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Quality and Patient Safety
Connecticut hospitals have set themselves apart by leading the nation with an ambitious statewide initiative to eliminate all-cause preventable harm using high reliability science to create a culture of safety.
The high reliability process reduces the number of serious safety events by reducing human errors and improving system reliability. Through extensive training and hands-on interactive workshops, hospital leaders are developing skills and learning to use practical tools that will enable them to create a culture of safety and fix systemic problems that lead to patient harm, decreasing events of preventable harm.
More than 10,000 people in hospitals across our state have been trained in high reliability science and behaviors - from CEOs to clinicians and non-clinical staff. This exciting and transformative work is resulting in a culture shift that is saving lives. And this year, Connecticut hospitals' dedication to patient safety through high reliability was recognized on a national level, as CHA was awarded the prestigious Dick Davidson Quality Milestone Award for Allied Association Leadership.
Key Objectives Include:
- Understanding core concepts about human error and event prevention in complex systems.
- Identifying what leaders can do to demonstrate safety as a core value.
- Understanding a behavior-based approach for improving and sustaining performance.
- Understanding success factors for building and sustaining a high reliability performance culture.
- Self-assessing organizational readiness.
Integrated with this groundbreaking statewide effort is CHA's work with the American Hospital Association's Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) on the Partnership for Patients effort, a national initiative to decrease preventable patient harm by 40% and prevent avoidable readmissions by 20%. Among other areas, hospitals are committed to eliminating all healthcare-associated infections (HAI), including central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and surgical site infections (SSI). Engagement in these collaboratives builds upon hospitals' prior work with the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Stop HAI projects: Stop BSI and Stop CAUTI, which successfully resulted in fewer healthcare-associated infections nationally.
Fourteen hospitals were engaged in the Stop BSI project and have achieved a reduction in their central line-associated blood stream infection (CLABSI) rates to an overall statewide rate of 1.1/1000 central line days. Connecticut's experience in the Stop BSI project, "Decreasing Central-Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections in Connecticut Intensive Care Units," was published in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, September 2013.
The On the CUSP: Stop CAUTI program began with nine hospitals in November 2011. Teams are now in the implementation phase of the project. This national patient safety program is aimed at reducing catheter associated urinary tract infections and implementing the comprehensive unit-based safety program (CUSP).
Several other ongoing clinical collaboratives unite hospitals around key safety objectives, including reducing preventable heart failure readmissions and infection prevention. Recently, hospital teams and community care partners have participated in the Heart Failure Readmissions Collaborative, a partnership between CHA's Patient Safety Organization and Qualidigm.
Also, 28 Connecticut hospitals participated in the national HCAHPS Patient Safety Learning Network to improve quality, patient safety, and patient experience. This national program currently involves 19 states.
Through its Patient Safety Organization (PSO), CHA is providing leadership and resources for ongoing improvement activities.
CHA's Towards Excellence in Care (TEIC) program provides facilities with quality improvement services through data collection and analysis of clinical processes and outcomes.
CHA, in partnership with Qualidigm and DPH, has developed a Wallet Medication Card and questions and answers about patient safety strategies for consumers.
Quality and Patient Safety Report
Ensuring the Highest Standards of Patient Safety and Quality Care
Questions and Answers About Patient Safety Strategies for Consumers
How Can I Help with Correct Patient Identification?
Carefully reviewing the spelling of your name, age, address, and other information and correcting any errors at the time you register at the hospital.
Making sure the nurse, doctor, or other healthcare worker checks your wristband and asks your name before taking any tests or giving you any medications or treatments.
Trying not to get frustrated when doctors and nurses repeat the same questions, such as asking your name; this is an important double check to confirm that your information is correct.
Telling a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare worker if you think he or she has confused you with someone else. For example, if the medication that you are given or procedure you are about to have is not what you were expecting, speak up and ask the provider to confirm that it is correct.
How Can I Help with Communication?
Take an active role in your care by:
Asking the person doing the test how long it will take for results to be reported to your doctor.
Asking your doctor to review the test results with you and to explain what that means for your future care.
Always confirming test results with your doctor, even if you are told that no call from the doctor means everything is fine.
How Can I Help with Medication Safety?
Take an active role in your care by:
Knowing what medications you take and why you take them.
Asking questions if you don't recognize a medication.
Telling the doctor or nurse about any allergies you have, or any bad reactions you have had to medications in the past, before taking a new medication.
Learning both the brand name and generic name for each medication you take.
Keeping a current written list of all the medication you take and bringing it with you whenever you go to the hospital or any other healthcare provider to help you remember to tell the hospital or other provider about all of your medicines. Click here for a wallet card to help you track your medications.
If there is a medication that you took at home that you have not been given in the hospital, asking your doctor or nurse if you should still be taking that medication.
Reviewing your list of medications with the doctor or nurse before you leave the hospital to make sure you understand which medicines to take and how often. You may also want to involve a family member or friend in that discussion so they can help you remember which medications to take.
After you leave the hospital, calling your doctor if you have any questions about which medication you should be taking. Do not assume that you should take all of the same medication that you took before you went into the hospital.
How Can I Help with IV Safety?
Sometimes in the hospital, you will be given liquid or liquid medicines through a thin tube attached to a bag of fluid. This is called an IV.
If you are given an IV, ask the nurse how long it should take for the liquid to "run out."
Tell the nurse if your IV doesn't seem to be working properly.
How Can I Help Reduce Infections?
Thorough hand washing is an important way to reduce the spread of infections anywhere, at home, at work, in the community, and in healthcare facilities. For information on the best techniques for hand washing, as well as a list of situations in which you should always wash your hands click here for the federal Centers for Disease Control's Clean Hands Campaign information.
Always wash your hands before touching a hospital patient that you are visiting and don't visit anyone in the hospital while you are ill.
If you are a hospital patient and have a family member or friend who is ill, ask that person not to visit you in the hospital until they are well.
Many hospitals have sinks or hand washing gel dispensers outside of patient rooms so you may not always see your healthcare personnel clean their hands. If you have not seen your doctor, nurse, or other healthcare worker wash their hands, however, don't be afraid to ask them if they have washed their hands before allowing them to touch you.
Before you leave the hospital, if you have any breaks in your skin, such as from an injury or where you had surgery, make sure you understand how you are supposed to care for the area once you get home. Your doctor or nurse will give you specific instructions about when you can get the area wet, whether you should keep it covered, and how to keep it clean. If you have not received these instructions, ask before you leave the hospital. It is very important that you follow these instructions carefully because it is easy for bacteria that cause infections to get into your body through a break in your skin.
How Can I Reduce the Risk of Falling?
In the hospital, take an active role in your care by:
Telling your nurse at the time you are admitted to the hospital if you have difficulty walking or have to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.
Always calling your nurse if the nurse or doctor tells you that you should ask for help when getting out of bed. You are not disturbing the nurses -- keeping you safe is an important part of the work they do.
Even if you have not been told to ask for help when getting up, any time you feel weak, dizzy, or sleepy, don't get out of bed without calling the nurse or nurse's assistant for help.
For other strategies on fall prevention in the community, click here for information from the Connecticut Collaboration for Fall Prevention.
How Can I Help My Doctor Perform the Correct Procedure?
At the time your surgery/procedure is scheduled:
Carefully read your surgery/procedure consent form and ask questions if you don't understand something. You may want to bring a trusted family member or friend with you who also can listen and ask questions.
At the hospital:
Ask the hospital personnel to confirm what kind of surgery/procedure you are having and on what body part the surgery/procedure is to be performed. If the hospital personnel give a different answer than you were expecting, ask to speak with the doctor before the procedure starts to confirm that you are having the correct procedure.
Participate in marking your own surgical site if the hospital asks you to do so and you are confident that you know the site of your surgery.
If hospital staff ask you to verify the procedure that is being done or the location of the procedure and you don't know, tell the hospital staff that you don't know. Don't guess or just agree with the hospital staff if you actually don't know the exact procedure or location of the procedure.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Hospital Compare: Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services
Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Institute of Medicine
Joint Commission
National Patient Safety Foundation
National Quality Forum


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Tuesday, Apr 3, 2018, 6:00 am
Farm Workers Are Under Attack For Doing a Job that Other Americans Won't
The farm workers were 35-year-old Santo Hilario Garcia and 33-year-old Marcelina Garcia Profecto. One fateful day last week, Garcia came out of his house before 7 a.m. and got behind the wheel of an SUV, with Profecto beside him. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents spotted Garcia and concluded that he fit the description of a suspect they were after. So they trailed him and pulled him over. As the agents exited their vehicle, Garcia panicked and sped away. The SUV slid off the road, flipped over and crashed into a power pole. The couple died at the scene.
Two other details:
First, at home, the couple left behind six children who are now orphans. A half dozen kids will grow up without parents, maybe wind up in foster care.
And second, this dreadful story could have been avoided if the ICE agents were better at their jobs. You see, they made a mistake. They weren't after Garcia, only someone who looked like him.
That's understandable. In these dark days of fear and loathing, all Latino immigrants look alike.
You hear anti-immigrant pundits on television talking about how farmers want "open borders" so they can keep wages low and exploit immigrants while denying jobs to Americans. It's one of those colossally ignorant statements that comes from city folks who think that milk comes from the supermarket.
With unemployment in California at a mere 4 percent, most of the folks who want to work are working. Meanwhile, those who don't want to work have the whole day free to call into talk radio shows and complain about how there are no jobs.
A fast-food restaurant near my house needs workers and it is offering $11 per hour, the state's minimum wage.
In San Diego County, an avocado farmer insists he can do better and that his workers can earn as much as $15 per hour. In Fresno County, a citrus farmer tells me that he is paying workers $22 per hour to pick mandarin oranges.
These gentlemen and other growers make up California's agriculture industry, which brings in $45 billion annually. Neither has ever had an American come up to them and ask for a job picking fruit.
California—which has the world's sixth largest economy—couldn't survive without farming. And farming would vanish without illegal immigrant labor.
Hatred and heated rhetoric doesn't bring in the harvest.
I didn't read this story in a book. I saw it with my eyes. I was born and raised in Central California. That is my home. The people there—who are often looked down on by clueless sophisticates in San Francisco and Los Angeles—are my people.
And, where immigration is concerned, my people live in the real world. Unlike the folks in Rust Belt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania who want to curl up in the fetal position and wait out the global economy by relying on Trump administration tariffs on steel and aluminum, the people in Central California are too busy working to stop and listen to those who say there is no work.
In fact, the state's farmers are so productive, and their industry so efficient, that they grow more than half of the produce in the United States and still have a surplus to sell overseas. So if countries like Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Brazil—which make up more than half of steel imports into the United States—retaliate against Trump's tariffs, agricultural exports could wind up taking the brunt of the punishment.
Back to the tragedy, I know what you're thinking. But don't speak to me about blame. Parents are not perfect. Like ICE agents, they make mistakes. These parents made the mistake of living in the country illegally. Then they made the additional—and fatal—mistake of fleeing from law enforcement officers. And for those mistakes, they paid a very high price.
Still, when confronted by heartbreaking stories like these, Americans can't get so focused on legality that we lose sight of our humanity. That is, if we want to continue to claim to be a civilized people.
(This story is the property of The Washington Post Writers Group. It is reposted on Rural America In These Times with permission from the author.)
Like what you've read? Subscribe to In These Times magazine, or make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting.
Ruben Navarrette
Ruben Navarrette is an increasingly important voice in the national political debate. His column offers new thinking on many of the major issues of the day, especially on thorny questions involving ethnicity and national origin. His column is syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group.

subset: commoncrawl


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Sunday, February 21, 2010
Summerson's Guide to Climbing, California Edition
First was a book on the Southwest. This is really good, but is mostly a subset of the national guide, with a few more climbs added in. Still recommended.
Far closer to home for me is the newly released California edition. Wow! What a resourse! If you ride in California, this is a must-buy. Even if you find one, just one climb here you weren't aware of, one gem of a climb to add to your "done that" list, the cost of the book is more than justified. And I can't imagine any rider not finding some inspiration here.
Okay, now to some details.
First, the route profiles... at first I was taken aback at the relatively low resolution of the profiles in the first book. In the CA book, the resolution has improved, but still these are below the level one can get from many sources, such as Lucas Pereira's gradiometer page, or from Strava. But the profiles work! The reason is for each segment, he posts the range of grades in that segment. How much information can one process, anyway? Basically you get the feel for the climb from John's representation, where from full profiles, it can be hard to grasp all the detail. So the profiles work for me.
Then there's his descriptions. Some of these are fantastic, really translating John's passion for climbing and ability to find a unique personality in each individual road. But some of the descriptions do fall a bit short, or are insufficient to navigate the road. For example, Mt Tamalpais in Marin or Lomas Cantadas in the Berkeley Hills both get short treatment. Lomas Cantadas in particular is quite a navigational challenge: we did it in the 2008 Low-Key Hillclimbs. But these are the exception: room for improvement in version 2. Most of the climbs are excellently described given the space limitations.
Then the climb numeric ratings. I love numeric ratings, and John's formula strikes a nice balance between simplicity and ease of calculation and accuracy. Now "accuracy" needs to be put in heavy quotes, as each rider has their own idea about how distance, altitude, grade, and steepness each contribute to how hard a climb is. So any formula, no matter how quantitatively precise, is going to have a heavy dose of subjective. I'll comment more on the formula in a bit, but first some background.
First there's the concept of "climb difficulty": gaining 1000 feet in 2 miles may be tough, yet may be less tough than gaining 1000 feet in 200 miles. Distance alone adds difficulty. A climb rating should be for only the "climbing" component. So the 2 mile climb is rated harder than the 200 mile climb, even if finishing the 200 mile climb is far more challenging.
Next a comment on the definition of a "climb". John described a definition in the first book, but liberalized it for the CA edition. And justifiably: Mount Hamilton was considered three separate climbs in the first guide due to the descents, but is included as a single climb in the CA version. I may comment more on this in a later post, but Hamilton is certainly a climb on its own, so I support the liberalized definition. Unfortunately the stricter definition is still listed on page 14 of the CA edition. He just fails to comply with it in the climb selections.
Then on the statistics: John derives elevation data from digital map data using measured GPS coordinates. Unfortunately, small errors in a GPS reading can result in large errors in altitude, so the numbers aren't always good. See, for example, a discussion of Motionbased Gravity, which applies this same technique.
One example is Old La Honda. The canonical number for Old La Honda out of Woodside is 1290 feet, which checks out with Google's "terrain" map. That's Lucas Pereira's number, for example. John has 1344 feet.
Kings Mountain Road is a bigger issue, where Lucas has 1540 feet, which also checks with Google. But John's number, 1691 feet, is clearly too high. John starts the "climb" at Highway 84, rather than at Greer Road or Entrance Way, with the segment between Highway 84 and Greer having negligible grade. So something's up: I'm not sure what. So if you really care, you might want to check altitude numbers against Google Maps.
Then there's the difficulty formula itself. He describes the formula as square root of grade multiplied by altitude difference (net, not gross) multiplied by an adjustment for peak altitude multiplied by an adjustment for the fraction of the road which is unpaved multiplied by a "bonus" if the road meets a certain criterion for non-uniform grade. All good, although I'd prefer the nonuniformity component be continuous rather than all-or-nothing, but I understand the need for simplicity. But then in the listed ratings, he uses the grade itself, rather than the square root of the grade. Obviously he decided the square root failed to give enough credit to truly steep climbs. But I feel square root works better for shallower grades. I may comment on the formula, and propose a compromise, in another post.
But altogether, I love this book. It's a great resource, one which I hope becomes available in every bike shop. Indeed, anyone getting into cycling should buy a copy. And everyone already into cycling should buy a copy, as well.
2 comments:
You have a different definition of simplicity than most people.
I found that Ross' Epic Hill Climb is harder than the Mt. Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hill Climb. Of course, Sumerson was factor bad weather into the the MWARBHC, and the weather was sunny and clear on the day I was in the event.
- February 23, 2010 at 10:58 PM
- djconnel said...
No weather adjustment to the climb rating.... although I think expectations are a big issue. I remember I'd been beaten by Alba on Mr. Bill's Nightmare when I bonked, so returned a few years later to try it again, totally psyched up. I actually on that day had more trouble with Page Mill, which was my "commute", than with Alba, because Page was just in the way, but Alba was my real goal.
The top of Pine Flat, in a race scenario, is really tough though, I agree: there's not the luxury to hold back for that final 20% grade since it's so important to be in a good group going into the flat part, so you begin that segment fairly deplete already. Mt Washington is likely less tactical, with more luxury to self-pace.
- February 24, 2010 at 7:52 AM


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Kayak and Camp along Frio River
5:00am, Apr. 20 - 7:00pm, Apr. 21
Trip Cost: $60
Have you ever wanted to do an overnight kayaking trip? Well, do it in style with Outdoor Adventures as we head to the Frio River and spend a night on the river banks. Trip cost includes transportation, equipment, meals, and instruction. Best sun tan ever also included! Sign up today, spots are limited.
Registration for this event is now closed.


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For years you've captured, traded and battled with them; now it's time once again to become a Pokémon yourself! Join a guild and prepare for adventure as you return to a fantastic land untouched by humans. Hundreds of Pokémon, randomly-generated dungeons, and online compatibility enhance strategic exploration and battles. Head out to explore long-lost dungeons, or hunt down criminal Pokémon - the choice is yours in this epic game.
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GUCCI BLOOMS GG SUPREME TOP HANDLE BAGCategories:Other Brands
Size: 11′ x 7′ x 6′ inches
Price: $1,390 USD
Gucci gives us some beautiful sights to see with the Blooms GG Supreme Top Handle Bag, an all-important piece that's one to watch this season. It's a Boston bag packed with so much femininity – sugar, spice and everything nice! A double top-handle with a detachable and adjustable shoulder strap never hurt anybody.
The bag features a Blooms print GG supreme canvas with an antique rose leather detail. It also has a Camel alcantara fabric lining with a suede-like finish. Antique silver metal hardware adorn the piece, giving it a wonderful shine.
The Blooms GG Supreme comes in two sizes to choose from – small, and medium. It's a perfect way to carry all of your essentials! Both bags have on mould construction and interior zip and smartphone pockets, making them the perfect accessory to every outfit. It's a great deal!
Get yours now via Gucci e-store.
Size: 14′ x 9′ x 7′ inches
Price: $1,650 USD
Tags: bag Gucci Top Handle GG SUPREME BLOOMS
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GUCCI DIONYSUS GG SUPREME SHOULDER BAGCategories:Other Brands
If you're the details and ornaments kind of girl (with luxurious tastes, of course), then Gucci has something in store for you. Presenting…the Dionysus GG Supreme Shoulder Bag, made to accommodate both your fascination for the exquisite, and your needs in the functionality department. It's as glorious as it sounds, trust me.
In all its godlike glory, the bag is made of the finest supreme canvas that comes in a pretty beige/ebony background – a highly workable and versatile piece made to be worn anytime, anywhere! It has an interior zipped compartment inside, with a pocket under the flap, to keep all your valuables in place. With a stunning, silver textured tiger spur (with a pin closure and a side release) that adds an antique flair, and a sliding chain strap which can be worn as a shoulder strap or a top handle (imagine the possibilities!), this bag is about to be your best bet…yet.
The bag comes three wonderful styles to choose from:
1.) Dionysus GG Supreme Canvas Embroidered Shoulder Bag
This baby has some serious artisan detailing – using brass thread wrapped in silk, it features a majestic bird design which is hand-embroidered onto silk, applied in front of the bag. It also has a pop of purple suede detail, which gives it a royal touch.
Dionysus GG Supreme Canvas Embroidered Shoulder Bag
Size: 12" x 8" x 4" (W x H x D)
Price: $3400 USD or €2590 EUR
2.) Dionysus GG Supreme Canvas Shoulder Bag
Well, this bag isn't your typical Plain Jane – but because of its simplicity and sleek design (or lack thereof…the details, I mean), you can say that the GG Supreme Canvas is the most versatile of the bunch. And with its taupe suede detail, you can be assured that it would match your ensembles perfectly. Neutral on neutral? Who said it could be THIS good?
Dionysus GG Supreme Canvas Shoulder Bag
Size: 12" x 8" x 4" (W x H x D)
Price: $2250 USD or €1600 EUR
3.) Dionysus Geranium Print Shoulder Bag
Dainty, delicate geranium prints adorn this take on the Dionysus – and with good reason, since it adds a wonderful touch of floral to the already majestic structure of the bag. With an antique rose suede detail, this bag is about to make you the fairest of them all.
Dionysus Geranium Print Shoulder Bag
Size: 12" x 8" x 4" (W x H x D)
Price: $2300 USD or €1700 EUR
Catch these wonderful arm candies now, available for pre-order via Gucci e-store.
Tags: bag Gucci Shoulder GG DIONYSUS SUPREME


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STOP Act Aims to End Sexual Assault in the MilitaryApril 24, 2013
Last week, AAUW's Director of Public Policy Lisa Maatz stood alongside Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), representatives from other women's organizations, and survivors of military rape to announce the reintroduction of the Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Prevention (STOP) Act (H.R. 1593). AAUW Executive Director Linda Hallman, a proud veteran of the U.S. Army, also recently gave testimony on this issue at the Defense Department's Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. AAUW strongly supports the STOP Act, which would change how sexual assault is handled in the military by creating an independent body to investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases.
Statistics prove how badly this legislation is needed. More than 200,000 women are in the active-duty military, making up about 14.5 percent of the active-duty force. The Department of Defense estimates that 19,000 sexual assaults occur in the military each year, yet the vast majority, between 80–90 percent, go unreported. In 2010, the Department of Defense conducted a survey of active-duty members that revealed that only 13.5 percent of victims report sexual assault.
The prosecution rates of sexual assault are alarmingly low. Only 8 percent of assailants were referred to courts-martial, or military courts, compared with 40 percent for similar offenders prosecuted in the civilian court system. Why should victims report their assault if they have no faith their assailant will be convicted?
That's what the STOP Act would address. It would change how sexual assault is handled in the military by creating an independent body to investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases. This legislation takes the prosecution, reporting, oversight, investigation, and victim care of sexual assaults out of the hands of the normal chain of command. Instead, a new department at DOD called the Sexual Assault Oversight and Response Office will have final and independent authority to investigate and oversee the prosecution of all sexual offenses. The legislation also creates a sexual assault database within the Department of Defense that will be required to share information with the Department of Justice civilian sex offender database.
AAUW backs many initiatives to address the problem of sexual assault in the military. Among our efforts is the work of our Legal Advocacy Fund, which has provided support to service members who allege in lawsuits that they were sexually assaulted or raped by other service members while serving their country.
AAUW has also teamed up with the filmmakers of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Invisible War to arrange screenings nationwide. Hundreds of AAUW members have seen this important movie and have engaged their communities in discussions about sexual assault and violence in our nation's military. People need to know more about this issue.
Through accountability, education, and a robust prosecution system, we can end sexual assault in the military. Such protections are a long time coming, and they are the least we can do to support and respect the women and men around the world advancing this country's interests and safety.
Learn more about the STOP Act and urge your representative to support the bill through AAUW's Two-Minute Activist tool!


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How a New York Native Fell in Love with Chicago Hot Dogs
A number of years ago at a point I can't exactly recall, as the hot dog's tenure as New York's default street food unofficially ended, I had what would be my last hot dog for years.
It wasn't intentional, I swear. I don't remember when it happened, but I know there was a point after which I ate no hot dogs. They just never felt worth eating, not with a decent slice a block away or a freshly grilled burger at a neighbor's cookout. Hot dogs the way this New Yorker grew up eating them didn't taste bad; they just tasted irrelevant.
That is, they did until I moved to Chicago, where I spent four years relishing every one I could find. Now that I'm back in New York, the hot dogs are what I miss most.
Let's review your average New York and Chicago dogs. The former are fished out of a murky pool of tepid water from a cart and slapped into a stale bun, perhaps topped with tame sauerkraut or yellow mustard. (Or, god forbid, ketchup,.) This is the case nearly everywhere you look.
The latter are plump, all-beef, natural casing Vienna Beef sausages given a good crisping on the grill or griddle, and topped with as little as onions and mustard or as much as a small deli salad, pickles, relish, peppers, and tomatoes. Those add-ons may be plentiful and perhaps structurally unsound, but they're beautifully calibrated to layer sweet, tangy, and hot elements on a warmly spiced, plenty snappy link—the banh mi of hot dogs. When Ed asked aloud one day, "which is the better hot dog city," how else could I answer?
Now I've had days-long arguments with a proud, proud New York hot dog lover about the technicalities of what a good hot dog is—New York, Chicago, or otherwise, and I'll admit: a truly great New York-style hot dog, which you can basically only get these days at Gray's Papaya or Papaya King, is a beautiful thing. There's nothing else like a natural casing dog carefully griddled to a crackling snap, innards dosed with paprika and garlic, and the whole thing topped with some sauerkraut or brown deli mustard. When you get one made right, time stands still.
And if you feel that two sources for great hot dogs make a great hot dog town, then I'm happy you're happy. But that strikes me as a little light.
By comparison, let's look at this map, which shows just how plentiful good natural casing hot dogs are in Chicago.* If you want a well-made, natural casing New York-style hot dog in New York, you've committed yourself to cooking at home or visiting one of the last scions of the trade. In Chicago you have, at press time, over 70 places to satisfy your craving, all brick and mortar shops with a defined aesthetic and sense of permanence. In a city with one-third of the people.
* Of course a natural casing dog doesn't equate to a good hot dog, but it suggests an amount of care and attention lacking at most New York dirty water stands.
A great hot dog town is defined by more than just its great hot dogs. It's built on a foundation of discussion, debate, and fierce adoration. It relies on a sense of tradition that's protected in the face of change. Chicago has maintained its hot dog tradition. New York, by and large, has not. Why did it take living in Chicago to make me fall in love with hot dogs? Because so many of my neighbors were head over heels for them.
No one's waiting in a two hour line at Gray's the way they do at Hot Doug's. In all my time in New York, never have I seen a drunk guy on the subway trip down the aisle, losing his keys but fiercely clutching his hot dog. And I'm still waiting to watch a shouting match at a New York hot dog stand over whether ketchup is considered an acceptable topping. Had I as a kid, my hot dog world view might be different today.
I'm not saying that your average Chicago dog is great. For every Hot Doug's or Gene's & Jude's you have a dozen lesser contenders. But I will say that your average Chicago dog is a far better specimen than your typical New York version: Chicago's are sweet and tart and hot and thoroughly spiced, all on a reliably beefy, delicately flavored sausage. I've had many New York hot dogs that I'd call bad. But I've yet to taste a Chicago dog I wouldn't finish.
New York has a way of building up great traditions and then forgetting about them. Finding a good bagel these days requires a treasure map. Public interest in pastrami, despite the city's new-found fascination with smoking and curing meats of all kinds, is at a dangerous low. Hell, even getting a good slice of pizza, perhaps our most vital contribution to American eating, is harder and harder by the day. The hot dog of today's New York is a dirty waterlogged walking corpse, and it's probably too late to save it.
That's not so in Chicago, where the people are wise enough to treat their hot dogs with respect. Great sausages demand great loyalty, and I'm thankful the city hasn't given up.
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Research In Motion's own Inside BlackBerry sat down with their SVP Design, Todd Wood. They wanted to ask him a few questions about his work, inspiration and the future of design. Here's what the man behind those awesome BlackBerry devices, software and services had to say in the interview:
1. Can you take us through the typical design process of a BlackBerry device?
We refer to the design process as 3Ds – Definition, Development and Delivery.
Definition is about understanding what the customer's needs and wants are, as well as the technical parameters, and what the business goals of the project are. We call this information-gathering, though it's really about gaining insight.
In development, we start to gather and map ideas. We edit them and develop them to become concepts, whether they are sketches or models. It's a creative, iterative process – editing and changing until you get to a point where you've answered the objectives.
Once you think you're where you want to be, often there's further testing. I like to remind the team that this whole process is actually "research in motion." We test our final designs with the very people who inspired them: the customers, the business people, and the technology people. Then, we work on delivering and manufacturing – all the things that go along with launching a product.
2. During the design process, do you look at major trends in the smartphone industry outside of RIM?
Yes, we're certainly aware of what's going on. One of the big trends we're seeing is this desire for larger displays, but usually you need something that fits in your hand or in your pocket. Screens can be enormous, but the consumer always makes a choice about what fits their lifestyle.
Another important trend is thinness. But what's interesting is that consumers take a pragmatic and balanced approach to this. They know that with bigger screens and more capability, battery size is also important. There is such a thing as too thin.
The last big trend is choice in the market for BlackBerry devices. A lot of our customers really love and can't live without their keyboards. In our BlackBerry® 7 OS portfolio, there is a choice of QWERTY, an all-touch or a slider-hybrid. Our approach is a portfolio of choice – we don't see it as a one-size-fits-all market.
3. What research do you undertake before designing the latest BlackBerry smartphone?
We do many types of research when we're in the design phase for a new device. This can be as complicated as huge consumer panels across multiple markets, or as simple as getting two people together in a room and showing them a bunch of models. It gets interesting when the two people forget you're in the room and they start talking, keeping each other honest and having a good discussion. We learn a lot not just by what they say, but by what they do with the models. They start acting out – putting one of the models in their pocket, holding it up to their ear, imagining owning the device. That's often the one they prefer.ADVERTISEMENT
4. What are other industries that you might draw inspiration from?
That's a good question. It's really about inspiration – we have a very diverse team so we get a lot of inspiration from many different sources. Personally, I enjoy following the furniture design industry. I often go to the Milan Furniture Fair in April. It's a design week where manufacturers show their products in partnership with designers from around the world. The furniture industry is very connected to the fashion industry in Italy. So you get a sense of trend, what is contemporary, what the hot colour is, etc.
But at the same time, fashion can be fickle – we don't chase fashion, but it is interesting how furniture resonates with fashion and moves at a similar tempo to the smartphone industry. They're renewing products on a yearly or bi-yearly basis. That is meaningful and relevant to us.
A big trend that we're seeing is that things are not really seasonal anymore, and designs are often very global – a lot of influences from around the world. It is this "one world" concept that's quite interesting. People are realizing they are all connected; it's full circle because of products and services like BlackBerry.
5. How important is design to today's smartphone consumer?
For consumers, design is super important. In recent customer feedback, we see that the importance of design and appearance is right up there with the fundamentals of mobile Internet access. It's then followed by the importance of the display and the keyboard decision.
What's interesting about design is that it's something people decide on really quickly – whether they like it or not, partly from the appearance and then by how it feels when they touch or hold it. Does it feel like it looks? Is there integrity there? For BlackBerry devices, we pay a lot of attention to build quality and finish– our goal is always to make them functional and beautiful. People recognize and value this a lot.
Bonus Question:
6. Where do you see the smartphone design industry in 5 years?
It's difficult to be speculative, but from a design point of view – design isn't just about appearance; the definition of design has become much more holistic, more universal. We often speak about design as an experience.
For us at RIM, we have been investing in design over the years, so we have a great multidisciplinary design team in the studio practicing Experience Design. It makes us a world-class organization. In the next five years, we will continue to grow the team and the capability. Others will try to emulate this model, but in the end I think, like most industries, it will become pretty clear that there are top tier brands. And our goal is to remain in that top tier.


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GLASSBORO, NJ – The York College baseball team dropped a 6-0 non-conference decision at Rowan University on Tuesday afternoon in Glassboro, NJ. The Spartans fall to 4-12 overall while the Profs improve to 9-4.
The Profs got on the board in the second with a walk and an RBI single from C.J. Szymczak as Rowan took the early 1-0 lead.
The Spartans, who have a stretch of five Capital Athletic Conference games in the next five days, went pitcher by committee as five Spartan pitchers saw action in the game.
The Profs reached freshman Bryan Palumbo for four runs in the third, taking the 5-0 lead.
Rowan closed out the scoring with a run in the seventh, accounting for the final 6-0 score.
Mike Swietanski earned the win for the Profs as he went six shutout innings. He struck out seven, walked two and scattered five hits. He improves to 2-1 with the win. Three Rowan pitchers closed out the game, allowing a hit with three strikeouts over the final three frames.
Junior Brandon Ullom pitched the first two innings and suffered the loss as he allowed a run on two hits with a walk and a strikeout in two innings of work. He is now 0-1 with the setback. Sophomore Josh Kohn had an effective outing for York as he allowed just one hit in his three shutout innings of action. He did walk three and strikeout one in his time on the hill. Junior Tommy Moran threw a perfect eighth inning for York.
Matt Hill paced the Rowan offense as he was 3-for-4 with two RBI and a run scored. Scott Weaver added two hits, a run and an RBI while Mark Magliaro chipped in with a hit and a run scored. Szymczak added two RBI on a hit and a sacrifice fly.
The Spartans received two hits from senior Kyle Cook while four other Spartans each had a hit in the contest.
Rowan finished the game with 11 runners left on base while York left eight stranded.
The Spartans return to action on Wednesday as they host Wesley in a Capital Athletic Conference contest. The game is a make up from a rain out earlier in the year. First pitch at Jaquet Field is set for 3:30 pm.
Kyle Cook photo courtesy of Zach Clabaugh (www.sharpedgefoto.com)


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YORK, PA – The nationally ranked Catholic University Cardinals came into Charles Wolf Gymnasium and used a 21-5 second half run to earn a 60-52 non-conference win over the host York College Spartans on Monday night York.
The Cardinals, who are ranked 17th in the D3hoops.com Poll and 21st in the USA Today Sports Coaches Poll, remain perfect at 13-0. The Spartans, ranked 18th in the D3Hoops.com Poll and 11th in the USA Today Sports Coaches Poll, fall to 11-2 overall as they have dropped two straight after their school-record 11-0 start.
The two-game skid is the first the Spartans have had since February 12 and 16, 2011 when they lost to Mary Washington and Wesley in consecutive games.
The Spartans opened the second half with junior Kristen Haley (Silver Spring, Md./Georgetown Visitation) scoring the first 12 points of the half for the Green and White. Her final bucket came at the 14:58 mark and started an 8-0 run that gave the Spartans a 42-35 lead with 13 minutes left in the game.
The Spartan lead grew to eight points twice with the final time coming on a Brittany Hicks (Dover, Pa./York Catholic) jumper with 10:13 left in the game. That's when the Cardinals kicked it into gear. Catholic held the Spartans scoreless over the next 5:10 as the Cardinals went on a 9-0 spurt to take a 48-47 lead. York's Kelsey Murphy (Olney, Md./Good Counsel) canned a lay up to give the Spartans a temporary 49-48 lead. Katrinia Owunna hit a lean in post move just over 20 seconds later and the Cardinals would not trail again.
Owunna outscored York 10-2 over the final 4:44 to seal the win in the battle of nationally ranked squads.
The first half was back and forth and full of turnovers as neither team gained any significant traction. With the game tied at 12, York went on an 8-2 run to take a 20-16 lead, their largest margin of the half. York maintained the lead until the last 40 seconds of the half as the Cardinals got two Spartan turnovers and turned them into Karlyn Dixon buckets as the two teams headed to the break tied at 24. The first half featured a combined 26 turnovers and 34.5% shooting.
Emily Grabiak paced a balanced Cardinal effort as she had 14 points in her 25 minutes of action. Grabiak was 6-for-10 from the floor and 2-for-2 from three for CUA. The Cardinals' leading scorer Jill Woerner was held to 12 points, more than six points under her average. Woerner went 6-for-18 from the floor but she did pull in a team-high nine rebounds. She also had four steals and two assists for the Cardinals.
Seven other Cardinals reached the scoring column as CUA played 11 players in the victory.
Haley and senior Loreta Tonuzi (Hazlet, N.J./Raritan) each tallied 12 points for the Spartans. Haley scored all of her points in the first nine minutes of the second half. She was 6-for-11 from the floor while she also had four rebounds, three assists, two blocked shots and a steal. Tonuzi provided another huge boost off the bench as the 12 points established a new career-high for the senior captain. Tonuzi converted a career-high four three pointers in just 16 minutes of work. Point guard Aja Wallpher (Ellicott City, Md./Seton Keough) had eight points, seven assists, four steals and two rebounds in the loss. Hicks led the Spartans on the glass with 12 rebounds while she chipped in with seven points, two assists, two blocks and a steal.
The Spartans' lack of depth was evident as the five starters all played over 31 minutes. That wear on the starters came in York's third game in five days. Tonuzi was the only non-starter to play more than five minutes in the contest. Conversely, Catholic had two starters play over 30 minutes as eight players played double figure minutes for the Cardinals.
Neither team shot the ball well from the field, not an unexpected fact as both teams are ranked defensively in the nation. Catholic is sixth in field goal percentage defense while York is 18th. The Spartans are 17th in scoring defense while the Cardinals entered the game 32nd.
The Cardinals shot 37.9% from the floor and 50% (3-for-6) from three. The Spartans converted 36.2% from the field while they went 7-for-21 (33.3%) from distance. The Cardinals held a significant advantage at the free throw line as they went 13-for-17 from the stripe while York was just 3-for-4. The four attempts for York are the lowest number of makes and attempts dating back to before the 2008-09 season. The Spartans entered the game attempting an average of 20.5 free throws per contest.
Turnovers proved to be very costly to York as the Cardinals turned the Green and White over 25 times, converting those miscues into 24 points. York was not nearly as efficient in converting the 19 Cardinal turnovers as the Spartans only got eight points off CUA mistakes.
The Cardinals held a slight 39-38 edge in total rebounds, however, Catholic had two huge offensive rebounds in the final 50 seconds as they were clinging to just a four point lead.
The Spartans get very little rest as they return to action on Wednesday to resume conference play at Wolf Gymnasium. York welcomes Salisbury University to York for a 6:00 pm contest.
Kristen Haley photo courtesy of Zach Clabaugh (www.sharpedgefoto.com)
Audio Highlights courtesy of Darrell Henry - Voice of the Spartans


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Kim Miller necesitaba un nuevo diseño de otro y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 20 diseños de 13 diseñadores freelance.
Looking for a set of 3 dynamic infographics that have a clear message and a clean eye catching look. The three topics are:
1) "Did you know?" 98% of computers have missing, outdated, or corrupted drivers.
2) "Did you know?" 90% of system crashes are caused by driver problems.
3) "Did you know?" Updating your computer's drivers can improve your PC's speed and performance by up to 60%
Driver Robot
Set of 3 - 300 pixel wide by 300 pixel tall diagrams. These are to be displayed on webpages that sell driver updating software. The graphics and text should work together to provide a clear and informative message to the average consumer about the problems that can come from having the wrong drivers and the advantages to updating them (exact wording for each is given in the summary above).
- Fresh graphics that pop and get readers attention
- A similar look between the 3 diagrams so they look good on the same page or even side by side.
- Simple modern text
- A clear message
- Preferred colors are: blue/black/gray and/or green, along with any other highlight or complementary colors that the designer sees fit.
- The Photoshop/Illustrator or Fireworks file and any fonts used.
- Cluttered text
- An unclear message
- Several different types and sizes of font
- A design that is too "busy"


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The Voice UK Season 7 Episode 14 () - Watch Online
The Voice UK is a British television talent show created by John de Mol and based on the concept The Voice of Holland. It began its eleven-week run in March 2012 on BBC One. The current judging panel consists of Sir Tom Jones, will.i.am, Kylie Minogue, and Ricky Wilson whilst Danny O'Donoghue and Jessie J have recently announced their departures to focus on their music careers. Reggie Yates and Holly Willoughby served as presenters for the first two series, with Emma Willis and Marvin Humes to present the show from the upcoming third series. The show involves artists drawn from public auditions, and is part of The Voice franchise. It is produced by Shed Media's Wall to Wall as well as Dutch production company Talpa Productions.The BBC won a "bidding war" with ITV, paying £22 million for the rights to broadcast the show in the UK for two years. ITV's Britain's Got Talent launched its sixth series on the same date of 24 March 2012. Many media outlets saw this move as a deliberate attempt by ITV to create a "TV ratings war" with the BBC.There are four different stages to the show: producers' auditions, blind auditions, battle phase and live shows. Producers' auditions for participants began in October 2011 with five events in London, two events in Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, and Cardiff, and one event in Belfast. The blind auditions were held at the BBC Television Centre and broadcast for the first four weeks of the series. The battle phase was broadcast over two nights during the weekend of 21?22 April. The winner of The Voice UK will receive £100,000 and a record deal with Universal Republic.
The Voice UK Season 7 Episode 14 () Links
Do not miss the latest episodes of all the hottest TV shows you enjoy watching. They are waiting for you here at Watchseriestv.tv. You can watch the episodes that have been updated the most recently, but you can also go back to some older episodes that you missed or want to see again. There is a grand collection of popular TV shows and all their seasons are included, with all the episodes they contain that are neatly arranged so you can find everything you want to see with a lot of ease.


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With over 18 years of experience, Botanic-Art is an international wholesale supplier of herbs, seeds, plants, cacti and extracts.
Most of the products we offer find their roots in shamanic traditions or in herbal medicine from around the world.
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We hope you enjoy browsing our website and look forward to hearing from you!


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Wyclef Jean has accused his former The Fugees bandmate and ex-lover Lauryn Hill of misleading him about the paternity of her son with Rohan Marley.
The pair was caught up in an affair at the height of their fame in the band despite Jean being married to Marie Claudinette at the time.
Jean has previously hinted the romance was the catalyst for the group's split in 1997, but in his new memoirs, titled Purpose, he blames Hill for allegedly lying about the paternity of her child in a bid to convince him it was his and not Marley's.
In an excerpt obtained by the New York Post, Jean writes, "In that moment something died between us. I was married and Lauryn and I were having an affair, but she led me to believe that the baby was mine, and I couldn't forgive that.
"She could no longer be my muse. Our love spell was broken."


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Q: What does the IoT mean for insurers?
Sandquist: There are few aspects of our consumer and commercial world that won't be affected by the IoT, and insurance is no exception. Some carriers will be threatened by it. Improved risk monitoring, accident prevention, early loss detection, and preventive maintenance will cause their revenue pools to contract. Carriers that are slow to integrate IoT data sources into their underwriting and pricing models risk adverse selection which could put pressure on their margins. As products are transformed into "living services," insurance could be bundled into those services, disrupting carriers' traditional distribution models. On the positive side, the IoT is creating countless opportunities for insurers. It can allow leading insurers to improve their operational efficiency, assess risk and price their products with greater precision, and become better at identifying fraud. And that's just looking at their traditional business. It also allows them to evolve from being simply payers of claims to valued partners that help their customers monitor, mitigate and avoid risk. For some, this will lead to transformed customer relationships and entirely new sources of customer value and revenue from hybrid product/services. It really does open up a new world of opportunity for the industry.
Q: Could you give an example of an impact to insurers' risk pools?
Sandquist: Take equipment breakdown insurance. The US Department of Energy has forecast that the IoT's ability to enhance predictive maintenance of assets could eliminate up to 70 percent of breakdowns. Insurers may not consider all of those breakdowns to be covered losses, due to various cause-of-loss exclusions, but a portion of them would be. That could result in a significant amount of revenue and loss costs all but disappearing from insurers' income statements.
Q: Where specifically will the opportunities lie for insurers?
Sandquist: The IoT creates the potential for new products like usage-based auto insurance and insurance against the cyber-attacks that are becoming more common in an increasingly connected world. It will enable a host of innovative risk mitigation services related to the connected home, the connected car, connected health, connected worker, and the industrial IoT. These can help improve customer satisfaction by enabling insurers to reposition themselves as partners in preventing losses. Of course, the IoT can also reduce insurers' loss and loss adjustment expenses. And finally, it has the potential to create additional opportunities for innovative new products such as context-relevant small-ticket insurance, for new customer interaction channels, and for more frequent and meaningful customer interactions.
Q: Is it as easy as that?
Sandquist: I didn't say it would be easy. There are likely to be companies from other industries that may also be vying to help reduce risk for customers, and some of these competitors may be better positioned within the data value chain. To be successful, insurers will need to be more open to partnerships and better at collaborating with companies that have access to the IoT data. And they will need to become more customer-centric and innovative than most have managed in the past. They'll need to improve their capabilities in a number of important areas, including big data, analytics, service design, personalization and the customer experience. From a technology perspective, this means implementing flexible core platforms that support underwriting and pricing based on data from the IoT. It also means operating in two speeds: Carriers must orchestrate their legacy evolution while at the same time managing disruptive innovation, changing their IT processes to roll out faster and more efficiently, and managing security threats quickly and proactively. From a culture perspective, they need to be more willing to try new things and learn quickly from them.
Q: How should insurers get started if they want to take advantage of the IoT?
Sandquist: It often starts with an analysis of customer needs and the definition of the customer value proposition—which could include both premium discounts and the design of new services that can leverage the vast amount of data being gathered through the IoT. Many carriers will need to collaborate with others in order to gain access to the IoT data through new ecosystem partnerships and vendor relationships. As the data from providing these services gives them greater insight into their customers' risks, they can use it to improve their underwriting and pricing models and further tailor the products and coverages they provide. Also, in collaboration with their ecosystem partners, they can develop and launch entirely new products and services that use IoT data for context-relevant offerings.
Q: How significant an impact do you believe the IoT will have on the insurance industry?
Sandquist: Accenture's 2015 Technology Vision for Insurance study found that 80 percent of insurance players believe the IoT will disrupt their traditional way of doing business. Our recent Distribution & Agency Management Survey found that 45 percent of insurance executives expect the IoT to be a driver of revenue growth for the industry. Interestingly, we saw a significant increase in investment in IoT-related connected insurance initiatives. While much of the early attention was directed at vehicle telematics, in the past 12 months there has been a two- to three-fold increase in the number of IoT-related products, services and pilots focused on homes and buildings, health and fitness, and other wearables. So this is certainly, and already, an area of increased focus for many insurers.
Register to download the Accenture Distribution & Agency Management Survey infographic and full report


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Program Helps Get Word Out About Missing Children
Read the story. Click the "LISTEN" button at the bottom of the page to hear the story. When you are done, click the "NEXT" button.
Parents in a small city have a new way to help find a missing child. The police in this city want parents to know about a new program. The program is free and could save valuable time looking for a child.
Here is how the program works. The police take a picture of the child with a digital camera. The digital camera saves pictures as a computer file. The computer file is copied onto a floppy disk. The disk is given to the parents to take home. Once parents take the disk home they can add information about their child using their home computer.
If a child does become missing, the parents can quickly send the picture and information that is on the disk to the police using e-mail. It can also be sent to places that help find missing children. Parents can even use the disk to print flyers to help find their child.
Someone who works for the city thought of the new system. A service club gave almost $4,000 to make the system and buy disks.
About 500 parents in the city are using the system. The police would like to make the system bigger and use it to help find old people who get lost too.
(This was adapted from an original story provided by News10 KXTV Sacramento.)


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The average adult in Henry County could throw away 600 times his weight in garbage over a lifetime, according to reports from environmentalists.
Alexandra Guidry knows the severity of that statistic. That's why the Eminence eighth-grader is pushing for door-to-door recycling services in the county. Last year Guidry surveyed the community about recycling for a school science project and found only a small portion recycle here. Others indicated they would be willing to recycle if it were easier, the survey found.
No Henry County cities offer curbside recycling.
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the Henry County Local, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label.
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Actress Uma Thurman became best friends with Quentin Tarantino during an awkward meeting about "Pulp Fiction."
An eye infection forced the movie star to cancel two planned meetings with the director and when they eventually met up, she hadn't read his script.
She recalls, "I'd been swimming in this pool in Los Angeles and I got an eye infection, so I couldn't read and I couldn't be seen. As soon as it was away, we scheduled a meeting but the infection went into the other eye, so then I had to delay the meeting (again).
"Finally, I go to have the meeting … and of course I hadn't really been able to read the script properly, and I couldn't explain about the eye infection … so we ended up getting to know each other really well because I had to kind of talk all the way around the subject."
Now, 20 years later, Thurman admits she has come clean about her first meeting with Tarantino, adding, "He knows."


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The fabled Santa Cruz seaside park is almost 100 years old. And it is awesome as ever.
I was busy scouting my crustacean breakfast possibilities when I heard the first screams of the day. Suddenly, a meal on the Santa Cruz municipal wharf would have to wait. Is there a more come-hither sound than that of people of all ages joining together in a chorus of shrieks as they plunge down the initial 70-foot drop on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk's Giant Dipper roller coaster? It's possible that I'm biased, as I come from a long line of Boardwalk pleasure seekers. My grandfather grew up in Santa Cruz and spent some time as a lifeguard at the Boardwalk's Plunge, an enormous indoor saltwater pool that once occupied the space where the Neptune's Kingdom miniature golf course now stands. On the walls of the Historium in the same building, among pictures of 1930s aerial beach acts and long-gone rides, hangs a flyer promoting a 1938 Water Carnival featuring Olympic swim champion Duke Kahanamoku, who, back in 1913, had participated in a race with a "crack" team of local swimmers—one of whom, family lore has it, was Grandpa Anderson.
My parents' first date was at the Boardwalk. And part of their 50th wedding anniversary celebration last fall took place there as well. In between, my siblings and I whiled away a fair chunk of our adolescence on its 12 acres, getting to know the seductive curves of the Giant Dipper, the delights of chocolate-dipped bananas, and the satisfying crunch of bumper-car collisions.
When I returned there late last summer for the first time in a decade, the Boardwalk defied all probability by looking brighter and cleaner than I remembered it. All of its many indelible elements—the sounds of laughter, sea-gulls, crashing waves, and rumbling roller coaster; the fried foods, track grease, and salt air—were exactly right. It is a sensory mix that's impossible to replicate, notwithstanding all the pots of money Disney invested to that end in its California Adventure Paradise Pier. "Disney was basically trying to capture the nostalgia of the California seaside amusement park, which is what Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is," says Eric Minton, West Coast bureau chief of the newspaper Amusement Today. "The Boardwalk is the real thing."
That it is the West Coast's only major seaside amusement park to survive into the 21st century is thanks to good luck and a series of visionary stewards, beginning with its founder, Fred W. Swanton. A tireless promoter intent on turning Santa Cruz into another Atlantic City, Swanton first built an onion-domed casino on the beach northwest of the San Lorenzo River in 1904. When that uninsured building burned down two years later, he convinced investors to rebuild on a grander scale. The opening of the new casino and ballroom, along with the Plunge and a pleasure pier and boardwalk, in June of 1907 inspired an inaugural ball (one band directed by John Philip Sousa) and a congratulatory message from President Theodore Roosevelt.
Since then, the Boardwalk has weathered storms, earthquakes, skyrocketing real estate prices, and the shifting sands of public taste. Charles Canfield, whose family has run the Boardwalk since 1952, has done a masterful job of balancing popular vintage attractions with cutting-edge amusements like laser tag and virtual-reality arcade games. But the Boardwalk's greatest appeal to its 3 million annual visitors—aside from its location on a spectacular mile-long stretch of Pacific beach—may be its remarkable consistency. A grandmother can bring her 2-year-old grandson and talk about when she was here in 1940, and they can have a picnic on the same beach where she picnicked 60 years earlier. Every kid still wants to have cotton candy; every kid still wants to ride the merry-go-round. In an era when most parks are caught up in an arms race to build the biggest and most technologically innovative roller coaster, the Boardwalk's chief attraction is still a rattly old 1924 wooden coaster that thrilled its 50 millionth rider last year.
It was to this old relic that I fairly sprinted and purchased a yard of 60-cent tickets. The line was mercifully short, so after parting with six tickets I had to entertain the question Dipper vets always discuss when they find themselves near the head of the line: front or back? A train rumbled overhead, followed by a wave of gleeful screams. When the cars pulled into the station a few moments later, departing passengers high-fived those of us in line, as though we were next in some endless rolling relay. The people ahead of me took the front, so I grabbed the last seat.
Giant Dipper creator Arthur Looff once said the ride's design was intended to evoke a "combination earthquake, balloon ascension, and aeroplane drop." Its builders effected all that in just 47 days at a cost of $50,000, about a third of what it costs today just to paint the thing its signature red and white. Not that you can see those colors for the first 15 seconds of the ride. Once the lap bars drop and a horn toot-toots, you are plunged into a dark tunnel and hit with a rush of cool air and the smell of salt, old painted wood, and track grease. "I wouldn't normally like that smell, but I'd miss it if it disappeared from the Dipper," says David Escalante, former public relations director for American Coaster Enthusiasts, a club of more than 8,500 coasterholics. "It was my first roller coaster, and it remains my all-time sentimental favorite."
As someone who stopped counting after riding his 400th coaster a few years back, Escalante can also say, with authority, "It's one of the most outstanding roller coasters in the world, and it is arguably the best-maintained one. There is no wasted track; it's fun from start to finish. And I love the way it looks. It's like stepping into a postcard from the 1920s."
It doesn't take many rides to establish a preference for the visual rush of the front or the exaggerated whip action of the back. But there are some Dipper nuances that may take years to pick up. Says Dave Ferrari, a retired florist who rode the Giant Dipper as a 10-year-old on the day it opened in 1924 ("It scared the hell out of me," he recalls) and still rides it at age 89 (in the front as often as possible), "I like to ride in the mornings. Later in the day, the track grease heats up and the thing goes much faster."
That partly explains why lines at the Dipper tend to get longer in the afternoon. Also, there is no need to rush to the Boardwalk as soon as it opens. There is no fee to get in, no pressure to run from attraction to attraction just to get your money's worth. You can purchase a $24.95 day pass, which entitles you to unlimited rides, or you can pay as you go. The pressure to buy anything at all is relatively low, which is just one reason the place still feels, improbably, timelessly carefree.
Wandering the Boardwalk with a fistful of tickets that will be good again tomorrow, and probably five years from now, you can easily forget about the existence of modern killjoys like metal detectors, cholesterol warnings, and personal injury lawyers. The park's maintenance and records are sparkling, and mishaps are negligible; thus the place doesn't feel shrouded by the liability fears manifest in the scolding signage and too-restrictive lap bars found in some other parks. And the security presence is as effective as it is invisible. "I put the Boardwalk among the elite in terms of operations," says Minton, who has visited 174 parks in the last three years. "It is an incredibly safe place."
Unless you are about to visit your cardiologist, that is. If there are amusement parks out there that stand as monuments to healthy eating, the Boardwalk is not one of them. After my first Dipper run of the day, I had a yearning for a mustard-slathered corn dog, which I satisfied at a fried-food dispensary near the arcade. I was also tempted by the nutritionally suspect offerings of garlic fries, soft ice cream cones, hot dogs, cotton candy, and—fire up the defibrillator—fried Twinkies, but I passed on those. Though the Boardwalk doesn't have any coasters with inversions, it still has a few stomach wrenchers among its 34 rides. I felt duty-bound to experience at least one while maintaining a certain reportorial decorum.
I looked for a favorite ride from my childhood, the Round-Up, a steel cylinder of individual stalls to which riders stayed pinned by centrifugal force as the bottom dropped out and the thing tilted up to a vertical spin cycle. Alas, the Round-Up wound up on the scrap heap in 1999. A worthy replacement turned out to be an epicyclically spinning ride called the Tornado, one of four Boardwalk rides named after natural disasters. (None of them, interestingly, is called the Earthquake, a disaster that strikes too close to home: The 1989 Loma Prieta quake, centered nine miles away, did almost $3 million in damage to the Boardwalk.)
After the Tornado, I needed to take a walk, so I paid $5 to amble through the new Fun House wearing a pair of flimsy souvenir 3-D glasses. The experience, enhanced as it was by a group of easily startled teenage girls walking behind me, was amusing, but it was nothing like the original Fun House, with its wooden slide, spinning platter, and rolling barrel that children used to enjoy all day for a small admission price (one of the reasons, along with increasing liability issues, that Canfield decided to shut it down in 1971).
Something that has better withstood the test of time and adolescent energy is the carousel, built and installed in 1911 by Arthur Looff's father, Charles, and one of two national landmarks (along with the Dipper) on the property—which is itself a landmark. The two chariots (included for modesty-minded Victorian ladies) and 73 carved and bejeweled horses—nearly all of which are original to the ride—have been painstakingly restored over the years. After surrendering four tickets, I mounted a palomino whose carved features included a pistol on its withers. Almost immediately I was distracted by the old ring-dispensing machine that was coming up on my right.
Nobody has produced these odd contraptions for years, so when something breaks down, the Boardwalk's mechanics have to machine their own replacement parts. A story has it that when the dispenser broke down for the umpteenth time in the '70s, it was simply removed. Ridership immediately dropped by about 75 percent. "If they could throw rings, teenagers would ride," says Marq Lipton, Boardwalk vice president of marketing and sales. "If not, it was just old folks and little kids." The machine was reinstalled and is now one of only a dozen still operating in the United States. Brass rings, which used to entitle whomever grabbed one to a free ride, are no longer in the rotation, but it is still hugely satisfying to snap off a greasy steel ring and fling it at the mouth of a clown a few feet away. (If you get it into the mouth, the clown's eyes light up, as if it had just tasted a fried Twinkie.)
Throwing an object into a hole is the point of a lot of Boardwalk games, too. On a weekend visit, I sat down to play a few rounds of Fascination, a game housed in a funky building near the carousel. The whole point of Fascination is to roll a ball down a wooden table into a grid of holes and hope that the holes you hit form a straight line, à la bingo. If you win, you get coupons, redeemable—in sufficiently vast quantities—for prizes. For people coming off a sugar high or just needing a break from the sun, Fascination is hugely appealing, especially at 50 cents a game. After bleeding $3 without a win, I was rescued from the slippery slope of Fascination addiction by a woman carrying a stuffed shark under one arm and a basketball under the other. She clearly could make better use of this opportunity than I. Even counting the 21 coupons I had won at Skee-Ball and Basket Fever earlier in the day, I realized it would take years to earn the coupons for a set of microwave bowls (360 coupons) or even a mini-salad spinner (190).
I'm very happy with the plastic whistle I got for a mere four coupons, but I suspect that no one comes to the Boardwalk for the prizes. They come for the beach, the free Friday night concerts during the summer, the rides, the pan-vintage arcade games (when was the last time you played Ms. Pac-Man?), the 1970s-era photo booth, and the taffy made right before their eyes at Marini's Candies. They come to laugh, to scream, to inhale an olfactory cocktail unlike any other. And they come back, month after month or years later, for the very same things.
The Sweet History of a Treat
There's hardly an ocean beach in America without a vendor of saltwater taffy. It's the de rigueur vacation treat if you're near saltwater—and yet it contains no saltwater at all. Recipes call for water, a pinch of salt, plus sugar, corn syrup, butter, cornstarch, and flavoring, but nobody makes it using ocean brine. So, we deduce, it's called what it's called because it is sold near the water.
That's close to true. According to Joseph Marini III of Marini's candy store at the Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, the confection was named in the 1920s after a fire was extinguished using seawater pumped up from a fireboat. Finding his taffy spritzed, Joseph's grandfather, another Joseph Marini, staged a "saltwater taffy" sale . . . and the name stuck. "He used to tell kids that every morning he walked to the end of the wharf to fill five-gallon buckets with saltwater to make the candy," Joseph recalls. "In fact, we use no salt at all in our taffy."
The East Coast story of genesis goes back to 1880 and the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Built above sea level to keep sand from creeping into hotel lobbies, the broad wooden walkway featured a taffy stand run by candy man David Bradley. One night, strong winds and a high tide sent ocean foam all over Bradley's supply of fresh taffy. Angry that his stock had been dampened, he sarcastically corrected a little girl who stepped up the next morning and asked for taffy. "You mean saltwater taffy!" he sneered. The child nodded; he sold her some; and later that day her boasts of buying saltwater taffy were overheard by Bradley's mother. A bulb illuminated above Mom's head and the next summer when Bradley opened his store, he printed signs that advertised a unique—or, more precisely, a uniquely named—product.
Whichever of them first cooked up the oceanic title, as candy makers perfected the formula—creating a silk-smooth taffy that didn't stick to its wrapper and tended not to yank out loose teeth—the treat became a favorite on beaches all along the Atlantic and Pacific, on the Gulf, and even around the Great Lakes.
One of the best things about saltwater taffy is that it comes in a near-infinite variety of flavors. The Seaside Candyman of Seaside, Ore., a jolly shop in Heritage Square, offers no less than 170 different kinds, from amaretto and apple to watermelon and wintergreen. You can get strawberry cheesecake, buttered popcorn (white with yellow stripes), guava, gooseberry, and coffee roast.
Most purveyors sell taffy by the pound or, for the casual stroller in search of just a couple of chaws, by the quarter pound. That's pretty much the way it was originally sold in Atlantic City: six wax paper-wrapped candy knots for a nickel.
But probably the greatest moment in taffy history was when merchant Joseph Fralinger had an idea: box the pieces and offer them on Saturday night to weekenders who were leaving the beach on Sunday. That way, they could take something home from their visit besides sand in their shoes and a sunburn. Fralinger's boxes of taffy were a sensation. Since then, many Americans consider a trip to the sea incomplete unless they return with a box that has enough chew in it to make their vacation last long into overtime.
Photography by Terrence McCarthy
This article was first published in May 2003. Some facts may have aged gracelessly. Please call ahead to verify information.


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USDA's latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) held no surprises, a welcome relief, according to at least one analyst.
USDA lowered old-crop carryout for corn to 729 million bushels, which was 40 below June's estimated 769 million but above the average trade guess of 725 million bushels. At the same time, the department raised estimated new-crop carryout to 1.96 billion bushels from last month's 1.95 billion bushels. July's new crop carryout was substantially higher than the average trade estimate of 1.9 billion bushels but well within the range of estimates.
"The biggest surprise this report was there were no surprises," sys Johan Ford, senior analyst with Ceres Hedge, Chicago. Ford was the commentator on a post report MGEX press briefing. Previous reports, particularly USDA's Acreage report released in late June held big surprises, particularly the increase in corn acreage rather than a decrease.
"We will crunch these numbers in and go right back to trading weather," says Ford.
In its June (WASDE) report, USDA notes: "This month's changes to corn use for 2012-13 and 2013-14 largely reflect the lateness of the 2013 crop and expectations for extremely tight supplies later this summer and into early fall. Feed and residual disappearance for 2012-13 is raised 50 million bushels as early harvest of new-crop corn is expected to be sharply reduced from last year."
USDA left its projected 2013-14 average farm price for corn unchanged at $4.40 to $5.25 per bushel.
It's hard to make a bullish case for corn prices. "An average yield estimate near 156 bushels per acre is a bit ambitious," says Ford. A yield that high, coupled with current acreage numbers would produce a corn crop near 14 billion bushels.
"There are big numbers overhanging the market," adds Ford. "The 14-billion overhang is a big number to overcome."
With the wide spread between current old-crop corn prices and new-crop prices, Ford recommends that producers sell old-crop corn by the end of this month. After that, buyers will wait until harvest to avoid paying a $2 or $3 premium.
Carryout stocks of soybeans at 125 million bushels were higher than expected but unchanged from last month's estimate. The average trade estimate has called for only 121 million bushels.
"Soybeans are still vulnerable to an early frost," says Ford. "It would not surprise me if we were overstated on yield."
Due to this year's late planting, USDA has under taken a survey of planted acres for soybeans, but it is not clear exactly when the results of that survey will be released.
"I expect it to be a slow, conservative process," says Ford. "USDA does not want to come out with a radical shift." With so much grumbling about the June numbers, Ford says he is leery of the political undertones.
USDA also left its 2013-14 season average price for soybeans unchanged at $9.75 to $11.75 per bushel. With close to ideal weather moving forward, Ford says that prices for corn and soybeans will likely continue to grind lower.
The world's supply of corn and wheat is getting smaller. USDA lowered both its global carryout for old-crop corn and wheat and both came in under expectations. The 2012-13 corn carryount of 123.6 million metric tons is smaller than USDA's June estimate of 124.3 million tons and the average trade estimate of 124.2 million.
USDA now estimates the 2012-13 world wheat carryout at 174.5 million metric tons, down from last month's 179.9 million and the average trade estimate of 179.3 million
Global carryout of old-crop soybeans was raised to 61.5 million metric tons, up from June's 61.2 million metric tons and higher than the average trade estimate of 60.9 million.
Coverage, Analysis of the July 11 USDA Reports
See all of the report data, coverage and analysis of the July 11 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates and Crop Production reports.


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Availability: On order usually ships within 24-72hrsStock Level: LowPlatforms: XBOX ONEPublisher: Little OrbitDevelopers: Little OrbitGenre: Action AdventureESRB: E10+ - Everyone 10+UPC: 815403010729Region Free: YesProduct was added to our catalog on Thursday 06 August, 2015.
Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations is an all-new, real-time, fully 3D action-oriented twist on the classic story-driven graphic adventure game. At the start of the game, Finn and Jake decide to carry on the profession of their parents, who were Professional Investigators. Confronted with mysterious Land of Ooo disappearances and strange events, players will interview colorful Ooo inhabitants, dispatch evil doers in fast-paced combat, solve mind-bending puzzles, explore secret and familiar locations, and genuinely feel as if they have stepped into their own personal episode of Adventure Time.
Playing as Finn, with help from his best bro Jake, players will encounter an assortment of new and fan favorite characters from the show, including BMO, Abracadaniel, Lumpy Space Princess, Ice King, Gunter, Magic Man, Lemongrab, Tree Trunks, Starchy and more! The world of Adventure Time comes to life through amazingly cinematic 3D and voiceovers from the original cast.
Sleuth your way through five cases set in the Land of Ooo, each of which plays out a separate story like an episode of the show. Are these cases related? If so, what do they all have in common?
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Villas with expansive gardens are not that common in the inner city but the home where Maddalena and Ben Dobson grew up is one of them. "The garden seemed huge to us as children," is how Maddalena remembers it. "Big enough to build huts in, all the things children do. All our friends liked to play there as much as we did."
Perhaps in some ways, the 878sq m of land is a mixed blessing. Zoned 7b it can be subdivided for four new dwellings and so is of interest to a wide variety of buyers for this very reason. Ben and Maddalena of course would love it to remain as a family home, as it has been for them for 30 years, although perhaps improved to 21st-century standards.
What the new purchaser will acquire, as well as that wonderful garden, is a fine old villa. Built in 1910, it is on the cusp of villas becoming bungalows, but this one leans towards the villa in style. Two-storeyed, with a front porch on the street side and two rear verandas overlooking the garden, every room is large and square. Ceilings are the lofty 3.6m stud common to this period, and Ben and Maddalena's parents, the late Helen and Colin, painstakingly restored each one to its original board and batten construction.
The minuscule kitchen they inherited when they purchased the house in two flats in 1982 was extended into the bathroom next door and is now a mid-sized room with granite counter tops and a range of cupboards, and could be easily opened out to the huge dining room alongside it. This square dining room has a working open fireplace and access to the lower veranda through what looks like a cupboard. Ben and Maddalena remember playing out here in the sun, despite its height above the ground and its low balustrades. "I can't remember ever trying to climb them or anything silly," says Maddalena. "I just remember how sunny it was and how we could get to the dining room and kitchen through the cupboard. We never thought of playing in the big sitting room for some reason."
This big and slightly formal room (again with a working fireplace) overlooks the garden and opens onto the lower of the two rear verandas, but it is the smaller and more intimate front room where Ben and Maddalena spent their childhood TV hours. "This was our room," says Maddalena. "We spent goodness knows how much time in here."
A handsome, double staircase leads to the bedrooms, all of which are situated on the upper floor. All four are large enough to be considered as doubles although the smallest with its tall, thin sash window feels more like a single. All are high-ceilinged, with a wall of big windows letting in lots of sunlight. Maddalena had the one at the front and Ben the one alongside his parents' at the rear. The room that was his parents' has access on to the upper veranda and is the perfect place to relax with a cup of tea. The only bathroom is on this floor and has been nicely modernised.
Both siblings admit to mixed feelings about the future of their family home but, as Ben admits, time moves on as both of them are already living separate lives. "Perhaps we're being sentimental, but it's a wonderful old house, solid kauri and so much a piece of the local history that it would be sad to see it not be improved and lived in as a family home. But obviously what will be, will be."


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December 15, 2009
(202) 874-5770
OCC Launches Financial Literacy Campaign In Partnership with Univision Communications Inc.
WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today announced it will launch a consumer financial education campaign for U.S. Hispanic consumers in partnership with Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language media company.
Through the new partnership, the OCC will work with Univision to develop short Public Service Announcements, or PSAs, that provide information on personal finance issues such as avoiding foreclosure scams and check fraud, and understanding reverse mortgages. These messages build from Univision's financial literacy platform "Cuentas Claras," or Clear Finances, a campaign that for the past four years has provided important financial information to Hispanics in the United States and Puerto Rico.
"I'm very pleased that we have this opportunity to work with Univision on consumer financial education," said Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan. "Financial literacy is vital for all Americans, and Univision offers an opportunity to provide information to literally millions of Hispanic viewers in the United States."
Univision and OCC will begin working together this month, and it is expected that the first jointly-produced PSAs will begin airing in January.
The OCC has sponsored a number of PSAs on various issues, such as foreclosure prevention and debt elimination schemes, and provides information to individuals at the agency's consumer-oriented Web site, www.HelpWithMyBank.gov.
Univision's operations include Univision Network, the most-watched Spanish-language broadcast television network; TeleFutura Network, a general-interest Spanish-language broadcast television network; Galavisión, a Spanish-language cable network; Univision Television Group and Univision Radio, which own and/or operate 132 television and radio stations in major U.S. Hispanic markets and Puerto Rico; and Univision Interactive Media, which includes the Spanish-language Internet destination, www.univision.com, and Univision Móvil for mobile Internet consumers.


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Jackie Rose looks back to a point in her life over 20 years ago when she met her soul mate. Given the opportunity to do it over again, she wouldn't change a thing — except where she picked him up.
Now, she says, "I know better."
After almost two decades of waiting, Rose was finally in a position to start her search for "the right one." She just bought her first home in Florida and had a budding career: it was time.
By KATHRYN FLAGG
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After weeks of pleading their case for struggling dairymen in Washington, D.C., Vermont's Congressional delegation finally made a breakthrough Friday, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the Obama administration is taking immediate action to boost prices paid to dairy farmers.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After weeks of pleading their case for struggling dairymen in Washington, D.C., Vermont's Congressional delegation finally made a breakthrough Friday, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that the Obama administration is taking immediate action to boost prices paid to dairy farmers.
That means that the price the federal government pays for milk and dairy products in the marketplace is set to go up for August, September and October, a price hike that the USDA estimates will increase dairy farmers' revenue nationally by $243 million.
a blog about music, visual arts, entertainment and everything in between
by tamara hilmes, intern
By ANDY KIRKALDY
BARRE — Two close losses in this past weekend's state championship tournament in Barre ended the Addison County American Legion baseball team's hopes of repeating as Vermont champion.
AC entered the eight-team tournament as a co-favorite after winning the program's first-ever Northern Division regular season title, but opened the tournament on Friday with a 5-4 upset at the hands of Southern Division No. 4 seed Bellows Falls.
AC eliminated Northern No. 3 Essex on Saturday, but Northern No. 2 Orleans-Essex-Caledonia (OEC) ousted AC on Sunday, 8-6.
By Andy Kirkaldy
Fenway Park didn't look much different when I went there on July 7 for the first time in 26 years. Sure, under the new Boston Red Sox ownership the old ball yard is clean and shiny, and the signs — literally and figuratively — of corporate America are everywhere.
But one gets used to being bombarded with advertising, and logos of all sizes crammed into Fenway's every nook and cranny have little impact on the essence of the House That Ruth Left.
By JOHN FLOWERS
MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury selectmen are backing off their original pitch to state officials for a temporary span to take traffic from the Pulp Mill Bridge when it closes for extensive repairs, possibly in 2011. They will instead lobby for paving and intersection improvements to handle the extra traffic that will hit downtown during the project.
By CHELSEY PLETTS
MIDDLEBURY — The Addison County Humane Society has rarely turned away an animal during its 34-year history as a safe haven for the lost, abandoned, abused or surrendered.
Now, however, the shelter is seeing a critical number of cats pouring into the facility at a rate that Executive Director Jackie Rose is concerned they cannot keep up with.
"We are facing a cat overpopulation crisis," Rose said. "The number of cats and unwanted cats that are in our communities is reaching really epidemic proportions."
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Houston Rep. Al Green has renewed his request that the U.S. Justice Department investigate the case of Chad Holley, a Houston resident who was allegedly kicked, punched and beaten by several Houston police officers.
Green's new request — and a visit by the Democratic congressman to Justice Department offices — came in the wake of a "not guilty" verdict in the case of one of the policemen, Andrew Blomberg.
"Chad Holley and his family deserve a fair and just federal civil rights investigation," Green said. "The Houston Police Department deserves a fair and just federal civil rights investigation. We must not allow the actions of some officers to become the image of the entire department."
Blomberg has since lost his job at the Houston Police Department. Three other officers also have been charged and are awaiting trial.
The March 2010 incident was captured on videotape and has been viewed more than 243,000 times on YouTube. In it, Holley – a 15-year-old black male – was reported to be fleeing a burglary when he got clipped by a police car.
In the video, Holley then lies down on the ground and puts his hands behind his head. Five officers completely surround Holley and – from the perspective of the video – appear to kick and punch him multiple times. One officer lands several blows after Holley had already been on the ground for half a minute.
The incident and subsequent ruling have caused a stir in Houston.
"It's hard to believe this is happening in Houston in 2012," Green said. "I commend those who engage in peaceful protest as a response."
Green submitted his first letter to the Department of Justice in February of 2011.


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Well, it's that time again...yep, time for the 2009 Baltimore PSA trial hosted by Metropolitan K9.
It's supposed to be a gorgeous weekend, we have 8 confirmed decoys, and we're flying in Midwest PSA Director, Darryl Richey to judge!
It's being held both Saturday and Sunday starting at 9 at St. Philip Neri School, 6401 South Orchard Road, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090.
All levels will be represented...and it is likely that Nisha will be making her debut in the 1's at this trial!
Once again, Cy will be in the 3's.
And....food will be provided by certified executive chef (and Metropolitan K9 club member), Donn Rudiger...there will be pulled pork, 1/2-lb certified angus beef burgers, 1/4-lb hot dogs, and chicken...the menus is sure to be mouth-watering!
Hope to see you there! If you have any questions, drop me a PM, or an email: firstname.lastname@example.com
For more information, visit our webpage: http://www.metropolitank9.com/2009BaltTrialInfo.htm


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Choosing a perfect dress for wedding and events could be a terrifying process.
There are so many dress options out there, it can be too overwhelming to choose a suitable one. How could you make sure which dress will make you look and feel the most beautiful? And which dress is supposed to be your dreamed one? Together with the talented dress designers, best of the Bridal industry, we've created a handy shopping guide on how to choose your dress. Refer to our guidelines whenever you may need it. We've also concluded some super helpful ideas that show exactly what dress shapes, necklines and trains are available to you! Hopefully it will add a little fun to your dress hunting experience! Happy shopping everyone…
The waist line on an empire gown is right under the bust. If you are petite and want to create the illusion of a longer body you may want to think about this shape.
With a fitted bodice and a skirt that gently flares out this silhouette suits most body shapes.
Fit for a Princess! This style of gown has a fitted bodice and a full, volumous skirt.
The column silhouette is a very narrow cut which often emphasises all of your curves. It suits a well proportioned figure.
A mermaid or trumpet cut gown features a corseted bodice and a fishtail shaped skirt starting either just below or just above the knee. They are designed to hug your curves in all the right places.
An important detail to consider on your dress is the neckline. This will help you decide what accessories you will be wearing – some necklines scream for a statement necklace, others call for a demure set of pearls. And, in some cases, you will feel that the dress alone is enough! Especially if your choice has an embellished or lace bodice and/or sleeves.
Note that the neckline of your gown has a huge impact on what bra you need to wear. So once you've made a final decision on your dress, underwear should be next on your list.
Nothing makes a Bridal statement quite like a sweeping train. We've listed the different lengths you'll find on our handy pin below so you can be sure to ask for the right type if you're desperate for that wow factor. And remember to ask our customer service to add a wrist loop, or a bustle if you prefer, so that you can dance in your gown later on. Or you could always get a second, shorter dress for the evening.
One Shoulder
A sweep train trail about 6 inches on the floor.
This train sweeps between 12 to 18 inches on the floor.
A cathedral train extends 22 or more inches.
You can also get a semi-cathedral which would be half way between a chapel and a cathedral.
Think Princess Di super train.
You will definitely need help from your best girls to walk down the aisle in this.