine miles off the Gulf coast.
Catch-and-release fishing would still be allowed and anglers also could transport sharks landed in federal waters, where all four species remain legal for most anglers to kill. The National Fisheries Service this year did prohibit commercial and sport anglers who keep tuna or swordfish from also keeping great, smooth or scalloped hammerhead sharks.
Shark experts and environmentalists applaud the FWC proposal and hope it clears the way for extending protections in both federal and international waters. Populations of all four species, according to FWC and federal fisheries biologists, have declined by more than half in recent decades, with studies suggesting smooth and scalloped hammerheads in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf down by as much as 98 percent and tigers reduced by at least 65 percent.
"It's a big step but we're going to need the federal government to step up and do their part as well,'' said Neil Hammerschlag, a research assistant professor and shark expert at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
Unlike most of the other 22 sharks on the state's prohibited list, which are rare to nonexistent in coastal waters, tigers and hammerheads are prized by anglers and still show up at the end of fishing lines, though not nearly in the numbers seen decades ago.
"I'm out there 10 days a month doing shark research,'' he said, "and I catch less than a handful of these a year.''
Because sharks reach breeding maturity late in life and produce relatively few offspring, they're particularly vulnerable to the impacts of overfishing, Hammerschlag said. Scientists estimate the gestation period of tiger sharks, for instance, at from nine to 15 months.
Jason Schratwieser, conservation director of the Dania Beach-based IGFA, said numerous international studies point to serious declines in the largest, ocean-going sharks like tigers and hammerheads. The great white, the infamous star of Jaws, has been so overfished it is already protected from commercial and recreational fishing in state and federal waters.
"I think you are seeing that these things need a little bit of a break,'' said Schratwieser.
Though some people see sharks as nothing more than dangerous monsters, scientists say they serve important roles at the top of the ocean food chain, keeping the ecosystem in balance. Reducing their numbers can create unexpected and unwanted ripple effects.
The heaviest pressure on sharks extends far beyond Florida, driven largely by the Asian shark fin soup trade, but coastal waters are important breeding and feeding grounds — particularly for hammerheads. In the spring and summer, they show up en masse to feed on migrating tarpon that draw anglers to the Florida Keys and other hot spots like Boca Grande. The biggest angling prizes are typically the largest females, which also are the most prodigious producers of shark pups.
Though some recreational anglers have grumbled, FWC spokeswoman Amanda Nalley said "we haven't had a lot of push-back.''
The rule, if approved, would make it a second-degree misdemeanor to catch and kill one of the sharks in state waters. The state is also developing an education campaign to promote safe catch-and-release using circle hooks and other gear that does less damage. The FWC is also considering a tag system that would allow anglers to pay to kill a limited number of sharks, such as potential record catches.
Fishing guide Dennis said he supports the proposed changes and won't be pursing any records in the future, tag option or not.
"Now, it doesn't mean as much to me as it did back then,'' he said.
Though he "got a lot of flack'' for killing the big hammerhead, he insisted something was lost in many of the stories, he said.
He said he had always practiced catch-and-release with sharks in a guiding career going back to 1998 — with three exceptions, for one tournament and for two hammerheads he knew qualified for the record books.
"I don't like people being mad at me,'' Dennis said. "I'd rather have people be happy and come give me money to take them fishing.''
To read more, visit www.miamiherald.com.


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By Virginia Konchan
"The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image." ―Guy Debord
"I'm telling you a lie in a vicious effort that you will repeat my lie over and over until it becomes true." ― Lady Gaga
The paroxysm of "authenticity," since its modernist deconstruction, can't cure postmodern anomie, at a time when politics, religion, self-esteem, personal expression are entirely bound up with the logics of branding and the blinding halogen lights of commodity culture, manufacturing not just celebrities but the desire to be them (mimesis, or facial reconstructive surgery), as well as dissatisfaction with our own imperfect bodies, financial and existential woes, and (occasionally) humdrum lives. When representation engulfs the real, the compensatory mechanism (inflated valuation of subjectivity, in identity politics) kicks in: can, then, the desire to worship or admire the other (as subject, not purchasable fetish) be the only "authentic" meme, driving the totalized spectacle, left? If surrendering the need for gods is last step on the journey to disillusionment ("You revolutionaries want another master, and you will get one" as Lacan warned in 1968), Gaga lights a path beyond institutionalized dogma, and the image regime, by demonstrating the performance of the real as nothing more than a metastasized staging of the desire for recognition, and (ew) love.
For Gaga, to be seen is to exist. The danger inheres in the absence or deconstruction of the spectacle, or, in psycho-sexual development, the failure of the mirror stage: without the media feed and cameras, how do iconic celebrities, and the rest of us, reify our existence, or ego? The body of an icon, like that of all market subjects, is experienced by spectators as an object designed to scandalize, sell products, and attract. Writers and other creative artists share in this dilemma of self-promotion and marketization: is constant self-and other reification through textual representation (enacting the schism between self and personae, site and parasite) that different, in the history of oral performance and codified text, than the rabbit hole of the entertainment industry?
From Gaga's "Manifesto of Little Monsters": "There is something heroic about the way my fans operate their cameras. So precisely, so intricately and so proudly. Like Kings writing the history of their people, is their prolific nature that both creates and procures what will later be perceived as the kingdom. So the real truth about Lady Gaga fans, my little monsters, lies in this sentiment: They are the Kings. They are the Queens . . . It is in theory of perception that we have established our bond, or the lie I should say, for which we kill. We are nothing without our image . . . the spiritual hologram of who we perceive ourselves to be or rather to become . . ."
If celebrities (and the cult of celebrity) are materially invented and produced by man, as archetypes sustaining the human drama, their cracked surfaces and flaws show us that defying natural laws or performing ideality is a paid performance by professional stuntmen and women, assisted by teams of choreographers, make-up artists, clothing designers, and funded by us. "Glamour is what I sell, it's my stock in trade," as Marlene Dietrich quipped. And glamour, as we know, makes life sexy, but, like hard living, can also kill.
The polarity between life and representations or reproductions of life was cogently articulated at the dawn of industrialism when Walter Benjamin declared, in 1936, all perception of post-auratic art to be perceptual mimesis: we are only shocked, moved, or stunned once, by the original event or form, and all that comes after is (mis)recognition, degrees of familiarity, and habituation to the supplement, dramatizing our alienation from sentience, the other, and ourselves.
In admiring celebrities, historical figures, and artists who seem to transcend biological or class determinisms (embodying the Greco-Roman will-to-form) we run the risk of conflating the spectacle of the medium (the "body wholly body," to quote Wallace Stevens, "fluttering its empty sleeves") with the message, or ceasing to believe (the coup of neoliberal aesthetics) in the value or existence of a "message," obviating the politics of resistance and conscious deliberation, at all.
From the onrush of "open letters" penned by Sufjan Stevens, Sinead O'Connor, and others counseling Miley Cyrus back from the brink after her twerking episode, to celebrity ripostes and biographies exposing the collateral damage of media-fueled celebrity, when not resulting in actual death (i.e. Amy Winehouse and Brittany Murphy), never has the line between art and performance, iconicity and humanity, production model and duplicate, copyright and forgery, been so attenuated (nor our memory of the "authentic," so atrophied) as today. Our collective amnesia of the real, spurred by celebrity culture, post-Cold War hijinks of technological progress (genetic engineering, robotics) and reality TV, has roots in surrealism, and other revolutionary movements breaking with official, and mass culture. In 1922, André Breton distanced himself from the Dadaist taste for scandal for scandal's sake, yet Louis Aragon pressed on, writing in the preface to The Libertine, "I've never looked for anything but scandal." As does Gaga: "They can't scare me if I scare them first."
The argument, like that of porn as liberation, that celebrities, even if manufactured, produced, and consumed, do so volitionally, retaining, agency, is nothing if not fraught, and often entails a culturally enforced process of teaching a woman to "confess" to enjoying social or actual prostitution, as dramatized in the 2013 biopic Lovelace, about porn star Linda Lovelace's economic and sexual exploitation by her manager, pimp, and husband, Chuck Traynor, and the porn industry. The star herself can become mesmerized by the mirrors of her overexposed image, and addicted to the biofeedback of fans and paparazzi (not like the saline-drip of social media).
Eddie McCaffray, on Gaga's "Do What U Want (With My Body)": "Gaga's body is either something valueless, such as garbage or raw meat, or something flagellated, such as that of an abuse victim, that of someone with an eating disorder, that of an addict [ . . . ] If it is valueless muck, it can be refashioned however fame or art (pop) demands. If it is merely a conduit for trauma, it allows that trauma to create a space from which Gaga can emerge as coping-mechanism-cum-messiah." McCaffray's presents a view of Gaga as a disembodied other, stripped of subjectivity, and her social function as either stigmatic repository for our shame, sexuality, and violence, or, in her performance of illness and hysteria, a stigmatic fetish, easing our anxiety over lack, and the void (the modernist nausea of non-being; and today, in zombie capitalism, bodies emptied of personalities and selves), to avoid its projection onto men.
We live in an era dominated by the anasemic drive (e.g. Chris Kraus' Aliens and Anorexia), mourning the inability of the necromantic body to signify, and substituting contingency and flux for meaning, and market transactions, relationships. Our troubled relationship to the stigmatized body is echoed in the enforced discipline and punishment of female reproductive body (fitness industries, post-industrial meat production, fertility politics, abortion debates), and its dangerous affects and outlaw desires. An aesthetics of waste (what writer Joyelle McSweeney calls magpie aesthetics), ecocritical, formalist, historicist, trans, queer, Marxist or feminist, can also been seen as a political refusal of the body-cum-artwork's capitalist (Stalinist, fascist) utility and form: within the culture and entertainment industries, taboos only need to be broken once for the "norm" to be shattered.
Openly confessing to having struggled with anorexia and bulimia since age fifteen, Gaga's Body Revolution campaign, launched in 2012, is accompanied by pictures of her in a slim but not anorexic or pre-pubescent state. As Katie J.M. Baker says, "We also know she's still struggling because of how she's trying to cope: by asking for support and validation from her millions of ardent fans. Gaga wants to empower others, clearly, but she's also letting us watch the narrative of her eating disorder play out. Gaga's Body Revolution campaign . . . is inarguably inspiring — it's heartwarming to see dozens of posts from women and men who are insecure about features ranging from love handles to missing limbs proudly post photos of their half-naked bodies . . . Gaga proves she really is just like her fans by "showing the world that it's not okay to critique her body" instead of suing the publications that called her fat or claiming she's 'dehydrated'."
Gaga—not so much as sex symbol but androgene—has come to represent, then, the limits not only of commodified performativity, but its breaking point, within the body: rhetorics not of transcendence or ideality but the politics of self-harm: the occupational hazard, in the entertainment industry, of illness and addiction, at war with the off-stage desire for health and intimacy.
Gaga, Madonna's closest heir, troubles not just iconic but historic stereotypes of women in power (witch-hunts, libidinal repressions of Victoriania), and yet the revolutionary message is largely that of defiance. Testing the boundaries of mainstream and avant-garde theaters (of the absurd, oppressed and cruel), and the sturm und drang of contemporary performance as "high art" (pageantry, spectacle), Gaga spits at vertiginous imaginaries dependent upon monetized and ideological investments for survival ("Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection"), reclaiming the right to bleed publically, for cash, not as shock art, but an embodied prolegomena, with witnesses, of her "truth" (what else is real)?
Bio: Virginia Konchan is a writer and critic living in Chicago. Her work has appeared widely in such places as in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and The Believer. Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, and regular contributor to The Conversant and Jacket2, she lives in Chicago.


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Tillamook Introduces Light Yogurt Sweetened With Truvia
Tillamook, Ore.-based Tillamook, a farmer-owned dairy co-op, introduces Tillamook Light Yogurt naturally sweetened with Truvia sweetener. It took two years to perfect the recipe, which is made with no artificial growth hormones, artificial flavors, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup. The 6-oz yogurt cups contain only 110 calories per serving, 35 percent less than regular low fat yogurt.
Flavors include Oregon Strawberry, Vanilla Bean, Marionberry, Raspberry, Peach, Mountain Huckleberry, Northwest Berry Patch, Pomegranate Blackberry, Lemon Squeeze and Dark Cherry.
"After 24 months of research and development we found the perfect combination of natural sweeteners, setting our brand apart from the competition" says Jay Allison, Tillamook vice president of sales and marketing. "We didn't compromise and now our consumers don't have to either."
Suggested retail price is 85 cents.


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New Geometry
The New Geometry Collection from Westhollow features the most well-made cork flooring you'll find anywhere. They are available in a variety of stained hardwood looks, have beveled edges and are about as practical as flooring can get. A Thick wear layer of cork is attached to an extremely rigid HDF core. The cork itself acts as a shock absorber, giving you comfort with each and every step. Many of our diy customers choose this flooring due to it's simple click locking mechanism. Installation requires no glue, no mess and no fuss. A 6 Layer UV cured finish gives this cork flooring great surface durability and keeps it easy to clean.
New Geometry Cork Collection
Other Westhollow Cork Collections...
Maltese Falcon - CorkSale Price: $2.99 /SF