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Monday, October 31, 2011
My Puppy: Organizing for Pet Emergencies
I have a cat named Puppy. When I first met him, he was a very skittish semi-feral cat — too scared to approach anyone. But as my neighbor and I walked around our neighborhood, he followed us up and down the streets — like a little puppy dog, I said. The name stuck.
Puppy obviously wanted to find himself a person, and he picked me. Over the years, he became much more socialized. While he was still primarily an outdoor cat, he'd come inside sometimes and cuddle with me. He hung around the yard a lot, especially as I made it cat-friendly; I even had custom-built cat houses to protect him from the elements.
If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know he wasn't eating well recently — and he just got diagnosed with feline large-cell gastrointestinal lymphoma, a particularly nasty type of kitty cancer. My vet removed the problem area, and it doesn't appear to have metastasized. Today he started chemo — but he's home now, curled up in my bed, eating OK and purring whenever I come and cuddle him. Please send good thoughts his way.
So how do you get organized for such a situation — a suddenly very sick pet? Here are the things that helped me:
1. Instant access to Puppy's medical history.
I scan all my cats' vet records and put them in Dropbox, so I have their history at my fingertips at all times.
2. A wonderful support network.
Besides my vets, who have been superb, I have:
- A fantastic neighbor who I could call to pick Puppy up at the vet when I got stuck in traffic and wasn't sure I'd get home in time.
- A friend who's a great dog trainer and also has lots of animal skills, who came over and helped me coax Puppy out from behind the bed when he was huddled there, out of reach.
- Lots of friends who support me with their kind messages, hugs (both in-person and virtual), little tidbits of practical advice, stories of other pets that did well with chemo, and introductions to other people who might be helpful. And they also just listen when I need to vent. And offer to help however they can.
And then there are all the folks who've posted helpful information on the Internet. I don't know those people, but I sure am grateful to everyone who took the time to share words of wisdom.
3. The right supplies.
Once I had to bring Puppy inside and keep him separate from the other two cats (so he doesn't get scared), I needed things like an extra litter box; I was really glad I already had one on hand. What I didn't have was an array of different foods to tempt Puppy to eat, but that was an easy thing to get.
4. The ability to say no.
Tonight is Halloween, which I usually look forward to; I really like seeing the kids in their costumes. But tonight I put my box of books — the treats I give instead of candy — on the front porch with a note saying I had a sick cat who needed peace and quiet, and to please just take a book or two. It seems to have worked just fine.
And I'm backing out of some evening engagements until things settle down a bit. I know that now, even more than normally, I need to protect my time and focus on the most important things: taking care of my cats; being there for my clients, family and friends; and taking care of myself. (And why is that last one always the hardest thing to do?)
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 8:33 PM 12 comments
Labels: Jeri gets organized, organizing with pets
Organizing with Knitting Baskets
Want a stylish way to containerize your knitting projects? There are some wonderful knitting baskets out there — and, of course, they could all be used for other purposes by those of us who aren't knitters.
The basket above comes from Eline Oftedal of Norway, and through the wonders of Etsy it's readily available to all of us. Eline's Etsy store is called The High North, and the tagline made me smile: "Hand made during the long Nordic winter." [via Pretty Vintage]
Here's another Etsy option — a stunning handmade basket from Freda's Basket Works.
This handmade knitting basket comes to us from Africa via Connected Fair Trade.
Peterboro Basket Company makes this knitting basket; you can also buy a fabric liner for the basket.
For something really different, you could get this leather knitting basket from Renaissance Art.
Finally, Sew Essential has framed knitting baskets — a style that I was only finding through vintage product sellers (such as this one and this one) before I found the Sew Essential site.
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 7:36 AM 0 comments
Labels: organizing products
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Organizing and Preserving Your Precious Photos
Photo by Derrick Story of The Digital Story, found on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.
Photo organizing — involving either printed photos or digital photos — can be overwhelming, so I'm always glad to find useful resources to share. Today I've got two: a podcast with some good ideas, and some products.
The podcast is called Organizing and Archiving Your Photos, from Derrick Story of The Digital Story. (Thanks to Karen on the Unclutterer Forums for the pointer.) Derrick covers a lot of territory — and points you to his titles at Lynda.com, which have much more information than this free podcast.
But even the free podcast has some good information. Derrick suggests some simple ways to organize your digital photos, but the part I really liked was when he offered his opinion on what to do with all those old photos you've got, that aren't organized:
For now, you just let it be the way that it is. Make sure that it's protected, make sure that it's backed up, but in terms of organization, just let if be for the moment. And start your new system fresh, today, after you've designed it. ...
When you start a new system, whatever your system's going to be, you're going to tinker with it a bit. You're going to adjust it, you're going to learn things along the way. ... It's a lot easier to develop your new system with just a few hundred images as they're coming in, instead of trying to deals with tens of thousands of images. ...
It's sort of like: Today's the first day of the rest of your organizing life.
After a while, once you feel pretty confident that you have a system that you like, and that you can stick to, then you can go back into your archives, into that legacy material, and start pulling it into the new system, a little bit at a time, as you have time.
The products are those included in the limited-time offer from Sally Jacobs, The Practical Archivist. For the month of October only — yes, just a few more days — you can order her Preservation Kits: one for children's art work, and one for family archives (mostly photographs, but also other special papers).
Update on Nov. 4, 2011: The kits are still for sale, so I guess Sally extended the offer.
The Family Archivist Survival Kit is intended to help you start a family archive, by providing one box of each size you're likely to need, and the envelopes and folders that go into those boxes. There's also a Photo Rescue Kit (available by itself, or as part of the family archive kit) to help you "rescue photographs from those horrible sticky magnetic albums, also known as The Chemical Sandwich of Dooooom."
Sally's been my go-to resource for understanding what products are really "archival" — which ones will truly protect your photos through the years. If you want storage boxes but don't want her kits, you can go to some of the suppliers she recommends: Hollinger Metal Edge, Gaylord and Light Impressions.
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 8:36 PM 0 comments
Labels: memorabilia, organizing products
Organizing Lessons from a Cabinet of Curiosities
Photo from Curious Expeditions, found on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.
Some months ago, my book group read Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne. The book didn't do much for me — but the part about the Wunderkammer caught my attention.
What's a Wunderkammer? Wikipedia says:
A cabinet of curiosities was an encyclopedic collection in Renaissance Europe of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. They were also known by various names such as Cabinet of Wonder, and in German Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer ("wonder-room"). ...And here's what Byrne had to say:
The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. The classic style of cabinet of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century, although more rudimentary collections had existed earlier.
I reach the British Museum, where there is a show of curiosity cabinets. ...And I love that — even if I'm not convinced that Byrne is exactly right — because it illustrates an important organizing principle: There's no one right way to group your things. Organizers often encourage people to group "like with like" — but there are many different ways things can be alike. Just one example: Some people like to group their books by color, while that would drive other people crazy. We all need to just use whatever groupings work for us.
The objects in the Wunderkammer — preserved creatures, odd books and treatises, antique carvings, sacred objects from foreign lands — were often grouped, by Sir John Sloane and other collectors of that period, by whatever criteria seemed appropriate, be it shape, material, or color. There would be, for example, a mass of bulbous objects from various parts of the world and then some sharp, pointy ones grouped together. Many of these objects had nothing to do with one another except for having similar shapes.
Hardly what one would think of as a rigorous, enlightened scientific method of categorization. But thinking back on it, I would suggest that yes, in a truly enlightened world, all green objects are in a way related somehow, more than just by being green, and maybe they are related in a way we don't understand yet, just as all hexagonal objects might share a common trait as well. These crazy groupings might someday be seen as not completely arbitrary.
And any kind of taxonomy might be as good or valid as any other.
Another interesting perspective comes from David Pescovitz, who writes:
Several years ago, I became fascinated with cabinets of curiosity. The Renaissance predecessor to modern day museums, these cabinets, sometimes entire rooms, were filled with a mish-mash of objects, both natural and artificial, that embodied the wonder of the world. (The German term for these collections, wunderkammer, literally means "chamber of wonders.")
Inside, you might find a mummy's hand, a "unicorn's horn," exotic seashells from distant lands, odd insects pinned and cataloged, and possibly even a two-headed lizard in a jar of formaldehyde. As Tradescant the Elder, one of the most notable cabinet keepers in history, requested in a letter to the Secretary of the English Navy in 1625, this was a quest for "Any thing that is strang."
First photo by rojabo / Jim Brodie; second photo by twiggles / Chris. Both found on Flickr and licensed through Creative Commons.
Reading this reminded me of my visit to the Whitby Museum, where much of the museum serves as a sort of cabinet of curiosities. How else can you quite explain a museum that has a fossil collection as well as a hand of glory?
But Pescovitz went on to say:
Many blogs, including the one I co-edit, have been described as virtual cabinets of curiosity — storehouses of unusual links, odd memes, fringe culture, and weird news.So welcome to my very own cabinet of curiosities, which I've been creating for exactly five years now!
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 12:21 AM 1 comments
Labels: organizing techniques
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Organizing the Papers: Putting Your Walls to Work
Want to keep some papers close at hand? Have free wall space? Want something with a splash of style? I've seen two products that take a familiar product and translate it to something new to address just this kind of situation.
The first is the Neuer_Ordner, or New_Folder, from Haseform. This one was all over the design blogs when it came out in 2007; I saw it on swissmiss, Apartment Therapy and more. You can buy these yellow ones from design3000.de (individual or set of three) or you can buy the folders from Connox (which has individual folders and sets of three, in both yellow and white).
And just a few days ago I found the Envelope Mail Holder from Goodwin + Goodwin. [via From Europe]
Related Post:
Return of the Wall Organizers
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 7:40 AM 4 comments
Labels: organizing products, organizing the office
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Keep Calm and Carry On Kerfuffle
Once upon a time, there was an old WWII poster that was discovered by Stuart Manley, one of the owners of Barter Books — and now that poster is sold all over the place, as are other products with the same design, and many parodies of the original.
Maria Bustillos, writing in The Awl, explains how things evolved:
Stuart Manley could quite easily have filed for trademark protection back then, but he didn't. And when other businesses began selling Keep Calm products, mugs and beer mats and mouse pads and whatnot, he didn't go after any of them, though he did ask to be credited for his discovery by the many manufacturers who later made use of it.Unsurprisingly, many people are unhappy about this, and a legal challenge is underway.
Fast-forward to late March of this year, when ... Mark Coop, an ex-TV producer whose credits include "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", succeeded in obtaining an EU trademark for the phrase "Keep Calm and Carry On."
If you're in the market for some Keep Calm merchandise, you may want to read the whole article in The Awl, or the earlier article in The Telegraph. And you can also read what Mark Coop has to say.
You can always choose to buy your Keep Calm products either from Barter Books directly, or from sites that do credit the bookstore, such as Keep Calm London - which has its own take on the controversy.
Meanwhile, I have two new Keep Calm products to share with you — neither of which gives a nod to Barter Books, darn it. The first is this pacifier case.
And as someone who just returned from some travels, I appreciated this T-shirt and tote.
Related Posts:
Words to Live By: Keep Calm and Carry On
Keep Calm: An Update
Keep Calm and Carry On - and Variations Thereof
A Holiday Reminder: Keep Calm and Carry On
Keep Calm and Carry On: The Poster and Beyond
Keep Calm As You Get Organized
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 3:09 AM 0 comments
Friday, October 21, 2011
Garden Storage Sheds Don't Have to Be Boring
Tired of the basic garden sheds from big box stores? Here's something very different — one of the garden sheds from The Rustic Way. It's made from recycled/reclaimed wood. [via Apartment Therapy]
You can also get a unique garden shed from the aptly-named Unique Garden Sheds, a family-owned and operated business.
Little Cottage Co. also has garden sheds in a number of styles, in both wood and vinyl.
If you just need a little shed, here's one from Adams All Natural Cedar.
This is the porthole shed from ShackUp, a brand of Hemingway Design. The company also has sheds designed specifically for storing bicycles. [via mydeco.com]
For more shed design inspiration, take a look at the "showy sheds" featured in The Oregonian. And look at the photo by Kevin Wakelam, taken on Lindisframe, where "the local fishermen have a great way to recycle thier old boats by turning them upside down and creating a storage shed for their gear."
Related Post:
Home Office Ideas I Do Like (with sheds as offices)
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 6:56 AM 6 comments
Labels: green alternatives, organizing products
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Getting More Done — Or Not: A Short Reading List
Juggle icon, from the Noun Project, licensed under Creative Commons
Want some ideas on how to make the most of your time — ideas that don't rely on using the latest and greatest apps, but rather address how we think about managing our time? Here's some of what I've been reading lately that I've found inspiring:
1. 100 Ways to Get More Done, by Ozan Onay and Ash Fontana
I usually hate lists like this — but this one is so well done that it's the exception to my rule. (Thanks to web designer / developer Kevin Henney for the pointer!) I'm picking just one of the 100 items as an example — but I highly recommend the whole list. You probably won't agree with all of the suggestions, and some of them will be irrelevant — but you're likely to find a few real gems, too.
6. Avoid starting work with a nagging emotion or stressful distraction on your mind. If this sounds hard, just internalize the following truism: either you can deal with the matter right now, or you can't. If you can deal with it now then deal with it now. If you can't, then there's no harm in scheduling a later time to worry about it.
Surprisingly, this works no matter how substantial the emotion/stressor. Worried that your partner is being unfaithful, or that the mole on your arm may be cancerous, or that the Soviet Union is building missile bases in Cuba? Set a Remember The Milk task to stress out about it from 7pm to 8pm next Thursday, and get back to work.
2. Haven't Had Time to Blog, by Chris Brogan
This wonderful post is meaningful even to those who aren't bloggers and have no reason to start blogging; you can replace "Blog" with "Read" or "Write My Book" or "Get Organized" or "Exercise" — or anything else you don't feel you have time for. It's a short post, and here's a short excerpt:
I met with someone yesterday who said to me that he didn't have any time to blog. Moments later, he told me what was happening on "Ice Loves Coco." ...
We pick our paths. We decide what we make time to do.
3. Make sure you disappoint the right people, by Jon Acuff
Thanks to LeeAnne Jones for pointing me to this one, which has a great opening — and the rest of the post is just as good:
A few weeks ago, I was supposed to run in an event called "The Warrior Dash." It's a 5K obstacle course that involves mud, fire, water and Viking helmets. I'd signed up for it months ago. But 24 hours before the event, I decided not to go.
Because I'm trying to disappoint the right people in my life.
4. Hurry up, get more done, and die, by Mark Morford
Mark Morford's writings are certainly not to everyone's taste, but I liked his reminder that we really don't need to fill up every 30-second spot of free time with getting yet another small task done.
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 5:51 PM 2 comments
Jewelry Mannequins: Dressing Up Your Storage
I've been intrigued by jewelry mannequins since I first stumbled upon them, online, back in 2007. Now you can even find them at Forever21 — but I'm still fascinated. The widest variety I've found recently is at JewelryNanny. But let's look at a few other jewelry mannequins. Update on May 31, 2012: I'm no longer finding these at Forever21.
The jewelry dress stand above comes from Chic Indulgences. It's one of the company's Victorian gowns; there's also Can Can couture, Bohemian chic, Hollywood legends and more.
Dolls Unlimited Omaha only has a few mannequin jewelry stands, but the ones it has are pretty darn nice. Update on July 29, 2014: I'm no longer finding jewelry mannequins at that site.
This mannequin jewelry holder comes from Kings River.
If you're in Malaysia, you could order a mannequin jewellery stand from Glitzbitz.
Let's end with the Esslinger jewelry mannequins, which are very different — a change of pace from the gorgeous gowns.
Related Posts:
The Joy of Jewelry Mannequins
Organize and Display Your Jewelry with a Jewelry Mannequin
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 12:01 AM 4 comments
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
It's OK to Give Up on a Book
Photo by Alan Cleaver, found on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons
I once gave up on a book after the first page. My local bookstore had a book club, and I bought the next month's book without really looking at it. But when I got it home and started reading, I realized immediately that the author's style was not for me. Fortunately, I was able to return the book.
That's the fastest I've given up on a book — and I have no hesitation in doing so. I just gave up on one book, which might have interesting content, because the typeface was so bad that it was painful to read. But usually I give up when I'm just not enjoying the content of the book.
Want some encouragement to stop reading "bad books" — books that seem bad to you? Here's blogger David Pierce, in a short extract from his Five Rules for Life:
We do so many things that don't add any value to our lives or anyone else's, and those things get in the way of that which is actually worthwhile. My favorite example is reading a book — if it's bad, we still tend to finish it just because we've already invested time in it. Why not cut our losses, stop reading, and spend that time reading a better book? Being a quitter is not a bad thing - it's a smart thing.And Leo Babauta of Zen Habits says this in his post on How to Read More:
Give up on a book if it's boring. Reading isn't something you do because it's good for you — it's not like taking your vitamins. You're reading because it's fun. So if a book isn't fun, dump it. Give it a try for at least a chapter, but if you still don't love it, move on.Scott H Young has a whole blog post entitled Know When to Stop Reading a Book. He includes ideas on how to make it easier to give up on a book — including getting books from the library, so you've not spent any money. One of my favorite parts of his post was a comment he added:
The lost opportunity cost from not putting a book down is often forgotten. When you put down a book, you aren't just giving up the chapters you didn't read, you're also gaining the chapters of some other book you did read. With a world filled with thousands of books, far more than you could ever read, I think that opportunity cost needs to be taken seriously.Finally, Miss Manners answers an etiquette question:
Question: A friend has lent me a book about a subject that is of interest to me. I am halfway through the book (more than 200 pages so far) and find it not very well written. Would it be impolite of me not to finish the book? My feeling is that I must finish the book in order to be truthful in saying that I did indeed read it.
Answer: Your friend is not going to quiz you. You need only return the book with thanks and, if possible, mumble that it had a good point or two. If not, you can always say that it is interesting to know what is being said in the field.
Do you ever give up on a book? How far do you go before giving up?
Related Post:
Book Lovers: Stop Reading Books You Don't Like
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 3:41 AM 7 comments
Labels: organizing the books, time management
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Organizing with a "Dia de los Muertos" Theme
Halloween and Dia de los Muertos are just a few weeks away, so let's look at some organizing-related products with a Day of the Dead theme. And let's start with this wonderful fabric bucket by Mickey Hoover of designsbyMickey4u.
These cat magnets from Silva at East Bay California really caught my eye, too.
And finally, here's a wooden skull storage piece from Acne JR — not specifically a Day of the Dead product, but one that certainly goes along with the theme. The cardboard box it's packed in is cute, too. [via From Europe]
Related Posts:
Halloween: 2 Ideas for Avoiding the Candy Clutter
Organizing and Halloween: Trick or Treat Buckets
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 7:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: organizing products
Monday, October 10, 2011
Organizing Finds in France
What are these? How could they be used for storage?
My first day in Paris, I went with friends to the Vanves flea market, where I saw these containers. And as the trip continued, I kept finding organizing-related stuff.
This gorgeous piece is the Soprano trunk from Pinel & Pinel; it holds about 480 CDs. I didn't just stumble on this one; I sought out the store after seeing its website online. (Warning: The site plays music at you automatically upon launch.) The gentleman at the store was gracious about letting me take all the photos I wanted.
Here's the Soprano, up close. While the green is lovely, it might not be to your taste; there are many options for both the interior and exterior colors.
And here's the Baby trunk, also from Pinel & Pinel.
While these are gorgeous, they are also —as I'm sure you've guessed — very much on the expensive side of things. The least expensive thing I saw in the store was a slim leather bracelet for 110 euros. Still, it was a pleasure to see such well-crafted storage pieces up close.
I found these mailbox stickers in Rennes, where I was visiting friends; many of the mailboxes had them. Apparently the Ministry of Energy and Environment produced these stickers; residents use them to indicate they don't want any unaddressed mail. The fact sheet (PDF) I found online says: "In 2004, the first year of the initiative, there were requests for 2.6 million stickers. ... More than 70% of sticker users were satisfied with the results of sticker and received significantly less junk mail."
And finally, here's a product I read about in the Air France magazine while flying home. "Since 1997, the French initiative ELISE has been helping workers sort trash and improve recycling in the workplace. This year, Philippe Starck has joined the venture, designing a new line of wastebaskets made of plant-based plastic." Starck's web site says the wastebasets are "coming soon."
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 5:33 AM 1 comments
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Mourning the Death of Steve Jobs — and Learning From Him
The soon-to-be-released Steve Jobs biography
I just spent a lovely two weeks in Paris and Rennes — lovely until the last morning, just hours before I flew home, when I got the news that Steve Jobs had died.
I've long been an Apple fan, because Apple products are such a delight to use, and make me so much more productive. As an organizer, I recommend investing in quality for the tools you use all the time, and my computing tools certainly fall into that category. On this trip, I had Steve's products with me — an iPhone and an iPad — and they served me well. On that last morning, they let me connect with others who were grieving, as I was.
In reading all the memorials, and listening to Steve's words again, I was struck by how much of what he said (and what others have said, in those memorials) resonates with themes I've often touched on here.
1. Good tools are a worthwhile investment.
I've already commented on this, but I love what Nancy Nall wrote about this topic. She starts with the story of a long-ago nightmare flight back home from Paris, and ends her story this way:
As we winged our way to Ohio, I asked myself if I'd have paid $200 to avoid the previous 24 hours, to get on a nice Air France or Pan Am jet at Orly and get off at Port Columbus, skipping Alitalia and the nonfunctioning toilets and the angry passenger and the train to the plane and all the rest of it, and thought: Oh, hell yes.
Years later, as I was contemplating the purchase of another computer, I learned that formatting a floppy in MS-DOS required me to type…
FORMAT drive: /C
…plus some other stuff, and if I got so much as a comma or space in the wrong place, it wouldn't work. And if I bought the PowerPC Mac laptop I was considering, I would face a simple question: This disk is not formatted. Would you like to format it?, followed by a yes/no click option.
The Mac was a few hundred dollars more than the PC. I remembered the lesson of Alitalia. I clicked Yes, and haven't looked back.
2. Focus; learn when to say no.
Steven Levy of Wired wrote about Steve's comeback at Apple:
He ... simplified Apple's product line to four computers — consumer and pro versions of desktop and laptop. "Focus does not mean saying yes, it means saying no," he explained.And here's another quote, this one from a conversation BusinessWeek Computer Editor Peter Burrows had with Steve in 2004. In that conversation, Steve was talking about where Apple's innovation comes from. He mentioned a number of things, including this:
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.And on Fast Company I found this story from Mark Parker, about his conversation with Steve when Parker was named CEO of Nike:
I said, "Well, do you have any advice?"
He said, "No, no, you're great." Then there was a pause. "Well, I do have some advice," he said. "Nike makes some of the best products in the world — products that you lust after, absolutely beautiful stunning products. But you also make a lot of crap."
He said, "Just get rid of the crappy stuff, and focus on the good stuff."
3. Be a perfectionist — but only on the things that matter.
Steve was well known for being demanding on Apple employees, insisting that every last detail on Apple products be outstanding. But I love this story from John Gruber:
After the WWDC keynote four months ago, I saw Steve, up close. ...
His sweater was well-worn, his jeans frayed at the cuffs.
But the thing that struck me were his shoes, those famous gray New Balance 993s. They too were well-worn. But also this: fresh bright green grass stains all over the heels. ...
Surely, my mind raced, surely he has more than one pair of those shoes. He could afford to buy the factory that made them. Why wear this grass-stained pair for the keynote, a rare and immeasurably high-profile public appearance? My guess: he didn't notice, didn't care. One of Jobs's many gifts was that he knew what to give a shit about. He knew how to focus and prioritize his time and attention. Grass stains on his sneakers didn't make the cut.
4. Spend your time wisely.
As Steve famously said in his Stanford commencement address:
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.And he also said:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Steve made his choices right up to the end, according to a story by Charles Duhigg in the New York Times, which reads in part:
Over the last few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, Calif., called an old friend's home number and asked if he was well enough to entertain visitors, perhaps for the last time. ...
Most were intercepted by his wife, Laurene. She would apologetically explain that he was too tired to receive many visitors. ...
He had only so much energy for farewells. The man who valued his privacy almost as much as his ability to leave his mark on the world had decided whom he most needed to see before he left. ...
Mostly, he spent time with his wife and children. ...
As news of the seriousness of his illness became more widely known, Mr. Jobs was asked to attend farewell dinners and to accept various awards.
He turned down the offers. On the days that he was well enough to go to Apple's offices, all he wanted afterward was to return home and have dinner with his family. When one acquaintance became too insistent on trying to send a gift to thank Mr. Jobs for his friendship, he was asked to stop calling. Mr. Jobs had other things to do before time ran out.
Posted by Jeri Dansky at 6:44 AM 7 comments
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NEW YORK | Patrick Brown is on an improbable mission: Make a burger Americans love, minus the meat.
Veggie patties have been around for decades, but Brown and others want to make foods without animal products that look, cook and taste like the real thing — and can finally appeal to the masses.
"We are not making a veggie burger. We're creating meat without using animals," said Brown, a former Stanford scientist who has been scanning plants in search of compounds that can help recreate meat.
Brown's company, Impossible Foods, is part of a wave of startups aiming to wean Americans off foods like burgers and eggs, and their efforts are attracting tens of millions of dollars from investors. The goal is to lessen the dependence on livestock for food, which they say isn't as healthy, affordable or environmentally friendly as plant-based alternatives.
The challenge is that most Americans happily eat meat and eggs. That means that, without a breakthrough, those seeking to upend factory farming risk becoming footnotes in the history of startups.
To understand the difficulty of their task, consider the transformation raw chicken undergoes when cooked. It starts as a slimy, unappetizing blob, then turns into a tender piece of meat.
In its office in Southern California, Beyond Meat works on "chicken" strips made with pea and soy proteins that have been sold at places like Whole Foods since 2012. But founder Ethan Brown concedes the product needs work.
To give the "meat" its fat, for instance, canola oil is evenly mixed throughout the product.
"That's not really how it works in an animal," said Brown, a vegan. "The fat can be a sheath on tendons."
To form the strips, a mixture is pressed through a machine that forms and sets the product's texture with heating and cooling chambers. The method isn't new in the world of fake meats, but the company says it fine-tuned the process to deliver a more realistic offering.
Brown dismisses the idea that fake meat might weird people out and says it's a "desirable evolution."
"It's like moving from the horse-drawn carriage to the automobile, or the landline to the iPhone," he said.
But Beyond Meat isn't quite there yet; The Huffington Post described the strips as having an "unpleasant" taste that inhabits a "strange territory between meat and vegetable."
At Impossible Foods, the patty is made by extracting proteins from foods like spinach and beans, then combining them with other ingredients. The company, which has about 100 employees, expects the product to be available in the latter half of next year, initially through a food-service operator.
Few have tasted it, but the vision continues to gain traction. In October, Impossible Foods said it raised $108 million in funding, on top of its previous $74 million. Among its investors are Bill Gates, Google Ventures and Horizons Ventures.
Another startup isn't totally ditching the cow.
With $15.5 million in funding, Modern Meadow in New York City takes cells from a cow through a biopsy and cultures them to grow into meat. At a conference in February, company founder Andras Forgacs likened the process to culturing yogurt or brewing beer.
"This is an extension of that," he said.
Modern Meadow doesn't have a product on the market yet either. The company says it doesn't necessarily want to replicate steaks and burgers, and gave a hint of the type of foods it might make by presenting "steak chips" for attendees at a small conference last year.
Only about 200 people have tried the chips, which Forgacs describes as "crispy, crunchy beef jerky."
Citing the demand for more openness about how food is made, he sees a day when people tour meat plants, as they do with breweries.
"There could be your friendly neighborhood meat brewery," Forgacs said.
In San Francisco, Hampton Creek's mission is to replace the eggs in products without anyone noticing. In trying to appeal to the mainstream, co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick has a simple rule.
"Number one, never use the word 'vegan,'" he said.
To avoid perceptions its eggless spread Just Mayo won't taste good, Hampton Creek even removed the V-word from the label. Tetrick says what makes the product different is that it tastes better and costs less — not that it's made with a protein from a Canadian yellow pea instead of eggs.
"The egg-free thing is almost irrelevant," he said.
Swapping out a single ingredient in a product may make it easier for people to swallow change. It may also make change simpler to achieve; Just Mayo's consistency and taste are similar to mayonnaise. The product, which is available at retailers including Target and Wal-Mart, is gaining enough traction that the American Egg Board, which is responsible for slogans like the "Incredible, Edible Egg," sees it as a "major threat," according to emails made public through a records request.
So far, Hampton Creek has attracted $120 million in funding. It continues to screen plants for compounds that can help replace eggs in recipes and plans to eventually introduce a scrambled-egg product.
For those looking to lessen the reliance on animals for food, there are encouraging signs all around.
Last year, Pinnacle Foods, the maker of Hungry-Man dinners, paid $154 million to acquire Gardein, which makes frozen veggie patties, nuggets and crumbles. Pinnacle CEO Robert Gamgort said he thinks meat alternatives are in the "early stages of a macro trend," similar to the way soy and almond milk changed the dairy category.
But for now, vegetarian products remain a niche market. And even if people cut back on meat and eggs for health, environmental or animal welfare reasons, they might not want literal replacements.
Morningstar, a longtime maker of vegetarian products owned by Kellogg, says people are becoming more accepting of vegetables as main ingredients. As such, it wants to evolve from a maker of meat substitutes to a brand known for its "veggie cuisine," such as bowls with brown rice and black beans.
Yves Potvin, Gardein's founder, also thinks veggie alternatives don't have to replicate meat, so long as they taste good. It's why Gardein's products are shaped to be reminiscent of meat, but don't try to mimic their exact flavor and texture.
"What people like is the experience," Potvin said. "They like the memory."
Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi .

subset: commoncrawl


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Thanks to Scott Killeen for checking in during the dead of winter! Here's his report from Dodger Stadium:
They are going to connect the outfield pavilion with the stadium. The gift shop to the north by the left field entrance is torn down. The last photos of the visiting team locker room, to be torn down after the Ducks use the stadium in January.


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All 2 entries tagged Laura Mulvey
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June 16, 2007
British Women Film directors
British Women Film Directors
Return to British Cinema Hub Page
Whilst of general interest to those dealing with issues of gender and cinema this posting should prove useful to those studying Women and Film within the current OCR specification.
Given the large number of British films and the very small number of Women directors the average rocket scientist can swiftly work out that there is a serious gender imbalance within the industry in the UK.
The Directors
This list of directors is taken from the BFI list of Directors in British and Irish Cinema
plus some additions. Sue Clayton isn't in the list although appears elsewhereon the site. Nor does Andrea Arnold feature in the list. Arnold recently made the film Red Road (2006) and has won at the Oscars and at Cannes. The list amounts to 11 women film directors in the history of British cinema. Not a good record over the last 100 years. Of these several are active film makers and can be included in the specification for OCR Contemporary British Cinema. Of these 11 directors five are currently active and include: Andrea Arnold, Antonia Bird, Gurinder Chadha, Sally Potter, Lynne Ramsey.
Adler, Carine (1948-)
Arnold Andrea (1961 -)
Bird, Antonia (1959 -)
Box Muriel (1905 - 1991)
Chadha, Gurinder (1960 -)
Clayton Sue (? )
Grierson, Ruby (1904-1940)
Mander, Kay (1915 - )
Mulvey, Laura (1941 - )
Potter, Sally (1949 - )
Ramsey Lynne ( 1969 -)
Guardian feature on the 'Celluloid Ceiling'
Kate Kellaway Guardian blog: Why is that film-making continues to be the most gender inequitable career in the arts?
Rachel Millward Guardian blog: Kate Kellaway asked what could be done to encourage more women into film-making. Here are my suggestions.
Rachel Millward is the organiser for the Bird's Eye View Women's Film Festival. It is solely to celebrate women film makers and started in 2005 in venues across London.
Return to British Cinema Hub Page
April 18, 2007
Laura Mulvey and The Male Gaze
Laura Mulvey and The Male Gaze in Cinema
This entry is primarily targeted at those doing A Level Media / film Studies and those doing film theory for the first time.
Many A Level students are now introduced to Laura Mulvey's theories of the 'Male Gaze' especially if they have opted to do an option on Women and Film. Mulvey's ideas were first expressed in an article written in Screen in 1975. It was then a highly theoretical cinema journal. The article which became a seminal one is called "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Some extracts here).
The levels of difficulty for those setting out in the world of thinking should not be underestimated. To be able to debate this article at higher levels requires a good knowledge of both Freudian and Lacanian theories of psychoanalysis. Much of the work done by Jacques Lacan is notoriously difficult and is not necessary for this level of analysis.
Key points of Mulvey's original article
She points out that feminists need a variety of tools (or methods) with which to understand the unseen workings of the patriarchal system which opresses women. Mulvey is concerned to argue that psychoanalysis is an important tool whilst recognising the need for many others.
Mulvey then moves onto a section which argues that pleasure needs to be destroyed and that this destruction is a radical weapon. Cinema particuarly Hollywood cinema which is primarily structured upon bringing pleasure raises questions about how the unconscious structures our ways of seeing and understanding of the world and also why we gain pleasure from looking.
Here Julia Roberts who is actually playing the character of a prostitute fits in with typically anodyne Hollywood fantasies which bear little or no relation to the reality of the sex trade. Compare this representation with that of Lilya in Lilya 4-Ever who is ateenager sold into the sex trade. One challenges the patriarchal status quo and the other doesn't. No prizes for working out which!
Mulvey points out that cinema had changed during the course of the 1960s and early 1970s in a way which afforded opportunities for other filmmakers outside of the mainstream because of technological developments in filming and also exhibition. It is worth noting that this is even more pertinent now because of the rise of relatively cheap digital video cameras (DV), relatively cheap software and with the growth of the internet the possibility of distributing to a global marketplace. YouTube is the perfect example of that.
Arguably it is the realms of the videogame which is beginning to impinge and to change cinema. It is perhaps here that industrial capitalist media will re-establish its headquarters. For just as it has become possible to erode and circumvennt the powerful position of Hollywood through technological advancement that advancement establishes new barriers to skills knowledge and capital, whilst a new media industry is being developed.
In 2003 David Puttnam on the BBC video Trigger Happy suggests has the potential to replace cinema and even TV as the most important medium. Perhaps it is here that Mulvey's arguments will need to be played out all over again in terms of the representation of women. But Mulvey was writing in a pre-digital era:
The magic of the Hollywood style at its best...arose, not exclusively but in one important aspect from its skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure. Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order. (Mulvey in Movies & Methods Vol II, p 306)
It is because this pleasure is already idologically encoded upon patriarchal terms that Mulvey wishes to use analysis to start to destroy that pleasure creating mechanism. This she hope will allow a new language of desire to emerge for humanity.
Lilya and her best friend in a nightclub. The 'friend' is out to sell herself for the first time. Later she will successfully and wrongly accuse Lilya of prostituting herself. Her the camera has pulled the focus to a narrow depth of field to make Lilya the main object of representation. Lilya here is represented as young, näive and vulnerable in a patriarchal world. Although she is in a strappy dress the way the image is filmed is anything but eroticised.
Mulvey then moves on to explain the term scopophilia which was developed by Freud to describe the pleasure in looking which is associated with sexual drives although nothing whatsoever to do with the erotogenic zones. In Freud's early wor:
...he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. (ibid p 307).
Mulvey is careful to note that for Freud scopophilia was essentially active, indeed it was an activity which he associated with children who have a voyeuristic curiosity to see the forbidden areas of the body. It is a curiosity which extends to the question of the presence / absence of the penis and ultimately in Freudian method to the question of the primal scene. This pleasure in looking becomes a part of the human subject. At its extreme it can be a perversion in which sexual satisfaction can only come :
...from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other. (ibid p 307)
Mulvey then notes that on the surface little could be further away from the shifty voyeur eying up an unwitting victim than cinema. this is why it is importatn to analyse carefully the workings of the cinema as a system, part of an overall ideological apparatus which structures a particular patriarchal world as 'normal'.
Above this publicity poster for Pretty Woman eroticises and fetishises in 'the nicest posssible way'. Here the use of star theory combined with Mulvey's theory of the gaze shows how Hollywood can make an unpleasant and patriarchally organised undrground busines seem 'OK'. One can pretend that it is 'post-modern irony' interpreted by the knowing subject (really?)
It is in the nature of cinema that the narrative unfurls with total indifference to the audience representing an hermetically sealed world. The darkness of the cinema helps to isolate the spectators from one another while the brilliance of the screen and the play of light and dark upon it contribute to this sense of isolation. The conditions of screening alongside the narrative and other conventions therefore can be understood to place the spectator in the illusory position of looking in on an abstract world. Here of course it is worth noting that frequently film isn't experienced like this but in the realm of home on a small screen with the possibilities of the external world intruding frequently.
The constitution of the ego
Importantly for Mulvey the whole of the cinema-going experience creates a structure of fascination which in a seeming paradox allows a forgetting of the ego (position of the subject in the world), yet simulataneously reinforces that ego through a process of identification through ideals "as expressed in particular in the star system" (Mulvey).
Contradictory model of vision
Mulvey then drives home the point that these two models of vision are contradictory. Scopophilic viewing requires a strong separation of the viewing subject from the observed object from a form of ego identification with the object on the screen through a process of fascination and and 'recognition of his like'. (Mulvey)
Both models have in common that they:
...pursue aims in indifference to perceptual reality . .. creating...a concept of the World that.... makes a mockery of the empirical reality of the world. (Mulvey ibid p 308).
It is extremely important that this idea of the operations of cinema and the social construction of vision operates at a deeply unconscious level. The theory is therefore one which is hard to prove in a hard "scientific" way through questionnaires etc precisely because the whole system works at a level of the subject which isn't immediately accessible to the conscious subject. We don't understand what it is that attracts us but as Theodor Adorno has pointed out, to be able to discuss rationality and reason there is clearly an area in which 'unreason' operates in individual subjects. Not all reponses by human beings can simply be measured by charts, questionnaires and statistics. Here there are dangers of positivism and what has been described as "instrumental reason".
Developing Theories of the Female Spectator
Mulvey was frequently criticized for omitting the question of female spectatorship. Why do women go to the cinema and what kind of pleasure do they gain from it? These became key questions for feminists and other film theorists and as a result Mulvey strove to address these issues in her article on "Afterthoughts" using Duel in The Sun as a case study. (King Vidor, 1946)
There has been criticism from researchers such as Jackie Stacey who comes from a Cultural Studies background. Cultural Studies argues that peope from the audiences for films must be approached and questioned about their conscious reactions to films and specifically the represenatiions of women within these films. Her own research suggested that women could gain a lot of satisfaction out of representations of women being powerful and in control of their lives or struggling to remain in control. These research findings supported the idea of the negotiated reading which comes from cultural studies theory and argues that audiences aren't just canvases totally controlled and manipulated by the film texts they have consumed. Rather the individuals within the audience are active and critical subjects capable of engaging with the intended messages emanating from the film but choosing to decode and read them differently. You will find it useful to engage with star theory if you are dealing with better known and high budget films which depend a lot on the promotion of stars to get a larger audience.
Mildred from Mildred Pierce a genre hybrid film which crosses over the matinee "woman's film" (melodrama) with a strong film noir sensibility. Here Mildred is represented as the doting mother whose obsession with her favourite daughter Vida destroys the family. After being left by her husband she meets playboy Monty who helps fiance her business. At their first meeting Mildred is painting up a ladder. The camera gradually tracks up her legs from a low angle eroticising her and providing a male gaze which is sexualised rather than seeing woman in 'her place' in the kitchen. The treatment of Mildred by the camera shows that theres is more than one kind of patriarchal gaze. however her status is still above that of an African-American woman who is playing a typical servant role!
Construction of the Male Gaze
The Wikipedia entry currently (17 / 04 / 07) argues the following:
In considering the way that films are put together, many feminist film critics have pointed to the "male gaze" that predominates in classical Hollywood filmmaking. Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" gave one of the most widely influential versions of this argument. This argument holds that through the use of various film techniques, such as the point of view shot, a typical film's viewer becomes aligned with the point of view of its male protagonist. Notably, women function as objects of this gaze far more often than as proxies for the spectator.
In Mildred Pierce it is Mildred's daughter who plays the role of femme fatale. The bad woman who uses her sexuality to get her own way. As the film progresses it is Vida who becomes the camera's eroticised object.
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey abbreviated version.
Biographical notes on Laura Mulvey
Wikipedia Biographical entry on Mulvey
Brief explanation of The Gaze
There are some useful notes on The Gaze by Daniel Chandler from Aberystwyth University including some on Mulvey. Well worth checking out.
A useful Powerpoint presentation on Mulvey is available via Birmingham University Arts Web


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An Act addressing the fiscal year 2015 budget shortfall
Message from His Excellency the Governor recommending legislation relative to addressing the fiscal year 2015 budget shortfall.
Bill Information
Bill Information
- Sponsor:
- Deval L. Patrick
- Status:
- Referred to House Committee on Ways and Means
Emergency Preamble
Whereas, The deferred operation of this act would tend to defeat its purpose, which is to forthwith address the fiscal year 2015 budget shortfall and to make other changes in law, each of which is immediately needed for important public purposes,, therefore it is hereby declared to be an emergency law, necessary for the immediate preservation of the public convenience.
Bill History
|Referred to the committee on House Ways and Means
|No further action taken
The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only. The General Court provides this information as a public service and while we endeavor to keep the data accurate and current to the best of our ability, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.


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|FunctionX Press Products
This is the site support for the C++ Fundamentals for Borland C++ Builder e-Book.
The Visual Component Library (VCL) is a set of functions and classes used to create applications. Although this library highly adheres to the C++ Standard, like any other compiler, Borland C++ Builder adds some details to its implementation of the C++ language. This ebook teaches not only the C++ language but especially it prepares the reader to Windows application development the way it is done in the VCL. It ebook doesn't teach graphical Windows applications programming; rather, through console applications, it teaches C++ as the languages relates to the VCL.
Screenshot 1
The second and replacing version of this ebook has been released. The new version is more up-to-date and better.
Related product: C++ Builder Programming
The screen shots on the book were taken from different versions of Microsoft Windows. This was done on purpose to let you know that the version you are using is not important as long as you have successfully installed Borland C++ Builder on your computer. Therefore, to follow the lessons on this ebook, you must have C++ Builder or the free Borland C++ compiler installed on your computer.
|Copyright 2003 © FunctionX, Inc.


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Happy Fourth of July from the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Museum is open Monday, July 4 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission for active military and their families is free. We hope you include the Museum in your Independence Day plans.
Also happening this week, there's a Gallery Talk on The Emperor's Private Paradise at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 5, and an Express Talk on the feature exhibition on Thursday, July 7 at noon.
Enjoy free admission on Thursday, July 7 for Target Free First Thursday, and stay for a very interesting panel discussion on "The Politics of Art" at 6:15 p.m. in Lubar Auditorium. Join Melissa Chiu from the Asia Society, New York, and Kathryn Kanjo from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among other panelists, as they discuss issues surrounding art and politics, including the recent situation with contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
Or, stop in at 1:30 p.m. and participate in T'ai Chi in Windhover Hall.
Weekends are for families at the Museum, with Story Time in the Galleries, Sketching in the Galleries, and the Kohl's Art Generation Open Studio on Sunday.
It's the halfway mark of summer – have you taken part in the Summer of CHINA yet?


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Best Lesbian Ever - Valentines Day - Personalised Photo Blanket
British Made Gifts - The home of the photo blanket.
Our personalised best lesbian ever photo blanket is the perfect custom gift and home accessory. At an extra-large size of 150cm x 150cm, our best-selling photo blankets are large enough to throw over any size sofa or bed.
Personalise this photo blanket with your favourite photo of BAE!
The personalised fleece blankets are printed one sided, edge to edge and hand sewn for a quality finish.
We have received amazing reviews on the anti-pill fleece material, print quality and overall excellent condition of this product.
Printed using environmentally friendly inks, the personalised photo blanket can be used time and time again as it can keep you warm in the winter and double as a picnic blanket in the summer, it is machine washable at 30 degrees – drip dry only.
This product is designed, printed, and manufactured to order in Yorkshire, England. We use dye sublimation to ensure a vibrant, high-quality print.
Perfect for any special occasion, the custom fleece throw can be edited to suit any recipient. An amazing gift for a special person!
Product details:
- 150cm x 150cm
- Made from 300 gsm anti-pill, soft fleece material
- Keep you warm in the winter and double as a picnic blanket in the summer
- Vibrant, warm and cosy
- Printed with environmentally friendly water-based inks
- Machine washable, drip dry only
- Made in Britain
Please do not use Emoji's when personalising your order, our software does not support them.*
Please do not use Emoji's when personalising your order, our software does not support them.*
Shipping & Returns↓
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All items are printed to order. We give a guideline of approximately 3 working days for your order to be manufactured, it is highly likely that your order will be dispatched within that timescale but we cannot make any guarantees and we cannot expedite any orders on request.
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UK - T48 (tracked 48) - (Estimated 3 Days Manufacture) + delivery within 48 hours - £2.99
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WILMINGTON, Ohio (AP) — Pilots for a cargo airline that carries packages for Amazon and DHL went on strike Tuesday, potentially causing delivery delays just as the holiday shopping season swings into high gear.
The airline, ABX Air, said it would seek a court order to end the strike by about 250 pilots.
The Teamsters union, which represents the pilots, said the strike had caused 75 flights to be canceled. ABX operates 35 daily flights for Amazon and 45 daily flights for DHL, according to the union.
The pilots allege that ABX is understaffed and forces them to work on days off without giving them the compensatory time off that they are owed under their contract.
The airline's president, John Starkovich, said the strike was illegal and that the dispute should be settled through arbitration.
A spokesman for ABX parent company Air Transport Services Group Inc. said the company would not comment on the impact of the strike.
Neither Amazon nor DHL responded immediately to requests for comment.
Wilmington-based Air Transport Services earned $22 million in the first nine months of this year, down from $26.5 million in the same period of 2015. The company's labor costs have increased 30 percent in that time, according to a regulatory filing.
The company's shares fell 28 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $16.40 in afternoon trading. They have nearly doubled in price in the past 12 months.


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Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!
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2010 Chilean earthquake causes icequakes in Antarctica
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Seismic events aren't rare occurrences on Antarctica, where sections of the frozen desert can experience hundreds of micro-earthquakes an hour due to ice deformation. Some scientists call them icequakes. But in March of 2010, the ice sheets in Antarctica vibrated a bit more than usual because of something more than 3,000 miles away: the 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake. A new Georgia Institute of Technology study published in Nature Geoscience is the first to indicate that Antarctica's frozen ground is sensitive to seismic waves from distant earthquakes.
To study the quake's impact on Antarctica, the Georgia Tech team looked at seismic data from 42 stations in the six hours before and after the 3:34 a.m. event. The researchers used the same technology that allowed them to "hear" the seismic response at large distances for the devastating 2011 magnitude 9 Japan earthquake as it rumbled through the earth. In other words, they simply removed the longer-period signals as the seismic waves spread from the distant epicenter to identify high-frequency signals from nearby sources. Nearly 30 percent (12 of the 42 stations) showed clear evidence of high-frequency seismic signals as the surface-wave arrived on Antarctica.
"We interpret these events as small icequakes, most of which were triggered during or immediately after the passing of long-period Rayleigh waves generated from the Chilean mainshock," said Zhigang Peng, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who led the study. "This is somewhat different from the micro-earthquakes and tremor caused by both Love and Rayleigh-type surface waves that traditionally occur in other tectonically active regions thousands of miles from large earthquakes.
Peng says the subtle difference is that micro-earthquakes respond to both shearing and volumetric deformation from distant events. The newly found icequakes respond only to volumetric deformation.
"Such differences may be subtle, but they tell us that the mechanisms of these triggered icequakes and small earthquakes are different," Peng added. "One is more like cracking, while the other is like a shear slip event. It's similar to two hands passing each other."
Some of the icequakes were quick bursts and over in less than one second. Others were long duration, tremor-like signals up to 10 seconds. They occurred in various parts of the continent, including seismic stations along the coast and near the South Pole.
The researchers found the clearest indication of induced high-frequency signals at station HOWD near the northwest corner of the Ellsworth Mountains. Short bursts occurred when the P wave hit the station, then continued again when the Rayleigh wave arrived. The triggered icequakes had very similar high waveform patterns, which indicates repeated failure at a single location, possibly by the opening of cracks.
Peng says the source locations of the icequakes are difficult to determine because there isn't an extensive seismic network coverage in Antarctica.
"But at least some of the icequakes themselves create surface waves, so they are probably formed very close to the ice surface," he added. "While we cannot be certain, we suspect they simply reflect fracturing of ice in the near surface due to alternating volumetric compressions and expansions as the Rayleigh waves passed through Antarctica's frozen ice."
Antarctica was originally not on the research team's target list. While examining seismic stations in the Southern Hemisphere, Peng "accidently" found the triggered icequakes at a few openly available stations. He and former Georgia Tech postdoctoral student Jake Walter (now a research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at UT Austin) then reached out to other seismologists (the paper's four co-authors) who were in charge of deploying more broadband seismometers in Antarctica.
This project is partially supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER grant (EAR-0956051). Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
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Hey has anyone seen blank originators in Exchange 5.5 under the Internet Mail Connector? I've been seeing it allot lately when I look at the outbound que and i'm trying to figure out what's going on. I'm not sure if it's a relay happening from the outside of if a user internally has some spamming program on there system. It shows the destination but the originator is <>.
Any input would be appreciated..


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Question What are the experiences of mothers of ill children before asthma is diagnosed in their children?
Grounded theory.
{Georgia}*, USA.
12 English speaking mothers of European (n=9) and African descent (n=3) who had 15 children with asthma (age range 6–18 y) and 8 healthy children (age range 3–9 y). There were 3 single parent families, 1 extended family, and 8 nuclear families. 3 families had 1 child each, 7 families had 2 children each, and 2 families had 3 children each. The children with asthma began experiencing symptoms during the first year of life.
3 60–90 minute interviews were conducted in the families' homes. An item, tell me how all of this began for you, was added to the questionnaire before the second round of interviews and yielded rich data. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed within 1 week. Transcribed interviews were analysed and coded for descriptions of the mothers' behaviours and perceptions and the relation between them. The interview data were compared to determine the consistency of data within and across interview sessions for each participant. Validity was determined by comparing codes across all interviews and by confirmation from the mothers in the final interview session that the findings reflected their experiences. 2 families who enrolled late and attended the final interview validated the transferability of the data.
Main results
Before asthma was diagnosed in their children the key experience of mothers was described as groping in the dark, which lasted from the children's first year of life until asthma was diagnosed (between the ages of 15 months and 5 years). There were 2 components to this experience: unending illness and searching for answers. The experience of an unending illness was characterised by unknowing (ie, illness episodes had no recognisable pattern and mothers received inadequate information from healthcare professionals), watching the struggle (ie, all mothers had stayed up through the night with their children, who were struggling to breathe, and were afraid for their children's wellbeing), and wearing out (ie, mothers were hypervigilant, worried excessively, and had disrupted sleep). In response to the experience of unending illness, mothers tried searching for answers, which was characterised by questioning; trying alternatives, which included home preparations and over the counter medications; and demanding attention, which included demanding a change in treatment plan, seeking referral to experts, and finding another paediatrician. The search for answers led to the referral of children to specialists who confirmed the diagnosis of asthma and prescribed a new treatment regimen.
Groping in the dark described the experience of mothers as their uncertainty grew with their children's repeat episodes of illness. Mothers reported relief after the diagnosis of asthma because the answer had been found to their problem.
An area of asthma care that is often neglected is the prediagnosis phase. The study by Horner provides insight into mothers' experiences while caring for their children during this phase.
Caution, however, must be exercised: the findings suggest that once the diagnosis of asthma was established, mothers stopped experiencing uncertainty. Uncertainty related to the aetiology of illness is only 1 source of uncertainty. Uncertainty related to other sources may continue to be experienced. Other sources of uncertainty include the situation (Will the symptoms recur? Will the child die?), the treatment (Will the treatment be effective? Will it cause secondary complications?), and the prognosis (What will be the quality of the child's future?).1 Although much work has recently been done in a variety of disciplines (economics, philosophy, medicine, sociology, psychology, and nursing) to further develop our understanding of uncertainty in illness and to develop interventions to help people cope with the stress of living under uncertainty, more work remains to be done.
This study poignantly describes mothers' experiences during the prediagnosis phase as groping in the dark, which reminds us of the importance of listening to patients' concerns and helping them to navigate the complex healthcare system. Establishing a diagnosis of asthma in children <4 years of age is often difficult because of other possible explanations of the symptoms and the inability to measure children's lung function. Giving a child a diagnosis of asthma should not be taken lightly. We need to be aware of the effects of labelling someone with a life threatening disease and the possibility that they may continue to take unnecessary medications. During the prediagnosis phase, nurses need not only to explore the family's expectations but also to share with them some of our own uncertainties about the diagnosis and the rationale for potentially delaying the diagnosis. Further research will help elucidate nursing interventions that assist parents with their uncertainty.
Source of funding: no external funding.
For article reprint: Dr S D Horner, University of Texas at Austin, School of Nursing, 1700 Red River, Austin, TX 78701–1499, USA.
↵* Information provided by author.


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This tutorial expands on techniques covered in Part 1 of the Illustrate and Animate a Bouncing Ball series. We'll be using Illustrator's 3D tools to improve Flash's spinning movement of the bouncing ball and taking a look at working between the two applications. The steps involved can also be followed independently of Part 1.
Final Image Preview
Below is the final animation we will be working towards. Want access to the full Vector Source files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join VECTORTUTS PLUS for just 9/month.
..and let's just remind ourselves of the subtly simpler animation we created during Part 1 of this tut..
Step 1: Plan of Action
Hands up, who followed the first part of this tut Illustrate and Animate a Bouncing Ball: Part 1 - Adobe Flash? Well those of you who did will have a Flash file to add to - those who didn't, don't worry. This second part can also be followed as an individual tut, giving an equally satisfying end result.
To start off, we're going to create a 3D ball in Illustrator. Secondly, we'll animate it within Illustrator and then lastly we'll take it over to Flash for the finishing touches. Let's begin by opening up a new document in Illustrator. The ball we used for the first part of this tut measured 90px x 90px so define your Artboard as having the same dimensions.
Step 2: Pattern
Before we create our 3D object, let's add a pattern to the Symbols palette which we'll use to map to the finished ball. If you recall from the first part of the tut, our ball had six alternately colored stripes - decorating our 3D version in the same way will be straightforward.
Create six vertical, equally sized and spaced rectangles. Color them alternately with red #DF3F22 and yellow #E3CB0E. Group them together if you wish and drag the whole lot into the Symbols palette (Window > Symbols). Assign this new symbol a name such as "ball_pattern," not that we're making any other symbols from which you need to differentiate it..
Step 3: The Ball
We're going to use the 3D Revolve tool to make a ball. Begin with the Ellipse tool and make a circle the same size as (and Aligned with) the Artboard. Use the Direct Selection tool to remove the left anchor point. Finish by making sure it has a fill (though the color is irrelevant as we'll be mapping the "ball_pattern" to it) but no stroke.
With this object selected go to Effects > 3D > Revolve... Check Preview and the default options should give you the following result.
Step 4: Mapping
Now give the ball it's pattern by clicking Map Art from within the 3D Options dialogue. A sphere will just have one surface to map; nice and simple. Select your "ball_pattern" from the Symbol drop-down and check Scale to Fit.
The Shade Artwork option is of particular relevance here. If you check it, you'll get a great effect on the ball's surface (see image below). However, the resultant vectors become so complex that Flash finds it very difficult to render them in animation. This doesn't mean that shading your ball isn't an option - should you choose to do so, it's possible to use the images in Flash by first rasterizing them. Flash has no problem handling the bitmaps this creates, but you of course lose the flexibility of working with paths.
I'll demonstrate this later on, but for now just take my word for it and leave Shade Artwork unchecked! Click OK to return to the 3D Options dialogue and make sure the Surface option here is also set to No Shading.
Step 5: Position
To complete the 3D process (for now) position your ball to a suitable angle and click OK. Bear in mind that we'll animate it revolving around it's central axis as demonstrated below.
Step 6: Copy & Paste
Copy and Paste your 3D ball in place (Command + C, Command + F). The two objects will be visible as separate paths if you expand the layer.
Step 7: Talkin' 'bout a Revolution
With the duplicate ball selected, refer to the Appearance palette (Window > Appearance). Double-click the 3D effect in order to edit it.
Once back in the 3D Options dialogue you'll need to perform just one task and then click OK. We need to revolve the ball around 120°. This will turn the ball to the first point where it looks exactly the same as the starting point; there's little point in revolving it a full 360° when it looks identical on three occasions during one revolution..
This will require a bit of eye-work. Click and drag one of the green edges on the position cube to revolve the ball around the central axis. Keep your eye on the preview of your ball and stop dragging when you see the ball has revolved enough. The wireframe of the ball matches neatly to our pattern; each colored segment of our ball consists of two longitudinal segments of the wireframe. This should make it easy enough to judge exactly where to stop dragging.
Step 8: The Perfect Blend
Having completed your two 3D objects go to Object > Blend > Blend Options. Here you'll specify the animation steps between the ball's two states. Choose Specified Steps and enter 18 (this is arbitrary, the more steps you choose, the more gradual the animation will be).
Step 9: Animate
Select your two objects and go to Object > Blend > Make. The result will be totally unnoticeable: all your blended steps are one top of one another..
In order to animate them in Flash, we need to split the steps and place them on separate layers. Expand the layer holding your blend and make sure you have the blend selected (as demonstrated below). Now open the palette menu within the Layers palette and choose Release to Layers (Sequence).
With that done, select all the resultant layers and drag them out of the first layer they're sitting in. We need them to be entirely independent. Next, delete the original "Layer 1;" it's now empty after all. You'll be left with a series of layers, each one containing a 3D ball at gradual degrees of rotation. The last and the first ones are exactly the same of course (they were the two original states which became blended) so you can remove one of these two layers as well.
Step 10: Save and Close
Well, that's that. I've just explained what to do in the title of this step; Save and Close your document. It's finished!
Step 11: Flash! Aa-aaaaaaah! Saviour of the Universe!
Ever since Adobe took on Macromedia's empire working between their applications has become easier and easier. Importing and exporting between Illustrator and Flash has been possible for some time, though the results could sometimes be a little unpredictable. Exporting Illustrator layers as SWF movie sequences, or as individual SWF files gave pretty good compatibility between programs. Then came CS3. Since that moment we've been able to import AI files directly and deal with the process entirely from within Flash itself.
Let's take a look at the options we have and apply them to this tut. If you have a Flash file from Part 1 of this tut, or if you're working with the source files, open up "source_1.fla;" our original animated ball. Otherwise just open up a new document in Flash.
Go to Flash > Preferences.. and choose AI File Importer. The options are all reasonably self-explanatory; we need to ensure that the contents of our AI file are imported as paths (not bitmaps, though as I mentioned earlier this is an option if the paths are too complex). Set up as below, our imported paths will be editable, the contents of each layer will be converted into individual movie clips and anything lying outside of the Artboard will be ignored (we only have objects within the Artboard so this doesn't really affect us).
Step 12: Target
OK, let's import our AI source file. Again, should you be working on a new flash file, just ignore my references to Part 1 of this tut.
In "source_1.fla" (or your own completed FLA file from Part 1) open the Library (Command + L) and double-click on "mc_ball_base." This was our ball in it's most basic state; this movie clip was what we span and then, in turn, bounced. Anything we do to this movie will therefore be spun and bounced too. Lock "Layer 1" and make a new one called "imported ball."
Step 13: Import
With the first keyframe of the "imported ball" layer selected go to File > Import > Import to Stage..
Select the AI file from your system and click OK. You'll be presented with the Import *file* to Library dialogue, here's where you finalize the import options regarding your AI file and this can be done on a layer-by-layer, object-by-object level.
First, you'll notice that each of the Illustrator layers has a Path object within it. Each Path has a warning symbol denoting that there's a problem. Indeed, clicking on Incompatibility Report will confirm that these objects are not compatible with Flash due to the 3D revolve Effect.
These are our rendered 3D balls and Flash cannot edit these in their current state; we would have had to have expanded the 3D effects for them to be editable. This isn't a problem in our case. We don't want to edit them, but we may want to scale them. Ignore the option of importing them as bitmaps; they'll import fine as scalable paths.
All other default settings here are fine for our needs; just make sure that layers will be converted to Keyframes. Click OK.
Step 14: Stroke
Having imported your AI file, you'll see a sequence of Keyframes on your "imported ball" layer. Moving the slider up and down the timeline will show how these frames give you your revolving ball. Perfect!
Now complete the effect by placing "Layer 1" above "imported ball" and deleting everything from this layer except the stroke. Click then on the frame above the last keyframe in your sequence (in my case frame 19) and click F5 to spread the frames along the length of the animation. This will have placed the original stroke over your ball.
Step 15: Check it!
Command + Enter will preview your animation. In my case, I've also opted to slow down the original spinning effect by lengthening the motion tween in the "mc_ball movie." You'll see the ball spinning 360° clockwise and also 360° around the central axis; an effect impossible (without massive concentration and a couple of months drawing) through using only Flash.
Step 16: Importing Bitmaps
Are you curious to know how it would have looked had we have gone for the shaded ball? Repeat the previous steps having elected to shade your 3D ball in Illustrator:
- Copy and Paste in place
- Define a blend with however many steps you wish
- Blend the two objects
- Extract only the layers you need
- Save
- Open Flash, go to Flash > Preferences.. and choose AI File Importer
- Opt to import layers as bitmaps
- Select a keyframe on which to begin your sequence
- Go to File > Import > Import to Stage..
- Check it!
You'll notice that I opted not to import the keyframes into the spinning movement; the ball no longer spins clockwise. If I had have done this, the lighting would also be spinning (and that would ruin the effect). It's a pretty good result don't you think? Again though, the problem with bitmaps is that they don't scale or rotate well in Flash. As you may have seen, the point at which the ball flattens when it hits the ground is rendered somewhat pixelated - a problem vectors don't experience.
Here ends the second part of this 2 part tut! These final steps have hopefully given you an insight into: separating Illustrator blends into layers, importing AI files into Flash, and capabilities and limits regarding vectors and bitmaps. As ever, I hope you enjoyed this one!
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First in a new series entitled 'Books I might have bought at SBL had the discounts been more favourable'
This from Brill:
Paul and The Restoration of Humanity in Light of Ancient Jewish Traditions
Aaron Sherwood
In Paul and The Restoration of Humanity in Light of Ancient Jewish Traditions, Aaron Sherwood questions the assumption of universalism in Pauline thought, and finds instead that relevant Pauline traditions depict a partly restricted and particularly Israelite restoration of humanity. This important Jewish component of Paul's thought remains largely unrecognized, but Pauline and other ancient Jewish traditions consistently present Israel and non-Israelites' uniting in their worship of Yhwh as the restoration of both Israel and humanity.
Aaron Sherwood demonstrates in Pauline traditions the same deployment of Israel-nations unification as in biblical and post-biblical traditions. This suggests that rather than secondarily finding space for Gentile justification, the restoration of humanity plays a generative role in Paul's theology, mission, and apostolic self-identity.


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Hello, I am basically trying to figure out how to show a flash message
for my system. I have basically got a code in my controller that copies
records, this is the code:
def copy
@artist_to_copy = Artist.find(params[:id])
@artist = Artist.new(@artist_to_copy.attributes)
I want a flash message to appear so that everytime I copy a original
record it will show on the flash message that it is i.e "This is the
copy of 1" and if I copy the record again it will say "This is the copy
of 2" etc. I cant seem to figure out how this would work if there are
many orginal records like for instance 1, 2, or 3. How would the flash
message know that id 4 is a copy of 2 etc. All very confusing but I
would be grateful if someone can come up with a solution for me, many
Nish #hmm#


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Untreatable Gonorrhea Spreading Around World: WHO
(Reuters) - Drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea have spread to countries across the world, the United Nations health agency said on Wednesday, and millions of patients may run out of treatment options unless doctors catch and treat cases earlier.
Scientists reported last year finding a superbug strain of gonorrhoea in Japan in 2008 that was resistant to all recommended antibiotics and warned then that it could transform a once easily treatable infections into a global health threat.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said those fears are now reality with many more countries, including Australia, France, Norway, Sweden and Britain, reporting cases of the sexually transmitted disease resistant to cephalosporin antibiotics - normally the last option for drugs against gonorrhoea.
Gonorrhoea is becoming a major public health challenge, said Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the WHO's department of reproductive health and research. She said more than 106 million people are newly infected with the disease every year.
The organism is what we term a superbug - it has developed resistance to virtually every class of antibiotics that exists, she told a briefing in Geneva. If gonococcal infections become untreatable, the health implications are significant.
Gonorrhoea is a bacterial sexually transmitted infection which, if left untreated, can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirths, severe eye infections in babies, and infertility in both men and women.
It is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world and is most prevalent in south and southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of cases is estimated at around 700,000 a year.
The WHO called for greater vigilance on the correct use of antibiotics and more research into alternative treatments for so-called gonococcal infections.
The emergence of drug-resistant or superbug strains of gonorrhoea is caused by unregulated access to and overuse of antibiotics, which helps fuel natural genetic mutations within the bacteria.
Experts say an added problem with gonorrhoea is that its strains tend to retain their genetic resistance to previous antibiotics even after their use has been discontinued.
Major producers of antibiotics for gonorrhoea include global drugmaking giants GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Abbott, as well as Indian firms like Cipla.
The WHO said it is not yet clear how far or wide drug resistance in gonorrhoea has spread, as many countries lack reliable data. The available data only shows the tip of the iceberg, said Lusti-Narasimhan.
Without adequate surveillance we won't know the extent of resistance...and without research into new antimicrobial agents there could soon be no effective treatment for patients.
Francis Ndowa, formerly the WHO's lead specialist for sexually transmitted infections, said gonorrhoea has not only adapted to elude antibiotics but developed less painful symptoms, increasing its survival chances.
They used to say that if you have urethral gonorrhoea you go to the toilet to pass urine, it would be like passing razor blades. It was that painful, he explained. Now people with gonorrhoea sometimes...only notice the discharge if they look when they pass urine, it's not that painful anymore.
So the organism has readjusted itself to provide fewer symptoms so that it can survive longer. It's an amazing interaction between man and pathogen.
Experts say the best way to reduce the risk of even greater resistance developing - beyond the urgent need to develop effective new drugs - is to treat gonorrhoea with combinations of two or more types of antibiotic at the same time.
This technique is used in the treatment of some other infections like tuberculosis in an attempt to make it more difficult for the bacteria to learn how to conquer the drugs.
Gonorrhoea can be prevented through safer sexual intercourse. The WHO said early detection and prompt treatment, including of sexual partners, is essential to control sexually transmitted infections.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, editing by Alessandra Rizzo and Mark Heinrich)
© Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023. All rights reserved.
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