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Sunday, 9 August 2009
PPN Creamy Spinach Walnut Pasta
I didn't have much energy once it was time for dinner. The freezer was very tempting but I had ingredients for Ashley's Penne with Creamy Spinach Walnut Sauce. I would have given it a miss if it had not seemed so easy. Cook some pasta and blitz the other ingredients in the food processor.
As always things took me a little longer than they should have. I toasted the walnuts and microwaved the spinach. E looked after Sylvia. But it was quicker than many of my meals. The sauce was quite substantial. It was a little like a pesto but creamier and packed full of more green vegetables. It needed company, as it was quite intense alone. Ashley suggested serving it with broccoli but it was carrots I had in my fridge. Besides I liked the colour contrast. If I was more organised I would like this with more vegetables. For example, it would go very nicely with a plain salad of tomato and cucumber with a squeeze of lemon juice.
Then yesterday, we went to see the A Day Pompeii Exhibition at the Museum. It was one of the busiest exhibitions I have been to and we slowly shuffled through it in the thick of the crowds. Fortunately, we had organised to meet my friend Kathleen so we were able to catch up with each other in the slow periods. I find some of the archeological finds can leave me cold – rusty fish hooks aren't really my thing – but I did enjoy some curiosities such as the carbonised loaf of bread. Most evocative were the plaster casts of the people huddling from the fury of the volcano. By the time we got home I was glad we had leftover pasta sauce for dinner.
Today we were all out of the sauce but we move furniture around, banged the dust out of rugs and I had a bike ride. I would have had the pasta again but instead I finally got a dal out of the freezer for dinner. Sylvia slept 11 hours last night so she had decided she doesn't need any sleep today. Hence it feels like we haven't had much time.
I would love 48 hours in the day but, failing that, I am glad to have discovered an interesting and quick pasta dish. The main change I made was to substitute mustard and lemon juice for fresh basil. This is my winter version of the dish but when summer comes I might just try it with basil. I have also thought it might be a good sauce to try in a pasta bake or lasagna.
I am sending this to Psychgrad of Equal Opportunity Kitchen who is hosting this week's Presto Pasta Night (#126), an event founded by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.
Creamy Spinach Walnut Pasta
Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites via Eat Me Delicious
Serves 4-5
250g fresh spinach
½ cup toasted walnuts,
2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
1 garlic clove, crushed
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1½ tsp seeded mustard
juice of ½ a small lemon
¼ tsp salt
ground black pepper to taste
500g dried pasta
4-8 carrots, cut into matchsticks (or other vegetables)
Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil for the pasta and prepare carrots.
Meanwhile, place washed spinach in a plastic bag or tub in the microwave and cook on high for about 2 minutes or until just wilted (or you can cook the spinach in a pot of boiling water). Place walnuts then spinach then remaining ingredients in the food processor and blend til smooth.
When water is boiling, cook pasta according to instructions and add carrot sticks about 2-3 minutes before pasta is cooked.
Drain pasta and carrots. Toss with spinach sauce and serve with a little extra Parmesan cheese grated on top and some fresh cracked pepper.
On the stereo:
Ruby: The Killjoys
15 comments:
Your subs sound equally yummy! And quick pasta is always a great weekenight dinner, I think.ReplyDelete
This looks good. I've never tried using cottage cheese to make a pasta sauce more creamy. But, it seems like a good idea -- lower fat than cream too.ReplyDelete
Thanks for participating in PPN!
Half way through your post, I had to get up and grab some walnuts - so good.ReplyDelete
Looks like a lovely pasta sauce and I like the broccoli idea.
Wow, this pasta with the creamy sauce looks absolutely delicious. I will definitely try it!ReplyDelete
Thanks Ricki - we are great at quick pasta on a weeknight but the sauce usually comes out of a jar if in a real hurryReplyDelete
Thanks Psychgrad - I was pleasantly surprised by cottage cheese in the sauce - the combination of cottage cheese and walnuts appealed because I use this combination in one of my favourite nut roasts
Thanks Tanna - I am going through a phase of loving walnuts - they are such wonderful nuts
Thanks Juliana - hope you enjoy it
This dish looks great! And I love the fact you toasted your walnuts for your pesto: it adds more flavors!ReplyDelete
Mmm I was eyeing that off when Ashley posted it and then forgot I had it bookmarked! I really need to make it, it still looks fabulous!ReplyDelete
Thanks Karine - I just toast them on a frypan on the stovetop which I find I am less likely to forget about - especially as my oven timer is on the blink!ReplyDelete
Thanks Vegetation - aren't blogs great for recipes coming around more than once to remind those of us who are easily distracted by the latest temptation
Mmm love your addition of mustard seeds! And great idea to use a different coloured vegetable in there.ReplyDelete
Sounds like life is...as Steve Martin used to say..."wild and crazy". Good thing there's pasta. Thanks for sharing with Prsto Pasta Nights.ReplyDelete
Really nice and creamy. spinach & cottage cheese is one my favourite combination for filling up pasta shells/ canneloni but this seems an equally good way to make itReplyDelete
Thanks Ashley - the mustard worked wellReplyDelete
Thanks Ruth - wild and crazy is about right!
Thanks Bergamot - I haven't used cottage cheese with pasta much before but I would love to - must try it in canneloni
Thanks Food Hunter
- Anonymous24 September 2010 at 18:09
Theres a whole lot of ingredients that dont appear in the method. Garlic, cheese, etc. Do I add these to the sauce?ReplyDelete
- Anonymous24 September 2010 at 18:10
Oops, sorry, delete that - I wasnt reading it properly :(ReplyDelete
Thanks for dropping by. I love hearing from you. Please share your thoughts and questions. Annoyingly the spammers are bombarding me so I have turned on the pesky captcha code (refresh to find an easy one if you don't like the first one)


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Every once in a while, there's news which reminds us that we're living in the age of accelerating change. This is one of those times: A new project has been announced in which scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Sussex are hoping to create the first accurate computer simulation of a honey bee brain — and then upload it into an autonomous flying robot.
This is obviously a huge win for science — but it could also save the world. The researchers hope a robotic insect could supplement or replace the shrinking population of honey bees that pollinate essential plant life.
Powerful and affordable
Now, while this might sound like some kind of outlandish futurist joke, there are some serious players — and money — involved. Called the "Green Brain Project," it was recently given £1 million (USD $1,614,700) by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as well as hardware donations from the NVIDIA corporation.
Specifically, NVIDIA will provide them with high-performance graphical processing units called GPU accelerators. This will allow the researchers to simulate aspects of a honey bee's brain by using massively paralleled desktop PCs. While this will certainly work to promote the NVIDIA brand, it will also allow the researchers to conduct their project inexpensively (supercomputer clusters aren't cheap).
And indeed, the researchers are going to need all the computational power they can get; it may appear that insects have simple minds — but their brains can be extremely complex.
Creating autonomy
Now, it should be noted that the researchers aren't trying to emulate a complete honey bee brain, but rather two specific and complex functions within it, namely vision and sense of smell. Once complete, they will upload those models into a robotic honey bee so that it can act autonomously.
"This is an important further advance over current work on brain models because it is becoming more and more clear that an essential aspect of brain function is that the brain is not acting in isolation but in constant interaction with the body and the environment," they note in their proposal, "This concept of 'embodiment' and its consequences for cognition are important insights of modern cognitive science and will become equally important for modern neuroscience."
By isolating and modeling these particular functions, the researchers hope to provide their flying robot with the cognitive power required to perform basic tasks — and without a set of pre-programmed instructions. It is hoped, for example, that the robotic bee will be able to detect particular odors or gasses in the same way that real bee can identify certain flowers.
To help them with their work, the researchers will collaborate with Martin Giurfa of Toulouse, an expert in all aspects of bee brain anatomy, physiology, and bee cognition and behavior.
Should they be successful, it would mark an important moment in technological history: The first robot brain that can perform complex tasks as proficiently as the animal its trying to emulate.
Artificial pollinators
The Green Brain Project could further our understanding of both artificial intelligence and the neuroscientific underpinnings of animal cognition. But also, along with the National Science Foundation-funded Robobees project (led by Harvard University), the advent of an artificial pollinator could provide a solution (either temporarily or permanently) to the problem of dwindling honey bee populations — an organism that's currently dealing with the devastating effects of colony collapse disorder.
In fact, the artificial honey bee may be the first of many robots we introduce into the environment to make up for the current era of widespread extinctions.

subset: commoncrawl


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Hunting liberal bias on 2012 trail
As the founder of the Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III has been lobbying charges of liberal media bias since 1987. And things, he says, aren't getting better.
"No, they're getting worse," Bozell told POLITICO, adding that network news broadcasts and long-standing newspapers are "something that makes a conservative pine for the good ol' days of Dan Rather."
To document his gloomy assessment, Bozell is out with "Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election — and How to Stop Them From Doing It in 2016," a new book co-authored with his Media Research Center colleague Tim Graham.
( QUIZ: Politicians and their books)
"I think the old media, the establishment media, the networks, the old newspapers, I think it's like cornered rats. … I think their days are numbered."
Bozell says that the 2012 election was just the latest — and perhaps most flagrant — example of journalists' bias toward liberal politicians.
"What you see on NBC, CBS and ABC, it doesn't even come close to what we call news — it's such advocacy," Bozell said. "There was no semblance of even-handedness in this campaign and nobody can say there was."
However, Bozell was reluctant to pen another book about liberal media bias when his publisher came to him with the idea. (Previous books by Bozell include: "And That's the Way It Isn't: A Reference Guide to Media Bias," "Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media" and "Whitewash: How the News Media Are Paving Hillary Clinton's Path to the Presidency.")
But a re-examination of the 2012 campaign made him change his mind. While reporters dogged Mitt Romney over Bain Capital, tax returns and gaffes, says Bozell, they let the Obama administration off the hook on such stories as Solyndra, Benghazi and the Fast and Furious operation.
"Any Republican should have beaten Barack Obama with one hand tied behind his back. Obama was the single most vulnerable incumbent in a generation," Bozell said, adding later, "you look at how the media did not cover scandals and controversies revolving around Barack Obama but covered anything and everything revolving around Republicans, and you ask yourself the question, 'Had the news media been fair and honest, would Obama have won reelection?' I don't think so."
He was particularly upset with a lengthy Washington Post story in May 2012 that looked into Romney's bullying as a teenager.
"How can you do 5,400 words in The Washington Post about Mitt Romney's high school days, focusing on cutting the hair of that one kid in 1965 and then do 5,500 words on Barack Obama's high school days revolving around his love of basketball and not even mention his love of something else, called marijuana?"
For Bozell, it's less that the coverage was inappropriate, however, but rather, that the coverage was one-sided.
"If you're going to cover the salacious, you've got to cover the salacious on both sides."


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Héctor Desvaux
Héctor Desvaux was born on February 4, 1980 in Santa Fe. Scroll below and check our most recent updates about Héctor Desvaux Net Worth, Salary, Biography, Age, Career, Wiki. Also discover more details information about Current Net worth as well as Monthly/Year Salary, Expense, Income Reports!
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|First Name
|Last Name
|Association Football Player
|40 years
|Birthday & Zodiac
|Birth Sign
|Birth Date
|February 4, 1980
|February 4
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|Height & Weight
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Monday, September 10, 2012
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Wednesday is New Comics Day
By Rich Barrett
Every Wednesday, I preview the 5 most interesting new comics hitting comic shops, Comixology, Kickstarter and the web that week. These aren't reviews, just brief highlights. If there's a release you're excited about, let's talk about it in the comments.
This week's comics include:
- A complex story about family
- A spy comic that will feature a different artist each month
- A comic described as Beavis and Butthead meet James Joyce
- China Miéville's coda to Dial H
- And a superhero who gets his powers from alcohol
1. Household
By Sam Alden
It's understandable if you're not familiar with Sam Alden's work—he's only in his early 20s and has been publishing his comics in a random assortment of Tumblr posts, unrelated websites, and ontributions to StudyGroup Comics. Each is like a discarded clue scattered across the web to help you piece together what this exciting new artist is all about. Almost every comic looks wildly different from the next and they range in genre from autobiography to fantasy. His body of work to date is really worth seeking out and just this past weekend he won a prestigious Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent.
Just before winning that award this past week, Alden released his newest comic both on his Tumblr and as a mini comic at last weekend's Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. Household is a short comic about a brother and sister who are reunited in New Orleans after some time apart. Their relationship is shadowed by a troubled childhood that they're each trying in their own way to escape from. Seeing each other again seems to complicate that in a big way.
This is a complex and emotionally harrowing comic that some will find a little too disturbing for them [edit: As noted in the comments below, I should mention that this comic gets very graphic about halfway through and is definitely for mature readers only]. Alden has many strengths as a cartoonist and one of them is knowing how to pull off the emotional gut punch. This story stuck with me for days after reading it. Alden drew it in a quickly pencilled style very similar to his Hawaii 1997 comic. It is unassuming in its rough quality and seems spontaneously drawn, belying the subtle layers of thematic storytelling beneath. You can often see where he he has erased lines of dialogue and his panel borders are wonky and uneven, but, there are so many elements of his cartooning that are more accomplished than you might at first realize. His sense of light and shadow as seen in that title page is beautiful. His realistic gestures (paired with spot-on dialogue) give his characters naturality that is so hard for many people to pull off in comics. And the way he structures his story, with interlocking scenes, sometimes switching back and forth in time from panel to panel, is just masterful.
Sam Alden, as his recent Ignatz Award indicates, is the next big thing. Check him out.
2. Zero
Written by Ales Kot; Art by Michael Walsh, colors by Jordie Bellaire, lettering by Clayton Cowles
Image Comics
A new ongoing series called Zero takes an interesting approach to comics storytelling that may be drawing inspiration from some recent trends in comics publishing. Writer Ales Kot is structuring his first ongoing comic so that each issue tells a standalone story feeding into a larger overall narrative. Each issue will also be drawn by a different artist.
Set in the near future, Zero is about a spy named Edward Zero who begins to uncover the uncomfortable truth behind the motives of the agency that employs him. Each issue focuses on a different mission and will tell a complete story but will build on the overarching story of Zero and his search for the truth. The first issue is drawn by Michael Walsh, the artist on the new X-Files comic for IDW. He has a gritty, realistic yet simple and clean style that is very reminiscent of Michael Lark (of Image Comics' Lazarus). Future artists will include Mateus Santolouco, Morgan Jeske, Tradd Moore, Will Tempest, and Tonci Zonjic. The consistent glue that will hold them all together is regular colorist Jordie Bellaire and letterer Clayton Cowles.
With the ever increasing popularity of digital comics, which rely more on single issue sales than collected editions, a comic that sells itself as consisting of "done-in-ones" where you can jump in at any point is a smart approach. Meanwhile, a recent comic that has successfully utilized multiple artists to tell different stories within one ongoing story is Brandon Graham's Prophet. The use of fresh talent and their varying art styles is a selling point for that book and fits in with the nature of the story in which the protagonist has multiple clones, each with their own stories to be told. Kot is capitalizing on a similar approach with some new names and rising stars on his roster and a story with changes in settings and time periods that allows for a flexibility in the book's aesthetic.
You can read an interview with Kot and see some preview pages from Zero here.
3. School Spirits
By Anya Davidson
For those readers that look for comics that push the envelope and experiment a little with form, the best places to look these days are probably out in the wild world of webcomics or within the Picturebox catalog. Started by Dan Nadel, co-editor of The Comics Journal, Picturebox publishes an eclectic mix of art comics and historical comic publications. Their books tend to value things like publication design, artistic experimentation and avant-garde aesthetics that you don't see in even the most independent of indie comics these days.
This week, Picturebox is releasing a couple of books and the one that most fits (or maybe breaks) the mold of artistic experimentation is Anya Davidson's debut graphic novel School Spirits. Davidson, a Chicago artist and former singer with the underground noise rock band Coughs, has been working on zines and mini comics for a number of years. Her work is very much in that punk frame of reference with loud, clashing color palettes and anything-goes storytelling. At times, her work is very reminiscent of classic, punk-comic provocateurs like Gary Panter but there are shades of many other influences in there including Mayan and Indian artwork, French cartoonist David B. and event a hint of Jack Kirby.
Davidson describes School Spirits as "Beavis and Butthead meets James Joyce's Ulysses," which is about as compelling a "___ meets ___" as I've heard in a while. It consists of four chapters that use different narrative techniques to tell a story involving a high school student named Oola with "an unusual connection to the supernatural."
You can preview some pages of School Spirits here.
4. Justice League 23.3/Dial E #1
Written by China Miéville; art by various
DC Comics
A nice little gem hidden within DC Comics's "Villain Month" (in which all their major superhero books are taken over by villains and temporarily renamed in their honor) is a comic that takes the place of Justice League #23.3 (there are 4 issues per title this month, hence the decimals) and is alternately titled Dial E #1. It is actually a coda to science fiction novelist China Miéville's highly acclaimed but recently cancelled DC comic Dial H.
A reworking of a goofy old DC comic—Dial H for Hero—Miéville's comic took the same concept (a guy finds a phone-like dial and whenever he dials H-E-R-O he turns into a new and different superhero) and added a dark and surreal flavor that calls to mind some of Grant Morrison's early work on Doom Patrol. Here, Mieville gets one last hurrah, but this time out there is an E dial that turns the criminals that find it into super villains.
Similar to the approach we mentioned in #2 with Ales Kot's Zero, Dial E uses an array of different artists within this one issue to differentiate the 20 different, brand new super villains it creates with the E Dial. The list of contributors is an exciting mix of artists that you'd regularly find in a DC Vertigo comic like Jeff Lemire, Brendan McCarthy, Jock and David Lapham as well as lesser known artists that you wouldn't typically see in what is ostensibly a Justice League comic like Tula O'Tay, Emma Rios, Sloane Leong, Annie Wu and many more.
You can see some preview pages here.
5. Buzzkill #1
Written by Donny Cates and Mark Reznicek; Art by Geoff Shaw, colors by Lauren Affe
Dark Horse Comics
We're all familiar with stories that show the devastating effects that alcoholism can have on someone's life. We also have seen how the power and confidence a story's character gets from alcohol is what eventually leads to the devastation. We may even have experienced these things ourselves in real life. However, in Buzzkill, a new 4 issue mini-series from Dark Horse, we meet a superhero whose power is derived from how much alcohol he imbibes. With that power comes blackouts, loss of control and massive amounts of destruction. After many years of this, the hero decides it is time to give it all up, which is exactly what his enemies want.
The creative team behind Buzzkill are all relative newcomers. Donny Cates got his break with Dark Horse with a story called Hunter Quaid that was published in their anthology Dark Horse Presents. Mark Reznicek is new to comics and a member of the band The Toadies who co-wrote the story with his friend Cates. Even artist Geoff Shaw has a short comics resume that's highlight is a 10 page story in a Batman anthology comic. Together they seem to have hit on a unique concept that looks to tell a serious story about addiction but within the larger-than-life trappings of a modern superhero comic. Despite its seemingly solemn take on alcoholism though, a sign that the comic will not take itself too seriously is in the names of some of the other heroes and villains that appear in the book, all with names derived from bands that Reznicek enjoys, i.e. "Panteradactyl."
Read a preview of the first few pages here.
The Brothers James #1
Zero's Michael Walsh has another comic out this week. This one is available through Comixology's Submit program for self-publishers. It's about two brothers driving across the country on a revenge mission to take out the people that killed their parents when they were kids. Preview and buy it through Comixology here.
Kinski #3
I haven't yet had the opportunity to mention the digital comic Kinski published by MonkeyBrain Comics and written and illustrated by the amazing Gabriel Hardman (Hulk, Secret Avengers). It's a weird, Hitchcockian story about a traveling businessman who ends up stealing a dog. The third issue goes on sale today for the very affordable price of 99 cents.
Also from Monkeybrain is this new 260+ page anthology consisting of 3 to 5 page stories all done by Brazilian comic creators, some whom have appeared in American anthologies such as Popgun and Dark Horse Presents and others that are most likely brand new to us American readers. Also on sale at Comixology.
Picturebox's other big release of the week (in addition to the previously mentioned School Spirits) is a graphic novel about an artist's assistant living in Pompeii, Italy before the deadly volcanic eruption that destroys the city. Writer and artist Frank Santoro is someone who loves to deconstruct and teach the art of making comics. He has drawn this book in a style that is reminiscent of Roman frescoes and drawings. Preview it here.
Brian Ralph's sitcom-like take on Tezuka-like robot manga gets collected in this new hardcover volume from Drawn & Quarterly.
Peruse the comics here.


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Expert's Rating
- Free app that updates drivers
- Neat and clean interface
- Bundles AVG toolbar
- Can only update one driver at a time
Our Verdict
Keep the drivers on your PC up to date.
Note: This review addresses v2.0 of the software, as do any user reviews dated before 05/27/2011.
Think your PC and your peripherals are up to date with the latest drivers installed? Think again. There's a very good chance that your drivers are outdated, leading to potential performance and security issues.
The free SlimDrivers provides a solid solution to the problem. It scans your PC and all attached peripherals, checks to see whether there are newer drivers available. It then reports on which are outdated, and shows you a list of them all. To update any driver, click "Download Update" and an installation procedure begins. After the drivers are installed, you'll generally be required to re-start your PC in order for them to take effect.
Note that downloading and installing drivers could potentially lead to system problems, so make sure before using this program to create a Restore Point. (The program will do it for you as well, if you ask it.) That way, if updating your drivers causes any problems, you can easily revert your system to the way it was before the update.
On my system, which I assumed had up-to-date drivers, SlimDrivers found 19 which were outdated. I downloaded and installed them all, and my system is now in tip-top shape. Did it increase performance? If so, I couldn't tell, but any tech guru will tell you that a system with the latest drivers is a more stable and secure system than one without.
You may find one thing about SlimDrivers annoying: You'll have to update each driver separately; you can't do them all at once. So if you have a lot of outdated drivers, that means you'll have to spend a good deal of time installing them, and restarting your PC multiple times. A for-pay version called Driver Update is available that will automatically update multiple drivers. It costs $29.97 for a one-year subscription.
–Preston Gralla


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➠ Haunted Hotel: Lonely Dream HD
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➠ Tiny Places HD
➠ Empress of the Deep II: Song of the Blue Whale HD
➠ Haunted Legends: The Queen of Spades Collector's Edition HD
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App Changes
- June 13, 2014 Initial release


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VICTORIA – Premier Christy Clark didn't win a seat in time to join her 48 fellow B.C. Liberal MLAs in the legislature for the summer session she ordered up.
By the time the byelection in Westside-Kelowna is certified by Elections B.C., Clark will be off to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. to meet with her fellow premiers in what is now loftily called the Council of the Federation.
These gatherings used to be called First Ministers' Conferences, and there was a set ritual, largely designed for the consumption of network television. Provincial premiers ganged up on the prime minister to demand federal "funding" for every conceivable need, just as municipal leaders get together each year to present their demands to the B.C. government.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper ended the show, declining to play the role of villain in this bit of political summer stock theatre, and it's unlikely that any future national leader would reverse this prudent decision.
The result, at least among western premiers, has been a quieter, more pragmatic effort to work together, rather than clumsy attempts to play a shell game with taxpayers' pockets.
The public got tired of this routine some time ago. I don't need a poll to tell me this is one of the reasons for the decline in voter participation and engagement in issues. Today, politicians frequently remind themselves out loud that there is "only one taxpayer" supporting the squabbling layers of this over-governed country.
And yet, the same mistake keeps being made over and over by opposition politicians, and dutifully reported by the news media. The notion that all problems can and should be solved by "more government funding" is now so engrained in our education system that it seems inescapable.
One of the NDP's big "gotcha" items last week was the failure of the B.C. government to buy the latest sonar technology to locate and recover the bodies of people who have drowned in one of our thousands of lakes and rivers. As with the health-care system, as soon as something is invented, some assume a right to it, regardless of cost.
Another big opposition target was the province's failure to buy up remote properties in the Kootenays that have been discovered to be at high risk of further landslides such as the one that swept through a year ago.
The question of limits for protecting people who choose to build homes in risky locations seldom comes up in our political-media theatre. The media's key ingredients are sympathetic victims to fit their narrative that all corporations and governments are greedy, stingy, callous and incompetent in everything they do.
What the opposition has dubbed "Christy Clark's wheelchair tax" is another case in point. A Fraser Health Authority official patiently explained what was really going on here.
An average $35 monthly rent for wheelchairs is charged at the majority of care facilities, which are contracted by the health authority. Operators charge as they see fit for maintenance, disinfection and replacement of this equipment, for patients who don't own their own chairs.
In September, a $25 fee is to be extended to the few facilities still directly run by Fraser Health, which have aging equipment and no fees. In all facilities, the fee is waived for those who can't afford it.
It would be useful for our politicians to frankly discuss the trend towards contracted health services, and the role of user fees in forcing people to take more responsibility for maintaining their own health.
But that is not what happens. The narrative of dumping frail, impoverished seniors from their wheelchairs has no relationship to reality, but it's how post-modern political theatre is done.
Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press and BCLocalnews.com


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Thyroid collars should be used for all dental x-rays when they do not interfere with the examination, according to a new policy statement issued June 13 by the American Thyroid Association (ATA).
The ATA released the statement to inform the public and healthcare practitioners about how to minimize risks to the thyroid gland associated with radiation exposure from diagnostic medical and dental radiography.
Radiation exposure to the thyroid among both children and adults is currently the strongest known risk factor for thyroid cancer, according to the ATA.
With more than 56,000 cases of thyroid cancer likely to be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2012, the incidence of thyroid cancer is increasing faster than any other cancer, the ATA noted in a press release. Although it is unlikely that radiation exposure is the predominant contributor to this trend, an increase in the use of diagnostic x-rays, particularly computed tomography (CT), is widespread and necessitates the protection of the thyroid gland where possible to diminish thyroid cancer risk.
In a 2005 brochure about thyroid cancer, the ATA stated that "routine x-ray exposure (e.g., dental x-rays, chest x-rays, and mammograms) does not cause thyroid cancer." While scientific knowledge at the time supported this language for the one-time use of the modalities cited, the statement did not take into account repeated exposure through diagnostic x-rays over a patient's lifetime or the increasing use of alternative procedures, such as CT, in which the doses to the thyroid are generally much larger, the association noted.
This prompted the ATA in 2011 to initiate a review of radiation as a cause of thyroid cancer, with the aim of establishing a policy that would state its view on how the exposure of the thyroid to radiation should be minimized.
The first section of the ATA's new policy statement is written for a general audience, while the second section reviews the medical literature supporting the policy. The ATA's chief conclusions and recommendations are as follows:
The risk of thyroid cancer arising from radiation exposure is very strongly dependent on age at exposure. It is only recently that a thyroid cancer risk for exposure after age 15 has been observed. This risk is low, but not absent.
For the purposes of public health planning, most experts and organizations assume that the risks for cancer, including thyroid cancer, are reduced proportionately with the dose.
The necessity of all diagnostic x-rays should be evaluated before they are performed. This must include the potential risks as well as the potential benefits to the patient. This must also include a consideration of the alternative methods for obtaining the same or related clinical information.
Thyroid-protective collars should be used for all dental x-rays when they do not interfere with the examination. Thyroid-protective collars are not needed for screening mammograms.
The patient or the patient's decision maker should be made aware of the potential risks and benefits of radiation in a manner that is understandable to them.
Clinicians should be adequately informed about the potential risks of radiation and the general principles of radiation dosimetry, especially as they relate to children and the thyroid.


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Set of 2 Dark Red Melamine Cups
Set of 2 Dark Red Melamine Cups
Sale Sold out
Regular price $16.90
Regular priceUnit price per
Sale price
Rice Dk New Melamine Cup Collection
Not only pretty, high quality too!
Rice Dk melamine cup can be used for hot and cold drinks, as a pencil and pen holder on your desk, or even as a small vase for small flowers.
This pretty cup comes in different colors, mix and match colors for a set or keep it unified. Anything goes!
The cups can be stacked for easy display in your cabinet or on shelf.
Children safe - no need to worry about falling and breaking.
Size: H 9 x D 9 cm
Material: Melamine
Color: Dark Red / Purple / Elegant Beige / Pastel Coral / Deep Green / Lavender / Mint Green / Pastel Yellow / Yellow / Green / Pastel Blue / Deep Blue / Turquoise / Aqua / Pastel Pink / Deep Pink / Red / Orange
Care: Dishwasher safe, not for use in the microwave.
Sold as: 1
Shipping - World Wide
$0 - $25.00 purchase


text: Take a look through the listings below. Should you not find anything that interests you, let us know what you're looking for. By signing up to receive NEW LISTING ALERT'S, you will be notified of new listings and price reductions that fit your search criteria via e-mail. This FREE service allows you to view new listings before they hit MLS®!! CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED!


text:
Square is a creative, professional, responsive HTML5 under construction / coming soon template with background music (optional) that has been built using the new Twitter Bootstrap3 framework. This template is being packed with a jquery countdown timer, mailchimp subscription form, ajax contact form.
Square allow you to use 4 types of background style with light and dark variation.
- - Plain background (1 gradient image included)
- - Single Image Background (Full screen)
- - Kenburn Slideshow (Full screen)
- - Youtube video background.(Full screen)
Main Feature
- Creative & Unique style
- Background Music (Optional) (NEW)
- Bootstrap Framework
- Fully Responsive
- Touch Enable
- Font Awesome Icon
- Ajax Contact form
- Working ajax Mailchimp Subscribe form
- Google Map
- Google Fonts
- Jquery Countdown Timer
- Easily customizable
- Ease of use
- Well structured and commented code
- Displays well in all modern browsers and devices
Note: Demo images are not included with this package.
Customer satisfaction is our top priority, don't hesitate to contact us using the contact form on our profile page if you require any assistance. Will try to reply within 24 hour.
Version: 1.3 – 23th April 2014
[+] Added Light version [+] Fixed bug for video version
Version: 1.2 – 13th March 2014
[+] Background MusicVersion: 1.2 – 6th March 2014
[+] Overlay pattern on Countdown Dice. [+] Minor css fix [+] Some bug fix for smart phoneVersion: 1.1 – 28th February 2014
[+] Fix bug for google map [+] Minor css fix
27th February 2014 - Initial Release


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Oy Babies!Permanent link
Mazel tov to Oy!Chicago bloggers Jane Charney and Rachel Friedman on the births of their sons!
Ron Ariel Averbukh was born May 21, 2012 at 3:22 am, weighing 7 pounds, 5 ounces. He's perfect, and Jane and Max are completely over the moon. The first name is in honor of his grandfather Rakhmil, who passed away in January. The middle name is in honor of his great grandfathers Arkady and Lev (the latter means lion in Russian as does Ariel in Hebrew).
Colin Harrison Friedman was born on May 24, 2012 at 10:45 am, weighing in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 20 inches long. He is a bright and alert little dude and looks forward to meeting everybody soon.
Moms, Dads and baby boys are all doing great.


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Worse than Chernobyl: The inner threat of Fukushima crisis
I recently pointed out, this operation has to go on forever - a long sickness, but at least not a sudden death. However, this week begins a new development in the potential sudden death department.
There is a curious and bizarre reversal of the natural at
Fukushima: a looking-glass world inversion. Unlike the standard
marine catastrophe, for example the Titanic, where the need is to
manically pump water out of the ship to stop it sinking, at
Fukushima the game is to madly pump water in, in order to stop it
melting down and exploding.
Probably because it is now clear that the saturation of the
ground from all the pumping water for cooling the several
reactors and spent fuel pools has destabilized the foundations of
the buildings, TEPCO is bringing forward its operation to try and
deal with what is perhaps the most dangerous of the four sites,
the spent fuel pond of Reactor 4. For this pond contains a truly
enormous amount of radioactive material: 1,331 spent fuel grids
amounting to 228.3 tons of Uranium and Plutonium buried inside a
swimming pool which has already dried out once and exploded. That
explosion blasted a significant, but unknown, quantity of
lethally radioactive bits and pieces of fuel element around the
site (where I heard they were bulldozed into the ground - who
knows?), but it also blew the top off the building, covered the
fuel elements under the water with rubble and pieces of crane
machinery, and no doubt twisted and melted a large proportion of
the remaining spent fuel.
Follow developments at Fukushima on RT's timeline.
The operation involves the kind of game that we are all familiar with in those machines in penny arcades. You know the ones. You stick in some coins. You have levers which manipulate a claw which you position over a teddy bear or a doll and then you let this down, pick the item up and drop it down a chute to win it. In the TEPCO version of this game, you build a crane over the spent fuel tank (or what's left of it) and manoeuver a grab down into the rubble to deftly pick out a spent fuel assembly, like a 4.5meter long and 24cm square birdcage containing the zirconium metal clad fuel elements, each unit weighing about one third of a ton.
Of course, to make the game more interesting, they are not just sitting there like they were when the tank was being used. They are under water (sea water), covered in debris, corroded, busted, twisted, intertwined and generally impossible to deal with. And here is the really scary thing: if you manage to bust a fuel element, the best outcome is that huge amounts of radioactivity escape into the air and blow over Japan, just like before. The worst outcome is when two of these things get too close, perhaps because in pulling one out it breaks and falls against another one in the tank. Because then you suddenly have lots of fission, a lot of heat, a meltdown, possibly a big blast like before, and the destruction of the entire cooling pond. Or else the water boils off and the whole thing catches fire.
Then what happens? Not quite Armageddon, but as far as Japan is
concerned, almost. I bet they have contingency plans to evacuate
the northern island to Korea, China, anywhere. A lot of this
radiation will end up in the USA, a long way downwind,
admittedly, but then there is an awful lot of radioactivity
Another tank with highly radioactive water at the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant has leaked, operator TEPCO reported on Tuesday. The contaminated water contains an unprecedented 80 million Becquerels of radiation per liter. The norm is a mere 150 Bq.
Let me lead you through what the spent fuel pond of Reactor 4 contains in the way of radionuclides. I was taken to task after my last article for not listing enough of the radionuclide contaminants. So for the record, though some may find it boring, let me remedy that. It is an impressive list of lethal material:
Strontium-89, Strontium-90, Yttrium-90, Zirconium-95, Niobium-95,
Ruthenium-106, Rhodium-106, Antimony-125, Iodine-131, Xenon-133,
Caesium-137, Caesium-134, Cerium-144 (loads of this),
Protoactinium-147, Europium-154, Plutonium-238, 239, 240, 241,
Americium (Yes)-241 and 243, Curium-242,243,244, and of course
Uranium 238,235 and 234.
These are the main ones. There are a lot more, and decay
daughters of these also. It is a scary amount of invisible death.
The total quantity of all these in the spent fuel pool of reactor
4 is about 1021 Becquerels, if we leave out the noble
gases and iodines maybe 1020 (that is, 1 with 20
zeroes). Maybe 50 to 100 Chernobyl accidents worth, or more
depending on what you believe came out of Chernobyl.
I list these because it should be made quite clear that the concentration of the media on the radio-caesiums and plutoniums and iodines is a very partial story. More discourse manipulation.
What lies within
Which brings me to another aspect of this grim piece of contemporary history. My expertise is in the health effects of internal radionuclides: what happens when these substances I list above get into human beings. Just after the Fukushima catastrophe I made a calculation and a prediction based on the scientific model of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR). I presented it at the German Society for Radioprotection/ ECRR conference in Berlin in May 2011.
This showed that there would be some 200,000 extra cancers in roughly 10 million population in the 200km radius of the site in the next 10 years, and 400,000 over 50 years. The current risk model adhered to and employed by the Japanese government is that of the International Commission of Radiological Protection, the ICRP. This predicts that no detectable cancers will be seen as a result of the "very low doses" received by the population.
It is this nonsense that allows them to say it is safe to live in contaminated areas so long as the annual "dose" is lower than about 20mSv and to refuse to evacuate the children from such places. The ECRR has predicted and explained all the increased rates of illness seen after the Chernobyl accident in the contaminated territories and of course predicts that the first effects will be increases in thyroid cancer in children, just like Chernobyl. But the ICRP and those employing its model deny there are such effects in Chernobyl: the problems there are due to vodka, radiophobia etc. Or that the children in Belarus who did develop thyroid cancer were iodine deficient. So in effect, Fukushima is a test of the two models. A test which has now begun.
It was reported recently that a survey of thyroid conditions in
young people age 0-18 by Fukushima Medical University found 12
confirmed cases and 15 suspected cases of thyroid cancer in
178,000 individuals screened. This is in a two-year period. The
2005 Japanese national incidence rate for thyroid cancer aged
0-18 is given in a recent peer reviewed report as 0.0 per
100,000. That is to say there are no cases. Let me be generous
and say that the annual rate per 100,000 is 0.05. That means in
the last two years we would expect 0.18 cases: we actually see at
minimum 12 cases but most likely 27 cases.
In epidemiology we calculate the excess risk as 27/0.18 which is 150 times the expected rate. Japan Times tells us "Researchers at Fukushima Medical University, which has been taking the leading role in the study, have said they do not believe the most recent cases are related to the nuclear crisis." Right, that's OK then. This must have been a random cluster, unluckily, but coincidentally near Fukushima, a source of radioiodine which is a known cause of thyroid cancer.
The risk model
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic
Radiation, UNSCEAR would agree. Also the World Health
Organization (since 1959 part of the International Atomic Energy
Agency [IAEA] as far as research into radiation and health is
concerned). In its preliminary report on Fukushima Health
effects, issued in 2012, it states that the maximum thyroid dose
was 35mSv and that most received a lot less. On the basis of the
ICRP model you would not expect (says radiation and health
supremo Dr. Wolfgang Weiss) to see what is clearly happening: an
accelerating thyroid cancer epidemic, worse than and earlier than
the Chernobyl thyroid cancer epidemic.
It is one more piece of evidence that the current ICRP risk model, employed by the Japanese (and all other world governments) is totally wrong and unsafe and must urgently be abandoned. Internal radiation exposure, as the ECRR approach shows, cannot be assessed by the simple concept of 'Absorbed Dose'. For those who want a more technical explanation you can see my recent article.
I met Weiss in 2011 at a conference of radiation research in Paris which he was running. At this MELODI conference I took the microphone and told the 650 delegates that the ICRP model was dead in the water and its use continued to kill the people it was intended to protect. I was pursued up the aisle by the Chair, Dr. Sisko Salomaa (of the Finnish Radiation Protection organization STUK), to wrestle the microphone away from the dangerous lunatic Busby.
But Weiss, Salomaa, and the other radiation agency apparatchiks
well know that the ICRP and the other global radiation protection
agencies UNSCEAR, IAEA and WHO are run by people (like
themselves) who are not experts on internal radiation pollution
and health, and rarely have any real hands-on research expertise.
They rely exclusively on the Hiroshima bomb studies which ignored
internal radiation, the black rain of uranium that affected the
controls outside the city and the control entrants after the
I have checked out their research publications: it is just the
case. Ask them. Their job has been - and still is - to protect,
not the public, but the nuclear industry and the military. After
Chernobyl, some of them turned up in Kiev when I was there in
2000 and talked down the effects of the radiation. Watch them in
action here. By 2005, these Chernobyl cancer effects were
turning up in Europe. One study in Sweden by Martin Tondel found
an 11 percent excess cancer risk for every 100kBq/sq metre of
caesium-137 contamination. Tondel was swiftly dealt with by his
boss, Lars Erik Holm, one-time head of ICRP and now Medical
Officer of Health of Sweden (Yes).
Again and again, these agencies and their spokespersons have
denied what was in front of their very eyes. Billions of dollars
are poured into cancer research, research on radiation, but any
attempt to carry out epidemiological studies of those exposed to
internal radiation, from depleted uranium in Iraq, to Chernobyl
contamination, to the shores of the massively-contaminated Baltic
Sea have been turned down for funding. I know. I applied with
colleagues from Latvia Technical University and from the
Karolinska Institute to look at cancer on the shores of the
Baltic; no way were we going to be allowed to even get the data,
let alone be funded.
As more evidence emerges from this ghastly inadvertent Fukushima
experiment, we will see more and more that we have governments
and radiation agencies who are wielding unsafe and incorrect
scientific assessments of reality. Additionally, we have what
might become one of the most serious global public health events
of human history being overseen by a private profit-making
company, TEPCO, with no good track record of competence or
And appropriately, in this looking-glass world, in a bizarre echo of these two inversions of justice and democracy, we have a sinking ship that can only be saved by pumping water into it.
What are we going to do with these people who have let us down, who are letting us down? They all should be put into a court and tried and sent to jail for what are effectively war crimes, in this new war, the invisible genetic poisoning of the planet and its innocent inhabitants.
Christopher Busby from the European
Committee on Radiation Risks for RT
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.


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13 centimeters is equal to 0 feet and 5.118 inches. There are easy ways to calculate how many feet and inches are in 13 cm. The first method is to perform simple arithmetic calculations that are not difficult. To perform arithmetic calculations, you need to be aware of length measurement units and how they work. Since we are going to convert from centimeters to feet and inches, you should know that 1 foot is equal to 12 inches and 1 centimeter is equal to 0.3937 inches. In case of large numbers, it is not possible to calculate manually. That's when online height conversion tools come into play. We have explained both the methods in detail below.
13 Centimeters to Feet and Inches Using a Simple Formula
We are going to do the calculation which is easy to understand using simple maths. As you know, 1 foot is equal to 12 inches and 1 centimeter is equal to 0.3937 inches, so we need to multiply 0.3937 by 13 to get the output in inches. Multiplying 0.3937 by 13, we have 5.118 inches. Now, 0 is equal to 0 feet so the result is 0 feet 5.118 inches.
13 Centimeters to Feet and Inches using the conversion tool
You can also use our online height conversion tool to find out how many feet and inches are in 13 cm. Simply enter the value 13 in the Centimeters input field. Our tool will instantly convert 13 centimeters to feet and inches and display the result of 0 feet 5.118 inches in the Feet and Inches field. You may also want to convert the 13 cm to other length units described above in the tool. You don't need to do anything. Our tool will take care of this and do the simultaneous instant conversion and show the resulting value in the respective fields.
Calculations of feet and inches from centimeters are commonly used when you want to calculate the height or length of an object. The basic questions surrounding such calculations are how long is 13 cm in feet and inches, how wide is 13 cm in feet and inches, how big is 13 cm in feet and inches, how much is 13 cm in feet and inches, e.t.c. The answer to all your questions is 0 feet 5.118 inches. We have already mentioned above how to convert 13 centimeters to feet and inches.
It doesn't matter what kind of unit conversion you are going to do, but in every unit conversion, the conversion factor plays an important role. Feet, inches and centimeters are part of the length measurement units, so it's not that difficult to convert 13 centimeters to feet and inches and 0 feet 5.118 inches to centimeters. The conversion is quite smooth and accurate. The conversion factor between 2 units mostly involves division or multiplication. The unit measurement mark for feet is feet and inches is in. This means you can write 0 feet and 5.118 inches as 0 feet 5.118 inches. The unit measurement symbol for centimeter is cm. This means you can write 13cm as 13cm.


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The Weed That Won the West
How did an invader from the Russian steppes become a symbol of the American West?
The trouble begins around sundown, when a couple of city slickers out for a drive in the desert become stranded along a lonely canyon road. It's silent and windless. Yet one by one, like wolves in the night, tumbleweeds start gathering around them.
"They're following us," the heroine cries. When her husband tries to intervene, one of the tumbleweeds leaps at his eyes.
"It was just like an octopus!" he shouts, after tearing it from his face. "There was living strength in it! ... Where did all that energy come from? How can you animate a dead weed?"
There were scarier moments in The Outer Limits, the old black-and-white science fiction series. But this episode, "Cry of Silence," holds a special horror for me.
My own encounter with these monsters began one autumn when my wife and I decided to buy some land—a couple of acres for horses on the outskirts of Santa Fe. We had noticed a few brittle tumbleweed skeletons lying around. But that was to be expected. Salsola tragus, as it's properly called, or Russian thistle, has become ubiquitous in the West. A few months later, after purchasing the property, we found more: piles of tumbleweeds that had accumulated against a stand of piñon and juniper trees during the March winds.
I tried not to worry. I had fought weeds of all kinds at our house in town, including the occasional tumbleweed. There was also kochia and flixweed, a wild mustard that seemed to resist both fire and herbicides, and yellow toadflax, which exudes a skin-burning chemical (a Homo sapien-icide) to fight off human pickers like me. The names we give these creatures are a testament to humanity's disgust: pigweed, dogbane, horseweed, sow thistle, stink grass, ragwort, poverty sumpweed. Programmed by evolution to eke out a living in the harshest regions of the planet, they find life anywhere else like retiring to Florida.
Salsola, I would discover, is their Genghis Khan. An invader from the Eurasian steppes east of the Ural Mountains, Russian thistle has shown an appalling ability to thrive in its adopted land. Every winter the plants die, and the stems become brittle, breaking with a gust of wind. Then they go rolling and rolling, merging into masses of ugly, brown thorn clouds that can bury a house or feed the fury of range fires. Good for almost nothing, the biggest plants—they get as large as Volkswagen bugs—can scatter as many as 250,000 seeds along a path extending for miles. The seeds then lie in wait, preparing for the next wave of the invasion.
With the spring snowmelt and the first summer rains on the ranch, thousands of Russian thistle seeds began to erupt into the sunlight, appearing against the brown earth like tiny blue-green stars. They looked so pretty and innocent, the young ones, basking in the sun. Then they began to transmogrify. In a few days they were the size of my hand, their rubbery, purple-veined fingers pulling back troll-like as I tried to yank them from the ground. They weren't yet ready to go.
In another week some of the plants had grown as big as bowling balls. Knowing they would soon double and triple in size, we hacked them with hoes, loaded them into the back of my Jeep, and hauled them to the dump. Two weeks later they were back again.
Throughout the summer we would spend most Saturdays stuffing 40-pound trash bags with the latest crop, trying to interrupt the ancient cycle by preventing the young plants from setting seed. I'd canvass every square foot of the property, and one week later I'd have to do it all over again. Salsola was everywhere.
For the next few months the weeds and I fell into a cycle of prey and predator, and I acquired the instincts of a hunter. The tiniest glimmer of Salsola would catch my attention, and I'd have to chop a whole patch dead. I tried mowing them down with a weed whacker, burning the babies with a propane torch. I tried herbicides—chemotherapy—that were supposed to suppress the seedlings before they sprouted or disrupt the metabolism of those already born. No remedy was more than marginally effective. Salsola was always a step ahead.
Soon I found myself spending hours with books like Weeds of the West andFundamentals of Weed Science. There is satisfaction in getting to know an enemy: its habits, its ethology—sometimes, it seemed, its psychology. By now I was sure the plants had learned to hide from me, hunkering down beside a rock and bursting into seed before I caught them. By November, when the infestation had finally subsided for the winter, I'd see Russian thistle when I closed my eyes. I'd hear Gene Autry in my head singing that horrible song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds."
Tumbleweeds around me sing their lonely song.
Nights underneath the prairie moon,
I ride along and sing this tune.
See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground ...
Pledging their love to the ground! Pillage and plunder is more like it. The next spring, after all of that work, the Salsola was as fierce as ever. And of course I was hardly the only one fighting this unwinnable war. How had this come to pass?
It was in October 1880 that the Department of Agriculture in Washington first received word of a strange plant that had begun appearing in the newly tilled farmlands of South Dakota. Included with the report was a sample that had been found near the town of Yankton on the Missouri River. The information was filed away and forgotten until, a little more than a decade later, more specimens began arriving in the mail. One came from Aberdeen, 200 miles northwest of the earlier sighting, and another from all the way up in North Dakota. The march was already becoming relentless. In the early 1890s a legislator proposed that a fence be built around the state to stem the incursion. It was too late. By this time the weed had already found its way to Canada.
While tracking down its history, James A. Young, a USDA scientist, gathered letters documenting the invasion. "The greater portion of South Dakota east of the Missouri is infested," one farmer wrote in 1891. "This obnoxious weed has become so formidable in some portions of the state ... that many farmers are driven from their homes on account of it."
Another correspondent wrote that "intelligent Russians" told him the weed grew abundantly back home around Odesa, "and it is supposed to have been brought to America by Russians in some manner not known." Some farmers suspected it had been introduced intentionally by subversive Mennonites.
Lyster Hoxie Dewey, assistant botanist, was sent from Washington to investigate. He interviewed anyone he could find who could provide information on the invasion. I imagine him on horseback clutching WANTED posters with mug shots of the weed. He dispatched questionnaires to the county governments in seven states asking when the plant had first been noticed and how far it had spread. He was appalled by what he found: "one almost continuous area of about 35,000 square miles which has become more or less covered with the Russian thistle in the comparatively brief period of twenty years."
Iowa, Nebraska, parts of Wisconsin—all were being overtaken. The infestation, Dewey was quick to assure his superiors, was not part of a conspiracy. Sometime in 1873 or 1874—that is how precise Dewey was—contaminated flaxseed from Russia had been sown, quite accidentally, on a farm near the town of Scotland, South Dakota.
"The rapidity with which the Russian thistle has spread, both in infesting new territory and in thoroughly covering that already infested, far exceeds that of any weed known in America," Dewey reported. "Very few cultivated plants even, which are intentionally introduced and intentionally disseminated, have a record for rapidity of distribution equal to that of this weed."
Taking root along roads, irrigation ditches, and railroad tracks, or stowing away inside shipments of grain, Salsola quickly spread across the West. By 1885 it had reached California. Within a few years Salsola had been sighted in more than a dozen states. Rollicking across its new homeland, Salsola was a frighteningly efficient seed-sowing machine.
It hardly bothers with leaves, putting its energy instead into producing small, spiny scales called bracts. Tucked in the cleft between bract and stem are small, barely visible flowers that give forth seeds. Inside each, coiled like a snake, is the Salsolaembryo, ready to unfurl into a seedling as soon as daytime temperatures rise just above freezing. Given only a few drops of moisture, the weed begins to grow, pushing down a root that can extend six feet deep, with tentacles reaching out even farther.
Late in the autumn, when the mature plant is pregnant with seeds, a layer of cells at the base weakens like the stem of an apple to allow easy detachment. Then comes the inevitable wind. The plant breaks and rolls and reseeds. Rich soil, poor soil, wet or dry, clay or sandy, alkaline or acidic—wherever it finds an opportunity. As long as the ground has been loosened by a plow, a shovel, or the hooves of a cow, Salsola will grow. In 1959 it was collected for the first time in Hawaii. Today the USDA Plants Database lists Russian thistle growing in every state except Florida and Alaska.
The weed has also continued to thrive in its native land, spreading throughout the dry parts of Europe and Asia. Canada, Australia, Argentina, South Africa—all have been conquered too. During the early 1960s, after aboveground nuclear testing finally ceased at the Nevada Test Site, the first thing said to grow back was Russian thistle. Radioactive Salsola has come tumbling out of the old Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, where plutonium was manufactured during the Cold War. I half expect to hear someday that Russian thistle has been found on the moon.
Late this spring, wanting to see where the whole mess started, I flew to Sioux Falls, rented a car, and headed south to Bon Homme County, where those hapless South Dakota farmers had let the genie escape. As I drove along the farm roads, I thought of that Outer Limits episode. A half-mad old codger finally rescues the couple from their weedy attackers, and they take refuge in his farmhouse. On a table is a copy of his journal: "There is a malignant intelligence behind these weeds," he wrote, before losing it completely. "No, not behind them, in them."
A sign on the outskirts identified the village of Scotland, population 891. There was no arch over the road, like the one in Castroville, California, "artichoke center of the world." Being the home of Russian thistle is not something you advertise. A purple water tower rose over Main Street, which led to a park where children were playing. Off to one corner, beyond the zone of maintenance, several tumbleweeds crouched, waiting to come in. Most of the region is now cultivated for corn and soybeans, so I didn't see as many Russian thistles as I had expected. They appeared mostly along roadsides, in neglected hollows. Given fewer open spaces to travel and the heavy use of industrial-grade herbicides, Salsola has moved to a friendlier land farther west.
I drove on to Vermillion, where I had arranged to see historical samples at the University of South Dakota's herbarium. James Robertson, a graduate student who oversees the collection, laid the weeds out on a table like a rogues' gallery. The oldest was dated August 1892—more than a hundred generations ago.
"I had an adviser who used to say that 'a weed' is a loser's term for a winner," Robertson said. "I think tumbleweeds won."
Not everyone is ready to surrender. To keep Salsola in check, scientists with the USDA have been working for years with colleagues in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Turkey on experiments with pests—mites, weevils, moths, and fungi—that prey on the weeds in their native habitat. Imported to the United States, biological controls like these "should help reduce the populations of this weed to innocuous levels over extensive regions," Lincoln Smith, one of the researchers, has predicted. But he has yet to receive federal permission for a release in the field. Federal regulations like these are a good thing, I suppose. I just wish they had been in place to stop theSalsola. For now the weed's only real foe is us.
We're not a very unified one. At Christmas the citizens of Chandler, Arizona, erect a tumbleweed Christmas tree. In Albuquerque a giant tumbleweed snowman looms menacingly over Interstate 40. Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, in Garden City, Kansas, actually grows Salsola—on purpose!—in long, neat rows: "Quality tested Tumbleweeds!" It ships them in boxes for $15 to $25 each as decorative items. (A special Web page caters to Japanese customers.) A man at Curious Country Creations in Utah proudly told me his tumbleweeds have been used in storefront displays by Ralph Lauren, in Broadway plays, and in Western-themed weddings. For $14.99 the guy will sell you a pack of tumbleweed seeds.
Maybe there is something to be admired about collective and commercial enterprises like these—something about making the best of things, embracing the inevitable. But I'm not buying it. To me, this is just consorting with the enemy.


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Ecological Society of America criticizes administration's overhaul of the Endangered Species Act
The Ecological Society of America today criticized the Bush administration's Aug. 15 proposal to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act, which would impose regulatory changes eliminating the requirement for federal projects to undergo independent scientific review. The proposal would allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their projects would harm endangered animals and plants.
"The concept of independent scientific review has been in practice since the 18th century and is crucial to ensuring that ideas and proposed work are scientifically sound," said Alison Power, president of the Society and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. "This overhaul of the Endangered Species Act would place the fate of rare species in the hands of government stakeholders who are not qualified to assess the environmental impacts of their activities."
The Endangered Species Act protects more than 2000 of the United States' rarest plants and animals. Ranging from green sea turtles to Santa Cruz cypress trees, these species are not only national treasures, but also biological resources and often integral parts of their ecosystems.
Under the current Act, which has been in effect since 1973, agencies are required to consult with scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to assess potential ecological threats of their proposed projects. The administration now claims that agencies possess the expertise to judge the potential risks of their own projects and could opt to forgo the consultation.
The Bush proposal would present a conflict of interest, erasing the distinction between scientific review and politics. But proponents argue that the agencies would be held accountable and would suffer strict repercussions if their work negatively affected endangered species or their habitats. Power says, however, that this logic would provide little incentive for agencies to assess their work as rigorously as an unbiased reviewer.
"What if we allowed pharmaceutical companies to approve and distribute drugs without consulting the Food and Drug Administration?" she asks. "The result would spell potential disaster for humans. In this case, the vulnerable party is our environment."
Recently, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management conducted an internal assessment to determine the effects of wildfire prevention projects on endangered species. A follow-up evaluation by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service revealed that about half these evaluations were lawfully and scientifically invalid.
The Society believes that independent scientific review is a critical part of the Endangered Species Act and that eliminating this part of the process will result in environmental neglect at best and species extinctions at worst. The administration's proposal would compromise our ecosystems' capacity to provide essential services, such as mitigating pollution, regulating climate and providing natural resources. Exposing the most vulnerable species to the threats that will result from the Bush proposal will endanger our ecological support system.
Previous ESA statements concerning peer review and the Endangered Species Act:
Joint Scientific Societies' Statement on Objective Scientific Peer Review (2004)
Joint Scientific Societies' Statement on the Endangered Species Act (2006)
Strengthening the Use of Science in Achieving the Goals of the Endangered Species Act (1996)
ESA has several experts available to comment on the proposal:
Stanley A. Temple
John A. Wiens
P. Dee Boersma
The Ecological Society of America is the world's largest professional organization of ecologists, representing 10,000 scientists in the United States and around the globe. Since its founding in 1915, ESA has promoted the responsible application of ecological principles to the solution of environmental problems through ESA reports, journals, research, and expert testimony to Congress. ESA publishes four journals and convenes an annual scientific conference. Visit the ESA website at http://www.esa.org.
Copyright ©2008 by AAAS, the science society.
|Photo © Larry Master/ www.masterimages.org


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Open Year-RoundA spacious, quiet and safe RV Park with 215 Sites. Centrally located near Downtown, Shopping Malls, and Restaurants.
The Golden Nugget is "Big Rig" and caravan friendly and has 34 large pull-thru sites and 87 back-in sites to accommodate larger rigs and tow vehicles.
4 heated restrooms with free hot showers.
(VOTED Cleanest Restrooms)
On-site Evening Entertainment and BBQs/PotlucksAdjacent to our park is a Municipal Park with Kaboom playground equipment for children and a large wooded exercise area for walking pets.
Close walking distance to the Bus-Stop, Russian Jack Golf Course, city bike trails, Car Wash, Costco, Kentucky Fried Chicken and O'Reilly Automotive.
You are always welcome at the Golden Nugget.


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A War Between China and Japan: What It Could Cost You
Posted By RichC on February 16, 2013
Shared per Emily Stewart of Online MBA blog … Thanks.
Global economists are keeping their eyes glued to the Asia-Pacific region, where a bitter feud is brewing between two of the world's most powerful nations over a small collectivity of islands in the East China Sea. The Chinese government argues that a treaty signed during the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) conferred ownership of the islands to China. Japan has long disputed these claims, and today argues that the islands are integral to its national identity.
The argument came to a head last September, when a boycott of Japanese products led Chinese demonstrators to target fellow citizens who owned Japanese cars. Three months later, the situation escalated when when Japanese jets confronted a Chinese plane flying over the islands; no shots were fired, but the act of antagonism has set a troubling precedent between the military forces of both nations.
The conflict between China and Japan has put the United States in a precarious position: if a full-scale war were to erupt, the U.S. would be forced to choose between a long-time ally (Japan) and its largest economic lender (China). Last year, China's holdings in U.S. securities reached $1.73 trillion and goods exported from the U.S. to China exceeded $100 billion. The two countries also share strong economic ties due to the large number of American companies that outsource jobs to China.
However, the U.S. government may be legally obligated to defend Japan. In November, the U.S. Senate added an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that officially recognizes Japan's claims to the disputed islands; the U.S. and Japan are also committed to a mutual defense treaty that requires either country to step in and defend the other when international disputes occur. Not honoring this treaty could very easily tarnish America's diplomatic image.
The countries of the Asia-Pacific region are collectively responsible for 55 percent of the global GDP and 44 percent of the world's trade. A major conflict between the region's two largest economies would not only impose a harsh dilemma on U.S. diplomats, but also have a significant impact on the entire global economy. It is in every nation's best interest that the Chinese and Japanese settle their territorial dispute peacefully.
Video Transcript
Whispers of the unthinkable are wafting throughout the Asian-Pacific Region: war between China and Japan over a small cluster of resource rich islands in the East China Sea claimed by China (Diaoyu) and Japan (Senkaku).
In September, the dispute quickly came to a boil. Fueled by nationalism and the memory of Japan's brutal occupation of China during World War II, enraged Chinese crowds filled the streets. They targeted owners of Japanese cars and launched a massive boycott of Japanese products, sending a debilitating gut punch to Japan's still struggling economy. In November, the Wall Street Journal Live reported that the boycott had cost Japanese companies "billions of dollars."
Since then, both nations have flexed their military muscle. In December, Japan scrambled jet fighters to respond to a Chinese plane flying over the islands. Although no shots have been fired yet, such dangerous confrontations are likely to continue.
Should the crisis worsen from its current status to, say, missiles launched and a ship sunk or an airplane knocked out of the sky, the United States will be forced to choose between backing a longtime ally (Japan) and supporting a nation more central to our economic health (China).
In terms of economics, China has the clear bottom-line edge, serving as America's biggest lender. As of September, China's holdings in US securities ($1.73 trillion) topped the global list of creditors.
In terms of trade, the most significant US relationship in the Asia-Pacific Region is with China – by far. According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, the export of US goods to China amounted to $104 billion in 2011, while exports to Japan over the same period were $66.2 billion.
Then there's the extensive outsourcing by American companies, which ties the economies of China and the US even closer. A case in point is Apple, which designs its iPhone and other products in the US, but has them assembled at China's massive Foxconn City facility.
All of this could be put at risk if the US sided with Japan in the current dispute – and the Chinese retaliated. A boycott would obviously harm American companies that ship agricultural products as well as cars and other finished goods to the Chinese market. Less clear is whether Chinese anger would extend to US firms such as Apple, which have deeper Chinese economic roots.
There's also the possibility that China, to punish the US, could sell off its stash of US securities, a move that would devalue the dollar. It's possible but not likely, at least according to a December report by the Congressional Research Service. Among other consequences, such a sale "could diminish the value of these securities" and "lead to large losses" for China.
In November, the US Senate unanimously approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act recognizing Japan's administration of the Senkakus and opposing the use of force. The Japanese cheered, and the Chinese howled. But the provocative sentiment expressed in the amendment should be no surprise.
In 2011, President Obama announced a major foreign policy shift. He declared that the Asia-Pacific Region – which generates "approximately 55 percent of world GDP and about 44 percent of world trade" – would be a top US security priority. The declaration was couched in normal and nuanced diplomatic niceties.
It could also prompt the Japanese to scrap their antiwar constitution – adopted after the US However, China and the other nations of the region weren't fooled.
For the United States, China is a classic "frenemy" – an economic partner, a rival, and a potential enemy that has upgraded its military capacity and used it to reinforce its claim to other disputed islands in the South China Sea.
More importantly, the US and Japan – which is home to ships of the powerful US Seventh Fleet – are bound together by a mutual defense treaty, which commits the US to defend its longtime ally. US failure to support Japan would undermine US credibility not just in Japan but throughout this strategically important region. Firebombing of Japanese cities and the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II – and commit their deep pool of technological skills and talent to a single goal: a massive rearmament program that could include nuclear weapons. No one doubts that the Japanese, have the capacity to become a world-class military power – an outcome no rational person wants to see.
Should a shooting war erupt, the US will side with Japan despite the nightmarish economic scenarios that could follow. The challenge facing US officials and diplomats in 2013 is to help China and Japan find a face-saving way to keep the dispute from getting that far.


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The story of a Texas teenager who's suing her family to stop them pressuring her into an abortion is all over the anti-abortion media. But their coverage of it shows how poorly they understand what it means to be pro-choice.
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports that the 14-year-old girl, who hasn't been named, alleges that her family scheduled an abortion appointment for her against her will. According to her lawyer, Stephen Casey of the Texas Center for the Defense of Life, she says family members kept her from going to school, and she accuses one cousin of "physically assaulting her by grabbing her by the neck, hitting her across the jaw and threatening to beat her if she didn't get an abortion." Another cousin allegedly said the girl was "mentally unstable" and incapable of caring for a child. The TCDL also maintains that the father of the fetus the girl is carrying, and his mother, support her desire to carry the pregnancy to term. Judge Missy Medary of the 347th State District Court of Texas has issued a temporary restraining order preventing her family "either directly or indirectly from forcing her to have an abortion against her will." It's in effect until a hearing on January 19, at which point Medary will decide whether to extend it for the full length of the girl's pregnancy.
The girl hasn't spoken publicly, and there are so many competing interests at work in her case that it's difficult to tell what she herself wants. In addition to her family and the father's family, there's also the TCDL, which as of now is the only source of public information about her side of the story. They apparently got involved when the girl's friends contacted a crisis pregnancy center on her behalf. Now TCDL CEO Greg Terra says, "We intend to fully support this young woman in her desire to allow her child to live. Every mother has the legal right to keep her unborn child, against the coercion of others, and we intend to support her decision in this case."
Continuing her pregnancy may well be what the girl wants, but it's a little disturbing that the TCDL's narrative is the only one out there. Her family doesn't have legal representation, so it's been difficult to get their point of view. A court representative told me that Judge Medary had appointed attorney Fran Willms as the girl's guardian for legal purposes — so far, due to the sensitivity of the case and due to her charge's age, Willms hasn't been able to provide me with any comment. As of now, I've been unable to confirm from any outside source that the girl's family is actually trying to force her to have an abortion — the only source for this story is the TCDL, which has an obvious vested interest in painting itself as the defender of a mother and her baby against an abortion-hungry family.
Why would this narrative be so appealing to an anti-choice group? Because it makes pro-choicers look like hypocrites. Kristen Walker of Live Action (the organization founded by anti-choice child prodigy Lila Rose) writes,
If the girl were suing her parents to get an abortion, what do you want to bet the anti-lifers would have this kid's face on a T-shirt already? It's not choice they are concerned with. If so, they would be standing up for this girl's right to choose to keep her baby. They don't care about her right to give birth. They care about her right to abort.
Walker also quotes some pro-choice comments from Democratic Underground, only one of which actually supports the family's (alleged) desire to force the girl to abort. Others are more nuanced. Says salvorhardin,
A woman's right to choose, is a woman's right to choose, and if we support choice for other minors, with or without parental notification, then we should also support this young woman's right to carry her baby to term. On the other hand, she's 14 years old, and her parents are going to bear the financial burden of her pregnancy, and possibly raising the kid if she doesn't elect for adoption. And if she actually is mentally unstable, then that's a whole other can of worms. I feel sorry for her and her family.
Adds Warpy,
The girl wants to keep this pregnancy and she should be allowed to, no question. However, we do know what's down the road for her in terms of diminished expectations and it's sad.
It's not as sad as having her parents force an abortion on her when she doesn't want it. That's the way to destroy all trust in her parents and quite possibly supply other scars, as well.
Really, no responsible pro-choicer should support a family's right to force a teenager to get an abortion. It might not be especially comfortable to think about a 14-year-old making a decision that will affect the rest of her life (anti-choicers like to say that abortions also impact women for the rest of their lives, and while this can happen, the claim that most women suffer permanent psychological damage from abortion is pure bullshit). But taking that decision away from her is way more upsetting — if we want to protect teens from families who would force them to carry their pregnancies to term, we also have to protect this girl from a family who wants to bully her into an abortion. Because despite the anti-abortion media's attempts to caricature us, safeguarding the bodily autonomy of women and girls is what advocates for choice are about.
14-Year-Old Girl Sues Family To Stop Abortion [Live Action]
Family stopped from forcing Texas teen to have abortion [Texas Center for Defense of Life]
Court order prevents family of Corpus Christi teen from forcing her to get abortion [Caller.com]


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The Art of Trolling: Inside a 4chan Smear Campaign
Last night, the users of 4Chan.org's notorious /b/ message board declared war on the lead singer of an obscure electro-pop band. More than 12 hours later, they're still waging it. This is how the Internet's worst trolls work.
This week, 4Chan's /b/ board launched an Internet gang-up on an 11-year-old girl, Jessi Slaughter, who had been the target of dubious Internet rumors about an underage sex scandal. They posted her real name, phone number, address and social networking information and spearheaded a campaign of Internet and real-life harassment. They made her cry. /b/'s denizens have turned their ire now on 25 year-old Dahvie Vanity, the other half of that very likely made-up scandal. Vanity is the lead singer of the terrible electro-pop MySpace band Blood on the Dance Floor (Sample lyric:"I'll fuck you in the face/and leave a nice taste.") Now, /b/ has sworn to destroy him.
4chan's /b/ message board is ground zero for Internet mischief. Some of their most famous pranks include sending Justin Bieber to North Korea, flooding YouTube with porn and getting 4cha.org's founder, Christopher Poole, voted Time's most influential person.
/b/'s campaign against Dahvie Vanity—dubbed "Operation: The Consequences"—is a good case study in how these often impressive, sometimes awful feats are pulled off. I've been following the trolling operation since it began last night on /b/, watching as it moved from /b/ to chatrooms to the inbox of the Orlando Police Department. Here's how it's unfolded so far:
Sometime last night after 10pm, a /b/ user posted a proposition that the board's users troll the "pedophile" Dahvie Vanity. 4chan was still basking in its earlier harassment of Jessi Slaughter, so users quickly got on board—the thread exploded with suggestions and encouragement accompanied by unrelated pictures of boobs. One user compiled a dossier of Dahvie's personal information—name, date of birth, links to his social networking profiles and articles about him. Someone posted a link to a chatroom. When I entered it, about 44 users were chattering in all caps about how to take Vanity down. (If you typed in lowercase a flurry of users scolded: "CAPS OR GET BANNED.") This is where most of the detailed planning would occur, with users frequently posting to the main /b/ board for reinforcements.
The early plans thrown around were the most technically ambitious, involving hacking into Vanity's MySpace or email accounts. Since users had found Dahvie Vanity's real name, date of birth and home state, the only thing they needed to reset the password on one of his email accounts (which one was unclear) was the answer to his security question: Name of first pet. One person posted the question to Yahoo! Answers, hoping some deeply obsessed fangirl would know the name of Vanity's first cat. Another one impersonated a fan and emailed Dahvie himself: "i just got a new cat and i wanted to name it after a pet you've had because i love you." Then they posted the email:
None of these deception tactics worked. "What happened to the old 4chan where everyone was a hax0r," griped one user. "They're all Tumblr fags now," replied another.
So they decided to launch a more pedestrian attack on Vanity's Internet reputation by Googlebombing him. Googlebombing consists of artificially boosting the number of searches for a term so it shows up in Google Hot Trends. (The origin of the virulent Justin Bieber syphilis rumor.) The phrase in this case was "Dahvie Vanity raped Jessica [redacted]"—Jessica being Jessi Slaughter, 4chan's earlier victim. The bomb was primed with a post on /b/ telling users to type the phrase into Refreshthing, a website which can automatically Google a phrase once every five seconds.
Users also created scores of pages on the crowdsourcing service Yahoo! Answers, asking questions like "Did Dahvie Vanity actually rape a girl?" Hey, just asking!
This afternoon, talk in the chatroom turned to trolling Dahvie In Real Life. IRL trolling is reserved for only /b/'s most hated enemies, but throughout the night, users had decided unequivocally that Dahvie was a serial rapist and a pedophile. They wanted to get him arrested. A couple of users emailed the Orlando police department, pretending to be worried parents who had heard rumors of Vanity molesting underage children. They posted the email:
One user emailed Gurl, an online community for teen girls, telling them that they had been molested by Vanity. Another had the inspired the idea to email Westboro Baptist Church, I guess in the hopes that they'll protest outside his house or something.
And that's basically where things stand as of this posting. 4chan has been having site problems for the last few hours, so Operation: The Consequences is in a holding pattern, unable to summon the full force of 4chan's user base. But the chat room still has 22 users. And this is what they're talking about:
[14:38] anonymousey: damn internet, you scary :/
[14:38] anonymousey: i would never want to be on the reciving end of us
[14:38] anonymousey: i'll just say that much
[14:38] cyahnidde: lol same
[14:38] cyahnidde: we are like...some kind of internet hate machine
This is the chat room. Dare you to troll it.
Update: Chat room: Trolled. Shots: Fired.


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I've been given a fabulous book – The Alice B.Toklas Cookbook, first published in 1954. Alice B. Toklas, the lover of writer Gertrude Stein, was an eccentric cook. But Gertrude and Alice's dinner guests were the likes of Matisse and Picasso, so the originality stakes were high. When Picasso popped round for lunch, Alice decided he would like a 'decorated fish', cooked using a method her grandmother swore by. She argued that a fish 'having lived its life in water, once caught, should have no further contact with the element in which it had been born and raised.'
I was starting to like the sound of recipe – until I got to the final paragraph. Alice suggests covering the fish with stripes of mayonnaise and tomato paste. Then, even worse, she goes hard-core kitsch and coats the mayonnaise-daubed fish in a fancy pattern of 'sieved hard-boiled eggs, the whites and the yolks apart.' Picasso apparently exclaimed at the fish's beauty, but suggested that its particular aesthetic made it more suitable for Matisse than him. What kind of tricky friend must he have been to have for lunch?
Food for friends is the best kind of food there is. Mind you, much as I love my friends, having just cooked spinach and parmesan tart for sixty of them, I don't feel like making pastry again for a while. Which is why I've just made a courgette and lovage tart, using not pastry but porridge oats. It's so effortless I could happily make it for six hundred. What's exquisite about this tart is the delicate flavour of celery bequeathed by the lovage. I picked my lovage this morning from a friend's garden. So this is food for friends containing food by friends. And it's a mini work of art.
Courgette and Lovage Tart
2 cups porridge oats
120 g butter
6 rashers smoked streaky bacon
3 medium onions, chopped finely
2 medium courgettes, quartered lengthways and sliced finely
Plump handful of lovage leaves
6 eggs
175 g mascarpone
Salt pepper
100 g cheddar cheese, grated
Salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees c.
Melt the butter and stir in the porridge oats. Once fully mixed, tip the oats into a ceramic tart dish about 25 to 30 cm in diameter. Squash the buttered oats firmly down into the dish with the back of a spoon until completely flat and smooth. Bake in the oven for fifteen minutes until the oats are slightly toasted in colour.
Snip the bacon into smallish squares and fry gently until crisp, but not brittle. Remove the bacon and fry the onions in the remaining oil, adding a slosh of olive oil to help them along. Add salt and a pinch of sugar to encourage the onions to caramelise. Once soft and golden, remove the onions and add a little more olive oil to the pan. Tip in the courgettes and season. Cook quite briskly for a few minutes and then add the shredded lovage leaves. Stir for a minute or so until the leaves wilt. Remove from the heat. Tip first the bacon, then the onion and finally the courgettes and lovage leaves evenly onto the oat base.
Mix the eggs, mascarpone, cheddar cheese and pepper well and then pour over the bacon, onions and courgettes, making sure everything is well coated. Bake in the oven for twenty to twenty five minutes until golden.
This tart is wonderful for a picnic because once cool it has none of the petulant qualities of a pastry tart that crumbles the minute it's packed into a hamper and emerges from the basket as a bundle of sulky crumbs. And lovage is just so eager to please. Not only does it volunteer to make the most delicious tart, it turns itself into a straw for your aperitif for goodness sakes.
Take the largest stalks from the plant, snip into reedy straws, and poke into glasses of elderflower cordial and ice. As you sip your drink through the celery-flavoured stalk, you will find the cordial has been magically transformed into the most delicate and exquisite cocktail. If like me you have a smart friend who grows not just lovage, but white dianthus flowers, pop a blossom into your glass to add an extra flavour of cucumber. Frothy white flowers and a living lovage straw – Picasso would love it.


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Following the criticism levelled at X Factor Malta contestant Matthew Grech, Ivan Grech Mintoff has made clear his political party's intention to seek the court's help in reviewing this matter. Details of the concerns he raises are explored in the "Exodus" programmes which he presents on Maltese TV.
Exodus Programme 6 in the current series that aired earlier this month has looked at this issue in the context of freedom of conscience, speech and expression. The programme asked guests to comment on the X Factor case. Dr Mike Davidson was one of those invited and he spoke about the work of Core Issues Trust and some of the legal challenges that have concerned us over the years. In particular, mention is made of the recognition gained in 2014, when judges reflected on the intervention of then UK Minister of Women and Equalities Maria Millar's lawyers on the position of "ex-gay" in relation to equality law and the UK's Equality Act of 2010.
Read the full article and watch clips of the Exodus programme.