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Can a Spot Urine Replace or Improve 24 Hour Urine Collections in Kidney Stone Patients
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01420354
Recruitment Status : Terminated (The study was combined with our Urine and Stool Study (NCT01637506).)
First Posted : August 19, 2011
Last Update Posted : March 3, 2017
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
|Condition or disease
|Kidney Stones
BACKGROUND Urinary stone disease is a common problem, causing significant morbidity and sometimes mortality. Stone disease affects 5-10% of the population during their lifetime and of these patients between 30-50% will have at least one recurrent episode.
Urinary stones arise due to crystallization and aggregation of supersaturated ion complexes in the urine. Depending on the concentration of various urinary constituents and the physicochemical characteristics of a given individual's urine (such as pH, volume, calcium citrate concentration etc.), different crystals may precipitate. Therefore therapy is tailored to the individual, based on stone composition and the results of the 24-hour urine collection. The majority of the stones are calcium based (calcium oxalate, calcium phosphate) while the remaining are comprised of uric acid, struvite, cystine or other substances.
While some stones can pass spontaneously, the majority will require some form of treatment, and more than 50% will require surgical intervention. Until the 1980s, treatment of upper urinary tract stones often involved extensive open surgical procedures5. With the introduction of extracorporeal shock-wave lithotripsy (ESWL) and refinements in endourological procedures like percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL), ureteroscopy (URS) techniques, it has now become possible to treat stones in almost all cases without open surgery. Stone management can be divided into three treatment phases. The first phase involves treatment of acute pain and the drainage of an obstructed and possibly infected kidney. The second phase aims to either remove or disintegrate the stone. The third phase is directed towards the prophylaxis of stone recurrence .
The third phase involves the metabolic evaluation of the patient to identify possible risk factors for forming recurrent stones, which consists of a 24 hour urine analysis to determine the content of urinary components such as calcium or oxalate that play a major role in stone disease. High levels of oxalate and calcium contribute to kidney stones recurrences and therapy to reduce these two substances in the urine can reduce recurrence rates. Low levels of citrate also increase the risk for forming stones, and can be treated with alkali such as potassium citrate.
Collecting 24-hour urines for evaluation and therapy can be cumbersome for patients and often leads to incorrect collection, which may be detectable by measuring the amount of creatinine in each sample. Previous attempts to evaluate spot versus 24-hour urines have been made, but more studies are necessary to determine how they compare to the conventional 24-hour collection. A more convenient method for collecting urine samples will facilitate the treatment and future prevention of recurrent kidney stone disease.
The aim of this project is to determine whether spot urines collected separately at key times throughout the day are comparable to the conventional pooled 24-hour urine collection, and whether the former yield more accurate information in terms of the levels of urinary components. Perhaps a patient with normal values for a pooled 24-hour collection may show spikes in certain variables throughout the day that would not be discovered in the 24-hour sample. Furthermore, reducing the collection to a single time point would improve patient compliance making it easier to do subsequent follow-up collections.
HYPOTHESIS AND OBJECTIVES We hypothesize that spot urines can provide equivalent information to that provided by a 24-hour urine test. An added benefit would be if spot urines provide more information for the identification of risk factors in patients who have normal 24-hour urine tests. A third possibility is that our hypothesis is incorrect and that a 24-hour urine sample will provide the most useful data in formulating a stone prevention therapy for our patients.
|Study Type :
|Actual Enrollment :
|21 participants
|Observational Model:
|Time Perspective:
|Official Title:
|Can a Spot Urine Replace or Improve 24 Hour Urine Collections in Kidney Stone Patients
|Study Start Date :
|August 2009
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|December 2016
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|December 2016
- Calcium supersaturation and the risk of Calcium Oxalate crystallization will be compared between individual spot urines and conventional 24-hour urine sample [ Time Frame: 24 hours divided into 4 time frames (spot urines) ]
- Identified risk factors for kidney stone patients will be compared between individual spot urines and conventional 24-hour urine sample: volume, pH, Urinary calcium, magnesium, oxalate, citrate, creatinine [ Time Frame: 24 hours divided in 4 time frames (spot urines) ]
Biospecimen Retention: Samples Without DNA
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|19 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
|Sampling Method:
|Non-Probability Sample
Inclusion Criteria:
- Patients who have been diagnosed as having calcium based urinary stones
- at least 19 years of age
- do not have any additional serious disease
Exclusion Criteria:
- Patients who do not have calcium based urinary stones (such as: uric acid, cystine, struvite)
- less than 19 years of age
- have a serious alternate disease
- Pregnancy
- Positive Urine Culture
- Active cancer
- Recurrent urinary infections
- Gross hematuria
- Receiving treatment with thiazides (or alternatively can be enrolled if the patient is willing to stop treatment for 2 weeks prior to study)
- Inability to provide informed consent
- Investigator's refusal to include
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT01420354
|Canada, British Columbia
|Vancouver General Hospital, DHCC, Level 6, 2775 Laurel Street
|Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V5Z 1M9
|Study Director:
|Ryan Paterson
|University of British Columbia
|Study Director:
|Roger Sutton
|University of British Columbia
|Study Director:
|Morris Pudek
|University of British Columbia
|Study Director:
|Dirk Lange
|University of British Columbia
|Study Director:
|Meredith Cushing
|Vancouver General Hospital
|Responsible Party:
|University of British Columbia
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|NCT01420354 History of Changes
|Other Study ID Numbers:
|First Posted:
|August 19, 2011 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|March 3, 2017
|Last Verified:
|March 2017
|Individual Participant Data (IPD) Sharing Statement:
|Plan to Share IPD:
Metabolic stones
kidney stones
renal calculi
metabolic evaluation
Kidney Calculi
Pathological Conditions, Anatomical
Kidney Diseases
Urologic Diseases
Urinary Calculi


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Saturday afternoon, last-minute Christmas shoppers could have visited any big-box chain or local boutique for the right gift for their loved ones, but there was one other option available between noon and 8 p.m. just south of Broadway on 13th Street. At The MAMMOTH Holiday Bazaar, held in the chilly confines of The Mammoth, unique gifts awaited those who sought out the interesting from the norm, whether it was a pack of tarot cards, hand-made arts and crafts, jewelry or something hard-to-find.
Formerly held at Nelligan Hall as "A Very Portland X-mas," the bazaar drew a few veteran vendors from the Flea Off Market – including Sanford and Sud and Rubyruth's – along with vendors new to selling, as well as those who have participated in other various arts and entertainment events. Mary Levinsky of Block Party Handmade Boutique, whose previous outing at the previous weekend's Flea Off involved rain, noted a much busier experience due to the last-minute energy prior to Christmas. Shawn Hennessey of Squallis Puppeteers, who also took part in the rainy December Flea Off, witnessed the opposite for his booth, selling more puppets in the wet than under the roof, though he had no complaints as Hennessey enjoyed the social aspects of both affairs more than anything.
Regarding the move from Nelligan Hall to 90,000 sq. ft. art space, co-owner Hallie Jones, stationed at the gift-wrapping space, stated that they had been "doing the holiday sale in Portland at Nelligan Hall for the past few years. It was really small and cramped, so [they] bought this building in March, and wanted to do it here." Jones added that they had been trying to establish an art space such as The Mammoth for nearly a decade, and aim to have the building fully up to code – in order to obtain a permanent event permit – for more events in the future, including another bazaar next Christmas.
For more information on the art space and upcoming events, visit The Mammoth's website at www.themammoth.org, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.
Photos: Louisville.com/Cameron Miquelon.

subset: commoncrawl


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Welcome to our walking event calendar. Please use the search features below to find walks located near you.
- This event has passed.
Walk The Platte – Englewood
November 7 @ 9:00 am - 11:00 am
An event every week that begins at 9:00 am on Thursday, repeating indefinitely
TYPE: Weekly | PACE: Fitness | TERRAIN: Paved Trail | DISTANCE: 5 mi
Walk Description: Come brisk walk the Platte with us. We start and end at the same point so you can walk as long as you short as you'd like. We start in Englewood at the pavilion next to the Broken Tee Golf Course. We can have alternate routes for people that want to do less than 5 miles, just let the leader know.
Walking Movement Leader: Bob is retired fire fighter that enjoys meeting people and exercising at the same time. He is an organizer of walks with the 50 and Over Meetup group, but he extends the invite to anyone that wants to join them.
Schedule, Planning, and Nearby Transit: Meet at the outdoor pavilion next to the Broken Tee Golf Course. There is plenty of parking available. RTD route 51 stops at the nearby bus tops. We leave on the dot at 9:00AM. If you're running late, you can contact Bob via phone or email (See below).
Trip Notes:
– Dogs are allowed on this one. Please be sure they are well-behaved and on a short leash. No retractable leashes please.
– Accessibility: it is handicap accessible, with some slight up/downhill slopes.
– Wear/Bring: comfortable socks & clothing (pref. non-cotton!), light backpack for snacks and water, gloves/scarf, head cap if cool outside, and sunglasses/sunscreen.
– Restrooms are only really available at the coffee house before we go. Please plan to use restroom beforehand. We usually don't break on this one. We move casually throughout the streets.
– Cancellation Policy: We only cancel in extreme weather conditions on our path, such as ice, hail, or lightening. Check Meetup or text the walk leader for the most up-to-date conditions.
Welcome Waivers: Please fill out the online "Welcome Waiver" or download, print, sign, and turn in a hard copy if this will be your first Walk2Connect walking experience this year.
RSVP: You register for this walk by A) Going through our Colorado Ramblers Meetup group linked here or B) Emailing or calling Bob at kb0xt2(at)gmail(dot)com , 720.290.1662
Get Involved!
1. Sign-up for weekly Walk2Connect emails
2. Keep checking our main event calendar
3. Follow us on Facebook
4. Become a [email protected] Champion
5. Learn more about leading walks in your area by becoming a Walking Movement Leader
Connect with our social media community ~ @Walk2Connect | #Lifeat3MPH


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DR team plays despite Caribbean Series dispute
HERMOSILLO, Mexico -- The Dominican Republic's Leones del Escogido, a powerhouse team looking to win back-to-back titles, is once again dominating the Caribbean Series, winning five of its first six games and locking up a spot in the championship two days early.
But they're also in the middle of controversy here at Estadio Sonora, with gripes over compensation and the new format.
Throughout the tournament, Escogido players -- though not so much those who come from Major League organizations -- have taken issue with their team's organizers, alleging that they were promised more than they're being paid for their participation in the Caribbean Series and threatening to boycott.
On Wednesday, it almost came to a head.
Right up until game time -- with both lineups announced over the PA system, the anthems being played and Venezuela's Navegantes de Magallanes on the field -- Escogido was nowhere to be found. The entire team was in the clubhouse, having a players-only meeting regarding their compensation. Players say they were promised 15 days of pay, but are only going to be paid for seven days, plus practices and travel dates -- which adds up to 10 or 11 days.
At 4 p.m. MT, Escogido players rushed into the dugout, put on their helmets and went to the on-deck circle to hit as the visiting team without even warming up. They wound up eliminating Venezuela with a 4-2 win, and the game started only five minutes later than scheduled.
But the issue remained unresolved.
Escogido players are expected to meet with the club's higher-ups later Wednesday night, and a couple of players said they expect to come to an agreement prior to the championship, which will take place at 7 p.m. MT on Thursday.
"That's something between the team and organizers of the [Dominican Professional Baseball League]," shortstop Miguel Tejada said in Spanish. "I expect it to get resolved."
Escogido is also the victim of a new format.
In prior years, the Caribbean Series champ was the team with the best record after six days of double-round-robin play. This year, though, a championship game is being held, pitting the team with the best record against the team with the second-best record. Some Escogido players don't think that's fair, given that they'll go into the championship 5-1 and their opponent, Mexico, is 3-3.
"I don't think that has been a good decision on the part of the organizers of the Caribbean Series," veteran infielder Julio Lugo said in Spanish. "I don't think a team that has won [five] games should be knocked out by a team that has won only three. It's not right. I don't think that's been managed well."


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Want to learn Objective-C for iPhone development? Now is your chance. We will be putting on a basic iPhone development class.
There is no charge, but you will be expected to participate. There will be a quick overview of Xcode and Objective-C and then we will go right into pair programming a sample application.
It is assumed you will know basics about programming.


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Smuggle Truck was inspired by the frustration our friends have experienced in trying to immigrate to the United States. With such a troublesome issue being largely avoided in popular media, especially video games, we felt the best way to criticize it was with an interactive satire.
In Smuggle Truck, players are driving a truck with passengers in the back, bringing them over a fictional border. This idea originated as a result of learning that the process of legal immigration was not as straightforward as we had assumed. As we lived through a painful 12 months of our friend struggling through the absurd legal minefield that surrounds U.S. immigration, we felt that we should create a game that touches on the issue. The comment was thrown around that "it's so tough to legally immigrate to the U.S., it's almost easier to smuggle yourself over the border", and thus Smuggle Truck was born. A two-day prototype eventually turned into an iPhone game, with the plan to reach as many players as possible.
Throughout the creation of the game, we maintained a meticulous eye to avoid depicting a specific stereotype or location, instead opting to generalize smuggling to its most basic abstract form. Through user testing and feedback from fellow developers and even random strangers, we worked to maintain a light and humorous representation of a subject that is normally avoided.
With a satirical angle on a real issue, we want to create a game that is fun to play but also stirs up discussion on ways to improve the problematic immigration system in the United States.


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In the interview, he is very candid and says things that if anyone said today, they would be lynched. His gruff statements remind me a lot of Friz, who I've worked for and had many funny encounters with.
Peet: Yes, it was a crusher. There was a committee of the older men which was kept secret. These were mostly old dried-up newspaper cartoonists and people Walt felt had experience even though they couldn't draw as well as the younger men. This was who decided who got screen credit. They hated the younger men who had talent because they were a threat to their jobs. They gave credit to themselves and their friends. We dared not complain since in the long run it would always be Walt Disney's [name] and that long list of names [below his] like a page in the phone book. The drawing quality had to be improved when we went into features, and that's when the younger talent began to do more. Walt began to realize that these people were real artists and not just dried-up old newspaper cartoonists.
Peet: There's nobody that good. He was a great Mickey Mouse artist. He had the juices and was very creative. He created the dwarfs for Snow White, and he had a real loose, natural style and was a natural for animation. He gave a new flexibility to the whole art of animation. I think he was too young when he hit his peak, for one thing. He was only twenty-four. Freddy drank himself out of sight and got a little bit cocky and thought he was too good for the whole thing. He would hardly do any drawing, and his assistants would cover up for him. He thought you could draw and drink and you can't do that. I worked on the mouse [in Dumbo] a lot for Freddy. It was his last big animation assignment. Ironically it was the drunken mouse scene. The champagne bottle falls into the tub of water, and the bubble comes up and then the mouse falls into the tub. Freddy just couldn't draw a mouse that didn't look like Mickey. It was so ingrained in him after drawing just thousands of them. The nose was too round, so I went over Freddy's things including the storyboards. Freddy did a fine animation job on it, but I refined his drawings so they looked like Timothy.
Peet fixed Tytla's Elephant DrawingsProvince: Two of the best, Bill Tytla and Fred Moore, worked on Dumbo.
Peet: People were always amazed at Bill Tytla, that he could draw the giant devil for "Night On Bald Mountain," and the giant in "Brave Little Tailor;" these ponderous, muscled characters, and then do this little elephant. After he got his first scene on Dumbo, he passed me in the hall and said, "Y'know, Bill, I can't draw these goddamned little elephants. If I send Nick [his assistant] up with the scene, would you see if you could work it out?" Nick brought up this stack of drawings, Bill's scene where the elephants first appear was just a mess. So I went over every one of them, probably a couple of hundred drawings, every damned frame in the picture, and redrew the whole scene. They shot the pencil test and showed it to Walt. He was ecstatic! Nick came up and told me, "Walt loved that thing, and I want to shake your hand!" Well, Bill never bothered to thank me, Walt either.
Province: Would you say Walt Disney had forgotten where he came from? After all, his own artistic ability was modest.
Peet: He couldn't do any of the things he was famous for. His humor was suspect. I would call it sarcasm at best. He also couldn't write or draw. I ran into a barber many years ago who had a Donald Duck drawing on the wall of his shop down in Hollywood. He said it was an original drawing by Walt Disney. It was from around '36 or '37. I thought it was funny because Walt could never have done that. He would sign the stuff, but he was always scared to death that somebody was going to ask him to do a drawing. He was a catalyst. He could take a room full of people and organize them into doing it. He could spot talent and pick this guy as good for that and someone else would be good for this.
Walt Hired Screenwriters and Playwrights and Didn't Use Their WorkHe was always hiring these big-time screenwriters and playwrights. These people had no conceptions in visual terms at all, all dialogue. So they really couldn't handle the stuff. He paid them a hell of a lot of money to fail. When it came down to it, we had to do it. He was very excited about Disneyland and working on that. Then to have to come back to the studio and work on the same old stuff he had been doing for years.
More to come....


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Showdown on the Sabine
Rocketing across the waves of the Sabine River in excess of 115 mph with water spraying the windshield, hindering your sight, you rapidly approach a buoy to turn on a dime at G-force speeds.
Not everyone can say they have had the opportunity to experience the thrill of Formula 1 speedboat racing first-hand, but everyone is invited to watch the outboard mayhem ensue as the Southern Professional Outboard Racing Tour comes to Orange once again this year for Showdown on the Sabine from Sept. 20-22 at the City of Orange Boat Ramp at 1000 Simmons Drive. Race times are 3-6 pm on Friday, Sept. 20; 9 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21; and 9 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22. The finals are scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 22.
"There's just something about when you see 15 boats leave the dock at one time … coming around the race course at over 100 mph … the sound, the smell, the water splashing … it's just very exciting for people to watch," said Lyndsay Mathews, Sport Racing Series chief race scorer.
"It is just incredible to watch (the boats) turn," added John Schubert, Sport Racing Series race director. "They'll be going 120 mph one direction and about two seconds later, turned around 180 degrees going 100 mph again a different direction."
And just like any motor sport where there is close competition and racers fighting for position, there is always a possibility of crashes, Schubert said.
"We'll go through the weekend with a decent amount of accidents. The boats can flip over backwards, they can run into each other in a turn, they can roll on a turn, they can bounce off each other going down the straightaway," said Schubert, 42, who said he learned the dangers of Formula 1 boat racing first-hand.
"When I was about 30, I was in an accident," he said. "I went into a turn and the boat rolled on me during the turn. It knocked me out and I woke up in the hospital with a broken back. I haven't raced since."
In case of the worst, Schubert assured that his trained rescue group of EMTs are prepared.
"We have a whole rescue crew that takes care of extracting the drivers," he said. "We'll get 'em out, get 'em on a boat, and get 'em to the ambulance."
Racers are from Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Detroit and Chicago, and are divided into four classes: Sport F1, Formula Lights, Super Stock Tri-Hull and J-Hydro (a class for kids ages 9-16). All kids wear specially made Kevlar suits and helmets for protection, Schubert said.
"Everything from 55-year-old men to 16-year old girls run the Formula Light class," he said. "It's a great place to start. It's not so difficult that you can't run it."
The Sabine Showdown is the last race of a series that goes all over the county, Schubert said.
"It started this season in Port Neches and ends in Orange," he said. "In between, it goes to Bay City, Mich., and Kankakee, Ill."
Racers win money and trophies.
"They'll start with testing, then qualifying heats and then we'll go to final heats on Sunday afternoon," he said. "We'll probably pay out $20,000 to $25,000 over four different classes of racing."
Schubert said the Sabine River makes an exciting course for racing.
"It's a great spot for spectators and participants," he said. "The river is beautiful and smooth. It's not totally salt, but it's not fresh. The brackish water is a little bit faster and harder than fresh water. It makes the speeds faster. The course is nice. It's got the levee going around it and the boat ramp right there. It's just really set up for what we do well."
This is the sixth year the event has been held, according to Jay Trahan, director of economic development for the City of Orange. It is organized and funded by the City of Orange Convention & Visitors Bureau, and approved by the City Council in an effort to promote tourism. There are approximately 65 staff and volunteers who work the event.
"There have been up to 10,000 attendees over the 3-day event in the past, and we are hoping for a great turnout this year as well," Trahan said. "One may expect a family oriented and safe environment with high speed racing boats that create an exciting atmosphere. Also, there's great food and drinks along with free admission to the event."
Additional attractions include a free musical concert by the band Rock Alley scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. at the downtown riverfront pavilion, food booths, craft booths, adult beverage booth, pit passes to enter the race area, and helicopter rides that may be purchased. Food booths will include shrimp on a stick, link sandwiches, ice cream cones, adult beverages and several other food items.
The event is a shot in the arm for Orange's economy, Trahan said.
"The Tunnel Boat Races event is very important to the City of Orange due to the opportunities it creates for increased hotel occupancy, a quality of life event for residents and visitors, and to showcase the City Boat Ramp where the recent Bassmasters Elite Series fishing tournament was held during March," he said.
Event partners include the Orange Parks Staff, Orange Fire Department, Acadian Ambulance, Orange Boating Club and Orange Chamber of Commerce. Security is provided by the Orange Police Department, Orange County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Ice chests, pets and bicycles are not allowed. Free parking is available along Simmons Drive; bring lawn chairs and blankets, but pop-up tents are allowed only at the top of the levee. For those who wish to purchase a business VIP Tent Sponsorship for employees and guests, contact the Orange Chamber of Commerce at (409) 883-3536. For additional information about this year's Tunnel Boat Races, contact the CVB office at (409) 883- 1011 or visit the website at www.orangetexas.org.


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NEW YORK - Activision Blizzard Inc. reported strong results for the latest quarter and raised its outlook for the full year on Tuesday as it began selling its latest "Call of Duty" game ahead of the holidays.
Long lines formed outside retail stores to buy "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," which went on sale at midnight Monday. The game is expected to break industry records set by its predecessor a year ago for metrics such as first-day sales and overall dollar sales. Last year's "Call of Duty: Black Ops" sold more than 25 million copies.
Investors, though, seemed to focus on Activision's other big game, "World of Warcraft," as the company's stock fell after the results came out. That's because the game ended the quarter with 10.3 million active subscribers, down from 11.1 million from the previous quarter.
Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said the 7 percent drop "freaked people out."
Activision gets much of its revenue and profit from "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft," Pachter said, so "if either is threatened, it makes people wonder about future profit growth."
The company hasn't given day-one sales figures for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," though it said pre-launch orders shattered prior records. The game's predecessor earned more than $1 billion in sales.
Blockbuster disc sales aside, Activision is also focusing on the game's long-term future - its online components that let people download add-on chapters, challenge other players online and keep playing long after the game's initial story ends.
On Tuesday, the company officially launched "Call of Duty: Elite," an online service for the game that's part social network and part organized sports with competitions, stats and a slew of other offerings.
CEO Bobby Kotick said the company is trying to deliver game content more regularly - like TV. This gets players treating games as a service they return to week after week, month after month, rather than a box they buy around Christmas and play for a few hours until they are done.
Activision earned $148 million, or 13 cents per share, in the July-September period. That's up from $51 million, or 4 cents per share, a year earlier.
Revenue rose 1 percent to $754 million from $745 million.
Adjusted earnings were $87 million, or 7 cents per share, in the latest quarter - above the 2 cents per share that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. Adjusted revenue was $627 million, above analysts' expectations of $565 million.
These figures exclude special items and account for the effects of deferring revenue and the related cost of sales for games with online components. Like other video game companies, Activision spreads these out over time, while the game is played, rather than all at once.
Activision is forecasting fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 55 cents per share on revenue of $2.17 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of 53 cents per share on revenue of $2.11 billion on that basis.
The fourth quarter is usually the most important one for video game companies because it includes holiday sales. Activision, which is based in Santa Monica, Calif., tends to give conservative guidance. Besides "Call of Duty," the company said its kids' game, "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure," which launched in October, is also doing well.
For the full year, the company now expects adjusted earnings of 85 cents per share on revenue of $4.25 billion. Its prior forecast was for adjusted earnings of 77 cents per share on revenue of $4.05 billion.
On this basis, analysts had predicted earnings of 79 cents per share on revenue of $4.12 billion.
The company's stock fell 45 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $13.48 in extended trading after the results came out. Earlier, the stock closed up 19 cents, or 1.4 percent, at $13.93. The stock also hit a 52-week high of $14.40 earlier on Tuesday.


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Ok – We admit it. We are all HGTV Junkies at DrapeStyle! We have a couple of Camps here too. Some are a little "Old School" and love to watch Candice Olson. Candice has done some amazing things in the Fabric World and we actually carry some of her Fabrics that she made in conjunction with one of our favorite Mills, Kravet. The Canadian born Olson seems to have really "blown-up" since her original days on HGTV and we see her everywhere now. Could not be happier for her.
A couple of us in the office can't get enough of of the Minneapolis native Nicole Curtis. We love her and we love the amazing things she does with older mid-west homes. No doubt that some us think that Nicole is the "next big thing" for both the DIY Channel and HGTV.
We haven't had the chance to work with either of them yet but we really hope that when Candice Olson or Nicole Curtis think Custom Drapery they think DrapeStyle!


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Lotus Notes 6 For Dummies
408 pages
November 2002
US $29.99 Add to Cart
This is a Print-on-Demand title. It will be printed specifically to fill your order. Please allow an additional 8-10 days delivery time. The book is not returnable.
Table of Contents
Author Information
- Lotus Notes For Dummies helps readers navigate and employ Lotus Notes to improve productivity and efficiency.
- Covers the enhanced features of the new version of Lotus Notes including the welcome page, instant messaging, document sharing, calendaring, group scheduling, and going mobile.
- This is an introductory level book that provides the essential information needed to enable users to get the most from the latest release of Lotus Notes.


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Deals of the Week
While Supplies Last!
Visit this page often as we will showcase our current specials and deals of the week. These offers will be available only while supplies last and are subject to change daily, so don't wait, order now!
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Re-Enrollment for 2020/2021 school year begins November 1st!
Re-enrollment for current Saint Gabriel families begins November 1st. All families will need to complete their re-enrollment form in TADS to guarantee their student's place in class next year. The re-enrollment fee will be billed to all current families in four easy installments. PLEASE NOTE: All families must complete a Financial Aid application in TADS when they re-enroll, the financial aid access code will be given at the end of the enrollment form.
Re-enroll Today!
To re-enroll, log into your TADS account and click on the 2020/2021 Enrollment tab, verify your personal information, and submit the form. We will be happy to help you complete your online forms. Please call the office to set up an appointment.
Children's Scholarship Fund Scholarships
Children's Scholarship Fund Philadelphia (www.csfphiladelphia.org ) provides scholarships for students who meet income eligibility and live within the city of Philadelphia. These are separate from scholarships available directly through Independence Mission Schools. If you currently do not have a CSFP scholarship award, you are encouraged to apply by March 1st. Lottery winners will be notified by CSFP in mid-March and must submit requested documents and registration forms, in addition to the financial aid application in TADS, by the indicated deadline to be considered for a CSFP scholarship. Please contact the office if you have any questions.


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|Lower Gwnedd, Pa.
|High School:
|Mount St. Joseph Acadmey
|Human Evolutionary Biology
|House Affiliation:
Senior • 2013
Rowed the third seat for the second varsity, collecting four wins.
Sophmore • 2011
Raced with the varsity eight … Helped the varsity eight place fourth at the IRA National Championships … Raced to third place at the EAWRC Sprints … Helped the varsity eight capture the Muri Cup against No. 7 MIT April 30 … Aided in defeat of No. 5 Georgetown to capture the Class of 2004 Cup … Also contributed to wins against No. 6 Bucknell, No. 7 Buffalo and, with the varsity four B, MIT.
Freshman •
Rowed in the second seat of the varsity eight for most of the season … Helped the Black and White place fourth at the IRA National Championships … Contributed to second-place team finish at EAWRC Sprints, as well as third-place varsity finish for Radcliffe's first Sprints varsity medal in four years … Helped Radcliffe capture Muri Cup against MIT and Class of 2004 Cup against Georgetown … Also had a hand in varsity wins against Bucknell and Buffalo.
Before Harvard
Competed in field hockey, swimming and crew at Mount St. Joseph Academy … Placed third in the varsity eight at the 2009 Head of the Charles … Recipient of the 2008 Dedication Award and the 2009 Coach's Award for crew … Graduated with distinguished honors … Vice president of Latin Club … Member of National Honor Society and National Latin Honor Society.


text:
AC Transit stuck with ex-manager's home
AC Transit directors sank more than half a million dollars into an Oakland hills home for their former general manager - and now they're stuck with it.
The cash-strapped district foreclosed on the four-bedroom house in July, six months after ex-GM Rick Fernandez stopped making his loan payments.
That has saddled the agency with an estimated $232,000 loss, based on a pair of loans totaling $500,000 that directors gave to Fernandez starting in 2004, plus additional sale and foreclosure costs.
"It turned out, in hindsight, not to be a good idea," said longtime AC Transit Director Greg Harper, who was among the board majority that supported the loan.
The loans were always rather odd.
Fernandez first requested $400,000 in 2004 so he could buy the house that had belonged to his late girlfriend, a former AC Transit employee, for $350,000.
A year later, the district loaned another $100,000 to Fernandez. AC Transit general counsel Ken Scheidig, who had been kept informed of the deal, recalled Fernandez "advising me he wanted to do improvements to the house."
Fernandez, who was being paid $276,000 a year, got the loans in lieu of a pay raise.
The variable-rate loans initially had a 3 percent interest rate. AC Transit directors figured the agency would make more money by lending to Fernandez than it could if it put the cash in short-term investments.
Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who served on the AC Transit board at the time, argued then that the deal carried "zero cost" to the agency. Kaplan did not return our calls this week seeking comment.
In 2009, Fernandez had a falling-out with the transit agency and exited with a year's salary, and an extra year or two to pay off the home loan. Within a year or so of leaving, however, Fernandez began missing his payments.
Fernandez did make "catch-up" payments, but in January he notified AC Transit that he was done - and the money stopped coming.
Fernandez, who still lives in the Bay Area, told us he had no comment.
In a recent report to the district's board, General Manager David Armijo said the home on Seminary Avenue is now appraised at $300,000 - $210,503 less than the district's $510,503 investment.
Armijo recommended selling the property, but AC Transit directors have asked staffers first to explore renting the house - hoping to buy time for the market to pick up.
"It was one of those things that looked too good to be true," Harper said, "and it was."
Hall chatter: San Francisco Police Commissioner Suzie Loftus has emerged as a top contender to succeed Supervisor Carmen Chu if, as expected, the mayor names Chu to replace Assessor Phil Ting.
Ting was sworn in to the Assembly on Monday, setting up the city's latest game of dominoes.
Loftus would be the only mother on the Board of Supervisors, which isn't a trivial consideration in a city that has found it a challenge to keep families with young children from fleeing to the suburbs.
And Loftus already has some political clout. She's a former assistant attorney general to state AG Kamala Harris - who happened to be sitting in the front row when the supervisors confirmed Loftus to the Police Commission in May.
Quan play: Just exactly what termed-out Assemblyman Sandre Swanson will do for Oakland as Mayor Jean Quan's new, $140,000-a-year deputy is a bit unclear.
"Big picture issues," like jobs, public safety and keeping the city's sports teams, Quan spokesman Sean Maher said when asked to define the duties for the mayor's former campaign co-chairman.
Unofficially, however, Swanson's job will probably include being a liaison between Quan and the city's politically active black ministries.
"It's smart politics," said City Council President Larry Reid, who represents East Oakland.
When she ran for mayor in 2010, "Jean didn't win a single precinct in my district, not one single precinct in Desley Brooks' district and only one in Nancy Nadel's West Oakland district," Reid said.
The move is smart politics for Swanson as well, if he wants to keep his profile up for a run for the state Senate when Loni Hancock is termed out of her seat in 2016.
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail email@example.com.


text:
New films on Screenbase include comedy-drama Legacy as well as animation Once Upon A Time In The Kitchen voiced by Nicholas Holt and Gemma Arterton.
Noel Clarke and Jason Maza are jointly producing Legacy through their respective companies Unstoppable Entertainment and Think Big Productions.
The comedy-drama centres on a group of friends who get more than they bargained for after deciding to throw the party of a lifetime.
The film is scheduled to shoot from mid-August with Davie Fairbanks and Marc Small directing. Casting is currently underway.
Universal Pictures holds UK distribution rights.
Nicholas Hoult [pictured], Gemma Arterton and Stephen Fry have been confirmed to voice family animation Once Upon A Time In The Kitchen about a feud between the everyday utensils and the best silver cutlery from opposite sides of the table.
Animator Alexander Williams will direct from Alexander Williams screenplay, with Bob Thompson producing through Kaleidoscope.
Kaleidoscope Film Distribution also acquired worldwide rights and will release the film in the UK.
Production is due to commence in September.


text:
My too kind and loving wife and I are driving along and I am singing to my Hits of the '70s when all of sudden a Subaru with a CoExist sticker cuts me off.
I wave at her with one finger and mutter a couple of four letter words that I am not allowed to use around my too kind and loving wife. She has threatened to put me in a time-out if I insist on articulating my dismay with such passion and conviction.
Profanity is an art form when properly practiced by pirates and my sister-in-law; but there are people, like my too kind and loving wife, that should never attempt to use it. I think I have heard her swear one time and it caused me to laugh so hysterically that I pulled a muscle.
The CoExist Lady keeps driving, oblivious to her lack of communication skills. Her dog is sticking his nose out of the passenger-side window and he seems to be laughing at me, which makes me so mad that I am tempted to cut her off so she can read my sticker, "Drive a hybrid, I need the gas!"
Sometimes people think that I am mature, but I am not. And the fact that I am really tempted to drive up past her just to cut her off makes me think that my too kind and loving wife may be right when she tells others that she will be happy when Charlie Sheen and I grow up and start acting like an adult.
Inside my "…big beautiful warlock brain" I think, "You're either in my corner, or you're with the trolls." Which doesn't make much sense, but you're not inside my "warlock" brain where it does make sense.
After ten minutes of my too kind and loving wife not saying anything, which may be a record, I have this feeling that I am in trouble.
I don't know for sure; but the hair on the back of my neck is tickling so I am thinking there is a serial killer in my back seat or my too kind and loving wife is mad at me.
I start out, "Okay, so what's wrong?" My too kind and loving wife shortly replies, "Nothing!" My first impulse is to say, "Great." and go back to singing.
I have to smash every impulse to just turn the stereo back up. After all, she said "Nothing!" Right?
Wrong! It is the way she said "nothing" that makes me think that "nothing" actually meant "something".
I try to sound open minded and warm, "No, really. What's the matter? I can tell something is bothering you." With the voice of chagrin, "Nothing!!"
Now I know "something" is wrong. Even though she said "nothing". What she really meant is "something". But, hey, she said "nothing" so technically, I shouldn't worry, right?
Wrong! If I turn the stereo up now, I might as well figure out if the new couch is as comfortable as my old one.
I feel like a Code Talker, "nothing" means "something", "yes" means "no", "I love you" means "I want to chop your body up into a thousand pieces and bury you in the back yard".
I don't know why this happens. Why can't women just say what they are thinking? Of course, if I figure that out, I could write a book, "Code Talker Handbook for Women".
I continue, "Oh... come on, tell me what's wrong." She folds her arms and pretends she is looking out the side window and hisses "Well if I have to tell you... apparently you are as clueless as you look."
I want to shout "Hallelujah! Yes! Absolutely, I am just as clueless as I look...now please just tell me what I did."
But instead I try to remember all the training I have had in active listening, and meekly squeak out, "Was it something I did? Come on tell me, what's wrong."
"Nothing!" Then I hear under her breath, "I'm married to an idiot...and a MAN." I think to myself, no use being redundant, use "idiot" or "man", but not both in the same sentence.
In my highly efficient warlock brain, I chuckle at my quick wit and want to offer up this gem, but decide this may not be the best time because my humor might go unappreciated.
Finally I exclaim, "You know that troll in the Subaru just about killed us all! I was merely signing for her to have a pleasant day."
Then I exclaim, "I didn't do nothing!" Which technically is a double negative; saying "I did not do nothing", actually means "I did do something."
I doubt she will catch this in the heat of the moment but my warlock brain is working at new levels because of the Mountain Dew.
I try harder, "Really, you can tell me what I did. Pleeeasssse tell me."


text:
Greenville County Continuing Education Program (CEP) is a progressive learning environment which uses high fidelity manikins, experienced field instructors, and scenario based education to keep the Firefighter/ Emergency Medical Technician on the cutting edge of their profession. These are monthly sessions which are available to any Greenville County Firefighter that possesses a South Carolina State and National Registry EMT card at no charge. These classes are held approximately 14 times a month with times and locations convenient to all participants. We feel this is the most effective and efficient method to deliver this education and provide the highest level of first response care to the citizens of Greenville County of which these men and women serve.
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Greenville, SC 29605


text:
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text:
On occasion, the two women went to lunch and she came home offended by some pettiness. And he would say, "Why do this to yourself?" He wanted to keep her from being hurt. He also wanted his wife and her friend to drift apart so that he never had to sit through another dinner party with the friend and her husband. But after a few months the rift would inevitably heal and the friendship return to good standing. He couldn't blame her. They went back a long way and you get only so many old friends.
He leaped four hours ahead of himself. He ruminated on the evening in future retrospect and recalled every gesture, every word. He walked back to the kitchen and stood with a new drink in front of the fridge, out of the way. "I can't do it," he said.
"Can't do what?"
The balls were up in the air: water slowly coming to a boil on the stove, meat seasoned on a plate sitting on the butcher block. She stood beside the sink dicing an onion. Other vegetables waited their turn on the counter, bright and doomed. She stopped cutting long enough to lift her arm to her eyes in a tragic pose. Then she resumed, more tearfully. She wasn't drinking much of her wine.
"I can predict everything that will happen from the moment they arrive to the little kiss on the cheek goodbye and I just can't goddam do it."
"You could stick your tongue down her throat instead of the kiss goodbye," she offered casually as she continued to dice. She was game, his wife. She spoke to him in bad taste freely and he considered it one of her best qualities. "But then that would surprise her, I guess, not you."
"They come in," he said, "we take their coats. Everyone talks in a big hurry as if we didn't have four long hours ahead of us. We self-medicate with alcohol. A lot of things are discussed, different issues. Everyone laughs a lot, but later no one can say what exactly was so witty. Compliments on the food. A couple of monologues. Then they start to yawn, we start to yawn. They say, 'We should think about leaving, huh?,' and we politely look away, like they've just decided to take a crap on the dinner table. Everyone stands, one of us gets their coats, peppy goodbyes. We all say what a lovely evening, do it again soon, blah-blah-blah. And then they leave and we talk about them and they hit the streets and talk about us."
"What would make you happy?" she asked.
"A blow job."
"Let's wait until they get here for that," she said.
She slid her finger along the blade to free the clinging onion. He handed her her glass. "Drink your wine," he said. She took a sip. He left the kitchen.
He sat on the sofa and resumed reading an article. Then he got up and returned to the kitchen and poured himself a new drink.
"That's another thing," he said. "Their big surprise. Even their goddam surprises are predictable."
"You need to act surprised for their sake," she said.
"Wait for a little opening," he said, "a little silence, and then he'll say, he'll be very coy, he'll say, 'Why don't you tell them?' And she'll say, 'No, you,' and he'll say, 'No, you,' and then she'll say, 'O.K., O.K., I'll tell them.' And we'll take in the news like we're genuinely surprised—like, holy shit, can you believe she's knocked up, someone run down for a Lotto ticket, someone tell Veuve Clicquot, that bastard will want to know! And that's just the worst, how predictable our response to their so-called news will be."
"Well, O.K.," she said. "When that happens, why don't you suggest they have an abortion?"
He chewed his ice and nodded. "That would shake things up," he said, "wouldn't it?"
"Tell them we can do it right here with a little Veuve Clicquot and one of the bedroom hangers."
"Delightful," he said. "I'm in."
The kitchen was small. He would have done better to remain in one of the other rooms, but he wanted to be with her. She was sautéing the garlic and the onion.
"He's O.K.," he said. "They're both O.K. I'm just being a dick."
"We do this, what—at most, once or twice a year. I think you can handle it. And when they have the baby—"
"Oh, Christ."
"When they have the baby, we'll see even less of them."
"Holiday cards. Here's our little sun-chine. See our little sun-chine? Christ."
"You aren't the one who's going to have to go to the baby shower," she said.
"How much you wanna bet they buy a stroller?"
"A stroller?"
"A stroller."
"A stroller," she said. "To cart the baby around."
He put cheese on a cracker. "For to cart the baby around in, yes," he said.
"And you, if you had a baby, there'd be no stroller, right, because it would be oh so predictable? Absolutely no stroller?"
"I was thinking we could duct-tape the child," he said. "It would be cheaper."
"Like a BabyBjörn, but duct tape."
"Would the baby face in or out?"
"If it was sleeping, in. Not sleeping, kind of kicking its feet, wanting to see the world, duct-tape it out, so it has a view."
"Allowing the child to be curious," she said. "Feeding its desire to marvel at this new experience called life."
"Something like that."
"The child must be so relieved that I'm barren," she said.
He left the kitchen. He stood in the living room with his drink, listening to the sounds of her cooking.
They should have invited Ben and Lauren, too, like last time. Ben and Lauren were more his friends. With Ben and Lauren there, time didn't move as it moved in hospital waiting rooms and the Midwestern churches of his youth. But she had wanted it just the four of them this time, probably so that they could more freely revel in their big news, and there was a limit to how many times he could say, unprompted, "Hey, should we invite Ben and Lauren?" At least he was doing Ben and Lauren a favor.
He returned to the kitchen. "When they come in," he said, "let's make them do a shot, both of them."
"A shot?"
"Of tequila."
"Her, too?"
"Both of them."
"To sort of . . . fortify the baby."
"We'll force them somehow," he said. "I'll figure it out."
"Better hurry," she said.
"All this talk of folic acid and prenatal vitamins. Give me a break. Do they think Attila the Hun got his daily dose of folic acid when he was in the womb? Napoleon?" She was going back and forth across the kitchen while he kept his drink close. "I could go on."
"George Washington," she said, "a Founding Father."
"See? I could go on. Moses."
"I don't think she's going to be willing to do a shot," she said.
"We trick her somehow. Tell her it's full of prenatal vitamins, and she shoots it down."
"Because she just graduated from the third grade," she said, "and she's blind and retarded."
"I'll think of something," he said.
He left the kitchen again. On his way back in, he said, "O.K., I've got it."
He found the room empty. Her wedding ring and the one with the diamond were on the counter, where she always put them before starting to cook anything. The sink had filled with dishes. On the stove, a big pot and a smaller one with a handle unfurled steam into the beige hood where the vent rattled. The door of the cabinet under the sink hung open. He checked the bathroom off the kitchen. He returned the way he'd come, through the apartment, in the unlikely event she had passed by without his noticing as he was sitting on the sofa. He returned to the kitchen, to the animated appliances and stewing ingredients. She came in through the front door.
"Where'd you go?"
"Took the garbage down," she said.
"I would have done that."
He had come up with a good approach to the evening, but he was no longer in the mood to present it. Instead, he went over to her at the stove. He threaded his arms around her waist as she stirred one of the pots. Years earlier, they'd had a name for this hug. He couldn't remember what it was. He kissed her neck, then the back of her hair. Her hair smelled of steam and shampoo and silk and wildflowers. "What can I do?" he said.
"You can set the table," she said.
He set the table. He stood in front of the refrigerator with a new drink. "So I've figured it out," he resumed. "They bring the bottle of wine, right? We thank them, we tuck it away in the kitchen. They never see it again. We start the evening. We don't ask them what they want to drink. Like it's just an oversight on our part. Because I know him. Even if she's not drinking because of the big news, he'll want a drink. I tell him we ran out. I tell him we'll open their wine at dinner. But then we don't. We just have water for the table. Then, in the middle of the meal—"
"You know, you should work for Al Qaeda," she said.
"—in the middle of the meal, I get up and go to the kitchen and I bring back a beer for myself. I open it at the table and take a long drink. What do you think?"
"Sounds promising."
"He says, 'Hey, got another one of those?,' and I'm, like, 'Oh, actually, this is the last one.' And then I kill it. Do you think they would leave?"
"Leave? No."
"Really? They wouldn't leave after that? Where the hell are they, anyway?"
"They might never come back, but no. They would not leave."
"You know, they're good people," he said. "Ultimately."
"She's my oldest friend," she said. "And he can be very funny."
"You're right, he can be very funny," he agreed.
Later, he came out of the bathroom just as the toilet was completing its roar. She was no longer in the kitchen. He took another cheese and cracker. He walked past the dressed table to the living room. She sat on the sofa reading the same magazine he had been reading. He stood in the middle of the room and raised his hands. "Where are they?"
"If there's one thing that's predictable," she said.
"But it's almost forty-five minutes."
"They'll be eating some very cold appetizers."
"Have you cooked the meat?"
"Everything but."
She casually flipped through the magazine. There was no outrage or impatience. She seemed resigned to waiting as long as it took.
"You should maybe call her," he said.
"Isn't this what you wanted?" she asked. "Something unpredictable?"
She was on the phone, calling hospitals. It was ten o'clock, and then it was ten-thirty. She had tried to reach them a dozen times. She'd sent texts and e-mails. They hadn't picked up and they hadn't replied.
"Not if it interfered with dinner," he said.
"Nice," she said. "Magnanimous and humane."
"Those fucking drips," he said, "have probably fallen asleep watching 'Friends' on DVD, for which they silence their phones and disable their BlackBerrys."
"Yes?" she said. She was speaking into the phone now. "O.K., thank you. Can you take my number just in case one of them comes in? Thank you." She left her name and number and hung up.
"Is it really possible," she said. She was dialling the next number. "Is it really possible that you care about no one but yourself?"
"I'm trying to be helpful."
"Your help isn't worth a good God damn anymore," she said.
He didn't like to be reminded. He left the room. "Sure," she said to the phone. "I love to hold."
"Is this meat going bad?" he called out. He was in the kitchen. He had finished the cheese and crackers, the mini Caprese salad she'd made with grape tomatoes, and the figs wrapped in bacon caramelized with a homemade glaze. Now he was sitting on a barstool eating a saucer of the mushroom risotto that was meant to go with the lamb, while staring at the meat on the butcher block. He had opened another bottle of wine. "Hey, babe, this meat? Should we do something with this meat?"
"Stick it up your ass," she said.
He stopped chewing. He looked with raised eyebrows at the two mustard-seasoned racks of lamb and thought how unpleasant it would be to insert one of their bony ribs into his butthole, but how much fun to walk out into the next room and moon her with a rack of lamb between his cheeks. "Stick it up my ass, huh," he said. "You know who should stick it up . . . whose asses . . . up whose asses it should be stuck up is, are your two friends of yours, their asses. They should stick it up their asses," he said.
Another hospital had no record, either, and again she left her name and number. She walked into the kitchen. "What are you muttering?"
"There are two racks there, one for each of their asses."
She put her fingertip on his forehead. "This isn't like them," she said, pushing his head back, "and you know it's not like them, and you're not being helpful." She released him, and he sprang back on the stool to an upright position.
"I'm sorry, am I supposed to be helpful?" he said. "Because I thought my help was no longer worth a good God damn."
She left the room.
"Wait," he said. He dropped the saucer to the counter and got off the stool. "Hold on." He followed her through the dining room. "Obviously, I'm not saying—will you listen to me please?—that I don't want to be helpful. Will you please turn around and listen?" She stopped and turned. "They just got their dates wrong, is all," he said, "and tomorrow, when they call, they'll tell you how sorry they are. They had to turn their phones off during the late showing of 'Kung Fu Panda' or something."
"So they went to see 'Kung Fu Panda' tonight," she said.
"Or something like it."
"And they turned their phones off so they wouldn't ring during 'Kung Fu Panda.' "
"Or," he said. "Or." He put his finger up. They were standing near the bedroom doorway. There was dim light coming from the dark room and he was suddenly irrationally afraid, as he had been as a child, that if anyone stepped inside, if she stepped inside, she would plummet to the center of the earth. He lowered his finger. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think they went to see 'Kung Fu Panda.' "
"You do not think, period," she said.
She stepped inside the bedroom. She did not plummet down but floated across the murk into the bathroom. She waited until the door was shut before switching on the light.
He sat on the kitchen floor for thirty minutes. Then he said, "Hey!" He got no response. He stood and went into the bedroom.
He found her in bed. She was in her pajamas. She was propped up against the headboard, flipping through another magazine in the light coming from the lamp on the nightstand. "What are you doing?"
"Going to bed."
"The meat is still on the counter," he said. "There's food everywhere. Are we just going to let it go to waste? And aren't you worried about your friends?" he asked.
"I'm not hungry," she said.
"Should you really be paging through a magazine right now?"
"What else would you suggest I do?"
"I don't know. Go over to their apartment? See if they're there?"
"I need to wait here in case I get a call from a hospital, or in case they show up."
He sat down on the bed. He put his head in his hands. He heard the glossy toss of one magazine page after another, and then, deeper in the ears, the squishy beat of his sobering heart.
"Well," he said, looking up. "Would you like me to go over there?"
"What are you going to do about it, big man? Man of steel? Gonna get inside the Absolutmobile and go find the big danger?"
He stared at her.
"It's too bad we can't have one," she said. "If it was ever abducted, what better daddy to save her?"
"Her? Is that right? Her?"
"I guess it would be important for you to have a boy, wouldn't it? So you could pass along all these accumulated masculinity skills. All your big-man powers."
He stood up from the bed.
"Do you want me to go over there or not?" he asked.
He had been to their apartment a handful of times, but tonight the lighting was much lower. It was a sizable apartment with a quirky floor plan and a proliferation of rooms that seemed to spool out one after another. He stepped inside the foyer and saw the first of the bedrooms pulsing with candlelight just beyond the entrance to the kitchen. He saw silhouettes of people there and more in the room to his right. People were coming and going from the kitchen, some louder than others. He did not recognize the man who had opened the door.
"Is there a party going on?" he asked.
"Are you a neighbor?"
"No. An old friend."
"There's beer in the fridge," the man said. He closed the door and introduced himself. They shook hands and the man disappeared.
The noisy talk was crisper than it had been in the hall outside, where he had first noticed its underwater strains and thought it must be coming from some other apartment. He stayed in the foyer for a minute and then drifted down the small corridor to the kitchen. Here, too, the light was dim. Votives cast shadows against the chrome appliances and ceiling-mounted pots and pans and the people standing in twos and threes against the black marble counter. Someone reached into the fridge. The bright telescoping light broke the ambience and the door falling shut just as quickly restored it. "The last one of those, you bastard?" someone said. The one addressed mimicked smashing the bottle on the speaker's head. There was more mimicry of hand-to-hand combat as he drifted out of the kitchen.
He made his way through the rooms. He saw no one he recognized. It was hard to see in the low light, and some people, in the middle of conversations, had their backs to him. He did not want to go around tapping on shoulders or craning his neck conspicuously. He felt self-conscious despite the anonymity afforded by the darkness. He regretted not getting a drink while he was in the kitchen, not only because it had been a while since his last drink, and drinking was helpful in these situations, but because without a drink in hand he felt that much more out of place.
He ended up by the gas fireplace below the mantel and mirror. Solid blue flames licked over fake logs with bulky knots, radiating a dry and passionless heat. No smoke, no ash. Just a steady dull and decorous burn. He stared at it until his eyes began to hurt, letting the competing voices behind him blend into one festive gibbering blur. When he looked up again, his eyes had hung a scrim of fire between him and the world. He could see only the vaguest shapes, the crudest outlines of people and walls, and then only at his periphery. He waited for the image to dissolve, but before it did completely a familiar voice said, "Well, look who it is."
He blinked to quicken his vision, which helped, but he didn't think it could be possible. "Ben?" he said.
"Lauren and I were just wondering where you could be," Ben said.
"We had plans," he found himself saying, "earlier in the evening."
"Where's Amy?"
"She's home," he said. He added, "Not feeling well."
"Oh, no," Ben said. "The flu?"
"Flulike," he said. "Where's Lauren?"
Ben turned around as if to locate Lauren. When he turned back, he spoke at a much lower register. "Listen, buddy, to your left, at ten o'clock? I'm going to pivot you, O.K.?" Ben reached out with his beer in hand and turned him a fraction. "Now she's at noon, right over my shoulder. See her? Do you know who that is?"
"She's beautiful."
"Beautiful? Buddy," he said, "do you have any idea who that woman is?"
"I don't know who any of these people are," he said.
Before he could study the woman any closer, he felt a hand on his arm. From the thinness of the grip he knew it to be a woman's hand, and when he turned he was not surprised. "Hey," he said. "You know we've been looking for you?"
"Stay right where you are, Ben," she said. "I'll get you another drink." She turned from Ben and addressed him. "Will you walk with me?"
With her hand now on the small of his back, she led him through the rooms faster than he had meandered through them on his own.
"What the hell's going on?" he asked her. "We've been looking for you all night and you're having a goddam party?"
"Hey, you promised to wait for me, now," she said to a group of people who turned to her all at once.
"Oh, I won't tell it without you," a man said, and someone laughed.
She turned back with a smile that quickly disappeared.
"Hey," he said. "Are you listening to me?"
"Can you please wait?" she asked, without looking at him.
"Where are we going?"
She returned him to the foyer. She finished what was left in her glass and placed it on the floor.
"Should you be drinking?"
"It's cranberry juice," she said. Then she opened the door and they stepped out into the hallway. She waited for the door to close behind her. "Who invited you to this party?" she asked.
"Who invited me?" he said. "No one invited me. We had dinner plans tonight, the four of us, and you stood us up."
"I'm sorry," she said. "We did not have dinner plans."
"I'm afraid, yes, we did," he said. "We made a huge spread for you guys and bought some very expensive meat and then I come here and find out you're having a big party."
"Now, why would we throw a big party if we had plans with you?"
"Why wouldn't we get an invitation if you were throwing a big party?" he asked.
She didn't have an answer. People considered her pretty, but she had puffy cheeks and a pouty mouth that had annoyed him from the beginning, almost against his will. He had wanted to like her at first, but her kind of mouth he associated with spoiled brats and her voice didn't help, nor the words she spoke. He felt sorry for that baby.
"Can't answer that, can you?" he said.
"Let me ask you something," she said. Her mouth, trembling a little, had never looked more punitive or ugly. "Why do you pretend to like us? Why do you invite us to dinner parties when everyone knows you don't like us, that you've been full of contempt for us from the very beginning?"
He was surprised by the forwardness of the question. He was tempted to argue the point. How could she know for certain that he didn't like them?
Instead, he said, "For Amy." She was silent. "Well, you asked," he said.
"This party is by invitation only," she said, "and we specifically did not invite you."
"So you don't invite me or Amy, your oldest friend Amy, but you invite my friend Ben?"
"We met Ben at one of your dinner parties."
"I know how you met him."
"And he and Lauren have since become friends."
"Who was that woman?" he asked.
"What woman?"
"The woman standing in front of me when I was talking to Ben."
"I must not be making myself very clear," she said.
"O.K., forget it," he said, "forget it. You don't want me here. That's fine. But I came because Amy was worried about you when you didn't show up for dinner. So what am I supposed to say to her when I go home knowing that you couldn't come to our dinner party because you have a big party going on yourself, and that you specifically didn't invite her?"
She stared at him. Her arms were folded and her head was a little cocked, as if they were having a lovers' quarrel, but her face was suddenly calm and expressionless.
"You want to know what I think of you?" she asked.
He was having a hard time reading her face. It was now so blank and flat and calm. He had no idea what she was thinking. It was as if she were a different person.
"I think Amy made a terrible mistake marrying you," she said. "I tried to tell her that, but I couldn't do it the way I should have. Amy and I have nothing, absolutely nothing in common anymore, and I'm sorry but I blame you for that, because it's so awful to have to see you and talk about you, and to think that she's going to be alone with you for the rest of her life just breaks my heart."
He began to walk away. He stopped and turned back. "You're barbarians," he said. "You and Scott both." He resumed walking.
"Don't come here again," she cried after him. "Don't call, either. Not tonight, and not tomorrow."
"I can't wait to go home and tell Amy. She's going to love this."
"I wish I could say I cared," she said.
He took a taxi home. In the back seat, he replayed the conversation again and again with such intensity that he began to shake his head and grit his teeth. He couldn't believe the things she had said to him. They were outrageous, offensive, and final. He hardly saw anything out the car window, but he could vividly picture her mouth and then the blank expression that had preceded her outburst, which worked him up even more.
When he stepped out of the cab, his anger had lessened through too much concentration on it. He wanted it to take hold of him again with its strangling grip, so he thought of the kitchen: every dish in the sink, the meat aging ruinously on the butcher block. He couldn't wait to see it again.
He walked through the front door and called out to her. He went through the apartment to the bedroom. The bed was unmade in that corner where she had lain flipping through her magazine, and the magazine itself was on the duvet. He looked in the bathroom before leaving the bedroom and walking back through the apartment, this time turning on all the overhead lights. On his way to the kitchen, he stopped at the closet and took an accounting of the coats, then he hurried on to the kitchen, where everything was as it had been a few hours earlier. He was that future self he had many times foretold but always dismissed as an impossibility. It was dizzying. He had to steady himself on the counter. He wanted nothing more than to tell her everything about the evening now. What cruel fun. What meagre compensation. Her wedding ring and the one with the diamond remained on the counter, where she had left them before she started cooking.
When he returned to the bedroom he found her on the far side of the bed with her back to him. His relief was immense. He crossed the room and saw in the light coming in through the blinds that her eyes were open. She didn't look at him, though she must have known he was there. He leaned against the wall. She continued to blink in a distant and lonely way.
"They were home," he said. He let that sink in. "They were home that whole time."
She closed her eyes. He prepared what he was going to say next. He wanted to go back now and start at the beginning, at the first sounds of the party he had picked up on in the hallway. With an economical and unsentimental gesture, she wiped a tear away before resettling her hand on her leg. He wasn't expecting her to cry.
He thought about how worried she had been. He thought about how much pride she took in her cooking and how much effort she had made for them.
He lay down beside her on the bed. "They were sleeping," he said. "I had to buzz them so many times just to wake them up. And she was so sorry. She said to me so many times how sorry she was."
She got out of bed and went into the other room. He was holding her one minute and the next he felt the enormity of the empty bed. He called out to her. She didn't respond. He called out to her a second time. He thought about getting up and going to her, but that was usually no longer helpful. He heard her rummaging through the closet. When she came back in, she switched on the overhead light just as he happened to be staring at it. His eyes burned and he turned away. The next thing he knew, she had placed a roller bag on the bed and was unzipping it.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
He couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was a totally predictable thing to do, to pack a bag, and yet completely outrageous. It was both dramatic and futile. Where did she plan to go?
"You're being ridiculous," he said. "Please stop. What does this have to do with me?"
She slowed down. She moved a few more things into the bag and then, with a gesture that was full of rage and yet halfhearted, she threw in a pair of socks. She seemed to recognize that what she was doing was preposterous, though nothing else appropriate or imaginable had come to her. She stood still in front of the bag. He got off the bed and took her in his arms.
"She just forgot," he said. "That's all. You know her."
She began to sob. She heaved into his shoulder as he held her. Hot tears came through his shirt.
"Why do I have this life?" she asked.
Her arms dropped to her side and she went limp. She cried as if he were not holding her, as if he were not in the room with her, as if he were not in the world at all. ♦


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Bautista homers as Blue Jays beat Brewers 4-1
TORONTO (AP) — A little extra zip made Drew Hutchison's fastball too much for the Milwaukee Brewers to handle.
Jose Bautista and Colby Rasmus hit solo home runs, Hutchison struck out a career-high 10 to snap a two-start losing streak and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Brewers 4-1 on Tuesday.
Manager John Gibbons said Hutchison had "a dynamite fastball."
"When he's on, he's on," Gibbons said.
Pitching on an extra day's rest, Hutchison retired the first 14 batters he faced before outfielder Khris Davis reached on an infield single to shortstop in the fifth. Hutchison followed by getting Lyle Overbay to fly out.
"The ball riding up a little bit with that extra life kind of caught us off guard," Overbay said. "It wasn't in the scouting report."
However, the Brewers did get a late scouting report from leadoff batter Scooter Gennett, who lined out to begin the game and brought a warning back to the bench.
"He came back and said 'Hey, when his ball is up, it takes off,'" Overbay said. "It kind of looks good coming in so you end up swinging at it anyway."
Hutchison (6-6) came in 1-4 with an 8.13 ERA in six home starts but delivered his best performance of the season at Rogers Centre. The right-hander allowed one run, three hits and two walks in seven innings.
"I was able to make good pitches and get ahead," Hutchison said. "That has a lot to do with it."
The Blue Jays ended a three-game losing streak, one shy of their season high, and won for the third time in 14 meetings with Milwaukee, much to the delight of a Canada Day crowd of 45,088.
"It's Canada Day in front of a nice crowd," Gibbons said. "You don't want to lay an egg."
The Brewers had their four-game road winning streak end as they lost away from home for just the third time in 13 games.
"We didn't get a lot of hits," manager Ron Roenicke said. "A lot of strikeouts, not a lot of hits."
Starting for the first time since leaving a June 22 game at Cincinnati with a strained left hamstring, Bautista gave the Blue Jays an early lead with a two-out blast in the first. The homer was his first since June 6 against St. Louis.
"Obviously, adding a guy like Bautista helps," Brewers right-hander Marco Estrada said. "He's one of the better hitters in the game."
Starting as the designated hitter, Bautista went 1 for 4 with a strikeout. He hopes to return to right field Wednesday.
Rasmus made it 2-0 with a leadoff drive in the fifth.
Both homers came off Estrada, who has allowed an ML-high 26, nine more than the next highest total.
Estrada (7-5) lost for the first time in three starts, allowing two runs and six hits in six innings. He walked one and struck out two.
Milwaukee cut the deficit in half with a two-out rally in the sixth when Gennett singled and scored on Ryan Braun's double.
The Brewers loaded the bases with two outs in the seventh thanks to a pair of walks and a hit batter, but Hutchison escaped by getting Jean Segura to fly out.
Aaron Loup started the eighth but left after hitting pinch hitter Rickie Weeks. Dustin McGowan came on and got Braun to ground into a double play. Jonathan Lucroy walked but McGowan fanned Carlos Gomez.
The Blue Jays added two runs in the eighth against reliever Rob Wooten. Melky Cabrera hit an RBI triple and scored on Edwin Encarnacion's double.
Casey Janssen finished for his 13th save in 15 chances.
NOTES: Elian Herrera replaced Davis in left in the seventh after Davis suffered a strained pectoral muscle sliding into second base. Davis said the injury was "mild." ... Gomez returned after sitting out Sunday's game with a strained neck. Gomez suffered the injury in an outfield collision with Ryan Braun Saturday. ... Segura returned for Milwaukee after missing Sunday's game with a sore left quadriceps. ... The Blue Jays wore special red caps and jerseys to mark the Canada Day holiday. ... Canadian IndyCar driver James Hinchliffe threw out the first pitch. ... Brewers RH Wily Peralta (9-5) faces Blue Jays LH J.A. Happ (7-4) on Wednesday.


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Sparky wrote:earth's perpendicular emission is the dominating field here.
Is there some form of higher math that would suggest that.?
Otherwise that is wild speculation, ignoring the hairball effect.
The earth as a whole recycles charge, most charge goes out via the equator. That would be the dominating perpendicular part.


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A Lankan well-wisher offers his take on the Tiger's maiden ODI win against his Lions. In between handling his side's loss with grace, this Sri Lanka fan also finds parallels between the two countries in terms of the maturation process for Test new comers.
Victory at Bogura - Yet another step in the right direction
by Ananda Herath
Published: 22nd February, 2006
Sri Lanka is not the greatest team on earth. In spite
of their reasonably good showing in Australia recently, the Lions have been losing matches quite frequently to India, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.
Today's loss to Bangladesh caps them all.
Bangladesh has beaten stronger teams if one considers the present form of Sri Lanka versus
the prevailing form of each other team beaten by Bangladesh, at the time of the loss (India, Pakistan and Australia)
Given these two caveats, I still consider today's win a momentous occasion in Bangladeshi cricket, for this heralds to the world that Bangladesh has arrived.
That the victory over Australia was no flash in the pan. That Bangladeshi wins are due to their capability. That losses which still outnumber wins by far is only a sign of the Tigers not having reached the psychological plateau where you feel equal to any other team.
I can understand the jubilation in Bangladesh today. I remember how, in our early days as a Test playing country, we celebrated in Sri Lanka when, once in a while, we would beat a major team. Sometimes
an unfair decision that went for the opposition would bother me deeply on the inside. That the great team we beat did not have some of their top players too seemed to me to take away the gloss off such a victory. Today, several years later on, I look back and realise that those wins were true wins; no flashes in the pan.
I realize that they became more frequent, with the interval between two wins rapidly diminishing, until we found suddenly that we were World Champions !
Today Bangladesh played like winners. Mashrafe, Rassel, Aftab Ahmed, Ashraful, Bashar, Kapali, all of them played as well as any of the stars of so called powerful teams in world cricket. The general air about them was the same air that hung about Duleep
Mendis, Roy Dias, Arjuna Ranatunga, Asantha de Mel, Ravi Ratnayake, et al when they used to spring 'surprises' on major teams in the mid and late 80s. Today, I know they were not surprises, but part of a process in which we became World Champions.
As a Sri Lankan, I am convinced that Bangladesh is good. Bangladesh is no longer a team to spring surprises.
Of course, the first defeat to any team is very hard to take. Sri Lanka had played Bangladesh on 15 occasions previously, not dropping a single game. So,
against the backdrop of the recent poor showing of Sri Lanka, today's defeat - the first to Bangladesh - was a very bitter pill to take; but as the dust settles gradually, it dawns upon me that this has not that sad a day. After all, for Sri Lanka it was just another loss in international cricket and definitely not the end of the road or anything.
For Bangladesh on the other hand, this is a great win, one that signals that they are as good as the others.
Well done Bangladesh. I wish all my friends here at BanglaCricket and the millions of jubilant Bangladeshi fans more happiness in watching their stars at play.
About the author(s): Ananda Herath is a Sri Lankan well-wisher of Bangladesh Cricket. He has played some mercantile tournament cricket and has always been a great cricket fan. He is a keen student of the game and looks at teams like Bangladesh who are trying to make a name for themselves as did Sri Lanka in her early days. he went to the same school (Ananda College) as Sri Lankan great Arjuna Ranatunga and was in the same class as his older brother Dhammika who too played for Sri Lanka.
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TS-nslixuan American Style taps Black Bronze Waterfall Antique Wash Basin


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QB Carson Palmer
With the Bengals struggling for much of the season, and with a pair of veteran wide receivers in Chad Ochocinco and Terrell Owens at his disposal, Palmer threw for 3,970 yards and 26 touchdowns in 2010, good enough to finish as the 11th-rated fantasy quarterback. His play improved upon a 2009 season in which he suffered through the worst statistical year of his career—other than his first year as a starter in 2003 and an injury-shortened campaign in 2008. However, with neither veteran wideout expected back with the Bengals in 2011, and with the team likely to revert to the run-based offense that propelled them to the AFC North title in 2009, Palmer's fantasy outlook for this season is not promising. The wide receiver depth chart will feature rookie first-round pick A.J. Green and youngsters Jerome Simpson, Jordan Shipley, and Andre Caldwell, along with second-year tight end Jermaine Gresham. That's a big drop-off from Owens and Ochocinco and probably part of the reason Palmer has asked for a trade. The constant losing in Cincinnati certainly hasn't helped, either. If Palmer were to stay, he did shine a ray of hope during the Bengals' final two games last year, where he put up solid numbers while throwing to the team's youngsters at wide receiver. But that was most likely an anomaly. Palmer ranks among the worst fantasy options at quarterback for 2011.
QB Andy Dalton
He's a rookie and his receiving corps may be the league's worst if veteran Chad Ochocinco isn't back, as is expected. In addition, the Bengals are expected to rely heavily on the run, even though their workhorse runner is a free agent who averaged 3.5 yards per carry in 2010. While Dalton will open the season as the Bengals starter if incumbent Carson Palmer is traded—or holds out or retires—there are basically no reasons to endorse him as anything more than a last resort fantasy option for 2011. With a bevy of young talent at wide receiver, Dalton is a decent option in dynasty leagues, but he should be avoided in redraft leagues.
RB Cedric Benson
After having a career year in 2009, Benson stumbled slightly last season, finishing with 1,111 rushing yards and seven touchdowns on the ground to go along with 178 receiving yards and a touchdown. While his rushing total only dropped by 140 yards, his 2009 production came in just 13 games compared to the 16 he played in 2010, and his average yards per carry dropped from 4.2 to 3.5. Benson is a free agent but figures to return to a Bengals team that has major question marks in the backfield, with quarterback Carson Palmer having requested a trade and only the unproven Bernard Scott behind Benson at running back. Benson has had 667 touches during his two-year, 29-game stay in Cincinnati, so look for him to be one of the league's few workhorse backs once again if he remains with the team. That argument is bolstered by the success the Bengals had with the run in 2009 and the possibility that rookie Andy Dalton could open the season at quarterback. Given the high number of touches he should get, Benson ranks as a mid-tier RB2 heading into 2011, provided he stays in Cincinnati.
RB Bernard Scott
When the Bengals used a sixth-round pick in 2009 to draft Scott, the assumption was that he would challenge Cedric Benson for playing time. Despite Benson's inability to generate many big plays and his lack of production as a receiver out of the backfield, Scott has not been able to earn significant playing time in the Bengals offense. He was basically an afterthought for most of the 2010 season, getting nine touches in the opening game but not topping six touches again until Week 15. Given Scott's lack of production and use, there is little doubt that the Bengals will look for another veteran running back if they fail to re-sign Benson. That makes Scott little more than a handcuff in 2011.
WR Chad Ochocinco
Two years ago, there were rumors the Bengals had turned down two first-round picks for Ochocinco. In typical Bengals fashion, they are now looking at getting a low-round draft pick for him or releasing him outright. He has a large salary for the coming season and the Bengals will soon have to test the youth they've acquired at wide receiver. With Ochocinco approaching 34 years of age and having just 831 yards last year and only one 1000-yard season in the last three, his days of being a fantasy stud appear to be over. If the Bengals decide to part ways with him, he has enough left to earn a starting spot wherever he lands, but his diminishing speed means the best fantasy owners can expect from him is a repeat of his 831 yards and four touchdowns from last season. That makes him a low-end WR3 with little upside and a history of inconsistent production.
WR A.J. Green
Chad Ochocinco is getting long in the tooth, and the Bengals seem destined for a youth movement. That bodes well for Green's targets, and the odds are strong that the fourth pick in this year's draft will emerge as the team's top threat at wide receiver early this season. Easily the most polished wideout in the draft and arguably the most talented, Green was very productive at Georgia and had a nose for finding the end zone, with 23 touchdowns in just three seasons. At 6'4" and 210 pounds, Green has prototypical size for a receiver in the West Coast offense that new offensive coordinator Jay Gruden will employ. The biggest issues for Green will be learning a pro offense in a shortened offseason and the team's uncertainty at quarterback and wide receiver, with the futures of Carson Palmer and Ochocinco in doubt. Green is gold in dynasty leagues, but he ranks as little more than a WR5 in 2011.
WR Jerome Simpson
If you're looking for a Jerome Simpson endorsement, you've come to the wrong place. That would involve ignoring the first 45 games of his career (in which he caught just one pass) in favor of the final three games of the 2010 season, in which he caught 20 passes for 277 yards and three touchdowns, including a pair of games with more than 18 fantasy points. While the former second-round pick likely secured another season on the Bengals roster due to those three games, the fact is that he was headed for the unemployment line and major bust status. Simpson has decent size and speed and he should be considered the front-runner to start opposite rookie A.J. Green, provided Chad Ochocinco is released as expected. However, barring a consistently productive training camp, Simpson carries major risk and is worth little more than a low draft pick in redraft leagues and should be considered waiver wire material in shallow leagues. His finish to the 2010 season makes him worth monitoring, not necessarily worth adding.
WR Andre Caldwell
The Bengals have raved about Caldwell's ability. Carson Palmer has raved about Caldwell's ability. Yet in three years he has caught just 87 passes for 855 yards and three touchdowns, and last year he was beat out by rookie Jordan Shipley to be the team's top slot receiver. Basically, Caldwell isn't shifty enough to play inside and he's not big or fast enough to play outside. Move on. And don't be surprised if the Bengals follow suit.
WR Jordan Shipley
There's a good side to Shipley and a bad side as well. It was certainly nice that he put up a fine rookie season in 2010, with 52 receptions for 600 yards and three touchdowns. Yet it became apparent over just one season that he is best suited to line up in the slot because he doesn't have the physical abilities necessary to succeed outside. That limits his fantasy appeal and potential in leagues that employ standard scoring. In PPR leagues, Shipley has some value given the current state of the Bengal's wide receivers, provided he continues to build on his 2010 production. His value is further increased if rookie Andy Dalton starts at quarterback since young quarterbacks tend to throw shorter routes, which Shipley usually runs. Shipley is a WR5 in standard scoring leagues, but move him up to WR4 in PPR leagues.
TE Jermaine Gresham
After a respectable rookie season with 52 receptions for 471 yards and four touchdowns, Gresham has some sleeper appeal heading into 2011. Unfortunately, that is dampened by the Bengals potentially starting a rookie quarterback and featuring an unproven group of young wide receivers. While both factors increase the likelihood of Gresham's targets increasing, there has to be significant concern regarding the Bengals ability to move the chains and generate any type of consistent offensive output. And although Gresham started strongly as a rookie, catching four or more passes in five of his first six games, he notched only two other such games over the balance of the season. He has the talent to excel in the team's new West Coast offense, but Gresham remains a fantasy backup heading into 2011.


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Jackie Chan has announced his retirement as an action star, saying he is too old for stunts and the world is "too violent". The 58-year-old actor said he felt "really, really tired" after decades of pushing his body to the limit. Chan is known for performing almost all of his own stunts.
In this gallery, we look back at his film career.Picture: Everett Collection / Rex Features