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Sports Drinks Shifting Ingredients, Marketing Strategies
When Kevin Garnett's endorsement contract expired with Gatorade in December, 2011, he chose to go in a different direction. Garnett, one of the most prestigious and accomplished forwards in NBA history, wanted to partner with a brand that he felt better represented his healthy, yoga-dependent lifestyle. A few months later, Garnett signed with ZICO, the coconut water brand.
"He believed in his lifestyle," said Bill Lange, ZICO's VP of marketing, "And his diet was a better fit with what we were all about than who he was with before us."
Garnett told reporters that ZICO is light on his stomach because of its low acidity, preventing cramping and allowing him to keep up with the younger stars of the NBA. Garnett's avowed interest in ZICO also signified a shift – not just regarding the changing perspective of many athletes toward beverage consumption, but also regarding the gradually changing landscape of the sports drink category.
"It comes down to all-natural," Lange said. "That's the biggest thing."
While the initial combination of hydration-oriented ingredients certainly played a vital role in the evolution of sports drinks, it's an ongoing move toward segmentation – the meshing of a product with an occasion – that seems to be propeling the category forward and broadening the field beyond the traditional two-horse race with Gatorade and Powerade. With products that suit any hour of the day and pack a wider range of ingredients, consumers are now seeking sports drinks during times once reserved for water, juice or carbonated soft drinks. It's this versatility that is maturing the category and widening its scope and marketability.
And even the big dogs are paying attention. Gatorade, for example, created the G Series to complement this need-specific trend. Gatorade Prime uses a blend of carbohydrates and B vitamins to deliver energy before athletic activity. Gatorade Perform supports athletic activity with carbohydrates and electrolytes. Gatorade Recover follows this activity and supports muscle growth with 16 grams of protein and electrolytes.
The increasing demand for all-natural products has influenced many other developing brands, aside from ZICO, that also market themselves toward active consumers. Lance Collins, founder and CEO of BodyArmor, dubs sports drinks "a flawed category" because of what he identifies as artificial flavoring, a lack of nutritional benefits and high sodium content.
"Sports drinks sell themselves on bright artificial colors," Collins wrote to BevNET in an email asking to not be included in any sports drink roundup.
BodyArmor, which Collins calls a "superdrink," claims to contain double the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, also one banana worth of potassium, 50 blueberries worth of polyphenols, and A, C and E antioxidant vitamins. And in case there was any confusion that BodyArmor isn't a sports drink, the brand has completely wrapped its bottles in packaging, providing the opposite of the colorful, clear bottles of Gatorade and Powerade.
Despite Collins' nearly manic insistence on categorical individuality, his company certainly favors athletes as endorsers: Buster Posey, the catcher for the San Francisco Giants, Mike Trout, the outfielder of the Los Angeles Angels, and Rob Gronkowski, the tight end of the New England Patriots are among those hawking the brand, and the product is catching on. In April, BodyArmor announced that the Dr Pepper Snapple Group will start distributing its products in New Jersey and Northern California.
Garnett's role with ZICO helped put coconut water directly at what marketers call the "point of sweat," but it's the natural qualities of coconut water overall that serve as a point of differentiation and a possible indicator of the future direction of sports drinks. While still providing hydration via five electrolytes, potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium and phosphorous, ZICO itself has been heavily marketed toward sports occasions — more so than its two largest competitors, Vita Coco and O.N.E.
ZICO's pitch has also paid off in the marketplace. Lange said that the company has nearly doubled in sales each year of its existence. And while that will likely become a challenging goal as ZICO continues to grow, Lange feels confident that the still-encouraging growth will be sustainable. As of February, Coke started to distribute ZICO nationally, opening the once-miniscule company to a wider range of consumers.
"That just opens doors to the power of the red truck system," Lange said.
To comply with this national launch, ZICO had to make a few adjustments in its business plan. When Mark Rampolla founded the company in 2004, he focused exclusively on targeting the Bikram Yoga crowd. Once the product gained some steam, he widened his marketing scope toward endurance athletes. Now, as a national brand, ZICO markets toward what Lange called "try-athletes," which includes cyclists, distance runners, yoga practitioners and more. This broader demographic fits ZICO's rapidly growing business.
"It's much more mainstream," Lange said. "We don't want to be just about that hyper-competitive group. We want to be about anybody who sees the value in living a healthy lifestyle."
This approach coincides with the overall category's aim for occasion-based consumption; a goal that overlaps other categories, as well. Caffeinated, coffee-flavored coconut waters, such as ZICO Latte, Coco Cafe and a variety of RealBeanz, offer consumers an alternative to a sugar-filled canned coffee. Lange said he's been told that some consumers choose ZICO chocolate instead of a candy bar; it craves the sweet tooth, but contains less sugar and less calories than standard desserts.
"When you make healthy choices for yourself, you just feel better," Lange said. "And it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy."
On the smaller side of things, Golazo serves as an example of another beverage marketed toward active consumers, but one that banks on soccer (futbol, for all you purists) as its key branding hook. This also follows the idea of occasion-based marketing. A soccer ball sits on the front of Golazo bottles and cans below the brand's slogan: "born to score." Even the title, Golazo, has a soccer connection; it's what some Spanish players scream after scoring a goal.
"We're not just going after the soccer mom. We're going after any soccer fan and soccer player. This is the passion brand for soccer," Golazo co-founder Richard Tait told BevNET. "We live it, breathe it, we want to fuel football."
Golazo throws another twist into the shifting web of sports drinks; it's all-natural and contains coconut water, but also uses non-GMO ingredients, offers less sodium than the leading sports drinks, and offers both energy and sports hydration options. It's this versatility and functionality that seem to be hallmarks of the future of beverages for active consumers.
Golazo has focused on refined markets that have clearly expressed an interest in soccer. Perhaps the company will go national if the U.S. ever fully embraces soccer. Until that unlikely event occurs, Tait has helped place his products in 1,600 stores in eight states throughout the West Coast, including all Safeway and Whole Foods stores in the region. He also believes that because soccer is the world's most popular sport, in time, Golazo has the potential to become an international brand.
While ZICO and Golazo both source natural electrolytes from coconuts, A-GAME uses sea salt minerals as its alternative to replenish the body's water and electrolytes. It also offers eight vitamins, minerals and carbohydrates, furthering its role as a functional sports drink. A-GAME, which is based in Orlando, Fla., announced in April that it secured national distribution across 3,000 GNC locations.
A-GAME's expanding distribution results from the growing demand for products catered toward another kind of consumer; the kind that doesn't win gold medals or consistently pass finish lines. Similar to ZICO – and to Body Armor – A-GAME markets itself as a cross-functional product compatible for both the health-conscious consumer or the sports enthusiast. These aren't new kinds of consumers. It's simply the genesis of brands targeting them in a direct manner.
"You don't want to just be about elite athletes," Lange said. "And you look at some of those sports drinks, they feature elite athletes on the TV commercial, but you know that the construction guys and the hungover kids and people are drinking it for all uses."


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Stop And Smell The Clichés
Normally I avoid clichés like the plague.
Still, when it comes to buying a cake, sometimes you've got to grab the bull by the horns.
(Just don't grab the other end.)
See, I'll bet you dollars to donuts:
You may think you have all your ducks in a row:
... a poo ant short of a picnic.
And s/he might get your cake ...
... bass ackwards.
I mean, does a bear ...
... sit in the woods?
(Aw, Pooh.)
Look, you're probably never going to get the baker to eat crow:
So don't make a tempest in a teapot!
(Actually, don't make anything in this teapot.)
After all, you've still got a cake, and maybe the manager will mark it down.
So rather than look a gift horse in the, uh ...
... gaping mouth nozzle of despair?
... just enjoy your cake.
I think Shakespeare put it best:
"That which they call a rose by any other name...
Thanks to Scott D., Deanna C., Laura M., Wolfie W., Anna M., Autumn J., Reba S., Jesea J., Lana H., and Maria V. for letting us have their cakes and read them, too.

subset: commoncrawl


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Our beautiful Woodland Pine Corner Christmas Tree will add a touch of Christmas joy to any home this winter.
The bushy branches of the Woodland Pine Half Christmas Tree give a real life feel to it, and also allow for some space between the foliage which makes your tree perfect for hanging your Christmas decorations on. It's made with the perfect mix of the highest quality plastic moulded (PE) and traditional PVC tips making it one of our most realisitc and quite difficult to tell the difference between this artificial tree and a real one.
The natural silhouette of this Woodland Pine Christmas tree has made it very popular with the celebrities of The Only Way is Essex and many high profile TV shows and venues across the country, it is the perfect tree for providing friends and family with festive cheer in the home.
The tips on the Woodland Pine trees have been expertly moulded from real tree needles to create this incredibly realistic tree that comes with strong hinged branches making the tree easy to put up and bring down.
For inspiration on decorating your tree, check out our range of stunning lights, decorations and accessories here. Remember our Christmas tree bags are also a simple, mess-free way of storing your Christmas tree for future Christmases!
Some of our notable customers include;
The Royal Northern College of Music (The Merry Widow), The Royal College Of Music, The Bridgewater Hall, The Open University, The Royal Festival Hall, The Royal Agricultural University, The Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh, RSC Royal Shakespeare Company, Blenheim Palace, Liverpool Cathedral, Salvation Army, Exeter University, Eton College, Guildhall School of Music Drama, Furness Academy, The University Of Liverpool, The Wales National Rugby Union Team (Millennium Stadium), National Marine Aquarium, 'The Army' at Sandhurst, The British Embassy Rangoon, Epson UK Ltd, Holiday Inn, Unilever, Antler Luggage, The BBC, MTV, ITV, Chanel 5, Thames TV X Factor, Geordie Shore, Big Brother, Ferne Mccann (Towie), Carol Wright (Towie), Jess Wright (Towie), Bobby Norris (Towie), Deborah Douglas (Towie).
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I can't imagine much I like better than enjoying a draft beer in my outdoor kitchen in the summer. But I can imagine that if I had my own kegerator in my outdoor kitchen — even if that were the extent of my outdoor kitchen — I wouldn't leave my backyard.
If "kegerator" conjures up images of frat party ragers or that jury-rigged clunker your brother has in his basement, think again. Today's beer dispensers are sleek and sophisticated, an some can spend nearly all year outdoors.
Here are three kegerators for your consideration.
DCS 24″ Outdoor Beer Dispenser
DCS, an extension of Australian appliance brand Fisher & Paykel, offers an entire suite of outdoor kitchen appliances.
This sleek, stainless steel outdoor kegerator (RF24T) is free-standing, but it can be slid under a counter and put between cabinetry as long as it's given proper clearance on all sides.
At $2,499, it's probably the most affordable in UL-rated outdoor beer dispensers.
Perlick, known for commercial refrigeration, makes the only 3-tap beer dispenser available for homes, meaning you can serve up to three beers at a time (from a commercial-grade unit).
It's UL rated for outdoors and can come either in a free-standing or built-in configuration. You can integrate it into your cabinetry, if you don't like the look of stainless, with the optional wood panel overlay kit.
And green beer isn't just for St. Patrick's Day. Would you believe that it's Energy Star rated? It is.
This is a special order item, so call for pricing.
Marvel Outdoor Keg Beer Dispenser
Marvel is another brand known for its commercial-grade refrigeration and claims it has "the only cooling system capable of keeping a half keg of beer frosty cold, from start to finish, right out of the tap."
Temperature controls are adjustable for serving different styles of beer, and this UL-rated outdoor beer dispenser can also be used for indoor applications.
But what I really like about this Marvel, are the casters. Liquid Meals on Wheels, anyone? You can wheel this puppy all around the backyard.
This is also a special order item, so call for pricing.


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British Historian On Porn And Internet Censorship: North Korea Is Right -- The Internet Is Our Enemy
from the nobody-does-liberty-better-than-totalitarians deptTimothy Stanley, University of Oxford historian and occasional blogger for
Over in the UK, British Prime Minister David Cameron has just introduced a rather overextensive anti-porn "crackdown" which forces Britain's four largest ISPs to filter pornographic material unless the user specifically opts in. Acting pretty much at the behest of something called the Mothers' Union, Cameron is also taking on billboards, aggressive advertising, sexualized tween clothing articles and, well, just about anything any concerned parent can dream up, thanks to the brand new Parentport website, where parents can go to file complaints about "any TV programme, advertisement, product or service they feel is inappropriate for children."
Stanley seems to be ok with all of this (as well as its obvious potential for abuse), referring to it as a "modest" proposal. He expresses dismay that so-called "conservative" commentators find this to be "injurious to liberty," while dropping what may very well be the quote of the day:
I am confused as to why such people use the label conservative to describe themselves. The single purpose of conservatism is to protect what is good about the traditional order. The internet is a threat to the traditional order and so it is not our friend. The North Koreans understand that, even if we do not.At this point, many of us are getting up to open windows and doors and turn on the fans in an effort to diffuse a bit of the irony hanging in the air. Stanley has just used the internet to badmouth the internet. Fair enough. People do this all the time. But to drag North Korea in as some sort of example of The Way Things Should Be Done? It's too much. For a British citizen who writes about politics (often in a dissenting manner) and who travels freely between "London, Oxford and Los Angeles" to refer to a country where dissent and attempting to leave the country are frowned upon (and by "frowned upon," I mean "punished with lengthy imprisonment, torture and death") as being somehow "smarter" is downright incomprehensible. (And deplorable.)
But he's not done yet. Stanley pursues the familiar "gateway" theory. Much like our beloved drug warriors constantly remind us that marijuana is the "gateway drug" through which all drug users pass en route to wasting their lives away in badly lit PSAs, Stanley is here to tell us that pornography is the "gateway," um, "thing" that leads to pedophilia and serial killing.
Internet pornography is an obvious example of how permitting one variety of perversion invariably leads to greater and more terrible crimes. The internet turned pedophilia from a private sin into an organized crime. It put people in touch with each other who would never have otherwise met, allowing them to pool resources and share victims. It gave predators access to kids through forums. It also used mainstream porn as a gateway drug. By introducing younger and younger models into erotica, it blurred the lines between childhood and adulthood. People who previously would never have had access to material by which to test their inclinations were now goaded into more and more depravity ("If you enjoyed that, you'll love this..."). Its the expansiveness of the internet that makes it so ripe for regulating.If you can fight your way through that paragraph without having your eyes roll out of your head, re-read that last sentence. "Because the internet is big, something should be done." It's nice to know that someone is out there encouraging politicians to grab ahold of something they can't possibly control and make a lot of "thinking about the children" noises until their approval ratings go up.
Porn is definitely evil, though. That much Stanley is sure of:
Nowadays, all a child has to do to access some muck is to log on to the family computer. Within seconds they can see videos of whips, goats, origami and tantric projection - the whole T&A.In Stanley's mind, Cameron's proposal doesn't go far enough:
I would go one step further and suggest that it's time to give back to local authorities the power to outlaw the sale of pornography altogether.Why?
Like heroin, porn has been proven to be addictive.Now porn is no longer marijuana (a.k.a. "the gateway drug"), but rather the destination itself. And that destination is? You guessed it: Murdertown!
On an existential level, pornography objectifies human beings, reducing them to the status of commodities. There is no need to engage with them as real people because the sexual stimulus is entirely one sided. This encourages the viewer to regard the subject as less than human.Yes yes yes. We picked this concept up over at PETA's porn site. What else?
That objectification has lethal consequences. Porn addiction is a common trait among serial killers. The murderer Ted Bundy detailed his experiences thus: "I would keep looking for more explicit, more graphic kinds of materials ... until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far. You reach that jumping-off point where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it will give you that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it."Troubling. Could porn actually lead to pedophilia and serial killing? Given porn's ubiquity on the "under-regulated" internet, you'd think the world would be filled with nothing but murderous pedophiles. Of course, there's no reason to refer to correlation and causation as identical (they're actually fraternal twins), no matter which side of this argument you're on. (That means you too, Stanley.)
So, without a doubt (in Stanley's mind), porn is bad and something draconian needs to be done about it. Unless, of course, you're talking about the good old days of porn when it came (sorry) in magazine form and needed to be smuggled about in paper bags and trenchcoats. Those were the good old innocent days, eh Stanley?
When I was a child, getting access to filth was bloody hard work. The best source was The Daily Sport, a silly old rag that featured saucy stories... All of this contact with nudity was fleeting and furtive. The joy was less in the seeing than the getting.Oh. I see. When you're nostalgically viewing your mental Kinetoscope (in Rose-Tinted Nostalgia-Vision™), porn was just "dirty magazines" and free of the serial killer training material that is so prevalent today. Boys will be boys, I guess. Except not anymore, apparently, because according to Stanley's back-of-an-envelope calculations (Porn + Internet = Bad) they'll just grow up to torture household pets when not idly sexting naked shots of themselves to their Facebook friends.
Well, Mr. Stanley, no wonder you're behind the Prime Minister's proposal. Anyone who's cool with the ISPs collecting a list of opt-in perverts at the behest of the government and who supports the implementation of a nationwide snitch line to keep people from being offended can most likely read your post with a straight face, somehow missing the irony, hypocrisy and unintentional hilarity its steeped in. I, as a fan of free speech and someone who "frowns upon" [see definition above] handing over control of the internet to various governments entities, cannot.
Filed Under: censorship, conservative, filters, historian, internet, porn, timothy stanley, uk


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Everyday Energy Healing
Everyday Energy Healing
Learn to give a hands-on Chakra Balancing!
By Meditation Oasis®
Voice-Guided Instructions & Meditations by Mary Maddux
Music by Richard Maddux
This CD contains everything you need to sense energy, activate the healing energy in your hands and give a hands-on, full body chakra balancing to another person.
Energy healer, Mary Maddux, voice-guides the listener step-by-step accompanied by beautiful, healing music.
The CD includes:
- An informative booklet and spoken introductions
- A chart of photographs of hand positions
- A voice-guided Energy Sensing Exercise to help you sense energy and activate your hands for healing
- A Centering Meditation to help you be fully present in the here and now, open and receptive to allow Universal Energy to flow
- Step-by-step voice-guided instruction in giving a full body Chakra Balancing to a partner
- Soothing, healing music supporting the voice-guided processes
1. Introduction (3:23)
2. Sensing Energy (16:14)
3. Preparing for Chakra Balancing (4:34)
4. Centering Meditation (10:15)
5. Chakra Balancing (32:50)
"This CD is a must for those interested in Energy Healing. It is easy to follow yet has profound results. With Mary's guidance I am able to support the healing of others as well as my own. What a lovely experience!" -- Kelly Dillman, Massage Therapist and Spa Director
"Fantastic CD!!! I was able to sense energy the first time I listened to it. It was easy to give the chakra balancing, a very positive experience. The person receiving the balancing was amazed. I like the voice, the directions, everything. I would most definitely recommend the CD to others." -- Deb F, Illinois
"I found this CD awesome. It's easy to listen to and understand. It was well done and the voice and sound contents were excellent... I did the chakra balancing on a friend and she said it was calming. I enjoy all of it. It's an excellent piece of work. Keep them coming!" -- ECP, Switchboard Operator


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Academic Program Review
Outcomes Assessment Requirement
Ongoing assessment activity is part of the Program Review process. Each program must have a Student Outcomes Assessment Plan (SOAP). At least one of its activities is to be implemented each year. Results should be discussed by program faculty members and any needed changes to the curriculum, instruction or the SOAP based on those findings are to be put into place. This activity must be documented and reported each Spring in the Annual Report to the Provost. The information can then be easily collected and synthesized for the Program Review self-study. An example of the assessment process is shown in the video, Basic Assessment Steps & Hypothetical Example . (Quicktime is needed to view this file. Click here to download Quicktime. )
Student Data Packet
OIE provides each program undergoing review with a standard set of data that is to be used to help understand and make decisions about the program. The data are to be incorporated in the self-study document. The packet must be included in an appendix, but its meaning for the program should be woven into the report narrative.
View elements in Undergraduate and Graduate Data Packets
Using and Interpreting Data
The data show a picture of student demand for the program, the program's enrollment patterns and trends, preparation level and demographics of its majors, and their success as defined by first-year retention and graduation rates and the time it takes them to move through the program. Degrees awarded are an indicator of a program's productivity, especially when viewed in relation to other measures of program size and capacity. Courses offered by semester with enrollment in each give faculty a concise way to review the curriculum for sequencing and student course-taking patterns. Counts of faculty members and their employment and demographics contribute to understanding the program's capacity and program and/or university goals such as assuring diversity. Comparing these program characteristics to college and university patterns and trends provides context and shows the program's progress relative to others. Where relevant, findings from these data should be used to relate program characteristics, outcomes and mission to the university's academic and strategic planning goals.
Details can be found at this link - Program Review Process and Policy
For more information about the Program Review, contact Dr. Xuanning Fu, Dean of Undergraduate Studies at ext. 8-4468 and Dr. James Marshall, Interim Dean of Graduate Studies, at ext. 8-2448, for undergraduate and graduate programs, respectively.
For more information about student outcomes assessment or the data packet, contact the Office of Institutional Effectivess. Additional outcomes assessment resources are available at this link.


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Download YEJUN - Winter To Spring MP3
Author: YEJUN, Added: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 (09:06)
You can download YEJUN - Winter To Spring song for free on Igeokpop. The song titled "Winter To Spring" is only for promotion. Buy the best quality YEJUN songs on Itunes, Amazon or other Official Online Music Stores.
Please buy official/original songs to support the artists, all content in this web is for promotional purpose only, we dont responsible for all users.


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Photo Viewer for Panoramio
Browse and view the photos from Google Panoramio. More than 800 cool places around the world from Panoramio.com will give you plenty of fun to explore the world with photos. Geo-tagged Wikipedia articles, if available, provide context to those photos. Features: * Find photos provided by Panoramio API for a visible map region * Find geo-tagged Wikipedia articles during photo map search * If you like a photo from map search, you can find all the photos by the photographer provided by Panoramio API * Provide a list of cool places from Panoramio.com (Cool places use satellite image tiles and sometimes those tiles are slow to load. So be patient) * Locate a place quickly by search * View a photo in full screen * Slideshow full screen photos * Favorite photos and photographers and manage your favorites * Share great photos via email, Facebook and Twitter * Save photos to your photo library * Provide a list of Panoramio photo contest winners ## Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their ownersRead more +
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Browse by Medical Category
General Analysis of the Mummy of Padihershef
Mimi Leveque's Presentation to the 2013 Mummy Congress
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Secrets revealed during restoration project
The Mummy Padihershef
In March 2013, MGH's oldest patient, the mummy Padihershef, underwent a full body CT scan. This scan, which provided more than 20,000 scans that were then assembled into 3D renderings of his body. Many of these are replicated in the report prepared by forensic pathologist Jonathan Elias, PhD, of AMSC Research, a mummy research consortium. A PDF of the report entitled "General Analysis of the Mummy Padihershef at Massachusetts General Hospital" can be found here.
One of the outcomes of the project includes a CT facial reconstruction of Padihershef. Using the scans, 3D facial recognition software and a thorough knowledge of mummy forensics, Elias' group undertook a thorough analysis based on all these factors and using a 3D skull model, developed a representation of what Padi may have looked like in life.
The mummy Padishershef has borne witness to many medical milestones during his 190 years in the Massachusetts General Hospital's (MGH) Ether Dome. Over the decades, visitors to the room have been greeted silently by this unusual host, standing nestled in his beautifully decorated coffin, and often wondered just who he was and how he came to reside at the hospital.
On May 4, 1823, MGH received from the city of Boston an Egyptian mummy, complete with painted wooden inner and outer coffins. The ensemble had been given to the city by Jacob Van Lennep, a Dutch merchant living in the Greek city of Smyrna in the early 19th century. It is thought that Mr. Van Lennep, who was also the Counsel General of the Netherlands, bought the mummy as a gift to Boston as a way to impress his native New England in-laws.
The mummy arrived in Boston on April 26, 1823, on the British ship the Sally Ann. He was placed under the care of the ship's captain, Robert B. Edes, along with Bryant P. Tilden, Esq., who ultimately made the decision to give the mummy to MGH. The fledgling hospital, which had opened its doors just two years earlier, was still in need of operating funds that would help it better serve the sick and indigent individuals for whom it had been chartered to provide care. The mummy would help raise those needed funds.
Shortly after his arrival, the mummy was put on display at "Mr. Doggett's Repository of Arts" in Boston, where hundreds of people paid $0.25 to see the first complete human Egyptian mummy in the U.S. That fall, the mummy went on a year-long, multi-city tour of the East Coast, raising even more money for the hospital. Upon his return, he was placed in the Ether Dome where he subsequently witnessed more than 6,000 surgeries, including the famous first successful demonstration of surgery under anesthesia on October 16, 1846.
More than a century later the hospital learned just who the mummy was. In 1960 Dows Dunham, curator emeritus of the Department of Egyptian Art at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, examined and translated the hieroglyphics on the mummy's coffin. Hailing from the 26th Dynasty (663-525 BC) or later, the mummy now had a name – Padihershef and a birthplace – Thebes; and an occupation -- stonecutter. Newer medical information tells us that Padi was probably between 20 and 30 years of age and was not a stonecutter at all. Rather, he was "tomb finder," or prospector, someone who looked for spaces in the Theban necropolis that could serve as burial spaces.
Until this most recent examination, little was known about his life before his death. John Collins Warren, MD, cofounder of the MGH and its first surgeon, had performed a post-mortem on "Padi" when he first came to the MGH, which included uncovering the mummy's head, as it remains today. In 1931 and again in 1977, X-rays were taken of Padi in his case, which provided a little more insight into his health. Growth lines show that Padi was so ill as a child that his growth stopped for some time before he was well again. Bone damage reveals that he suffered from arthritis. The extensive report included here provides many details of Padi's life that were unknown to us until his March 2013 scanning examination.
Padi has been restored twice before: once in the 1980s and again in 2002. Salt deposits that build up from the embalming elixir have formed on the exposed portions of Padi's face and head need to be removed periodically.
For more information about the Padihershef restoration project or for questions about the MGH Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation and history programs, please email email@example.com.
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Mum's the Word
Wow, I'm almost sad it's Halloween; I have oodles more Halloween Wrecks to share! (So take note, Wreckporters: get your Thanksgiving Wrecks submitted early.)
Let's see, we've covered pumpkins and ghosts and spiders, but I feel like something's missing from our Halloween line up...
OH! I know! This is:
Hey, John R.? What'd you say this was again? A mummy? [checking photo again] With a red hair bow? Seriously? Wait - that's a cookie! Does that even count?
Hm, well, let's see what Amanda M. dug up for us.
Amanda thought this was some kind of spiderweb, but my Wreck radar is telling me it was supposed to be a mummy head. It's also alerting me to the fact that this is a dreaded CCC, so we'd best move on.
Ok, here we go: that's actually recognizable. Kudos, Annie D.; I bet you never thought this would be the best looking one, huh? Still, I include it as a base of reference for this next one:
Yep, Stephanie S. reports that this was actually labeled "Mummy Cake". As opposed to "Ticked-Off Cross-Breed of a Storm-Trooper and a Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtle Cake".
And the award for "Least Effort Exerted in Making Overstocked Cakes into Halloween Cakes" goes to:
Like you, I thought that surely this design (found by Amy W.) was a one-store fluke. But then I got this from Jessica K.:
Ack! The smiley face mummies are everywhere! And they're surrounded by nuts!
Still, I don't think any of those Wrecks can compete with what Michael G. uncovered:
Words fail me. The stringy white stuff, the eyeballs, the two fingers...yep, I got nuthin'. Y'all will have to help me out here: what the heck is this? My best guess is a melted mummy, but I'm sure you guys can come up with something better.


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The panda cub born in the D.C. National Zoo on 9-16-2012 died this morning for unknown reasons. Zoo officials made the discovery after hearing distress sounds from the mother. Per the article:
Panda keepers and volunteers "heard a distress vocalization from the mother, Mei Xiang, at 9:17 am and notified the veterinarian staff immediately," zoo officials said. "The staff were able to safely retrieve the cub for an evaluation at 10:22 am. Veterinarians immediately performed CPR and other life-saving measures but the cub did not respond," the statement said. At first observation, veterinarians said there was no outward sign of trauma, no outward sign of infection, and the cub was "in good body condition," weighing just under 100 grams.
Update: Poor lungs responsible for panda cub's death.
Associated birth article:
Views: 215
Awww they were so excited about this baby...
The distress vocalization of the mother adds to the heartbreak.
It really was so hard to watch. I guess this was the first in a while she'd carried to term, so sad.
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Can you spot the Code violations?
Hint: An enlightening installation.
Find the Answer
How well do you know the Code? Think you can spot violations the original installer either ignored or couldn't identify? Here's your chance to moonlight as an electrical inspector and second-guess someone else's work from the safety of your living room or office. Joe Tedesco, who has a knack for finding shoddy electrical work, did the dirty work and found this mess. Now it's your turn to identify the violation.
July Winners
Erich Ely, an electrical engineer with Olin Corp. in Niagara Falls, N.Y., had this to say about the photograph in the July issue. "The picture appears to violate Art. 410, Sec. IV: Luminaire Supports. I do not consider attaching the fixture to an existing fixture to be a secure means of support, as required by 410.15(A). Additionally, it looks like the existing fixture is still energized. This is not good."
Matthew J. Majchrzak, an electrical engineer with Integrated Design Solutions in Troy, Mich., submitted these comments. "According to 410.30, cord-connected lamp holders and luminaires should have the fixture located directly below the outlet or busway that it is connected to. The cord shall not be under strain, and shall be terminated in a grounding-type attachment plug cap or busway plug. It also appears this installation violates 410.31. The fluorescent fixture appears to be acting as a raceway for the cord to travel away from the area that is above the HID fixture. In addition, the electrical tape that is wrapped around the fluorescent ballast compartment cover to secure it shows that this was a hurry-up makeshift attempt to conceal the splices."
Note: All of the fixtures in this garage are wired in the same manner!
Correctly identify the Code violation(s) in this month's photo — in 200 words or less — and you could win something to put in your toolbox. E-mail your response to Joe Tedesco at [email protected], and he'll select three winners (excluding manufacturers and prior winners) at random from the correct submissions. Winners will receive a set of insulated hand tools from Ideal Industries, Inc. valued at more than $125.* The set includes 9.25-inch insulated side-cutting pliers, 10-inch insulated tongue-and-groove pliers, and a 0.25-inch × 6-inch insulated screwdriver.
* Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery of tools.


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Blonde, Big Breasted YouTube Blogger Goes On Blind Date With Internet Fan [VIDEO]
From the same girl that asked whether or not dogs have brains and taught us how to take a 'skinny' picture, it's Trisha's blind date with a fan of her YouTube blogs.
OK, so she's really meeting him to pick up a fan art painting of herself. This poor dude drove five hours! The icing on the cake is that she told him to meet her at Starbucks, sent him the address, and then she went to the wrong one! Comedy gold!
As a special bonus, enjoy this big boobied blonde and her opinion on dating older men!


text: N.C. Students Challenge Gov. McCrory's New Voting Restrictions At State Board September 3, 2013, 9:37 AM EDT North Carolina's Board of Elections is set to hear three cases Tuesday that challenge the state's new voting law on the premise that it attempts to supress student votes, the Raleigh News & Observer reported. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a complete overhaul of the state voting system into law in mid-August, which shortened early voting and required voter IDs, among other new rules. The measure set off a flurry of criticism from political figures like Colin Powell and Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), who argued that it infriged on voting rights of students, minorities, the elderly, and low-income citizens. The measure also ended same-day registration, and eliminated a popular high school civics program that registered tens of thousands of students to vote each year prior to their 18th birthdays, if they would turn 18 by election time. The cases scheduled to be heard by the state Board of Elections on Tuesday include a student who was barred from running for city council because the law prevented him from using his college dorm address to establish residency, as well as a challenge to the closure of several polling places on university campuses, which students claim prevented their ability to vote, according to the News & Observer. Read More →


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Ok, so by now I'm sure you've heard about all the changes Etsy has made on the whole changing your shop name. I had given an account on how I went about changing my shop name, here, before these newest updates were made. And since I see a lot of people still refering to that post, I thought I'd give a few links from Etsy's Storque on their updates. This should make the whole process SO much easier!!
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I hope this helps, good luck!


text:
BERLIN, Germany – Qatar Airways has announced the upgrade of Business Class seats and entertainment systems on select Airbus A330-200 and A320 aircraft, in order to offer an even more luxurious and consistent experience to customers.
The upgrade – which is part of an on-going customer enhancement project – will usher in new levels of comfort for Business Class passengers, who will now enjoy seats that recline into a true 180-degree lie-flat position. Modifications to seven A330-200 and nine A320 aircraft have already commenced, and are expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2014.
"Qatar Airways is known for two key features – dynamic growth and a constant focus on top-quality service, where the customer is at the heart of everything we do," said His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker, Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer.
"I firmly believe in providing our passengers with the best levels of service and the best available in-flight product," said Mr. Al Baker. "And to deliver our five-star service in a consistent way is probably our greatest achievement and has been the foundation of our success to date."
Business Class seating on both the upgraded A320 and A330 recline into a 180-degree true lie-flat bed, providing superior sleep comfort and greater consistency with the Qatar Airways long-haul wide-body fleet.
The seats also feature six-way adjustable headrests, four-way adjustable lumbar support, a variety of personal stowage compartments, privacy dividers and fresh contemporary styling.
Business Class on both aircraft will feature new 15.4" smart monitors and touch screen remote controller handsets, which also allow dual screen mode. The seats also offer PC Power, USB ports and connectivity for smart devices. On A330 aircraft, the inflight entertainment system will be upgraded to the Panasonic eX2 platform, providing a richer entertainment experience with a greater amount of programming.
The A330 aircraft will also be fitted with onboard connectivity, with the installation of the Panasonic Global Communications Suite. Both the A330 and A320 will also have the capability of sending and receiving SMS and MMS messages.
On the A330 aircraft, Economy Class seating will also be upgraded to provide greater comfort and more personal space. The new seats will be fitted with new 10.6" monitors and handsets, upgrading the customer experience to Boeing 777 standards.
The enhanced A320 aircraft will operate on the Vienna, Tunis, Milan, Rome, Geneva and Maldives routes while the upgraded A330s will operate on the Barcelona, Osaka, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Phuket routes.
Qatar Airways currently flies a fleet of 32 A320s, 16 A330-200s, 13 A330-300s and four A340-600s that are deployed on a variety of routes across the network.
For images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/qatarairways/sets/72157641942003175/
Notes to Editors:
Qatar Airways is the national carrier of the State of Qatar. Currently undergoing rapid expansion, Qatar Airways is one of the fastest growing airlines operating one of the youngest fleets in the world.
Now in its 17th year of operations, Qatar Airways has a modern fleet of 129 aircraft flying to 136 key business and leisure destinations across six continents.
On October 30, 2013, Qatar Airways joined the oneworld Alliance, becoming the first Gulf carrier to join a global airline alliance, enabling its customers to benefit from almost 1,000 airports in more than 150 countries, with 14,000 daily departures.
Award-winning carrier Qatar Airways was presented with three honours at the annual Skytrax 2013 World Airline Awards held during the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, France, last June. The airline was awarded World's Best Business Class, World's Best Business Class Lounge and, for the second consecutive year, Best Airline Staff Service in the Middle East.
During the 2013 Dubai Air Show the airline placed orders for more than 60 new aircraft – a mixture of Boeing 777X and Airbus A330 Freighters. In total the airline has more than 280 aircraft on order worth more than US $50 billion. The airline will move into its new hub and home, Hamad International Airport, from early 2014. For more information, visit www.qatarairways.com.
For further information contact:
Qatar Airways Group, Corporate Communications Department
Tel: +974 44302072, Fax: +974 44302069
E-mail: email@example.com
Website: www.qatarairways.com


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Both these videos are from German web retailer Innovative Materials, who apparently used to sell something called "superhydrophobic aerogel" in powder or granule form. In these videos, surfaces coated with this powder react in interesting ways to water. They seem to be sold out of the stuff, but a bit of Googling confirms that superhydrophobic aerogels do exist and can be made in many ways. Exactly what type was used in these demonstrations is unclear. [via Boing Boing]
Innovative Materials Blog: Aerogel Powder


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text:
When the occupant of the office turned to face the view on a recent idyllic morning, she first moved her hand toward the window, then brought it back to her heart, where it fluttered.This is one of the ways Barbara Gaines likes to depict her gratitude and love for all the good things and good people that have happened to her and the tiny theater she founded in Chicago some 20 years ago.
Then she catches herself, seemingly worried that the opulence of her surroundings will get too much attention.
"Don't think. . . ," she says, the sentence suddenly coming to a halt. "Don't write that I have. . . ," she adds, and stops again.
Then, in another of her favorite gestures, she exhales a large breath and her tiny frame seems to crumple. Finally, she looks up and speaks.
"I just don't know how this ever happened to us," she says.
One can understand her mystification. The 55-year-old Gaines is sitting pretty atop the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, one of Chicago's great cultural success stories as it approaches its fourth season on Navy Pier. The theater has more than 23,000 subscribers and claims with justification to be the largest employer of actors in Chicago. Each year in its new home, it has renewed more than 85 percent of its previous subscription base, an impressive figure. Even in a rough economy, most of its mainstage performances sell out, and teachers from both city and suburbs routinely clamor to get their students in to see its matinees. With savvy planning, the theater even has figured out how to appeal to summer tourists, offering a seasonal diet of Shakespeare with reduced running times, teen-friendly parodies like "The Bomb-itty of Errors," and family-oriented musicals like "The Wizard of Oz."
When the construction of the $23.2 million theater was announced five years ago, many naysayers suggested that its mainly elderly audience would resist moving their subscriptions from the troupe's former home at the Ruth Page Theatre on North Dearborn Street to the tourist-driven, traffic-infested Navy Pier with its costly parking and carnival atmosphere. Clearly, that view did not prove to have much foundation. And even more remarkably, while cultural architecture is often the subject of controversy, the new theater on Navy Pier seems to have few, if any, detractors.
"I think it's the best space for doing Shakespeare that I have ever seen anywhere," says Sir Peter Hall, the creator of Britain's Royal Shakespeare
Company. "And I love the fact that it's there amidst the Ferris wheel and the hot dogs. I think Shakespeare would have wanted something even more down market than that."
We cannot know, of course, what Shakespeare would have wanted. But the more significant and largely unexamined matter is the nature and substance of Gaines' growing body of artistic work there amid the fast-food restaurants and the virtual-reality rides.
She's less of a mystery, for sure, than the playwright whose works she most admires, but she's still something of an enigma. She has arrived in this lofty place--one of the very best jobs in the American theater--without much formal training in direction and without any significant directing experience at any other theater or in any other city.
And this seemingly vulnerable woman, who does not hesitate to describe herself as "frail," made her way from doing Shakespeare on the roof of the Red Lion Pub in Lincoln Park to persuading the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the City of Chicago and other public bodies to contribute more than $18 million to help build one of the best venues for classical theater in the world. And now that all that is in place, she shows no sign of slowing down or stopping. Not only is Gaines directing "Love's Labor's Lost," which begins previews Friday and opens on Sept. 13, but she also talks openly and grandly about her plans for turning this theater into "an international magnet for the best artists in the world."
"In our profession you meet a lot of people who talk about doing things," says Michael Bogdanov, co-founder of the English Shakespeare Company in London. "That theater is testimony to someone who actually does things. For almost anyone else, building that kind of facility would take a lifetime of work."
Yet Gaines rejects any characterization of herself as a go-getter. "I have so much frailty," she says, "I am amazed the theater was built."
She was born Barbara Schwarz in 1946 to a family steeped in television. Gaines' late father, Mickey Schwarz, was a busy director of television commercials and her grandfather was an editor and producer. An industry kid, she liked to hang out at studios. "My dad taught me," Gaines says over lunch one day on Navy Pier, "that there was a creative solution to every problem."
After stints in Manhattan and Long Island, the Schwarz family (Gaines was one of three children) settled in suburban Portchester, N.Y., when Barbara was 10 years old. She says her family was a close one--her 82-year-old mother, Rhoda Schwarz, follows her daughter's career closely from her home in Baltimore. But despite the easy potential entree into the film and television business, Gaines says she wasn't interested. "I found film so boring," she says of the production process. "It didn't move fast enough to keep me interested."
When she was a teenager, Gaines came to Northwestern University's long-established National High School Institute, known as the Cherub Program, a summer experience for young people interested in theater that has trained a lot of future professionals. "A shiver went down my spine as soon as I was on the stage," she says. "This felt like home to me."
She returned to Northwestern for college, and that's where her budding fascination with Shakespeare was nurtured by Wallace Bacon, the late founder of what is now NU's Department of Performance Studies and a noted interpreter of the Bard's works.
"To be honest, Dr. Bacon was the only teacher there who really believed in me," Gaines says. "My obsession with Shakespeare just grew and grew. Whenever I would go home from college, I'd lie on my parents' bed and go through every play until they fell asleep. I realized that nothing made me as happy as working with Shakespeare's texts." But making a living doing that required finding a way inside the Shakespeare establishment.
In 1969, the year she graduated from Northwestern, she got married and, in quick succession, divorced. She won't talk about her marriage except to emphasize (and re-emphasize) its lack of importance in the trajectory of her life. Nonetheless, she has kept her ex-husband's name. And she has not remarried, preferring to live alone in a Lincoln Park apartment with a golden retriever named Shakespeare's Fanny. She dates from time to time. But outside of her job, she says that animals are her biggest passion.
In the mid-1970s, Gaines went back to New York to try to make it as an actress. But although she says she found some financial success, she also says she was lonely and missed her friends in Chicago. "I felt that people who didn't really know anything about me were in a position to control my life," she says. "I felt a sort of impotence."
So, in 1980, she returned to Chicago and began plying her acting trade around what she saw as a kinder and more hospitable town. During the next several years, she acted in all kinds of productions. She played an attorney in James Sherman's "Mr. 80%" at the Victory Gardens Theatre Company under the direction of Dennis Zacek; she was a neighbor in "The Perfect Party" at the Northlight Theatre, then located in Evanston; and she donned an English accent to do "The Real Thing" under the direction of the late Michael Maggio. Even though several of those productions were very successful, Gaines says she was becoming bored.
So in 1983, she began conducting Shakespeare workshops--her fellow actors were asked to pay tuition--at the old Organic Theatre space on North Clark Street. The workshops caught on and resulted in a one-night public performance at the old Body Politic space on Lincoln Avenue. By 1985, the fledgling group was doing a selection of scenes at the Second City e.t.c. space titled "To Shakespeare With Love." The six-performance run was a sellout.
About this time, Gaines began telling a story about how she went up to director Peter Brook, one of the leading lights of classical theater internationally, at New York's Lincoln Center in 1983 and told him that while he did not know her now, he would someday be working with her company in Chicago. In the 1980s, that was an amusing anecdote about Gaines' chutzpah. In 2002, the story has come true. Brook knows who she is now, and has worked with her company.
"She's both remarkable and lovable," the director said recently from his office in Paris. "Heart, know-how, the ability to dream and the shrewd sense of an entrepreneur. That's Barbara."
But in 1986, the best venue Gaines could afford for the first major public performance of what was then dubbed the Chicago Shakespeare Workshop was the outdoor terrace of the Red Lion Pub, an English-themed hostelry at 2446 N. Lincoln Ave. The first show, "King Henry V," was an Actors' Equity Showcase production in which no one got paid. The total budget was about $3,000. The quixotic location and ragtag financials helped bring attention to the show, which was praised not so much for its subtle artistry as for its defiant energy.
"Overcoming the clank of 'L' trains, the thunder of overflying jets and even the occasional odors from a nearby back-yard fish fry, 17 performers enact 45 parts and serve up the heroic sweep of a major chapter in English history," wrote Sid Smith in the Chicago Tribune at the time. "Their tiny platform space plays home to battlefield carnage and coy royal courtship, to knavish fooleries and kingly crises, to senseless bloodshed and to a lusty victory, all in a production that's as economic as it is well-spoken and affecting."
Gaines has remained loyal to many of the actors--such as Bernie Landis, Ernest Perry Jr. and Robert Scogin--who were in the pub that day. They, in turn, look back at the Red Lion through the haze of nostalgia. "I get chills whenever I think of that show," says Landis, his eyes misting. "We were like an extended family back then."
By 1987, Gaines had moved her family to the Ruth Page Theatre and renamed her troupe the Chicago Shakespeare Repertory Company ("Chicago" in the name was deemed unwieldy and soon dropped). Its debut production of "Troilus and Cressida" was greeted with great enthusiasm by the Tribune's Richard Christiansen, an early booster of Gaines and her theater.
"What happened Wednesday night on stage in the Ruth Page Theatre was something of a miracle," Christiansen wrote in his lead paragraph, "a mature, confident, full-blown production . . . performed with a passion, wit and sting, that, in honoring its author, crowned itself."
For the next decade, Gaines' Shakespeare Repertory followed its mission of doing local Chicago productions of classical theater. Budgets quickly grew--Gaines' "Troilus and Cressida" cost $92,000 in 1987, thanks to funding from the Chase Manhattan Corp. In general, her productions became known for their romantic sweep. From "Much Ado About Nothing" to "Cymbeline," Gaines usually accompanied her shows with theatrical--often dazzling--lighting, loud sound effects, original music and sumptuous costumes. As a rule, the tragedies and histories got better reviews than the comedy.
But Chicago Shakespeare, and Gaines herself, attracted relatively little national attention. The actors and designers were almost all local--the theater was never much interested in stars, unlike many of its peers across the country.
"Barbara has made a commitment to the scene in Chicago and I think that's an admirable thing," says Libby Appel, who runs the Oregon Shakespeare Festival--arguably the leading classical theater in the United States--but says she does not know Gaines' work all that well.
Although a few out-of-towners were invited to direct, Gaines did most of the shows herself. Even as out-of-town critics discovered Chicago theater figures such as directors Robert Falls, Frank Galati and Mary Zimmerman, Gaines and her work were largely ignored.
But it soon became impossible for anyone to ignore her theater.
In November 1997, Gaines stood next to Mayor Richard M. Daley as he announced that Shakespeare Rep would take up residence in a $23.2 million theater, custom-designed by VOA Associates with a 550-seat mainstage, to be christened the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
The new theater was a result of many things: the savvy hustling of Criss Henderson, the theater's highly regarded executive director; the bounty of a buoyant economy; the connectedness of the theater's board; the desire of Navy Pier and Daley to counteract the perception that the pier was all hamburgers and hoopla. The Goodman Theatre had already looked at the pier and decided it didn't want to be there. But Gaines saw an opportunity--and she grabbed it with both hands, declaring with some hubris at the 1997 press conference that "Shakespeare loves his new home."
By 1999, the theater was up and running. The inaugural production, "Antony and Cleopatra," was, of course, directed by Gaines, and it was no surprise that it starred Chicago actors Lisa Dodson and Kevin Gudahl, two of Gaines' most loyal performers and two of her longtime favorites. It was a grand, weighty and portentous affair, directed with a sense of the sweep of history and the passion of forbidden love. The design came replete with burnished gold, a reflecting pool, trap doors, and a grand stairway. Alaric Jans composed a lush original score. Although some critics felt the show was miscast, one could understand every word the actors were saying.
It was a classic Gaines production.
The show sold out all 74 of its performances. And by January 2000, Gaines' production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" had garnered the largest advance in her theater's 14-year history.
Assessing Gaines' international reputation today is far from easy. Many leaders of the American classical theater still have seen little or none of her work, since Chicago Shakespeare has always been about doing Shakespeare in Chicago. Moreover, critical comments are often colored by an artist's desire to work at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the future, or not to speak ill of a colleague, or, conversely, to make their own institution or directing look good.
But when many directors and administrators on both sides of the Atlantic are asked about Gaines and her work, common themes emerge. Many of the leaders of England's Shakespeare establishment, whom Gaines often refers to as "my boys," don't easily separate her directing work from her theater and her city--both of which they greatly admire.
"She looked at theaters all over the world and pretty much ironed out all the design flaws," says director Edward Hall, the son of Sir Peter Hall. "The result has been an extraordinarily malleable space."
"There is a condition of intimacy at that theater in Chicago," says Brook, "that you could never get in a traditional proscenium space."
As Hall and Brook well know, it was Gaines who argued vociferously for an intimate mainstage modeled after the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, even though others involved with the company were arguing for a bigger seating capacity, which would have helped the theater's finances. But it's hard to see how this theater could have been any better from an artistic perspective. With its deep thrust stage and three-sided auditorium, it has proven to be ideal for classical theater, not least because it's easy for monologues to be delivered very close to a large percentage of the audience.
But although Gaines deserves a great deal of the credit for this building, she also has had the good fortune to work in a city with a large community of capable performers.
"There are so many quality actors in Chicago, especially actors of a certain age," says Bogdanov, who directed "Timon of Athens" at Chicago Shakespeare in 1997. "[Gaines has] a company around her that appreciates her talent. That can be a cozy and incestuous thing, but in this case it's still robust and virile."
Since most British directors of Shakespeare despise what they see as the classic American attempt to don faux-English accents, ape the Stratford style and locate themselves somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, they admire Gaines for what they think of as a straightforward, upbeat, middle-of-the-road approach to the classics. They seem to think of this approach as a kind of Chicago-style Shakespeare, and the Brits like that idea--at least for a theater in Chicago. For one thing, it plays into their preconceived notions of American aesthetics. And it's no threat to their own power structure.
"At least in the European sense of the word, she's not a radical," says Bogdanov. "But on the other hand, she's not traditional in the ways some English directors are traditional."
In America, the response is a little different. Many directors say that Chicago Shakespeare has yet to make the transition from a local troupe to a nationally known company and that Gaines has yet to make a similar transition. They point out that the top-tier American classical actors have yet to work at the theater--by contrast, say, with the better-known New York Shakespeare Festival or the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington, D.C., both of which regularly cast major movie stars. And they note that only recently has Gaines been hiring world-class guest directors--and that, even now, those directors tend to be dominated by Englishmen.
"I couldn't describe her aesthetic, but I think of Barbara Gaines as a solid director," says Kent Thompson, who runs the highly regarded Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which increasingly shuns British actors and directors to cultivate an avowedly American focus. "Barbara is known as a storyteller. She's not trying to redefine theater for a modern audience. The theater has not yet built a national focus . . . but then that takes a bit of time."
"I find her very enigmatic, quite challenging and just a little exhausting," says Fred C. Adams, the outspoken patriarch of the Utah Shakespearean Festival, which won a Tony Award in 2000. "She's a feminist who thinks the future of the theater is entirely female, and I'm just enough of a chauvinist to think that might not be the case."
The world of classical theater, of course, has always been dominated by men. Asked about Adams' remarks, Gaines says, "People sometimes think I am going to be this big old battle-ax, but I run from people like that. I'd rather call myself a humanist than a feminist. I've never been treated badly or denied any kind of access. So I really don't have any kind of ax to grind."
Gaines' colleagues at the other large theaters in Chicago seem to greatly admire the populist activity on Navy Pier and speak of Gaines with great affection and personal admiration. There's widespread appreciation for her insistence on strong text work--and her use of the First Folio in the rehearsal process. But they don't necessarily see Chicago Shakespeare as a font of innovation.
"Accessibility is a touchstone of their work," says Charles Newell, artistic director of the Court Theatre, which also frequently produces Shakespeare. "They have really shown people that these texts can be understood. But that's a bit different from what drives us at Court. We speak a lot about being provocative and irreverent. I don't think we compete with each other--in many ways, we occupy different niches. And that's a good thing."
Newell makes the point that theaters cannot be all things to all people, and that it may be unfair to suggest that Gaines should be building a young classical theater and reaching mainstream audiences while pushing the artistic envelope. And if one suggests that she should be using top-notch international artists, then she'd be open to the inevitable criticism that she had neglected the very actors who helped build her theater.
Indeed, Gaines says quite openly that clarity is her main priority. "It's very difficult to do Shakespeare well," she says. "I am demanding about the way the language is spoken. I often don't understand a lot of other people's productions because they aren't clear and the language does not work with the physical gestures."
As one might expect, many actors who work often at the theater say Gaines is uniquely attuned to their needs. "Her strong suit is vision," says Tim Gregory, a regular on the pier along with such other local actors as Greg Vinkler and Scott Parkinson. "She can mine the humanity in every play. She's not highly conceptual, but she's also not locked in. I feel comfortable working with her."
Others take a different view--noting that for all her apparent softness, Gaines isn't shy about overruling her artistic collaborators when she needs to make the point that she is in charge. And many don't think they do their most innovative work under her direction. "I don't think anyone expects to break a lot of new ground here," says another actor who works regularly at the theater.
Warm and personable, Gaines has engendered a remarkably loyal staff. Henderson, her longtime partner at Chicago Shakespeare, has turned down a lot of chances to move on. Although some people in the theater community consider him the one mainly responsible for the financial and popular success of the theater complex (which he books very shrewdly with outside fare), he begs to differ. He considers Gaines' emotional link to her audiences as without peer, and scorns the notion that she's a middlebrow populist who'd play only in the Midwest. "Barbara has not been given her due as an artist by the press in the same way the actors on our stage have been given their due," he says one day, eyes flashing.
n the first day of rehearsals for "Love's Labor's Lost," Gaines is seated at one end of a long table in a rehearsal room addressing her company. Although there's some nervous laughter, the mood is informal and relaxed. Most of the actors have worked at this theater before, and many of them have shared the stage on previous occasions. One gets the sense that everyone knows what to expect from this process.
In her opening remarks to the cast, Gaines speaks of the work not in political or aesthetic terms, but in terms of personal feelings. She speaks about her own "journey with the play," tells her cast that she "disagrees with most of the scholars about this play," and describes how she read the work and then "fell in love."
Such personalization--and the frequent use of such words as "passion" and "heart"--is a vital part of Gaines' approach as a director. As her remarks meander on, you begin to appreciate her skill at getting her mainly young actors to see that they were "born to speak this language" and capable of understanding the play's shifts and turns. In turn, she will rely on them to make the play alive for the loyal and large audience on the pier. And it's clear from the start that the aim here is not politicization or aesthetic experimentation so much as mass identification.
That's her niche. And, in this particular time and place, it works.
"The miracle of this play for me is that it reminds us that life can change at any moment," she says, sighing heavily. "We should cherish the time we spend together. Things can change very quickly."
By the end of this first chat, some of the more hesitant expressions in the room have softened. "This play has been criticized for a lack of plot," Gaines says, laughing, "but then most of our lives have a lack of plot."
So what of the future? Gaines, clearly, has little interest in what British directors like Bogdanov think of as "political engagement." She's unlikely ever to flit around the world directing, sparring with critics, and self-promoting. It's hard to imagine her ever wanting to do anything like Joshua Sobol's recent post-modern revival of "The Merchant of Venice" at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington, which changed the sex of two of the leading characters. And it's hard to imagine her regular audience wanting her to.
She just wants to direct Shakespeare with clarity and lucidity and attention to the text rather than relying on radical concepts. And she likes to take care of her audience --and her community of theater people--in Chicago. "I don't want my politics to be on the stage," she says.
All in all, Gaines considers her main strength to be relating Shakespeare to human lives of both sexes, both as they were lived and as they are now lived. "I don't think Shakespeare ever set out to teach us anything," she says one day. "He was just a craftsman. He just wanted to tell a great story."
"She has softened me," Henderson says. "And I really believe that those personal terms are where her genius lies."
Back in her office, Gaines is asked about her lack of outside directing. She replies that if she were to work elsewhere, she'd probably want to do it with her favorite actors and designers along for the ride. Most directors in the theater gain international reputations for themselves and their institutions by working in different cities; both the Goodman Theatre and Robert Falls' stock rose after Falls directed on Broadway. But one could also argue that the Royal Shakespeare Company cemented its reputation in America by touring as an institution--which did not do director Brook any harm, either.
If Gaines ever casts her eyes beyond Chicago, she'll likely be pursuing the latter method. But because of the large casts, major classical tours are very expensive and hard to arrange. Anyway, it's not a top priority for her. "That will happen when it's supposed to happen," she says.
Her eyes cheat out toward that gorgeous view of Lake Michigan and people at play.
"You know," she says, "the dream has always been to do it here."


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Organized labor's big loss in Michigan could change the dynamic in Ohio. Reuters says Michigan "is about to get a second look from corporate America" after approving "right to work" legislation that prohibits union membership as a condition of employment. "We're going to see some major investments in Michigan over the next two to three years," says Neil De Koker, the head of Troy, Mich.-based trade group the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, which represents auto component makers. Reuters reports that supporters of right-to-work "said it tempers industry fears of dealing with the United Auto Workers union and makes Michigan more competitive against neighboring industrial states such as Ohio, which does not have such a law." Steve Bernstein, a Michigan labor lawyer, tells Reuters, "If we're going to compete with states like Ohio, maybe they're saying, well, this is an ace in the hole for us." This Associated Press analysis looks at the right-to-work landscape in the industrial Midwest. Here's how it describes the situation in Ohio: Ohio voters in 2011 overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping law that placed restrictions on public employee unions. Republican Gov. John Kasich says making Ohio a right-to-work state is not among his priorities and that he sees other ways to keep the state competitive. However, a group called Ohioans for Workplace Freedom has been circulating petitions for a ballot measure that would keep workers covered by labor contracts from having to join a union or pay dues. This Wall Street Journal story points out some of the transparent political maneuvering that went into passing Michigan's right-to-work legislation. "The GOP in Michigan took lessons from previous fights over the rights of unionized workers," The Journal says. "The Michigan measure carves out an exception for police and firefighters, key groups that had opposed the elimination of most collective-bargaining rights for public employees in Ohio when they were targeted." Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., tells the newspaper, "When they carve out the police and firefighters, it probably reduces the public opposition to the legislation by 50%." Very true, even though that drives me crazy. If you think right-to-work is an important concept, fine, but don't carve out exemptions for certain people just because you don't want to make them mad at election time.
Editor's Choice
Michigan's approval of 'right-to-work' could impact Ohio
The Wall Street Journal's editorial page lauds tort reform efforts in Ohio, which it says is "poised to become the first in the nation to clamp down on the abuse of asbestos bankruptcy trusts." The state Legislature "is trying to end this racket by requiring asbestos plaintiffs to file any trust claims before proceeding to trial," the newspaper notes. "They must then identify to the courts any claims to trusts they have made, including the basis of their alleged injury." (The House passed the reform bill earlier this year, and the Senate approved a version last week. Gov. John Kasich says he'll sign it.) The tort bar "is responding as usual by claiming that victims will lose their day in court," The Journal notes. "But any plaintiff can still file a claim with any trust and take part in any lawsuit. The only change is greater transparency about the claim and injury. To the extent that this reform reduces the number of fraudulent claims that deplete trust funds, it will preserve trust assets for legitimate victims. And it will save jobs at companies that will be spared a frivolous, double-dip lawsuit."
American arts organizations have two main holiday traditions: "The Nutcracker," for ballets, and "A Christmas Carol," for theater companies of all sizes. Forbes.com takes a look at how the Charles Dickens classic has become a centerpiece at American theater companies. The bottom line: The productions are so popular that they fund the theater companies' budgets "well beyond the holidays." Chicago's Goodman Theatre has performed "A Christmas Carol" at the holidays for 35 straight years, the longest run in the United States, Forbes.com says. The newspaper compiles a list of the 19 longest-running "Christmas Carol" productions nationwide, and Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater Festival is at No. 6, having performed the show for 24 years. This year's Great Lakes production runs through Dec. 23.
You also can follow me on Twitter for more news about business and Northeast Ohio.


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Need a good laugh? You're in luck. Monday, April 14, is International Moment of Laughter Day, a non-denominational holiday dreamed up by writer, professional speaker and "humor consultant" Izzy Gesell. (One way to make yourself really laugh, according to Gesell: Get naked, and look in the mirror. Thanks a lot, Izzy.)
To mark the occasion, LIFE.com features this lovely picture of the one and only Charlie Chaplin utterly convulsed on the set of his 1952 career coda, Limelight. Here is the Silent Era icon on the set of his final major film, years after he had made his best-known works—masterpieces like City Lights, Modern Times and The Great Dictator. And yet, even in his 60s, the great filmmaker's light appears undimmed.
The creator of the shambling, luckless Tramp, Chaplin's tragicomic vision was perhaps forever shaped by his own difficult childhood.He grew up fatherless, and after his mother had a nervous breakdown, he spent time in a London orphanage. At times, he performed on the street for pennies.
Still, Chaplin would later insist, "a day without laughter is a day wasted."
(It's ironic that this raucously light-hearted photo was made by W. Eugene Smith, a cantankerous genius celebrated for his pictures of life's bitterest struggles, rather than silver-screen frivolity.)
In the end, perhaps the happy fact of this brief meeting between two towering creative talents is reason enough for a smile. Or even a good laugh.
Myles Little is an associate photo editor at TIME.


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Prime Minister of Israel 1969-1974
Foreign Minister of Israel 1956-1966
Golda Meir – labor Zionist leader, diplomat and Israel's fourth Prime Minister – was born Golda Mabovitch in Kiev (Ukraine) in 1898. When she was eight years old, her family immigrated to the United States. Raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she joined a Zionist youth movement, married Morris Myerson, and, in 1921, immigrated to Palestine, joining Kibbutz Merhavia.
In 1924 the Meyersons moved to Jerusalem, and Golda began a series of positions as an official of the Histadrut – General Federation of Labor, and became a member of its "inner circle."
Over the next three decades, Golda Meir was active in the Histadrut, first in trade union and welfare programs, then in Zionist labor organization and fund-raising abroad, and later still in political roles. She was appointed chief of the Histadrut's political section – designed to use the Histadrut's growing power to advance Zionist aims such as unrestricted Jewish immigration.
When, in 1946, most of the Jewish community's senior leaders were interned by the British authorities, Golda Meir replaced Moshe Sharett as acting head of the political department of the Jewish Agency until the establishment of the state in 1948. From then on she played a part both in internal labor Zionist politics and in diplomatic efforts – including her ultimately unsuccessful secret meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah on the eve of the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948, in an attempt to reach agreement and avoid war.
In June 1948 Golda Meir was appointed Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union, a position she filled for less than a year. She was elected as a Member of Knesset in the 1949 elections, and served as Minister of Labor and National Insurance from 1949 to 1956 – years of social unrest and a high rate of unemployment, caused by mass immigration. She enacted enlightened social welfare policies, provided subsidized housing for immigrants and orchestrated their integration into the workforce.
During the following decade (1956-66), Golda Meir served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. She initiated Israel's policy of cooperation with the newly independent nations of Africa, introducing a cooperation program based on Israel's development experience, which continues to this day. At the same time, she endeavored to cement relations with the United States and established extensive bilateral ties with Latin American countries. Between 1966 and 1968 she served as Secretary-General first of Mapai and then of the newly formed "Alignment" (made up of three Labor factions).
Upon the death of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1969, Golda Meir – the "consensus candidate" – was chosen to succeed him. In the October 1969 elections, she led her party to victory.
Shortly after she took office, the War of Attrition – sporadic military actions along the Suez Canal which escalated into full-scale war – ended in a cease-fire agreement with Egypt. Though the cease-fire was broken time and again by the advancement of Egyptian missiles on the Suez Canal front, it did bring a three-year period of tranquillity, shattered only in October 1973 by the Yom Kippur War.
As Prime Minister, Golda Meir concentrated much of her energies on the diplomatic front – artfully mixing personal diplomacy with skillful use of the mass media. Armed with an iron will, a warm personality and grandmotherly image, simple but highly-effective rhetoric and a "shopping list," Golda Meir successfully solicited financial and military aid in unprecedented measure.
Golda Meir showed strong leadership during the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur War, securing an American airlift of arms while standing firm on the terms of disengagement-of-forces negotiations and rapid return of POWs. Although the Agranat Commission of Inquiry had exonerated her from direct responsibility for Israel's unpreparedness for the war, and she had led her party to victory in the December 1973 elections, Golda Meir bowed to what she felt was the "will of the people" and resigned in mid-1974. She withdrew from public life and began to write her memoirs, but was present in the Knesset to greet Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on his historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977.
Golda Meir died in December 1978, at the age of 80.


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COMMERCE CITY Colo. (Thursday January 21 2010) – The Colorado Rapids announced today a trade with Toronto FC in which Colorado receive allocation money in exchange for midfielder Jacob Peterson.
Per club and league policies financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
(Click here to watch exclusive video of head coach Gary Smith commenting on the trade on the club's Facebook page).
Peterson originally drafted by Colorado with the ninth pick in the second round of the 2006 MLS SuperDraft recorded eight goals and five assists while appearing in 92 games for the Rapids.
The four-year veteran from Indiana University played in 23 games last season scoring two goals and adding two assists before suffering a torn ACL in his right knee on Sept. 23 and missing the remainder of the season.


text: Parasomnias Parasomnias are phenomena, either behavioral or physiological, that intrude into the sleep process and by themselves, are not primarily disorders of sleep and wake states. These disorders are manifestations of central nervous system activation usually transmitted through skeletal muscle or autonomic, or involuntary, nervous system channels. They include nightmares/night terrors, sleepwalking, REM behavior disorder (RBD), clenching or grinding of the teeth (bruxism), bedwetting and others. Although these disorders can be normal in children or adults (if they occur only occasionally), parasomnias can be disruptive to the sleeper, bed partner or other family members when the episodes become frequent or particularly intense. A careful sleep history and sometimes an overnight sleep study are needed to diagnose and treat parasonmias. Nightmares/Night Terrors Nightmares are frightening dreams that usually awaken the sleeper during REM sleep. Night terrors are characterized by sudden arousal from slow wave sleep with a piercing scream or cry, followed by manifestations of intense fear and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness. The person is usually inconsolable, and will not remember the event in the morning. Sleepwalking Sleepwalking consists of a series of complex behaviors that are initiated during slow wave sleep and result in walking during sleep. There may be difficulty in arousing the patient during a sleepwalking episode and amnesia afterward is common. REM Behavior Disorder (RBD) During REM sleep a person is paralyzed except for the eyes and breathing muscles. This is called atonia. In Rem Behavior Disorder (RBD) muscle atonia does not occur and the sleeper is free to exhibit elaborate motor activity associated with dreaming. These behaviors may be violent or injurious to the sleeper and may disrupt sleep continuity. Bruxism Bruxism is a movement disorder characterized by grinding or clenching of the teeth during sleep. Bruxism may cause abnormal wear of the teeth or jaw muscle discomfort. Bruxism may increase in severity during times of stress or when another sleep disorder such as Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is present. Bedwetting Bedwetting or sleep enuresis, is the recurrent and involuntary voiding of urine during sleep. Bedwetting can be associated with other medical conditions such as diabetes, urinary tract infection or epilepsy. These conditions need to be properly treated before other treatments for bedwetting can be explored.


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Twitch Begins Silencing Videos With Audible Magic: Making Everyone Worse Off, Because Copyright Law Sucks
from the not-how-to-do-it deptAs a whole bunch of people on my Twitter feed are letting me know, video game streaming company Twitch* (read disclosure below!) has announced that it has turned on Audible Magic to begin silencing "Video on Demand" videos that make use of copyright-covered music -- including in-game music. This only covers the video on demand (stored) videos, rather than the live streams that Twitch is probably most well known for. As Twitch's General Counsel Boo Baker explains:
We've partnered with Audible Magic, which works closely with the recorded music industry, to scan past and future VODs for music owned or controlled by clients of Audible Magic. This includes in-game and ambient music. When music in the Audible Magic database is detected ("Flagged Content"), the affected portion of the VOD will be muted and volume controls for that VOD will be turned off. Additionally, past broadcasts and highlights with Flagged Content are exportable but will remain muted.This, quite reasonably, has many folks up in arms -- with Felicia Day making the point in the most humorous of ways: "So Twitch has become a silent movie company now?" That's because pretty much every video game has some music, and it's unlikely (at best) that users of Twitch cleared that music. In the past, we've seen some similar issues with YouTube's ContentID system flagging similar "Let's Play" videos on that site.
The Audible Magic technology will scan for third party music in 30 minute blocks — if Audible Magic does not detect its clients' music, that portion of the VOD will not be muted. If third party audio is detected anywhere in the 30-minute scanned block, the entire 30 minutes will be muted.
Really, what this seems to demonstrate is the failure of the "one-size filter fits all" world that the legacy content industry lives in. The music and movie industries have long demanded such filters, sometimes arguing (though failing) that the current DMCA requires filters like Audible Magic or Content ID. US copyright law currently does not require such a thing, though you know that the industry is pushing hard to get that into any copyright reform bill. And, for all the problems of ContentID (and there are many), it's the kind of solution that you can see often does make sense in a YouTube world (though it has way too many false positives).
However, when it comes to Twitch, this kind of solution seems to make no sense at all. People are not going to Twitch to hear music. They're going to see video games. In fact, this kind of solution on Twitch seems inherently counterproductive for just about everyone. These days musicians want their music in video games because it's fantastic for those musicians, both making them money and giving them a ridiculous amount of exposure. There are even entire discussions for indie musicians about how to get their music into video games because it's such an important promotional avenue.
Those musicians aren't hurt by Twitch videos. They're hurt by silent Twitch videos, meaning fewer people hear the music.
A fairly strong case can be made that in-game and ambient video game music on Twitch is fair use. It seems to be clearly transformative in the same sense that scanning whole books to create a searchable index is transformative fair use or that a book of magazine covers of movie monsters is transformative fair use, or that a book of concert posters is transformative fair use. In each case, while the entire work is used, and the original may have been licensed, the use here is for an entirely different purpose.
And yet, with this move, Twitch seems to be inherently stating that fair use for the audio is an afterthought, rather than a key component to what it's doing.
Given the various lawsuits against other video sites, it's quite likely that Twitch was facing serious legal pressure to make this move. As we've noted, the music industry has repeatedly made arguments in other lawsuits that such filtering was necessary. Just recently, video site Vimeo announced it, too, was using Audible Magic. And, for years, legacy content players have insisted that using such a tool was required.
But it's not. There's nothing in the law that requires a site to do this. And even if you can make the case that it makes sense for general interest user-generated video sites, that's simply not the case with Twitch, whose whole purpose is to stream video from video games. It's yet another case of taking a broad maxim ("video sites should use automated filtering to silence or take down "copyrighted" material") to extreme and ridiculous ends where it doesn't make sense at all.
In other words, it's another example of the pressures and risks of today's copyright laws getting in the way of a useful innovation, leading to a result that is actually worse for everyone.
From a pure "avoiding liability" position, you could see why Twitch would make this decision. Assuming that some recording industry lawyers were pressuring the company, arguing that continuing to allow those videos without a fingerprinting solution put it at risk of losing its DMCA safe harbors. Because that's the kind of argument an RIAA or an ASCAP might make. And this is really a big part of the problem with copyright law today (and especially statutory damages). Even if Twitch believes that not having such a tool is okay, it might still get taken to court and could face a massive judgment if a court decides the other way. Thus, all of the ridiculous incentives of copyright law today push Twitch to make use of this solution that, without any question, makes everyone worse off. It harms musicians. It harms Twitch. It harms video game fans. It harms Twitch's users. It harms video games. Who does it benefit besides Audible Magic and maybe some lawyers?
Copyright remains totally broken.
* Disclosure: As you may know, just a couple of weeks ago, Twitch announced that they were providing matching donations for our net neutrality crowdfunding campaign, something we are quite thankful for. That said, the company's support of that effort doesn't change our views at all on this being a dumb move that harms everyone.
Filed Under: copyright, fair use, filtering, fingerprinting, lets play, music, streaming, video games
Companies: audible magic, twitch


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