text:
†Success stories based on previous formulation of EleCare.
Peighton was born at 36 weeks weighing 6 pounds and 10 ounces. Within her first days, she became very ill with projectile vomiting due to food sensitivity. We tried switching formulas, including rice and soy formulas, but nothing helped. At 5 weeks, Peighton was hospitalized because of her inability to eat and her severe weight loss.
Our saving grace
Our doctors were honest with us; they didn't think Peighton was going to make it. So we took matters into our own hands. After countless hours researching, we found the best gastroenterologists in the country. Amazingly, they were only five hours away. During Peighton's hospital stay, our doctors recommended we try EleCare® as her sole source of nutrition. For the first time, Peighton could keep her formula down. Soon after, she began gaining weight and continued to do so for about six months.
11 months old
We started introducing Peighton to solid foods, but the vomiting returned. As her condition worsened, she was readmitted to the hospital. During her 17-day stay, Peighton was fed EleCare through a nasogastric tube (NG tube). After Peighton left the hospital, we continued to feed her EleCare every hour, even as she slept.
Defying the odds
Today, Peighton is two and a half years old and still relies on EleCare for most of her nutrition. But we're making progress! Peighton can now tolerate eggs and some fruit. We take it one day at a time.
Did you know?
Infants fed EleCare for 42 days showed significant improvements in symptoms associated with food protein-induced proctocolitis.1
*Among those recommending amino acid-based products for infants and children ages 1 and up.
1.Borschel MW, Antonson DL, Murray ND, et al. Evaluation of a free amino acid-based formula in infants with presumptive food protein-induced proctocolitis. Open Medicine. 2014. doi: 10.1177/2050312114551857
Lily's first moments of life were amazing... and terrifying. Soon after she was born, Lily was placed in the Neonatal Intensive-Care Unit (NICU). During her week-long stay, we noticed she had been spitting up. However, our concerns were overshadowed by the excitement of bringing her home. I couldn't wait to feed Lily — it's that bonding time every mother lives for. But each feeding, breast or bottle, would leave her in extreme pain. It was heartbreaking to watch our little girl bring her knees to her chest, arch her back, and cry.
More issues, more guesses
By the time she was 1½ months old, Lily's food allergies were causing her to experience projectile vomiting. It was awful. Our pediatrician recommended trying new formulas and medications. Nothing helped. Not even soy formulas, which caused severe constipation.
Finally, answers
Our quest for answers led us to a pediatric gastroenterologist. After much research, our doctors advised us to try EleCare®. Lily took to it immediately. Our "miracle" formula helped stop her projectile vomiting and allows her to eat without severe pain. Lily enjoys the taste of EleCare, and the product is wonderful for her highly sensitive digestive system.
Did you know?
The eight types of food that account for a majority of allergic reactions are: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat.
Our amazing son, Kaareen, arrived a month early weighing just under 4 pounds. The odds were stacked against our little guy, but he was ready to put up a big fight. Kaareen was born with Down syndrome, two large holes in his heart, and a clubfoot. While in the hospital, Kaareen got an infection in his intestine and needed emergency surgery. During surgery, they had to remove 80% of his intestine and placed a gastrostomy tube (G-tube) and colostomy bag. After surgery, Kaareen was introduced to EleCare. We fed him a little by mouth and the rest through his G-tube. Almost immediately, we noticed that EleCare was helping Kaareen gain weight.
3 months old and more surgeries
Kaareen needed surgery to reconnect his intestines and remove his colostomy bag. He recovered well, but we were told he would need an additional surgery to fix his heart defect. We thought that was the last of Kaareen's surgeries and we could begin living a normal life. But a few months later, he began having severe diarrhea. Kaareen was admitted to the hospital again and stayed for a month while they ran more tests. During his stay, doctors stopped giving Kaareen EleCare and introduced several other infant formulas. But none were tolerated and his condition quickly worsened. They put him back on EleCare and immediately, his condition improved.
Kaareen today
Kaareen has had a few more surgeries but remains very happy. He still has his G-tube but is starting to eat baby food by mouth. Kaareen still relies on EleCare and continues to gain weight — our bundle of joy is loving life!
Did you know?
Tube feeding refers to the act of delivering nutrients through a tube directly to a patient's gastrointestinal (GI) tract, usually through the nose, stomach, or small intestine.
Olivia was born premature and suffered from necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). To help correct her potentially dangerous intestinal disorder, Olivia underwent surgery to remove the damaged sections of her intestine. As a result, she developed short bowel syndrome (SBS) and needed a gastrostomy tube (G-Tube).
Finding answers
Because of Olivia's condition, she developed anemia and other nutritional deficiencies. We tried several infant formulas, but they only made her symptoms worse. When Olivia was 10 weeks old, our doctor recommended that we try EleCare. Honestly, we were a little skeptical but tried to remain positive. To our surprise, we noticed a major improvement!
It's a flavor-full world
Olivia has been on EleCare for two and a half years and she continues to amaze us. Recently, we began weaning Olivia off EleCare and started introducing solid foods to her diet. Needless to say, she's enjoying every minute. Her favorite food? Ice cream, of course! Today, Olivia is almost 3 years old and spends her time dancing and playing ball with friends and family.
Did you know?
A symptom of short bowel syndrome (SBS) is chronic diarrhea, which may result in:
As an infant, Ryan tired easily, had trouble feeding, and his growth was poor. Around 8 months of age the vomiting began and the fatigue worsened. And just days after his 1st birthday, Ryan's poor growth became so concerning he was admitted to the hospital for failure to thrive.
Waiting rooms, waiting for answers
After two exhausting years filled with dozens of specialists and tests, our son was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) at age 2½. But, we weren't out of the woods. Another year of failed treatments, multiple endoscopies and biopsies, and more doctors followed. In an effort to keep him out of the hospital, Ryan was fed small amounts hourly — even through the night — to try to maintain his weight.
4 years old and 1 big decision
Elimination diets and supplementation with EleCare® were initiated but Ryan was not improving. Vomiting, weight loss and poor vertical growth persisted. Ryan underwent the surgical placement of a feeding tube and began using EleCare as his sole source of nutrition. We lost a lot of sleep over the decision, but within a few weeks, we knew we made the right choice. Using only EleCare, Ryan thrived for the first time.
We have our son and our lives back
Ryan grew, gained weight, and had more energy. He signed up for karate a month later and started swimming that summer. Watching Ryan transform from a sickly child to a vibrant child in a few short months was amazing. I can't help but notice his smile and his energy. Gone are the sleepless nights, the stress of trying to maintain his weight, and the anxiety over the future.
Living with EoE
Ryan continues to have exacerbations and remissions of his disease — a disease he will live with for the foreseeable future. He has been able to add foods to his diet but continues to rely on EleCare for half of his calories and nutrition. He is a happy kid. Just like his friends.
Learn more about eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders (EGIDs)
Did you know?
Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) occurs when the wall of the esophagus is infiltrated by eosinophils. Symptoms can include abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, coughing, and failure to thrive.
When Stanton was born, he was a healthy term infant. But after 3 days, he stopped eating, would not breastfeed, and began vomiting. At its worst, Stanton was vomiting 32 times a day. After trying 17 different formulas, Stanton's parents found EleCare.
Did you know?
EleCare is well-tolerated and supports growth and development in infants.1
*Among those recommending amino acid-based products for infants and children ages 1 and up.
1. Borschel MW, Ziegler EE, Wedig RT, Oliver JS. Growth of healthy term infants fed an extensively hydrolyzed casein-based or free amino acid-based infant formula: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial. Clin Pediatr. 2013;52(10):910-917.
Trent was born with a pulmonary condition that required him to be on a ventilator and tube fed. For more than a week, his parents were unable to hold him because of his treatments. He was soon diagnosed with Down syndrome and three holes in his heart that required surgery. But two months after surgery his incision was not healing. When the doctors determined it was because he wasn't absorbing nutrients, he was started on EleCare.
Did you know?
EleCare is clinically shown to support growth when used as a primary source of nutrition.1
*Among those recommending amino acid-based products for infants and children ages 1 and up.
1. Borschel MW, Ziegler EE, Wedig RT, Oliver JS. Growth of healthy term infants fed an extensively hydrolyzed casein-based or free amino acid-based infant formula: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial. Clin Pediatr. 2013;52(10):910-917.
As with most first-time parents, Collin's mom and dad were ecstatic at his birth. But after a few days of nursing, Collin started showing signs of abdominal pain and gas. He was diagnosed with milk protein allergy, and had to be put on formula. But after two weeks on special formula, his mother noticed blood in his stool. A return to the doctor showed Collin's allergy more severe than the doctor thought, and he was started on EleCare.
Did you know?
EleCare is effective in maintaining normal growth in children with cow's milk allergy and multiple food allergies.1
*Among those recommending amino acid-based products for infants and children ages 1 and up.
1. Sicherer SH, Noone SA, Koerner CB, et al. J Pediatr. 2001;138:688‐693.


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Lawrence O'Donnell
The ongoing battle between cable's Fox News and MSNBC sometimes makes TV's Ultimate Fighter seem tame. MSNBC's latest weapon is Lawrence O'Donnell, one of the gutsiest, most fiercely intelligent and entertaining hosts on any television network, cable or otherwise. So when ratings king Keith Olbermann parted company with MSNBC, O'Donnell was the natural choice to fill his chair.
Each weeknight on his show, The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell, the host, who is so far to the left of the political spectrum that he has described himself as a socialist, discusses the issues of the day—clashes between unions and state governments, Afghanistan, Charlie Sheen—with a sharp focus on what he calls "Republican folly." He delights in skewering conservative media figures and politicians. He called Vice President Dick Cheney's speech on counterterrorism policy "sleazy." He slammed Fox News commentator Glenn Beck's "fake biblical literalist piety." He has criticized Minnesota Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann's "breathtaking demonstrations of ignorance levels previously unimaginable in a member of Congress or a graduate of an American elementary school" and has called Fox's Bill O'Reilly "a joke" and a liar.
O'Donnell, who is from Boston, is to the political left what O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are to the right—that is, if either were also a Harvard graduate and political wonk versed in the minutiae of health care policy and tax codes. After college O'Donnell worked for half a decade, first as communications director and later as senior advisor, for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once said of O'Donnell, "He's maybe the smartest man, and he sure as hell is the toughest." In addition to his inside-the-Beltway political career, O'Donnell, who is 59 and married to actress Kathryn Harrold, has written a book, worked as writer and producer on the TV show The West Wing and acted on that show and on Big Love (he had a recurring role). On MSNBC, he guest hosted Hardball With Chris Matthews, The Ed Show, The Rachel Maddow Show and Countdown With Keith Olbermann, which led to The Last Word.
Playboy sent Contributing Editor David Sheff, who conducted last month's interview with Congressman Barney Frank, to New York to talk media and politics with O'Donnell. Sheff reports, "O'Donnell is the rare television host who talks beyond bullet points about almost any issue you can name. Ask him about health care, and along with analysis of the Obama plan you get a detailed, nuanced history of the issue as it has evolved since the Nixon presidency. O'Donnell seemed sincere when he said he prefers serious debate to the kind of shouting matches many cable news hosts are famous for, but that didn't stop him from ripping into former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who that day gave an interview in which he blamed his marital infidelities on his passion for America. O'Donnell, on a tear, said it had less to do with Gingrich's passion for America than it had to do with Viagra."
PLAYBOY: As a former advisor to a U.S. senator, do you ever feel it's unseemly to be part of the sparring on cable news shows?
O'DONNELL: It's the nature of these shows. In its successful form, prime-time cable news is op-ed television, which is why CNN usually runs last.
PLAYBOY: Does contentiousness drive ratings?
O'DONNELL: My highest-rated shows were 25 minutes with the vice president, which was not contentious in any way, and any 10 minutes I've had with Bill Maher, which were not contentious either. Contentiousness is not what drives the ratings.
PLAYBOY: Yet lots of yelling goes on. Bill O'Reilly is famous for interrupting guests and sometimes bullying them.
O'DONNELL: I don't think it's required. The audience is drawn to someone who gives voice to how they feel. It doesn't have to involve yelling or bullying. But I do think it's probably satisfying to his audience to see O'Reilly beat someone up.
PLAYBOY: You've attacked O'Reilly, recently for his interview with President Obama. What was wrong with it?
O'DONNELL: You have your big Super Bowl moment to interview the president and don't ask a single memorable question, not one, other than "How does it feel to be hated?" And this was coming from someone who is hated by millions of people. It's a stupid question because it's one you could ask any president. They're all hated. In fact, Obama is hated in lower numbers than most presidents. O'Reilly didn't ask one worthwhile policy question. He had an interview opportunity with the president, and he completely blew it.
PLAYBOY: You once said of O'Reilly, "I see dozens of guys I grew up with who are just like him—overbearing, argumentative Irish guys."
O'DONNELL: I can't take Bill seriously. He's a character I've known since I was a kid. He makes me laugh more than anything else, because he's this faux character, a character he plays in a series called The O'Reilly Factor—the braggadocio Irish guy who plays as if he's smarter than you, but in fact he doesn't know very much and can't really back up what he says. Everybody from my neighborhood knows that character and thinks that character is a joke. You know, the tough-guy part of it is the biggest fraud of all. Bill's from Long Island. Sorry, that's not tough-guy territory.
PLAYBOY: Is Glenn Beck a newer version of O'Reilly?
O'DONNELL: Beck is one of the great showmen of this field.
PLAYBOY: Some people think he's dangerous, potentially inciting viewers to violence.
O'DONNELL: He doesn't feel dangerous to me. It's hard for a man in makeup to feel dangerous.
PLAYBOY: Do you think Beck believes the extreme views he espouses, or is he pandering to his audience?
O'DONNELL: The latter. He follows his audience. He tells them what they want to hear.
PLAYBOY: So extremism sells?
O'DONNELL: Well, maybe Beck's extremism has to do with a straight decline in his audience over the past year. It's quite pronounced. His numbers have declined. People are theorizing that it has to do with his going too far, making no sense and cheering for the wrong side—for example, cheering on Mubarak in Egypt. Another thing is that he's a doomsday guy. "The world is coming to an end" is his thing. You can say that for a limited time, and then it had better come to an end or people will think it's not worth listening to you much longer. [Editor's note: Shortly after this interview was completed, Beck and Fox News announced they were parting ways.]
PLAYBOY: Does Rush Limbaugh also pander?
O'DONNELL: Yes. He tells his audience what they want to hear. Even more than that, he plays the character they want him to be. Rush did a horrific physical imitation of Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease. If we have a beloved actor in America, it is Michael J. Fox. He's bearing his disease nobly and bravely, and you have no option but to admire him. Rush decided to attack him, though, because Fox is a Democrat. Rush did his horrible impression, with his arms moving out of control and all that. His viewers saw Rush do that and didn't think it was funny. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Rush Limbaugh deeply regrets what he did, but he will never apologize for it, ever, because the character Rush Limbaugh cannot apologize. That would destroy the character, and that's all he is—a character, like O'Reilly and the others.
PLAYBOY: Do you worry Limbaugh and other right-wing commentators' audiences believe them when they encourage rather than refute untruths, such as the so-called birthers' belief that President Obama wasn't born in the United States?
O'DONNELL: To me it's just stupid.
PLAYBOY: You angrily attacked potential Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee when he said President Obama grew up in Kenya.
O'DONNELL: I wasn't terribly angry about it. I just commented. He said, "The one thing I know is that President Obama was raised in Kenya." I said, "If that's the one thing Mike Huckabee knows, he doesn't know anything."
PLAYBOY: And yet some right-wing pundits continue to encourage the birthers and other Obama conspiracy theorists.
O'DONNELL: Yes, the number of people in America who believe these lies would be dramatically lower if the Huckabees and Republican congressmen and O'Reillys were all sharply and clearly adamant and honest. You wouldn't see this alarming mushrooming in the number of people who think Obama wasn't born or raised here or think he's a Muslim. The numbers would be far lower if people treated this the way John McCain did during the campaign. He clearly said that Obama isn't Muslim and is an American. They'd go away if everyone treated obvious falsehoods the way Ann Coulter does. She's adamant about the birthers being crazy.
PLAYBOY: Do the ones who fuel the flames, encouraging the misinformation, do so intentionally, manipulating their audience, or do they believe the lies?
O'DONNELL: I don't think a single Republican congressman believes there's any issue with Obama's birth. Not one. And I don't believe Sean Hannity or O'Reilly or any of those people ever thought there was any issue with Barack Obama's birth either. I don't think anybody working at Fox News thinks that. But the thing people fear most with an audience is offending them. When you know a significant portion of your audience thinks Obama isn't a citizen, you talk about it in a different way if you're in the audience-preservation business or the voter-preservation business. It's brave when someone like Ann Coulter says the deniers are nuts. She may be losing a speaking fee here or there because of it, but apparently she's interested enough in electing conservatives to separate herself from the crazies.
PLAYBOY: How will that help elect conservatives? They're the ones making the assertions.
O'DONNELL: She knows you need to appeal to independents in order to elect conservatives and that when you want to appeal to independents, you do not want to sound crazy. George Will dealt with this in his column, talking about these increasing "vibrations of weirdness," he called them, coming from Republicans and Republican candidates, and that week he labeled Huckabee the newest and worst offender of them all. Will wants conservatives to prevail electorally, and the crazier they sound, the less likely they will.
PLAYBOY: It sounds as though you don't think Huckabee has much chance of becoming the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.
O'DONNELL: [Shakes head]
PLAYBOY: How about Sarah Palin?
O'DONNELL: Palin is the most recent losing vice presidential candidate who will never be president. In the television age, no losing vice presidential candidate has ever succeeded. Exactly two managed to get themselves back on a convention stage: Walter Mondale and Bob Dole. They lost. Palin knows this, and she has no intention of running for anything again in her life. She made that absolutely clear the day she quit the governorship in Alaska. She's doing everything she should do as a moneymaking operation, which is what she is. She will never say she's not running for president until it's absolutely beyond obvious, because she understands the second she's not running, Tim Pawlenty becomes more important.
PLAYBOY: Has Palin been good for commentators like you? She seems to provide an endless supply of faux pas, family scandals and shocking statements.
O'DONNELL: She's been good for us, and we've been good for her. We are doing everything we can to feed her moneymaking capacity by keeping her alive. What if we treated her as we did Dan Quayle? How much is a Dan Quayle speech worth right now? She is absolutely a cable news creation. There is no Dan Quayle phenomenon, and there wasn't after he was on the losing side of the vice presidential slot. There was no Joe Lieberman phenomenon after he was on the losing side of the vice presidential slot. I think she knows that, which is why she does what she does to keep herself on our radar.
PLAYBOY: Does Newt Gingrich have a shot at the nomination?
O'DONNELL: No. Newt is trying to make us French. He won't succeed.
PLAYBOY: How is he trying to make us French?
O'DONNELL: He's trying to say three marriages are okay. At some point three marriages will be okay, but not now. Two marriages weren't okay until Reagan came along and won. McCain had two, but he lost for other reasons. At this point, Newt cannot be elected with his marital record. I don't care about it, but many people do. I would have voted for Mitt Romney's great-grandfather, who had five wives at the same time, if I agreed with him on policy. I'd vote for Newt Gingrich if I agreed with him on policy. But I don't decide the elections. People who decide elections, the swing voters, apparently care what kind of person you are. Newt's story includes stuff that a consensus of Americans finds extremely negative. Having your wife in a hospital for cancer treatment and going in to discuss divorce terms is considered uncool by enough people, especially conservative Republicans. Also, I don't think he can overcome the optics of running for president.
PLAYBOY: What optics are required?
O'DONNELL: You can't look the way he looks. You have to be thinner. You have to be trimmer. He would lose in the general election, absolutely, but he'll never get to a general election.
PLAYBOY: What's your take on Mitt Romney?
O'DONNELL: Romney is going to have a problem with Christian fundamentalists who believe Mormonism is not an actual Christian branch but a heretical branch. They will not vote for a Mormon under any circumstances. I could vote for someone who married five times, and I could vote for a Mormon for anything. Tell me what your tax policy is. Tell me what you want to do with Medicare and Social Security. But Republicans, at least evangelical Christian Republicans, would have a serious problem voting for a Mormon, and they won't. It's why Romney gave a speech in which he tried to explain his religion. He talked about the faith of his fathers, but he didn't say anything about the faith of his fathers. He didn't say a single thing his fathers believed, not one. And the one Mormon he cited, Brigham Young, he cited heroically.
LAYBOY: What do you have against Brigham Young?
O'DONNELL: Brigham Young said God told him that if a white person has sex with a black person, the white person will die on the spot, in the bed, won't take another breath. The media don't know that, and they think that because a university is named after Brigham Young and its basketball team has black players there's nothing else to think or know about it. But if the candidate brought up the faith of his fathers, then you can reasonably ask the candidate questions about the faith of his fathers, including the fact that well into Romney's adulthood his religion said that black men could not be priests in this church. Then, one day, the president of the Mormon church said, "God just told me he has changed his mind, and black men can now be priests." The day before God changed his mind, what did Mitt Romney think about black men not being allowed to be priests in the Mormon church?
PLAYBOY: Who would have a harder time running for president in America, a Mormon or an atheist?
O'DONNELL: An atheist would have a bigger problem in America overall but a smaller problem with evangelical Christian voters, because to them an atheist is not a heretic. An atheist is not putting a false god in front of God.
PLAYBOY: Of the current pack of contenders, who's the most likely Republican nominee?
O'DONNELL: Tim Pawlenty is the only one. It's a process of elimination. There's a serious problem with every other Republican running for president. Besides his religion, Romney has the problem of having created Obamacare in Massachusetts before Obamacare went national. In the end Huckabee probably won't run, but if he does, he won't have the wider appeal necessary. As I said, Palin's not going to run. She's a loser, and America hates losers. Ron Paul will get his solid seven percent of the vote. Pawlenty is the only guy who has no negative.
PLAYBOY: Does he have the optics?
O'DONNELL: He's got what he's got. Look, if you had a Pawlenty who was also dynamic, I'd say, "Oh, the dynamic Pawlenty is going to win. He's going to beat the undynamic Pawlenty." There isn't one.
PLAYBOY: How significant a force is Michele Bachmann?
O'DONNELL: She's another of our media creations. There couldn't be a Michele Bachmann without a lot of cable news programming chattering about her. In the old-media world, The New York Times would not have spent much time on her. She wouldn't be getting rewarded in any way for being Michele Bachmann. You didn't have people talking like that in the early 1990s, to go back to an ancient period, because they would be labeled quacks and ignored by the dominant media, if the dominant media decided to notice them at all. Now that we have all these media outlets and the internet, there's niche marketing. She's a niche. Anyone and anything can get on TV now, so it's possible for all sorts of things to get traction that never would have before. In 1993 a television show about ice-road truckers would have been impossible. Ice Road Truckers is a hit in the world of cable programming now because there are enough people—a million something or whatever it is—who want to watch it, including me. There's a market for every kind of weird idea in a country of 300 million.
PLAYBOY: You described prime-time cable news, excluding CNN, as op-ed television. Is a danger of op-ed television that viewers may not realize they're watching commentary from a liberal or conservative point of view? To borrow Fox's slogan, they may think they're watching fair and balanced news.
O'DONNELL: Which is more dangerous, getting your news exclusively from cable TV or not getting your news?
PLAYBOY: In some cases, maybe propaganda is worse than no news.
O'DONNELL: Absolutely nothing can be done about it other than to watch something else. You can watch the Discovery Channel.
PLAYBOY: How has the internet changed discourse in America?
O'DONNELL: There are many more public discussions about everything that happens in the world, both for better and worse. The only way you used to be able to get some access to what people were thinking was to listen to call-in talk radio, which I always found fascinating because of exactly that. They were the citizens who were never heard from. Now there are blogs and the internet comment world. The fun thing about it is that people can be much more intemperate and profane than they would ever be calling any radio show other than Howard Stern's.
PLAYBOY: Let's tackle a few of the pressing issues. You've said we should raise taxes, which is as unpopular a stand as you can take.
O'DONNELL: We're living in this absurd tax environment where two UCLA professors who are married to each other are taxed at the same tax rate as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It's an absurdly primitive notion of income distribution.
PLAYBOY: Yet the Republicans believe we're overtaxed.
O'DONNELL: Well, they think the government is doing too much. I'm someone who doesn't think the government is doing too much. My obligation on the liberal side of our politics and our governing policies is to come up with a way to raise revenue to pay for the things I think we should pay for—social services, Social Security, whatever.
PLAYBOY: Apparently you'd go much further even than many liberals. You've described yourself as a socialist. Doesn't that alienate you from most people? During the campaign Obama had to defend himself against those who charged he was a socialist.
O'DONNELL: Which he is. He was accused of it by socialists. We're all socialists, at least any of us who agree Social Security is a good thing. I'm a socialist because I support Social Security and Medicare. They're socialistic. Everyone who supports these programs is supporting socialism—including most Republicans.
PLAYBOY: Critics have called Obama's health care law socialistic. Is it?
O'DONNELL: It's not. It's the most absurd, ridiculous nonsolution and covers approximately half the people who need to be covered. That's what the Democratic liberal ideal had become by the time we got to the Obama presidency. Half of them? That's your idea?
PLAYBOY: Wasn't that expediency? Isn't it necessary to compromise to get legislation passed?
O'DONNELL: This president began with the notion that the smartest way to solve the health care problem would be to expand Medicare, which is correct. Medicare for people over a certain age works well. It would have taken time to figure out how to make it work for everyone, but it could, and the American public could have understood it, it could have eventually passed, and it wouldn't have scared so many people.
PLAYBOY: But do you agree that compromise is essential in a country as polarized as ours?
O'DONNELL: If you compromise and compromise on what you stand for, then what do you stand for? Nothing. Mario Cuomo was willing to lose his governorship over something not a single Democrat would ever risk an election over again: the death penalty. Does anyone remember the death penalty as a political issue? Guess which side the liberals were on. Guess which side the conservatives were on. The death penalty is not on the list of litmus tests for liberals now. Liberals gave up.
PLAYBOY: For practical reasons? Because polls show most Americans support it?
O'DONNELL: It is about being practical, and it is entirely about that for politicians. For Cuomo, a Roman Catholic, no, it's not about being practical. It's his agreement with the pope that thou shall not kill. The trick question now for politicians in either party is, Over what would you be willing to lose an election? Bill Clinton would not understand the question. He wouldn't. Over time, each adjustment you make, especially each moral adjustment you make, moves you closer to being nothing. If you watch the conservative movement on the abortion issue and over the same period of time watch the Democratic Party on the death penalty—these two things that people call death—you will notice that one utterly and totally abandoned any attachment to principle and the other gripped the principle tighter and tighter over time. In the 1990s I could have said to Republicans, "Look, can't you see the country is pro choice now? The country is pretty close to two thirds pro choice. This is a bad formula for you." However, for many Republicans and virtually all antiabortion Republican voters, this is a deeply important moral issue on which they will not yield. And their refusal to yield on a moral issue over time gives them a moral center around which to organize.
PLAYBOY: Why did Democrats give up on the death penalty?
O'DONNELL: There is no lobbying interest against the death penalty. You could be a member of Congress for 40 years and never have one visit from a person lobbying against the death penalty. On the other hand, a vast lobby and a vast voter population have a strong interest in preserving all reproductive rights as they exist now and advancing some of them. It's why abortion remains an issue for Democrats as it is for Republicans.
PLAYBOY: Will a stalemate remain when it comes to gun control?
O'DONNELL: Democrats have been silenced on gun control and ammunition control. By the way, at this time they should be taking on ammunition control, which is more important than gun control.
PLAYBOY: What's the difference? If you have a car, you need gas. If you have a gun, you need ammunition. They go hand in hand.
O'DONNELL: If you want to reduce air pollution in this country, you don't have to limit the production of automobiles; you have to limit the production of gasoline. There are a couple hundred million guns out there right now that you'll never get back, but they all need bullets. Ammunition doesn't last forever; guns do. I don't care if you have a gun. How much ammunition do you have, and how long is it going to last? Gunpowder deteriorates over time. If I can control your flow of ammunition, those bullets you have now, those 200 bullets, 10 years from now, you're going to have none. The shooter in Tucson killed as many people as he did because we allow high-capacity magazines. It used to be that you had to reload after 10 rounds. Not now. Republicans, without a whimper from the Democrats, allowed the ban on those high-capacity magazines to expire. It's not something they'll take on. Nor will Obama.
PLAYBOY: You were a writer on The West Wing. How close to the real thing is The West Wing'sdepiction of the Oval Office?
O'DONNELL: The Oval Office is a very formal environment, not like on the show. You wouldn't want to be filming how stiff Oval Office stuff can be. In the end, The West Wing was about entertainment. Watching President Obama at work in the Oval Office wouldn't necessarily make a show anyone would want to watch.
PLAYBOY: You see the results of Obama in the West Wing. Is he effective when he's in that room?
O'DONNELL: The only way I could render a verdict on that is if I were in the governing chamber with him. I've never seen Barack Obama at work. I had moments with President Clinton in the Oval Office when he performed very well—quickly and brilliantly under pressure—and other moments when he was indecisive and slow and afraid of what his wife would think, at least on health care. That was peculiar beyond description: The problem is what the president's wife thinks?
PLAYBOY: Are you disappointed with Obama's first two years in office?
O'DONNELL: I'm not disappointed in Obama. He's done a masterful job in many areas. He did a masterful job with his Supreme Court nominations of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Overall, he's done more than I expected him to do. The fact that the top tax rate did not go back up doesn't surprise me. They didn't have the votes to do it. It's not up to the president. If it were, it would be back up. I get why Guantánamo as a prison facility is still there. Where are you going to put those inmates? We've known this about America for a long time: Whatever you want to do is fine, but not in my backyard. If "not in my backyard" applies to anything, it applies to Al Qaeda. Afghanistan is very complex, and the complexities of it change on a daily basis. What is a politician going to do when faced with the responsibility of dealing with those complexities? Obama didn't run as a peace candidate. People projected onto him things he did not say. They projected onto him the idea that somehow his prosecution of what was going on in Afghanistan would make more sense to people than what was happening under Bush.
PLAYBOY: Has Obama been hamstrung by the midterm elections?
O'DONNELL: Yes, and especially now that there are people in Congress whose only agenda is to stop anything from happening. We've had a sharp decline in the past 15 years in the education of elected officials. They are being educated in their political and governing views through sloganeering. We've produced a class of elected officials who are by far the shallowest in my lifetime. Their entire understanding of what it is they do for a living comes from the talking points put in front of them during their campaign. It's true of Democrats and Republicans. On the Republican side there are now politicians in office who hate government. You're electing members of the House of Representatives who are running against government. It's like saying "I'm running for president of Avis because I hate the car rental business."
PLAYBOY: Maybe that's a good thing. Tea Party legislators would respond to that—to use your analogy—they hate the rental car business, and they're here to fix it.
O'DONNELL: The trouble with approaching government from the standpoint of "I hate government" is that you are extremely unlikely to find a better way for government to do anything at all. You are also extremely unlikely to be the persuasive person on the matter of what the government should no longer do. And it's even worse because of a horrible dynamic that doesn't allow a Republican to veer from the right, no matter what he or she thinks. Occasionally a Republican would realize Rush Limbaugh had gone way too far and said something absolutely unconscionable and indefensible, and that Republican would say so, and then Rush would immediately discipline that Republican on the radio, and that Republican would apologize, all within a 12-hour news cycle. That policing system is flawless. And when you have a policing system like that on thought, thought stops.
PLAYBOY: If the media are complicit, and Limbaugh and others are the biggest offenders on the right, you have to be included in the list of the biggest offenders on the left.
O'DONNELL: I'm not policing thought. The opposite. I encourage thought. I want thoughtfulness. I want people to understand the complexity of the issues. Otherwise nothing meaningful will ever change. I want debate. I want people to be educated enough to have a conversation.
PLAYBOY: But isn't the reality that MSNBC is simply the left's answer to Fox News? Isn't that its raison d'être?
O'DONNELL: Not originally. At first MSNBC was trying to be Fox, doing a pathetic imitation of it. In show business you follow the leader, and Fox was the leader. If you have Desperate Housewives, then we're going to get a housewives show. Fox was this incredible success, just amazing all of us, and MSNBC was trying to imitate it in whatever ways it could, pulling in whatever Republicans it could. The only liberal it hired at that time was named Ron Reagan, and his father used to be president.
PLAYBOY: What changed?
O'DONNELL: It was a wonderful creative accident driven by Keith Olbermann. At a certain point in the progress, or lack of progress, of the Iraq war, Keith, who had his show on MSNBC, took a sharp turn to the left, and the ratings skyrocketed. If those ratings had gone down, that sharp left turn would have been stopped. I'm sure the executive class was afraid of it at first, until it saw the ratings reports. Once it did, there was no turning around. Counterprogramming turned out to be exactly what to do.
PLAYBOY: How much do ratings influence the stories you cover? You've said you'd like to talk about Chinese currency on the show, yet you've also covered Charlie Sheen.
O'DONNELL: If a story's out there, and it's big and it's news, we may cover it. On a show I was hosting long before this one, the question came up, "Are we going to do the Lindsay Lohan story tonight? Does this belong in our news mix?" There are holier-than-thou audience members who believe Lindsay Lohan doesn't belong in the news mix, but I said, "Yeah, we can do the Lindsay Lohan story, but we're not doing any jokes." This was the same night we were doing a little item about Chelsea Clinton's wedding that weekend, and I noticed these stories had something in common. What we were seeing in Chelsea Clinton's wedding and in the latest Lindsay Lohan saga was a story about American parenting, the risks and possibilities. There were two girls, not of a terribly dissimilar age, who grew up with very difficult parents. If your father is president of the United States, no matter what he's like, he has made your life extraordinarily difficult. It's a hard way to grow up, and you have to find your way. And you're doing it in an age of unbelievably intense media scrutiny. Then when your father misbehaves egregiously, in a way that would be difficult for any daughter to bear, you're going to have to bear it, knowing that everybody you meet for the rest of your life knows that about your father before they meet you. And there was Lindsay Lohan, who is an extraordinary artist, really lovely, in the place she was in—is still in—because her parents chose to put her there. No one can become a child actor without parents saying, "I want my child to become a child actor." It's one of the worst things you can do to a child—to put him or her to work that way, to put the burden of movie stardom on a 12-year-old, as she was when she started, and the burden of having hundreds of millions of dollars at stake based on what she does on the set at work tomorrow, to steal childhood from her and then say, "Good luck with adulthood." It was a terrible, terrible parenting choice. So the story about Lindsay Lohan and Chelsea Clinton that interested me was about their parents. That weekend we were going to see a family, with all the human frailties families have, that did its absolute best under extraordinarily difficult circumstances to provide the best childhood they could for a kid whose father was governor and later president. And then we were watching another couple of parents who cared more about what their child could do for them than they ever cared about what they could do for their child. That's the story we did.
PLAYBOY: When you spoke about Charlie Sheen, unlike many other shows, which talked about his problems with a sort of prurience and glee, as if it were a joke, you spoke soberly about his mental state and his addiction.
O'DONNELL: You can't grow up Irish in Boston and not know something about addiction. It is one of the plagues of my culture, so I've been through these trials with friends and loved ones, and it's something you can never joke about if you've been close to it. There's no question what you're looking at because there's no original behavior. You're watching a person dying who may or may not die. If you've watched someone die that way, there's only one way to look at it. You're looking at tragedy, whether it's an unknown person from my old neighborhood or a celebrity.
PLAYBOY: Now that you're a celebrity, how does it feel when you're the subject of speculations and scrutiny by the press?
O'DONNELL: I have a perverse relationship to untruths about me: I love them. Every untrue thing said about me publicly means people know less of the truth, and that means I still have my privacy. I once told one of the Kennedy cousins about it. I said, "You know, I love it when they get things completely wrong about me, because it means I still have my privacy." Like other Kennedys, throughout his life he'd fought against untruths about himself and his family. "You mean it's a good thing?" It was a revelation for him.
PLAYBOY: What's a favorite untruth printed about you?
O'DONNELL: In the past couple of months it was written that I was some kind of barroom brawler and carouser, which I think is great, especially as it contrasts with my deep dark secret, one I haven't revealed publicly.
PLAYBOY: What haven't you wanted people to know?
O'DONNELL: My big dark secret is I've never had a drink in my life. I've never been drunk in my life, and I've never taken a drug.
PLAYBOY: That's your deep dark secret? For most well-known people, that would be the untruth. Why have you hidden it?
O'DONNELL: That fact would generate a set of presumptions.
PLAYBOY: Such as?
O'DONNELL: It would suggest a tremendous amount of behavioral conservatism, and that's just not the case. It also would suggest a kind of intolerance, which isn't the case either. To some people it suggests a kind of discipline that's absolutely not present. I wish I had that discipline in the face of ice cream. I just don't have an attraction to the most corrupting and dangerous of consumptions.
PLAYBOY: Did you abstain as a reaction to the alcoholism and addiction you'd seen growing up?
O'DONNELL: Every guy was drunk every Friday and Saturday night by the time he was 11 years old. Most of them started around the age of 10. Everybody was drunk by the time they were 11. By the time they were 12, they were seriously drunk every Friday and Saturday night. Some of them never came out of that. But that's not why I never did it. I simply hated the taste of it. I had nothing against it. I just wouldn't put something in my mouth that I hated the taste of. It became a mostly faulty girl-getting strategy. My teenage strategy was, "I'll be the one who's not puking. Let's see if that works." It turns out the girls in my neighborhood weren't interested in you no matter what you did, so it didn't work. I was well into adulthood until somebody said to me, "Well, you know, it can help on a date if a girl has had a drink." And I went, "Hmm, maybe that's why I'm behind the curve."
PLAYBOY: Besides your abstinence and lack of luck with girls, how else would you describe your childhood?
O'DONNELL: As I said, our neighborhood in Dorchester was almost entirely Irish, and I learned one of the most important things about my culture by watching television. I'm not sure I've learned anything since by watching television. When I was a kid, Carroll O'Connor, star of All in the Family, was on The Merv Griffin Show, and they were talking about Irish culture. Merv was asking about when O'Connor went back home to his neighborhood after he'd become a success and said, "That must have been the return of the conquering hero." O'Connor responded, "Oh, you know, the Irish would much prefer you come back in failure." On my Little League team, the best thing you could do was get a walk. You didn't want to strike out; that was embarrassing. But the other embarrassing thing would be to hit a home run.
PLAYBOY: Were your parents hard to please like that?
O'DONNELL: They were exceptions. My father was a Boston cop who would sit on the witness stand being cross-examined by lawyers and think, I could do that. And he did. He had to go to school at night, because he didn't graduate from college, and he became a lawyer. That's the kind of achievement story that doesn't belong in my culture. Everyone told him, "You can't do this. You will fail."
PLAYBOY: How are you treated now when you go home to your old neighborhood?
O'DONNELL: The good thing about my culture's alienation from achievement is that people are never overly impressed by it. They never think someone has to be looked up to because of what they've done occupationally. They take people as they think they are. If you get some fancy job, they're going to be looking for you to be a jerk about it, and they expect you to be. And if you're not, then you're okay.
PLAYBOY: Even after you went off to Harvard, worked for a U.S. senator, worked in Hollywood and had your own television show?
O'DONNELL: These aren't people who get impressed. These are people who are never disappointed in a politician because they're not childish enough to believe what a politician says while running for office. They tend not to be disappointed by a lot of things in life or by a lot of people, because they're suspicious of appearances and promises. These aren't people who end up with mortgages they can't afford in some sort of delusion-driven deals. These are people who tell you what they think, whether you want to hear it or not, which is why this is probably a pretty good job for me. I can say whatever I want about whatever is going on in the world. No one tells me what to say. No one tells me what not to say. No one ever will.

subset: commoncrawl


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The NBA and I broke up about about 10 years or so ago. I promise you there were only a handful of people on the planet who were bigger NBA junkies than me in the 1970s and '80s. I still have probably 200 Boston Celtics games on VHS from those years and watch them all the time. I went to Johnny Most Basketball Camp in 1977. After reading his basketball book, maybe I can say there is only one person (Bill Simmons) who was above my level as far as passion and knowledge of the Celtics from those days. Maybe. I'd love to see who'd win a "1970s and '80s Boston Celtics Trivial Pursuit" game between me and him. Quick question: who was the Houston Rockets forward who matched up against Larry Bird in the jump-ball circle in his first pro game ever in 1979? If anybody took more than 10 seconds to guess, I win. Rick Barry).
I loved to play basketball more than any other sport, and at 6-5 with pretty good jumper, I had some game.
But I just can't watch the pro game anymore. Most every reason why would probably sound like a cliched laundry list for a lot of guys my age, so I'll spare you.
As I write this, I'm looking a bit foolish, because I actually am watching an NBA game at the moment – Nuggets-Jazz, Game 2 – and the Jazz have a 12-point lead, 63-51. I was just going to say that one of the reasons why I can't deal with the NBA anymore are the completely predictable first-round series. The home team always wins. The home teams always get all the calls. Home teams went 7-1 in the first eight NBA playoff games, and as Simmons noted, they covered the spread in all seven wins.
The record of the seventh- and eighth-seeded teams in the NHL playoffs entering Monday, by night-and-day contrast, was 8-4. Better still, each of the NHL's first eight playoff games were decided by one goal. There had already been seven overtime games after Sunday's 1-0 Avs thriller over San Jose.
The NBA? Zzzzzzzzz. The home team always wins. At least, 80 percent of the time they do. Two or three guys make all the difference most nights in the NBA. You can take bathroom breaks during the action in NBA playoff games, and know you'll be fine as long as you're there for a few minutes in the fourth quarter. Then, the home team makes its last little run, the other team quits and, voila, a few minutes of garbage time.
In the NHL, you've got to hold it if you have to go. You can't miss a minute of an NHL playoff game, because that could be the moment the game turns. With every game decided by one goal, you just can't afford to take your eyes off the action. Where the hell are you going? You might miss the game-winner?"
The NHL has now officially surpassed the NBA as the better league when playoff time rolls around. You can sense people around the country are starting to pick up on this too. It's starting to get a little bit of a buzz comparable to the NCAA men's hoops tourney, in some ways. Just a little. Nobody watches college basketball during the regular season, but everyone watches the NCAAs because the teams care so much and the games are usually close. Nobody watches the NHL's regular season, either, but the playoffs have become a flag-waving, everybody-comes-dressed-the-same, must-see roar-fest, with games between teams that aren't separated by much. While the NHL constantly gets chumped on by pundits for their low TV ratings, the fact is they are pretty well comparable to the NBA in these playoffs so far, and were last year as well.
I wish I could still love the NBA. But I just can't. The first three rounds just always seem like one long predetermined dress rehearsal to the inevitable Heavy Favorite of one conference playing the Heavy Favorite of the other.
The NHL playoffs are probably at their best in the first round, too, because of all the upsets that happen. As teams winnow down, the games become a little more predictable perhaps, but the first round is virtually favorite-free.
So anyway, it's 76-62 Utah now. Maybe I can get back into this game again, who knows. But right now, the Kings-Canucks game is resuming for the third period. See ya, Association.


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How We Make Snow
Each winter, an amazing transformation takes place at Roundtop Mountain Resort. Even though Mother Nature does not provide much snow in this region, the slopes are always covered with fresh snow. How do we do it? We're glad you asked!
Machine made snow is made up of exactly the same stuff as natural snow - frozen water. When the weather provides cold temperatures, but no moisture, our snowmaking team simply adds just the right amount of moisture to the atmosphere to produce excellent snow. It may sound easy, but making great snow requires millions of dollars in specialized equipment and an experienced team of snowmakers.
You may have heard people say that machine made snow is more durable than natural snow. Believe it or not, it's true! here's why:
The classic six sided natural snowflake is soft and fluffy when it falls from the sky. That's why natural snow can be so fluffy at first - it is mostly air. However, over time the little branches break off and because of the greater surface area the crystal melts faster too. The properties of the snow change dramatically.
Machine made snow looks more like little round balls. As time goes by, the machine made crystal may shrink, but the basic shape stays the same longer. Since it is a ball, it has a smaller surface area so it melts slower too. Therefore, you can groom and ski on machine made snow and it will retain it's original properties longer.
We Work With the Weather
Now a little bit about the weather. Just like Mother Nature, we need temperatures of 32 degrees or lower to make snow. But 32 doesn't always equal 32! Snowmakers work from the "Wet Bulb" temperature. The wet bulb takes the amount of humidity in the air and evaporative cooling into account. The wet bulb temperature is usually colder than dry bulb (the kind most people use) so it may appear that we can make snow above 32 degrees at times. The rule of thumb is that as the temperature and humidity go down, the amount of snow we make goes up!
It All Begins As Water
Roundtop Mountain Resort has snowmaking ponds with a total capacity of over 35 million gallons! All of the machine made snow you see on the slopes started out in our snowmaking ponds...and will eventually return there after the ski season ends.
In order to make snow, we need to pump cold water up the hill - 4,000 gallons per minute when running at full capacity. Our 5 vertical turbine water pumps take water from the ponds and pump it up the mountain. You may notice the fountain in the snowmaking pond near the maintenance area. That's not just for looks, it helps cool the water, which makes snowmaking work better.
Air is the Other Half of the Equation
But water is only half of the story. Most snow making equipment also requires compressed air - a lot of it! Our 10 compressors produce up to 30,750 cfm of air at full capacity. Producing compressed air is the most expensive part of snowmaking. Newer tower mounted "fan" guns use much less compressed air so they are more efficient. Each season we add more high efficiency "airless" snowmaking equipment, allowing us to make more snow with less energy. In fact, even at full capacity we seldom run more than two compressors these days.
Unfortunately, compressed air comes out of the compressor very hot (180 degrees), obviously not good for snowmaking. Before the air goes up the hill, it is run through huge air coolers to bring the temperature down to a more reasonable 36 degrees. Even the "airless" fan guns require a little compressed air to operate.
Then You Have to Mix It Just Right
So now we have a lot of cold water and a lot of cold air - what's next? There are two sets of pipes running under every slope - over 9 miles of pipe in all. One set distributes air, one set distributes water to over 350 snowmaking hydrant pairs.
When we are ready to make snow, we connect "snow guns" to the snowmaking stations. The "guns" allow our snowmaking crew to mix just the right amount of air and water to produce snow on the slopes.
Air/Water guns rely on compressed air to propel the water through the gun and into the air to make snow. Obviously they use a lot of compressed air to accomplish this. However, since we can adjust both the amount of water and the amount of compressed air very precisely, this system tends to work well in marginal temperatures.
Airless (or fan) guns use a large fan to propel the water into the air to make snow. They only require a very small amount of compressed air to keep things moving. On the front of the gun there is a series of rings with water nozzles on them. As the temperature goes up or down, we can open or close rings to adjust the amount of water we are using.
Most of our airless guns are mounted on towers. The reason is that if we spray the water high into the air, it has more time to fall before it hits the slope. That gives it more time to freeze and dry out. Since we can use more water, we can make more snow. In addition colder/dryer snow is a better surface for skiing and snowboarding too.
Many of our airless tower guns are now automated. This means that we can turn them on and off by computer rather than having to hike to them and do it manually. The towers are equipped with their own weather station and they can "talk" to each other. As the temperatures go up or down, the system adjusts the amount of water being used automatically to make the best snow possible.
Doesn't That Waste Water?
First, it is important to note that snowmaking doesn't consume water, it only stores it as snow on our slopes. The water used for snowmaking is surface water that we have stored in our snowmaking ponds. The ponds fill up naturally from rainfall and snow melt. At the end of the season, the snow melts and the water returns to the ponds.


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Celebrate The Season Greeting Cards
- Description
Celebrate the season with this attractive personalized card! Add your practice name, your logo, a special message or anything else! Each unit of 100 cards comes with your custom imprint inside and includes 100 blank envelopes.
- 4 x 6 inches
- 100 per unit
- Imprint area is 3" x 5"
- Imprint is in black.
- Choose one of our stock logos or upload your own logo for free!
- Ships 1 week after ordering. Please allow normal delivery time.
- This product ships separately.
- Additional Information
Additional Information
Warning This product ships separately.
- Reviews


text:
I think my unbeaten run is going to come to an end today. Had the misfortune of being made to bowl first on a flat track, and they're currently 172-2 after 26, with their two best batsmen in. TBH I'll be pretty happy to 'restrict' them to 320 or so, and hope that my top order continue their good form.
EDIT: Good job lads, only 367 to win!
EDIT: My openers are making an impressive attempt chasing a near-impossible target. 119-0 after 16 overs, RR of 7.44, RRR of 7.29. Cuss continuing his incredible run with 69* (52) so far.


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Guidelines for Producing Rice Using Furrow Irrigation
Paul Tracy, Barry D. Sims, Steven G. Hefner and John P. Cairns
Department of Agronomy
Traditional rice culture in Missouri uses flood water management. Reasons for flooding include efficient growth, rice's poor water stress tolerance and its ability to flourish in submerged soil where many competitive grasses and broadleaf weeds cannot survive.
Flooded management of any crop requires intensive equipment, labor and energy inputs, and is costly and time consuming. It also requires large water supplies. Water tables in many rice growing regions are diminishing. Restricted water use, priority use (human, industrial or transportation), or lack of adequate water supplies may lead to regulation. Possible consequences include prohibitive production costs or even banning of rice production in some regions.
Environmental concerns over water use are constantly debated. If rice can be produced using less water, then it will be less affected by these concerns.
Many areas of the world grow non-flooded rice, often referred to as upland rice. These regions (Asia, Africa and South America) receive large amounts of rainfall during the rice growing season. Upland rice varieties tend to be of lower quality, short or medium grain and may not be well suited for United States rice consumption or market outlets.
Much rice production research has centered on good quality, long or medium grain rice varieties produced with intermittent basin flooding or sprinkler irrigation systems. Intermittent flooding reduces water consumption. However, levee building and maintenance and harvest problems associated with levees, as well as difficulties with rotation from basin to non-basin crops, require increased labor, high energy inputs and high costs. Sprinkler irrigation systems also have high initial equipment costs and energy requirements.
Recent experiments conducted by Missouri rice producers and MU personnel indicate that the advantages of furrow irrigation over intermittent-flooded or sprinkle-irrigated rice include less labor, energy requirements and initial cost; and easier rotation to crops such as corn, soybeans or cotton. Advantages of furrow-irrigated rice compared to flooded rice include reduced levee construction, use of ground equipment in place of airplanes for agrichemical applications, quick field drying for timely harvest, less land preparation when rotating to other crops, and potential use on soils that will not maintain a permanent flood.
Disadvantages of furrow rice culture vs. intermittent flooding or sprinkle irrigation are not apparent. Drawbacks of furrow-irrigated vs. flooded rice systems are yield reductions of 5 to 20 percent, maturity delays, costlier weed control, potential water stress and lack of pertinent information about the system.
On fields well suited for flooded rice management, furrow-irrigated rice will rarely, if ever, outproduce flooded rice.
The purpose of this publication is to introduce producers to the furrow-irrigated rice system and help interested individuals decide whether that system has potential for use on their farms.
Site selection and land preparation
Furrow-irrigated rice can be produced on many southeast Missouri soils. Loamy sand soils are questionable and sandy soils should be avoided or tried on a limited acreage basis for evaluation. Sandy soils with a compacted plow layer may support furrow-irrigated rice. Sandy loam, loam, silt loam, silty clay loam and clay soils all have potential for growing rice by furrow irrigation. Planting and initial stand emergence will be easier on loamy soils than clay soils.
Field grade is the most important factor in choosing and preparing a field for furrow-irrigated rice. Precision-graded land is best, but may not be needed on short-run fields. Most land furrow irrigated for corn or soybeans in the past is adequate. Water must run down every furrow: skipped furrows or poorly graded land creates potential for water stress and yield loss.
Field preparation starts with discing. One discing prior to bed preparation usually is adequate behind a low-residue crop such as soybeans. Following corn or rice, more discings may be required.
After discing, raised beds should be built using a bed conditioner "hipper." Most hipping equipment in southeast Missouri is designed for 30- or 38-inch spacings between raised beds. Either spacing can be used for furrow-irrigated rice. Spacings greater than 38 inches have not been studied, but probably will not provide adequate conditions unless soils allow good lateral wicking action of irrigation water.
Bed spacing and height may differ by soil texture, and should be made to allow complete soil saturation across the entire soil surface (including ridge-tops) after each irrigation. Bed height must be tall enough to prohibit irrigation water from breaking over bed tops.
A tail levee should be constructed after planting or stand establishment. Levees prevent water loss and maintain near-flooded conditions at the field's lower end. Side levees 50 to 400 feet in length can be built if the field has considerable side slope, and will prevent water from becoming too deep at low corners. A "typical" furrow-irrigated field is illustrated in Figure 1 (please see print publication for illustration).
Planting practices
Two planting practices have been studied. Prepared beds can be physically lowered, after which rice grain is drilled using a standard grain drill adjusted for micro-relief; or rice can be broadcast, after which grain is incorporated into the soil by physically lowering the beds or by "re-hipping."
It is recommended that rice seed be drilled instead of broadcast. The greatest benefit of drilling is accurate seed placement. Grain drills respond with better placement on 38-inch bed spacings compared to 30-inch bed spacing because of more gradual micro-relief. Many rice varieties have poor epicotyl strength (pushing power) and have difficulty emerging through soil. Seven-inch drill spacings and 1/2-inch seed depth placement has been successful. Other drill spacings may also work but have not been studied.
The broadcast system leads to seed placement ranging from the soil surface to the depth of tillage and frequently leads to poor stand establishment. Broadcast seeding should only be done on loam or sandy loam soils that have little tendency to crust, and with rice varieties that possess excellent stand establishment capabilities. Drilling is recommended on all soils, especially on clay or clay loams.
Seeding rate should be approximately equal or slightly higher in furrow-irrigated compared to flooded rice fields, and will be variety-dependent. Studies in Missouri in 1988 and 1989 have shown 100 to 150 pounds (1.75 to 2.5 million seed) Lemont rice per acre to be optimum for furrow-irrigated rice (Table 1).
Table 1
Seeding rates for furrow-irrigated rice.1
|Seeding rate2 per acre
|Rice yield per acre
|50 pounds (approximately 850,000 seed per acre)
|107 bushels
|95 bushels
|100 pounds
|130 bushels
|108 bushels
|150 pounds
|121 bushels
|110 bushels
|200 pounds
|119 bushels
|107 bushels
1These studies were conducted on a Portageville, Mo. clay soil.
2Rice variety = Lemont
Rice should be irrigated (flushed) immediately following planting unless rainfall is imminent. Flushing is necessary to enhance seed germination, seedling emergence and early season crop growth. Soft soil also provides an easier medium for uniform stand establishment in the event of non-uniform seed placement. Flushing of furrow-irrigated rice fields is quicker and more efficient than flushing flooded rice fields.
Variety selection
Long grain rices often grown under flooded conditions in Missouri can also be grown by furrow irrigation. Seedling emergence and vigor are key considerations in selecting varieties. Since the permanent flood is not used to aid in weed control, quick stand establishment and canopy closure is essential. The best adapted varieties possess excellent emergence, seedling vigor, canopy closure and weed competitiveness. However, Lemont, a variety known for poor stand establishment, has been grown successfully (150 ) in Missouri using furrow irrigation management.
Grain yields of selected varieties grown by furrow irrigation in 1988 are listed in Table 2. Overall yields in this variety test were poor due to broadcast non-uniform seed placement, but differences among varieties were obtained. Lemont yielded less than varieties that displayed quicker stand establishment or earlier maturing varieties such as Newbonnet. Excellent seed quality (percent germination, fungicide treatment, etc.) is necessary with any variety.
Table 2
Comparison of selected rice varieties grown under furrow-irrigated water management
|Yield per acre
|119 bushels
|99 bushels
|95 bushels
|92 bushels
For further information on rice variety evaluations in Missouri, see the Missouri Crop Performance publication for rice, produced annually through the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station. Although short and medium grain rice varieties are not traditionally grown in Missouri, they may be well adapted for the furrow-irrigated system. Future tests of these cultivars under furrow irrigation will be done if interest warrants.
Water management
Rice can be grown without flooding so long as moisture stress is avoided. The key to water management in furrow-irrigated rice is to maintain moist soils through frequent irrigation or rainfall. Irrigation scheduling is dependent on air temperature, evapotranspiration rate, rainfall events, soil texture and soil permeability. Most furrow-irrigated rice fields require 1 to 2 inches of water every three to four days during peak evapotranspiration periods (July and August) and four to eight days in May, June and September.
Irrigation events should be scheduled when soils on the upper and center sections of the field show visual signs of drying in the upper 2 inches, or when soil moisture deficit compared to field capacity has reached approximately 1 inch. At this point, the tail levees will still maintain a partial flood in the lower section of the field. Total water use has been found to be approximately half for furrow-irrigated compared to flooded rice (Table 3). Gated aluminum or poly-pipe can be used in water delivery.
Table 3
Irrigation water applied to furrow-irrigated rice on a clay soil in southeast Missouri, 1988-1990
|Field, year
|Irrigation water
|Furrow-irrigated field, 1988
|14 inches
|19 inches
|Furrow-irrigated field A, 1989
|13 inches
|15 inches
|Furrow-irrigated field B, 1989
|21 inches
|15 inches
|Flooded field B, 19891
|44 inches
|15 inches
|Flooded recommendation2
|30 to 40 inches
1Field B was split 1/2 flooded and 1/2 furrow irrigated
2Arkansas Extension recommended rice water use on clay soils.
Weed control
Weed control and management in furrow-irrigated rice may require at least one additional herbicide application than conventional flooded rice production. Cultural, mechanical (preplant tillage) and chemical weed control methods all should be integrated.
Cultural control
Cultural weed control consists of rotating rice with crops in which problem weeds may be more easily controlled and providing conditions that promote good stand establishment and early season crop vigor. Early season vigor provides a more competitive rice crop with weed interference and better tolerance to herbicide treatments. A sparse early season rice stand may allow more weeds to emerge and compete with the crop. A good quality, weed-free seed source is also very important to prevent the introduction of new weeds.
Mechanical control
Tillage, although not useful while rice is growing, is very important prior to planting. All weeds should be controlled before planting to prevent early season weed-crop competition.
Chemical control
Herbicides are vital to a good weed control program for furrow-irrigated rice. Growers should scout regularly for new weed flushes after previous herbicide treatments, since without permanent flooding, weeds will germinate and emerge throughout the growing season. Early season herbicide programs should be planned similarly to those for flooded rice.
A pre-emergence residual herbicide may be more important in furrow-irrigated rice, since less water is used than in flooded rice culture. A couple of weeks free of weeds will aid in good stand establishment and early season crop vigor.
Prowl has provided excellent residual grass control in furrow-irrigated rice studies. Prowl can be applied pre-emergence to the rice or tank-mixed with the early season propanil (Stam) treatment. It should be used especially when sprangletop is a problem, since propanil is weak on sprangletop.
Bolero is effective only if the soil surface is maintained wet, which can be very difficult. Although a furrow-irrigated rice field can be flushed frequently with water, it is difficult to maintain a uniformly moist soil surface because the tops of the bed will dry out much faster than the bottoms of the furrows. Therefore, Bolero has not provided adequate residual annual grass control in MU furrow rice studies.
Three herbicides are currently registered for postemergence annual grass control in rice: propanil (Stam, and others), Arrosolo, and Whip. Arrosolo also will provide contact and some residual grass control.
Propanil should be applied postemergence to small, one- to two-leaf annual grasses. Propanil should be applied according to the grass growth stage and not the rice growth stage. Growers often wait until the entire rice field has emerged before propanil is applied. When these practices are followed, annual grasses are at different growth stages and frequently are too large for effective and consistent control with propanil.
Early season propanil applications often cause some foliar injury (leaf burn) to small rice plants. However, rice recovers rapidly and outgrows this early season injury within one to two weeks after treatment. The potential risk of slight leaf burn is much less than the loss in weed control that could occur if weeds are too large for effective control. Propanil treatments may have to be repeated according to label directions if additional grass flushes occur. Propanil can also be tank-mixed with Prowl to add residual grass control.
A package mix containing the active ingredients propanil and molinate (Ordram), Arrosolo provides control of susceptible annual grasses and will also provide residual grass and selected broadleaf weed control. It is weak on sprangletop. Arrosolo can be applied to rice in the spiking to three-leaf stage and to barnyardgrass in the one- to two-leaf stage. Fields should be sealed by flushing after application. Residual control can be reduced when applied to wet soil.
Whip provides excellent grass control (sprangletop, barnyardgrass, crabgrass, foxtails, fall panicum, and Johnsongrass). It should be applied to four-leaf to tillering rice, but before panicle initiation.
Whip has performed well in a weed control program following the first propanil treatment. It should not be applied with a crop oil or surfactant. Do not apply Whip within 14 days following fertilizer applications. Avoid standing water for five to seven days after application. Nitrogen should be applied after treatments. Do not tank-mix Whip with other pesticides. It should not be applied within 65 days of harvest.
Broadleaf weeds must be controlled during early seedling stages to prevent weed competition and yield reductions. Heavy infestations of broadleaf weeds common to conventional row crops have infested furrow-irrigated rice. Fields should be scouted regularly, problem weeds identified and the correct herbicides matched to the weeds to be controlled.
Several programs have been tested for early season broadleaf weed control in furrow-irrigated rice. Excellent control has been achieved with timely broadleaf herbicide treatments in a program using propanil. Basagran, Blazer, propanil, Arrosolo and 2,4-D amine control certain broadleaf weeds in rice. 2,4-D controls a broad spectrum of broadleaf weeds and has been very effective in furrow-irrigated rice research. Refer to label for specific weeds for each herbicide.
Excellent weed control has been obtained in MU research with the rice herbicides currently available. However, one to two additional herbicide treatments may be necessary. Late emerging annual grass weeds have been common in university rice trials. Furrow-irrigated rice fields should be scouted frequently to monitor weed control during the growing season. More intensive management is necessary for successful weed control compared to flooded rice culture.
The herbicide recommendations in this publication were current at the time of writing. However, this publication is not meant as a substitution for reading the herbicide label. For specific information on the use of each herbicide labeled for weed control in rice.
Submergence generates a number of soil electrochemical and chemical changes that may be beneficial for rice production. The layer of water above the soil functions as a barrier and interrupts normal gas exchange between the soil and the atmosphere. The dramatic decrease in soil oxygen interrupts the nitrification process and aids in maintaining the fertilizer nitrogen (N) in the ammonium (NH4) form, where it is less susceptible to denitrification losses.
Accelerated N loss was anticipated when rice was grown under fluctuating moisture regimes. Yet field experiments indicate that the optimum rate for the high N requirement rice variety Lemont is similar under furrow irrigation to that of flooded Lemont rice (Table 4). Therefore, N recommendations for furrow Lemont rice should closely parallel those for flooded rice. Best yields were attained when application timings contributed a large amount of N for early growth, followed by a later application of N at internode elongation.
Table 4
Effect of N rate and application timing on furrow-irrigated rice
|N application ratio
|129 pounds per acre
|85 pounds per acre
|123 pounds per acre
|141 pounds per acre
|128 pounds per acre
|112 pounds per acre
|121 pounds per acre
|116 pounds per acre
|90 pounds per acre
|84 pounds per acre
|125 pounds per acre
|109 pounds per acre
|84 pounds per acre
|108 pounds per acre
|107 pounds per acre
|127 pounds per acre
1Ratios refer to preflood: 1/2 inch internode elongation:14 days post-internode elongation:28 days post-internode elongation.
2Recommended ratio for flooded Lemont rice.
Data in Table 4 were generated on clay textured soils. Furrow rice crops produced on sandier soils may require modified N management. Recent research on furrow-irrigated rice in Arkansas has shown that on low N requirement rice varieties (Tebonnent), furrow irrigation may require slightly more N (especially early season) than do flooded irrigation systems.
In flooded rice, NH4-based N sources such as urea and ammonium sulfate (AS) have been more efficient while nitrate (NO3) sources such as urea-ammonium nitrate (UAN) and ammonium nitrate are more susceptible to N loss by denitrification. Volatilization loss of N from NH4-based fertilizers can occur if they are improperly applied, especially with N sources such as urea which possess a high degree of alkalinity.
Different N fertilizer source options may be available with intermittent-irrigated rice (Table 5). Applications of UAN become more feasible in the absence of floodwater because the nitrate component of the fertilizer is less susceptible to denitrification losses. Each midseason application of UAN should not exceed 30 pounds N to avoid excessive vegetative burn.
Table 5
Effects of N source, application timing and Dicyandiamide on furrow-irrigated rice
|N source application timing (pounds per acre)
|Bushels per acre
|180 + 0 + 01
|120 + 30 + 30
|60 + 60 + 60
1Ratios refer to preflood: 1/2 inch internode elongation:1/2 inch internode elongation + 14 day N fertilizer application timings.
Slow-release fertilizers, such as sulfur-coated urea (SCU), produced good furrow rice yields when entire N quantities were applied early in the season. SCU also has the advantage of reducing the number of N applications and minimizing N loss due to volatilization. However, SCU is currently cost prohibitive for rice production. Broadcast applications of urea should be made when the soil surface is dry and then accompanied by an irrigation or rainfall event within 24 hours to move the fertilizer into the soil and minimize volatilization.
The advantage of using a nitrification inhibitor, if effective, is that only one N application is required. Results from using dicyandiamide (DCD) as a nitrification inhibitor on furrow-irrigated rice indicated limited promise at best (Table 5).
Phosphorus fertilization for furrow rice may differ from that of flooded rice. Submergence during flooding also induces soil pH adjustments to near neutrality and mineral changes that enhance phosphorus availability. As a result, phosphorus fertilization of rotational crops supplies adequate phosphorus to flooded rice crops.
In the absence of flooding, furrow-irrigated rice may respond to phosphorus fertilization on low phosphorus soils. Lime and sulfur requirements often supplied in appreciable amounts through irrigation water may be required in the absence of flooded conditions.
Disease control
Rice disease pressure may be different in furrow- irrigated rice. Furrow-irrigated rice has a slightly lower canopy humidity. Therefore, fungal diseases that thrive in warm-humid conditions may respond differently.
The two major rice diseases in Missouri are blast and sheath blight. Blast usually begins on stressed plants (sometimes initially identified on levee-planted rice). Blast problems may be greater in furrow-irrigated rice due to increased moisture stress potential. Sheath blight problems are greatest when this soil-borne fungus attacks rice stems at the highest possible point. It floats on water and attacks rice at the water depth level. It can be assumed that sheath blight infestations are reduced in furrowed rice fields, which have no floodwater.
Good policy for all rice producers (regardless of irrigation delivery system) is to plant disease-tolerant varieties, scout fields, and apply fungicides when disease pressure reaches threshold levels.
Milling quality
Many producers are concerned that non-flooded conditions will adversely affect rice milling quality. A summary of milling quality data collected on furrow-irrigated rice fields in Missouri during 1988 and 1989 is shown in Table 6. Milling quality across all locations was excellent, with no head rice values below 60 percent. The only location where rice milling quality was directly compared between flooded and furrow-irrigated conditions showed that the flooded rice had slightly better head rice yields. But in this field the furrow-irrigated head rice was above dockage levels.
Table 6
Furrow-irrigated rice milling quality data
|Location, year
|Brown rice
|Milled rice
|Head rice
|Pemiscot Co., 1988
|83 percent
|76 percent
|65 percent
|17 percent
|Stoddard Co., 1988
|82 percent
|73 percent
|66 percent
|18 percent
|Pemiscot Co. #1, 1989
|80 percent
|69 percent
|64 percent
|20 percent
|Stoddard Co., 1989
|80 percent
|68 percent
|64 percent
|20 percent
|Pemiscot Co. #2, 1989
|80 percent
|68 percent
|62 percent
|20 percent
|Pemiscot Co. #2, 1989 (flooded rice)
|80 percent
|72 percent
|6 percent
|20 percent
Rice can be produced in southeast Missouri using furrow irrigation as the water delivery system. However, furrow irrigation is not intended to replace flood water management, but to serve as an alternative in environmental situations that prohibit flooded soil conditions. Principal situations where furrow irrigation may be appropriate include: expanding rice acreages into nontraditional rice soils for rotation; weed control (especially red rice); and disease control, or protection of federal base acreages, on soils incapable of maintaining a permanent flood and in areas where water is limited, or irrigation pumping costs are excessive.
As with any new management system, rice growers intending to furrow irrigate should do so on small acreages for 1 to 3 years until they are confident that it fits into their farming operation.


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New Edition Now Covers Recycling, Environmental Issues, and Analytical DeterminationEmploying four decades of experience in the rare metal and rare earths industry, the authors of Extractive Metallurgy of Rare Earths, Second Edition present the entire subject of rare earth elements with depth and accuracy. This second edition updates the most impor
Whether you're working in pure or discrete mathematics, biology, agriculture, finance, or engineering, this collection supplies an online library of top-tier Chapman & Hall/CRC references, handbooks, pocketbooks, and primers. It provides immediate access to theories, equations, algorithms, or analytical methods anytime they're needed.
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Why U.S. Attorneys and FBI Brass Support Washington's Marijuana Law
The authors are employees of the ACLU of Washington.
Voters in Washington state, along with those in Colorado, made history on Election Day by passing laws that legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana for adults age 21 and over. Washington's law, Initiative 502 (I-502), passed with a 55-45 margin, sending a clear message that the public is ready for a change in policy. We hope the adoption of these laws will be a watershed moment in how the United States deals with marijuana.
I-502 makes possession of limited amounts of marijuana (1 oz. or less) lawful for adults under state law. As of December 6, 2012, adults will no longer be subject to arrest under state law for possessing marijuana.
During a year-long rule-making process that will end in December 2013, the State Liquor Control board will create a tightly regulated system that licenses the production, processing, and selling of marijuana. Marijuana will be sold in stand-alone stores that are very similar to Washington's familiar hard-alcohol stores. Private entities licensed by the state will produce, process, and sell marijuana, and it will be taxed at each step along the way.
The ACLU has long opposed the War on Drugs and its criminalization of marijuana. ACLU support for I-502 is part of our broader work of criminal justice reform. Our state and nation's unfair marijuana policies have damaged civil liberties in many ways – eroding constitutional protections against searches and seizures, putting large numbers of individuals behind bars for nonviolent crimes, and disproportionately targeting people of color.
In Washington state, there were almost a quarter million arrests of adults for marijuana possession over the last 25 years. And though African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans combined constituted 14% of Washington's population, they were 25% of the people arrested for marijuana possession between 2001 through 2010.
The initiative came at a time of growing recognition that marijuana prohibition is a failed policy that consumes law-enforcement resources much better devoted to dealing with violent crime. I-502 gained broad support not only from social justice organizations and civic leaders, but also from health care professionals and some law enforcement officials.
Endorsers included two former U.S. attorneys, the former head of the Seattle's FBI office, Seattle's City Attorney, and both candidates for Sheriff in King County, which includes Seattle. Opposition from law enforcement officials in the state was muted, reflecting in part that many of them recognize the futility of current marijuana laws. The Children's Alliance, a statewide advocacy group, also backed 502 because of the impact of marijuana arrests in breaking up families and harming communities of color.
Another factor in winning support was that the initiative's sponsors acknowledged that marijuana is not a harmless substance. I-502 was drafted to mirror the success we've had in reducing tobacco use over the last two decades. Indeed, the initiative directs more than half of the tax revenue derived from legalized marijuana to health care, drug prevention, and public health education. This potential funding is substantial: the state's Office of Financial Management estimated that legalization could yield nearly $2 billion dollars over five years to public coffers.
Of course, marijuana use remains a crime under federal law. Supporters of I-502 are hopeful that the federal government will not interfere with the implementation of the law, in light of the fact that the measure takes public safety and public health very seriously. Proponents of the new law hope to work with federal officials in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation to ensure that it is fairly implemented. We point out that the law's tight regulation of marijuana will improve public safety and increase respect for law enforcement. Resources can be shifted to deal with violent crime, and police will no longer be seen as making arrests for a law widely regarded as unfair. We urge federal officials to respect the will of our state's voters and not enforce federal laws against Washington residents who are obeying state law.
The campaign for I-502 shows how a well thought-out, pragmatic approach to criminal justice reform can lead to change considered unthinkable just a few years ago. Washington and Colorado look forward to operating as laboratories for a better public policy for marijuana use.
Since its inception, the War on Drugs has cost millions of dollars and thousands of lives. The civilians caught in the crossfire say it's time for change.
The American problem with mass incarceration is less about crime than it is about how—and who—we lock up.
The international war on drugs isn't stopping drug use or trafficking—but it is ruining lives. Drug policy expert Sanho Tree on what we can do differently.


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I had the pleasure of attending the Shopping Centres Association of Kenya (SCAK) launch event in Nairobi. These events are for me an opportunity to interact with Industry players, network and occasionally get a view of "Government position" on certain sectors. The SCAK launch event did not disappoint and offered these opportunities.
The launch is an actualization of a journey that started in October 2011. The organisers and officials presented the audience with the journey and growth of retail in Kenya and used the opportunity to share their concerns. The association brings together different players in the retail space: developers, retailers, service providers including mall managers.
The intent:
- Creating influence by providing a platform for advocacy and lobbying government on issues of common interest
- Education by establishing channels for retail specific and mall management courses and/or lobby local Universities to offer these
- Research on how to utilise the information available from them to the benefit of future malls in various respects such as design to ensure holistic experience by shoppers, identify "hot spots" etc.
Some of the concerns articulated by both investors/owners of malls and retailers have been the subject of debate in other Real Estate forums.
- A representative of the mall owners raised a concern on an issue that is one of my "pet peeves" which is the legislated commercial term of five (5) years; with no provisions for termination by notice. This is particularly frustrating when a retailer does not perform well, would like to close shop but and is locked in to a five year term of lease. While various market mechanisms have evolved as market practise to deal with such instances, these come at a cost and it may be preferable that lease terms be more flexible to be supportive of business. The matter of lease terms legislated at a minimum of 5 years in historical legislation may have been well intended and was aimed at safeguarding the interest of both landlords and tenants but is one that should be reviewed.
- Does Nairobi have the demand and capacity for all the retail stock presently delivered and in the pipeline? This was a matter raised by both the mall owners and retailers. Considering the journey from 1983 when the first formal retail mall, Sarit Centre opened its doors with 12,000 sqm and the current stock in Nairobi is 390,000 sqm and with the pipeline projects growing these by a further 120% to 860,000 sqm by 2018.The brokers active in retail admit that malls are letting slower and to the same retailers, and this therefore alludes to this being genuine reason for concern. There seemed to be a sense of hope that as the economy continues to do well and the middle class grows, the uptake of retail stock will improve. There also seems to be consensus, and I agree, that developers need to look at opportunities for Retail Malls outside of Nairobi, which is saturated. To this end, Government was urged to look at infrastructure in the Counties and taking lessons learnt from Nairobi, strictly focus on land use zoning and planning (and enforcing existing legislation).
- How do mall owners invest in attracting "new retailers"/International retailers into the market and ensuring that the experience in malls is one that encourages thriving trade? There has been concern that mall owners & managers limited their involvement to rent collection without effort to ensure that the malls thrive and remain attractive investments for both the owners and retailers.
- Two representatives of retailers expressed frustration at research available in market noting that these was either inadequate and/or what they consider research by foreign firms who do not have full appreciation of some local market specific issues such as impact of informal traders, second hand goods, hawkers etc. on formal trade.
The launch of the association, associated with other similar bodies in South Africa and London is definitely a welcome initiative that will potentially bring transparency to the retail industry, to the benefit of all investors, mall owners & retailers and ultimately with benefit to the customers.


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This was - and is - Britain, the British Establishment and the British aristocracy. A conspiracy of wealth and power, significantly immune to the law and democratic accountability.
The Master of Sempill and Lord Sempill
"His father, the eighteenth Lord, had sired four children in total; the succeeding Lord and three daughters. The youngest daughter, Elizabeth Forbes-Sempill was born on 6 September 1912. On the death of her father, her brother, the new Lord and Baronet, entrusted the management of his Fintray and Craigievar estates into her hands.
Elizabeth subsequently changed gender, becoming Ewan Forbes-Sempill in 1952. On the nineteenth Lord's death in 1965 the baronetcy and barony were separated; the lordship passed to his daughter Ann, the twentieth Lady Sempill, while his new younger brother, Ewan, succeeded in the baronetcy, which could only be inherited by male heirs, after a two-year legal dispute to determine if he was a legitimate male successor.
After his death, the cousin born in 1927 became Sir John Alexander Cumnock Forbes-Sempill, bt. The twentieth Lady Sempill was the wife of, firstly, Eric Holt. They were later divorced and she then married secondly Stuart Whitemore Chant, who in 1966 by decree of the Lord Lyon assumed the additional surname of Sempill. As of 2010 the title is held by Lady Sempill's eldest son from her second marriage, the twenty-first Lord, who succeeded in 1995."
An extraordinary story of a Scottish Lordship, which if presented as fiction, would be dismissed as an outlandish fantasy. An independent Scotland won't have such anachronistic things as Lords. They're one of the many reasons Scotland wants its independence. It's old history, of course, but such history and such men are represented as all that was great about Britain by apologists for the Union.
The ludicrous farce of the British Empire
Unionists share their identity crisisThe traitor - the 19th Lord SempillThe present Lord Sempill


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Video How To Make Dont Talk Politics At Table Cocktail
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