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Best Of :: People & Places
Two stories below Broadway, beneath the ceaseless hustle and/or bustle, there's a ballroom in the belly of the Los Angeles Theatre. When it's an empty belly, everything echoes, as though calling forth the sounds of past dancers up from the bedrock and delivering them once more. It's the kind of rippling acoustic reverie that sounds like laughter, or ball bearings, or birdsong, depending on where you are in the room. It's not something that gets mentioned much on the L.A. Conservancy's walking tours, and seldom do those Sunday tours make it all the way down there — but when they do, the sounds that come pinging and ringing from the footsteps of the curious are enough to make one's pace slow in order to feel the effects of each foot fall. What results is a joyous pause that recalls the first time you ever heard your own movements create a weird sound. The best listening spot is at the center of the room, where the wood bends and yaws just enough to make the sound that much more pronounced — a wet, bouncing kind of reverb and echo created by more than 75 years of people enjoying movies and, on their way to the show, creating another kind of spectacular in the process.
—David Cotner
The Paramount Ranch has stood in for Tombstone, Laredo, Dodge City and a host of other cowboy movie landmarks. The façade of a Western town still stands at the entrance and is occasionally used for TV and film shoots. A large grassy area with tables is perfect for picnics. Various trailheads lead into easy hikes through Malibu Creek State Park.—Molly Lambert
It's a favorite of hipsters, artists, scholars, scientists and pretty much anyone with an interest in natural history, dimly lit rooms, mysticism, bees, Wunderkammer, biology, archaeology, pyramids, taxidermy, Victoriana, the notion of what makes a museum a museum, and/or a general sort of elegant weirdness. The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which opened in the late 1980s and, along with its curator-creator David Wilson, was profiled in Lawrence Weschler's book Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders, subsists on donations. It has survived some tough times, thanks in large part to the $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant Wilson received in 2001. More recently, the museum picked up yet another prestigious accolade: its own Facebook page. Titled "I Want to Live in the Museum of Jurassic Technology," with some 134 members and growing, the page expresses a kind of deep longing. If you lived in the MJT, the sentiment goes, you would have as much time as you desired to wrap your mind around the enigma, to parse out every nuance as you contemplate its greatest hits: the mouse on toast; the Napoleon Library; the microminiature Goofy sculpture on a grain of rice atop the eye of a needle; the mobile-park dioramas; and the strange bell thing that chimes unexpectedly while you're staring at the holographic Egyptian tomb.
If you lived in the MJT, you would be the proud possessor of a wealth of relics, curios and technological artifacts supposedly harvested from the lower Jurassic period. People would squint for extended periods at the itty-bitty fruit-stone carving in your living room, trying to make out if there really is a Flemish landscape etched on its front, and "an unusually grim Crucifixion, with a soldier on horseback, Longinus piercing Christ's side with a lance" on its back. Friends would stop by for Georgian black tea and cookies in your Tula Tea Room. Perhaps they'd whisper about how you really ought to hire a new decorator, because your entire place is a wee bit funereal, never mind the cute portraits of the Soviet space dogs. Or if they straight up don't get it — and a few unenlightened folks never will — they'll stomp out in a bewildered huff and swear that it's the worst $10 donation they ever spent. You'll know better, though. "Jurassic" means a whole lot more than "dinosaur."—Gendy Alimurung
At first glance, it's a rusted tower crane. Perhaps something dredged up from the ocean, an artifact of some lost city in some displaced future, like Mad Max's Atlantis. Unlike any projection system Los Angeles has ever seen, the Engine Theater is 1,000 pounds of illuminated oxidized-steel sculpture that rotates to hold a 17-by-10-foot film screen.
Built by Silver Lake–based filmmaker Burke Roberts and his Bizzurke Army collective to answer what Roberts saw as L.A.'s lack of independent screening venues, the Engine is a portable movie theater designed to fit into a number of indoor and outdoor spaces, turning any environment into a motion-picture venue.
Since its 2007 debut at the Architecture and Design Museum of Los Angeles, the Engine Theater has traveled to giant outdoor music and art festivals like Burning Man and Coachella, as well as private parties and über-hip downtown L.A. events, like this year's HARD New Year's Eve, where it screened Daft Punk's film Electroma. Never in one place for long, the Engine's home is where it parks its trailer.
The Engine may have taken 4,000 man-hours to create, but for Roberts and the artists that make up the Bizzurke Army, screening in and around L.A. is only the beginning of the theater's potential. Roberts sees the Engine Theater as having unlimited touring capabilities, like a punk rock band that travels city to city to play gigs wherever, and to whomever.
Currently you can find the Engine at Studio 1636 art gallery, in Hollywood, where Roberts hosts weekly screenings of independent films from around the world.—Erin Broadley
Steam trains were an obsession for Walt Disney since his childhood. From his earliest sketches, he planned to have a railroad circling around the park at Disneyland. Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnson, two of Disney Studios' "Nine Old Men" of animation, shared the same obsession. They introduced Walt to their hobby of narrow-gauge live-steam backyard railroading, inspiring Disney to re-create the barn from his family home in Missouri and make his own miniature track. He used the barn as a workshop for his Carolwood Railroad, a fully operating steam train built an eighth of the size of the real thing on a half-mile of track. Although his train, the Lilly Belle, resides at Disneyland, Walt's Carolwood Barn has been relocated to Griffith Park's former Travel Town, now known as the Los Angeles Live Steamers Museum. The Barn is open free to the public on the third Sunday of each month, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with guided tours provided by members of the Carolwood Pacific Historical Society—Molly Lambert
In the general category of obsessive types, rail fanatics are hard to beat. It's one of those fixations that begins in childhood and can balloon into an all-consuming, nostalgia-drenched existence. A glance at any historical rail Web site, typically filled with pages of precise timetables, minutiae about obsolete technology and other arcane information relating to gauge size and engine types will give you an idea.
Of course, every train obsessive's fixation began in childhood. Most kids love trains. Even those who might never step foot in any form of rail-operated transport are gripped by an intuitive fascination.
That's why a visit to the Travel Town Museum in Griffith Park is both a great way to kill a couple hours with your kids and connect with your inner child and history geek. Hell, it's a shame that most visitors are parents with tots in tow. Adults with a modicum of interest in the subject are missing out.
The "railroad petting zoo" that hugs the 5 at the northern end of the park is a graveyard of technology. Nineteenth-century horse-drawn passenger cars are exposed to the elements, and the passage of time is evident on the decaying bodies of the imposing locomotive engines, cabooses, freight cars, Pullmans and other relics that feel like a ragtag group of world-weary characters. (For those who want to get their hands dirty with a more intensive hands-on experience with working trains, membership at the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum next door is better suited to active hobbyists.)
Plus, Travel Town is a bargain. You can buy tickets on the Travel Town Railroad mini-train ($2 or $2.50 for two laps around the three-eighths-of-a-mile track; it's the sister to the Griffith Park & Southern Railroad), make a voluntary donation and buy train-themed goods at the gift shop. Or you can visit and spend no money at all.
The institution, which is managed by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and the Travel Town Museum Foundation, could use some curatorial and physical sprucing up. At times the interpretive program closely approaches paeans to the corporations that built the railways and donated most of the collection, with little in the way of critical history. The attractions are also, frankly, really dangerous. Climbing inside the Oahu Railway and Land Company caboose, or the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe locomotive requires some perilous maneuvering — no small feat if you're managing overly excited kids. Though some cars are undergoing restoration, an army of conservators is nowhere to be found, nor is there a list of who's-who board members posted at the entrance.
But this down-home quality, extending even to the unfussy graphic design, is also a big part of Travel Town's charm. On weekdays especially, there's a ghost-town-like appeal that makes you feel like you have the run of the place. What better way to spark imaginations, regardless of age?—Jessica Ritz
The sun is high, the sky is blue, and a few scattered hoots are on the verge of becoming a rare midafternoon chorus at the Gibbon Conservation Center. "These guys usually sing in the morning," says Alan Mootnick, director of the center. "But maybe you'll get lucky."
Sure enough, the hoots quickly multiply into a deafening harmony of gibbon clatter. "Well, this is a really exciting treat," Mootnick shouts over the din with a smile so big it seems like he's never seen his gibbons sing before. From all directions there are howls and groans, beeps and whistles, some so fast and high-pitched that the collective output sounds electronic, like the workings of some futuristic laboratory. "In their native forest," Mootnick says, "you can hear this for miles. Luckily, my neighbors out here don't mind."
Mootnick doesn't have that many neighbors on the edge of Santa Clarita, not far from Vasquez Rocks and past the frontier where the malls and developments gradually give way to farms and horse ranches. Santa Clarita is an unlikely place for the country's largest zoological facility devoted to gibbon research, but that's what the Gibbon Conservation Center is.
"We have the rarest group of apes — and don't forget that gibbons are apes — in the western hemisphere," he says. "And the most gibbons. We're also the only place in the world with all four gibbon genera."
Mootnick wears khaki long sleeves and brown suspenders even when not in the field, because he doesn't like the sun. "And neither do the gibbons, really," he says. "But this is where land is cheap. Or was cheap. And this is where we wound up." To find these apes in the wild, you'd have to travel to a half-dozen countries on two continents and hunker down for weeks in jungle undergrowth covered in sweat and 90 percent DEET. "But if you live in Los Angeles," Mootnick says, "all you have to do is drive up the 5 freeway."
If you've never seen a gibbon, do make that trip. If you have seen a gibbon, then you know they are endlessly playful, fascinating creatures, and you will therefore also want to make that trip. Gibbons have just the right ratio of arm length to body weight to make them the most natural acrobats on earth. When they're not effortlessly arcing from perch to perch at 35 miles per hour, they like to demonstrate their abilities as the only nonhuman primates to brachiate, meaning they walk upright, loping around like adorable little long-armed hairy people. This is what the kindergartner-sized, black-haired Siamangs are currently doing, as Mootnick chuckles at their antics.
"Kino and Rumi have issues to work out," he says. The chorus is still going strong, and Kino and Rumi chime in, filling their throat pouches and letting their mandibles float on the notes as they exhale. "The songs are part of their little drama," Mootnick says, decoding the story for us. The trouble started when he separated the couple for four months — they were a bit too amorous and Mootnick didn't want more offspring — and Kino took the time alone as an opportunity to start singing with another female in a separate enclosure. "Now that they're back together, Rumi started drowning him out, throwing him off, trying to break his new love."
Mootnick's own gibbon love began when he was 9. Tarzan led him to the old Griffith Park zoo, which led him to ask his parents why he couldn't build his own zoo at home. "They told me that there's nothing in the world I couldn't do," Mootnick says. "But — they added that I'd have to do it myself."
And so, at 9 years of age, self-starter Mootnick took a job working at his grandfather's furniture store. The money was important, but equally valuable was the ability to acquire scrap materials. He'd straighten the nails from broken chair legs, sofa frames and credenza doors, converting the remnants into cages in his parents' backyard. The first menagerie started with a dog, a rabbit and a pair of pigeons. At 13, Mootnick started welding. Bigger enclosures led to bigger animals, including primates. But it wasn't until his mid-20s that Mootnick got a hold of his first gibbon, a white-handed or Jar Gibbon.
"At the time," he says, "I had a lot of animals, not just gibbons. I was living on 2.5 acres in Woodland Hills, if you can believe, with a homemade zoo. And I was leasing."
Eventually Mootnick moved out to Santa Clarita and pared down to focus solely on gibbons. He is entirely self-taught, and Mootnick's 32 years working with gibbons have made him a world-renowned expert. He publishes papers in top journals, appears at symposia, does field work and provides an important breeding service, loaning partners, finding unrelated mates to keep bloodlines healthy and producing offspring for zoos all over the world.
In a nearby cage, Cantor, a little golden baby Northern White-Cheeked Gibbon, is clinging adorably to his mother. "These are some of the most endangered gibbons," Mootnick says as we watch the family watch us. In the wild, they number less than 500. In general, the pressure on gibbons is enormous. In Bangladesh, where gibbons once widely roamed the canopies, there are only 200 gibbons left. "They need our help," Mootnick says.
The Gibbon Conservation Center survives on a supply of volunteers (including Mootnick, who has never been paid for his years of work) and fund-raising from corporations, individuals, membership drives and a gift shop where Mootnick sells items imported from Indonesia. Twice a year, he hosts a fund-raising picnic for the public. "The last one brought in 400 people," he says. "A big success."
Mootnick is hoping to raise enough money for a bigger plot, in Ventura County, where he envisions his ultimate zoo: a system of larger, naturalistic enclosures, without fences, where the public can sit and observe gibbons for hours as if they were on a field study in the wild.
"It's a new type of idea," he says. "But it will work."
The estimated cost? Up to a couple million dollars. A stretch, Mootnick knows, but he points out that it was a stretch to get this far from the 9-year-old banging discarded furniture together in his backyard.
"My next picnic is in October," he says. It's a breakfast picnic on October 19. "The more people who come to enjoy the gibbons now will help others enjoy them in the future."—Joshuah Bearman
Estelle Getty would be rolling in her grave if she knew that there's a pornographic painting of her vagina out there. The World of Wonder Storefront Gallery opened its doors last summer with the now infamous "Golden Gals Gone Wild," an exhibit inspired by The Golden Girls that includes erotic depictions of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia, and a lone rendering of the girls as Hindu goddesses. (We always knew they were holy.) In recent months, the gallery has displayed art celebrating all things Britney Spears ("Just Britney," with yet another vagina showing) and Madonna ("Dial M for Madonna"), while the current "Dollypop" pays tribute to the queen of country. The works range from a portrait made entirely out of candy to a doll lovingly crafted out of pipe cleaners. Just look for a giant pair of breasts in the gallery's window — you can't miss 'em.
Gallery owners Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato know all about turning pop-culture trash into art and honoring gay icons. After founding their World of Wonder Productions in 1991, the producing and directing partners began their careers managing RuPaul, and spent the next 15-plus years creating work for TV and film both here and abroad. They've worked with countless artists and pseudocelebs, from Ellen DeGeneres and Heidi Fleiss to Perez Hilton.
But Bailey and Barbato didn't make their mark in Hollywood until The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the 2000 documentary that saw the rise and fall of the late Tammy Faye Bakker through the late televangelist's unbeatable soul. Since then, the partners have released their first feature film on party promoter turned convicted killer Michael Alig and the New York club scene, 2003's Party Monster, followed by 2005's Inside Deep Throat, another documentary on the behind-the-scenes story of the most legendary porno ever made.
The East Villagers moved shop to L.A. in 1995, taking with them their "weird collective" of artists and art enthusiasts, and following in the footsteps of Ann Magnuson, author and former club kid James St. James and more of their '80s N.Y. cohorts, who eventually migrated West.
"We love New York," Barbato says. "But part of it was getting to that point in our lives where we were wanting to settle down a bit more. It's so difficult to do that in New York. Just the simple things, like space. And the weather's kinda nice here. It was the superficial, simple things like that. We moved out here for the quality of life. Then it turned out there all these New Yorkers are out here."
Seeing the dire need for more trash on Hollywood Boulevard, Bailey and Barbato decided to open World of Wonder in 2007, in the same building that houses their production company, conveniently located next to Skooby's Hot Dogs and the Iglesia Universal Church.
"We've always been obsessed with art," Barbato says. "Here we are, right on Hollywood Boulevard. We're at the center of all things pop culture. We used to rent it out to a porno store, and their lease was up. They used to sell dildos and essential oils, and now we're selling topless Bea Arthurs and Dolly Partons."
The gallery primarily stages group shows on pop art. And St. James — his book Disco Bloodbath was the basis for Party Monster — can occasionally be seen manning the gallery and curating exhibits.
"He's an institution here at World of Wonder," says Barbato, "which I think is our gift to Hollywood Boulevard."
But you're probably more familiar with Bailey and Barbato's current TV ventures, including top reality shows like Pam: Girl on the Loose on E! and Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood on Oxygen, or the HBO documentary Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madame of Crystal, which chronicles the former Hollywood madam's attempts to open the first all-male brothel in Nevada. (For Anglophiles and children of the '80s, the duo have also been longtime followers of U.K. former pop star Pete Burns, directing a documentary and another reality series for the Dead or Alive lead singer, who has become the poster boy for plastic surgery gone horribly, horribly wrong.)
Even if you don't get around to finding Dolly's breasts by the time "Dollypop" closes on October 8, the gallery's future shows will include the same artsy-tartsy style: RuPaul is curating an upcoming exhibit; the intersection of celebrity and politics is the subject of another; and plans are in the works for a show all about owls. Owls?
"Owls have always been interesting subjects for many artists," says Barbato, with the conviction of someone who believes in UFOs. "They seem to be resurfacing. They were very trendy in the '70s. That's another example of a personal obsession of ours. You know, 'whatta hoot'? I don't know what owls, drag queens and politics have in common, but somehow for us, they do have something in common."—Siran Babayan
The only off-leash hiking area in the city, Runyon Canyon is the best place to let your dog run free and enjoy sprawling views of the Hollywood Hills. With 90 acres to roam, both you and Prince will get a good workout walk or run. Of course, this see-and-be-seen slice of nature is also known as a great celebrity-spotting sight (we frequently see Jason Bateman jogging up the mountain). We like the short hike to Indian Rock, the highest point in the canyon; there's a good resting spot, with flat areas to play a game of fetch or Frisbee and 360-degree views of the city. On a clear day, you can even catch a glimpse of the ocean. Bring a bone and sit down for a picnic with your loyal hound. The winding trails on the way back down are perfect for doggy socializing. And who knows? Dogs are known to be good matchmakers — so pay attention when yours runs up for a sniff of someone new.—Gina Pollack
It's hard to believe in a city that's largely known for creating the decentralized urban form, but even during Los Angeles' early years, shared public places were a given. Often, they didn't take shape without a fight, and one of the most pleasant places in L.A., now known as the Exposition Park Rose Garden, is a result of such turf battles.
Agricultural Park, across the street from USC, was a locus of civic activity and pride during the late 19th century, and then became a center of vice. So it was the perfect canvas on which to apply ideas from the City Beautiful architecture and urban-planning movement. The lawlessness in Agricultural Park was hardly Grand Theft Auto material, but Methodist crusader William Miller Bowen hated what he saw. City Beautiful (the most notable example being the monumental grandeur of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition) gave Bowen and his team of reformers some ideas about how to clean up the place. The classical planning and architectural ideals could help show off Agricultural Park's accomplishments, as well as borrow some architectural legitimacy. While other efforts to import City Beautiful elements to Los Angeles failed, they worked at what became Exposition Park.
Three imposing structures brought Los Angeles some badly needed cultural institutions, including one that became the Natural History Museum, and acted as a hedge against the gambling, prostitution and boozing that had been such a draw. And what better symbol than the chaste and dignified rose, planted in disciplined, orderly rows, to tame the memories of the area's sordid past? By 1928, the central sunken garden was rededicated as the Exposition Park Rose Garden, an ideal venue to support the growing horticulture movement and contemplative passive activity. Fortunately for Los Angeles' Olympic bid, the area was all dressed up and ready to go in eclectic Beaux Arts stylings when the games came to town in 1932.
Exposition Park today is no longer an idyllic, tranquil respite. Its location and scale don't seamlessly mesh with its surroundings, a fault both of its own design and that of Los Angeles at large. But the thousands of rosebushes that remain are maintained with a precision that would have pleased Mr. Bowen, and the garden is open to the public year-round. While the Pasadena Tournament of Roses gets more attention, the Exposition Park Rose Garden endures as a reminder of Los Angeles' ongoing battle with itself.—Jessica Ritz
We've all been there: hot Scottish boyfriend needs a green card and you've always wanted a European passport; or, your waif-y girlfriend has systemic candida and could suck some serious marrow out of your SAG health insurance. All signs point to happily ever after, so you throw both caution and commitment-phobia to the wind and decide to tie the knot.
You've got money, you've got style and you've got a Jewish mother on your back, which means Vegas is out, and there's a reception to plan. Where shall you do the deed?
Marvimon's your obvious choice, and not just because it's Eastside convenient. Built in the '20s as an automobile showroom, the 7,000-square-foot space at the northern edge of Chinatown has since been gutted, made over and reinvented as a hip, hot, happening multiuse loft, available for parties, exhibitions and events. (It also houses its owners.) The space is gorgeous, with epically high ceilings, exposed-brick walls, elegant lighting, a massive bistro kitchen and a spacious courtyard complete with happy green grass and a dazzling view of the downtown skyline. Don't forget the skylights and the bumpin' sound system for your nephew's band's rollicking version of "Hava Nagila." With room for 300 folks to stand and 150 to sit, there's plenty of space for those long-forgotten cousins your mother insists upon inviting for no other reason than to gloat about how thin her daughter is. Mazel tov.—Dani Katz
How to measure penis size discreetly: big nose, big hose? Large feet ... ? Measuring the tip of the middle finger to the base of the palm? Outside Studs Theatre in West Hollywood, you can gaze upon the scrawl of the late and lamented Linda Lovelace, marvel at the impressive confidence oozing from the signatures of Harry Reems and Marilyn Chambers, or you can put your hands and feet in the impressions of one John C. Holmes. Grauman's Chinese isn't the only theater in Southern California with a monopoly on the footprints of the stars in its forecourt — there are also the lost prints of Roy Rogers, Trigger and other Western stars at the now-closed Strand in East L.A, and the walk of fame in front of the Vista Theatre, with its prints of Kenneth Anger and the cast of Dark Shadows. And then there's the Studs Theatre, formerly the Tomkat, formerly the Pussycat Theatre.
Bill Margold, journalist and noted pervert, reveals that "John Holmes made those imprints on February 7, 1985, in conjunction with the premiere of Girls on Fire. I'm not sure when the Pussycat switched to showing gay films. I've been trying to convince Larry Flynt to try to purchase the Holmes and Lovelace imprints and have them moved over to Hustler Hollywood, but nothing has come of it ... yet."
Removed from the context of the theater, however, the footprints become a pointless, empty burlesque, forgetting a point in time during which the adult industry sought to compete with mainstream movies on the basis that they were making films that also just happened to have hardcore sexuality in them — and that porn's cosmos and cosmology deserved its own star system, with all the trappings and exaltation implied. And of course when a man walks by the theater and sees John Holmes' handprints, the logical and meaningful impulse is the laying on of hands. A religious experience. And yeah, I fit. No, seriously.—David Cotner


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Until this year, the world had recorded 1,640 deaths from Ebola since the virus was discovered in 1976.
Then Ebola appeared in West Africa.
So far this year, 887 people have died of Ebola in West Africa, the World Health Organization said Monday.
To put that into perspective, more than a third of all people known to have died from the Ebola virus have died in the current outbreak.
And the outbreak is still spreading at a frightening rate. Last week, there were more than 200 new cases reported across four countries.
To find out more about the origins of Ebola — and what may lie ahead — we talked to author David Quammen. He wrote the book Spillover, which traces the evolution of Ebola, HIV and other diseases that move from animals to people.
Here's an excerpt from our conversation, which has been edited for clarity.
The title of your book is Spillover. What does this term mean?
Spillover is the event when a disease, or the agent that causes it, moves from one species to another.
In particular, there's a group of diseases, called zoonotic diseases, which pass from nonhuman animals into humans. And spillover is the moment when a new virus has the opportunity to leap from a bat, monkey or rodent into its first human victim.
We're pretty sure that's what happened with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
How widespread is the Ebola virus in Africa? Are there pockets of wild animals, such as fruit bats, carrying Ebola in certain regions? Or is the virus really widespread in animals?
The Ebola virus seems to be confined to the moist forests of Central and West Africa.
We don't know where Ebola lives permanently — its so-called reservoir host. A reservoir is the animal in which a pathogen or virus lives inconspicuously, without causing symptoms. That's its refuge, its home. The virus replicates in the reservoir host at a relatively low rate and doesn't cause trouble.
For Ebola, bats are a key suspect. Three species have been found to carry antibodies to Ebola. But nobody has actually found live Ebola viruses in those bats.
Scientists don't know how the Ebola outbreak in West Africa started. But how have other Ebola outbreaks begun?
Each of these new, emerging diseases is sort of a mystery story. The first mystery to be solved is what's the reservoir host and what caused it to spill over into humans.
There was one Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it was suspected that the first case involved contact with a big fruit bat.
There were some large, migratory fruit bats roosting along the river in this area. One man in particular bought a bat at a market and carried it home. Then, I believe, the infection passed from him to his daughter. There was a strong, but not definite, implication that the killing of fruit bats, and the selling and buying of them in the market, is what triggered an outbreak.
How did we go from a virus that's found largely in animals to a virus that can be deadly for humans — and spread across four countries?
Human behavior is causing this problem. More and more, we're going into wild, diverse ecosystems around the world, especially tropical forests.
Some scientists believe that each individual species of animal, plant, bacterium and fungus in these places carries at least one unique virus, maybe even 10 of them.
We, humans, go into those wild ecosystems. We cut down trees. We build mines, roads and villages. We kill the animals and eat them. Or we capture them and transport them around the world.
In doing that, we expose ourselves to all these viruses living around the world. That gives the viruses the opportunity to spill over into humans. Then in some cases, once the virus makes that first spillover, it discovers that it might be highly transmissible in humans. Then you might have an epidemic or a pandemic.
Is the Ebola virus in West Africa changing over time and becoming more contagious in people?
Potentially. That's a real concern.
Viruses evolve by way of Darwinian natural selection. The more cases of Ebola we have, the more chances the virus gets to replicate. And the more chances there [are] for it to mutate in a particular way that it adapts well to living in humans — and perhaps transmitting more easily from human to human.
The longer this outbreak in West Africa goes on, the more chances there are for the Ebola virus to mutate and adapt. That's no small concern.
Do you think this Ebola outbreak is the next "big one"?
I would hope that this outbreak could — however bad it may become — could be controlled short of the scope of the big epidemics and pandemics. It seems more than likely that it can.
So I don't think this Ebola outbreak is the next big one. But I think it's a dress rehearsal for the next big one.
The experts I talk to say the next big one will almost certainly be caused by a zoonotic virus, coming out of animals. And it's likely to be one that is transmissible through the respiratory route — that is, through a sneeze or cough.
Ebola is not an easily transmissible virus. It requires direct contact with bodily fluids. It doesn't travel on the respiratory route.
Viruses such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome and SARS are much more of a concern to scientists that study these things than Ebola because they are already transmissible through the respiratory route. They are also highly adaptable, and they mutate quickly.
In terms of the next big one, SARS and MERS stand higher on the watch list than Ebola.
In West Africa the Ebola virus is spreading with frightening speed. Let's just put this in perspective here. More than a third of all the people known to have died from Ebola since it was first discovered in 1976, have died in this current outbreak. David Quammen is the author of a book called "Spillover: Animal Infections And The Next Human Pandemic." We reached him because we wanted to learn more about the origins of Ebola.
DAVID QUAMMEN: Each of these new emerging diseases is sort of a mystery story. And the first mystery to be solved is, what's the reservoir host, and then, what caused it to spill over from that host into humans.
GREENE: You say reservoir host. Explain to me what you mean by that.
QUAMMEN: Well, a reservoir host is the animal in which one of these pathogens, viruses or another sort of bug lives permanently, inconspicuously without causing symptoms. That's its refuge, its home. And then when it comes out and gets into another species such as humans, it can cause big trouble. It's a new environment and it goes wild. So that's - when Ebola gets into humans or gets into chimpanzees, or gorillas it causes mayhem.
GREENE: Is there an example of an Ebola outbreak where we learned something from how scientists believe it, you know, it started?
QUAMMEN: There is one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I can't tell you the year off the top of my head. But it was suspected that the first case or one of the first cases involved contact with a bat, a big fruit bat. There were some that were roosting along a river near this area and one man in particular bought a bat at a market, carried it home and the infection passed from him to his daughter and onward to other people in that area.
GREENE: Is there some element of human behavior here that might be evolving. You know, selling or buying a fruit bat at a market, maybe that's a species that wouldn't be on sale in a market in the past? Some have said that maybe deforestation at increasing rates is bringing humans in contact maybe with this virus. I mean, is our species behavior maybe causing this?
QUAMMEN: Absolutely, our species' behavior is part this - is causing this. More and more we're going into the wild diverse ecosystems around the world, especially tropical forests, we go into those places, we cut down the trees, we build timber camps, we build mines, we build roads, we build villages. We kill the animals and eat them or we capture them and transport them around the world. And in doing that we expose ourselves to all of these viruses carried by wild animals and that gives the viruses the opportunity to spill over into human hosts.
GREENE: So it seems like no one expected this outbreak to become so big and for this to spread so quickly. It's going from human to human at a very quick pace. What do you think is happening here?
QUAMMEN: The circumstances on the ground in West Africa seem to be especially bad. You have three smallish countries with very porous borders; some of those are forested borders. The virus has gotten across those borders. People are scared of the Westernized health care system. They want to take care of their loved ones at home. There is always some belief that this is not a virus, that this is a phenomenon that involves sorcery or curses that somebody puts on somebody else. So it's been very hard for those reasons to isolate the outbreak in one or two villages in the countryside.
GREENE: Is this virus, Ebola, adapting, mutating, changing over time and perhaps some way that could be really alarming here?
QUAMMEN: Well, that's a potential and that's a real concern. The more cases of Ebola infection we have, the more chances there are for the virus to mutate in a particular way that adapts it well to living in humans, replicating in humans and perhaps transmitting from human to human.
GREENE: How do you see the future of Ebola right now?
QUAMMEN: Well, the experts I listen to remind us that this is not an easily transmissible virus. It doesn't travel by the respiratory route; it doesn't travel on a sneeze; it doesn't travel on a cough, so far. So I would hope that this outbreak, however bad it may become, can be controlled short of the scope of the big epidemics and pandemics. But there are lots of other viruses out there that are also jumping from animals into humans, passing from human to human, replicating abundantly, evolving. So that it may be that bird flu or the SARS coronavirus may return. The MERS virus out of the Arabian Peninsula, there are all these things. I don't think that this Ebola outbreak is the next big one, but I think it's a dress rehearsal for the next big one.
GREENE: David Quammen, thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it.
QUAMMEN: You're very welcome, David.
GREENE: David Quammen is the author of "Spillover: Animal Infections And The Next Human Pandemic." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

subset: commoncrawl


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Facts & Figures
President: Mulatu Teshome Wirtu (2013)
Prime Minister: Hailemariam Desalegn (2012)
Land area: 432,310 sq mi (1,119,683 sq km); total area: 435,186 sq mi (1,127,127 sq km)
Population (2014 est.): 96,633,458 (growth rate: 2.89%); birth rate: 37.66/1000; infant mortality rate: 55.77/1000; life expectancy: 60.75
Capital and largest city (2011 est.): Addis Ababa, 2.979
Monetary unit: Birr
- Ethiopia Main Page
- Mengistu Leads a Campaign of "Red Terror"
- War with Eritrea
- Ethiopia Lends Military Support to Neighbor Somalia
- Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Dies
- ISIS Targets Ethiopian Workers; Ruling Party Stays in Power
Ethiopia is in east-central Africa, bordered on the west by the Sudan, the east by Somalia and Djibouti, the south by Kenya, and the northeast by Eritrea. It has several high mountains, the highest of which is Ras Dashan at 15,158 ft (4,620 m). The Blue Nile, or Abbai, rises in the northwest and flows in a great semicircle before entering the Sudan. Its chief reservoir, Lake Tana, lies in the northwest.
Federal republic.
Archeologists have found the oldest known human ancestors in Ethiopia, including Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba (c. 5.8–5.2 million years old) and Australopithecus anamensis (c. 4.2 million years old). Originally called Abyssinia, Ethiopia is sub-Saharan Africa's oldest state, and its Solomonic dynasty claims descent from King Menelik I, traditionally believed to have been the son of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon. The current nation is a consolidation of smaller kingdoms that owed feudal allegiance to the Ethiopian emperor.
Hamitic peoples migrated to Ethiopia from Asia Minor in prehistoric times. Semitic traders from Arabia penetrated the region in the 7th century B.C. Its Red Sea ports were important to the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Coptic Christianity was brought to the region in A.D. 341, and a variant of it became Ethiopia's state religion. Ancient Ethiopia reached its peak in the 5th century, then was isolated by the rise of Islam and weakened by feudal wars.
Modern Ethiopia emerged under Emperor Menelik II, who established its independence by routing an Italian invasion in 1896. He expanded Ethiopia by conquest. Disorders that followed Menelik's death brought his daughter to the throne in 1917, with his cousin, Tafari Makonnen, as regent and heir apparent. When the empress died in 1930, Tafari was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I.
Haile Selassie, called the "Lion of Judah," outlawed slavery and tried to centralize his scattered realm, in which 70 languages were spoken. In 1931, he created a constitution, revised in 1955, that called for a parliament with an appointed senate, an elected chamber of deputies, and a system of courts. But basic power remained with the emperor.
Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia on Oct. 3, 1935, forcing Haile Selassie into exile in May 1936. Ethiopia was annexed to Eritrea, then an Italian colony, and to Italian Somaliland, forming Italian East Africa. In 1941, British troops routed the Italians, and Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa. In 1952, Eritrea was incorporated into Ethiopia.
Mengistu Leads a Campaign of "Red Terror"
On Sept. 12, 1974, Haile Selassie was deposed, the constitution suspended, and Ethiopia proclaimed a Socialist state under a collective military dictatorship called the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), also known as the Derg. U.S. aid stopped, and Cuban and Soviet aid began. Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam became head of state in 1977. During this period Ethiopia fought against Eritrean secessionists as well as Somali rebels, and the government fought against its own people in a campaign called the "red terror." Thousands of political opponents were killed. Mengistu remained leader until 1991, when his greatest supporter, the Soviet Union, dismantled itself. In May 2008, Ethiopia's Supreme Court sentenced Mengistu to death in absentia. He had lived in Zimbabwe since 1991.
A group called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front seized the capital in 1991, and in May a separatist guerrilla organization, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, took control of the province of Eritrea. The two groups agreed that Eritrea would have an internationally supervised referendum on independence. This election took place in April 1993 with almost unanimous support for Eritrean independence. Ethiopia accepted and recognized Eritrea as an independent state within a few days. Sixty-eight leaders of the former military government were put on trial in April 1996 on charges that included genocide and crimes against humanity.
War with Eritrea
Since Eritrea's independence, Eritrea and Ethiopia had disagreed about the exact demarcation of their borders, and in May 1998, Eritrea initiated border clashes that developed into a full-scale war that left more than 80,000 dead and further destroyed both countries' ailing economies. After a costly and bloody two-year war, a formal peace agreement was signed in Dec. 2000. The United Nations provided more than 4,000 peacekeeping forces to patrol the buffer zone between the two nations. An international commission defined a new border between the two countries in April 2002. Ethiopia disputed the new border, escalating tensions between the two countries once again. In Dec. 2005, an international Court of Arbitration ruled that Eritrea had violated international law in attacking Ethiopia in the 1998 war.
In 2003, in an effort to solve its chronic shortage of food and to lessen its dependence on international aid, Ethiopia began relocating 2 million farmers from their parched highland homes to areas with more fertile soil in the western part of the country. The largest relocation program in African history, however, has turned into a disaster. The majority of those resettled are still unable to support themselves, and, most alarmingly, much of the fertile regions where the farmers have been resettled are rife with malaria.
Ethiopia Lends Military Support to Neighbor Somalia
In June 2006, an Islamist militia seized control of the capital of neighboring Somalia and established control in much of that country's south. Ethiopia, which has clashed in the past with Somalia's Islamists and considers them a threat to regional security, began amassing troops on Somalia's border, in support of Somalia's weak transitional government, led by President Abdullah. In mid-December, Ethiopia launched air strikes against the Islamists, and in a matter of days Ethiopian ground troops and Somali soldiers regained of Mogadishu. A week later most of the Islamists had been forced to flee the country. Ethiopia announced that its troops would remain in Somalia until stability was assured and a functional central government had been established. Battles between the insurgents and Somali and Ethiopian troops intensified in March, leaving 300 civilians dead in what has been called the worst fighting in 15 years. Amid a growing threat from militant Islamists, Ethiopia began withdrawing troops from Somalia in January 2009. At this point, Somalia was far from stable. Indeed, Ethiopia's presence in Somalia sparked increased guerrilla warfare and even further weakened the transitional government. Many feared that the withdrawal, along with Somalia's political instability, would provide Islamists an opportunity to fill the power vacuum.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front won parliamentary elections by a wide margin in May 2010. The U.S. and the European Union said the vote failed to meet international standards, and the opposition refused to recognize the results. Nevertheless, parliament elected Zenawi to a fourth term.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Dies
In August 2012, Prime Minister Zenawi died at age 57 after a long illness. Zenawi had been in power since 1995. He is credited with lifting the country out of famine to the point that Ethiopia began exporting food, reducing poverty, increasing economic growth, and improving infrastructure. However, Zenawi was repressive and dictatorial, arresting and imprisoning activists, journalists, and members of the opposition. Relations between the U.S. and Ethiopia improved under Zenawi, with Ethiopia helping the U.S. combat Muslim militants in Africa. The U.S. gives Ethiopia some $800 million in aid annually. Hailemariam Desalegn, the minister of foreign affairs, succeeded Zenawi.
On October 7, 2013, Mulatu Teshome Wirtu became the fourth president of Ethiopia. He previously served as Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Cooperation, Minister of Agriculture, and Speaker of the House of Federation. He also served as the country's Ambassador to China, Japan and Turkey. He was elected president by Parliament. The vote was unanimous. Mulatu Teshome replaces Girma Wolde-Giorgis who could not seek re-election due to term limits.
ISIS Targets Ethiopian Workers; Ruling Party Stays in Power
In April 2015, members of the Islamic State killed about 20 migrant workers in Libya. The victims, believed to be Ethiopian Christians, were either shot or beheaded.
Preliminary results of May 2015 elections, gave the Ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) a landslide victory. The opposition accused the EPRDF of voter intimidation. Voter turnout was high, about 90%.
See also Encyclopedia: Ethiopia .
U.S. State Dept. Country Notes: Ethiopia


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SEQUEL COMING SOON!-Matthew Corp's first attempt at a zombie/ horror game. Fight side by side with unforgettable characters, in a story that will take you across Russia, and require you to kill countless zombies, as two different playable characters! Dark Fusion is not about dying really far in and forgetting to save, and having to restart the whole game because you died. It is about killing zombies, living the epic story. and sticking together. Due to this. Dying has been taking out. You wont die. But that does not mean this game will be easier. The challenges will now not be staying alive. But finding out where to go, what to do, and how to do it. And trying to stick together with your party member! Be sure to check out the sequel, coming soon! :) Be sure to get the map packs first! (Desolation Map Pack- Available Now)
Contains >Dark Fusion >All Previous Map Packs >Holiday 2012 Map FULLY LOADED DOWNLOAD
Only registered members can share their thoughts. So come on! Join the community today (totally free - or sign in with your social account on the right) and join in the conversation.


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by NBA.com staff
Andrei Kirilenko, along with a handful of other NBA players headlined the 11th edition of Basketball Without Borders Europe in Russia this weekend. Below is a recap of Day 4 — and the final day — of the event. This is the first time this clinic has been held in Russia.
The final day of Basketball without Borders Europe got off to a very colorful start at Children's Home #59 in Moscow, where NBA Cares partnered with Kirilenko's Kids to refurbish a basketball court. Ten children from the home greeted NBA/FIBA players and coaches with a traditional Russian welcome of bread and salt. The children were all dressed in bright Russian folk outfits and entertained the audience with a traditional dance. The director of the children's home spoke and thanked Kirilenko, his foundation, and the NBA for their involvement in refurbishing the court, now complete with four baskets, bleachers and several basketballs to get the kids started.
Back at the Igrovoy Sport Complex there was a girl's clinic, organized by the Russian Basketball Federation, in partnership with the NBA. After getting some exercise and playing advice from several of the Basketball without Borders participants, the girls all filled the stands to get ready for the All-Star game. The camp's final and most anticipated event, the 2012 BWB Europe All-Star game featured the strongest players who were selected the night before by the coaching staff with input from the scouts in attendance.
The teams, simply known as 'Red' and 'White,' were evenly matched at the start, both coming off the bench strong. The Red squad was coached by Minnesota Timberwolves Player Development Coach David Adelman, assisted by NBA player Brian Cardinal and NBA Legend Sarunas Marciulionis. Denver Nuggets Assistant Coach Melvin Hunt led the White squad, along with Turkish Basketball Federation coach Ozan Havuzlu.
The crowd got the first All-Star moment at the end of the first quarter, when a long three-point buzzer beater fell, to put the Red team at 18, leading by four. Half-time saw the Red team with an even bigger lead of 39-22. While the coaches talked strategy, fans made some noise for the little volunteers in the Dress and Dribble contest and a couple players who tested their accuracy in the Three-Point contest. The whistle blew and the second half was underway with the White team chipping away at the Red team's first half lead.
Cheering on the White team, the girl's clinic participants clearly wanted Hunt's team to come from behind for the win. Only down seven points with 2:10 on the clock, the White team pushed hard, but just couldn't close the gap. Adelman's team took the win, with a final score of 65-60.
Trophies were then given out to the game's MVP, the camp's MVP and the Three-Point contest winner. Each took a photo holding their prizes from Nike with the Kirilenko, Shved and Mozgov. The 11th BWB Europe concluded with players saying goodbye to their teammates and competitors, having played hard, fought language barriers and made the four-day camp count. Until next year!


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This is one of the coolest items we have seen this year. Four different color pens are displayed in a holder. A volunteer is given a drawing and is asked to choose a marker. They are instructed to color a portion of the drawing. This is repeated with the other 3 color markers. When the drawing is complete the volunteer opens an envelope which has been in full view the entire time. The envelope contains a duplicate of the drawing the color choices match exactly.
The performer has his back turned during the color selections. The performer does not see what markers the volunteer is using.
Another presentation is to have the volunteer and the performer stand back to back. The volunteer is asked to choose a marker and draw a symbol (square, circle, etc..) The performer is able to duplicate the color choices.
No assistants or stooges are used. This is a hi-tech electronic device.
Six Marker version.
I recently purchased Pen Prediction and it has been a HUGE Hit at my shows. This is just Mind Blowing Mentalism at its finest. This is built by a fine craftsman and is built to last. I would give this a 9/10 just because I do not think any product on the market deserves a 10. Purchase this before the price goes up as this is easily worth $ 400.00. - Rod P
Used this for the first time at my Casino show and I was waiting for this routine for awhile now and now I have this. It is worth the price and more, wish I had the ability to create this device I love this effect and will be part of my shows - carmen
Do you own this product? Write a review.


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Israel News - Stay Informed, Pray Informed
Israeli public opinion polls showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu and his Likud Party reaping the benefits of his tension-filled visit to Washington this week.
A poll carried out by Israeli survey company Dialogue showed that 51 percent of Israelis approve of Netanyahu's leadership, up from 38 percent last month.
A 47 percent plurality viewed Netanyahu's address before the US Congress as a success, and half of Israelis said they felt proud as they watched the American lawmakers repeatedly and enthusiastically applaud their leader.
Netanyahu's speech before Congress was seen as a rebuff of US President Barack Obama's peace policies laid out earlier in the week. Only 25 percent of the Israelis polled by Dialogue believe Obama is friendly toward Israel.
Netanyahu's perceived success in Washington has also paid off for the ruling Likud Party, which another poll conducted on behalf of Channel 2 News showed would handily win if elections were held today.
According to the survey by the Sarid Institute, if elections were held today, the Likud would come away with 34 Knesset seats, up from its current 27. The opposition Kadima Party would win 29 seats, one more than its current 28.
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates
For Information & Reservations:
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Views: 88
Yeah, that is totally unacceptable. It just goes to show that the men in charge of this country are mostly Christians. Conservative, Evangelical Christians. The dangerous kind. We're screwed.
You know, I was never really that thankful to be a Canadian until I became an Atheist and saw all the religous propaganda in the States.
I agree Patrick when I see all the problems that religion creates in that country I too get reminded how good we have it here.
As if the list of reasons not to join the Navy weren't long enough.
So glad I am moving to Canada
Not the first time they've been accused of this. As Kemal Ataturk said, 'soldiers who think they are going to heaven, are conveniently willing to die.'
Ironically, someone on this site awhile back stated an interesting statistic.
Military personnel have a higher percentage of atheists/agnostics than the civilian population.
War is a religious idea. You can't separate the two. Stalin was an atheist? Not really. He was an ideologue that formed his own "religion". The U.S. declared a holy war against the USSR.
I don't believe the stats that say military personnel have a higher percentage of atheists/agnostics.
Those in control of the military are bible thumpers.
In the Mid-East, this could cause a war of annihilation because of religious tribalism.
Why doesn't the army just use psychologists?
I agree...the chaplain could and should be replaced by a therapist, and take the religious component out of the position altogether. These folks need someone to talk to, and not feed them the bull that comes with religion.


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Art Theft: The The Majority Of Fascinating and Famous Cases in History
Art theft is an ancient and complicated criminal offense. When you look at the some of the most famous cases of art thefts in history, you see completely planned operations that involve art dealers, art fakers, mobsters, ransoms, and millions of dollars. Here you can check out about some of the most popular cases of art theft in the history.
The First Theft:
The very first documented case of art theft remained in 1473, when 2 panels of altarpiece of the Last Judgment by the Dutch painter Hans Memling were stolen. While the triptych was being transferred by ship from the Netherlands to Florence, the ship was attacked by pirates who took it to the Gdansk cathedral in Poland. Nowadays, the piece is revealed at the National Museum in Gdansk where it was recently moved from the Basilica of the Presumption.
The Most Famous Theft:
The most well-known story of art theft includes among the most famous paintings worldwide and among the most famous artists in history as a suspect. In the night of August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was taken out of the Louver. Right after, Pablo Picasso was jailed and questioned by the cops, however was launched rapidly.
It turned out that the 30 × 21 inch painting was taken by one of the museum staff members by the name of Vincenzo Peruggia, who simply carried it concealed under his coat. The crime was thoroughly conducted by a well-known con man, Eduardo de Valfierno, who was sent out by an art faker who planned to make copies and offer them as if they were the original painting.
While Yves Chaudron, the art faker, was hectic creating copies for the popular work of art, Mona Lisa was still concealed at Peruggias apartment. Eventually, Peruggia was caught by the authorities while attempting to sell the painting to an art dealership from Florence, Italy.
The Biggest Theft in the U.S.A:
The greatest art theft in United States took location at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. On the night of March 18, 1990, a group of burglars using cops uniforms got into the museum and took thirteen paintings whose cumulative worth was approximated at around 300 million dollars. The thieves took 2 paintings and one print by Rembrandt, and works of Vermeer, Manet, Degas, Govaert Flinck, as well as a French and a Chinese artifact.
Since yet, none of the paintings have been discovered and the case is still unsolved. According to current rumors, the FBI are examining the possibility that the Boston Mob along with French art dealers are linked to the crime.
The Scream:
The painting by Edvard Munchs, The Scream, is probably the most demanded painting by art burglars in history. It has been stolen two times and was just recently recuperated. In 1994, during the Winter Season Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, The Scream was stolen from an Oslo gallery by two burglars who broke through an open window, triggered the alarm and left a note stating: thanks for the bad security.
3 months later on, the holders of the painting approached the Norwegian Government with an offer: 1 million dollars ransom for Edvard Munchs The Scream. The Government declined the deal, however the Norwegian cops worked together with the British Police and the Getty Museum to https://www.whitepages.com/name/Kurt-Criter/Denver-CO arrange a sting operation that brought back the painting to where it belongs.
While Museum officials waiting for the burglars to demand ransom money, rumors claimed that both paintings were burned to hide evidence. Ultimately, the Norwegian cops discovered the 2 paintings on August 31, 2006 but the truths on how they were recovered are not known.
When you look at the some of the most well-known cases of art thefts in history, you see completely planned operations that involve art dealers, art fakers, mobsters, ransoms, and millions of dollars. The most famous story of art theft involves one of the most popular paintings in the world and one of the most popular artists in history as a suspect. The criminal activity https://medium.com/@kurtcriter was thoroughly carried out by a notorious con man, Eduardo de Valfierno, who was sent out by an art faker who intended to make copies and offer them as if they were the original painting.
Eventually, Peruggia was caught by the police while attempting to offer the painting to an art dealership from Florence, Italy. The painting by Edvard Munchs, The Scream, is probably the most looked for after painting by art thieves in history.


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Wednesday, Nov. 26: "JELLIES"
One of the city's most popular exhibits of the last two years, the Shedd Aquarium's "Jellies" has announced its last call for visitors. The hauntingly beautiful jellyfish will vanish in January, so there's no time like the present to see them one more time (or for the first time). With their wide array of colors, shapes and sizes, these bizarrely beautiful aquatic enigmas — with no brains, blood or bones — never cease to fascinate.
Where: Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. Lake Shore Drive (312-939-2438, sheddaquarium.org)
When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Cost: $40, $31 for kids 3-11.
—Photo: Brenna Hernandez/Shedd...


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|Join hundreds of other Developers and InfoSec professionals for Training, Sessions and Community at our first conference of 2019
[AppSec Tel Aviv, May 26-30th]
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==OWASP WebGoat Project==
==OWASP WebGoat Project==
WebGoat is .
. .
Revision as of 09:18, 5 September 2014
- Main
- FAQs
- Acknowledgements
- Road Map and Getting Involved
- Previous Releases and Future Development
- Project About
OWASP WebGoat Project
WebGoat 6 is under way. The 6.0 release is a major modernization of the UI and framework.
The next release will migrate all the lessons to the new architecture. You can help us prioritize which lessons to port and define new lessons to create by taking the WebGoat survey
WebGoat is a deliberately insecure web application maintained by OWASP designed to teach web application security lessons. You can install and practice with WebGoat in either J2EE (this page) or WebGoat for .Net in ASP.NET. In each lesson, users must demonstrate their understanding of a security issue by exploiting a real vulnerability in the WebGoat applications. For example, in one of the lessons the user must use SQL injection to steal fake credit card numbers. The application is a realistic teaching environment, providing users with hints and code to further explain the lesson.
Why the name "WebGoat"? Developers should not feel bad about not knowing security. Even the best programmers make security errors. What they need is a scapegoat, right? Just blame it on the 'Goat!
To get started:
WebGoat for J2EE is written in Java and therefore installs on any platform with a Java virtual machine. There are installation programs for Linux, OS X Tiger and Windows. Once deployed, the user can go through the lessons and track their progress with the scorecard. There are currently over 30 lessons, including those dealing with the following issues:
For more details, please see the WebGoat User and Install Guide.
OWASP WebGoat Project is free to use. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2)
Project Sponsors
The WebGoat project is sponsored by
What is WebGoat?
OWASP WebGoat Project provides:
Web application security is difficult to learn and practice. Not many people have full blown web applications like online book stores or online banks that can be used to scan for vulnerabilities. In addition, security professionals frequently need to test tools against a platform known to be vulnerable to ensure that they perform as advertised. All of this needs to happen in a safe and legal environment. Even if your intentions are good, we believe you should never attempt to find vulnerabilities without permission. The primary goal of the WebGoat project is simple: create a de-facto interactive teaching environment for web application security. In the future, the project team hopes to extend WebGoat into becoming a security benchmarking platform and a Java-based Web site Honeypot.
Aung Khant (YGN Ethical Hacker Group) has created a series of movies showing possible solutions to the WebGoat lessons. These training movies can be viewed at
Feel free to contact him for any help with WebGoat.
Project Leader
Related Projects
Quick Download
WebGoat downloads from version 5.4 and later are available at WebGoat Google code downloads.
Or you can simply click here to download the WebGoat 5.4 for Windows - download, unzip, click to run version
You can sync to the current WebGoat source tree at Google code.
There is also a Git clone: available at GitHub
Email List
News and Events
In Print
The WebGoat project is run by Bruce Mayhew. He can be contacted at webgoat AT owasp.org. WebGoat distributions are currently maintained on SourceForge and Google. The WebGoat framework makes it extremely easy to add additional lessons. We are actively seeking developers to add new lessons as new web technologies emerge. If you are interested in volunteering for the project, or have a comment, question, or suggestion, please join the WebGoat mailing list.
Thanks to Ounce Labs for allowing me time to work on and run the WebGoat project during my day job!
The project's overall goal is to...
Be the defacto standard web application security training environment
In the near term, we are focused on the following tactical goals...
- Demonstrate most common web application security vulnerabilities
- Add educational support for secure coding practices
- Enhance enterprise lesson tracking
- Attract more contributions of lessons
- Revisit existing lesson base to standardize lesson theme.
- Increase ease-of-use and expand user base
Here are the current tasks defined to help us achieve these goals
- Replace basic authentication with forms based authentication
- Rewrite all lessons to follow common theme using common database
- Rewrite user administration to allow better user management (non-hackable)
- Fix Logoff
- Defuse all lessons to disallow inadvertent harm to user's OS
- General security cleanup. Remove exploits that are not lesson specific
- Remove non working lessons
New Lessons
- Server side forward allows access to WEB-INF resources
- Account enumeration using webscarab
- SQLException lesson - could tie into overall error handling
- XML attacks - Entity recursion, ...
For more information contact Bruce Mayhew at webgoat at owasp dot org
Involvement in the development and promotion of WebGoat is actively encouraged! You do not have to be a security expert in order to contribute.
Previous Releases
You can download WebGoat version 5.2 and older from the OWASP Source Code Center at Sourceforge. There are versions with and without Java, and installation only requires unzipping the download and running a start script. For convenience, a ready-to-deploy WAR file is also made available to drop right into your J2EE application server.
WebGoat 5.2 Standard
This release is a download, unzip, and click-to-run release. It comes with the Java Runtime Environment and a configured Tomcat 5.5 server.
* Double-click on webgoat.bat - a Tomcat command window starts * Browse to http://localhost/WebGoat/attack
WebGoat 5.2 Developer
Note: This release is intended to provide an environment for working on the WebGoat labs. If you would like to develop lessons, synch to the baseline at Google code.
The developer release includes the standard release with the addition of a configured eclipse environment. The developer release is also a download, unzip, and click-to-run release. It works exactly the same as the standard release if you only wish to explore the lessons. However, if you want to perform the labs or use WebGoat in the classroom, use the eclipse.bat to start up a preconfigured WebGoat environment. Detailed instructions are include at the top of the _HOW TO create the WebGoat workspace.txt_ file.
* Extract the Eclipse-Workspace.zip file to the working directory * Double-click the eclipse.bat file * In the Eclipse package explorer (top right), right click the WebGoat project and refresh * In the Eclipse package explorer (top right), right click the Servers project and refresh * In the Eclipse servers view (bottom), right click LocalHost server and start * Browse to http://localhost/WebGoat/attack * Any changes made to the source will automatically compile and redeploy when saved
Please send all comments to Bruce Mayhew at webgoat AT owasp.org regarding this release.
Future Development
WebGoat has been fairly stable for a few years. The latest stable release as of Oct 7, 2013 is 5.4, and the development for 6.0 is underway at | the WebGoat Google repo. There are some issues on the WebGoat issues page that require fixing, any help there would be appreciated.
Going forward WebGoat should take advantage of the training material provided at OWASP and incorporate that material into the lesson plans. WebGoat has been useful in educating security folks in the type of attacks and how they could be exploited. WebGoat should start focusing on educating the security staff and developers on potential mitigation strategies. I would also like to see an expansion of the report card feature and the enterprise architecture used for tracking the lessons completed. WebGoat could be used in organizations as a introduction to secure coding practices.
Check out the project roadmap and find some tasks that you can help with right away.
What does this OWASP project offer you?
What releases are available for this project?
Pages in category "OWASP WebGoat Project"
The following 17 pages are in this category, out of 17 total.


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DENY Anderson Design Group
Anderson Design Group Mermaid X Ing Throw Pillow
Wanna transform a serious room into a fun, inviting space? Looking to complete a room full of solids with a unique print? Need to add a pop of color to your dull, lackluster space? Accomplish all of the above with one simple, yet powerful home accessory we like to call the DENY Throw Pillow! Available in four sizes, our throw pillow is made from a medium weight woven polyester with a hidden zipper and removable bun insert.
- 100% medium weight white woven polyester
- Printed on front and back
- Concealed zipper with bun insert
- Premium polyester fill insert
- Spot clean with mild detergent
- Custom made for every order
- Estimated Ship Date: 5-10 business days
- This item is eligible for a return or exchange in new condition within 30 days
16" x 16" (41cm x 41cm)
18" x 18" (46cm x 46cm)
20" x 20" (51cm x 51cm)
26" x 26" (66cm x 66cm)
We measure all of our pillows from edge to edge without the insert or filling
(Please note there is a 1" tolerance on all printed textile products)
Joel Anderson, founder of Anderson Design Group, graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design in 1986. His design firm has been creating branding for companies all over the world since 1993, but Joel's real hobby/obsession is vintage poster art. Joel and his team of artists have admired and studied classic illustrated advertising prints for years. When they wanted to collect their favorites, they found that antique prints were just too expensive and the best public domain reproductions have been over-exploited. So, Joel had an idea, "What if we created our own classic poster designs featuring modern themes, but hand-rendered them in the tradition of the masters of the Golden Age of Poster Art?" So, they did just that. One of their first design collections, Art and Soul Of America, has won loads of design awards and quickly became a best-selling series of limited edition prints. Today, Joel and his team at Anderson Design Group continue to create new lines of prints from their studio in Nashville, Tennessee.


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Tennnnnn-hut, ladies! The next time Uncle Sam comes calling, he�s probably going to want you, too.
WASHINGTON � Tennnnnn-hut, ladies! The next time Uncle Sam comes calling, he�s probably going to want you, too.
The Obama administration�s recent decision to lift the ban on women in combat has opened the door for a change in the law that currently compels only men between age 18 and 25 to register for a military draft, according to legal experts and military historians.
Never before has the country drafted women into military service, and neither the administration nor Congress is in a hurry to make them register for a future call-up. But, legally, they may have no other choice.
It is only constitutional to register men for a draft, the Supreme Court ruled more than three decades ago, because the reason for registration is to create a pool of potential combat troops should a national emergency demand a rapid increase in the size of the military. Women were excluded from serving in battlefield jobs, so there was no reason to register them for possible conscription into the armed forces, the court held.
Now that front-line infantry, armor, artillery and special operations jobs are open to female volunteers who can meet the physical requirements, it will be difficult for anyone to make a persuasive argument that women should continue to be exempt from registration, said Diane Mazur, a law professor at the University of Florida and a former Air Force officer.
�They�re going to have to show that excluding women from the draft actually improves military readiness,� Mazur said. �I just don�t see how you can make that argument.�
Groups that backed the end of the ban on women in combat also support including women in draft registration as a matter of basic citizenship. Women should have the same civic obligations as men, said Greg Jacob, a former Marine Corps officer and policy director for the Service Women�s Action Network. �We see registration as another step forward in terms of equality and fairness,� Jacob said.
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., supports draft registration for women, according to his spokeswoman. Rep. Howard �Buck� McKeon, R-Calif., who heads the House Armed Services Committee, hasn�t made up his mind. McKeon said through a spokesman that he�s awaiting a Defense Department report due in the coming weeks that will assess the legal impact of lifting the ban women in combat on draft registration.
But if you�re worried a draft notice is going to soon be in your mailbox, take a deep breath. There is no looming national crisis that makes a military draft likely.
A draft would be enormously unpopular; a new poll by Quinnipiac University found that American voters firmly oppose a return to conscription. Also, adding women to the mix just doesn�t appear to be a high priority for a battle-weary nation nearing the end of more than a decade of war.
The U.S. military has been an all-volunteer force for the past 40 years and women have become an integral part of it. Nearly 15 percent of the 1.4 million troops on active duty are female. More than 280,000 women have served in Iraq, Afghanistan or other countries in support of the wars. There have been 152 women killed in the fighting.
Americans overwhelmingly support allowing female volunteers to serve in ground combat roles by a 75-25 margin, according to the Quinnipiac poll. But the survey of 1,772 registered voters found them conflicted over mandated military service for women.
On the question of re-establishing a military draft, male and female voters said they were opposed, 65-28, according to the poll. If a draft were called, however, men backed the conscription of women as well as men, by 59-36, the poll said. But 48 percent of the women surveyed said they did not want women to be drafted while 45 percent said they should be.
Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar, a California Air National Guard pilot who served three tours in Afghanistan, said excluding women from a draft reinforces a stereotype that they are less capable than men and need to be protected. Not every woman can handle a close combat job, she said, and neither can every man.
But they can contribute in other ways if a crisis demands their service, said Hegar, who received a Purple Heart for wounds she suffered when her Medevac helicopter was shot at during a mission near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Hegar and three other female service members filed a lawsuit last year challenging the combat ban on the grounds that the policy unfairly blocked them from promotions and other advancements open to men. The suit did not address the question of draft registration for women.
�You can�t pick and choose when equality should apply to you,� Hegar said. �Making generalized statements like, �Women are capable of being in combat� or �Women are incapable of being in combat,� are equally ignorant. People are either competent or they�re not competent.�
For baby boomers in particular, talk of conscription stirs memories of the social and political upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s caused in large part by the unpopularity of the Vietnam war and the perceived unfairness of the draft. Research published in the late 1970s showed that men from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to fight in Vietnam than men from middle- and high-income families who could avoid being drafted by going to college or finding a slot in a stateside National Guard unit.
�The American people lost confidence in the draft as a means of raising an army when it ceased to require equal sacrifice from everyone that was eligible to serve,� said Bernard Rostker, a former director of the Selective Service System and the author of �I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force.�
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has made several attempts over the past decade to reinstitute the draft on the grounds that a small fraction of U.S. citizens are bearing a disproportionate burden in fighting the nation�s wars. But his bills have gone nowhere.
That hasn�t stopped him from trying. Just this month, Rangel introduced another bring-back-the-draft bill that also would require women to register.
�Women have proven that they can do the very same tasks, military and non-military, that men can,� Rangel said.
No one has been conscripted into the U.S. military since 1973 when an apprentice plumber from California named Dwight Elliott Stone became the last draftee to be inducted. Stone, now 63 and living in San Francisco, didn�t go happily. �I just wanted to do my two years and get the hell out,� Stone said. He ended up serving about 17 months, and never had to go overseas.
The rules have been changed to make a future draft more equitable than it was during the Vietnam era. Being a college student is no longer an out; induction can only be postponed until the end of a semester.
Men who don�t register with the Selective Service System, an independent federal agency that prepares for a draft, can be charged with a felony and fined up to $250,000. But the Justice Department hasn�t prosecuted anyone for that offense since 1986.
There can be other consequences, though. Failing to register can mean the loss of financial aid for college, being refused employment with the federal government, and denied U.S. citizenship.
The Selective Service System maintains a database of nearly 17 million names of potential male draftees, yet the odds of a draft being called are remote, according to national security experts. Volunteers typically are more motivated, more disciplined and more physically fit than draftees. They�re also more willing to re-enlist, which creates a more experienced force.
The Pentagon�s top brass didn�t push for a draft in 2005 when recruiting efforts slumped and they needed more troops for the expanding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University. Instead, it hired contractors by the thousands, called up reservists, and used an arcane rule known as �stop-loss� to extend, involuntarily, by months the tours of active-duty troops, said Bacevich, a retired Army colonel.
With formation of the all-volunteer force under way, President Gerald Ford ended the peacetime draft registration process in 1975. But after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan a few years later, World War III suddenly seemed possible, and President Jimmy Carter ordered a return to registration as a show of resolve. Carter, ever the progressive politician, added a twist. He wanted young women, not just young men, to sign up.
But Congress and certainly the country weren�t ready for such a seismic cultural shift, and lawmakers refused to allow the registration of women.
Elaine Eidson, a mother of three sons and a daughter from Haleyville, Ala., spoke for what she described as the country�s �silent majority� in testimony she gave in March 1980 to a House subcommittee that quickly shelved Carter�s proposal. �This I will not stand for, nor will the American people stand for it,� said Eidson, a member of the conservative Eagle Forum, according to the hearing record. �You cannot draft our women.�
The Supreme Court�s ruling came a year later and validated Congress� rejection of Carter�s plan. The case that triggered the decision took a circuitous route to the high court. It was originally filed in federal court in Philadelphia during the waning days of the Vietnam War by a young medical school student named Robert Goldberg. He challenged the constitutionality of the Military Selective Service Act on the grounds that it discriminated against men by excluding women from draft registration. While Goldberg was subject to the draft, his number was never called.
When Ford ended draft registration, Goldberg�s case languished. Carter�s decision to revive the process gave it new life. A district court ruled in favor of Goldberg, finding that the Selective Service Act unconstitutionally discriminated between men and women.
The federal government appealed and the Supreme Court reversed the lower court. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that Congress �acted well within its constitutional authority to raise and regulate armies and navies when it authorized the registration of men and not women.�
Goldberg is now 59 and a doctor living and practicing near San Francisco. He said there is a �delicious irony� in the Pentagon�s decision to end the ban on women in combat nearly 40 years after he challenged the idea that women couldn�t cope with the rigors of military service.
�As a 20-year-old, I wasn�t trying to make history,� Goldberg said. �All I was trying to do was to see that the Selective Service System be declared unconstitutional by one means or another. It seemed patently obvious to me that a woman could do a job as well as I could.�


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Ball State's Field Station and Environmental Education Center (FSEEC) provides hands-on learning and observation of nature and encourages exploration of natural processes by students of all ages. Our research activities are directed toward understanding human impact on ecological processes and communities, and we share our resources and data.
Our center is a collaboration of the Departments of Biology, Natural Resources and Environmental Management, Landscape Architecture, Geology, and others. FSEEC is comprised of six properties totaling 425 acres.
Want to learn more? Check out our frequently asked questions (FAQ) page or contact us.
Learn More About the Workshops


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Talk:Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) Database File (EDB) format
From ForensicsWiki
Revision as of 10:39, 29 July 2012 by Joachim Metz (Talk | contribs)
Are there any tools that can show or export the contents of these database files?
- Joachim 03:39, 29 July 2012 (PDT) Yes, I've added a tools sections to this page. There are probably more tools so feel free to expand the list.


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Pitt Team Receives $2.5 Million to Simulate and Analyze Brain, Immune System Activity and Apply Math to Medical Problems
PITTSBURGH-In an effort to promote the application of mathematics to medical treatment, researchers in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Mathematics will undertake a $2.5 million project to create models of how the brain and immune system function and change over time in response to certain illnesses, infections, and treatment. The models are intended to help doctors better understand and predict the possible short- and long-term responses of their patient's body to treatment.
The National Science Foundation awarded University professor G. Bard Ermentrout, assistant professor Beatrice Riviere, associate professor Jonathan Rubin, assistant professor David Swigon, and professor and interim chair Ivan Yotov a nearly $1.8 million Research Training Group (RTG) award. The RTG includes resources for creating training programs for mathematics students wherein they would work with physicians and biologists to help resolve complicated medical problems through mathematics. Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences-which houses the mathematics department-provided additional funds.
The team will create a variety of computer models based on differential equations-which predict how systems evolve over time-with the medical guidance of scientists and doctors in Pitt's Departments of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience, the Pitt School of Medicine, and UPMC, said Rubin, a coinvestigator on the project.
The immune system models will plot the various chemical and physical changes that occur as the body battles influenza, inflammation, sepsis and necrosis, and wounds. Ultimately, Rubin explained, the researchers want to pinpoint the origin of such conditions as multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (multiple organ failure), a potentially deadly, uncontrollable inflammation that usually strikes ailing patients with compromised immune systems.
"Infection and inflammation kill people in the intensive care unit," Rubin said. "We hope that by building this model and calculating how to control the system, we can help doctors design a clinical strategy for intervention based on a condition's progression."
The neurological models will outline the typical course of activity in various brain regions, communication among brain cells, and time-dependent changes in the synapses-the small gaps between cells through which they communicate. The team will look for how electrical signals and brain waves transmit between brain cells and, in turn, the manner in which those impulses alter the cells.
One clinical application, Rubin said, would be for improving therapies for neurological conditions, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS), which manipulates brain activity via a surgically implanted device that emits electric pulses. Despite DBS' effectiveness in treating such conditions as chronic pain and Parkinson's disease, how it works remains unknown, Rubin said. Once the pathways of brain activity are exposed, he continued, doctors could observe how DBS functions and better control the electrical currents to avoid the known psychological side effects.
The complicated models simulate the extensive, constant interaction of various cells and organs operating on multiple time scales, from the immeasurably swift to a full day. The complexity of these models will require the development of new simulation and mathematical techniques, but the work could apply to several other biological systems.
"We're exploring mathematical and computational territory that has not been understood yet," Rubin said. "For instance, the brain contains millions of neurons that in turn contain very small molecules [neurotransmitters]. This network functions on a time scale measured in submilliseconds, a scale so small that no one can really grasp how short it is. At the same time, the brain manages and abides by the circadian rhythm, the body's 24-hour cycle.
"If we make a breakthrough on how to map these time scales, it would apply to multiple systems," Rubin added.
Media Resources
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For more information about Pitt's schools of dental medicine, health and rehabilitation sciences, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health, click here >
To locate stories from health science schools prior to 2013, visit the UPMC news archives »
Urgent Question?
University of Pittsburgh news reps are available to answer urgent media inquiries. Outside of regular business hours (Mon-Fri, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.), please call 412-225-6384.
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Saturday, July 7, 2012
Lindor Truffle Cupcakes
20 comments :
Oh wow. Truffles inside? So awesome!ReplyDelete
Dorothy, they. Are. Awesome!! LolReplyDelete
Genious! And EVIL!ReplyDelete
Oh my goodness! These must be the best cupcakes ever!ReplyDelete
Yummie Yummie!ReplyDelete
I Need These Immediately! They look amazingly delicious - I love Lindor Truffles.Thanks for sharing the recipe. Visiting from Craftionary link up - Have a wonderful weekend:)ReplyDelete
These look awesome!! I love your blog! Im a new follower! Would love for you to visit mine!ReplyDelete
Oh my - this must just be true goodness. Love it.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousJuly 14, 2012 at 10:07 AM
I LOVE Lindor truffle! This could be big trouble!!ReplyDelete
Thanks guys! They are definitely a MUST try! Especially since you can make them with any truffles you like!ReplyDelete
Yum! These look incredible!ReplyDelete
ALL I CAN SAY IS YUMMY!!! I JUST RETURNED TO 5 YEAR OLD ME!! I WILL BE TRYING THESE FOR SURE!!ReplyDelete
This maybe a silly question but I was going to make these today and the cupcakes in the picture are chocolate but the recipe doesn't show any? Unless I am missing it which is totally possible :)ReplyDelete
Oh my gosh there should be 3/4 cup cocoa powder after the flour. I'm so sorry I forgot to add it in!! I will change it now thak you for saying something!!ReplyDelete
Thank you!! Can't wait to try them! I am putting salted caramel on top with the milk chocolate truffle and chocolate cupcake OMG Can't wait!ReplyDelete
That sounds amazing! Let me know how they turn out!!ReplyDelete
- ChandraAugust 14, 2012 at 3:55 PM
Ok - you need to make the (makes 22-24) MUCH biiger - AND you need to say you need 24 truffles. I didn't see the tiny makes 22-24 (which underestimates the batter, I think) and saw that you only called for 12 truffles. I read through the recipe and you put one truffle per cupcake and thought this was for 12 cupcakes. It wasn't until I had started doubling the batter (and it was too late) that I realized this had to make more than 12 cupcakes. I ended up with 24 over-full cupcakes and 12 overfull Jumbo cupcakes. Those all didn't even fit in my over at one time so the last 6 jumbo had to be baked separately. The batter tasted good uncooked. They are in the oven now, but over-flowing because I was trying to get everything to fit.ReplyDelete
I picked this recipe because it's a homemade cake (whereas all the others I found for lindor truffle cupcakes used a boxed mix as a base). I think they'll be good, but a pain to get out of the pans. Please resize your "servings" and say 24 - 30 cupcakes as I think I would have gotten at least 28 cupcakes that were properly filled. Otherwise, I think these will be excellent cupcakes.
I shall be using a dark chocolate butter cream frosting as I used the mint chocolate truffles.
- ChandraAugust 15, 2012 at 4:16 PM
The finished cupcakes were a huge success - the cake recipe is very good (but I used a different frosting than listed here). Just be aware that this recipe makes about 30 cupakes :)ReplyDelete
- AnonymousSeptember 4, 2017 at 5:58 PM
I made them...yield appx 30. Very good, but they are seriously over the top rich and chocolatey. Cupcake was delicious, loved the icing.ReplyDelete


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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - As thousands of runners picked up their packets and T-shirts at the Runners Expo on Friday they had the chance to meet a legend in the running community, Bill Rodgers.
Rodgers ran in -- and won -- the first River Run in 1978.
"There were nowhere near as many women runners, no prize money. The race was much smaller. It was still exciting. It's a very exciting course." Rodgers said.
Rodgers is also the only American to win both the Boston and New York City marathons four times each. He ranks his first 15K win in Jacksonville as one of his greatest and loves to see how the race has grown and gained interest over 35 years.
"When you become a walker, a runner, it's a lifetime sport. This is how we can beat diseases like heart disease and diabetes" he said.
Rodgers signed autographs for the runners on their race numbers, shirts, and some on his book, 'The Idiots Guide to Running'. For people just starting out, he recommends joining a running club locally to stay motivated, which is something he has managed to do since he was in his prime.
"I ran 130 miles a week I ran twice a day. These top young runners are doing the same thing," said Rodgers. "Now I run 30 miles a week, 40 miles a week. I can't train that hard. I'm 65 years old."
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