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I've already written beginner's guides to Twitter, WordPress, SEO, and Blog Monetization, and the BlogWorld Blog also had a 101-level guide to Podcasting. Today, though, I wanted to back up even farther and write a mini guide for brand new bloggers. I can't tell you how many people I met at BlogWorld LA 2011 who are new and totally overwhelmed. We were all new bloggers once, and it's tough. This is the guide I wish someone had written for me when I started blogging.
What is Blogging?
First, let's start by defining what blogging really is. Easier said than done. In my opinion, a blog has two components:
- The content is regularly updated, rather than being static, with content arranged chronologically.
- Readers can interact with the content through comments, voting, social sharing, etc.
Not all blogs are updated daily or even weekly. Not all blogs have posts that are structured in a traditional format. Not all blogs have comments open. Not all blogs feature Twitter/Facebook/etc. share buttons. Some blogs feature the author's opinions very prominently. Others are more objective news sources.
There's a really great post by Darren Rowse on Problogger about what a blog really is. It's pretty old, but still helpful. I recommend you reading this post to learn more if you don't understand the different between a blog and another kind of website. Remember, the definition of a blog isn't set in stone.
Your Blog Content
Despite the inability to firmly describe what defines a blog, one thing is certain: you can't have a blog without content. Individual pieces of content are called "blog posts." You can also record video posts or podcasts.
A mistake that I commonly see: people confuse the words "blog" and "blog post." If you write one post per day, don't say that you are writing one blog per day. Someone can hire you to "write ten blog posts" but they likely wouldn't hire you to "write ten blogs" (if they do, that means you're going to be VERY busy, since that means you're writing for ten individual websites). Basically, "blog" is the website and "blog posts" or just "posts" are the articles.
Many bloggers choose to blog in a specific niche. A niche is a specific topic, so all of your blog posts will revolve around this topic. It does go a little farther, though – your niche also includes a specific target market. Essentially, you want to ask, "who will be my reader?" and write posts for that group of people. David Risley wrote a great post about how to evaluate the viability of a niche (if you want to monetize your blog) that I recommend checking out.
You can also blog in a more journal style. Online diaries are extremely difficult to monetize unless you're a celebrity or well-known personality, but there are no rules to blogger. You can write about whatever you want.
Your Blog's Sidebar
Most blogs have a sidebar, and some have two (one on either side). You can put whatever you you want on your sidebar, but here are a few things that bloggers typically include:
- A way to subscribe to the blog's RSS feed
- A way to subscribe to the blog's mailing list
- A search bar
- A list of the most recent posts
- A list of the most popular posts
- The categories
- A list of the most recent comments
- Social profile buttons
- Advertisements
- Links to niche resources
- Photos
- Videos
This is not by far an exhaustive list. You can include anything on the sidebar that you want! Keep in mind that the sidebar real estate "above the fold" (i.e., viewable before a reader has to start strolling) is more valuable, so put your most important stuff at the top or sell ads placed in these spots for more money.
Blogging Platforms
A blogging "platform" is the program you'll use to update your blog. I mean, you can do it manually by updating the code of your website every day, but this is super inefficient, even if you are awesome at coding. You want to choose a blogging platform.
The two most common platforms are WordPress and Blogger. Both have free versions so you can start a blog without paying for your own domain name and hosting, but your URL will be blogname.wordpress.com or blogname.blogspot.com. I highly recommend that you pay for your own domain name and hosting (there are options available for less than $5 per month) if you want anything more than an online diary. It's hard to monetize if your blog doesn't look professional.
WordPress and Blogger are both easy to use and have great service, so check them both out before making your decision. They're also not your only options if you want to blog on your own domain name, but they are pretty widely used because they're free to download and put on your own domain. Here are some other options:
- Typepad is an easy-to-use option, though this is not a free content management system for bloggers (though your monthly fee also include a domain name/hosting, so it isn't a bad deal)
- Moveable Type is free for bloggers
- Tumblr is an option, with a great built-in community, but you don't have the option to use your own domain (all blogs are blogname.tumblr.com)
- Squarespace is an option that's super easy to use, but with customization limitations
- Drupal is a traditional content management system that can be used for blogging and is loved by coders
There's a really great post about blogging platforms on Practical Ecommerce that I recommend you read. My heart lies with WordPress!
Your Blogging Goals
I always recommend that brand new bloggers start by defining your blogging goals, since that will dictate the type of content you write, your monetization efforts, etc. Here are some goals you might have:
- Teach others something you know
- Inspire readers in a certain area
- Provide entertainment
- Promote a business, product ,or service
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field
- Make money online
- Vent your feelings and voice your opinions
- Network with other people in a specific niche
Many blogs do more than one things on the above list, but it helps to establish your main goal so you can ensure that every single blog post you write helps you achieve that main goal. A good way of figuring out what you goal is to ask yourself this: When my readers think of me and my blog, what impression do I want in their minds?
Do you want to be the opinionated girl who teaches others about gardening? Do you want to be the blog that has the awesome country music community? Do you want to be the go-to source for information about new ice cream products?
Some Final Tips for Blogging Beginners
If you have more questions, I'd love to answer them for you – just ask in the comments section below. Here are a few more tips for beginning bloggers:
- Be consistent. You don't have to blog once a day, but it helps to establish how often you're going to blog not only to help you maintain a schedule, but also to help your readers know when to expect new content.
- Give your readers a way to sign up for a mailing list. Even if you don't email them right now, collecting those emails one by one is going to help you in the future.
- Have pages that talk about who your are, what your blog is about, and how to contact you. Make sure they'll all linked clearly in your navigation menu.
- Use 5-10 tags with every post to help readers find more posts on your blog relating to the same subject (and to help with SEO).
- When designing your blog, make sure that it looks good in every browser, especially Internet Explore, which has a tendency to break websites that look awesome in other browsers.
- Make sure you have a mobile version of your website. It's really easy to use a plugin to create an automatic mobile version if you use WordPress.
- Don't overwhelm with categories. You want your options to be clear, but if you have 50 categories, it's hard to keep them all updated. Instead, go for main categories that are broader and subcategories to help further organize content.
- Use pictures to help make your blog more personal (if that makes sense for your niche and writing style).
- Make sure your blog is search-engine friendly. Our SEO guide can help you with that.
What tips have I missed? Experienced bloggers, help me out!


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Luca Burgalassi – Fragments lyrics
On my knees
To pick up
The broken pieces from the ground
Since our
Porcelain building
Shattered on the floor
And every fragment
Is a new wound
Needing to be cured
And every fragment
Is just
A fragment to forget
And you?
Are you in front of the mirror,
Criticized by your own image
Pretending to defend yourself
When no one's there attacking you?
Now I find
Small pieces everywhere
At every step
I'm afraid to cut myself
Was equilibrium
And you knew
It could break down easily
To rebuild
Is not easy
Not as clear as before
May crumble down again
And you?
Are you inside the mirror
Criticizing your own image
And still attacking
Who is no longer defending?

subset: commoncrawl


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Tuesday, April 4, 2006
My "Hamburger Patties" are spicy, therefore I consider them as being "sexy" because, in my house, blandness is regarded as a blasphemy! I love tasty food and I NEED strong aromas that joyfully flirt with my tastebuds and nosebuds!!! Those beef burgers are fully satisfying and their divine flavor is so boostive that you'll ask for more!!!...
So, please do your hamburgers a favour, fill them up with those explosive patties and give them the sex-appeal they deserve!!!
This recipe comes out from no other place than my kitchen (aka the spice chamber) where I play the alchemist for my biggest pleasure and also yours!...
Yields about 6-8 patties
500g Ground beef
1 Small onion, chopped
3/4 Tsp Garlic powder or 1-2 Cloves garlic, crushed
4 Tbs Quick oats
1 1/2 Tsp Cornflour (optional)
10-20 Drops Red tabasco
1 Tbs Oyster sauce
1/2 Tbs Fish sauce
1/3 Tsp Mild curry powder
1 Tsp Dried thyme
1/2 Tsp Dried oregano
1 Tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Pinch Paprika powder
Pepper to taste
Salt to taste
Flour for coating
1. In a big bowl, mix all ingredients together.
2. Knead the meat with your hands until it is homogenously mixed, about 5 minutes.
3. Shape meat into flat patties and slightly coat them with flour.
4. Fry until the patties are cooked through and golden brown
You can knead the meat as you would do with bread dough.
Serving Suggestions:
Eat accompanied by rice or pastas, or use it for your 100% homemade hamburgers. For more hamburger information and recipes click here.
(Raw patties -Pic by http://pus.inmagine.com)
(Hamburgers -Pic by www.wholefoodsmarket.com)
14 comments:
i love burger too...but dont speak english! sorry...ReplyDelete
LOULOU: Merci de la visite! Tes hamburgers sont aussi magnifiques...ReplyDelete
- Anonymous5:29 PM, April 04, 2006
La photo, la recette...J'adore !
Il y a fort à parier que ces hamburgers figureront bientôt au menu chez nous ;O)
Merci pour l'idée...
Ça donne vraiment très envie de mordre dedans!ReplyDelete
Hamburger or tartare baked ? I like too... and yours hamburgers are so sexxxxyyyyReplyDelete
Ces hamburger ne sont pas sexy... ils sont le pêché de gourmandise à eux tout seuls !!! et moi je suis prêt à l'enfer!!!ReplyDelete
- Anonymous4:54 AM, April 05, 2006
Yes, sexy hamburgers! I love them! I love the spices that you have put in them. I'm going to have to try this for myself!ReplyDelete
INGRID: Merci (bien que les photos ne soient pas de moi)! J'espère que cette recette te plaira...ReplyDelete
FABIENNE: I'm ready for both versions! Thanks (although I didn't shoot those pictures)...
DORIANN: ;-))), alors, dans ce cas, tu es déjà en enfer car tu as vendu ton âme au diable!!!
PAZ: Thanks! I'm a spice freak and have to add them (nearly) everywhere, therefore my patties are so colourful taste-wise. If you don't like to have so many spices, then you can also reduce the quantities (but I really recommend you to keep the fish and oyster sauce)... I hope you'll like them!
- Anonymous9:05 PM, April 05, 2006
Looks delicious! Only just discoved your site tonight, great to come across another Swiss based food blog!!ReplyDelete
- Anonymous5:19 PM, April 18, 2006
I tried this recipe the other day. It was delicious!ReplyDelete
PAZ: I'm glad you liked this recipe! Thanks...ReplyDelete
- Anonymous8:42 PM, May 18, 2009
The turquoise type is almost impossible to read.ReplyDelete
Cute, maybe.
Totally impractical.
ANONYMOUS: Thanks for passing by and for leaving a comment! Now, things have changed (new posts with different colors)...ReplyDelete
Whoa, woman! You don't play around with your burgers. That is quite a long list of ingredients but sounds delicious.ReplyDelete
"give them the sex-appeal they deserve" - You're funny : D


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It's a chewy mint-shaped craft! It's a ring! No, it's a jellyfish?Britain on Thursday released 35 previously classified files documenting sightings of unidentified flying objects by the military and members of the public dating back to the 1950s.
The files contain around 8,500 pages, which mainly cover the period from 1997 to 2005 and include photographs, drawings and descriptions of flying saucer sightings, as well as letters the Ministry of Defence sent eyewitnesses in response to their accounts.
Policemen, a soldier, a Royal Air Force officer and members of the public report sightings of objects including a "chewy mint-shaped solid craft" and aerial objects resembling a "ring," a "jellyfish" and a "silver voile spin top."
In one account, a man said he believed he had been abducted by aliens in October 1998 after seeing an unidentified craft hover over his London home and finding he had gained an hour of time in the process.
"It was a large cigar-shaped vehicle with big projectiles on each side like wings," he told the MoD.
"It seemed to have two very bright lights at the front and a white light flashing round and round underneath ... As you can imagine, I felt quite shaken."
The MoD wrote to the man informing him that the object was probably an airship, adding that the time he had gained was probably the result of the clocks being put back one hour on the night of his close encounter.
Another file released by the National Archives reveals how the RAF was inundated with calls one morning in 1967 after residents of southern England awoke to find six small beeping UFOs lying in a perfect line from the Isle of Sheppey to the Bristol Channel.
A bomb disposal unit blew up one of the UFOs, another was airlifted to the southeastern village of Aldermaston and both the army and the MoD's intelligence unit were mobilized for what was considered a real "alien invasion."
It was later discovered that engineering students at Farnborough Technical College had constructed and positioned the UFOs in a bid to raise money for charity.
"It does raise some questions about what really would happen if at any time in the future there was some kind of instant - would we be prepared?" said David Clarke, author of "The UFO Files" and consultant to the National Archives' UFO project.
One of the files documents the experiences of a retired RAF officer who said he saw a UFO while on holiday in Sri Lanka in April 2004 and sent the MoD supporting photographs.
"I noticed a partial aura in the sky, a minute or so later, there was a clap of thunder, then a short while later a ring like a doughnut appeared," he told the MoD, adding that he thought it was an "air burst."
In its reply, the MoD suggested he contact the Sri Lankan government.
Other highlights include a UFO policy file from 1997 which reveals how the Ministry of Defence handled UFO reports and a file detailing the only full debate about UFOs ever to be held in Britain's House of Lords - in January 1979.
The MoD said it investigated every UFO sighting report it received to determine "whether there is any evidence that the United Kingdom's airspace might have been compromised by hostile or unauthorized air activity."
*The files are available to download free of charge for one month at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos.
Reuters Life!


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Ozzy Osbourne's Former Bassist Bob Daisley Gives His Side of Reissues Story
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne's pivotal metal releases, 'Blizzard of Ozz,' and, 'Diary of a Madman,' camp Osbourne recently unleashed re-mastered issues of both albums, including a box set toting previously unreleased live tapings, a coffee table book and other metal-happy goodies.
Fans rejoiced at the fresh reissues, chiefly because bass slinger Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake's playing on the recordings had been restored. If you recall, on the previous 2002 reissues, the booming rhythm section of Daisley and Kerslake was re-taped, note-for-note, by different musicians, duo to nasty arguments over songwriting credits and royal payments. Fans didn't take to it, and things got messy.
Now, Daisley and Kerslake are back in their rightful spot, and the fresh recordings sound astounding. All's well that ends well, right?
As the story continues, Daisley is finishing up his memoir, brazenly named "For Facts Sake!" He's truly telling all when it comes to his place in Ozzy's band and feelings about the situation. Long story short, Daisley feels he was wronged and wants to explain his side of the story.
For one, Daisley says the 2011 reissue could have packed much more material than what actually made the release. "There'd been talk about it during 2010, and it was then that I offered to supply tapes of our rehearsals and writing sessions, to go as proper bonus material," he told Rock Cellar Magazine. "And I just said that I wanted a royalty out of it, because it's my stuff. But they wouldn't do it because they didn't want to give me a royalty – they just wanted to buy it.
"So no agreement was made, and as a result the bonus material in the box set is minimal, which is unfortunate because I know the fans want to hear the stuff that I've got – recordings of the writing sessions, rehearsals and the songs taking shape. But the Osbournes wouldn't come to the table, y'know. I didn't even ask for an equal royalty, it was just a small royalty I wanted because it's my stuff…"
Daisley added that he had "literally hours and hours of tapes I've got from us writing those albums and rehearsing it" that could have gone into the set. "You can hear the songs changing, the different parts taking shape, and all this stuff would have been perfect bonus material for the box set. Sadly, the Osbournes are just too greedy and self-absorbed."
What are your thoughts on Daisley's side of the story?


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Brown Quail
Brown quail were introduced to New Zealand as game birds in the 1860s and 1870s. However, the South Island liberations failed and now they are common only north of Auckland and in parts of the Bay of Plenty.
Their natural range is southern Indonesia, New Guinea, and Australia. It has been mooted that a species of the Australian brown quail was also native to New Zealand but the introduction of stocks of the same species from Australia makes it difficult to confirm.
The brown quail are an overall brownish colour, finely patterned with black and when scuttling for cover may be mistaken for a rat.
Rougher country is preferred with places to hide although, if pressed, will fly upwards with a whir of wings before landing in cover and quickly disappearing.


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The answer to treating painful arthritis could lie in an age old herbal remedy -- frankincense, according to Cardiff University scientists. Cardiff scientists have been examining the potential benefits of frankincense to help relieve and alleviate the symptoms of the condition.
"The search for new ways of relieving the symptoms of inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis is a long and difficult one," according to Dr Emma Blain, who leads the research with her co-investigators Professor Vic Duance from Cardiff University's School of Biosciences and Dr Ahmed Ali of the Compton Group.
"The South West of England and Wales has a long standing connection with the Somali community who have used extracts of frankincense as a traditional herbal remedy for arthritic conditions.
"What our research has focused on is whether and how these extracts can help relieve the inflammation that causes the pain," she added.
The Cardiff scientists believe they have been able to demonstrate that treatment with an extract of Boswellia frereana -- a rare frankincense species -- inhibits the production of key inflammatory molecules which helps prevent the breakdown of the cartilage tissue which causes the condition.
Dr Ali adds: "The search for new drugs to alleviate the symptoms of conditions like inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis is a priority area for scientists. What our research has managed to achieve is to use innovative chemical extraction techniques to determine the active ingredient in frankincense.
"Having done this we are now able to further characterise the chemical entity and compare its success against other anti-inflammatory drugs used for treating the condition."
The research comes as a result of a seedcorn project, funded by the Severnside Alliance for Translational Research (SARTRE), through the MRC Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme devolved portfolio.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Cardiff University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Cite This Page:


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HOLLYWOOD, California (CNN) -- Singer Christina Aguilera joined fellow Grammy Award winners Alicia Keys and John Legend for "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute," which honored the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2008.
Christina Aguilera performs her hit single "Beautiful" at "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute."
The show, taped before an audience of more than 2,500 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, premiered on the global networks of CNN on Thanksgiving night.
Liz McCartney, dedicated to helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina rebuild their homes, was named 2008 CNN Hero of the Year.
McCartney, who will receive $100,000 to continue her work just outside New Orleans, was selected from among the top 10 CNN Heroes after six weeks of online voting at CNN.com. More than 1 million votes were cast.
"To the country and the world, I ask you to please join us," said McCartney, of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. "Together we can continue to rebuild families' homes and lives. ... If you join us, we'll be unstoppable."
Hosted by CNN's Anderson Cooper, "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" featured musical performances by Aguilera, Keys and Legend.
Keys sang "Superwoman," her tribute to women around the world, from her hit album "As I Am." Aguilera performed her hit single "Beautiful."
Legend, backed by the world-renowned Agape Choir, performed "If You're Out There," from his just-released album, "Evolver."
All three performances echoed the spirit of the CNN Heroes campaign, which salutes everyday people accomplishing extraordinary things in their communities and beyond.
"In this time of economic turmoil, it is such a relief to know that there are people like these heroes, people who care more for others than they do for themselves," Cooper said.
The top 10 CNN Heroes, chosen by a blue-ribbon panel from an initial pool of more than 3,700 viewer nominations, were each honored with a documentary tribute and introduced by a celebrity presenter. Each of the top 10 Heroes receives $25,000.
Actors Cameron Diaz, Salma Hayek, John Krasinski, Forest Whitaker, Meg Ryan, Terrence Howard, Lucy Liu, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale and Selena Gomez were among the stars joining in CNN's tribute to the top 10. See key moments from the show, including presentations and performances »
In addition, actor Hugh Jackman presented People magazine's 2008 Heroes Among Us award to six recipients honored by the magazine.
Award-winning producer-director Joel Gallen returned to executive produce this year's program. Among his credits, Gallen produced telethon events supporting victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, winning an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award for "America: A Tribute to Heroes."
The Kodak Theatre is best known as the first permanent home of the Academy Awards.
In alphabetical order, the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2008 as chosen by the blue-ribbon panel are:
Tad Agoglia, Houston, Texas: Agoglia's First Response Team provides immediate help to areas hit by natural disasters. In a little more than a year, he and his crew have helped thousands of victims at more than 15 sites across the United States, free of charge.
Yohannes Gebregeorgis, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Moved by the lack of children's books and literacy in his native Ethiopia, Gebregeorgis established Ethiopia Reads, bringing free public libraries and literacy programs to thousands of Ethiopian children.
Carolyn LeCroy, Norfolk, Virginia: After serving time in prison, LeCroy started the Messages Project to help children stay connected with their incarcerated parents. She and volunteer camera crews have taped roughly 3,000 messages from inmates to their children.
Anne Mahlum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: On her daily morning jogs, Mahlum used to run past homeless men. Today, she's helping to transform lives by running with them, and others as part of her Back On My Feet program.
Liz McCartney, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana: McCartney moved to New Orleans to dedicate herself to helping Hurricane Katrina survivors move back into their homes. Her nonprofit, St. Bernard Project, has rebuilt the homes of more than 120 families for free.
Phymean Noun, Toronto, Ontario: Growing up in Cambodia, Noun struggled to complete high school. Today, she offers hundreds of Cambodian children who work in Phnom Penh's trash dump a way out through free schooling and job training.
David Puckett, Savannah, Georgia: Puckett started PIPO Missions to bring ongoing prosthetic and orthotic care to those in need. Since November 2000, he has helped more than 420 people in southeastern Mexico, free of charge.
Maria Ruiz, El Paso, Texas: Several times a week, Ruiz crosses the border into Juarez, Mexico, bringing food, clothing and toys to hundreds of impoverished children and their families.
Marie Da Silva, Los Angeles, California: Having lost 14 family members to AIDS, the nanny funds a school in her native Malawi, where half a million children have been orphaned by the disease.
Viola Vaughn, Kaolack, Senegal: The Detroit, Michigan, native moved to Senegal to retire. Instead, a group of failing schoolchildren asked her to help them pass their classes. Today, her 10,000 Girls program is helping hundreds of girls succeed in school and run their own businesses.


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Last time I told an unofficial farewell to winter without even bothering to ask whether it has decided to go away or not. It turned out that it is here to stay and we, as people living in Istanbul should accept the fact that we will go through a cool summer this year. For me cool days are only bearable with a bowl of tasty soup. So this time I share a recipe that will turn your otherwise humble soup into a five star feast.
Remember the most delicious soup you've ever had. Why do you think it is that tasty? What makes it different from a regular soup is the use of a flavorful stock instead of water. Using plain water is more practical for sure but when it comes to taste, difference is like between French butter and margarine. Using a fish, chicken, beef or vegetable stock according to your main soup ingredients elevates the overall taste and leaves a rich flavor on your taste buds. I prefer using vegetable stock since it goes very well almost with anything and is lighter compared to other variations. Moreover, you can use it in other meat and poultry dishes, vegetable stews, sauces, risottos or simply almost everywhere.
Good thing about preparing a full-flavor vegetable stock is that you can make it by using leftovers in your vegetable tray without visiting the market in your neighborhood. Whatever you have at home will do the job. So nice and refined and almost for free, I'll call it as economies of scraps. Besides, it is healthier than the store bought bouillon cubes, ingredients of which you may never know exactly.
There are hundreds of vegetable stock recipes out there and there is no right or wrong combination. In other words, making vegetable stock is more like combining your outfits, as long as they look good on you, there ain't no problem. However, if you are not a mix&match person with a proven success, a French classic may lead you the way: mirepoix, which means the combination of celery, carrot, and onion in raw, roasted or sauteed form used as a flavor base for most of the dishes. You may use many other vegetables but be careful with cabbage and broccoli since they have quite strong flavors to dominate over other ingredients. Keep in mind that starchy vegetables like potato will make your stock look more cloudy and thicker. Adding some fresh herbs and pepper corns will make your stock even more fragrant which is something good to enrich its taste.
When it comes to cooking there are two ways to follow: browning vegetables in olive oil before adding water or directly boiling them without pre-cooking. By following the second way you will end up with a more clear stock in terms of looks however I prefer the first one since browned vegetables release their aromas and develop a sweeter flavor which adds more complexity to the stock.
You can be generous while preparing your vegetable stock and refrigerate the unused portion for future use. Having such a delicious base under hand will save your life when you need to make a quick soup or a sauce.
Ingredients (around 4 cups)
- 3-4 celery sticks, chopped
- 4-5 small tomatoes, halved
- 1 mid sized onion, chopped
- 1 stalk of leek, chopped
- 3 mid sized carrots, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
- 6 sprigs of fresh parsley
- 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
- 1 1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 5-6 white and pink pepper corns
- 5-6 black pepper corns
- 2 bay leaves
- Sea salt
- 5 cups of water
|Heat olive oil in a heavy bottom sauce pan or a stock pot over medium heat.
|Add onion garlic, celery, leek and carrot. Cook, covered until all vegetables start to sweat and pay attention to stirring frequently. When they are a little browned add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a simmer and cover the pan with its lid. Gently simmering vegetables is the optimum way to extract their distinct flavors, high heat may give harm to delicate ones.
|Cook vegetable stock for 45 minutes or until it gains a rich full vegetable flavor by testing every 10 minutes. Skim any surface scum. Discard vegetables by straining the stock.


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Central hacking seconds
Sapphire glass, convex, antireflective coating on both sides
Date display
Watch Details
- case
- Movement
- Features
- Care For Your Watch
- 18 ct 5N gold case
- Diameter 37.0 mm
- Height 9.2 mm
- Water resistance 3.0 bar
- 35111 Calibre
- Automatic, self-winding
- 42 hours Power Reserve
- Frequency 28'800 VPH (4 Hz)
- 163 Components
- 25 Jewels
- Central hacking seconds
- Sapphire glass, convex, antireflective coating on both sides
- Date display
It involves a full overhaul of the timepiece and is a complex, largerly manual task that takes several hours.
Learn how to clean your watch, wind it and more in our six-part "How To…" video series.
We offer three methods of delivery:
Standard: 5-7 business days* Express: 2 business days* Urgent: next business day**
Orders purchases online or by phone can be returned within 30 days free of charge.
Would you like to visit us? Find the IWC boutique or service centre that is closest to your location.
Register to become a member of my IWC and benefit from a 6-year extension to the standard 2-year international limited warranty.
Portofino Automatic 37
A purist design and a touch of luxury: with a case measuring 37 millimetres in diameter, this simple, elegant three-hand timepiece fits perfectly round a slender wrist.
Portofino Automatic 37
A purist design and a touch of luxury: with a case measuring 37 millimetres in diameter, this simple, elegant three-hand timepiece fits perfectly round a slender wrist.
The opulent design and slightly smaller case of the Portofino Automatic 37 are a source of delight for devotees of timeless wristwatches. A dark brown alligator leather strap from Santoni was selected for the 5N gold model with 12 diamonds on the silver-plated dial. The precious stones of exceptionally high quality give the watch a radiance of its own, while the design itself remains sleek and simple. The fine sun-pattern finish on the dial reflects light in a myriad of different ways, while the polished surfaces of the case give the watch an opulent style of its own. In addition to the hour, minute and seconds hands, the watch, which is water-resistant to 3 bar, also features a rapid-advance date display. All of these functions are powered by the 35111-calibre mechanical automatic movement.
6 Variations
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SPARTA, TN–Noted author, social critic, and political gadfly Christopher Hitchens was once again the focus of controversy Monday, when he was forcibly removed from Happy Trails trailer park following a drunken confrontation with Noreen Bodell, 39, his common-law wife of 14 years.
Responding to a domestic-disturbance call, police arrived at the couple's double-wide trailer at approximately 2:15 p.m. to find Hitchens and Bodell throwing dishes at each other. When the officers attempted to remove Hitchens from the premises, the leftist intellectual became physically and verbally abusive toward the officers, calling them "shitkickers," "bitches," and "effete liberal apologists for the atrocities of late-stage capitalism."
Having consumed what sources described as "a substantial amount of single-malt scotch," Hitchens then burst into tears, yelling, "That woman never understood me for who I am. I want to talk to [Harper's editor Lewis] Lapham. Lapham's the only one who understands me."
Charged with disturbing the peace, Hitchens was taken to the Sparta police station at 3 p.m. and released four hours later.
Little is known about Bodell, a heavy-set blonde who has been known to use several different surnames. According to sources familiar with the couple, the incident marks the third time in as many weeks that police have been forced to intervene in their volatile relationship.
"We're down at the old Hitchens place probably twice a month at least," said Sgt. Wilson Vernon, the first of three officers to arrive at the scene. "Once his blood's up, old Hitch can get meaner than a three-legged coon hound. From what the neighbors told us about this latest incident, Noreen was all worked up, accusing him of drinking and womanizing. He was angry with her refusal to acknowledge that there is ample evidence to make a case for prosecuting Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. She just kept shouting, 'No, there ain't!'"
Police were initially summoned when neighbors reported hearing shouting and a loud crash, followed by a rambling polemic on Kissinger's alleged covert approval of Indonesia's illegal invasion of East Timor in 1975.
Though the belligerent Hitchens required three officers to subdue him, police do not consider the incident serious, calling it "business as usual" and describing Hitchens as a "hot-tempered but essentially harmless provocateur for the Far Left."
"Hitch is an all-right guy once he sobers up," Vernon said. "He just gets a little wound-up sometimes, like when his woman stays out all night down at Smokey Joe's Tavern, or he has a deadline looming for his Vanity Fair column."
Hitchens' run-ins with the law have not been restricted to Sparta city limits. In May 2002, he was arrested for drunkenly singing 1930s union songs while driving a stolen riding lawnmower through the streets of Boston, where he was attending an international women's-rights conference. Hitchens accused police of "atavistic, morally reprehensible Stalinist scare tactics" before being bailed out by conference organizers the following morning.
Sgt. Ed Poole of Boston's 11th Precinct said there was no love lost between Hitchens and his arresting officers.
"Word got around the station that this guy wrote a whole book claiming that Mother Teresa was a stooge of right-wing dictators," Poole recalled. "Supposedly, he said her hypocritical approach to charity for the poor of Calcutta, as well as her steadfast advocacy of the Catholic Church's doctrine prohibiting birth control, made her an essentially immoral individual undeserving of the mantle of sainthood. Well, a lot of the boys here are Irish-Catholic born and raised, and they don't take too kindly to people speaking ill of nuns."
Town officials in Sparta, where Hitchens has maintained an on-again, off-again residence for two decades, admit that he may be "a handful" at times, but they insist he is not a danger to himself or others.
"If I know Hitch, by the end of the week, he and Noreen'll be back together, cuddlin' and kissin', just as happy as two crawdads in a pond," Sparta Police Chief Buck Perkins said. "We don't get a lot of ultra-progressive agitators 'round these parts, but Hitch is okay. Plus, he earned a lot of points with the townsfolk for his vocal criticism of the anti-war movement. Even though he was attacking the war opponents from the left, folks around here don't necessarily understand the implications of that, so he's an all-right Joe in their book."
Added Perkins: "So long as Hitch can learn to keep his mouth shut about Christianity being symptomatic of the 'savage and ignorant prehistory of our species' and whatnot, I'm sure he'll cause no trouble that a few cups of black coffee and a night in the drunk tank can't solve."


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The majority of women in America who seek abortions are already moms. Some of them are too poor to afford another child, but others potentially could — they simply choose not to. Is this choice such a bad thing?
On Monday, Slate's Lauren Sandler reported that since 2008, a full 72% of women seeking abortions from clinics run by the National Abortion Federation already had at least one child. Sandler writes that "most mothers who abort say they are doing so to protect the kids they already have" and "that rationale is tough to demonize politically, especially when you consider that most women making this choice are contending with some combination of low income, unemployment, and a lack of health insurance, or are struggling to raise kids on their own." It's certainly true that the recession has increased the pressures on many moms, and it's ironic that those who oppose abortion are often those who also oppose a social safety net that could help mothers support their kids. But what about the moms who are doing okay, who have health insurance and a decent income but choose to abort anyway? Former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt tells Sandler, "The less in control of a woman's life she is, the more the public supports her right to make that choice [to have an abortion]. The more she is in control of her life, saying this is the life I choose, the less people support it."
Over at the Times, Judith Warner casts this suspicion of women in control as part of "the enduring, not well-acknowledged, insidious and quite endemic hostility toward well-educated professional women that exists in our culture." She explains,
At a time when so many people, including increasing numbers of men, feel as if they have so very little control in their lives, a person who does (or is believed to) have choices — some modicum of control over her fate — is perhaps a prime target for resentment and vitriol. Which makes me wonder further: if "choice" is now perceived as the purview of the privileged few, the abortion rights movement may need to find itself a new slogan.
This makes a certain amount of sense — now more than ever before, having options may be seen as (and really be) a privilege. But the idea that abortion should only be a last resort is older than the recession. If there's any way you can possibly carry a child to term, the thinking goes, you should. And this idea makes sense, especially for those who find themselves on the fence in the abortion debate — if you're uncomfortable with abortion, it's easier to countenance it for someone who sees no other options than for someone who selects it from among several possible choices. That's actually fine — the beauty of being pro-choice is you don't have to like what someone else decides. All you have to do is affirm her freedom to decide it, whether she does so in comfort, in poverty, or somewhere in between.
The Mother Majority [Slate]
Is 'Choice' Less Accepted For Mothers? [NYT]
Image via Vasaleks/Shutterstock.com


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The 10 Best Verve Songs
Few British bands from the 1990s, Britpop or otherwise, have been pushed to the sidelines more forcefully than the Verve. I can think of, well, quite a few reasons for this. You've got their singer, Richard Ashcroft, a perfectly arrogant British rock star who continues to play that role even as his solo output has devolved into a mixed bag of adult-contemporary singer-songwriter-isms (the similarities between Ashcroft and Russell Brand's Aldous Snow character are too striking to be coincidental). Ashcroft doesn't possess the cartoonish hilarity of the Gallaghers, or the mellowed-out likeability of Damon Albarn, or the bookishly, charmingly avuncular vibe of Jarvis Cocker. Having only released four albums and having broken up three times, the Verve's statistics are somewhat Spinal Tap-worthy, or at the very least make them Britpop's answer to Jane's Addiction. (Which I guess isn't terrible? But still.) There's the very simple fact that they are associated with Britpop while actually being quite a bit different tonally and thematically. Where the big three of Oasis, Blur, and Pulp, all grappled directly with topics and images of Britishness, the Verve were always looking pretty much exclusively inward. They sounded like they had more to do with U2 and that they listened to American alternative well before Blur opened up to it. Unfailingly, they sounded very serious, when even Britpop figures as self-inflated as the Gallagher brothers provided punchlines at rapid-fire speed.
Very simply, though, the Verve were never firmly a part of the American conception of the Britpop narrative. Our main pop interaction with the band was a handful of successful singles from 1997's Urban Hymns, which was the band's final album for a long time until they released Forth in 2008 (which was actually a good deal better than it had any business being, though it isn't represented on this list). If you went to college in the last twenty years, you heard some guy playing "Wonderwall" in his dorm room enough that by the time you graduated you were ready to burn everything in sight made of wood as soon as that first chord echoed out. Blur and Pulp both remained relevant for the fact that you can hear their influence in a young indie band every now and then far more than, say, you'd hear the influence of an American contemporary like Pearl Jam or Soundgarden. Even if they don't know the name Damon Albarn, plenty of American listeners know Gorillaz. None of this happened for the Verve. Inescapably, people remember "Bittersweet Symphony" as "that song that plays at the end of Cruel Intentions," which, let's be real, has Ryan Philippe in it. When I mentioned I was revisiting the Verve's catalog to write a top ten list, a friend quipped: "The Verve have more than one song worth writing about?" which was the exact joke I'd anticipated. He followed it up: "Semi-honest question."
Quite frankly, that's why we're talking about the Verve. Because, somehow, they've disappeared a bit, at least for American listeners under a certain age, and the reality is that they have some woefully overlooked music. First and foremost is that if you just hear a few stray Urban Hymnstracks, the Verve come off as a late-'90s pop-rock band. They're more than that. It depends on how widely you define shoegaze, but their debut A Storm In Heaven is probably one of the unsung works in the genre; or, alternatively, it's an excellent psychedelic record and an overlooked '90s classic. When I first got into the Verve, A Northern Soul was my distant least favorite, but my appreciation for it has grown over the years. It's a harrowing thing of multiple emotional peaks and valleys, often within the same song. It occurred to me that A Northern Soul will turn 20 next year, and probably won't qualify for the sort of retrospective we'll bestow on Pulp's His 'N' Hers or Blur's Parklife this week. And, fair enough — the Verve had demonstrably less influence and reach than those bands at the time, only becoming true pop successes with their then-swan song Urban Hymns, and then only really in the UK.
So it's with some degree of irony that Stereogum's Britpop Week struck me as the right time to talk about the Verve's ten best songs. I'm not sure we'd think to write about them at any other time, or that you would've thought to listen to them at any other time. They, to a certain degree like Spiritualized, were more so a British band making excellent music that happened to have some similarities with the big, overarching Britpop movement, but weren't quite part of it themselves. There's some degree of counter-narrative here: this is one of the great British bands of the '90s, but they aren't entirely relevant to the story of Britain in the '90s. And here are ten of their songs that you should listen to.
10. "The Drugs Don't Work" (from Urban Hymns, 1997)
To be entirely honest, I wasn't all that enthusiastic about putting "The Drugs Don't Work" on this list. It's never been one of my favorites on Urban Hymns, and I was tempted to write about "Space And Time" or "Weeping Willow" instead. But, in fairness, it seems too major to ignore if we're considering the Verve's top ten songs during a week of writing devoted to the legacy of Britpop. "The Drugs Don't Work" is easily the Verve's second best-known song, somehow the sort of thing that seems ripe for YouTube covers with people playing an acoustic guitar alone in their room. It was their biggest hit in the UK, garnering them their only #1 on their home country's Singles Chart. And even though it had nothing to do with Princess Diana, it was released the day after her death and some still associate it with that specific time in England's history (which, notably, marks one of the moments where the Verve was more directly entangled with mainstream British culture, and thus more "Britpop-ish," even though it came at the tail end of the Britpop era). Meaning-wise, different corners of the internet will tell you different things: that it's about a collapsing relationship and the narrator/Ashcroft watching his lover descend into drug abuse, or that it's about Ashcroft's experience of watching his father die from cancer. Back when they were touring A Northern Soul, Ashcroft would apparently play the song some nights and would sing "Now the drugs don't work/ They just make me worse," instead of the "make you worse" that'd eventually wind up on the record. Given the always-high levels of toxicity that defined the Verve's camp, it's not a stretch to interpret "The Drugs Don't Work" as having a layered meaning, dealing with Ashcroft watching himself go down a certain road but reflecting that experience through having watched others wither away in different circumstances. I still think acoustic balladry was a path of diminishing returns for Ashcroft's songwriting, and not the Verve's main strength, but credit where it's due: This is one of the more important and universally affecting Verve songs out there.
9. "Blue" (from A Storm In Heaven, 1993)
One spring break during high school, I was in Naples, Florida, walking down the street when a late twentysomething guy pulled up to a red light in a black convertible, top down, with "Blue" just absolutely blasting. You'd swear the palm fronds were blowing not because of wind but because of that weird repetitive hissing sound in the song. The moment sort of blew my mind. Here we were in an exceedingly pleasant, condo-dominated landscape most appealing to families with young children and retirees/soon-to-be retirees with vacation homes. Not the sort of place you expect to see a twentysomething dude cruising, turning his music up to obnoxious levels, and playing a forgotten Verve song. At that point, "Blue" was already a touch more than a decade old, and as far as I can remember it was the first and last time I heard a pre-Urban Hymns Verve song in any sort of public space. And it was a little instructive. Maybe it was the cover or the general inscrutability of A Storm In Heaven, but I always considered it a winter album, a thing for bitterly cold rainy days right after all the trees had died, or for snowstorm afternoons. "Blue," though, was always the outlier, undulating on a persistent groove and adopting a clear "This is the single" structure amongst the more listless textures that otherwise dominated the record. Hearing it down in Florida, surrounded by palm trees and coated in an atmosphere as heavy as (but more humid than) the Verve's music, made me realize there could be a sensuality to their songs as well. The guy in the convertible had it right: "Blue" would sound great at a party in a swamp.
8. "Gravity Grave" (From Verve EP, 1992)
When it came to representing the Verve EP on this list, it was a toss up between "Gravity Grave" and "She's A Superstar." My preferences tend to fall towards the latter, a beautiful slow-burn storm of a track. But the place of "Gravity Grave" amongst the Verve's catalog feels more crucial. I mean, it was the first song on their debut EP and already they had so much figured out about the sound they'd chase through the Verve's first two-album run. That delayed bassline, the way Nick McCabe's layered guitars spiraled and crowded around each other even as the song itself seemed to drift off further into the atmosphere, those ghostly harmonica peels, and the calm, almost incantatory quality of Ashcroft's vocals in the murkiness of it all: each of these elements laid groundwork for the particular brand of shoegaze psychedelia the band would perfect on A Storm In Heaven and then dirty up on A Northern Soul. You can even hear a little bit of "Gravity Grave" on Urban Hymns: its delay-driven lope pops up in different forms with "Catching The Butterfly" and in the airier sections of "The Rolling People." Live, the band would stretch it out close to ten minutes, playing it out as meditation as much as ritual. They seemed to understand this was their foundation, an early attempt that immediately captured what this band was about and what they could do.
7. "A New Decade" (from A Northern Soul, 1995)
A Northern Soul has one of the more underrated openings of the '90s, three very different songs that flow perfectly into each other and get at the whole battered scope of the album. There's the one-two punch of "A New Decade" and "This Is Music" — a rare example of the Verve rocking out in a more straightforward fashion, and excelling — and then an immediate reprieve in the form of "On Your Own," which actually could only be considered a reprieve due to its acoustic guitars and pretty melody, because that one's kind of a heartbreaker, too. "A New Decade," a totally broken-down version of an anthem, is a fitting beginning. After a fifty second fade-in, the band pulls back a tattered curtain and reveals the world of A Northern Soul. The track is frontloaded with the big melody, churning along in arena-alt fashion for about two minutes before it breaks down into a wandering, building-but-never-quite-cresting outro. The whole thing was a sort of shocking turn after the density of A Storm In Heaven — in hindsight that early Verve stuff had the makings of arena-ready stuff, but it was all smeared. This is different: dried out, brittle, and coarse. It's as if U2 had pulled a mid-'90s R.E.M. and embraced a darker, more ragged version of themselves born from the alternative movement they had helped influence; the evocation of the title in "A New Decade" could've been ripped from the New Adventures In Hi-Fi that U2 never made. The way "A New Decade" drifts off is telling, though. It might feel huge at first, but the refrain of "A new decade…" sounding out halfway through the '90s drips with irony and desperation. It hints at a desire for a fresh start that feels out of reach, and exposes the world-weariness that runs throughout A Northern Soul.
6. "A Northern Soul" (from A Northern Soul, 1995)
Much like "The Sun, The Sea" functioned on A Storm In Heaven (more on which below), "A Northern Soul" was the dark heart of the album with which it shared a name. Though its position at Track 5 out of a very lengthy 12 doesn't make it technically the centerpiece, combined with the noisy jam "Brainstorm Interlude" "A Northern Soul" is the gaping wound from which everything on the Verve's sophomore album emanates. Much of its power is located in the fact that the Verve, even though they were always good for a few unnervingly trippy tracks here and there, never wrote another song quite like this. The sessions for A Northern Soul were a famously fraught, drug-laden experience, and the album's title track seems to capture the moment where the band had spun out from that and into a beleaguered yet crazed exhaustion. Where McCabe's psychedelic guitar tendencies usually fell more on the blurry, delay-driven side of things, here he adopted an ugly, blistering wah-assisted sound. On top of that is that piercingly high synth line that intrudes now and then. The first time I heard this song I thought it was a mess. These days the way its off-kilter pieces come together to form a brutally hypnotic whole strikes me as one of the most impressive examples of the Verve's songwriting and attention to specific qualities of sound. Even after nearly seven minutes, every time McCabe's guitar belches out that riff or that synth line creeps back, it sounds like something's being ripped open. "A Northern Soul" is the least pretty maelstrom the Verve ever crafted, but perhaps the most evocative — a pop song as splintered as the mental and emotional states it represents.
5. "Slide Away" (from A Storm In Heaven, 1993)
Speaking of underrated openings and the '90s, the Verve wrote one of the most quintessentially '90s-sounding song intros out there with "Slide Away," the second single from A Storm In Heaven. It has that rumbling bassline courtesy of Simon Jones, the notes seemingly sequenced in a "this precedes a song that strives to be massive," kind of way. The Verve went in with that quiet verse-loud chorus approach on this one, and accordingly there's a brief but gratifying guitar entrance before the distortion dies down and McCabe's guitar takes the role of color and texture through verses where that bass is again dominant. This is one of the moments on A Storm In Heaven that showed the Verve were capable of hooks and big-sounding songs as much as they were adept at crafting beautifully cloudy soundscapes. They hadn't quite gotten their knack for a chorus yet, though. While the verse melody remains amongst my favorite by the Verve, the dramatic impact of the chorus is mainly reliant on the fact that the guitars build and build and cascade back in on cue. Ashcroft's voice is fairly buried under it all in those moments, which, considering the song's called "Slide Away," is actually appropriate. Much like the other climactic moments on A Storm In Heaven, the final fifty seconds of "Slide Away" promise escape through being overcome. Ashcroft's voice fights against the growing noise of guitars as they wrap around him, but in the end he takes the song's advice and lets the currents carry him away.
4. "The Sun, The Sea" (from A Storm In Heaven, 1993)
There are some dark and twisting roads in the Verve's catalog, but few moments you could categorize as "aggressive." And then there's that sudden blast of guitar distortion that opens "The Sun, The Sea," roaring in right after the last spectral wisps of "A Beautiful Mind" dissipate. It crashes in, you know, like a wave, staying true to half its title and that generally aqueous vibe that dominates A Storm In Heaven. For much of the rest of the album, though, any water-related descriptors would have to do with the fact that they're the sort of songs characterized by a pretty opacity you want to let wash over you. "The Sun, The Sea," rather, feels like hanging out in the eye of a hurricane, and then hanging out in the hurricane itself. Everything's relatively calm for the verses, but there's always something evidently roiling around the edges of the song. Those verses have an inevitable pull to them, always gesturing headlong into recurring, distorted ruptures of the chorus until the whole thing unravels into a sort of free-jazz-shoegaze coda. It's gorgeous and haunting and cathartic all at once. The apocalyptic core of A Storm In Heaven, "The Sun, The Sea" is unique amongst the Verve's other songs. Sure, they'd turn the guitars up elsewhere from time to time, but the guitars of "The Sun, The Sea" are elemental things. Like some of the best psychedelic songs, this hardly sounds like music made by humans, but it does sound like it's capable of conjuring things beyond us.
3. "Lucky Man" (from Urban Hymns, 1997)
Urban Hymns was my introduction to the Verve, and though I still find it to be a brilliant album, over the years I've gravitated more towards their earlier, more psychedelic material. So it's a bit surprising to find myself here, with a top three songs that come from the opposite end of the Verve's spectrum. You just can't argue with "Lucky Man," though — it's an infectious, indelible pop song. And there's a whole lot of narrative power to it, too. After a brief breakup, Ashcroft got the band back together and recorded the sprawling, thirteen tracks that became Urban Hymns, one of the best achievements of Britpop's final chapter and, I still have to say, the band's finest work. "Lucky Man" is one of the key tracks here and in their catalog at large, a hit in both the UK (on the Singles Chart) and the US (on the Modern Rock Tracks chart), and the one that Bono said he wishes he'd written. That last quality is telling. With Urban Hymns the Verve mainly abandoned the thick soundscapes they'd previously crafted so well in favor of unabashedly anthemic pop, and more than a few songs bear a melodic influence from bands like U2. "Lucky Man" holds down the preposterously strong third quarter of the album (seriously, "Space And Time" into "Weeping Willow" into "Lucky Man" into "One Day," is unstoppable) and stands out amongst an album absolutely loaded with memorable hooks. It's the best one on Urban Hymns, except, you know, that other one, which we'll get to in a moment.
2. "History" (from A Northern Soul, 1995)
In the hands of many others — including those of an older Ashcroft, and perhaps even the Verve themselves during that second reunion — the string intro of "History" would tip way into the saccharine. This is a dramatic discography, but the strings here outdo a lot of it, managing to be stately and cinematic while also feeling like real pangs of suffering. There's a lot going on there, perhaps thanks to how the orchestration gets recontextualized throughout the song, providing texture alongside the other elements "History" picks up as it strides along. They swell at all the strategic moments, making the song a sort of perpetual five and a half minute gut punch. That downbeat where Ashcroft begins "Maybe we could find a room"– man, that has to be one of the most crushing moments in the entire Verve canon. And then you can say that about something like half a dozen other little match-ups of just the right vocal delivery, just the right instrumentation or slight uptick in dynamics, that occur throughout "History." The thing about the song is, as ostensibly sad as the lyrics and instrumentation are, those handclaps and that beat and the way the original string motif returns at the end all feel distantly hopeful, too, even if the ending of the song hints at a journey towards resolution rather than a resolution itself. Amidst all the contortions of A Northern Soul, it does sound like a revery. "History" came out as a single after the band's first abrupt breakup, and thus takes on an extra wrinkle of resonance. What a perfect way to bow out– a song of incredible loneliness, as melancholic as it is, but ultimately a little triumphant. It's a hell of a song to end a career with, and if you do decide to release another album two years later anyway, you better have a hell of a song to come back with. And, well…
1. "Bittersweet Symphony" (from Urban Hymns, 1997)
I'm sure there are people who consider this song somewhat of a punchline, given Americans mainly know about the Verve through its use in Cruel Intentions. I'm sure there are people who find its rampant late-'90s sounds and trip-hop beat dated, or the song simply oversaturated. But its placement here was inevitable. There is a reason "Bittwersweet Symphony" is, to some people, the sole lasting bit of the Verve's legacy: this is an impeccable, immortal pop song. The kind of thing that has a handful of silly lyrics that seem very profound in high school, less so in the ensuing years, and then can be sold to you over again when you're supposed to be older and jaded just because there's so much damn conviction behind it. This, I'd submit, is amongst the top five Britpop songs, up there with "Common People" and whatever Blur or Oasis singles you prefer (You can have "Wonderwall" and "Parklife," but I'll take "Live Forever," "Supersonic," "The Universal," or "This Is A Low"). It is perhaps the last great anthem Britpop produced in its final days, unless you want to count "Tender" off of Blur's 1999 album 13, but that feels like something different at that point — an elegy, where "Bittersweet Symphony" is one last sprint, one last gasp. Actually, let's just call it one of the great '90s songs, period.
But, also, where did this even come from? Two years earlier the Verve had flared out with A Northern Soul, and the aforementioned brilliance of "History" as their final single. This doesn't sound like that band. Given, Urban Hymns was comprised partially of material Ashcroft had been preparing for a solo album, but even if that explains some of the sharp sonic differences from prior Verve outings, it's also important to note just how radically the band's music had changed tonally. This is what's great about Urban Hymns, the fact that in hindsight it's almost as if the band had to reunite to complete a trilogy. Even with all it's own melancholic moments — and the fact that some of its final lyrics are "This is a big: fuck you! Come on!" — Urban Hymns is the salve to all that preceded it in the Verve's catalog. "Bittersweet Symphony" kicks all of that off, both as lead single and opening track, letting little glimpses of hope and peace find their way into the world of the Verve. On their previous album Ashcroft pronounced the words "A new decade" as if there was no hope he'd make it to the next one, that the very concept was a fantasy. In 1997, Radiohead would release OK Computer, which grappled with modern and technological anxieties as a new millennium approached. "Bittersweet Symphony," for once, placed the Verve on the other side of things. As a song, it seems to embody all the optimism for a new beginning that might occur at the turn of a century. Even if it didn't quite turn out that way, "Bittersweet Symphony" remains a monumental work: one last great affirmation as Britpop came to a close.
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How Healthy is Healthcare in Hawaii?
Ten experts in local healthcare joined in a wide-ranging, two-hour public forum on healthcare costs, quality of care, needed innovations and the future of healthcare. Here is an abbreviated transcript of that discussion. Click here for the full transcript.
Hawaii Business, ThinkTech Hawaii, the Hawaii Venture Capital Association and other organizations sponsored a public discussion on Dec. 6, 2011 by two panels about healthcare in Hawaii.
FIRST Panel
• Dr. Virginia Pressler, executive VP and chief strategic officer for Hawaii Pacific Health.
- Beth Giesting, the governor's healthcare transformation coordinator;
- Dr. Thomas Tsang, senior advisor to the governor on healthcare;
- Coral Andrews, executive director for the Health Insurance Exchange; and
- Bruce Anderson, president and CEO, Hawaii Health Systems Corp.
Pressler: The 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently released a study of comparative data on the quality and cost of healthcare. By every measure, the U.S. pays more for its medical system, more dollars per person, and higher prices for drugs, doctors, and hospitals and administrative costs.
The U.S. spends two to three times more than the average for other OECD countries. Total healthcare spending in the U.S. costs about $8,000 per person per year. The next-highest spender is Norway, at less than $5,500 per person.
Quality is a mixed bag. The U.S. has the best five-year survival for breast cancer in the world and we are the second in colorectal cancer survival, yet, when we look at other measures of quality, we rank 27th out of 34 in life expectancy. We are 31st out of 34 in premature mortality. We are 25th in cardiovascular mortality. The U.S. has the second-worst rate of adult diabetes, behind Mexico, and we have the highest rate of adult obesity. And on top of that, we have 50 million uninsured individuals in the U.S.
Yet Hawaii has some of the best health statistics. A recent study ranked Hawaii as the fourth healthiest state. The state also has the lowest rate of uninsured residents, 8 percent, and we have the second- or third-lowest healthcare premiums in the U.S.
Giesting: When we look at the healthcare problem, we first need to see how our system differs from other parts of the economy. Imagine any other part of the service sector that continues to grow while essentially ignoring its customers. The healthcare sector is largely created for the convenience and benefit of the providers, insurers and professionals in healthcare.
There is almost no information available to consumers about cost and quality. Even when consumers get information from their insuring provider, they may not understand it or know what to do with it. Certainly it is difficult for consumers to get the care they need or the information they need, so I would say consumer-driven healthcare is absolutely a mandate.
Another issue: Imagine any other major economic sector that does not use information technology to improve its own business, that does not use IT to share essential information with its partners. A recent study showed only about 10 percent of physicians across the country use electronic health records in a meaningful way. Our healthcare system pays extensively for specialty services, lots of procedures and duplication. What it does not pay for is primary care or prevention. It does not pay for managing care so that you can maximize benefits from available services.
Tsang: My role is to advise the governor about all the best practices across the country, including technology and systems innovations, and what we can bring in and adapt for Hawaii.
There are lots of opportunities for innovators; there is $30 billion in incentive money for providers and hospitals to advance health-information technology. We can see it in the 82-percent increase in the value of health-technology stocks, and we see a lot of folks moving into two huge sectors.
The first sector is managing data. How can we mine the power of data across the country to actually manage risk? Being able to predict and target very, very few resources with a laser beam and target those patients that have the co-morbidities, those patients who have the risk factors for becoming readmission patients.
The second sector is patient engagement. There is a huge new industry called gamification of healthcare, and we see lots of games popping up with the Xbox, mobile phones, etc., to really engage patients and consumers.
Andrews: I view the Health Insurance Exchange as a place where all other things will come together. The exchange was created at the 2011 Legislature. We're unique in Hawaii, because our Legislature set up our exchange as a private nonprofit. The target markets for the insurance exchange are individuals and small businesses with 50 or fewer employees. The exchange will be a bit like Travelocity, where you'll have a webpage where individuals or small businesses can shop. The Insurance Commissioner will qualify the health plans and providers that use the exchange so that they meet the federal requirements for minimum health benefits. It will be up and running in January 2014.
Anderson: Hawaii Health Systems Corp. is the safety net of the care system in the state. [The state-subsidized network provides] emergency and other essential services to the uninsured, the underinsured, those on Medicaid and others with special healthcare needs.
There are many other facilities that think of themselves as safety nets, but our business is really to keep our doors open and make sure people in Hawaii have the services they need. In many areas, particularly rural areas, we are the only healthcare providers. We work in partnership with physicians, clinics and others in all these communities, but we are the most important and largest provider of care on most of the Neighbor Islands. In fact, HHSC is the fourth-largest public-health system in the United States.
Pressler: Do you ever foresee a time when the HHSC, the state hospitals, will be self-sufficient and not require appropriations every year from the Legislature?
Anderson: No, I don't, but we can reduce our expenditures, we can increase efficiencies and we are trying to work more closely with the private-sector facilities to coordinate care.
Pressler: Why aren't we focusing on prevention?
Tsang: That has largely to do with the evidence and the economics of prevention. Much of the hardcore literature hasn't shown equivocal evidence or unequivocal evidence that prevention saves money. I know that's counterintuitive, but that's what the evidence shows. With that said, a lot of what Beth and I are doing does have a prevention aspect, because you're talking about care coordination and identifying outliers in the system that would benefit from interventions. That set of interventions would be hugely preventative. When you have 200,000 patients in the Medicaid system and you can identify, with the push of a button, which patients have not received a colonoscopy, that's using technology to do population health management.
Pressler: Who are the 8 percent uninsured?
Giesting: Some are unemployed and can't afford COBRA, or their working spouse can't afford dependent-care coverage. Some have part-time jobs or are self-employed, homeless people or immigrants who are not working. Providing affordable insurance products for them is going to be a big boom (economically).
Pressler: If payments to primary doctors were doubled, access would increase, hospitalizations would decrease and millions of dollars would be saved. Why can't doctors have control of their pay and their patients' health instead of giving all of the resources to insurance and other companies?
Tsang: I think there's an acknowledgment, at least nationally, that primary-care doctors need their payments, and the reimbursement system needs to be redesigned. That's why, at least with Medicaid, the payments of primary-care doctors are being increased to Medicare values.
- Sen. Josh Green, chair of the Senate Committee on Health and a physician
- Dr. Jerris Hedges, dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine at UH;
- Hilton Raethel, senior VP at HMSA;
- Dr. Nadine Tenn Salle, a practicing physician and president of the board of the Hawaii Independent Physicians Association; and
- Dr. Art Ushijima, CEO of the Queen's Health Systems.
Green: The healthcare system in America works for a lot of people, but doesn't work for the working poor very well or for children who live below the poverty line. Those are two large groups. And it doesn't work for a solid part of the middle class that has serious health problems that are extremely costly and push them over the edge.
In 2001, America spent $1.3 trillion on healthcare. In 2011, we spent twice that, $2.6 trillion. That tells you that there was incredible expansion. It also tells you there's an incredible opportunity for solutions.
When we talk about giant expenditures for anything, people want to get their money's worth. This may sound a little crazy, but I'm not particularly concerned about spending trillions of dollars in healthcare, but I am concerned about spending it badly, or not spending it on what people actually need.
Two percent of the population consumes 65 percent of our healthcare resources. In no other business is that tolerated. That has to be addressed.
If you told me today that my 4-year-old had leukemia, what percent of the dollars that I earn from my three jobs would I spend on that leukemia? If I could get her well, if I had a good oncologist, I might spend all of it. Think about what healthcare means to people and what its actual value is, and then think about how we get that healthcare to the people who need it.
Hedges: We have a shortage of providers here in Hawaii and nationally. In 2025, it's anticipated that there'll be 120,000 fewer providers than what the demographics in the U.S. will require. So we cannot simply pull from other states to meet Hawaii's needs.
But we can create a more efficient model of training. I would like to outline a concept proposed by Daniel Hunt, executive director for the accrediting body for medical schools in the U.S. He proposed a Doctor of Clinical Practice degree, to be done in conjunction with current medical schools – essentially a streamlined path to becoming licensed, so instead of the four years of medical-school training, there will be three years.
The three years would be based on the clinical knowledge set that we now provide but would be focused more on application and less on the basic science elements. The anticipation is that the in-hospital subsequent training would be more attenuated and would focus on what one needs to do for continuity of care. The bottom line is that students would complete their training and become ready for a license in four years total, rather than the four years in medical school plus the three or four additional years in residency training. This is something we can do in Hawaii.
Another great benefit is that such trainees would only be licensed in Hawaii and we wouldn't lose physician trainees to other parts of the nation.
Raethel: Historically, healthcare in Hawaii has been paid predominantly on a fee-for-service basis. In other words, the more you do, the more you get paid. You get paid based on volume, not value, and on quantity, not quality. Fee-for-service is a terrible set of incentives for healthcare, but that's the way healthcare has been reimbursed in Hawaii and across the country for years.
If you want to change behavior, you have to change incentives. So we are. We are paying hospitals and doctors now for how well they treat patients. We're paying them for taking care of a patient population. We're paying them for quality, safety, efficiency and reducing harm.
This is not something you change overnight. You can't change a whole system of care in just a few months or a couple of years. We started last year working with every hospital in our provider network across the state, setting a goal of having 15 percent of their reimbursement tied to these outcomes for quality, safety and efficiency.
Tenn Salle: (As a physician) I'm supposed to be the one in the group to bring it all together, because after this entire transformation takes place, the question is, Will you be satisfied? Can I actually practice under the model that is created? In five or 10 years, will you, I, your child, your parents, be able to find a quality physician and be able to access treatment in a timely manner?
I'm in solo practice. I practice at Queen's. I'm involved with internal medicine, which is adults, and pediatrics. So, I'm a little bit of a typical private practitioner in Hawaii. I'm in a nongroup practice. I'm located fairly close to a major hospital but I'm also a dying breed. I am actually a breed that may not survive this healthcare transformation because practitioners such as myself can't afford the overhead, despite the reimbursements that are being put in place.
It's important, as we develop the models, that we keep some things in mind. One is the patient-physician relationship. We have to remember that this is what it's all about. Another is that we must create a system that will serve our entire community, not just the working middle class. We must create government policy that says we have to take care of the indigent, the poor and the medically complex. Finally, I want you to remember something that has permeated both panels today, and that is a re-evaluation of preventative care.
Green: Dr. Tenn Salle, what's the toughest part of being a doctor in a solo practice in Hawaii?
Tenn Salle: It is a very difficult life. It's hard work, but what keeps physicians doing it is a love for what they do.
But physicians are increasingly being pulled away from what they love to do, which is actually take care of patients. My day often starts around 4:30 in the morning, and I just get home to put my children to bed around 7:30 or 8 at night – and that's if I don't get called back to the hospital. My day is popping in and out of rooms, literally. I'm taking care of a patient, and then I have to step out because I need to speak to the insurance company, because they work 8-to-4 jobs. My medical staff can't justify (to the insurance companies) why I need to transfer my patient who has a complication of Hodgkin's lymphoma in radiation therapy. I must do that. I am being more involved in administrative things and that's not calculated into the reimbursement that doctors get either personally or into the model that we're supposed to be responsible for.
Ushijima: Today, there are about 45 million Americans who are Medicare beneficiaries. Their number has grown by about 500,000 beneficiaries per year and at an annual cost now to the U.S. Treasury of about $600-plus billion. Now, there are 77 million aging baby boomers – people born between 1946 and 1964 – and the first of those people turned 65 in 2011. On average, there will be 4 million people per year turning 65 for the next 27 years, so Medicare enrollment is going to increase substantially.
At Queen's, we deal with the most expensive part of the healthcare system, the inpatient area [hospitalization]. We will continue to see increasing demand as the population ages. Strategically, we need to look at how we're going to function and to improve services at the primary-care level to keep patients out of the hospital. We need to concentrate services to achieve scale and to provide as much of the services on an outpatient basis. We also need to collaborate and work together as a community of providers and payers. I'm also a firm believer in investment in technology – not just information technology, but technology to improve diagnosis and treatment.
Green: Why don't the payers alleviate the burden to providers by standardizing pre-authorized and administrative forms to decrease cost?
Raethel: Good question, and I don't really have a good answer. There are a lot of complexities, and the payers all have their own rules. Medicaid, Medicare, Quest plans, Quest Expanded Access plans, Worker's Comp. It would be great if we could simplify that. There have been attempts to do that but we've not been successful so far. But we need to continue pushing for the standardization route, which will help reduce administrative overhead.
Green: How much would standardized forms help you, Dr. Tenn Salle?
Tenn Salle: I think most practitioners look forward to that. If billing, administrative work, preauthorizations, understanding of benefits, etc., could be done online, that could be done outside of time (with patients) and streamline an incredible amount of work.
Green: How do we convince medical students to go into primary care?
Hedges: The future generation of physicians is looking at having a balanced life. Although reimbursement is important, paying educational debt is critical. There's still the reality that there will be more group practice, more shared practice activity, and that sharing of responsibilities is one of the attractors for the current generation of trainees.


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Patriots defensive back Alfonzo Dennard was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence in Nebraska early Thursday morning, Lincoln police confirmed.
According to a police report, Dennard was stopped just before 2 a.m. on Normal Boulevard after a Lincoln police sergeant observed a red Honda Accord straddling lane lines. The report says Dennard "emitted an odor of alcohol and displayed signs of impairment."
After field sobriety tests were performed at the scene, he was taken to Cornhusker Place, a substance abuse treatment facility, for a breath test, but the report says he "would not provide an adequate breath sample for testing."
Dennard was cited for DUI, refusal of a chemical test, and straddling lane lines, and then released. He has a court date of Aug. 12.
Dennard's arrest is the latest black mark for the Patriots, who released Aaron Hernandez last month hours after he was arrested in connection with the murder or Odin Lloyd.
"The New England Patriots are extremely disappointed to learn of Alfonzo Dennard's arrest," the team said in a statement Thursday.
"We take this matter very seriously and are working to get more information on the incident."
Dennard is on two years probation, must serve a 30-day jail sentence in 2014, and perform community service following his conviction on a felony assault charge stemming from a dispute outside a Lincoln bar in 2012. Dennard was convicted of assaulting a police officer during the April 21, 2012 incident.
When Dennard was sentenced in April, his attorney, Terry Dougherty, said he would ask the court to reconsider the 30-day jail sentence before it is scheduled to begin next March.
Judge Stephanie Stacy issued a stern message to Dennard at his sentencing about his future behavior.
"There are a lot of people who are watching you — young athletes who will model your behavior, your attitudes, particularly about law enforcement," she said. "I hope this order of probation gives you an opportunity to set a positive example and positively influence people.
"I encourage you take advantage of that. Good luck to you."
Dennard's arrest is another distraction for the Patriots as they head toward training camp at the end of July.
"Everything we don't want is happening," team owner Robert Kraft said Monday when discussing Hernandez's arrest.
If the Patriots were to cut Dennard, he would count just $43,386 against the salary cap this season.
Ben Volin of the Globe staff contributed to this story


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For me it's not a moral dilemma. Indeed, another young racer has died on TV, cut down as millions watched, leaving those who love him with the kind of grief we outsiders can only conceptualize, not actually feel. Watching or not watching the crash that killed Marco Simoncelli (or Dan Wheldon) won't bring him back, and as human beings, we're hard-wired to a certain ghoulishness. It's who we are. That's not my issue.
I won't watch Marco Simoncelli's crash because it's like witnessing the death of racing's future.
To me, MotoGP is the highest form of motorized competition. Yes, I'm four-wheel nerd enough to drag myself out of bed early on Saturday mornings for Formula One qualifying, and watch the races for the tire selections and pitting strategies. But the reductive display of skill in motorcycle racing, specifically in its highest ranks, puts MotoGP far above any other motorsport in terms of sheer racing drama.
And so, Simoncelli's death hit me hard, in part because of how hopefully I'd been watching his tentative ascent. A brash young rider, Simoncelli had spent his second season in the big show crashing people out and getting a reputation for being a bit of a nutter. And yet, the excitement he generated when he was on point lit a talent-filled field with sparks of brilliance — like watching Dwyane Wade's first season with Miami in 2003.
To get a feel for what Simoncelli meant to the future of motorcycle racing — and by extension, racing in general — one need only watch the final laps of the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island last week.
Simoncelli was hovering in third, having relinquished second to Repsol Honda's Andrea Dovizioso, who'd edged past him a lap earlier. A vexing rain was falling on half the track, and the spotty slickness began claiming riders, first Álvaro Bautista, then Cal Crutchlow, then Simoncelli's Gresini Honda teammate, Hiroshi Aoyama. Casey Stoner was so far out front that only a similar shunt would have kept him from the top of the podium.
As the race unwound, Dovi put in his quickest lap of the race, and looked sure to hold second, while Simoncelli, who'd pulled off a breathtaking last-lap pass on Dovi at San Marino a month earlier, appeared to be resigned to the third podium step.
And then he wasn't. Closing in on Turn 4, a low-gear hairpin, Simoncelli outbraked Dovi, then edged over to within inches of Dovi's bike to find an inside line that would shoot him through the tight right hander. It worked. Simoncelli scooted past to finish the lap just over 0.2 seconds ahead of Dovizioso.
It was Simoncelli's best result in MotoGP. The 24-year-old rising star would die a week later in a freak accident during the second lap of the Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang. I've heard it's one of those one-in-a-million accidents that no one can predict and no one can comprehend in retrospect. I wouldn't know.
Nearing the end of his second MotoGP season, Simoncelli had just signed to Gresini for 2012. His reputation for pushing harder than his specialized hardware, and the laws of physics, might allow seemed a function of his youth, but so was the enthusiasm and good-naturedness that made him such a likable character in a sport of bitter rivalries. When he pulled it together, as he seemed destined to, the coming years would be laid out like a golden highway.
And then they weren't.
"Sic for me was like a youngest brother. So strong on track and so sweet in the normal life. I will miss him a lot."
— Valentino Rossi
(Photo: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images Sport)


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Crosscutting Concepts News
Lyle and Louise: Blood Spatter
Students must determine how the blood spatter found at a cabin scene was formed. To do this, students first learn about the techniques for blood spatter pattern analysis. Then, students will conduct an experiment designed to determine the relationship between the height and angle of impact of a blood drop and the size of shape of the spatter.
Students drop synthetic blood onto paper at different heights and angles then measure the size and shape of those drops. Afterward, they will use MS Excel or another spreadsheet program to analyze their data and build a mathematical model.
After students have created their model, they will apply it to the blood spatter patterns found in the cabin. By running strings that attach to the blood in the crime scene model's walls at angles predicted by their model, students will be able to determine the point of impact that caused the spatter.
Supplies are included for up to 30 students working in six groups. As in all Lyle and Louise modules, this kit is geared to high school and undergraduate courses and is matched to NGSS. Kit includes 6 cardboard blood drop angle support, 6 3-D cardboard cabin model, 50 sheets of 17″ length by 11″ width, 6 bottles of synthetic blood, 6 Pasteur pipettes, 6 Pasteur pipette bulbs. Also includes 6 sets of crime scene blood spatter images, 6 sets of string, 1 box of push-pins, 6 measuring tapes, fully illustrated teacher's manual with technique background. It can be stored at room temperature.


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Our Plesk shared hosting accounts support Wincache for PHP apps. This feature can increase the performance of PHP applications through caching on your hosting account.
Microsoft has a document that outlines how Wincache works here. Our Plesk shared hosting accounts can support everything outlined in the article. However, by default, we enable everything outlined in the What Wincache Does for "Free" section.


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Get more >>
Knitting Guide
Whether you are picking up yarn and knitting needles for the first time or entering another decade of knitting, we hope you will find this stitch guide a useful resource. With our easy step-by-step picture guide you can learn all the basics of knitting: casting-on, the knit stitch, the purl stitch, and binding off. Youll also discover useful techniques such as: knitting in-the-round, increasing, decreasing and some handy seaming methods.
To get started knitting, all you need is some yarn, needles, scissors and a tapestry needle. As you progress, you can equip your knitting toolbox with row counters, stitch holders, tape measures, cable needles, stitch markers and much more.
Now that you have yarn and needles ready to go, lets get started! Find a comfortable place with good light and read through the steps before you start. As with any new skill, learning to knit requires both patience and perseverance. Remember, you should have fun with your knitting. If you get stuck, take a deep breath, take a break but keep at it!
As you discover the world of yarn choices, you can work with natural or man made fibers from lace-weight to super-bulky yarns in all the colors of the rainbow.
Needles come in a variety of sizes and materials too such as plastic, wood, bamboo and metal. If you are just beginning, pick your yarn and use the needles recommended on the yarns label. As you become a more experienced knitter you will learn how to work with needle size and gauge to reach the stitch count called for in the pattern. Knitting can give you a life full of pleasure and relaxation. An afternoon sitting in the doctors waiting room is now an opportunity to create.
You can make handmade items for yourself and people you love. When you give a knitted gift, your time, talent, even the thoughts and feelings you have as your knit are now part of your gift. Just as every journey begins with a single step, every knitter beings with a single stitch.


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Portfolio!by Rik on February 18, 2015 at 2:46 pm
After a long time of not making new portfolios, I made a new portfolio!
It's been a long time coming, and I'm happy with the result. I even forgot a lot of the illustrations I did along the way =) Check it out!


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1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2009–10
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 04/06/2010
|Page tools: Print Page
By contrast, total imports of energy products were relatively small (1,880 PJ in 2007-08) (table 19.8). Crude oil made up 54% of total energy imports in 2007-08. Imports of primary energy products have increased from 1,117 PJ in 2002-03 to 1,246 PJ in 2007-08 (up 12%). Imports of derived energy products (mainly petroleum-based products), have increased substantially from 176 PJ in 2002-03 to 634 PJ in 2007-08 (up 261%).
Graph 19.9 shows the comparison between energy exports and imports from 1997-98 to 2007-08.
Table 19.10 shows the value and contribution of energy products to Australia's trade. In 2007-08 the export of energy products contributed $45.6b (25%) towards Australia's total merchandise export earnings. Black coal accounted for 54% of the total value of energy exports in 2007-08 ($24.4b), followed by crude oil (21%) and LNG (13%). Imports of energy products (mainly crude oil) accounted for $30.5b (15%) of the total value of Australia's imports in 2007-08. Over the period 2002-03 to 2007-08 the value of crude oil imports increased by $9.0b (up 115%).
While the volume (in PJ) of energy exports has increased by 15% in the period 2002-03 to 2007-08 (table 19.8), the value of energy exports over the same period increased by 88%, partly due to price increases for energy products in the period. Although uranium accounted for over a third of all exports by energy volume, the value of uranium exports contributed only 2% of the total value of energy exports in 2007-08.


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Archive Dreaming
SALT Galata, Istanbul,
May, 2017
Wind of Boston : Data Paintings
100 Northern Ave. Boston, Massachusetts
January, 2017
Liminal Room
Zorlu Performing Center, Istanbul, Turkey
November, 2015
The ambient qualities of urban ecologies―as we as civilizations create them in specific geographic locations―are coming to the forefront of cultural production. With the advent of digital media and environmental consciousness more than any other point in human history we are able to access the formal qualities of the ambient environment in terms of the built, social and natural environments. Through sensors, databases and visualization we can collect information on the ambient dynamics of cities, sound, light, air quality, acoustics, human movement, ecological dimensions, social preferences and their multiplicity of interactions. And while social media and global commerce has transcended the confines of place, its impact on culture has made place-centric experiences and spatial awareness more important not less.
RAP PAR―a team from Istanbul P. Dervis, A. Sanal, R. Anadol, Turkey―proposes a sound and light installation, namely Augmenting Spatiality for Abercrombie Lane. The installation's premise is to reveal specific ambient qualities of Sydney and Istanbul as distinct urban ecologies, but also like a cultural exchange, put their sampled qualities into a dialogue that responds to one another. The dialogue will be framed on a spatial narrative referring to 'equal' volumes of spaces to create sequence, compression, gateway, perception and extension in the formal geometry of the space. Abercrombie Lane was specifically selected as it is the only site that is common to many of the urban spaces in Istanbul, but also as it does not receive direct sun to the ground which creates a very suitable environment for light installation. RAP PAR is taking Beyoğlu-Karaköy axis as its main spatial center to collect sound, and specifically İstiklal Street as the 'main spine' (with particular resemblances with the George Street, including current urban transformation urgencies) to form the background sound vocabulary of 'equal' volumes that are connected to this main axis.
Curator: Pelin Derviş
Artist: RefiK Anadol
Architect: ŞANAL architecture|urbanism (Alexis Şanal, Orkun Beydaği)
Programming/Electronics Designer: Sebastian Neitsch
Sound Designer: Kerim Karaoğlu
SALT Galata, Istanbul,
May, 2017
100 Northern Ave. Boston, Massachusetts
January, 2017
Zorlu Performing Center, Istanbul, Turkey
November, 2015


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