text:
Gunmen Kill American Teacher Accused of 'Spreading Christianity' in Yemen
Joel Shrum Targeted by Al-Qaida for Allegedly Being a 'Missionary;' Employer Denies Claim
Terrorist group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has killed an American teacher accused of preaching Christianity in Yemen, according to text messages sent out by the group.
The American, 30-year-old Joel Shrum, was killed in the Yemeni province of Taiz on Sunday. Shrum, from Pennsylvania, was fatally shot by two gunmen on a motorcycle, according to defense ministry officials.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula sent out a text message to journalists in the country claiming responsibility for the attack. The group said Shrum was killed for serving as a "senior missionary" in Taiz – working to spread Christianity to the Yemeni people.
The Yemeni constitution mentions religious liberty but proselytizing is illegal and it is against the law for Muslims to convert to Christianity, according to Christian persecution group, The Voice of Martyrs.
Christianity exists as a minority religion in the country with an estimated 4,000 Catholics believed to live in Yemen. Christian missions from several countries have an active presence in Yemen.
The International Training Development Center where Shrum was employed, which is a government-affiliated NGO, has denied the terrorist networks claims that Shrum was working as a Christian missionary.
"He was an American development worker who has been working in Yemen with his wife and two children since 2010," the center said in a statement.
The ITDC is a vocational center that is partnered with the Yemeni government to provide services to poor communities. Shrum was apparently on his way to teach an English course to community residents when he was killed. He leaves behind a wife and two young children.
The training and development center said that Muslims and Christians work together within the institution to foster "human development, skill transfer and community development" but added that religious and political debates are not permitted within the institution and that all religions are respected.
"The ITDC is calling on the Yemeni people to rise up and reject this hatred and violence in their country," the statement added.
Yemen is considered the poorest country in the Arab world and is mired with a plethora of problems including water scarcity and virtual nationwide addition to the mild narcotic khat. Former president of the country, Ali Addullah Saleh, stepped down from his post last month following a year of deadly protests against his leadership that left some 2,000 people dead.


text: Internet con artists quickly jumped on the news of a data breach at Apple's developer website\u00a0to launch a phishing campaign aimed at relieving users of their online credentials.The phishing campaign is addressed to Apple customers and masquerades as a confirm-your-account information letter. The message includes a disguised malicious link to a website where sensitive information can be stolen from users.The campaign is apparently aimed at exploiting the widely-publicized breach of Apple's Development Center website attributed to Turkish security researcher Ibrahim Balic. Although he denies any malicious intent, his downloading of 100,000 user records from the site has been criticized by some security experts as unethical.See also: Bitdefender finds cracks in Apple's walled garden "He acted highly unethically by downloading that much data," Ragib Hasan, an assistant professor in the computer and information sciences department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in an interview.Phishing attacks on Apple users aren't new, although they have been growing in recent years. Nadezhda Demidova, of Kaspersky Lab, reported in June that on an average day, Apple phishing sites attract some 200,000 users. Two years ago, traffic at such sites averaged ,1000 visits per day.The rise in Apple-themed phishing attacks has been noticed by other security researchers. "Over the past few months, we have seen a constant stream of phishing scams targeting the Apple community," Alex Watson, director of security research at Websense, said via email.While this week's phishing campaign was crafted to snare Apple users, it wasn't the kind of spear-phishing attack that would be launched by someone with a boatload of stolen email addresses from an Apple website. "The particular scams that we have seen in the past few days appear to be focused on phishing only," Watson said."This recent campaign is relatively low volume and not specifically targeted toward Apple users," he added. "In this manner, the recent attacks do not appear to be particularly advanced or novel."Crafting phishing campaigns that exploit data breaches is standard-operating-procedure for phishers. "We've seen these piggy-back attacks for at least five years," Dave Jevans, chairman and CTO of Marble Security, said in an interview.For example, Jevans noted, "When a credit card processor gets hacked, we'll see fake emails instructing people on protecting themselves from the breach."He's also seen campaigns aimed at iTunes account holders. Besides allowing a byte bandit to run up a bill buying music and other media from Apple's online outlet, he noted, compromised iTunes accounts serve another purpose for online thieves."You can use it to test the validity of credit cards you got from somewhere else," Jevans explained. If a criminal can complete a transaction at the iTunes Store with a stolen credit card number, they know the number is good and can fence it for more money in the underground market.Although the recent spam campaign wasn't directed specifically at developers, if it lands in a developer's inbox, it's easy to understand why it might catch them with their guard down: Apple shut down the developer site without warning or explanation for four days."With anxious developers waiting impatiently for their portal access to be restored, it is fairly normal for them to have a lack of endurance during this difficult time of no portal access," Tommy Chin, a technical support engineer for Core Security, said in an email."After all this downtime," he said, "developers are most likely upset and worried about their account. Therefore, a password reset e-mail that looks like it came from Apple would create a stress-relieving feeling for the developers who can't sleep at night."While the vulnerability at the developers site became public just this week, no one knows whether hackers had discovered it before Balic. That could have serious consequences because it could allow digital desperadoes to mount "ice phishing" attacks tied to the site.Ice phishing is similar to spear phishing, but instead of redirecting a target to a bogus website masquerading as legitimate, the target goes to a legitimate website that's been compromised and can infect incoming traffic with malware."Many corporations are using browser security technologies with filters that screen out illegitimate websites," Tom Kellermann, vice president of cyber security for Trend Micro, said in an interview. "But in the ice phishing context, a legitimate website is used to avoid those filters."What we have to ask [is] was this more than just a snatch and grab of accounts or was it used as a watering hole attack for the 12 hours that it was vulnerable?" Kellermann added. "We have to ask not whether or not we will be phished because we're an app developer, but whether we're already owned by hackers because the site became a watering hole and then an ice phishing reservoir."

subset: commoncrawl


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Gathering of Writers Celebrates Kestrel 31
When poets and writers gather for a weekend of readings and fellowship, the mutual appreciation and inspiration are almost visible floating in the air. On April 11 and 12, the Fairmont State University Department of Language and Literature hosted such a group in celebration of Issue 31 of Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art.
"Kestrel 31 explores the complex nature of memory, its pains, pleasures and dangers," said Dr. Suzanne Heagy, Associate Professor of English and one of the three editors of Kestrel. "My hope is that the poems, essays, stories and art in this issue allow readers to imaginatively inhabit worlds they might not otherwise encounter and remember—London; Cap Negre, 1909; present day New Jersey; Iran via Facebook; the world of circus dogs. Reading can take us to unknown worlds and make them memorable."
Dr. Donna J. Long, Professor of English, and Dr. Elizabeth Savage, Professor of English, also served as editors for the journal and, along with Heagy, hosted the visiting writers who traveled to campus from as far away as California and Washington State. Velicia Darquenne, English major and Kestrel intern, also assisted with the issue and events.
On Friday afternoon, nine Kestrel contributing writers—Tim Armentrout from southern West Virginia, Barbara Crooker from Fogelsburg, Pa.; Cathy Barber from San Francisco; Ellen McGrath Smith from Pittsburgh; Bob Kunzinger from Virginia; Matt Zambito from Spokane, Wash.; Ethel Rackin from Philadelphia; Greg Weiss from Ohio; and Ace Boggess from Charleston—joined in a panel discussion with about 40 students and community members about truth, facts and the role of memory in writing.
"If you don't say what you feel, then you feel what you don't say forever," Armentrout said.
Nonfiction writer Kunzinger stated that to him the facts are not as important as the truth, pointing out the difference between people remembering details differently and someone getting the facts wrong; people still need to agree on the truth of the conversation.
Of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama—poet Matt Zambito said, "The goal of all four genres is to tell little 't' truths to lead to big 'T' Truth, even if that means telling little white lies to get there."
On Friday evening, Crooker, Kunzinger, Rackin, McGrath Smith and Zambito read their work during a community event at the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center.
Rackin shared her "Ode to Friends":
"So kind their intelligence
regarding birds of prey—
osprey, kites, true hawks—
regardless, they pray
for wellbeing
of all kinds!"
Kunzinger read flash nonfiction about how an injury from a scythe during yard work ended up saving his life. McGrath Smith told "The Cry Room," a story filled with loss and a mother's expression of grief. Zambito entertained with a witty poem about facial hair, among others, and Crooker with a poem about why she does not like milk chocolate. The audience was stirred from thoughtful reflection, to tears, to laughter and back.
The gathering met on Saturday at Heston Farm for a sunny afternoon outdoors filled with food, drinks and poetry readings. Armentrout began with poems about an uncle's funeral, a mine disaster and prescription drug abuse, among other topics. Barber followed with poetry about going to the grocery store, her friend Jane finding a man, women being comfortable with their bodies, the laugh-provoking "Porn Star Name" and a persona poem about Bigfoot. Weiss then shared his words, including a poem called "Algebra," which included more about life than math. The final readings came from Ace Boggess who read from his book, "The Prisoners," including a poem from an inmate perspective called "Can They Do That?" and another poem featuring the memorable line: "…many within have sin enough to purify the world with their absence."
To conclude the weekend's activities, Long thanked the visiting writers for "sharing your demons and your dreams."
Copies of Kestrel 31 are available for purchase through the Department of Language & Literature. For more information, contact Long at (304) 367-4180 or e-mail Kestrel at email@example.com. The cost for a single issue is $12; a two-issue subscription is $20. Checks may be made payable to Kestrel and mailed to Kestrel, Department of Language & Literature, Fairmont State University, 1201 Locust Ave., Fairmont, WV 26554.KestrelLanguage & LiteratureCollege of Liberal ArtsEnglishElizabeth SavageDonna LongSuzanne Heagy


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On Wall Street, the stock of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was setting records in 1929, rising from $100-to-$500 a share — a little "irrational exuberance" well before the time when that term would be used to describe another frothy market; the dot-com bubble of the 1990s.
New businesses in the fields of communication, publishing, news, and entertainment were then on the rise. CBS, Business Week, and Walt Disney were among the emerging enterprises of that day. Talking motion pictures, only a few years old, had become the dominant movie form.
In May, Hollywood's first Academy Awards were made in a ceremony that lasted less than a half hour. Wings took the Best Picture award. Across the nation, good times were still rolling along practically everywhere through mid-year.
Although there may have been a few insiders on Wall Street who saw the economic storm clouds gathering, and there had been a jolt or two in the market in March, there was little hint of the prolonged ill wind to come, especially on Main Street. The market peril and crashing stocks would not arrive until late October. In fact, for most of the year, the nation was simply going about business as usual. And nothing was more business-as-usual than baseball.
Time's Cover Story
In late July, Time magazine ran a baseball cover story about the changing nature of the game, assessing teams and players at mid-season. Featured on the cover was a young player from the Philadelphia Athletics named Jimmie Foxx, who would also get a share of the ink in Time's cover story.
Baseball by then was the nation's major national pastime and its biggest commercialized sport. But one concern in the game at the time was whether the ball had been juiced, as there had been a noticeable increase in hitting since the games of the 1910s.
In 1912, "home run" Baker, as he was called, had set the record for round trippers at 13; in 1927, Babe Ruth hit 60. Spalding, the manufacturer of baseballs, insisted the "juiced ball" theory was a myth, but the debate continued.
Time's story also focused on some of the young players creating a sensation that year, among them, 19 year-old Mel Ott of the New York Giants. Up to that point in the season Ott had hit 26 home-runs with a batting average of .324, impressing fans with his speed, outfielding abilities, and strong arm.
But Time reserved its strongest praise for Jimmie Fox, described as "even more sensational than player Ott." Foxx that July was in a neck-and-neck race for the batting title, as he and rival Heine Manush of the St. Louis Browns, both of whom had averages at the time around the .400 level.
Manush had won the American League batting title in 1926 when he was with the Detroit Tigers, hitting .378. But neither he nor Foxx would win the 1929 title. Lew Fonseca of the Cleveland Indians would take the prize, hitting .369. Still, Foxx hit a very good .354 average that year with 33 home runs.
Farm Boy FoxxThe year 1929 was Foxx's first full year in the majors. He had come up to the Athletics in 1924 when he was about 16, from a minor league team in Maryland's Eastern Shore League. Foxx proved himself a versatile player, handling any position except pitching. Although he preferred third base, with the Athletics in 1928 he became their first baseman, hitting .328 that season in 118 games.
Foxx was a strong farm boy, from Sudlersville, Maryland; he stood just under six foot weighing in at about 185-pounds with a good build. He described for Time, with some farm-boy bravado, how life on the farm prepared him for baseball:
…I worked on a farm and I am glad of it. Farmer boys are stronger than city boys. When I was 12, I could cut corn all day, help in the wheat fields, swing 200-pound bags of phosphate off a platform into a wagon. We had games on the farm to test strength and grip. A fellow had to plant both feet in half a barrel of wheat and then pick up two bushels of wheat or corn and balance them on his shoulders. Another trick was to lift a 200-pound keg of nails without letting the keg touch your body. I could do that easily but I never realized then it was helping me train for the Big Leagues.
Rare Hitting Feat
The year 1929 also marked another extraordinary hitting performance which occurred at Philadelphia's other team, the National League's Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies that year had a player named Lefty O'Doul, acquired in a trade with San Francisco. O'Doul would hit .398 for the Phillies in 1929, winning the National League batting title. He also had 32 home runs, 122 runs batted in and scored 152 runs.
But O'Doul's extraordinary feat that year was his 254 hits in a single season — a rare feat equaled or exceeded only by four other players in professional baseball history: George Sisler of the St. Louis Browns in 1920 with 257 hits; Bill Terry with the New York Giants in 1930 with 254 hits; and Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners, who holds the record with 262 hits set in 2004.
Foxx became known as a good hitter and also for his prodigious home run shots. He hit drives that soared over the roof of Philadelphia's old Shibe Park Stadium, and was the only man up to that time to hit a ball over the centerfield wall there, 468 feet from home plate. He had also become the only man to hit two homers over the roof of Chicago's Comiskey Park, both of which went some 500 feet, plus. In New York's Yankee Stadium, Foxx sent one of Lefty Gomez's pitches into the third deck. Time was right about featuring the up-and-comer on its July 1929 cover. Foxx would go on to have a Hall of Fame career.
Foxx Chases Ruth
In 1932, Jimmie Foxx hit 58 homers and might well have matched or broken Babe Ruth's record that year with 60 or 61, but he fell off a ladder at home and missed the last few games of the season. In 1933, he took the American League Triple Crown with 48 homers, 163 RBI and .356 batting average.
When Jimmie Foxx retired in 1945, he ranked No. 2 on the all-time home-run list with 534 home runs, behind only Babe Ruth. He also had 1,922 runs batted in and a lifetime batting average of .325. He won three MVP awards and his 12 consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs was a major league record that stood for more than 60 years until broken by Barry Bonds in 2004. He also held the record for the youngest player (32 years old) to hit 500 career home runs until eclipsed by Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees in August 2007, then a younger 32 year-old.
1929 World Series
In the 1929 World Series, Foxx and the Philadelphia Athletics, with their American League pennant-winning record of 104 wins and 46 losses, played the Chicago Cubs of the National League, with their season record of 98 wins and 54 losses. Both teams had sell-outs for their home games by late September 1929, with one report noting the Cubs organization had taken in $1.2 million for tickets for its games.
The first two games were played at Wrigley Field in Chicago on October 8th and 9th, and the last three at Shibe Park in Philadelphia on October 11th, 12th and 14th. Notable perfor- mances in that series came in Game 1 with aging A's pitcher Howard Ehmke setting a record of 13 strikeouts that stood until 1953 when Carl Erskine broke it with 14. Jimmie Fox hit one home run in Game 1 and 2 more in Game 2, becoming the first major leaguer to homer in his first two World Series games.
"Mack Attack"
But in game 4 of the Series in Philadelphia, the famous "Mack Attack" of the A's occurred, named for the A's legendary manager, Connie Mack. In that game, the Athletics overcame an eight-run deficit by scoring ten runs in the 7th inning after Cubs' center fielder Hack Wilson lost a fly ball in the sun resulting in a bases-clearing, inside-the-park home run.
The A's went on to win that game and the World Series. It was perhaps one of the last big hurrahs for the "Roaring Twenties," an era that had also been characterized by major sports accomplishments and major sports personalities.
Market Crash
Ten days following the World Series, on October 24th, 1929 in New York, a day known in financial lore as Black Thursday, the Stock Market began its catastrophic plunge. The euphoria and financial gains of the great bull market were shattered that day, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed and continued to fall at an unprecedented rate. On October 28 and 29 — Black Monday and Black Tuesday, as they came to be known — the decline was even worse, precipitating widespread panic. The stock collapse continued for a month, sending many investors to financial ruin and marking the onset of hard times. The country and much of the world then fell into a deep economic depression which continued for years. By 1932, Wall Street stocks were worth only 11 percent of what they had been in 1929.Baseball, meanwhile, would try to follow its seasonal rhythms, as the business of sport and life marched on — at least for a time. In February 1930, professional players were reporting to their respective camps for spring training. That fall, Jimmie Foxx and the Athletics would again make it to the World Series, this time besting the St. Louis Cardinals, four games to two.
But even baseball would feel the hard times. By 1933 the average per game national attendance had fallen to below five thousand. Baseball tried to raise interest that year by starting the All-Star game, played at mid-season, when the best players from each league were assembled to play against one another. But as the Great Depression ground on, some owners were unable to pay the salaries of their star players. The Athletics owner, Connie Mack, was obliged to sell off a number of his stars, including Jimmie Foxx. In late 1935, Mack sold Foxx's contract to the Boston Red Sox. Foxx then played in Boston for a time, as a teammate of an up-and-coming youngster named Ted Williams. But Foxx himself still had a few good years ahead.
Boston Power
With Boston in 1938, Foxx had a phenomenal year: he hit 50 home runs and drove in 175 runs with a batting average of .349. He narrowly missed the Triple Crown but did garner that year's MVP award. In 1939 he had another good year, hitting .360. His 50 home runs at Boston would remain the single-season record for that team until David Ortiz of the Red Sox hit 54 in 2006. Foxx would finish his career in the 1940s with the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951.Foxx did some minor league and women's baseball coaching in the 1950s, and was also head baseball coach at the University of Miami in 1956 and 1957. However, a series of bad investments left him broke in 1958. He died in Miami, Florida in 1967 at the age of 59. Still today, Foxx remains one of the all-time greats. In 1999, he was ranked No. 15 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. In July 2000, he was one of 20 players commemorated with a U.S. postage stamp in the "Baseball Legends" group.
See also at this website, the "Baseball Stories" category page for additional stories on other famous players, including: Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, Sandy Koufax, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Christy Mathewson, Stan Musial, Bill Mazeroski, Lou Gehrig, and Honus Wagner. The "Annals of Sport" page has additional sports stories as well. Thanks for visiting – and if you like what you find here, please make a donation to help support the research and writing at this website. Thank you. – Jack Doyle
Please Support
Thank You
Date Posted: 21 February 2009
Last Update: 19 April 2017
Comments to: email@example.com
Sources, Links & Additional Information
"Baseball, Midseason," Time, Monday, July 29, 1929.
John B. Holway, "Double XX," BaseballGuru .com.
"Athletics Sold Out for Series; Cub Fans Remit $1,200,000," New York Times, September 18, 1929, Sports, p. 26.
"Jimmie Foxx," Wikipedia.org.
PBS, "The Crash of 1929," American Experi-ence, WGBH, Boston, October 2004.
Associated Press, "Mack Sells Grove and 4 Other Stars; Athletics' Pilot Breaks up Club in Startling Deals, Receiving $300,000," New York Times, Wednesday, December 13, 1933, Sports, P.32.
Associated Press, "Red Sox Not to Bid $200,000 for Foxx; Cronin Says Boston Prefers to Spend Money Asked for the Star on Younger Players," New York Times, Thursday, October 3, 1935, Sports, P. 32.
"Foxx to Sox," Time, Monday, December 23, 1935.
Mark R. Millikin, Jimmie Foxx: The Pride of Sudlersville, Scarecrow Press, September 2005, 304pp.
W. Harrison Daniel, Jimmie Foxx: The Life and Times of a Baseball Hall of Famer, 1907-1967
McFarland & Company, September 1996, 256pp.
Gregory H. Wolf, et. al., Winning on the North Side: The 1929 Chicago Cubs, Society for American Baseball Research, January 2015, 314pp.
Roger Snell, Root for the Cubs: Charlie Root and the 1929 Chicago Cubs, Wind Publications
April 2009, 280pp.


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Good Ideas Grow on Paper
Great designers have one thing in common: their design process is centred on ideas; ideas that are more often than not developed on paper. Though it's often tempting to take the path of least resistance, turning to the computer in the headlong rush to complete a project (often in the face of formidable client pressure), resist the urge and – for a truly great idea – start first on paper.
The path of least resistance is often characterised by cliché and overused techniques – one per cent noise,
text-shadow – the usual suspects – techniques that are ten-a-penny at the gallery sites. Whilst all are useful, and technique and craft are important, great design isn't about technique alone – it's about technique in the service of good ideas.
But how do we generate those ideas?
Inspiration can certainly come to you out of the blue. When working as a designer in a role which often consists of incubating good ideas, however, idly waiting for the time-honoured lightbulb to appear above your head just isn't good enough. We need to establish an environment where we tip the odds of getting good ideas in our favour.
So, when faced with the blank canvas, what do we do to unlock the proverbial tidal wave of creativity? Fear not. We're about to share with you a couple of stalwart techniques that will stand you in good stead when you need that good idea, in the face of the pressure of yet another looming deadline.
Get the process right
Where do ideas come from? In many cases they come from anywhere but the screen. Hence, our first commandment is to close the lid of your computer and, for a change, work on paper. It might seem strange, it might also seem like a distraction, but – trust us – the time invested here will more than pay off.
Idea generation should be a process of rapid iteration, sketching and thinking aloud, all processes best undertaken in more fast paced, analogue media. Our tool of choice is the Sharpie and Flip Chart Combo©, intentionally low resolution to encourage lo-fi idea generation. In short, your tools should be designed not to be precious, but to quickly process your thoughts. Ideas can be expressed with a thick line marker or by drawing with a stick in the sand; it's the ideas that matter, not the medium.
Input > Synthesise > Output
Ideas don't materialise in a vacuum. Without constant input, the outputs will inevitably remain the same. As such, it's essential to maintain an inquisitive mind, ensuring a steady flow of new triggers and stimuli that enable your thinking to evolve.
What every designer brings to the table is their prior experience and unique knowledge. It should come as no surprise to discover that a tried and tested method of increasing that knowledge is, believe it or not, to read – often and widely. The best and most nuanced ideas come after many years of priming the brain with an array of diverse material, a point made recently in Jessica Hische's aptly named Why You Should Know Your Shit.
One of the best ways of synthesising the knowledge you accumulate is to write. The act of writing facilitates your thinking and stores the pieces of the jigsaw you'll one day return to. You don't have to write a book or a well-articulated article; a scribbled note in the margin will suffice in facilitating the process of digestion.
As with writing, we implore you to make sketching an essential part of your digestion process. More immediate than writing, sketching has the power to put yet unformed ideas down on paper, giving you an insight into the fantastic conceptions you're more often than not still incubating.
Our second commandment is a practical one: always carry a sketchbook and a pen. Although it seems that the very best ideas are scribbled on the back of a beer mat or a wine-stained napkin, always carrying your 'thinking utensils' should be as natural as not leaving the house without your phone, wallet, keys or pants.
Further, the more you use your sketchbook, the less precious you'll find yourself becoming. Sketching isn't about being an excellent draughtsman, it's about synthesising and processing your thoughts and ideas, as Jason Santa Maria summarises nicely in his article Pretty Sketchy:
Sketchbooks are not about being a good artist, they're about being a good thinker.
Jason Santa Maria
The sketchbook and pen should become your trusted tools in your task to constantly survey the world around you. As Paul Smith says, You Can Find Inspiration in Anything; close the lid, look beyond the computer; there's a whole world of inspiration out there.
Learn to love old dusty buildings
So, how do you learn? How do you push beyond the predictable world pre-filtered by Mr Google? The answer lies in establishing a habit of exploring the wonderful worlds of museums and libraries, dusty old buildings that repay repeated visits.
Once the primary repositories of thought and endless sources of inspiration, these institutions are now often passed over for the quick fix of a Google search or Wikipedia by you, the designer, chained to a desk and manacled to a MacBook. Whilst others might frown, we urge you to get away from your desk and take an eye-opening stroll through the knowledge-filled corridors of yore (and don't forget to bring your sketchbook).
Here you'll find ideas aplenty, ideas that will set you apart from your peers, who remain ever-reliant on the same old digital sources.
The idea generation toolbox
Now that we've established the importance of getting the process and the context right, it's time to meet the idea generation toolbox: a series of tools and techniques that can be applied singularly or in combination to solve the perennial problem of the blank canvas.
The clean sheet of paper, numbing in its emptiness, can prove an insurmountable barrier to many a project, but the route beyond it involves just a few, well-considered steps. The route to a good idea lies in widening your pool of inspiration at the project outset. Let go and generate ideas quickly; it's critical to diverge before you converge – but how do we do this and what exactly do we mean by this?
The temptation is to pull something out of your well-worn box of tricks, something that you know from experience will do the job. We urge you, however, not to fall prey to this desire. You can do better; better still, a few of you putting your minds together can do a lot better. By avoiding the path of least resistance, you can create something extraordinary.
Culturally, we value logical, linear thinking. Since the days of Plato and Aristotle, critical thinking, deduction and the pursuit of truth have been rewarded. To generate creative ideas, however, we need to start thinking sideways, making connections that don't necessarily follow logically. Lateral thinking, a phrase coined by Edward de Bono in 1967, aptly describes this very process:
With logic you start out with certain ingredients, just as in playing chess you start out with given pieces – lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces.
Edward de Bono
One of the easiest ways to start thinking laterally is to start with a mind map, a perfect tool for widening the scope of a project beyond the predictable and an ideal one for getting the context right for discovery.
Making connections
Mind maps can be used to generate, visualise and structure ideas. Arranged intuitively and classified around groupings, mind maps allow chance connections to be drawn across related groups of information, and are perfect for exposing alogical associations and unexpected relationships.
Get a number of people together in a room, equipped with the Sharpie and Flip Chart Combo©. Give yourself a limited amount of time – half an hour should prove more than enough – and you'll be surprised at the results a few well-chosen people can generate in a very short space of time. The key is to work fast, diverge and not inhibit thinking.
We've been embracing Tony Buzan's methods in our teaching for over a decade. His ideas on the power of radiant thinking and how this can be applied to mind maps, uncover the real power which lies in the human brain's ability to spot connections across a mapped out body of diverse knowledge.
Frank Chimero wrote about this recently in How to Have an Idea, which beautifully illustrates Mr Buzan's theories, articulating the importance of the brain's ability to make abstract connections, finding unexpected pairings when a concept is mapped out on paper.
Once a topic is surveyed and a rich set of stimuli articulated, the next stage is to draw connections, pulling from opposite sides of the mind map. It's at this point, when defining alogical connections, that the truly interesting and unexpected ideas are often uncovered.
The curve ball
If you've followed our instructions so far, all being well, you should have a number of ideas. Good news: we have one last technique to throw into the mix. We like to call it 'the curve ball', that last minute 'something' that forces you to rethink and encourages you to address a problem from a different direction.
There are a number of ways of throwing in a curve ball – a short, sharp, unexpected impetus – but we have a firm favourite we think you'll appreciate. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies – subtitled 'Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas' – are the perfect creative tool for throwing in a spot of unpredictability. As Eno and Schmidt put it:
The Oblique Strategies can be used as a pack (a set of possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident.
Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt
Simply pick a card and apply the strategy to the problem at hand. The key here, as with de Bono's techniques, is to embrace randomness and provocation to inspire lateral creative approaches.
To assist this process, you might wish to consult one of the many virtual decks of Oblique Strategies online.
Wrapping up
To summarise, it's tempting to see the route to the fastest satisfactory conclusion in a computer when, in reality, that's the last place you should start. The tools we've introduced, far from time-consuming, are hyper-efficient, always at hand and, if you factor them into your workflow, the key to unlocking the ideas that set the great designers apart.
We wish you well on your quest in search of the perfect idea, now armed with the knowledge that the quest begins on paper.


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It was a long cold Sunday for New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, who decided a few months ago to challenge Vladimir Putin in the 2012 Russian presidential election. Nyet, Prokhorov! Nyet! As we've noted before, Putin is not only strong leader who crush enemy like Black Sea mosquito but also manliest sportsman of sport. There is no defeating of Putin.
And thus we were left with this sad scene from inside Prokhorov's campaign war room yesterday as the election results rolled in:
As waiters ferried wine and grilled vegetables and salmon-Prokhorov is known for his fondness for good, healthy food-Anton Krasovsky, a television journalist who became Prokhorov's campaign chair, sat on a modern gray couch. Wearing a black suit and a skinny black tie, huffing on thin menthols, he was a picture straight out of "Mad Men." Krasovsky was frustrated, and showered hard-to-translate curses on everything around him, especially the gathering pro-Putin rally. "I drove past those fucking bitches," he said. "Fucking fuckwits."
Prokhorov, who finished third in the election, was more measured in his comments, which was probably wise considering Putin has started rounding up protestors and opposition leaders:
"There's a difference between fair and unfair elections, and legitimate and illegitimate elections," he said, when asked if, in light of extensive reports of fraud, he was prepared to recognize these elections as legitimate. "From the very beginning, they were not fair, but I knew that they would be that way when I started." Prokhorov was a system player; he was not prepared to dismiss today's vote as illegitmate [sic].
You want illegitimate politics, Prokhorov? Get back here and figure out how to sign Dwight Howard before the trade deadline.


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TechRadar Verdict
The Mini 12 is certainly mean, but it's a 3G modem away from the 12" dream machine it could have been. Despite the sheen of the screen
- +
Bright, shiny screen
- +
Cool and quiet
- -
Disappointing battery
- -
No full-size keyboard
Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Oh joy. Another netbook. A further entry in the now absurdly overpopulated world of inwardly-identical half-baked laptops. Just what the world needs.
But wait! This one has a bigger screen! And it's actually quite different! Phew.
The essence of netbooks is usually portability, so it's a relief that Dell has done a truly magnificent job with the packaging of the Inspiron Mini 12.
Fantastically thin
That bigger screen doesn't hurt its road-warrior potential one bit. It's sumptuously thin, made even thinner by the addition of some clever MacBook Air style tapering to the lid, and incredibly light, easily beating an MSI Wind on both counts.
Everything from the gloss-finish lid -- a bit 2007 but acceptably swish for the prince point -- to the high-resolution 1280x800 twelve-point-one-incher -- sadly poorly lit, but otherwise stunning -- suggests that Dell is pushing its margins hard.
It's not perfect, though -- the trackpad is questionable, with odd behaviour and spongy buttons, and the keyboard isn't quite full size despite the room afforded by the screen.
Impressive performance
So what of the guts of this beast? This would be the point in the traditional netbook review where we'd taxi into our stock rant about the fair-to-middling last gen performance of the Atom N270. But neither Inspiron 12 model plumps for the N270; the £400 Vista model uses the infinitesimally different 1.6GHz Z530, and the Ubuntu-toting version on test here sports a 1.33GHz Z520.
The performance gap is actually barely noticeable. While the N270 could prance merrily around doing a favourable impersonation of a proper laptop processor, the Z520 -- coupled with only 1GB RAM -- does a passable imitation of a N270.
In conjunction with the fairly obscure (but highly touted) PowerVR-developed GMA500 graphics, the Mini 12 manages 576p easily, 720p with a few dropped frames, and then the battery runs out. This is not the lifestyle laptop it could have been, in that sense. But there are other benefits: it's stupendously cool and almost imperceptably silent.
Niche netbook
At least the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 has its niche. It's a netbook with a big screen, netbook being the operative word.
There's a chasm of performance between it and the proper laptops hovering at around the same price, and that's a trend that's set to continue as the netbook market eats further into that of its more established brethren.
You're an enthusiast – this is a fine machine, but you may as well save some money and grab an equally capable N270. You can thank us later.


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Local Blogs
By Sally Torbey
The campus tourUploaded: Nov 3, 2013
Our family is in the throes of our third child applying to college. My husband and I are trying to talk our youngest children into alternative educational opportunities, as we are not certain we have the stamina to support two more kids through this process. They have not yet agreed, but since they are still in elementary and middle school, we have a few years to convince them!
Applying to college is an all consuming task for students, requiring many hours of test prepping, standardized test taking, school vacations traveling for college visits and interviews, and the writing of dozens of essays for applications. It also dominates the dinner conversation for about a year, so the whole family can be involved.
From the time students start high school, they are inundated with colorful brochures and glossy postcards advertising colleges and urging them to apply. Having watched his older siblings go through this process, our senior is skeptical about all the mail. "Look, another college that wants me to apply so they can reject me and increase their selectivity ratings!" There are also college guides, college fairs, college representatives visiting the high school and college websites as sources of information. The most important ritual, though, in finalizing the list of where to apply is the college visit. The most important part of the college visit is the campus tour.
In fact, where students decide to apply to college really comes down to just one factor, the student tour guide. As far as my kids are concerned, the tour guide is representative of every student who has ever attended, currently attends, or will ever attend that college or university. The appeal of the tour guide is directly related to how well he or she has mastered simultaneously talking, gesturing towards buildings, and drinking a chai latte, all while walking backwards. We had one tour guide who wore four inch wedged platform flip- flops in April, in Minnesota. There was still snow on the ground. I spent the hour anxiously watching her slip on the ice and stumble off curbs, while I googled first aid for sprained ankles and concussions. The tour guide's lack of poise doomed that college for my daughter, who refused to apply. Another college's tour guide was wearing a red Coca- Cola T-shirt with " Enjoy Cocaine" written on it. I refused to let our son apply to that one. Of course, there are the tour guides whose presentations are so polished, I was tempted to ask to see their college ID, as it seemed more likely they were professional actors hired to impersonate student tour guides.
There is one very significant upside to college visits. Our teens have been so busy with homework, sports, or writing into the wee hours of the night for the school newsmagazine, that we have not actually seen them since they started high school. We know they still live with us because laundry appears, groceries disappear and we receive the occasional text. College visits give us the opportunity to spend many uninterrupted hours in planes, rental cars, hotels and restaurants with our senior. Driving through Iowa with spotty cell phone and Internet access is especially good for bonding. And in between college visits in southern California, my daughter and I spent a delightful afternoon at Disneyland. I had no idea that Disneyland is much more fun without small children along.
Through supporting our teens in the application process, we get reacquainted with them, just in time to send them off to college. The downside is that having had the opportunity to enjoy their company again, we miss them even more!


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SNOW HILL – Convicted West Ocean City murderer Gregory W. Stokes, 31, will learn his fate next week when he appears in Worcester County Circuit Court for a sentencing hearing which could put him behind bars for as many as 33 years.
On June 4, Stokes pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated cruelty to an animal in a pre-arranged deal between the state prosecutors and his defense lawyer and now faces as many as 33 years in jail for the combined convictions. The second-degree murder conviction carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail, while the cruelty to an animal charge carries a maximum of three years in jail. His sentencing hearing is set for next Wednesday, Aug. 8, in Snow Hill.
In the pre-arranged deal between Worcester County State's Attorney Joel Todd and defense attorney Neil Brafman, Stokes pleaded guilty to the two charges in exchange for having the other charges, including first-degree murder, against him dropped. The formalizing of the deal was delayed briefly in June because the court had not yet received the final report from the state psychiatrist who examined Stokes after Brafman filed a motion to declare his client not criminally responsible.
However, the state psychiatrist called Todd during the motions hearing in June and confirmed he was criminally responsible. Brafman, who sat in on the conference call, then agreed to move forward with the arranged plea bargain with the understanding a formal written report would be sent to the court prior to the sentencing hearing next week.
The case began with the discovery of a handgun in a car belonging to the victim's family involved in an accident in Salisbury on Jan. 11 and ended with the capture of Stokes in Baltimore less than 24 hours later.
On Thursday, Jan. 11, Maryland State Police responded to a motor vehicle accident on Route 13 at the Route 50 ramp near Salisbury and discovered an unoccupied 2001 Kia registered to the victim's father, William Ralph Balk, of Dockside Drive in Ocean City, in a ditch along the roadside.
As the vehicle was being towed, the Maryland State Trooper investigating the incident noticed a .38-caliber handgun on the floor of the truck. A short time later, Salisbury Police notified the State Police that the driver had taken a Salisbury City Cab from the scene. The cab was identified and subsequently stopped on eastbound Route 50 near Arthur W. Perdue Stadium. Stokes was found inside the cab and identified as the missing driver of the KIA. Stokes, who appeared intoxicated, according to police reports, told the trooper his girlfriend was driving the KIA and they had had an argument and decided to part ways.
At that time, the trooper noticed a "soft-sided" leather holster inside the crotch area of Stokes' pants. Stokes told the trooper he used the holster to carry his cell phone. With no further information available, Stokes was released and allowed to continue on his way in the Salisbury taxicab, according to police reports.
Not long after the trooper released Stokes and allowed him to continue on his way in the taxi, the MSP Salisbury Barrack got a call from a man who identified himself as Samuel Cavanaugh, who said "just after lunch" he had received a call from Stokes. Cavanaugh told police Stokes said "he had killed his girlfriend" and had "shot her a few times," according to police reports.
Because of the information provided by Cavanaugh, and because the KIA was registered to the victim's father, Worcester County Bureau of Investigation (WCBI) detectives went to the Dockside Drive residence in Mystic Harbour in West Ocean City around 1:30 p.m. that afternoon. The MSP Salisbury barrack had contacted the MSP Berlin barrack and advised that the Salisbury City Cab driver had dropped Stokes off at the Dockside Drive residence earlier.
Meanwhile, the WCBI detectives that responded to the Mystic Harbor residence looked through a sliding glass door and observed a female, later identified as Pamela Balk, lying motionless on a sleeper sofa. After unsuccessful attempts to wake the female, the detectives forced entry into the residence and discovered the deceased victim had been shot several times in the face and head, according to police reports.
Police also discovered the victim's dog in a back bedroom and the animal had been "struck with such force as to cause the animal's eye to dislocate from the socket," according to police reports.
The timeline in the police report is sketchy in terms of the actual times in the sequence of events, but it appears Stokes allegedly committed the crime sometime Thursday morning, first left the scene in the KIA, took a taxi cab back to the Mystic Harbor residence and later left in a Jeep Wrangler owned by the victim's parents.
The discovery of the KIA and later questioning of Stokes in the cab in Salisbury took place sometime in the late morning hours. The call to Cavanaugh from Stokes about what he had done occurred "just after lunch," and a witness, a resident on Dockside Drive, told police she saw Stokes leaving leaving the victim's home in the Jeep Wrangler between 12:15 and 12:30 p.m. WCBI detectives arrived at the victim's Dockside Drive residence around 1:30 p.m. and discovered the body a short time later.


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Miley Cyrus -- Cops Race to L.A. Home in Apparent 'Swatting' Prank
Miley Cyrus Cops Race to L.A. Home in Apparent 'Swatting' Prank
Cops raced to Miley Cyrus' L.A. house tonight after receiving a report about a possible home invasion ... but when they arrived to the scene, it turned out to be a false alarm ... and all signs point to a troubling prank known as "Swatting."
Law enforcement sources confirm ... the LAPD received a 911 call at 6:50 PM to report a possible home invasion, possible shots fired.
The LAPD responded immediately ... sending a chopper, and officers with high powered weapons , who immediately set up a perimeter around the home ... with guns drawn.
But the cops quickly determined the house was quiet, no one was home ... and there was no sign of a crime -- it was a false alarm.
Law enforcement tells TMZ ... officials now believe the caller is a "911 abuser."
The call seems to fall in line with a prank called "Swatting" -- in which a caller tries to trick emergency responders into dispatching law enforcement (like the SWAT team) to a home by making up a serious crime.
Cops tell TMZ ... if the call was indeed a prank, which it appears to be, the caller will be arrested ... and face serious criminal charges. In fact, we're told if someone were to be hurt or killed due to the prank, the caller could even face felony charges.


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The topic du jour on the left these days is inequality. But why does the left care about inequality? Do they really want to lift those at the bottom of the income ladder? Or are they just looking for one more reason to increase the power of government?
If you care about those at the bottom then you are wasting your time and everyone else's time unless you focus on one and only one phenomenon: the inequality of educational opportunity. Poor kids are almost always enrolled in bad schools. Rich kids are almost always in good schools.
So what does the left have to say about the public school system? Almost nothing. Nothing? That's right. Nothing. I can't remember ever seeing an editorial by Paul Krugman on how to reform the public schools. So I Googled to see if I have missed something. The only thing I found was a negative post about vouchers. And Krugman is not alone.
You almost never see anything written by left-of-center folks on reforming the public schools. And I have noticed on TV talk shows that it's almost impossible to get liberals to agree to the most modest of all reform ideas: getting rid of bad teachers and making sure we keep the good ones.
Here is the uncomfortable reality:
1.Our system of public education is one of the most regressive features of American society.
2.There is almost nothing we could do that would be more impactful in reducing inequality of educational opportunity and inequality overall than to do what Sweden has done: give every child a voucher and let them select a school of choice.
3.Yet on the left there is almost uniform resistance to this idea or any other idea that challenges the power of the teachers unions.
Over and over again, liberal pundits come up with objections to the idea of school choice. What they completely ignore is that we already have a system of school choice.
How school choice currently works. The vast majority of parents are already participating in a system of school choice. For example, there are 79 school districts within a 50-mile radius of downtown Dallas. Assuming each district has at least two campuses at each grade level, a typical family has a choice of about 158 public schools — provided the parents can afford to buy a house in any neighborhood and are willing to drive a considerable distance to work.
How well does this system work? Better than you might think. A study by researchers at Southern Methodist University and the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank found that North Dallas houses near higher-ranking elementary schools sold for about 20 percent more than houses near lower-ranking schools. The authors conclude that the market for education works surprisingly well. Parents can discern quality and the market charges a premium for it.
This conclusion is supported by an informal survey conducted by Dallas attorney H. Martin Gibson of housing prices in Highland Park — a wealthy Dallas suburb. Although most Highland Park homes are inside the Highland Park Independent School District (HPISD), a few are in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD). Gibson found that, all else equal, homes on the HPISD side of the street sell for 24 percent more than those on the DISD side. This implies that many Highland Park homeowners are paying about $72,000 just for the right to send their children to Highland Park schools.
More recently, the Brookings Institution investigated the same phenomena nationwide:
•Across the 100 largest metropolitan areas, housing costs an average of 2.4 times as much, or nearly $11,000 more per year, near a high-scoring public school than near a low-scoring public school.
•This housing cost gap reflects that home values are $205,000 higher on average in the neighborhoods of high-scoring versus low-scoring schools. Near high-scoring schools, typical homes have 1.5 additional rooms and the share of housing units that are rented is roughly 30 percentage points lower than in neighborhoods near low-scoring schools.
If the system works well for those who have money, how does it work for those who don't? What happens to families who cannot afford to buy a house in an expensive neighborhood? Unfortunately, they're out of luck. Since the current choice system in Dallas and across the country rations educational opportunity through the housing market, it's almost inevitable that the children of low-income families will end up in schools no one else wants to attend. These are the schools with the worst teachers, the worst principals and the lowest test scores.
A compounding factor is that parents who can afford more expensive homes are much more adept at dealing with public sector bureaucracies. If a bad teacher or principal is identified at a school in a wealthy neighborhood, parents typically will complain until that person is transferred to another school. Then the parents at the next school will likely complain. This transfer process will continue until the worst teachers and worst principals wind up at schools where either the parents don't complain or nothing happens if they do. These invariably are schools in low-income neighborhoods.
Of course, it is possible to turn a truly bad school into a good one through some Herculean effort. But if the effort was successful and perceived to be permanent, "gentrification" would occur. Middle-income families would move into the neighborhood and bid up housing prices. Low-income residents would be priced out of the market and would have to move somewhere else. It is no accident that the worst schools are consistently found in low-income neighborhoods that lie predominantly in urban areas. Indeed, it could not be otherwise.
How liberals view school choice. There have always been some on the left who want to liberate poor children from bad schools. But, sad to say, they are in a distinct minority. Here is Krugman on school choice:
… [P]roposals for school vouchers should be critiqued not only on educational or cost-efficiency grounds but also because they raise the risk of a collapse in the political support for public education. (If upper-middle-class families are allowed to "top up" their vouchers with their own money, they will soon realize that it is in their interest to cut the size of the vouchers as much as possible). And-dare we say it?-we should in general oppose privatization plans if they are likely to destroy public sector unions. After all, people on the right tend to favor privatization for exactly the same reason.
And what exactly would be wrong if the teachers unions went away? Clearly they view the schools as a jobs program far more than a way of lifting children out of poverty. What the teachers unions do systematically is support big government. They want higher taxes and more government spending. Even if you thought that these were good things, is it worth it to sacrifice millions of poor children in the process? The left apparently thinks so.
Postscript: Newly elected New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio appeared on Morning Joe the other day to explain why he wants to close some of the city's best charter schools:
Among the 870 Success Academy seats blocked was a modest 194-student expansion for Success Academy students in Harlem to move into a new middle school. That triggered days of searing press coverage pointing out that those 194 students, all low-income minorities, were coming from a school, Success Academy 4, that killed it on the new state test scores, with 80 percent of the students passing the math test, and 59 percent the English test. The co-located middle school the mayor is protecting and where many of those 194 charter students would end up: P.S. 149, where 5 percent of students passed the math test, and 11 percent the English test. (Slate)
While the other guests rightly pound on the mayor and expressed outrage, Economist Jeffrey Sachs sat by and said nothing. And everyone has a right to be silent. But not if you intend to turn around and tell us how important it is to do something about inequality.


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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
Hypochondria (or hypochondriasis, sometimes referred to as health anxiety/health phobia) refers to an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured him/her that his/her concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease. Many people suffering from this disorder focus on a particular symptom as the catalyst of their worrying, such as gastro-intestinal problems, palpitations, or muscle fatigue. The DSM-IV-TR defines this disorder, "Hypochondriasis," as a somatoform disorder and it is thought to plague about 1-5% of the general population.[1] Hypochondria is often characterized by fears that minor bodily symptoms may indicate a serious illness, constant self-examination and self-diagnosis, and a preoccupation with one's body. Many individuals with hypochondriasis express doubt and disbelief in the doctors' diagnosis, and report that doctors' reassurance about an absence of a serious medical condition is unconvincing, or un-lasting. Many hypochondriacs require constant reassurance, either from doctors, family, or friends, and the disorder can become a disabling torment for the individual with hypochondriasis, as well as his or her family and friends. Some hypochondriacal individuals are completely avoidant of any reminder of illness, whereas others are frequent visitors of doctors' offices. Other hypochondriacs will never speak about their terror, convinced that their fear of having a serious illness will not be taken seriously by those in whom they confide.
Hypochondria is often associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, and anxiety, and can also be brought on by stress. It is distinct from factitious disorders and malingering, in which an individual intentionally fakes, exaggerates, or induces mental or physical illnesses.
Etymology and colloquial use
The term hypochondria comes from the Greek hypo- (below) and chondros (cartilage - of the breast bone), and is thought to have been originally coined by Hippocrates. It was thought by many Greek physicians of antiquity that many ailments were caused by the movement of the spleen, an organ located near the hypochondrium (the upper region of the abdomen just below the ribs on either side of the epigastrium). Later use in the 19th Century employed the term to mean, "illness without a specific cause," and it is thought that around that time period the term evolved to be the male counterpart to female hysteria. In modern usage, the term hypochondriac is often used as a pejorative label for individuals who hold the belief that they have a serious illness despite repeated reassurance from physicians that they are perfectly healthy.
Manifestation and comorbidity
Hypochondriasis manifests in various ways. Some people have numerous intrusive thoughts and physical sensations that push them to check with family, friends and physicians. Other people are so afraid of any reminder of illness that they will avoid medical professionals for a seemingly minor problem, sometimes to the point of becoming neglectful of their health when a serious condition may exist and go undiagnosed. Yet, some others live in despair and depression, certain that they have a life-threatening disease and no physician can help them, considering the disease as a punishment for past misdeeds. [2]
Hypochondriasis is often accompanied by other psychological disorders. Clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (also known as OCD), phobias and somatization disorder are the most common accompanying conditions in people with hypochondriasis, as well as a generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis at some point in their life. [3]
Many people with hypochondriasis experience a cycle of intrusive thoughts followed by compulsive checking, which is very similar to the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, while people with hypochondriasis are afraid of having an illness, patients with OCD worry about getting an illness or of transmitting an illness to others. [2] Although some people might have both, these are distinct conditions.
Patients with hypochondriasis often are not aware that depression and anxiety produce their own physical symptoms that might be mistaken for signs of a serious medical disease. For example, people with depression often experience changes in appetite and weight fluctuation, fatigue, decreased interest in sex and motivation in life overall. Intense anxiety is associated with rapid heart beat, palpitations, sweating, muscle tension, stomach discomfort, and numbness or tingling in certain parts of the body (hands, forehead, etc.).
Factors contributing to Hypochondria
Cyberchondria is a colloquial term for hypochondria in individuals who have researched medical conditions on the internet. The media and the internet often contribute to hypochondria, as articles, TV shows and advertisements regarding serious illnesses such as cancer and multiple sclerosis (some of the common diseases hypochondriacs think they have) often portray these diseases as being random, obscure and somewhat inevitable. Inaccurate portrayal of risk and the identification of non-specific symptoms as signs of serious illness contribute to exacerbating the hypochondriac's fear that they actually have that illness.
Major disease outbreaks or predicted pandemics can also contribute to hypochondria. Statistics regarding certain illnesses, such as cancer, will give hypochondriacs the illusion that they are more likely to develop the disease. A simple suggestion of mental illness can often trigger one with hypochondria to obsess over the possibility.
It is common for serious illnesses or deaths of family members or friends to trigger hypochondria in certain individuals. Similarly, when approaching the age of a parent's premature death from disease, many otherwise healthy, happy individuals fall prey to hypochondria. These individuals believe they are suffering from the same disease that caused their parent's death, sometimes causing panic attacks with corresponding symptoms.
A majority of people who experience physical pains or anxieties over non-existent ailments are not actually "faking it", but rather, experience the natural results of other emotional issues, such as very high amounts of stress.
Our emotions have cognitive, physiological and feeling components. For example, when one is sad, an individual may simultaneously experience muscle weakness and loss of energy. Whether it is an emotional memory, a vivid fantasy, or a present situation, the brain treats it the same. It is a real experience processed through neural paths.
Family studies of hypochondriasis do not show a genetic transmission of the disorder. Among relatives of people suffering from hypochondriasis only somatization disorder and generalized anxiety disorder were more common than in average families. [2] Other studies have shown that the first degree relatives of patients with OCD have a higher than expected frequency of a somatoform disorder (either hypochondriasis or body dysmorphic disorder). [4] Many people with hypochondriasis point out a pattern of paying close attention to bodily sensations, preventative investigations, and checking with physicians, that they have learned from family members, but there is no definitive scientific support for this notion.
Many people are aware that anxiety and depression are mediated by problems with brain chemicals such as serotonin and norepinephrine. The physical symptoms that people with anxiety or depression feel are indeed real bodily symptoms, and are in fact triggered by neurochemical changes. For example, too much norepinephrine will result in severe panic attacks with symptoms of increased heart rate and sweating, shortness of breath, and fear. Too little serotonin can result in severe depression, accompanied by an inability to sleep, severe fatigue, and needs fixing.
To treat hypochondriasis, one must acknowledge the interplay of body and mind. If a person is sick with a medical disease such as diabetes or arthritis, there will often be psychological consequences, such as depression. Some even report being suicidal. In the same way, someone with psychological issues such as depression or anxiety will sometimes experience physical manifestations of these affective fluctuations, often in the form of medically unexplained symptoms. Common symptoms include headaches, abdominal, back, joint, rectal, or urinary pain, nausea,itching, diarrhea, dizziness, or balance problems. Many people with hypochondriasis accompanied by medically unexplained symptoms feel they are not understood by their physicians, and are frustrated by their doctors' repeated failure to provide symptom relief. Common to the different approaches to the treatment of hypochondriasis is the effort to help each patient find a better way to overcome the way his/her medically unexplained symptoms and illness concerns rule her/his life. Current research makes clear that this excessive worry can be helped by either appropriate medicine or targeted psychotherapy.
For a long time, hypochondriasis was considered untreatable. However, recent scientific studies show that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs, e.g., fluoxetine and paroxetine) are effective treatment options for hypochondriasis as demonstrated in clinical trials [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. CBT, a psycho-educational "talk" therapy, helps the worrier to address and cope with bothersome physical symptoms and illness worries and is found helpful in reducing the intensity and frequency of troubling bodily symptoms. SSRIs can reduce obsessional worry through readjusting neurotransmitter levels, have been shown to be effective as treatments for anxiety and depression, as well as for hypochondriasis.
NIH-funded studies are now underway to compare different treatment approaches for hypochondriasis: a study in the NYC area and a study in the Boston area. In these studies, patients will be given one of four treatments: supportive therapy with fluoxetine, supportive therapy with placebo, cognitive behavior therapy, or cognitive behavior therapy with fluoxetine. For more information you can also visit external links.
In Norway a clinic specializing in the treatment of hypochondria has been opened.
Tips for hypochondriacs
If one is worried about having a serious medical illness despite receiving reassurance to the contrary by a physician during a comprehensive evaluation, it might be beneficial to put these techniques into practice:
- Keeping a journal describing symptoms or events that led to your episodes of illness should allow one to see the illness clearer.
- Trying to restrict or put a time limit on one's internet medical research, reading of medical books, or self-checking behaviors, as they tend to increase illness worries.
- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including a good night sleep, well-balanced diet and a positive outlook. A good tip is to follow the PEAS tool sometimes used to combat depression: Pleasure, Exercise, Achievement and Socializing - try to add an aspect of each to daily activities.
- Practicing relaxation techniques, such as breathing, meditation or other methods may help to decrease anxiety and the effects of stress.
- Trying interrupt one's worries with activities that will fully engage one's attention and shift it away from illness; for example, hobbies, word or number games, exercise or walking, talking with a humorous friend, or recalling happy memories.
- Thinking about alternative explanations for one's physical sensations that might include stress or normal bodily changes.
- Breaking one's habits of worrying one step at a time.
Self-Help Books
The following self-help books might be helpful as well.
- Stress Management and Relaxation
- Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. Joan Borysenko. Bantam, 1988.
- The Wellness Book. Herbert Benson and Eileen Stuart. Simon & Schuster/Fireside, 1992
- The Woman's Comfort Book. Jennifer Louden. Harper SanFrancisco, 1992.
- The Stress Solution-An Action Plan to Manage the Stress in Your Life. Lyle Miller and Alma Dell Smith. Pocket Book, 1993.
- Wellness at Work-Building Resilience to Job Stress. Valerie O'Hara. New Harbinger Publications, 1995.
- Wellness and Symptom Management
- Stop Suffering Now. Arthur J. Barsky and Emily C. Deans. HarperCollins, 2005.
- Phantom Illness: Recognizing, Understanding, and Overcoming Hypochondria. Carla Cantor and Brian Fallon. Mariner Books, 1997.
- Hypochondria: Woeful Imaginings. Susan Baur. University of California Press, 1989.
- Managing Pain Before It Manages You. Margaret Caudill. Guilford Press, 1995.
- Healing Mind, Healthy Woman. Alice Domar and Henry Dreher. Henry Holt & Co,1996.
- Living a Healthy Life with a Chronic Condition. Kate Lorig, Holstead Holman. Bull Publishing Co, 1994.
- The Healthy Mind Healthy Body Handbook. David Sobel and Robert Ornstein. HarperCollins,1996.
- It's Not All in Your Head. Gordon JG Asmundson and Steven Taylor. Guilford Press, 2005
- Stop worrying About your Health! George Zgourides. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2002
- Back Sense. Ronald D. Siegel, Michael H. Urdang, Douglas R. Johnson. Broadway Books, 2001.
- The Feeling Good Handbook. David Burns. Penguin, 1989.
- Mind Over Mood. Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky. Guilford Press, 1995.
Pop Culture
In the 2001 film Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (The Fabulous Life of Amélie Poulain), Isabelle Nanty's character Georgette is a hypochondriac.
In the 2005 DreamWorks Animation film Madagascar, a giraffe (Melman) is portrayed as a hypochondriac.
On the show South Park, Stan Marsh's father, Randy Marsh, is described by his son as a hypochondriac in the episode "Bloody Mary".
In the film My Girl the leading character Vada is a hypochondriac most likely due to her being raised in a funeral home.
In the film, Bandits, one of the bank robbers (portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton), Terry, is a hypochondriac. The other bank robber, Joe, used this to an advantage once, and claimed that his brother received a brain tumor from smelling burning feathers as a joke to get Terry to worry.
In the TV series, Scrubs, recurring character Harvey Korman, portrayed by actor Richard Kind, is a hypochondriac that appears in several episodes. His most notable appearance being in the episode, "My New Old Friend."
In the 1986 hit film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris' friend Cameron Frye (portrayed by Alan Ruck) was displaying some symptoms of hypochondria throughout the movie, notably when he is lying in bed thinking he is sick, until Ferris convinces him that it's all in his head.
In the TV series, Boy Meets World Cory is diagnosed with hypochondria and sees it as a real illness.
In the book It, Eddie Kaspbrak's mother is a hypochondriac who convinces her son that he is frail and has asthma, even though he does not. She even argues with doctors regarding her son's health.
See also
- ↑ American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., text revised, Washington, DC, APA, 2000.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Fallon BA, Qureshi, AI, Laje G, Klein B: Hypochondriasis and its relationship to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychiatr Clin North Am 2000; 23:605-616.
- ↑ Barsky AJ: Hypochondriasis and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychiatr Clin North Am 1992; 15:791-801.
- ↑ Bienvenu OJ, Samuels JF, Riddle MA, Hoehn-Saric R, Liang KY, Cullen BAM, Grados, MA, Nestadt G: The relationship of obsessive-compulsive disorder to possible spectrum disorders: results from a family study. Biological Psychiatry 2000, 48:287-293.
- ↑ Barsky AJ, Ahern DK: Cognitive behavior therapy for hypochondriasis: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA 2004; 291:1464-1470.
- ↑ Clark DM, Salkovskis PM, Hackman A, Wells A, Fennell M, Ludgate J, Ahmand S, Richards HC, Gelder M: Two psychological treatments for hypochondriasis, a randomized controlled trial. Br J Psychiatry 1998; 173:218-225.
- ↑ Fallon BA, Schneier FR, Marshall R, Campeas R, Vermes D, Goetz D, Liebowitz MR: The pharmacotherapy of hypochondriasis. Psychopharmacol Bull 1996; 32:607-611.
- ↑ Fallon BA, Qureshi AI, Schneiner FR, Sanchez-Lacay A, Vermes D, Feinstein R, Connelly J, Liebowitz MR: An open trial of fluvoxamine for hypochondriasis. Psychosomatics 2003; 44:298-303.
- ↑ Greeven A, Van Balkom AJ, Visser S, Merkelbach JW, Van Rood YR, Van Dyck R, Van der Does AJ, Zitman FG, Spinhoven P: Cognitive behavior therapy and paroxetine in the treatment of hypochondriasis: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Psychiatry 2007; 164:91-99.
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The Kite Runner
Fremont is where author Khaled Hosseini grew up after his folks left Afghanistan in 1980. It's interesting to me that in real life Hosseini is a practicing physician (age 38), while he makes the protagonist in his somewhat autobiographical book a professional writer. That Amir's father in the novel accepts his son's unconventional choice of profession without a fight -- which no South Asian parent would ever do! -- might be the only thing that really doesn't ring true for me in terms of the immigrant experience reflected in The Kite Runner.
It's hard to say exactly why The Kite Runner has become such a big hit. According to one recent USA Today article, it's sold more than 1.4 million copies and had 17 printings, which makes it a certifiable phenomenon for a first-time author in today's anemic book market. (Other tidbits: it's currently ranked #9 at Amazon, and hit #1 on the New York Times paperback bestseller list this spring.) It's almost entirely a word-of-mouth phenomenon, which makes it even more impressive. Americans want to read this book -- by an unknown Afghan who happens to have a name that's not so different from "Hussein." That's something.
And most people I've talked to -- including several of my colleagues in the English department -- seem to really like the story. It clicks; it strikes a nerve; it does something. There are also doubters, such as this Slate writer, who found the book's psychological focus on redemption a little too pat -- almost programmed to appeal to western readers. (Hm, she may have a point there.)
In my view, though it's not quite a literary masterpiece, The Kite Runner does do some interesting things narratively, and is a nicely paced and carefully written story. The most intriguing element for me are the references to the 9th century Persian epic the Shahnamah (sometimes spelled Shahnameh), by the Persian writer Firdawsi.
The particular chapter of the Shahnamah that is singled out in The Kite Runner (and it has resonance in more than one way in the story, but I won't give away exactly how) is the story of Rostam and Sohrab. Rostam is a king and a brave fighter who has a rival named Sohrab. After a series of skirmishes, Rostam mortally wounds Sohrab. In the conversation the two of them have after the battle, as Sohrab is dying, it becomes clear that Sohrab is in fact Rostam's long-lost son. Here's the paragraph quoted in the novel:
If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of thine obstinancy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting...
Ah yes, fathers, sons, and a scene of primeval violence. It's the kind of thing that only really happens in heatbreaking medieval epics and melodramatic Hindi films, but it gets me every time. It's important in the beginning of the novel -- as the protagonist feels neglected by his father -- and it becomes important again at the end, in an interesting way. If you don't stop to notice the connection, you might miss it.
(Incidentally, check out illustrations from different early manuscripts of the Shahnamah at the Shahnama Project at SOAS. Beautiful... And here is a translation of just the Rostam and Sohrab chapter of the Shahnamah).
The other thing I like in The Kite Runner is the way Hosseini goes easy on the ethnography. You don't hear long lectures on Burqas, or Pashtun marriage rituals, or inter-ethnic rivalries in Afghan society. There is a little on each of the above in the novel -- you might learn a couple of things about relations between Pashtuns and Hazaras -- and that's undoubtedly part of its appeal for some people. But Hosseini doesn't hit the reader over the head with it, the way Asne Seierstad does in The Bookseller of Kabul -- the "other" book on Afghanistan everyone is talking about.
(On the other hand, Seierstad's book is an explicitly feminist account of how Afghani customs are oppressive to women. This is something Hosseini's book doesn't really get into much. His next book, he says, will deal with gender issues in Afghan culture much more directly.)
Hosseini avoids excessive explanation and historical context; perhaps he realized while writing it in 2001-2002 that many readers coming to his book would already know the story of the exile of King Zahir Shah in 1973, of the Soviet invasion and the devastating civil war that followed, and the rise of the Taliban (see Wikipedia for a brief primer on modern Afghani history).
With the ethnography and historical explanation at a minimum, Hosseini is free to jump right into the story.


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July 7, 2009
Google Apps Premier Demo Accounts
A small number of features can't be used in the demo account: Postini email services, domain aliasing and phone support, but all the other options should be available. You can test the APIs, the migration tool, Google Apps Sync for Outlook, the video sharing service and other business-oriented features.
When you sign up for Google Apps Premier Edition, the service is free for the first month, but you need to have a domain and you have to configure some advanced settings. The demo account is much easier to use, even if you only have two weeks to explore the myriad of features included in Google Apps.
If you only want to use Google Apps for personal use or for a small group, you should try the free edition, which is still available, despite Google's efforts to make it more difficult to find*. TechCrunch claims that "the free version of Google Apps is history", but that's not true and I'm certain that Google will always offer a free version.
* How to find the link to Google Apps Standard Edition? Go to Google Apps' homepage, click on "Gmail and Google Calendar", then click on "See details and sign up" and then select "Not a business? Explore Standard Edition". Only three links from the homepage.
22 comments:
why don't they give it free for 140 days...........? lolReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 7:11 AM
All fine and well, but if you choose Google Apps you have to forfeit other services, such as Google Reader (unless you are prepared to have multiple email addresses, which can be confusing for clients).ReplyDelete
I agree with Sankar, 14 days is not enough to test all the features, maybe a month or so.ReplyDelete
I hope they keep the free version.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 9:19 AM
This is GREAT. If 14 days aren't enough for you, I think that you can always start another demo..ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 11:19 AM
A per user price of $50 is ridiculous when you can have a hosted website for $60/year!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 1:22 PM
I think it's priced right. $50 / user / year is comparable to the cost of a Lotus Domino (and MS Exchange I think) client license BUT Google Apps doesn't have any hardware cost and almost zero administrative costs. And it works "out of the box"..ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 1:50 PM
Shared contacts?ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 2:00 PM
There's a shared contacts API for Google Apps premier. And look at the news on Google Enterprise blog on the forthcoming mail delegation feature. Looks like Google wants to ship a complete enterprise product..ReplyDelete
It doesn't have secure data connectorsReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 7, 2009 at 11:41 PM
Are you talking about this?ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 8, 2009 at 11:22 AM
<< If you only want to use Google Apps for personal use or for a small group, you should try the free edition, which is still available, despite Google's efforts to make it more difficult to find*. >>ReplyDelete
The link for the free edition is back:
- AnonymousJuly 23, 2009 at 6:19 AM
I currently have the Standard edition but am willing to pay for Premier just so I'll be able to use the new Gmail BlackBerry Plug-in when it comes out of RIM beta in a few weeks. BUT...if, I ever want to switch back from Premier to Standard, is this possible (without a hassle)?ReplyDelete
Yes, you can downgrade from Premier to the Standard edition, but you should know that Google "does not provide refunds for domain registration or Premier Edition subscriptions" (more here). When you upgrade to Premier, you get a 30-day free trial.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 24, 2009 at 8:53 AM
Thanks, Alex. I'm not worried about the refund, but I had just read a few horror stories about taking a long time to get downgraded back to Standard. I'll wait until I know for sure that RIM's new Gmail Plugin will only work with Premier before I upgrade to Premier...they might change their minds and let it work with with the standard edition.ReplyDelete
I want to upgrade to Premiere, and I own a domain name, but am not using it actively for email or anything. Would that be a problem when upgrading?ReplyDelete
- AnonymousOctober 6, 2009 at 7:55 PM
"A per user price of $50 is ridiculous when you can have a hosted website for $60/year! " your a jackass, $60 a year to host a site doesnt give you the apps does it, some people should just stick to pushing trolliesReplyDelete
what if you want to try to google apps premier just to get the dual delivery option in order to set it up before taking down exchange? when you get it working then u downgrade it and have no charge?ReplyDelete
Not to be cheap but the standard would be fine for us and I need to test it first.
You get a 30-day trial when you sign up for Google Apps Premier. The trial can be cancelled before it expires and you'll not be charged if you cancel the trial in the first 30 days. You'll be downgraded to the standard edition.ReplyDelete
The problem is, there is no way to contact Google after you sign up for Premier. I can't find a PIN or any other information. No One to contact. I tried to cancel and their auto info says sales are final. I post a question and get no response. I'm so disappointed to see this kind of performance with Google.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 14, 2010 at 6:28 AM
This post is baloney. Google Apps is the choice of fruitcakes.ReplyDelete
Once you get touched by Google in any way -you can close you account, but it means nothing to Google.
Google keeps everything on file, all your vital statistics, your credit card numbers, AND THE PREDATORY HAIRBALLS OVER AT Google Checkout will keep your email address (if it's not a Google address) in their high-speed spam mill, -sending spam to victims of this Google arrogance.
Google is a company that has form emails it sends out to those who claim about being ripped off.
Wait-a-second. I thought customer complaints were supposed to be anomalies?
How does Google deal with customer complaints? Google deals with form emails, and there's no human touch required to rip you off.
Give them a credit card number and you are screwed.
Google is busy building a predatory Internet machine that rips people off, -no human touch required.
They steal you blind with bait and switch offerings (like Google Apps out of the Blogspot when you pay them $10 for a "custom domain" which then will never work with your Blogspot site, so you have to go to Google Apps. You just paid Google $10 to advertise to you.
And then Google lets you scream at their computer, which promptly and soul-less-ly sends you a form email saying -tough! We keep your money. All your money and time are us, is Google's attitude.
Google is designed by Nintendo players. This is like trying to beat Zelda. Who really has the time to try?
And then Google has the gall to start spamming you after you have totally sworn off Google, even switching you default search engine to Bing and after you've closed your account -completely- utterly disgusted with the bew business ethic pervasive on the Internet.
It's a predatory business model Google is living.
You'll never cough up the predatory hairball that is Google.
Google is the vampire leech that has attached itself to your forehead permanently.
Don Robertson
Limestone, Maine
I would agree with the fellow poster, and that is that it is time to forget G.ReplyDelete
The point about the saving of statistics should be taken into effect.


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With his win in Saturday's third and final training running, America's Bode Miller proved he's the man to beat in Alpine Skiing's marquee event — Sunday's Olympic Downhill.
Sure, his rivals might still have been holding something back in the hopes of not revealing their cards too early, but so was Miller. Rather than squat low in his tuck—a taxing, low-profile position that's akin to doing squats while resisting serious g-forces—and risk fatiguing his legs, the five-time Olympian stood tall during the Rosa Khutor's gliding sections to save strength.
"I just wasn't working quite so much with aerodynamics; I was just standing a little taller and resting," Miller told a scrum of reporters under brilliant blue skies at the finish. "It felt good on my legs, I wasn't as tired."
It was a smart play. At over two miles in length, the Rosa Khutor course is the second longest downhill track in the world, relentlessly throwing skiers back and forth across the hill in a series of long, swooping, bumpy turns. And at 36, Miller—who sat out last season to nurse a knee injury—is one of the oldest skiers competing, meaning he'll have to save every ounce of strength for his gold medal assault on Sunday.
Elsewhere during his third training run, however, Miller wasn't holding anything back. After putting his superior technical abilities to good use by skiing the tightest and most aggressive line through the course's serpentine upper section, the five-time Olympic medalist continued to build speed, effortlessly absorbing bumps and carving difficult, off camber turns the rest of the way down.
"It was fun," Miller said. "It's one of those courses where I don't think you're safer by going easy. The key to this course is based on your athleticism and your ability to get on the front of your skis."
Despite his advanced age, Miller entered this season in arguably his best ever shape, returning to competition a full 20 pounds lighter. He thinks his renewed fitness will payoff in dividends at these demanding Olympics, where he's competing in all five Alpine events.
But beyond his strength and tactics, there appears to be something almost magical about Miller's current level of skiing. After a shaky start to the season, one punctuated by moments of brilliance but largely categorized by a failure to live up to his proven potential, Miller seems to have rediscovered his mojo, looking looser and smoother with each run he's taken down the Rosa Khutor course.
Even Miller's rivals are taking note.
"He's skiing really well," acknowledged Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, the only competitor to finish within a second of Miller during Saturday's training. "That's his biggest advantage right now. Especially the top part, it's impressive."
Is a coveted downhill gold medal all but inevitable for Miller? Of course anything can happen on race day (particularly in the Olympic downhill, which has a history of upsets), but with his impressive performance in training this week, Miller is now squarely the favorite.
Just ask chief rival Svindal: "Is he the favorite? I think so. He's been the best skier on this mountain, so right now he looks like the favorite."