text:
So, here's your little cakeless observation of the week, brought on by Grover's newest toy--the one in the cent{re/er} of this photo (from Bright Starts). It took some work, but I finally convinced Better Half that this is a blue zebra. (Grover agreed with me from the start.) But I'm starting to wish that I'd called it a stripey donkey, because I am mocked (not by Grover, who is too bidialectal to notice and would be too polite to mention it even if she weren't) every time I say zebra in the way that I learned to say it, with the first syllable pronounced like zee (the American name for the letter that's called zed in BrE). In British English, the first syllable is pronounced as it would be in the French zèbre, i.e. zeb.
This is one of those pronunciation differences that is not the result of a general pronunciation rule that differs between AmE and BrE--instead, it's just a lexical oddity, like vitamin (first i as in bit in BrE, but like in bite in AmE) or tomato (you know the song). BrE is probably influenced by a tendency toward(s) shorter vowels and greater awareness of French, while AmE isn't. In spite of the fact that the only non-dual-citizen in the household (ha! who's the minority now?) will only accept the zeb pronunciation, the OED lists the zee pronunciation first. (People from other regions of the UK will have to let us know if they use the zee-bra pronunciation there. Zeb seems to be standard in the Southeast.)
On my listening to it (as you can see from my description of the sound in the last paragraph), it sounds like the BrE version puts the syllable break here zeb•ra, rather than here ze•bra, but as far as I know, that's against English syllabification rules, which favo(u)r complex onsets (i.e. a consonant cluster at the beginning of a syllable) of increasing sonority (i.e. the explosive /b/ before the more vowel-like /r/) over plosives in the coda (i.e. putting the /b/ at the end of the previous syllable). So, I'm assuming that I'm wrong about that syllabification (i.e., that it's just my perception of the less-familiar-to-me pronunciation and not the reality of it) and that both versions put the syllable break before the /b/--but I'd be happy for real-life phoneticians (rather than a dabbling lexicologist) to weigh in on the matter.
I pronounce it (to the extent that my American articulatory organs allow) in the British way when I say (BrE) zebra crossing (a pedestrian [AmE] crosswalk marked by stripes on the road--as seen on the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road). But when talking to my baby about toy animals, I revert to my mother tongue--now my mothering tongue.
P.S. Apologies for all the (annoying, I know) parenthetical comments, which make my sentences (oh, won't someone stop me?) so difficult to parse.
P.P.S. Two mentions in Language Log this week. Wow, I'm somebody now! Thanks Ben and Arnold!
43 comments
Growing up with a New Zealander father and American mother, I've heard an argument on this very subject. Zebras are interesting linguistically. Not too long ago I wrote about the weirdness of the zebra's extinct relative, the quagga, and how that name has arisen long since the quagga's extinction.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous11 July, 2008 02:38
Is vitamin (/ai/ US : /I/ UK) really just a lexical oddity? It seems to be part of an admittedly not too productive pattern: dynasty, privacy, and cyclamen seem to match vitamin.ReplyDelete
From what I understand, English does favor complex codas, certainly relative to languages other than English. In what languages do you have oddities like "strengths"?ReplyDelete
What's more, consider "better" in an Estuary accent: [bɛʔə]. If that were syllabified "bet-ter" or "be-tter", the /t/ in the onset would be realized as [t], not a glottal stop - which appears only in codas. So the only possible syllabication is "bett-er". Given the choice of zero coda or consonant coda, English is favoring the consonant coda.
- Anonymous11 July, 2008 08:29
I just saw a BBC show that mentioned cervical cancer. The host emphasized the second syllable of 'cervical' and pronounced it so that it rhymed with 'like'. The two Australians there agreed with the one American that they would emphasize the first syllable and rhyme the second with 'lick', possibly schwaified (which word google tells me has already been discoverd, alas).ReplyDelete
While it is true that English syllabification rules favour complex onsets, a different rule takes precedant here - namely, you can't have syllables ending in weak vowels such as TRAP, KIT and the vowel here in question, DRESS. Therefore it's most definitely 'zeb.ra'.ReplyDelete
English syllabification is theoretically controversial, as approaches attempt to account for various phenomena, such as distribution of tense and lax vowels and glottaling (mentioned in earlier comments), aspiration of voiceless stops, flapping of /t/, the sonority hierarchy, and so on. One approach allows medial consonants to be ambisyllabic, and this would be the case for the /b/ in BrE zebra. The first syllable is /zeb/ (coda after lax vowel) and the second is /br@/, with maximization of syllable onsets, and no syllable contact law violations as would be in zeb.ra where coda /b/ is less "sonorous" than onset /r/. The /b/ is in both syllables at the same time, i.e. ambisyllabic.ReplyDelete
coulter: Good point. Vitamin is not so odd after all!ReplyDelete
JC: While English does allow codas, even particularly heavy ones as you noted, such things only arise when there's no possibility of sticking the material in the onset. In the case of strengths, there's no second syllable to put any of those consonants into. But in strengthen the "th" sound goes into the second syllable, thus lightening up the coda of the first. That's the kind of case we're looking at (or listening to) in zebra--the matter of what to do where two syllables meet.
Thanks to anjodjuna and max for the phonological help!
- Anonymous11 July, 2008 11:24
My natural inclination (BrE/Scottish) is to use zee for both the animal and the crossing although I'm used to hearing both pronunciations.ReplyDelete
I (Southern BrE) tend to say "zee-bra" but don't "take it strange" (Northern Ireland!) if someone says it with a short "e". And I always read it as "vitamin", with short "i", but our (BrE) biology teacher at school said it with a long "i".ReplyDelete
What about "migraine"? I pronounce it "mee-graine", but both my Northern Ireland sister-in-law, and my American one say "my-graine".
Growing up in the northwest of England, it was definitely zebra not zeebra. My Glaswegian grandmother pronounced it the same way.ReplyDelete
It makes sense to me that you pronounce it the English way when you're referring to a 'zebra crossing' as that term doesn't exist in American English.
- Anonymous11 July, 2008 20:32
Definitely zee here (ScE, Glasgow). I have heard zeb, but decidedly not as commonly as zee. It strikes me as feeling southeastern English, but that is only a feeling and a striking.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous12 July, 2008 00:36
My instinctive reaction was that AmE favo[u]red zeebra because the initial letter is pronounced zee in AmE but zed in BrE. Just as well Grover is a girl so that you didn't have to worry about giving her names like "Cecil" or "Bernard" - cf Cecilia and Bernice!ReplyDelete
It's definitely zeb•ra here in East London.ReplyDelete
ze•bra is what holds in ze•tits :)
- Anonymous12 July, 2008 17:48
andy j - we Canadians says zed but zebra.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous12 July, 2008 19:03
"we Canadians says zed but zebra."
Oh well, there goes my theory, LOL. Although you haven't written it that way, I'm guessing that you meant that Canadians pronounce it 'zeebra', rather than making reference to Lynne's other point about where the syllable break occurs.
- Anonymous13 July, 2008 13:41
Like the Canadians, we, in India, where pronunciation usually follows BrE (or used to follow, sigh), say 'zed' but 'zee-bra' and 'zee-bra crossing'.ReplyDelete
We use the short i in 'vitamin', 'semi-', 'anti-', and others, where I think AmE uses {ai} as in 'die'.
But the {ai} seems to be more common than {short i} in the first syllables of 'dynasty', 'direction', 'privacy' and 'simultaneous', where I guess BrE uses {short i} :)
P.S. The parentheses (not annoying) are fine; it would take several levels of nesting to make us lose our stack and find the sentences hard to parse.
P.P.S. I have always found your blog to be more interesting than Language Log is on average; I don't think I'm the only one :)
- Anonymous13 July, 2008 20:59
I'm an RP-speaker from SE England. Everyone I know says "zeb-ruh" but David Attenborough says "zee-bruh". He's in his eighties, so perhaps it's an age-related thing here, in the way that no one says "Keen-ya" any more.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous13 July, 2008 21:40
I understood that 'vitamin' is a synthetic word dating from the early 20thC, corresponding to 'vital amine' - i.e. a (bio)chemical compound essential to life, containing one or more amino (nitrogen groups. Thus, it was pernickety chemistry lecturers who persisted with vie-tamin when their crass students had adopted the vit-amin pronunciation.ReplyDelete
As a BrE biochemist (!) I say vitt-amin, zeb-ra, dinn-asty, sick-lamen (and now I know that the Greeks pronounce Cyclades as Kick-lahd-ase I feel justified), but I do use both priv- and prie-vacy....
- Anonymous14 July, 2008 01:45
The expression "zebra crossing" always makes me smile. I think of something like this: http://anwo.com/store/media/zebra_crossing_2.JPG instead, as one sometimes sees "moose crossing," "duck crossing," etc.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous14 July, 2008 03:26
re: cervicalReplyDelete
The GPs I used to work for told me it was CER-vical for the cervix, and cer-VI-cal for the neck vertebrae.
Maybe that was their personal preference, as elderly British-trained Australian doctors.
They also couldn't stand medicine pronounced with three syllables, preferring med-cine over med-i-cine.
Sorry to go off-topic. This Australian says zeb-ra, my-graine, vy-tamin and din-asty. Very inconsistent.
Another oddity is yoghurt - I reckon it's yo-(rhymes with go), not yo-(as in dog).
- Anonymous14 July, 2008 05:12
Angie, you might be inconsistent but at least this Australian agrees with you. Also pry-vacy, sim-ultaneous.ReplyDelete
shreevasta: "We use the short i in 'vitamin', 'semi-', 'anti-', and others, where I think AmE uses {ai} as in 'die'."ReplyDelete
While using a short 'i' in "vitamin" would be quite unusual in the versions of AmE that I am familiar with, in "semi-" and "anti-", the case is more complex.
I might say either "sem[ai]circle" or "sem[ee]circle" (I don't know how I choose which pronunciation to use, but I use both). I think I would only use a short 'i' in words such as "sem[i]nar" and "sem[i]nal".
Similarly, "ant[i]dote", "ant[i]pathy", but "ant[ee]proton" and either "ant[ai]trust" or "ant[ee]trust".
- Anonymous15 July, 2008 09:18
Regarding cervical, the BBC show was about women's reproductive health. No backs in sight. (Actually, no cervices were in sight either, but they were talked about.)ReplyDelete
I should have mentioned it above, but I brought up the cervical thing to show that swapping the lick sound with the like sound goes both ways. 'Cyclic' (first syllable) is another example where it goes the other way.
Is there a general rule that explains when you rhyme with lick or like depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on? I doubt it.
I'm noticing the word pronounced "PRY-vacy" more and more on both BBC radio and TV these days, by British presenters.ReplyDelete
With regard to using one pronunciation for neck cervical and the other one for the uterine cervix, this seems to happen because some people are so intolerant of a many-many relationship between words and meanings that they invent their own distinctions to squish it back to one-to-one. An example I have heard also is that some people use the two different pronunciations of plaque (with æ and with ɑː) for two of the different meanings (commemorative sign vs dental bacteria). There are also people who insist that the different plurals of fish (invariant fish vs fishes) have different meanings. All of these appear to be inventions, with no basis in historical or current usage, but that doesn't stop their proponents insisting that Platonically X pronunciation _means_ Y.ReplyDelete
"My instinctive reaction was that AmE favo[u]red zeebra because the initial letter is pronounced zee in AmE but zed in BrE."ReplyDelete
Likewise. I kind of assumed it was related to the use of "zebra" as an examplar for "z". So Brits would say "zed as in zebra" while Americans would say "zee as in zeebra". But apparently not.
- Anonymous16 July, 2008 19:49
Yes, I meant Canadians say zeebra like Americans but the letter Z is pronounced zed like the British.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous19 July, 2008 22:47
Another interesting one which this reminds me of is how to say Linux. Linus Torvalds says that he was trying to write a replacement for Minix and it should be pronounced in a way that sounds not unlike Minix. This seems to be the prevailing pronunciation in UK that I have heard (I am English). I have, however, heard some people say it like line-ux, perhaps thinking of the name Linus as they do so. I have heard this a lot from Americans. It does seem to me that people on each side of the Atlantic have a 'comfortable' way to say some words that differs from one another - so once the two words vital amine had been condensed to one, BrE conveniently ignored the derivation in order to pronounce the word as it appears to be - and so probably do people speaking AmE even though that actually appears to more accurately reflect the original two wordsReplyDelete
- Anonymous21 July, 2008 15:26
some people say it like line-ux, perhaps thinking of the name Linus as they do so. I have heard this a lot from Americans.ReplyDelete
Sorry to go too offtopic, but that is ironic: the name Linus itself has a short [ee] in it, "compare prInt, mInImal etc." (Listen here.) So thinking of the name Linus as it is pronounced in America (I guess) is like hypercorrection?
- Anonymous29 July, 2008 20:33
The pronunciation of cervical with a long i derives from the wish to retain Latin quantity. The oblique cases, e.g., cervicis, genitive, have a long i. The same goes for umbilical (long second i) I believe (I am too lazy right now to look it up).ReplyDelete
As a semi-RP speaker I prefer short i myself for both.
Except that the 'long i' in English isn't a long /i/ at all, but a diphthong /ai/, which wouldn't have been said in the Latin source word.ReplyDeleteReplies
How can you be certain of what wouldn't have been said in Latin? I wonder if you mean republican Latin, imperial Latin or liturgical Latin. Did any of them have a standard pronunciation at any time?Delete
Julius Caesar was in Britain and a great deal of what he wrote is known, but does anyone at this time know how he spoke. I suspect that the majority of his legionnaires, auxiliaries and administrators either spoke Latin as a second language or only understood basic commands. Also those that had Latin as their native language probably had local dialects.
While it is true that English syllabification rules favour complex onsets, a different rule takes precedant here - namely, you can't have syllables ending in weak vowels such as TRAP, KIT and the vowel here in question, DRESS.
Your proposed "rule" won't fly in non-rhotic accents, like those of most of England. How would you syllabify words like "mirror", "merry", "marry", "sorry" and "hurry"?
If you try to syllabify "marry" as /mær.i/, then you run into the fact that /mær/ is not even pronounceable in isolation (except perhaps in Irish accents, which are rhotic). Clearly it must be syllabified /mæ.ri/. (Note that "marry" doesn't rhyme with "scary" in England, as it does for most Americans).
Ad vp:ReplyDelete
Maybe the choice is not one between /mær.i/ and /mæ.ri/, but /r/ belongs to BOTH syllables. Such consonants are called ambisyllabic (or a Silbengelenk in German). Don't get confused by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): it offers no notation for syllable breaks that are not between segments, but coincide with segments.
Ambisyllabicity doesn't really improve things, does it? You still have an unpronounceable "syllable" /mær/.
@ vp:ReplyDelete
I'm not sure about that.
If the /r/ of /mæri/ is ambisyllabic this implies that there is never a syllable /mær/ in isolation, but a syllable /mæṛ/ which has the property of not being conceivable without the syllable /ṛi/ that follows it. The two syllables share a consonant that inseparably links them to one another and THE POSSIBILITY OF A PAUSE BETWEEN THEM IS RULED OUT. — Ambisyllabic /mæṛi/ is not the same as, say, /mær.ri/ which is composed of a syllable /mær/ and another, separate syllable /ri/, with geminate /r.r/.
Everytime I hear BBC News presenters (for example) say "zeb-ra" and "vIT-amin", it still causes me to stop and have to figure out what they mean, but yet other british pronunciations - which are more drastically different - I don't even think twice about when I hear them (ie "glacier" pronounced "glass-ier" doesn't even cause me to bat an eye) unless someone else is in the room and they react to the pronunciation. Seems odd that the small differences are the one's I notice.ReplyDelete
Oh, and I always assotiated "zed" as being a rare giveaway for someone speaking Canadian English vs. American English, for what it's worth (ie there's a line in an early episode of Stargate Atlantis that comes to mind)Replies
I say zeb-ra but understand zee-bra. On the other hand I say vai-ta-min rather than vita-min. Vit-al would confuse me since I am used to saying and hearing vait-al.Delete
I feel this topic is off the mark. The use of Zed or Zee as the name of the letter seems to vary more within a country than between the countries. For example "HOW THE WEST WAS WON" was not a Canadian or British production but it prominently featured a character named Zeb Macahan. He was mostly referred to as Zeb and occasionally as Zebulon, but I can't recall that anyone called him Zeeb.
Nick Caulfield wrote (rather a long time ago now):ReplyDelete
I have, however, heard some people say it like line-ux, perhaps thinking of the name Linus as they do so.
American Linuses may pronounce the first syllable of their name as 'line' but the Swedish-speaking Finn Torvalds rhymes it with, well, Lynne.Replies
Swedish (meaing the language) is a word (the English one) for Svenska (meaing the language) and often pronounced (by the natives) as "Sveeedish. I thought Linux was the offspring of UNIX and a penguin (pingviiiin). Linus rhymes with minus (Linus rimmar med minus) no doubt and in Sweden "lynne" means mood (and in any language this is way off the topic). Well the "Prodigal Tongue" is published so here we go.Delete
Yes, I would say that Finn (but not Torvalds) rhymes with Lynne, so the first syllable of Linus has the same phonetic values as "lee." The Swedish "i" sound is found in the English words bin, fin, kin, king, sin, sinking and win. It also corresponds to "e" in between, keen, queen and seen.
For the second syllable you need to know that the Swedes do not pronounce "u" as "a" so it should sound like "o" in moon, soon, room and spoon or like "u" in June and Jupiter.
For Li•nus and Li•nux the first syllable is stressed and stretched. The sound of the letter "i" is maintained a lot longer than the single letter appears to indicate. The second syllable is short and the pitch (tone) usually drops a note or two.
If the above seems difficult then try "lean noose" for Linus.
Also try saying "lee nukes" for Linux.
Zebra is a native African animal. Therefore, how the English speaking African pronounces it, should be the correct one. Right, Deebra?ReplyDelete
- ktschwarz28 December, 2021 16:33
"the OED lists the zee pronunciation first" — That was outdated. You were looking at an entry written for the First Edition in 1921. The British preference for the "zeb" pronunciation rose during the 20th century; the OED's Second Edition could theoretically have noted it, but it was produced on a tight schedule and they didn't have time to update pronunciations. (Meanwhile, Americans have preserved the older "zee".)ReplyDelete
The phonetician John Wells tracked "zebra" and other disputed pronunciations with pronunciation polls, and reported the results in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. The 1988 poll already found 83% preference for "zeb", and furthermore, it was rising with time: for younger speakers (born since 1962), the preference was 96%. So the commenter above who mentioned David Attenborough's age was quite right.
The OED's Third Edition updated "zebra" in 2018, and the "zeb" pronunciation is now listed first for British English. The etymology is worth reading, too: it doesn't come from an African language but from Italian and Portuguese, and originally referred to striped feral horses in the Iberian peninsula; it was transferred to the African striped equid by Portuguese colonists in Africa.
Moral of the story: Always be aware of the entry date when citing the OED!
- Anonymous14 June, 2023 01:43
In the 1955 movie "Dam Busters," one of the Lancaster bombers has markings AJ-Z, making the plane Z-Zebra. When Guy Gibson (played by Richard Todd) is communicating with Z-Zebra's pilot via radio during the attack, he pronounces it "Zebra" (short e) and not "Zeebra."ReplyDelete


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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
1983 - Super-Boxers
4 comments:
- AnonymousOctober 22, 2013 at 10:21 AM
I loved Super Boxers when I was a kid. I remember looking at it on the shelf of the local bookstore but never had the money to afford the $5.95 price tag (my allowance was $2 a week, and that would've meant going without new comics for 3 weeks). After it had been out a while, I was lucky enough to get it for $2 in a comic grab bag. Read it several times and was the envy of my comic collecting friends.ReplyDelete
This is probably my favorite of all the Marvel Graphic Novel line... maybe not for the story but for the nostalgia.
This came out during that golden age when graphic novels were first showing up in real honest to goodness comic book shops. This was one free of continuity that I could enjoy for what it was. I love my collection of these graphic novels. It's a shame they don't make it anymore.ReplyDelete
Hey Kal. I agree. Although I feel the current Indy stuff like The Wake or Saga are those departures from the comic book norm that these graphic novels used to be. I don't think we'll ever see the big two companies take changes like that again.ReplyDelete
This was an absolute favorite of mine back when it came out. Must have read it a dozen times over a couple of months, and my friends read it a few times, too. I remember being really taken with the "numbered graphic novel" series back then, and the sheer possibilities for brand-new stories.ReplyDelete


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By CHRIS KARDISH
A bill blocking a University of North Carolina policy allowing students to choose roommates of the opposite sex has found new life in the state Senate budget.
The proposal was inserted in the $20.6 billion plan approved this week. It seeks to prevent a UNC-Chapel Hill policy giving students the option to choose opposite-sex roommates from taking effect this fall.
The proposal would allow opposite-sex assignments only if students are siblings, legally married or a parent and child. It was introduced in a bill that never received a committee vote. A deadline requiring any non-spending bill to pass one chamber to stay alive through the 2013-14 legislative session recently expired.
Proponents of the UNC policy, which passed the board of trustees last year, argue it will help prevent harassment of gay, lesbian and transgender students. Advocates say many gay and transgender students feel more comfortable with members of the opposite sex and the policy, for example, would allow a gay man to live with a woman best friend from high school.
Opposite-sex students would only share living spaces in apartments or suites, not individual rooms. Nearly 100 campuses nationwide have similar policies, according to UNC's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Center.
To take effect, the proposal would have to survive the House version of the budget, which is expected in three weeks. Any differences in spending plans would have to be hashed out in a conference committee.
It's not unusual for unrelated policy items to find their way into the budget, though it has been the practice of previous legislatures to include the names of lawmakers who add those provisions. Only one of the three sponsors of the original bill returned phone calls or email messages seeking comment.
Sen. Ben Clark, D-Hoke, said he didn't push to include his proposal in the budget and doesn't know who did.
"I think the budget is for taking care of things like how we're going to spend money," he said.
He said his views on student housing "may be a little old-fashioned," but the university should be able to combat bullying with heightened anti-harassment policies and enforcement.
"It's incumbent upon them to make sure they're free of harassment in any dorm, in any classroom, in any organization," he said. "To me, it's a problem if we think we have to give special accommodations. It's unacceptable to me that they should not feel they're free everywhere."
Kevin Claybren, a UNC junior and member of the advocacy group that pushed for the rule, said the budget would overturn a policy supported by 55 university departments and committees as well as 3,000 students who signed a petition before the board of trustees vote.
He added that fears of heterosexual couples abusing the system aren't supported by reviews at universities that have already adopted similar policies, and UNC's housing department will actively screen for those cases. This year will include only 32 rooms, or less than 1 percent of all housing units, as a limited pilot program, Claybren said.
"We know that harassment is a reality on our campus, especially in housing, so why not make sure that our campus can be as safe as possible for all students?," he said. "This program isn't even set in stone."
House budget writer Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, said he's concerned with the number of unrelated items in the budget proposal, and his chamber will look over all of them before releasing its own spending plan.
"The House would prefer to have less policy that is not tied directly to appropriations, and so we're obviously looking at that issue," he said. "There's quite a bit of policy that's come over from the Senate, and so we're going to be carefully reviewing the work that the Senate has done."


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Outstation Rates
Rs 34/km
Driver Bata
Rs 700
Driver Night Bata
Rs 700
local Packages
8hr 80km : Rs 7000
Extra Hr: Rs 400, Extra Km: Rs 34
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Ranganatha RaoBangalore
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text: A cybercriminal has built a ransomware program based on proof-of-concept code released online, but messed up the implementation, resulting in victims' files being completely unrecoverable.Researchers from antivirus vendor Trend Micro recently spotted a new file-encrypting ransomware program distributed as a Flash Player update through a compromised website in Paraguay.After they analyzed the program's code, they realized that it was a modification of a proof-of-concept file encryptor application called Hidden Tear that was published on GitHub in August by a Turkish security enthusiast.Hidden Tear comes with a disclaimer that the code may only be used for education purposes and a warning that people using it as ransomware could go to jail.Not surprisingly, cybercriminals don't care much about disclaimers or jail warnings, so it wasn't long before the code was used to create ransomware programs.First, some Reddit users pointed out similarities between Hidden Tear and Linux.Encoder, a ransomware program targeting Web servers. The similarities included a flaw in the encryption implementation that made recovering affected files possible without paying the ransom.After facing understandable criticism for releasing the code, the Hidden Tear author said in a blog post in November that one of his intentions was to create a trap for unskilled cybercriminals and that the flawed encryption was intentional.True or not, it seems that the code is doing more harm than good.Called RANSOM_CRYPTEAR.B, the ransomware program distributed from the website in Paraguay is also based on Hidden Tear, but its\u00a0creator, supposedly a Brazilian hacker,\u00a0has made a serious error,\u00a0according to the Trend Micro researchers.Once executed on a computer, RANSOM_CRYPTEAR.B generates an encryption key and saves it in a file on the computer's desktop. It then proceeds to encrypt files with certain extensions, including the file where the encryption key is stored, before sending it to the attacker.This makes it essentially impossible to recover the files, as the key itself gets encrypted, probably by mistake, the Trend Micro researchers said in a blog post.In other words, users infected with the program will not be able to recover their files in the absence of backups, even if they decide to pay the ransom.Sharing information about how various threats work is important in order to understand them and to protect users, but releasing sample code\u00a0publicly is not needed for that goal, the Trend Micro researchers said.


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Taro Clotrimazole Cream - 0.5 OZ
Taro Clotrimazole Cream - 0.5 OZ
- Size: 0.5 OZ
- Manufacturer: TARO PHARMACEUTICAL USA
Cleanse skin with soap and water and dry thoroughly. Apply a thin layer over affected area morning and evening or as directed by a physician. For athlete's foot, pay special attention to the spaces between the toes. It is also helpful to wear well-fitting, ventilated shoes and to change shoes and socks at least once daily. Best results in athlete's foot and ringworm are usually obtained within 4 weeks' use of this product, and in jock itch, within 2 weeks' use. If satisfactory results have not occurred within these times, consult a physician or pharmacist. Children under 12 years of age should be supervised in the use of this product. This product is not effective on the scalp or nails.
Active Ingredients: Clotrimazole 1% Inactive Ingredients: Cetostearyl Alcohol; Cetyl Esters Wax; 2-Octyldodecanol; Polysorbate-60; Purified Water; Sorbitan Monostearate; As a Preservative: Benzyl Alcohol (1%)
Do not use on children under 2 years of age except under the advice and supervision of a physician. FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY. If irritation occurs or if there is no improvement within 4 weeks (for athlete's foot or ringworm) or within 2 weeks (for jock itch), discontinue use and consult a physician or pharmacist. Keep this and all drugs out of the reach of children. In case of accidental ingestion, seek professional assistance or contact a Poison Control Center immediately. Use only as directed.


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12Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip and I/O controllers deliver performance required for next-generation server and external storage platforms
CEBIT, HANNOVER, GERMANY, March 5, 2013 — LSI Corporation (NASDAQ: LSI) today announced the company is first to ship production-level 12Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) and I/O controller solutions to OEM customers. 12Gb/s SAS technology is designed to deliver double the data transfer rate of prior SAS solutions and unleashes the full performance potential of next-generation enterprise systems deploying high-performance solid-state storage.
The new products include:
- 12Gb/s SAS ROC: LSISAS3108
- 12Gb/s SAS I/O Controller: LSISAS3008
At CeBIT, LSI is demonstrating the LSISAS3108 ROC plus MegaRAID® 6 technology along with the LSISAS3x48 SAS expander. For those looking to take advantage of 12Gb/s speeds with existing 6Gb/s drive infrastructure, LSI is showcasing DataBolt™ technology, a bandwidth optimizer performance acceleration feature. DataBolt technology, combined with the extended bandwidth of PCIe® 3.0, is designed to deliver double the throughput performance while using today's 6Gb/s SAS or SATA drive solutions. With this feature, DataBolt technology offers product enhancements and future proofing that helps protect customers' hard disk drive (HDD) and solid state drive (SSD) investments.
"The explosive growth of data in cloud and enterprise datacenters drives the need for a higher-performance storage interface that enables more rapid access to data," said Jeff Janukowicz, research director for Solid State Storage and Enabling Technologies at IDC. "12Gb/s SAS addresses this requirement by doubling the performance of current 6Gb/s SAS-based systems, and helps to unlock the full potential of PCI Express® 3.0-based systems and the most recent solid-state storage solutions."
By doubling the data transfer rate of 6Gb/s SAS solutions, 12Gb/s SAS allows the SAS infrastructure to deliver bandwidth that exceeds that of PCI Express 3.0 with a single host bus adapter (HBA). The improved bandwidth, backed by I/O processing capabilities to maximize link utilization, supports increased scaling of traditional HDDs as well as improved SSD performance. 12Gb/s SAS also provides customers with investment protection with backward compatibility with 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s SAS.
"Today's announcement underscores LSI's 12Gb/s SAS leadership as we continue to drive first-to-market solutions for data protection and acceleration," said Kelly Bryant, vice president of marketing, RAID Storage Division, LSI. "With leading designs and unique capabilities like DataBolt technology, LSI 12Gb/s SAS solutions are designed to deliver the performance required for the most demanding next-generation server and storage platforms."
Production-volume shipments of the 12Gb/s SAS ROC and 12Gb/s SAS I/O controller are occurring this month, followed by the availability of 12Gb/s SAS expanders, MegaRAID controllers and HBAs in Q2.
Since the inception of SAS, LSI has delivered an industry-leading portfolio of products including SAS ROC, controller and expander ICs, HBAs, MegaRAID and 3ware® RAID controllers, 6Gb/s SAS switches, advanced software options and WarpDrive® SLP-300 acceleration cards. Based on a 25-year track record of hardware and firmware expertise and extensive validation processes, LSI is the SAS product supplier of choice for OEMs that want to deliver a broad set of storage solutions for the highest performance and best ROI.
More information on the complete LSI SAS portfolio is available at www.lsi.com/sas.
About LSI
LSI Corporation (NASDAQ: LSI) designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters, mobile networks and client computing. Our technology is the intelligence critical to enhanced application performance, and is applied in solutions created in collaboration with our partners. More information is available at www.lsi.com. Connect with LSI via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
LSI, the LSI & Design logo, Storage.Networking.Accelerated., MegaRAID, DataBolt, 3ware and WarpDrive are trademarks or registered trademarks of LSI Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
All other brand or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Individual results may vary depending on the storage environment and system components.
For more information, contact:
David Szabados
LSI Corporation


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Monday, February 23, 2015
Surprise Package with Liberty of London fabrics
I received a fun surprise package from one of my dear friends last weekend. It is always such an exciting feeling to find a package on my door step, and when I opened it up it was filled with Liberty of London scraps!! If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I treasure my scraps especially my Liberty of London scraps... You can see some examples of how I used my scraps; even the tiniest pieces in the past; like mod podge mini tree, wooden spool necklace and wall art.
Obviously, she is a kindred spirit... she kept tiny and skinny scraps. How sweet of her to pass that on to me with a sweet card saying "I thought you might use these tiny bits & pieces in you crafting!..."
Yes I will!!
Look how pretty they are even as scraps.
Posted by Sachiko at 8:44 PM 4 comments
Labels: fabric , friends , happy mail , Liberty of London , scraps
Friday, February 13, 2015
Anthro Pillow Inspired Canvas Flower Wall Art
Hello everyone! I am visiting Bev at Flamingo Toes to share my tutorial. She is hosting a fun event called Scrap Busting Extravaganza at her blog Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next 3 months. If you need great ideas of what to do with your scraps you should go check them out.
I hope you will enjoy my tutorial! :)
Posted by Sachiko at 9:52 PM 7 comments
Labels: craft , fabric , home décor , scraps , tutorial
Monday, February 2, 2015
Epson LabelWorks Printable Ribbon Kit Review
Epson's LabelWorks Printable Ribbon Kit? This is a perfect handy gadget for printing personalized satin ribbons for crafts, decorations, gift and much more. There are 14 font types and 10 font styles to choose from. You can store up to 30 label designs and print up to two lines of text. This particular model accommodates tapes from 1/4" to 1/2" wide. Usually I have a hard time with any techie things, but seriously, everyone, it was easy enough that I was able to figure out the way around, right away! Once I start playing with it, ideas started popping in my head; here are some of the things I did...
I wanted to print customized ribbons for each of my kiddos. I am going to tie these onto their Valentine's day gifts. I bet they will LOVE to see their own names on the ribbons!
Office Max, Amazon and Staples. What would you make and say if you had this awesome label maker?
I wanted to print customized ribbons for each of my kiddos. I am going to tie these onto their Valentine's day gifts. I bet they will LOVE to see their own names on the ribbons!
Office Max, Amazon and Staples. What would you make and say if you had this awesome label maker?
Posted by Sachiko at 4:00 AM 3 comments
Labels: craft , Epson LabelWorkds Printable Ribbon Kit , review , ribbon
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Social entrepreneurs often grapple with the decision of whether to establish their organizations as nonprofit or for-profit in order to reach their goals. But what if you don't know which model to use, or which would best suit your mission? I've stood at this crossroads myself, and share my own experience here in the hopes that it will help inform other social entrepreneurs facing the same decision.
When I was a graduate student at Stanford University in 2007, a team of students and I first conceptualized the Embrace Infant Warmer — a low cost way to regulate the temperature of vulnerable newborns, without the need for constant electricity, and at a fraction of the cost of existing solutions. We were eager to take this product to the disadvantaged communities who desperately needed it. We needed to build an organization by which we could carry out this vision, and inevitably, the question arose: Should we be a for-profit or a nonprofit entity?
We debated at length the merits of each type of structure, and came to the conclusion that the fundamental difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit organization is where it can source capital. A for-profit can raise money from private investors, for which it must give equity or dividends to shareholders; ultimately, a return on investment is expected. A nonprofit, on the other hand, can seek donations from individuals, foundations and corporations. Such stakeholders generally expect a "social return" on capital.
Given the inherent risk associated with what we were attempting to do (an untested management team bringing to market an unprecedented medical device) and the uncertainty of the commercial viability of the product, and given the type of customers we wanted to serve, we decided the best option was to go down the nonprofit route and created a 501(c)(3). However, even as a nonprofit, we believed in running the organization as a business; we would sell the product at a margin, and any "profits" would be reinvested back into the company to fulfil our longer term goal: to create a line of affordable medical devices that could save the lives of millions of at-risk babies.
I believe that to be an entrepreneur, one must be truly idealistic — almost naïve — and even more so to be a social entrepreneur. We started Embrace with a bold vision, ready to change the world in our own way. Little did we know the time and capital it would require for us to get from a concept to a manufactured and clinically tested product — not to mention what it would take to build a distribution channel to sell our product. Nor did we realize the amount of management time it would require for us to raise this capital as a non-profit organization; precious time that would be taken away from building the product and the infrastructure needed to deliver the product, and to make impact at the scale we had envisioned.
In order to raise the capital that was needed to achieve our mission to save as many babies as possible, we decided to spin off a for-profit arm of the company. We would run two separate organizations: the nonprofit arm, Embrace, would own the intellectual property for the technology, take philanthropic contributions to donate the product to the poorest communities through NGO partners, and build an eco-system around which we could help promote newborn health, through things beyond the technology, like education.
The for-profit arm, Embrace Innovations, would raise money from venture capitalists — though our first screening criteria would be investors who were aligned with our social mission. It would license the technology by paying a royalty for every product sold. The for-profit arm would be responsible for the capital-intensive aspects of the work, including manufacturing, clinical testing and R&D. And, importantly, it would set up the sales and distribution infrastructure to sell the product to those who could afford to pay for it, while still focusing on bottom of the pyramid markets.
Our hope is that these two organizations, together, will most effectively meet the goals of Embrace: in the short run, to give every child a chance for a healthy life with our infant warmer, and in the long run, to empower the disadvantaged to improve their lives through a line of affordable healthcare technologies. Having both a for-profit and a nonprofit organization working side by side allows us to leverage private capital, in addition to philanthropy, to ultimately serve all segments of the market with our product.
Furthermore, this allows the for-profit entity to develop and focus its competencies to sell and distribute products, as well as to conduct research and development. At the same time, the nonprofit is able to focus on broader issues around newborn health, through training, education, and monitoring and evaluation. Early last year, we were able to close a Series A round of financing from Khosla Impact Fund and Capricorn Investment Group, giving us a launchpad by which to try this new structure. Thus far, through this approach, Embrace and Embrace Innovations have helped over 3,000 babies with our product. While our primary focus is in India, Embrace is doing pilot projects with NGO partners in 10 countries, and we hope to further scale this year.
Making social impact requires innovative thinking, not just in terms of developing a new product or service, but also in terms of organizational structures and mechanisms for raising capital. The challenges that social entrepreneurs are trying to solve are some of the most formidable problems in the world, in areas with significant market failures, poor governance, and a complete lack of infrastructure. Effectively tackling problems in this environment may require leveraging both capital and expertise from grant makers and private investors alike. Ultimately, social enterprises should not be confined to a single type of legal structure. The most important part of choosing the right structure is starting with your mission, and then adopting a structure that allows you to best achieve it.
Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and give us feedback.
Insights from HBR and The Bridgespan Group


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Iceland 2012
In September 2012 I spend 19 days with two good friends, Steve Pelton and Kim Kamstra, in Iceland. We all love Landscape photography and considering we shot in similar locations, our eyes seen much different prospectives on Iceland's Beauty. Here is just a small amount of what my eyes were lucky enough to see and capture. JIMRead More


text:
Idlewild, October 17, 1858.
The splendid volume you sent me, (The Poems of EDGAR POE, published by our friend Redfield, with taste and costliness so suited to the rare gems of which it is the setting.) has vividly reopened to me one of the long closed chamber of that Past so trying to both of us. In our harassing and exhausting days of "Daily" Editorship, POE, for a time, you remember, was our assistant — the constant and industrious occupant of a desk in our office. The light shining from this volume — genius, of a diamond-lustre, which I think wholly unsurpassed justifies fully to me, now, the estimate I then formed from the presence of the man. Of the poems, it would be to me the delicious alchymy of love to write a criticism. They are among the few that I delight to read to a friend, for a feast in an hour of idleness. But it is of the once living man — as here pictured in the biography prefacing the book — that I wish to make a remark or two which shall stand for your voice and mine.
Of the ably written, but (in its impression) erroneous biography, which is placed at the beginning of the volume, I will quote the opening paragraph: —
"It would be well for all poets if nothing more were known of their lives than what they themselves infuse into their poetry. Too close a knowledge of the weaknesses and errors of the inspired children of Parnassus cannot but impair, in some degree, the delicate aroma of their songs. The inner life of the poet, the secrets of his inspiration, the mysterious processes by which his pearls of thought are produced, can never be made known and the accidents of his daily life have but little more interest than those which fall to common men. Under all circumstances the poet is a mystery, and the utterances of his fancy are but the drapery of the veiled statue which still leaves the figure itself unknown. A dissection of the song-bird gives us no insight into the secret of his melodious notes. Some of the great modern poets have had their whole lives exposed, with minute accuracy; but in what are we the wiser for the knowledge we have obtained of them? We only know they lived and suffered like other men, and their inspirations are still a cause of wonder and delight. the subtle secret of their power is still hidden from our search; and though we know more of the daily habits of the men we know no more of the hidden power of the poet. But there is still a yearning to know how the men lived whose genius has charmed and instructed us, and a vague feeling exists, that in probing the lives of poets, we may learn something of the art by which they produced their works. * * * *
"Of all the poets whose lives have been a puzzle and a mystery to the world, there is no one more difficult to be understood than EDGAR ALLAN POE. It is impossible to carry in the mind a double idea of a man, and to believe him to be both a saint and a fiend; yet such is the embarrassment felt by those who have first read the poems of this strange being, and then read any of the biographies of him which pretend to anything like an accurate account of his life. Like his own 'Raven,' he is, to his readers, 'bird or fiend,' they know not which. But a close study of his works will reveal the fact — which may serve, in some degree, to remove this embarrassment — that there is nowhere discoverable in them a consciousness of moral responsibility. They are full of the subtleties of passion, of grief, despair, and longing; but they contain nothing that indicates a sense of moral rectitude. They are the productions of one whose religion was a worship of the Beautiful, and who knew no beauty but that which was purely sensuous. There were but two kinds of beauty for him, and they were Form and Color. He revelled in an ideal world of perfect shows, and was made wretched by any imperfections of art. The Leonore whose loss he deplored was a being fair to the eye, a beautiful creature, like Undine, without a soul. With this key to the character of the poet, there is no difficulty in fully comprehending the strange inconsistencies, the basenesses and nobleness, which his wayward life exhibited.
"Some of the biographers of Poe have been harshly judged for the view given of his character, and it has naturally been supposed that private pique has led to the exaggeration of his personal defects. But such imputations are unjust: a truthful delineation of his career would give a darker hue to his character than it has received from any of his biographers. In fact, he has been more fortunate than most poets in his historians. Lowell and Willis have sketched him with gentleness and a reverent feeling for his genius; and Griswold, his literary executor, in his fuller biography, has generously suppressed much that he might have given. This is neither the proper time nor place to write a full history of this unhappy genius; those who scan his marvellous poems closely may find therein the man, for it is not possible for the true poet to veil himself from his readers. What he writes he is."
The biographer then gives a brief memoir, of which the following passage is intended to picture truly his connection with us. Poe, he says, "was soon installed as editor of 'Graham's Magazine,' As a matter of course he quarrelled with Graham, and then went to New-York, where he engaged as a sub-editor on the 'Mirror.' * * * But he did not long remain at this employment, which was wholly unsuited to him, and he left the 'Mirror' without quarrelling with the proprietors."
I do not think that the casual reader would get, from this passage, (in which there is no positive incorrectness) an impression which at all corresponds to the picture left, by the same period, in your remembrance and mine. POE came to us quite incidentally — neither of us, if I remember rightly, having been personally acquainted with him till that time — and his position towards us, and connection with us, of course unaffected by claims of previous friendship, were a fair average of his general intercourse and impression. As he was a man who never smiled, and never said a propitiatory or deprecating word, we were not likely to have been seized with any sudden partiality or wayward caprice in his favor.
I should preface my avowal of an almost reverence for the man, as I knew him, by reminding the reader of the strange double, common to the presence and magnetism of a man of genius, and the almost totally different estimate which may be thus formed of the same individual, by two strangers or acquaintances of equal intellectual acumen and discrimination. The mysterious electricity of mind, where it is negative, is more apt to be entirely antipodal in poets than in men equally gifted in other ways. The nature of the poet is wholly unrevealed to those upon whom his electric influence is lost or amounts to an antagonism. What could be more different than are often the two honest opinions, entertained by good judges, of the nature of the same gifted man?
It was rather a step downward, after being the chief editor of several monthlies, as Poe had been, to come into the office of a daily journal as a mechanical paragraphist. It was his business to sit at a desk, in a corner of the editorial room, ready to be called upon for any of the miscellaneous work of the moment — announcing news, condensing statements, answering correspondents, noticing amusement — everything but the writing of a "leader," or constructing any article upon which his peculiar idiosyncrasy of mind could be impressed. Yet you remember how absolutely and how good-humoredly ready he was for any suggestion, how punctually and industriously reliable, in the following out of the wish once expressed, how cheerful and present-minded in his work when he might excusably have been so listless and abstracted. We loved the man for the entireness of fidelity with which he served us — himself, or any vanity of his own, so utterly put aside. When he left us we were very reluctant to part with him, but we could not object, as it was to better his fortunes. He was to take the lead in another periodical.
But, on one of the pages of the splendid volume before me, is the key to an inner chamber of the heart of that gifted man. There is the SONNET TO HIS WIFE'S MOTHER; and, in my opinion, the exquisite beauty of the relationship between the two — EDGAR POE and Mrs. CLEMM, the sainted woman who so devoted her entire existence to a tender care and worship of her [column 4:] unhappy boy — will embalm him in the poetical heart-memory of mankind. Let me here recall the picture, which I have already drawn of her and her affection — writing of them at the time of his death: —
"But there is another, more touching and far more forcible, evidence that there was goodness in Edgar A. Poe. To reveal it, we are obliged to venture upon the lifting of the veil which sacredly covers grief and refinement in poverty; but we think it may be excused if so we can brighten the memory of the poet, even were there not a more needed and immediate service which it may render to the nearest link broken by his death.
"Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe's removal to this city was by a call which we received from a lady who introduced herself to us as the mother of his wife. She was in search of employment for him, and she excused her errand by mentioning that he was ill, that her daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their circumstances were such as compelled her taking it upon herself, The countenance of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her long-forgotten but habitually and unconsciously refined manners, and her appealing and yet appreciative mention of the claims and abilities of her son, disclosed at once the presence of one of those angels upon earth that women in adversity can be. It was a hard fate that she was watching over, Mr. Poe wrote with fastidious difficulty, and in a style too much above the popular level to be well paid. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and, with his sick wife, frequently in want of the merest necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has been that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject, to sell — sometimes simply pleading in a broken voice that he was ill, and begging for him — mentioning nothing but that 'he was ill,' whatever might be the reason for his writing nothing; and never, amid all her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died, a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his ministering angel — living with him, caring for him, guarding him against exposure, and, when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated in destitution and suffering, begging for him still. If woman's devotion, born with a first love, and fed with human passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this — pure, disinterested, and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit — say for him who inspired it?
"We have a letter before us, written by this lady, Mrs. Clemm, on the morning in which she heard of the death of this object of her untiring care. It is merely a request that we would call upon her; but we will copy a few of its words, sacred as its privacy is, to warrant the truth of the picture we have drawn above, and add force to the appeal we wish to make for her: —
* * "I have this morning heard of the death of my darling Eddie. * * * Can you give me any circumstances or particulars? * * Oh! do not desert your poor friend in this bitter affliction. * * Ask Mr. —— to come, as I must deliver a message to him from my poor Eddie. * * I need not ask you to notice his death and to speak well of him. I know you will. But say what an affectionate son he was to me, his poor desolate mother."
"To hedge round a grave with respect, what choice is there between the relinquished wealth and honors of the world and the story of such a woman's unrewarded devotion! Risking what we do, in delicacy, by making it public, we feel — other reasons aside — that it betters the world to make known that there are such ministrations to its erring and gifted. What we have said will speak to some hearts. There are those who will be glad to know how the lamp, whose light of poetry has beamed on their far-away recognition, was watched over with care and pain — that they may send to her, who is more darkened than they by its extinction, some token of their sympathy. She is destitute and alone. If any, far or near, will send to us what may aid and cheer her through the remainder of her life, we will joyfully place it in her hands."*
And now let me add, to so touching a picture, the Sonnet from this beautiful volume, addressed to his mother-in-law, which so embalms her for immortality in his genius: —
"Because I feel, that, in the heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of 'Mother,'
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you —
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother, my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life."
The reader of this sonnet, who has the volume in his hand, turns back to look musingly upon the features of the poet in whom resided such inspiration. But, though exceedingly well engraved, and valuable, for the recalling of his features to those who knew them with the angel shining through, the picture is from a daguerreotype; and taken, by the superficial sunshine, at a moment when the dark spirit contorted the lineaments. It gives no idea of the beauty of EDGAR POE. The exquisitely chiselled features, the habitual but intellectual melancholy, the clear pallor of the complexion, and the calm eye, like the molten stillness of a slumbering volcano, composed a countenance of which this picture is but the skeleton. After reading "the Raven," "Ulalume," "Leonore" and "Annabel Lee," the luxuriast in poetry will better conceive what his face might have been.
It has been one of our privileges, my dear Morris — it is one of the usually unreckoned and outside privileges of our present day's toilsome profession — to be thought guides and wardens to that "Fountain of Egeria" at which gifted hearts long to be unburthened. The young poet, the genius unappreciated, the crushed hope or ambition, over which the juggernaut of the world has driven its hard wheel — these and like sufferers are apt to come to us with their tears or their story. We stand at the public ear. We can reach the vague and undefined throne before which they desire to be heard.
I have always esteemed it an interesting privilege, I say, to be thus able to read, nearly, truly and confidingly, the hearts of the less common of mankind. Weak-voiced for themselves, as the most gifted are often likeliest to be, it is a great happiness to know them first, and speak for them to the world — to urge their claims, and strengthen their confidence, and reverently to grade and establish their deservings. There is much to counterbalance it, it is true; for there are (oh how many!) mistaken and false claimants, for whom the kindness of truthful discouragement seems both cruel and certain to be misunderstood. But the happier side of it — the first recognising, appreciating and assuring to itself modest and true genius — is, I have always thought, to "walk with angels." With the monotony of assured and established social intercourse; the dulness of similitude in men unmistakably classed, labelled and acknowledged; the hardness and shallowness of commonplace character and feeling; it is indeed, (the exceptional privilege I speak of) a relief — an inner knowledge of other and better minds and hearts, by which life, this our daily life, so apt to be stale and weary, is inexpressibly enriched.!
I have thus torn a leaf out of your experience and mine, my dear Morris — a little too autobiographically, perhaps you will say, considering that I was speaking for two — but POE was one of our "boys." We both loved him. He was re-baptized, and adopted, over our inkstand of appreciation and admiration. It is hard to hear his name sounded anew, even by such a trumpet of fame as this superb volume, without giving our accent to the echo.
Closing somewhat in haste, I remain
Yours as ever, N. P. W.
[The followings footnote appears at the bottom of column 4:]
* We have been grieved lately to learn that this appeal should be made as urgently to-day as when it was first written. Mrs. Clemm is still living and in need. It may touch some distant heart to have repeated it now, and we again say that we will most gladly receive and forward to her any tribute which poetic appreciation of "her boy" and of herself may thus bring to us.
Poe worked for the New York Mirror in late 1844 and early 1845, leaving to assume an editorial role at the Broadway Journal. The paragraphs quoted from an article written "at the time of his death" are from Willis's "The Death of Edgar Poe," Home Journal, October 20, 1849.
[S:0 - HJ, 1858] - Edgar Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Letter about Edgar Poe (N. P. Willis, 1858)


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Whatever your preconceptions about Mexican food, if you've never eaten in Mexico, they will almost certainly be wrong. Food here bears very little resemblance to the concoctions served in "Mexican" restaurants or fast-food joints in other parts of the world – you certainly won't find chile con carne outside the tourist spots. Nor, as a rule, is it especially spicy.
Where to eatBasic meals are served at restaurantes, but you can get breakfast, snacks and often full meals at cafés too; there are takeaway and fast-food places serving sandwiches, tortas (filled rolls) and tacos (tortillas folded over with a filling), as well as more international-style food; there are establishments called jugerías (look for signs saying "Jugos y Licuados") serving nothing but wonderful jugos (juices), licuados (fruit blended with water or milk) and fruit salads; and there are street stalls dishing out everything from tacos to orange juice to ready-made vegetable salads sprinkled with chile-salt and lime. Just about every market in the country has a cooked-food section, too, and these are invariably the cheapest places to eat, if not always the most enticing surroundings. Big cities and resorts have international restaurants – pizza, burgers and Chinese food are ubiquitous, and Argentine restaurants are the places to go for well-cooked, quality steaks.
On buses (especially second-class ones), people clamber on at stops with home-made foods, local specialities, cold drinks or coffee. You'll find wonderful things this way that you won't come across in restaurants, but they should be treated with caution, and with an eye to hygiene.
What to eatThe basic Mexican diet is essentially one of corn (maíz as a crop, elote when eaten), supplemented by beans and chiles. These three things appear in an almost infinite variety of guises.
Beans and vegetablesBeans (frijoles), an invariable accompaniment to egg dishes – and pretty much everything else too – are usually of the pinto or kidney variety and are almost always served refritos, ie boiled up, mashed and "refried" (though actually it is the first time they're fried). They're even better if you can get them whole in some kind of country-style soup or stew, often with pork or bacon, as in frijoles charros. You'll find corn in soups and stews such as pozole (with meat), or roasted on the cob at street stalls. Mexican vegetables include the green tomatillo (tomate, as opposed to jitomate, which is an ordinary tomato), nopales, which are prickly pear fronds (the fruit being a tuna), and huitlacoche, a fungus that grows on corn. You may also get to eat zucchini flowers (flor de calabaza), which are especially popular in quesadillas.
Tortillas and tamalesAs well as being eaten as a vegetable in its own right, corn is ground into flour for tortillas, basically flat maize pancakes (tortillas made of wheat flour, or de harina, are rare except in the north). The ground maize is combined with salt and water in a paste (masa) which is pressed or patted flat by hand, then heated on a comal, a flat steel sheet. While smarter restaurants serve bread rolls (bolillos), a stack of tortillas is a common accompaniment in cheaper places, and they also form the basis of most antojitos (appetizers or light courses). Simplest of these are tacos, tortillas filled with almost anything, from beef and chicken to green vegetables, and then fried (they're usually still soft, not at all like the baked taco shells you may have had at home). With cheese, either alone or in addition to other fillings, they are called quesadillas. Enchiladas are rolled, filled tortillas covered in salsa and baked; enchiladas suizas are filled with chicken and have sour cream over them. Tostadas are flat tortillas toasted crisp and piled with ingredients – usually meat, salad vegetables and cheese (smaller bite-size versions are known as sopes). Tortillas torn up and cooked together with meat and (usually hot) sauce are called chilaquiles; this is a traditional way of using up leftovers. In the north, especially, you'll also come across burritos (large wheat-flour tortillas, stuffed with anything, but usually beef and potatoes or beans) and gorditas (delicious fat corn tortillas, sliced open, stuffed and baked or fried). Also short and fat are tlacoyos, tortillas made with a stuffing of mashed beans, often using blue-corn flour, which gives them a rather bizarre colour.
Corn flour, too, is the basis of tamales – found predominantly in central and southern Mexico – which are a sort of cornmeal pudding, stuffed, flavoured and steamed in corn or banana leaves. They can be either savoury, with additions like shrimp or corn kernels, or sweet when made with something like coconut.
Meat, seafood and eggsExcept in the north, meat is not especially good – beef in particular is usually thin and tough; pork, goat and occasionally lamb are better. If the menu doesn't specify what kind of meat it is, it's usually pork – even steak (bistec) can be pork unless it specifies bistec de res. For thick American-style steaks, look for a sign saying "Carnes Hereford" or for a "New York Cut" description (only in expensive places or in the north or at fancier resorts). Seafood is almost always fresh and delicious, especially the spicy shrimp or octopus cocktails which you find in most coastal areas (coctél/campechana de camarón or pulpo), but beware of eating uncooked shellfish, even ceviche (though the lime juice it is marinaded in does kill off most of the nasties). Eggs in country areas are genuinely free range and flavoursome. They feature on every menu as the most basic of meals, and at some time you must try the classic Mexican combinations of huevos rancheros (fried eggs on a tortilla with red salsa) or huevos a la mexicana (scrambled with onion, tomato and chile).
Vegetarian foodVegetarians can eat well in Mexico, although it does take caution to avoid meat altogether. Many Mexican dishes are naturally meat-free and there are always fabulous fruits and vegetables available. Most restaurants serve vegetable soups and rice, and items like quesadillas, chiles rellenos and even tacos and enchiladas often come with non-meat fillings. Another possibility is queso fundido, simply (and literally) melted cheese, served with tortillas and salsa. Eggs, too, are served anywhere at any time, and many jugerías serve huge mixed salads to which grains and nuts can be added.
However, vegetarianism, though growing, is not particularly common, and a simple cheese and chile dish may have some meat added to "improve" it. Worse, most of the fat used for frying is animal fat (usually lard), so that even something as unadorned as refried beans may not be strictly vegetarian (especially as a bone or some stock may have been added to the water the beans were originally boiled in). Even "vegetarian" restaurants, which can be found in all the big cities, often include chicken on the menu. You may well have better luck in pizza places and Chinese or other ethnic restaurants.
MealsTraditionally, Mexicans eat a light breakfast very early, a snack of tacos or eggs in mid-morning, lunch (the main meal of the day) around 2pm or later – in theory followed by a siesta, but decreasingly so, it seems – and a late, light supper. Eating a large meal at lunch time can be a great way to save money – almost every restaurant serves a cut-price comida corrida (a set meal, changing daily).
Breakfast (desayuno) in Mexico can consist simply of coffee and pan dulce – sweet rolls and pastries that usually come in a basket; you pay for as many as you eat. More substantial breakfasts consist of eggs in any number of forms (many set breakfasts include huevos al gusto: eggs any way you like them), and at fruit-juice places you can have a simple licuado fortified with raw egg (blanquillo). Freshly squeezed orange juice (jugo de naranja) is always available from street stalls in the early morning.
Snacks mostly consist of some variation on the taco/enchilada theme (stalls selling them are called taquerías), but tortas – rolls heavily filled with meat or cheese or both, garnished with avocado and chile and toasted on request – are also wonderful, and you'll see takeout torta stands everywhere. Failing that, you can of course always make your own snacks with bread or tortillas, along with fillings such as avocado or cheese, from shops or markets.
At lunch time (around 1–5pm) many restaurants serve a comida corrida (known in smarter places as the menu del día or menu turístico), usually consisting of three or four courses for US$5–8/£5–6.50 or less – sometimes even half that price. A typical comida will consist of "wet" soup, probably vegetable, followed by "dry" soup – most commonly sopa de arroz (rice seasoned with tomato or chile), or perhaps a plate of vegetables, pasta, beans or guacamole (avocado mashed with onion, and maybe tomato, lime juice and chile). Then comes the main course (usually meat or fish), followed by pudding, usually fruit, flan or pudin (crème caramel-like concoctions), or rice pudding. Other Mexican desserts worth looking out for include meringue made with pulque, and capirotada (bread pudding, especially popular during Lent).
Some restaurants also offer set meals in the evening, but this is rare, and on the whole going out to eat at night is much more expensive.
DrinksThe basic drinks to accompany food are water or beer. If you're drinking water, stick to bottled stuff (agua mineral or agua de Tehuacán) – it comes either plain (sin gas) or carbonated (con gas).
Jugos, licuados and refrescosSoft drinks (refrescos) – including Coke, Pepsi, Squirt (fun to pronounce in Spanish), and Mexican brands like apple-flavoured Sidral (which are usually extremely sweet) – are on sale everywhere. Far more tempting are the real fruit juices and licuados sold at shops and stalls displaying the "Jugos y Licuados" sign and known as jugerías or licuaderías. Juices (jugos) can be squeezed from anything that will go through the extractor. Orange (naranja) and carrot (zanahoria) are the staples, but you should also experiment with some of the more obscure tropical fruits such as soursop or mamey. Licuados are made of fruit mixed with water (licuado de agua or simply agua de…) or milk (licuado de leche) in a blender, usually with sugar added, and are always fantastic. Limonada (fresh lemonade) is also sold in many of these places, as are aguas frescas – flavoured cold drinks, of which the most common are horchata (rice milk flavoured with cinnamon) and agua de arroz (like an iced rice-pudding drink – delicious), agua de jamaica (hibiscus) or de tamarindo (tamarind). These are also often served in restaurants or sold in the streets from great glass jars. Make sure that any water and ice used is purified – street stalls are especially suspect in this regard. Juices and licuados are also sold at many ice-cream parlours – neverías or paleterías. The ice cream, more like Italian gelato than the heavy-cream US varieties, can also be fabulous and comes in a huge range of flavours.
Coffee and teaA great deal of coffee is produced in Mexico, and in the growing areas, especially the state of Veracruz, as well as in the traditional coffeehouses in the capital, you will be served superb coffee. In its basic form, café solo or negro, it is strong, black, often sweet (ask for it sin azúcar for no sugar), and comes in small cups. For weaker black coffee ask for café americano, though this may mean instant (if you do want instant, ask for "Nescafé"). White is café cortado or con un pocito de leche; café con leche can be delicious, made with all milk and no water (ask if it's "hecho de leche", made of milk). Espresso and cappuccino are often available too, or you may be offered café de olla – stewed in the pot for hours with cinnamon and sugar, it's thick, sweet and tasty. Outside traditional coffee areas, however, the coffee is often terrible, with only instant available.
Tea (té) is often available too, and you may well be offered a cup at the end of a comida. You may also be offered herb teas such as manzanillo (camomile) or yerbabuena (mint). If you get the chance to try traditional hot chocolate ("the drink of the Aztecs"), then do so – it's an extraordinary, spicy, semi-bitter concoction, quite unlike the milky bedtime drink of your childhood. Artisan chocolate shops sell the chocolate for this (you just add boiling water), and occasionally sell it as a drink too.
AlcoholYou'll normally be drinking in bars, the least heavy atmosphere among which is in hotel bars, tourist areas or anything that describes itself as a "ladies' bar". Cantinas are for serious drinking, traditionally macho places that were closed to women (they typically had a sign above the door prohibiting entry to "women, members of the armed forces and anyone in uniform"). Especially in big cities they are now more liberal, but in small, conservative places they remain exclusively male preserves with an atmosphere of drunken bonhomie and an undercurrent of readiness for a fight, where women may not be welcome and are sometimes still even banned.
If you don't feel comfortable in bars, you can buy alcohol from most shops, supermarkets and, cheapest of all, agencias, which are normally agents for just one brand. For bottles you pay a deposit: to get it back, keep your receipt and return your bottles to the same store. Bigger, 940ml bottles are known as caguamas (turtles), or in the case of Pacífico, ballenas (whales).
Beer and wineMexican beer (cerveza) is mostly light lager (cerveza clara) – usually light in flavour as well as colour. Sol, Tecate and Dos Equis are typical brands; if you want something more flavoursome try Modelo, Bohémia or Corona, or a dark (oscura) beer, of which the best are Negra Modelo, Indio and Bohémia Obscura. Microbreweries are increasingly springing up. Try a michelada, a beer cocktail made by adding ice, lime and Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces to dark beer and rimming the glass with salt. The milder chelada is a light beer mixed with plenty of lime and salt, and both are refreshing on a sunny day.
Wine (vino – tinto is red, blanco is white) is not seen a great deal, although Mexico does produce a fair number of perfectly good vintages. You're safest sticking to brand names like Hidalgo or Domecq, although it may also be worth experimenting with some of the new labels, especially those from Baja California, such as L. A. Cetto, which are attempting to emulate the success of their neighbours across the border and in many cases have borrowed American techniques and wine-makers.
Tequila, mescal and pulqueTequila, distilled from the cactus-like agave plant and produced mainly in the state of Jalisco, is the most famous Mexican spirit, usually taken with lime and salt, or a chile and tomato chaser called sangrita, but añejo or reposado tequila (aged in the vat), should be sipped straight, and not wasted in cocktails such as margarita (tequila, lime juice and triple sec – considered a ladies´ drink). Mexican law allows up to 49 percent cane or corn to be added to the agave from which tequila is made, so unless the label says "100% de agave", it won't be. The proprietary brands, José Cuervo and Sauza, make bog-standard white tequilas as well as smoother, aged versions (Cuervo Tradicional and Sauza Hornitos), but connoisseurs prefer posher makes such as Herradura or Don Julio. "Gold" tequila contains extraneous colourings and is worth avoiding.
Mescal (often spelled mezcal) is basically the same thing as tequila, but is made from a slightly different variety of plant, the maguey, and is younger and less refined. In fact, tequila was originally just a variety of mescal. The spurious belief that the worm in the mescal bottle is hallucinogenic is based on confusion between the drink and the peyote cactus, which is also called mescal, but by the time you've got down as far as the worm, you'll be too far gone to notice anyway.
Pulque, a mildly alcoholic milky beer made from the same maguey cactus, is the traditional drink of the poor and sold in special bars called pulquerías. The best comes from the State of Mexico, and is thick and viscous – it's a little like palm wine, and definitely an acquired taste. Unfermented pulque, called aguamiel, is sweet and non-alcoholic.
Other spirits and cocktailsDrinking other spirits, you should always ask for nacional, as anything imported is fabulously expensive. Rum (ron), gin (ginebra) and vodka are made in Mexico, as are some very palatable brandies (brandy or coñac – try San Marcos or Presidente). Most of the cocktails for which Mexico is known – margaritas, piñas coladas and so on – are available only in tourist areas or hotel bars, and are generally pretty strong.
SalsaMost Mexican food is not in itself terribly spicy – the fire comes from the red and green salsa supplied as condiments on the table, and the salsa can be a good guide to the quality of a restaurant. A place with a superior salsa on the table will probably serve up some decent food, whereas a place that takes no pride in its salsa is likely to treat its food in the same manner. To a certain extent you can tell from the presentation: a place that has grubby, rarely changed salsa dishes probably just refills them from a supermarket-bought can, and will not take the same pride in its food as a casero (home-cooking) restaurant that proudly puts its own salsa on the table in a nice bowl. Usually you get a red salsa and a green one, and sometimes bottled hot-sauce condiments too.
Nowadays, the red bowl may contain a raw, California-style salsa: tomato, onion, chile and coriander (cilantro) finely chopped together. More common, though, are the traditional cooked salsas: either green or red, and relatively mild (though start eating with caution, just in case). The recipes are – of course – closely guarded secrets, but the basic ingredients are tomato (the verdant Mexican tomatillo in green versions), onion and one or more of the hundreds of varieties of chile.


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Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, Champagne
Prestige Brut
Champagne Brut, NV
30% Chardonnay, 60% Pinot Noir,
10% Pinot Meunier
The Prestige wines from Philippe Gonet express the amiable, fun-loving side of Champagne without sacrificing the elegant family style. With beautiful aromatics of orchard fruits and brioche, the bubbles are relaxed yet precise, the texture is lush, and the finish is satisfying. The dosage is a little higher than the Gonet house style for touch more body, 8 g/l.
The Prestige wines were started by the late Philippe Gonet, crafted specifically for a friend and restaurateur back in the 70s in Paris. Named after his son, Pierre (now the winemaker), and his wife's maiden name, Cellier, the wines showcase an approachable fruity style only recently made available in the U.S. market. Made with the same precision and care from certified sustainable vineyards, HVE.
Prestige Brut Rosé
Champagne Brut Rosé, NV
90% Chardonnay, 10% Pinot Noir
What makes this rosé stand out is the high percentage of Chardonnay fruit from classified villages in the Côte des Blancs. A great value to be sure, a delicate rose color with aromas expressing red floral spice and raspberry fruits. The chalky minerality shines through the Chardonnay, creating complex bread notes and crushed-rock sensations. Very fresh with fine effervescence and drinkability.
The quality of the fruit and the pedigree of the vineyard sourcing can not be overstated for this rosé style Champagne. The Pinot Noir is sourced from the 1er Cru village of Vertus where the family was originally based in the 1800s. It is made into a still wine which is blended into the Chardonnay after fermentation is complete. The vineyards are certified sustainable under the relatively new, but highly respected, HVE certification.