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Black Narcissus (1947)
In short, Black Narcissus is a film about a handful of Anglican nuns who open a mission school and clinic in a remote Himalayan village, so yes, it is exactly what you'd expect: a technologically masterful erotic thriller.
Deborah Kerr plays Sister Clodagh, a moderately arrogant thirty-something nun, who is sent by her mother superior to lead a new mission in an empty palace set high in the mountains of Darjeeling. The palace was once home to a bygone General's extra women; indeed, the walls are decorated with images of beautiful bathing girls in various poses and stages of dress. The heir to this palace, the current General, tried to establish a school and dispensary the year before by installing a band of monks, but they only lasted five months. It is a windy place, full of ghosts after all, and no one thought to paint over the pictures.
Sister Clodagh is given four women of the order to take with her: Sister Briony (Judith Furse), a sturdy, no-nonsense nun; Sister "Honey" (Jenny Laird), a happy, glass-ever-half-full kind of gal; Sister Phillipa (Flora Robson), the landscaping nun; and finally Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), a sharp-edged, unhappy woman who is prone to illness and complaining, because a trip to the Himalayas 'round about monsoon season might be just the thing to perk her up.
The troupe is met on location (more on this later) by the General's British agent, Mr. Dean (David Farrar), a handsome, dissolute rogue with wavy hair and a manly swagger, who dresses in short-sleeved cotton shirts (all unbuttoned), a battered alpine hat, and high-waisted, Magnum, P.I. man-shorts. He is both helpful and discomfiting to Sisters Clodagh and Ruth (if for different reasons) and he makes no secret about Mopu not being a good fit for them. He tells the nuns the locals are like children who don't know from modern medicine, so the nuns better not try to help any of them if they get really sick, because if one of 'em dies, they'll all think the magic is bad.
Dean rides a Shetland pony, so he should know.
As the girls settle in, the raw, earthy beauty of their surroundings seeps in, upending each of them in different, but profound ways. In spite of the "clear air" and ceaseless wind, they get the clinic and school up and running. Sister Clodagh develops a collegial tolerance of Mr. Dean, Sister Briony remains sturdy, and Sister Honey remains cheerful. Poor Sister Phillipa, who spends much of her time outdoors, seems so easily distracted and Sister Ruth, when she isn't carping about the stupidity and smell of the children, seems to brighten a bit whenever she sees Mr. Dean. Dean helps with the plumbing and whatnot, and even hands them a disturbingly beautiful girl of seventeen (the gorgeous, walnut-tinted Jean Simmons) who has been hanging around Dean's doorstep to keep her out of trouble, if you know what I mean.
Enter the Young General (Sabu), the nephew of the Old General, who has been called from his studies in London to take his place in Mopu. Sister Clodagh reluctantly agrees that he can study with the girls for the time being. She's not such a bad egg, really, as we learn from flashbacks to her time as a flaming red-headed lass in Ireland before she took the veil and had a handsome boyfriend. She's not the only nun to be remembering things from the Before Time: poor Sister Phillipa couldn't resist planting flowers where the practical vegetables ought to be and is very distressed about it, and Sister Ruth, getting paler and more angular by the day is clearly pining for Mr. Dean and his Shetland pony ways.
Then one day, a villager brings in her feverish, dying baby. Sister Briony sends the woman home, knowing the baby will die, but Sister Honey secretly gives the mother medicine, which doesn't work. The next day, after the baby dies, no one comes to clinic or school and the nuns suddenly find it dangerous to venture outside their garden. The Young General has run off that same night with Jean Simmons, and Sister Ruth is about to open that mysterious package she received from Calcutta. Left with her troubling thoughts and "that something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated," Sister Clodagh finds herself in for a rough evening.
An evening I won't spoil with too much detail, but suffice it to say that Sister Ruth has been harboring a deep hatred of Sister Clodagh, whom she sees as a rival for Mr. Dean's affections. After a disappointing encounter with Mr. Dean, Sister Ruth emerges feverish and mad, wanting nothing more than to terrorize Sister Clodagh for the remaining minutes of the picture, which she does, magnificently.
I can count the number of times on one hand when one person actually touches another in this picture, but so much is suggested through color, sound, atmosphere, and those rich, intimate close-ups, that you'd swear you'd seen Everything, All of It. Perhaps the greatest illusion of all is the fact that the entire film was shot in the studio, using models and hand-painted, black-and-white photographic mattes. The only thing authentically Indian about Black Narcissus is Sabu and the plants used in some of the exteriors.
During the filming of this picture. Kathleen Byron and director Michael Powell frequently argued about how to play Ruth. Powell envisioned Ruth as a crazed, hysterical monster, whereas Byron wanted to play Ruth...oh what's the word...human, as though her actions might be motivated by sincere inexperience and regretted decisions. You can judge who won that argument in the scene where Ruth goes to Dean's quarters. Their disagreement was complicated by the fact that Byron and Powell were having an affair at the time, and that Ruth's principal rival was being played by the director's recent ex-lover, Deborah Kerr. So maybe the villain of this film isn't so much Sister Ruth, whose frustrated passion drove her to madness, but how frightening women's sexuality can be...at least to men.
It certainly was villainous by the standards of the Catholic League of Decency, who thought the picture obscene on account of the nuns succumbing to various forms of sensuality. The film was not allowed to be released in the United States until those nuns were turned into Anglicans. As scary (and trope-y) the voracious, crazed, needy female monster in movies is, give me Black Narcissus over Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction any day.
However you feel about nuns, the Raj, or what a player Michael Powell turned out to be, Black Narcissus is a hot work of art from beginning to end -- and Kathleen Byron is terrifying.
This post is my contribution to The Great Villain Blogathon, hosted by Speakeasy, Shadows & Satin, and Silver Screenings.
Please take a moment to read about the other dastards, creeps, and nogoodniks you love to hate.
But Sister Ruth Is Ill...
About Mildred
I'll do just about anything a movie tells me to do. Unless it tells me wrong...
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I'm conflicted about horse racing. I love the spectacle of Derby Day, the women in their finery, the drunken bums in the infield, even the punters wagering the rent money at the local track. In better times I've even designed racing silks for our imaginary stable, and still I'm not completely convinced that racing isn't a step or 2 away from cock fighting. As with other beliefs you have it or you don't, and no amount of logic and rational discussion will sway.
Remember that these prints were included in a weekly newspaper. The color and quality are remarkable, for which the artist was paid a pittance. The color sporting prints are the most sought after by collectors.

subset: commoncrawl


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JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld was named to the shortlist for the Mann Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement.
Appelfeld, 80, was among 10 authors from around the world who were chosen for the prestigious prize in 2013. The winner will be announced in May.
Appelfeld writes fiction in Hebrew — a language he learned in his teens after escaping a German concentration camp, joining the Soviet army and living in a displaced persons camp in Italy before arriving in prestate Israel in 1946. Most of his work focuses on Jewish life in Europe before, during and after World War II.
Others on the shortlist are Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson of the United States; U R Ananthamurthy, India; Intizar Husain, Pakistan; Yan Lianke, China; Marie NDiaye, France; Josip Novakovich, Canada; Vladimir Sorokin, Russia; and Peter Stamm, Switzerland.


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|devpsy.org > humor > academic language
|k h g @ d e v p s y . o r g
What do mysterious sounding phrases in academic papers really mean? Archived deep within the University of Pennsylvania Humor Page are the answers.
The following list of phrases and their definitions might help you understand the mysterious language of science (including psychology) and medicine. These special phrases are also applicable to anyone reading a PhD dissertation or academic paper.
"IT HAS LONG BEEN KNOWN" ... I didn't look up the original reference.
"A DEFINITE TREND IS EVIDENT" ... These data are practically meaningless.
"WHILE IT HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE TO PROVIDE DEFINITE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS" ... An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.
"THREE OF THE SAMPLES WERE CHOSEN FOR DETAILED STUDY" ... The other results didn't make any sense.
"TYPICAL RESULTS ARE SHOWN" ... This is the prettiest graph.
"THESE RESULTS WILL BE IN A SUBSEQUENT REPORT" ... I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.
"IN MY EXPERIENCE" ... Once
"IN CASE AFTER CASE" ... Twice
"IN A SERIES OF CASES" ... Thrice
"IT IS BELIEVED THAT" ... I think.
"IT IS GENERALLY BELIEVED THAT" ... A couple of others think so, too.
"CORRECT WITHIN AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE" ... Wrong.
"ACCORD1NG TO STATISTICAL ANALYSIS" ... Rumour has it.
"A STATISTICALLY-ORIENTED PROJECTION OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE FINDINGS" ... A wild guess.
"A CAREFUL ANALYSIS OF OBTAINABLE DATA" ... Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of beer.
"IT IS CLEAR THAT MUCH ADDITIONAL WORK WILL BE REQUIRED BEFORE A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF THIS PHENOMENON OCCURS" ... I don't understand it
"AFTER ADDITIONAL STUDY BY MY COLLEAGUES" ... They don't understand it either.
"THANKS ARE DUE TO JOE BLOGGS FOR ASSISTANCE WITH THE EXPERIMENT AND TO CINDY ADAMS FOR VALUABLE DISCUSSIONS" ... Mr. Bloggs did the work and Ms. Adams explained to me what it meant.
"A HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT AREA FOR EXPLORATORY STUDY" ... A totally useless topic selected by my committee.
"IT IS HOPED THAT THIS STUDY WILL STIMULATE FURTHER 1NVESTIGATION IN THIS FIELD" ... I quit.
|devpsy.org > humor > academic language
|K. H. Grobman
|k h g @ d e v p s y . o r g
|© 2003 - 2008


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Kate Morton says that her books are similar to Victorian gothic novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. What elements of the Gothic novel do you see in The Secret Keeper? In what ways does she depart from this form?
Created: 07/09/13
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Right off the bat, we have the remote home with secrets. There is also a sense of a controlling prophecy with the greeting of 'it's been a long time" by the mysterious visitor that that is immediately murdered by the mother. So there is that sense of a threatening, controlling male, and then later in the story there are the revealing details of the physically abusive husband.
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I don't see this as a gothic novel. It has mystery but is not mysterious; terror but not that caused by the mysterious or psychological; nothing supernatural, death but not the kind caused by mysterious circumstances, doubles but not the kind that normally figure in a true gothic sense.
When I think of contemporary gothic novels I thinks of Diane Satterfield's "13th Tale," Shirley Jackson's " We Have Always Lived in the Castle," Daphne DuMaurier's "Rebecca," and Carlos Ruiz Zafon's " Shadow in the Wind."
Join Date: 04/23/11
Posts: 118
I tend to think of gothic novels as trauma upon trauma piling on the lead character, i.e. Jane Eyre. I was just sure that Jimmy would prove to be a bad guy who would somehow ruin Dolly's life. But he was such a good guy that it threw me off. And so many of the things that happened to Dolly were of her own creation and that didn't fit for me either. So the only really Gothic elements I saw were both Dolly and Vivien being cruelly stripped of their families and left alone in the world.
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Meeting Notes 2013 02 12
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You should read the meeting instructions forthwith!
These are the notes from the The 253rd Meeting of Noisebridge. Note-taker: FIXME YOUR NAME HERE; Moderator: FIXME THEIR NAME HERE.
- One or two bullet points of high-level meeting summary.
Short announcements and events
- Bullet point list of announcements and events
Membership Binder
- The name of the applicant, the week of their application, and their sponsors.
Financial Report
- Funds in bank:
- Noisetor (See the bulletpoints at the bottom of http://noisetor.net/finances/#summary):
Consensus items
Proposals from last week
(Add any items which pass or are blocked to the Consensus Items History page.)
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This article is a reprint of Wise Bread's contribution to OPEN Forum from American Express -- where small business owners can get advice from experts and share tips with each other.
As companies grow, they inherently become more complex. They eventually outgrow the capacity of their founders to be involved in every single detail of the business. There are too many customers, employees, products, projects, vendors, and suppliers with which one person can be intimately involved.
As the leaders of thriving companies become removed from the details, they feel a loss of control and will likely struggle to know how the company's cash flow and profitability are really performing. They have to rely on reports with lots of numbers and data to understand how the company has done and make the best decisions possible to help the company succeed in the future.
The transition from a startup to a booming company is often difficult for founders and entrepreneurs. They have to re-train their intuition to process reports and data rather than talking to their employees and customers and reviewing the bills from their vendors and suppliers. While they should still engage in getting information from these qualitative sources, quantitative data will become more and more important to them as the company grows. Generally, quantitative data measurements need to cover both the past and future on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.
Find one to three measurable pieces of information that can be reported daily. The items included on the daily report need adequately to allow the management team to answer this simple question: "Did we win or lose today?" Some examples include gross profit per day, daily units sold, billable hours worked, backlog, and more. In addition to reporting actual performance on a couple of critical ratios, thriving companies need to know what tomorrow will look like. Measuring performance is not the reason to be in business, but it is critical to running the business effectively.
Have a weekly report that highlights between 12 to 20 data points, with at least one or two coming from each of the critical areas of the business: marketing, sales, operations, finance, R&D, etc. These might include number of leads, leads converted to sales, cost per acquisition, revenue, revenue per employee, number of employees, percentage of receivables past due, working capital, current ratio, and more. (You can receive some more ideas on what should be included from one of my recent blog posts, The Key Business Metrics Every Entrepreneur Must Know.) Besides knowing how the business did last week, this report should also project the company's performance on these key numbers for the week to come. Also look at an updated cash flow projection (at least 90 days and up to 270 days into the future) each week so your company can adequately plan for and adjust to cash flow shortages and excesses.
It is also important to have monthly and quarterly financial and operational reports, which include monthly financial statements. The monthly financial statements should include comparisons to prior years and months in the business as well as to industry averages and benchmarks. Performance relative to the company's plans and budgets, as well as projections for the next month and year, should also be included and analyzed. Pay particular attention to validating and invalidating assumptions, and then improving them from month to month. Similar reports need to be reviewed on a quarterly basis, but they are typically more summarized and need to include lots of charts and graphs for quick review and presentations, often to the company's board.
Companies should revisit their five-year financial model and plan on a yearly basis. This includes a careful assessment of all of the assumptions that went into the model and updating those assumptions based on the actual performance of the company. Many business owners fight this activity because they feel it is too hard to project five years into the future. While it is certainly hard (and I have yet to see anyone that has projected their business performance perfectly for five future years) the exercise always yields helpful information to build a more competitive and sustainable business.
If you want to give your business the best chance to succeed, you may want to consider establishing processes for all of these critical past and future reports. They will help you make sure your company is improving its cash flow, profits, and financial health!
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.


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In 2002, Peter Kim founded Hudson Jeans in the pioneering years of "California Premium Denim." Since then Hudson has fueled the growth of the category worldwide through groundbreaking product, unyielding passion and positive energy.
Rooted in the legacy of British Cool and liberated by the free spirit of LA, Hudson is a rebel with a cause—a brand that redefines the standard every time.
Today, Hudson is a global leader in Premium Denim and the mission remains the same as day one; transcend product and inspire people around the world to live out their passions, push life to its fullest, and challenge themselves to be their very best.


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Rescue cost: The big unknown
A government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can take many forms, and so could the cost to the U.S. Treasury.
|Special Report
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If only it were the $64 million question. The taxpayer bill for rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could turn out to be the $64 billion question. Or more - or less.
The fact is: Nobody really knows yet.
Until the housing market recovers, there's no telling how much an intervention in Fannie and Freddie could cost taxpayers. But if it costs anything, the cost will likely be in the billions, not the millions.
Just how many billions depends largely on the structure of the rescue.
The two firms, which were set up by the government to help stimulate and underpin the market for home loans, own or back $5 trillion worth of debt - half the mortgage debt in the country. Since last summer, they have suffered about $12 billion in losses.
At the same time, Fannie (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) have become virtually the only source of funding for banks and other lenders that offer mortgages. Their ability to buy up mortgages is crucial to the recovery of the battered home market and the broader U.S. economy.
The thinking is that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - sometime before Sunday evening - will put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship. That means the government will boot management out and run the two agencies until they get back on their feet.
Such a takeover, however, does not mean that the $5 trillion of loans and loan guarantees the two agencies have on their books get put on the balance sheet of the federal government. Fannie and Freddie would continue to operate as separate entities from the government.
But should the companies' liabilities ever exceed their assets, it is likely the government would make good on its implicit guarantee to back their debt, said attorney Thomas Stanton, author of two books on Fannie and Freddie and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
One reason for conservatorship, some say, is to prevent larger taxpayer losses like the kind the government saw during the savings and loans crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The move would ensure that Freddie and Fannie don't take unnecessary financial risks in an attempt to stem shareholder losses.
"When you have managers under pressure they have real incentive to bet the bank," said Stanton. "Taxpayers tend to lose a lot of money because the gambles don't pay off."
The Treasury may also opt to invest money in both companies - perhaps by every month buying bonds that it could later convert to stock. The money the Treasury invests would be taxpayer-financed.
"The only near-term cost is the amount of money the Treasury invests," said Jaret Seiberg, a financial services analyst at the Stanford Group, a policy research firm. How those investments perform will determine whether taxpayers make or lose money. And that performance is based entirely on the housing market's performance.
The fate of Fannie and Freddie is also in the hands of central bankers around the world who buy their debt. If the move to conservatorship doesn't assure them that the companies are on a sound path, the Treasury may be forced to take one or two additional steps.
Paulson could ask Congress to make the government's backing of the mortgage giants explicit by writing it into law, and he could put the companies into receivership, according to Stanton.
Under receivership, shareholders could be wiped out and the taxpayer would officially be on the hook for the agencies' bad debt. But the tab wouldn't be anything close to $5 trillion the agencies have on their books, because only a relatively small portion of the agencies' underlying home loans are likely to to default.
Of course, even a small percentage of $5 trillion is not a small amount of money.
It's impossible to put a number on it right now. But some experts say the rescue would probably cost more than the Federal Reserve's $29 billion backing of Bear Stearns assets when it was taken over by J.P. Morgan Chase.
"It will no doubt cost more than Bear - it's a lot bigger," said Lee Sheppard, a contributing editor at Tax Analysts.


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A German court has thrown out a Motorola Mobility patent lawsuit against Apple, breaking a recent run of courtroom successes for the company.
The patent enforcement action was dismissed, a spokesman for the District Court in Mannheim, Germany, said Friday.
While this ruling went in Apple's favor, the company's products are the subject of a number of other patent infringement lawsuits in Germany, brought by Motorola Mobility and also Samsung Electronics. Last week, Motorola Mobility succeeded briefly in blocking sales of Apple's mobile phones in Germany, winning an injunction to enforce an earlier patent ruling that Apple had infringed a patent essential to the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) mobile communications standard.
Such injunctions have themselves become a bone of contention between Apple and other patent holders. Apple feels that they should not be used in relation to standards-essential patents. But injunctions are considered fair game by rival mobile OS developer Google, which could soon become the owner of Motorola Mobility if antitrust authorities approve the deal.
In Friday's judgment, the court ruled that Motorola Mobility failed to present conclusive evidence that Apple had infringed its patent, according to patent analyst Florian Mueller.
That's because, he said, Motorola Mobility relied on an argument that its European Patent 1053613, on a "method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access signal," is essential to the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) standard for communications, and that Apple had necessarily infringed on it in implementing the standard in its 3G phones.
Standards Argument
Many standards bodies — including the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which set the UMTS standard — require that companies helping write the standard declare any relevant patents they hold and agree to license those essential to the standard on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. But because the essential nature of such patents is typically determined by the patent holder itself, Motorola Mobility's argument is somewhat circular.
Motorola Mobility failed to demonstrate that the accused Apple products actually practice the claimed invention, Mueller wrote on his FOSS Patents blog. It "didn't show any kind of actual implementation (neither hardware nor software), and arguing merely on the basis of the specifications of the standard was insufficient to win."
While demonstrating in court that a mobile phone's user interface infringes a patent may be simple enough, showing how the chips or the low-level software inside it work is a different matter. But Motorola Mobility may still try to make that case: according to Mueller, the company is asserting the same patent against Apple's online store in a lawsuit filed in district court in Dusseldorf — and that case has not yet gone to trial.
An Apple spokesman said the company was aware of the ruling but declined to comment on the case, while Motorola Mobility representatives did not return requests for comment.
Peter Sayer covers open source software, European intellectual property legislation and general technology breaking news for IDG News Service. Send comments and news tips to Peter at email@example.com.


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The conference is sponsored by the ACM Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) Project. The conference will begin on the evening of Friday, November 6, with a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner at 6:30 p.m. Robert Malekoff, Assistant Professor of Sport Studies at Guilford College, will deliver the keynote address after dinner. Saturday, November 7, will begin with breakfast at 8:00 a.m., and the schedule events will end around 4:00 p.m. Please keep the start and end times in mind when you are making your travel arrangements.
Hotel Arrangements
ACM has made reservations for those requesting them at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. ACM FaCE will cover one night of lodging (parking included) at the hotel. You will be responsible for any incidental charges or a second night's stay.
If you requested hotel accommodations, you should have received a confirmation e-mail. If you did not, please notify Betsy Hutula.
The hotel is about 15 minute walk from Coe College or a very short car ride.
Hotel Information:
Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel
350 First Avenue N.E.
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
P: 319.363.8161 or 719.955.5650
Travel Information
ACM FaCE will reimburse each college/university the cost of one vehicle making a round trip to Coe College at the rate of $.55/mile, or actual travel expenses, whichever is less. For institutions beyond driving range (Colorado College), ACM-FaCE can support four airline tickets from either Colorado Springs or Denver to Cedar Rapids (up to $1,800, whichever is less). A reimbursement form will be sent to the Deans office on ACM campuses.
For those flying into Cedar Rapids (CID), the Crowne Plaza offers a complimentary shuttle service. A courtesy phone (with a direct line to the hotel) is located next to the baggage carousel. The hotel is about a 10 minute ride from the airport.
The main address for Coe College is 1220 First Avenue N.E., Cedar Rapids, IA 52402. Driving directions can be found from many online sources, including the Coe College website
Click here for a Coe College campus map.
Dress Code
The dress code for the Conference is business casual.


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Awesome article! Who would have thought so many cool ways to save!
As a kid, I used to love using other people's bathrooms — there was always a new, exotic array of creams, cleaners, and conditioners to stare at, wondering "What's this for?" (And, in some cases, "Why does this [insert: soap, lotion, powder] smell so flipping awful?")
These days, I still get a little excited about the products we keep in our bathrooms — but now, it's because I like discovering alternative uses for everyday things (OK, I still like to know what other people's lotions smell like, too). I've collected tips from around Wise Bread and the web to help you make the most of your bathroom products. So whether you want to get more life out of the stuff you own or are out of something and need to find a substitute, read on for great ways to get more out of everything in your bathroom. (See also: How Baking Soda Took My Bathroom From "Yuck" to Yes!)
Yeah, you can use a bar of soap to make things smell nice and clean, but it can also help you keep things smelling nice in another way — if you hang it up outside, bar soap can help deter skunks. Prefer liquid soap to bar soap? You can follow this tutorial for turning bar soap into liquid. There are plenty more alternative uses for bar soap, too — like these nine.
From pulling zippers to holding hems, check out Myscha's piece on 25 uses for bobby pins.
I fondly remember making a comb into a musical instrument as a kid. Real Simple has seven more uses for combs — including using a (clean) comb to create some awesome cake-frosting texture.
Personally, I'm a soap-and-water shaver. But one thing I remember from my days of reading teen magazines was the suggestion of swapping in conditioner for shave cream when you're in a pinch. Since conditioner is, at heart, a moisturizer, it can also be used as a stand-in for lotion, or even to grease up stuck things like zippers or rings trapped on fingers (because, come on, do you really want to cover your wedding ring in butter?).
Stylelist has a great list of alternative uses for cotton balls; my favorite detials how you can use cotton balls to make daffodils last longer.
The Coupon High recommends a few uses for deodorant, including drying pimples.
Our own Linsey Knerl has already listed 14 great uses for floss, including hanging photos, precision cake cutting, and even baby delivery (um, don't try that at home?).
Over at Yahoo! Voices, Angela Vee lists a few different ways to use old hairbrushes. Most of them are for (big surprise) brushing other things, but I especially like her suggestion of using an old brush to work dirt out of messy kids' clothes (or adult clothes, because sometimes, you just have to jump in a mud puddle no matter what your age is).
I've always liked using my hair dryer as a way to dry clothes in a pinch, but that's a pretty obvious use. For more creative options, take a look at this Instructables guide on ways to use a hair dryer.
If your liquid soap is Castile soap (like Dr. Bronner's), you can dilute it and use it as a household cleaner, add a ¼ cup to your laundry in place of regular detergent, or even use it as a toothpaste.
When I'm having a particularly frizzy hair day (such as every day that I'm on the East Coast), I'll often use a little bit of lotion to help tame the curly beast. Like the aforementioned conditioner, it can also be used when you need to moisturize other things (like hair) or get stuck things unstuck.
Our Nora Dunn compiled a list of 19 uses for mouthwash, from treating bruises to cleaning glass. Mouthwash also factors into Paul's secret lawn tonic recipe, which uses other common ingredients that you (hopefully) don't keep in your bathroom, like beer.
I was first introduced to the magic of nail polish when my 3rd grade teacher took a bottle out of her desk to help stop a run in her stockings; all you need to do is paint a little clear polish around the hole. Mikey compiled 14 other uses for nail polish — as someone who has done a lot of sewing, using nail polish to help thread a needle is one of my favorite tips.
Even though it's probably not great for the blade, I'll sometimes use my bathroom razor to cut loose threads off of clothing. But if you're a straight-razor user, you have several more options available to you.
If you've spilled grease or oil on your clothing, try pouring a bit of shampoo on, rubbing it in, and rinsing. This works best immediately after the spill. Readers Digest also recommends a bit of shampoo for shining up leather shoes and purses (just rub a little on it with a clean cloth) and washing things other than hair, like delicates or hair brushes.
Well, I know that performers will often use shaving cream as an inexpensive alternative for whipped cream when they want to hit someone in the face with a pie. That might not be the most practical use, but Apartment Therapy has another great suggestion — mixing shaving cream with bleach to help keep the cleaner in place when removing mildew from grout.
Of course, toilet paper can be used for tissues (and vice versa). But if you really want to get fancy...check out this toilet paper wedding dress.
Just because a toothbrush isn't great for cleaning your teeth anymore doesn't mean it's kaput. Used toothbrushes are great for scrubbing hard-to-reach areas around the house, like between tiles or behind the faucet. Or if you're looking for a fun project to do with your kids, try this toothbrush robot.
From removing stains to relieving itchy bug bites, Nora Dunn has gathered 20 great alternative uses for toothpaste.
You might know the stuff primarily as an astringent, but Paul has detailed 14 other great uses for witch hazel.
What did I miss? Share your favorite alternative uses for bathroom products in the comments.
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
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Great tips! I never heard about these things except the nail polish, toothpaste, and toothbrush. Thanks for sharing!
Using a shaving cream pie to prank someone is dangerous. My friend almost had to get an ambulance after someone surprised him and he gasped, inhaling some of the menthol cream.
The toilet paper wedding dress is pretty ridiculous. From the picture you can't really even tell it isn't a traditional wedding dress.


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by Jonathan Fahey, The Associated Press
NEW YORK – The frigid winter of 2014 is setting the price of natural gas on fire.
Friday, the price in the futures market soared past $5 per 1,000 cubic feet, up 9 per cent for the day to the highest level in three and a half years. The price of natural gas is up 29 per cent in two weeks, and is 50 per cent higher than last year at this time.
Record amounts of natural gas are being burned for heat and electricity. Meanwhile, it's so cold that drillers are struggling to produce enough to keep up with the high demand. So much natural gas is coming out of storage that the Energy Department says supplies have fallen 20 per cent below a year ago — and that was before this latest cold spell. Says energy analyst Stephen Schork:
[quote]We've got record demand, record withdrawals from storage, and short-term production is threatened. It's a dangerous market right now.[/quote]
Natural gas and electric customers are sure to see somewhat higher rates in the coming months. But they will be insulated from sharp increases because regulators often force natural gas and electric utilities to use financial instruments and fuel-buying strategies that protect residential customers from high volatility.
North America faces second major cold snap
To understand the price increase, just look at the thermometer. A second major cold snap this month is gripping much of the country, including the heavily-populated Northeast. And forecasters are now predicting colder weather in the weeks to come, extending south through Texas.
Natural gas is used by half the nation's households for heating, making it the most important heating fuel. Electricity is the second most popular heating source, and electric power generators use natural gas to generate power more than any other fuel except for coal.
Commodity Weather Group, which predicts heating demand for energy companies and consumers, said in a report Friday that periodic breaks in the cold weather are expected to be "weaker and briefer, extending the duration of colder weather" in late January and early February.
Shale gas wells can freeze up
There are a couple of other factors at play. In the past, much of U.S. natural gas was produced in the Gulf of Mexico. If weather disrupted supplies there, it was typically in the early fall, during hurricane season, when heating and electricity demand are low and natural gas storage facilities are mostly full in preparation for winter.
Now, much of U.S. production comes from on-shore formations that are more susceptible to cold, ice and snow. Wells that are not designed for such extreme conditions can freeze, halting production.
"Now the threat to production is when demand is at its highest," Schork says.
Also, electric utilities have for several years been switching to cheaper natural gas for power generation. And new pipelines aren't being built fast enough to deliver all the gas required at times of high demand. That can lead to regional shortages that send prices skyrocketing.
Gas prices could remain high
When the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Station in Maryland shut down earlier this week because of an electrical problem brought on by snow and ice, power generators across the East Coast scrambled to replace the lost power by cranking up natural gas-fired plants. That sent natural gas prices for immediate delivery, known as the spot price, to a record $120 per 1,000 cubic feet in some markets on the East Coast. To put that in perspective, that's equivalent to oil at more than $700 per barrel.
Analysts say there is plenty of gas to replenish supplies, and drillers will scramble to boost production so they can fetch prices they haven't seen since the summer of 2010.
If, that is, the weather heats up later in February and March. If it's still cold when baseball season opens in early April, though, Schork says, "we'll be looking at much higher natural gas prices."


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Proceedings, September 2012
Savvy adversaries are more capable than ever of using high-tech gadgets and social media against the United States.
From Tunisia to Cairo, Sanaa, Bahrain, Benghazi, Damascus, London, Wall Street, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis, 2011 was the year of the social-media revolution. Smartphones and social media have enabled groups of like-minded individuals to share information, spread their messages, and upend traditional relationships between the public and authorities. These developments are part of a continuing trend in the democratization of information: the empowerment of groups and individuals by information technology. Combined with the democratization of destruction, or the expansion of access to destructive technology and tactics, small groups and individuals will have greater ability to counter traditional security forces in hybrid and irregular conflicts, where force-on-force military engagements may be blended with other operations aimed at influencing key populations.1
The future operating environment will be one of contested domains—air, land, sea, space, cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum, and increasingly, the influence domain, where individuals and groups compete to spread their messages. U.S. military forces must be prepared for future challenges within these domains from nation-states as well as non-state groups or individuals. While the Department of Defense (DOD) is generally good at estimating and preparing for challenges from organized military forces, threats from non-state groups tend to be more diffuse and decentralized, more organic, and less predictable in nature.2 The continued diffusion of power to non-state groups will increase the challenges associated with irregular and hybrid warfare, with significant implications for U.S. forces.3
The Democratization of Information
The widespread availability of social media and Internet-capable smartphones has transformed relationships between the public and traditional authority. In the past few years, these technologies have helped non-state groups record and broadcast abuses of power, organize to form ad hoc collectives, and counter messages from authorities. In many cases, authorities have been slow to realize the implications of these changes. Even U.S. domestic agencies have repeatedly been embarrassed by incidents in which officials have been recorded using heavy-handed tactics. Images and video of peaceful protesters being pepper-sprayed, abused, or intimidated by law-enforcement officials in New York, Berkeley, UC Davis, the University of Maryland, and Washington, D.C., have led to outrage, suspension of offending officials, and in at least one case felony criminal charges.4


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This article is more than 1 year old
UK Gov confirms new Foot and Mouth leak
That's AND not IN
The government has confirmed that it is investigating another "probable" leak of the foot and mouth virus from Pirbright, the site at the centre of the summer's outbreak of the disease.
There are two facilities on the Pirbright site: one is the government owned and managed Institute for Animal Health, and the other, Merial, a commercial operation that works to synthesise the virus for use in vaccines.
Environment Secretary Hillary Benn issued a written statement saying that investigators have been dispatched to the Merial lab on the site. He said inspectors have been assured that the virus, which escaped through a leaky valve last week, has not escaped into the environment.
Benn said the leak was discovered less than two weeks after Defra (Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs) restored Merial Animal Health's licence to use the virus for vaccine production. On 19 November, some of the virus was found to be missing, and the leak attributed to a broken valve. All operations were immediately stopped and the equipment was decontaminated, he added.
In the summer, the Health and Safety Executive was not able to determine which of the two facilities on Pirbright was responsible for the outbreak of the virus.
Foot and Mouth has an incubation period of up to 14 days, so it will be some time before local farmers will know whether or not the virus was indeed contained. ®


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Behind closed doors, congressional leaders and the White House are discussing budget savings to tie to the upcoming vote on the federal debt limit. Republicans have promised that spending cuts must be at least as large as the debt-increase amount. Thus, if the debt limit is increased by $2 trillion to get the government through the end of 2012, policymakers need to agree on $2 trillion in cuts, probably measured over 10 years.
However, I'm getting very suspicious that party leaders will deliver phony "cuts," not actual terminations in programs or reductions in entitlements. Looking at Congressional Budget Office projections, it is fairly easy to come up with $2 trillion in "savings" without actually cutting anything.
Figure 1 shows 10-year "savings" of $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan war costs. The top line is the CBO baseline, against which "cuts" are officially measured. To construct the baseline, the CBO takes current spending and increases it over time by inflation. But nobody expects war spending to continue rising like that. Rather, spending is supposed to fall in coming years as troops are withdrawn.
Thus, the bottom line in the chart is the more realistic troop-withdrawal spending path used in both the Paul Ryan House budget plan and President Obama's budget. This spending path produces official "savings" of $1 trillion over 10 years, but it's more of an accounting artifact than real savings.
Figure 2 shows the non-security portion of discretionary spending, which is roughly total discretionary spending less defense and homeland security. The top line shows CBO baseline spending, which initially dips as "stimulus" funding peters out, then starts rising again with assumed inflation.
The bottom line shows an alternative of holding spending fixed at the 2012 level proposed in the House budget plan. Holding spending constant after some initial cuts in 2012 would save $1 trillion over the decade compared to the CBO baseline. That would be an accomplishment, but any debt-limit deal would need a rigid enforcement mechanism for these savings to actually materialize because future appropriators will push to reverse cuts and keep spending rising. However, most budget analysts are skeptical about the ability of budget mechanisms to rigidly control future discretionary spending.
To recap, Figures 1 and 2 show how to get $2 trillion in "savings" without making any actual cuts. But it's even easier than that because policymakers will include interest savings in any spending-cut deal. Interest savings are roughly 20 percent of the value of any program "cuts" over 10 years. Thus to reach a $2 trillion goal in "savings," policymakers will just need to find "cuts" of about $1.7 trillion.
So far, I haven't mentioned entitlement programs. The two charts show that party leaders could find $2 trillion in "savings" without even touching the three giant programs that are wreaking havoc on our fiscal future: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And we reached the $2 trillion savings goal without touching the bloated regular defense budget.
The upshot of all this is that conservative voters and Tea Partiers interested in real spending cuts need to watch closely when party leaders announce their grand debt-limit compromise in coming weeks. A deal that simply counts projected future savings against inflated discretionary baselines would be a fiscal fraud.
Instead, we need real spending cuts, and those come in only two flavors. One type of real cut is to fully zero out discretionary programs and repeal the underlying program authorizations. The other sort of real cut is to change entitlement laws to permanently reduce benefit levels of programs such as Medicare. Those sorts of cuts would be difficult to reverse, and thus would be solid steps toward controlling the budget and averting the coming debt tsunami.
Chris Edwards is editor of Cato's www.DownsizingGovernment.org.


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Hundreds of friends and family crowded the pews at a church near Atlanta, and Champion's drum major uniform was on display next to his open casket. Members of the marching band from Southwest DeKalb High School, where Champion attended, performed in full regalia at the beginning and end of the service.
Beulah Missionary Baptist Church pastor John Tatum urged the crowd to stop the "foolish" hazing in college fraternities and marching bands.
"If there's anything about this man's legacy we need to put a stop to, it's hazing," he said to a chorus of amens. "I call upon every parent, every mother, every father ... do what is necessary now to stop this tragedy from ever happening again."
The 26-year-old junior was found dead Nov. 19 on a bus parked outside an Orlando, Fla., hotel after the school's football team lost to a rival. Police said Champion, a clarinet player, had been vomiting and complained he couldn't breathe shortly before he collapsed, but they have not released any other details.
Since Champion's death, Julian White, the band director at the historically black university in Tallahassee has been fired. The school has announced an independent probe, and the university president said he will work to end the long practice of hazing in the marching band.
Speaking at the service, White said Champion was like a son to him. He said he saw Champion shortly after he was found unconscious and he "looked in peace."
"This is a difficult time for me. You may see me smile, and you probably won't see me cry," he said. "I'm happy that I knew Robert."
The group that oversees Florida's public universities announced Tuesday it wanted to investigate whether the school did enough to respond to hazing.
Champion fell in love with music when he was about age 6. He started in bands in middle school and his mother said he was so enthusiastic about performances she called him "Mr. Band."
The Florida A&M band, known as the "Marching 100," was one of the most prominent in the nation. The band has performed at Super Bowls, the Grammys and presidential inaugurations.
University president James Ammons pledged to "stamp out hazing at FAMU."
"I vow that Robert's death will not be in vain," he said.


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Day of Action
Title: Day of Action
Creator: Caitlyn Notaro, volunteers from the greater Utica community
Region: Utica
Date: 2015
Medium: paint
Technique: painting
16 murals, 8 locations, and over 240 volunteers: that was the impressive count for Utica's Day of Action in 2015. Artist Caitlyn Notaro outlined all the figures in black in each location. Then volunteers were able to "paint-by-number" and fill in her designs. Local businesses sponsored each mural, providing the funding for paint and other supplies. Smiling children's faces and inspirational quotes fill the walls of little league baseball dugouts, park buildings, and the Community Health Center.
The United Way of the Valley and the Greater Utica Area has hosted this event for several years. Other co-sponsors are The Parkway Center/Mohawk Regional Volunteer Center, The City of Utica, and the HomeOwnership Center.
It's a tradition for United Way chapters across the country to sponsor a Day of Action. Often, this is scheduled around the Summer Solstice, to fit the most community service in the longest day of the year. 2013 was the Utica Day of Action's first focus on a "Graffiti Bust," in response to a community survey. Work in 2014 continued that theme, placing murals in areas commonly tagged with graffiti. By 2015, the community was ready for more, and the volunteers were eager to sign up.
Inscription: "UTICA COMMUNITY HEALTH. Where you are the CENTER of our attention" "LIVE UNITED" "2015 DAY OF ACTION" "United Way" "PARTNERS: City of Utica & Parkway Center"
Subject: Public art, Mural painting and decoration
Rights: © Caitlyn Notaro 2015
(In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/)
Find out more:
Related Works: AO-00101, AO-00102, AO-00109, AO-00110, AO-00111, AO-00112, AO-00113, AO-00114, AO-00115, AO-00116
Location: Community Health Center, 1651 Oneida Street, Utica


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Sponsors and brand vinyl stickers logos Akrapovic 2uds
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