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text: Oh Baby! Posted on May 7, 2013 by Jody During the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries, midwives commonly attended to women during childbirth, particularly in the ethnic communities in the North and in African-American communities in the South. E.J. Kirkland at the West Florida Midwives Institute, Florida A&M College, Tallahassee, 1933 Marion County midwives at the Florida State Board of Health Midwife Institute, St. Augustine, 1934 Read more »

subset: commoncrawl


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The megastore Macy's will be open for a straight 48 hours the weekend before Christmas.
Black Friday sales started earlier and earlier this year and now last minute shoppers have their own special shopping spree.
Marketing expert Bernhard Schroeder from San Diego State said this move for a non-stop shopping weekend may give Macy's an edge with last minute shoppers. And is bound to get the attention of other retail competitors.
"While there is one part of me that says, 'Wow, what is our society heading into?' the marketing side of me says, 'Game on.'"
NBC 7 asked some shoppers if they would make purchases in the middle of the night. It was a mixed response.
"No, I'll be asleep at that time," said one shopper.
Another said she'd take advantage of the unusual time.
"If there's less people out, why not?" said another shopper.
It could help Macy's compete against online retailers, according to Schroeder.
Macy's hopes they can create a sort of Black Friday buzz for bargain shoppers and procrastinators. But the question still remains: Who will end up shopping in the middle of the night?


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12.8.2 Tie break criteria
a) Head to head competition
b) Most points earned in common games
c) Most wins in common games
d) Highest goal differential in common games (maximum of +/- 3 goals per game)
e) Most goals scored in common games (maximum of 3 goals per game)
f) Fewest ejections (summation of player send -offs and coach/spectator expelled)
g) Most wins in all games
h) Highest goal differential in all games (maximum of +/- 3 goals per game)
i) Most goals scored in all games (maximum of 3 goals per game)
j) Fewest goals allowed in all games (maximum of 3 goals per game)
k) Coin flip or other random process to be determined by the program or area director. The head coach, assistant, manager, team parent or regional commissioner of each team must be present unless the head coach gives consent otherwise. Except for the regional commissioner, the team representative must be listed on the team roster.
To view all teams in your Age, click Teams then Age.
To view only your Team games, click Teams, click Age, Click your team.
To view all games in your Age, click Schedules, click Age.
To view standings click Standings, click Age.
To view only your Teams scores, click Teams, click Age, Click your team.
To view all scores in your Age, click Schedules, click Age.
To view all information relating to Area Q, click Homepage.
To report score, click on schedules, age, report score.
Follow instructions in the report score window.
Do not press back. Your score will be reported in "Real" time.
Remember to press "Reload" or "Refresh" after posting scores.
The "report score" command will not be available until the day of the game.
Please contact your local Region for password.
If a wrong score has been posted:
1) Contact by e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
2) E-mail: The new (corrected) scores.
The e-mail must contain the following in order.
a) Age/Gender of Team.
b) Game number.
c) Goals, yellow cards and red cards of home team. (home team is first team on the schedule)
d) Goals, yellow cards and red cards of visiting team.
e) Name and position on team, of person requesting change.
Thank you


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Discussion with Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss.
Views: 399
Not exactly sure what you're replying to... The title of this thread is that of the youtube video, in which Dawkins and Krauss were discussing the book "A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing".
I've heard attempts at explanations at where the first matter/energy came from and to me they come up short. But that doesn't mean that the only explanation is some god or gods did it.
That just complicates things further. If a god or gods created the universe where did it/they come from? From nothing? Always there? Now we're back to the same problem.
Perhaps what's missing here is the notion that matter and empty space arise mutually. As Write4U pointed out, there was never solely "nothing." It's said by astrophysicists that the "Big Bang" occurred in 10-dimensional hyperspace (or 11 if you adhere to M-theory). So, that perhaps the singularity is a whitehole which sprung forth both energy and empty space or dark matter from the larger multiverse. The plasma that condensed and gave birth to the stars which condensed further into supernovae/hypernovae that allowed planets to arise, and so on and so forth until finally you have our dear selves.
Now, to account for consciousness, I've heard someone use the idea of panpsychism or what's also called panexperientialism. That's the idea that all matter, in some sense, possesses consciousness. Now, of course, a rock wouldn't have the type of consciousness we're familiar with, but perhaps it has, to use an Indian term, a kind of "turiya" consciousness, a pure consciousness void of emotion, volition, self-awareness, etc. I mean, I offer that just as an example, but of course the rock wouldn't experience emotion, because neuroscientists attribute that to human neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc. which the rock obviously does not possess.
Anyway, I think if we're going to discuss the topic of "Something from Nothing," then it's important to account for consciousness as well as to have the "big picture." An interesting book I've read on the topic of the nascency of consciousness is Julian Jaynes book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," and I just offer that as suggestion to anyone who's intrigued on the topic of "consciousness."
A video you may be interested in, Write4U, and anyone else who finds this topic intriguing. Ramesh Balsekar, a recently deceased Hindu of India, discusses the cyclical model of the universe here, but you've got to pay close attention because he has an accent and no teeth!
I read QuantumBrahman in its entirey, thank you for that link. You know, ever since I was introduced to eastern thought through the work of Alan Watts, the chaos of M-theory, the quantum vacuum, etc., has sort of become a little more clear.
I think the difference is between eastern philosophy and science or physics is that the scientist or physicist attempts to grasp the universe intellectually through a series of concepts while the Hindu sage understands through a direct intuitive experience; a colossal altered state of consciousness that is devoid of concepts, but in order come back and discuss it, they must use concepts such as "Brahman" to articulate it.
That's another aspect of these things that has always fascinated me. The ancient sages who realized what science is just now coming to terms with in the 20th and 21st century. In Hinduism, it's referred to as "moksha" or "samadhi," in Buddhism, "nirvana," and in Zen, they call it "satori." It is essentially an experience of or glimpse of what they call "Brahman" or what an M-theorist might call "11 dimensional hyperspace."
More contemporary it's been referred to as "cosmic consciousness" or "ego death" by people like Alan Watts, Richard M. Bucke, or Terence McKenna. Dr. Rick Strassman had an interesting speculation in his book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule." He believed that what meditation may be is a natural induction of endogenous N,N-DMT, a naturally occurring neurotransmitter that also holds the title of being the most powerful entheogenic compound known to exist in nature, there it is right behind our eyebrows.
Likewise, the ancient shamans who took the entheogenic route, whether it be psilocybin or DMT admixtures such as "ayahuasca" which use dates back thousands of years, glimpsed essentially the same insight. I want to leave a few links here if you also find interest in these things…
Here's a couple that go over this "potentiality" or "permutations" that you emphasized. This higher dimensional source in which all these possibilities are, in a sense, "already there," they exist in this pure potential and Rob Bryanton at the 10thdim YouTube channel believes that field of "pure potential" may be where we draw our "free will" from, even if everything in the material universe is "predetermined," and that's another facet of interest when discussing this stuff, the philosophical debate of free will vs. predeterminism or compatibilism.
Very interesting and entertaining video.
I think the requirement of a "beginning" is a product of our psychology as human animals, just as primitive peoples would personify the world around them - simple mechanisms formed from our personal experiences as intelligent pack-animals. Outside of our perception of reality, there may be no requirement for a beginning. Just as time will always march on and on, so it may have always been before. For all we know, there may well have been a "big crunch" before the "big bang", and many more cycles before. Just as we used to think that our galaxy was the limit of the universe, so we may also find that the "big bang" was not unique - there may be another level of system above what we know now as "the universe", just as we found other galaxies when we thought our own was unique. Unfortunately, we may be too far away from any such thing to detect or measure in any meaningful way, but maybe a mathematical model could suggest such a thing?
I'm not a theoretical physicist, so I have no idea, but the concept seems plausible to me.
I believe that there has never been "nothing". It seems an all-too-human simplification on par with "there must have been a designer".
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LOS ANGELES, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- TNT says it has canceled Timothy Hutton's Los Angeles-set drama series "Leverage" after five seasons.
The cable network said in a posting on its website Friday it is "time to say goodbye."
"We are honored to have worked with executive producer Dean Devlin, Electric Entertainment, creators John Rogers and Chris Downey, and all the cast and production crew on 'Leverage,'" the statement said. "We look forward to exploring new opportunities to work with them again in the future. We also want to thank the passionately devoted fans of 'Leverage,' who have been the driving force behind its success."
TVGuide.com said the decision not to renew the show for a sixth season came after the series saw its ratings drop significantly this season.


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The easy part of becoming the North American International Auto Show was for Detroit's car dealers to claim the name. The hard part was getting buy-in from international automakers and for media to attend.But 25 years ago, a determined cadre of Detroit-area dealers and business leaders — along with staff from the Detroit Auto Dealers Association — upstaged the New York International Auto Show with much fanfare and not a little relief."There were some people at the Big Three, especially in sales and marketing, who were kind of laughing at us," said Ken Meade, the 70-year-old CEO of Meade Lexus of Lakeside in Utica who helped put the first show together as a DADA trustee.Few people would consider Detroit a January destination. Cold, gray and dreary are some of the nicer descriptions of the city in 1989. But despite a fierce snowstorm that year, the North American International Auto Show made its debut — and has been going strong ever since. Last year's show featured: • 71 global or North American vehicle premieres. • Auto executives and more than 5,200 media members from around the world visiting the city. • An estimated $365 million in economic impact to the Detroit area. How it came together was a mixture of hard work, good fortune and realized opportunity, said Gordon Stewart, 68, who owns four Chevrolet stores in Michigan, Georgia and Florida. Big break What prompted Detroit's expansion beyond a regional show? While traveling in England in the mid-1980s, Detroit dealer Bob Thibodeau Sr. was chatting up a London cabbie, who wondered why Detroit, the home of the Big Three, didn't have a bigger auto show. Thibodeau, who died in 2005, was inspired to ask the DADA to consider expanding. Thibodeau joined Meade, Stewart, dealership group owner David Fischer and others who propelled the plan. The challenge of turning the regional Detroit auto show into an international event was getting the international media to attend and finding auto executives for them to interview, Stewart said. Press days also needed to be televised. Preparation for the first international show started almost two years before the kickoff, with the dealers, Dan Hayes, then the association's executive vice president, and others visiting shows in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Paris and Geneva. Michelin, the French tire giant, had experience sponsoring press rooms at the international shows. Michelin, which still sponsors the show in Detroit, provided advice on how to set up a room and process interviews with automaker executives — many of whom needed translation, Stewart said.Then the organizers caught a huge break. Toyota was preparing to launch Lexus in the United States when Meade and others urged Bob McCurry, then Toyota's U.S. sales chief, to introduce the luxury brand in Detroit. McCurry, who died in 2006, agreed. Nissan, realizing that its rival was about to plant a flag in Detroit, decided to launch its Infiniti luxury brand at the show as well. That proved an instant magnet for international media and an increased presence by the German luxury automakers, Stewart said. About 4,000 journalists attended Detroit's first international show. Key players Stewart said the composition of the organizing committee proved crucial to the cause. Meade, one of the first 25 Lexus dealers in the country, helped lure Lexus. Fischer had several German import brands in his Troy-based Suburban Collection dealership group, which allowed him to influence those carmakers. Another key player was Heinz Prechter, a sunroof entrepreneur who knew international protocols and had the promotional connections, Stewart said. Prechter, the former head of Southgate-based American Sunroof Corp., died in 2001.Keith Crain, editor-in-chief of Automotive News and Crain's Detroit Business, said the Detroit dealers were wise to claim the "North American" international mantle before New York City, Chicago or Los Angeles.Crain said he told Hayes, "The first one who says it, gets it." And while New York had tagged itself as an "international" auto show since it was formed in 1900, it always used the city's location as its moniker. New York hadn't trademarked the "North American" name. Detroit snapped it up. The automakers weren't playing around, either. Toyota came to the first show with a two-story exhibit that spurred competition with rivals to build elaborate displays to showcase their vehicles, Thibodeau said in a transcribed 2003 interview with his son, Bob Thibodeau Jr. Stewart said he remembers the moment when any lingering doubts about the success of the first show vanished: "We knew it would work when thousands of press started signing up for it." From Automotive News
How Detroit built its marquee auto show


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Space is the Place: Alex Paulus at Rust Hall
Memphis College of Art announces the opening of its newest alumni exhibition, Space is the Place, by Alexander Paulus on May 29. The exhibition will run until August 3 in the Alumni Gallery of Rust Hall, 1930 Poplar Avenue.
Paulus earned his MFA from Memphis College of Art in 2009 and a BFA from Southeast Missouri State University with an emphasis in painting in 2003. He is currently an instructor at Southwest Tennessee Community College.
For Space is the Place, Paulus has drawn inspiration from diverse sources. "This work takes the theories of ancient aliens, mythological gods and modern day science and smashes them all together," said Paulus. "The purpose of this is to further confuse generations as to what present day humans believe is the origin of our existence."
Rust Hall Alumni Gallery Hours:
Mon-Fri - 8:30am-5pm
Saturday - 9am-4pm
Sunday - 9am-noon


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Park & Ride Permits
Online Services
- Purchase Permits
(Students & Employees only)
- Appeal Citations (Student & Employee only)
- Pay Citations (Students, Employee, Visitors, Vendors & Guests)
Need Login Help?
- First Time User Registration
(Opens new window)
- For password resets and other questions, Contact Parking Services
Motorist Assistance
- Call 408-924-2222
The Park & Ride lot is located on South 7th Street (between Humboldt and Alma Streets), 8 blocks south of the main campus, across from Spartan Stadium. See Parking Maps.
Permits are required. You can purchase a Fall or Spring semester permit on line. See How to Buy Parking Permits.
一道本不卡免费高清If you do not have a Park & Ride permit, you may buy permits from parking permit Pay-Stations in the lot or use any valid main campus permit. Pay-Stations accept coins, $1 and $5 bills. Exact change is not required.
|Permit Description
|Permit Price
|Per Half-Hour
(Maximum daily rate of $4)
|All Day Parking
(Fall or Spring)
Free Shuttle Services
We provide free shuttle services from the Park & Ride lot to the SJSU main campus Monday - Thursday. Your Park & Ride permit is valid in any main campus garage Friday - Sunday or on any non-shuttle service day. For details, see Shuttle Services一道本不卡免费高清.


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Bush Hog®
MS250G Ground Driven Manure Spreader
MS-G Series
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MS-G Manure spreaders offer simplicity and reliability for applications where a PTO doesn't exist. Offering a full size range, MS-G ground drive units can be used with vehicles such as ATVs, UTVs or even lawn tractors. Traction implement tires are standard on GROUND DRIVE units to ensure the torque is there for a fine, consistent spread.
Place your mouse over the image to enlarge any portion of the product below.
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Performance Features
- Recommended 15-25 HP
- 25 Bushel Heaped Capacity (31.25 cu.ft.)
- Ground Drive
|6 x 12/5 Tires/Bolts
|Total Weight w/ Tires
|510 Lbs.
|Tongue Weight
|34 Lbs.
|Box Dimensions
|72" x 26" x 15" (LxWxH)
|Total Dimensions
|117" x 48" x 29" (LxWxH)


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MONTREAL - A 12-year-old boy charged with fatally shooting his older brother will seek bail early next week, with his family wanting him to attend the funeral.
"They're mourning as a family and they want all family present (at the funeral)," lawyer Sonia Harvey, a member of the accused's legal team, said Friday.
"It's very important to them that he be released in time to attend his brother's funeral. In fact, it's absolutely necessary to them that he be present."
The boy was charged Tuesday with manslaughter after his 16-year-old brother was shot to death on Monday night at the family home in Dorval, a suburb in western Montreal.
The identity of the accused and the victim cannot be revealed because they are minors. The accused pleaded not guilty to the charges during his initial appearance.
Harvey said the family had mandated lawyers to seek bail at the earliest opportunity, so they tried unsuccessfully on Friday to set a date on Monday.
The hearing will be held Tuesday — just before the viewing and funeral for his brother later in the week.
If he's not granted bail, Harvey indicated Friday she'll petition the court for special dispensation to allow her client to attend the funeral.
"We will ask for a special permission that he be released on humanitarian grounds," she said.
The accused was expressionless during a brief court appearance Friday as his legal team asked that he be given psychological help.
Harvey said her client has only seen a nurse since being detained on Monday and has not been offered any further medical help.
Another member of the boy's legal team explained even a visit with a doctor would help.
"We're not experts but clearly he's a 12-year-old who has experienced a shock, so we want him to be seen by someone to evaluate if he needs help," Karine Doherty said.
Judge Gilles Ouellet agreed to put the pre-teen into the custody of youth protection to ensure he gets psychological help.
The Crown has indicated it will oppose bail come Tuesday.
Prosecutor Marie-Claude Bourassa says she will invoke various reasons, including "the gravity of the crime."
Authorities have said evidence indicates the Monday evening shooting was not an accident.
The boy is also charged with illegal possession of a loaded, prohibited weapon. He faces a maximum three-year sentence on the most serious charge. He cannot be sentenced as an adult.
Police say the teenage victim was shot in the upper body with a handgun they said could have belonged to a family member. The Crown says the investigation is continuing.
The Crown has not provided much further detail about what happened or where the weapon came from.
Wearing a sweater and jeans, the 12-year-old appeared impassive Friday in a courtroom packed with family members, including his parents.
They were briefed before and after the hearing and were later able to see their son privately in another part of the court.
"He's a young man who understands the judicial process quite well and certainly he's impatient and wants to be released," said Doherty.


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Michael Behe's version of Intelligent Design, Retracing Denton's course? By Edward T. Babinski
This is not strictly speaking an article about "Debunking Christianity," though since Behe and other I.D.ists assume that they can prove the existence of a Designer it is relevant to the topic of Debunking Christianity, though it must be admitted there are plenty of Christian Evolutionists who do not believe that Behe's attempts at finding "proofs" of the existence of a "Designer" by studying genomes will lead anywhere.
The Evolution of Behe's Views: Francis S. Collins, the head of the Human genome project (who is both a Christian and an evolutionist), critiqued Behe's earlier hypothesis (that Behe has since dropped), namely of a "super cell" in the beginning that's frontloaded with excess DNA to be put into use much later as the world evolves. Collins pointed out such a hypothesis did not make sense because if a super cell was indeed filled with tons of information to be used "much later" that information would have to be supernaturally preserved over long periods of time because unused portions of the genome are known to undergo continual mutations.
Behe once wrote, "If random evolution is true, there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the Mesonychid [a whale ancestor] and the ancient whale. Where are they?" Behe assumed such forms would not or could not be found, but three transitional species were identified by paleontologists within a year of that statement.
In Darwin's Black Box, Behe posited that genes for modern complex biochemical systems, such as blood clotting, might have been "designed billions of years ago and have been passed down to the present … but not 'turned on'." This is known to be genetically impossible because genes that aren't used will degenerate, but there it was in print. And Behe's argument against the evolution of flagella and the immune system have been dismantled in detail and new evidence continues to emerge, yet the same old assertions for design reappear here as if they were uncontested.
Behe now admits in his latest book, The Edge of Evolution, that almost the entire edifice of evolutionary theory is true: evolution, natural selection, common ancestry. His one novel claim is that the genetic variation that fuels natural selection–mutation–is produced not by random changes in DNA, as evolutionists maintain, but by an Intelligent Designer, The Great Mutator.
Behe's current situation reminds me of a similar situation in the past that the true father of the I.D. movement, Michael Denton, got himself into. After he wrote his first anti-evolutionary book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, he was praised by the folks at Access Research Network (editors of the flagstaff I.D. publication, Origins & Design), and became a member of the Discovery Institute. Then Denton admitted in an interview that he had not even known about the fossil evidence of inbetween species, like mammal-like reptiles. He also wrote his book before the various genome identification projects had taken off. Denton's views were altered significantly by the time he wrote his second book, Nature's Destiny, in which he admitted that the genetic distance between species even between humans and chimpanzees was relatively small (as I like to point out, that genetic distance between humans and chimps is smaller than the genetic distance between near identical sibling species of fruit flies), and so Denton now accepts that evolution has taken place. He also had his name removed as a member of the Discovery Institute.
Christian and biologist, Ken Miller, responds to Behe
The continuing dismemberment of Behe (Links to reviews of his new book)
Pushing Behe over the edge
Malaria according to Nat. Geog. (& Behe)
Behe blows it
Silence over Behe's book
We don't have an intelligent designer (ID), we have a bungling consistent evolver (BCE). Or maybe an adaptive changer (AC). In fact, what we have in the most economical interpretation is, of course, evolution.
—Lisa Randall, physicist


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You are hereHome >
Ed's Blog
Latest Trojan Horse Data Breach Bill (HR6743-Luetkemeyer) Could Be Called "Equifax Protection Act"
On Thursday, 13 September, the House Financial Services Committee is to consider the latest in a long series of data security, privacy and data breach bills that Congress takes up annually at the request of the banks. These Trojan Horse bills come galloping in with few, if any, consumer protections riding in the saddle, but massive and permanent elimination of stronger state laws hidden in the belly of the beasts. Expect committee debate to feature much hand-wringing over "balkanization" and "patchwork quilts" and the need for a federal standard, goshdarnit, so long as it is one that doesn't do much (other than take away the state laws that do protect consumers).
The proposal, HR6743, the Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act (Luetkemeyer (MO)), might also be called the "Equifax Protection Act." Why? The bill would protect banks and other "financial institutions" from stronger state privacy laws. That sweeping definition of "financial institutions" to be exempted from stronger state laws includes Equifax and the other credit bureaus, the payday lenders and the debt collectors. Yikes.
We've joined a letter from over 28 state and national consumer, civil rights, civil liberties and privacy organizations to oppose HR6743, the Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act, to be considered. The committee notice includes a reference to the bill as filed and an anticipated substitute (our letter refers to the sponsor's substitute). This substitute will be presented as narrow and perfected and necessary. Actually, it is cleverly written to weaken current federal breach notice requirements for banks and other "financial institutions" while simultaneously throwing all state data security, data breach and other data privacy laws under the bus.
Our letter points out that the bill is unnecessary since every state already has a breach notice requirement. Most are stronger than the federal scheme that the bill amends. More importantly, we point out that the bill is unacceptable because it reverses the longstanding federal provision know as the Senator Paul Sarbanes (MD) amendment to the Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999. The Sarbanes amendment has allowed new and innovative state privacy laws to flourish for 20 years now. We wouldn't have the 2018 free credit freeze if a freeze law hadn't been passed in nearly every state beginning in the early 2000s. Worse, HR6743's intent is not merely to have one national breach notice requirement for financial institutions, but to take away all other state data security and privacy harm laws, as well as eliminate any stronger breach notice laws.
The letter explains that the bill requires notice only when the company that failed to protect your information determines a breach is "reasonably likely" to result only in a specified "harm," here defined narrowly to mean only "identity theft, fraud or economic loss." Yet as the letter goes on to point out, states are innovating in recognizing that data breaches cause many more harms preempted from accountability and notice by HR 6743, than these limited financial harms:
"There are many non-financial harms that can result from a data breach, such as harm to dignity from the compromise of nude photos, or harm to reputation from the compromise of personal email. A breach could even lead to physical harm, such as if logs of a domestic violence victim's calls to a support hotline were to fall into the wrong hands. By weakening the notice standard in the overwhelming majority of states, this law would cause consumers to stop receiving notifications about breaches that they currently have a right to hear about today— breaches that could lead to physical or emotional harm."
"Many states are innovating in these areas and also protecting more forms of information – not simply financial – from misuse. For example, several states have established biometric privacy and medical information privacy laws; others have protected log-in credentials for online accounts and electronic signatures. Further, states could more quickly respond to new or emerging harm threats than Congress, as they have numerous times in the past, if they are not preempted."
Of course, if Congress were really trying to improve the laws, it might consider holding Equifax and other firms accountable to their privacy victims. After, it was just over one year ago that Equifax finally announced to 145 million plus consumers that they'd been careless and, oops, failed to fix a known and well-publicized security vulnerability and then lost our financial DNA, also called the "keys to identity theft." Our release and new report "Equifax Breach: One Year Later" last week gave you tips on how to protect yourself. Don't wait for Congress to protect you. This anticipated vote is on a bill that says: we don't want to hold Equifax accountable; instead we want to immunize banks, debt collectors, payday lenders(!), Equifax and others from stronger state laws. At a time of rampant corporate mishandling of personal information, this bill will wrongly take state consumer cops off the privacy and data security beat.
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Offering informed feedback, the Writing Center's tutors conference with students on their college-level reading and writing assignments at any stage of their composing processes. A conference's purpose is to enhance a writer's ability to produce any essay for any course across the curriculum before students submit them to their ultimate audience, the professors who grade them.
In a 45-minute conference tutors will, in collaboration with a student, identify, prioritize, and address the issues a particular assignment's draft presents. Tutors can coach students in narrowing a topic, finding a focus, organizing ideas, developing content, and improving style and correctness. Tutors can also clarify APA- and MLA-formatting guidelines for embedding and citing sources. Each conference should meet the individual composing needs of students and introduce re-writing and editing skills students can practice independently.
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Growth Modeling of Longitudinal Data
David Myers
posted on Thursday, April 06, 2000 - 11:46 am
Imagine we have a growth model that is a quadratic, then the rate of learning can be expressed as S + 2Qt where S is the linear term, Q is the quadtratic term, t is time (this is just the partial derivate of outcome--test scores in this case, with respect to time). Now, I want to be able to compute the variance of learning. It would seem that I could take the predicted factor scores for S and Q, for each child i, form the quanity S+2Qt for each child, and then compute the variance of the new variable. Is this correct?
I want to be able to use this to compute effect sizes where the numererator of the effect size is the difference in learning rates for two groups of children. Thanks in advance.
posted on Friday, April 07, 2000 - 9:29 am
That would be one way of getting the variance - through estimated factor scores. This variance, however, may have the usual biases due to estimating factor scores. How about the alternative of computing
V(S + 2Qt) = V(S) + 4tt V(Q) + 4t Cov(S,Q)
where those variances and covariance are the growth model estimates?
Julia Kim
posted on Tuesday, April 11, 2000 - 2:11 pm
We've come across an instance where the equation above yields a negative variance. Specifically, a growth model for Math achievement produced the following:
When t = 3, V(S + 2Qt) = -3.
What may be the implications for our model? Thanks.
posted on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - 10:10 am
This is an old post, but you might notice that for these parameter estimates the correlation between S and Q is out of range. I've computed
Such results are usually an indication of model misspecification, or a potential overspecification. It seems that the Q term is not needed (multicollinearity).
Estimated covariance matrices are not required to follow the rules associated with correlation matrices, and sometimes negative estimates of variance, out of range correlations, etc., can occur.
Perhaps you can use constraints, and/or boundaries so that your covariance parameters result in correlations that fall between -1 and +1.
Then this formula should be positive.
posted on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - 6:39 pm
Good point. And note that centering at the average time might make the s, q correlation go down.
Bill Dudley
posted on Friday, October 03, 2008 - 2:02 pm
I have data from a study in which slopes differ for treatment and control - as estimated in a Latent growth curve analysis. The variables are similar to those in my next study. I would like to use the estimates from the successful model in a Monte Carlo and model different effects sizes and N�s (vary the slopes and NOBS)
In �How to use Monte Carlo �� Muthen & Muthen 2002, the effect size is defined as the group difference in slopes divided by the standard deviation of the slope growth factor.(page 7). In the growth model monte carlo set up on page 17 we see that the intercept and slope are set at 0 and .2 [i*0 s*.2]. Because S is regressed onto X we are provided with the residual variance of s is .09. s*.09;RIGHT??
Given my confusion on this, I am at a loss about how to use my current analyses to model power in my next study - ----
Q1 I assume that the standard deviation of the slope is computed from the parameters in this model OR perhaps derived from the preceding unconditional l model. Page 16. If the SD is computed can you point me to the formula for this so that I might see how to vary to effect sizes
Q2 Your Monte carlo examples use variables with means of zero. Can I just use the mean and SD�s from my real data or is there an advantage to outcomes with mean = 0 ? or should I convert my raw data to scores for this purpose?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Saturday, October 04, 2008 - 12:04 pm
Q1. You compute the SD(s) from sqrt{Var(s)},
Var(s) = b^2*Var(x) + resvar(s);
where b is the slope in the regression of the slope on the covariate x (b^2) is the square of b). You get this in Tech4. You can also define effect size as the outcome mean difference (ctrl-tx)/SD at a certain time point - might be more down to earth.
Q2. Keep your variables as they are. The means of the growth factors are given as in the Topic 3 handout, but also in Tech4.
Bill Dudley
posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 11:29 am
Please excuse the hiatus between postings, however I'd like to follow up my power estimation post of 10/03. Consider a test of differences in slopes between two groups as modeled in the growth2 example from Muthen & Muthen 2002. I think that this is comparable to the test of the time by group interaction in a Repeated measures ANOVA. If I use GPOWER to estimate the effect size for this interaction with 50 per group, alpha = .05 and correlations between measures a .3, I get an f ~.15. If I use Growth2 from Muthen and Muthen for a group difference in linear slopes I can detect an effect size of .63. It seems likely that the GPOWER estimate is far too liberal. I assume that this discrepancy is multiply determined � in the ANOVA we are dealing with Cohen�s f and in the LCM I assume that we are working Cohen�s d (??). Also I assume that in the Growth2 model that Y1 � y4 are not correlated whereas they are in the GPOWER estimation. And I assume that the Growth2 model is far more restrictive than the more general interaction test in GPOWER in that the Growth2 model is for a linear change in the positive direction etc. Can you comment on this?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 - 6:52 pm
I would think GPOWER (which I am not familiar with) considers effect size in terms of the means of the outcomes for a certain time point, not the random slope means. In the Mplus Monte Carlo setting you can also consider effect size for the outcome at a certain time point - expressing the y mean difference divided by the SD. The growth model does have correlated y's because the y's are all influenced by the growth factors. Tech4 says how strongly correlated they are. You are probably right that the linear growth model gets a different power estimate than the repeated measures ANOVA which doesn't impose linear growth.
posted on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 - 7:22 am
I developed a GMM of treatment courses in which I regressed the variance of the slopes on type of treatment within each of the latent classes. Now, I am confused how to derive effect sizes from the slopes. According to Raudenbush & Xiao-Feng (2001), effect sizes can computed by the formula:
mean slope of treatment 1 minus mean slope of treatment 2 divided by the population standard deviation of the polynomial trend of interest (tau).
So, is tau the square root of the residual variance of the slope in the Mplus output?
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Wednesday, July 01, 2009 - 8:39 am
Karl Hallmackenreuther
posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 8:22 am
I'm analyzing a randomized trial over 4 years (4 measurement points, the first is pre-test) via LGM and want to compute the effect size as "d" [estimated outcome mean difference (ctrl-tx)/SD at the last time point]. I've heard that one should use the pre-test SD to calculate d for the last time point in LGMs. That seems not very comprehensible to me and in my special case SDs for the outcome are heavily increasing over time for both control and intervention. So I prefer to use SDs pertaining to the last measurment point to get a smaller but more "realistic" d. What is your opinion?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 9:50 am
I agree with you. If one is interested in the mean difference at the end of a study, it seems natural to consider the variation at the end of the study. One argument against that is that this variation is affected by treatment, so you should work with baseline variance. But even the control group can change variance from baseline to the end. My question would more be - if at the end the control and treatment group variances are very different, which should we use? In that case, perhaps the control group variance at the end is more meaningful because that refers to the normative development without treatment.
Karl Hallmackenreuther
posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 10:54 am
I was using the estimated outcome variance at the last measurement point because I was calculating "d" for estimated means and thought this would be more stringent. This estimated variance was equal across intervention/control because I modeled Intervention as a dummy-covariate. There were rather small variance residuals and observed variances seemed comparable across intervention and control. Is it o.k. to use the estimated variation in this case?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 11:14 am
Yes, that's what I would recommend.
Cindy Schaeffer
posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - 7:43 am
I too need to compute effect sizes for a tx effect (S regressed on dichotomous tx variable 0 = control, 1 = intervention) in LGMs with 5 unequal time points, continuous outcomes, and 2 additional covariates (age and gender). I think I am clear on how to do this, but have a few questions:
1. Do any of the procedures outlined in these posts change when the Tscores option is used (TYPE = random missing)? I ask because I am getting huge "d" values, 3+ in some cases when S on tx p values are in the .05 range. This is due in part because I have very small residual variances on S in the denominator.
2. What about when outcomes are count variables? (Tscores option and TYPE = random). I am getting excessively large effect sizes on these in particular.
3. Is there a way to look at overall effect size across 5 time points rather than difference in mean at the final time point? Isolating the change effect to the last time point seems to undermine the advantage of using repeated measures in the first place.
Thanks much,
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - 2:10 pm
1. I assume "d" is the effect size? I think it is more understandable to look at effect size as a y mean difference (see also 3.), rather than an s difference. The variance of s can be small even when the y variance is large, which makes the s difference less important.
2. For counts you don't have a y variance parameter, so I am not sure what the effect size definition for y would be.
3. I agree that this should be done. It is really the area between the tx and ctrl curves that is important. Not sure off hand how to best quantify that, however.
Hanno Petras
posted on Friday, March 12, 2010 - 11:15 am
I am stuck understanding the computation of effect sizes from the Muthen & Muthen (2002) paper (page 7). In your paper, you say that a slope effect of 0.2 translates into an effect size of 0.63 and that the effect size is computed as the ratio of the slope difference divided by the standard error. Here is my computation and I appreciate your advice, because I am stuck.
Slope| x=0 = 0.2
Slope| x=1 = 0.2 + 0.2*0.460 where 0.460 is the mean of x
To compute the variance of the slope I used:
SQRT (Var(s))=b^2 *var(x) + resvar(s)
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Saturday, March 13, 2010 - 9:48 am
slope mean|x=0 = a
slope mean|x=1 = a + .2
The difference is .2
.2 / Sqrt (.04*.25 + .09) = .63
Hanno Petras
posted on Saturday, March 13, 2010 - 3:17 pm
Hi Linda,
thanks. This is helpful.
Leah Vermont
posted on Saturday, October 15, 2011 - 1:21 pm
I am running a parallel process LGM.
The correlation coefficients between the respective slopes (both linear and quadratic) of my two constructs were positive and significant. I would like to know how best to determine the magnitude of these significant correlations, in order to determine the effect sizes. Specifically, which parameter estimates should be used?
Thank you for you time,
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Saturday, October 15, 2011 - 6:18 pm
Just look at the TECH4 output, where you find the correlations (in contrast, the results section gives the covariances). I don't know that you can use the term "effect size" in the context of a correlation.
Karen S. Mitchell
posted on Friday, August 24, 2012 - 10:05 am
I've estimated a two-level linear growth model (not latent) to test the impact of an intervention on scores across 9 time points. I have one treatment group and one control group and need to calculate an effect size. Would I use the formula from Feingold (2009)?
Beta_11 / (square root of tau)
Where Beta_11 is the unstandardized coefficient of the regression of the slope on treatment (0/1). Would I take the square root of the slope residual variance for the denominator?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Friday, August 24, 2012 - 10:29 am
It isn't clear what one should use for effect size in growth models. You refer to the effect size on the slope in which case the denominator SD should be based on the slope variances, not the slope residual variance (so see TECH4). But one could also argue for the effect size on the outcome itself at a certain time point, so you need to express the outcome model-estimated mean at that time point and the model-estimated variance at that time point. Our Topic 3 handouts show how to compute those.
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Friday, August 24, 2012 - 10:34 am
See slides 97 and 98 of the Topic 3 course handout on the website.
Karen S. Mitchell
posted on Friday, August 24, 2012 - 11:06 am
Thank you. I'm using type=random (see below), so Tech4 isn't available. Is there another way to obtain the slope variance in this model?
Usevariables are
dgroup Y person time ;
Cluster = person ;
Within time ;
Between = dgroup ;
Missing are .;
s | Y on time ;
Y s on dgroup ;
Y with s ;
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Friday, August 24, 2012 - 11:11 am
You have on Between
s ON dgroup;
which implies that the s variance is easily computed as
V(s) = b^2 * V(dgroup) + res var (s),
where b is the model-estimate slope in s ON dgroup that you see in the output, V(group) is obtained as the sample variance from Sampstat, and res var (s) is the model-estimated residual variance of s in the output.
Karen S. Mitchell
posted on Friday, August 24, 2012 - 11:37 am
antonio zuffiano
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013 - 7:17 am
Dear Bengt and Linda
First of all, thank you so much for your wonderful support.
I am still confused about the computation of effect size in LGM and I have to answer to one reviewer who asked me information about effect size.
I used an LGM (three time points: pre-test, 6-month post-test, 12-month follow-up) in which I regressed on the latent non-linear slope (coded 0 * 1) of my outcome Y the following variables:
"treatment" (0 = control group, 1 = intervention group);
"sex" (0 = male, 1 = female);
"age of participants";
"the latent intercept" which represents the initial status.
I found a positive and significant effect of "treatment" on the slope and I would like to summarize the size of this effect.
Can you help me?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Friday, March 29, 2013 - 4:04 pm
I think the most down to earth effect size is to compute the effect size in the outcome at the last time point as implied by the growth model. That is, using the difference in model-implied estimated mean for control and intervention groups divided by the SD for the outcome at the last time point. The SD is obtained directly in the output (use RESIDUAL) and the means are computed from the estimates in the output in line with slides 97-98 of our Topic 3 handout on our web site.
Ping Kuo
posted on Saturday, December 19, 2015 - 4:33 am
My model is a longitudinal model with only two assessments. How could I calculate the effect sizes for latent mean difference? For example, latent mean=0 at Time 1 and latent mean at Time 2 was freely estimated. I got latent mean at Time 2= -.450 and factor variance at Time 1 and Time 2 were.77, 1.1, respectively. Does the value of factor mean from "STDYX Standardization" indicate effect size?
Thanks a lot.
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Sunday, December 20, 2015 - 5:27 pm
Divide -0.450 by 0.77 if you want the answer in the time 1 SD.
Hye Jeong Choi
posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - 6:50 am
I have two questions. I have four different groups (e.g., four different linear trajectories) Some groups have significantly different slope or intercept.
Q1. How can I calculate effect size between group1's slope and groups2's slope?
I assumed that mean difference from two groups' slope divided by growth factor SD. Am I correct? If so, which groups' growth factor's SD should I use? They have different slope and different growth factor' SD.
Q2. How can I calculate effect size intercept difference among groups? I searched articles but I couldn't find it. Do you have a formula for this?
Hye Jeong Choi
posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - 6:54 am
I have two questions. I have four different groups (e.g., four different linear trajectories) Some groups have significantly different slope or intercept.
Q1. How can I calculate effect size between group1's slope and groups2's slope?
I assumed that mean difference from two groups' slope divided by growth factor SD. Am I correct? If so, which groups' growth factor's SD should I use? They have different slope and different growth factor' SD.
Q2. How can I calculate effect size intercept difference among groups? I searched articles but I couldn't find it. Do you have a formula for this?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - 12:53 pm
Please post these questions on SEMNET.
Susan Collins
posted on Thursday, May 25, 2017 - 12:28 pm
And a follow-up question: If the residual variance for slope in a linear growth model is negative (which I am now holding constant), how can one generate the effect size for the slope? I understand the formula is dependent on the resvar(s).
Susan Collins
posted on Thursday, May 25, 2017 - 12:33 pm
Oops--looks like I forgot to post my original question. I apologize. I am conducting a monte carlo study for a power analysis. I understand how to calculate cohen's d for the differences in slope for a linear growth model. How could one do this in a growth model where the measured outcomes are counts but (I assume) the latent variable is continuous? Thanks!
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Thursday, May 25, 2017 - 6:46 pm
By effect size for the slope I assume that you consider slope mean values for say 2 different groups and divide by the slope SD. That same approach would be used for count outcomes. You want to modify a model with negative variance estimates.
Aurelie Lange
posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2019 - 5:04 am
Dear Dr Muthen,
I have a linear growht model with three time points. We are simply analysing change over time.
Is it possible to compute an effect size for the slope coefficient? I.e., is it possible to provide an estimate of the size / relevance of the change over time?
Thank you!
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2019 - 5:02 pm
See the paper
Feingold, A. (2018). Time-varying effect sizes for quadratic growth models in multilevel and latent growth modeling. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal. DOI: 10.1080/10705511.2018.1547110
Yaqiong Wang
posted on Wednesday, June 19, 2019 - 4:12 pm
I'm running parallel process latent growth curve modeling with constructs A and B, both of which were measured for four times. Construct B follows a quadratic developmental trajectory while contract A has a linear trajectory. The regression coefficients of slopes B (both linear and quadratic)on intercept A are significant.
1. Could you tell me if/how I can calculate the effect size for the regression coefficient?
2. If I run another model with constructs C and B, can I use the effect size of each model to compare the strength of the effect between constructs A and C?
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Saturday, June 22, 2019 - 6:26 am
1. How about using the STD solution where both the IV i and the DV s are standardized.
2. Sounds ok.
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The idea is to piece together a collective ATG Australian team by open voting, in a similar fashion to Nufan's World XIs.
I will provide a list of options for each of the positions, and leave them up for a few days. Post your selections in each category as we go.
The categories will be:
Openers (2)
Number 3 batsman (1)
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Wicketkeeper (1)
Bowling attack (4)
Players who would/might fit in to an all-round category will be included in either the list of batsmen, or the list for bowlers, or both (in some cases). For instance, Miller will be included as a middle order batsman, and as a bowling option, while Lindwall/Davidson will be included as bowling options only. This allows choice in team structure, rather than making an AR mandatory for teams.
If you feel I've forgotten someone, feel free to suggest them. Once this one is complete, we will move to the next nation.


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FCC to study rules on cable-broadcast negotiations
(AP) -- Federal regulators want to do more to avoid TV signal blackouts caused by disputes over programming fees that pit broadcast television stations against cable companies and other pay TV operators.
The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote Thursday to launch a review of the federal rules that govern negotiations over the fees that cable, satellite and other video services pay TV stations to carry their signals in channel lineups. To supplement advertising revenue, broadcasters have begun demanding cash for signals they used to give away for free, and that contributes to rising cable bills.
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A similar dispute caused Cablevision subscribers to miss the first 15 minutes of last year's Oscars when the ABC station in New York yanked its signal. Other standoffs have pitted Time Warner Cable Inc. against Fox; Mediacom Communications Corp. against Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc.; and Time Warner Cable against Sinclair. Another battle is now brewing between Dish Network Corp. and Lin TV Corp.
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text:
Too many notes create discord in latest
Phantom of the Opera Reviews
Posted by:
Article Date:
January 7, 2005 |
A. O. Scott
Publication/Article Link:
The spectacle and emotion of Lord Lloyd Webber's `Phantom of the Opera' work onstage, but fall a little flat on the big screen
"There are too many notes for my taste," sniffs one of the proprietors of the Opera Populaire in The Phantom of the Opera.
I quite agree. He is talking about the threatening messages that the control-freak phantom (Gerard Butler) is sending to various members of the company, but his complaint applies perfectly to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose relentless bombast afflicts this movie like a bad case of swollen lymph nodes.
Of course, Lord Lloyd Webber's music is the whole point of the film, and Joel Schumacher, the director, does his best to find a visual style to match the vulgarity and pretentiousness of the soundtrack. He succeeds admirably, drawing on his long-ago experience designing department-store window displays to produce nearly two-and-a-half hours' worth of overstuffed tableaux, the cumulative effect of which is likely to be a state of headachy nervous exhaustion. This kind of spectacle might work onstage, where numb enervation can sometimes be mistaken for exhilaration, but this screen version, for all its wailing emotionalism and elaborate production design, lacks both authentic romance and the thrill of memorable spectacle.
The Phantom of the Opera is big on theatrics but fails with the nuances.
These failings are not the fault of the cast, which works hard to capture the grand, delicate feelings of this venerable, much-adapted story. Somewhere in this movie is the story of a striving young singer, a tormented musical genius and the volatile mixture of artistic ambition and obsessive longing that binds them together, but it is buried in orchestral sludge and chaotic storytelling.
Lord Lloyd Webber's thorough acquaintance with the canon of 18th and 19th-century classical music is not in doubt, but his attempt to force a marriage between that tradition and modern musical theater represents a victory of pseudo-populist grandiosity over taste -- an act of cultural butchery akin to turning an aviary of graceful swans and brilliant peacocks into an order of Chicken McNuggets. The songs fill your ears, but you are unlikely to find yourself humming any of them after the movie is over (which may, come to think of it, be the only merciful thing about this Phantom.)
Emmy Rossum glows in the part of the singer Christine Daae.
Nonetheless, the music is technically demanding -- just try to hum a few bars -- and calls forth some impressive singing, especially from Butler and from the lovely Emmy Rossum, who plays his protagonist, Christine Daae. Rossum, who was the murdered daughter in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, breathes some fresh air into her claustrophobic, overupholstered surroundings and brings both a spark of defiance and a touch of melancholy to her role. Butler has sufficient physical and vocal presence to give the phantom some dramatic weight, though the same cannot be said for Patrick Wilson, who plays the phantom's rival (and Christine's childhood sweetheart), the smooth-faced Vicomte Raoul de Chigny. Although everyone in the movie is supposed to be French, only Miranda Richardson, as the head of the corps de ballet, attempts a French accent.
Film Notes
Directed by: Joel Schumacher,
Written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Schumacher
Starring: Gerard Butler (the Phantom), Emmy Rossum (Christine Daae), Patrick Wilson (Raoul de Chagny), Miranda Richardson (Madame Giry) , Minnie Driver (Carlotta), Simon Callow (Andre) and Ciaran Hinds (Firmin)
Running time: 143 minutes
Taiwan Release: today
Minnie Driver, as the Italian diva upstaged by Christine and the Phantom, tries a bit of dialect humor, saying things like " `Ee lava me!" and "I 'ate my 'at!" as if she were auditioning for a part in the next Super Mario video game. This passes for comic relief in a film otherwise notable for its witlessness. Full though it is of bellowings and screechings about love, art and the spirit of music, The Phantom of the Opera is remarkably lacking in tenderness or grace. The gothic creepiness that has kept Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel in circulation for so long has also been swept away. There are dark corridors, guttering candles, masks, robes, corsets and top hats, but no sense of mystery or strangeness.
For that, I suppose, you will have to go back to Rupert Julian's 1925 version, which starred Lon Chaney as the phantom. That film, long regarded as a classic, has a great many virtues, two of which seem especially relevant at the moment: it is 93 minutes long, and it is silent.


text:
How very unusual...and no date of publication (handwritten "Nov 1964").
"Double Rites At Lomira Are Planned
Nicholas Thill, 94, Daughter-In-Law Die Same Day
Double funeral services for Nicholas Thill, 94, a resident of the county home, and his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Anna Thill, 66, of Lomira, both of whom died Monday, have been scheduled for Friday morning at the Kletzer Funeral home, Lomira, and St. Martin's Catholic church, Ashford.
Mr. Thill, who died Monday afternoon at the county home, was born Nov. 9, 1870, in the Town of Ashford, a son of Nick and Mary Threweler Thill. He married Anna Steinmetz, who preceded him in death.
Brief Illness
Mrs. Thill, who died Monday night at St. Agnes hospital after a brief illness, was born Feb 28, 1898, a daughter of Paul and Mary Miller Wolf. She was married to Joe Thill, son of Nicholas, on Sept. 28, 1921, at Holy Hill church.
Services for the two will be held at 9:30 a.m. Friday at the Kletzer Funeral home, followed by 10 a.m. rites at St. Martin's church, the Rev. Joseph Conley officiating. Burial will be in the church cemetery. Friends may call at the funeral home after 3 p.m. Thursday.
Survivors Listed
Surviving Mr Thill are three sons, Joe and Paul of Lomira and Lawrence of Kiel; four daughters, Mrs. Julie Schaefer, city, and Mrs. Dorothy Murphy, Mrs. Rosella Whalen, and Mrs. Anna Eilbes, all of Milwaukee; 32 grandchildren; 67 great-grandchildren; one brother, Henry, Marathon City; and one sister, Mrs. Margaret Mand, Oshkosh.
In addition to his wife, three sons and a daughter preceded him in death.
Surviving Mrs. Thill are the widower; two sisters, Mrs. Alice Schraufnagel, Marshall, and Mrs. Peter Biesbier, Milwaukee; four brothers, Tony Wolf of Rio, Herbert of Barton, Roman, Beaver Dam, and Art of Randolph; and several nieces and nephews."
I always enjoy transcribing these clippings! Lots of great genealogical information out there for someone (and most likely for my tree as well, but no connection yet...lots of names I recognize though!). Made sure I checked on FindAGrave to see if this grave was on there. A little information for Nicholas and Anna was, but no pictures. Requested...hopefully someone can get a picture when all that snow melts!
Have fun tending those roots!


text:
In the days when he was the hip young gunslinger of British fiction, the Martin Amis interview tended to follow a certain form. This would involve tyro journalists – Amis wannabes for the most part – joining their subject at the snooker table or on the tennis court, where the author would go through his famously competitive paces, presenting the journalist with the tricky dilemma of whether to throw the game and curry his favour, or beat him and risk his resentment.
But at 62, time and Amis's recent relocation to New York have put something of a damper on his sporting enthusiasms. The pub and snooker evenings were long ago sacrificed to family life. And he no longer plays tennis.
'It just got so tragic,' he says with a sigh. 'I hated it so much – because I wasn't winning. Isabel says, "Play 80-year-olds, you'll win against them." But that's no good. I can still run – not as fast. My game was built on mobility; didn't have any big shots or anything. A defensive lob was my big shot. But it's more to do with reflexes. You shape to do it and you're not there – you're crowding it, and the ball's out of reach, and it fills you with a weird sort of self-disgust. Solemn exasperation and self-disgust.'
Nowadays, he can't even watch the Premier League because he is unable to operate the television. 'Pathetic!' He gives a rueful shrug. 'The technology has moved so far beyond my competence.'
Amis relocated to New York some 18 months ago, and now lives in the Cobble Hill district of Brooklyn, in a handsome four-storey brownstone, with his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, and their two teenage daughters, Fernanda and Clio. It is tempting to read something into the move. One of the recurring themes of Amis's pronouncements over the past few years has been a palpable disenchantment with England and English life: the 'skanky town' malice of London's literary world; his bald declaration to a French newspaper that he would 'prefer not to be English'; the sense that his homeland is a busted flush; the fact that his new book, Lionel Asbo, is a satire on the shallowness and vulgarity of celebrity-obsessed Britain. All of this may or may not be true, but it is not the reason he has decamped to America. Isabel, he says, is a New Yorker, and wanted to be closer to her mother and stepfather as they grew older.
'But her stepfather died while we were packing our stuff, so it was even more important for us to come in the end. That was the only reason. It wasn't any disaffection with England or anything like that.'
In fact, Amis has an almost umbilical connection to America. As a child he lived for a year in Princeton, New Jersey, when his father was lecturing at the university there. His first wife is American; Isabel is half-American, half-Uruguayan. He has been a frequent visitor over the years, and some of his sharpest writing has been journalism on American life, contained in his volume The Moronic Inferno.
But it has been like seeing a completely different country. Outside his door are leafy streets, pretty young mothers with buggies, bijou coffee shops. Its effect has been palpably soothing. He extols its 'prelapsarian feel – like living in the 1950s!' Even the skies – wide and blue – seem to come from childhood. 'I can't imagine why New Yorkers don't go around boasting about it for three or four hours every day.'
Amis has spent the afternoon writing in his study upstairs, and it has left him in a ruminative mood. He is wearing a red and white striped shirt and a fleece waistcoat; with the swept-back wings of grey hair, the high forehead and the slightly grizzled countenance he looks like a rather raffish Whitstable antiques dealer. He potters around the kitchen, makes tea, and wonders aloud about where we might talk until Isabel suggests the sitting-room. Ah yes! The sitting-room.
Light floods in through the sash windows on to whitewashed floorboards. The pale walls are hung with large paintings by Isabel's two artist brothers: an abstract by Caio and a striking nude by Bruno, who died in 1994 at the age of 36. We seat ourselves at a table.
Three days earlier Amis had spoken at the memorial service for the writer Christopher Hitchens, and the past two days have been a time of 'rather warm and weepy emotion', remembering 'Hitch' with family and friends. Hitchens was his closest friend for 40 years, 'the only friend,' he says, 'to whom you could confess to anything. And I don't mean particular deeds. I mean to your worst feelings and most dishonourable impulses. And I could say that to Christopher without any fear of disaffection on his part.
'And all my other friends, although I love them, they all have places where I feel I can't visit, that I can't say things because they will offend certain assumptions of theirs about me and about life in general. I could be emotionally naked with Christopher, and he could with me. And that's very rare, I think.'
Amis is – and there is no other word for it – a wonderful talker. His burnished, smoky voice conveys erudition, irony and world-weary sagacity in equal measure. And it seems fitting for Hitchens to appear so early in the conversation, because one is immediately struck by their similarities – the cadences in their speech, the fondness for the skewering put-down (Mitt Romney looks like a man who has 'gone to the dentist one afternoon and come out with his head capped'); the frequent invocation of Nabokov, Conrad, Larkin (Hitchens' favourite poet, Amis's godfather). In an essay on the writer Joan Didion, Amis once described her as at no point giving the sense of being someone 'who uses literature as a constant model or ideal'. It has the ring of a moral judgment. For Amis, literature is that model, that ideal.
'Brutally generic' with his 'slablike body, the full lump of a face, the tightly shaved crown with its tawny stubble', Lionel Asbo, the eponymous antihero of Amis's new book, is a subsistence criminal and full-time lout, a seething mass of basic instincts and barely suppressed rage who looks out on the world from his flat on the 30th floor of a council tower block in the loveless London borough of Diston. By random quirks of biology and chance, he is also the guardian of his young nephew, Desmond – a bright-spark 15-year-old of mixed race who happens to be conducting an illicit affair with his grandmother, Lionel's mum.
When Lionel wins £140 million in the lottery, he sets off on a kind of Yob's Progress through exclusive hotels, fancy tailors and expensive restaurants, fortified by endless cans of Cobra, torpedo-sized joints and champagne served in pint glasses. He also takes up with a pneumatic celebrity bimbo named Threnody. Under the guidance of Threnody – and a slick, highly priced team of advisers – Lionel goes from national horror to national treasure, a paragon of amoral, solipsistic ignorance, even as Desmond struggles with his conscience and tries to rise out of the sewer of Diston with a crash-course of self-education in the local public library.
The book is a wicked satire on the English class system, the vapidity of celebrity culture and the triumph of selfishness. 'How restful it must be to have no consciousness of others,' Desmond remarks of his uncle at one point. Lionel is a comic monster for the times, as John Self, the hero of Money was for Thatcher-era greed and boorishness. Amis 'adores' him: 'You can't write about characters that disgust you. The whole form of fiction is actually a loving form, and you wouldn't have the energy to put it down unless you had some, almost erotic affection for your characters. Similarly, I'm not disgusted but amused by the triumph of superficiality. And the egotism of people who are eminent without being in the least distinguished and somehow feeling that that's their due – that seems to me to be a peculiarly English phenomenon.'
Amis describes it as a book, above all, about intelligence – how it is used, developed and wasted. 'There is a tremendous amount of latent intelligence in England, and it's awful that we cultivate it so patchily and randomly. So much of it is to do with the socio-economic level – it gets to be much more difficult to be a Desmond in that milieu. And there's a saturation in values that all point the other way – very much exemplified by the reality show. What are they getting these rewards for? Their personality! It's delusional. You make a complete chump of yourself, prostitute yourself, for a celebrity that is absolutely weightless; a floating celebrity that has no ballast. But it's seen as a kind of punishment, not being famous. As a deprivation.'
Fame… '"That last infirmity of noble minds", as Milton put it. But the idea of Milton being famous for winning the lottery, or a reality show…' Amis raises his eyebrows, temporarily at a loss for words.
He has a well-rehearsed explanation for this, to do with Britain's long and slow post-war decline from world power to, as he puts it, 'a second- or even third-echelon state'.
'The whole philosophy that we call "pc", levelism, cultural relativism and so on has been tremendously handy for England because it got us through the loss of Empire. Because under that ideology you don't want Empire – so we felt a little bit cleansed by losing it. But it was all illusion. In fact, we thirst for Empire.
'The original meaning of the word "disappointment" is not not getting what you hoped for, it's having something taken away from you. Dis-appointed. Fired. Sacked. And we are a disappointed nation in that way.'
Amis watched last summer's riots on his television in Brooklyn from an ironist's perspective: 'delight' in the odd spectacle of looters trying on trainers before stealing them – 'I thought that was quite innovatory in the looting line: the looter with the power of choice' – and in the fact that in a mall of shops the only one that was completely unmolested was a Waterstones. 'But it didn't – to use the cant word – resonate with me. There is always a population that is going to take whatever advantage it can from what looks like a temporary breakdown of law and order. I don't think it was a coherent thing at all. I still think the British are on the whole extremely tolerant and polite and friendly. There is a sort of witty civility in England you don't get in America.'
Lionel Asbo is frequently wincingly funny. Amis's aim at the totems and mores of common fame is as unerring, and his phrase-making as pyrotechnically dazzling, as ever. 'Diston,' he writes, 'with its burping, magmatic canal, its fizzly low-rise pylons, its buzzing waste.' A particularly dour and dispiriting Scottish town is called Souness. (There are some jarring wrong notes: would Threnody really say that 'glamour and myself are virtually synonymous'?) Amis also writes with real – and uncharacteristic – tenderness about Desmond. 'He's probably the most… I wouldn't say likeable' – incest, after all, is rarely likeable – 'but certainly the best-behaved character I've ever come up with,' he says.
The book is subtitled 'The State of England'. But in truth it could have been written any time over the past 10 years. And it seems particularly timeless as a catalogue of Amis's recurring obsessions: yobbish behaviour, bad sex, porn (which Lionel consumes wholesale: 'With the Mac,' he exults, 'you can have three new bunk-ups every day – just by using your imagination!'), spiritual vacuity, physical and moral decay. One is reminded of the critic Peter Kemp's observation that reading Amis's early novels was like 'being plunged into a septic tank doubling as a Jacuzzi'.
'Yes, not bad,' Amis says, as if giving marks. 'He's not a critic I enjoy reading on me, but something like that. All the things I hate in life, I enjoy them in fiction. Vulgarity, cynicism – all those sort of displaced and degraded feelings. I'm a great admirer of incorrigibility, too. People who go on making the same mistakes, I very much admire. Adore incorrigibility. And I delight in stupidity as well.
'But the thing I value most – and this comes out in fiction in a way you don't think about in your daily life – is innocence. And the trouble with having that as your main value is that innocence is diminishing all the time. The world has got drunk, lost its handbag and been sick in the bus so many times now.'
Somewhere a bell must have rung, for he suddenly says, 'We can have a drink now', as if the bar has just opened. He fetches two beers from the kitchen, and a bottle of wine for later. The family cat has walked in and is now splayed contentedly on the sofa. A picture of happiness, I say. Amis looks at the cat. 'Borges said, "Every creature is immortal except for man." We know we're going to die. They don't. "Time is a river that is bearing me away, but I am the river." No animal has to grapple with that thought, because they think they're eternally alive. Have you noticed, religious people – really religious people – look sinisterly young? Because it's consciousness of death that draws all these lines on us. Not just the time moving past you, but where it's headed.' He takes a swig from his beer.
Amis began writing Lionel Asbo almost three years ago, long before there was any talk of moving to America – 'so it's not my final V-sign to England or anything like that.' He wrote it and finished the second draft in a year. 'And I thought, it will take me a few weeks to revise it and then it's done. Incredible! A whole novel in a year!' But it then took him another year to revise it. What was missing, he came to realise, was 'anxiety': 'It just wasn't good enough. And what it lacked was that I hadn't worried about it enough.'
It didn't use to be like this. With his first four novels, he read the completed manuscript in a day, and on the next delivered it to his agent. Money took him three years to write – 'thoroughly enjoying it' – and three days of agony to read. 'It seemed to me appalling, the whole thing. My blood was the way your blood feels gangrenous when you're really anxious. That was three days of anxiety from three years' work, so a huge imbalance.'
Now he has come to believe that the balance has to be 50-50. 'Weighing things so that they measure up and balance out' – it is, he says, a matter of decorum. 'You've got to earn it. And this concept has come to seem very basic to me.'
Earning it. This line of thinking is particularly interesting coming from Martin Amis, of course; because if he has one particular fixation – you might almost call it an obsession – it is to do with being Kingsley Amis's son and all that grows from it; the uniqueness of it (can you think of another son or daughter of a celebrated novelist who has equalled, not to say surpassed, the achievements of their parent? No, neither can he); the light, or shadow, that it has cast on his own career; and his firmly entrenched conviction that he has been punished for it. It's what Amis calls 'the curse of Prince Charles – the taint of heredity'; the perception 'that somehow you haven't earned it, in the sense that it's a bit like taking over the family pub'.
A fitting analogy. The Amis Arms was a lively, often rackety establishment (where, incidentally, much drink was taken. According to one account, by the end of his life Kingsley was putting away a bottle of Macallan single malt a day, before moving on to gin and Campari). Martin spent his first nine years in Swansea, where Kingsley was teaching at university, then a year at Princeton. When he was 12, his father left the family for the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Amis stuttered through a series of schools and crammers – one headmaster described him as 'unusually unpromising' – until his education was taken in hand by his stepmother, who persuaded him to try for Oxford. He left with a 'congratulatory first' – the university's highest award.
As a father, Kingsley was 'very minimalist – in other words, my mother did it all. But whenever you did pass him, before he slunk back into his study, he always made you laugh, which went a very long way.
'The great thing about Kingsley was that unlike all the fathers of my male friends, he didn't resist the sexual revolution when it happened to us. All my friends' fathers were thinking, "So there is going to be sex before marriage, eh? Why was I told that there wasn't going to be sex before marriage?" There really was a retroactive envy. But Kingsley was delighted by all that. He'd had that fight with his father, and he wasn't going to have it with my brother and me.'
Amis allows that the early 1970s was 'a very opportune time' to be young and single. In adolescence he had been prey to consuming crushes on girls, 'but always completely chaste. I was very frightened of getting hurt, to a perhaps damaging extent, so tended to hold back on feelings. It may be no more than a reaction to parents breaking up, where it makes you distrustful of love. It's like having the carpet whipped out from underneath you.'
You sense that he quickly made up for lost time as his literary star rose. 'Just average really.' He thinks again. 'A little over-average, perhaps… A friend of mine, who's dead now, said that he'd slept with 600 or 700 women in a four-year period in Los Angeles. But that was doing absolutely nothing else. And I don't think he took many of those girls to the opera more than once. But what inhibits us is that you've got so many other things to do, and you like to do – like writing novels.'
He wrote his first book, The Rachel Papers, in 1973, when he was 24. The day after he finished writing it, he began his next book. Dead Babies was published in 1975, Success in 1978. Amis was a glamorous figure, with his Byronic looks smouldering behind a veil of cigarette smoke, the velvet jackets, cuban-heel boots and Beauchamp Place shirts – he was novelist as pop star, as the cliche had it, 'the Mick Jagger of literature'.
'The problem with that,' he says lightly, 'is why isn't Mick Jagger known as the Martin Amis of the rock world? It's a conundrum, that.'
The truth is, he says, when you're only 5ft 6in you never feel glamorous. 'My first wife, who was taller than me, said to me once, "You should be grateful that you're short because you'd have been a real pill if you'd been tall."' He pauses. 'True.' A slightly longer pause. 'Maybe. I always felt quite confident, but no airs for that reason, really. It would have been ridiculous to have airs at 5ft 6in. I didn't have swagger.'
His father always took a slightly equivocal view of his work. 'He thought novels should just be middle-brow entertainments. His favourite living novelist was Dick Francis. He said to me once, "I'm never going to begin another novel unless it begins 'A shot rang out' or 'A scream rent the midnight air'." He thought my work was…' Amis reaches for the mot juste. 'Onanistic. He sporadically liked my fiction, much more perhaps my criticism; but he said, "I do admire you as an adult – you get on planes, you go on trains by yourself, you're competent" – in a way he never was.'
If Kingsley took an equivocal view of Martin's work, his growing popularity was evidently a source of rancour. 'Did I tell you Martin is spending a year abroad as a TAX EXILE?' Kingsley wrote to Philip Larkin in 1978. 'Last year he earned £38,000. Little shit. 29, he is. Little shit.'
So, jealousy then?
'No. Although he did say that he was at a party once and a woman came up to him and said, "How does it feel to have a son who's much more famous than you?" And he said, "He isn't much more famous than me." And she said, "Yes he is, much more famous." He told me that he thought that was very funny.'
Of course, the woman was right. Martin was much more famous. And then, in the manner of such things, fame turned on him. In 1994 he dispensed with his long-standing agent Pat Kavanagh in pursuit of a publisher's advance of £500,000 – in the process jeopardising his close friendship with her husband, Julian Barnes. Expensive dental work was trumpeted as a sign of his vanity and profligacy. In 1996 he divorced his wife after meeting Isabel Fonseca. With each successive twist in the tale the balmy breeze of admiration turned to the chill wind of personal attacks and vituperative reviews – what Amis himself described as an 'Eisteddfod of hostility'.
'Nothing is more banal than what your father does for a living,' he says; and growing up as the son of a novelist takes the edge off the literary life, at both ends. 'You know what it's like to be attacked and praised, because you've seen it happen to your father. So when you get a bad review you don't seek the foetal position for 12 hours, and when you get a good review you don't go out and get drunk.' But then again – as he points out – to accuse a writer of being egotistical is like accusing a professional boxer of being violent. 'You just wouldn't do it otherwise.' And you can tell the criticism hurt.
'I won't be accused of whingeing, I hope.' He reaches for his glass. 'Everyone was very generous when I started, and then it gets as if I'm Kingsley and I've lived for a century. There are certain noticeable anomalies that, if I'd come from nowhere, as is the case with my writer friends – if my father had been a businessman, or a schooteacher or an Army man, for instance – then you're taken a bit more seriously, I think. Or a bit more on your own merits.'
So you think the hostility derives from being Kingsley's son?
'Yeah. The subliminal feeling that it was no struggle for me at all. And it's not conscious, but it's there. I don't feel it interferes with my readers at all, but it does with officialdom, including the press and such things. People have asked me, would I accept a knighthood?' Kingsley was knighted in 1990. 'Well, believe me, it's not going to come up. I haven't been offered an MBE, where all my writer friends and peers are either turning down or accepting knighthoods. The only literary prize I've won for fiction was 40 years ago.'
He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize only once, in 1991, for Time's Arrow. (Kingsley, who died in 1995, was shortlisted three times, winning it in 1986 for The Old Devils.) 'But my friends have all been shortlisted, or won it. It does seem to be a bit of a sinister coincidence.'
Did it rankle when Julian Barnes won it last year?
'No. It was the same as when Ian [McEwan] won. You open the paper and say "shit" with a smile on your face, and then you actually feel quite high for a couple of days. It's more a feeling of "here we go again" when it isn't shortlisted.' He shrugs. 'Anyway, I'm delighted with the readers I have, and that is the main thing. That's what you want: you don't want money, you don't want prizes; you want readership.'
I tell Amis that I think he's got it wrong here. The figure of his father – quite naturally – looms far larger in his mind than it does in anybody else's. Surely, whatever hostility has come Amis's way from the press and literary establishment has less to do with his being the son of Kingsley than with his own fame and celebrity. It is the classic case of cutting down to size. He gives me a doubtful look.
'Does that explain why I haven't been offered an MBE?'
That may be because you once described the Royal family as 'philistine'.
'That's a possibility.'
We talk about his family. As well as his two daughters by Isabel, he has two sons from his first marriage to Antonia Phillips: Louis, a journalist, and Jacob, an academic. He also has a daughter, Delilah, who was born following a brief affair in the 1970s with the late artist Lamorna Seale, and who was unaware that Amis was her father until she was 19. Delilah has three children.
The only durable word, he says, that has survived from his generation to his children's is 'cool'. 'That has been the guiding value. And being a grandfather is very uncool, don't you think? When you were 20, did you think it would be cool to be a grandfather? So uncool.' He laughs. 'Although, of course, I'm delighted for my daughter. And they're exceptionally charming children.'
The worst thing about growing old, he says, is the 'fear of declining powers'. For three quarters of an hour each day he does the Times crossword – it appears in the New York Post. On average, he completes half of it; once, all of it. But sometimes none of it. 'And I feel as though I've got Alzheimer's, staring at this for 45 minutes without being able to fill in one clue. In fact, my competence at crosswords is about what it always was, but it's more the paranoia at this stage; the fear of what's to come.'
It is a fact, he says, that your vocabulary starts to shrink in your fifties – 'so you reach for the Thesaurus a bit more than you used to.' Language no longer rushes at Amis like it used to. 'When I look at my early stuff – which I don't do, but I sometimes have to – I'm amazed by the garrulity; quite impressed, actually, by how I can't shut up. You do learn how to shut up.'
What you fall back on, he says, is craft. 'I wrote a piece on Nabokov, which was discussing what derives from talent and what derives from genius. Genius is all the God-given stuff – the altitude of perception and articulacy. Talent is craft. And what happens I think is your genius shrinks and your talent expands. You get better at construction and knowing what goes where – pacing, modulation, that kind of thing.' He mimics a footballer: 'I can still do a job in midfield. A good job too, because you know more about the game.'
The point is, he goes on, whatever the critics may say, he still believes he is on his game. He is happy with Lionel Asbo and 'very interested' in the novel he is writing now – 'my second visit to the Holocaust'.
'I still feel, when I wake up and all I've got to do that day is write, I can't wait to get down there. It's a wonderful way of earning a living.'
Getting old, he says, may be very uncool – but the peculiar thing is that it seems to agree with him. 'Because I seem to be happier than I was when I was younger.' A note of slight disbelief registers in his voice, as if to say, how did that happen? He reaches for the wine and pours two glasses.
At the memorial service for Hitchens, Amis was talking to another friend, who said that Hitchens' death had left him with the feeling there was now less in life to hang on to. Amis doesn't see it like that. The 'shameful secret', he says, is that the death of a friend very much increases your love of life. We grieve for them but by loving life more, because they can't do that any more. You treasure the moments on their behalf. It's a great gift from your dead friends that they make life more precious to you. It's quite a subversive thought.' He falls silent for a moment. 'It's very complicated, all this – coming to terms with it. It's slow and stubborn and will take the rest of my life to process. As Hitch and I used to say, the idea of "closure", in the vernacular, is disgusting, a wank.
'He grappled with the Nietzsche line, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Amis gives a bleak smile. 'I always thought that was all balls; what doesn't kill you makes you weaker, and kills you later on.'
'Lionel Asbo' (Jonathan Cape) is available for £16.99 plus £1.25 p&p from Telegraph Books (0844-871 1515). Martin Amis will be appearing at the Telegraph Hay Festival on June 10


text:
Pictured: Mark Pollak
PRINCETON, N.J. – Harvard and Yale tied for the lowest scores at this weekend's Princeton Invitational hosted by Springdale Golf Club but the Elis won the tiebreaker on the final-round score of the team's fifth player.
With 15 schools competing including seven of the eight Ivies, Harvard took a one-stroke lead into Sunday's final round but Yale made up that last stroke and took home the title as its No. 5 player, Carson Weinand, bested Harvard's Danny Mayer by three shots, 74-77.
Still, both clubs impressed with rounds of 874 as Harvard finished at 288-294-292 and Yale at 294-289-291.
Yale also had the individual champion, as Tom McCarthy finished at 3-under ahead of second-place Brendan Kelly of Villanova, who finished at even par.
Harvard was paced by Mark Pollak who rode 11 birdies to a pair of 69 rounds againsta round of 77 coming Saturday afternoon. He finished fourth at 215 overall while Greg Shuman also had a top-10 effort (eighth) with rounds of 72-73-73-218.
Tony Grillo (73-73-73-219) finished 12th while Louis Amira (80-71-78-229) finished 53rd and was one of five players to record an eagle during the weekend. Mayer came in at 60th with rounds of 74-80-77-231.
Towson and Penn tied for third, four shots behind Harvard and Yale, while Villanova finished fifth, 15 shots behind the pace.