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Simple is good. Simple is easier. Simple is more profitable.
What I'm going to share with you in these next couple of articles is the soul of simplicity. With it you'll learn all you need to know to produce better investment results than 80% of the professionals and active amateurs out there. It will take almost none of your time and you can focus on all the other things that make your life rich and beautiful.
How can this be? Isn't investing complicated? Don't I need professionals to guide me?
No and no.
Since the days of Babylon people have been coming up with investments, mostly to sell to other people. There is a strong financial incentive to make these investments complex and mysterious.
But the simple truth is the more complex an investment the less likely it is to be profitable. Index funds outperform actively managed funds in large part simply because actively managed funds require expense active managers. Not only are they prone to making investing mistakes, their fees are a continual performance drag on the portfolio.
But they are very profitable for the companies that run them and as such are heavily promoted. Of course, those profits come from your pocket. So do the promotion costs.
Not only do you not need complex investments for success, they actually work against you. At best they are costly. At worst, they are a cesspool of swindlers. Not worth your time. We can do better.
Here's all we are going to need: Three considerations and three tools.
The Three Considerations.
You'll want to consider:
- In what stage of your investing life are you: The Wealth Building Stage or the Wealth Preservation Stage? Or, mostly likely, a blend of the two.
- What level of risk do you find acceptable?
- Is your investment horizon long-term or short-term?
As you've surely noticed, these three are closely linked. Your level of risk will vary with your investment horizon. Both will tilt the direction of your investing stage. All three will be linked to your current employment and future plans. Only you can make these decisions, but let me offer a couple of guiding thoughts.
Safety is a bit of an illusion.
There is no risk free investment. Don't let anyone tell you differently. If you bury your cash in the backyard and dig it up 20 years from now, you'll still have the same amount of money. But even modest inflation levels will have drastically reduced its spending power.
If you invest to protect yourself from inflation, deflation might rob you. Or the other way around.
Your stage is not necessarily linked to your age.
You might be planning to retire early. You might be worried about your job. You might be taking a sabbatical. You might be returning to the workforce after several years of retirement. Your life stages may well shift several times over the course of your life. Your investments can easily shift with them.
F-you money is critical.
If you don't yet have yours, start building it now. Be relentless. Life is uncertain. The job you have and love today can disappear tomorrow. Nothing money can buy is more important than your fiscal freedom. In this modern world of ours no tool is more important.
Don't be too quick to think short-term.
Most of us are, or should be, long-term investors. The typical investment advisor's rule of thumb is: subtract your age from 100 (or 120). The result is the percent of your portfolio that should be in stocks. A 60-year-old should, by this calculation, have 60% in conservative, wealth preserving bonds. Nonsense.
Here's the problem. Even modest inflation destroys the value of bonds over time and bonds can't offer the compensating growth potential of stocks.
If you are just starting out at age 20 you are looking at perhaps 80 years of investing. Maybe even a century if life expectancies continue to expand. Even at 60 and in good health you could easily be looking at another 30 years. That's long-term in my book.
Or maybe you have a younger spouse. Or maybe you want to leave some money to your kids, grandkids or even to a charity. All will have their own long-term horizons.
Once you've sorted through your three considerations you are ready to build your portfolio, and you'll need only these three tools to do it. See, I promised this would be simple.
1. Stocks. VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund). You've already met this fund in earlier posts of this series. It is an index fund that invests in stocks. Stocks, over time, provide the best returns and with VTSAX, the lowest effort and cost. This is our core wealth-building tool and our hedge against inflation. But, as we've discussed, stocks are a wild ride along the way and you gotta be tough.
2. Bonds. VBTLX (Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund) Bonds provide income, tend to smooth out the rough ride of stocks and are a deflation hedge. Deflation is what the Fed is currently fighting so hard and it is what pulled the US into the Great Depression. Very scary. The downside for bonds is that during times of inflation and/or rising interest rates they get hammered.
3. Cash. Cash is always good to have in hand. You never want to have to sell your investments to meet emergencies.
Cash is also king during times of deflation. The more prices drop, the more your cash can buy. But idle cash doesn't have much earning potential and when prices rise (inflation) its value steadily erodes.
We tend to keep ours here: VMMXX. This is a money market fund and time was they offered higher yields than banks. These days, with interest rates near zero, not so much. (Update on 8/8/23: the current YTD return of VMMXX is 19.29%—not bad at all). Now we also keep some in our local bank. If you prefer, an online bank like ING works fine too.
So that's it. Three simple tools. Two index mutual funds and a money market and/or bank account. A wealth builder, an inflation hedge, a deflation hedge and cash for daily needs and emergencies. Low cost, effective, diversified and simple.
You can fine tune the investments in each to meet the needs of your own personal considerations. Want a smoother ride? Willing to accept a lower long term return and slower wealth accumulation? Just increase the percent in VBTLX.
Next time we'll talk about a couple of specific strategies and portfolios to get you started.
Meanwhile, a brief note on….
You will have noticed Vanguard is the company that operates all of these funds. It is the only investment company I recommend, and the only one you need (or should) deal with. Vanguard's unique structure means that its interests and yours are the same. Vanguard the company is owned by the Vanguard funds. In other words, by us, the fund shareholders. This is unique among investment companies.
A while back a commentator on Reddit, referring to one of my posts, said: "This really just looks like a commercial for Vanguard." I can see his point, although I wish he'd made it directly on here.
I am a huge Vanguard fan, but I am not on their payroll and I have no financial interest in the company other than owning the funds I describe.
You might find an index fund in another investment company that is a bit cheaper. They create some as "loss leaders." But you can't trust these other companies long-term. Their interests are not your interests. Their interests lie in making money for their owners.
If you play with snakes, to quote Dave Ramsey, you'll eventually get bitten.
Don't bother. Stick with Vanguard.
Addendum: What if you can't buy VTSAX? Or even Vanguard?
Disclaimer: Like everything on this blog, this is only sharing ideas. You are solely responsible for your own choices.


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"I recently ordered a cake from Pattys and was impressed with the excellent customer service. Starting with the initial phone call, all of my questions and concerns were answered in a helpful way. I ordered a birthday cake for my friends with a photograph on top. Choosing the flavor/filling was so hard, but I decided on red velvet with a cream cheese filling.
When I went to pick up the cake, Phillip gave me a preview of the enlarged photograph before putting it on the cake. When the cake was finished, I was amazed at the quality of the photograph and the fact that it was edible!
I kept sneaking peaks at the cake before the birthday gathering, it was so beautiful! It was a huge success at the party, my friends loved it! The red velvet flavor was good, but I couldn't taste the cocoa that is supposed to be in red velvet. The frosting was delicious though!
Also, I had to get the cake the day before the party, but it still tasted very fresh and moist :)
I am dying to try cupcakes and the CAKEBALLS!"

subset: commoncrawl


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Cloud computing is all the rage in the IT industry these days, but there's still plenty of confusion about how cloud applications work and what kind of long-term impact they will have on business technology.
In this article we'll take a look at six common misconceptions IT pros and users have about cloud apps, related to performance, security, management, cost and the long-term effect on IT staffing.
[ Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]
1. Cloud computing will put IT pros out of a job
It's true that shifting internal IT functions to cloud applications lessens the need for a business to have a huge IT staff. Some organizations have moved to cloud services such as Google Apps because they no longer had the staff to handle an internal email and collaboration system. This cause-and-effect may be switched in other cases, with layoffs occurring because of a move to outsourcing.
But the long-term risk to IT employees may not be as terrible as it might first appear, analysts say. For a business that uses many cloud apps, internal IT staff is still needed to manage and integrate the services. Some IT managers may start to see themselves more as vendor managers.
"There's no question it could reduce the demand for traditional IT skills," says analyst Jeff Kaplan, managing director of Thinkstrategies. "But that doesn't mean there can't be a whole new generation of requirements around vendor management, to properly evaluate, select, monitor, manage and contract with these cloud computing companies."
These "traditional" IT pros might find their roles shifting to business unit support, making sure every employee has the right cloud tools to do his or her job. Another obvious point is that, over time, as technology resources shift from customers to vendors, the vendors will have a greater need for IT pros, creating more jobs on the vendor side.
If you're an IT administrator managing servers, applications and other in-house systems today, a shift to cloud computing could force you to learn new skills or eventually find a job elsewhere. But smart tech people already know their industry undergoes constant change, and should be ready to adapt.
2. The cloud is free (or at least incredibly inexpednsive)
The Google Apps business version is $50 per user per year. Microsoft's online services start at $120 per year, and both Google and Microsoft offer free versions to home users.
That sounds inexpensive, because it is, but users and analysts are quick to point out that licensing is not the only cost of using a cloud service.
"One of the biggest preconceived notions you have is that it's free. It's out there, it's not a big deal, just sign up and everything's great," says Scott Weidig, who is a technology coordinator at Schaumberg High School in Illinois and uses a variety of cloud apps for business and personal use, including Zoho and Google Apps.
Some customers report having to upgrade Internet bandwidth to take advantage of cloud services (more on that later in this article).
There are also hidden legal costs, because there is generally an increased risk profile when you move applications from the enterprise data center to the cloud, says Nolan Goldberg, a patent and trade secret litigation attorney for Proskauer Rose in New York.
"Cloud services will not necessarily be cheaper," Goldberg says. "The misconception is that a cloud service is always going to be cheaper because people are looking at the sticker price, and not the true total cost."
Before adopting a cloud service, a customer should perform due diligence to make sure the service is suitable for a given application, and that the contract with a cloud provider is not harmful to the customer. Some cloud service contracts state that the terms can be changed by the provider at will or with little or no notice, a troubling development, Goldberg says.
Storing data in the cloud brings new security and litigation risks, but unfortunately it is difficult to calculate beforehand how those risks will increase the customer's potential financial obligation.
3. Cloud performance is never a problem
Just because you use a cloud provider doesn't mean you can ignore your own IT infrastructure and expect great performance. Information systems director Timothy Porter says after adopting some cloud apps a few years ago, "we had to reevaluate the amount of bandwidth we had in our corporate office."
Porter is the IS director at WS Development Associates in Chestnut Hill, Mass., a real estate developer and owner with 82 properties throughout New England.
WS Development Associates users cloud software applications for invoice processing, payroll and other HR functions. The company originally had two T1 lines, and upgraded to a Verizon Mux setup for data rates of up to 50 megabits per second. Cisco WAN acceleration devices were also necessary to improve performance at branch offices, Porter said.
Before the upgrades, performance was a major problem.
"When you start processing a lot of invoices via an application that is not hosted internally, you will have a lag while doing the processing," Porter says. "When you're trying to process dozens of invoices, that really adds up over time, and user frustration can show itself."
Even if your Internet bandwidth is solid, other factors can degrade performance. At Schaumberg High School, Weidig says a Web filter installed to prevent students from surfing inappropriate sites was slowing legitimate educational Web sites, including a cloud-based reading assessment tool used by students. It turned out the hosted reading site was using nine different IP addresses and URLs, and the Web filter only knew about two of them. Reconfiguring the server to more efficiently allow access to trusted sites solved the problem, but identifying the issue was not a simple task.
Cloud vendors like to make it seem as if cloud platforms offer infinite scalability, but that may not be the case for power users. Spirent, a network performance testing firm, recently evaluated several cloud providers including Amazon, Blue Lock, Hosting.Com, GoGrid, Maximum ASP, and Rackspace. The company found that as the number of connections to a cloud service goes up, response times also go up. This is perhaps not surprising, but some of the response times lagged to as much as three to five seconds, says Tim Jefferson, general manager, networks and applications group at Spirent.
In order to serve an unlimited number of users, "what you have to give up is performance," Jefferson says. "As you scale up in one vector, it may cost you response in another vector."
4. You can replace Microsoft Office with Google, or Zoho, or…
Yes, there are examples of organizations switching completely from Microsoft Office to a cloud-based email, document editing and collaboration platform, but it is definitely the exception for now.
IDC surveyed businesses in July 2009 and found that nearly 97 percent were using Microsoft Office, and 77 percent were using Microsoft to the exclusion of all other platforms. Google Docs was being used extensively by nearly 20 percent of businesses, but mainly as a complement to Microsoft Office rather than as a replacement.
Just weeks ago Google officials urged customers to try out Google Docs as a complement to Microsoft, and said "there's no need to uninstall" Office.
Google has at other times argued that Google Apps can be a complete replacement for Microsoft Office because -- in Google's view -- the extra features you get from Microsoft aren't necessary for most users.
But even the most optimistic cloud computing proponents usually won't claim that cloud apps are as good as Microsoft Office today. Raju Vegesna, the "evangelist" for cloud apps provider Zoho, says that while the cloud will eventually be a viable replacement of Microsoft, "in the short run it's complementary."
"Microsoft took 20 years to build Office to where it is. It just takes time. There are features we will have to implement to have the depth of Microsoft Office," Vegesna says.
Vegesna predicts the cloud will offer all of the features of Microsoft Office within two years. Customers will have to do their own evaluations to see if they agree with that assessment, but even if Vegesna is correct, he notes that email and office tool replacement cycles will take years.
"These things don't happen overnight," he says..
5. The cloud is easy to set up and manage
Vendors may tell you that using cloud applications will nearly eliminate IT management needs, but customers say managing cloud services is not that simple.
There are still management responsibilities in terms of managing the service providers you contract with, Kaplan notes. IT management also extends to integrating tools from multiple vendors, and provisioning new cloud services in response to user needs, Vegesna says. And ensuring performance of applications may require upgrades to a customer's infrastructure, as earlier noted.
Users experienced with using Gmail or Google Docs may not realize how complicated setting up a cloud service for a corporation is, Weidig says.
"From a consumer standpoint, it's very easy to set up," he says. "From a corporation's standpoint, that becomes a much larger uphill battle."
One of the biggest management challenges is making sure you have control over your data, an important task for both practical and legal reasons. The ability to move data and business processes from one cloud service to another may be limited. And the question of how much control a vendor has over your data is still being sorted out in the courts, but it's safe to assume that putting data into the cloud rather than inside your data center increases the risk that a government entity could seize sensitive information related to employees or customers, Goldberg says.
The cloud makes heavy use of virtualization technology, making it easier for data to be moved from facility to facility and from state to state, and to be mingled with data owned by other customers in a multi-tenant system.
Porter notes that he runs data loss prevention software internally, but cannot have the same control over a third party's infrastructure.
Data protection laws vary from state to state, and are becoming stricter, putting the burden on customers to carefully evaluate vendors and insert appropriate language into contracts to ensure that sufficient processes to protect data are in place.
"The end user who has a Gmail account at home doesn't always understand all the aspects of who owns their data, and how their data may be restricted if it contains personal information," Porter says. "Just because something is cheap and easy or you can outsource it doesn't mean all your obligations end there. A corporate environment is very different than a personal environment. There are a lot of boundaries that need to be jumped over before you can put all your information in the cloud."
6. Security is [fill in the blank]
Security is a contentious issue for cloud watchers. Some argue that users mistakenly believe clouds are inherently insecure, while others say users are not skeptical enough.
Vegesna of Zoho argues that most customers will have more security by moving to Zoho, because "we have larger security teams than most of these businesses," and Zoho hires third-party white hat hackers to test its systems monthly.
Weidig, however, says that while he generally trusts vendors like Google, Zoho and Microsoft, he thinks users place too much trust in the data security of cloud providers.
"You read stories just about daily in reference to XYZ site getting hacked," he says.
Too often, users think "nobody cares about me, or what [data] they can get from me," he says.
Skeptics can point to any number of incidents seeming to prove the risks of cloud applications. Google recently admitted that it had mistakenly been collecting browsing data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks since 2007. Last year, a hacker obtained more than 300 confidential documents that the company Twitter was storing with Google Apps, although the incident was blamed on insufficient passwords rather than Google's security.
Almost any computer system can be hacked, unfortunately. In many cases businesses may conclude that their own systems are more secure than the systems operated by cloud providers, or that some data is too precious to be stored outside of their own firewalls. Others, especially small businesses with limited IT staffs, may feel better off with a cloud provider.
Kaplan is on the side of cloud vendors in this case.
"A lot of people think inherent to the web there's far less security, but in many cases it could be far greater. Many customers can't support or maintain their security level to same level as the cloud," he says. "When you talk about proven players, like Salesforce and Google, they are facing far greater security challenges and holding up against those in a far better fashion than many corporations are going to do."
Vegesna says Zoho and other vendors still face a challenge convincing customers that security is robust enough.
"You are asking the user to trust someone to put their entire data online," he says. "They're not initially very comfortable with it."
Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin.
Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.
Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office
This story, "Six common misconceptions about cloud apps" was originally published by Network World.


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How do I install StatCounter using PBase?
- Sign up for a free account at StatCounter and follow the steps to create your first project and generate your StatCounter code.
- If prompted, make sure to choose PBase from the list of Installation Guides.
- Copy the StatCounter code (highlight + ctrl c)
- Login to your PBase account (opens in a new window)
- Click the "Home" button in the upper right hand corner
- Click the "All Galleries" link at the top
- Click the edit link for the gallery you wish to change
- Paste the StatCounter code into the description box
- Check the box labeled "html flag check if using html in the description."
- Click the "Update Gallery" button
Thanks for your feedback!


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June 7, 2011
Checkboxes are Back in Google Docs
"This is actually a hybrid of checkboxes and the more recent selection model. So you can use checkboxes, but you can also still use Ctrl or Cmd to select multiple items. Another one I like a lot, is to use Shift to select many consecutive items at once (click on the checkbox of the first file, scroll down and hold down Shift when you click on a checkbox further down the list, this will select everything in between)."
Checkboxes may seem unnecessary, especially considering that people rarely select multiple files, but they're a familiar interface element that's easy to use. Not many people know that holding down Ctrl lets you select multiple files, even though it's a standard feature in most operating systems.
{ Thanks, Cougar. }
7 comments:
- AnonymousJune 7, 2011 at 5:00 PM
Yeah, it took me a little fiddlin to realize that there was a new way to select documents, but once I figured it out, I liked the new way quite a bit. For that reason, I'm sorry to see the return of check-boxes - they unnecessarily clutter the interface.ReplyDelete
Maybe some day we'll get lucky enough to see the good ole > mark, a la Gmail, signifying keyboard shortcuts have arrived for Docs' home page . . .ReplyDelete
Maybe the re-established check box is an introduction? Here's keeping my fingers crossed.
(Thanks for the shout out, Alex.)
I also think they are a backward step.ReplyDelete
I have read the article right and both ways are staying. Hopefully once people adapt to the new way Google can attempt to get rid of the ugly and now unneeded check boxes or at least provide a user with a option to remove them.
- AnonymousJune 8, 2011 at 2:41 AM
Perhaps it is a step back but i feel the highlight color isnt dark/strong enough (compared to mac ox for instance) and this applies to the spreadsheets as well so a checkbox for me removes all doubt that something is selected.ReplyDelete
And since you can select multiple files why cant you open them all at once? Or am i missing something?
Although the docs list seems to refresh (not sure if its push or every few minuts) I would like the refresh button back.
Thanks God. I've been waiting for this feature back!!!ReplyDelete
For those who were using new way of selecting I will say that it works too! So you can select files via both checkboxes or 'mouse method'.
Try it.
- AnonymousJune 8, 2011 at 12:29 PM
And just as small a change but with a bigger impact to me is that Google Docs Drawings finally added in an Underline button (to go along with Bold and Italic) for text. I create many wireframes in that tool, so it's a big win to not have to draw lines by hand under link text in my IA drawings! Any other small changes that showed up there unannounced that anyone notice?ReplyDelete
Awesome Information Keep it up www.nulledbycherry.comReplyDelete


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Tag: Hughes Langston
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue"


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Rain Reports For Duty: South Korean Pop Star Starts Military Service
Even this blogger isn't old enough (just barely, though) to have been around when Elvis Presley went into the Army in March, 1958.
But it's well known that was a huge deal.
Now there's this close comparison from Asia:
South Korean pop star Rain today reported for his mandatory 21-month tour of duty with his nation's army.
The Korea Timessays the 29-year-old singer and actor "smiled throughout [a] farewell event thanking his fans for the love they have given him over the past 10 years. More than 1,000 people crowded near the base [in Gyeonggi Province] to see Rain on his last day as a civilian, waiting for two and a half hours for him to appear."
"Thank you for coming," said Rain (real name: Jung Ji-hoon). "I'm sorry to make such a fuss while leaving. I'll be back from my duties soon."
How big is Rain? Not only does he sell millions of songs, fill concert halls and have a budding film career, he keeps winning the reader poll in the Time100.
And he has a high-profile "enemy" — Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert (our apologies for Stephen's one slightly risque word).
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Extremely violent video games have become the dangerous obsession of a significant portion of our youth, and several towns and states have passed ordinances intended to prevent minors from buying or viewing them. But judicial supremacists are striking down these laws by claiming this extremely graphic violence deserves the same First Amendment protection as Shakespeare.
In March, a three-judge panel for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal unanimously held that violent video games are entitled to as much protection as the Bible. This was the ruling of Entertainment Software Association v. Swanson, even though one of the video games, "Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend," boasts it will enable the user "to hack your enemies to meaty bits!"
Judge Roger L. Wollman, writing for the court, observed that "great literature includes many themes and descriptions of violence. See, e.g., Judges 4:21 (NIV) ('But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to [Sisera] while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground and he died.')." What Wollman failed to add is that a literary description of violence in the Bible does not engage a teenager in role-playing or desensitize him to the harm.
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Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County likewise held that violent video games are free speech because they contain "stories, imagery, age-old themes of literature and messages, even an ideology, just as books and movies do." But so do some adult pornographic movies, and no one insists there is a First Amendment right to sell them to children.
TRENDING: North Korea deports runaway U.S. soldier after he broke the law there
That decision acknowledged a psychologist's expert testimony that violent video games frequently lead to aggressive behavior, yet inexplicably rejected it, noting instead that a high school principal who testified was unable to prove that violent video games cause psychological harm to teens who play them.
A similar decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, considered an ordinance that would have prevented arcade owners with five or more games deemed "harmful to minors" from allowing children to play the games without parental supervision. That court struck down the ordinance, commenting that the violent arcade games in question were not proven to be similar to the standard video games that have been linked to violence, and therefore not directly proven to have harmful effects.
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The decision compared violent video games to classic works of literature such as "The Odyssey," "The Divine Comedy" and "War and Peace." There is a distinct difference between sympathizing with the perpetrator of violence and being the perpetrator of violence, but that difference was apparently lost on the court.
In a case involving a video game that shows teenagers how to kill policemen, federal district court Judge Robert S. Lasnik permanently enjoined Washington state from restricting the distribution of violent video games to minors. In Video Software Dealers Association v. Maleng, he quoted the Interactive Digital Software decision in ruling that "guided by the First Amendment, we are obliged to recognize that they are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature."
These decisions ignore the way violent video games encourage role-playing, making the child the perpetrator of violence in a manner that no book or movie can. It does not require a leap in imagination to see the risk of immature players transferring violent role-playing to real life.
Legitimate free speech expresses violence in a rational context, rather than displaying it graphically to evoke an immediate emotional reaction. It is not a First Amendment right to cause panic on an airplane by shouting that someone has a bomb; nor is it legitimate free speech to evoke violent reactions in children through graphic video games.
A teenager who learns how to murder and mutilate human beings in video games is desensitized to commit heinous crimes against his neighbors. Nothing in the First Amendment should prevent regulations to stop this, supremacist judges to the contrary notwithstanding.
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Related special offers:
"Betrayed by the Bench: How Judge-made Law has Transformed America's Constitution, Courts and Culture"
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"Judicial Tyranny: The New Kings of America"


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November 17, 2008, - 10:18 am
Hypocrite: ESPN Prettyboy Calls Non-Obama Voters "Racist"; COMPLAIN to ESPN
By Debbie Schlussel
On Friday, I told you about ESPN's racist, bigoted casting call for a commercial depicting various ethnicities on college campuses.
But apparently, the bigotry of his own employer was lost on ESPN prettyboy Chris Fowler. The "College Game Day" broadcaster announced to viewers that if you didn't vote for Barack Obama, you won't hire a Black coach. In other words, if you didn't vote for Obama, you're a racist.
I've gotten a number of letters from rightfully upset ESPN "Game Day" viewers, who want to watch football, not hear the inane Fowler's political views and racism litmus tests. That includes reader David:
Look Who's Calling You a Racist . . .
Chris Fowler opened his mouth only to insert his foot.
During College Gameday this past Saturday he stated if you didn't vote for Obama then you likely wouldn't hire a black guy as a head coach.
So in other words… if you didn't vote for Obama… chances are you are a racist. Ideology be damned – skin color should decide your vote/choices, right?
Almost a new low for ESPN. Right up there with sending Jeremy Schaap up to Iceland to goad [DS: the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel nutjob] Bobby Fisher into saying something crazy, and then calling it news. Fowler should be made to apologize, but he won't be.
Commenter "scottinoc" wrote on Free Republic:
On the discussion of why there aren't "enough" African American coaches in college football, Chris Fowler discussed the lure of big money NFL contracts for black assistant coaches, etc, then the discussion naturally gravitated to the racism angle, "behind the scenes".
"Among those behind-the-scenes financial backers of big universities, there may not be…you know…that many people who voted for Obama…"
Sheesh, now I can't even watch ESPN college football gameday without being told that I'm racist for not voting for Obama.
Thanks, Chris. Look in the mirror. And look at your own network and their bigoted casting call for a commercial for your own show.
Oh, and by the way, the real racists are the ones–like Jesse Jackson–who constantly complain that there aren't enough collegiate Black coaches, but look the other way on the obvious disparity on the field, where 75%–plus of the players are Black, and 77%-plus of the players on scholarship are Black. Yes, the real racists are the ones who set quotas and affirmative action requirements for hiring and promotions in coaching.
But don't hold your breath for Chris Fowler to give both sides and comment on that.
Complain to ESPN, and let the network know that Chris Fowler's politics have no place in college football broadcasts.
Oh, and by the way, don't expect a "Fairness Doctrine" to balance this kind of stuff out.
I looked for YouTube video of Chris Fowler to find anything of substance. While there were many videos of Fowler spewing forth hot air, the only videos of any entertainment value were those depicting Chris Fowler juggling. But it's a different Chris Fowler. Well, at least one Chris Fowler has talent. And it's not the one who called 55 million-plus Americans "racist":


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Advanced Search
By Sharon Spier, DVM, Ph.D., DACVIM
Infection caused by Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis (commonly known as pigeon fever or dryland distemper) assumes three forms: external abscesses, internal infection, and ulcerative lymphangitis (limb infection). The most common clinical form of the disease, characterized by external abscesses in the pectoral or ventral abdomen, is often called "pigeon fever," due to the swelling of the horse's pectoral region resembling a pigeon's breast. Veterinarians also call it "dryland distemper," reflecting the prevalence in arid regions of the western United States. There appears to be no breed or sex predilection for the development of any of these forms. Portals of entry for this soil-dwelling organism are thought to be abrasions or other skin wounds, or mucous membranes. Studies have shown that insects such as the horn fly, housefly, and stable fly can act as mechanical vectors for the transmission of this disease to horses. The disease could also be transmitted through horse-to-horse contact or from infected to susceptible horses via insects, other vectors, or contaminated soil.
The first deep intramuscular abscesses caused by C. pseudotuberculosis were reported in California in 1915, and the disease has since been considered one of the most frequently diagnosed equine infectious diseases in the western United States. Evidence exists that infection is increasing in incidence, possibly associated with climate change. Unprecedented epidemics in the past decade have affected thousands of horses in Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, all states that historically had low prevalence of the disease. High temperatures and drought conditions preceded all reported outbreaks of disease. The incidence of pigeon fever fluctuates considerably from year to year, presumably due to herd immunity and environmental factors such as rainfall, temperature, and insect populations. Disease incidence is seasonal, with the highest number of cases occurring during the dry months of the year, although cases might be seen all year.
External abscesses can occur anywhere on the body, but they most frequently develop in the pectoral region and along the ventral midline of the abdomen. Generally, horses with external abscesses do not develop signs of systemic illness, although 25% will develop fever. If signs of systemic illness are present, further diagnostics to rule out internal infection are warranted. A diagnosis of internal infection is based on clinical signs, serology, diagnostic imaging, and bacterial culture. The most common clinical signs are concurrent external abscess, decreased appetite, fever, lethargy, weight loss, and signs of respiratory disease or abdominal pain. Ulcerative lymphangitis is the least common form of pigeon fever. Signs include limb swelling (hind limbs are affected more commonly), cellulitis (skin infection), and draining tracts that follow lymphatics in the horse's body. Affected horses often develop a severe lameness, fever, lethargy, and anorexia.
The veterinarian must individualize the treatment regimen for a horse's external abscesses, depending on the severity of disease. Establishing drainage is the most important treatment and ultimately leads to faster resolution and return to athletic performance. Antimicrobials are indicated for horses with internal abscesses and for those with ulcerative lymphangitis.
Until a protective vaccine is developed for horses, we can only suggest that horse owners in endemic areas practice good sanitation and fly control and avoid unnecessary environmental contamination from diseased horses. Feeding supplements containing insect growth regulators and using fly parasites and adult fly traps also reduce pest populations. Proper sanitation, disposal of contaminated bedding, and disinfection might reduce the incidence of new cases. Proper wound care (including avoiding fly bite dermatitis on the ventral midline) is also important to prevent contamination from the horse's environment and resulting infection.
About The Author
Sharon Spier, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, is a professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of California, Davis.
Article reprinted Courtesy of The Horse: Your Guide to Equine Health Care, an AAEP Media Partner.


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Big brother will watch you in the office
UK Inquirer | April 8, 2005
HITACHI is demonstrating a system which means that if you're in the office you'll be able to run, but you may not be able to hide.
According to a report in the Nikkei Business Daily, the system will use chair based sensors, wireless enabled name tags, while the whole tracking system will be controlled from a single PC.
This is how it's supposed to work. When you get up from your chair, your wireless name tag is activated, and beams your location every half a minute. The wireless signal uses a base station within the office to forward info about your location to the PC.
The person operating the PC can tell exactly where you are, and presumably "questions will be asked" if you spend too much time in the loo, or if your name goes off the radar because you've headed outside for a crafty cigarette.
Presumably if an office romance has flowered, the close proximity of two wireless name tags will give the game away.
A whole cluster of wireless name tags in the same location around the water cooler will presumably raise questions with your bosses too. Were you all plotting a putsch? Or simply chatting about the TV soap you all watched last night?
Perhaps future systems will include a gadget fixed to your waist which will give you a sharp electric shock if you're away from your desk too long. Or include a small printing module which will show you how much has been docked from your salary for your periods of inactivity and even deliver a dismissal notice remotely. The possibilities are endless.
"Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" -Thomas Jefferson.
Mother gets life in prison
Future of the Prison State
Man Complains at Bank, Gets Arrested and Charged with Felony
New Yorkers Searched
National ID's
The Police State is Coming
Police State USA
Evils in Government
Evils in Government II
New York Woman Calls 311 to Gripe, Gets $100 Fine
The Police State is Here Folks!


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BOSTON (AP) - Combined results from two studies of an experimental Alzheimer's drug suggest it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease.
Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals to significantly slow the mind-robbing disease. But pooled results found 34 percent less decline in mild Alzheimer's patients compared to those on a dummy treatment for 18 months.
Doctors say the results do not seem strong enough to win approval of the drug now. But they show researchers are on the right track by trying to clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.
The drug is being developed by Eli Lilly & Co. and is called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab). Results were reported Monday at an American Neurological Association conference in Boston.
About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.
Solanezumab is one of three drugs in late-stage testing that seek to alter the course of Alzheimer's. The two studies each had about 1,000 patients, about two-thirds with mild disease and one-third with moderately severe Alzheimer's, in 16 countries. Their average age was 75.
The main measures were two tests, one reflecting language, memory and thinking and the other, ability to perform daily activities such as eating and grooming. The combined results on the mild disease patients showed a nearly 2-point difference in the roughly 90-point score on thinking abilities.
"It's a small difference," said Dr. Rachelle Doody of Baylor College of Medicine. She heads a nationwide research network funded by the National Institute on Aging that did an independent analysis of Lilly's results on the studies and presented them Monday at the conference.
Still, "you slow the decline" with the drug, she said.
Independent experts agreed.
"It's certainly not the home run we all wanted, but we're very encouraged by these results," said Maria Carillo, senior director of medical and scientific relations for the Alzheimer's Association, which had no role in the research.
A Lilly official said the company will discuss next steps with the Food and Drug Administration.
The price of Lilly shares rose more than 2 percent, or $1.22, to $49.45 in heavy Monday afternoon trading while the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell slightly. The shares set a new 52-week high price of $49.78 before retreating slightly.


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Laura Croft's Tomb Raider & Indiana Jones' Temple of Doom: Ancient Angkor [PICS]
- Tagged Angkor, archaeological, Cambodia, Indiana Jones, Laura Croft, rock-cut architecture, Ta Prohm, Temple of Doom, Tomb Raider, UNESCO World Heritage Site
Once upon a time, or around 1580, while cutting a path through the thick Cambodian jungle, Portuguese missionaries came upon huge towers carved into rocks that were in ruins and covered in roots and vines. Continuing on, they discovered an ancient lost city that was twice as large as Manhattan and that nature was trying to swallow. The missionaries had discovered abandoned Angkor Wat—the 500-acre site is one of the world's largest religious monuments and the most elaborate of the Angkor's temples. There are more than 1,000 Temples of Angkor which were built from the 9th to 13th centuries during a time when the Kingdom of Cambodia was one of the most powerful civilizations on the planet. There were rarely any inscriptions found in later centuries after 1431, when Angkor was seized by the Thai army. During its prime, as many as 750,000 – one million people lived in Angkor, making it one of the greatest vanishing acts of all time. Archaeologists now know that Angkor Wat and many of its surrounding structures were built to appease "devas" and "asuras" which are angelic demi-Gods of the Hindu religion. Thousands upon thousands of these demi-god beings are carved into every single rock temple at the site. Both Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones Temple of Doom were filmed here. Angkor Archaeological Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992. New research claims to have


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We were all taught how to cross a street: Look both ways. But, in some cities, you'll also have to ask permission by pressing a tiny button and waiting your turn. Those little buttons on walk signals have been nicknamed "beg buttons"—because walkers are pretty much begging to be able to cross.
Here in Los Angeles, if you don't press them, you won't even get the opportunity to cross—the light will turn red, stopping the opposing traffic, but you'll never get a walk signal and the light won't stay green long enough for you to actually make it to the other side.
It's annoying for walkers: have you ever tried to walk a few blocks, stopping to hit the button at every single intersection? Or hit the button just a few seconds too late and had to wait a whole additional cycle? But it also illustrates the backwardness of our street design: pedestrians, who are supposed to have the right-of-way, are required to press a button at an intersection in order to get a walk signal, which should happen automatically. This video illustrates the problem well:
This struggle is nothing new, of course. The term "jaywalking" was invented by the auto industry to shame pedestrians in the 1920s. But it has become an issue again due to recent, highly publicized crackdowns on jaywalking in Los Angeles and New York City. As reported a few weeks ago, offenders are being issued tickets upwards of $200. (That's actually not all that bad compared to some other places: In Singapore you could go to jail for three months.)
But the problem, especially in L.A., is that jaywalking is not only defined as running across the street mid-block without a signal—you can also get a ticket for stepping off the curb at a signal after the "countdown" starts.
This is not to say that people don't cross the street illegally—they definitely do. And who hasn't tried to beat the clock by running across the street before that countdown runs out? The problem with beg buttons is that they criminalize walkers—they provide a very specific way for police to blame pedestrians for an uptick in collisions.
"We're heavily enforcing pedestrian violations because they're impeding traffic and causing too many accidents and deaths," LAPD officer Lydia Leos told the LA Downtown News. (This was just a week before an LAPD officer struck a pedestrian in a crosswalk—with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti in the back seat.)
According to law enforcement, jaywalking crackdowns and beg buttons are required because pedestrians are making the streets unsafe. Wait, pedestrians are dangerous? These sentiments are echoed in a recent New York Times article by Tom Vanderbilt, who eloquently explains the ridiculousness of this logic:
Those humans in Los Angeles who began walking a second or two after the light was blinking were, after all, violating the "Vehicle Code." Note that cars, apparently, do not violate a "Human Code."
As for pedestrian safety, which is the typical stated purpose of jaywalking crackdowns, more pedestrians generally are killed in urban areas by cars violating their right of way than are rogue pedestrians violating vehicles' right of way. Then there are those people struck on sidewalks, even inside restaurants. What do we call that? Jay-living?
There are some solutions which can help turn this misguided attitude around. In D.C., for example, instead of cracking down on deviant pedestrians, cameras have been installed at intersections specifically to catch drivers who "block intersections, roll through stop signs, fail to yield to pedestrians, pass through an intersection at an unsafe speed or take an oversize bus or truck on a street too small to accommodate it."
The fines for blocking an intersection or rolling through a stop sign are $50—still far lower than the jaywalking ticket you might get in other cities. But it's a step in the right direction: Law enforcement is targeting the entity that's most likely to do the most harm.
Another option is to give the pedestrian a few extra seconds to cross, what planners call a "leading pedestrian interval" or LPI. Here, walk signals give pedestrians a five second head start before the cars crossing with them get the green light. This not only gives extra time to cross the street—especially important for wide streets and elderly residents or people with wheelchairs or strollers—it allows the pedestrians to get out into the streets and be more visible before the cars start driving through, preventing collisions from right turns.
This solution is great: it doesn't require any additional infrastructure, just a reprogramming of the signal's schedule.
We should also look at redesigning the intersections themselves. There has been a resurgence in the crosswalks called pedestrian scrambles which stop all vehicular traffic (even right turns) and allow walkers to cross in all directions, including diagonally, which is the safest and most effective way to get pedestrians across the street. If you look at the intersection above, which is Oxford Circus in London, you'll see that not only do the signals stop all traffic, but the pedestrian paths themselves are highlighted with paint and reflectors. This clearly delineates the path that's for walkers and makes them feel better about crossing. It redesigns the intersection for pedestrians, as it should be.
Scrambles aren't the only way to make walkers safer, and many of the best solutions draw from a variety of improvements. In New York City last night, the DOT revealed a comprehensive pedestrian safety redesign for a deadly intersection on the Upper West Side that included a shorter wait for pedestrians, limited left turns, and a redesigned crosswalk.
Designing more visible crosswalks is a pretty simple thing to do, but most cities likely won't embark upon massive pedestrian signaling improvements until there's a particular density of walkers to use them. The reason beg buttons have been phased out in cities like New York is because there's a high number of walkers at pretty much any intersection. If another city made an announcement to remove their beg buttons, I have a feeling we'd hear from frustrated drivers who would complain that their time stopped at a light will be longer because they'll have to wait, even when no pedestrians are present.
There are other technologies that can help circumvent this problem, like sensors that will activate a walk signal without having to press a button, but that still enforces the divide between car vs. pedestrian—and it will cost cities more money to install.
So how about reducing the number of signals? There have been studies that show signaling actually makes drivers less mindful of their surroundings; they're more likely to pay attention to pedestrians and other obstacles at stop signs, when they'll have to take an active role in deciding when to stop and go. And signal-free roundabouts have been shown to offer vast improvements when it comes to mitigating traffic flow and reducing pedestrian collisions.
Of course, this is not an option for very, very busy intersections, but you've likely experienced why this is a better solution for yourself while crossing smaller streets. A stop sign allows the driver and walker to make eye contact and engage in a dialogue of sorts, agreeing to keep each other safe. And that's exactly what we should be doing: making everyone on the street feel safe and acknowledged.
Once we get rid of the beg buttons, we can redesign those interactions to be better experiences for walkers. At one intersection in Germany, as part of a project by Sandro Engle, Amelie Künzler, Holger Michel, and a team of students, the beg button becomes a gaming interface where you can play a modified version of Pong with someone across the street:
While I'm not sure that the signal in this instance is making anyone safer, it does create awareness, and makes waiting to cross the street a lot less tedious and a lot more fun. [New York Times]
Top image via street.mn, scramble via Mike Roberts, roundabout via Andrew Bossi, video via @c_fly1


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Mike Check: Vick's Matchup With the Ravens
We've devoted plenty of space here to Michael Vick's struggles in Week 1. But here's a breakdown of two specific areas – blitz and play-action – with an eye on Sunday's matchup against the Ravens.
The Browns sent extra pressure on 18 of Vick's 61 dropbacks, or 29.5 percent of the time. Against the blitz, Vick was 7-for-17 for 145 yards (41.2 completion percentage, 8.5 yards per attempt). Against four rushers or fewer, he was 22-for-39 for 172 yards. Both touchdowns, one sack and all four interceptions came against four rushers or fewer.
Here's a look at how Vick performed against different numbers of rushers:
|Number Of Rushers
|Total Plays
There's a tiny morsel of encouraging news in those numbers. Vick averaged 8.5 yards per attempt against extra pressure. The key to getting defenses to think twice about blitzing is to burn them with big plays. Vick only completed 41.2 percent of his passes against extra pressure, but at least he picked up big chunks of yardage on some of the completions.
Pay special attention to Vick's performance against five rushers (5-for-14, 122 yards last week). In 2011, the Ravens rushed five 28.2 percent of the time, fifth-most in the league, according to Football Outsiders. Vick will face just one extra rusher often on Sunday. He, Jason Kelce and the rest of the offense will need to identify where the pressure is coming from. Often times last week, it was from the edge. And that will likely continue against Baltimore.
I mentioned in yesterday's cheat sheet that Andy Dalton had success with quick screens against the Ravens' blitz. Here's one example with the All-22 footage, starting with what the defense looks like pre-snap.
The Ravens have seven defenders at the line of scrimmage. The circled receiver is Andrew Hawkins. He was originally lined up in the slot to the right side, but Dalton motioned him to the left, perhaps sensing that's where the pressure was coming from. He also had another receiver to that side, which would help to block for the eventual screen.
Leaving unblocked defenders is not always a bad thing. Here, the Bengals run a quick play-fake, but they (on purpose) allow three defenders from Dalton's back-side to rush unblocked.
The arrow points to two of those defenders. The third one I mentioned fell for the play-fake and attacked the ball-carrier. The Bengals offensive linemen, meanwhile, hustled downfield to set up blocks.
As you can see, Hawkins had plenty of running room, and the Bengals had the Ravens defenders out-numbered. The pass was made behind the line of scrimmage, but this turned out to be a 27-yard gain, the Bengals' longest of the day. Don't be surprised if the Eagles use these quick wide receiver screens Sunday.
A couple people asked me on Twitter to chart Vick's throws when the Eagles used any type of play-fake to the running backs last week. Overall, the Eagles used a play-fake on 19 of 61 dropbacks, or 31.1 percent of the time. In those situations, Vick was just 7-for-16 for 79 yards and a pair of interceptions. Both his sacks also came off play-action. And he also had an 11-yard scramble.
There are a couple reasons the Eagles use play-action. Opposing defenses play their safeties deep to protect against big plays from DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin. Fakes to LeSean McCoy can get them to inch up. They can also get linebackers to bite and open up the middle of the field for Jason Avant and Brent Celek.
Play-action also gets Vick deep into his drops, which offensive line coach Howard Mudd said back at training is important.
"The only thing that we really stress is the depth of the pocket," Mudd said. "Because Mike isn't really tall, so when he gets to his throwing spot, the more separation you can have between the original line and Mike is really important so that he feels, oh, there's a bunch of space here. I can see, I can deliver, take off if you want."
But there's also a downside. In the past two years, Vick has worked to identify what he's seeing pre-snap. Turning his back to the defense for a second or two delays Vick from going through his reads. That might mean having a defender in his face or sensing false pressure and taking off to run. It might also mean losing track of a defender and making a bad throw.
That appeared to be the case last week on the pick-six to Browns linebacker D'Qwell Jackson. The Eagles ran a play-fake, and while Jackson paused for a split-second, he was able to get back in his drop quick enough to make the interception.
"We were in Cover-2, and Vick not being the tallest of quarterback, he loses zone droppers occasionally," Jackson told reporters after the game.
When the Eagles ran no play-fake at all last week, Vick was 22-for-40 for 238 yards (55 percent completions, 5.95 YPA). Not great numbers, but better than what he produced with the play-fakes (43.8 percent, 4.9 YPA).
It'll be interesting to see how often the Eagles try to get Ray Lewis and the other Ravens defenders to bite on Sunday. Or if they reduce the number of play-fakes after Week 1.


text: A long-standing effort to extend privacy protections to email and other data in the cloud got new life Thursday when U.S. lawmakers introduced not one, but two bills to reform the country's electronic privacy laws.Both the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act, called the LEADS Act, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Amendments Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search data that's been stored on Web-based or cloud-based services for more than 180 days.Under the 29-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act [ECPA], law enforcement agencies do not need a court-ordered warrant to search unopened e-mail stored with a vendor for longer than 180 days, although they do need court approval to access unopened e-mail less than 180 days old.Several tech vendors and digital rights groups have been pushing for ECPA reform since early 2010, but Congress has failed to act. In an era of cloud computing, it doesn't make sense for data stored past six months to have fewer legal protections than other personal data, backers of ECPA reform say.The LEADS Act was introduced by Senators Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Dean Heller, a Nevada Republican. The legislation is similar to a bill of the same name that Hatch and other senators introduced last year.Sponsors of the ECPA Amendments Act in the Senate include Senators Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. A House of Representatives version of the same bill is sponsored by Representatives Kevin Yoder, a Kansas Republican, and Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat."In 2015, it is absurd that the government is free to rifle through Americans' emails that are older than six months," Wyden said in a statement. "Because of this arcane law, as technology advances, Americans' civil liberties are eroding."Among the companies voicing support for the LEADS Act were Microsoft and Verizon Communications. The LEADS Act offers "common-sense reforms" to ECPA, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, wrote in a blog post. "The LEADS Act is a real solution to a real problem."The bill would also limit the overseas reach of search warrants, Smith noted. During the past year, Microsoft has been fighting a New York warrant for emails stored in the company's facility in Dublin.Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's email address is firstname.lastname@example.com.


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With the holiday party season right around the corner, a growing camp of entertaining experts suggests approaching things a little less like Martha Stewart, and a little more like Steven Spielberg. Whether it's a Halloween party for the kids, a Thanksgiving potluck or an elegant Christmas dinner, entertaining pros know that "setting the scene" for a memorable event can make a significantly greater impact than debuting the next ambitious dessert recipe.
"Inviting family and friends into your home is an intimate gesture," says Ginny Bean, founder/publisher of Ginny's catalog and Ginnys.com. "From the way the lighting is set, to the scented candles you choose and the music that's playing, the best gift you can give your guests is to create a scene that makes them feel comfortable and welcome."
Bean offers the following checklist for transforming your home into a seamless scene for holiday entertaining, and creating a warm and inviting place for guests to interact.
• Choose your space. Identify and arrange the area of your home where your scene will be set. When choosing a location, think about the season and theme of your event. If it's a Halloween party and you've transformed your yard into a ghoulish garden of spooky spectacles, convene in a front room and open the curtains. On Thanksgiving, gather near the fireplace. If your home doesn't have a fireplace, electric fireplaces provide surprisingly affordable ambiance and season-long enjoyment for your family.
• Set up the room the day before the party, so you have plenty of time to make last-minute changes. Arrange furniture so guests can move around easily, clearing out extra furniture if necessary. A general rule of thumb for mixers and cocktail parties is to have seating for 10 to 15 percent of your guests. If the space you choose is going to be crowded, use a single, preferably round, center table for hors d'oeuvres. If your space is too big for the number of guests, use multiple small tables to create mini food stations, which will encourage guests to move throughout the room.
• Dim the lights. Avoid unflattering overhead lights and instead rely on table and floor lamps and mood-enhancing candlelight. To get more light from candles, place them in clusters, and decorate with metallic accents that bounce light around and provide a festive holiday feel. Candles, of course, bring more to the party than a flattering light source. Seasonal scents like spiced pumpkin, cranberry clove and gingerbread maple play a dramatic sensory role in setting the scene.
• Simplify the table decor. When creating centerpieces and decorative accents for your table and serving areas, less is often more. Seasonal fruit presented with nuts and berries, or evergreen branches and pinecones from your backyard, can make a lovely and elegant statement, at a fraction of the cost of fresh flowers. If you want to decorate with flowers, remember that one large arrangement makes a stronger impression than several small ones. For maximum impact, place flowers on the main food station or at the bar, where guests are guaranteed to see them.
• Add thoughtful touches. Place cards casually incorporated into a nicely folded napkin, or placed between the tines of a fork, show how you have thought about each guest and who they might enjoy meeting.
• Turn on the music. Music helps your guests relax and gets them in the proper party mood. Many stereo systems now have an mp3 player dock, so you can create a playlist for the entire evening and avoid the hassle of scrambling to change CDs. Choose tunes that match the occasion, but Bean suggests mixing traditional holiday songs with favorite party tunes in a ratio of one to three.
• Ready, set, relax. Set the table, dim the lights, start the music and light the candles well in advance, so you're relaxed and ready to greet your guests the minute they walk in the door.
"If you're sometimes challenged to get everything ready in time, remember that getting 80 percent of the work finished is good enough," says Bean, who also encourages her fellow hostesses to "stop trying to be Superwoman in an apron, and ask for help."
To browse hundreds of seasonal entertaining, home and kitchen ideas, or request a copy of Ginny's fall/winter catalogs, visit Ginnys.com or call 800-693-0809. You can also find Ginny's on Facebook. : :


text: A SWALLOW, returning from abroad and especially fond of dwelling with men, built herself a nest in the wall of a Court of Justice and there hatched seven young birds. A Serpent gliding past the nest from its hole in the wall ate up the young unfledged nestlings. The Swallow, finding her nest empty, lamented greatly and exclaimed: "Woe to me a stranger! that in this place where all others' rights are protected, I alone should suffer wrong."


text:
For eight years, Bill Keller was the Executive Editor of the New York Times. Today, he's a full-time writer for the paper of record, and when he talks, people listen. In fact, it turns out people listen even when it's not actually him talking.
Like, say, in this deviously clever—and quite realistic!—fake editorial, in which a fake Bill Keller gives a fake rousing defense of WikiLeaks.
It's a charming piece of deception; the voice is close enough to Keller's (and even borrows some direct quotes from the victim, as AllThingsD reports), the background looks enough like the real nytimes.com that you'd be forgiven for missing the absent NYT favicon and the incorrect URL format. And plenty of people did just that! Including journalistic notables from Salon, GigaOM, and the NY Times itself.
Oh, and Anonymous bought into it, too.
In fact, it took an all-caps tweet from Keller himself early this morning to put and end to the confusion:
Well played, mischief-causers! I don't know if you've changed anyone's mind about Wikileaks, but you've certainly made a handful of people feel foolish for five or six hours. And that's got to count for something. [Fake NY Times]


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barbara a. gamlin
barbara a. gamlin is a Canadian lawyer practising in Langley, British Columbia, Canada...
To get in touch with barbara a. gamlin our records indicate that you can do so via their most recent address of 20432 DOUGLAS CRESCENT, Langley, British Columbia, Canada, V3A 4B4 or by phone: 604-534-8551. For a map to this location, scroll down and we've provided a map showing the approximate location of barbara a. gamlin.
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20432 DOUGLAS CRESCENT, Langley, British Columbia, Canada, V3A 4B4
Phone: 604-534-8551


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Evangelium Vitae (1995), by Pope John Paul II
The encyclical entitled "Evangelium Vitae," meaning "The Gospel of Life," was promulgated on 25 March 1995 by Pope John Paul II in Rome, Italy. The document was written to reiterate the view of the Roman Catholic Church on the value of life and to warn against violating the sanctity of life. The document focuses on right to life issues including abortion, birth control, and euthanasia, but also touches on other concepts relevant to embryology, such as contraception, in vitro fertilization, sterilization, embryonic stem cell research, and fetal experimentation.
Format: Articles
Subject: Religion, Reproduction
Father Frank Pavone (1959- )
Father Frank Pavone, a key proponent of the Roman Catholic Church's pro-life movement, has devoted his life's work to ending abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and other techniques and procedures that he believes threaten human life from conception to death. His contributions to the pro-life movement include founding a new religious order called the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life and participating in high-profile protests and television interviews for the pro-life cause.
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Subject: People, Religion, Reproduction
Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)
Pope John Paul II's views on abortion and embryology have been very influential to the Roman Catholic Church. He strictly forbade abortion and other threats to what he regarded as early human life in his encyclical entitled "Evangelium Vitae," meaning the "Gospel of Life." His authority on moral and social issues was highly regarded during his lifetime.
Format: Articles
Subject: People, Religion, Reproduction


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There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Jonathan Swift
What's Wrong With Today's Board Meetings
As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it's time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven't changed since the early 1900's.
It's time.
Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model.
Reinventing the board meeting may offer angel-funded startups – which because of geography or size of investment typically don't have formal boards or directors – to attract experienced advice and investment outside of technology clusters (i.e. Silicon Valley, New York).
Here's how.
Because We've Always Done It This Way
The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model. While startups eventually get into execution mode, their initial stages are devoted to a non-linear, chaotic search for a business model: finding product/market fit to identify a product or service people will buy in droves at a sustainable, profitable pace.
In the last few years, our understanding that startups are not smaller versions of large companies, made us recognize that startups need their own tools, different from those used in existing companies: Customer Development – the process to search for a Business Model, the Business Model Canvas – the scorecard to measure progress in the search, and Agile Engineering – the tools to physically construct the product.
Yet while we've reinvented how startups build their companies, startup investors are still having board meetings like it's the 19th century.
Why Have a Board Meeting?
From a VC's point of view there are two reasons for board meetings.
1) It's their fiduciary responsibility. Once a startup gets going, it has asymmetric information. Investors get board seats to assure themselves and their limited partners that they are duly informed about their investment.
2) Investors believe that their experience and guidance can maximize their return. Here it's the board that has asymmetric knowledge. A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. (VC's sit on 6 – 12 boards at a time. Assume an average tenure of 4 years per board. Assume two veteran VC's per board. = 50-100x more experience.)
From a founder's point of view there are three reasons for board meetings.
1) It's an obligation that came with the check.
2) Founders who have a great board do recognize the uncanny pattern recognition skills that good VC's bring.
3) An experienced board brings an extensive network of customers, partners, help in recruiting, follow-on financing, etc.
What's Wrong With a Board Meeting?
The Wrong Metrics. Traditional startup board meetings spend an insane amount of wasted time using Fortune 100 company metrics like income statements, cash flow, balance sheet, waterfall charts. The only numbers in those documents that are important in the first year of a startup's life are burn rate and cash balance. Most board meetings never get past big company metrics to focus on the crucial startup numbers. That's simply a failure of a startup board's fiduciary responsibility.
The Wrong Discussions. The most important advice/guidance that should come from investors in a board meeting is about a startup's search for a business model: What are the business model hypotheses? What are the most important hypotheses to test now? How are we progressing validating each hypothesis? What do those numbers/metrics look like? What are the iterations and Pivots – and why?
Not Real-time. Startup board meetings occur every 4-6 weeks. While that's great when you showed up in your horse and buggy, the strategy-to-tactic-to implementation lag is painful at Internet speeds. And unless there's rigor in the process, because there is no formal structure for follow up, tracking what happened as a result of meeting recommendations and action items gets lost in the daily demands of everyone's work. (Of course great VC's mix in coffees, phone calls, coaching and other non-board meeting interactions but it's ad hoc and not always done.)
Wastes Founders Time. For the founders, "the get ready for the board meeting" drill is often a performance rather than a snapshot. Powerpoints, spreadsheets and rehearsals consume time for materials that are used once and discarded. There are no standards for what each side (board versus management) does. What is the entrepreneur supposed to be doing? What are the board members supposed to be contributing?
The Wrong Structure. If you read advice on how to run a board meeting you'll get advice that would have felt comfortable to Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller.
In the age of the Internet why do we need to get together in one room on a fixed schedule? Why do we need to wait a month to six weeks to see progress? Why don't we have standards for what metrics VC's want to see from their early stage startup teams?
Angels In America
For angel-funded startups, life is even tougher. Data from the Startup Genome project shows that startups that have helpful mentors, listen to customers, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth. If you're in a technology cluster like Silicon Valley you may be able to attract ad hoc advice from experienced investors. But very little of it is formal, and almost none of it approaches the 50-100x experience level of professional investors.
As there's no formal board, most of these angel/investors meetings are over coffees. And lacking a board meeting there's no formal mechanism to get investor advice. Angel investments in mobile and web apps today are approaching the "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" strategy.
And for startups outside of technology clusters, there's almost no chance of attracting Silicon Valley VC's or angels. Geography is a barrier to investment.
So given all this, the million dollar question is: Why in the age of the Internet haven't we adopted the tools we build/sell to solve these problems?
In the next post – Reinventing the Board Meeting.
Lessons Learned
- Early stage board meetings are often clones of large company board meetings
- That's very, very wrong
- Angel-funded startups have no formal mechanism for experienced advice
- There's a better way
Listen to the post here: Download the Podcast here
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Corporate/Gov't Innovation, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital |


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The Next Act Theatre attempts to capture the life of a legend in its latest production, Lombardi: The Only Thing, a biographical play about the seminal Green Bay Packers coach. Revised by playwright Eric Simonson, the play ranges from comedic and dramatic to factual and fantastic. Set in a crucial time for the coach, it's mostly realistic, but it also features an imagined conversation between Lombardi, his father and JFK, among others. In order to make Lombardi clearer to audiences, these imagined characters were integrated in a way that illustrates Lombardi's internal crisis prior to the string of championships that would come to define him. The play, which has extended its run due to popular demand, is staged tonight with a 7:30 pay-what-you-can performance.
Lombardi: The Only Thing
Tonight @ the Next Act Theatre - 7:30 p.m.


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Serial Asshole Shia LaBeouf Takes His Apologies to the Sky
Shia LaBeouf is very very sorry for plagiarizing Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Justin M. Damiano. And he can't stop apologizing for it. He's apologized so much he even ran out of his own words and had to steal apologies from famous people including Kanye West, Robert McNamara, Tiger Woods, and Shepherd Fairey.
But on New Year's day, LaBeouf took the insincere apologies to a new level and hired a skywriter to blanket the sky of Hollywood and Studio City with a simple message: "I am sorry Daniel Clowes." Too bad Daniel Clowes lives in the Bay Area and couldn't witness this new desperate plea for attention.
LaBeouf even took to Twitter after the skywriting to make sure he'd get credit for the spectacle in the clouds.
CLOUD: - vapor floating in the atmosphere - remote servers used to SHARE DATA - to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014
Because when you rip off someone's work and get caught, it's best to continue making the situation LESS CLEAR.
But at this point it's obvious LaBeouf is trying to pass this off as some kind of 21st century performance piece about art, property, and increasingly irrelevant movie stars. On New Year's Eve, he tweeted:
You have my apologies for offending you for thinking I was being serious instead of accurately realizing I was mocking you.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013
Not quite sure who he's mocking, but it doesn't matter because he stole this apology from a anti-abortion nutjob in Texas. Cool art, Shia. Cool, cool edgy art.
And he's at it again Thursday morning, borrowing his latest apology from Jay Z:
I am not a biter. I'm a writer for myself and others. I steal some plot points & dialogue. I'm only big'n up my brother.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 2, 2014
What an asshole.


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Levitational Pull
Price: $1.94
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Subtitle: Songs for Enlightening Up!
Eighteen playful, joyous, lighthearted and often hysterically humorous personal growth related songs reminding you to lighten up and let in the light.
Song Titles:
"... witty, wise, funny and entertaining — the perfect antidote for excessive seriousness. Levitational Pull will help you defy gravity." — Steve Bhaerman (a.k.a. Swami Beyondananda)By Scott Kalechstein


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Vaccination programs for children have prevented more than 100 million cases of serious contagious disease in the United States since 1924, according to a new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The research, led by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh's graduate school of public health, analyzed public health reports going back to the 19th century. The reports covered 56 diseases, but the article in the journal focused on seven: polio, measles, rubella, mumps, hepatitis A, diphtheria and pertussis, or whooping cough.
Researchers analyzed disease reports before and after the times when vaccines became commercially available. Put simply, the estimates for prevented cases came from the falloff in disease reports after vaccines were licensed and widely available. The researchers projected the number of cases that would have occurred had the pre-vaccination patterns continued as the nation's population increased.
The journal article is one example of the kind of analysis that can be done when enormous data sets are built and mined. The project, which started in 2009, required assembling 88 million reports of individual cases of disease, much of it from the weekly morbidity reports in the library of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then the reports had to be converted to digital formats.
Most of the data entry — 200 million keystrokes — was done by Digital Divide Data, a social enterprise that provides jobs and technology training to young people in Cambodia, Laos and Kenya.
Still, data entry was just a start. The information was put into spreadsheets for making tables, but was later sorted and standardized so it could be searched, manipulated and queried on the project's website.
"Collecting all this data is one thing, but making the data computable is where the big payoff should be," said Dr. Irene Eckstrand, a program director and science officer for the N.I.H.'s Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study.
The University of Pittsburgh researchers also looked at death rates, but decided against including an estimate in the journal article, largely because death certificate data became more reliable and consistent only in the 1960s, the researchers said.
But Dr. Donald S. Burke, the dean of Pittsburgh's graduate school of public health and an author of the medical journal article, said that a reasonable projection of prevented deaths based on known mortality rates in the disease categories would be three million to four million.
The scientists said their research should help inform the debate on the risks and benefits of vaccinating American children.
Pointing to the research results, Dr. Burke said, "If you're anti-vaccine, that's the price you pay."
The medical journal article notes the recent resurgence of some diseases as some parents have resisted vaccinating their children. For example, the worst whooping cough epidemic since 1959 occurred last year, with more than 38,000 reported cases nationwide.
The disease data is on the project's website, available for use by other researchers, students, the news media and members of the public who may be curious about the outbreak and spread of a particular disease. Much of the data is searchable by disease, year and location. The project was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"I'm very excited to see what people will find in this data, what patterns and insights are there waiting to be discovered," said Dr. Willem G. van Panhuis, an epidemiologist at Pittsburgh and lead author of the journal article.
The project's name itself is a nod to the notion that data is a powerful tool for scientific discovery. It is called Project Tycho, after the 16th century Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe, whose careful, detailed astronomical observations were the foundation on which Johannes Kepler made the creative leap to devise his laws of planetary motion.
The open-access model for the project at Pittsburgh is increasingly the pattern with government data. The United States government has opened up thousands of data sets to the public.
Just how these assets will be exploited commercially is still in the experimental stage, other than a few well-known applications like using government weather data for forecasting services and insurance products.
But the potential seems to be considerable. Last month, the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm, projected that the total economic benefit to companies and consumers of open data could reach $3 trillion worldwide.
Source: The New York Times


text: BBC Needs Help With Natural History of Human Body The BBC are making a series of programmes about the Human Body. They will illustrate what science can currently tell us about how the human body works and how it evolved. If you have research that you think would help us to visualise human biological processes in a new and enlightening way, please contact me at kathy.barnby at bbc.co.uk *+44.181.752.6210 and fax +44.181.752 6810 in London. I would love to see examples of images created by new technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, computer analysis of X-ray and PET scans. Also film or video images, no matter how old, which show the processes of our bodies. We want to illustrate human life from conception, through foetal development, into babyhood, childhood, before and after puberty, the ageing process, death and beyond. Examples of the moments we might capture on film are: 1 Macrophage cells clearing away debris. 2 The exit of a lymphocyte cell through a blood vessel wall. 3 A way of visualisng the thymus at different stages of life. 4 Production of cells in bone marrow


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Active Hunter
Hey everyone, just wanted to show off my hard work and purchases. The gauntlets were bought from a member and needed some fixing and repainting. Among the alterations are the pin and hindge method. I didn't like the velcro closure because the shells showed signs of cracking. The armor is not attached yet. I'll upload those in a future post. let me know what you think.


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ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia's Republicans in the U.S. House voted against a last-minute deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" after the state's two senators voted for it.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that all eight of Georgia's Republicans voted against the bill in the House late Tuesday.
They broke with the state's GOP senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, who had voted for it just after the new year began.
Among Democrats, John Barrow of Augusta voted no. Sanford Bishop of Albany; David Scott of Atlanta; and Hank Johnson of DeKalb County voted yes.
Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta did not vote, as he returned home after his wife died Monday.
The last-minute deal in Congress to avoid the "fiscal cliff" sent world stocks climbing Wednesday.


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1993 Ford Saleen Mustang - The Price Is Right
This Ain't No Game Show
Related Video
It seems that at times, things are not within reach, the timing is bad, the money is not there, or we get there too late. When it comes to Saleens, as with Shelbys, many of us just can't take that final step over the precipice to ownership. "I looked at that car several times at John Bleakley Ford in 1993 and 1994, but I just couldn't afford it," said Bill Price. We know that tune quite well. Around here we seem to sing it all too often when presented with a piece of Mustang history such as this convertible. If only we had the money.
Because he wanted a one-of car, Bill drooled over the Saleen until it sold in 1994.
It is one of only five 1993 Saleen SCs, one of three convertibles, and the only SC that is yellow. Period.
End of sentence. Of course, there are many components that make this ride special, such as the eye-popping Bright Canary Yellow paint, rocking ground effects, and the black with yellow appointments interior. Other components that jump out at you are the Canary Yellow 17-inch rims mounting P225/45-17 tires up front and P245/40-17 tires out back. Yep, visually it is about as subtle as a Sammy Sosa home run.
More subdued because of the eye-searing paint are the Saleen disc brakes with special Saleen Calipers that peek through the holes on the wheels. Backing these up is the Saleen Racecraft suspension with special progressive-rate springs, Saleen struts and shocks, and Saleen urethane bushings. Saleen also added a three-point lower brace and a g-load brace to stiffen the chassis, as well as one in the engine bay to further that along. This leads us to believe that this car handles and, according to Bill, it does.
Of course, Steve and the folks at Saleen didn't stop there. They piled on the appointments to the engine to the point that we decided to list them rather than wax poetic on them. With the kind of power the 302 is capable of, you need some stuff to get it to the ground. There is a Saleen-shifted five-speed and 3.55 Auburn rearend to get the juice to the monster meats out back.
Creature comforts are there, too. Leather wraps the Saleen-spec'd Recaro front seats and matching back seat as well. There also is a lightbar and Spyder kit to round out the styling. For ground-pounding sound, Saleen spec'd a Pioneer system and six-disc CD changer for the SC. In front of the driver is the 200-mph speedo gauge package that gives you the idea that it might be useful.
After the car sold new from the dealership, Bill sort of forgot about it. During that time, it traded hands again and finally came to rest at Parkway Ford in Adarville, Georgia, with a scant 2,800 miles on the odometer. Bill's friend Derrick immediately placed a call and told Bill the car was there. Uh-oh.
The scraping began, and Bill managed to come up with enough cash to buy the SC. Finally, the price was right.
Saleen Power
Here's the menu of Saleen stuff. Impressive, no?
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Gossett Leads Clemson To 7-1 Win Over GSU
CLEMSON, S.C. (CU SID) — Sophomore righthander Daniel Gossett struck out a season-high 12 batters to lead #15 Clemson to a 7-1 victory over Georgia Southern at Doug Kingsmore Stadium on Friday night. The Tigers, who took a 1-0 lead in the series, improved to 35-15 on the season. The Eagles dropped to 25-24 in 2013. The Tigers scored a run in the first inning and never relinquished the lead. Clemson added three runs in the fourth inning, one run in the fifth, and two runs in the seventh to close out the scoring. Gossett (8-3) pitched 7.1 strong innings to earn the win. He allowed just two hits, one run, and two walks with 12 strikeouts. He also retired the first 10 batters of the game. Justin Hess (4-5), the first of three Georgia Southern pitchers, suffered the loss. He yielded five hits, five runs, and seven walks with six strikeouts in 5.0 innings pitched. The Tigers scored in the first inning when Garrett Boulware grounded a two-out single through the left side to score Maleeke Gibson, who earlier led off with a walk and stole second. In the fourth inning, Shane Kennedy drew a one-out walk and advanced to third on Jon McGibbon's single through the left side on a hit-and-run. Tyler Krieger reached on a fielder's choice to first as McGibbon was retired at second and Kennedy scored. After Thomas Brittle walked, Mike Triller blooped a two-out double to left field to score Krieger and Brittle, giving Clemson a 4-0 lead. Steve Wilkerson led off the fifth inning with a walk, stole second, and advanced to third on an error. Two batters later, Boulware was intentionally walked and Kennedy walked to load the bases. McGibbon then grounded out to first to score Wilkerson. In the sixth inning, Scooter Williams was hit-by-pitch, stole second, and scored on Ben Morgan's single up the middle. Wilkerson led off the seventh inning with a walk and advanced to second on Steven Duggar's sacrifice bunt. Boulware followed with a line-drive single to left field to score Wilkerson, then Kennedy belted a triple to left-center to score Boulware. Boulware and Triller both went 2-for-3 with two RBIs to lead Clemson, who outhit Georgia Southern 9-3. Kennedy went 2-for-2 with a triple and two walks as well. Morgan went 2-for-4 with the Eagles' only RBI. Clemson and Georgia Southern will play game-two of the three-game series on Saturday at 6:30 PM.


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Kaluga Region (07.2010)
Less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, the Kalugua region is both agricultural & industrial. Founded in the 14th century, present day Kaluga is a hub of Russia's automotive industry with major European & Japanese manufacturers operating or opening plants there. Located on the Oka River, 60% of the region's land is agricultural. Midway between Moscow & Kaluga in the Kaluga Region is the pastoral town of Borovsk. Once occupied by Napoleon, this now secluded town of 12,000 has acquired notoriety for the murals painted on its buildings. The work of an amateur painter, Vladimir Ovchinnikov's murals depict historical events & figures, and everyday life. His wall murals attract tourists and, more recently, the ire of the local administration who do not appreciate some of his satirical paintings. A short, nearby trip but difficult none-the-less as we stayed in 3 different hotels the first three days. Why? Don't ask, don't tell.Read More


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Coleman v Attridge Law & Steve Law -The decision and its impact
Facts of the case
Sharon Coleman's son Oliver was born with a rare condition affecting his breathing and also has a hearing impairment. Ms Coleman brought a case claiming she was forced to resign from her job as a legal secretary after, she claims, being harassed by her employers and being refused flexible working which other employees were granted. Ms Coleman's case is that she was targeted because she has a child with a disability, and was denied flexible work arrangements offered to her colleagues without disabled children.
Since Ms Coleman's case relied on the application of European law (European Employment Framework Directive 2000/78/EC) to the Disability Discrimination Act, before deciding on the facts of her claim, the Employment Tribunal first asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to determine whether the Directive protects employees who are treated less favourably or harassed because of their association with a disabled person. In July 2008, the ECJ ruled that disability discrimination by association is unlawful in the workplace.
Ms Coleman's case went back to the Employment Tribunal on 30 September 2008 to decide whether the DDA as it is currently written covers associative discrimination or whether UK law will have to be amended to make it compliant with the Directive. The Tribunal's decision is expected soon.
Ms Coleman's victory before the European Court of Justice has ensured that the UK's disability discrimination law provides protection on the grounds of someone's association (including caring responsibilities) with a disabled person.
Next steps
The Equality Bill provides the Government with a legislative vehicle to clarify the issue of 'association' in domestic law.
The explanatory note 71 to the Bill states that:
'this definition (of direct discrimination) is broad enough to cover cases where the less favourable treatment is because of the victim's association with someone who has that characteristic or because the victim is wrongly thought to have it.'
Last Updated: 09 Sep 2015
Last updated: 08 Jun 2016


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There are two things that aren't obvious just by looking at these friands - one, they are gluten free - rice flour replaces regular flour for an extra light finish and two, inside, they have a fig heart.
The figs I've used are these:
Such a pretty tin, produced by Baldjis in Greece - they are whole green (Kalamata) figs that are preserved in a light syrup.
Since they are a little larger than I had thought they would be, I've only used half a fig per friand.
[Makes about 6 hearts - I've used a silicon heart shaped mould]
75 grams butter, melted and cooled
75 grams icing sugar
25 grams rice flour
50 grams almond meal
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste/vanilla extract
3 canned Figs, halved
Whisk the egg whites with vanilla bean paste/extract until light and fluffy but stop before they reach soft peak stage.
Sift the icing sugar, rice flour and almond meal together into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the cooled, melted butter - stir briskly to incorporate.
Add a large spoonful of the beaten egg whites to the mixture, stir to slacken before adding the rest of the egg whites - be gentle when folding in the egg white you don't want to deflate the mixture.
Place the silicon mould on a baking tray - half fill each heart with batter, add half a fig, then top with remaining batter.
Bake in a preheated 170°C oven for about 25 minutes or until golden and cooked through.
Once cooked let the friands sit in the tray for a few minutes before turning them out onto a wire rack. If the underside seems a little moist (this can happen due to the syrup in the figs) then place them back into the oven, bottom up, for 5 minutes, or until they feel dry to the touch. When done, remove to a wire rack to cool before serving.
*the final aphrodisiac count is four - Egg, Figs, Almonds, Vanilla so I could really call these my Gluten-Free, Four Aphrodisiac, Fig Filled Friands and I'll stop with the f's in case I get into trouble.
Looking for more? Make sure you head back to Chris's site for the recap.