text:
We are deep into that part of the election when it's impossible to escape the flood of frivolous news articles about what the candidates ate, exaggerated gaffes, or pretty much anything except actual policy. This week's example: the fervor about the homebrewed beer that Obama occasionally breaks out on the campaign trail. Crowds chant "four more beers," reporters get to write punny headlines like "Obama plays up love of beer to ferment coalition of the swilling," and beer lovers in my Twitter feed gush that the president makes and drinks beer just like them, so, like, who cares about all his Bush-esque civil liberties abuses?
I reacted to the story with my usual political cynicism, but on further reflection having a sitting president publicly boast of his homemade beer represents a real advance in freedom. Though it's hard to believe as I sit here typing in Portland, Oregon, where making a batch of homebrew with friends is a wholesome afternoon activity, brewing beer at home continued to be against the law in the United States long after Prohibition.
Portland-based homebrew advocate and local legend Fred Eckhardt wrote in his seminal A Treatise on Lager Beers about the state of American beer in 1969:
After Prohibition, it remained illegal to make homebrew (it still is) and so even then there was no light to be shed on the subject. Now more than 35 years after the end of Prohibition we are just beginning to explore the possibilities of homebrewing… There are almost no quality beers made in this country, so if you want good old-country style beer you must make it yourself. Even the German beers imported into this country are being made to the so-called American taste. Pablum and pap for babies. You actually can make beer just as good as the great European master brews in your home. This book is only a start.
Indeed it was. Nine years later, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation allowing people to brew reasonable quantities of beer at home for their personal use, no permits or taxes required. Today American brewers make some of the best beer in the world and many of them got their start making small batches in their garages and kitchens. (The quote above is excerpted in Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch's The Declaration of Independents, which should be on everyone's election year reading list.)
Prohibition casts a long shadow, however, and there are still many regulations that can trip up homebrewers. Homebrewing is completely illegal in Alabama and Mississippi. In other states archaic laws have banned removing homebrew from the home, shutting down beer competitions. In Oregon, such a law was amended last year after public outcry. Perhaps seeing the nation's top elected official drinking beer made at his home will give added legitimacy to the practice and help remove these remaining barriers.
For what it's worth, I'm not sure that even Obama's beer is completely legal. [Update: See below for a response from the TTB.] As Dan Todd pointed out to me on Twitter, the beer is made by White House chefs, not the president himself. According to Reuters:
The beer, which comes in both a light and dark variety, is made by the White House chefs who use traditional beer-brewing methods. […] Taxpayers are not footing the bill for the beer, as both the cost of the equipment and the cost of brewing the beer is paid for by the Obamas personally, the official said.
Federal law states that homebrewed beer cannot be sold and that it cannot be produced by partnerships or corporations:
Any adult may produce beer, without payment of tax, for personal or family use and not for sale. […]
Partnerships except as provided in §25.207, corporations or associations may not produce beer, without payment of tax, for personal or family use. [The exception referred to is for operators of licensed breweries, who may take some of their product home without paying taxes on it.]
The Tax and Trade Bureau also has strict regulations for brew-on-premises facilities (BOPs), businesses that provide equipment and space to homebrewers, and the assistance they are allowed to provide to clients:
Proprietors and employees of BOPs may not:
Provide assistance to, or on behalf of, customers in the production, storage, or packaging of beer, such as:
— Fermenting mash,
— Adding sugar, CO2, or any other ingredients to beer,
— Filtering or bottling beer, or
— Providing physical assistance in the production, tank transfer, racking, or the bottling or kegging of beer.
I don't know the specific arrangement the White House beer is brewed under, but having employees brew beer for one's personal use seems possibly problematic. The president may also be stretching the meaning of "personal use." When Obama gives his beer away to potential voters while running for office, does that still qualify? It would take one hell of a gutsy TTB agent to levy fines against his ultimate boss, but it sure would be amusing to watch the attempt.
Having a brewery in the White House also provides an opportunity to raise the question of why home distilling, which essentially requires only the additional steps of boiling one's beer and collecting portions of the condensate, remains an illegal offense that can land one in prison. Merely owning a still in this country is suspect: It must be low in volume, can only be used for making purified water, essential oils, fuel, etc., and the TTB can demand from sellers of stills the name and address of any customer, no warrant required.
Our first president, George Washington, had a distillery on his property and underground distillers continue the tradition of making quality spirits at home. Unfortunately, making craft spirits legally requires leaping some major hurdles. Darek Bell, owner of Corsair Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee, discusses this in his extremely interesting book on distilling, Alt Whiskeys:
Unfortunately, only a few countries in the world allow legal home distilling. New Zealand, for example, is one of them. In the United States, distilling whiskey without a federal permit is a felony. This is no parking ticket. It is life destroying: five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Bell compares craft distilling today to craft beer in the 1980s. Small distillers are making excellent products but they've not yet achieved their full creative potential, hampered as they are by high start-up costs and regulatory requirements. Bell's beer-inspired recipes provide a glimpse of what the future of small-scale whiskey might look like: Chamomile Wheat Whiskey, Huckleberry Moonshine, Bavarian Helles Whiskey. But trying these at home or experimenting with them before going commercial is forbidden, so the path that led to full-time careers for many homebrewers is closed to would-be spirits makers. Legal changes to bring home distilling into the open would help unleash this creativity.
This week's many articles about Obama's taste for craft beer have been inane, but they do show how far we've come destigmatizing and legalizing alcohol. If thirty years from now we have a president stirring Manhattans made with his special White House Whiskey, that will be an even greater sign of progress.
Update 8/23/12: I've been trying to reach the TTB for clarification on the legality of having paid employees brew beer for one's personal use. I haven't received a response, but I will update if and when I do.
Update 8/27/12: The Tax and Trade Bureau has responded to my request for clarification about the legality of hiring employees to make tax-free beer for one's personal consumption. Short answer: This is an issue for which the TTB has never issued a ruling, but the law doesn't preclude it.
Here's the question I sent to Tom Hogue, who handles congressional and media inquiries for the TTB:
I'm curious if the TTB has ruled on the legality of having paid employees brew beer for one's personal consumption. Without necessarily commenting on the White House beer specifically, would this qualify as legal homebrewing? If so, can ordinary citizens hire personal chefs to brew beer for them without paying taxes on it?
And here's Tom's response:
The answer to your question is generally speaking, yes. We have not issued a ruling on this issue, however, the regulations do not preclude a person from hiring a personal chef to brew beer for them, provided that they adhere to the regulatory provisions relating to personal or family use.
This is interesting for a couple reasons. First is that the White House brewery has brought up an issue that the TTB has never had to rule on before. Second is that while it's illegal to sell homebrewed beer, one can apparently sell the labor that goes into making it. This opens up potential business opportunities. For personal chefs it's an additional service they can offer and one more way they can differentiate themselves from the competition. It might even be possible to work as a "professional homebrewer," traveling from house to house making beer to clients' specifications. Who knows if there's enough demand for that, but it's an intriguing possibility. (There is at least one "Homebrew Guru" offering something like this in the form of home instruction.)
A caveat to the above: With no official ruling on the subject, these ideas are purely speculative. If more people start earning money making homebrew, the TTB may decide to rule and the selling beer vs. selling labor distinction might not hold up. But for now, at least, an enterprising brewer can claim a sitting president and former University of Chicago law professor as an example in his favor.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The American Alpine Club's Trip Reports features coverage of a 2010 expedition to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The team of ski mountaineers pursued the highest peaks of the Brooks Range journeying to the Arctic Ocean.
Written and Submitted by Kit DesLauriers—June 30, 2011
In April 2010, I was part of a team of ski mountaineers who journeyed to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in far northeastern Alaska to climb and ski it's high peaks and then experience skiing across the contested coastal plain to the Arctic Ocean.
From base camp near Okpilak Lake, we first climbed the northeast side of Mt. Michelson (8,855 ft; 2699 m) and made a ski descent from the summit via the east face and north-facing glacier back to camp. It may have been skied before but I don't know for sure and it is highly unlikely to have been skied via our route since the standard route is the South Face to the East Ridge.
Mt. Isto is the highest mountain in the Brooks Range (9,050 ft) according to the USGS Topographic Map named Demarcation Point [1:250,000 made in 1955 (with limited revisions in 1983)]. Acknowledging that the mapping in Alaska is very lacking in detail—we are talking about small differences—it is still of note that USGS maps and our GPS indicated that Mt Isto is higher than Mt. Chamberlin (9,020 ft). Apparently, some people and publications consider it to be the highest peak in the Range. Our GPS actually gave the elevation of Mt. Isto to be 9,080 ft. On April 28th, 2010 we climbed and skied the SW Face of Mt. Isto from our advanced base camp on the Upper Okpilak River which was 13 miles south of our original base camp. Again, it is unknown if this mountain had been skied before.
The third and final climb/ski before we left the Upper Okpilak valley was of an unnamed peak that measured 8,760 ft. on the map yet on my GPS came in at 8,860 ft. Again, while not a large difference in elevation it is interesting that if this unnamed mountain actually is 8,860, then it would be higher than Mt. Michelson. We skied south from camp up the river drainage and then turned east up the glacier and climbed the West Face, also our ski descent route. We joked that this route would rate 5.6 X as far as skiing goes since the summit ridge is extraordinarily narrow with rock pinnacles as obstacles plus immense exposure down the west and east aspects but the snow quality was surprisingly good—as it was on most all parts of our descents. There is never much snow in the Refuge and we were at the end of the season for winter traveling through the valleys but fortunately we were also just after the polar bears had left their dens for the pack ice.
Pulling our sleds loaded with gear, we kicked and glided due north across the coastal plain for 60 miles over the next 5 days before reaching our destination of Kaktovik on the Beaufort Sea. Team members included: Kit DesLauriers, Hilaree O'Neil, Giulia Manego, Kasha Rigby, John Griber, Chris Figenshau.


text:
A gaming startup in India is looking to bring motion-based gaming to the Apple TV, courtesy of your iPhone.
While numerous games let you play on your iPhone or iPad and have the images show via wireless on your Apple TV, Rolocule Games claims that the technology behind their "Rolocule Engine" removes the lag sometimes present in these titles through the use of advanced, patented algorithms.
Just as Nintendo used "Wii Sports" to show off the motion capabilities of the Wii, Rolocule's first game to use the motion sensing technology is Motion Tennis, available now on the App Store for $7.99.
The game takes advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer and gyroscope to mirror when you swing your iPhone in the game. It then uses Apple's AirPlay technology to send the gameplay to your Apple TV, effectively turning it into a console without requiring the installation of software on Apple's set-top box.
We expect to see more titles take advantage of AirPlay functionality with the arrival of iOS 7. Apple has shown that it's taking gaming on the platform seriously, integrating tools into the new version of its iPhone and iPad software that make it easier for game developers to work with dedicated controllers similar to those used by the Xbox or PlayStation.
Here's a video demonstrating Motion Tennis:


text:
Cape Coral City Council may not have totally agreed on all subjects at its regular meeting Monday, but the elected board was in agreement with the purchase of 30 portable defibrillators - especially given the funding source.
The $50,000 expenditure will come from state forfeiture funds - money collected as a result of drug busts and other criminal activity. It's the same source of funds the city used to buy a SWAT vehicle last year.
Councilmember Chris Chulakes-Leetz read off a list of the many nearby police departments that have this potential life-saving device and said this should have been done years ago.
"This is long overdue, but it's a landmark movement for officers and a service they're happy to provide," Chulakes-Leetz said. "Early defibrillation saves lives and officers are often first on the scene."
Police Chief Bart Connelly said the training on the defibrillator will take about two hours.
"I understand where they would like to have this in their arsenal," Councilmember Kevin McGrail said. "You hope you never need to use it, but it's nice to know they're there."
The city also got great news regarding its expenditures in health insurance benefits, as it will save more than $710,000 this year.
It will see a 1.5 percent decrease in its medical premiums, according to a presentation made by Human Resource Director Lisa Sonego.
The measure, in which the city will stay with Florida Blue, will save the city more than $335,000.
Humana will take over the city's dental plan at a $21,000 savings; a move to Florida Combined Life for basic life insurance and long-term disability will save the city almost $158,000.
The deal includes $180,000 given to the city to spend directly on wellness programs such as smoking cessation and dieting, among others.
The full invoice price will be $23.831 million, which includes medical, dental, basic life and long-term disability.
Sonego said the upcoming Obamacare will have no impact on health coverage.
The recommendations made in the report were approved unanimously.
In other business, the city approved the reappointment of two members to its Health Facilities Authority, Betty Dill and Linda Prince, as well as two members to the Contractors Regulatory Board, Dolores Classon and Stan Raso.
It also approved the salary of the legal administrative assistant to City Attorney Dolores Menendez at $17.47 an hour and passed a resolution to approve the award of bid to Community Asphalt Corp. for the local road paving project in the south Cape.


text:
Sioux Falls Drivers Use Caution [AUDIO]
Gaylynn Huber of Sioux Falls Streets says police are reporting there are about 25 locations in the city where there are tree branches or entire trees lying across the street. Huber tells KSOO Radio: "Right now the vegetation has about a quarter inch of ice on it. It's been raining so hard that it really hasn't impacted the streets yet. As we speak our street crews are hitting them right now because they are starting to ice up."
Huber urges drivers to use caution as the day progresses and the roads become slick.


text:
Smoke a spliff and take a lift
Smoke a spliff and take a trip
There we just... pass me the chalice and say Shango take a sip
We goin on a high grade trip
We nah go leave we mistress
We nah go leave Don and Maris, Susette and Doris
Sometimes ah them ah carry me Cannibis
Babylon say me rude
Me say them haffi honour this
We planting acres and acres
So me tell the youth and say fi plant up the whole of jamaica
Acres and acres !
Make me hear it for the reapers and the buyers, and the cultivators
Acres and acres !
Have love inna me heart for the weed, me have to burn the haters
Acres and acres !
We spell it with a G-A-N and call it GAN-JAmaica
So me tell babylon say no fi touch me grown
And me tell the wicked man say no fi cut it down
Me never come up ah your place and try fi shut it down
And never use my bulldozer and try fi buck it down
Me tell the youth them bring some weed and "couchie come"
And tell them bring some more food and me "couchie come"
I say them want me weed ground
Them no merciful
Me prefer plant the weed than fi go bust me gun
Yo again ah bigger jugement !
See it here now !
Wowowowowowo helicopter come
Wowowowowowo invade me weed ground
Wowowowowowo me ah fly the next jump
Wowowowowowo ..... fifty pound ah come
Yow !
Me nah go swap it fi no coke nah swap it fi no opium
Nah swap it fi no henessy nah swap it fi no rum
Nah swap it fi no bullet, nah swap it fi no gun
Proper infrastructure now and tell them bring the money come
Ah that me smoke, ah no joke, me nah take no coke
Ah that me smoke, COUGH make you choke
Ah that me smoke, ah no joke, me nah take no dope
Ah that me smoke, ah the highest grade put it inna the chalice make it blaze
People want change so them sent fi obama
Said them tired of George Bush and them drama
Everyday them ah search fi Osama
And them can't find him 'pon no corner
Tell dem fi legalize marijuana
More money fi the youth them inna Ghana
Inna Kenya and up ah Botswana
Tell them spend more money 'pon the teachers and the farmers yeah !
Inna Gambia, South Africa, Mozambique yeah
I-thiopia ah no joke yeah, ah it we smoke yeah
Zimbabwe, we smoke it everyday, me nah play
Dem now dem fight it inna the zone here
And now me se them plant up so much of California!
Why them fi fight the weed?
Everyday dem try fi kill the breed yeah
Look how hard we have to work to find the seed
And plant it up and grow it cause ah that we need yeah
Me smoke it till me eyes them bleed
When you smoke it ah lead yuh ah lead
No cocaine
"Acres" was a single off of Capleton's 2010 "I-ternal Fire", his 4th album for VP Records. Having taken a 6 year break this was King Shango's triumphant return to reggae music. The "Indiscretions Riddim" was produced by Shane Brown and The Prophet's version is one of the more played and known versions.


text:
It has been said by several mystics in the last century that the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the final gift that God is giving to the world for its conversion and salvation before the Second Coming of Christ. The role of Mary in the divine plan of salvation and in our own spiritual lives is part of "the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God… that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known…" (Eph. 3:9-10). The Church has made known this mystery of Mary, planted as a seed in the soil of the Holy Scriptures and coming to full fruition in the life of the Holy Catholic Church. So the saints have said that if people would come to the Lord through his Mother, He would welcome them and spare them from the evils of this age and from eternal damnation. We see that all too few people have so far responded to this invitation and received this gift, but the offer is still open, precisely because it is the final one.
This corresponds well to what we find in the Gospel of John at the time of Jesus' death on the Cross. Jesus says to Mary: "Woman, behold your son!" And then Jesus says to John: "Behold, your Mother!" It's important to read the very next verse, which begins: "After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished…"
"After this… all was now finished." This means that Jesus' work wasn't finished until He gave us his Mother as our own, and once He did so, his mission was complete. The gift of Mary to us as our Mother was the last gift Jesus gave to the world before He died. If people traditionally honor the last request of a dying man, how much more should we receive what the Son of God has given us just moments before He died! So, as Mary was Jesus' final gift to us before the end of his life, her Immaculate Heart is his final gift to us before the end of the world.
At Cana and at the Cross, Mary is at the beginning and the end of Jesus' public life—and she was obviously at the very beginning of his life through the incarnation and divine maternity. So we also find her to be present at the beginning of our lives: from the moment of our baptism, when she becomes our Mother—because at that moment we are adopted by the Father and become brothers and sisters of the Only-begotten Son—until the hour of our death, when she will be present at our final agony, as she stood next to the Cross of Jesus. Then He will tell us once more to behold our Mother, to receive the gift, and then be carried in her arms into the Kingdom of Heaven. We constantly pray to her to assist us now and at the hour of our death.
Jesus' gift of Mary to us as our Mother is intimately connected with the Holy Eucharist, so she should be very close to our hearts. Blessed John Paul II made that clear in his encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (#57) when he wrote: "In the memorial of Calvary [which is the Eucharistic Sacrifice], all that Christ accomplished by his passion and his death is present. Consequently all that Christ did with regard to his Mother for our sake is also present. To her he gave the beloved disciple and, in him, each of us… To each of us he also says: 'Behold your mother!' (cf. Jn. 19: 26-27). Experiencing the memorial of Christ's death in the Eucharist also means continually receiving this gift. It means accepting—like John—the one who is given to us anew as our Mother. It also means taking on a commitment to be conformed to Christ, putting ourselves at the school of his Mother and allowing her to accompany us. Mary is present, with the Church and as the Mother of the Church, at each of our celebrations of the Eucharist. If the Church and the Eucharist are inseparably united, the same ought to be said of Mary and the Eucharist." So Blessed John Paul says that at every Eucharistic Sacrifice not only are the mysteries of his death and resurrection manifested and communicated, but also the gift of Mary as our Mother, which is meant to be renewed at every Holy Mass.
In our lives, then, the paschal mystery of Christ finds its expression primarily in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, but also in the precious gift of his Mother, who is intimately united to all his divine mysteries.
Mary, having suffered so much in union with Jesus on the Cross, has the most reason to rejoice in his resurrection. A hymn to Our Lady during paschal time begins by saying: "An angel greeted you, O Full of Grace…" This sounds like the annunciation, but then it goes on to say, "Rejoice, for after three days your Son rose from the dead." So perhaps as the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary just before Jesus entered her holy womb, the same Archangel announced to her the resurrection, moments before Jesus manifested Himself to her in his risen glory, as the mystics say He did—and how could it be otherwise?
Then the hymn immediately leaps forward to Mary's final glorification, exulting: "Shine forth in splendor, New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord is risen on you!" Our Lady shines forth in the power of the glory of the Lord, who has made her the Queen of Heaven. The Queen wields the power and authority of the King insofar as He grants it to her. It is his by nature, hers by grace. As an earthly king holds all power for himself, but shares it as he wills with the queen, so too Christ the King has exalted his Mother and shared the authority of his reign with her, because He loves more than anyone He has ever made. The picture I've posted here was not originally painted to depict the Queen of Heaven, but it has been used and accepted as such by a number of people in the Church (like Fr Donald Calloway in his new book, Under the Mantle), for the beauty and power of its Catholic symbolism. I think that any man with a chivalrous bone in his body would love this picture, would love to be knighted by his Lady, to serve her mission to gather souls for the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a beautiful image of the ideal of manly devotion and love—and the willingness to fight to the death to defend the honor of the Queen—which is lost on so many souls today, either because traditional ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness mean little to them, or because they simply refuse to honor her whom the Lord honors so highly in Heaven.
But there is more. The Queen, while the central figure in this picture, does not act alone. See how the bright light (the Uncreated Light of God, for our purposes), shines upon her right side, running down her arm and even into the blade of the sword. (I don't know how it looks on your screen, but the darker the background is, the brighter the light looks.) So the power, the grace, is God's, but the Queen, as Mediatrix of Grace, communicates it to us. She has often been sent by God over the centuries to call us to repent and return to the Lord, and by his power she has worked many miracles. So the Queen has authority from the King to consecrate "knights" for her service, who will labor for the triumph of her Immaculate Heart as she prophesied at Fatima, and who manifest the manly devotion which she inspires. God is jealous to defend her honor against those who would reject, denigrate, or ignore her, and so he sets aside certain persons and gives them a special vocation to offer service and reparation to her, thus vindicating God's righteousness and winning the grace of repentance for those who blindly (or even hatefully) refuse to honor the Queen. Our Lady said to Sr Lucia of Fatima: "There are so many souls whom the Justice of God condemns for sins committed against me, that I have come to ask for reparation: sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray…" While the ranks of the devout are mostly composed of women, this is an honorable thing a man can do: ask God to be taken into the service of the Queen, set apart to receive grace through her for the offering of reparation to her Immaculate Heart, and fruitful prayers and sacrifices for the salvation of souls. Thus you will receive the full benefit of the Lord's "final gift" to mankind, and many others will benefit as well.
This post is also my final gift to you on Two Pillars. The Contemplatives of St Joseph have a mission that will consume all of my time, for a long time, and I will not even be able to dig up old homilies to recycle. I ask your prayers for this mission, because I need to spend many hours a day in prayer in addition to all this work, if it is going to be fruitful (and if I'm not to burn out through excessive activity!). If it were up to me, I would have a little cottage on the coast and spend the rest of my life praying and writing. But I'm here to do the Lord's will, and He is moving me in a new direction. I trust that obedience will bear its fruit.
I will make this blog available indefinitely, since there is still much in the archives you can look through. It's worth all the time and effort if I have been able to help some souls advance a little farther along the road of truth and love, of holiness and salvation. Pray for me as I will pray for you. Good-bye for now, and I hope to see you on the Other Side. And, as my old Unk Gene used to say: "God bless you and Mary keep you!"


text:
Times New RomanJuly 24, 2003
It's time we take back Times New Roman on the web
Since 1994, nearly all browsers have shipped with Times as the default font. Up until the introduction of the
<font> tag, the only way it could be changed was if the user reset her own default. Most of the web was viewed in Times, and when a way to change that finally appeared we quickly embraced it and never looked back.
So why the continual shunning? It's a good font. Designed in 1931 for The Times of London, it has become the de facto standard for digital imaging. While not as pixel-precise in its on-screen rendering as Georgia or Verdana, it still does a fine job. But still we ignore it, unless we specify it as a last resort for the lunatics viewing our site who even now don't have Georgia installed.
No more. Used in new and inspiring ways, Times can be beautiful and fresh, and a brand new old tool in our pathetically limited web type case.
First of all, let's examine leading, or
line-height as it's known in CSS. Padding the space between each line is the easiest way we can reinvigorate Times, and probably the most effective. Consider the following:
I never thought about it in as much detail. As a kid, who has time
to consider the future, anyway? There are far too many bikes to
ride, forests to explore, and sprinklers to run through to worry
about growing up. As a kid, there's no future because life is all
about living in the present.
Very 1994. Let's add some leading:
I never thought about it in as much detail. As a kid, who has time
to consider the future, anyway? There are far too many bikes to
ride, forests to explore, and sprinklers to run through to worry
about growing up. As a kid, there's no future because life is all
about living in the present.
Already we've managed to drop the 'unstyled text' look and move into something more typographically pleasing. What I've taken for granted is that the text is also constrained. 500 years of typographical study have determined that for maximum legibility, line lengths should be no more than 80 characters and no less than 40 characters. 65 is a good ideal to shoot for. The early web allowed no such control without a mish-mash of ugly
<p> and
<br> tags, but CSS lets us get around that by limiting widths and setting margins. Doing so automatically casts off a bit of that early web stigma.
Body text may be re-sized of course, and picking anything other than 16px Times moves a further step away from the early-web look:
I never thought about it in as much detail. As a kid, who has time
to consider the future, anyway? There are far too many bikes to
ride, forests to explore, and sprinklers to run through to worry
about growing up. As a kid, there's no future because life is all
about living in the present. (source)
One more white space trick before we move on:
word-spacing, which only works in relatively new browsers:
I never thought about it in as much detail. As a kid, who has time
to consider the future, anyway? There are far too many bikes to
ride, forests to explore, and sprinklers to run through to worry
about growing up. As a kid, there's no future because life is all
about living in the present. (source)
Body text is easy enough, but what about headlines? We're all sick of the bold 32px Times look of an unstyled
h1, after all:
A Pocket Full of Rye
A solution is again white space, in the form of
A Pocket Full of Rye
This does a bit, but it doesn't go quite far enough. It still feels like a browser war-era headline, and that has to go. So to mix some bad metaphors, let's open up our arsenal and really give this some juice. See you on the other side.
A Pocket Full of Rye
(font: 500 italic 32px 'Times New Roman';
letter-spacing: 0.1em;)
A Pocket Full of Rye
(font: 100 32px 'Times New Roman';
letter-spacing: 0.1em; text-transform: uppercase;)
A Pocket Full of Rye
(font: 900 32px 'Times New Roman';
letter-spacing: -0.1em;)
A Pocket Full of Rye
(font: italic 32px 'Times New Roman';
letter-spacing: 0.3em; text-transform: lowercase;)
Did you get that? Each one is 32px Times New Roman, the same font as a default
h1 in many browsers. It should be noted that 'px' is a good unit for on-screen consistency, but it's rather bad for accessibility. For our purposes right now, I'm trying to match the common browser default for
h1-sized text so it's not as important, but more information on font sizing on the web is available, and indeed something you should read.
Before we're done, let's try playing with our CSS and applying some typography tricks to bring out the best from Times New Roman:
To a boy growing up in central British Columbia, hockey cards were a big thing. They were what you did during your spare time on lunch breaks, they were what you talked about with your friends. More than just printed pieces of paper with colour photos on the front, they were entertainment, currency, and a sign of social status. (source)
To a boy growing up in central British Columbia, hockey cards were a big thing. They were what you did during your spare time on lunch breaks, they were what you talked about with your friends. More than just printed pieces of paper with colour photos on the front, they were entertainment, currency, and a sign of social status. (source)
You get the idea. Now it's up to you. Don't be afraid of Times — embrace it, love it, and learn to use it well. The web will be better for it.
update: I've added this PNG comparing Times to Georgia with and without Cleartype rendering.
See explanation.
Reader Comments
Well, I'm sold. Thanks for the great examples and the refresher. I'm one of those designers that has had a mental block on Times for quite a while now. It's just a font I never really conisder. And here I was thinking I was the only one.
Been singing the gospel for awhile now, Dave. ;-)
When I read abt the padding between lines (by specifying a line-height, I immediately thought abt Arikawa's website. He uses the technique, perfectly! Kudos to you for the awesome type on your site.
Eric Meyer recently redesigned his site and the default stylesheet uses Times New Roman/unstyled text extensively. Would this qualify as a meme or must it propagate a bit more?
Would this qualify as a meme or must it propagate a bit more?
Doubt it. Unstyled text is still unstyled text. Styled Times is a completely different beast.
Arikawa - and so you have. Nice job of it, too.
Wonderful examples, Dave. Sometimes it's very difficult to be open-minded and sensitive to the typographical needs of the web, but you seem the perfect soul to do it. You're like… a visionary or something.
All good responses. I have to say, however, that I was under the impression that leading (in typography) referenced the amount of space in between letters rather than the space between the lines.
Lead — [Rhyming with red] Originally a strip of soft metal (lead or brass) used for vertical spacing between lines of type. Now meaning the vertical distance from the baseline of one line to the baseline of the next. Also called leading.
— The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst
If i'm not mistaken, "kerning" is the word used to specify the space between letters. "Leading, " as Dave says, refers to line height.
I read an article not too long ago from HumanFactors that said that while the rule of 80/40 was widely held to be "true" modern studies have found no such evidence that it must be so. Reading speeds and understanding appear to be the same despite varying line lengths and in the end it comes down to what the user prefers and not necessarily what's 'best'.
So the question comes up; do we prefer the 80/40 just because it strikes some cord in us or because for 200+ years it's been the 'standard' in typography and we're trained to feel comfortable with that length.
Actually, "letter-spacing" is the correct term for spacing between letters. Kerning refers to spatial relationships between specific pairs of letters and can differ from one typeface family to another. Some common problem pairs like 'To' or 'Wa'. Aren't we such geeks?
Nice work Dave.
Was this at all inspired by Doug's use of serif fonts (not sure just what they are) on the adaptive path redesign? That man is a master with typography.
DAG SON times new roman is my least favorite font – i'm hardly a fan of any serif fonts. You make it look nice. One thing i am a fan of, is tight spacing , so that
{font: 900 32px 'Times New Roman';
letter-spacing: -0.1em;)}
is crazy appealing.
time to bite, er appropriate.
Jon — you have to ask yourself then, do you hate it because of its ubiquity on the web?
Laziness and inexperience both create poor visuals; pages thrown together with no typographical consideration use Times, so you begin to associate it with bad or lazy design. Not to mention that an 'unstyled' document is usually rendered in it. Both of those go a long way to explaining why it remains under-utilized.
I have to say that I am not at all sold. I find Times New Roman very annoying to read, at least as body text. I find that sans-serif fonts are much easier on my eyes for body text, and using the serif fonts for the headlines works quite nicely. Times does not render well in Windows 2000 on an lcd. The curves and angles are very pixelated. I can't even read the italicized body text; it is far too annoying. The techniques you use are quite handy and I might try messing around with them at some point, but I will be keeping myself away from Times, thanks all the same.
For what it's worth, I don't actually define the exact font on my site. I leave it up to the viewer to decide. I only define serif, sans, or monospace.
The use of color can also enliven Times (or any font, for that matter.) I think a lot of the perceived beauty of Georgia is that it is so often presented in colors other than black on white. The designers who employ Georgia tend to use a variety of fore- and background color combinations that add a lot of interest. Doing the same to Times would adds to its character, as well.
Another thing that helps… better on-screen font rendering thanks to ClearType and other anti-aliasing algorithms (but ClearType, especially.)
I don't actually define the exact font on my site. I leave it up to the viewer to decide. I only define serif, sans, or monospace.
But when was the last time you actually knew someone who defined these fonts in their browser? For me, I think it was around 1996, when that feature was first available. So in other words, you use Times, Arial and Courier.
Nice job with Times! Honestly, I still am not sure I like it, but you've certainly made it more acceptable in my mind. To me, though, the Times New Roman font at large sizes looks too pixelated. Look at the "R" or "Y" in your (font: 100 32px 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0.1em; text-transform: uppercase;) example. Doesn't the "slant" look kind of jagged? That's just the nature of the font, I know, but I don't like that so much. But I must say, on the smaller font sizes, you made it look appealing, and I maight try to use it myself someday.
That's success on your part- taking designers from "Times? I'll never use that nasty font!" to "Yeah, with a little stylin', Times might be the right font for the job!". Thanks!
Since I got namechecked, I'll pop in to say that the default meyerweb theme, "Eos," does use what I would call minimally styled Times:
font: 100% "Times New Roman", Times, TimesNR, serif;
Personally, I think it works well with the design into which it was placed, perhaps because I started with Times and designed around it (to the extent that I can be said to design at all). But you've prompted me to play around with some variations on that theme, maybe spreading stuff out just a bit, to see if I like it any better.
As for Web typography in general, I complained about size a while back. I'd love to see you tackle some of those issues, Dave, in the same lucid and compelling manner you did here.
ClearType and Quartz rendering makes all the difference in the world.
Everytime I look at a Times New Roman typeface especially when it's been set to a smaller size on my Windows 2000 test machine—which has been set to smooth edges of fonts as much as possible—I want to cringe. And italicized? Oof. So this is the look that everyone complains about.
But we perservere in the hopes that the majority of viewers will have a ClearType or Quartz enabled environment, and those that don't can stop calling us "Mr. Jaggy." as in Jagged, not Jaguar
I've appended a PNG to this post comparing Times New Roman to Georgia on Firebird/XP — rows 1 and 3 are Times, rows 2 and 4 are Georgia. No anti-aliasing on the left, ClearType on the right. They run from 10px to 14px.
I'm finding that non-anti-aliased Georgia looks almost as bad as Times at 10px, is that just me? I'd say 11px is the sweet spot for both of them where they start becoming more easily readable.
Like I said, Times wasn't designed specifically for on-screen use, but seeing it next to a font that was shows that it sure does a hell of a job, considering.
Dave's been reminiscing about Music School or something… Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge! That's an acronym for the lines on the treble clef (A.K.A. G-clef)! HA! That's great. Thanks for the comparison. Definitely 11px is the sweet spot. Anything below that on either font, anti-alias or not, looks kind of… lacking.
No wonder we don't get to see too many real-world examples of great design like this…either Dave is too busy writing an article or everyone else is too busy posting comments :)
Arikawa, I have a P41.7Ghz laptop running WinXP and I have cleartype disabled - it slows the machine down too much. So it's not just people with Win2000 that view fonts without cleartype…
From what I learnt back at University, Serif fonts are supposed to be easier to read than Sans-Serif cause of the little hooks and spikes which allows the eyes to glide from one letter to the next. I wonder is it because its non-accurate pixel placement on screen that makes it worse than it is on print.
The 80/40 rule.
I think the best way is to have the main content resize with the window so that the user can adjust the width of the browser window to read a long text page comfortably. I know people who adjust columns to something not to my personal liking at all, so tastes must differ.
Using ems as column width can give a good starting point at page load.
Yet another post of yours bookmarked under "CSS Resources". Good show!
you have to ask yourself then, do you hate it because of its ubiquity on the web?
partially so–however, i've been seeing verdana for a few years now as well, and it doesn't bother me nearly as much as times new roman…let me qualify. i'm not a typeface specialist, i just know what i like when i see it–there's one incarnation of Times that brings me nothing but good feeling–a page printed using LaTeX. The reason is because when i first was in college, this was the only real way to print a page that looked decent. I made sure I mastered LaTeX just so my reports looked better than the other underclassment who would use the default printer font. For that, i guess, it holds a place in my heart. However i do submit that the spacing of a "default" LaTeX document is different than the first documents i read in something like MS wordpad. It looked less elegant.
Having said that, i'm nearly sure the reasons are psychological and not visual…but then again–what isn't? :)
Goudy would gasp. You would steal sheep?!
Ah, but Tom, are we talking about blackletter or lower case? Oh wait. I used both.
No sheep are safe.
Hmm, interesting debate. The reason I do not use Times New Roman, or any Serif font, for that matter has to do with accessibility.
Several organization operated by and/or for people with low-vision and blindness strongly recommend the use of a sans-serif font to make it easier to read.
For instance, the American Foundation for the Blind:
This is a choice *I* made. It is not necessarily the right choice in all situations. But when my blind friends tell me that something's easier for them, hey, I listen and try to implement when/where I can :-)
My 2 cents, your mileage may vary :-)
I had always looked upon Times New Roman as the "ugly font" when its used in its navive format on the wed i ushally see it as a mark of bad design. However this guide has really changed my opinions on the font. I may well intergrate some of you tips into a futures design. Inspirational stuff.
I have had this article bookmarked for a while now because I knew it would come in handy. And it did - I have just converted an intranet site from a graphics-based site (images used for breakout quotes from articlesetc.) to a CSS driven site, and TNR fitted the bill for the breakout quotes. Normally I would never consider it but after reading this I thought "hmm, this may look quite good" - and it does. Cheers


text:
Aurora in the News
Soapbox Cincinnati Features Advisor
November 1, 2011
No one likes to plan a funeral, and often such plans are made quickly, through grief, with little or no notice.
Technology is changing the way almost everyone does business, and the funeral planning industry is no different. Aurora Casket Company, which manufactures 170,000 caskets every year, has developed Advisor, a web-based platform that helps connect funeral homes and families, making the planning process easier and more personalized.
"More and more people are looking for planning services online because today families move a lot, and may not have the family history of being tied to a local funeral home," says Aurora Executive Vice President Chris Barrott. "Our customers have a need for software to help them run their businesses as well as to become more proactive in dealing with families."
Advisor has three basic parts: one piece that automates the basic business process and a second that allows families to make arrangements online before a face-to-face meeting. The third piece allows families to privately share information and memories through a password protected, custom website. The family website is emailed as a link.
Advisor is an updated version of arrangement software Aurora, a fifth-generation family business founded in 1890, developed in the late 1990s. Advisor is distinct from its predecessor in that it is online and incorporates a front-end counterpart. Families who have used the software say they like planning and communicating online, at their own pace, before meeting with funeral home staff.
"Through Advisor, families can learn about what is going to be involved in the process, what items they need to bring with them, what documents they need to find, decisions they need to be making, services available and (they) can share information about the loved that has passed away," Barrott says.
Advisor's arraignment platform has been updated to allow more personalized planning, Barrott adds.
"Today funerals are being planned in a much more personalized manner, and funeral homes are a lot more flexible in how they are being carried out. The software encourages that creativity and how it's used to help with the grieving process," Barrott says.
By Feoshia Henderson (original link)


text:
Bruce Springsteen Rocks The Apollo Theater
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band thrilled a capacity crowd of 1,500 people at New York's legendary Apollo Theatre with a special preview of his upcoming tour. The 20-song, two-hour and five-minute concert, a celebration of SiriusXM's 10th anniversary and a fundraiser for WhyHunger, was broadcast over the satellite radio service's E Street Radio station.
The show borrowed heavily from Springsteen's new album, 'Wrecking Ball,' with eight songs coming from the recently released CD, including the first two, 'We Take Care of Our Own' and the title track. Much of the rest of the set was filled out with time-honored staples like, 'The Promised Land,' The Rising' and 'Thunder Road.'
Throughout the night Springsteen paid tribute to the legendary Harlem venue. Lacking a proper hype man, he gave himself an introduction straight out of James Brown's 'Live at the Apollo' album, referring to himself as the "man who paid the cost to be the Boss" and "the hardest-working white man in show business."
They also performed several classic soul songs, the Temptations, 'The Way You Do the Things You Do,' which was prefaced by Springsteen talking about how much he had learned about life from the soul greats of the 1960s. That was followed by Wilson Pickett's '634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.),' during which Springsteen climbed up into the balcony. The show closed with the refrain from Sam & Dave's 'Hold On, I'm Comin" as he was led off the stage by his tech in the style of James Brown.
Springsteen twice referenced his bandmates who have fallen in recent years. As the band introductions during 'My City of Ruins' came to a close, he repeatedly asked the crowd, "Are we missing anybody," speaking not only of saxophonist Clarence Clemons, but also organist Danny Federici, who passed away in 2008. Eventually the crowd picked up the cue and rose to its feet. Springsteen continued "The only thing I can guarantee you is that if you're here and we're here, they're here."
During 'Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,' the band stopped as Springsteen sang the line, 'They made that change uptown and the Big Man joined the band' unaccompanied as the crowd cheered. The song kick backed into gear with the horn section playing Clemons' famous two-bar solo in unison. It was a joyous celebration of everything Clemons brought to Springsteen's music.
In his first non-televised gig as a member of the E Street Band, Jake Clemons acquitted himself well, stepping forward to play his uncle's famous solo on 'Badlands,' 'The Promised Land' and 'Thunder Road.' He also played sang backup vocals on several other numbers.
As one would expect from a performance that was essentially a glorified dress rehearsal, there were a few rough spots. There were more than a few missed cues, and the sequencing could use some fine-tuning. For example, the performance of 'Mansion on the Hill,' with only Springsteen, Soozie Tyrell on violin and Patti Scialfa on vocals was beautiful, but it slowed the pace of the show coming immediately after 'The Promised Land.' But these didn't detract too much from the power of the music, and we can expect that these kinks will be worked out by the time the tour opens in Atlanta on March 18.
1. We Take Care of Our Own
2. Wrecking Ball
3. Badlands
4. Death to My Hometown
5. My City Of Ruins
6. E Street Shuffle
7. Jack Of All Trades
8. Shackled & Drawn
9. Waiting On A Sunny Day
10. The Promised Land
11. Mansion On The Hill
12. The Way You Do The Things You Do
13. 634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A)
14. The Rising
15. We Are Alive
16. Thunder Road
17. Rocky Ground (w/Michelle Moore)
18. Land Of Hope and Dreams
19. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
20. Hold On, I'm Comin'
See Bruce Springsteen Pay Tribute to His Late Bandmates, "If You're Here and We're Here, They're Here"
Watch Bruce Springsteen Climb Into the Apollo Theatre Balcony During a Medley of 'The Way You Do the Things You Do' and '634-5789′


text:
Loading some great jobs for you...
Inland Valley Medical Center
A 122 bed acute care hospital which features the regions only Level II Trauma Unit and is the county-designated Paramedical Base station and Southwest Riverside Countys only Center of Excellence in Weight Loss Surgery.
Rancho Springs Medical Center
A 120 bed acute care hospital which includes the regions largest birthing center along with the areas only NICU in combination with Rady Childrens Hospital and the regions first da Vinci Robotic Surgical Program.As a staff member providing clinical expertise you will be responsible for providing excellence in patient care, collaborative and comprehensive care based on patient and/or family needs, and quality and efficient services. Staff will also practice in accordance with all regulatory, professional, legal and hospital policies as well as consistently demonstrate behaviors that model the SWHS Core Values and the hospitals mission statement.
Job Requirements


text: 16 Make your online gift now | College of Arts & Sciences | Kent State University Skip to main content SearchCloseSEARCH KENT STATE Search Search in: College of Arts & SciencesAll www.kent.edu SearchSearch A-Z Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Apply Visit Give Now FlashLine Login Calendars Phone DirectoryFaculty & Staff Phone Directory Emeriti or Retiree All Departments Maps & Directions Search College of Arts & SciencesOffice of the Provost Menu About Close About Overview Dean's Office Centers & Institutes Departments History of the College News Events Why Arts & Sciences? Give Back Current Students Close Current Students Overview Advising Apply for Graduation Campus Resources Degree Programs Student Organizations & Activities Study Abroad Undergraduate Research Opportunities Future Students Close Future Students Overview Admissions Apply Now Degree Programs Find the Program for You Transfer Students Why Arts & Sciences? Departments Close Departments Overview Anthropology Biological Sciences Chemistry & Biochemistry Computer Science English Geography Geology History Mathematical Sciences Modern and Classical Language Studies Pan-African Studies Philosophy Physics Political Science Psychological Sciences Sociology Degrees Close Degrees Overview Majors and Minors (Undergraduate) Master's Programs Ph.D. Programs Plan Your Own Degree Pre-Health Programs Graduate Affairs Close Graduate Affairs Overview Deadlines Forms & Resources Graduate Faculty Representative Master's Programs Ph.D. Programs Research Close Research Overview Find Funding Develop Proposals View Awards Office of Postdoctoral Studies Undergraduate Research Opportunities FlashLine Login Calendars Phone DirectoryFaculty & Staff Phone Directory Emeriti or Retiree All Departments Maps & Directions Search Apply Visit Give Now Live Chat Make your online gift now KentCollege of Arts & SciencesMake your online gift now About Current Students Future Students Departments Degrees Graduate Affairs Research College of Arts & Sciences Office of the Provost Mailing Address P.O. Box 5190Kent, OH 44242-0001 Street Address 800 E. Summit St.Kent, OH 44242 Street AddressP.O. Box 5190, 850 University Esplanade, Kent, Ohio 44242Mailing AddressPO Box 5190Kent, OH 44242-0001 Contact Us 330-672-3000 firstname.lastname@example.com Contact firstname.lastname@example.com Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Quick LinksCareer Exploration and Development Downtown Kent Grad Blog Library University Catalog Kent State Kent Campus - Facebook Kent State Kent Campus - Twitter Kent State Kent Campus - YouTube Kent State Kent Campus - Instagram Kent State Kent Campus - LinkedIn Kent State Kent Campus - Snapchat Kent State Kent Campus - Pinterest ... Information Accessibility Emergency Information For Our Alumni For the Media Jobs & Employment Life at KSU May 4th, 50th Commemoration Privacy Statement Tuition Technology Support Website Feedback


text:
Teaching and Learning Center
In This Section
Teaching and Learning Center
The Teaching and Learning Center promotes a culture within USciences in which excellent teaching and learning are valued and studied. It provides expertise, consultation, and scholarship to empower faculty to be effective and excellent teachers. With enhanced teaching competence, student learning outcomes will be improved.
Services Provided
The Teaching and Learning Center, located in Whitecar Suite 2600, provides and coordinates resources for faculty members from all disciplines who are interested in helping their students become more effective learners. All Teaching and Learning Center consultations are confidential. Services and activities include:
- Assist in the onboarding of new faculty
- Provide support for new faculty or faculty who are teaching new courses
- Consultations with individuals or groups interested in revising courses, improving lecture style, exploring new teaching strategies, improving tests, etc.
- Linking faculty members with USciences colleagues who have common instructional concerns
- Conduct confidential classroom observations and constructive feedback
- Conduct workshops and informal discussion groups on issues such as promoting learning-centered teaching, teaching large classes effectively, developing teaching portfolios, using authentic assessments and balancing teaching and research
- Provide suggestions on how to teaching large classes effectively, develop teaching portfolios, use authentic assessments and balance teaching and research
- Provide assistance in funding attendance at conferences on teaching and learning with travel grants
- Provide resources collection of books, journals, and newsletters on the teaching and learning process
- Encourage and assist faculty to innovate in their teaching and to assess the effectiveness of their teaching
- Award prizes for innovative teaching, outstanding adjunct teachers, scholarship of Teaching and Learning
- Disseminate Documents of Educational Innovations
- Assist faculty to use Rubrics for self-Assessment of Teaching for improvement and for promotion and tenure dossiers
- Educate faculty and administrators on how to conduct assessments of student learning, the teaching and learning process, and of educational programs.
We will do everything we can to help make your teaching at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia a rewarding experience.
Professor, Director of the Teaching and Learning Center,
Assistant Provost for Faculty and Assessment Development
University of the Sciences
600 South 43rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-4495


text:
OLD BROWSER ! We have noticed that you are using an old Internet browser. For a better browsing experience, we recommend that you use a different browser or upgrade to a newer version of your browser.
Iron pyrophosphate Not Approved
Status under Reg. (EC) No 1107/2009 (repealing Directive 91/414/EEC )
Authorisation at national level
|No authorisation in place
EU - Maximum Residue Levels (Reg. (EC) No 396/2005) (MRLs)
|Default MRL of 0.01 mg/kg according to Art 18(1)(b) Reg 396 / 2005.
Classification Reg. 1272/2008
|No classification
Toxicological information
|No Toxicological information
- Legend
- RMS:Rapporteur Member State
- Co-RMS:Co-Rapporteur Member State
- ADI:Acceptable daily intake
- ARfD:Acute reference dose
- AOEL:Acceptable operator exposure level


text:
Faith is central to all the world's religions. Webster's dictionary defines religious faith as unquestioning belief in God and religious tenets that does not require proof or evidence. The Hindu view of faith is somewhat different. This is because in Hinduism faith is not a static state; rather, it is constantly deepening through personal experience and growth. The spiritual truths of Sanatana Dharma, initially accepted without proof, are ultimately proved through personal experience. Swami Chinmayananda, founder of Chinmaya Mission, succinctly conveyed this concept: "Faith is to believe what you do not see. The reward of faith is to see what you believed."
My Gurudeva, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, presents this deeper aspect of faith by citing an old saying favored by pragmatic intellectuals, "Seeing is believing," and then states that a more profound adage is "Believing is seeing." He goes on to explain that today's scientists and educators see with their two eyes and pass judgments based on what they currently believe. The rishis of the past and the rishis of the now and those yet to come also are seers. Their seeing is not with the two eyes; it is with the third eye, the eye of the soul. Gurudeva observed, "The intellect in its capacity to contain truth is a very limited tool, while faith is a very broad, accommodating and embracing faculty. The mystery of life and beyond life, of Siva, is really better understood through faith than through intellectual reasoning."
The focus of many religions is on helping those with no faith in God to believe in God. For Western faiths, belief in God is the beginning and the end of the process. Once you have come to believe in God, there is nothing more to do. Your salvation is assured. However, in Hinduism belief is only the first step. Hindus want to move beyond just believing in God to experiencing the Divine for themselves.
Faith, called astikya in Sanskrit, is the fourth of ten spiritual practices called niyamas, literally meaning "to unleash." The niyamas are ethical and religious practices that release or cultivate one's refined, soul qualities. These observances comprise the second limb of the ashtanga ("eight-limbed") yoga system, which is codified in numerous scriptures.
Gurudeva summarizes faith as a Hindu practice: "Astikya is to cultivate an unshakable faith. Believe firmly in God, Gods, guru and your path to enlightenment. Trust in the words of the masters, the scriptures and traditions. Practice devotion and sadhana to inspire experiences that build advanced faith. Be loyal to your lineage, one with your satguru. Shun those who try to break your faith by argument and accusation. Avoid doubt and despair."
Like faith, the world's creation is addressed in all religions. A common Hindu view is that God creates and is His creation. This panentheistic vision contrasts with other religious views, such as "creation out of nothing" and "non-creation," the view that reality is beginningless and eternal. The Hindu view of God's creating the world from Himself is described in the Mundaka Upanishad: "As a spider spins and withdraws its web, as herbs grow on the earth, as hair grows on the head and body of a person, so also from the Imperishable arises this universe."
Examining these concepts of faith and creation together enables us to make an interesting comparison between the perspectives of a modern scientist and a Hindu sage. The scientist's natural question is, "How can you prove the existence of God?" The sage's natural rejoinder is, "How can you deny the existence of God?" This polarity arises from the fact that everything the scientist perceives is matter, and everything the sage sees is God.
The cultivation of faith can be compared to the growth of a tree. As a young sapling, it can easily be uprooted, just as faith based solely on belief can easily be shaken or destroyed. Faith boltstered with philosophical knowledge is like a medium-size tree, strong and not easily disturbed. Faith matured by personal experience of God and the Gods is like a full-grown tree which can withstand external forces. Let's look more closely at faith's three developmental stages.
Informed Conviction: Faith in its second stage is belief strengthened by a sound understanding of Hindu philosophy. Gurudeva called this the bedrock on which faith is sustained. It is established by studying in a systematic and consistent manner to increase your knowledge about Hindu philosophy and practices. Such a study can include comparing Hinduism with the world's other major religions to understand how they differ and how they are similar.
As we evolve spiritually, faith matures. I have seen so many devotees growing into a deeper relationship with God, a more profound acceptance of Divinity in their lives. Here are some examples.
An important aspect of deepening our faith is building confidence in our innate divinity and our ability to experience it. We are fortunate in the modern Hindu world to have enlightened men and women in whom we can recognize high spiritual attainments. In them we have living examples of the illumined state we hope to one day achieve. We must remember that their attainment is our own potential; it is, in fact, the spiritual destiny of each soul in this or a future life. The path to such attainment involves regular practice of devotion and meditation, which leads eventually to personal experiences of the Divine.


text:
Top 25 • Billboard Rap Songs • September 1, 2018 | Streaming-Charts - Urban-Vibes.co.uk
Published: 8 months ago By: YMDrizzyWeezy
By: YMDrizzyWeezyPublished: 8 months ago
68, 915 views
1, 092 Likes 50 Dislikes
↓ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇsᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴏɴ↓
✘ Description: This week's top rap streamed radio songs and on-demand songs and videos on leading online music services.
The music charts should be seen as promotion of the songs. Through the large range of charts, we make people aware of new songs that they might not know and therefore encourage them to buy it.
10 Comments
Report form


text:
Dear visitor, welcome to SPRINKLER TALK FORUM - You Got Questions, We've Got Answers. If this is your first visit here, please read the Help. It explains how this page works. You must be registered before you can use all the page's features. Please use the registration form, to register here or read more information about the registration process. If you are already registered, please login here.
Friday, July 1st 2011, 7:02pm
This post has been edited 3 times, last edit by "SWOkie66" (Jul 1st 2011, 8:17pm)
Friday, July 1st 2011, 9:15pm
Friday, July 1st 2011, 11:29pm
Saturday, July 2nd 2011, 12:44am
Saturday, July 2nd 2011, 9:59am
Saturday, July 2nd 2011, 1:16pm
Tuesday, July 5th 2011, 11:45pm
Wednesday, July 6th 2011, 8:33pm
Wednesday, July 6th 2011, 11:10pm
Thursday, July 7th 2011, 12:26am


text: I did the perfect server setp on 10.04 server. It's a home/small business server also with MthTV installed. We currently run a couple of web applications from our remote web server on Dreamhost that I am interested in running locally. I would be the only user as far as accessing the control panel and I don't see a need for using a domain name. Ideally I would like to have access to these web apps from the web, but only for a few employees. I am thinking of leaving our web site hosted with Dreamhost. Is there some benefit to running things through ispConfig instead of just installing to my var folder & using phpmyadmin to configure my database stuff? Possibly related, what is the best way to have access to our web apps from the internet with a regular cable internet access account (dynamic ip)? Security is obviously a concern if we're going to be accessing from outside and it's not clear to me if running things through ispConfig is any different than not in this respect. I do have a router of course.


text:
Tech Extreme / Extra / Extended
|แจก ฟรี เครดิต ทดลอง เล่น Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share Plugin
A very simple social sharing plugin for your wordpress website. More than 200,000+ Download
|Scrolling Social Sharebar Plugin
A highly customizable social scrolling sharebar. You will be able to easily customize colors to match the design of your site
|Blogger 301 Redirect Plugin
The best plugin that is available for mapping your Blogger post and feeds to WordPress posts and feeds after blogger to wordpress migration. 9000+ bloggers are redirecting there blogger blog to wordpress using this plugin
|Link to URL / Post
Easily redirect your posts to another post/ random post or even to your affiliate links
If not Like then atleast +1 us :)


text:
No waitlists, no travel, no traffic, and no hassles.
Bright Heart Health is the first online opioid use disorder treatment program via telemedicine. Individuals meet with our medical staff and counselors via video conferencing – not in a clinic or office. We provide individuals with the highest level of care.
We prescribe and monitor medications (e.g., Suboxone) that allow individuals to stop abusing opioids without experiencing powerful drug cravings or severe withdrawal symptoms. Our counselors meet with individuals online via telemedicine, and help identify and develop strategies to deal with the issues and disorders that may have contributed to or been impacted by opioid abuse.
At Bright Heart Health, we will help prepare you to live a healthier and more productive life, free from of opioid addiction.
Are you a physician who is certified to prescribe Buprenorphine? Do you want to get more exposure to people looking for your services in your city?
Learn how you can add your contact information to our directory.


text:
Monday, October 11, 2010
13 comments:
- Cara said...
ooh. I'm in a terribly bad habit of not leaving myself enough time to cook breakfast lately (though rather than not eat, I just end up getting to work a little later, oops!) Bookmarking this for sure.
- October 13, 2010 at 12:55 PM
i definitely could use some friendliness around my waist. this looks like a good one!
- October 13, 2010 at 11:11 PM
I'm definitely going to give this a try - looks wonderful!!
Yes, I have heard of the Ginger People. I put their ginger syrup (and greek yogurt) on my spiced oatmeal every time!
- October 14, 2010 at 9:13 AM
- The Enchanted Cook said...
Hi Jules - what a perfect and healthy fall breakfast! Your photos are amazing!
- October 17, 2010 at 9:58 AM
- Protein Girl said...
This looks so good!!!Great job!
I often make oatmeal bakes in the morning, and I NEVER tire of them! So many ways to make them! I recommend trying to make a savory oat bake! Cheese, oats, eggs, scallions, onion, spinach, pepper, tomoato etc... so good!
- March 5, 2011 at 5:56 PM
- Dana said...
How many servings does this make? Looks delish!
- October 2, 2011 at 5:43 PM
- Jules and Ruby said...
hi Dana...i think when i make it in a square glass 2qt pyrex it makes 9...or in a rectangular 2qt i can get 12...depends on how hungry and who's eatin'. as i recall this freezes pretty well. i haven't made it in quite a while so thanks for the comment and reminding me it's time for some pumpkin goodies.
- October 2, 2011 at 7:31 PM
- KWebb said...
This sounds delicious. Is it 2 cups of oatmeal prior to cooking or post cooking? Thanks!
- January 21, 2012 at 7:03 AM
- Jules and Ruby said...
hi Kwebb...2 cups "cooked" oatmeal...measured after cooking. i hope you like it. thanks for stopping by
- January 21, 2012 at 8:37 PM
This was a disappointment. I followed the instructions exactly and was unhappy with the mushy consistency, even after baking it longer than the recommended 60 min. I don't see any comments here from folks who have made this.
Thanks posting some healthy, balanced recipes, this one just didn't work out for me.
- February 18, 2013 at 11:40 AM
- Jules and Ruby said...
hi Anonymous...sorry you didn't like it, but i appreciate the report. it is a bit mushy when served warm. it kind of resembles an "oatmeal custard" ?... in the photo it was probably chilled so it held it's shape. i usually eat it cold or slightly warmed. thanks again for the comment...J
- February 19, 2013 at 4:32 PM
Does this oatmeal bake have wwpp value?
- March 6, 2013 at 9:14 AM
- Jules and Ruby said...
hi Anonymous...sorry to get back so late. is wwpp weight watchers?...i'm not sure what that value would be, but this is pretty healthy so maybe you could work with it. thanks for stopping by
- March 10, 2013 at 11:15 AM


text:
Heroes Wanted
A Study In Emerald
Posted in
Darrell Drake When not dutifully scrawling novels and the occasional article, Darrell can be found petting his wife or bathing with his frolicsome cat. They're both spry and easily beguiled by plastic springs, so he often confuses the two when typing his biographies in third-person.
If populating a map for military conquest, it would be accurate to neatly place his tiny walnut idol–artillery, maybe–somewhere in Toronto, Ontario. His ammunition would be writing, reading, gaming, slumbering and catting; not the naughty whipping sort but activities involving cats. Catting.
Name (required)
Mail (will not be published) (required)
© 2019 Press X or Die. All Rights Reserved.
Designed & Developed by Matt Brett / Powered by WordPress


text:
Just because something's recycled doesn't mean it has to look cheap or ugly, says the founder of Carmina Campus, a new line of totes, computer sleeves, and iPad covers made from reclaimed materials. Then again, she's a Fendi. The youngest daughter of Anna, one of five Fendi sisters who transformed the family business into an international brand, Ilaria Venturini Fendi is using her clan's artisanal approach to refashion castoff supplies into objects of exuberance and desire. Produced in Africa through the UN-sanctioned Ethical Fashion Programme, the line marries fine tailoring with leftover fabrics (including reclaimed safari tents, military blankets, and leather swatches) to reflect Venturini Fendi's aspirations for a better world.
Venturini Fendi didn't just grow up surrounded by luxurious furs and leathers in the Fendi atelier; her father, Giulio Venturini, also took her on frequent trips to the country, where he imparted his passion for animals and the environment. After some time on an organic farm in Rome, Venturini Fendi decided to reclaim her family birthright— and change some lives in the process.
"The idea is that the word 'ethical' should no longer apply to just a niche," Venturini Fendi says.
"The idea is that the word 'ethical' should no longer apply to just a niche," Venturini Fendi says.
Now available in such high-end fashion hubs as 10 Corso Como in Milan and the Dover Street Market in London, Carmina Campus sends a message that sustainable can be lustable. But the line is also an outlet for activism. Its "STOP FGM" collection, for instance, campaigns against the practice of female genial mutilation, with a portion of proceeds earmarked for charity.
"The idea is that the word 'ethical' should no longer apply to just a niche," Venturini Fendi says in a press release. "The entire fashion system could and should take up certain parameters, making the distinction pointless." Such a revolution would require an overhaul of everything we know about the industry, but then again, she has generations of Fendi DNA behind her.


text:
John J. Gross: Folk Songs Sung by the Germans from Russia
Music CD produced by Prairie Public Broadcasting, Fargo, North Dakota, 2005.
John J. Gross was born on November 7, 1924. The son of John M. and Magdalena Vetter Gross, he grew up on a farm southwest of Napoleon, ND, and attended a country school. John married Margaret Schaffer on February 3, 1947, and they raised five children. When John was four and five years old, his father would play the pump organ and sing folk songs while his mother was sewing clothes for their thirteen children.
John would often fall asleep listening to his father. Soon his father had John and his older brother, Mathias, stand beside the organ and learn the German folk songs. They sang for their grandparents and relatives as well as at namesday and wedding celebrations. John learned to sing and play by ear, and is still performing German-Russian folk music today at the age of 80.
Below is a list of songs on the CD:
John J. Gross: Folk Songs Sung by the Germans from Russia
CD is $15.00 plus Shipping & Handling


text:
One on One With Cal Cohen, M.D.
Stalemate -- but Not Checkmate: An Expert Takes on the Challenges
Jeff Berry: What do you see as some of the most challenging issues you encounter as a clinician in treating patients with HIV?
Cal Cohen: There are a number of infectious diseases that you take a pill for a couple of days and they're gone. If you have pneumonia, if you have strep throat, if you have syphilis ... you treat it and it's gone. Unfortunately, HIV is the opposite model. As far as we know, it will probably never leave the body. And therefore, we're talking about stalemate, we're not talking about checkmate. We're talking about a regimen that maintains control of this virus because when it grows, it causes damage. So we have to stop its growth, for as long as people are alive.
To me, that's what continues to be the most fulfilling part of this field; for almost everybody -- we can get the virus under control these days. Almost everybody. Obviously, that's terrific. The days of pneumocystis and cryptococcal meningitis and resistant viruses and all that stuff -- those were miserable days and those were miserable diseases. Dealing with death and disease you can't stop is a miserable, sad story.
These days, treatment is way better than that. That's great. When HIV is controlled, it's quite remarkable how well people do. We know at the current time that when somebody starts on a regimen, that most people who take most of their meds will do fine [emphatic pause], and most people won't have virologic breakthrough.
That's the importance of adherence. That's what creates the dividing line -- between the likelihood of treatment failure, that the regimen is going to fail and then if all doesn't get better the next time, you're going to be stuck with untreatable HIV vs., hey, no, your HIV is under control and we can focus on the fact that you don't like your job and you don't like your boyfriend. Or you do and what do you plan to do to celebrate? And those kinds of things are very important, but obviously they are a luxury to focus on if your viral load is 200,000 and your CD4 is 20, and you're coughing.
We're not glib enough to think HIV is irrelevant even if the viral load is undetectable. Nevertheless, most of us are very confident that if the viral load is undetectable, most people are fine most of the time.
But on the other hand, it's taking medicine every day, every day, every day, at least so far. We've done some research, called the FOTO study, to show that daily meds are not necessarily the only way to go about this, at least for those whose virus is suppressed on three of the longer-acting antiviral medications. But for now, even with the possibility of short breaks, we are talking meds most every day. For some people that's fine, but there are some people for whom that's just hard to do, for whatever reason. And for the people for whom it's easy, it is in some ways incomprehensible that it's ever hard. But a clinician's job, obviously, is to take care of both kinds of people.
There are times in which people can go from one category to another. For example, there's someone whose life is going well and they're taking their meds, and life is good, and they have access to health care. But things can change. Depression is certainly among the most common reasons why some people may just say, "The heck with it. It isn't worth it anymore. I don't care about my HIV meds because I don't care about a long and healthy life anymore." Other people slip into drug abuse, whether it's crystal meth or other drugs, and they're no longer so dedicated to the ongoing daily medicines to control their HIV because other things sometimes take precedence. For others, it's economics, which is obviously a worry for our health care system nowadays. Can I afford these meds? A clinician needs to ensure that those issues are handled, because that makes the difference for those people who will maintain control of HIV so that it may not even be in the top 10 medical concerns in their lives. Or it may be at the bottom of the top 10, but not at the top of the top 10.
JB: We're seeing an aging population of people living with HIV. Any idea about the complications of inflammation, whether as a result of HIV or the medications used to treat it?
CC: I think it's worth noting the obvious, that this is part of the point of getting HIV under control. It's worth reminding ourselves that as we all age, things can and often do start to go wrong. Putting that into context, yes, we are, as a field, now concentrating on changes that happen to people as they mature, and since heart disease is very common, there's been a lot of interest and focus on that. In addition, we're certainly worried that when HIV is uncontrolled, it increases the risk of heart damage and heart attack.
Similarly, when we treat HIV with some medications, the risk is also higher than with other medications. There are two versions of that story. There are medicines that change the known risk factors, meaning that they change your cholesterol values in ways that we think is unfavorable. That's real and we try to avoid those meds as much as we can. These days, most of us start people on the most cholesterol and lipid-friendly regimen we have, and that's great.
At the same time, though, we are aware of some studies that show that some of these medications contribute to an increased risk of heart attack despite, or in addition to, whatever they do to cholesterol and other changes. That's been the focus of the past couple of years of work, mainly around the drug abacavir [Ziagen], and also to some extent around the use of [lopinavir/ritonavir] Kaletra, the protease inhibitor. And a few of the other protease inhibitors, for example, fos-amprenavir [Lexiva], all are in this category of medications that at least have an association with a higher than predicted risk of heart attack in people who are on them vs. people who are on other treatments.
These data are certainly controversial. There are studies that see this, there are studies that don't. There are people who feel that this is some important signal to respect and there are other people who feel that the whole thing is probably just a mis-reading of the data we have. So there's controversy. And each clinician has to decide how much they want to use that information to make judgments.
Nevertheless, even with the controversy it's important to recognize that we do have some medications that consistently are not shown to be associated with a higher risk of these problems. I think many of the revisions in the most recent guidelines from the DHHS in 2009, which just came out on December 1st, summarize which medicines at the current time seem to have the lowest risk of changing both the known factors -- like changes in cholesterol -- and changes in the unknown risk factors. And do well to control HIV with fewer risks.
JB: In your opinion, if you had a patient who was on, say, Kaletra and they were experiencing these changes over a long period of time, would you switch them? Or is that irreversible once that damage is done?
CC: Let me make sure I understand. Let's define irreversible -- like for somebody who had a heart attack?
JB: No, just elevated triglycerides over a period of time.
CC: There's no doubt that if somebody is on, say, Kaletra and has elevated triglycerides, that we have a lot of studies, all of which have shown we have medications to use instead of Kaletra that would reliably lower the triglyceride fraction.
There's actually some ambiguity about this topic -- in terms of which of the lipid fractions are important. There's controversy in, for example, how important triglycerides are in predicting the risk of heart disease. Nevertheless, let's just say we have someone with what we call globally abnormal lipids. We do have a number of studies that show we have medicines that can usually improve the lipid profile. We also know there are rules for how to switch without creating virologic breakthrough.
So, in recent years, we've had a lot of information about how to switch and how to switch correctly. We also have recent studies to show us that sometimes we get it wrong and that there are rules to the game and that switching should be done by somebody who knows the rules of the game. It shouldn't be done by somebody who doesn't understand HIV medications.
JB: Do you think there's still a need for expanded access to newer agents for those currently failing therapy or will there be over the next year or two? If so, should the drug companies always provide an EAP [expanded access program] or only in certain circumstances? And if so, what should those be?
CC: At the current time, probably the only expanded access likely to be relevant are for drugs that offer advantages to people whose virus can't be controlled without that drug. The only drug that I'm aware of for which that may be potentially true is the maturation inhibitor called bevirimat. It's being developed as it often, though not always, is active against resistant viruses -- resistance specifically to other drugs in other classes. So that's the drug that, in the next year or so, may be critical to have in an EAP. Others may also be identified, such as newer integrase inhibitors. We shall see.
JB: Can you talk a little bit about treatment as prevention?
CC: First, let's review the basics. We know enough intellectually so that we don't need to use treatment as prevention, right? We know how the virus is transmitted and therefore, people who are negative can stay negative, even if they have sex with positive people. I'm saying the obvious, but it is true. I think it's reasonable to reassure the negative partner of an HIV-positive person that we know the rules of the game of sex and we know, for example, kissing is not going to transmit this virus and that there are things that they can do sexually that just don't transmit HIV.
So, if we then accept that despite knowing that, we still have an epidemic of 55,000 new infections in the U.S. every year, many suggest we need to try something else. In other words, our strategy historically that says only that people should be protecting themselves -- it just hasn't fully worked, so what else can we do?
If somebody says, "I'm positive in a relationship where my partner is negative, and I would like to go on treatment so I can protect him or her," that approach seems very much supported by the data we have so far. There's very little doubt that when somebody is positive and on treatment they're much less infectious to partners than if they're off treatment. I think that's pretty clear, even if not guaranteed.
I think the piece of this that is going to get a lot more interesting next year is what do we do for treatment as prevention for the negative person, what's called pre-exposure prophylaxis. I think that's now become very interesting because that changes the whole story line. Now, somebody who's positive can be on treatment to protect their partner, but somebody who's negative can potentially go on treatment to protect themselves.
Where some people get nervous with this conversation is if people then say, "Now that I'm on treatment and my viral load is undetectable, my partner and I can do anything we want because the risk is essentially zero." I think that's where the controversy brews because it is entirely possible that their risk still isn't zero, because there are men who have HIV in their seminal fluid even though in their blood it is undetectable. We know that's real and there are studies showing that three to four percent of men fall into that category -- and we don't know who they are unless we do viral load in seminal fluid and most labs don't have that capability. So the messaging still has to be "Yes, it's much less risky to you -- on the other hand, this doesn't mean that you can feel as confident as we wish you could feel." So this is better and may make the odds go from one percent risk to one in a thousand risk, but it doesn't make it zero.
JB: We're seeing more and more individuals being diagnosed and coming into care with substance abuse and mental health issues. What are you seeing in your patients and how are you addressing those issues?
CC: Well, in my personal practice I'm not seeing more and more. I'm seeing a steady amount. I think the drug many of us are challenged by the most is crystal methamphetamine. Certainly, its use in urban gay men is well-documented and of concern to many of us, partly because of what it does to people. It seems to have a power to make people prioritize sexual experiences at the expense of other things in life, like holding a job, like having an income, and even taking HIV meds. And that's always regrettable, and when people are in that struggle, sometimes it's hard to convince them that they're in it.
Sometimes it takes lots of discussions and lots of time. Sometimes it takes multiple discussions with multiple people. A very wise psychiatrist named Glen Treisman in Baltimore, whose life's work is dealing with psychiatric issues and substance abuse, said the key to dealing with substance abuse is you confront it. You're honest and you confront it. You say, "This is what's going on with your life. You don't think so, but it is. And if you are able to change this direction, your life won't be going in this downhill direction. That doesn't mean that your life will be perfect. There are always challenges." Some people say, "I don't really care." "You don't understand." "This is way better than you'll ever find out" and that's it. But, as Glen said, part of medicine is this persistent optimism that you are an agent of people's health for whatever it is that they're ready to change. You say this is where this is going and if you want help to go somewhere else, that's why I'm here.
JB: What do you find most exasperating about your work?
CC: Exasperating? Probably for me the biggest exasperation is the intrusion of for-profit insurance companies on decision-making that we want to do, because they are prioritizing expense rather than health. Being told that when I prescribe a new regimen for somebody, oh, let's say [Isentress, Intelence, and Prezista], and being told the pharmacy can't dispense one of those three because the insurance company doesn't approve that. To me that's just profoundly irritating that some likely extraordinarily ignorant human being -- ignorant meaning they don't know what I'm about to talk to them about -- is going to answer the phone and through a series of buttons, allow me to take care of somebody who I have spent 20 years figuring out how to prescribe for, and I think that they have no business in intruding on it. I appreciate the economics, but it makes me craaazy that the system doesn't seem to figure out that some of us should be allowed to do what we do without the intrusion of that stuff.
JB: Wow. I never thought about that aspect of it.
CC: It's even worse, in some ways, because when the pharmacy or pharmacist is under-informed and they give that person two of the three meds but not all three, because the third one is not approved, and the person then takes the two of the three but not all three, then that is potentially disastrous. I've had that thankfully rarely, but those are the kinds of scenarios that I truly want to just put on the front page of the New York Times and say this insurance company just jeopardized this person's life and if this person's life is shorter as a result of what just happened here I hope that they pay millions of dollars in fines for the kind of stuff that they do to us. And it makes me enraged, as you maybe can tell. It's a rare event, but boy, I don't think it's going away.


text:
You know, on one level the government shutdown is the strangest story. Congressional Republicans didn't want a shutdown—they wanted to ding ObamaCare without having one. Democrats did want a shutdown—they thought it would reveal the Republicans as crazy, irresponsible, at the mercy of their radical wing. That's not what they said in public, but it's how they thought things would play out.
The shutdown came. Republicans scrambled for a strategy: pass bill after bill to fund federal agencies and departments that have been closed. Keep those monuments open! They would get a shutdown without a shutdown, make their point while not causing the kind of pain that would come back on them.
The Democrats and the president responded by refusing to back the funding bills. Their strategy would be to keep everything closed, which would cause maximum pain for the citizenry, who would react by hating the GOP. And the people are blaming the Republicans, but the Democrats too. The Democrats have been reduced to trying to keep World War II vets out of their monument, and saying blithe things about children with cancer.
And what all this means is that Republicans, who hate big government, are fighting to keep it open, and Democrats, who love big government, are fighting to keep it closed. Strange.
Watching the president's news conference today I continued to think he made a mistake in adopting the Pain Strategy, but I also thought he and his party missed a real opportunity. The president and the Democrats should not have spent the past 10 days insulting Republicans; they should have spent the past ten days laughing at them. After the shutdown Mr. Obama should have had his party rush to the floor of Congress with bill after bill refunding and opening whatever the Republicans had caused to be shut. The Democrats should not have branded the shutdown "the Republican shutdown"; they should have branded it, "The Failed, Desperate, Uncaring Republican Attempt to Close Down Our Government." The president should have made himself the protector of the potentially abused. And when Republicans, as they would have, refused to fund some programs or agencies dear to his constituencies, the president should have fought to protect them, too. He should have made the Republicans look not dangerous but ditzy and ineffectual. "A bunch of armchair nihilists can't stop the American government from doing the work of the people." And he should have smiled throughout, from day one, knowing he was leaving his opponent in the looming debt ceiling fight starting out from a position of embarrassment.
* * *
If you watched the president's press conference and walked in thinking he was more or less right about things you probably left feeling the same way, and if you walked in feeling he was wrong you walked out thinking that. Mr. Obama has a great talent for saying harsh things in a moderate way. He compared Republicans to arsonists, immature people, extortionists and I think zombies out for your blood. Normally when you insult someone your tone gets a little hot, but the president insults people in cool, mild tones, as if he's only trying to describe them accurately.
I imagined him as a child:
Grandmother: "Do your homework now."
Obama: "Well, I understand your position and I can't say it's fully without merit, but I don't suppose it's the worst thing that someone works hard in school all day and then attempts to take a short breather."
Grandmother: "Barry, it's 9 o'clock. Do your homework."
Obama: "I'm sure I'll get to that, and I understand your frustration at being the chief breadwinner in our family, and I'm sure you're tired, as grandpa is from whatever he does. And believe me, I understand your need to establish some kind of authority and impose order in an atypical family containing a grandson approaching his teen years. And I don't doubt you're feeling some conscious or unconscious anxiety that you may have contributed in some degree to this situation, though I want you to understand I don't blame you, or indeed anyone."
Grandmother: "Barry, keep that up and I'll come at you with the broom. Get that TV off, now!"
Obama: "I understand why someone might resort to such threats and feel the lure of violence, especially the powerless, who cling to their brooms."
I imagine it ended with her grabbing the broom, his yelping "OK, OK!" and running, with his books, to his room.


text:
AUSTIN, Texas- In his first race at the 2014 NCAA Championships, Yale sophomore Brian Hogan took 34th place in the 500-yard freestyle. Hogan's time of 4:20.22 was his second fastest of the season, just .69 slower than his time at the Ivy League Championships.
While Hogan did not advance to the final heats, he was able to beat a talented Ivy League rival in the preliminaries. Penn sophomore Chris Swanson, the Phil Moriarty High Point Swimmer at the Ivy League Championships and the conference 500-yard freestyle champion, finished 38th, .48 after Hogan.
The NCAA Championships continue through Saturday at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center in Austin, Texas. On Friday, Hogan will compete in the 200-yard freestyle. He is seeded 42nd in the event. Fans can watch live footage of his preliminary race here:
http://texassports.com/showcase/?Live=233 .
Friday's finals will be streamed on ESPN3 here:
-Report by Josh Mandell '16


text:
A Family-First Philosophy
Take Care of Your Own and Then Physicians for Social Responsibility
They say charity starts at home, and that can be especially true during uncertain economic times. If you're worried that you won't be able to provide for your family, you might overlook a gift to the organizations and causes that also need your support.
Through gift planning, you can choose a method of giving that protects your family's needs and offers greater tax savings. Here are a few ways you can support Physicians for Social Responsibility.
- A gift in your will. You may find the flexibility of naming Physicians for Social Responsibility in your will or living trust appealing because you can change your mind at any time. By leaving a percentage of your estate to PSR, gifts to family members and other loved ones remain proportional no matter how your estate fluctuates over the years.
- Retirement plan assets. Because retirement plan assets can be heavily taxed when left to family, it can be tax-savvy to leave these assets to charity through beneficiary designations.
- Life insurance. Life insurance is a simple way to make a big impact. You can leave all or a portion of your life insurance policy to PSR.
- Charitable gift annuity. Charitable gift annuities are a strong gift option. Contact us to learn more about this way to give.
How to Give
Looking for other ways to give to Physicians for Social Responsibility? Contact Cheryl Talbert Sam at 202-587-5239 or email@example.com to find a gift that best fits your situation. We are happy to help!


text:
The Vapolution 2.0 Travel Package includes everything you need to Vaporizer while traveling. The 2 hour lithium ion battery pack and the car adapter make for a great travel companion. We offer many optional parts that are not included in this package. See our parts page for all the available options.
This Travel Package Includes:
- 1 Vapolution 2.0 Glass on Glass Vaporizer
- 1 12VDC Power Supply
- 1 Car Adapter
- 2 Glass Bowls (1 Medium & 1 Large.)
- 2 Retaining Washers
- 2 Medical Grade 3 Foot Long Whips
- 1 Lithium Ion Battery Pack and Charger
The Vapolution 2.0 User Guide can be downloaded here.
Login to Submit a Review