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'66 (i think) Type III. What a piece of junk.
Yep, sure did.
I've got a New Beetle does that count?
I had some other kind of aircooled boxer motor like a Porsche or a Bus
'66 (i think) Type III. What a piece of junk.
"No one wants advice -- only corroboration." -John Steinbeck
Like San Jose BMW Motorcycles on Facebook.
Someone mentioned a Corvair a couple of posts back. When I was 7 my mom and i moved out to Phoenix AZ from Michigan. She bought a white Corvair Monza with a blue interior.
During the trip a gas station guy had some fun at our expense. He told my mom that we were going to cross a lot of desert and sold her a heavy canvas water bag to tote water for the radiator in. Mom didn't know from air cooled and hey - I was only 7!
My grandparents had one of the early "turtle top" VW camper vans. (Highly unusual for my Grandpa from Detroit who was a Buick man and worked in the Auto industry to buy a German vehicle in the late 60's.)
They used to come out to AZ camping in their turtle top. It was a great little set up with a stove and sink - heaven for this boy.
Gotta say this is one reason I enjoy this forum so much. The comments of others trigger memories that make me smile - thanks for letting me rattle on.....
Don't winterize; Rounderize!
I had a '71 beetle - green outside, black in (frickin' hot in summer). My parents never told me about changing oil - never changed it in something like two years (I then sold it). Damn thing didn't care. I'm now somewhat anal about changing my oil
Acrually, the heaters in Beetles were quite good if kept in adjustment. There was a lot of difference in the way American service practices were as opposed to European standards. Typically, if the engine came out of a beetle for a clutch job or something, the mechanic didn't even hook up the heater cables. Or, if they did, they never adjusted them. Any cable will stretch, and eventually, when the heater was put full on, the cables didn't completely actuate the flap that would divert the air into the interior. Of course, if the heater channels rusted through, alot of the heated air blew outside, but that's a different matter. I always got the ones that were already rusted, so the first thing I did was to plug up the holes so the hear would come inside, then crawl under the car and jam the flaps full on for the winter.
One of the recommended procedures in Europe (my friend's grandfather owned a dealership in Switzerland) was: every spring, you'd bring the car to the dealership and the whole interior was removed right down to the floorpan and the car would be aired out with the doors open for a couple of days. All of my beetles rusted from the inside out insofar as the floorpans went.
1969 powder puff blue Karman Ghia Convertible - had a 12 volt hairdryer to defrost the windows.
Also a non discript type 3 wagon
Old VeeDubs is da best VeeDubs.
'69 with a sun roof, 68 convertable, a bus - don't remember the year, one of them P cars, my ex took our tricked out 98 and trashed it when we split.
Pass the mustard and UP THE REVOLUTION!
Porsche, OTOH, added an electri fan that actuated automatically when the heater boxes were opened up to "full". I could use my 911 as a sauna if Iwanted to, about 3 min. after the engine fired up!
Dark Blue
Had the 1500cc engine, 12v electrics. Put on an extractor exhaust and new jets in the carbs and it was quick for a bug.
Drove it cross country when I was 19 and traded it for a Yamaha in San Diego.
My first car was a '66 Bug and my brother had a '65. When he went to college, I had both.
It had the BIG 1300 cc, 50 HP engine. But only got high 20's mpg. Top speed, if you dared, about 75 mph. Only weighed about 1,700 lbs. Mine was light blue with a black interior. Ice scraper used as a windshield "defroster" in the winter.
As a comparison my current car is a 2006 VW Jetta TDI. 1.9 liter engine with a rated output of 100 HP/177 ft. lbs. of torque. Weighs 3,200 lbs. Averages about 43 mpg.
Things sure have changed in the last forty years.
Ben Ricci
Rides & Drives: '07 BMW F800ST Low, '07 Porsche Cayman, '06 VW Jetta TDI & '05 BMW R1200ST
I had a '58 and then a '68 bug. I don't want to talk about how many times I rebuilt engines, had wheels fall off, no brakes, etc. I can't believe I lived through all of it.
I remember getting a speeding ticket once and successfully fighting it by pointing out to the judge there was no way my VW could go that fast. Of course, he didn't know I had tricked it out by then.
My maternal grandmother had bugs and wagons and fastbacks (every model except the vans/transporters) from the 1950s to the 1980s. We called her "Grandma with the Volkswagon" to differentiate her from our paternal grandmother. She even signed all of our birthday and Christmas cards with this name.
My sister had a '70 bug, I think, it's when they made an automatic, she had it and it sucked. My mother had one when I was two and she was pregnant with my sister, and I remember we were hit while in it. I also remember playing in it while it was in the driveway, releasing the parking brake, and rolling out the driveway and across the street to the neighbor's driveway. That was fun! The parents were scared, that made it more fun!!
The last one my mother had was the Super model, 1976 maybe? The last one Grandma-with-the-VW had was an old red square wagon, parked at her curb so long the thing was hardly red anymore.
Speaking of "thing," we passed one last week and we reminiscing; my boss in the 1980s had one he drove to work every day.
It seems to be the "revive old thread" day
Had a '72 Super , always started....except wehen you were running late ...starter issues on this one drove me nuts.
My first was a '59 Micro bus panel ( no windows except two sliders in doors and the tiny rear) No heater would ever heat that box up! It did however have a '70 ish 1600cc motor slid in its engine compartment with a Holly 2 barrel that had no space for an air filter....The headers on it allowed my neighbors and friends to hear me coming for blocks away they claimed...also had a set of Keystone mags w/ wide tires.... I believe was the term!
I also survived a rollover in a '63 convertible where I was ejected thru the cloth sunroof ( open at time) and came back to roll it back over for the other three to get out of it...the Jack Daniels adrenaline inspired superstrength was talked about for some time....dumb-dumb 17 year olds!
Steve Henson
SABMWRA MOA Club#62's Flat Fixer/ current forum moderator
It's not the breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away-D.Dillon/G. Strait
First one was a '66 followed by a '68 when the first one was stolen and beaten to a pulp by the thieves. I used to put my ski boots in front of the '68s "heaters" to at least warm them up on the way to the SoCal ski resorts. The '68 got stuck in the snow once and just sat spinning the tires. I left it in gear, got out and pushed it out, jogged around, jumped in and drove home. No prob in a beetle. One more note...spent part of my 21st birthday legally drinking and removing a transaxle from a friends '69. Great memories.
08 R1200GS aka Stormy.
1989 Honda GB500 aka Ton Up.
I hate deer and love venison
I had a 74 Super Beetle, loved that car, could drift it through an exit ramp using just the throttle.
Then had a 74 Bus, converted that to full electric.
Now I have a 2000 Beetle TDI and a 1986 Vanagon Syncro.
So, ya. I like VW.
I could be the voice you're hearing.
Oh yeah, I failed to mention back on page one (three years ago) that the very first car I ever rode in was a 66 VW. My parents had this cute little off-white bug when I was born, and I have faint memories of me at age 3 and my brother at age 1 riding together in the little compartment behind the back seat. That was a fun place to ride!
"If you can't fix it with a hammer, it's electrical." -somebody's dad


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Number agreement… these can be captured by context-free grammar, but not efficiently (as we have seen from recent homework)
Case constraints (only on pronouns in English)
Count noun constraint
Regularization - accounting for 'displaced constituents' / movement
We can include the category as a feature cat in the feature structure: [cat = NP, number = singular, person = 3]. We can also nest the feature structures, with the value of a feature being another feature structure: [cat = NP, agreement = [number = singular, person = 3]].
If X is a feature structure, then we will write the value of feature f of X as X.f. If the feature structure does not specify a value for f, we say X.f = null; furthermore, null.f = null.
A feature path is a sequence of one or more feature names which
is used to select a value from a feature structure: <f1 f2> applied
to X gets (X.f1).f2. For example, <agreement number> applied to
[cat = NP, agreement = [number = singular, person = 3]] yields 'singular'.
The nested feature structures can be represented as trees with labeled arcs, and the feature paths as paths in these trees.
We may generalize these structures to graphs, corresponding to reentrant
feature structures. These will prove convenient for capturing constraints
between constituents in our grammar (J&M p. 399).
The definition of unify(X,Y) is recursive:
if X = null, return Y
if Y = null, return X
if X and Y are the same atomic value, return X
if X and Y are both feature structures, then
create a new feature structure Z
for each feature f in either X or Y
add f with the value unify(X.f, Y.f) to Z
(note that if X.f and Y.f cannot be unified, the entire process fails)
return Z
else fail
Note that this version does not account for reentrant structures.
J&M describe a version which destructively modifies the arguments and accounts for re-entrancy, p. 423.
To capture number agreement, we would write
<NP number> = <VP number>
If we wanted to check agreement in both number and person, we could write
<NP number> = <VP number>
<NP person> = <VP person>
or we could group both number and person under an 'agreement' feature, as shown above, and write
<NP agreement> = <VP agreement>
Similarly, we could check determiner - head agreement by
<DET agreement> = <N agreement>
The set of constraints associated with a rule can be 'compiled' into a feature graph which will be associated with that rule.
"mouse" cat = n, number = singular;
"mice" cat = n, number = plural;
(A feature can be omitted to indicate that it can take on either value: "fish" cat = n; )
In searching the chart for a prior node, we must now check that not just the grammar symbol(s) and start and end nodes are the same, but also that the feature structures are the same (J&M point out that a subsumption test for feature structures is sufficient -- p. 432).

subset: commoncrawl


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There is an R-26 for sale fairly close to me.......It is a '57, an looks pretty nice. My question, about as general as you can get, is forty two hundred dollars a fair starting price for this scooter?
I sold my airhead GS a while ago, and was looking foe a /5, but for as much riding as I have been doing the R-26 looks like a good fit for me. What I'm trying to say is that I am not a long distance rider and I'm not sure how much riding I will do, but I still get juiced when I see old Beemers ( grew up with R-69'S in the garage ). I came across this R-26 yesterday, hope it's still available, and thought it was the coolest scooter I've seen in a while.
Oh yea, back to the thread, I'm not familiar with the pre-70's and am curious if the asking price is fair or not. I know the question is vague but I'm hoping that you folks can help me out!
Thanks for your time
Will Vetter


text:
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text:
White Paper: For those of you whose Greek mythology might be a little rusty, Hercules was a demi-god, the result of one of Zeus's dalliances with mortal women. Hera, Zeus's divine wife, was not best pleased by her husband's lack of faithfulness, and thus decided to punish Hercules.1 She drugged him, and in his drug-induced state Hercules killed his wife and two children. When he recovered his senses, Hercules was, of course, full of remorse and begged for redemption. In order to earn forgiveness, he was set 10 "impossible tasks." On two of those tasks he got aid from family and friends, and thus was given two extra tasks. Had Hercules been around today, Hera may well have set him about the task of preserving capital in an age of financial repression.
Before we get into the details of financial repression and its impact upon investing, let's perform a trick beloved by economists and abstract from the issue of repression and indeed valuations (obviously only for a moment as a thought experiment before you think I've been drugged by Hera and have taken leave of my senses). I think the world today could easily be described as the "Era of Uncertainty" Problems threaten from almost every direction: the fiscal cliff looms, the U.S. Presidential Cycle is upon us, Europe's troubles are clear for all to see, China appears to be slowing…indeed, the possibility of a global recession is non-negligible. Well-known and respected observers have publicly voiced their concerns. For instance, Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital recently wrote, "The world seems more uncertain today than at any other time in my life." John Bogle has said, "The economy has clouds hovering over it…And the financial system has been damaged."
Economists have come up with measures of uncertainty that combine things like the number of newspaper stories about uncertainty with the spread of economists' forecasts into a single measure. Exhibit 1 shows an example of this kind of index, and a cursory glance confirms the situation outlined above: the one thing we have been certain of is that uncertainty is high!
Now, if I told you we were in a world of slowing growth, where macro fears dominate and where uncertainty is high, chances are you would find yourself thinking about capital preservation (i.e., maintaining the real purchasing power of your capital).
This would certainly make sense if we lived in a world where economists' favourite Latin expression, ceteris paribus, was a good description of reality. Ceteris paribus simply means that everything is the same or equal. But, sadly, we simply can't ignore valuations. As Exhibit 2 shows, the investment opportunity set is currently pretty limited, especially for those assets that are generally associated with capital preservation (i.e., cash and bonds). They are all expensive, and bear in mind that our cash and bond forecasts embed a return to "normal" over the next seven years.
It is worth spending a few moments considering what has led us to arrive at this opportunity set. I think that it is a direct result of the policies being followed by central banks, especially the U.S. Federal Reserve. It has been uncharacteristically clear about the way Quantitative Easing (QE) "works." Brian Sack of the New York Fed writes:
A primary channel through which this effect takes place is by narrowing the risk premiums on the assets being purchased. By purchasing a particular asset, the Fed reduces the amount of the security that the private sector holds, displacing some investors and reducing the holdings of others. In order for investors to be willing to make those adjustments, the expected return on the security has to fall. Put differently, the purchases bid up the price of the asset and hence lower its yield. These effects would be expected to spill over into other assets that are similar in nature, to the extent that investors are willing to substitute between the assets. These patterns describe what researchers often refer to as the portfolio balance channel. [Emphasis added.]
Put another way, QE sets the short-term rate to zero, and then tries to persuade everyone to spend rather than save by driving down the rates of return on all other assets (by direct purchase and indirect effects) towards zero, until there is nothing left to hold savings in. Essentially, Bernanke's first commandment to investors goes something like this: Go forth and speculate. I don't care what you do as long as you do something irresponsible.
Not all of Bernanke's predecessors would have necessarily shared his enthusiasm for recklessness. William McChesney Martin was the longest-serving Federal Reserve Governor of all time. He seriously considered training as a Presbyterian minister before deciding that his vocation lay elsewhere, a trait that earned him the beautifully oxymoronic moniker of "the happy puritan." He is probably most famous for his observation that the central bank's role was to "take away the punch bowl just when the party is getting started." In contrast, Bernanke's Fed is acting like teenage boys on prom night: spiking the punch, handing out free drinks, hoping to get lucky, and encouraging everyone to view the market through beer goggles.
So why is the Fed pursuing this policy? The answer, I think, is that the Fed is worried about the "initial condition" or starting point (if you prefer) of the economy, a position of over-indebtedness. When one starts from this position there are really only four ways out:
i. Growth is obviously the most "popular" but hardest route.
ii. Austerity is pretty much doomed to failure as it tends to lead to falling tax revenues, wider deficits, and public unrest.2
iii. Abrogation runs the spectrum from default (entirely at the borrower's discretion) to restructuring (a combination of borrower and lender) right out to the oft-forgotten forgiveness (entirely at the lender's discretion).
iv. Inflation erodes the real value of the debt and transfers wealth from savers to borrowers. Inflating away debt can be delivered by two different routes: (a) sudden bursts of inflation, which catch participants off guard, or (b) financial repression.
Financial repression can be defined (somewhat loosely, admittedly) as a policy that results in consistent negative real interest rates. Keynes poetically called this the "euthanasia of the rentier."3 The tools available to engineer this outcome are many and varied, ranging from explicit (or implicit) caps on interest rates to directed lending to the government by captive domestic audiences (think the postal saving system in Japan over the last two decades) to capital controls (favoured by emerging markets in days gone by).
What evidence can be offered that financial repression is something that investors need to consider? The prima facie case is surely Exhibit 3, coupled with the Fed's actions. Effectively, bond yields are so low because we have group of price-insensitive buyers in the market. Obviously, the main such agents are the central banks themselves, but in keeping with financial repression, they are turning to others over whom they exert considerable influence and encouraging them to follow suit. So, the banks are told that government bonds are a zero risk weight asset, and therefore they must own them. The insurers are told that under Solvency II they too must own lots of government bonds. Pension funds are encouraged to liability match with the "best" match being defined as (yes, you guessed it, surprise, surprise) government bonds.
So how does a value investor respond to this? It certainly appears as if the assets one would normally associate with capital preservation are expensive. So can and/or should you substitute other assets such as equities into the role of safe-haven value store?
In order to begin analysing this I need to introduce you to Exhibit 4. It represents a simple, two-asset (cash and stocks) fantasy world. It shows two lines, the first being the blue line (for those reading in black and white that is the line that slopes down from right to left), which represents a value investor's reaction function. It tells us for a given equity forecast how much stock we should own in our portfolio. I've calibrated it so that at "fair value" – approximately 6% real – you have 50% of your portfolio in equities (obviously this could be set for any level). As the market becomes cheaper, you will want to own more of it, and as it becomes more expensive, you will want to own less of it. So, in essence, this captures the behaviour of a value investor.
The red line (sloping down from left to right) shows a line of capital preservation. This maps out how much equity you would need to own given the forecast, assuming that whatever you didn't own in stock was invested in cash, which was going to earn a -2.5% real return (i.e., financial repression is in play). This line is behaviourally inverse to the value investor's reaction function. It leads to odd behaviour like selling equities as they become cheaper because you need less of the higher returning asset to offset the drag on your cash, and at the other end of the scale, owning lots of equities when they are expensive because it takes a lot to offset the real return cash drag in the portfolio. This is clearly at odds with a value investing approach.
As Ben Graham opined:
"The investor has no sound basis for expecting more than an average overall return…[from] common stocks [JM: Indeed, on our measures global equities look priced to deliver around 3% real p.a. in our current forecast]…But even if these expectations should prove to be understated by a substantial amount, the case would not be made for an all-stock investment program…The common stock buyer at today's prices will be running a real risk of having unsatisfactory results therefrom over a period of years."4
In effect, Ben Graham is highlighting the "tail risk" that comes with owning equities, especially at high valuations. We have used Exhibit 5 before, but it stands repeating. The idea behind the exhibit came from my friend, John Hussman.5 The horizontal axis plots the level of the real return forecast,6 the vertical axis shows the subsequent deepest drawdown from the point of the forecast over the next three years.
The worst of the market's drawdowns occur when forecast returns are below 5% real, and this risk grows as the forecast return drops to zero and below. Indeed, at forecasts of zero and below, investors run the risk of seeing their investment halve over the next three years! [N.B. GMO's current S&P 500 forecast is 0% annually.]
Conversely, when the forecast return is 10% or higher, the risk of deep drawdown over the subsequent three years is relatively muted, limited as it is to around 20%. Thus, as valuations become more and more attractive, the downside becomes less and less – the margin of safety at work.
So investors find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis, facing either the likely but limited erosion of purchasing power that stems from holding cash, or the uncertain but potentially disastrous impairment of capital that arises from owning overvalued equities. Hardly an appealing choice!
However, there is some hope. People often talk about capital preservation and capital growth as mutually exclusive competing objectives: you can do one or the other but not both. I think they can be reconciled by time horizon. That is to say that there are times when it is absolutely correct to focus on capital preservation (think 2007) and in doing so you end up with capital to then deploy for capital growth when the opportunity set is much riper (think early 2009). This provides a hint at one way in which we might seek to deal with financial repression, effectively by outcompounding the drag of inflation and negative real rates. As long as investors swing between irrational exuberance and the depths of despair, altering the asset mix to reflect the opportunity set may provide a path to beating inflation.
Let's now turn to the impact of financial repression upon equities. The easiest way to frame this is to think of a dividend discount model of valuation, and then think about how financial repression might impact the various elements.
The price of your equities is determined by the flow of dividends (out across the top row of the above equation) and the discount rate (going out across the bottom of the equation). It should be clear that a policy of financial repression in and of itself has no impact upon the cashflows/dividends. In contrast, if you base your discount rate on another rate such as the government bond yield plus an equity risk premium, then it will clearly be affected by the policy of financial repression.
The extent to which this matters to you as an investor clearly depends upon the duration of the repression. For instance, if you thought you were just going to see financial repression for a single year, you wouldn't care because a single year's cash flow makes up a de minimis amount of the total worth of a long-duration asset like equities. If, on the other hand, you thought financial repression were going to be permanent, your discount rate would be permanently lower, and this would clearly significantly impact your valuation of equities.
Exhibit 6 shows how your estimate of fair value is dragged down by long periods of financial repression. Let's say you start from a position similar to ours in that equities should generate around 6% real under normal circumstances. As the exhibit shows, if financial repression lasts five years, your fair value estimate is barely dented. At 10 years of repression you are taking about 60 basis points off the fair value, well within the noise tolerance of any estimate of fair value. However, by the time you are at 15 years of financial repression, your estimate of fair value would be over 100 basis points lower than "normal." As we extend out to 20 years and beyond, your estimate of fair value is now 200 basis points lower than "normal"; fair value is now 4% rather than 6%.
Clearly this will impact your behaviour. Let's return to the diagram we used earlier, showing our value investor's reaction function. If an investor alters his perception of fair value, then it translates as a horizontal shift in the reaction function. At each new assessment of fair value, a "neutral" weight is held (set to be 50% above). Exhibit 7, which is a repeat of Exhibit 4 with some additional lines, represents these shifting reaction functions, each one reflecting behaviour that depends upon the investor's assessment of the duration of financial repression. The longer he thinks financial repression will last, the further to the left his reaction function slides.
These horizontal shifts may not look particularly dramatic but they can lead to some very different behaviour. This is best illustrated by picking an example. Let's say you think equities are priced to generate 5% real. If we are in a normal world, where fair value is 6% real, then equities are expensive and you should own less than you would at fair value. However, if you think that financial repression will last 20 years, your fair value is not 6% but 4%, and thus at 5% real stocks are actually cheap and you should own more of them than you normally would. Exhibit 8 quantifies this. Based on the original reaction function at 5%, you would own around 35% in equities. However, if you were operating under the assumption that fair value was 4%, then you would own close to 70% in equities at 5% real, nearly double your stock weight under the base case.
Of course, this raises the obvious question as to how long financial repression will last. I'd love to be able to tell you the answer, but I have a rare form of Tourette Syndrome that compels me to tell the truth, which is that I have absolutely no idea.
Reinhart and Sberina (2011) provide us with the following table based on some notable periods of financial repression; unfortunately the sample size is small (many of these events are actually one and the same). However, based on this data the average duration of repression is 22 years ±12 years!
As ever, when in doubt one can turn to Ben Graham's writings for insight. The quotation below comes from The Intelligent Investor, which was written right in the middle of the post-World War II period of U.S. financial repression:
It must be evident that we have no enthusiasm for common stocks at these levels…[However] we feel that the defensive investor cannot afford to be without an appreciable proportion of common stocks in his portfolio, even if we regard them as the lesser of two evils – the greater being the risks in an all-bond holding.
This neatly sums up GMO's viewpoint. We don't like stocks as an asset class compared to what we think fair value should be. However, the alternatives are generally really awful. This problem is exacerbated if financial repression lasts beyond our forecast horizon of seven years. So, at the margin, an investor would probably be wise to give equities a little more benefit of the doubt, and hence a little more weight in their portfolio than they would do, if the Fed weren't pursuing policies of financial repression.
Of course, you must ask what would happen if you are wrong? That is to say, what would happen if you thought financial repression was here for 20 years, and it actually lasted only five years? The answer is, naturally, that you would own too much equity at too high a price. You would have been buying equities thinking fair value were 4% real, but then after five years you would realize that fair value had actually been 6%. This creates a permanent impairment of capital.
Exhibit 10 shows a stylised version of this problem. It assumes that equities are priced to deliver 4% real (i.e., fair value under the scenario of financial repression lasting 20 years), and then traces out the extent of the permanent impairment of your total capital if it transpires that after five years repression ends. It is obviously a function of your expected duration of repression since that determines which reaction function you sit on, and therefore how much weight you hold in stocks. If you thought repression were going to last 20 years, then at 4% real you would own 50% in stocks. However, if after five years of 4% real, fair value shifts to 6%, then you would take a 14% impairment on your equity holdings, or a 7% impairment of your total capital (permanent because you should not expect stocks to move from their fair value).
There are no easy answers to the problem of capital preservation in an age of financial repression, only difficult choices. Given that our models assume that rates revert to "normal" over the next seven years, we shouldn't be reacting very differently than we would under normal circumstances. However, we willingly admit we could be wrong. Predicting cash rates is a tough thing to do, because in essence you are predicting a policy variable. Looking at our history, our cash forecasts have generally been one of the least accurate for exactly that reason. As ever we tend to err on the side of caution by assuming that financial repression is short-lived: we will tend to under-own equities if proved wrong, but we still have the potential to out-compound the effects to inflation if the opportunity set continues to shift as it has done in the past.
As an alternative to our view, one could look to the forward market to gauge the market's implied view on cash rates and inflation (as shown in Exhibit 11).
The market currently seems to believe that the Fed will indeed keep real short rates supressed for a very long time – consistent with the historical experience of financial repression. Effectively, the market currently implies that real short rates will average almost -1.5% over the next 20 years!
However, before one dashes out to buy equities, it is worth noting that the forward curves are not great predictors of actual future short rates in either nominal or real terms (Exhibits 12 and 13, respectively).
All of which leaves me with yet another example of the specific form of Tourette Syndrome mentioned previously, however, on this occasion a quotation from Voltaire sums it up best: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
Appendix: Tobin's Q and Financial Repression One of the things that made my head ache whilst I was thinking through the implications of financial repression for equity valuations was how a measure like Tobin's Q would fit into the story. Tobin's Q measures the market value of an enterprise relative to its replacement cost.
The approach has its route in Keynes's General Theory where he writes:
But the daily revaluations of the Stock Exchange, though they are primarily made to facilitate transfers of old investments between one individual and another, inevitably exert a decisive influence on the rate of current investment. For there is no sense in building up a new enterprise at a cost greater than that at which a similar existing enterprise can be purchased; whilst there is an inducement to spend on a new project what may seem an extravagant sum, if it can be floated off on the Stock Exchange at an immediate profit.
As Tobin and Brainard note,7 "Economic logic indicates that a normal equilibrium value for Q is 1… Values of Q above 1 should stimulate investment, in excess of requirements for replacement and normal growth, and values of Q below 1 discourage investment."
At first it wasn't obvious to me that under this approach financial repression could affect such a measure. This caused me to doubt my initial results. However, upon reflection it became clear that financial repression actually does come to bear upon Tobin's Q.
Financial repression has no impact upon the denominator of the equation – replacement cost is unaffected by financial repression. However, the numerator – market value – can be thought of as exactly the dividend discount model that was presented earlier, and thus can be affected by financial repression via the discount rate. In essence, financial repression raises the level of Tobin's Q above 1.
Having reached this conclusion I was intrigued to see if anyone else had thought about such issues. Some research revealed something that I should have guessed – none other than James Tobin himself had detailed this outcome in a paper in 1969.8
He writes, "If the rate on one asset, 'money,' is fixed, then the market rate of return on capital can, indeed must, be among the n-1 rates to be determined. This enables the monetary authority to force the market return on physical capital to diverge from its technological marginal efficiency – or, what is the same thing, to force the market valuation of existing capital to diverge from its reproduction cost. By creating these divergences, the monetary authority can affect the current rate of production and accumulation of capital assets." [Emphasis added.]
So whilst financial repression clearly doesn't impact replacement cost, it can alter the valuation of the asset in the market. Effectively, Tobin is arguing that policies such as those of financial repression will change the "equilibrium" level of Q. Indeed, Tobin argues that creating "arbitrage" opportunities (a wedge between replacement cost and market valuation) is one way in which central banks can affect the real economy.
1 Oddly, we in the English speaking world use the name of Hercules, but this is actually the Roman name for the character. His Greek name was Heracles, which translates as "To the glory of Hera," Zeus's apparent attempt to placate his wife's anger.
2 James Montier, "Is Austerity the Road to Ruin?" GMO white paper, July 2010.
3 A rentier was someone who lived off the income stream of investments.
4 Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing, 1973.
5 www.hussmandfunds.com
6 Of course, we at GMO have been doing these forecasts in real time since 1994, but this chart shows data from 1940 onwards. I have created a series of forecasts for market returns based on mean reversion in the Graham and Dodd P/E. They correlate very closely with the real-time forecasts we have made, so provide a rough proxy of what we might well have been saying if we had been around at the time.
7 Tobin and Brainard, "Asset Markets and the Cost of Capital," Cowles Foundation, Paper 440, 1977.
8 James Tobin, "A General Equilibrium Approach to Monetary Theory," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol 1, No. 1 pp15-29, 1969.
Mr. Montier is a member of GMO's asset allocation team. Prior to joining GMO in 2009, he was co-head of Global Strategy at Société Générale. Mr. Montier is the author of several books including Behavioural Investing: A Practitioner's Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance; Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment; and The Little Book of Behavioural Investing. Mr. Montier is a visiting fellow at the University of Durham and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Portsmouth University and an M.Sc. in Economics from Warwick University.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the views of Mr. Montier through the period ending November 28, 2012 and are subject to change at any time based on market and other conditions. This is not an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. The article may contain some forward looking statements. There can be no guarantee that any forward looking statement will be realized. GMO undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward looking tatements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Statements concerning financial market trends are based on current market conditions, which will fluctuate. References to securities and/or issuers are for illustrative purposes only. References made to securities or issuers are not representative of all of the securities purchased, sold or recommended for advisory clients, and it should not be assumed that the investment in the securities was or will be profitable. There is no guarantee that these investment strategies will work under all market conditions, and each investor should evaluate the suitability of their investments for the long term, especially during periods of downturns in the markets.
White Paper: For those of you whose Greek mythology might be a little rusty, Hercules was a demi-god, the result of one of Zeus's dalliances with mortal women. Hera, Zeus's divine wife, was not best pleased by her husband's lack of faithfulness, and thus decided to punish Hercules.1 She drugged him, and in his drug-induced state Hercules killed his wife and two children. When he recovered his senses, Hercules was, of course, full of remorse and begged for redemption. In order to earn forgiveness, he was set 10 "impossible tasks." On two of those tasks he got aid from family and friends, and thus was given two extra tasks. Had Hercules been around today, Hera may well have set him about the task of preserving capital in an age of financial repression.


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The partnership between Chrysler Group and Fiat will unveil the new 2012 seven-seat crossover Fiat Freemont at the Geneva Motor Show in March.
The Fiat Freemont features the body of a Dodge Journey but is rebranded with a Fiat logo, new bumpers and grille, and includes different engine choices that have been developed by Fiat PowerTrain (FPT).
For FWD manual transmission models, a Fiat 2.0-liter MultiJet turbo diesel engine with 140- or 170-horsepower will be offered. Being released later will be the AWD 4×4 models with a 2.0-liter MultiJet 170-horsepower engine and Chrysler's 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 276-horsepower engine, both with automatic transmissions. Read the rest of this entry »


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Is this topic for you?
This topic provides information about cancer of the lining of the uterus (endometrium). It does not cover cancer in the muscle of the uterus, which is called uterine sarcoma. This topic focuses on type I endometrial cancer, which is the most common kind of uterine cancer.
What is endometrial cancer?
Endometrial cancer is the growth of abnormal cells in the lining of the uterus . The lining is called the endometrium. Endometrial cancer is also called cancer of the uterus, or uterine cancer.
Endometrial cancer usually occurs in women older than 50. The good news is that it is usually cured when it is found early. And most of the time, the cancer is found in its earliest stage, before it has spread outside the uterus.
What causes endometrial cancer?
The most common cause of type I endometrial cancer is having too much of the hormone estrogen compared to the hormone progesterone in the body. This hormone imbalance causes the lining of the uterus to get thicker and thicker. If the lining builds up and stays that way, then cancer cells can start to grow.
Women who have this hormone imbalance over time may be more likely to get endometrial cancer after age 50.
What are the symptoms?
The most common symptoms include:
- Bleeding or vaginal discharge not related to your period (menstruation).
- Pain during sex.
- Pelvic pain.
How is endometrial cancer diagnosed?
Endometrial cancer is usually diagnosed with a biopsy. In this test, the doctor removes a small sample of the lining of the uterus to look for cancer cells.
How is it treated?
The main treatment for endometrial cancer is surgery to remove the uterus plus the cervix, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. This is called a hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Other treatments include radiation therapy, hormone therapy, or chemotherapy.
Finding out that you have cancer can change your life. You may feel like your world has turned upside down and you have lost all control. Talking with family, friends, or a counselor can really help. Ask your doctor about support groups. Or call the American Cancer Society (1-800-227-2345) or visit its website at www.cancer.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learning about endometrial cancer:
Being diagnosed:
Getting treatment:
Ongoing concerns:
Living with endometrial cancer:
Supportive care:


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Agenda Gives Centrists Pause
Some Democrats Fear Obama's Social Emphases May Undercut Focus on Economy
President Barack Obama's sweeping liberal agenda, as laid out in Monday's inauguration speech, has some centrist Democrats worried the focus on issues such as gun control and climate change could dilute efforts to boost the economy and create jobs.
Mr. Obama's speech was a call to action on Democratic social issues, focusing in part on civil rights, gay rights and efforts to help low-income Americans.
But parts of his...


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Experiencing art is, for some people, mere entertainment, a welcome diversion from the banalities of everyday life. Others may think of art primarily as an investment, or something to be consumed. But for some of us, art can be a life-changing experience.
With that in mind, we posed two questions to a few dozen of our finest local artists: What piece of art (visual art/film/literature/music/dance/whatever) changed your life? And how did it affect you?
The responses were entertaining and enlightening. You may even find some of them inspiring. We've also prepared an extensive listing of arts events scheduled for the coming months. Thanks to the Free Fall Baltimore initiative—more than 75 arts organizations are offering events free of charge in October and November (visit freefallbaltimore.com for details)—there's never been a better time to experience the local arts scene.
It might even change your life.
John Barth
For better or worse, I became the writer that I became in considerable measure because of two literary monuments fortuitously encountered during my student years at Johns Hopkins. The first was James Joyce's Ulysses, that polestar of literary Modernism first published in France in 1922, banned from the USA until 1933 on account of its erotic aspects, acclaimed in a recent poll as the greatest novel of the 20th century, and hungrily devoured by me nearly 60 years ago in the 1946 Modern Library edition. That copy remains on my shelf, index-tabbed and heavily annotated by a fledgling fictionist as wowed at age 20 by that Modernist masterpiece as a naive but ambitious young painter might have been on first encountering the works of Pablo Picasso.
The second (in some ways a counterweight to the first) was the anonymous medieval Persian/Arabian tales of Scheherazade, which I'd read originally as a kid in a radically abridged and expurgated Arabian Nights discreetly illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, but then rediscovered in the Hopkins library in Richard Burton's 17-volume, privately printed and utterly unexpurgated 1885 edition (likewise now in a place of honor in our house) entitled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night—ribald, raucous, hilarious, heart-constricting —wherein the Sultan's Vizier's beautiful and canny daughter diverts her murderously misogynous master with nearly three years worth of sex and storytelling to prevent his deflowering and executing every maiden in the realm. Her life ever on the line, only as good as her next piece, Scheherazade remains for me the most piquant emblem of the storyteller's lot.
So: one icon of early-20th-century Modernism and another of timeless oral taletelling, Ulysses and The 1001 Nights became (and remain) my chiefest stars. With their aid I've steered my own course, trying as best I can to not mistake my navigation-stars for my destination.
Teddy Douglas
DJ/producer (Basement Boys)
"Soul Man" by Sam and Dave was the first 45 rpm record that my parents purchased for me in the 1960's. It made me fall in love with music. To now have a career in the music business is truly satisfying.
Geologist & Avey Tare
Musicians (Animal Collective)
The Shining by Stanley Kubrick—specifically the music in the film. How could you know at 15 years old that abstract sound could be just as interesting and powerful as melody and rhythm? We certainly didn't until watching that film at just the right moment. Eleven years later, we're still influenced by what we learned that night.
Jay Steinhour
DJ/producer (Basement Boys)
When I was in high school I took a trip one fall with some friends to see Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater." I was overwhelmed by the design integrity, how it worked with nature and almost became part of nature. It also worked so well as a living space. I knew I wanted to be creative, and affect how people experienced the world and interacted with it. I went to architecture school, and turned to interactive urban planning, by involving and educating communities about the world around them. Then, my interest turned to music. Though I liked many different kinds of music, it was soulful dance music that grabbed me. But what really grabbed me was DJing and creating a musical journey for dancers on the dance floor. The creative process of programming positive, soulful dance music pulled me into a career in music. More than architecture, it allowed me to affect an even deeper, more personal space where people lived.
Grace Hartigan
One of the things that really changed my life was meeting Jackson Pollock and seeing his drip paintings when they were still wet in the studio. They impressed upon me that the canvas and the self are indivisible—they cannot be divided. The work is the self.
Lafayette Gilchrist
The album Money Jungle, the famous trio date involving Max Roach (drums), Charles Mingus (bass), and The Man himself, Duke Ellington, at the piano. I never knew sound could have such adventure and imagination. I knew after hearing this record my life would be spent in the pursuit of sounds.
Tim Camponeschi (aka Slim Man)
When I was five years old, my Dad took me to see a movie with Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye. It was called The Five Pennies. I saw Louis play trumpet and sing in the movie, and asked my Dad to get me a trumpet for Christmas.
He got me a plastic toy trumpet. I told him I didn't want a toy, I wanted a real one. So for my birthday, right after Christmas, he got me a real one, and it started my love affair with music, jazz, and Louis Armstrong.
Madison Smartt Bell
There is more than one such instance, but the one that comes to mind is the part in Dostoevsky's The Idiot where Prince Myshkin goes to visit Rogozhin. Myshkin, being on the verge of an epileptic seizure, is full of paranoid dread and believes that Rogozhin is planning to kill him. In fact, Rogozhin is planning to kill him (the two have a difference over a woman, etc.). Rogozhin is waiting for Myshkin at the top of his stairs, and Myshkin climbs toward him believing that Rogozhin is holding a knife behind his back, which he is. At the moment Rogozhin draws his knife, Myshkin falls into his fit and in the moment of collapse experiences the full panorama of omniscient euphoria that is often reported from the cusp of such seizures. In my own life at the time, there were events that seemed to echo it still further, so a feeling of synchronicity was impressed deeply upon me. And Dostoevksy became my greatest influence.
Irene Lewis
Artistic Director (Center Stage)
When I was fifteen, my high school in Long Island put on a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Prior to that, I had not been exposed to anything artistic—theater, classical music, dance, visual arts, what have you—but from experiencing that show, and seeing the depth of vision and human emotion presented on a stage through very simple means, I was hooked. I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
Gregg Wilhelm
Founder of CityLit Project
The original Clash album (on vinyl!) released in the USA in 1979, but discovered by me in 1981 at Record Masters in the Rotunda. From the first crunching chords of "Clash City Rockers" to the stop-on-a-dime finale of "Garageland," I was hooked. It ushered me to the Ramones, The Jam, Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, and the rest of the Clash catalog that become my soundtrack for the Reagan-Thatcher 1980s. More importantly, it ignited the first sparks of a DIY spirit within me. While I never dyed my hair blue, pierced a body part, or owned a pair of real Doc Martens, that essential punk spirit evolved into what I guess they call an "entrepreneurial spirit" these days. This drive might partly explain how I have been able to create "career opportunities" in the book world even though the culture of literature is under attack. Twenty-five years later, I still listen to it.
John Berndt
Musician & Co-Founder of the High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music
At the age of six my mother took me to the BMA to see an "empty gallery" exhibit by Sol Lewitt consisting of faint geometric pencil marks on the walls. What it suggested to me at that ripe age was a kind of non-conformist culture confronting the viewer from a remote, complex, strange, and abstract standpoint—like being contacted by interesting aliens that have something fundamental and surprising to tell you. I spent the rest of my life following up on that suggested possibility by energetically exploring and participating in the artistic, musical, and political avant-gardes. While they contain plenty of garbage and fluff, they did ultimately provide me with many "miracles"—piercing ideas and perspectives that go far beyond what is usually possible in our civilization. The path severely less traveled was really where the action was.
Marin Alsop
Music Director (BSO)
Hearing Brahms' String Sextet in B flat major when I was 12 years old made me suddenly understand that music can change one's life from the inside out. It's the first piece I felt truly "moved" by and I have loved it intensely from that moment on.
Anne Tyler
Eudora Welty's short story, "The Wide Net"—and more specifically, the sentence describing someone who could sit all day pondering how the tail of the C got through the loop of the L in the Coca-Cola sign. That sentence came at me like a burst of light. It made me see that I could write about ordinary life rather than something grand and operatic.
Maria Broom
Dancer and Actress (The Wire)
The most influential artistic experience of my life was seeing the original Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo at the Lyric when I was six years old. It was the singular event that made me "know" that I wanted to perform on stage as a dancer. I saw all of those men and women in beautiful costumes surrounded by stunning, larger-than-life scenery, and I knew that "those were my people." And I have been dancing and performing ever since.
Tom Hall
Music Director (Baltimore Choral Arts Society)
They say you never forget your first time, and they're right. The first time I ever sang in a chorus was during my freshman year in college. We sang Gabriel Fauré's Requiem, and I was so moved, that within weeks of singing that concert, I abandoned my plans to be a professional guitarist and embraced choral music as my life's work. The best thing about choral music is that you are part of something bigger than yourself. The Fauré Requiem will always be a big part of me.
Elizabeth Spires
Some experiences of great art are electric, dramatic. I'm thinking of the effect on the viewer, or reader, of Van Gogh's swirling, cosmically charged Starry Night or Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Terrible Sonnets." But some art is more quietly life-changing. Five or six years ago, my husband brought back some small paintings from Haiti, done in a naive style by the young painter Armand Fleurimond. His lyrical scenes of the lush Haitian countryside and seashore, of children jumping rope or flying kites, insisted that a parallel world co-exists in that tiny island country alongside the violence, instability, and poverty.
Fleurimond's paintings capture a private realm that I return to again and again, always feeling restored by his fresh, innocent vision. His paintings speak to the power of the imagination to give us a different version of the violent world we have grown accustomed to living in. By their very existence, they insist that hope prevails. In Haiti. Here. Anywhere. I call that life-changing.
Darin Atwater
Music Director (Soulful Symphony)
In high school while watching the Kennedy Center Honors, which my mom forced me to do every December, I saw The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform their classic Revelations as they paid tribute the their Artistic Director and Founder, Alvin Ailey. It gave me an aesthetic framework for the elevation of the African-American vernacular. It represented the power of an institution to represent culture at its highest form, and the ability to engineer that culture through art. It is that benchmark I pursue.
Niki Lee
Green Day's American Idiot CD catapulted me out of whatever I thought middle-age was supposed to be. My transformation from hermit-like suburbanite to 47-year-old punk rock groupie was stunning. The opening guitar riff of the title song nailed me nearly two years ago, while I was working on the computer and listening to the Howard Stern Show. It caused my whole body to surge backwards in my black swivel chair, hands involuntarily flying off my ergonomic computer keyboard as if I'd been shot full of electricity. Giving a middle finger to the powers-that-be, it was the most satisfying rock music I'd heard in over 15 years, and I hadn't realized how much I'd been craving that kind of expression.
It helped pull me back from the brink of becoming a sloppy drug addict with severe health, relationship, and job problems. The pain of a severe case of sciatica got me addicted to painkillers, cigarettes, Bailey's Irish Cream, and Cocoa Puffs.
It was a slippery slope. None of my clothes fit, and visits to the liquor store became embarrassingly frequent. Fearing I'd end up being some fat, out-of-shape, rode-hard-and-put-up-wet 50-year-old, I started doing yoga and gave up my vices. Hearing American Idiot was the final slap in the face that ratcheted up my recovery 10,000 notches.
To see Green Day perform, and I simply had to, I started to travel—before that, I always hated to travel. The band was playing American Idiot in its entirety at the Hard Rock Café in Las Vegas, and I wanted to go. Flying, especially after 9/11, totally freaked me out, but I went anyway because I was sick of thinking that only other people went on adventures. The show was exhilarating. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is a force I've never witnessed before—a cross between Charlie Chaplin, Jim Morrison, Mister Rogers, and Elvis. But the cherry on the top of that Sin City hot fudge sundae was shooting craps with the band's drummer, Tre Cool, who complimented me on my Green Day tattoo. Oh yeah, I got a Green Day tattoo on my forearm.
Then, there was Europe. I impulsively bought a ticket to see the band in Lyon, France. A friend of mine was so amused by my newfound fandom that she gave me a free, first-class British Airways ticket to cross the Atlantic. The trip to Lyon turned into a tour of four countries in six days, during which I saw the band three times. I even took the Chunnel between England and France, something that I never ever ever would have considered before that—much too dangerous!
American Idiot upended my life so exquisitely that, after years of fearful living, I was liberated. I learned how to have fun by myself and with others, how to fly without panicking, and how to infuse my own music and life with spirit and guts. Now, when something overwhelms me, I get in touch with my inner Billie Joe.
John Waters
I first saw this shocking, elegant, beautiful painting—Nude Descending A Staircase by Marcel Duchamp—in a magazine when I was about 8 years old and it stopped me in my childhood tracks. I couldn't wait to show this masterpiece to friends but they all said, "EWWWWWW!" "That's ugly." "You're stupid." Right then I realized the thrilling power of contemporary art and for the next year every time I came down the steps at my parents' house, I was Nude Descending A Staircase, but I didn't tell anybody.
Manuel Barrueco
Back in 1987, I had the opportunity to get to know the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu while performing his concerto "To the Edge of Dream" with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. Up until that time, I had seen classical music and my own work much more from an intellectual point of view. But after that experience, especially after getting over the shock of both of them encouraging me to infuse my performance with much more eroticism, my work transformed itself to be much more about beauty, poetry, and ultimately about the human experience.
Alex Castro
So many things. So many important things. Eliot (Four Quartets), Stevens (Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction), but it always comes back to music. All art feebly tries to attain what music does naturally. So, recently, the Aria movement from Roger Sessions' Divertimento for Orchestra, but always the one thing that I go back to and which has had the profoundest effect: the Bach Cello Suites, preferably played by Janos Starker.
Nothing goes deeper or sees more.


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What's Included
About This Organizer
The Jointure is a 501(c)3 organization that has been providing community education for almost 100 years. It began in 1914 as a small community initiative in Bound Brook through the Board of Education. Over the years, the Jointure expanded and partnered with other area school districts in Somerset County. Today, the Jointure represents a true "joint venture" in learning. Adult education classes are available from the northern part of the county in Basking Ridge to the southern part of the county in Hillsborough. In addition, the Jointure has partnered with local schools providing pre-school, kindergarten and before and after school programs. We look forward to continuing to bring quality education and experiences to the communities of Somerset County.
Organizer Info
The Jointure Community Programs


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This entry was posted on Monday, January 6th, 2014 at 2:30 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2014 Chevrolet Volt
Monday January 6th, 2014 at 2:11 PM
Posted by: aquadog


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Hospitals warned over weekend care
Hospitals will face sanctions unless they deliver the same standard of care seven days a week in a shake-up aimed at cutting the increased death risk at weekends.
Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS England's medical director, said he was setting out "pretty radical changes" which were backed up with some "pretty hard levers" to make sure hospitals complied.
He told t he Sunday Times that hospital trusts will be contractually bound to run a full service seven days a week - with breaches costing them up to 2.5% of their annual income of up to £500 million.
Sir Bruce indicated the changes, which could cost around £1 billion to implement, would result in hospitals making more efficient use of equipment and expertise.
The increased risk of mortality at the weekend could be as high as 11% on a Saturday and 16% on a Sunday, according to an analysis of more than 14 million hospital admissions in 2009/10.
Under the plan, w ithin three years all patients admitted to a hospital ward as an emergency will see a consultant within 14 hours, and those already in hospital will be reviewed by one every 24 hours.
Routine surgery will also be available for minor conditions, such as hernias, as well as blood tests, heart checks and biopsies, saving patients from having to take time off work.
Services such as X-rays, ultrasounds, CT and MRI scans will be carried out promptly at weekends, following the review.
On the BBC's Andrew Marr Show Sir Bruce explained that " junior doctors are feeling particularly stressed at the weekends because of the complexity of patients, the complexity of diagnosis and treatment, and they feel unsupported."
He said: "This has been brought to our attention and we worry about that, not only because it may relate to the higher mortality but also because it implies that we could be training the next generation of doctors better."
Effectively shutting down many services at the weekend was also wasteful, he added.
"It seems strange in many ways that we should start to wind down on a Friday afternoon and warm up on a Sunday while operating theatres are empty, outpatient clinics echo, expensive diagnostic kit isn't being used and in the meantime people are waiting for diagnosis and treatment."
Sir Bruce indicated that the changes would add around 1.5% to 2% of the annual hospital running costs.
"The budget of the NHS is, broadly speaking £100 billion. Only half of the expenditure is spent in hospitals, the other half is spent outside hospitals."
But he said: " What we do know is that if you have more consultant presence in a hospital at the weekend, several things happen: firstly you don't have inappropriate admissions to the hospital.
"Secondly, when those patients are admitted they get a diagnosis quicker and the appropriate treatment is started more quickly.
"That means that patients spend less time in hospital and the hospital as a whole runs more efficiently."
Sir Bruce said he believed a clause in contracts which says that organisations cannot force consultants to work at weekends could be removed,
Setting out his plan, which will be put to NHS England's board on Tuesday, he said 10 benchmarks had been identified for hospitals to meet.
"We have identified 10 clinical standards which will deal with what our expectations are in terms of diagnostic capacity in organisations at the weekend - so how their labs work and consultant presence as well.
"Those seem to be the two things that are at the heart of this matter. We are going to put those into the NHS contract for organisations over the course of the next three years.
"We are going to make organisations be absolutely transparent about whether they are meeting these 10 clinical standards or not. "
Organisations which do not have suitable levels of consultant presence will be prevented from contracts to train junior doctors.
The Care Quality Commission will ensure that no hospitals receive the highest ratings unless they meet the conditions and "for acute services to be judged safe, they have to be safe 24/7".
"These are some pretty radical changes with some pretty hard levers behind them," Sir Bruce said.
He will also ask NHS England to set up pilot schemes in 2014/15 to improve GP access for at least 500,000 people to help move to a seven-day model across the health service.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "Patients should be at the heart of the NHS and be able to depend on it every day - not just Monday to Friday. I want the NHS to expand to provide seven-day services so that more patients get the right care, when they need it."
Dean Royles, chief executive of the NHS Employers organisation, said: " Seven-day working is probably the most important issue facing the NHS at the current time, and movement in this direction is essential if we are to ensure its sustainable long-term future.
"The NHS can't afford to sit back and rest on the laurels of its 65-year history, and Professor Keogh's report adds to the momentum for change and progress.
"We are increasingly seeing hospitals and community-based health services develop innovative services that anticipate and respond to patient needs, but all too often NHS employers find the terms and conditions of doctors are getting in the way of progress.
"We are now facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change how the NHS works. Patients, employers, medical Royal Colleges and the Government all want to see seven-day care. I hope this report will help accelerate progress and we make the ambition a reality."


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Agency buys vehicles for its visiting nurses
BELLOWS FALLS -- Louise Cheeney has put 25,000 miles on her car since she got it.
That was in April.
But the registered nurse with Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Vermont and New Hampshire is one of 15 staff members the agency has equipped with vehicles and now has a brand-new set of wheels for professional and personal use.
The VNAVNH recently decided to take out 36-month leases on 15 cars for its employees and held a launch for seven of them at Bellows Falls on Thursday. The other eight were launched at the agency's West Lebanon, N.H., location on Wednesday.
"I'm very excited. My car is tired and wants to rest in the driveway," Cheeney said with a laugh Thursday.
Shelia Aubin, the vice president of clinical operations for VNAVNH, said the fleet of 2013 Nissan Versas are part of a pilot program the agency started for the benefit of staff members and patients. DGI-Invisuals, of Billerica, Mass., contributed in the design and decorative wrapping of the vehicles, according to a statement.
"We began this project because we have such a large geographic area, we have to get our clinicians to the patients so one of the challenges is, of course, their vehicle to get them to their patients," Aubin said on the cold and windy Thursday behind the Rockingham Medical Group, which houses VNAVNH offices. "Right now in the agency, our staff is traveling 1.5 million miles every year. The average staff person is traveling about 500 miles a week and, obviously, it goes up and down from there."
Each of the 15 staff members assigned a vehicle will also be given two company debit cards -- one to cover gas and the other to take care of mechanical repairs and car washes. Hogan said more cars will likely be added to the fleet in the future.
All will be asked to pay $50 a month for personal usage. The vehicles were offered to staff members who travel in the most rural areas.
"I can start my day anywhere," Cheeney said. "I won't be receiving mileage, because I'll have the gas card for free gas instead, but I will start my day anywhere in my route. We used to try to start close to home and make a big circle. Now I can start way far away and work my way home."
After speaking with reporters, Cheeney got behind the wheel of her new ride -- which she called "Lucky No. 13" -- and pulled out of its parking spot before taking a brief drive around the lot to break it in.
Carol Barry, a registered nurse who has worked for VNAVNH for nearly 15 years, arrived a little later but made sure to check out and admire her new vehicle.
"We put so much mileage on our cars, it's just a wonderful, wonderful thing the VNA is doing," she said, adding that she averages 125 miles a day.
Aubin said she and Catherine Hogan, director of development and marketing, started hearing complaints from staff members who were putting many miles on their vehicles. They said some have had to reschedule appointments due to mechanical problems caused by excessive mileage. The agency has about 100 staff members, including registered nurses, therapists, hospice workers and social workers.
The VNAVNH services 6,000 patients a year and covers a 4,000-square-foot area along the Connecticut River, from the Montpelier area to just across the Massachusetts border.
Domenic Poli can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com, or 802-254-2311. You can follow him on Twitter @dpoli_reformer.
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In the clucky country a city's food basket can be filled out the back
ROBERT MAYER beams as he describes the image of his young daughters scuttling down to the chicken coop first thing in the morning to collect the day's eggs. When they reach the kitchen, the eggs are still warm.
''It doesn't get any fresher than that!'' he boasts.
Such a prospect would strike many people as a novelty reserved for idyllic barnyards, far away from the hustle and bustle of city life. But it seems in 2012, this is no longer the case.
The Mayer family, who live in North Balgowlah, 13 kilometres north-east of Sydney's CBD, are part of the ever-increasing group of Australians defying the stereotype of suburban living and enjoying the fruits - and eggs - of backyard produce.
''It's easy to go to the supermarket and buy eggs,'' Mayer says, ''but there's something really rewarding about actually being involved in the experience.''
According to the Australian Egg Corporation, backyard chicken coops account for almost 10 per cent of the nation's total egg production, with 393 million eggs produced in metropolitan and regional gardens last year. Mayer isn't surprised at the figure. ''In our neighbourhood - actually, in our street - every second household has a chicken coop out the back,'' he says. ''It's something that has really brought the community together.''
Dave Ingham, founder of Rentachook, has been a key figure in shaping this urban farming community. Since founding his business in 2001, Ingham has installed approximately 5000 chicken coops in homes around Sydney.
Ingham believes the internet has played a significant role in making people aware of how easy it is to keep chickens, even when they're living in small, urban spaces. However, he says people are continually surprised to find that chickens make great pets as well.
''They're lovely animals, very placid … and trust me, once you've seen chickens up close you'll never eat a cage egg again.''
Backyard chicken coops are just one of the many ways communities around the world are increasing their self-sufficiency, while reducing their ecological footprint. Food writer Jill Dupleix believes this movement comes down to our human desire to reconnect with the earth in an era often devoid of nature's influence.
''There's something that feels good about getting your nails in the dirt - even if it's just to grab a bunch of herbs out of a pot plant,'' she said.
Dupleix says that at the centre of this trend is the benefit of education, particularly when it comes to children. ''Chicken coops are great for families because they encourage children to actually respect animals and take responsibility for the food they're putting into their mouths.''
So with urban farming increasing in popularity by the day, what can we expect next from the self-sufficiency movement? ''I'm keeping an eye out for the urban cow movement,'' Dupleix laughs.
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Haren keeps changing to stay ahead
Right-hander has reinvented himself again in Anaheim
Dan Haren has pitched for four teams, seven managers and five pitching coaches in his eight-year career in the big leagues. Along the way, he's had to take on new looks.
"I'm a completely different pitcher than I was in Oakland," Haren told the Los Angeles Times. "When I was over there, I threw much harder. I didn't throw a cut fastball. Now I've kind of reinvented myself. You can't just go out there and throw up the same stuff every year. Everyone has to adjust along the way."
"He's evolved," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "He's evolved into more of a pitcher. Back then, he relied more on just dynamic stuff. Mentally, he's as tough as any pitcher I've seen."
John Baker gets first start since surgery: After missing most of the 2010 season with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery, John Baker has progressed to the point where he can swing the bat without pain. But he is still unable to play catcher. On Friday, he made his first start since the surgery, serving as Florida's designated hitter.
"I probably wouldn't have slept last night if they told me I was going to start the game," Baker told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "I think [manager] Edwin [Rodriguez] used his baseball player whisperer skills and didn't say anything to me. I'm not getting that much sleep anyway, so it probably would have just kept me up all night."
"I was even happy when I struck out," Baker said. "I had butterflies during batting practice, anticipating getting out there and playing. I couldn't sit still all day. I felt like a little kid. That's why we play this game. It was nice to have that kind of moment."
Detwiler finds retooled delivery effective: Ross Detwiler has reworked his delivery and is hoping to win the job as the Nationals' fifth starter in Spring Training. He helped his chances by pitching three innings with five strikeouts against the Braves. He allowed just one unearned run.
"I remember a few times last year trying to throw an inside fastball and leaving it over the plate, and it's either a home run or it's in the gap or something," Detwiler told the The Washington Post about why he changed his delivery. "So, I think I'm really able to drive the ball inside now."
Brian Wilson's debut just like old times: In his first appearance of the spring, San Francisco's Brian Wilson retired the side on 10 pitches against the Mariners.
"We had all the confidence Willie was fine ... but with that said, it was good for the team and these fans to see him out there," manager Bruce Bochy told the San Jose Mercury News. "He'll definitely get the crowd into it. He's got a lot of presence, and he sends a lot of confidence through the club all the time."
Wandy Rodriguez chalks up successful outing: Wandy Rodriguez looked sharp in his second Spring Training outing on Saturday. Of the 52 pitches he threw, 31 were for strikes.
"I threw a lot of strikes with all my pitches," Rodriguez told the Houston Chronicle. "I did the work you need and feel better."
"He was mixing his pitches real well," Astros manager Brad Mills said. "I thought his curveball was exceptional, and he was really working his fastball down in the zone."
Blackburn finds plenty of reasons for optimism: It looks like Nick Blackburn has earned a spot in the Twins' rotation. It's been a healthy spring for Blackburn, who says he feels as good as he has in years.
"This is probably the best I've felt in the last several springs, with knees and everything included," Blackburn told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "I'm finally getting out there to run a little bit. My legs feel stronger, which carries over to my delivery, too. My elbow feels great. I can't remember having as much freedom in my elbow as I've had."
Marcum showcases control: Shaun Marcum is known for his control. He lived up to that reputation this weekend when he threw three scoreless innings against the Angels. Marcum allowed only two hits and struck out three.
"You hear it [beforehand], but today you saw it," Brewers teammate Craig Counsell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "You saw why he's so good. When he misses, he just misses. It tempts the hitters. That was fun to watch."
Chris Young continues to impress: Chris Young had another solid outing for the Mets, allowing one unearned run in three innings on Friday against the Marlins. In five innings of work, Young has a 0.00 ERA.
"Right now, the life on the ball feels better than it did at the same point last year and maybe the year before, and I'm excited about that," Young, who made just 18 starts (including four last season) for the Padres over the previous two years due to shoulder injuries, told the New York Daily News. "Mechanically, I'm farther ahead right now than I've been the last couple of years. I can see the differences, and part of that is the life on the fastball.
"But I'm not satisfied with it. I still think there's a lot of room for improvement, and the ceiling's still a lot higher than even where I am right now."
Adrian Gonzalez is making strides: Adrian Gonzalez took batting practice on the field this weekend for the first time since reporting to Red Sox training camp. He took 25 swings and hit three home runs over the right-field fence on his last five swings.
Gonzalez will continue to take a slow and steady approach to his rehab from shoulder surgery. There is no target date for him to get into an exhibition game, but he could be playing by the end of the week.
"I remind myself every day," Gonzalez told the Boston Herald of his deliberate pace to be ready by Opening Day. "We're not going too fast. We're taking it pretty slow. If I was going too fast, I'd be playing right now.
"My shoulder is responding pretty good. We're just taking it one day at a time."
Wood picked up tips from Rivera: Kerry Wood is thrilled to be back in Chicago, but he learned a lot from Mariano Rivera last year as a member of the Yankees.
"I'm a guy who gets out there and gets adrenaline going, and I've been a power pitcher my whole career, and I want to throw it harder, and I can't get the ball out of my hand fast enough," Wood told MLB.com. "Watching him get ready in Yankee Stadium against the Red Sox and it's a tie game, he's acting like it's a Spring Training game. It kicks in when you go on the field, but the preparation when you go in the game has to be the same as it is in Spring Training."
J.D. Martinez gets first game action: J.D. Martinez finally was able to get into a spring game for the Astros on Saturday after being slowed by a strained quadriceps. The outfielder hit .341 with 18 home runs last season while splitting time at Lexington (A) and Corpus Christi (AA). Since being drafted in the 20th round in 2009, he has a .343 career batting average.
"You look at his numbers, what he's been able to do in the Minor Leagues," manager Brad Mills told the Houston Chronicle. "Then you ask people, and they talk about how he drives the ball and how he swings the bat. They reiterate what the numbers say."
This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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Q&A Interview With Anne Burrell, Host of Food Network's Worst Cooks in America
Anne Burrell Talks Terrible Cooks and the Year Ahead
If you've ever wondered what the world's most unappetizing dishes look like, here's your chance to find out. On Jan. 3, Food Network is exploring the opposite end of the culinary spectrum with Worst Cooks in America, a new reality TV series showcasing some of the nation's biggest kitchen failures.
I spoke with Food Network chef Anne Burrell — who, along with Beau MacMillan, is one of the show's hosts — about the new series, the biggest fail of a dish she's ever had, and her year ahead. More, after the jump.
YumSugar: Tell me about your new show, Worst Cooks in America.
Anne Burrell: There's a lot of twists, and a lot of tears, and a lot of laughing. It's a triumphant show. I was unprepared mentally for the real part of a reality show: people's reactions and emotions, and my own reactions and emotions. It was kind of crazy.
YS: It seems potentials would feign horrible cooking skills just to be on TV. How did you really know these people were some of America's worst cooks?
AB: That was definitely a concern of ours, so we were really looking [out] for it. Once they got in the kitchen there was no question about it: They really had no kitchen skills.
YS: What was the worst entry that you tried?
AB: The turnip surprise. It was hollowed out turnips and rutabagas, stuffed with tri-tip beef, asparagus, and rhubarb, tossed in a sauté pan and put in the oven — no salt, no oil, whole turnips, completely raw. Everything was weird looking, and completely unpalatable.
YS: Did you ever think you were being too harsh or hard on the contestants?
AB: I don't. I think that our job was to give them tough love. But working in restaurants and being a cook is a tough job. Sometimes it's a tough place, so that's just how it rolls.
YS: Did doing the show make you more or less believe in challenged cooks?
AB: I've seen a lot of challenged cooks, because I have a background in teaching, but I was truly shocked at how bad these folks actually were. But I do like to think that if you have the desire to learn how to cook, then anybody can.
YS: What are some of your favorite New York restaurants?
AB: My tried-and-true favorite restaurant would be Babbo. That is a truly special restaurant. I'm a big fan of Momofuku Ssam Bar, and a new favorite of mine is The Breslin. I'm friends with April [Bloomfield], but I'm also a huge fan of her cooking.
YS: What are you doing for New Year's?
AB: New Year's in Manhattan is tough. Usually I have a party out of pure selfishness, so I don't have to get a cab. This year I'm going to stay home and have an intimate dinner party. I have a big year coming up, so it's just a time to enjoy all the excitement.
YS: Tell me about your big year ahead.
AB: I'm starting to film a new season of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. I'm going to start working on a book. I would like it to be based on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, a book that could be used a lot, with sexy pictures in it, that's easy to use. Hopefully, the spine gets broken, and it gets all crapped up with food, and in a couple of years it will barely close, it's so used and loved.
YS: What's your advice for the hopeless cooks out there?
AB: Read your recipe before you start cooking! Get your ingredients all prepped up before you start. Then you feel like you're cooking on the Food Network, and you can clean as you go. Cooking should be fun, not stressful.


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Three players who were on the Spurs roster through the 2011-12 season are among 18 players the team will take to Las Vegas for Summer League play that will begin for the Spurs on Sunday with a game against the Atlanta Hawks.
Kawhi Leonard, the 2011-12 first-team All-Rookie selection to started 39 games at small forward last season, will be the team's featured player in Las Vegas. He has been in Las Vegas for six days as a memver of USA Basketball's select team that has been scrimmaging against the U.S. Olympic team as it prepares for London.
Swing man James Anderson, the team's first-round draft pick in 2010, and point guard Cory Joseph, a first-rounder in 2011, also are on the summer roster. So is Missouri guard Marcus Denmon, selected in the second round (59th overall) on June 28th.
The Spurs also will get a look at seven-footer Alexis Ajinca, the 20th selection in the 2008 draft, by Charlotte. The French-born Ajinca has played 71 NBA games for three teams (Charlotte, Dallas and Toronto), averaging 3.1 points and 1.6 rebounds in limited playing time.
Among other noteable summer league signees: Eric Dawson, the former Sam Houston High School star who played four games with the Spurs on 10-day contracts last season; 6-11 Ryan Richards, the club's 2010 second-round pick (49th overall); and former Texas Longhorns big man Alexis Wangmene, who played one season at UT with Joseph.
The Spurs are to play five summer league games, concluding with a July 21 game against the Mavericks.
Jacque Vaughn will serve as head coach of the summer Spurs.


text: Tamsin is growing on me. She's fun and has a certain attitude. That bit where she drunkenly climbed fully clothed into Bo's bubble bath was a hoot. Bo's response to that move was interesting, by the way. She was guarded and wary ("Tamsin, what are you doing?") but she wasn't obviously freaked-out and/or turned on either. You honestly couldn't tell how she would have reacted if Tamsin had started getting frisky . . . .


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Celebrities in Mary Katrantzou Dresses
Hail Mary! Celebs Who Are Crazy For Katrantzou
She may have only been showing at London Fashion Week since 2008, but Mary Katrantzou is already enjoying the kind of success most fashion designers can only dream of. The Greek-born, London-trained talent is known for her bold, unique prints, incorporating items you'd never expect to see on clothing — think typewriters, keyboards, and fish tanks. Structured shapes and the famous lantern skirt have become her trademark, but over recent seasons her look has softened, with less emphasis on bold, bright color. We've enjoyed a more subdued palette of black, indigo, deep purple, and lavender, and silhouettes have softened, too, with more use of chiffon, silk, and satin. Celebrities know to look to Mary for memorable red carpet dresses that require very few accessories.
With London Fashion Week kicking off today, click through to see some of her best looks on the likes of Keira Knightley, Diane Kruger, Kerry Washington, and Alexa Chung.


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This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.
International Comparative Study on the Management, Productivity, and Effectiveness of Research Teams and Institutions (ICSOPRU), 1971-1989 (ICPSR 9471)
Principal Investigator(s): United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
The goal of the ICSOPRU project was to improve the management of research teams and institutions and increase awareness of their responsibility concerning proper application of research results. Concrete objectives were twofold: (1) on the international level, to make widely available comparable facts and experiences concerning the management of research teams and to promote multilateral as well as bilateral cooperation in this field, and (2) on the national level to provide all those concerned (science policy-makers, research managers, scientists, engineers) with substantive information on the state of their national research potential and to encourage them, on the basis of this information compared eventually with similar information from other countries, to take self-corrective actions as needed to improve the level of effectiveness and productivity of the research teams and institutions. Seventeen countries from Africa, the Arab States, Asia, Europe and Latin America took part in ICSOPRU. There were four stages or rounds of data collection: six countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Sweden) in Round 1 (between February and September 1974), six countries (Argentina, Egypt, India, Republic of Korea [South], Poland, Ukrainian S.S.R.) in Round 2 (between June 1978 and September 1981), five countries (Brazil, India, Nigeria, Spain, Ukrainian S.S.R.) in Round 3 (between October 1981 and November 1985), and four countries (China, Ghana, Hungary, Mexico) in Round 4 (between May 1985 and June 1987). Each round of questionnaires had different items (except for Rounds 2 and 3 which were the same). Round 1 items included general administrative information relevant to the research units answered by the administrator of the unit, scientific information on the research unit and information relevant to the unit's head answered by the head of the unit, individual information answered by scientists and engineers of the unit, individual information answered by technicians of the unit, and external evaluation of the research units from various scientific and administrative perspectives answered by external evaluators. Rounds 2 and 3 included general information about the research unit answered by the head of the unit, information on the respondent and his or her evaluation of the research unit's management, items on productivity and effectiveness answered by head of the unit along with scientists, engineers, and technicians of the unit, EV-rating of the research unit's effectiveness on a series of dimensions dealing with scientific or social criteria and administrative criteria answered by external evaluators. The fourth round of questionnaires included information on the institutional environment of the research unit answered by the head of the institution, general information on the research unit answered by the head of the unit, information on the respondent and his or her evaluation of the research unit's management, items on productivity and effectiveness answered by the head of the unit, scientists, engineers, and technicians.
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Study Description
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). International Comparative Study on the Management, Productivity, and Effectiveness of Research Teams and Institutions (ICSOPRU), 1971-1989. ICPSR09471-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1991. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09471.v1
Persistent URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09471.v1
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This study was funded by:
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Scope of Study
Subject Terms: administration, management, policy-making, productivity, research, research institutes, science
Geographic Coverage: Africa, Argentina, Asia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, China (Peoples Republic), Egypt, Europe, Finland, Ghana, Hungary, India, Latin America, Mexico, Middle East, Nigeria, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Ukraine, Global
- 1971--1989
- 1974--1990
There were four stages or rounds of data collection for the International Comparative Study on the Management, Productivity, and Effectiveness of Research Teams and Institutions (ICSOPRU), 1971-1989 [ICPSR 9471]. For each round there are four files of unit-level and respondent-level statistics provided (Datasets 0007-0010, 0015-0018, 0023-0026 and 0031-0034). There are no carriage return characters in the statistics files. Accordingly, each statistics file should be listed with a print program that does not interpret the first column of each record as a carriage control character.
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Free Shipping!
SP - Squirrel/Chipmunk 6 oz. bait blows peanut butter and sunflower seeds off the face of the earth. It has seven different nut essences and plenty of real nuts and grains to boot. It works great for chimpunks, squirrels and other small rodents. It is very effective year round.


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The Oklahoma State staff has the same discussion almost daily, and it's partly because there is no wrong answer to the question the coaches discuss:
Where should the Cowboys play freshman Marcus Smart?
In their discussions, head coach Travis Ford said, "We've put Marcus at pretty much every position except center. Because he can do it."
Smart is a 6-4, 200-pound guard from Flower Mound, Tex., rated the No. 13-overall prospect in the 2012 recruiting class by Scout.com. Having played his way onto the 12-man roster of the United States Under-18 national team, he was singled out for praise by head coach Billy Donovan of Florida and power forward Jarnell Stokes of Tennessee.
Both cited Smart's leadership and commitment to winning, qualities that have Ford excited about the future at Oklahoma State. The Cowboys have missed the past two NCAA Tournaments but return five of their top six scorers. Keiton Page, the player who completed his career, mostly functioned as a shooting guard. But Markel Brown, who played the point, is a solid player but not a creative force.
Smart might be more effective there.
"He can be a great point guard," Ford said Thursday. "That might be his best position. He sees the court, handles the ball -- he's a natural leader. Obviously, he can play the 2, the 3, the 4. The way we play, we allow our players to use their talents. I don't know that he has a defined position right now."
Smart won't arrive at Oklahoma State until July, after he is finished playing with USA Basketball. Given that Smart was MVP as his Texas Assault squad won the Under-16 division of the adidas Super 64 in 2010, and that he was MVP again as Assault won the Under-17 Super 64 last summer and that he led Marcus High to state championships each of the past years, it's a fair bet the U.S. squad will return from Brazil with a gold medal.
"Marcus is all about winning, period. That's his No. 1 concern, No. 1 goal -- to try to figure out how to help his team win," Ford said. "He is one of the most unselfish people I've ever been around."
Ford said that when Smart's excellent teammate, Phil Forte, was presented with the MVP award following this past season's state title, "there was no one more excited than Marcus." Forte also is on his way to Oklahoma State.
Smart is "just the ultimate competitor," Ford said. "He loves to win, and it's contagious to his teammates. He's going to bring a lot of enthusiasm and energy. He talks more than any player I've seen on the court. He loves to talk to his teammates."


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One bag, two looks
The Philips AVENT Urban bag SCD148/60 has two stylish front flaps to change the look of the bag with the seasons or your wardrobe and has all the features of an AVENT Baby Bag. See all benefits
For storage of cold expressed breast milk/formula or pre-boiled hot water for up to 4 hours.
The microfibre is lightweight and easy to clean.
The Philips AVANT Urban bag has a wide adjustable shoulder strap for optimum carrying comfort