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Kudos to Matt Finch for listing eight interesting, specific, testable prophecies.
My predictions:
Stronger ties between Paizo and WotC. Hasbro continues not to care, because they can't think of a way to really capitalize on the D&D brand, but continue to assume there's gold in them thar hills.
Stronger push for DDI. Those who count beans in WotC will continue to see that as a stronger way to bring in revenue as the sales of books continue to sink. The virtual table will be the new tentpole attraction.
Continued experimentation with "niche" settings in the OSR. Lot's more "weird fantasy," "weird sci-fi," and mixes of the two. A steampunk OSR setting or game will suddenly make a play for center-stage.
New experimentation with alternate forms of revenue streams in OSR products. And by this I mean, selling something other than books and PDFs.
Raggi's continued success (and openness about his business practices) inspires others to try to follow in his footsteps. Most will fall flat on their faces because they won't really have anything new or needed to offer. One (possibly two) will become big new names in the OSR.
Folks mostly known as OSR types will start to branch out into other RPG genres, other sorts of games, other media (novels, low-budget animation, online comics). A tiny handful of these will experience unexpected success.
I predict that neither Barking Alien nor Biopunk will tell me who these "more socially relevant innovators" in RPGs are, considering that RPGs have only become less and less popular since the Gygax days.
I also predict that anyone who cares about what's "socially relevant" when they sit down and play a game in the privacy of their own home with their friends will eventually ask themselves why they care.
I also predict that if he does tell me who these socially relevant innovators are and we try out these socially relevant games, nobody in my ethnically diverse, pansexual, mixed-gender gaming group will think it's all that special.
I also predict that biopunk will continue to refrain from using blanket statements and talk like a Master Baiter when he comes around to -my- blog yet still do so elsewhere, for reasons obscure to me.
1. Paizo and Hasbro will come to real blows. There will be key employee defections from one side to the other. There will be legal battling between the two game publishers that will not amount to much aside from some public squabbling.
2. Hasbro will (finally) release a digital D&D based and branded "virtual game table" type of product that will generate much positive press and will cause other RPG houses to announce or seriously consider similar initiatives.
3. Hasbro will announce ongoing development of a D&D based TV show or animated feature at GenCon, release date TDB.
I rather hope OSRIC will enter distribution in 2011.
I predict that I will be trying out 4e in this year. I am currently playing in 3.5 ToEE campaign and can say that 4e positively looks like 1e compared to the rules glut that I have to wade through in this one while playing.
I mean in 4e vs PF fight, ruleswise and even setting-wise (PoL vs Golarion), PF is for me the worst offender. On the other hand I love planet stories and all that.
Someone will fix D&D by inventing RuneQuest (as has happened every year).
Someone will talk about what they think is an idea for a role-playing game, but is really an idea for a dice mechanic (as happens more or less constantly on rpg.net).
-Hasbro sells off all rights to D&D.
-OSR continues to grow and more innovative products continue to be produced by the fans.
-more local hobby game stores close
-Obama's college transcripts are opened and it's revealed he was president of the D&D club. (meanwhile birthers claim this proves he was really born in Blackmoor)
First off:
My Predictions:(Forgot last time)
1)4th Edition continues to crumble.(No Suprise there.)
2)Pathfinder market share up.
3)WW's WOD attempts comeback.
4)More professional new Old-School stuff.
5)James Maliszewski will become the Anti-Pope of Old School when he embraces Dogs In The Vineyard, and attempts to spread his influence over a Forge-less world.(Ok, maybe not that one.)
@Barking Alien:
"@Biopunk - Careful with the terms innovation, socially relevant and variety. As I've learned the hard way recently some OSR fans can develop allergic reactions. They break out in silly responses. Treat them gingerly and consult your local grognard. ;P" Only when they're insulting about it, and I would dare say most people aren't posting 'silly' responses to what is after all subjective positions on a game. It's their opinion on RPGs, it's kinda not earth-shatteringly important. Just fun. Not a grognard, by the way! ;-)
Choice of words:
Purposefully insulting, great tactic. Never saw that on the Net before...
Reinventing the Wheel:
Happens every day, people love to tinker, but incrementally, this field reflects that strongly.
Socially relevant innovators:
Those dudes? Oh, I mean they're known to a select group of people, but their efforts aren't as well known amongst even the Fan Community as even say Bill Slavisek, Johnathon Tweet, Sandy Peterson, or the like. I agree they have interesting product. Zak Sabbath in particular.
On Flaws: All games have them, old or not. Though some seem to think otherwise, especially if the devs supposedly thought long and hard about 'fundamental changes'.(Slaughtering 'Sacred Cows' and the like.)
On players: I've read the blogs, and almost all of them do play, but many would like to play more, but with the same line-up, and they never seem to seek out anyone else that could be potentially interested in playing. More people would be good, all I'm saying...
On Art: It was good back then, still good today, imo. There are artists around now I'd like to see do some illos, of course.
As for the hobgoblin: not partial to it. Mine looked different :-)
Paradigm Shift: In IT industry, it's definitely code, dude.
On reactionary: overused term, caution is good sometimes. Why isn't Alignment gone yet? Hit Points, still? 'vancian magic[nonesuch]'s still here. were just some of my reactions to Third Edition! But everybody's reactionary sometimes!
Thanks to Tenkar's (www.tenkarstavern.com) excellent blog I've become aware of many of the other great RPG blogs that exist, challenge, and inspire me throughout the year.
It is my hope that the articles at White Haired Man's (www.whitehairedman.com) blog will do the same for many of you. Happy New Year and many happy returns.
@KP: Thanks.
We are also a terribly nostalgic bunch that views a certain part of our youth through rose-coloured glasses. I really don't begrudge those in the OSR for reminiscing over illustrations in the Monster Manual or whatever image it was that first inspired them.
We were all inspired by all those illustrations because, at the time, the game was completely 'new' to us. We were inspired because the artwork was relatively simple and that our imaginings of the creatures in our fantasy worlds could easily grow from it.
Very few of us have any remaining physical representations of game play from that time.
Playing a game that is mostly in your head tends to do that.
The art didn't make the game intrinsically any better; it just gave us a common point of reference when discussing our part in playing it.
It is also one of the few things that we can now agree on as a 'shared' experience.
When most of us fought our first hobgoblin, it probably looked like the hobgoblins on p.52 of the Monster Manual or on the cover of Keep on the Borderlands. That is pretty cool.
I just don't believe in saying that because that happens, it makes one artist's representation superior to another's.
I am curious as to how the 4E vs Pathfinder battle will play out over the year. Both companies put out state-of-the-art products; and my bookshelves are filling up with both. The problem - other than my increasing debt-load - is that I definitely don't have time to play both; so who to support.
When 4E came out with it's tougher GSL (and doesn't that look like a tactical error now)many of the independents launched their own 3.5 variants; at the time PF looked like one of the herd, and a little slow to launch to boot. Now, as PF continues to move from success to success I'd imagine they'll benefit from many of the other alternate 3.5 systems being quietly abandoned in there favour. Look at the way Monte Cook's Dungeon-a-Day went from being generic 3.5 to pretty much an official PF product.
PF also has an advantage in that all those myriad 3E/3.5E products will work with it with the odd adjustment; and I imagine it'd be easier and quicker to adapt AD&D and OSR products to PF than to 4E.
OTOH 4E looks so different and "next-gen"; and it seems like it'd be fun and balanced to play (at least as far as combat and dungeon-crawling go; it seems to be a little prescriptive and deficient on the role-playing side of things).
For a veteran of many campaigns PF (or OSR even) seems the more logical choice. For a brand-new, teen player? I don't know. I think 4E might be a more attractive product for players new to the hobby. In my experience (as a gamer and junior high teacher) most teens who've heard of tabletop RPGs only know 4E - to them that's D&D. The odd exception being the kid who's dad played D&D, and shows up at Games Club clutching a set of worn 1E rulebooks, .
Alcibiades of Willowdale
Oh, and Paradigm Shift is what happens to your character after Epic levels. It's in the new 4ed Immortals set. Trust me.
One of two things will happen:
1. Hasbro will give up on WotC's brand management of D&D and will take over the brand name entirely. We can then look forward to either the D&D board game with collectable expansion packs and D&D Trivial Pursuit, or D&D branded Nerf, Transformer, and G.I. Joe products.
2. Hasbro will give up on WotC's brand management of D&D and will sell the IP to the highest bidder. Some rich grognard will buy it up and keep it locked away. Tunnels & Trolls will reign supreme.
I thought the AD&D hardbacks will be republished in their original form by WoTC... For fun and profit... Or it will be in 2012 only? Why should they wait for another year? :)
I predict tin foil hat sales will skyrocket in 2011.
@Biopunk: Your views, and hopes for the OSR seem in stark contrast to what the OSR holds dear. Looking back at the founders of early roleplaying with fresh eyes, and examining their design choices; embracing more straightforward art than 'dungeonpunk' and flash; as well as showing new-school gamers what value old school gaming has to offer.
I don't keep close enough tabs on the OSR publishing world to be able to predict what changes or innovations might be around the corner. I HOPE that in 2011 that there will be more OSR products that provide DIY creation toolkits/guides for the aspiring OSR DM, than what I consider 'vanity projects'.
"ALL RPGs are D&D with the serial numbers filed off..."
- Maybe to you, but reinventing the wheel every month isn't exactly bringing anything innovative to the table.
As to "the who"?
-Micheal Curtis, for sure, for his 'The Dungeon Alphabet' alone.
A few months earlier, I would have said Raggi, McKinney or Sabbath; now that they have put all their eggs in one basket, I'm not so sure.
As to the "who is professing to love, but not play"?
-Read more blogs. It is not an uncommon complaint. And as you do, remember that not everyone has the same opportunities you do to get together a group to game with.
I said nothing about 'correcting' anything, but that is effectively what home-brew and house rules do. I said admitting there are "failings".
"Telling somebody to develop 'emotional maturity' sounds highly insulting..."
-That was the point of my statement.
That is part of a paradigm shift.
Paradigm Shift isn't "code" for anything. It is is a way of describing a fundamental change. It has nothing to do with "better". It has everything to do with 'different'.
Remember the 'R' in OSR is supposed to be for 'renaissance', not 'reactionary'.
There is far too much of the latter in this 'movement'.
People will continue to bitch and carp at each other on forums and blogs.
"At what level do I get Paradigm Shift?"
I think it's a mutation that comes up during character creation.
RPGNow Print on Demand will become an important part of the small press publishing landscape.
In addition RPGNow Print on Demand will start to make "Out of print" obselete as witnessed by many of Chaosium's current offers (like the Great Pendragon Campaign).
Finally See more full color OSR supplements as RPGNow's PoD Color price is very competitive. Although it will take a few months for everybody to catch on.
At what level do I get Paradigm Shift?
1) I also think that James Raggi will continue to gain traction, partly due to a big brouhaha about the art and content of his material. I don't think he will have cash flow problems. I do think that he will have more copies of his game than he can sell during the year, and that he will respond to this with discounts or packaged bundles of game + modules.
2) Frog God Games will continue to publish a steady stream of materials for Swords & Wizardry / AD&D / OD&D. Some people will hate this, some people will be happy about it.
3) Old school gaming will gain traction in the mainstream community via the larger clones gaining more name recognition. This will lead to a gateway effect that brings younger gamers in, and return gamers in. This will result in message boards becoming more elitist about their new and old members. A new message board might even spring up as a result, but I doubt this.
4) OSRIC will get more aggressively published, which will lead to more edition-warring among the clones. Publishers will try to stop that trend, and will succeed to a large degree, but it will remain a low-level feature of the landscape from then onward. AD&D will get new players through OSRIC in the same way that other clones have a "gateway" effect.
5) There will be a lot of controversy about Joe Goodman's "old school" game as publication approaches. It will be generally hated in the old school message boards, but will get some traction in the mainstream. It might or might not succeed - that will depend on its quality and whether Goodman supports it in 2012.
6) WotC will not bother with the clones; their problem is Paizo and Pathfinder, and the clones are minuscule compared to the threat of Pathfinder. Last year, WotC could have used the clones to explain their weakness to HASBRO (incorrectly, but still a good straw-grasp). Now, with Paizo building so fast, it's simply too clear that WotC's weakness lies elsewhere than the clones.
7) The value of the D&D trademark falls, as Pathfinder rises. WotC will seek to use it for collateral purposes - movies, novels, card games, whatever they can do to change it into a generic franchise rather than a purely gaming franchise.
8) 4e recovers a bit of ground after the disastrous launch, but continues to lose ground to Pathfinder - more slowly, but still a frightening trend for WotC brand management.
I'm expecting 2011 to be a year more about big campaigns than big products. I'm also hoping to meet a bunch more Toronto area gamers.
Wow. I thought I was in a bad mood before I read the comments!
James, if I had not had to relocated my family and find a new church to pastor in 2010, X-Plorers would have been released. I think you saw the truth, but the world just didn't cooperate. :)
Wild, crazy, off-the-wall prediction: An OSR module, a super-dungeon if you will, that doesn't take place in a 'dungeon.' Hasn't anyone heard of the great outdoors? A city? The next day, the OSR implodes.
And my own Simulacra (isn't that the name of a city in the old Expert rules?) of Stratego called Capture the Flag.
No, but they are fantasy science games... hence they are also subject to WotC's scrutiny. Wait, Gamma World IS WotC! So that one is okay...
Do the new Gamma World or Sorcery and Super Science count as science fantasy games?
Innovation, socially relevant and variety? (achoo! itch-itchi-tch...) :)
No game is perfect, never will be, old or new. That doesn't mean not to play them though. It's half the fun!
Putting on my swamy turbin, I predict...
1. Gygax Games will release Gary's infamous Greyhawk Castle in its entirety through WotC. This will be the kickoff to D&D's 5th Edition.
2. New internet regulations will allow Hasbro/WotC greater power to have all non-current edition D&D and indie-game blogs to be shut down as they are all based on thier intellectual property. Doesn't everyone realize that the blogverse is simply the Plane of Concordant Opposition (tm)?
3. The OSR will become another propaganda arm affiliated with Julian Assange. We shall help influence the minds of the world's youth against established authorities everywhere for the greater good (whose good? does it really matter?). Welcome to the Fool World Order!
I can see this "Old School" thing rising up and strangling the hell out of the competition...so long as you people stop publishing games with "skill systems!" What is that all about anyway?!
I predict James Raggi/LotFP will become a much larger publisher, publishing products by many bloggers in addition to Zak and Geoff, and will re-brand his company (deliberately or not) as a "transgressive" RPG publisher rather than OSR. I also predict that he'll be plagued by cash flow issues as he goes through the small publishing learning curve.
I predict a ridiculous glut of megadungeon product - Dwimmermount, Lake Geneva Castle Campaign, Stonehell 2, my own humble megadungeon, and others.
I predict that WotC/Hasbro continue to not care about the OSR at all, because we're old, cheap bastards.
And I have no idea what a "humanist" approach to the OSR would be - probably something that isn't the OSR at all. I recommend whoever doesn't like the direction of anything in the OSR, go publish whatever your idea is instead of complaining that some other guy isn't doing it.
@Biopunk - Careful with the terms innovation, socially relevant and variety. As I've learned the hard way recently some OSR fans can develop allergic reactions. They break out in silly responses. Treat them gingerly and consult your local grognard. ;P
My predicitions aren't all that wild but they are likely...
We will see more OSR retroclones of games other than D&D. Either through similar OGL type situations or just designer reading an out-of-print game and revising it for a modern era. The excellent indie game InSpectres so highly resembles West End Games' original Ghostbusters RPG under the hood that I found using the two together to be a snap.
The quality of the indie game, thanks to Lulu and similar self-publishing avenues, will increase, giving the OSR a run for its money in the internet storefront and FLGS shelves. What I'd like to see, though cynical me realizes I myself am an oddity, would be a single individual looking at both shelves and having a hard time deciding where to spend his or her money. A fellow can dream.
I think that WotC may crack down on OSR as well but I also think it may be so they can come out with a 'Classics' line of reprinted old school stuff. If not, I can also see the first signed of 4.5 or a 5th Edition by year's end. They need to drum up some enthusiam and wow the fanbase again soon.
Just my two coppers.
Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year to all!
One prediction, three hopes, all OSR product-related:
Jim Raggi's Grindhouse Edition of LotFPWFRPG will RAWK!
1. Frog God Games will release more hardback copies of S&W Complete.
2. Goblinoid Games will release the updated, LL-compatible version of Starships and Spacemen.
3. Micheal Curtis will release Stonehell Dungeon Vol. 2.
Happy New Year!
Not too sure about your first statement. It highly depends on what you would consider "D&D with the serial numbers filed off".
I think the only thing that Wushu really has in common with DnD is the fact that your roll dice. Even the roleplaying itself takes another form in that game.
I'm also not sure that roleplaying wouldn't exist without dnd. I played a musketeer game a while back, that I seem to remember was created before dnd, but in the same approximate. While it wasn't really a roleplaying game, but more a game that just begged to be roleplayed, the very early dnd was much the same way. I tend to think that the nerdish world of wargaming and board gaming metamorphed over to the new genre of roleplaying games at several different points, and not just at the point that is dnd.
Some of the virtual table tops are getting really cool, to the point where I would use them if I had a proper screen at my local gaming spot. Maptool has this really nice feature where you can set it so the players can only see what is inside the range of their torchlight.
ALL RPGs are D&D with the serial numbers filed off, to greater or lesser degrees, or at least utilize the concepts developed therein. They wouldn't even exist without it. Many of them, especially the newer ones, in my opinion, shouldn't. But they do, and all the better for it.
Socially relevant innovators? Like who?
Gygax, Arneson, Greg Costikyan, Jeff Grubb, Steve Jackson, etc... down to even latecomers like Monte Cook are more relevant than anyone else in RPGs today, due to their ideas still in common currency, and refinements of same.
Who is professing to love, but not play?
You can get local players by simply sharing your interest, and not hiding it!
Skype/Virtual Table, suchlike not needed, unless you really want to, that is. You don't have to reconnect with a gaming group flung all over the country, start new ones. More players, ya know...
Recognizing flaws in our favorite games? I think no-one can agree what they are, and if so, how to 'correct' them. To some people, they're features. I guess newer games don't have 'em right?
Telling somebody to develop 'emotional maturity' sounds highly insulting, to my mind; especially in reference to a game. Sorta along with saying this: 'puerile waxing on and on about the greatness of the limited talents and illustrations in the gamebooks of yore...': thanx for your highly subjective critique. Who's better, like Wayne Reynolds or something, seriously?
Paradigm Shift: Code for Newer=Better.(I work in IT and this term is really overused, people.)
Fan of the Blog, James!
@Joeseph: I actually had to google 'The Forge'. The amount and concentration of the Kool-Aid™ consumed in gaming forums generally frightens me away from participating in them. :(
@Matt: I think 'Paradigm Shift' is a Feat that comes in at 99,000xp, but only if you have succeeded in increasing all your Ability Scores by 1 (or perhaps 2, with regards to Constitution...).
But that is using the 4E rules! :)
I think your are going to see more user-friendly aps that you can load on your tablet or smartphone--no matter what version of D&D or any other RPG you like to use. Check out the "DM's Toolkit" and "Cartographer RPG" from Level99 Games. You can tell these guys are big OSR fans.
Is Paradigm Shift a feat or an at-will power?
You hang out in The Forge, don't you, biopunk? ;-)
Personally, I'd like to see a distinct and decisive backlash against all the retro RPG emulators that seem to be nothing more than someone's house-ruled vanity project.
More generally, I'd like:
An emergence of a much needed OSR 'humanism', rejecting the abject worship of Gygax and Arneson in favour of more modern and socially relevant innovators...
The embracing a variety of artists and styles of artwork, rather than hold to the puerile waxing on and on about the greatness of the limited talents and illustrations in the gamebooks of yore...
Adapting with the modern technology that surrounds them (such as Skype or Virtual Tabletops...), regarding ways to participate in the games they profess to love, but haven't played, for a lack of local players...
A self-awareness that the games they loved to play in the past had failings, as do any they may chose to play...
Basically, that those in the OSR develop the emotional maturity needed for a paradigm shift to occur, before it completely withers on the vine.
Not that it will be something that I will personally enjoy one iota, but I predict that WotC will crack down on OSR publishers, particularly those who use the OGL to publish simulacra. This will be done in an attempt to "protect their IP" and will significantly harm their image amongst people who don't really buy their products anyway.
Does Chaosium's "Chronicles of Future Earth" qualify as Science Fantasy? It just came out within the last week or so. I don't know if it's even hit store shelves yet, but I've a copy, and it's pretty neat looking.


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Saturday, June 6, 2009
One Upside to the Economic Downturn...
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Yep, yep, yep. Who says everyone's suffering "in this economy"? I'm making out like an extremely fashionable bandit over here! Check out what the infinitely talented Kate Citrin gifted me with this week:
Awesome, huh? And since I'm such a giver, I've arranged for these lovelies to be available to you commoner Wreckies as well. Just click on the photos to be taken to the appropriate Zazzle page. Oh, and be sure to give lots o' love to Kate, too; I'm sure she'll find working for your praise and virtual high-fives far more satisfying than those pedestrian money-making gigs.
28 comments | Post a Comment
omg Faaaaaablulous!
- June 6, 2009 at 4:00 PM
- nicole said...
very nice...my favorite of the cakewrecks shirts so far.
- June 6, 2009 at 4:14 PM
- Brandy said...
Those are very classy!
- June 6, 2009 at 4:38 PM
I would absolutely be considered a "cake wrecks" baker. As hard as I try to make a beautiful cake, they always turn out a disaster! But I will not give up!
- June 6, 2009 at 5:05 PM
- Harley Dee said...
Oh mah gosh, those are awesome!! I have to have one :D
- June 6, 2009 at 5:18 PM
- Stephanie McGee said...
Now those are awesome. Kudos to Kate for her very prodigious talent. I am most in awe at this moment in time. I bow to all official cake wrecks bakers for their awesome talents at wreaking carnage on cakes.
OK...I don't know what got into me. Maybe it's Athena's spirit influencing me... - June 6, 2009 at 5:44 PM
- That Music Girl said...
i love that it says "love" with random quotations..teehee the topper on the "cake"
- June 6, 2009 at 5:52 PM
- Morgan said...
You know what, you really do need a pro to get great results; and what great results these are!
- June 6, 2009 at 6:03 PM
- Haiku Joy said...
Bestest Cake Wreck shirts!
Her finesse is just my style.
Love twirly letters! - June 6, 2009 at 6:18 PM
- Katy said...
Those are great! :)
- June 6, 2009 at 6:53 PM
- Kristin said...
They totally ROCK!
- June 6, 2009 at 7:24 PM
Are awesome. - June 6, 2009 at 7:46 PM
- shaibaer said...
I love those shirts! Can anyone tell me what the "Cake Wrecks" font is in the top shirt, please?
- June 6, 2009 at 8:56 PM
- El Comodoro said...
I just dig seeing (1) a ghost sock puppet (2) seriously rad hair and (3) a nice arm tattoo all in the same photo. This is like a Pulitzer contender, here.
Still reeling from this.
captainjackmakesport.blogspot.com - June 6, 2009 at 9:52 PM
- Miss Isles said...
Have you seen this?
I don't think you've ever features a cannibul!cake... - June 7, 2009 at 7:11 AM
I dislike how you put that advertising right before your posts. I scroll past, but it's a real nuisance. If you want to advertise, then advertise, but leave your blog out of it. I would say that that is Cake Wrecks' only flaw.
- June 7, 2009 at 8:26 AM
- Pam said...
I love them . If you make them an apron they're mine.
- June 7, 2009 at 9:26 AM
Dear A. Nony Mouse,
We here at Cake Wrecks make every effort to keep advertising to a minimum. As an example, we told the company that does our banner ads not to use any pop-up ads even though we will lose revenue because of it. And the normal ads on the page are as background as we can make them for now.
That said, the t-shirts are almost all user designed and have become part of the Cake Wrecks culture. They are not a big money maker but we have them up because people request them.
Lastly, let me say that I have never understood the problem people have with scrolling past a post they don't like. It takes no time, it takes little to no effort, and we have at least 5 full posts on every page so you don't even have to refresh the page to see more content.
So there it is. I've gone on to long already.
john - June 7, 2009 at 9:28 AM
- chibiume said...
Where are the adorable ghost-shaped oven mitts from? I would love a pair!
- June 7, 2009 at 11:14 AM
- Kelly said...
These are beautiful!
- June 7, 2009 at 2:26 PM
I have that oven mitt!!! Gotta love Target...or that's where mine is from anyway.
- June 7, 2009 at 5:37 PM
- kate said...
Hello all! Thank you SO much! It was fun to make these so that (fingers crossed) Jen can make some pocket change and keep blogging for us.
To answer some questions:
The font, King and Queen Font, can be found on dafont.com, it was designed by the very talented Brän at Fractal Eye.
The ghost oven mitts were from Target(R) around Halloween. All my home decorating is done around then.
Another note, the gratuitous quotes around "Love" were the always brilliant Jen's idea.
Again, thanks for the kudos! - June 7, 2009 at 6:25 PM
- Beth said...
Love the ghost mitts! too bad target isn't stocking them off season. Who says ghosts are only for halloween. :(
- June 8, 2009 at 1:53 PM
- My name is Michelle. said...
The airbrushing shirt should come in bad tie dye.
- June 8, 2009 at 11:40 PM
- Emilie Kahn said...
I second Pam on the apron comment. These would be so Fab on aprons!
- June 9, 2009 at 6:07 PM
- john f said...
I just did a google search of "site:cakewrecks.blogspot.com flotsam" and got more than 10 pages of results. Priceless. You rock.
- June 24, 2009 at 3:12 PM
- vicki said...
my four year old's response? "I want to wear some cake!"
- August 27, 2009 at 8:29 AM
I love the little ghosts.... They are the most adorable little oven mitts.
- December 9, 2009 at 4:49 AM
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Praise for the Book
- "Will have you laughing so hard you'll forget to eat!"— Washington Post
- "a hilarious winner" — The Oregonian
- "a fantastically gut-busting book"— NPR
- "It's all here, each wreck a disaster of hilarity." — BookPage.com
- "Hysterically funny!"— Epinions.com
- "laugh-out-loud funny"— The Times
- "Yates' sharp humor makes the funny even funnier." — The Dallas Morning News
- "an amazing laugh-out-loud book"— The Book Triblog
What the fans are saying
- "I was laughing so hard, I couldn't catch my breath."
- "As funny as the blog that started it."
- "WAY better than I expected!"
- "Cake Wreckery at its best!"
- "Wrecktastic!"
- American Mensa:Top 50 Websites of 2010
- Amazon: Top 10 gift books of 2009
- The Orlando Sentinal "Orbbies": Winner Humor
- 2009 BlogLuxe Awards: Funniest Blog
- 2009 Bloggies: Best Writing of a Weblog, Best New Weblog, Best Food Blog
- The 2008 Weblog Awards: Best Food Blog
- Blogger's Choice 2008 Awards: Best Humor Blog
Where's the book?
We don't have any copies of Cake Wrecks for sale here, autographed or otherwise. We decided the shipping and handling costs would be too high to make it worth your while. So instead, buy your copies locally or online and then order personalized bookplates: it's cheaper, easier, and I think even looks a bit nicer.
Ordering Info
Payments must be made through Paypal, which accepts all major credit cards. Sorry, but that means no checks or MOs or barter-based chickens.
We ship everything first class USPS, and will do our best to have your package in the mail within 2 days of your order.
Popular This Month
Popular This Month
- A Cake Wrecks Salute
- Tassel Hassles
- Sunday Sweets: Bullseyes
- Too Soon?
- Goodbye Captain Eo
- Transformers Going Down in Flames
- This One's For The Ladies
- The "Year" of the "Grad"
- Minions, Report!
- Celebrating the "Yes" with a bunch of "No"s
- Falker Satherhood Revisited
- Father's Day Wrap-Up
- Sunday Sweets: Happy Father's Day
- Keep It Stupid, Stupid
- Dastardly Dad Designs
- Threadcakes Contest
- My Dad's Cake is More Insulting Than YOUR Dad's Cake
- KILL IT WITH FIRE!! (Oh wait, they already did...)
- Better Dieting Through Cake
- Who's Your "Dady"?
- Sunday Sweets: Star Wars
- Wreckie Grad Shows Us How It's Done
- Star Wars Weekend
- Expressions of "Graditude"
- Well, That's Not a Good Sign
- Letter VS Spirit
- The Future's So Bright..
- Graduate! Celebrate! "Decorate!"
- Sunday Sweets: Candy!!
- One Upside to the Economic Downturn...
- Willy's First Order of Business
- And Now, MORE Weird Wedding Cakes
- Weird Wedding Cakes
- Cake Wrecks, World Educator
- Maybe We Should Stick with "Good Job"
- Insulting Inscriptions 101
- Panic at the Disco


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Notice: This Wiki is now read only and edits are no longer possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
Orion/Documentation/User Guide/Getting started
This tutorial will get you started with using Orion, and provides a step by step walk-through of some of the core functionality.
A list of Frequently Asked Questions is also available.
Getting Orion
You have two choices to get started with Orion. The first is to create an account on the public server at OrionHub. To do this, visit OrionHub, click Create a new account and enter your information. An email will be sent to confirm your address. Once confirmed, return to OrionHub and log in.
The second method to get started is to download a standalone version of the server. For instructions, see Install Orion on Localhost.
Once you have successfully set up an account, you can proceed to the next step.
Logging into Orion
When you attempt to access a page that requires logging in, you'll be redirected to the Login Page and prompted for credentials.
On your first visit to the login page, you can sign in using either of these ways:
- Sign in using the username and password of your Orion account.
- Sign in using a Mozilla Persona. To do this, your Persona email address must be the same as the email address you chose when creating your Orion account. You can sign up for a Persona here.
- Sign in with a linked Google account. To link a Google account, use Orion's Settings page.
If you are accessing a server other than OrionHub or localhost, the server administrator may have disallowed you from creating an account on the Login Page. In that case, you'll have to ask the server administrator to create one for you.
After a successful login, you will be redirected to the Orion page you were trying to access prior to login.
Working with folders and files
In Orion, each user has a virtual root folder where various folders and files can be created. These files are maintained on the Orion server. The Navigator page is used to browse and modify your files.
Creating folders and files
First, make sure you're at the Navigator page by clicking the "hamburger" menu (), and then clicking Navigator. The Navigator is the primary place where your files and folders will be shown. Because you haven't created any files or folders yet, the navigator is initially empty:
To start working with files and folders in Orion, create a folder by clicking the menu and clicking New Folder:
To navigate, you can either expand the folders in-place (using the ► twisties), or you can click on the folder's name to drill into that folder. After you have drilled into a folder, you can navigate back up using the breadcrumb at the top of the page (pictured below). You can also use your browser's Back button, or a keyboard command (Alt+↑) to navigate up.
Using the common banner
The banner provides access to common operations in Orion. The navigation menu (sometimes called the "hamburger") appears in the left side of the banner, and provides access to navigation links that take you to various pages in Orion, as well as related resources or tasks that are relevant to your current context. (For example, if you're viewing a folder inside a Git repository, a Git Log link will be shown. Clicking it takes you straight to the Git Log page for the folder.)
The right side of the banner provides a user menu containing Settings, Help, and other actions vaguely related to your user identity.
In the center of the banner, you'll find the breadcrumb, and the name of the resource being manipulated. (Some Orion pages will show a simple static title here, if you're not currently targeting any particular resource.)
Below the banner, the content of the page appears. The page toolbar contains commands. The commands act upon the current folder (unless you've made a selection in the file tree).
Here is a picture of the banner with the navigation and user menus expanded, to show the various links they offer:
The New menu () contains commands for creating new files or folders, and the Actions menu () contains commands that apply to existing files or folders. The Go Up command lets you navigate up to the parent folder.
Files and folders may be selected by clicking their row in the tree, or by using the Ctrl and arrow keys on the keyboard. Once a selection has been made, the Actions menu will show commands that operate on the selected items (such as move, copy, and delete). If you have not made a selection, the Actions menu will show commands that act upon the folder you're currently viewing.
Importing folders and files
There are many ways to import your files into Orion. You can upload a zip file, import via SFTP, or clone a Git repository.
To import files from your local file system into Orion, select one or more files on your computer and simply drag them into the file tree. You can also drag Zip files into the navigator. Orion will ask you if you want to unzip the folder. This is convenient for backing up and restoring your work.
If your browser supports it, you can even drag and drop an entire folder from your OS file explorer into Orion:
Exporting folders and files
When you have worked with your code on Orion and are ready to export your work back to your local workstation, navigate to the folder you wish to export and choose the Export as Zip link.
The contents of the folder will be placed in a zip file, and that zip file will be downloaded using your browser's download manager.
Editing code
Once you've navigated to the file you want to work with, click on its link to open the Editing page. You'll find that the editor supports the basics (cut/copy/paste, undo/redo) as well as your favorite text-editing features from Eclipse desktop (move up/down, copy up/down, go to line, find, incremental find). For now, most of these commands are accessible only through keyboard shortcuts, using the default key bindings in Eclipse desktop. To see a full list of available keyboard commands in the editor, press Alt+Shift+? (Ctrl+Shift+? on Mac OS). Outside of the editor, you can get the same help on any page by pressing Shift+?.
The editing page shows a small tree of your files in the left-hand pane. Like its larger counterpart on the Navigator page, the miniature file tree lets you perform file management actions: create files and folders, rename, delete, etc. You can even drag & drop from files from your local computer into the file tree to upload them.
JavaScript development
If you are working with JavaScript (a *.js file), the editor will syntax highlight your code. Orion provides an outline of your JS functions: click the View Options () menu to switch between the file tree and the outline.
Orion also shows markers for problem areas in your code. Integration with existing web tools is an important goal in Orion, so we have implemented a plug-in that runs JSLint on JavaScript files in order to produce the outline and problem markers. The familiar Eclipse problem UI is used to display the problems in the editor. You'll see problem markers beside each offending line of code in the left-hand ruler, red underlining under the problematic text, and overview problem markers to the right-hand side of the editor. These last markers allow you to navigate quickly to a problem in a part of the file that's not currently displayed.
The editor will also match brackets when you click next to a bracket, perform auto indention, and provide source-code oriented key bindings for things like toggling comments and adding/removing block comments.
Orion allows multiple kinds of code outline views to be plugged in. For example you can install the nonymous plugin that provides a hierarchical JavaScript outline view and an advanced way of naming anonymous JavaScript functions. If you have multiple outline views installed, the View Options menu at the top of the outline pane allows you to switch between them.
Firebug Integration
The Orion server is Firebug-savvy, so that recent alpha versions of Firebug, together with a Firebug extension, can invoke the Orion editor to make corrections. For details about this, see the Firebug wiki.
CSS development
Syntax highlighting of CSS files is also supported. Orion uses CSSLint to validate and check for problems in CSS files. An outline view is also provided, which shows the list of rules in your file and allows you to quickly navigate between them. As a proof of concept, Orion provides a very simple form of content assist. In Orion, our goal is to provide the plug-in points for things like content assist and outlining, allowing plug-in developers to enhance the functionality. For now, Orion supplies a content assist based on CSS keyword proposals. We hope to integrate existing source code analysis tools as plug-ins to enhance content assist support, outlining, and problem identification for many kinds of files.
HTML development
A simple HTML outline is provided, based on DOM ids. Syntax highlighting is also available for HTML files.
Java development
Java syntax highlighting is also supported. However, we have not implemented any outlining or content assist. Since we are building an integrated web-based toolset, we felt it important to target first the web client languages such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, so we can attract members of the JS community to Eclipse. Since we are self hosting Orion development in Orion, we need the JS features first.
Extending the editor with a Plug-in
We've also implemented pluggable editor actions which allow third-party developers to extend the behavior of the Orion editor on the fly. For example, we've developed an Orion plug-in based on the JSBeautifier code formatter so that source code can be easily beautified. The plug-in is located at https://orion-plugins.googlecode.com/git/0.5/plugins/beautify/jsbeautify.html. Once the plug-in is installed, reload an Orion editor to see a new command appear beside rest of the editor commands.
Once you are actively using Orion, you'll find that you want to move quickly between different files and folders. There are several ways to go about this. Orion uses Apache Lucene search to provide several different search functions.
Searching for file content
The search page is designed to perform a search for content inside your files. The scope of the search depends on how you open the search page. There are 3 ways to open the search page with a search scope.
- In any Orion page, clicking on the Navigation Menu > Main Pages > Search link will bring up the global search page. It will search all the files in your workspace.
- In the pages that focus on a single directory (for example, the Editor page), clicking Navigation Menu > Related Links > Scope Search will bring up a search page that's scoped to the current directory. Only files under the selected directory will be searched.
- You can also access the scoped directory search by selecting any directory in the file navigator and going to Actions menu (gear menu) > Scope Search.
Once the Search page is loaded, you can start to search on all criteria available on the left hand side of the page. Search results are displayed on the right-hand side.
Finding a file by name
The Find File Named dialog can be opened by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F on your keyboard. This dialog lets you search for a file by name. Simple wildcard characters are supported.
Searching inside the editor
You can also perform a global search on a highlighted phrase from inside the editor using the Ctrl + H shortcut. You can also type other keywords to search the file contents on-the-fly.
A nice side effect of editing source code in browser pages is being able to use browser mechanisms, such as the history, to quickly find files. If you find yourself working in the same handful of files, opening a new browser tab and typing in the filename will quickly get you there.
Working with git
We intend to provide many different kinds of plug-ins for integrating Orion into open source and proprietary version control systems. Our first example in this area is a UI for working with Git repositories. For files and folders that are managed in a Git repository, you will see a menu allowing you to navigate to various Git views dealing with the file or folder:
The Related pages menu will also give you contextually appropriate links to various Git pages, including the top-level of your Git repository.
The Git Status page shows you all the files in your git repository that have changed, and allows you to stage, unstage, and commit changes. You can multi-select files to stage/unstage/commit using shift or ctrl.
Click the twistie arrow next to a changed file to show a comparison of what changed in the file.
If you prefer, you can view the changes in a side-by-side comparison:
The Git Status page shows also a list of recent commits on the active branch. You may open the Git Log page by clicking the Complete Log button and see the full list of commits on that branch. Click on a commit in the log page to open the Git Commit page for complete information about that commit.
You can also open the Compare page for each change in the selected commit.
Launching your project as a website
Orion can create "sites" for testing an application developed with Orion as a stand-alone website. Click the Sites link on the Orion toolbar. This takes you to the Sites page, where you can create, edit, delete, or launch web sites for testing. Sites will be launched either as a sub-domain of the Orion server, or at an alternate IP address when running the server locally.
Note that if you are running your own server, and you wish to set up hosting on a sub-domain, a different IP address, or if you're running Mac OS X, you'll have to supply some more information to the Orion server. See Configuring virtual host names for more detail.
You create a site by clicking the Create Site button and supplying a name for your site. Your new site will appear and you should fill in the path mappings for your project. In this example the "My Work" project has an index.html in the root so just a basic path is required to mount that project at the root. Once done that step you select "Save". You have the option of starting the server from this page or refreshing the list of sites page to see your new site.
Assuming you are at the sites page you can click the Start button to start the site. The result will be similar to the following image, showing the site running and the URL showing where the site can be accessed.
Upon visiting the site's URL, success! — We see the listing of the "My Work" directory we added.
Now browse to index.html:
At this point, we can do incremental development by using the Orion editor to change the files in our "My Work" folder, and then simply reloading the site page to see the changes.
Extending Orion
Orion allows developers to build plug-ins that add behavior to Orion pages. Let's learn about plug-ins by taking a look at a simple plug-in which extends the navigator.
To see what plug-ins are installed in your Orion system, open the Settings page from the Options menu at the top right of the Orion banner (next to the user name). Then click the Plugins category on the left-hand side of the screen.
The Plugins page shows what plug-ins you have installed, and allows you to install, reload, or remove plugins. You can see that several plugins that provide Orion functionality, such as file management, user management, Git, JSLint, are already installed. Plugins extend Orion by implementing new behaviors, or extensions to the system. Places where "extensions" may be contributed are often called extension points.
The orion.navigate.command extension point allows plug-ins to contribute commands that act upon files and folders in the navigator. These commands will be placed in the Actions menu. Each contributed command can specify how many and what types of files it can work with.
A sample plug-in that demonstrates the different kinds of commands you can contribute is located at http://orionhub.org/plugins/sampleCommandsPlugin.html. On the Plugins page, you can click on Install and paste or type this URL into the text area and press Submit. When you reload the Navigator page, you will see new commands in the item action menu.
The "Bulk item command" can act on more than one item, so it will appear in the Actions menu when you select more than one item in the navigator.
Learning more
More information about plug-ins and extensions can be found in the architecture section in the Orion Developer Guide. See sampleCommandsPlugin.html for the source code.
Reporting Orion Bugs
Search the list of open Orion bugs and feature requests for your issue first.
If you don't find your issue, then submit a new Orion bug, or feature request.


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This course, which is Part Three in the series of Startup Entrepreneurship specialization, offers Life Lessons from a Master Innovator, with proven achievements. During this course you will listen to conversations and interviews with Mr. David (Dadi) Perlmutter, who until recently was Executive VP of Intel corporate. Dadi will talk about 10 life lessons, based on his 34 years as a rebel innovator and entrepreneur.
We will share with you the following lessons:
Love and Knowledge are infinite: grow and share;
Learn from Failures and Successes;
Nothing Moves without a Vision;
Have a Differentiated Market Transforming Strategy;
Dare to Take Action;
Fight Resistance;
It is All About the Ecosystem;
Build a Team;
Keep it Simple and Work Hard.
By the end of the course the learner will:
* Know how to lead a process of innovation and implement ideas through all its phases from discovery to delivery in your own field of choice.
* Know how to apply creativity to generate creative ideas in a wide range of strategic management issues.
* Know how to solve problems in general, with a high degree of innovative creative thinking, to widen the range of possible choices
* Identify new and unfamiliar challenges and needs, reflect on them from a creative point of view (zoom in), decide on the
action they require (zoom out) and generate a novel and useful solution
* Transform ideas into real value-creating products, services and processes.
* Be able to analyze both success and failure and draw conclusions from both, for improving future innovative efforts.
* Be able to identify and create key features of innovative products and services and in doing so, generate strategically differentiated innovations that are unique
* Be able to present your ideas persuasively and overcome resistance.
* Know how to simplify a complex product and make it user friendly.
Course assignments will include participation in two discussion groups and four assignments. In each assignment you will be asked to deal with a question relating to an interview you have seen.


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Putin and gulags of the mind
Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 20, 2014
"Once an agent, always an agent."
This was the terse response of Nina Khrushcheva on New Year's Eve 1999 when her mother commented favorably about the new president, Vladimir Putin, who was then speaking on TV.
Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of former Premier Nikita Khrushchev, was prescient then and feels no need to revise those comments now. Instead, her mother's early reviews were symptomatic of what Khrushcheva calls the "gulag of the Russian mind," part of the title of her just-published book, "The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind."
This particular gulag refers to a mindset that includes, as her mother's optimism implied, the hope that the next czar will be better than the last. It also refers to the still-lingering sense among many Russians that Russia was better off before its post-Stalinist reforms. Putin has gone so far as to say the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe.
Speaking to the Federation Council on Tuesday, he more or less blamed Khrushchev for the current mess in Crimea, noting that Khrushchev initiated the Crimean transfer.
As translated by Khrushcheva from Russian, Putin said, "It was unclear what Khrushchev was motivated by. Maybe he wanted the Ukrainian nomenclature to be on his side. Maybe he felt responsible for the mass repressions he organized in Ukraine."
"Really?" says Nina, her eyebrow an audible arch. "Mass repressions? And this from the man who has been trying to rehabilitate Stalin, the czar of mass repressions, since the moment he got into the Kremlin. Oh the gulag of the Russian mind!"
Khrushcheva, an associate professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, is no fan of Putin, one might have guessed. A woman who prefers simplicity, she is direct, blunt and, at times, wickedly funny. Would that President Obama had — a foreign policy, she says, adding that she is a loyal Democrat. Would that Americans understood Putin for what he is — no mere bully, he is "an old KGB-chinovnik (petty clerk)."
Although Putin enjoys the popular image of the terrifying KGB agent, Khrushcheva says he was really a clerk whose nickname was "Moth." More Miss Moneypenny than James Bond.
In his own mind, Putin is "messianic, a uniter of lands, and corrector of historic wrongs," Khrushcheva says sarcastically. Which is to say, he is often delusional. Yet his delusion is buffeted by the wounded pride of his countrymen, many of whom also want to see the motherland restored to greatness.
While American observers try to predict Putin's next moves, Khrushcheva has been on target thus far. Her prediction on Feb. 20 that Putin would go into Ukraine — and six days later that Crimea would be taken over — was exact. Her (measured) prediction now is that Putin won't pursue Ukraine if only because it is too expensive to invade another country.
It is possible, meanwhile, that Putin's yawning response to Western penalties could mean that he doesn't fully realize the effect sanctions could have because he doesn't fully understand how free economies and markets work. As Khrushcheva says, "You can't order them (markets) not to panic."
Although the recent rollout of sanctions on members of Putin's inner circle, viewed as weak, were followed by a Russian market rally, stronger sanctions could be more damaging. Then again, it may be that Putin doesn't really care. His interest isn't in today's markets but in tomorrow's empire.
Crimeans, 97 percent of whom voted to become part of Russia (against a backdrop of heavily armed Russian troops), may be deluding themselves in thinking that they might become another Sochi — rebuilt in splendor in preparation for the Winter Olympics. Asks Khrushcheva, does Russia really have another $50 billion to create a new showpiece?
Meanwhile, the key to preventing tensions from further escalating is for the European Union and NATO to chart a firm course with Kiev — and they must mean it. "What Putin hates is idle talk."
As for allowing Putin to save face, as many commentators have opined, never mind. As far as Putin is concerned, he's in charge. He's the leader who keeps his word. Putin said he'd take Crimea — and he did. If he doesn't go further into Ukraine, it won't be to save face but to allow others to relax. And for his beneficence, Crimea will be forgiven?
This is his calculation, in Khrushcheva's analysis, and one can only hope that Putin the agent explores his inner magnanimity and feels good about himself at the end of the day.
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
This course explores the analysis and design of thin-walled pressure vessels and engineering structures subjected to torsion.
------------------------------------------------ The copyright of all content and materials in this course are owned by either the Georgia Tech Research Corporation or Dr. Wayne Whiteman. By participating in the course or using the content or materials, whether in whole or in part, you agree that you may download and use any content and/or material in this course for your own personal, non-commercial use only in a manner consistent with a student of any academic course. Any other use of the content and materials, including use by other academic universities or entities, is prohibited without express written permission of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation. Interested parties may contact Dr. Wayne Whiteman directly for information regarding the procedure to obtain a non-exclusive license.


text:
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Annette (Cary's other mother) and her newborn twins
In keeping with the old saying, March on the farm came in like a lion and out like
Chocolate Chip Biscotti's newborn girl
When we went down to make sure the three of them were resting comfortably in their bonding suite before going to bed a few hours later, a quick check of the rest of the prego flock revealed that Chocolate Chip Biscotti had just given birth to a beautiful black girl out in the barnyard—with the cutest little pink nose.
She also has one inverted eyelid, which causes irritation and tearing, and I'm trying to fix it by simply pulling it into place several times a day, rather than resorting to a more complicated procedure. It's worked for me before, so I'm hopeful.
Wednesday morning Amy had twins, and last night sometime between the 10pm check and a 2am check, one of the two still unnamed Katahdin ewes we bought last year from our sheep shearer had twin girls way out in the barnyard.
At 3:30 this morning I finally crawled back into bed, reassured that the three of them were safe and sound in a bonding suite, and while only one of the lambs had nursed, both had drunk a little colostrum from a small syringe that I'd miraculously been able to milk out of not-real-friendly mama.
This morning both lambs were up and seemingly full of energy, but for some reason mama has decided that she only had one lamb, not two, and keeps knocking away the other one every time it gets near her and tries to nurse. Talk about a heartbreaking (and frustrating) sight.
If things don't improve soon, my plan is to see if I can trick the next new mother who has a single lamb into thinking she actually had twins by rubbing the birthing fluid from the newborn baby on the rejected lamb and hoping the mother will accept her—and the lamb (who has already imprinted on her birth mother) will also be amenable to the plan.
If that doesn't work, I'll bring the rejected baby up on a bottle—but unlike Cary (who is doing great by the way), I don't think she'll be let into the living room!
Of course the Nanny Bear is always ready to assist.
Oh, baby baby. And so it begins!
Current lamb count: 7. Ewe lambs: 5. Ram lambs: 2. Hours of sleep one of us has had in the last two nights: There are certain things it's just better not to count this time of year.
Can't wait for more baby pictures?
Lambing Season 2006 Photos & Reports
Lambing Season 2007 Photos & Reports
Lambing Season 2008 Part 1
Lambing Season 2008 Part 2
More Sheep Stories & Photos
Farm Stories & Farm Life Tidbits
© FarmgirlFare.com, the bouncing baby foodie farm blog where this is the first year we bred—in an attempt to build up some parasite resistance—our mostly Suffolk ewes with a Kathadin hair sheep ram (you don't shear this breed's coarse, furry 'hair') and the resulting little hair balls, as I've fondly started calling them, are cute as can be but look so different than what we're used to! (Chocolate Chip Biscotti's black lamb above was bred with a Suffolk ram so she's 100% wool sheep.)


text: JERUSALEM � When Margaux Stelman began modeling a few months ago, she always had her sister Simone in mind. Simone was an ex-model who died three years ago after a long battle with anorexia, a common affliction of models trying to look thinner and thinner � and girls trying to look like them. Now, thanks to a new Israeli law that prohibits the employment of underweight fashion models, Stelman says she feels protected from the traditional pressures of an industry notorious for encouraging extremes in thinness. The law sets weight minimums with the aim of discouraging anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders that affect mostly young women, who go on extreme diets and are unable to eat normally. "This disease is something that"s very close to me," the 21-year-old university student from Belgium said at a recent photo shoot, the country"s first since the law took effect last week. "Doing the exact opposite, showing girls that (they) can be healthy and be a model anyway, it"s really something I want to show." The Israeli law, passed by parliament last year, is the first of its kind. The United States and England have guidelines, but their fashion industry is self-regulated. Other governments have taken steps to prevent "size zero" medical problems but have shied away from legislation. Israel, like other countries, is obsessed by models. International supermodel Bar Refaeli is considered a national hero. Refaeli, an Israeli who has graced the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, among others, is not unnaturally thin. The new law requires models to produce a medical report no older than three months at every shoot for the Israeli market, stating that they are not malnourished by World Health Organization standards. The U.N. agency relies on the body mass index, calculated by factors of weight and height. WHO says a body mass index below 18.5 indicates malnutrition. According to that standard, a woman 1.72 meters tall (5-feet-8) should weigh no less than 54 kilograms (119 pounds). Critics say the body mass index is flawed and cannot be applied equally to everyone. For example, many professional athletes fall outside the health boundaries set by the scale, because of their height or muscle mass. Stelman is 1.7 meters tall (5-foot-7) and says she weighs around 60 kilograms (132 pounds) � but she isn"t quite sure. "I never weigh myself. I don"t care. I don"t even have a scale," she said. "Weight is just a number. As long as I feel good and healthy � that"s all that matters." One of the main supporters of the new legislation is Adi Barkan, one of Israel"s top model agents. In 30 years of work, he says he has seen young women become skinnier and sicker while struggling to fit the shrinking mold of what the industry considers attractive. He said Europe"s fashion has started shifting back. "They understand that something has to change," said Barkan, noting the rampant use of Photoshop, the popular picture editing computer program, to make models look even skinnier. The Israeli law requires that any advertisement published for the Israeli market must clearly disclose whether the models" appearance was altered by digital manipulation. Israeli designer Keren Saban said she prefers models who display her clothes to be "someone who looks like a woman." "A woman"s look is not something you need to be ashamed of, just the contrary," said Saban. "That is what an item should look like when we sell clothes to women."


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7 Ways to Raise a Global Kid
Article Translations: (Spanish)
Today's kids are growing up in a globalized world. But how do you teach them to embrace and thrive among the planet's many cultures — from Boston to Bangkok?
Travel is an obvious answer, but far-flung trips may not fit your vacation budget. Raising global kids doesn't have to break the bank or feel like another task for your to-do list. Instead, make it a fun exploration and a unique opportunity to learn, enjoy, explore, and grow.
Here are seven ways to get started:
1. "See" the World — At Home
Hang a world map in a high-traffic spot so kids get familiar with (and curious about) country and city names, locations, cultures, and languages. Place a globe where they can reach it and they're sure to spin it and imagine far-off places.
Consider other decorative items that have a global connection. Some items will come with a story, like a rug woven by women working to improve their lives. Look for picture books that feature houses, gardens, recipes, or sports in far-off places. Do you have examples of foreign currency? Frame them and hang them on the wall as conversation pieces.
2. Talk It Up
International news reports are full of difficult subjects, but you can find gentler ways to start a conversation. Perhaps a friend has an ethnic celebration coming up or kids from another country have just enrolled at your child's school.
Check your clothing labels. Was your T-shirt made in Peru, Bangladesh, or China? Find those places on your map and talk about what life might be like there.
You don't have to be an expert. Just your sincere interest serves as a powerful example that you care about the larger world.
3. Let Music Send a Message
You don't need to stop what you're doing to declare "Now we're going to listen to world music!" Just slip it into your music rotation. Dance to it while making dinner, listen while driving, or turn on a soothing selection at bedtime. You and your kids will hear lyrics in foreign languages and you'll also hear English sung with varied accents.
4. Spice Up Family Movie Night
Try a family-friendly foreign film, especially those told from a child's point of view. Where would you like to go tonight — Mongolia, Ireland, or India?
Make it a global snacking experience, too. Find an ethnic grocery store near you and ask the storekeeper to recommend best-selling snacks to pair with your movie.
5. Give Gifts of the World
Handmade art and crafts make terrific gifts. It's even better when you know the artisan benefited directly from the sale. Consider buying teacher, holiday, and birthday presents from a fair-trade store in your town or online. Kids can find meaning and pride in a purchase that connects them to the bigger world.
6. Dip Into a Foreign Language
Find out if your child's school teaches any foreign languages. Can you support the effort or help get a program started? At home, try online learning programs and language software. Play games with your kids to practice their skills or help with an after-school foreign language club.
Do you know a friend or neighbor who speaks a foreign language you and your kids would like to learn? Maybe you can arrange for informal tutoring.
7. Set Out to Serve
Offer your time and resources to make a difference. It cultivates empowerment, motivation, and a sense of global connection. Serving helps make it real for both you and your kids.
Where to start? Talk to local people already engaged in service. You also can take a look at U.S. and global programs making a difference on websites like GlobalLiving.com.
A global perspective can begin a family adventure that connects us with diverse communities and helps us see beyond our immediate circumstances. It also prepares kids to succeed in an interconnected economy and society. Locally and globally, it's a win-win-win./p>
Note: All information is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.
© 1995-2024 KidsHealth ® All rights reserved. Images provided by iStock, Getty Images, Corbis, Veer, Science Photo Library, Science Source Images, Shutterstock, and Clipart.com


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PHILADELPHIA — Sherwood Brown scored 24 points and Bernard Thompson had 23 to lead Florida Gulf Coast to an incredible NCAA tournament debut, a 78-68 win over second-seeded Georgetown on Friday night in the second round of the South Regional.
The Eagles, in their second season of being eligible for Division I postseason, became just the seventh No. 15 seed to beat a No. 2.FGCU (25-10) will play the winner of the game between seventh-seeded San Diego State and No. 10 Oklahoma in the third round on Sunday.A night after America's oldest university, Harvard, pulled off a major upset over fourth-seeded New Mexico, one of its youngest — FGCU's first student was admitted in 1997 — got one that was even bigger.The Eagles took control with a 21-2 run that gave them a 52-33 lead with 12:28 to play, though the Hoyas used a furious rally to get within 72-68 with 52 seconds left.It was another disappointing NCAA exit for the Hoyas (25-7), who have lost to a double-digit seed in their past four appearances.Markel Starks had 23 points for the Hoyas.
Copyright by STATS LLC and The Associated Press


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Forget all the athletic achievements and personal glory on view in Sochi, Russia. The image that stands out most in my mind during the broadcast of the 2014 Winter Olympics? The Cadillac commercial with a boxy, middle-aged white guy in a fancy house striding purposefully from his luxurious swimming pool to his $75,000 luxury Cadillac ELR parked out front while extolling the virtues of hard work, American-style.
"Why do we work so hard? For stuff?" actor Neal McDonough asks in the commercial that has been playing without cease. "Other countries work. They stroll home. They stop by a café. They take the entire month of August off. … Off," he says again, to reinforce the point.
"Why aren't you like that? Why aren't WE like that?"
The first time the commercial aired during the opening ceremonies in Sochi, the slight pause after those two questions made me hopeful. I sat up to listen closely.
Was he about to say – we should be more like that? Because Americans work among the most hours of any advanced country in the world, save South Korea and Japan, where they've had to invent a word for dying at your desk. ("karoshi," death from overwork) We also work among the most extreme hours, at 50 or more per week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American works about one month more a year than in 1976.
Was he going to say that we Americans are caught up in what economist Juliet Schor calls a vicious cycle of "work-and-spend" – caught on a time-sucking treadmill of more spending, more stuff, more debt, stagnant wages, higher costs and more work to pay for it all?
Would he talk about how we Americans, alone among the advanced economies, have no national vacation policy? (So sacrosanct is time off in some countries that the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in 2012 that workers who get sick on vacation are entitled to take more time off "to enable the worker to rest and enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure.")
American leisure? Don't let the averages fool you, he could say. While it looks like leisure time has gone up, time diaries show that leisure and sleep time have gone up steeply since 1985 for those with less than a high school degree. Why? They're becoming unemployed or underemployed. And leisure and sleep time for the college educated, the ones working those crazy extreme hours, has fallen steeply.
Americans don't have two "nurture days" per child until age 8, as Denmark does. No yearlong paid parental leaves for mothers and fathers, as in Iceland. Nor a national three-month sabbatical policy, which Belgium has.
Instead of taking the entire month of August off, the most employers voluntarily grant us American workers tends to be two weeks. One in four workers gets no paid vacation or holidays at all, one study found. And, in a telling annual report called the "Vacation Deprivation" study, travel company Expedia figures that Americans didn't even use 577 million of those measly vacation days at all last year.
So as I watched the Cadillac commercial, hanging onto that rich white guy's pause, I was hoping he'd make a pitch to bring some sanity to American workaholic culture. It wouldn't have been a first for the auto industry. Henry Ford outraged his fellow industrialists when he cut his workers' hours to 40 a week. (Standards in some industries at the time were for 12-hour workdays, 7 days a week.) Ford did so because his internal research showed 40 hours was as far as you could push manual laborers in a week before they got stupid and began making costly mistakes. He also wanted his workers to have the leisure time to buy and use his cars.
The rich guy takes a breath and smirks. We work so much "because we're crazy, driven hard-working believers, that's why."
Bill Gates. The Wright Brothers. Were they crazy? he asks. We went to the moon and, you know what we got? Bored, he says.
"You work hard. You create your own luck. And you've gotta believe anything is possible." Fair enough. "As for all the stuff?" he says as he knowingly unplugs his luxury electric car, "that's the upside of only taking TWO weeks off in August. N'est-ce pas?"
I groaned.
Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell told me to lighten up, that the ads were meant to take a playful poke at the European luxury car makers who have dominated the market for decades. "And at least it's gotten your attention," he said.
You know what really needs attention? What working like crazy and taking no time off really gets us:
• Sick. Americans spend almost twice as much on health care per person than people in other advanced nations – paying out of pocket, while other countries pool resources – and we suffer more injuries and illnesses and die younger, the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine reports.
• Stressed. America may be the richest nation on earth, but the World Health Organization has found it is also the most anxious, with nearly one-third of all Americans likely to suffer from anxiety in their lifetime.
• Stupid. In a study of brains using functional MRI technology, scientists at the Yale Stress Center have found that subjects who both lived through stressful events and felt stressed out had smaller brain volumes than less-stressed subjects in critical areas of the prefrontal cortex that govern thinking, planning, decision-making, learning and memory.
• Off balance. The United States ranks toward the bottom of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's work-life balance scale. And a growing number of Americans report feeling rushed, pressed for time, that they don't spend enough time with their families, and at the end of the day, haven't gotten to all the things they needed to do, much less wanted to do.
• Disengaged. Gallup estimates that 70 percent of all workers are disengaged from their jobs, costing between $450-$550 billion each year in productivity. And although American productivity looks mighty in international comparisons, slice that productivity by hours worked, and the United States falls several rungs – in some years even below those countries whose workers stroll home in the evening after a shorter, more intense work day, stop by a café and take the entire month of August off. Off.
So yes, America, work hard. Hoo-ah American ingenuity, gumption and drive. But remember that inspiration comes in the shower, on a walk, in a moment of rest, not when your nose is to the grindstone. It's just the way our brains are wired.
Remember that even hardworking Bill Gates typically gives himself Think Weeks, cloistered away twice a year, owns an island off Belize, vacations in Croatia, plays bridge and tennis to relax and reads in his palatial library. The hardworking Wright Brothers only invented the first flying machine because they took a break from their busy bicycle shop, leaving Ohio to camp out in North Carolina's Outer Banks in their leisure time for months.
And remember, rather than working so hard to have stuff, better to work to have leisure, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said, upon which happiness depends.
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Delicious dry roasted organic pumpkin seeds, misted with EDEN sea salt. Great for parties, camping, backpacking, or a nutritious snack any time. Low sodium and an excellent source of healthy fiber, protein, and magnesium, and a good source of iron and zinc. Wheat free, gluten free, and cholesterol free.
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EDEN Dry Roasted, Salted Pumpkin Seeds are a healthy and happily received snack food, that is an excellent source of protein, healthy fiber, and magnesium offering 50% Daily Value (DV) per 1/4 serving. They are cholesterol free and low sodium, and a good source of iron and zinc. Although they are high in fat, they are lower in saturated fats and higher in beneficial monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. They contain no added oil, refined salt, additives, or preservatives.
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Gun violence in America is almost entirely a black phenomenon; just disarm them and the violence goes away (per Wall Street Journal and Atlantic Cities) |
More importantly, the fear of black criminality that convinces productive families to vacate urban America and move from suburb to suburb in search of a tranquil city to raise a family would also - instantly - be removed from the minds of white people.
You see, rampant black criminality - and the rational fear of black crime - is the reason cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Detroit, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, and St. Louis have become cities where few white faces are rarely seen in areas that are heavily black.
Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) can blame white racism for the poverty and poor conditions found in majority black areas of urban environments, but the reality is simply this: wherever black people numerically become the majority, the physical conditions of the community will degenerate immediately to a level befitting its new majority population.
Primarily law-abiding white Americans are (and always have) currently purchasing record amounts of guns and ammunition for three reasons: a rational fear of black crime; a rational fear that the government is clamping down on gun ownership and the 2nd Amendment and that it will ultimately use its power to disarm white America -- the only people capable of restoring order out of the chaos in the modern racial democracy that exists in the United States; and, finally, that a "collapse" of some sorts is imminent.
But think about it: hasn't a collapse of Biblical proportions already happened to 90 percent black Detroit; 75 percent black Birmingham; and others areas of the nation that can scarcely be called 'civilized' anymore? Where black gun violence is as much a fact of life as welfare checks arriving at the first of the month and the EBT/Food Stamp/WIC card being reloaded at the same time?
What if innovation and an entrepreneur class were to return to these cities via the magic of gentrification? All that serves as an impediment to the rebirth of cities like Detroit and Birmingham is the presence of scary black people - based on crime statistics, "scary" might not be too strong a word.
What if it became a crime for black people to own weapons?
Just take a look at some quick stats before brushing aside this rational idea as 'racist':
- From Atlantic Cities [The Geography of US Gun Violence]: Gun violence in America has reached epidemic proportions — over 30,000 people died by gun in 2011, according to preliminary data [PDF]. This past summer, dubbed the summer of the gun, these numbers felt all too close and all too random, with shootings near the Empire State Building and in an office in D.C. closely following mass killings in Aurora, Colorado and Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The first map above shows the overall rate of gun-related deaths per 100,000 people by metro. The rates vary substantially from a high of 32.8 in New Orleans to a low of 3.6 in Boston. Birmingham has the second highest rate with 20.5, followed by Memphis with 19.8. Las Vegas (17.6) and Jacksonville (17.5) round out the top five metro rates. After Boston, the metros with the lowest rates include San Jose (3.8), followed by Providence (4.1), New York (4.8), and Hartford (4.8).Race, unfortunately and tragically, factors into gun death at the metro level. The share of the population that is black is positively related to both the overall rate of gun death (.56) and even more so with gun-related homicides (.72). The pattern is similar for the share of the population that is comprised of young black males which is also positively related to the overall rate of gun death (.55) and murder by gun (.70).
- From the Daily Beast, via the pathetic David Frum [Gun Violence Isn't a Racial Problem]:Yesterday the Baton Rouge Advocate published a lengthy analysis of the 2012 murder stats in the city. Take a look at this PDF of one of the inside pages. Last year, 83 people died by homicide in Baton Rouge. Of that number, 87% were black, and 87% were male. Two-thirds had been in trouble with the law before, and one-third had been in trouble with the law for drugs. The median age of victims: 26.Of the perpetrators, the median age was 22. Get this: 96% of them were black, and 90% were male. Almost two-thirds had previous arrests. One out of four had a drug record.Most of the murders took place in the poorest parts of the city.What can we learn from these statistics? That murder in Baton Rouge is almost entirely about young black men from the poor part of town killing other young black men from the poor part of town. It's mostly a matter of thugs killing thugs.
State Homicide Rates by Race -- Courtesy of Vox Day |
- From the Washington Post, a breakdown of gun violence in New York City [The Color of Murder and Gun Violence in New York] :"In short, 95.1 percent of all murder victims and 95.9 percent of all shooting victims in New York City are black or Hispanic. And 90.2 percent of those arrested for murder and 96.7 percent of those arrested for shooting someone are black and Hispanic. I don't even know where to begin to describe the horror I still feel looking at those numbers. But the word 'hunted' comes to mind."
- Vox Day noted that the New York Times published a column arguing that because black people kill black people in urban areas at such extreme rates, all of America should be disarmed. He pointed out something else entirely, illustrating the relationship of gun violence to... race [Race and Guns Part 1] :
Below is a chart I [Vox] prepared based on the state-by-state offense rates, per 100k population, comparing black homicide to non-black homicide. The source was the commenter Silver's comment on a recent Steve Sailer post, derived from a 2009 FBI report. The average state homicide rate is 17.3 per 100k for the black population and 2.5 per 100k for the non-black population. As Silver notes, the FBI information cannot be used to directly compare black and white homicide rates, since the non-black rate combines the white, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian rates. I will attempt to sort out some of those rates in the next post on this subject, but even a casual glance will suffice to show that the states with the highest non-black homicide rates, the District of Columbia (9.1), Nevada (5.2), Arizona (4.4), and California (4.3) tends to coincide with higher levels of Hispanic population.
If Cole's thesis was correct, we would have to find that gun ownership and poverty are vastly higher among the black population than among the other U.S. populations. But this is clearly not the case with regards to gun ownership, since 44% of whites own guns compared to 27% of blacks, and the Hispanic poverty rate is 26.6%, nearly equal to the black poverty rate of 27.4%. Therefore, we can not only refute his argument that gun rights entail violence by comparing international crime statistics, but also conclusively show that his "necessary" recommendations for reducing violence are unrelated to the causal problem at hand, and as a result, extremely unlikely to reduce it in any substantive manner. - The city of Chicago, where handguns are already outlawed, is a case study in why black people should be barred from firearm ownership [Chicago Murder Rate Tops Afghan Death Toll]: A WND review of the Chicago Police Department Murder Analysis
reports from 2003 to 2011 provides a statistical breakdown of the
demographics of both the victims and offenders in the 4,265 murders in
Chicago over that time period.
Of the victims of murder in Chicago from 2003 to 2011, an average of 77 percent had a prior arrest history, with a high of 79 percent of the 436 murdered in Chicago in 2010 having arrest histories.
For the same 2003-2011 period, blacks were the victims of 75 percent of 4,265 murders. Blacks also were the offenders in 75 percent of the murders.
According to 2010 U.S. Census information, Chicago has a population of 2,695,598 people. The city is 33 percent black, 32 percent white (not Hispanic), and 30 percent Hispanic or Latino in origin.
For the 2003-2011 period, whites were nearly 6 percent of the victims and accused of carrying out 4 percent of the murders.
For the 2003-2011 period, Hispanics or Latinos were 19 percent of the victims and 20 percent of the offenders.
Between 2003 and 2011, 4,265 people were murdered in the city of Chicago. In 2012 alone, 512 people were murdered in the city.
Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for the war in Afghanistan, which started Oct. 7, 2001, has seen a total of 2,166 killed. The war has been ongoing for 11 years, 3 months and one week.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, the name for the war in Iraq, which started March 20, 2003, and ended Dec. 15, 2011, saw a total of 4,422 killed.
We could breakdown gun violence in Atlanta, Birmingham (just read The Killing Years), Milwaukee, Washington D.C., Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami, Orlando, Houston, Dallas, Tulsa, Detroit, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Savannah, Macon (Georgia), Nashville, or Philadelphia.. but we could just read the Wall Street Journal's power article Communities Struggle to Break a Grim Cycle of Killing [8-18-12] for the truth:
Bureau of Justice Statistics data show that from 1976 to 2005, white victims were killed by white defendants 86% of the time and black victims were killed by blacks 94% of the time.
Then there is the matter of who is dying. Although the U.S. murder rate has been dropping for years, an analysis of homicide data by The Wall Street Journal found that the number of black male victims increased more than 10%, to 5,942 in 2010 from 5,307 in 2000.
Overall, more than half the nation's homicide victims are African-American, though blacks make up only 13% of the population. Of those black murder victims, 85% were men, mostly young men.
Despite the declining U.S. murder rate, killings remain stubbornly high in poor pockets of cities large and small. In some cases, the rate is rising sharply. That increase is draining resources from police, prosecutors, social workers and hospitals.How dare you argue for disarming black people, SBPDL! Couldn't that lead to the state enacting harsher laws against the black community that would then be unable to defend itself, especially the law-abiding population of black people who are also at the mercy of gun-wielding blacks?
And this same logic must applied to anyone hoping to grab guns from the law-abiding white population of the United States.