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Swing music, or simply Swing, is a form of American music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1940. Swing uses a strong rhythm section of double bass and drums as the anchor for a lead section of brass instruments such as trumpets and trombones, woodwinds including saxophones and clarinets, and sometimes stringed instruments such as violin and guitar, medium to fast tempos, and a "lilting" swing time rhythm. The name swing came from the phrase 'swing feel' where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music (unlike classical music). Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, a period known as the Swing Era. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong rhythmic "groove" or drive.
Swing has roots in the late 1920s use of larger ensembles using written arrangements. The period between 1935 and 1946 is when big band swing music reached its peak and was the most popular music in America. This period is known as the Swing Era. A typical song played in swing style would feature a strong, anchoring rhythm section in support of more loosely tied wind, brass. The most common style consisted of having a soloist take center stage, and improvise a solo within the framework of his bandmates playing support. Swing music began to decline in popularity during World War II because of several factors. Most importantly it became difficult to staff a "big band" because many musicians were overseas fighting in the war. By the late 1940s, swing had morphed into traditional pop music, or evolved into new jazz styles such as jump blues and bebop. Swing music saw a revival in the late 1950s and 1960s with pop vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole, as well as jazz-oriented vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald.
The best-known bandleaders of the Swing Era were Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw. The best-known arrangers included Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Noted wind and brass players included clarinettists Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw; sax players Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, and Charlie Parker; trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima; and trombonists such as Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Notable rhythm section performers included Jimmy Blanton, Milt Hinton, and Slam Stewart on bass; Lionel Hampton on marimba; Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, and Art Tatum on keys; Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich on drums; Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt on guitar. Some of the best-known Swing vocalists were Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
Swing was blended with other genres to create new styles. In country music, artists such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Bob Wills introduced many elements of swing along with blues to create a genre called western swing. Gypsy swing is an outgrowth of Venuti and Lang's jazz violin swing. In the 1970s and 1980s, fans of the big band swing music attended swing music performances at supper clubs. In the late-1980s (into the early 1990s) a trendier, more urban-styled swing-beat emerged called the new jack swing spearheaded by Teddy Riley. In the late 1990s (1998 until about 2000) there was a short-lived "Swing revival" movement, led by bands such as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, the Lucky Strikes, Hipster Daddy-O and the Handgrenades, and Brian Setzer. In Canada, some of the early 2000s records by The JW-Jones Blues Band included swing revival elements.
The styles of jazz that were popular from the late teens through the late 1920s were usually played with rhythms with a two beat feel, and often attempted to reproduce the style of contrapuntal improvisation developed by the first generation of jazz musicians in New Orleans. In the late 1920s, however, larger ensembles using written arrangements became the norm, and a subtle stylistic shift took place in the rhythm, which developed a four beat feel with a smoothly syncopated style of playing the melody, while the rhythm section supported it with a steady four to the bar.
As with jazz, swing was created by African Americans, and its impact on the overall American culture was such that it marked and named an entire era of the United States, the Swing Era – as the 1920s had been termed the Jazz Age. Such an influence from the black community was unprecedented in any western country. Swing music abandoned the string orchestra and used simpler, "edgier" arrangements that emphasized horns and wind instruments and improvised melodies.
Louis Armstrong shared a different version of the history of swing during a nationwide broadcast of the Bing Crosby (radio) Show.[1] Crosby said, "We have as our guest the master of swing and I'm going to get him to tell you what swing music is." Armstrong said, "Ah, swing, well, we used to call it syncopation — then they called it ragtime, then blues — then jazz. Now, it's swing. White folks, yo'all sho is a mess."[2][3]
In comparison with the styles of the 1920s, the 1930s represents a more sophisticated sound, but with an exciting feel of its own. Most jazz bands adopted this style by the early 1930s, but "sweet" bands remained the most popular for white dancers until Benny Goodman's appearance at the Palomar Ballroom in August 1935. Swing's birth has been traced by some jazz historians to Chick Webb's stand in Harlem in 1931, but they noted the music failed to take off because the onset of the Depression in earnest that year killed the nightclub business, particularly in poor black areas like Harlem. Fletcher Henderson, another bandleader from this period who needed work, lent his arrangement talent to Goodman. Goodman had auditioned and won a spot on a radio show, "Let's Dance," but only had a few songs; he needed more. Henderson's arrangements are what gave him his bigger repertoire and distinctive sound. The show was on after midnight in the East and few people heard it, but unknown to them, it was on earlier on the West Coast and developed the audience that later led to his Palomar Ballroom triumph. The audience of young white dancers favored Goodman's rhythms and daring swing arrangements. "Hot Swing" and Boogie Woogie remained the dominant form of American popular music for the next ten years. Standards like "Moten Swing" by Bennie Moten and the Kansas City Orchestra were important in the development of swing music and the move towards a freer form of orchestral jazz. [4][5][6] Audiences raved at the new music, and at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia in December 1932, the doors were let open to the public who came crammed into the theatre to hear the new sound, demanding seven encores from Moten's orchestra.
In his autobiography W.C. Handy wrote, "This brings to mind the fact that prominent white orchestra leaders, concert singers and others are making commercial use of Negro music in its various phases. That's why they introduced "swing" which is not a musical form."[7]
Large orchestras had to reorganize themselves in order to achieve the new sound. These bands dropped their string instruments, which were now felt to hamper the improvised style necessary for swing music. This necessitated a slightly more detailed and organized type of composition and notation than was then the norm. Band leaders put more energy into developing arrangements, perhaps reducing the chaos that might result from as many as 12 or 16 musicians spontaneously improvising. But the best swing bands at the height of the era explored the full gamut of possibilities from spontaneous ensemble playing to highly orchestrated music in the vein of European art music.
A typical song played in swing style would feature a strong, anchoring rhythm section in support of more loosely tied wind, brass. During the swing era, string and/or vocals sections were also common. The level of improvisation that the audience might expect at any one time varied depending on the arrangement, the band, the song, and the band-leader.
The most common style consisted of having a soloist take center stage, and improvise a solo within the framework of his bandmates playing support. As a song progressed, multiple soloists would be expected to take over and individually improvise their own part; however, it was not unusual to have two or three band members improvising at any one time.
Many of the songs during the swing era were selections from the Great American Songbook. The music of the swing era is often regarded as one of the most influential precursors to traditional pop music, as it helped popularize many American "standards."
Swing jazz began to be embraced by the public around 1935. Prior to that, it had had limited acceptance, mostly among black audiences. Radio remotes increased interest in the music, and it grew in popularity throughout the States. As with many new popular musical styles, it met with some resistance from the public because of its improvisation, fast erratic tempos, lack of strings, occasionally risqué lyrics and other cultural associations, such as the sometimes frenetic swing dancing that accompanied performances. Audiences who had become used to the romantic arrangements (and what was perceived as classier and more refined music), were taken aback by the often erratic and edginess of swing music.
German swing bands were virtually unknown to British and American fans, but thrived in the early 1940s in spite of an official Nazi campaign against "decadent Western music".[8] German authorities in fact created a Swing band called "Charlie and His Orchestra" to record hot Swing and dance music. Some songs included lyrics ridiculing and abusing the leaders and people of Allied nations. Records were dropped over "enemy" lines by parachute.[9]
In the US, by the late 1930s and early 1940s, swing had become the most popular musical style and remained so for several years, until it was supplanted in the late 1940s by the pop standards sung by the crooners who grew out of the Big Band tradition that swing began. Bandleaders such as the Dorsey Brothers often helped launch the careers of vocalists who went on to popularity as solo artists, such as Frank Sinatra.
Swing music began to decline in popularity during World War II because of several factors. Most importantly it became difficult to staff a "big band" because many musicians were overseas fighting in the war. Also, the cost of touring with a large ensemble became cumbersome because of wartime economics. These two factors made smaller three- to five-piece combos more profitable and manageable. A third reason is the recording bans of 1942 and 1948 because of musicians' union strikes. In 1948, there were no records legally made at all, although independent labels continued to bootleg records in small numbers. When the ban was over in January 1949, swing had morphed into traditional pop music, or evolved into new jazz styles such as jump blues and bebop.
Swing music saw a sort of a revival in the late 1950s and 1960s. Today, this music is sometimes referred to as easy listening. It was, in essence, an updated form of the big band swing music that had been popular in the 1930s and 1940s. This music, however, emphasized the vocalist more so than the instrumentation. Like the music of the Swing Era, many of these songs were also selections from the Great American Songbook.
This brand of music was made popular by arrangers such as Nelson Riddle and pop vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Matt Monro, Judy Garland, and Nat King Cole, as well as jazz-oriented vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald and Keely Smith. Many of these singers were also involved in the "less swinging" vocal pop music of this period.
By the late 1960s, this form of swing had largely faded, replaced by the contemporary forms of rock music.
Many of the crooners who came to the fore after the swing era had their origins in swing bands. Frank Sinatra used the swing-band approach to great effect in almost all of his recordings and kept this style of music popular well into the rock 'n' roll era.
In country music, artists such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Bob Wills introduced many elements of swing along with blues to create a genre called western swing. Like Sinatra did, Mullican went solo from the Cliff Bruner band and had a successful solo career that included many songs that maintained a swing structure. Artists like Willie Nelson have kept the swing elements of country music present into the rock 'n' roll era. Nat King Cole followed Sinatra into the pop music world bringing with him a similar combination of swing bands and ballads. Like Mullican, he was important in bringing piano to the fore of popular music.
Gypsy swing is an outgrowth of Venuti and Lang's jazz violin swing, the style emerging in its own right in Europe with Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. The repertoire overlaps that of 1930s swing, including French popular music, gypsy songs, and compositions by Reinhardt, but gypsy swing bands are formulated differently. There is no brass or percussion; guitars and bass form the backbone, with violin, accordion, clarinet or guitar taking the lead. Gypsy swing groups generally have no more than five players. Although they originated in different continents, similarities have often been noted between gypsy swing and western swing, leading to various fusions.
Rock 'n' roll era hitmakers like Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley also found time to include many swing-era standards into their repertoire. Presley's hit "Are You Lonesome Tonight" is an old swing standard and Lewis' "To Make Love Sweeter For You" is a new song but in the old style. Domino made the swing standard "My Blue Heaven" a rock 'n' roll hit. Among the critically acclaimed band leaders of the 1930s and 1940s whose performances included elements of both "Sweet Band" music and traditional swing music was Shep Fields.
Though swing music was no longer a mainstream musical style at this point, fans of the big band swing music of the Swing Era were able to attend swing music performances at supper clubs throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These were known as "big band nostalgia" tours. They featured some of the famous bandleaders and vocalists of the swing era who were now, essentially, in semi-retirement. Notable individuals who participated in these tours included bandleader Harry James and vocalist Dick Haymes, as well as many notable musicians whom had been popular in the 1940s.
In the late-1980s (into the early 1990s) a trendier, more urban-styled swing-beat emerged called the new jack swing spearheaded by Teddy Riley and Bernard Belle the fusion genre became popular form by using the hip-hop "swing" beats created by the drum machine, and hardware samples, seeped into pop culture and was the definitive sound of the inventive Black New York club scene during the golden age of hip hop, with contemporary R&Bstyle singing. "[1] Encyclopædia Britannica states that the "key producers" were Babyface and Teddy Riley.[1]
In the late 1990s (1998 until about 2000) there was a short-lived "Swing revival" movement, led by bands such as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, the Lucky Strikes, Hipster Daddy-O and the Handgrenades, and Brian Setzer. Many of the new bands of this period played a style of music ��� often referred to as neo-swing — that combined swing jazz with contemporary styles of music such as Rockabilly, Ska, and Rock music. The style also accelerated the revival of swing dancing, both in a traditional style, and in hybrid approaches which blended 1930s dancing with 2000-era dance styles.
In 2001 Robbie Williams released his fifth studio album consisting mainly of popular swing covers titled "Swing When You're Winning" which proved to be popular in many countries selling more than 7 million copies worldwide.
In 2006, the singer Christina Aguilera released her studio album "Back to Basics" when she mixed several different styles including swing, jazz and blues. The album was another commercial success for Aguilera's career.
In recent years Swing music has become fairly popular in Germany. Singers Roger Cicero, Tom Gaebel, and Thomas Anders have attained large followings both in their native country and world wide. Cicero's style is predominantly that of 1940s and 1950s swing music, combined with German lyrics; he became Germany's participant for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007.
Another modern development consists of fusing swing (original, or remixes of classics) with hip hop and house techniques.
"Swing house" was particularly popular during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Influences incorporated into it include Louis Jordan and Louis Prima.
Electroswing is mainly popular in Europe, and electro swing artists incorporate influences such as Tango and Django Reinhardt's Gypsy Swing. Leading artists include Caravan Palace and Parov Stelar.
Both genres are connected with a revival of swing dances, such as the Lindy hop.
In November 2013, Robbie Williams released another swing album, Swings Both Ways, including a series of covers and other new songs which used a music style mixing swing and pop. The album became quite famous, having sold a total of 1.5 million copies worldwide as of January 2014, and reaching number one in music lists in five different countries.
Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jazz, Santa Monica, California
Oklahoma City, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Benny Goodman, Staten Island, Swing music
Miles Davis, Jazz, Count Basie, Django Reinhardt, Duke Ellington


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Thursday, September 29, 2011
My great great grandmother Jane McColm had 2 death certificates
Sound strange to you? Jane died at the Railway Yard at Wallangarra on the Queensland-N.S.W. border. (I've just realised that the postcard I purchased a couple of weeks ago, has further meaning.) What did her husband do? He registered her death in both Stanthorpe (Qld) and Tenterfield (N.S.W.)
It is very interesting to compare the two death certificates.
The first one I discovered was the N.S.W. one. This stated that she was 40 years old and came from Wigtownshire in Scotland. Her father, James Fleming, was a druggist and her mother was Jane Milroy. Jane was married to Malcolm McColm and had no children. She died of puerperal fever. I wasn't happy with this certificate. I knew she had children - my great grandmother was one of them. Wigtownshire in Scotland also didn't give me the information I required.
A couple of years later I was browsing the Queensland indexes when I found her death registered again. I ordered the certificate and was delighted. The registrar in Stanthorpe was much more thorough than the one in Tenterfield.
Jane, 33, was born in Stranraer, Wigtownshire, Scotland and she had 7 children, Elizabeth 9, Samuel 8, James 6, Jane 4, Mary 3, and Ethel Peel 5 weeks and 2 days. Ethel's age doesn't tally with the duration of Jane's illness, but the certificate is typed and not a copy.
I am so pleased that Malcolm registered Jane's death twice. The experience left me wondering about the quality of information registered in Tenterfield at that time. A less than diligent Clerk of the Court!
3 comments:
Good to hear from you, Sharon, in another interesting post about your ancestors.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousOctober 1, 2011 at 5:42 AM
Hi Sharon, I can assist you with the occupation of Malcolm and dating the postcard. My ancestors were also original settlers at the 'Garra. My mum and dad still live there and I love going home. I'd be interested to know more of your connection with the place. Please contact me by email: email@example.com
- AnonymousOctober 12, 2011 at 8:56 PM
hi SharonReplyDelete
A good outcome showing the virtues of persistence. I could be cheeky and say Queenslanders do it better, but I know full well there are plenty of occasions where this wouldn't be the case. Puerperal fever was a most unpleasant illness associated with childbirth as you know -my great grandmother also died of it but there's no child's birth contemporaneous with her death.

subset: commoncrawl


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This series of write-ups celebrates the Lenovo Forum's family of volunteer advocates - moderators, gurus and outstanding members of the Forum, who consistently go out of their way to help out in this community through sharing what they know, dissecting, delving and diving into various issues to educate other users and solve one another's problems. We salute and honor your dedication and hard work!
Having been involved in the IT industry for close to a decade, Peter Barnette, otherwise known as MrPeter1985 in the Lenovo Community, very recently edited his forum signature, proudly declaring his wish to be a Tablet evangelist. Intrigued, we catch up with the guru to find out what inspired this change, and also learned how he used the IdeaPad K1 as, get this, a parenting tool.
Serene: You changed your signature recently and declared yourself a Tablet evangelist. What inspired you to do so?
Peter: As a volunteer, I have limited time to contribute to the community, but I really enjoying talking with people who are passionate about new technology and helping where I can. As tablets are new and the community around them is still small, I thought it would be a great area to get more involved. I really want to see a self sustaining support eco-system develop around these new android powered Lenovo tables and really want to be involved in making that happen so as soon as I got my hands on a K1, I joined as many of the active discussions on the product that I could.
Serene: Do you think tablets are just a fad? Will it be here to stay, or just a blip and be forgotten?
Peter: Tablets have actually been around for a long time (if you think about it, the first ThinkPad was actually one!) At the beginning, these touch-based devices never took off due to their size, cost, weight, short battery life and poor application support. They only really did so when the iPhone and iPod Touch came to the market, where you have a device that had longer lasting battery life, is responsive to touch interaction, has smooth graphics flow and a gorgeous design. Most importantly, it has a large range of apps to give the device more utility. Hence, the growth in the size of such tablets is a natural progression. The iPad came to the market with its wide offering solid hardware and has a great industrial design and great trove of applications. Best of all, it had a ravenous fan base willing to get their hands on a set at all costs.
Tablets will evolve, of course. With the advent of technology and birth of opportunities to extend their capability, such as cloud computing, as well as improvements in hardware and apps, I predict the Tablet will eventually occupy a greater slice of the pie smartphones and netbooks combined have today.
Serene: How do you think the tablet trend will evolve?Peter: Judging by the past and current trajectories of notebooks and netbooks, one would conventionally predict the tablet trend will evolve in terms of hardware - having more memory, better CPU/GPU and improved battery run time, etc. However, perhaps the more meaningful evolution for Tablets may be made through software development.
The Tablet looks set to become more powerful and the ways in which it can be used could be expanded. Improvements are made in technology, even as we speak. As it is we have the implementation of faster wireless network connections and the use of cloud computing. However, it will not rule the world. This is just another step in a longer evolutionary path. Perhaps one day a new device might supplant the touch-based system by directly interacting with your mind. Maybe some kind of head band you would wear that would pick up impulses from your brain and move the pointer around via a Bluetooth connection. Hey, it could happen!.
Serene: What are some of the things users need to look out for or check before buying one?Peter: It all depends on what you, the consumer, want or need. Do you need a big screen? Must it be scratch-resistant? Have a decent camera? There isn't really a list of tips for this – you must remember you are buying this for yourself and not because it looks good, and so, your purchase should suit your likes and habits.
Serene:Is there a specific audience most suited to its use?Peter: No. They naturally have a wide range of fans as they have many applications and software services. You can use it to read e-books, surf the web, watch a movie etc. Its uses are varied and as technology improves these do so as well.
Serene: How has the Tablet impacted your life?Peter: I've only had one a short while, so it is a bit early to say. The Tablet has enriched it somewhat. I am using the IdeaPad K1 tablet, which gives me more freedom to do other things that my ThinkPad T500 did not allow me to do so. I can read an eBook, watch flash media without having to carry around a 6 pounds of notebook, and do simple web browsing with near instant on capability.
Serene: You have an adorable son - does he like the K1? Any plans to get him a tablet as well?Peter: I would most certainly get my son a 7-inch tablet (The A1 would fit the bill nicely. * wink wink*) when the chance arises. He loves playing on his Mom's iPod Touch, and he refers to the K1 as the big iPod. He really loves the coloring and drawing apps. Last night the K1 even read him a few stories before he went to bed and was almost like a digital computer babysitter!
Got a question about Lenovo's range of Tablets? Pop by our boards, check out and join in the discussions, and feel free to ask away! And while you are at it, say hi to Peter!
Hi Peter,
Yeah i like tablet as it's very light and portable. When i need to do some internet surfing either for work or for leisure, it comes very handy. Just hook it up to wifi and complete my work easily. I always did it before my sleep.
So what about ThinkPad Slate? I am going to get one soon for myself.
@Cleo a loan machine or a TP Tablet that you bought yourself? I had used the TP Tablet during the Channel Partner Event in Melbourne couple of months back, and the pen input was really neat. The keyboard casing is also a must have feature for the TP tablet, as the keyboard key is very good in tactility. However, since the TP tablet is oriented at business and IT support staffs, it would have benefited from the Windows OS ecosystem.
However, typing in bed with the TP tablet is probably not a good idea, you should get a nice X220 for that.
@lead_org, it's for myself indulgence BTW, I'm typing with K1 in bed now. The slate will be used in many occasions too so i think it's good.
@Cleo_Lenovo Haven't used the ThinkPad Slate YET. But I'm sure it's nice, with the Pen and all.
Sketchbook Pro isn't available yet, but I tested it and must say it works just nicely on the K1.
Just need to find a good Pen that works for the K1.
@lead_org oh, and the K1 types just as nicely with a split keyboard app
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Don't look now, but California just got a lot closer to the Gulf of Mexico.
Some kind of earthquake-caused seismic shift? Hardly. Oil and its offshore problems have taken center stage in the special election battle between former Assembly Democrat John Laird and Assembly Republican Sam Blakeslee. The winner will fill the seat vacated by Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado in the 15th district of the State Senate.
There are dozens of distinctions between the liberal Laird and conservative Blakeslee, but oil seems to be the stickiest of them all.
Laird accuses Blakeslee of being a tool of the oil industry. That's pretty harsh, but there may be at least a relationship.
Prior to being an elected official, Blakeslee worked for Exxon in Houston. That's no political crime in itself. Where the story gets interesting is Blakeslee's role regarding oil in the state legislature, where he served as Republican minority leader. Blakeslee authored legislation that would have added 28 rigs to the offshore oil drilling area off Santa Barbara, while removing some platforms at an unknown future date. That's the same area where the nation's first major oil spill occurred in 1969. He also authored legislation that would have circumvented the state Lands Commission's ability to prevent offshore drilling, an effort that died in committee.
But do facts tarnish Blakeslee?
For his part, Blakeslee claims he's a victim of character assassination. After all, he's not a total loser with environmentalists; he has a 25 percent approval with the Sierra Club, compared to Laird's 100 percent. But that may not be enough to get Blakeslee out of the oil-friendly charge. Over the past six years, Blakeslee has received $65,000 in campaign contributions from Big OIl, compared to zero for Laird.
All this is not to paint a halo over Laird's head when it comes to influence. Records show that he has received a ton of dough from organized labor and teacher interests as well as support from environmental groups. But the difference is that Laird doesn't hide his affiliations, where as Blakeslee would just as soon have the oil issue go back to the gulf.
It would be a mischaracterization of Blakeslee to describe him as a tool of the oil industry. Still, if campaign finance records are any guide, he seems to have much more in common with the industry than his opponent.
None of this would have even hit the political radar had the oil spill in the gulf not occurred. But with the spill and Blakeslee's background, Laird has been handed a campaign gift. And he's not about to turn down such good fortune.
Follow us on Twitter @PropZero. Join the conversation about the future of California's cash, kids and jobs.


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Arguments for Jon Hamm:
- Sigh. He's perfect. He really really is.
- Don Draper, in short time, has become a television icon. He and Don Draper are inextricably linked. And Don Draper is a Dude. Dudes approve of Don Jon Draper Hamm.
- There's the tv thing, but there's also been a well planned foray into film, complemented by a sense of humour that is so engaging and charming and so silly, he's hitting every single checkbox for sexy across all age groups
- Blemish-free. Like completely. He's not only not a womaniser, he's completely devoted to his woman to the point that there has never, ever been the hint of a whisper of straying, looking, flirting, NOTHING. He respects her, he protects her, he defers to her with seeming weak, he includes her without looking like it's desperate, he's committed without appearing controlled. All of this is MiniVan approved.
- Jon Hamm is NICE. He is unspoiled. He is gracious. He is kind. He does favours for friends. He just shows up for no reason, because he wants to. Because he's supportive. Because he doesn't put a price tag on his time like every hour is for sale. Amid so many famewhores, he is so refreshingly authentic.
- Hamm was rejected for a long long time. Success came relatively late. And as such, he's humble and accessible – two words that give the People demographic an instant erection. For the magazine's most popular feature, on its 25th birthday, you couldn't ask for a more appealing candidate.
Arguments against Jon Hamm:
- Jon Hamm is not Movie Star. Yet. I have always maintained, in the 6 or so years I've been doing this, that the SMA has to be a Movie Star. Television stars simply aren't enough. Television is provincial. That is slowly changing, sure. But television still isn't what Film is. This is why Patrick Dempsey, at the height of McDreamy, never made it. Yes, Jon Hamm is more than just a tv doctor. It's rare that a television star can move beyond his character. And he has. But has he moved far enough? Is he Global? Does some guy working in an office in Croydon know the name Jon Hamm without looking at a photo? They don't watch SNL overseas the way we do here. They don't know when Jon Hamm's being amazing on 30 Rock the way we do here. To put it bluntly – he's a tv star on a very small network who has made supporting appearances everywhere else, and particularly in his most recent film. And that's the thing: the SMA is NOT a supporting star. The SMA is a Leading Man. Jon Hamm has not led a movie. Can Jon Hamm carry a movie? We actually don't know. On the 26th year, sure. 27 yeah, ok. But on the 25th anniversary, such a major, major milestone, do you want the Sexiest Man Alive to be a SUPPORTING player at the movies?
Please. If it were up to me, no doubt, he gets my vote. But if I'm an editor at People, I'm thinking about Legacy. And with that kind of expectation, it's the one knock against Jon Hamm. Sadly, it's a MAJOR knock against Jon Hamm.
Odds: 3 to 1
Arguments for:
- He shaved his beard
- He is a Megastar. If you ask anyone around the world to name a Megastar off the top of their head, it would likely be Brad Pitt.
- The Family Brange. Toting around his children. The MiniVan eats that sh-t up
- The Jolie has a film coming out soon. Having her partner named SMA wouldn't hurt her box office. Giving him the title gets HER too. People Magazine may not be able to resist the one-two Brange cover gift.
- Pitt has not been named SMA since 2000. He has not owned the crown since he hooked up with Angelina Jolie. Securing it means victory for them. That they have finally conquered Aniston. That they have finally moved beyond the triangle. They may claim that they don't care about this, oh but of course they do.
- Look, if it were any other year, if it were 26 or 27, Brad would never be at the top of the list of consideration. But as I keep saying, 25 is a huge milestone. And over the last two decades, no other man has personified Global Sex Symbol quite like Brad Pitt. Not for this stretch of time. Even if you're onside with Jennifer Aniston, you cannot deny his brand. This choice isn't simply a choice for one year, this choice is the ambassador for what the entire Sexiest Man Alive institution has become. And no one better represents the feature on the 25th anniversary of People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive. Also, since he was the first two time winner, it's only fitting that he becomes the first three time winner too.
Arguments against:
- Much of People Magazine's MiniVan demographic still cannot forgive the fact that he left their best friend, especially when she's still bitter and alone.
- The 25th anniversary issue of the SMA might come with some conditions. The interview, the pictures, the kind of access Pitt has been reluctant to give. Though the Brange would covet the title, they may not covet it enough to have to come down from their golden cloud and kowtow to the people.
- Is it time for someone new? The 25th milestone may be a perfect time to honour a perennial favourite, but you could argue it's also the best time to hail a new one.
Odds: 3 to 1
This will be a tight fight. Again, if I'm picking as Lainey, I'm picking Jon Hamm. But if I'm picking as a guardian of the magazine's most enduring Institution, with a quarter of a century to commemorate (and you have to believe, even though they do some dumbass things over there at People Magazine, that they are truly feeling the significance of this selection), how can you deny a heavyweight like Brad Pitt for the 25th anniversary? In another 25 years, when they open up the archives, you want a face to next to that number, and you want to be able to say, Oh yeah, of course... Brad Pitt.
Do you hate me?
Are you mad at me?
Are we fighting?
Let's fight about this tomorrow during the Weekly LiveBlog. Sarah from Cinesnark will probably be mad at me too.
Photos from Wenn.com


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Risaralda in English
From Wikipaisa
Risaralda is a department of the Republic of Colombia. It is located in the western central region of the country and part of the Paisa Region. Its capital is Pereira. It was divided from the department of Caldas in 1966. Risaralda is very well known for the high quality of its coffee, and a booming industry: clothes, food, trading of goods and services.
The territory is very mountainous and has many kinds of climate in a very small area. Its proximity to harbours like Buenaventura on the Pacific Ocean and to the biggest cities in Colombia – Bogotá, Cali, Medellín – makes it a fast growing economic centre.
- Apia
- Balboa
- Belén de Umbría
- Dosquebradas
- Guatica
- La Celia
- La Virginia
- Marsella
- Mistrato
- Pereira
- Pueblo Rico
- Quinchía
- Santa Rosa de Cabal
- Santuario


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Main navigation | Main content
|From a telescope at the South Pole, researchers find concrete evidence of the early universe's incredible expansion
|Steffen Richter, Harvard University
Right after its birth in the Big Bang, the infant universe threw the mother of all tantrums. In an instant it ballooned from smaller than an atomic nucleus to something much larger than its currently observable size. (Yes, the universe is bigger than we can currently observe.)
This infinitesimally short period of expansion is called the inflation epoch, and it was rough. Inflation generated all kinds of particles and perturbations, including gravitational waves, which made gigantic ripples in the very fabric of space.
Or so the theory of inflation goes. But there has been scant hard evidence to bolster it. Until now.
A team of physicists, led by the University of Minnesota's Clem Pryke along with colleagues from Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech, has just confirmed a key piece of the theory. Inflation predicts that gravitational waves will have left a certain "signature" on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation—a form of light that fills the sky and has been called "the afterglow of the Big Bang."
Working with the BICEP2 telescope at the National Science Foundation's South Pole Station, the researchers detected the clear imprint of gravitational waves in the CMB.
"It's the smoking gun for inflation," says Pryke, an associate professor of physics. "There's no other explanation for the gravitational waves [whose imprint] we're seeing."
A polarizing influence
The universe began with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Inflation followed immediately, and went incredibly fast: It began somewhere around 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang and was over after another 10-32 seconds or so had passed. It produced high-amplitude gravitational waves, which propagated through the newly expanded universe.
About 380,000 years later, the universe had cooled enough for the first true atoms to condense, opening up a path for light to travel freely. That first light persists today as the CMB, which has been stretched to microwave wavelengths by the universe's continued expansion.
As the CMB light was scattering for the last time, the presence of the gravitational waves imprinted a special curling pattern of polarization on the CMB. This observed curling pattern in the CMB, called B mode polarization, was not only a smoking gun for gravitational waves and the inflation theory, but unexpectedly strong.
"We were looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar," says Pryke.
Another triumph for Einstein
The existence of gravitational waves is predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. The waves have never before been observed, but the BICEP2 finding means general relativity has passed another test, says Pryke.
It also brings physics closer to its holy grail: a theory of everything (TOE) that describes the four fundamental forces of nature within a single framework. Many physicists believe that in a period previous to inflation, known as the Planck epoch, the universe was unimaginably small, dense, and hot and only one force existed. But it split into four, which became electromagnetism, two forces that govern the behavior of the atomic nucleus, and gravity. Currently, quantum mechanics describes the first three, but theorists have been unable to bring gravity into the fold.
In observing the handiwork of gravitational waves through BICEP2, however, physicists are looking into gravity's behavior during a window of time that is "as close as we will ever get" to the Planck epoch, Pryke says.
"This is a direct insight into physics at the Planck scale, where energies were very high and all the forces were unified," he explains. "The discovery has implications for those trying to formulate [a unified theory that describes all the forces]. Observing B modes could be the only experimental evidence we'll ever get, because we'll never be able to build a machine that can recreate the energy of the Planck epoch."
The inflation theory was first proposed by American physicist Alan Guth in 1980. Besides Pryke, principal investigators for the BICEP2 collaboration are John Kovac at Harvard/CfA, Jamie Bock at Caltech, and Chao-Lin Kuo at Stanford/SLAC.
Story by Deane Morrison. Contact the writer at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Reposted from the University of Minnesota home page.


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The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 19, No. 1 June 1992
PATTI A. MILLS, EDITOR Indiana State University
Dale L. Flesher, The Institute of Internal Auditors: 50 Years of Progress Through Sharing (The Institute of Internal Auditors, 1991, 180 pp.; members, $15; nonmembers, $20).
Reviewed by Frank E. Ryerson III University of Montevallo
This book is a history of the Institute of Internal Auditors and serves to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Institute's founding in 1941. The author, Dale Flesher, does an admirable job of describing the individuals, events and activities that were instrumental in fostering the growth of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) from an initial group of 24 businessmen to an international organization with over 42,000 members.
The book consists of ten chapters, each of which provides a chronological discussion of a major IIA-related topic area. These self-contained histories provide for easy reference to spe-cific topics and allow for continuity of exposition within each area. Also, in order to provide an overall perspective on the development of the IIA, the book concludes with a chronologi-cal time line which integrates the major events and activities recounted in previous chapters.
The Introduction chapter describes how a number of major changes in the internal auditing environment has both ex-panded and enhanced the role of the internal auditor over time. The history of the IIA is incorporated into this broader discus-sion of the profession's development and is attributed a major role in its evolution. In fact, Flesher states that "... for the past 50 years the history of internal auditing has been synonymous with the history of the IIA" [p. 15]. Support for this assertion is provided in the remaining chapters of the book.
Chapters Two and Three discuss the leading role the IIA has played in promoting the emerging professionalism of the inter-nal auditor. This historical review includes descriptions of such


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The corkscrew was shaped like a girl in a pleated frock, of the sort that Lara knew from childhood photographs of her mother, a short, light-green summer dress. Only the red collar didn't really fit; it should have been embroidered tulle, and white. Lara could see the pictures—big family get-togethers in a garden in the north of Italy, full of people she didn't know. Even her mother didn't know all their names. "That man was a neighbor—what was his name again? And aren't those my mother's cousin Alberto's children? Graziella, Alfina, and what was the little one called? Antonio? Tonino?" The colors were faded, which made them somehow more garish. It was as though the photographs had captured the sun, the sun of childhood, pale and ever-present. Thereafter the family had fallen apart, and people had gone their separate ways. When Lara had visited Italy with her parents, there hadn't been any more big reunions, only afternoons spent in darkened homes with old people who smelled funny and served dry cookies and big plastic bottles of lukewarm Fanta.
The grip on the corkscrew was the girl's head. She had a pageboy cut and a fixed smile. Lara looked at the price tag. She and Simon already had a corkscrew, and they hardly ever drank wine. She hesitated for a long time, while the shop woman eyed her doubtfully, then she pulled herself together and took the corkscrew to the register. "Is it a gift?" the woman asked, unpicking the price tag and dabbing it on the back of her hand. "No." Lara shook her head. "No need to wrap it—I'll take it like that." She looked at her watch. The bus wouldn't leave for another half hour.
Lara worked at the Raiffeisen Bank, and she got off work before Simon, but she liked to wait for him so that they could travel home together. Usually, she'd sit in the bus shelter, smoke a cigarette, and browse through the free paper. Suddenly she'd become aware of Simon standing in front of her, smiling. She'd jump up and kiss him on the lips, and he'd make a remark about her awful habit. Sometimes he meant it; sometimes he was just being flippant. The last few days it had been so cold that she'd skipped her cherished after-work cigarette and got straight on the bus, which was usually waiting there when she got to the station. Simon worked in a hi-fi store. After it closed, he needed to tidy things away and, when the boss wasn't there, shut down the register. The bus drivers knew him and they waited when they saw him running around the corner.
"I had to stay and do the till," he said breathlessly, dropping onto the seat beside Lara and kissing her on the lips. "Have you been smoking again?" They were sitting right at the back; the row with three seats together was their favorite. It wasn't too bright there, and the noise of the engine muffled their whispering.
Lara hadn't taken off her coat, but still she could feel Simon's shoulder against hers. He told her about his day—picky customers and new equipment, an argument with the owner. Lara loved these rides with him, especially in winter, when it was already dark outside—the half hour up and over the ridge, through little villages, past meadows with old apple orchards and plowland. The bus radio was playing a country-music song. "That was 'Sweet Dreams,' " the presenter said, "by Reba McEntire, to whom we are devoting the entire show today." Lara kissed Simon and rested her head on his shoulder.
They had been living together for just over four months, in a little one-bedroom apartment above the train-station restaurant, not far from the lake. It wasn't ideal, but Simon had wanted to stay in the village where he grew up, and even though there wasn't much going on there, it had proved difficult to find any place at all. The building was old and run down; the staircase was a mess, with an old freezer unit partially blocking the way, and stacks of white plastic chairs for the beer garden, empty cardboard boxes, and other junk stored on the landing. On the second floor, there were a couple of rooms for guests, which were rarely occupied, and up on the third was their apartment and two studios. One of these was empty; in the other lived Danica, a young Serbian woman who waited tables in the restaurant.
When Lara and Simon had first gone to look at the apartment, she hadn't been able to envisage them living there at all. But after they'd been to look at a few other places, all much more expensive, they'd gone back to it. Before they moved in, they repainted the walls: the landlady chipped in with paint and brushes and gave them a free hand with the decoration. They spent whole evenings talking about color schemes, but in the end they just painted everything white. The rooms looked cozier right away, and Lara was happy. It was a good time to leave home, even though she got on well with her parents. She was ready to take control of her life, to buy things, to move out.
Lara was twenty-one, Simon three years older. He'd had one girlfriend before Lara, but they hadn't lived together. "It wasn't anything serious," he'd say if Lara asked. He had also lived with his parents before moving in with Lara, and still needed to get used to the fact that clothes didn't wash themselves and the fridge didn't automatically refill itself. But he, too, seemed to get a kick out of going shopping together on the weekends and deciding what they would cook today and tomorrow and the next day. "Do we need milk?" "You know, the coffee's almost gone." "We're out of garbage bags." Sentences like that had an unexpected charm, and a full shopping cart was like an emblem of the fulfilled life that lay before them. When Simon wheeled it into the underground parking garage, with Lara at his side, she felt a deep pride and a curious satisfaction at being grown up and independent.
They had been to IKEA a couple of times, and bought a mattress and a box spring and various bits and pieces for the bathroom and the kitchen—lamps and tablecloths and silverware. Simon's parents had given them an old table and four chairs. For a wardrobe, they had a set of cheap shelves, for which Lara had sewed a red curtain. She loved these little tasks, making cushion covers, installing a new toilet seat and a showerhead, putting up posters. Simon would watch her and enjoy it with her. The electrical things were his department.
Every week, there was something new, a barely used coffee machine that Lara had found on eBay, a wooden crate for their shoes, a whole stack of yellow bath towels that were on sale. Simon rarely got involved. At most, he would say, "Do we really need this?" Or, "How much did you pay for that?" "It's a mistake to economize on quality—these towels will last us forever," Lara told him. "Forever is a long time," Simon answered.
He hadn't brought much into their household; the rented van they'd driven first to his parents' house, then to hers, was barely a quarter full of his boxes of clothes, CDs, and old schoolbooks. Most of the space was taken up by his stereo equipment, his gigantic loudspeakers, and his computer. They bought a TV on an installment plan, a showroom model that Simon's boss gave them a good price on.
"How do you like this?" Lara asked, producing the corkscrew from her bag on the empty seat next to her. Simon took it and played with it, saying nothing. He furrowed his brow and pulled on the screw, and the girl raised her arms. "A ballet dancer," he said. "No," Lara said. "Just a girl. Do we even have any wine?" "That bottle from your parents," Simon said. He was still playing with the thing, pulling the handles up and down, causing the girl to wave her hands, as if cheering or calling for help. "Was it expensive?" "We drank that when Hanni and Martin came over," Lara said. "Don't you remember?"
The restaurant below their apartment was a bit seedy. Lara and Simon never went there, even though their landlady was the manager. If they ate out anywhere, it was at a place a hundred yards up the road, which did stuffed chicken breasts. They rarely went to the lakeside disco where they'd met. During the week, they went to bed early, and if they felt like going out dancing on the weekend they went into the city, where there were better clubs and not everyone knew them.
The bus stopped outside the station, and the driver wished everyone a nice evening over the P.A. The passengers got off, said a word or two in parting, and went their separate ways. Lara knew most of them, if only by sight. But there was one man she hadn't seen before. He had turned around once or twice during the trip and looked at her. When the driver announced the last stop, he had got up right away and gone to the door, even though the bus was stopping anyway. While the bus took its last few turns, the man stood in front of Lara. He looked about forty, and with his long black coat he didn't really fit in. As she was studying him, their eyes met. The man seemed quiet, almost indifferent, but in his eyes Lara saw an attentiveness and a kind of hunger that she found a little disagreeable, but at the same time provocative. She turned to Simon, kissed him, and asked, "Will you come to the market with me tomorrow during your lunch break?" She could tell that her voice sounded artificial and even a bit loud, but she felt she had to say something. The man in the black coat was the first to get off the bus. Lara saw him walk back in the direction of the main street. After a few steps, he turned around quickly, as though to see whether she was following him, and their eyes met once again. "Do you know him?" Simon asked. Lara shook her head. "His face looks familiar to me, for some reason."
Lara locked the door behind her and read, as she did every evening, the handwritten sign that hung in the foyer. "PLEASE DON'T THROW BREAD AWAY." Beside the door was an old cardboard box filled to the top with stale bread. Lara wondered what her landlady planned to do with it. From the restaurant came the sounds of music and loud laughter. When folk bands played there on Fridays, Lara and Simon could hear the racket up in their apartment. Even worse were the toilet smells in the hallway and the smoke that wended its way up the stairs. Simon had been down to complain a couple of times, but the landlady just said that if they were so bothered by the smell they should open a few windows.
"Are you hungry?" Lara asked. "I wouldn't mind a hot bath before dinner. I'm chilled to the bone." The half hour in the bus hadn't been enough to warm her up. "I bought some fresh ravioli—they take only three minutes," she added. "I had a late lunch," Simon said. "I'm not hungry yet." They were standing together in the kitchen, and Lara was putting the groceries away. She held up the corkscrew. "Do you like the color?" "Green," Simon said, and Lara thought about the faded colors of the Italian photos again. "It was forty-five francs," she said. "Do you think that's too much?" Simon shrugged. "You could always get a bottle of wine from the restaurant while I'm in the bath," Lara said, "and then we can initiate the corkscrew."
She went to the bathroom, ran the tub, and got undressed. The mirror misted over with condensation, and the smell of pine needles filled the air. She turned off the water, and the apartment seemed suddenly very quiet. Then she heard footsteps and Simon's voice through the half-open door. He said, "I'm just going downstairs for the bottle of wine." "I thought you'd gone already," Lara said, and she poked her head around the door, and he kissed her and tried to push the door open, but she held it steady. They kissed again. "See you in a minute," Lara said. It was odd—she still felt a little embarrassed in front of him. When they went to bed, she would change in the bathroom and slip under the sheet next to him in her nightie. She'd wait impatiently for him to slide across to her, but she never dreamed of taking the initiative.
Before they'd moved in together, it had all been pretty complicated. She'd introduced Simon to her parents fairly early on, and they'd liked him, but he had never spent the night under their roof. Lara would have felt ashamed of sleeping with him in her childhood bedroom, and she would have been scared of her parents walking in on them or hearing them, even though they weren't noisy in bed. When they had slept together, it was at Simon's parents' house. Lara had always felt tense, and had started at the smallest sound. In the summer, they'd done it in the forest a couple of times, but that was uncomfortable, and Lara had been just as nervous. She had yet to get used to their new freedom; even now, she was scared that someone would see them or hear them. Sometimes, when Simon was on top of her, she pulled the covers up over his head. When he tried to push them down, she held on to them and said, "I'll get cold."
She basked in the warm water, and thought about what still had to be done in the apartment, what they were still missing. She would have liked a bedside table, but it wouldn't make much sense to buy one, since they didn't even have a bed frame. They had seen a colonial-style bed in a furniture store, a sort of fourposter in poplar, with white tulle curtains. "A dream," a salesman, who had approached them and was looking at them expectantly, said. That bed came with fitted tables, and a wardrobe as well. But for the moment it was more than they could afford, and Lara wasn't sure if Simon liked it, or if it wasn't a bit girlie for him. When they'd gone to see the beds at IKEA, Simon's only question each time had been "Is it strong? Will it hold up?" He probably hadn't meant it like that, but Lara had still felt embarrassed in front of the salesman. "We don't need to buy everything at once," she'd said. So now they had a mattress and a box spring on the floor.
After twenty minutes, she got out of the bath and pulled the plug. She dried herself on one of the big yellow bath towels. It wasn't actually a color she liked, that slightly off, mustardy yellow. But you couldn't argue about the quality—the quality was excellent. She had put the towels through the wash a couple of times, and they still felt brand new. Lara remembered what Simon had said: "Forever is a long time." Presumably, the towels would outlast their relationship, she thought, and that gave her a shock. She loved Simon, and he loved her, but was there any guarantee that he would still love her in five or ten years' time? Her notions of the future were both very precise and very vague. She wanted children and a home, and she wanted to go on working part time once the children were there. In a few years, she would get her promotion, and maybe one day she would become branch manager. But all that seemed very far off, a different life.
Sometimes she asked herself if Simon had the same sort of dreams that she had. It made her suspicious when he said, "Let's just wait and see—que sera sera. We're still young." In fact, he still felt as strange to her as this apartment, which was only slowly turning into home. She never knew exactly what he wanted; he didn't talk about himself much. It was only when he was with his friends that he seemed perfectly natural and relaxed.
She wrapped the towel around her, rinsed her hair in the sink, and put it up. Suddenly she felt a longing for Simon; she wanted to throw her arms around him, lie in bed with him, and press herself against him. She went to the kitchen, but he wasn't there. "Simon," she called, and went into the living room and then the bedroom. "Simon?"
He was still down in the restaurant, she told herself. He was sure to be back any moment. She sat at the table and leafed through the free paper she had picked up at the bus station. An ex-Miss Switzerland wanted to climb Kilimanjaro to raise money for a children's cancer hospital; Prince William had worn a toupee for a portrait photographer, or so, at least, the newspaper claimed; an American had been put to death for a murder he had committed twenty-five years ago. Under the headline "GRUESOME FIND ON LAKE," there was a story about a trout fisherman who had stumbled upon a dead body in the water just offshore. The policemen who had pulled the body in were quoted as saying that the dead man had been missing for a couple of months. Presumably it was suicide, though accidental death was also a possibility. The water temperature was less than forty degrees: if you fell in you wouldn't last more than a few minutes.
Water dripped from Lara's hair onto the picture of the marina where the body had been found. With a shudder, she pushed the newspaper away. She thought about that man being in the lake only a few hundred yards away, while she and Simon were moving in, or eating their supper, or making love. She felt cold in her towel. There was only a gas heater in the apartment, and the windows were not exactly insulated. Lara went into the kitchen and put on the water for the ravioli. She took two plates from the cupboard and a couple of forks off the draining board, and scrubbed at a stain on one of the counters, but it wouldn't budge. The kitchen was from the seventies, and you could scrub away at it as much as you liked, but it never got completely clean. Lara went to the bathroom, blow-dried her hair, and put on some clothes.
She crept down the creaking staircase. She didn't turn on the landing light—she didn't want to be seen. The music had stopped, and the voices had quieted down, too.
She had almost reached the bottom when the door to the bar opened, and she saw the backlit silhouette of an enormous man. At the same moment, the light turned on in the hallway. The man had a flushed complexion. He pulled the door shut behind him and passed her without a word, on his way to the men's room, as if he hadn't seen her. The landlady's voice was loud and distinct. "He didn't recognize him right away," she was saying, "because the man was face down. In summer he probably would have bobbed up sooner." Lara pushed open the door to the bar and stepped inside.
There were half a dozen men at the bar and the tables, and Lara was alarmed because they all seemed to be looking at her, but then she realized that their attention was on the landlady, behind the bar. She was talking about something else now. "They ought to poison that son of a bitch," she said, "to teach him what it feels like. Those poor dogs." Lara had seen the tabloid headline: "ANIMAL HATER STRIKES AGAIN." Simon was standing on one of the benches along the wall, his head obscured by an enormous TV mounted on the ceiling. Right behind him and looking up at him stood Danica, the waitress. Even though they were neighbors, Lara had run into her only once or twice on the stairs. Sometimes she heard her footsteps on the landing late at night, but there was never any sound from her studio. Danica had come to Switzerland from Serbia with her parents when she was little, she'd told Lara and Simon the first time they met. She hadn't managed to find an apprenticeship, even though she had good grades. "Do you think she's attractive?" Lara had asked Simon later. "Other women don't interest me," he'd replied. "But surely you've got an opinion?" "I don't know," he said. "I think she's got bedroom eyes," Lara said, and Simon laughed and kissed her.
Simon seemed to be trying to fix the TV. After a while, he jumped off the bench and said something to Danica. She smiled and switched the TV on, and together they looked at the screen, which was showing a grainy picture of a downhill skier. Simon spotted Lara and went over to her. "A faulty connection," he said, and, when she looked at him in confusion, "The TV's on the blink." He turned to the landlady and said that the antenna wire was bent, but he could bring her a new one tomorrow. "Isn't it practical having a workman in the house?" the landlady said. "What will you have to drink? A glass of red?" "I was going to buy a bottle of wine," Simon said. "It's on the house," the landlady said. "And the young lady?" Simon looked at Lara, and then he said, "I'd rather have a beer," and, to Lara, "Are you hungry?" "Sit down, the pair of you," the landlady said, dunking a glass in murky dishwater and pouring a large beer.
There wasn't a free table, so Simon sat down opposite an old man who seemed to have had a few already. Lara slid onto the bench next to Simon. "She asked me if I'd take a look at the TV," he said half apologetically. "A faulty connection." "I thought you weren't coming back," Lara said. She sounded reproachful, which she didn't mean to be. She had promised herself that she wouldn't be clingy with Simon. He had just wanted to help out. She was sorry she'd come down. If she'd stayed upstairs, he surely wouldn't have accepted the landlady's offer, and would have come back up. Danica stepped over to the table, bringing Simon's beer and a glass of wine for Lara. The landlady and the men were still talking about the poisoned dogs, and what the authorities should do to the guilty party if they caught him. The drunk at their table said under his breath that he could think of a couple of dogs he wouldn't mind poisoning. Lara wasn't sure if the remark was intended for them, and she didn't reply. She felt her hair, which was still a little damp.
For no obvious reason, the drunk started talking about a cruise he'd gone on almost twenty years ago, on the Black Sea. It had been dull—those cruises were pretty uneventful. "I've been to the Crimea, to Sevastopol, where the Russians have a navy base and submarines. That was an experience—that was worth it," he said. Simon didn't seem to be listening; he drank his beer and looked up at the TV, where a different skier was now on the slope. From the speaker came the sound of cowbells and the rhythmic shouts of supporters. Lara wasn't sure where the Black Sea was.
Danica appeared at their table, and filled up Lara's glass before she was able to say no, thank you. Now she was sitting there foolishly with her hand over the full glass. She hadn't had anything to eat since lunchtime, and she could feel the alcohol going to her head. "Will you have another beer?" Danica asked. Simon glanced quickly over at Lara, as though he needed her permission. Then he said, "Yes, sure," and half got up. "Will you excuse me? I'll be back in a minute." Lara let him out. No sooner had she sat down again than the drunk asked if she was from the area—he hadn't seen her before. She felt ill at ease in the bar, threatened by the loud landlady and the drunken men who were ogling her. "I grew up in Kreuzlingen," she said. The man held out his hand and said that his name was Manfred. She shook his hand and said, "Lara." " 'Dr. Zhivago,' " he said. "That was a nice film. With Omar Sharif, and . . . who was she again?" "Julie Christie," Lara said. "In the streetcar." The drunk smiled. "I have a sister in Kreuzlingen. Have you ever been to Russia?" "No," Lara said.
She wanted to say something else—she would feel safer if she were talking—but she couldn't think of anything. "Where is the Black Sea again?" she asked finally. "If you're coming from the Mediterranean, you pass Istanbul and go through the Bosphorus, then you're in the Black Sea. The south shore is Turkey, and in the north are Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia." "Have you been to all those places?" Lara asked. "I went on that cruise," Manfred said. "That's where I met my wife. She's Ukrainian. She was working on the ship. But that didn't work out." Danica came back and asked if they wanted anything. Both shook their heads. When she was gone, Manfred said in a whisper, "I tell you, those women from the East," and then he laid his finger across his lips.
Lara was relieved when Simon finally returned. He was holding a dirty white cable in one hand. He had a quick word with the landlady, and then he climbed up on the bench again and switched the cables. For a moment, there was just a streaky gray on the screen, then the picture suddenly came clear, and the sound seemed even louder than before to Lara. Simon punched through a few channels on the remote, probably to check that the reception was uniformly good. There was a brief glimpse of two men sitting facing each other. Lara was almost sure that one of them was the man in the black coat, from the bus. But the scene disappeared immediately, to be replaced by a woman arguing with a little girl, and then a group of soldiers sneaking through a forest, and then back to the skiing. Simon returned to the table. "I just remembered I had an old cable lying around," he said, and smiled in satisfaction. "Shall we go?" Lara said, getting to her feet.
The landlady didn't want any money for the bottle of wine. "It's in return for the cable," she said, giving Lara and Simon her hand, which felt soft and a bit soapy from the washing up. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," one of the men called after them as they left the bar, and everyone laughed.
The water was boiling violently; half of it had evaporated already, leaving a white chalky line at the top of the saucepan. Lara quickly turned off the gas. "Never, ever, leave the stove on when you go out, not even for a second," Simon said. As if Lara didn't know that. "It's not my fault," she said. "I thought you'd be back right away." She felt like crying. "I didn't mean it like that," Simon said, and kissed her. "Nothing happened." Lara turned away and picked up the corkscrew. Simon watched alertly as she took the plastic seal off the bottle. She had to overcome her own resistance to place her thumb over the girl's face and apply enough strength to insert the screw into the cork. She looked Simon in the eye, let him see how furious she was. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know, it's my fault." She set down the bottle and said, as if in conciliation, "You do it." Simon put on a rather ceremonious expression, as though God knows what surprise was in store, and slowly pushed down on the girl's arms. With a bright popping sound, the cork came out of the bottle.
Simon looked at Lara with a grin. She threw her arms around him and started to kiss him, went on repeatedly kissing him, and tried to undo the buttons on his shirt.
Simon, not looking where he was putting it, set the corkscrew down, and with their mouths glued together they undressed each other and let their clothes drop to the floor. Simon almost fell over as he wriggled out of his tight jeans—he was only just able to catch himself on Lara, who was impatiently tugging at the hooks on her bra. When they were both naked, Lara lay down on the coconut matting they had bought at IKEA, and Simon knelt between her legs. He tried to enter her, but couldn't. "Wouldn't you rather go to the bed?" he asked. "Wait," Lara said, and she disappeared into the living room and came back with one of the sofa cushions. She lay down again and pushed the cushion under her. The matting was rough, and she could feel it scratching her back, but she didn't care. Soon Simon rolled off her and lay next to her, and she understood that he had come.
She was still aroused, and stroked him until he was hard again. This time she sat on top of him. Simon didn't seem very focussed, but she didn't care. She rode him till she could no longer feel the burning in her knees, and sensed the blood rushing to her face. She shut her eyes and moved more and more vigorously. It was as though it were all happening inside her head, as though all her sensations were combining to form one overwhelming feeling. Then she heard herself shout, and she dropped panting onto Simon, her head beside his, not daring to look him in the eye. She lay like that until her breathing came more evenly and she could feel her body again, the pain in her knees and the chill on her back. She sat up. Simon looked at her in astonishment, and asked with a smile, "Did the earth move for you, then?" She laid a finger across his mouth. Her face grew very earnest, and she said, "If you ever stop loving me, I want you to promise to tell me." "But I do love you," Simon protested. "I mean, because you never know what will happen," Lara said. "And now I have to put something on, or I'll catch cold."
In the bathroom, she saw that the pattern of the coconut matting was imprinted across her back, and that her knees were scraped open. She thought of taking a shower, but for now she just put on a fresh pair of panties and pulled on her dressing gown. When she went back to the kitchen, Simon had got dressed, put fresh water on to boil, and laid the table. He poured two glasses of wine and passed her one, and they toasted each other. "Here's to us." The wine was awful.
Lara didn't sit facing Simon as she usually did but beside him, and she kept touching him during the meal, grazing his arm or stroking his neck and back. After they'd finished eating, they sat for a long time talking. Lara was bubbly; she spoke faster and more volubly than usual. "I think I must be a bit drunk," she said. "I'd better look out then, hadn't I?" Simon said with a smile. "Shall we go to bed?"
He went to the bathroom and came back in pajamas. Lara didn't feel like brushing her teeth. She just took off her dressing gown and slid into bed with Simon. He lay on his back and she pressed herself against him, slipping her hand under his pajama top and stroking his chest. "Are you tired?" she asked. "Yes," Simon said, and with that he turned onto his side and soon his breathing was calm and even. Lara didn't feel at all tired. After lying there awake for a while, she got up and made herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. Then she went to the living room and turned on the TV. She flipped her way through the programs. It was mostly films and talk shows. Lara stopped for a moment at one station with phone-sex ads, and watched the women rubbing their breasts and moaning "Call me, call me." For once, she didn't feel disgusted; on the contrary, she felt a kind of sympathy or solidarity for the women, which surprised her. She clicked onward, and suddenly there was the man from the bus again. It was the local channel, which recycled its programs every hour. The studio was in the old town, not far away. Lara knew the host by sight. He had been a teacher at Simon's school.
She listened for a while before it dawned on her that the guest on the show was a writer. She'd never heard his name before. The host's questions were often longer than the man's short, factual replies. Again, Lara was aware of his alert look, which had caught her attention on the bus. Asked where he got the ideas for his stories, he said that he found them on the street. Only today, on the bus to the studio, he added, he'd seen this young couple, two perfectly ordinary young people, sitting together and talking terribly earnestly. "They reminded me of my youth, of a woman I wanted to marry and have kids with," he said. "Then something got in the way. But I've never felt so sure of anything as I did then, before I really knew the first thing about living."
He imagined that the couple had only just moved in together; they were still furnishing their apartment and buying things for it and maybe, with slight astonishment, contemplating the years that lay ahead of them, asking themselves whether their relationship would last. "It was that blissful but slightly anxious moment of starting out that interested me," the writer said. "Maybe I'll write a story about it." "And how will the story end?" the host asked. The writer shrugged. "I won't know that until I've finished it," he said.
He talked about how young couples sometimes resembled very old couples, perhaps because both had to deal with uncertainty. The host asked if it wasn't tricky to write from life. The writer shook his head. He wouldn't be painting a portrait of these two individuals. They had given him an idea for something, but they had nothing to do with the people he'd write about in his story. In actual fact, they weren't a couple at all, he said. They'd got off at two different stops and kissed goodbye on the cheek. Lara heard the last train pull in. Quarter to one. She went up to the window and saw the train standing there, with no one getting on or off. After a while, it silently pulled away. The writer would have gone home long ago, even as he continued to speak on the TV. For a month, the channel would keep replaying this conversation with him, in an endless loop, until he himself had become just as imaginary a figure as Lara or Simon. ♦
(Translated, from the German, by Michael Hofmann.)


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Radioactive contamination? - (Oct/06/2010 )
I think I'm being a little radiophobic right now, but I wanted to get your opinion on something:
The other day the radiation officer changed our radiation badges and as she did so, she brushed up against my sleeve with her hand. For some reason I got it into my mind that her hand could possibly be contaminated with radiation (perhaps from a badge that had something spilled on it) and I ended up washing off my sleeve twice at work. I also used a Geiger counter to check myself and my bench to make sure there was no contamination--there wasn't any, but I forgot to check the place where she touched me. Do you think there's anything to worry about? I figure if there were any contamination the radiation badges would come back crazy-positive, but since I don't really know anything about it, I figured I should ask...
I don't think you really need to worry about the radiation officer. These people are highly trained and aware of how to handle and work with radiation safely. You are correct that if a badge gets radiation spilled on it, it will come back with extremely high readings. I worry much more about the other people in my lab working with radiation and their competence. Many times I find contamination of the bench and pipettes after a certain person in my lab has done anything with radiation. You have a better chance of getting exposed to radiation contamination by these people than the safety officer.
I agree, you don't have to worry about it. You used the Geiger counter to check and was ok, so.... and don't worry for the place she touched, she knew what to do sure.
ALways use the geiger!
So I know I shouldn't be too worried about it, but I still haven't washed my shirt--if I did have something radioactive on my shirt and I washed it through the machine, should all of my clothes come back with detectable levels of radiation/would I be able to tell if there were something nasty on me?


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Distressed Photo Overlay Download
Create a vintage, weathered look to your photos for a fun, festive touch for Halloween scrapbook layouts by downloading and adding a photo overlay like this one.
To create this look:
1. Download this overlay from ErinInk. Note: This is a PNG file, so you'll need Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to use it.
2. Open your photo and the overlay in Photoshop Elements.
3. Place your photo on top of the overlay, and clip the photo to the overlay (Control + G for PC; Command + G for Mac).
4. While on the photo layer, select a blending mode from the drop down menu (Erin Clayton chose Hard Light for this example).
5. Flatten and save your new image.
For more tricks to make or take spooky photos, see the October 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine.
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Young Lyric aka Lyrikkal (10-Year-Old Female Rapper) - Look At Me Now Remix (Over Chris Brown's Track)
"10-year old little girl from H-Town givin em the bizness on Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now" track.. "
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Aspen schools asking voters for tax increase
ASPEN, Colo. (AP) – The Aspen School District is asking voters to approve a property tax increase of $1.2 million a year to help close a budget shortfall.
The school board voted unanimously on Tuesday to put the issue on the ballot this fall.
School officials say the increase would amount to a $14 a year more for a residence valued at $500,000 and $56 on a residence valued at $2 million.
Officials say the tax increase would help buffer the school district against potential cuts in state funding and against three statewide measures on the ballot in November that would reduce local government's fees and tax revenue and restrict their ability to borrow.
The increase would be permanent.
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The federal budget cuts mandated to begin Friday after the White House and Congress failed to compromise on the issue could spell trouble for two important endeavors in Southwest Florida: tourism and job creation.
So far, one of the only visible effects was the cancellation of a March 9 concert by the U.S. Coast Guard Band at the Bradenton Riverwalk Park.
Depending on how the political divide over the federal budget and national debt plays out, there could be much broader ramifications for this region.
Furloughs and planned cutbacks at two agencies present at every commercial airport in the nation — the Transportation Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration — are a potential threat to Florida's top-ranked tourism industry. Fewer personnel could mean delays for both flights and travelers. International visitors could be discouraged from coming back.
Meanwhile, Suncoast Workforce, the primary job assistance agency in the Sarasota-Bradenton metropolitan area, relies almost solely on federal funding for its work.
With the so-called sequestration now in force, the federal government has effectively been ordered by Congress to cut spending by $85 billion between now and the end of September.
Those cuts could have a disproportionately bad effect on Florida's economy, said Jerry Parrish, chief economist for Florida TaxWatch.
"You're an international visitor. Instead of waiting an hour to get through customs, now you're going to wait two and a half? If that is your welcome to Florida, how likely are you to come back?" Parrish said.
The slowdown also could curb traffic at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport because of a trickle-down effect from larger airports, said consultant Michael Boyd, who counts the regional airport among his clients.
"Within the next six weeks, it could get very, very bad," Boyd said. "It is cheap politics, and Sarasota is going to take a hit."
Assuming TSA and Customs workers are furloughed, federal laws require giving them at least 30 days notice, so there will be a lag in impact.
The sequestration fight comes as Florida is celebrating its second consecutive year of record visitation: 89 million visitors in 2012. Manatee and Sarasota counties have likewise enjoyed a post-recession surge that has pushed up visitor populations and spending.
Though he does not see direct cuts coming for Sarasota-Bradenton, airport chief executive Frederick "Rick" Piccolo echoed Boyd's predictions.
"The negative news is that obviously it will cause delays at the bigger airports, and that is where our aircraft go," Piccolo said.
This region's other airport could see an even more tangible hit: Punta Gorda Airport's control tower is on a list of 100 operations that might be closed as the U.S. Department of Transportation copes with impending cuts. The tower is manned by Robinson Aviation Inc., a private company that is on contract with the FAA.
At stake could be the service provided by carrier Allegiant Air from Punta Gorda to 11 cities.
The earliest the tower would shut down is April 1, said James Parrish, the airport's assistant director. "We are still on the list," Parrish said.
While Allegiant has not provided any direct answers about cutbacks, Boyd, the airport consultant, noted that the Nevada-based carrier pulled out of Fort Collins, Colo., last summer because there was no air traffic control. "They were doing very well traffic-wise, but said, 'Because there is no tower, we are history.' "
The total cost for Punta Gorda's eight controllers is about $600,000 per year.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to cut $600,000 out of the FAA budget," Parrish said.
Finding a job, sprucing up a r�sum� or being retrained also could become more difficult under sequestration in Florida because the state's job apparatus relies heavily on federal funding.
Suncoast Workforce is one of 24 boards around the state that share a $279 million annual budget.
Operating through three offices and two satellites in Southwest Florida, Suncoast last year helped place 13,377 people in jobs, or an average of 1,115 per month.
Two state agencies, Workforce Florida and the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, act as funnels for the money, distributing it through complex formulas that weigh the jobless rate and the size of the communities served.
Like many state and local agencies with exposure to the budget cuts, the DEO has been in touch with its federal counterpart, the U.S. Department of Labor, but has received very little specific information yet, said spokesman James Miller.
He expects something next week.
At the Suncoast Workforce board, most of its $9.8 million annual budget comes from two federal sources, according to spokeswoman Sally Hill. The federal Workforce Investment Act pays for qualified applicants to win new workplace credentials from providers such as State College of Florida and the Sarasota County Technical Institute. Another federal program, the Wagner-Peyser Act, pays for Suncoast workshops covering r�sum� writing and interview skills.
But the lack of specifics from DEO has left the local board, which employs 100, in limbo.
"We do not have any details," Hill said.
Parrish, the Florida TaxWatch economist, predicts "they'll face a cut."
On Friday, one of the first tangible realities of federal budget-cutting hit the Bradenton Riverwalk, a $6.2 million project stretching a mile and a half along the Manatee River and linking public facilities, restaurants, a skate park and an amphitheater.
One of the big components of the project aimed at revitalizing Bradenton is live events, like a performance that had been slated for March 9 by U.S. Coast Guard Band.
A notification Friday ended that particular opportunity, with the Coast Guard saying it had to cancel to "preserve those areas that best support its critical assets."
"It would have been fun," said Johnette Isham, executive director of Realize Bradenton Inc., which had helped organize the event. "We have been working on this for seven or eight months."
Budget cuts threaten tourism, job hunters and Coast Guard band
The federal budget cuts mandated to begin Friday after the White House and Congress failed to compromise on the issue could spell trouble for two important endeavors in Southwest Florida: tourism and job creation.


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Prepositional phrases are not used to brighten up communications, they are very important descriptive devices.
'Grapefruit(s)' is the object of the preposition, not the 'subject'.
The noun comes after, not in front of, the preposition-- that is why it is called a 'pre'-'position'.
I can't imagine 'advance to' being a compound preposition (slide 8).
Eliminate the definition of 'verb' in slide 4: your topic is 'prepositions'.
Otherwise, good job and good luck.


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Free Windows Software For Your PC You Need to Download Immediately!
You have just treated your PC to a fresh Windows installation, which means your hard drive is now a blank slate. With so much free software to choose from, it might be easy for you to overlook some of the less flashy solutions, or neglect some of the programs you never even knew existed.
That is why we have compiled this list of free Windows software that every user should have. Of course, you can do without any of these, but you would be missing out. Here is our top list of free PC software.
Mozilla Firefox/Google Chrome
Leading the pack when it comes to internet browsers is Mozilla Firefox. Internet Explorer is a great browser, and has come a long way since its early days, but if you prefer something different, Mozilla Firefox is an obvious solution. It does so many things right, and it's easy to see why it is the most popular browser out there. Great speed, tabbed browsing, private browsing, and, another plus of it being the most popular, a whole slew of various add-ons and plug-ins which extend its basic arsenal, which is considerable even on its own.
But, we cannot mention Firefox without mentioning its biggest rival, Google Chrome. It offers pretty much the same stuff Firefox does: tabbed browsing, private browsing and a multitude of different extensions. If you use your Google account to log into Google Chrome, you will be able to sync browsing history, bookmarks and preferences, and have them on any device you are currently using. It's a runner-up in this popularity contest, but as far as speed, stability and features are concerned, it's a dead heat between these two giants. Also consider what information Google may be gathering about your online behaviour – if you are interested!
VLC Media Player
VLC is not just a great piece of software, but an awesome one. We swear by it. If you want to play multimedia on your computer, but want to avoid the slow, clunky behemoth that is Windows Media Player, VLC Media Player is a must-have. We have to admit, when it first appeared years ago, we foolishly dismissed it, judging the book by its cover. But, we were proven wrong quickly. Whenever there was a multimedia file that couldn't be read by any other player, VLC came to the rescue. Sometimes we joke it would be able to play our father's old records, or audio cassettes. As far as specific formats go, you name it: MP3, FLAC, DivX, Xvid, H.264, MKV, WMA, WMV, Real Video, MOV, ALAC and whole bunch of others. We cannot praise it enough.
OK, so we've got you covered on media playback and surfing. But, over time, your computer will turn into a junkyard, much like your room when you were still living with your parents, and you're going to need to clean that mess up. If you don't want to re-install Windows all over again, CCleaner is a tool you must have in your toolbox.
CCleaner will help you get rid of unused software or malware that has managed to slip through the cracks of your anti-virus. It will also clean your Registry, free up some space on your hard drive, and a whole series of other stuff that will make your PC run as smoothly as it did after a fresh Windows installation.
These are just for starters – there are loads more to come, keep a look out for future posts!