Quotes, URL's, Links And References-by:older Femmes, Butches, Ftms, Mtfs, Queer, Etc.

[sweetlady]

:s :s :s


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/28/business/600-pre.jpg



July 29, 2007

Preoccupations

Hold the Elevator for Me. Forever.

By BRUCE FELTON


THE last time Jan Neufeld rode in an elevator was in 1993. “I hated it and swore never to do it again,” she said. And the last time before that? She’s not sure. Maybe during the Carter administration.


“My elevator phobia is so severe that I don’t even want to try to overcome it,” said Ms. Neufeld, a freelance court transcriber who works out of her home (a second-floor apartment) in Kew Gardens, Queens. “Frankly, I think people who use elevators are crazy.”


There are no statistics on the number of people who are elevator phobic, but it is a problem that afflicts working people across the nation, and not just in major vertical metropolises like New York and Chicago.


Mary Hartman’s job as a financial counselor for a hospital system in Fort Wayne, Ind. (population: 205,000), requires her to attend monthly meetings on the fourth floor of the company’s corporate headquarters. That was never a problem until last year, when the stairwells were locked as a security precaution. Now she always arrives early enough to find someone with a key.


And if no one is around? “I can take the elevator if I have to,” she said. “I do breathing exercises I learned in yoga class,” she added. “And I stand there like a scared rabbit.”


Some people benefit from spousal support or the kindness of strangers. Michal Regev, a registered psychologist in Vancouver, British Columbia, once treated an executive whose wife drove him to his office each day, rode up to the 31st floor with him, and met him at the end of the day for the trip home.


In extreme cases, though, “the very thought of entering an elevator can trigger a full-blown panic attack,” Dr. Regev said.


In those situations, the only possible strategy may be outright avoidance — albeit at some personal sacrifice. Dr. Regev recalled a software engineer who passed up an attractive job offer in a high-rise building for a much lower-paying job in a three-story hospital. “He knew he was giving up a lot, but for him there was no other option,” she said.


Ms. Neufeld, 55, says that while her aversion has limited her professionally — “I might have had a career as a court reporter, but that would mean traveling to courts and law offices on high floors,” — she is fine with that.


Full disclosure: I am not crazy about elevators myself, although I live in a 12th floor apartment in Manhattan and my work often requires my presence in the upper reaches of midtown skyscrapers.


For the most part, I manage fine, provided the car moves swiftly and smoothly with no grunts, whines or hiccups and the doors open promptly. Anything less than a perfect ride, though, and suddenly I am the victim in a Poe short story or the next Ming Kuang Chen, the restaurant deliveryman who spent more than three days in a stalled Bronx high-rise elevator in 2005.

It isn’t acrophobia or a terror of falling that spooks me so much as the idea of being confined without my express consent.

For others, elevator phobia originates in the chilling certainty that the frayed shoelace on which the car is suspended will snap. But in reality, on the rare occasions when a cable does break, the car does not plunge to the bottom. Elevators move up and down on as many as 10 cables, any one of which can support a fully loaded car.

In addition, any falling motion will trigger a safety brake, a standard feature since the 1850s. Speed governors, counterweights, position sensors and guide rails provide additional layers of protection.

But couldn’t all the cables come undone at the same time? That has happened only once — in 1945, when a B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. “All the cables were severed and the car went into free fall with two women inside,” said Robert Caporale, editor of Elevator World magazine. “Even so, both survived.”


People do get hurt and even die in elevators from time to time, the same as they do riding in any other type of conveyance. According to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, there were about 8,800 elevator-related injuries nationwide, 70 of them fatal, from 2001 to 2006. Considering that Americans take about 120 billion rides a year, “that’s an excellent safety record,” Mr. Caporale said.


But for the elevator-averse, statistics yield little comfort. While a few can trace their fears to a specific situation, more often “there is no underlying trauma, just as people develop driving phobias without ever having been in a car accident,” said Dr. Fredric Neuman, director of the Anxiety and Phobia Treatment Center at White Plains Hospital Center.


THE good news is that elevator phobias appear to be eminently treatable. Many practitioners take a behavioral modification approach. Typically, the therapist accompanies the patient to the elevator in the patient’s workplace. Initially, they just look at the car from the outside, but they work up to entering and closing the door a few times, though without actually going anyplace. “When the patient is ready, we’ll try a few test runs to lower floors,” Dr. Neuman said. “By the 10th time, they’re usually over it.”


Perhaps some will take comfort in Dr. Neuman’s observation about patients of his who were stuck overnight in elevators during the 1977 and 2003 blackouts. In almost every case, their panicky feelings eased after 30 to 60 minutes and they calmed down, he said. “It was unpleasant, but no one flipped out or embarrassed themselves.”


These days, he said: “I tell patients that if they do get stuck between floors for an extended period, I can describe almost minute by minute how they’ll react — how much time they’ll spend pressing all the floor buttons, calling for help, trying to get the emergency phone to work and finally relaxing. No one dies and no one goes crazy.”


That is nice to know. And I will try to keep Dr. Neuman’s words in mind the next time I’m caught in a malfunctioning elevator.


At the moment, though, I do not feel reassured.





(y) (y) Here's to taking the stairs.......:)




(f)





Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f) (f)



Australian granny, 94, becomes world's oldest master


By Rob Taylor Wed Aug 1, 11:32 PM ET


CANBERRA (Reuters) - A 94-year-old Australian great-great-grandmother who quit school at 12 is said to have become the world's oldest person to earn a university masters degree.


Medical Science Masters Degree graduate Phyllis Turner, from Australia's Adelaide University, began studying for her postgraduate degree at age 90 and received her award this week.


"I feel very very happy after five years of study, but sorry that I am just a little bit immobilized," Mrs Turner, who uses a walking stick, told Australian papers.


Degree supervisor Professor Maciej Henneberg said he had been amazed by Turner's energy and dedication to study.


"Mentally she was like any other student. You couldn't tell her thinking, her enthusiasm and her interests apart from somebody who was 25. She has a lively mind," he told Reuters.


"She used to wake up at 5am in the morning and think about something, and then ring to say she wanted to check on it."


Turner left primary school at 12 to help her mother look after her siblings after her father left the family.


She returned to study almost 60 years later, enrolling at the prestigious Adelaide University to study anthropology at age 70, winning honors in 2002 before moving on to her masters.


Henneberg said Turner completed a research based paper into the anthropological history of Australia prior to European settlement and international investigations showed she was the oldest postgraduate degree recipient in the world.


"We will be trying to enter her into the Guinness book of world records, he said.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070802/wl_nm/australia_masters_dc_1




(y) (y)






What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :|

AKA......Cheap!




Matt and his camping partner hike and skinny dip on the way to Hidden Lake, in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.


Albino Lake at sunset, in Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/01/travel/Week11-15-650.jpg



August 1, 2007

Frugal Traveler | American Road Trip

From Wyoming to Montana on Foot

By MATT GROSS

New York Times


TEN THOUSAND feet above sea level, just north of the Wyoming-Montana border, lies Albino Lake, a fish-shaped oblong of icy water bounded on its east by a reddish, rock-slide-scarred ridge and on its west by the high, bare peak of Lonesome Mountain. A few tiny, rocky islands poke up from the water, and on one stands a thatch of purple wildflowers that glow like neon in the golden light of late afternoon. When night falls, the surface of the lake turns silver, then black. The rough stillness in the air is a constant reminder that, although a thin trail runs along the shore, this is the very edge of civilization — the frontier.


It was here, on the lake’s gentle, mossy southern slopes, that my friend Mary Ellen Hitt and I camped on our second night in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a section of the Gallatin National Forest just northeast of Yellowstone. All summer long, I’d been wanting to experience America the most frugal way possible — and to live out my “Man vs. Wild” fantasies — and these 920,377 acres of mountains, lakes, streams and valleys, recommended by several readers, seemed like a perfect place to do it.


I hadn’t, however, wanted to enter the wilderness alone. Though I’d pitched my tent numerous times on this journey, I’d never done so more than a dozen yards from my Volvo. But when I mentioned my plans to Mary Ellen, a tough little 20-year-old I met in Vietnam a few years ago, she offered to fly in from the East Coast.


Had she ever camped out before?


“I’m from Maine,” she said.


I told her to buy a ticket.


As it turned out, she had never slept far from a car, either. We were both young and fit, with good balance, strong backs and a basic understanding of “leave no trace” hiking (i.e., whatever you take in, you take out). But we were also both amateurs, infinitely amused by the directions on a can of bear spray (“In some cases, you may have to wait until the bear is quite close”) and gleefully picking packets of miso soup and cans of cumin-flavored black beans from supermarket shelves, but unsure of just how far we could hike over four days and three nights in the backcountry.


Still, the clerks at Sylvan Peak Enterprises (9 South Broadway Avenue, Red Lodge, Mont.; 406-446-1770) who sold us topographical trail maps ($7.50 each) didn’t bat an eye when we described our plans. In fact, they helped us plan a route that led from the Island Lake trailhead (on the Wyoming side of the impossibly scenic Beartooth Highway) up into Montana and around a few lakes, then back down to the Beartooth Lake trailhead, where we’d hitchhike back to the Volvo. It was a 20-mile trek, and it sounded easy.


And at first, it was. We arrived at Island Lake late on Thursday and marched along a well-marked trail into the wilderness, and even with a gray drizzle bouncing off our lightweight waterproof shells, the beauty of the Beartooths was immediate. Island Lake stretched out next to us, fed by trickling streams that we had to hop over or cross on chunks of stone. Beyond hills rose into pine-strewn ridges and buttes whose mix of gray, blond and russet rock reminded me of the temples of some wiry, weathered mountaineer.


That evening, on a swell above Night Lake, we pitched our tent (bought at Eastern Mountain Sports for $191.20, a 20 percent discount), fired up the portable gas stove and feasted on prepackaged but organic Annie’s macaroni and cheese, Maine beef jerky and swigs of good Scotch from my flask. The tent’s rain fly kept us dry, and I slept soundly in my three-season sleeping bag — artificially insulated, therefore cheaper — on a thick, comfy sleeping pad ($94.95, but a worthwhile splurge).


The rain, however, only got worse in the morning and we stayed inside our tent until well after 9 a.m., wondering if we had made a huge mistake in coming here at all. But then the downpour lightened to a pitter-patter, then ceased entirely as the sun emerged. We drank our morning Nestlé 3-in-1 instant coffee, packed up the gear and began our hike in earnest.


In the daylight, the damp land sparkled before us, and we went north, diverging briefly from the path to climb several hundred feet of rock for a view of three secluded lakes. High above the land, we could see the brilliant reflections of water tucked away amid the forests, and patches of snow and ice on peaks, but the last stretches of ridge were too much to climb. So instead we stopped for lunch and cooked chili-lemongrass noodle soup (85 cents a packet in Cody, Wyo.), topped it with a fried egg and dined with the best view imaginable.


Back on the trail, we tried to make northward progress, but were tempted by Becker Lake, which offered dozens of places to swim. Gunmetal clouds were approaching, but we didn’t care — we pulled off our clothes and soaked in the frosty water until I started imagining the news reports: “The bodies of two naked tourists were pulled from Becker Lake today after a lightning storm. ...” We got out, dried off and started hiking just in time to be hit by another downpour. Still, getting wet was better than getting electrocuted.


The weather had cleared by the time we arrived at Albino Lake, and we knew we had to camp there — the beauty was overwhelming. We pitched the tent and made dinner — shitake mushrooms cooked into Cajun-style rice-and-beans — then smoked my Cuban cigarillos, drank Black Maple Hill bourbon from my silver Tibetan flask and danced to salsa music from my shortwave radio until the sun sank behind Lonesome Mountain.


When it was fully dark, we shut off the radio and were preparing for bed, when Mary Ellen, sitting on a boulder outside the tent, whispered, “Look!”


There, on the other side of the boulder, were 10 mountain goats, standing stock-still in a line, their thick white coats illuminated by the nearly full moon. They looked like ghosts, and they stared at us intently.


Slowly, they began to move toward us, stopping to sniff the pair of jeans I’d left to dry on another stone. One, apparently the leader, walked up to us and snorted — I swear I could see the moonlit ridges of his horns — then turned and tramped away, followed by his herd. Two were kids, and they bleated in a high pitch that sounded like a meow.


Mary Ellen and I stayed on the boulder, listening to the hollow clop of the goats’ hooves and the gleeful munching of tall grasses. Finally, they walked up the ridge and crossed over, silhouetted by the gleaming moon. We said nothing for a long while.


Whether the goats were a good or ill omen, I never figured out. The next day’s hike was a challenge. After a short hike to Jasper Lake, we consulted our maps and decided to leave the trail. Heading south, we saw, led us to Golden Lake, and below it Hidden Lake — and who wouldn’t be tempted by that name?


To reach it, however, we first had to navigate the slopes of Golden Lake, which were covered with ice and fallen rocks. Some were twice the size of my car, others mere pebbles, and they were mostly stable — mostly. We’d heard two rockslides the day before, and as we picked our way around the lake, our overweight packs throwing us off balance, we were acutely aware that a sudden peal of thunder could send down a shower far more deadly than rain.


But we made it. After climbing one last 300-foot hill, we gazed down into a long, deep canyon, its sides piled high with rocks, a crystalline stream rushing through its center toward a lush, green valley. Miles beyond, successive outlines of mountains etched the skyline in ever-fainter shades, and somewhere in between, we knew, was Hidden Lake.


As we maneuvered down this Hidden Valley, we realized Golden Lake had been a mere warm-up. This next descent demanded unstinting concentration, precision-timed leaps (with 40 pounds on our backs) and, when the canyon narrowed and the stream broadened, brute force of will.


Four hours later, our thighs and backs so sore we no longer noticed the weight, we arrived at Hidden Lake and trudged through the stream’s delta, soaking our shoes. The sun was setting, and after climbing one last, defiantly steep hill on which we’d camp, we felt both triumphant and defeated. To look at Hidden Lake was to see not only the splendor of nature but also its isolating power — we were the only humans here, the lake was ringed with cliffs, and there was no way out but to climb, climb, climb.


That night, we ate more mushrooms, rice and beans and played our harmonicas around a campfire, knowing the next day might be the toughest yet.


“I just want to see my Volvo again,” I said.


The trail we followed the next morning might have been made by man, or by beast, but it went straight up into the woods atop the ridge, vanishing and reappearing with disturbing frequency. Somewhere ahead was a proper trail, pocked with boot prints and horseshoes, but to find it we had to scan our maps, whip out the compass and backtrack half a mile before it leapt into focus. It took the better part of the afternoon, and our feet whined with blisters, but we finally found it. From there, it was a simple but endless slog, down through breathtaking valleys, up over lung-searing passes. Only the majesty of the buttes — and the dream of a steak dinner — kept us going.


By the time we reached the Beartooth Lake trailhead, Mary Ellen and I were exhausted, skinny, filthy and invigorated. Near the parking lot, we bumped into Ann Davey, a middle-aged woman from the suburbs of Billings, Mont., who was asking hikers about their journeys.


“That’s quite an accomplishment!” she exclaimed when we told her about ours. Only seasoned hikers — or crazy ones — attempted to enter Hidden Valley, she said, adding, “I’m just so happy to hear you did it.” Then she offered us a ride back to my car.


As her big white Suburban trundled uphill toward Island Lake, I wondered where we fit in: Were we now experienced, certifiably crazy or just lucky? All I knew was that in this battle of man and woman vs. wild, there were no losers.




8-)8-) Nice reading about it, armchair style - than experiencing it personally. The geography is what caught my eye. :)





(w) (w) Stay cool. (f) (f)





Si hoc adfixum in obice legere potes, et liberaliter educatus et nimis popinquus ades.

If you can read this bumper sticker, you are both very well educated and much too close.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o




http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/02/garden/02teepees-1-600.jpg



August 2, 2007

A New Tribe of Tepee Dwellers

By JULIA CHAPLIN


IBIZA, Spain


SERENA COOK is the ultimate social connector for the deep-pocketed summer set on this Spanish resort island. A former organic foods chef from London, she runs a concierge service that helps clients, who have included Calvin Klein, Hugh Grant and members of U2, get hold of V.I.P. party invites, prime-time restaurant reservations and desirable villas, which can rent for up to $16,000 a week in July and August.


But she’s pretty relaxed about her own surroundings. Her one-bedroom farmhouse in the hills outside the town of Evissa had no guest quarters, so she leased a nearby cottage for her visitors. When the rent went up, she did what any resourceful, neo-bohemian Ibizan would: She bought a 16-by-18-foot canvas tepee, had it painted with tribal patterns in earth red and big-sky blue, and set it up just beyond her pool in the shade of a palm tree. All for just $2,165.


“I always had this romantic idea of sleeping in a tepee,” said Ms. Cook, 33, who lives on the island from May through October (she runs her company, Deliciously Sorted, from London in the winter) and has furnished the room with a double bed, Mexican votive candles and a Persian rug. “But mainly, it was a really practical way to create another room.”


Ms. Cook is one of a small but growing number of residents here who have embraced the tepee as an appealing alternative to expensive home additions. On an island still heavily influenced by the countercultural ethos and grab-bag multiculturalism of the backpackers who flocked here in the ’60s, tepees strike many as an appropriately down-to-earth and soulful place to crash for the night.


Not that Ibiza hasn’t changed a lot in the 40-odd years since long-haired world travelers began descending on it from less temperate way stations like Goa, Morocco and Southeast Asia, taking over dilapidated farmhouses, called fincas. But even now, when the island has become a refuge for jet setters like Kate Moss and Jade Jagger, nearly every fashionable restaurant, nightclub and farmhouse boutique hotel is decorated with quasi-spiritual ephemera like Buddha statues, paintings of Hindu deities and embroidered Moroccan floor cushions. The tepee, which first drew notice here 10 years ago, when a yoga center imported several to house its students, was a natural for the island.


Ms. Jagger helped advance its cause soon after, when she set up a tepee with a disco ball and Moroccan carpets on the grounds of her finca in Sant Joan, a sort of rich, hippie-ish enclave in the north (she has since added a second). Then, last year, canvas tepees made by a Spanish company, Tipiwakan, began to be sold at 100% Ibiza, a consignment shop on an overgrown lot that looks something like a New Age junkyard. They range in price there from $2,500 (for a model 16 feet across and 18 feet high that can sleep up to eight) to $7,495 (for one that is 32 ½ feet and sleeps up to 25.) Painted decoration is extra.


“It’s turned into quite a business,” said Guillermo Fernandez Oriol, the owner of 100% Ibiza, who was sitting outside his home, a trailer tricked out with a tiki bar and outdoor couches for hanging out.


Last year, he said, he sold 12 tepees; this summer, before the start of his busiest month, August, he sold 15. (He has also begun to do a brisk business renting tepees to weekenders, who use them for parties at big rented villas; a 16-by-18-footer is $1,322 for three days, including candles, Moroccan rugs, floor cushions and dream catchers.)


His shamanesque installers are two brothers who live in tepees on a squat in the Ibizan forest, and who cleanse new tepees with sage burning and song. “Ninety-five percent of my buyers are homeowners from London or Germany who use them as guest rooms,” Mr. Fernandez Oriol said. “They have an open mind.”


Danny McGrath, a British-born film director, lives on Ibiza between shoots with his wife, Sophie, a costume designer, and their daughter in a 500-year-old finca in a remote valley down the road from Ms. Jagger. When they decided to move to Ibiza four years ago because they were sick of “worrying about which drinks party or dinner to attend” in the London film world, Mr. McGrath said, they brought a 16-by-20-foot tepee, setting it up among the pine trees down the hill from their finca as a private outpost for guests. Every year, they change the décor, using objects from movie sets they have worked on, like the current red-and-yellow Moroccan blankets and leather-stitched poufs from Ridley Scott’s 2005 movie “Kingdom of Heaven,” which Ms. McGrath worked on as a stylist.


“It’s a great place to come after a night crammed into a club or a party at a villa,” said Mr. McGrath, who became interested in tribal structures in the late 1980s, after living on the Paiute-Shoshone reservation near Bishop, Calif., while working as a ski instructor. “You can hang out in the tepee with friends just as the sun’s rising, and you can smell the dew in the air.”


Tepees seem to be particularly well suited to the Ibizan summer, with its cool nights and dry Mediterranean climate. For heating or marshmallow toasting, a small fire pit can be placed in the earth in the center — tepees don’t have floors — and a flap near the top that can be opened as a chimney. The lining can be pulled up or down to adjust the temperature and ventilation. And in case of high winds, the installers wrap a rope around the outside and tie it to stakes in the ground.


The major downside is the lack of bathroom facilities. Christelle and Matt Jones, a couple who moved from London to Ibiza two years ago with their four children (they are preparing to open an Ibiza branch of their London bakery, Flour Power City), had to relocate their tepee from the backyard to a spot closer to the house because of guests’ complaints about the treacherous midnight hike to the toilet.


Other hosts are more laid back. “Guests use the bathroom up at the house,” said Mr. McGrath. “But half don’t bother trying to get up the hill in time.” He often reminds guests that the Sioux and the Cheyenne lived that way, he said: “They had no running water but were a hygienic sort of people.”


In keeping with the prevailing spirit of Ibiza, tepee owners tend to draw on the lore of tribal life in their decorating. Many go well beyond the painted patterns on tepees like Ms. Cook’s in their efforts to evoke a sense of cultural and spiritual authenticity, displaying ceremonial Native American objects like carved wooden drums, dream catchers, medicine pouches and bunches of spiritually purifying dried herbs.


In fact, the original plains tepee had no religious or ceremonial significance, and this kind of decorating amounts to merely “glamorizing the past,” said Linda A. Holley, the author of “Tipis, Tepees, Teepees,” a guide to the history of tepees published by Gibbs Smith earlier this year. “It’s a myth that really isn’t there that a lot of people believe in anyway,” she said.


Others don’t even try for authenticity, blithely mixing furnishings from any number of cultures, as long as they seem suitably primitive. Ursula Erasmus, a German businesswoman who gave up her career as an importer of accessories from Asia last year because she “was sick of the stress of too many picky clients,” and retired to Ibiza, decorated her 23-foot tepee with dozens of cow- and goat-hide floor coverings bought on eBay and a Balinese day bed, along with Native American drums and instruments.


She got her tepee, which sleeps a dozen, last spring, after her 16-year-old son, who attends a Swiss boarding school, announced he was coming to visit in a month with his touring theater troupe. (“10 teenagers in all!” Ms. Erasmus said.) Then, at the last minute, her son canceled, so Ms. Erasmus has invited friends instead.


“Two shamans are flying in from Germany” later this summer, she said. And the various expats she knows from the African drum circle at Las Dalias, a restaurant and club in San Carlos, the nexus of the neo-hippie scene, “will come for a big party” at the end of the summer, she said, “where we will play music and grill food on the fire inside the tepee.”


Ms. Cook, meanwhile, opts to cede her house to her guests, and use the tepee herself.


“But when the sun comes up in the morning,” she said, “it gets hot as a furnace in there.” Not an ideal situation for her London friends who go out all night clubbing and want to sleep late.


“I have to get up early anyway for my job,” she said. “Just like the Indians.”



(l) (l)


For Buffalo Dreams


August 2, 2007

For Buffalo Dreams


TEPEES may be available at only one store on Ibiza, but there are plenty of sources in the United States.


REESE TIPIS specializes in the Sioux-Cheyenne composite style, using an easy-to-erect tripod support structure. Kits cost between $275 (for a 9-foot tepee covered in relatively light fabric) and $2,727 (for a 26-foot model with a highly durable fabric); poles and stakes are additional; reesetipis.com or (866) 890-8474.


NOMADICS TIPI MAKERS offers more than 60 variations of “traditional style artwork,” including soaring eagles, shaman figurines and “big dipper in night sky.” Prices range from $800 for a 12-foot model to $2,200 for 26 feet; tipi.com or (541) 389-3980.


WESTERN CANVAS in Wyoming decorates its tepees with tribal designs done by local Indians. Its complete tepee packages range from $646 (for a 12-foot model) to $4,159 (for a heavy-fabric 30-foot tepee); www.westerncanvas.com or (800) 587-6707.


RELIABLE TENT AND TIPI offers an 8 ½-foot children’s backyard model with an outline of an eagle, ready to paint, for $253, in addition to Sioux and Crow Indian styles; reliabletent.com or (800) 544-1039.


BRAIN TAN HIDE sells 14-foot tepees made from 10 buffalo bull hides and 3 strips of buffalo sinew, for $8,500; (505) 687-3267 or braintan.com/bison/wes4.html. Tepees can also be done in elk.






(y) (y) Very cool, except for the "family" part. When I search for get-away places, I make sure nobody under 14 is allowed. At least that guarantees some level of peaceful relaxing. Having a full-sized tepee (or two) on forested property - for use as a guest room is a pretty cool idea, IMHO.



(f)




Mutantur omnia nos et mutamur in illis.

All things change, and we change with them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o


Tattoo: turning back time.

http://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2007/08/01/tattoo-lee-4.jpg


Inks trapped inside polymer beads could mean that painful removals will be a thing of the past.

Michael Pollitt

The Guardian

Thursday August 2 2007


Do you ever regret getting that tattoo? People often do - and then discover that removing it is a long, slow, often expensive and sometimes painful process whose results are by no means guaranteed.


But thanks to Professor Edith Mathiowitz of Brown University in the US, you might never need to again. Whenever you fancy new body art, a single laser treatment will clear the way - because the first durable, but easily removable, tattoo is just around the corner.


Trapped ink

The secret lies in microencapsulation, a process already used in many other applications, from drug delivery to magazine scratch-and-sniff perfume advertisements. This traps a useful substance inside a harder polymer which only breaks under controlled conditions - being rubbed in the scratch-and-sniff perfume, or in the gut for some drugs.


Here, the plan is to trap the tattoo inks in microscopic polymer beads. But whoever thought of applying it to tattoos?


"The idea began at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston by Dr Rox Anderson and by Bruce Klitzman at Duke University," says Mathiowitz, whose expertise lies in encapsulation research for pharmaceutical delivery systems. "Both of them approached me to take their idea further so that we could create a permanent but removable tattoo. Our challenge is to find the right combination of polymer and dye, and make it still hard enough so that you can push it through the skin and have it stay there."


That will be done conventionally, using sharp needles - tattooing is a painful process, and making the end result removable hasn't changed that. But when you want to remove the tattoo, the polymer beads can be burst with a single laser treatment, releasing the ink which then degrades naturally. The now-colourless bead coatings remain inert in your body, although bio-erodable ones - which would create a tattoo that would fade over time - are also possible.


"Traditionally, black ink absorbs all wavelengths of light. Our particles, however, were engineered to absorb more light at specific wavelengths, focusing the energy better on the beads and allowing the body to remove the tattoo ink," says Mathiowitz. "The non-erodible polymers will be left behind in the body. The bioerodable ones will be more challenging. You can design them to disappear after three months, six months or a year."


A New York company, Freedom-2 Inc, expects to start selling the new ink to tattoo artists in December. This will use biodegradable and bioabsorbable dyes encapsulated in microscopic (5-6 microns) polymethylmethacrylate beads suspended in solution.


Dr Nick Lowe is a consultant dermatologist and skin laser expert at the Cranley Clinic in London. He's also a spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation, the charity for skin disease research. He deals with all manner of skin problems, including tattoos which are painfully removed using lasers that shatter the pigments into pieces small enough for the body's immune system to deal with.


Fascinating concept

His advice about getting a tattoo? "Don't run in and get these done. It's a lot easier to have one put in than it is to have it taken off," says Lowe. "The laser treatment can damage the skin and permanently give you white scarring".


When shown Freedom-2's before and after publicity photographs of a tattoo trial, he points to areas of remaining tattoo and, more significantly, the removal of normal skin pigment and a loss of freckles. He also worries about possible allergic reactions, as well as simple lumps and bumps from the polymer.


"Has there been enough study done on this type of ink-polymer system to make sure that it is not, in some instances, difficult to remove?" asks Lowe. "I think that it's a fascinating concept that needs considerably more research."

Ta-ta, tattoo

Tattoos are normally situated between 1mm and 2mm under the skin. Before the arrival of pulsed medical lasers in the late 1980s, the options for removing an unwanted tattoo could be painful and disfiguring.


Excision

Cutting out pigmented skin is only suitable for small tattoos, because it leaves a scar. Taking a skin graft to replace the excised flesh just makes a scar elsewhere.


Salibrasion

The skin is aggressively "sanded" with salt to remove the tattoo by abrading the covering layers of skin. This is probably one of the oldest methods of tattoo removal.


Dermabrasion

Surface layers of the skin are removed with a surgical sandpaper or special rotary tool.


Injections

Saline injections may help blur or break up a tattoo.


Chemical peeling

Also used for other skin conditions. It progressively removes the skin and, eventually, the tattoo.


Covering up

An unwanted old tattoo can be covered up or concealed with a new tattoo that uses darker inks.




http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/02/guardianweeklytechnologysection.it3





:o I am still seriously considering a tat from before my 50th. Maybe one of these methods would suffice just in case I change my mind. :)



(f) (f)





Fac ut vivas.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :| :| :| :| :|


2 August 2007 11:31

Planet Murdoch: is nothing out of his reach?


Rupert Murdoch’s spectacular $5bn takeover of America’s revered ‘Wall Street Journal’ is the crowning moment of half a century’s deal-making and empire-building. Is anything out of his reach? Stephen Foley reports

Published: 02 August 2007


"Rupert is my boss. Rupert Murdoch has bought Dow Jones. Dow Jones owns my paper. So I am now an underling in the world's most evil corporate empire. "


This anonymous blog entry from a Wall Street Journal reporter just about summed up the sense of misery as the news sank in. At the paper's newsrooms across the US, journalists held impromptu wakes. "We stood around a pile of Journals and drank whisky," one told a reporter from a rival paper.


"The readers' comments on WSJ.com really got to people," another Journal veteran lamented. On the paper's website, reader after reader threatened to cancel their subscriptions. "This news is like hearing from an old friend that he has a debilitating, fatal disease," said one, in an unconscious echo of the late British playwright Dennis Potter, who called his cancer "Rupert".


"Murdoch will defile it and turn it into another example of his legendarily low-brow offerings," predicted one reader, and throughout the discussion, wags were coming up with tabloid-style headlines for the media business coup of the decade. The best: "D'oh! Simpsons boss Homers in on Journal".


It has taken Rupert Murdoch many years to become as hated in the US as he has been in the UK for more than two decades, and in his native Australia for longer still. But he has sealed that status thanks to his takeover of The Wall Street Journal /no spamming of other sites/ pious organ of the American financial establishment for over a century. Its previous owners, the Bancroft family, agonised about their duty to protect a national icon handed down through generations, but they could not turn down $5bn (£2.5bn), nearly twice what the paper was worth.


His success proves what his detractors fear most: he is rich enough, powerful enough and audacious enough to get anything /no spamming of other sites/ anything /no spamming of other sites/ that he wants. Now that his News Corp empire is absorbing the second best-selling newspaper in the US (one of its two or three most politically influential) he is more powerful than almost anybody without access to a nuclear button.


And the most extraordinary thing of all is that Rupert Murdoch is 76. What of rumours last year that he was starting to slow down, take more of an interest in consolidating the legacy for his children, retire from the daily grind and the nightly party circuit? Blown out of the water. The people with him throughout his four-month chess game with the Bancrofts say he has been as alive as ever, as vigorous and immersed in the detail and the plotting /no spamming of other sites/ indeed more so, since this is a trophy he has coveted personally for more than a decade rather than something News Corp is likely to make a large return on.


"This is what he likes to do, this is what keeps him going," says Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair's media commentator. "He thrives on this sort of confrontation, this insistence on his primacy. It is part of the Rupert Murdoch brand. That's the real value of spending $5bn: he gets to look once again as if he is unstoppable."


The Journal is the missing piece of the puzzle in the US, where his influence on the news is limited /no spamming of other sites/ if limited is the right word /no spamming of other sites/ to the country's newest and already most watched news channel, Fox News. Its unabashedly unfair and unbalanced right-wing outpourings, plus its mix of trashy personality stories, has utterly changed the landscape of television news, pushing CNN into second place and forcing the established channel to react in ways that critics allege have blurred the boundaries between news and comment. He also owns the New York Post, a trashy tabloid and a guilty pleasure for many New Yorkers, keen to see which misbehaving celebrities and politicians are being terrorised in its famous gossip column, Page Six. It is through the Post /no spamming of other sites/ which he rescued from bankruptcy, thanks to a waiver of media ownership restrictions /no spamming of other sites/ that Murdoch has waged feuds with the judge who imprisoned his business associate Michael Milken, politicians such as Teddy Kennedy ("Fat Boy", the Post calls him) who have opposed liberalised media laws, and business rivals such as Ted Turner.


And it is therefore in New York that Murdoch is concentrating his time, lounging in the 8,000 sq ft apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side that once belonged to the mighty Rockefellers /no spamming of other sites/ another trophy asset that he coveted for decades and only finally got the opportunity to buy in 2004.


With his wife, Wendi Deng, 38 years his junior, whom he first wooed when she was an executive at Star TV in Hong Kong, Murdoch has been extending his dynasty, with two daughters aged five and four. His renewed vigour may have much to do with the confused state of any succession plans /no spamming of other sites/ Lachlan, his eldest son, flounced out of News Corp in 2005 in a dispute over inheritance plans for the new daughters, leaving Murdoch without an obvious successor. The younger James is running the outpost BSkyB in the UK, and was brought in to help reassure the Bancrofts that the Murdoch family can be good stewards of the Journal, but he is not deemed experienced enough yet to take the torch from his father.


Not that he ever will. "Rupert will never have completed his task by the time he leaves this earth. He's a huge restless spirit," Kelvin Mackenzie, his editor at The Sun once memorably said. Murdoch himself jokes that he had planned to retire at 100, but has had to postpone it. Instead, through his ownership of the MySpace social networking site, he is having to do a whole lot of getting down with the kids, learning about the internet and new ways to distribute the media content being churned out by the Fox television studio, maker of The Simpsons and American Idol, and movie lots, which have just spawned another Die Hard. One of his most recent parties, covered in the West Coast gossip rags, saw MySpace founder Tom Anderson rubbing shoulders with Tom Cruise and American Idol judge Simon Cowell on the roof of Murdoch's Beverly Hills condo.


His East Coast pad plays host to more heavyweight guests from politics and business /no spamming of other sites/ Murdoch never fails to mix the two. He is a dramatic convert to the cause of Hillary Clinton's campaign for the White House, hosting a fund-raiser for the former First Lady and burying the hatchet after years when his papers castigated her and her husband. Since she was elected Senator for New York, he has been burying more than just the hatchet /no spamming of other sites/ stories on her marriage, too, if insiders at the New York Post are right.


It was ever thus, in Murdoch's giant empire, where the news is tweaked in ways that suit his interests and keep his friends sweet.


He does it in little ways. A Saudi businessman friend of Murdoch, the billionaire Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who owns shares in News Corp, took umbridge at Fox News' coverage of the riots in the Paris suburbs in 2005. He phoned Murdoch to complain specifically about a caption describing them as " Muslim riots", and within half an hour the mogul had stepped in to get the caption changed to "Civil unrest".


And he does it in big ways. The BBC was thrown off Star TV in Asia, broadcasting into China, after the Communist regime complained about its critical coverage. Murdoch was unapologetic: "Primarily a financial consideration. But it might have occurred to me /no spamming of other sites/ this might have not hurt relations with Beijing," he told The Wall Street Journal, even as he was promising he would not interfere in the paper's editorial line if he took it over. "At that stage, I had not been received by a single [Chinese] minister or anyone. They had a report from Xinhua that when I had the South China Morning Post I was a member of MI6 or MI5. So no one was allowed to see me. We just had a total blackout for five years."


Power and influence are melded together through Murdoch's long career in the news business. Last month /no spamming of other sites/ thanks to a Freedom of Information request by The Independent /no spamming of other sites/ we discovered that Murdoch had a hotline to Tony Blair at crucial moments during his premiership, and that the pair spoke three times in nine days in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The war was strongly supported by Murdoch-owned newspapers around the world. On two occasions, the day after a call with Blair, The Sun launched vitriolic attacks on the anti-war French President Jacques Chirac.


But Michael Wolff says Murdoch's motivation is not power so much as just an interest in the news. That is why buying the Journal is quite a quaint move. "In this day and age, no rational media person likes newspapers except old people. Young people are not interested in newspapers, advertisers are not interested in the news. But Murdoch still loves getting his hands dirty at a newspaper. He is buying a present for himself."


How Rupert’s embrace stretches from Alaska to Australia



Global

Harpercollins Publishing A leading worldwide consumer book publisher. In the late 1980s, acquired US publishers Harper & Row and Williams Collins. Merged in 1989 to form Harper-Collins, which principally operates in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. Worth $2.2bn.

Employees: 3,000 worldwide



North America

Fox Entertainment Group (100% owned)

Fox Broadcasting Co In 1986, News Corp launched Fox Broadcasting, the first new US TV network since 1948. Now reaches 98 per cent of US homes. Hit series include 24 and American Idol. Worth at least $36.6bn.

Employees: 5,300

Cable Network Programming (Includes Fox News, Fox Sport World, 50 per cent of National Geographic channel) Fox News channel launched in 1996 /no spamming of other sites/ now more popular than CNN.

Employees: 1,929

Twentieth Century Fox Film In 1985, Murdoch became a US citizen in order to buy more American media assets. That year he acquired Twentieth Century Fox film business. It has enjoyed a string of hits, including The Simpsons Movie.

Employees: 3,700 worldwide

MySpace In July 2005 Murdoch bought Intermix Media, owners of MySpace, for $580m. Murdoch hoped it would channel traffic to his other sites.

IGN Entertainment The MySpace acquisition was rapidly followed by the purchase of IGN, an internet video game company, for $650m, giving him control of gaming sites such as Game-spy and film criticism site Rotten Tomatoes.

GemStar-TV Guide International (41%) Provider of printed and interactive TV guides. Part of the magazines and inserts (carried in newspapers) business. News Corp’s magazines and inserts assets valued at $3bn.

Employees: 1,892

New York Post First bought 200-year-old New York Post in 1976 but forced to sell it for regulatory reasons. Acquired again (when on brink of bankruptcy) in 1988 for $25m.

Employees: 930

DirecTV (34%) Acquired stake in satellite broadcaster DirecTV in 2003 for $6.6bn after 20-year chase for a distribution network in the US. In 2006 agreed to transfer interest to Liberty Media in return for Liberty’s shares in News Corp. News Corp stake valued at $8.4bn.

Employees: 3,400

The Weekly Standard The intellectual cheerleader of the neocon right. Washington-based weekly political magazine has a circulation of 60,000.

Employees: 28



Latin America

Sky Latin America DirecTV Latin America Holdings include Sky Mexico and Sky Brazil, each of which has more than 700,000 customers and 100 channels in its respective territory. DirecTV Latin America and Sky Latin America are in the process of merging, which will give them a combined 3.3 million subscribers.



Other territories


India

HarperCollins Publishers Hathaway Cable (25%) NDS India (research and development plant in Bangalore)



Israel

NDS Israel (research and development plant in Jerusalem)

Channel 10 TV 9% stake taken in 2006

Fiji

Fiji Times, Sunday Times, Nai Lalakai, Shanti Dut

Papua New Guinea

Post-Courier (63%)



UK

News International

The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, News of the World, TLS The company’s UK newspaper business, News International, is at the centre of a global newspaper empire estimated to be worth $11bn (before the Dow Jones deal). The UK accounts for 60 per cent of News Corp's newspaper revenues. The News International titles have around one third of the national newspaper market in Britain.

Employees: 4,000

NDS (78%) NDS makes smart cards for pay-television businesses, including News Corp’s own. News Corp’s stake is worth $1bn.

Employees: 1,500

BSkyB (35%) It offers more than 400 digital channels. and dominates the UK pay-TV market with 8.6 million subscribers. Aims to have 10 million subscribers by 2010. Sky is valued at about £11.5bn, making the News Corp stake worth £4.03bn.

Employees: 16,000

EASYNET Broadband internet provider, bought for £211m in 2005.

Amstrad This week News Corp splashed out £125m on Amstrad, founded by Sir Alan Sugar. Amstrad manufactures around a third of Sky’s set-top boxes. The deal is primarily a cost-reduction exercise for News Corp: it cuts out the middle-man. Sir Alan will remain chairman of Amstrad for the time being.

Employees: 300



Asia & The Middle East

Star TV A wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp, acquired 1993-1995, Star broadcasts across the Asia-Pacific region, through a mixture of cable, satellite and free-to-air services. Star has more than 40 channels in seven languages, and reaches more than 300 million viewers across 53 Asian countries.

Its main operations ( pictured) are in Asia. Channels include Star Chinese Channel, Star Plus, Xing Kong, Vijay, Phoenix Chinese Channel, Channel V , Star Sports, Star Chinese Movies, Star Mandarin Movies, Star Movies, Phoenix Movies Channel, Star News. Valued at $3bn. Serves: Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mainland China, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Brunei, Macau, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, UAE, Yemen.

Employees: 1,700

Phoenix Satellite TV (38%) Hong Kong-based. Operations include a subscription movie channel in China, and a 24-hour news outlet, InfoNews, broadcast via cable in Hong Kong and via satellite to Taiwan, Mainland China and rest of East Asia. In China, reaches more than 42 million households (140 million viewers), broadcasting in Mandarin.

China Network Systems (20%) Cable TV operator based in Taiwan; News Corp acquired stake in 2001.



Europe

Sky Italia (80%) News Corp entered Italian pay-TV market in 1999 with stake in Stream. Bought Telepiu, merged it with Stream, formed Sky Italia. Estimated value: up to $4.9bn.

Sky Radio European pop music network sold in 2006 as part of a €190m deal.

NDS France A software development venture.

Balkan News Corporation News Corp launched bTV, Bulgaria’s first national private television station, in 2000. Has a 40 per cent market share.

NDS Denmark Develops games software for television.

News Outdoor(75%) Billboard advertising company focused on emerging European nations and Russia.



Australia

News Limited The Australian, The Weekend Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, Herald Sun, Sunday Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail (42%), The Sunday Mail (Brisbane, 42%), The Advertiser, Sunday Mail (Adelaide), The Mercury, Sunday Tasmanian, The Sunday Times, Northern Territory News, Sunday Territorian News Corp has more than 100 Australian newspaper titles /no spamming of other sites/ 70 per cent of the market.

Employees: 8,000

Fox Studios Australia The first major studio development for 20th Century Fox outside North America opened in 1998.

Employees: 129

Foxtel The leading subscription television provider.

Fairfax Took 7.5% stake in rival media conglomerate for $360m in 2006.





http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2828948.ece




^o)^o) I guess I can always stop the yearly renewal of my WSJ subscription - if the format and especially very professional and well-written content is "Murdochized".......AKA ...becomes similar to National Inquirer TRASH. I can always spot a Murdoch-owned news web site - all glitterati photos and focus on "supposed celebs". Trash, I tell you.



;)






Ut sementem feceris ita metes.

As you sow, so will you reap.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

<:o) <:o) <:o)


Oh, and a Coffee Warning! ;)




Has the President misjudged Mr Brown's style?

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor

Published: 02 August 2007


Perhaps it wasn't the most appropriate present Gordon Brown has ever received. When he left Camp David on Monday, George Bush handed him a brown leather bomber jacket.


It bore the US presidential seal, with its symbol of an eagle, olive branch and arrows, and the label "Rt Hon Gordon Brown". It came in a huge cardboard box wrapped in gold paper also bearing the presidential seal.


The jacket was the same as the one worn by Mr Bush at Camp David at his first meeting with Tony Blair in 2001. At the time, the item of clothing that attracted most attention was Mr Blair's trousers, later described as "ball-crushingly tight" by Sir Christopher Meyer, who was Britain's ambassador in Washington.


Downing Street refused to comment on Mr Brown's rather unexpected present last night, saying it never commented on gifts. His aides said they were "not pleased" that the news had leaked out. The choice of gift will raise eyebrows because the bomber jacket might have been more appropriate for Mr Blair, given his "shoulder-to-shoulder" support for Mr Bush in Iraq. Before Mr Brown's trip to the US, the American media was awash with speculation that the Prime Minister would not have such a close personal bond with the President as his predecessor. At their press conference, Mr Brown acknowledged the problems in Iraq and made clear the withdrawal of British troops from the Basra area would not be delayed to avoid looking at odds with the "surge" of US forces in the Baghdad region.


Although Mr Brown voted for the Iraq invasion and publicly supported Mr Blair's decision, he has hinted he might not have gone to war so quickly by backing a multilateral foreign policy.


It is understood that Mr Brown gave Mr Bush a more conventional present - a book about Winston Churchill, the first British prime minister to visit Camp David. During his visit, Mr Brown repeatedly referred to Churchill as he spoke about the historic links between the US and Britain. Mr Blair loaned a bust of Churchill to Mr Bush for the duration of his term of office.


Details of gifts to ministers which are worth more than £140 are now published by the Cabinet Office. Its records show that in January 2003, Mr Blair received a holdall from the US government. In July that year, Mr Bush gave him some silver beakers. They were not purchased by Mr Blair for his personal use, which ministers are allowed to do if they want to keep presents worth more than £140.



Office gifts

* In 2005, John Prescott faced personal ridicule when he was presented with a cowboy outfit during a visit to the Texan ranch of the tycoon Philip Anschutz, who was bidding to open a supercasino at the Millennium Dome.


* Tony Blair was haunted by offerings of jewellery and watches - "Berlusconi's bling" - from the then Italian Prime Minister. Silvio Berlusconi lavished gifts on the Prime Minister and his wife including 18 watches, bracelets, a ring and earrings.


* Margaret Thatcher had regular gifts of jewellery, including a string of gifts from Middle Eastern states. But there is no record of any valuable gifts from her great ally Ronald Reagan.




http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2826182.ece






:D What could I possibly add? Except I LOVE British news web sites. Talk about telling it like it is! :D






Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



Sharon Stone? 50 is not the new 30.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/graphics/2007/08/02/ixftfifty194.jpg



While many women heading for their half-century brace themselves for Botox, one writer found a better way.



Fifty? No, it's not the new thirty


Last Updated: 12:01am BST 02/08/2007


As she approached her half-century, Linda Kelsey braced herself for Botox, hot flushes and lying about her age. Facing reality, however, was more fulfilling .


Fifty, I'm on a mission to inform the world, is not the new Thirty. Despite what the glossy magazines tell you, Fifty is not even the new Forty. What I've discovered, after a long and sometimes tortuous journey, is that Fifty is the new Fifty, and it finally feels like something to celebrate.


It has, however, been quite a route from outrage to acceptance. Fifty is a particularly piercing wake-up call in women's lives.


It starts when that first Saga advert for cut-price insurance plops menacingly through your letter-box - on your birthday, for heaven's sake!


It continues when you look at yourself in a full-length mirror and realise that there's a whole new lexicon to describe the devastation you see before you - from bingo wings to muffin-tops, your body will never be just a body ever again but a series of graphically unpleasant euphemisms.


It takes on a scary new dimension when you are talking to the plumber about your pipes and find yourself blushing like a lovesick teenager all the way from your ankles to the top of your scalp.


It's around this time that you start thinking you can't wait for the children to be off your hands, then suddenly they're about to be and you're beside yourself with grief. (My son is 19.)


And then, in an instant, you find you have a couple more children on your hands - only these turn out to be your parents, who need as much care and attention in their old age as your children did when they were young. You look at your husband of maybe 15, 20 or 25 years and you think, now what? Or maybe he does, and suddenly he's upped and gone.


Like most women of my generation, I've had to face up to almost all of these things around the time of turning 50, and yet I find myself feeling ridiculously cheerful.


As I approached the big birthday, I had decided the time had come for some life-changing decisions. Like most of my friends, I resolved to start lying about my age. I also felt the moment had come to abandon my feminist principles and surgically change my face.


I vowed I was never, ever going to become one of those women who say ''Is it me, or is it hot in here?'' but intended to sail coolly through the menopause. Finally, if I could find someone short-sighted enough to oblige me - I was thinking a tall, dark, handsome stranger with mild cataracts - I was going to have a discreet little affair.


So much for the best-laid plans. If you're going to lie about turning 50, it's probably best not to write a novel, as I have just done, with the issue of hitting your half-century as its central theme.


I chickened out of the facelift after a dressing-down from my husband. He peered at me close up, as though examining the car for signs of wear and tear. ''Mmm,'' he said thoughtfully, prodding an under-eye bag. ''I reckon you've got a good two more years before we need to think about swapping you for a new model.


But you may like to have your head examined in the meantime.'' As for the burning issue of menopausal hot flushes, my poor husband is now the victim of a permanent stiff neck from the cold north wind that blew through the open bedroom window every night of last winter.


The affair? Well, I have indeed met lots of tall, dark, handsome strangers lately, but so far none with cataracts.


Instead of succumbing to ageorexia, the disease that's crippling middle-aged women (and younger ones, too) up and down the land who wish to do battle with sagging, wrinkles and bulges, I've decided to preserve what I can without resorting to cosmetic surgery, and live with what I can't. My eventual decision not to succumb to Botox, lunchtime lasers or the knife was reached after a recent trip to New York.


I happened to be staying on the Upper East Side, where the matrons of Madison Avenue hang out and walk their Pekinese. These uniformly wealthy women, with access to the shiniest cosmetic scalpels in the business, looked eerily identical, like the aged aunts of the Stepford Wives.


Not good, not youthful, but most definitely weird. Some of my friends back home are heading the same way. I decided I'd rather look saggy than paralysed.


Of all the compliments you might pay a middle-aged woman, ''you don't look your age'' is the one that's guaranteed to make her spirits soar. It has sent my mood skywards enough times.


But I now see how empty a compliment it is. To be blessed with good genes or a good surgeon doesn't make a woman special, all it does is reinforce society's nutty and pernicious obsession with youth. I eat healthily, I exercise regularly, I dress fashionably, wear make-up and cover the grey roots of my hair. That's as far as I'm prepared to go.


I'd like to think there are changes in the air. And I don't mean the media fanfare about one sexy sexagenarian winning an Oscar - Helen Mirren for her portrayal of the Queen - although we can all applaud her singular achievement.


Nor do I mean the meticulously retouched celebrities such as Sharon Stone and other ''older'' A-listers, rolled out ad nauseam as proof that older women are still sexy.


The role models who mean something are rather closer to home. Like the splendid women of 50-plus in Dove's Beauty Comes of Age campaign, and public faces such as Sandra Howard, writing her first novel at 64.


Like the increasing number of women in their fifties with the courage to walk out on marriages gone rotten and prepared to face a foggy future alone rather than settle for long-term unhappiness, and the growing breed of female fiftysomethings turning to enterprise and self-employment, forming an exciting new wave of ''olderpreneurs''.


My personal strategy for dealing with the F-word, after something of a struggle, is to focus on enjoying what I am, rather than to rue what I no longer can be. To reflect on all the things I've achieved - in my career, as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend.


To plan all the things I want to do, one new thing a year until I keel over completely. Last year it was to write my first novel. This year it has been to learn how to sing. Next year, who knows?


A wise older woman once said that she didn't mind being regarded as being over the hill because it's only once you're over the hill that you pick up speed. I say 50 cheers to that.


• 'Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word' by Linda Kelsey.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/08/02/nosplit/ftfifty102.xml






(y) :D (y) :D Exceptionally well done article!! Air brushing indeed. ;)



(f) (f)





Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-| 8-|


New biometric technology means one in the eye for airport queues


Last Updated: 12:01am BST 02/08/2007


Beat the crowds at UK airports this summer by taking advantage of the latest biometric technology, says Emma Hartley


It's been a bad week for the British airport queue. First, MPs said that standing in one could make you a "sitting duck" target for terrorists.


Then Kitty Ussher, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, warned that "Heathrow hassle" and long queues, particularly at passport control, were deterring business people from flying to London for meetings, which could have a long-term impact on the national economy.


Never has air travel been less glamorous for the British holidaymaker. The recent beefing-up of airport security, while understood and accepted with typical stoicism, has none the less turned foreign sojourns into an epic and tiring series of queues and checks.


But it needn't be that way: there is a recently installed digital solution to at least half of the problem - the part encountered at the arrivals hall in the UK - available to those travellers classified as "low security risk".


IRIS, an acronym for Iris Recognition Immigration System, is a service provided free at the point of contact by the Immigration Service, in which eight British airport terminals - four at Heathrow, two at Gatwick plus Birmingham and Manchester - have the facility to scan a human iris. As with a fingerprint, every iris is unique, even for identical twins.
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The iris-scanning process takes about two minutes and no appointment is necessary; you just need to clear security at a participating airport, keep hold of your boarding card, and ask to be directed to the IRIS suite.


The particular infrared camera system used to power IRIS was developed by Sagem Défense Sécurité, a French company that has also developed iris-scanning applications for military use, but the basic technique involves taking simultaneous pictures on two light frequencies - ambient light and that from a light-emitting diode in the infrared region.


Paul Stanborough, managing director of rival outfit Aditech, explains: "It's the red light that makes the picture of the iris unique. That's the clever bit that generates the algorithm, coding the image and allowing it to be stored and found again."


With the images of your irises held on a database, when you return to the UK you can skip the long queue at passport control and instead head for the IRIS gate. The queue here, by comparison, is determined entirely by the scheme's uptake - only around 100,000 have enrolled so far, very few of whom will be travelling at any given time, so there is rarely any queue at all.


Moreover, the day when that line will be the same length as the others is a long way off, not least because access to the scheme is restricted to those deemed "low risk".


Passing through the IRIS system involves simply gazing into a mirrored box at the recognition technology, which should spring the gate open within seconds.


IRIS users are and will remain almost entirely UK passport holders, according to Brodie Clark, the Government's strategic director for border control. "It is possible, though, that if [non-British passport-holders] fly to the UK often on business and are not on any police watch-list, you may also be eligible," he said.


Because the data is not stored on your passport but on the Immigration Service's database, the scheme is unaffected by passport expiry. However, IRIS must be activated within six months of enrolling and is valid unused for two years but renewed every time it is used.


It is designed for frequent flyers, most probably business and solo travellers. It's not without its pitfalls: if, for instance, someone takes a small child into the IRIS gate the technology will not work since it is designed for one person at a time. Similarly, a person wearing backpack-style hand luggage might create the impression of two people in the booth and disrupt the process, so all baggage must be put on the ground.


Until now, the system's existence at passport control has remained a rather well-kept secret. The three other people who presented themselves for enrolment at Gatwick South Terminal during the 15 minutes or so I was there this week all said that they had heard about it in a roundabout way, through random browsing on the internet or from friends.


However, it is understood that the Government is about to launch a promotional drive to encourage greater use of the IRIS technology.


And the benefits of IRIS will be felt elsewhere in the airport, too. Since the time-saving benefits of iris-scanning are wiped out if you speed through immigration just to hang around at the baggage carousel waiting for your suitcase, the scheme indirectly encourages people to take less luggage when they travel, leading in turn to shorter check-in times.


Balm to the soul for Britain's weary travellers.


• Information at www.iris.gov.uk


• The Science Museum in South Kensington, London SW7 (0870 870 4868; www.sciencemuseum.org.uk) is holding a three-day event on the science and technology of biometrics called 'Please Identify Yourself'. Open 10am to 6pm from August 14 to 16. Entry free.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/08/02/dlbio102.xml





(h) (i)





Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



Hanging Rabbit

Determination vs. Distraction

Fear not, rabbit lovers; you'll find no bunnies ascending the gallows here. Rather, this site presents one very tenacious carrot lover who imagines your cursor to be a beta-carotene snack. Try and shake him; you'll only resign in grudging admiration of his hoppity chutzpah.


Desire shackles us all:


http://www.changar.com/archives/go.html






(h)(h)(h) Very cool and alot of fun. It made me laugh and wake Wyatt up. :D



(f)



Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-| 8-|



BuzzDash


Need an opinion?


With polls on just about everything—sports, entertainment, politics, and more—BuzzDash lets you keep your finger on the pulse of public opinion. You can even start your own polls to measure issues that matter to you. And it's more convenient than a soap box.


Not just for busy bees:


http://www.buzzdash.com/





:| :| Like we are not already inumdated with extraneous info daily. ;) Here's a web site for everything you probably didn't know that you needed to know. Or something like that. ;)







Multum in parvo.

Much in little.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

Groovy Green


Saving the world is suddenly cool


A local site with a global perspective, Groovy Green offers information about environmental consciousness. There's also a breaking news section to keep you updated on cool new developments and trends in the green community.


Sustainable surfing:


http://groovygreen.com/index.php?option=com_magazine&Itemid=57






“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” - Mohandas K. Ghandi



(y) (y)





Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.

What goes around, comes around.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o :o



New 7 Wonders

Build it and they will vote


Out with the ancient world, in with the new. Check out the results of this international survey to choose the new 7 wonders of the world—from the Great Wall of China to the Taj Mahal in India. Plus, you can vote on the 7 wonders of nature.



Sorry, Colossus of Rhodes:


http://www.new7wonders.com/






|-) |-) ....Must be the intense heat and humidity........:) I wonder about the research methods used to come up with this list. ^o) ^o)






Nosce te ipsum.

Know thyself.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



Bicycle Universe

All bikes, all the time


Who knew there was so much to know about bicycles? Well, apparently these nice folks at Bicycle Universe do. They provide tons of free information about equipment, safety, laws, history, and more.


Keep on pedaling:


http://bicycleuniverse.info/




(y)






Noli nothis permittere te terere.

Don't let the b*st*rds wear you down. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&)

[sweetlady]

:D



Brilliantly subversive humor, woeful anatomical ignorance or just a wonderfully clueless mistake? I'm guessing the last, but in any case the wired world is having a good horselaugh this morning over this Xinhua story on multiple sclerosis research, illustrated with an X-ray of Homer Simpson's brain (let me know if the link goes dead; I have a screenshot). Computerworld says it's just one more example of the Chinese state-run media's willingness to ignore image copyrights. Others blame cultural unfamiliarity. "Despite the foreign language polishers, the writers and editors who produce English and other foreign language content for Xinhua and other state-owned media organizations do not have the cultural awareness necessary to avoid errors like the misuse of the Homer Simpson illustration," said Jeremy Goldkorn, editor of the English-language Chinese media blog Danwei.org. But geez, whether or not you care about copyright or recognize Homer Simpson, surely a cursory glance by someone along the line would have spotted something a little off. Nut-size brain floating in big, empty skull? Or maybe, as Joey de Villa at Global Nerdy suggests, it wasn't noticed because of the influence of some Asian tech manuals and their cartoon style. But I'm still betting on the overworked, underpaid, tired and possibly hungover news clerk theory.



HILARIOUS!

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-07/30/xin_3120704301027437122523.jpg




http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-07/30/content_6450253.htm




A photo of Homer Simpson accompanying a genuine article about multiple sclerosis (MS) has exposed Chinese state-run media's penchant for using images without permission.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9028723




http://globalnerdy.com/2007/08/02/homer-simpson-x-ray-used-in-medical-article-in-chinese-news/




http://kotaku.com/gaming/top/the-japanese-super-safe-wii-safety-manual-218939.php





:D :D :D





Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. (w) (w)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:|



...a thorough examination of the correlation between the mortality rate of red-shirted Enterprise crew members, fights and Kirk's success with alien women.


http://www.clicktracks.com/insidetrack/articles/kirk_analytics.php?source=nws072007






(y) (y) The conclusion is priceless!!!!! (y) (y) Misogynistic? Definitely. But as I read through the study.......the conclusion not only made sense but was funny, IMHO. Captain Kirk needs to be brought down a peg or two....;) And, no, I was not an avid Star Trek fan. :)



(f)






Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. (w) (w)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(h)(h)(h)



http://members.optushome.com.au/davidquinn000/Diogenes%20Folder/Diogenes.html




(y) (y)




(f)




Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?

Ever noticed how wherever you stand, the smoke goes right into your face?

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf



:|



(f)





Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. (w) (w)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)



This historic New Mexico city, which has thrived as a tourist destination by tenaciously preserving its past, is slowly beginning to embrace the future.


Slide Show: The New Santa Fe:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/04/travel/20070805_SANTAFE_SLIDESHOW_index.html




August 5, 2007

Is Santa Fe Ready for a Makeover?

By HENRY SHUKMAN


A SUNDAY evening in late June. A crowd of well-dressed people is spilling out of the St. Francis Auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown Santa Fe, a grand adobe building some 90 years old, with monolithic mud towers and tender curvaceous walls connecting them. The late sun doesn't just gleam on the old adobe edifice. It's deeper than that. The red and orange that lights up on the walls, over the heads of the exiting crowd, seems to come from deep within them. The low light tranforms the scene into a vision.


There's a moment like this almost every evening in Santa Fe, when the light suddenly transfigures the earthen buildings, the lush cottonwood trees, even the blacktop and cars. It all becomes luminous and dreamlike. It's as if the light contains some special MSG of sight, and one can't stop staring. Santa Fe must have offered this spectacle for the last four centuries, since the Palace of the Governors was built on the plaza by the Spanish.


That light — the cottonwood-filtered sunlight of the morning, the thick orange-juicy light of the evening; a light that matches other famed atmospheres, such as Venice's gauzy haze or Provence's luminosity — is one reason why Santa Fe seems to exert such power over both the people who live there and the ones who return year after year. Powerful, too, is the pull of its history, a history that is solidified in the mud of its buildings and that seems almost palpable, like some slow-moving river that cuts through the center of the city. Yet around town, there is a sense of change. People are talking about a New Santa Fe.


The Rail Runner commuter train is coming, linking Santa Fe directly to downtown Albuquerque in an hour and a quarter. A huge new $100 million commercial center, the Railyard, is being built downtown, a rival hub to the plaza in contemporary-industrial steel and glass. Tax incentives have greatly enhanced the film industry in New Mexico, and much of the post-production is centered around Santa Fe. The celebrated Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta is now represented not only by the Marion Center for Photographic Arts at the College of Santa Fe but also by the Zocalo, an extraordinary condominium development spilling down a hillside north of town. And in 2005, Santa Fe was designated America's first Unesco Creative City, a global acknowledgment of its place at the forefront not just of folk art, crafts and design, but in new media too.


The old and the new: Can a 400-year-old city change? Do its inhabitants want it to? How much can a tourist town that lives off its heritage welcome change?


On a quiet street on the east side of Santa Fe, among the ochre and rose of the traditional adobe homes, there's one discreet house whose lines are sharper than most, whose stucco is a shade grayer. What you can see of it from the road is an intriguing blend of the masses and layering of traditional Indian pueblos, with a contemporary starkness. You wouldn't imagine that it — and its architect, Trey Jordan — had been at the center of an ugly controversy since it was built two and a half years ago. Vandalized, covered in graffiti, discussed at Historic Design Review Board meetings, the house — and a few others of his around town — have made Mr. Jordan both a bête noire of the traditionalists, who would like to see nothing but old-fashioned Santa Fe-style houses going up in historic districts, and a mascot of those who think it's time the city allowed in a breath of change. These days, both parties seem to be winning.


Ever since the 1920's when Santa Fe's Pueblo Revival style, with its adobe walls, viga beams, molded corners and kiva fireplaces, was established and codified, the city has appeared to be one of the best-preserved in the United States. Devotees of its mud architecture, of this southwestern Timbuktu, speak of a native style risen from the earth itself. But the city's look was actually a deliberate concoction, brewed up by the city elders in the 1910s. The railway had bypassed Santa Fe in the 1870's, and the city watched with a tinge of green in its eyes as Taos became a magnet for the arts in the early 20th century.


The leading citizens decided it was time to start promoting the state capital. A museum was needed, and a distinctive architectural style, something exotic. First they considered going Alhambra, but after the Scottish Rite Temple went up in 1911 as the first example of the new look — bright pink with moorish arches — they rethought things (mercifully, some say) and went adobe instead.


Their foresight was inspired. Almost a century on, the city they helped design and midwife remains one of the best-loved in America. It has only 75,000 inhabitants but its renown is global. For many decades it has been, and remains, a dynamo of American art and culture. O'Keeffe, Willa Cather, Bob Dylan, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg, Cormac McCarthy — the roll call of arts greats who have spent time there is disproportionate for such a far-flung desert oasis. In the '80s and '90s, Santa Fe Style, a repackaging of the original Pueblo Revival, became one of the most celebrated design looks on the continent. With success like this, who would want anything to change?


Some don't. Many don't. The Historic Board has done an admirable job over the decades of maintaining a consistent look for Santa Fe, but behind its adobe walls, and behind some newer walls made of glass, steel and concrete, there is undeniably a new, and perhaps more sophisticated, more internationally aware cultural center emerging.


For over a century, Santa Fe and northern New Mexico have been a place of healing, a land of the cure. First it was tuberculosis; while Texas and California closed their borders to consumptives, New Mexico welcomed them. Then when Mabel Dodge Luhan moved to Taos in 1916, the area became a focus of New Thought, of artists and thinkers who felt called to develop antidotes to the malaise of modern civilization. Urban-refugee hippies congregated in the '60s. It has long been a city for seekers and dreamers wanting to heal the dissatisfactions of consumerist life.


The old days of Santa Fe when one beloved local artist had a billboard up on the highway trumpeting his own brilliance — “Tommy Macaione, New Star of the Art-World Firmament” — are surely gone. A particular Southwestern brand of bohemianism — part Bob Dylan, part van Gogh, part Ken Kesey — is probably dying out. But as Jan Morris commented 20 years ago, beneath the touristic veneer of Santa Fe there has long been a dedicated community of serious sun-cured artists, who work hard and have little to do with the tourist town. And it continues to attract exceptional talent. Mr. Jordan's modernist-Pueblo architecture; the cuisine of chefs like Nelli Maltezos; the jewelry of Denise Betesh; the Nobel-stuffed think tank and research center at the Santa Fe Institute.


I've been coming for nearly 15 years, and while the ancient fabric of this old American city still exerts its powerful magnetism, there is clearly a more contemporary city coming to the fore too, one that is arguably more connected to the rest of America, and indeed the world. It's manifest in art, in design, and even in cuisine. The fact that northern New Mexico has long been a center of innovative green building is also now bringing it into greater prominence as a design hub. What was once crazy hippie solar architecture (“biotecture,” as Michael Reynolds, the Earthship pioneer, calls it) is becoming mainstream thinking on sustainable design. While the hippie-hacienda-ism best seen in ceramic-encrusted bermed homes may still be a fringe look, its principles of green living are not.


It only takes a stroll around the center to see it happening.


SITE Santa Fe, an installation center that pulls in site-specific art from around the world, has been an anchor in Santa Fe's status as an art hub since it was founded in 1995. Located a mile or two west of Canyon Road, the city's traditional art thoroughfare, it has also become the cornerstone of a new colony of art galleries that seem altogether more serious ventures in contemporary art than the cowboy-and-Indian art and the irony-free kitsch that still dominate much of Canyon Road. (Though there are exceptions even there, such as the new Gallery Moda, which has a formidable collection of post-war prints by American artists, Ellsworth Kelly, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Motherwell among them.)


Because of the Railyard development happening around it, which includes a large public park, SITE will soon become a kind of museum-in-the-park, a fact that delights its current director, Laura Heon. One oddity of Santa Fe's art scene is that although big-name artists live here, and big collectors have homes here, the galleries are mostly regional in what they offer. SITE is an exception: internationally renowned, yet until recently, comparatively unrecognized in its hometown.


Not far up Old Pecos Trail, CCA, the Center for Contemporary Arts, is committed to elevating contemporary regional art to a national level. It's currently undergoing major reconstruction. A derelict World War II tank garage next door is being turned into the Muñoz Waxman Gallery, overlooked by a glass mezzanine; the James Turrell “SkySpace” in the grounds — said to be the first he ever built, 21 years ago — will soon be reopened to the public.


Even the city's food has felt the shock of the new. Aqua Santa, under the guidance of the Slow Food wizard Brian Knox, continues to fill up night after night with the great and the good. For close to a century now the city has had a sprinkling of notable artists and writers, but there seems to be a new and more visible concentration of celebrities here these days. On that Sunday night in June, for example, when a crowd of 400 attended a V-Day reading in the St. Francis Auditorium presided over by Eve Ensler (of “Vagina Monologues” fame), a number of people wended their way afterward through the narrow downtown streets to Aqua Santa, where a reception was held on its leafy patio. Amid the crowd sipping Gruet sparkling wine (from a New Mexican vineyard run by an old French Champagne family) various stars could be glimpsed: Ali McGraw, Jane Fonda, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame (who recently moved there in a blaze of local publicity) and Val Kilmer. The wealth of second-homers was also in sparkling evidence.


Ristra restaurant has a gleaming new bar that wouldn't feel out of place in SoHo; La Mancha, the restaurant at the Galisteo Inn south of town, has settled down after a couple of uncertain years with a strong new chef, Kim Müller, formerly of the Compound; La Boca, a new tapas house in downtown, offers contemporary reinventions of traditional Spanish cuisine; and 10 miles south of town at the train station in Lamy, which saw many luminaries pass through — Jung, D. H. Lawrence, Huxley, Stieglitz — a 1950 dining car of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad has been resurrected for breakfast and lunch.


Meanwhile Trattoria Nostrani continues its meteoric rise in American gastronomy, now recognised as one of the 50 best restaurants in the country by Gourmet magazine. Its chef, Nelli Maltezos, recently rolled out her summer menu, a sequence of dishes that seem to float to the table from some culinary Olympus, a mountainside up which many a $40 entree elsewhere labors with effort. The Inn of the Anasazi's restaurant has a new chef, Martin Rios, who grew up in Santa Fe before training under French chefs in New York City and France. He calls his cooking contemporary global, but his expertise is fundamentally French. From the new terrace on the street you can watch a sublime New Mexican sunset cast its spell over downtown.


After decades of careful preservation, Santa Fe is beginning to offer sure proof that the old and new can coexist. As Gov. Bill Richardson puts it, “Unesco recognized Santa Fe as a Creative City not for the things it makes; it recognized Santa Fe for the way it lives.”


“Thousands of people attend Midnight Mass at the Basilica de Santa Fe on Christmas Eve, a ceremony that's accompanied by a traditional Native American sign language interpreter,” the governor said. “The world's next-generation genome sequencers are being installed just a few miles from the Palace of the Governors built by the Spanish almost 400 years ago, the nation's oldest public building. One son in a family learns their centuries-old tradition of weaving, the daughter does advanced physics research up the hill.”


You can still go there to get away from it all. But if you want to go there to bask in some of the most beautiful light on the continent without leaving the rest of the world behind, you can. Who could ask for more?



VISITOR INFORMATION

WHAT TO SEE

SITE Santa Fe (1606 Paseo de Peralta; 505-989-1199; www.sitesantafe.org; closed Mondays and Tuesdays; $10 entry, $5 for students and 60 or older, but free on Fridays). The current show, a dismembered trailer home by the Austrian Hans Schabus, is an intriguing new take on the West.


CCA: Center for Contemporary Arts (1050 Old Pecos Trail; 505-982-1338; www.ccasantafe.org). The inaugural show in the new tank-warehouse gallery, “Chopped, Chromed, Customized,” opening Aug. 25, will feature lowrider-inspired art.


James Kelly Contemporary (1601 Paseo de Peralta; 505-989-1601; www.jameskelly.com). The current exhibition is a much-praised, much-debated show by Sherrie Levine (plain plywood boards a dominant feature).


G. Coles-Christensen Rug Merchants (125 West San Francisco Street; 505-986-6089; www.therugmerchants.com). The store, run by Gary Coles-Christensen, is stuffed with thousands of gorgeous kilims, gabbehs and antique carpets from across the world.



WHERE TO EAT

All prices are for two without wine or tip.


Aqua Santa (451 West Alameda Street; 505-982-6297). Among the offerings are truffle-infused halibut with chard, and endlessly braised shepherd's lamb; and they have a good supply of wonderful Domaine Tempier Bandol rosé. Lunch Wednesday through Friday, about $40 to $60; dinner Tuesday through Saturday, about $90.


La Boca (72 West Marcy Street; 505-982-3433; www.labocasantafe.com). On the current menu are grilled artichokes with Spanish goat cheese, orange zest and mint, and ginger grilled shrimp with Moroccan spiced yogurt. Lunch Monday through Saturday, $30 to $50; dinner daily, $50 to $100, with a limited tapas menu from 3 to 5:30 Monday through Saturday afternoons.


Inn of the Anasazi (113 Washington Avenue; 505-988-3030; www.innoftheanasazi.com). Highlights include chilled avocado soup with chipotle-glazed prawn, Colorado lamb chops and semi-boned quail with foie gras brioche. Daily, lunch $45 to $60; dinner $90 to $140.


La Mancha (Galisteo Inn, 9 La Vega Road, Galisteo; 505-466-8200; www.galisteoinn.com). A small dining room in a lovely 300-year-old hacienda inn, surrounded by lawns, giant cottonwoods and grazing llamas. Dinner Wednesday through Saturday, $50 to $100; Sunday brunch, $20 to $40.


Lamy Station Café (505-466-1904; www.lamystationcafe.com). A railroad dining car restored by Michael Gintert and Sam Latkin, full of chunky original stainless-steel features. They're not in the market for Michelin stars, but Mr. Gintert's huckleberry barbecue sauce has been featured on the Food Network. Breakfast and lunch Wednesday through Saturday and brunch on Sunday, $18 to $32.


Ristra (548 Agua Fria Street; 505-982-8608; www.ristrarestaurant.com). The restaurant has achiote grilled elk tenderloin and tempura squash blossom with Boursin cheese and red chili beurre blanc. Dinner $75 to $110.


Trattoria Nostrani (304 Johnson Street; 505-983-3800; www.trattorianostrani.com). The summer menu includes savory crepe with crab, spinach and egg and marinated swordfish with smoked prosciutto salad with wild dandelions. Watch out for the ruthlessly enforced no-scent policy; there have been reports even of octogenarians summarily dismissed for a dab of Chanel. Dinner Monday through Saturday $135 to $180.



WHERE TO STAY

Inn of the Anasazi (113 Washington Avenue; reservations, 800-688-8100; www.innoftheanasazi.com). A few steps from the plaza, this is generally reckoned to be the best in town. Rates for doubles currently start at $349.


The Inn of the Five Graces (150 East DeVargas Street; 505-992-0957; www.fivegraces.com). Hidden away down a back street a short walk from the plaza, and incorporating a favorite old restaurant and bar, the Pink Adobe, this is a sumptuous, somewhat eccentric hideaway. Suites from $385.


Garretts Desert Inn (311 Old Santa Fe Trail; 800-888-2145; www. garrettsdesertinn.com). The best things about this place are that it's right in downtown, and great value; the worst is that it actually charges hotel guests to park during the day, even though it's a motel. Incredible, but true. Doubles from $109 through October.


Santa Fe Sage Inn (725 Cerrillos Road; 505-982-5952; www.santafesageinn.com). About as nice as a motel can be, and a very short drive from downtown, this is very conveniently located for the Railyard and SITE Santa Fe. Doubles from $85.



(l) (l) (l)



(f)




Mutantur omnia nos et mutamur in illis.

All things change, and we change with them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:s :s

;)


Taking blows to the head and falling from 35 feet are two pastimes at a stunt-training school in the Bronx.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/02/nyregion/03stunts-600.jpg


August 3, 2007

Fall Down, Go Boom, Get Paid. Then Teach Others How.

By DALTON WALKER


High above the ground, one man crashed a beer bottle over the head of another man, sending him tumbling 35 feet. Nearby, a third man went crashing down a flight of stairs.


No one was seriously injured. In fact, no one even was scratched. For the men involved in the tussling, it was just another day on the job.


The violence was all for show and was part of a demonstration at a professional stunt-training school that is opening this month on what was previously a vacant lot on Amethyst Street near Rhinelander Avenue in the Van Nest neighborhood of the Bronx.


The man who fell 35 feet from a platform, Anthony R. Persad, landed safely on a 12-by-12-foot air bag, while the man who tumbled down the stairs, Teel James Glenn, seemed unfazed.


Both men quickly got up and did it again.


“I get to do everything we were told not to do in the second grade,” said Mr. Glenn, 52, who has been a stuntman for 30 years. “I run with scissors and make loud, obnoxious noises. And people pay me for it. It’s great.”


Among other things, Mr. Glenn has fallen down stairs on one soap opera, “One Life to Live,” and was in a hurricane scene in another, “All My Children.”


The instructional school, called Hollywood Stunts, was founded by Bob Cotter, another professional stuntman. Mr. Cotter said he had performed in several movies — including “Rounders,” in which he was tossed out of a bathroom by a couple of thugs — and commercials.


Mr. Cotter, 54, said that while filming stunts in New York he would routinely meet people who would ask him how they could learn more about doing stunts.


So he decided to open a school, a process that was much more difficult than he had imagined.


He said he spent years searching vacant lots that he could rent and was turned down by property owners more times than he could remember because of safety concerns.


Finally, in April he found a parking lot surrounded by houses and small businesses and turned it into a 6,000-square-foot center for people who want to learn things like armed and unarmed combat, high falls, car hits, fire gags and window penetration.


Mr. Cotter said he invested about $150,000 in stunt equipment and pays $65,000 a year for insurance.


Two posters with the name of the training center are attached to the fence that surrounds the training area. Inside, a small storage shed holds most of the stunt equipment.


A 60-foot scaffold, a trampoline, a staircase and a covered area full of padded mats are spread out on the property, and the ground is padded with wood chips.


"Performing stunts is an adrenaline rush,” Mr. Persad said. “I like sharing the feeling with other people.”


Mr. Persad has been a stuntman for five years, and he has been killed many times. As for being hit on the head with a beer bottle, he said it “felt like a soft Nerf football.”


“It’s all about concentration,” he said.


Seventeen of the 20 slots for the first three-week program for people 18 and older are already filled, Mr. Cotter said. He added that he has 17 instructors, all of whom are career stunt performers.


A weekend class for boys and girls 10 to 17 years old will be offered later, he said. Advanced classes for people who have completed the other class will focus on one individual stunt at a time.


“We are going where no one has been,” he said.


Mr. Cotter got into the stunt business by being in the right place at the right time. He said he was working as an extra on the set of a music video for the Rolling Stones in 1996 when, at the end of a long day, the director was frustrated by an actor who had been hired to take a fall.


Mr. Cotter asked the director if he could try. He said that if he failed, he would not ask for any money.


One successful fall later, Mr. Cotter had a new career, although he did take a stunt course in Seattle.


And now he finally has his own training center.


“I put all my energy into this school,” Mr. Cotter said. “I pretty much put everything else on the back burner. There’s been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears at times on my part. There were times I second-guessed my dream, but I never stopped reaching for it.”



:o :o



(f)






Si hoc adfixum in obice legere potes, et liberaliter educatus et nimis popinquus ades.

If you can read this bumper sticker, you are both very well educated and much too close.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l)



Art lovers, shopaholics and pessimists alike will find something to rave about in this quirky city that some call the most beautiful place in the United States.


(l) (I AGREE....it's definitely near the top of my list....) (l)




Slide Show: Weekend in Sedona

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/02/06/travel/20070211_HOURS_SLIDESHOW_1.html


<EYES WATERING.....BIG SIGH...viewing the Slide Show......>





Crossing Oak Creek at Red Rock Crossing.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/11/travel/11hours600.1.jpg



36 Hours in Sedona, Ariz.

By KERIDWEN CORNELIUS


ASK five people to sum up Sedona, and you'll probably get five wildly different responses. Art lovers exclaim over the galleries specializing in Southwestern tableaus. Shopaholics rave about boutiques selling Western duds and American Indian jewelry. Pessimists rue the rash of T-shirt shops, while enlightenment-seekers wax spiritual about its “vortexes.” And outdoor enthusiasts rhapsodize about hiking among red rock spires and ancient Indian ruins. All of this is great news for visitors, who can sample it all — even a U.F.O.-viewing site — in a quirky city that some call the most beautiful place in the United States.



Friday

5 p.m.

1) RED ROCK ROVER

Sedona's cinematic red rocks have been zipping across your windshield like scenes from a Hollywood western. Now it's your turn to ride off into the sunset. Turn up Airport Road to Airport Saddleback — you want the tiny parking lot on the left, not the chockablock Airport Vista farther up the road. Slip on hiking boots and hit the Airport Loop trail for close encounters with the towering crimson sandstones: Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, Coffee Pot Rock and the Cockscombe. It's a 90-minute ramble, but if your energy flags, just turn back and scramble up Overlook Point to watch the paprika-red sunset.


7 p.m.

2) ARIZONA SPICE

Good Southwestern food can be hard to find in Sedona, which is why the upscale El Portal inn is a godsend (95 Portal Lane, 800-313-0017; www.elportalsedona.com). On Friday and Saturday evenings, the inn opens its doors to nonguests, who can dine on creative Arizona-accented cuisine under a courtyard bower or by a flickering fireplace made of large river rocks, depending on the season. With an emphasis on local produce, the chef, Eden Messner, turns out dishes like butternut squash and poblano chili soup with cinnamon lime cream ($9) and cumin-encrusted marlin topped with a tower of tomatillo avocado salsa ($28). Reservations are highly recommended.


9:30 p.m.

3) WINE GALLERY

Sedona isn't known for its night life. Most bars, in fact, shut down at 10 p.m. For a little art to go with your nightcap, swing by the Gallery on Oak Creek inside the Amara Resort and Spa (310 North Highway 89A, 928-340-8900; www.amararesort.com). Sample a boutique shiraz from a 200-strong wine list or a green tea and vodka cocktail called an Enlightened Nirvana, as you peruse a collection of paintings and sculptures culled from local galleries. The outdoor fire pit is just as picturesque.



Saturday

8 a.m.

4) BREAK AN EGG

Kick-start your day in classic Sedona fashion with breakfast at the Coffee Pot Restaurant (2050 West Highway 89A, 928-282-6626), which serves 101 “famous” omelets. Locals and tourists pack the kitschy, eclectic joint, so you may have to peruse the gift shop for jewelry and coffee mugs while waiting for a table. But once you're seated, the friendly waitresses are swift and might even leave the coffeepot on your table for convenient refills. Overwhelmed by the choices? Try the hearty huevos rancheros, smothered in green chili ($6.50). If you have kids, dare them to order the peanut butter, jelly and banana omelet ($5.95).


9:30 a.m.

5) CRYSTAL PERSUASION

If you're in the market for chimes and gypsy-chic dresses, head for the Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village (336 Highway 179, 928-282-4838; www.tlaq.com), a Spanish- colonial-style shopping arcade with fountains and muscular sycamores. Environmental Realists (928-282-4945) sells everyday objects with clever twists, like a compass-embedded walking stick ($24 to $100). El Prado by the Creek (928-282-7390; www.elpradogalleries.com) carries a forest of copper-and-stainless-steel wind sculptures and rustic furniture made from river rocks. And across the street is Crystal Castle (313 Highway 179, 928-282-5910), the place for rhodochrosite, chrysoprase and other crystals that are said to promote metaphysical healing, whether it's mental clarity or finding the love within. Apparently, the right crystal for you is the one you can't put down.


11 a.m.

6) SUNSETS, POTTERY AND FRAMES

Galleries dot the city. The biggest of them is Exposures International (561 Highway 179, 928-282-1125; www.exposuresfineart.com), a sprawling space overflowing with paintings, sculpture, jewelry and more. Check out Bill Worrell's prehistoric-art-inspired sculptures (from $975) and photographs by the owner, Marty Herman, like “Monsoon Sunset” (from $229, depending on size). Other interesting galleries can be found at Hozho Center, including Lanning Gallery (431 Highway 179, 928-282-6865; www.lanninggallery.com), which specializes in contemporary art. To learn more about the local art scene, visit the Sedona Arts Center (15 Art Barn Road, 928-282-3865; www.sedonaartscenter.com), a nonprofit gallery that holds exhibits and poetry readings


1 p.m.

7) A CREEK RUNS THROUGH IT

Sedona is cradled in a fragrant riparian valley through which Oak Creek gently runs. Weather permitting, dine creekside at L'Auberge de Sedona (301 L'Auberge Lane, 928-282-1667; www.lauberge.com), a contemporary American restaurant “with French roots,” with a stone patio perched at the water's edge. Indulge in a Kobe beef burger ($22), or the “Red Rock plateau” with various kinds of seafood and a half ounce of caviar ($65) or go light with a shrimp gazpacho with avocado cream ($12). Cottonwoods rustle, the creek burbles and ducks waddle between the linen-draped tables.


2:30 p.m.

8) SPIRITED AWAY

You can't get far in Sedona without hearing about the vortexes, places where the earth supposedly radiates psychic energy. Believers claim that they induce everything from heightened energy to tear-inducing spiritual enlightenment. Whether you're a skeptic or believer, a guided tour of the vortexes by Earth Wisdom Jeep Tours (293 North Highway 89A, 928-282-4714; www.earthwisdomjeeptours.com) is definitely scenic (two and a half hours for $68 a person). If vortexes aren't your thing, the tour also explores the area's history, geology and American Indian culture, and there are several other tours. They'll explain how the rocks became rust-colored: add a dash of iron, let it oxidize for several million years and voilà!


6 p.m.

9) CACTUS ON THE ROCKS

A prickly pear margarita — made from a local cactus — is the must-drink cocktail in Sedona, and one of the best spots to try it is the terrace at Tii Gavo at Enchantment Resort (525 Boynton Canyon Road, 928-204-6366; www.enchantmentresort.com). Tii Gavo means gathering place in the Havasupai Indian language, and it is a restaurant where well-heeled spa-lovers rub elbows with hikers fresh off the trail. Afterward, move inside to the Yavapai Dining Room (928-204-6000; reservations required for nonguests). The restaurant, with its American Indian pottery and views of Boynton Canyon, is no stranger to celebrities like Sharon Stone and Robert DeNiro. Favorites include a smoked and grilled buffalo tenderloin ($40) or sea bass with watercress risotto ($40). The wine list is extensive and far-ranging, but consider one of the local Echo Canyon reds.


9:30 p.m.

10) A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY

Thanks to strict ordinances on light pollution, the dark skies over Sedona are ideal for stargazing (or U.F.O. spotting). Take a cosmic journey with Evening Sky Tours (866-701-0398; www.eveningskytours.com; $60, $20 ages 6 to 15), which offers professional astronomers who can point out those elusive constellations, as well as an eyeful of spiral galaxies and the rings of Saturn. They'll meet you at a dark spot or even take a telescope to your hotel.



Sunday

6 a.m.

11) ROCK YOUR WORLD

Soar over Sedona valley in a hot air balloon at sunrise for jaw-dropping views of rose-tinted buttes. Northern Light Balloon Expeditions (800-230-6222; www.northernlightballoon.com) offers three- to four-hour trips for $190 a person that include a Champagne breakfast picnic in a remote spot. If you prefer to stay earthbound, pack your own picnic and set out on the 3.6-mile Broken Arrow Trail ($5 for Red Rock Day Pass, which allows entry to a number of natural areas, available at most hotels and convenience stores). Hike along red rocks stained with desert varnish, weave through cypress forests and climb up a doughlike outcropping for commanding views of Casner Canyon.


10 a.m.

12) MORNING SPIRITUAL

Take a peek inside the Chapel of the Holy Cross (780 Chapel Road, 928-282-4069; www.chapeloftheholycross.com), a modernist icon that looks like a concrete spaceship jutting out of the craggy boulders. Designed in 1932 by Marguerite Brunswig Staude (but not built until 1956), the chapel is sandwiched between soaring concrete walls that bookend a gigantic glass window with a 90-foot-tall cross. Prayer services are held on Monday evenings, so don't worry about interrupting. The chapel affords spectacular photo ops and another chance to have a psychic moment. The chapel sits on — you guessed it — a vortex.



The Basics

American flies into Phoenix from Kennedy Airport, and Continental and America West fly from Newark. A Web search found early-March fares from $218. Sedona is a two-hour drive to the north.


The Enchantment Resort and Mii Amo Spa (525 Boynton Canyon Road, 800-826-4180; www.enchantmentresort.com) has dozens of adobe casitas strewn along Boynton Canyon. The 220-room resort offers nature walks, an American Indian cultural program and star gazing. Casita bedrooms start at $295.


Tucked into Oak Creek Canyon, L'Auberge de Sedona (301 L'Auberge Lane, 800-272-6777; www.lauberge.com) blends log cabin-styling with a touch of France. Lodge room rates start at $175. Cottages with fireplaces start at $275.


Ed and Kris Varjean will make you feel at home at Lantern Light Inn (3085 West Highway 89A, 877-275-4973; www.lanternlightinn.com), a French-style bed-and-breakfast that sleeps 10, with two intimate fireplaces, five fountains and four patios. Rooms start at $105.




(y) (y)



(f)





Have a nice day.

Die dulci fruimini.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l)



The resort city of Sedona, Ariz., is blessed with four mild seasons, abundant sunshine, clean air and some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes in the country.



Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/11/09/realestate/greathomes/20061109_GH_SEDONA_SLIDESHOW_1.html



(f)





What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



HOW TO INSTALL A HOME SECURITY SYSTEM IN THE SOUTH


1. Go to a second-hand store and buy a pair of men's
used size 14-16 work boots.


2. Place them on your front porch, along with a copy
of Guns & Ammo Magazine.


3. Put a few giant dog dishes and raw bones next to
the boots and magazines.


4. Leave a note on your door that reads:


Hey Bubba, Big Jim, Slim and Stubby,


I went for more ammunition. Back in an hour. Don't
mess with the pit bulls--they attacked the mailman
this morning and messed him up real bad. I don't think
Killer took part in it but it was hard to tell from
all the blood. Anyway, I locked all four of 'em in
the house. Better wait outside.






(y) (l) (y) (l) Hey, whatever works to help me feel safe in this day and age!!! (y) My personal favorite is putting several signs on my property that say: "Is there life after death? Trespass and find out!"


:)








Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (f)



Patti LuPone's performance as Mama Rose in "Gypsy" is the galvanizing event of the summer.



August 5, 2007

Patti’s Turn, if Not Always Rose’s

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD


THE police were called to City Center last weekend when violence flared in the lobby during intermission at the closing performance of “Gypsy,” shortly after Patti LuPone stormed down the aisle one last time as Momma Rose.


It seems one fellow was heard making loudly disparaging remarks about her intonation in “Some People.” Umbrage was taken by a particularly rabid supporter of Ms. LuPone’s. Insults were exchanged. A withering acerbity on the subject of Bernadette Peters was apparently the tipping point. Fists began flying, and a few of New York’s finest had to break up a frenzied melee.


Well, not really. I’m pulling your leg. But I would hardly have been surprised to hear that something of the kind had taken place during the three-week run of that classic musical, the inaugural event in City Center Encores! Summer Stars series.


Let others knit their brows over the Democratic candidates’ health-care plans or the continuing turmoil in Iraq. For followers of theater Ms. LuPone’s arrival in New York in the guise of the lovable monster Momma Rose was the galvanizing event of the summer, inspiring heated debates at social gatherings and frenzied e-mail exchanges between friends, wild-eyed encomiums or whispers of disappointment. And that was just among the theater critics.


In the view of many, Momma Rose, the stage mother of them all, was a role — the role — Ms. LuPone was born to play, a character whose bold contours suit this fiercely gifted performer as few others in the canon do. Rarely in recent memory has the meeting of performer and role sparked the enthusiasm that gathered around Ms. LuPone’s summer date with theatrical destiny.


Actor and character do, however, part ways in one key respect: Momma Rose is a woman living her life in feverish search for an audience that never arrives, while Ms. LuPone has amassed one of the most loyal and fervent followings of any musical-theater star of recent vintage.


At the performance I attended, excited anticipation seemed to hover in the auditorium like an emotional fog before the curtain rose. The applause began at the first burst of brass from the famous overture and punctuated the show from start to finish, culminating in an instant ovation at the climax of “Rose’s Turn.” (A bit of a problem, this, since everyone has to sit down again so the show can finish.)


I will confess I shared in the contagious sense of occasion, and I had already seen Ms. LuPone perform the role. Last summer on the way to a vacation, I took a detour to Chicago to catch her debut in the musical, in a staged concert version at the Ravinia Festival of music in Highland Park, Ill.


I was curious to discover how this Rose had flowered a year later. At Ravinia, Ms. LuPone was undertaking the role in challenging circumstances: She was starring in “Sweeney Todd” on Broadway at the time and took a minimal amount of time off to prepare and perform at Ravinia. With these constraints in mind, I was impressed by the overall quality of the performance, although it did not strike me as the stratospheric success you might hope for under ideal conditions.


Ms. LuPone gave a thoroughly polished and effective musical-comedy turn, but she did not seem to inhabit the role with the focus and commitment I had hoped for. It was an entertaining portrait that somehow didn’t coalesce into a complete and emotionally compelling one. Perhaps the experience gained at Ravinia and the ministrations of Arthur Laurents, who wrote the musical’s book and directed the new production, would help Ms. LuPone scale the heights.


At City Center, alas, I found myself once again entertained but also disappointed, and it occurred to me that Ms. LuPone’s supportive fan base might be part of the problem this time, more inhibition than inspiration. To perform before an audience all but expecting rapture is surely an intimidating, even unnerving experience.


How do you set aside the knowledge that your admirers are out there, hoping to be transported by your assumption of an all-but-legendary role? How do you find the courage and concentration to disappear into the skin of another character when you know it is also your own voice they have come to hear?


The temptation to peek from inside the world of the show and acknowledge an affectionate complicity between performer and audience can be hard to resist. Performers feed off the energy of audiences, but there is a seductive danger in allowing their responsiveness into the psychic sphere needed to create a performance of concentrated integrity. Too often at City Center I sensed a tug of war taking place between Ms. LuPone the actor and Ms. LuPone the entertainer, rather than an instinctive collaboration between these two necessary components of a musical theater performer’s makeup.


Ms. LuPone drew freely on her natural wit to punch up the fertile humor in the show, but at many points she almost tipped over into burlesque, or shtick. Momma Rose has fire and warmth and a mordant humor born of hard knocks, but an entertainer she isn’t, a star she will never be. That’s the bitter truth she tries to erase by relentlessly hounding her daughters into the spotlight.


Ms. LuPone’s sharply attuned instincts as a star performer seemed to kick in automatically at the show’s celebrated high points. She delivered Rose’s big songs with assured musicianship and commanding authority. Missing, for me at least, was the sense that she was living these crucial moments inside the itching soul of the character. These songs — “Some People,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Rose’s Turn” — are celebrated numbers. They are among the most thrilling in all of musical comedy, probably, but they are something more: finely wrought expressions of volcanic emotion overflowing the limits of plain speech.


Interestingly, both at Ravinia and in New York, Ms. LuPone’s performance was most effective in the scenes that find Rose warmly but sometimes wrongheadedly mothering her daughters, or forging a complicated but rewarding relationship with Herbie (the stalwart Boyd Gaines), the man destined never to be her fourth husband. The climactic confrontation between Rose and her daughter Gypsy Rose Lee (a terrific Laura Benanti) was the most emotionally wrenching I’ve ever witnessed, for example.


When the responsibility of delivering a big moment or putting across a joke was lifted from her shoulders, Ms. LuPone was moving, compelling and alive. The familiar, charismatic entertainer stepped aside, and the actor emerged, revealing anew that illuminating the truths of human experience immortalized in art is the greatest entertainment of all.




(l) (f) (l) (f)






Have a nice day.

Die dulci fruimini. (f)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :|


;)



A MAN accused of having sex with a sheep in the Netherlands has walked free from court because the animal was unable to testify in the case against him.


August 06, 2007 12:00am


A MAN who was accused of having sex with a sheep has walked free because the animal was unable to testify.


The man, from Haaksbergen, near Utrecht in the Netherlands, was reported to police after a farmer caught him having sex with a sheep.

But the case was thrown out of court as the sheep couldn't take to the stand to testify that it didn't want to have sex and had suffered emotional stress.

Under Dutch law, bestiality is not a crime unless it can be proved the animal didn't want to have sex.

"Short of putting the sheep in the dock, at the moment these perverts cannot be prosecuted," animal rights campaigner Jos van Huisen said.



http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22194529-13762,00.html#






:o Of course, this Australian news web site is yet another Murdoch-owned one......:s
Thus the focus on "National Inquirer" trype news.......:|


:D Still - it said volumes about men. :o






Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :| :| :|



US Police State: Congress Approves Extensive Wiretapping

Global Research, August 6, 2007

Washington Post


Global Research Editor`s Note

The introduction of extensive wiretapping should be seen in relation to Bush adminstration measures which are geared towards the suspension of civil liberties and the crminalisation of dissent including Bush`s July 17 executive order, which criminalizes the antiwar movement. The objective of this most recent piece of legislation is clear: establish a Police State in America.

The fact that the wiretapping under the legislation applies to foreigners is cosmetic. The measure is intended legitimise an extensive system of surveillance

06 August 2007


House Approves Wiretap Measure

White House Bill Boosts Warrantless Surveillance

By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, August 5, 2007; A01


The Democratic-controlled House last night approved and sent to President Bush for his signature legislation written by his intelligence advisers to enhance their ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners without a court order.


The 227 to 183 House vote capped a high-pressure campaign by the White House to change the nation's wiretap law, in which the administration capitalized on Democrats' fears of being branded weak on terrorism and on a general congressional desire to act on the measure before an August recess.


The Senate had passed the legislation Friday night after House Democrats failed to win enough votes to pass a narrower revision of a statute known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The original statute was enacted after the revelation of CIA abuses in the 1970s, and it required judicial oversight for most federal wiretapping conducted in the United States.


Privacy and civil liberties advocates, and many Democratic lawmakers, complained that the Bush administration's revisions of the law could breach constitutional protections against government intrusion. But the administration, aided by Republican congressional leaders, suggested that a failure to approve what intelligence officials sought could expose the country to a greater risk of terrorist attacks.


Democrats facing reelection next year in conservative districts helped propel the bill to a quick approval. Adding to the pressures they felt were recent intelligence reports about threatening new al-Qaeda activity in Pakistan and the disclosure by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) of a secret court ruling earlier this year that complicated the wiretapping of purely foreign communications that happen to pass through a communications node on U.S. soil.


The bill would give the National Security Agency the right to collect such communications in the future without a warrant. But it goes further than that: It also would allow the interception and recording of electronic communications involving, at least in part, people "reasonably believed to be outside the United States" without a court's order or oversight.


White House spokesman Tony Fratto emphasized that the bill is not meant to increase eavesdropping on Americans or "to affect in any way the legitimate privacy rights" of U.S. citizens. Data related to Americans in communications with foreigners who are the targets of a U.S. terrorism investigation could be monitored only if intelligence officials have a reasonable expectation of learning information relevant to that probe, a senior U.S. official said.


"There are a lot of people who felt we had to pass something," said one angry Democratic lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of caucus discussions. "It was tantamount to being railroaded."


In a sole substantial concession to Democrats, the administration agreed to a provision allowing the legislation to be reconsidered in six months.


Some House Democrats were still upset by what they saw as a deliberate scuttling by the White House of negotiations on a compromise bill. On Thursday, Democratic leaders reached what they believed was a deal with the government's chief intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, only to be presented with a new list of conditions at the last minute. The White House and McConnell have denied that a deal had been reached.


"I think the White House didn't want to take 'yes' for an answer from the Democrats," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), an intelligence committee member.


The administration said that its bill is aimed at bringing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 into step with advances in technology, primarily by restoring the government's power to gather without a warrant foreign intelligence on targets located overseas.


Because the law has not kept up with advances in telecommunications, McConnell said in congressional testimony, the government "is significantly burdened in capturing overseas communications of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside the United States."


Civil liberties and privacy advocates and a majority of Democrats said the bill could allow the monitoring of virtually any calls, e-mails or other communications going overseas that originate in the United States, without a court order, if the government deems the recipient to be the target of a U.S. probe.


Last night, several Democrats said the bill would undermine the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said lawmakers were being "stampeded by fearmongering and deception" into voting for the bill. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) warned that the bill would lead to "potential unprecedented abuse of innocent Americans' privacy."


Republicans and administration officials argued to the contrary that the distinctions in the present law -- between calls inside and outside the country -- are outmoded in an age of cellphones that work on multiple continents. What intelligence officials seek, a White House official said in an interview yesterday, is the ability to "surveil a target wherever the call [or other communication involving that target] comes from," and that the new legislation would provide that.


In place of a court's approval -- which intelligence officials worried might come too slowly -- the NSA would institute a system of internal bureaucratic controls.


A senior intelligence official said that in cases in which an overseas target is communicating with people in the United States not relevant to an investigation, their names are "minimized," or stripped from the transcript, before it is disseminated. "You won't see data mining in there," the official said. "You won't see vast drift net surveillance of Americans. . . . What we do not do is target people in the United States without a warrant."


Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that the Democrats would introduce legislation on surveillance in the fall and would conduct oversight of the administration's surveillance program.


A narrower Democratic alternative, which Democrats said they crafted partly in response to McConnell's concerns, won majority support but nonetheless failed because it did not collect the necessary two-thirds vote Friday night in the House. It failed after an emotional debate in which Republicans charged Democrats with being soft on terrorism and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of not caring "about the truth."


Under the administration's version of the bill, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general can authorize the surveillance of all communications involving foreign targets. Oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, composed of federal judges whose deliberations are secret, would be limited to examining whether the government's guidelines for targeting overseas suspects are appropriate. The court would not authorize the surveillance.


The bill's six-month sunset clause did not assuage some critics.


"I'm not comfortable suspending the constitution even temporarily," said Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence committee. "The countries we detest around the world are the ones that spy on their own people. Usually they say they do it for the sake of public safety and security."




http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6465






:o Privacy is a concept that just doesn't have a future. The only
strategy that I can think of is to lead such a boring life no one
gives a shit about what you read, where you shop or what you say.



;) "Stay under the radar!"




(f)





Mutantur omnia nos et mutamur in illis.

All things change, and we change with them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

^o)^o)^o)



NBC muckraker gets hacked at Defcon

By Dan Goodin in Las Vega

Published Saturday 4th August 2007 01:46 GMT


Defcon A rare moment of drama came to Defcon when a woman fled the conference after being identified in front of hundreds of other attendees as an undercover television reporter on a crusade to expose collusion between cyber criminals and federal agents.


The woman, identified by conference organizers as a producer for Dateline NBC, bolted a few minutes after a panel called Spot the Fed began. After being tipped off about the covert operation - and knowing the producer was in the audience - organizers announced to the standing-room only crowd that the contest was being changed to "spot the undercover reporter."


Defcon founder Jeff Moss told the crowd that there was a real, covert reporter in their very midst and then asked if attendees thought she should be ejected for violating Defcon rules concerning the taking of photos and videos of conference attendees. Before the audience could respond, the woman bolted from the room and was quickly given chase by a throng of reporters.


For years, Defcon has imposed strict conditions on those attending. Video and photos are not permitted unless the subjects have given their permission. Those covering the event for news organizations must apply for a press credential and are subjected to greater enforcement of the privacy rules.


Defcon "is like Switzerland, its neutral territory," said a senior conference staff member who goes by the name Priest. "The feds come in and they don't arrest us. We don't turn their phones into 976 numbers," he added, referring to the telephone prefix used by phone sex operators and others to automatically charge the caller a set fee.


Priest said organizers were tipped off about the producer's plans by someone who was thoroughly familiar with the story. According to Priest, the producer told the informant that "the people in Kansas would be very interested in knowing what was happening at Defcon."


Organizers were able to confirm that the woman had a camera in a small black bag that allowed her to surreptitiously video tape people attending the show. She hoped to tape people admitting to breaking the law and then attempt to tie them to federal agents who also attended the show. At one point, she was observed panning a room with her hidden camera.


The woman was identified as Michelle Madigan, an associate producer for Dateline. As she exited the conference room, a Defcon staff member suggested she accept a press credential and continue covering the conference.


"Like a thief in the night, she decided to flee," said Priest.


The woman declined to comment at least four times as several dozen people, many of them reporters, followed her through the parking lot of the Riviera Hotel, where the conference is being held. She eventually got into a silver Infinity and drove off.


After being tipped off, conference organizers asked Madigan on four occasions if she might want a press credential. Each time, she declined. Once she arrived at the conference, organizers kept her under surveillance.


Despite the unusual scrutiny Madigan received - and the fact that her picture and alleged plan had been posted on Wired and other publications for hours prior to her outing - the producer never suspected her cover was blown, said Priest.


"Not very bright," he said

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/04/defcon_exposes_muckraker/



Other views:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/03/Undercover-Dateline-NBC-producer-booted-from-Defcon_1.html



Dateline Las Vegas: hackers whack a mole hack:

http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/5962



http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/005080.html





^o) Stupid young thing!! They asked her several times if she wanted a "press badge or press credentials" - what was she thinking? Sometimes young womyn give all womyn a bad rep, IMHO. Talk about a double-digit IQ. <shaking head...>



(f)






Noli nothis permittere te terere.

Don't let the b*st*rds wear you down.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)



Welcome to edfringe.com, home of the 60th Edinburgh Festival Fringe and your one and only destination for all things Fringe related.



http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/fringe/




(y) (y)



(f)




Carpe Diem!

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)


Welcome: The Scotsman recommends

SCOTLAND is a wonderful place to live – and we all have our favourite little pieces of it. Whether it is a gorgeous secluded beach, a fantastic drive or a friendly restaurateur who can't do enough for customers, we remember these places and people for a...



http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1570&id=815842007




(l) (f) (l) (f)






Nosce te ipsum.

Know thyself.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f)


The Scotsman Wed 1 Aug 2007

Best website

CLAIRE SMITH


1. www.edinburghfestivals.com


Of course we were always going to say that the site run by The Scotsman is the best, but it is really pretty useful - even if we say so ourselves. This is a guide to all the festivals going on in the city in August, which is updated every day to include the latest reviews.


You can find all the critics published in The Scotsman and work out which shows are worth trying and which should be avoided.


There is a lot of other stuff too - blogs, news, gossip and photographs to keep you up to date with everything going on in the festival city.


It is an ideal complement to our superb 24-page festival supplement, which will run for three weeks from this Saturday.



2. www.edfringe.co.uk


The official site of the Edinburgh Fringe gives you all the daily listings and lets you book tickets online.


Reviews from a number of publications are posted up every day and there is the chance for Fringe-goers to share their recommendations and experiences on the forums.


3. www.eif.co.uk


You can download the entire programme of the Edinburgh International Festival from this site and keep track of all the theatre, opera, music and talks in the official festival. The EIF website is regularly updated with special offers and news of extra performances.


4. www.edinburghguide.com


This long-established website is a useful way to keep in touch with everything which is going on in the city, especially at festival time. The guide has an unusual system of rating shows - instead of stars they are given drams, based on the notion of how much you need to drink to sit through them.


5. www.chortle.co.uk


Lots of news and insider gossip from the world of comedy can be found on the chortle website, which has a forum where users can discuss Edinburgh all year round.


The talkboards are always buzzing with juicy speculation about all the latest behind-the-scenes scandals. You'll also find Fringe blogs, including that of Andrew J Lederer - probably the world's most incontinent blogger.


Related topic

* Recommends

http://living.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1570



This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1570&id=1194792007



(y) (y)






Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



http://www.petegoldlust.com/carvedcrayons.html





(y) http://www.petegoldlust.com/images/carvedcrayons_06-carvedc-16.jpg





http://www.petegoldlust.com/installations.html





(h)(h)(h)(h)





Go ahead. Make my day.

Age. Fac ut gaudeam. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



The physics of beer bubbles:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=652




:)



|-) |-)





Si hoc adfixum in obice legere potes, et liberaliter educatus et nimis popinquus ades.

If you can read this bumper sticker, you are both very well educated and much too close.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-) 8-)



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070806/ap_on_fe_st/odd_hello_kitty_cops




:) Pretty silly.



(f)






What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



Q U O T E D


"I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard. But a few million doesn't go as far as it used to. Maybe in the '70s, a few million bucks meant 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,' or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore."


-- Hal Steger, marketing executive, in a New York Times piece on Silicon Valley's insecure single-digit millionaires; the expected "quit your whining" reaction can be found here and here.




http://www.winextra.com/2007/08/05/sick-to-death-with-bubble-rich-whiners/



http://www.livedigitally.com/2007/08/04/those-poor-poor-millionaires/





^o)^o)^o)






Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



http://freshome.com/2007/07/31/detergentless-haier-wash20-washing-machine/




:|




(f)





Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;) ;)



August 06, 2007


Coffee Break: Does Caffeine Perk Up Memory?


A new study finds that loading up on the stimulant may enhance the thinking of older women


Trying to cut down on your coffee consumption, ladies? Well if you're of a certain age, you might want to reconsider. A new study from France found that women—especially those 65 and over—who reported drinking three-plus cups of java daily did better on memory tests than compeers who drank one or fewer cups a day.


"Caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in women," study author Karen Ritchie of INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Montpellier, France, said in a statement.


Scientists tested 7,000 people over four years; they adjusted for other factors that might affect memory such as age, education, depression, medication and chronic illness. Their findings, published in the new issue of Neurology: Women who drank over three cups of Joe a day were less likely to experience as much memory decline as those who downed a cup or less. And benefits seemed to increase with age: the mega/no spamming of other sites/coffee drinkers were 30 percent less likely to suffer memory loss at age 65 and 70 percent less likely over age 80 than non/no spamming of other sites/coffee drinkers.


But researchers say that doesn't mean you should start guzzling café aux laits or espressos. "While we have some ideas as to how this works biologically, we need to have a better understanding of how caffeine affects the brain before we can start promoting caffeine intake as a way to reduce cognitive decline," Ritchie said. "But the results are interesting—caffeine use is already widespread and it has fewer side effects than other treatments for cognitive decline, and it requires a relatively small amount for a beneficial effect."


So could this be a way to stave off dementia? Alas, although the quaffers in the bunch excelled on memory tests, they did not appear to have lower rates of dementia. "We really need a longer study to look at whether caffeine prevents dementia," Ritchie said. "It might be that caffeine could slow the dementia process rather than preventing it."


One other interesting note: for some reason, men apparently do not receive the same caffeine memory boost as women. Ritchie said researchers are not sure why but speculate that it may be because women are "more sensitive to the effects of caffeine…. Their bodies may react differently to the stimulant, or they may metabolize caffeine differently."



http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=3CFB0625-E7F2-99DF-39C4208D730BE244



(y) (y)






Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :|



Q U O T E D


"We wanted to have a freeform space for students to be able to say what they think is important, not always having the school run that dialogue. To me this is just four pieces of blank paper. You do what you want. It can be a presentation. It can be poetry. It can be anything."


-- Rose Martinelli, associate dean for student recruitment and admissions, on the University of Chicago business school's new requirement that applications include a PowerPoint presentation.




University of Chicago B-school wants PowerPoint with application:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_6500714?nclick_check=1







:| :| All that AND increased tuition? What a bargain. Not. (n) The PITA (pain in the ass) factor is WAY too high, IMHO.

:o What about folks who are not creative with virtual crayons and paint?



(f)





Si usted puede leer esto, usted es overeducated. ;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3803584387889303730





(f) (f)





Ab imo pectore

"From the bottom of the chest (heart). (l)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l)



http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/art/ad1.gif



(y) (y) However, I'll take much newer models, thank you very much. ;)



(f)






Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Fool me once and shame on you, fool me twice and shame on me.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



Apple announced today that its iTunes Store has now sold more than 3 billion songs since it opened just over four years ago, the last billion coming in the past six months. Calculating that 12 tracks equals a CD, the NPD Group listed iTunes as the third-biggest overall music retailer in the U.S., behind only Wal-Mart and Target.


Happy news only slightly clouded by word that AT&T, Apple's iPhone partner, has a deal with eMusic, the second-largest online music retailer behind iTunes, to allow its users to download songs from independent labels directly to their cell phones -- though not their iPhones. According to the New York Times, "Tracks will cost more than they do over the Internet - $7.49 for five songs, as opposed to $9.99 for 30 at the online site - because of the expense of sending them over a mobile network to a user's phone . For that price, however, users can also get another copy of the song, which they can download from the Internet as an MP3." Over at Wired, Adario Strange says, "The real surprise here is AT&T's digital music promiscuity. We thought once you went Jobs, you didn't go back. Perhaps the AT&T/Apple relationship isn't as rock solid as some would like to think."



http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/07/31itunes.html



http://www.siliconvalley.com/latestheadlines/ci_6508211?nclick_check=1



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/business/media/31music.html?ex=1343534400&en=92980650f359cd6d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss



http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070731-indie-music-meet-telco-behemoth-emusic-comes-to-att-phones.html



http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/07/apples-3-billio.html



(f)






Docendo discimus.

We learn by teaching.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



Among the news releases that came over the transom today was one on a survey of IT professionals asked to pick the most influential tech product of the last 25 years, and I almost sprayed my coffee as I did a double-take at the headline. According to the poll conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association, 66 percent of folks in the IT industry believe that title goes to ... Microsoft Internet Explorer. In fact, the top five finishers had a distinct tilt toward Redmond. Following IE, the products rated most influential were Microsoft Word, Microsoft Windows 95, and then a tie between Microsoft Excel and the Apple iPod. The second five went like this: the BlackBerry, Adobe Photoshop, McAfee VirusScan, Netscape Navigator and the Palm Pilot.


Now I know people just love to go back and forth over such lists, but this one seems almost perversely designed to inspire agitated sputtering. I mean, if you want to pick a browser as the most influential product or application since 1982, how does Netscape come in lower than IE, when it was Netscape that drove the development of IE? And the Apple corps certainly has a beef about its meager representation. Any theories on how these particular choices came out of this particular group? Have they spent too much time in the server room?



http://www.comptia.org/pressroom/get_pr.aspx?prid=1262



(f)




Absentem lædit, qui cum ebrio litigat.

He who quarrels with a drunk hurts an absentee. ;)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field and a masterful marketing campaign were enough to carry iPhone fever through launch and the initial run of largely loving reviews, but it looks like that honeymoon glow is beginning to fade. Some "second look" reviews are showing up with tempered enthusiasm and a less forgiving attitude toward shortcomings that were earlier glossed over. People are wondering why the sales and activation numbers aren't lining up. A potential security vulnerability turned up. And today -- well, just look:


http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_6443383



http://captainluckydog.blogspot.com/2007/07/truth-about-iphone-is-coming-out.html



http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/07/ok_who_bet_the_under_on_iphone_activations_in_the_ first_30_hours.html



http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/07/hackers_camp_out_for_launch_of_iphone_crack.html



* Apple shares were down about 4 percent in midday trading after reports that a note from the stock trading desk at Miller Tabak & Co. raised the possibility that the company was reducing its production of iPhones from "9 million units to 4.5 million units." Miller Tabak analyst Peter Boockvar later told AppleInsider that the comment was gossip passed along in conversation, not an official note, but for the day, at least, the damage was done. No comment from Apple.



http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/mng-ba?Account=siliconvalley&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=aapl



http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/07/31/apple_slips_on_overblown_iphone_remark_ipod_ramp_i n_september.html




* New York's Consumer Protection Agency said today it sent a letter to Apple raising some complaints about the iPhone, namely that requiring the unit to go back to the factory for an $85 battery change and charging owners $30 for loaner to use in the interim didn't seem the friendliest of policies. Or as Mindy Bockstein, the board's chairman and executive director, said in a press release, "A high-end cell phone shouldn't have to have low-end customer service." (There is now a cheap third-party alternative, if you're brave enough to try it.) No comment from Apple.


http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzipho0730-story,0,3274582.story



http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/31/iphones-first-sketchy-battery-replacement-kit-appears/




* NASA scrubbed the launch of the iPhone among its workforce, declaring it "not to be enterprise ready," according to the minutes of a July 10 meeting of NASA tech officials obtained by InformationWeek. The reasoning wasn't further explained in the minutes, but it likely included some of the points made a month ago by Gartner analysts. Getting a thumbs-up from the space agency were the new BlackBerry 8800 from Research In Motion and the Palm Treo 750. No comment from Apple.



http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201202008



http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=200001726






:| "No comment from Apple." Gee, that's a surprise.



(f)







Acta est fabula.

(Caesar Augustus's last words): "So ends the story."


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :|

:o



It's taken a little while, but those rosy predictions of free municipal wireless Internet access for all are starting to lose their glow, and not surprisingly, it's over that fundamental question about any free service: Who's going to pay for it?



Up in San Francisco, the city has been moving toward a deal with EarthLink and Google for citywide WiFi under an arrangement in which the companies would pay for the right to build and operate a network that would provide low-speed access for free and low-end broadband for $20 a month. Things looked to be on track until the city came back with a few suggested changes -- like making the low-end broadband speed free and charging for anything snappier, adding some more privacy protection and cutting the length of the contract from 16 years down to eight. Apparently in shock, EarthLink asked for a month to think things over, and judging by the recent comments of EarthLink's new CEO, the company is looking at issues far bigger than just the San Francisco deal. "The Wi-Fi business as currently constituted will not provide an acceptable return. We're actively exploring ways to scale this business more economically," said Rolla P. Huff in a conference call last week.


http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/06/san-francisco-pulls-the-plug-on-google-earthlinks-citywide-wi/



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/02/BA8KRBF752.DTL&hw=google+earthlink&sn=001&sc=1000



One possibility raised by Huff is already starting to come into play in the regional plans of Silicon Valley's Joint Venture Wireless Project -- the prospect of relying on cities becoming paying "anchor tenants" of their community WiFi service, guaranteeing their provider some reliable revenue. Said Huff, "That would go a long way in our being able to get an acceptable return on this investment. Until we're convinced that we can build new networks and get an acceptable return, we will delay any further new build-outs." And that's the direction the Silicon Valley project is heading. The 40 or so cities in the region will be asked to pay to use their WiFi network to connection municipal departments and employees. On top of reports showing skimpy usage of existing municipal WiFi networks, this is enough to send many of the cities back to the keyboard for some heavy-duty cost-benefit analysis.



http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_6554029






|-) |-) |-) Waiting for Municipal wireless is like "Waiting for Godot". :|


(f)






Aut inveniam viam aut faciam.

I will either find a way or I will make one.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:) :)


Slide Show:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/aug/07/internationalnews?picture=330344884




:'( New Delhi, India: A Tibetan activist looks on during the 30th day of hunger strike. Fourteen Tibetan activists have been on an indefinite hunger strike for the last 30 days, against China's new railway line to Tibet, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and demanding the release of the 11th Panchen Lama:

http://image.guim.co.uk/Guardian/news/gallery/2007/aug/07/internationalnews/GD4240366@A-Tibetan-act0005-4157.jpg






(f) Hiroshima, Japan: Lanterns float on the Motoyasu river to mourn victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945:

http://image.guim.co.uk/Guardian/news/gallery/2007/aug/07/internationalnews/GD4241300@Lanterns-are-0007-5073.jpg





(f) (f)






Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.

If Caesar were alive, you'd be chained to an oar. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o :o




http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/08/07/dolls372.jpg



'We've really upset some men'


A Doll's House with dwarfs playing the male roles? It caused fury in the US - how will Edinburgh react?

By Mark Fisher

Tuesday August 7, 2007

The Guardian


Mark Povinelli refers to himself as a "little person". He accepts the term dwarf because it accurately reflects his condition of dwarfism. Midget, however, is forbidden; a slur. But, however you say it, the actor is uncommonly small: 3ft 9in. You'd want to say this was irrelevant were it not for two things. Firstly, he is little in a world designed by and for bigger people, an awkward reality he encounters every day, and one he tackles with good grace. "I find humour in my size," he says. "The world is not built for me, but I'm living in that world, so there's lots of room for comedy."


The second unavoidable issue is Povinelli's current role. The actor, who once played an angel in Frasier, has been cast as the paternalistic Torvald in Mabou Mines DollHouse, a critically acclaimed reworking of Ibsen's classic A Doll's House. This production, by the New York-based avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, features no man taller than 4ft 5in. The women, such as Maude Mitchell's Nora, tower above the men, squeezing themselves into a miniature set that takes no account of their proportions. The language and the attitudes, however, are straight out of 19th-century Norway, meaning Torvald continues to patronise his "poor little Nora", despite being small enough for her to scoop him up into her arms.


Director Lee Breuer is playing on the absurdity of a social order that favours one sex over the other. Ibsen's play, a landmark in the movement towards women's emancipation, was considered dangerously subversive in its day, with its portrayal of a young mother who walks out on a stultifying marriage. Here, in DollHouse, the warped relationships and skewed status find a parallel in the imbalanced physical relationships, creating a surreal comedy out of a melodrama, but without removing its political bite.


Breuer, who adapted the idea from an old Berliner Ensemble production of Brecht's Coriolan, knew he was on to something as soon as he overheard a couple at an early preview of DollHouse in New York in 2003. At the interval the man got up, said he didn't like it, and made for the exit. Turning back, he asked his partner if she was coming. "No, I think I'll stay and see a little more," she replied. Angrily, he asked when she wanted to be picked up. "Don't bother," was her terse response.


"I had this vision of various couples breaking up during the Nora-Torvald scene," laughs Breuer, a remarkably young looking 70-year-old, who has run Mabou Mines since its inception in 1970. "So I incorporated 12 boxes into the set, each with a couple of puppets, and all the puppets are breaking up. We've really upset men, especially in areas that are tremendously patriarchal, such as South Carolina, where half the upper middle-class couples were like Torvald and Nora. They don't like to be accused of doing what they're doing. I remember one senator who was there saying, 'I'm a liberal, I think there's some good acting. But this play - I'm not that liberal.'"


Cast as one of theatre's great authoritarian males, Povinelli delights in undermining our expectations of the part. "There's something silly and desperate about it," says the actor, whom Breuer describes as a "miniature Jean-Paul Belmondo" because of his Mediterranean good looks. "Torvald has been given the book about how to be a man, how to treat women, how to be in society; there are many average-sized people who aren't very good at that either. I see him as one of those guys: he got the manual, he just wasn't really good at it. I don't see him as misogynistic; he's just trying to do the best for his family, and everything he was taught was wrong."


That the production has animated audiences is without question ("The precise opposite of every Doll's House you ever saw in your life," one US reviewer raved) but what of the ethics of such blatantly heightist casting? Will audiences in Edinburgh's international festival be any less guilty of gawping than those who once queued for freak shows and circuses? Is the cultural cachet of Ibsen just a smoke screen to disguise a demeaning spectacle as exploitative as a minstrel show?


Povinelli believes we can watch with a clear conscience. He takes no issue with theatre's "vaudeville, voyeuristic and carnival" aspects and, in any case, even the rare person who comes to DollHouse in search of end-of-the-pier-type thrills will be brought up sharp by the production's politics. Some well-meaning liberals (all around average height) have told him he is being exploited, but, he says, that's not for them to decide.


"There are scenes in this where Maude picks me up, and that's taboo number one for a little person, especially male. But if I were married to an average-sized woman, there would be times in our marriage when she would pick me up. They would be in the privacy of our own home and they would always be controlled by me. That's what Nora and Torvald do. To pretend that there isn't this height difference and that she would never pick him up, whether protectively or sexually, would be silly."


That's not to say Povinelli approached the project without caution. "You have to be very careful when you're such a distinct type," he says. "Even with people who have the best intentions, you have to ask what the point is and weigh up how much of a gimmick it is. But this show was a pretty easy decision because it's Ibsen and it's Torvald - and how often does any actor, let alone a 4ft actor, get to do this role off-Broadway and all around the world?"


Povinelli, who played Toulouse- Lautrec in Martha Clarke's Belle Epoque at New York's Lincoln Center, accepts that any character he portrays always becomes a little person, and thinks it would be ignoring the obvious to pretend otherwise.


"It's obviously the most profound thing physically about me and that physicality affects every aspect of my life," he says.


"I'm comfortable with that. It's what I find so interesting about casting me in non-traditional roles. We've all seen Torvald time and again, and to see one that's so different, even at first look, suddenly opens your eyes.


"One of the great things about this show is that I get to choose when they laugh at me, when they cry, when they are seduced by me and when they are horrified by me. That's really empowering, because so often in my life I'm not in control about what people find humorous about my size".


· Mabou Mines DollHouse is at the King's Theatre from August 24-28. Box office: 0131-473 2000.




http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2007/story/0,,2142991,00.html




^o) ^o) ^o)




(f)





Dulce enim etiam nomen est pacis.

The name 'peace' is sweet itself.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f)



Girl, uninterrupted... Jennifer Fox:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2007/08/07/jennifer_fox_sq.jpg



Zoe Williams meets US film-maker Jennifer Fox, who has flown all over the world to find out what it means to be a woman. Zoe Williams meets a recent convert to feminism.



My life on film

Tuesday August 7, 2007

The Guardian


Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman is a new documentary series billed as the real person's Sex and the City. Candace Bushnell, who wrote the original, has called it: "Required viewing for every woman." (But I wonder whether that isn't New York-speak for, "I have met this person. This is stage two in our acquaintanceship, in which we start saying nice things about one another.") The New York Times, which called it "part personal diary, part transglobal slumber party", praised it as "an addictive soap about sexuality and sisterhood", but other reviewers have been much harsher, criticising the "solipsism raging out of control". In it, film-maker Jennifer Fox, over six hours of finished film and three years of filming, has a number of conversations: with the camera, with her friends, with female acquaintances from Pakistan, India and Somalia, with one of her boyfriends - but not the married one - with her mother. She is 42 at the start, and has an accidental pregnancy that ends in miscarriage and alerts her to the fact that she would like to have children soon. She is neither prim nor especially raunchy, so I suppose if you were to extend the real-life SATC analogy, she would be Carrie.


When Fox embarked on this project, putting her whole life and identity before the camera, she was already celebrated, at least on the American indie circuit, for her highbrow docusoap, An American Love Story, in which she lived with a mixed-race couple and their children for a full two years. She won awards for Beirut: The Last Home Movie, which she made in 1988. Although these sound like incredibly political, agenda-led projects, she maintains that she had never been political: she had never even voted in an election until Bush loomed for a second time. And she had never called herself a feminist.


Fox is a physically endearing person, small and kind of forgiving in her body language, and she is wearing a very assertive top for a Wednesday morning. The first thing she says is: "Oh, you think I'm overdressed! But I thought we had a photographer coming!" And I think, how did she know I thought that? Does she have special skills?


Anyway, the documentary. "This is a real life, I'm sick of fake lives being shown," she explains. "I felt politically that my statement was: for better or worse, this is a real female life. You may hate it, you may think I'm self-involved - I am. You may think I'm confused - I am. But this is actually exposing the inside of one woman's real life and not a fantasy. I will not be ashamed. I will not be ashamed of my sexuality. I will not be ashamed of my abortions. I will not even be ashamed of my married man. I will not be ashamed that I never married or had children."


You get the picture. The series is interesting, I think, because it asks every question that modern feminism should be asking itself, if it is to have any meaningful role in modern political discourse. Can women have sex on equal terms to men, and without guilt? Do we have control over our own reproductive systems, or are we still fighting for it? Is parity in terms of breeding and child-rearing ever a realistic goal, or do women just "see things differently"? Have the barriers of misogyny been overturned only for privileged women? As western women, should we even be discussing our relatively minor gender issues, or should we be focused on the much more devastating injustices women suffer elsewhere?


And to every question, in my view, with uncanny consistency, Flying ... gives exactly the wrong answer. When I meet Fox, though, I really start to like her after a while, so if you discern any conflict in the arguments that follow, it is my friendly heart wrestling with my judgmental head. Each of the hour-long episodes starts with Fox's voiceover, saying "I never wanted to be a girl, in the way girls were supposed to be."


In episode one, she lays out the bare bones of her relationship status, as they say on Facebook. She is having an affair with a married guy, Kye (not his real name), and also seeing a Swiss guy, Patrick (his real name). "I had a married lover," she narrates. "He lived in the shadows, but he was always in me, and I had to act like he didn't exist ... Every woman will tell you: never fall in love with a married man."


My hackles are up already: I don't believe in a female-solidarity that takes all married men off the table. A solidarity that wide is meaningless, you might just as well swear solidarity to all men. But, having eschewed this solidarity and shagged the guy in the first place, you cannot then call on the sisterhood of what "every woman will tell you". It's schlocky. I won't spoil it by telling you what happens with Kye, except to say that he is an absolute tool who, having resolved his "complicated" love issues by leaving his wife, then turns round to say he is uncomfortable with Fox's own sexual freedom. With Patrick, things are a little more out in the open, in so far as she wants to film the two of them but he doesn't want to be filmed and she badgers him ceaselessly. "He's still uncomfortable with the film," she tells me, "and everybody loved him!" (As if the approbation of strangers was a fair trade for a private life.)


"It pushed him to the edge of his sensibilities, of what he can accept, because he's such a private person. For me, it gave me the relationship, but for him, it endangered it," she continues, simply, as though it were a game of luck and chance, rather than a film that she had decided to make and could have stopped at any point.


By episode three, in the midst of struggling to have a child, she commences a refrain about how all women are seen as either mothers or whores. This is in no way borne out by her behaviour: she is sensitive and delicate around her married lover, but very rough and tumble and disrespectful, really, of the feelings of her available lover, who treats her with enormous affection. She says, both in the film and when I meet her, that his accent is daft and really puts her off, plus she has never liked blonds. In other words, she is behaving exactly as men are supposed to behave.


This is parity! This is what relationships look like in a post-feminist world: the woman is neither mother nor whore, she is getting it all her own way; and I would applaud that if she would only do the decent thing and admit it. But, she explains, as I put this to her, "Mentally, I still have it in my head that it's marriage and kids or failure. And that's the dilemma. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that is part of the western woman's modern dilemma." Grrr ...


Now, about those children. If there is one area in which Fox toes an unambiguous feminist line, it's vis-a-vis abortion. "It's a value that I wasn't there to fight for, but I've had four or five abortions, so I just can't believe that in a modern world, people could consider that that wasn't the norm. I will do everything I can to fight for it now. We're going to do a college tour [with Flying ...], and we're going to put as many of the proceeds as we can, to pro-choice services."


The simple act of admitting to having had an abortion at all is a much bigger deal in the US than it is over here, unless accompanied by self-flagellation and, preferably, a religious conversion of some sort. So hats off to her for that, but the IVF segments of the film are another matter altogether. Again, I don't want to spoil the plot, so I'll just describe the atmosphere: throughout the process, Fox paints a woman's urge to procreate as some kind of mythical, primal force which can neither be reasoned with nor balanced against other imperatives. I would counter that this thinking undermines women's standing as rational beings, and thereby undermines any struggle we might have to retain control of our own reproductive systems. Yes, people want babies, they have to, or nobody would go through the bother. But you're on very dangerous ground when you start talking about yourself as a creature possessed, and I don't think it's very convincing. Nobody talks like this in their 20s, before they start thinking of their fertility as finite. This sort of thing is worth interrogating, in other words, before putting it out there, as "honesty", as an expression of what you feel as a "real woman".


Fox has considered the ethics of it, she counters: "I think IVF is a moral issue no matter what. Why go through this very expensive, complicated - nobody says it, but potentially dangerous - process, to have your own biological child, when there are millions and millions of children who need a home? What's interesting is that they did a study in Brazil, offering IVF for free to some very poor women in São Paulo, and they took it. So anyone who has the capability to have a biological child will do it - it's absolutely not a function of affluence. But it's still a moral issue: the problem is, you love somebody and all these biological things happen, you want a child that looks like Patrick. All the same things happen, no matter what your intellectual ability to reason, you suddenly want that connection.


"I didn't even believe in wanting a genetic child - I love the idea of adoption - but suddenly, being in love, I wanted Patrick's child."


But perhaps there's an element of not wanting to miss out? She must have been in love before. "I've wanted a child before. The reality is that most women want babies. There is a biological component."


But if it were all about biology, we would all be having babies in our late teens and early 20s, since that's the biological ideal. "Well, I don't agree. We have biology but we still have mind."


Then why do we talk about biology as being the primary force in our late 30s and early 40s, when before that it is easily trounced by the mind? "If we were men, it would take place in our 60s," she says.


But she is still saying that we only take seriously our biological imperative at the very end of our ability to fulfil it. So I wonder whether that isn't primarily practical, rather than biological - I don't want to miss out on what's mine. "There is a biological component! Have you not felt that?"


Here, I am on a sticky wicket as I am seven months' pregnant, and hardly want to say, well, it's only a practical thing. But I still maintain that she is wrong. If we were to only realise we were in love with someone when he or she fell for someone else . . . or only take any care of a parent when they were just about to die, I think that would call into question the authenticity of our feelings. I'm just saying, can we make sure that this stuff is authentic before we, as women, sacrifice our standing as rational beings?


To return to Sex and the City, briefly, there were massive ideological problems with that series. It was a homage to shoes, as much as anything else. It was very light, and it did make women seem shallow. But the lightness of touch also worked when it came to a discussion about whether or not they wanted children, and when it was time to get a move on. It cut through the self-aggrandisement and represented women more honestly, in a way, by not trying to paint an unquenchable biological thirst in all of us.


In what I find the most depressing bit of the film, Fox travels to Pakistan, as part of a project featuring women in rural areas, on the borders of Islamabad and Afghanistan. Fox is on her way to a remote village, in a car with Shazia who, at 32, is still a virgin. Neither she nor her friend would have been able to carry on studying if they had married, so they have sacrificed any chance of sexual fulfilment, of family, of physical or any other intimate companionship, in order to have an intellectual life; which they won't be able to pursue to any meaningful level because they are only women. Oh yes, and the village they going to has just been the scene of a vicious murder in which a young woman was "honour killed" by her brother and father, for falling in love with the wrong man.


This story, coupled with that of Amina, a Somalian refugee living in England and campaigning against female genital mutilation, whom Fox meets later in the programme, really puts a strain on feminist discourse: is there, at this stage, any place for putting the finishing touches on western feminism? Is there any room for discussion on what constitutes true equality within a relationship, or on how women continue to perceive male domination, even on the level of atmosphere? How can we justify that kind of fine-tuning? "What I don't want to do is disconnect, and say us and them. I want to say us. The fact that I was sexually abused at 13, or the fact that I've been beaten up by a man, or nearly raped, or that I'm afraid to walk on the streets at night is the same central root of what is happening in Pakistan."


I agree that the root is the same, and, of course, sexual violence is endemic. But our concerns surely seem petty compared with these women's: they are battling to have any intellectual activity at all; for the right to use their own language. "I totally agree," she says, "I just think we should see a relationship to them. I feel that I'm only one generation out of the woods, in relation to that. My grandmother was locked in her room on her honeymoon every time her husband had to go shine his shoes. That was the 1920s. They are battling to leave the house, but my grandmother was battling to leave the house, and we're not so far out of the woods that we can't see it. I want to fight for women in Pakistan and Somalia, but I want to see how I am related to them.


"I think what Amina and her friends appreciated, was me not looking at them with pity, but instead looking at our similarities. They really hate the way we in the west say, 'Oh you poor woman, you've had this done to you.' And there's a reason for it, because somehow pity is a disconnect. We are too often 'us and them' instead of 'us'. I just want to really focus on that,


"I don't want to say we have it worse or that we're the same - we're not - but we're on a spectrum, and the roots are the same. Everywhere the issue is sexual control. Walking along the street is an issue of sexual control. They might not talk about sexual control, but the reason women aren't allowed out of the house or to walk along the street is because men might look at them."


Well, yes and no, but mainly no. Women might be victims in the west, but there is the rule of law, and whatever its inadequacies, it still exists. We may have been chattels in the Bible, but we are not chattels now.


And yet, I cannot tell you how much of this is a flaw in Fox's feminism, or how much she is just a different sort of person: she does not believe in being judgmental. She thinks "judgment is just bullshit, it's putting your superiority on top of someone else's".


By her own admission, she is new to this game and has only been even calling herself a feminist since she finished making the film, at the age of 45. There are bits of her website that are a bit rich, coming from such a late arrival, as it were: a section called "Take action!", as if what the movement really needs, in its sluggish later life, is a bit of engagement from people who had never, hitherto, given it any thought. But maybe this is what American-style politics looks like when it arrives via therapy ("I am a New Yorker," she says, "I was raised on therapy"). Too much context can be almost as bad as none at all. But still, she's asking the questions. At least people are still asking the questions. We don't all have to agree.






:| :| Hmmm.....some common ground here? 8-)8-)


Simularities rather than differences. (y) (y)




(f) (f)




Dum vita est, spes est.

While life is, hope is. / While there is life, there is hope.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(y) (y) (y) (y)



Give us credit

Casey McKinnon

Guardian Unlimited

Tuesday August 7 2007


Now that the excitement over reality TV is dying down, a new budget-saving television revolution is upon us: internet video reruns. Later this year, many stations across America will be launching shows featuring some of the most popular web videos you've already seen. They'll also be screwing the producers of those videos – people like me - out of royalties, recognition and more.


Over the past few years we've seen a decrease in the number of scripted shows on television. Instead, broadcasters have turned to running reality shows that proved less expensive and more profitable. Now, noticing the increasing popularity of YouTube and video podcasts where people showcase their talent for free, broadcasters are turning their gaze to independent web video producers like us to find even cheaper content.


These days, we at Galacticast get at least three contracts in our inbox every week from some big media producer wanting to license our content. This is not a new thing: the Canadian technology channel G4 Tech TV started showcasing videoblogs over a year ago with their show Torrent, featuring some of the first big web video successes such as Galacticast, Ask a Ninja and Rocketboom. The difference now is that everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, just as everyone did with reality TV after Survivor and Big Brother became popular.


Unfortunately, the majority of web video producers are working for the love of it. They don't have the business or legal know-how to fully understand what the contracts that are sent to them mean. Often, the idea that their work might be featured on their favourite TV station is so exciting that they don't bother to read the small print.


While many people making web video don't expect to get paid for having their content broadcast on TV, they do expect recognition. Unfortunately, in contracts I've seen recently from major American broadcasters, these new programmes aren't even willing to credit the producers by name or by web address.


What's more, these contracts often contain exclusivity rights – so not only do they expect you to sign over your content royalty-free, but for a long period of time. And, thanks to the quiet insertion of a waiver of moral rights, the creators don't have any control over spin-offs based on their work.


When we reply to these broadcasters explaining why we can't adhere to their demands, they often write back to baby us as if we can't possibly understand.


What we web video producers need to do is to ground ourselves as small businesses and micro production companies. Like any company, we need a lawyer to look over our contracts to make sure that we retain our rights. Or we could have a lawyer help us to write our own contract to send to the broadcasters as a way of outlining what's acceptable.


One major difference between web video makers and traditional TV and film producers is unions. Though the proud lack of gatekeepers is part of the web's appeal, it also means we've had to find other ways to defend ourselves. Where traditional producers have unions, we have message boards and internet groups to voice our concerns. In the future, we might need better ways to share experiences and warn against the various sharks trying to screw us over.


One thing is for sure: providing that I continue to watch TV, I will certainly be wondering which naïve producer signed away their soul for the unfunded video that will play on my screen. On second thoughts, perhaps it is a good thing they'll go uncredited.


· Casey McKinnon is co-producer of the video podcasts Galacticast and A Comicbook Orange.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/07/comment.digitalvideo





(y) (f) (y) (f) (y)







Felicitas est parvus canis calidus.

Happiness is a warm puppy. (From an early 1960's Peanuts comic strip by the late Charles Schultz.)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



Video Fun Box – Windows

I'm ready for my close up


Video Fun Box is a video titling package that includes a wide range of fully customizable digital video effects. Creating breathtaking 3D titles is easy with Video Fun Box. By harnessing the full power of your PC's graphics hardware, Video Fun Box creates beautiful animated 3D titles and special effects in real-time.



http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Editors/Video-Fun-Box.shtml




(y) (y) Don't forget, Beta copies are free! 8-|8-|



(f)





Carpe Carpio.

Seize the carp. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-|(h)8-|(h)8-|(h)



Q U O T E D


"The Internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn't bode well for long-term artistic vision. It's just a means to an end.


"We're talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that's not going to happen with people blogging on the Internet. I mean, get out there - communicate.


"Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the Internet. Let's get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole Internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There's too much technology available. I'm sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today."


-- Sir Elton John, musician and acknowledged technophobe



http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007350453,00.html





:o :o But Sir Elton successfully uses the Internet - when it serves a good business purpose. ;) As in making dineros........



(f)






Nil significat, nil oscillat.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-| 8-|



......Charles Miller explains exactly what engineers mean when they describe problems as "impossible," "trivial," "unfeasible," "non-trivial," "hard," and "very hard."



http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engineers_feasibility





"To that end, here's a quick lexicon of what computer programmers generally mean when they're talking about how hard some problem is, starting with the most extreme":



"Impossible"

The man most commonly regarded as the 'father' of computer science is the English mathematician, Alan Turing. Turing did a lot of work in World War II helping the Allies break the German military ciphers. To reward him, the British Government convicted him of gross indecency after the war (he was homosexual), took away his security clearance and put him on hormone therapy. His death not long after is generally accepted as suicide. :( :(


Anyway. Turing's most famous contribution to computer science is the Church-Turing Thesis. This describes a theoretical device called a Universal Turing Machine that is both capable of solving any computational problem that could be represented as an algorithm, and of emulating any other device that solves computational problems.


Anything that can be (deterministically) mechanically computed can be computed by a Turing machine. Anything that performs deterministic mechanical computations is really just a Turing machine. Engineers speak of computer hardware or programming languages that have this full range of computation as being "Turing complete".


In this framework, the word 'impossible' has a definite meaning. A problem is impossible if its solution can not be computed by a Turing machine.


Admittedly, this isn't a very useful distinction. On one hand, Turing machines are a mathematical theory. They're infinitely fast and have unlimited storage, and you have an unbounded amount of time to write your program for it. As such, many things that are theoretically possible are practically impossible (more on that later).


On the other hand (and this trips up engineers all the time), it doesn't ascribe any value to mostly solving a problem. No Turing machine can tell you if you're going to like a book or not, but Amazon makes a lot of money out of coming out with a close-enough guess.






(f) (l) (f) Lots more definitions:

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engineers_feasibility








Semper ubi sub ubi.

Always wear underwear. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :| :| :|



101 Ways To Know Your Software Project Is Doomed


Filed Under Software Process:


1. Management has renamed its Waterfall process to Agile Waterfall.


2. You start hiring consultants so they can take the blame.


3. The Continuous Integration server has returned the error message “Fuck it, I give up”.


4. You have implemented your own Ruby framework that uses XML configuration files.


5. Your eldest team member references Martin Fowler as a ’snot-nosed punk.


6. Your source code control system is a series of folders on a shared drive.
'

7. Allocated QA time is for Q and A why your crap is broken.


8. All of your requirements are written on a used cocktail napkin.


9. You start considering a new job so you don’t have to maintain the application you are building.


10. The lead web developer thinks the X in XHTML means ‘extreme’.


11. Ever iteration meeting starts with “Do you want the good news or the bad news…”.


12. Your team still gives a crap about its CMM Level.


13. Progress is now measured by the number of fixed bugs and not completed features.


14. Continuous Integration is getting new employees to read the employee handbook.


15. You are friends with the janitor.


16. The SCRUM master doesn’t really care what you did yesterday or what you will do today.


17. Every milestone ends in a dead sprint.


18. Your best developer only has his A+ Certification.


19. You do not understand the acronyms DRY, YAGNI, or KISS; but you do understand WTF, PHB, and FUBAR.


20. Your manager could be replaced by an email redirection batch file.


21. The only certification your software process has is ISO 9001/2000.


22. Your manager thinks ‘Metrics’ is a type of protein drink.


23. Every bug is prioritized as Critical.


24. Every feature is prioritized as Trivial.


25. Project estimates magically match the budget.


26. Developers use the excuse of ’self documenting code’ for no comments.


27. Your favorite software pattern is God Object.


28. You still believe compiling is a form of testing.


29. Developers still use Notepad as an IDE.


30. Your manager wastes 7 hours a week asking for progress reports (true story).


31. You do not have your own machine and you are not doing pair programming.


32. Team Rule - No meetings until 10 AM since we were all here until 2 AM.


33. Your team believes ORM is a ‘fad’.


34. Your team believes the transition from VB6 to VB.NET will be ’seamless’.


35. Your manager thinks MS Project is the best management tool the market offers.


36. Your spouse only gets to see you on a webcam.


37. None of your unit tests have asserts in them.


38. FrontPage is your web page editor of choice.


39. You get into flame wars if { should be on new line, but you are impartial to patterns such as MVC.


40. The company motto is ‘Do more with less’.


41. The phrase ‘It works on my machine’ is heard more than once a day.


42. The last conference your .NET team attended was Apple WWDC 2000.


43. Your manager insists that you track all activity but never uses the information to make decisions.


44. All debugging occurs on the live server.


45. Your manager does not know how to check email.


46. Your manager thinks being SOX compliant means not working on baseball nights.


47. The company hires Senetor Ted Stevens to give your project kick-off inspiration speech.


48. The last book you read - Visual InterDev 6 Bible.


49. The overall budget is mistaken for your weekly Mountain Dew bill.


50. Your manager spends his lunch hour crying in his car (another true story).


51. Your lead web developer defines AJAX as a cleaning product.


52. Your boss expects you to spend the next 2 days creating a purchase request for a $50 component.


53. The sales team decreased your estimates because they believe you can work faster.


54. Requirement - Rank #1 on Google.


55. Everyday you work until Midnight, everyday your boss leaves at 4:30.


56. Your manager loves to say “Why do the developers care? They get paid by the hour.”
57. The night shift at Starbucks knows you by name.


58. Management can not understand why anyone needs more than a single monitor.


59. Your development team only uses source control as a power failure backup system.


60. Developers are not responsible for any testing.


61. The team does not use SVN because they believe the merge algorithms are black voodoo magic.


62. Your white boards are mostly white (VersionOne).


63. The client continually mistakes your burn-down chart for a burn-up chart.


64. The project code name is renamed to ‘The Death March’.


65. Now it physically pains you to say the word - Yes.


66. Your teammates don’t refactor, they refuctor.


67. To reward you for all of your overtime your boss purchases a new coffee maker.


68. Your project budget is entered in the company ledger as ‘Corporate Overhead’.


69. You secretly outsource pieces of the project so you can blog at work.


70. A Change Control Board is created and your product isn’t even its first alpha version.


71. Daily you consider breaking your fingers for the short term disability check.


72. The deadline has been renamed a ‘milestone’…just like the last ‘milestone’.


73. Your project managers ‘open door’ policy only applies between 5:01 PM - 7:59 AM.


74. Your boss argues “Why buy it when we can built it!”


75. You bring beer to the office during your 2nd shift.


76. The project manager is spotted consulting a Ouija board.


77. You give misinformation to your teammates so you look better on your personal review.


78. All code reviews are scheduled a week before product launch.


79. Budget for testing exists as “if we have time”.


80. The client will only talk about the requirements after they receive a fixed estimation.


81. The boss does not find the humor in Dilbert.


82. You start noticing your boss’s poker tells during planning poker.


83. You start wondering if working 2 shifts at Pizza Hut is a better career alternative.


84. All performance issues are resolved by getting larger machines.


85. The project has been demoted to being released as a permanent ‘Beta’ version.


86. Your car is towed from the office parking lot as it was thought to be abandoned.


87. The project manager likes to doodle during requirements gathering meetings.


88. Your SCRUM team consists of 1.


89. Your timesheet looks like a Powerball ticket.


90. The web developer thinks being 508 means looking good in her Levi Red Tabs.


91. You think you need Multiple Personality Disorder medication because you are Mort, Elvis, and Einstein.


92. Your manager substitutes professional consultant advice for a Magic 8 Ball.


93. You know exactly how many compile warnings cause an ‘Out of Memory’ exception in your IDE.


94. I have used IDE twice in this list and you still don’t know what it stands for.


95. You have cut and pasted code from The Daily WTF.


96. Broken unit tests are deleted because they are obviously out of date.


97. You are sent to a conference to learn, but you skip sessions to go hunting for swag.


98. QA has nicknamed you Chief Off-By-One.


99. You are using MOSS 2007.


100. You have been 90% complete 90% of the time.


101. “Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too… thanks.”





http://www.codesqueeze.com/101-ways-to-know-your-software-project-is-doomed/




8-|(h)8-|(h)8-|(h)8-|(h)






Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



http://nanolab.me.cmu.edu/publications/papers/Floyd-IROS2006.pdf




:| :|




(f)





Veritas vos liberabit.

The truth will set you free.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:D :D



http://www.cheap-parking.net/job-nearly-done.html




;) There are two clues if you get stuck.......:)



(f)







Usus magister est optimus.

Experience is the best teacher." (i.e., "Practice makes perfect.) ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o :o



http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/07/23/070723sh_shouts_rich



(f)





Ulula cum lupis, cum quibus esse cupis.

Who keeps company with wolves, will learn to howl. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:s



http://cgi.ebay.com/2-Large-Bell-Howell-Mailmobile-Packmobile-Robots_W0QQitemZ190133372741QQihZ009QQcategoryZ100 184QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem




:| :|




(f)






(l) (l) Si vis amari, ama.

If you want to be loved, love. (l) (l)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :|


;)


You don't often see a headline like this in the tech section (and we're the poorer for it). Offered without comment:


Ex-Broadcom CEO accused in court documents of building secret lair for sex, drugs.



LOS ANGELES - The co-founder of semiconductor maker Broadcom Corp., under scrutiny in a federal stock options probe, was accused seven years ago of building an underground hideaway at his estate to indulge in drugs and sex with prostitutes, according to court documents. ... The illegal network of tunnels and rooms underneath (Henry T. Nicholas III's) Laguna Hills estate was kept secret from his wife and city officials, the documents said.




http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_6412923?nclick_check=1





^o)^o)^o)







Scio me nihil scire.

"I know that I know nothing." (Socrates)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



A Fish Story Slide Sjow:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/07/dining/20070808_FISH_SLIDESHOW_index.html




ART OF THE DEEP A black sea bass, inked in white and printed on black silk by Annie Sessler.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/08/dining/12fish600.1.jpg




August 8, 2007

First a Hook, Then Ink: An Artist’s Catch

By BRETT MARTIN

MONTAUK, N.Y.


THIS is a fish story: a whopper (or at least a keeper) about a peculiar intersection of nature, art and food. Annie Sessler, an artist living here on the East End of Long Island, makes fish prints — impressions of sea life, mostly on vintage textiles, for which she uses fish themselves like rubber stamps or wood blocks. The prints, made with a process dating to the 19th century, are lovely, often haunting images. To whatever extent a fish can be said to have a personality, Ms. Sessler has a gift for capturing and honoring it.


But before inspiration can strike, the fish must. And that’s where Ms. Sessler’s husband, a longtime fisherman named Jim Goldberg, comes in. It’s an elegant hunter-gatherer arrangement: he catches the fish; she prints the fish; then, together, they eat the fish.


“I’m not like other wives who sit at home, waiting for jewelry,” she said. “When Jim comes home, I’m like, ‘What fish did you bring me?’ ”


Early one misty summer morning, Mr. Goldberg, who is 57, sun-blasted and wiry, headed out into Montauk’s harbor in a small borrowed boat. Baiting his hook with strips of squid, he puttered a few hundred yards toward the mouth of the harbor, dropped his line and let the incoming tide carry the boat back toward the dock.


After only a few such passes, just about the time reveille sounded at the Coast Guard station on shore, he had already hauled up a handsome fluke, a flounder and a sea robin. Many fishermen discard the bottom-dwelling sea robin as inedible, but Mr. Goldberg said the firm tail meat was delicious. Also, the prehistoric-looking head and spiny wings make beautiful prints.


As the fog burned off, Mr. Goldberg steered his boat into open water, toward Block Island Sound. Over the years he’s made his living as a lobsterman, a clam digger and a skipper on commercial draggers, taking multiday trips miles offshore in search of cod and other fish. If there is any reason to be nostalgic for those grueling, often freezing journeys, it’s the wild and weird varieties of sea life he used to bring home for Ms. Sessler: dogfish, skate, John Dory.


Once his haul included a small, blazing red deep-sea creature that the couple simply called Mystery Fish. Mr. Goldberg now makes his living primarily by shaping and repairing surfboards, so his wife has to make do with more quotidian species.


On this day, the catch included two bluefish that Mr. Goldberg wrestled into the boat within 10 minutes of cutting the motor out on the open water. The second fish flopped and squirmed in the bottom of the boat as he tried to remove the hook with a delicate touch. “Come on, lay down and be quiet,” he told the fish through gritted teeth, aware that broken scales would provoke his wife’s wrath.


His mesh sack filled with more than enough to produce what he called a “seafood extravaganza,” Mr. Goldberg steered toward shore. The meal, he promised, would be “psycho.”


Like her husband, Ms. Sessler occasionally talks to her fish. As Mr. Goldberg unloaded his catch in the garage, she peered into the cooler and clapped her hands. “Oh, you’re beautiful!” she said, lifting a bluefish. She carried it inside by the tail and lay it in the kitchen sink to begin the “desliming” process.


“You’re gorgeous,” she said, running warm water over the body and gently sponging it with paper towels. “I love you.” Once, when Mr. Goldberg arrived with a large yellowfin tuna, she had to climb into the shower with it.

In Japan the tradition of fish printing, or gyotaku, goes back to the 1800s, when fishermen began using ink and paper to record their catch. Ms. Sessler, who studied design in college, began making her fish prints two winters ago, when her husband got home from a long fishing excursion. On a lark, he took a small scup, or porgy, and a stamp pad and demonstrated how to make a print. Then he went to sleep. When he woke several hours later, the house was filled with dozens of fish prints.


Since then, Ms. Sessler has made over a thousand prints, refining her technique through trial and error. Under the name East End Fish Prints, she began selling her prints last spring, for up to $2,500 each, and quickly found an appreciative audience.


Alexa Van de Walle and her husband, Henry Owsley, saw some of the prints at an arts fair in Southampton, N.Y., and promptly bought eight for the dining room of their summer house.


“There’s something wonderful about how organic they are — how they’re truly something from nature,” said Ms. Van de Walle, who now owns 11 of the prints. “It’s not an abstraction of a fish. It is a fish.”


Now Ms. Sessler placed her bluefish on a palette of newspaper spread on the kitchen table. She used cotton balls and Q-Tips to plug the nostrils, the anus and the hole where it had grabbed the hook. She stacked additional sheaves of paper and cardboard under the tail and back fins, making the surface of the body even and flat. She propped the toothy mouth open with a tiny length of Q-Tip.


The effect of the final print would depend on how the ink was applied. In some of Ms. Sessler’s prints, sweeping brushwork is visible, as though the subject had been caught mid-dart. In the spring, when Mr. Goldberg night-fishes for migrating baby squid, the resulting prints have the quick whorl of Japanese calligraphy. Most often, though, Ms. Sessler strives for a delicate accuracy that rivals the etchings that might be found in a 19th-century encyclopedia.


Using a small rubber roller and a series of brushes, she applied a light patina of ink to the fish. She cut a sheet of white satin and laid it over the fish like a shroud. Then, with the firm fingers of a baker kneading dough, she began to rub the cloth, outlining the fish’s shape. Beneath her hands, the image slowly appeared, as though in a brass rubbing.


In the water, the bluefish had been a shimmering flash of blue and silver; soon enough, on a plate, it would be an anonymous (though tasty) fillet. But now there was the opportunity to really look at the fish: the powerful jaws; the delicate bloodline running from head to tail; the intricate chicken-wire pattern of the scales. Making prints has given Ms. Sessler a passionate appreciation for such anatomical details.


“The mahi-mahi has a bloodline like an EKG,” she said, rifling through representative prints. “It spikes up and down. The John Dory’s is high and arcing, very fine. A tuna is amazing because it’s super-slippery in the front, and then there’s almost a tear and you get into rougher scales.”


“I don’t think of a fish as an object,” she said. “I think of it as a subject. I feel grateful when it reveals itself through me.”


Soon enough there would be more reason to be grateful. As Ms. Sessler finished printing a fish, she rinsed off the water-soluble ink and handed it over to Mr. Goldberg for his extravaganza.


In addition to the fish he had caught that morning, he had spent the afternoon buying local sweet corn and digging about a hundred littleneck clams nearby, off Napeague. A fisherman friend had dropped off striped bass fillets and a cooler full of squid. The couple’s 3-year-old daughter had returned from school, and a few old surfer and artist friends were gathering in the yard.


He prepared the bass and bluefish with recipes from his days cooking for crewmates on long dragger trips. He cut the bass into chunks and set them in a dish of white vinegar before dredging them in Aunt Jemima pancake mix and frying them in oil. The sweet, sharp-flavored nuggets barely had a chance to cool before they were wolfed down.


The bluefish fillets received the most attention. Mr. Goldberg placed them in foil with several handfuls of thinly sliced onions and roughly chopped tomato. He topped this with three or four sizable pats of cream cheese, two spoonfuls of mayonnaise and a few lumps of butter before sealing the foil pouch and placing it on the grill alongside the clams and corn.


Wouldn’t all the toppings overwhelm the flavor of the fish? Perhaps, Mr. Goldberg said, “but I don’t like bluefish.” In fact, though hardly Le Bernardin (or the American Heart Association, for that matter), the mayo and cream cheese melted into a rich sludge that nicely offset the oiliness of the fish.


In a little more than 10 hours, the bluefish had gone from wild animal to art object to food for friends and family. Short of passing by Mr. Goldberg’s hook altogether, what fish could hope for a happier fate?





(y) (y) Amazing artwork AND? This artist's husband washes the fish off, cleans and creates culinary delights with them. Now THAT is a pure slice of heaven, IMHO. At least the "someone else cleaning the fish" part.....:o


;)



:) I used to go fishing in the Sacramento River Delta, near San Francisco (It was truly once a GREAT place for Stripped Bass!) and then it was "catch and release" for me.......and now it's watching the water and scenery as I paddle a canoe on a lake where NO ENGINES are permitted!


(o) Time will change things perhaps.....I'd fish again if I had a fishing buddy - and not one that waited for me on the shore, like my pet........ ;)



(f)







Aut inveniam viam aut faciam.

I will either find a way or I will make one.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(h) (h) (h) (h) (h) (h) (h)




SOCIAL BOOKMARKING: 50+ Social Bookmarking Sites

August 8, 2007 — 06:33 AM PDT — by Sean P. Aune


With the acquisition this week of a shopping bookmarks service, and strong rumors of another bookmarking service being acquired, we thought it was time to reflect on how the social bookmarking space shapes up these days. Here are more than 50 of the top social bookmarking sites available.



Social Bookmarking


i89.us - Export to several formats, see popular & recent bookmarks, ability to shorten URLs.


AllMyFavorites.net - Create an organized page for your bookmarks that you can share with friends and family, access from any computer.


Backflip.com - Check out the most popular links each day, set “The Daily Routine” as your homepage so you can visit your must stop sites each day with ease.


BibSonomy.com - Public & private bookmarks, tag cloud, related tags, duplicate detection with the chance to merge their info.


BlinkPro.com - Dynamic folders, bookmark all links of a page plus all the usual features.


BlogMarks.net - Save your bookmarks, tag them with keywords for easy searching amongst your list, share with others.


Bluedot.us - Tabbed user page showing a network of friends, bookmarks, and related tags. Allows you to import contacts from all the major mail services such as GMail and Yahoo.


BmAccess.net - Bookmark a site, add tags, when you look up a tag, you get the names and a little thumbnail image of the site along with it.


BuddyMarks.com - Store your bookmarks online, share some or all of them, discover new sites to visit by searching the public bookmark area.


Chipmark.com - Browse random “chipmarks”, share them, sort, filter, and get personal recommendations.


Complore - 10MB of file storage, public & private sharing, tag cloud, popular feeds and more.


Connectbeam.com - A themed social bookmarking site for enterprise-scale business.


Connectedy - Import your bookmarks, batch edit them, check in on hot topics.


Connotea.org - A themed social bookmarking site specifically for researchers, clinicians and scientists.


Diigo.com - Highlight portions of a page, write on it like you would a piece of paper, share with your group, and search all publicly saved pages.


Excites.com - Organize your bookmarks by tags, add comments and notes, share publicly, subscribe to certain tags so you can be notified when a new site is added that may interest you.


Feedmelinks.com - All the usual social bookmarking goodies, but you can also add links via email.


GetBoo.com - Export your folders to HTML, import and remove duplicates, delete all bookmarks.


Givealink.org - Donate your bookmarks to this site to help them recommend sites and get a better understanding of how each person bookmarks.


Hyperlinkomatic.com - Import/export, categories, notes, sharing, block users, RSS, tags.


IKeepBookmarks.com - Folders, search folder names and more.


Lilisto.com - Ratings, notes, categories, smart categories and in-page editing.


Linkroll.com - Links open in new window, subscribe to tags, browse by archives.


Ma.gnolia.com - Discuss all the saved bookmarks in groups, see what the Featured Linker is all about, join discussions in the Hot Group.


Mister-Wong.com - Bookmark and tag, search for tags that interest you, make buddies with people who have interesting saved sites.


Netvouz.com - Save your bookmarks in folders, tag them with keywords, share them with others or password protect them.


Nextaris.com - Folders, tags, clippings; store up to 100MB for free.


Shadows.com - Share your already existing bookmarks, discuss and rate sites and see what you can find.


SocialBookmarking.org - User and global tag cloud, blogs, social networking, avatars and more.


StumbleUpon.com - Lets you “channel surf” the Internet and review sites; it learns what you like and recommends more of the same.


Unalog.com - A basic social bookmarking site, but with the ability to look back at specific days and see what was going on.


WireFan.com - You can vote on links as well as add thumbnails for sites.


Xilinus.com - Tags, rating, search, public & private listing, drag-and-drop sorting.


Yahoo! My Web - One button click adds your bookmarks to the search engine giants system, features duplicate detection to help you keep your bookmarks tidy.





(y) (y) Social Bookmarking Sites With Clipping


BlinkList.com - Save sites for later reading, share your list or keep it private, even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.


Clipclip.org - Like an online scrapbook, you clip out the part of the site you want, then share it with whomever you want, and discover new places to visit.


Clipmarks.com - Allows you to clip just the chosen bits of a webpage, save them to the main website, or even insert them into your own blog. Think of it as fancy block quoting.


del.icio.us - You add your bookmarks and access them from anywhere. Check out what others are saving and see where it takes you.


Furl.net - Not only can you do the standard bookmarking and sharing, you can save archived versions of a webpage and even export all your saved pages to a ZIP file.


Linktopia.com - Keep private, share, mark as friends only, edit bookmark dates.


RawSugar.com - Can cluster your tags for you based on recommendations by other users.


Simpy.com - This social bookmarker does all the usual plus detects links that have changed, and distributes your bookmarks via your blog’s RSS if you like.


Spurl.net - You can upload your existing bookmarks to get started, add more for centralized access, check out hot lists and recommendations.


SyncOne.net - All the usual features plus the ability to add your own Google Ads to the top of your profile page.


URLex.info - Inbox, group creation, directory, all of the usual features, plus being able to send your RSS feed to the site.






Social News


Blog-buzz.com - Similar to Digg, but for blog posts.


Digg.com - Synonymous with social bookmarking: you Digg a story, others Digg it, the more popular it gets the better chance it has of hitting the first page.


Netscape.com - A former contender in the browser wars, and the “mother” of Mozilla, it’s now a a social news aggregator with voting of stories similar to Digg.


Newsvine.com - Users can write articles on current news events, save links to external content; vote, comment and chat on article pages created by both users and by journalists.


Reddit.com - You vote up or down on a story making it move around on the home page.


Shoutwire.com - Similar to Digg, except instead of “Digging a story”, you “shout it”. Still a way to vote on unique Internet news stories.


Thoof.com - Add news stories you find interesting, anyone can “improve” the article by fixing the URL, editing the summary and more.





Lots more hot links: http://mashable.com/2007/08/08/social-bookmarking-2/



(f) (f) Enjoy! If anyone finds a web site that is really cool, please let me know! I would LOVE to explore. :-)







What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:D




If you're reading Download Squad, odds are you know all about Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Furl, and del.icio.us. But if you've ever had trouble explaining to your friends, relatives, and coworkers why it makes more sense to share news/store bookmarks online, this video is for you.



http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/08/07/a-social-bookmarking-explanation-your-mom-would-understand/



(f) (f)







Ab imo pectore

"From the bottom of the chest (heart).

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:s :s :s



Dem hopefuls oppose same-sex marriage

By: Ben Smith

Aug 10, 2007 12:21 AM EST


LOS ANGELES — The leading Democratic presidential candidates all but apologized for their failure to support same-sex marriage before a largely gay and lesbian television audience Thursday night.


The Los Angeles forum, organized by the Human Rights Campaign and the gay-themed cable network LOGO, marked the newfound political confidence of a community being swept into the mainstream by a swift, generational change in American views.


The debate's panelists, who included the president of the HRC, a Washington Post editorial writer and the lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge, took for granted the candidates' support for a sweeping package of federal rights for gays and lesbians.


And they drew repeated apologies from the candidates with longer records in public life, as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton defended her husband's record and Clinton, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson each apologized for past mistakes.


"We should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word 'marriage,' which has religious connotation to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples," said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, whose relative newness to the presidential stage left him as the only major candidate who hasn't shifted his position on gay rights.


But Obama, like Clinton and Edwards, was unable to explain his opposition to same-sex marriage in principled terms, referring to it as a matter of "semantics." Obama cast his opposition as a matter of strategy and priority — he would not have advised the civil rights movement to make the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws a top priority in 1961, he said.


Clinton called her opposition "personal," but didn't explain it. And Edwards took back an earlier comment that his "faith" had led him to oppose same-sex marriage — but didn't elaborate on the source of his current opposition.


"Their reasons for opposing equality in civil marriage tonight became even less clear," Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said in a statement after the debate.


Clinton has cast her decades in public life as an advantage to her candidacy, but seated in a beige armchair in the Oprah-style event, it was clearly a liability. Bill Clinton arrived in office in 1992 bearing high hopes for gays and lesbians, only to disappoint them on many key policy issues.


"Our hearts were broken. We were thrown under the bus. We were pushed aside. All of those great promises that were made to us were broken," Etheridge said, in one of several questions that seemed to veer the debate into the slightly narcissistic — and decidedly unjournalistic — territory of Los Angeles celebrity.


Clinton responded by defending two of the most controversial policies of the 1990s, the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on sexual orientation and the Defense of Marriage Act, which permits states to ignore same-sex marriages from other states.


She defended the two measures on largely tactical grounds: The Pentagon policy, she said, was the best that could be done at the time, while the Defense of Marriage Act forestalled something worse.


"I don't know that we could have defeated [the Federal Marriage Amendment] if we did not have DOMA," she said.


Edwards, for his part, pleased the crowd with a set of specific commitments. He said he would favor teaching about gay and lesbian families in public schools, and would personally help a hypothetical transgendered aide to transition to the other sex. And he firmly said he would take the question of gays in the military out of the hands of military officers, to whom President Clinton showed great deference in 1992.


"It's not the job of the generals to make this determination," he said. "It's the job of the president of the United States to make this policy determination."


Richardson was the only candidate to fall flat with a friendly crowd, who gave what is for the gay rights movement the distinctly wrong answer to the question of whether homosexuality is a matter of biology or choice.


"It's a choice," he seemed to guess, and then sunk into his armchair amid the shocked silence.


"I'm not sure you understood the question," Etheridge replied, but Richardson seemed unable to recover.


"I'm not a scientist. I don't see this as an issue of science or definition," he said. "I don't like to answer definitions like that, that perhaps are grounded in science or something else I don't understand."


After the debate, Richardson issued a statement saying he does not believe homosexuality is a choice.


The Los Angeles forum was the third appearance in a week of leading candidates before a core Democratic constituency. On Saturday, they addressed bloggers and activists at the YearlyKos convention, promising to stand up to Republicans and conservative media.


On Wednesday, they told a rowdy labor crowd in Chicago that they'd make organizing easier and add restrictions to trade.


And their appearance Thursday with a smaller, slicker crowd — it included gay semi-celebrities including the actor Neil Patrick Harris, most famous for his role as “Doogie Howser” — felt no different. It was a required stop on the campaign trail, with none of the frisson of danger or controversy that gay rights used to carry.


Another sign that the moment for controversy over gay issues has passed was the loneliness of the sole protester. The debate drew just one protester, a grizzled 65-year old retired firefighter named John Franklin, who carried a large black sign declaring "Homo-Sex" a "threat to national security."


Franklin said he was "angry at the Christian church for not responding" to him. And he maintained that "one protester is better than none."




http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5320.html





:| :| Gov. Richardson fell flat on his face when Mellissa Ehteridge asked her question about "at birth versus choice". You could see the stunned faces and shock among audience members.


(f) I am grateful to have had the opportunity to listen (and watch) the Democratic party candidates asnwer questions on the Logo Channel from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. last night. I didn't watch much of the analysis afterwards - the Logo commentators weren't experienced, IMHO. AND - "Saving Grace" was on TNT at 11:00 p.m. and I missed the first broadcast of this week's episode Monday.


The televised broadcast will be analyzed to death by everyone over the next week and probably alot longer, depending on what each candidate said (or didn't). :|



(f)





Frankly my dear, I very much DO give a damn. ^o)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:|



Gay voters scrutinize Democrats in TV forum

Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:16AM EDT

By Steve Gorman


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Six Democrats running for the White House made some history on Thursday night as they debated such issues as same-sex marriage versus civil unions in an unprecedented nationally televised forum directed at gay voters.


While the event, carried live on the gay-oriented cable network Logo, owned by Viacom Inc., shed little new light on candidates' positions, organizers hailed it as a political milestone.


The two-hour event marked the first time that an ensemble of major-party candidates for president -- this one all Democrats -- appeared together specifically to address a gay and lesbian audience in a national telecast.


Gays are estimated to account for 4 to 6 percent of the U.S. electorate, and, according to a recent survey, the percentage who turned out to vote in the 2004 presidential race topped 90 percent, far more than the public at large.


Organizers said candidates of both major parties were invited to take part but that no Republicans accepted.


"We pulled the curtain back a bit and gave all Americans a deeper look inside the candidates' core beliefs about the issues that affect our community," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian civil rights group that co-sponsored the forum.


Still, Solmonese said he was disappointed in the stand taken by four of the candidates, including front-runners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, in supporting civil unions for same-sex couples over full-fledged marriage.


The question of same-sex marriage vs. civil unions, which dominated Thursday's discussion, has emerged as a hot-button issue in the gay community and a tricky one for Democrats who count gays and lesbians among their core constituency.


"While we heard very strong commitments to civil unions and equality in federal rights and benefits, their reasons for opposing equality in civil marriage tonight became even less clear," Solmonese said.



EQUALITY

Solmonese was one of four panelists posing questions to the candidates, who appeared separately for 20 minutes each. Rock star and activist Melissa Etheridge also was a panelist.


At least one candidate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, seemed to stumble when asked by Etheridge if he believed homosexuality was a choice or biological.


"It's a choice," he said at first. "I'm not a scientist. I don't see this as an issue of science or definition."


When pressed on the point that opponents of gay rights often assert that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, Richardson said, "I don't think it's a matter of preferences, I think it's a matter of equality."


His campaign later issued a statement "clarifying" his position: "Let me be clear -- I do not believe that sexual orientation or gender identity happen by choice."


Like Richardson, the three leading Democrats in the race -- New York Sen. Clinton, Illinois Sen. Obama and former North Carolina Sen. Edwards -- struggled to explain why they oppose same-sex marriage but support civil unions that confer all the same legal rights that married couples enjoy.


"My view is we should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word 'marriage,' which has religious connotations to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples," Obama said.


Edwards backed away from previous statement that his opposition to gay marriage was grounded in his religious faith, stating, "I shouldn't have said that."


The two lone candidates backing full marriage for same-sex couples were two trailing the most in the polls -- Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.


All the candidates decried what they characterized as Republican attempts to use the debate over gay marriage to distract Americans from other issues.


As of January 2008, New Hampshire will become only the fourth state allowing civil unions for gay couples. Only Massachusetts permits full same-sex marriage. Twenty-six states have constitutional amendments barring gay marriage.




http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0927437220070810




:) Reuters is one primary source that countless news web sites around thte world use to write their own stories - so I thought I'd include the Reuters' story on last night's Logo broadcast. For anyone interested. (f)



:o I was surprised that Hilary agreed to come LAST. The candidates came on in the order that they accepted the invitation to attend.



:| And what was up with the two candidates talking about LOVE throughout their pitch? The candidate from Ohio seemed to be wobbly walking the line between making some sense and being off in the weeds. He reminded me of the young Timothy Leary on LSD - barely making himself understood. Actually it was worse, IMHO. Does he believe the GLBT community believes what the moderator called his "enlightened" position? Come on now. Well, his message didn't resonate with me.


The unfortunate thing is that nobody did for me last night.




"Let the sun shine in, Let the sun shine in..." :|







Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity. (w) (w)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:) (~) :) (~)



Puccini for Beginners (2006)


In this love-crazed comedy, commitment phobic Allegra (Elizabeth Reaser) is recovering from a breakup with her girlfriend but begins questioning her sexuality and sanity when she falls for a member of the opposite sex. Philip (Justin Kirk) is the tidy professor who romances the ambivalent Allegra while she also pursues Grace (Gretchen Mol), a straight, recently single woman. Director Maria Maggenti is the force behind this snappy screwball romp.


Cast:

Justin Kirk, Gretchen Mol, Julianne Nicholson, Elizabeth Reaser




(~) Reviews:


Puccini for Beginners is so good! This is exactly my kind of film. It is set in beautiful New York City. I also love Puccini, opera, and the Met (I recently saw Turandot there). It stars Elizabeth Reaser (Sweet Land -- and everywhere else lately it seems), Gretchen Mol (she was in Woody Allen's Celebrity), and Justin Kirk (Angels in America. A Manhattan bisexual romantic screwball comedy; does it get any better? It is from the great filmmaker Maria Maggenti of The Incredibly True Adventure of 2 Girls in Love fame.



This movie has been widely compared to Woody Allen, but I liked it better because it's so warm-hearted. Yes, it's a sophisticated screwball comedy of relations in New York, but it's so much subtler than Allen has become, and most definitely less sour. People are funny and witty, but without underlining their cleverness here--the jokes come almost unbidden, as in the best screwball comedies. They open their mouths and say outrageous, hilarious things, but quietly, and as if forced to by the peculiar circumstances they're in. I loved the script and every lead, and replayed many scenes because we laughed so hard we missed things.



(~)

Although there are stereotypical characters scattered through this movie in the roles of supporting characters, the main 6 characters are realistically complex enough to completely escape your predictions for their behavior. You will like them. They will surprise you. You will luxuriate in the company of these people (who you may wish were your friends- they are cooler than my friends).




(y) (y)







Mutantur omnia nos et mutamur in illis.

All things change, and we change with them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f) (f) (f)



Missing in America (2006)

After hiding out in the woods for 35 years, an emotionally damaged Vietnam veteran takes in the young daughter of an Army buddy in this heartwarming drama. Life will never be the same for grumpy recluse Jake (Danny Glover) when he winds up caring for the daughter of a terminally ill friend (David Strathairn). The spirited girl gives the scarred shut-in new purpose -- and brings hope to a community of forgotten veterans. Linda Hamilton co-stars.


Cast:

Danny Glover, Ron Perlman, Linda Hamilton, Zoe Weizenbaum, David Strathairn, Gabrielle Rose, Jesse Moss, Ty Olsson, Frank C. Turner, Colin Lawrence



(~) (~) Reviews:


I was drafted in Jan.1969 and was in the Army until Aug. 13, 1970 14:34. There are thousands of men that can relate to a film of this type. Being one of the first to get home and having it a lot easier than most that I went to school with. I seen how much different each one of them had changed, and how long it took for some, just not to jump at a loud sound. This film really does show why these men are like they are, but more of how they are living a very lonely life and they want it that way, maybe a little kindness and understanding would help them change a little. I do know that some people can handle a lot more than others and many hate themselves for things that they had to do. I enjoyed this film, but that’s just my point of view.



(~) (~)

I recently saw this film at the Monaco International Film festival and it was excellent, it even got Best Film at the festival. You should definitely see this movie, especially with someone you love. The acting and directing was superb, and it was a great story.





(l) (f) (l) (f) I gave it four stars. Amazing film.









What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l) (l)



The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee


When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in
a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.


A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front
of him When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and
empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then
asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.


The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar
He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between
the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They
agreed it was.


The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of
course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar
was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."


The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty
space between the sand. The students laughed.


"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to
recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the
important things -= your family, your children, your health, your friends
and your favourite passions -- and if everything else was lost and only
they remained, your life would still be full.


The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and
your car.


The sand is everything else -- the small stuff. "If you put the sand into
the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the
golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy
on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are
important to you."


"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend
time with your children Spend time with your parents. Visit with
grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to
dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and
fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first -- the things that
really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."


One of the students raised her hand and enquired what the coffee
represented. The professor smiled and said, "I'm glad you asked."


The coffee just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem,
there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."




(f) (f)





Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



Weekend showers - of meteors - expected

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Saturday, August 11, 2007


Look up! Look up! The Perseids are coming!


Meteors will be racing across the sky from the dusty fragments of an old comet this weekend and, with no moon out at night, should enchant patient sky watchers who've never seen them before, and give astronomers delightful work.


The Perseid meteor shower happens every August, and although it's not unusual at this time of year for nighttime fog to obscure the spectacle for everyone in San Francisco, the problem can be overcome by heading for the hills outside the city. Other good spots for viewing include Bay Area parks and meadows where city lights can't pollute the dark sky.


The best time to view the Perseids should be from Sunday after 10 p.m. until well before dawn Monday, but a few meteors will already be flying across the sky before midnight tonight and dawn Sunday, astronomers say.


Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, calculates that by 11 p.m. Sunday, about 15 streaks of light every hour will be flaring like falling stars across small segments of the sky. But by 5:14 a.m. Monday - just before dawn - the count could rise to nearly one every minute, Jenniskens said.


Most Perseids are likely to be somewhat faint, but now and then a single streak could shine as brightly as a star, he said.


The Perseid meteors are named after the region in the constellation Perseus known as the radiant where, to those watching, they appear to originate. They are, in fact, the dusty debris of a comet named Swift-Tuttle that orbits the sun and flies through the inner solar system roughly every 120 years.


The comet was discovered in 1862, and astronomers last observed it in 1992. But each year Earth's orbit carries it through the trail of particles from the comet - some are even as large as pebbles - that the sun's violent energy has stripped away. When those particles pass through the Earth's upper atmosphere they vaporize by friction into short-lived white-hot streaks.


At the end of this month, a truly rare and perhaps even more spectacular meteor shower called the Aurigids will also be visible briefly over Northern California skies, Jenniskens said.


About 2,000 years ago, a comet now called Kiess passed by the sun and flew back beyond the solar system before returning again in 1911, leaving behind a thin stream of dust particles that only occasionally encounter Earth's orbital path. The dusty meteors appear to originate in the constellation Auriga, hence the shower's name.


This year the Aurigid meteors will flare for only about an hour and should peak around 4:36 a.m. on Sept. 1. Sky watchers should be able to count almost 160 of the "falling stars" in that brief period, according to Jenniskens. Some could be colorful and some even brighter than starlight, he said.


Amateur astronomers - and professionals, too - will use this weekend's Perseid shower to practice their observation skills in preparation for the peak appearance of the Aurigid meteors.


Jenniskens will be flying out of the NASA Ames Research Center this weekend to practice observing and counting the Perseids, and then will lead two NASA planes on a rare all-night airborne mission to observe the Aurigids.
Online resources


Astronomer Peter Jenniskens has created a "Fluxtimator" applet that enables computers users with Java software to calculate the approximate meteor count each night for both showers. It can be found at:

links.sfgate.com/ZOQ



Meteor viewing tips

Andrew Fraknoi, chairman of astronomy at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, offers these recommendations:


-- Get away from lights as much as possible.


-- Allow 15 minutes for eyes to adapt to the dark.


-- The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, so try to have a full sky view away from trees and don't use binoculars.


-- Be patient. A shooting star may appear every few minutes.


-- Take someone with whom you like to sit in the dark.




http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/11/MN1VRFE7P.DTL




(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)



(f)




Ab Iove principium.

Let's start with the most important.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (l) (f)



The Scotsman Sun 12 Aug 2007


Meteor shower to be star attraction for astronomers, but cloudy sky's the limit

MURDO MACLEOD


A SPECTACULAR meteor shower will be seen over the UK this weekend, if the clouds stay away.


The Perseids, which streak through the sky every summer, will appear brighter than usual because of a new moon.


Astronomers estimate that under ideal conditions, up to 80 meteors an hour - one every 45 seconds - could be visible. Although the showers have already begun, they will be at their maximum tonight.


The shower will peak at around 3am. Although the meteors appear to radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus in the north-eastern sky, they can be seen from anywhere in the UK, depending on the weather. Enthusiasts in Scotland will need to be lucky or patient as tonight's forecast for most of the country is for rain.


Robin Scagell, vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The Perseids are the most reliable of the meteor showers. Although you could see 80 an hour, I'd say one a minute is more realistic, and that's a good number.


"They are distinctive meteors, which move quite quickly in a sudden flash of light. Some are quite spectacular with long contrails, and occasionally you get a trail that carries on glowing for a minute or two.


"Because there's going to be a new moon, this will be a good year to see them. Amateur astronomers will be out in force."


Dr Martin Lee, an expert in meteorites at Glasgow University, said: "It's actually about the same number of meteors, but because of the lack of moonlight you will be able to see them much better, but you need to try and get away from the light in and around the cities or you won't see it very well. If you live in Edinburgh, head for the Pentland Hills, that should be just far enough to give a really good view. And if you're in Glasgow then I would suggest travelling to around Helensburgh."


Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society, added: "If you have never seen a meteor shower, this is a really nice opportunity to watch one. It can be spectacular. The nice thing about it is that it is really easy to watch. You just have to get out of bed and look toward the east. Even if you just watch for just a minute or two, you should see quite a few meteors."


Skywatchers are advised to avoid being in close proximity to artificial lighting such as street lights in order to maximise their vision.


The Perseids are made up of dusty debris shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle, discovered in 1862. Each year the Earth's orbit causes it to plough through the meteors, which burn up as they shoot through the upper atmosphere. Most of the meteors are no bigger than a grain of sand, but as they shoot through the Earth's atmosphere at around 135,000mph they burn up in a bright light and many leave a glowing streak in their wake. Occasionally, they ignite into a bright fireball as larger meteors shoot through.


The Perseids, which are named after the constellation from which they appear to originate, Perseus, used to be known as the "tears of St Lawrence" after a 3rd-century archdeacon of Rome. When he was executed by the Romans, meteors streaked through the night sky and reappeared every year around St Lawrence's feast day on August 10.


Chinese records from 36AD contain the earliest reports of the Perseids.


Star-gazers should also watch out for Mars, which will be especially bright in the northern sky over this weekend.



http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1266992007



(y) (y)






Ad astra!

To the stars!


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (l) (f) (l) (f)



The Tibetan plateau is framed by a dining-car window. For luxury travelers, no place now seems too remote for a train trip.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/12/travel/12jour600.1.jpg



August 12, 2007

Journeys | Luxury Trains

Riding the Velvet Rails

By JOSHUA KURLANTZICK


AS the train rolled across the Tibetan countryside, I stared out into a harsh, bleak landscape. Tibetan nomads rode horses across seemingly endless grasslands dotted with small alpine lakes and ravines cut across snow-capped peaks. Tibetan traders hauling wheelbarrows piled with meat and barley walked a solitary road alongside the train route.


Inside the new Tibet train, which opened last summer and climbs to 16,000 feet while linking Lhasa to other parts of western China , passengers luxuriated in creature comforts. Groups of Chinese travelers played cards in their plush reclining chairs and four-bunk cabins. Even the waitresses, normally surly on Chinese trains, seemed to have attended remedial charm school — they laughed and even bowed slightly as they handed out plates of noodles and spicy Sichuan sautéed tofu. And next year, the trip will become even more luxurious; the company Rail Partners plans to open a high-end route to Lhasa that will include 24-hour butler service and flat-screen TVs.


Even in remote Tibet, it seems, the era of luxury train travel has returned, albeit to areas where it never before existed. Many nations are reinvesting in their train systems since flying has become more uncomfortable and far less luxurious in the age of terrorism and low-cost airlines; this summer has produced more stories of flight delays. And with growing interest in airplanes’ carbon footprint, some travelers also are realizing trains may be more environmentally friendly.


In a world of cramped and unpleasant planes, trains actually may be the last respite of luxury. Sensing this demand, luxury travel companies like Orient-Express have invested in restoring the world’s most famous train routes. And travelers are responding by packing new trains. In China, tickets for the Tibet route are so coveted that a black market has sprung up at some stations, and I had to pay a scalper four times face value to get one of the coveted berths when I traveled last August.


Much of the new boom in luxury trains has come in Asia , which has a generation of newly wealthy tourists eager to see their own countries. Vietnam has upgraded the train system running the length of the country. India’s rail system long has knitted the nation together, but in recent years it has moved beyond its utilitarian purpose. The upscale Taj hotel group, for one, has helped roll out the Deccan Odyssey, which rumbles from Mumbai to Goa and Pune. The Deccan’s interiors resemble maharajas’ palaces, with overstuffed sofas and rich wood walls, and stewards onboard monitor their guests’ every need. A similar luxury train, the Palace on Wheels, runs from Delhi through the tourist triangle of Jaipur and Agra, and the Indian government is considering another luxury route across the entire country.


Orient-Express pioneered the new age of upscale Asian trains, by creating the Eastern & Oriental Express between Singapore and Bangkok in the early ’90s. That train simulates the grand, formal Asian trains of the early 20th century, with cherry paneling, silk curtains and cabins complete with Bulgari toiletries.


The Eastern & Oriental benefits from innate Thai hospitality, which can make even a train breakdown endurable. On one recent trip heading south from Bangkok, on a normal Thai train, the carriage shuddered to a halt just before the next station, leaving my fellow passengers and me staring out the window at rice fields and an occasional water buffalo. The air-conditioning started to falter — not a welcome development on a 100-degree day. Still, while the engineers tried to fix the power, members of the cabin staff distributed bottles of water and boxes of icy fresh papaya and pineapple.


Many of these Asian trains pattern themselves after cruise ships and include amenities far beyond traditional railroads. The Deccan includes a spa room, where you can sample local ayurvedic massage and steam baths as the train rolls on. Other new trains include boutiques and Internet access.


European and African nations also have recognized the demand for luxury rail trips. Competing with South Africa’s long-running Blue Train between Cape Town and Pretoria, a formal experience where men don jackets for dinner in the train restaurant, the South African businessman Rohan Vos began Rovos Rail. Using restored carriages from as far back as 1911, Rovos offers itineraries across southern Africa. Even small, isolated Eritrea has revamped its narrow-gauge railway, dating from the Italian colonial era, so it can run charters. It ascends through impossibly steep passes rising from Asmara, the capital.


As in Asia, Orient-Express helped rebuild the European luxury rail market by restoring 1920s coaches and trying to re-create the most famous train in history, the Orient Express route to Istanbul, which inspired mystery novels and films. The new-old train comes complete with afternoon tea and snaking curves through Austrian mountain passes. No microwaved burgers or other typical train fare here: At meals on Orient-Express’s trains, guests can dig into beluga caviar, white truffle risotto and roasted Alaskan white king salmon.


GW Travel, a British travel company, this year began a luxury trans-Siberian service from Moscow to Vladivostok. The service barely resembles the trip I once took on an old Siberian spur route, where cabin attendants screamed at passengers in the middle of night and, during an hours-long train stop, we waited outside in a dark, decrepit border town as traders tried to sell us ratty Mongolian cashmere sweaters and moldering fruit. Instead, GW’s train features cabins with flat-screen TVs and DVD players.


Even long-maligned Amtrak is getting into the act, and plans to introduce restored vintage cars on several long cross-country and Eastern Seaboard routes.


Working with Grand Luxe Rail Journeys, Amtrak is equipping the cars with lounges that feature live piano music and upscale dining cabins with uniformed waiters. The restored cars will be connected to regular Amtrak trains, but passengers from other cars will not be able to enter the upscale section.


Some things, apparently, never change.



VISITOR INFORMATION

The most comprehensive Web site about international train travel is www.seat61.com. It’s run by a former employee of British train companies and offers route details, extensive information about how to book in many nations and detailed histories of some of the world’s most famous trains.


For organized all-inclusive luxury rail trips through Europe, try the tour operator Great Rail Journeys (www.greatrail.com). These trips normally include train tickets, guides and accommodations for wherever you stop, though this can vary. A 10-day tour of the Tyrol starts at £795 (about $1,645 at $2.07 to the pound), and an 11-day tour through Spain and on to Morocco by ferry starts at £1,750.


Or, you can book luxury trains more directly. For more information about the Deccan, go to www.deccan-odyssey.com, and for more information about the Eastern & Oriental Express and the restored Orient Express see www.orient-express.com. (The Orient Express, now called the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, primarily runs to Venice, but it offers occasional special trips to Istanbul.) For more information about the upscale trans-Siberian route go to www.gwtravel.co.uk. Twin shares on the trans-Siberian route next year start at £5,495. Blue Train information is available at www.bluetrain.co.za, and Rovos information is at www.rovos.com. Information on Amtrak’s new upscale service is available at www.grandluxerail.com. Berths start at $789 a person.


For train bookings in Thailand other than on the Eastern & Oriental, see www.thaifocus.com. An interesting side train trip is to Kanchanaburi, in western Thailand, where museums commemorate the World War II railway link with Burma built by Thai laborers and Allied prisoners of war, which inspired “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”





(l) (l) (l) (l)






Ad augusta per angusta.

To high places by narrow roads. (Or train tracks.) ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)



Four restaurants on the Outer Cape make an effort to offer the kind of quality cooking that nowadays everyone can find in their hometowns.



Mac’s Shack, serving local fare and authentic kitsch.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/12/travel/12choice600.1.jpg




August 12, 2007

Choice Tables | Cape Cod

In Clam-Shack Country, the Classics Reign

By MARK BITTMAN


LOCAL bounty is increasingly the attraction in the world's best eating places. And although the waters off Cape Cod have seen a terrible decline in fish (if it were discovered today, it would be named Cape Clam Shack, or Cape Summer House) there are still enough commercial fishermen to supply local restaurants. So I wish the reigning philosophy would be more as it is in coastal communities elsewhere: “Here's what we've got, and we hope you like it.” Aren't well-traveled Americans, having eaten whelk in France, head-on sardines in Italy, and fresh sea cucumber in Spain, venturesome enough to sample local shark, monkfish, octopus, skate and more?


Sadly, I see little evidence of this. Even good cooking all too often focuses on an audience, real or imagined, that doesn't care where it is. This mythical clientele wants meat, chicken, shrimp and salmon (oh, and tuna tartar) no matter where they find themselves.


So though I found little uncommon or adventuresome — none of the shark, monkfish or other above-mentioned fish, all plentiful in the waters there, were on any menus I saw — what I did find in a tour of Outer Cape restaurants was more attention paid to common local seafood (like cod, clams and oysters) and other local ingredients than 10 years ago, and an effort to offer the kind of quality cooking that nowadays everyone can find in their hometowns.


Abba is a good example, a big-town restaurant in a little house just outside the heart of Orleans (Old Colony Way and West Road, Orleans; 508-255-8144). Along with the Wicked Oyster, which I'll discuss next, it's the most promising development in food on the Cape since they began selling scallops with roe at Hatch's Fish Market (310 Main Street, Wellfleet, for those of you cooking). The house is an old wooden Cape, with wide-board floors and a semi-formal, modern look. It feels geared toward an older, moneyed crowd, but it isn't overpriced: an average meal for two, with tip and a $40 bottle of wine (the wine list is appealing), runs about $150. For the quality of the food, and especially the efficient service, this isn't bad. (Because Abba is open year-round, everything seems more professional than in places that rely on seasonal help.)


I wish there were more local fish, but as you've gathered, that's a recurring theme; otherwise the food is mostly interesting and well-prepared. The chef is Israeli (abba means father in Hebrew), but the menu is ostensibly pan-Mediterranean (I'd call it neo-Californian), with a little Thai thrown in. In principle I'd rather ditch the Thai food, but in reality the grilled squid on watercress and tomato, laced with lime and chili and nam pla, is probably the most unusual salad you'll find east of Providence. Steamed mussels in coconut milk is another winner, as was pad Thai. Thai seafood stew, however, made with a variety of fish, did not sing, and when I thought of what you could do with a few local clams, mussels, squid and finfish, I felt a little sad.


The non-Thai cooking was more consistent, especially creamy, subtle artichoke soup; crisp hot falafel with cool tahini sauce; rack of lamb with North African spices; and perfectly cooked king salmon with sweet chili jam. These dishes do not give Abba a sense of place — you might as well be in Healdsburg — but they do give mid-Cape diners a chance to escape from the mind-boggling dullness of mediocre clam shacks and pretentious country club-style restaurants. For that, and the sticky rice black pudding with coconut ice cream and pineapple, I love it.


I'm equally fond of the Wicked Oyster, which is just off Route 6 on the way into Wellfleet Center (50 Main Street, Wellfleet; 508-349-3455). The setup is similar, but less design-y: an old house, replete with foot-wide floorboards but without the sophisticated trappings. The light fixtures might be from Ikea, there's a lively bar scene with the Red Sox game on television, and the mostly hard surfaces seem to amplify noise. Although the Wicked Oyster is also open year-round (and for breakfast and lunch), the staffing is a bit more Cape-like, which is to say amateurish. On one visit, my server — to her credit — actually apologized for being so far behind.


But, the food there is honest, and someone is alive and awake and paying attention in this kitchen — you'd be as happy to eat their food on the Upper West Side as you will be in Wellfleet. (Actually, the Upper West Side would benefit from the presence of a place like this.) Prices are fair, but without exerting ourselves my companion and I spent $200 on dinner; you could keep it lower, but, again, this is a real restaurant and priced accordingly. (The wine list is another good one.)


The most expensive entrée was my $33 lobster stew with fresh corn, peas and pea shoots, and it was sensational, as good a dish as I've had in months, one in which everything worked. Nearly as satisfying was striped bass in a stew with potatoes, arugula, leeks, cream, clams and bacon. Two dishes, and as much local fish and even vegetables as you see on entire menus in other restaurants.


Also notable was seared yellowfin tuna with three sauces (a hot chili sauce, which should be sampled last — wish I'd had warning — a mellow herb sauce and a mustard mayo); oyster stew had too much thyme for my taste, but was otherwise credible. Most of the other offerings are what you might call classic contemporary: seared foie gras, fried calamari, walnut and gorgonzola salad, rack of lamb, grilled salmon, a pork chop from Niman Ranch in California. I stuck with what appeared to be the local fish and was happy I did.


Desserts provided an example of one of those kitchens where either the chef has a split personality or is at war with the pastry chef. Out of a sense of duty, I ordered — get this — a banana white-chocolate ice cream cake, the description of which is as long as this sentence; not surprisingly, it didn't make for compelling eating. Strawberry shortcake, the “chef's whim” of the evening, was better, but unexciting. You might be better off going back to PJ's on Route 6 for a soft ice cream. (While I'm at it, PJ's — 2616 Route 6, Wellfleet; 508-349-2126 — has the best fried clams and onions rings I've had on the Cape.)


If the Cape is as touristic as Manhattan, Provincetown is the Empire State Building, and the food has long been about as good as that you expect around 34th and 5th, which is to say not very. But the Red Inn, a 200-plus-year-old house that has been beautifully maintained and restored and updated — yes, there are wide-plank floors here too — is at least making an effort (15 Commercial Street, Provincetown; 508-487-7334). I wish that there were more local fish on the menu (and now I'll shut up). There is a lovely dish of Chatham cod with a huge quantity of confited garlic, rosemary, potatoes, lemon and bacon, and it would feed two; a plate of four gargantuan sea scallops over orzo was not as complex, but equally satisfying. And the raw bar is first-rate.


But beyond that, the food, while in general well prepared, is aimed at people who visit the Cape to eat the same food they do at their local restaurants at home. A gargantuan serving of lamb chops with mashed potatoes in red wine demi-glace; yellowfin tuna over Provençal-style beans; Kobe beef mini-burgers (which, with a salad and a glass or two of red, would make a lovely little dinner).


And the place is gorgeous, with walls of white, taupe and ochre, tongue-and-groove paneling over a bay window in the beautiful back room, fireplaces, a great barroom, a killer view, lovely gardens, a deck right on the water. It's not the best food on the Outer Cape, but it may well be the best food in Provincetown, and it's an altogether positive experience.


Back in Wellfleet, the hard reservation (especially since they don't take any) is at Mac's Shack, near the harbor in Wellfleet (91 Commercial Street; 508-349-6333). I was excited about it for a couple of reasons in addition to its popularity. One, I'm a fan of Mac's takeout on the town pier (the best view of any clam shack I know), and of its fish market in “downtown” Truro. And two, I have a historical fondness for the space, which was once the Lobster Hutt (sic) and is still adorned with a boat attached to the roof, in which is standing a mannequin dressed as a fisherman, casting a net down to a huge model of a lobster. Now, this over-the-top variation on vernacular Cape Cod architecture — bring your camera — overlooks an incredibly busy bar scene, which includes, from 3 in the afternoon, a raw bar and sushi.


There's a sushi bar inside, too, and about as ambitious a menu as you'd want to see, all the way from poblano peppers stuffed with wild Maine shrimp to coconut curried scallops to sake-marinated tofu to the usual fried stuff, to tuna tartar. There are truffled mashed potatoes, tuna mango martinis, and those weird, large sushi rolls. There are lobster dinners, surf and turf, and New York strip, and plain broiled fish.


All of this in a big, open, noisy, crowded room with lots of very cool copper-topped tables and just about as many people as can fit. The service is beyond informal (my party of four, which included a woman, was called “guys” at least 10 times); the plates are real, though the napkins are paper; the prices are fair, though not cheap. (You can easily spend $50 a person here before wine, but you can also hold it to $30 and eat well.)


The great thing is that there are a lot of local fin- and shellfish: bluefish, cod, swordfish, striped bass, haddock, scallops, clams and oysters. The not-so-great thing is that like the servers, the kitchen staff seems inexperienced: swordfish and scallops were overcooked, striped bass was undercooked, and cod was right on the money. One out of four isn't exactly a sweep. I'd like to see this place with better focus, and perhaps a bit less of a mob, so the quality of the fish can shine through.


Still, more restaurants like Mac's — ambitious, but with an eye toward using Cape seafood — would go a long way.




(l) (f) (l) (f)






Amicus optima vitae possessio.

A friend is the greatest treasure in life. (f)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



Once again, you’re bound for Guest Hampton or Give-Me-Shelter Island, and once again, you’re pondering what to take your weekend hosts. Hostess gifts should convey the giver’s wit, good taste and gratitude — without kicking down the doors of ostentation. Below are a clutch of clever indie-shop choices for the well-behaved guest, all $55 or less. Accessorize them with a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou-washing-dishes, and odds are you’ll be invited back at Thanksgiving.



Slide Show:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/04/fashion/20070805_PULSE_SLIDESHOW_2.html




Knitted Fruit Covers? :| :|


:o All of the items seemed a wee bit (or alot) over the top, don't you think? :D Must be nice to be willing to pay $2. per paper cup with a nose on it......;)


^o) I've never gone empty-handed to a shindig, but what about wine, flowers and/or a fantastically fabulous fresh fruit dessert to somebody's home? <Still smiling over the knitted fruit covers as well as my love of alliteration...)

:)


(f)





Ars longa, vita brevis.

Art is long, life is short. (f)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l) (l)



August 8, 2007

The Minimalist

101 Quick Meals? Make It an Even 111

By MARK BITTMAN


“SUMMER Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less,” the Minimalist column on July 18, clearly struck a chord.


From the comments posted at nytimes.com, which numbered close to 400, it was evident that the heat was not the only factor driving a desire for ultrafast cooking.


Summer did enter into many people’s thinking. One reader suggested taking a half-gallon of ice cream outside for the family to consume before it melted.


But another wrote, “With an uncooperative spouse, a demanding job and three impossible children, five-minute meals are perhaps more the ticket.”


Then there were the jokes: “Put two quarts water in stock pot, add salt, set to boil. Pick up phone and call local pizzeria; order. Wait for water to boil. Answer doorbell. Open door, pay for pizza. Turn off water; let water cool while eating pizza. Pour water down drain.”


And there were the posts in the “I wish I’d thought of that” category. My favorites, not easily achieved in the average American kitchen, were along the lines of this one: “Spread homemade lard (or goose fat if you have any) on slices of farmhouse bread; sprinkle with salt and paprika. Eat as is, or with scallions and/or Hungarian wax peppers.” (Try substituting the phrase “lardo di colonnata” for “lard,” and you will quickly understand how trendy this simple idea is.)


There were pasta dishes ad infinitum. (Indeed, when putting together the original list, I eliminated a dozen or more pasta possibilities in a search for balance.) While many pasta recipes suggested by readers sound wonderful, I’m setting them aside for the same reason.


Following are some of the other suggestions that are worth sharing with a wider audience.


(l) (l) (l) 1. Tortilla soup: Obviously best with fresh salsa, homemade stock and so on, but even with store-bought ingredients this has appeal: Combine one cup of cooked black beans and one cup of corn kernels with four cups of chicken stock in a pot; heat through. (You can add leftover chicken meat.) Fill four bowls with cilantro, tortilla chips, salsa and shredded cheese. Pour broth over chip mixture and serve.



2. Fast beans and vegetables: Sauté chopped onions, minced garlic and sliced zucchini in extra virgin olive oil. Add two cups of cooked white beans and two cups of chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper, lots of basil and a little more oil. Serve plain or over couscous.



3. Sauté chopped chorizo (the hard Spanish kind) in olive oil until it begins to crisp. Add two cups of chopped tomatoes and one cup of water or clam juice; cook until saucy. Add a dozen or more well-scrubbed littleneck clams and cook until they open. Serve in bowls, along with bread.



4. Lebanese fava bean salad: Heat equal amounts of canned fava beans and chickpeas; mash with a potato masher along with a minced garlic clove, lemon juice to taste and salt. Garnish with chopped parsley and diced tomatoes. Eat with pita.



5. The Greek fried egg: Heat olive oil gently in a skillet with fresh oregano; fry eggs in it. Pour into a bowl and top with crumbled feta cheese and a handful of olives. Serve with country bread.



6. Basil chicken, Indian style: Ideally, this is marinated for hours, but you can either cheat and skip that, or think ahead. Grind together half a cup of basil leaves, five cloves garlic, a one-inch piece of ginger, half a cup of plain yogurt, two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, one tablespoon lemon juice and some salt. Toss with one-and-a-half-inch chunks of chicken breast (or salmon, pork or other protein); marinate in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours, stirring occasionally. Shake off excess marinade and broil or grill chicken until done, turning once.



7. Mix grated lemon peel with softened butter (or olive oil) and salt. Cut the lemons into quarters and alternate on skewers with shrimp. Grill or broil, brushing with lemon butter, until shrimp are done.


8. Bean-and-tuna salad: Good, olive-oil packed tuna is a must here: Combine two cups of cannellini beans, drained, with a minced red onion, a can of tuna, olive oil and salt and pepper as needed. Chopped sage is great in this, as are rosemary and basil.



9. Toss three cups of strawberries, hulled and halved or quartered, with a tablespoon of good aged balsamic vinegar and some black pepper. Wash and dry four cups arugula, then toss with salt and olive oil. Combine with the berries, and crumble fresh goat cheese over all.



(l) (l) 10. Cucumber soup: Peel and seed, if necessary, four to six medium cucumbers (or three English cucumbers); purée in a food processor with a seeded, stemmed jalapeño (optional), a scallion, a clove of garlic and a cup or more of yogurt or sour cream; add a little cold water if necessary to get the machine to work. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve in bowls, garnished with a little more yogurt or sour cream, and some snipped dill or chives.



(y) (y) (y)



(f)





Aut disce aut discede,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o :o :o :o :o



August 12, 2007

God Bless Amerigo

By NATHANIEL PHILBRICK


AMERIGO

The Man Who Gave His Name to America.

By Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

231 pp. Random House.


It’s one of the stranger quirks of history and geography. The continent that was supposedly discovered by Christopher Columbus is named for a decidedly second-rate Johnny-come-lately of an explorer named Amerigo Vespucci. Like Columbus, Vespucci was an Italian who sailed on occasion under the flag of Spain. But unlike Columbus, Vespucci was more at home in a counting house than a sailing ship. (Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, normally a booster of all things American, dismissed him as a mere “pickle dealer.”) What Vespucci did have, according to Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s wonderfully idiosyncratic and intelligent new biography of the explorer, was a gift for chicanery and self-promotion, along with an aching need to be remembered. As it turns out, America — this nation of notorious hucksters, dreamers and spin doctors — was named for just the right guy.


Fernández-Armesto’s previous books about world history and exploration — “The Americas,” “Civilizations” and “Pathfinders,” among them — are must reading in these globally minded times. But even a historian of Fernández-Armesto’s learning and reach might have chosen to ignore the fact that 2007 marks the 500th anniversary of the naming of America. Except for a few brief narratives and letters, the record is maddeningly slight when it comes to Vespucci. But “Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America” is much more than an occasional throwaway. Using the bare bones of what is known about Vespucci to expatiate on subjects as diverse as the brutal world of Renaissance Italy, the importance of trade winds to world history and the poetics of travel writing, Fernández-Armesto has written a provocative primer on how navigators like Columbus and Vespucci set loose the cultural storm that eventually created the world we live in today.


Vespucci (1454-1512) grew up in the turbulent orbit of the Medici family in Florence. Although he spent considerable time as a student and traveled briefly to Paris on a diplomatic mission, most of his early years were spent juggling a variety of business ventures. It might seem like an unlikely way to prepare for a career as a navigator and cosmographer, but as Fernández-Armesto says, “a man with a head for accounts may also have a head for astronomical lucubrations.”


It was business that brought Vespucci to Seville just around the time that Columbus was mounting his famous voyage across the Atlantic. By the time Columbus returned in triumph in 1493, Vespucci was intimately connected with the group of merchants that supplied the explorer’s subsequent, far less successful voyages. By the late 1490s, with Vespucci’s financial prospects deteriorating and with the example of Columbus’s sudden fame offering apparent inspiration, Vespucci (now in his late 40s) opted for a career makeover. He would go to sea. Even though Columbus had so far failed to find the westward route to Asia, Ferdinand and Isabella were still willing to follow up on Columbus’s discoveries — as long as it didn’t involve Columbus, who was now in disfavor with the court. Into the breach leapt Vespucci.


Vespucci earned what reputation he has as an explorer by participating in two trans-Atlantic voyages between 1499 and 1502. It was during the second voyage, this time under the Portuguese flag, that Vespucci ventured to the coast of modern-day Brazil and claimed to have discovered a new continent — what he called the New World. As Fernández-Armesto explains, this claim was not as bold and prescient as it might otherwise seem. Several years earlier, in 1498, Columbus had sailed past the mouth of the Orinoco River and reasoned that this huge outwash of fresh water could come only from a landmass of continental proportions. Columbus called it “an enormous land, to be found in the south, of which at the present time nothing has been known.” In claiming that South America was a continent, Vespucci was only confirming what his mentor and role model Columbus had already established. Vespucci, it turns out, was also not the first to use the phrase “New World” — that distinction goes to Peter Martyr, who had coined the term three years earlier.


Even more important than his actual accomplishments were the accounts of his voyages. In his writings he was driven, like many explorers before and since, by a desire to establish a lasting name for himself. In one of his few existing manuscript letters, Vespucci tells of his decision to write an account of his most recent voyage so he can leave “some fame behind me after I die.” In these narratives, Vespucci depicts himself as a navigator par excellence. While mere seamen rely on experience and orally transmitted sailing instructions to find their way across the ocean, Vespucci ostentatiously wields his navigational instruments. Much like that of the medical doctors of his day, Vespucci’s science appears to have been more about deception and bluff than actual results, but as Fernández-Armesto writes, “the difference between magic and science is narrower than most people think today.”


It was in 1507, with the publication of a large cut-out map suitable for creating a do-it-yourself globe, that Vespucci’s first name, if not Vespucci himself, achieved lasting renown. On this map, published in the intellectual backwater of St. Dié in Lorraine, the designation “America” (the feminine of Amerigo) was chosen for the portion of the hemisphere where Vespucci claimed to have landed during his second voyage. In 1538, the noted mapmaker Mercator, apparently referring to the earlier map from St. Dié, chose to use the name America to mark not just the southern but also the northern portion of the continent. The rest, as they say, is history. “The tradition was secure,” Fernández-Armesto writes, “the decision irreversible.” And so, because of Mercator and assorted others, more than 350 million of us now call ourselves Americans.


As Fernández-Armesto astutely observes, it’s probably a good thing Mercator went with America instead of what might have been the more obvious choice, Christopheria or, say, Columbia. “Columbus has such an ineluctable presence in history,” he writes, “that a hemisphere named after him would never be free of association with him. With every vocalization, images of imperialism, evangelization, colonization, massacre and ecological exchange would spring to mind. The controversies would be constant, the revulsion unendurable.” Since Amerigo Vespucci is a historical nonentity, the term “America” is free of the disturbing connotations that would have been associated with his more famous forebear. “History has made him irrelevant,” Fernández-Armesto writes, “to the major resonances of his own name.” Thanks to the ephemerality of Amerigo Vespucci’s reputation as an explorer, America was given an enduring name.


Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of “In the Heart of the Sea,” “Sea of Glory” and, most recently, “Mayflower.”




:| I never knew (or completely forgot) how the Americas including our own country was named! :o Can't you just imagine some President beginning his speech with the words, "My fellow Vespuccians..."?



;) ;)






Cibi condimentum est fames.

Hunger is a spice for any meal. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)



The Buddy System (1984)


(~) Plot Summary: A quiet school truant officer, Joe, uncovers a young boy's attempt to fake a residential address, and subsequently gets involved romantically with the boy's mother. The truant officer waffles between a sadistic relationship with his on-again, off-again girlfriend and the mother. When one of the officer's inventions takes off, he chooses the girl and shatters the friendship with the boy and his mother. Only at the last possible moment does he figure out what he's sacrificed, and attempts to get it back. Written by Cheryl Pickard.



Cast:

Richard Dreyfuss ... Joe

Susan Sarandon ... Emily

Nancy Allen ... Carrie

Jean Stapleton ... Mrs. Price


Wil Wheaton ... Tim




(~) (~) Reviews:

I loved The Buddy System. Yes, it was very cheesy and completely predictable. But, if you like slushy romantic dramas, this one is for you. Richard Dreyfuss is brilliant as usual as the wannabe writer. Susan Sarandon plays the potential love interest, and the ever cute Wil Wheaton as her little son. The scene in which Timmy (Wheaton) explains to his mother (Sarandon) about the meaning of "The Buddy System" is like the core of the film - this is where you understand the whole meaning of it. A very cosy movie that leaves you believing there could be happy endings in real life, too.



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087006/



http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800042188/info





(f) (f) What a very young Susan Sarandon - already luminous and so gifted. Dreyfuss is no slouch outfit as an actor either. The kid steals many scenes with his lines. (y) (y)


(co)(co) Was a nice break from the computer glass - for the eyes as well as jumping the synapse to right brain. :)







Claude os, aperi oculos!

Shut your mouth, open your eyes. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)



Q U O T E D


"My expectations for this computer were, I must admit, not very high. But it completely took me by surprise. It was cleverly designed, imaginative, straightforward, easy to understand (I was given no instructions on how to use it. It was just, 'Here. Figure it out yourself.'), useful and simple, entertaining, dependable, really a 'stick to the basics' kind of computer. ...


"My main problem with this laptop is how very slow it is. ... I had to wait two minutes to get onto one application. That's just a little longer than I can accept. Also, it got slower and slower and slower the longer I went without rebooting it. ... And one of the most frustrating things about the system was that it gave no warning when it was out of power (as it was often because it lost charge very quickly) but just shut down. ...


"All in all, this laptop is great for its price, its job, and its value. It is almost perfect. Just speed it up, give it a little more battery charge hold, and you have yourself the perfect laptop. I'm sure kids around the world will really love, enjoy, and cherish these laptops."


-- A 12-year-old reviews the One Laptop Per Child program's XO computer.




http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1187



http://laptop.org/vision/index.shtml



http://laptop.org/en/laptop/





:| :| :|





Caveat emptor.

Let the buyer beware.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

....that have been translated as "easy to read, exciting teenage novels" in which "difficult passages and complicated events are made easy and illuminated as the stories unfold."


(f) (f)



http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/shakespeare_ebooks.htm





"The Tempest":

http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/modern_tempest_online.htm





"Hamlet":

http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/modern_hamlet_online.htm





(f) (f) (f)






De gustibus non est disputandum.

In matters of taste there is no dispute. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:) (f) :) (f)



THE HUMOR OF STEVEN WRIGHT


If you're not familiar with the work of Steven Wright, he's the famous
scientist who once said: "I woke up one morning and all of my stuff had been
stolen...and replaced by exact duplicates."


His mind sees things differently than we do, to our amazement and amusement.
Here are some more of his gems:


1- I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.


2- Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.


3- Half the people you know are below average.


4- 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.


5- 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.


6- A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.


7- A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.


8- If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.


9- All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand.


10- The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.


11- I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.


12- OK, so what's the speed of dark?


13- How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?


14- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something.


15- Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.


16- When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.


17- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.


18- Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.


19- I intend to live forever -- so far, so good.


20- If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?


21- Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.


22- What happens if you get scared half to death twice?


23- My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn
louder."


24- Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?


25- If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.


26- A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.


27- Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.


28- The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.


29- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is
research.


30- The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.


31- The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.


32- The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.


33- Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film!




(y) (y) (y)







Ars longa, vita brevis.

Art is long, life is short.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:D



http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/gallery.cfm




(f)






Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l) (l)




Houseboats on Princes Canal in Amsterdam, once a low-cost alternative to living on land, have gone upscale in recent years.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/14/world/14houseboat.600.jpg




Low Coast Canal Living SLIDE SHOW:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/13/world/20070814_HOUSEBOAT_slideshow_index.html




August 14, 2007

Amsterdam Journal

A Rising Tide of Gentrification Rocks Dutch Houseboats

By JOHN TAGLIABUE


AMSTERDAM, Aug. 8 — On a recent Saturday during the confusion of this watery city’s annual Gay Pride Parade along the majestic Princes Canal, a beach umbrella was knocked into the water from the foredeck of Jackie Wijnakker’s houseboat, so she dove into the water to fetch it, unsuccessfully. It was only the second time in 17 years that she had jumped into the canal, and she cannot recall what she was trying to retrieve the first time. At any rate, she said with a laugh, “I’m too old to be diving into canals.”


She told the tale as a testament to how clean the water is, despite its murky, khaki color. “The canals are flushed regularly,” said Ron Van Heukelom, a neighbor who lives on dry land and has never ventured into the canal.


The flushing is necessary because, while most of Amsterdam’s 2,800 houseboats have running water, electricity and gas heat, few are connected to sewerage systems and continue to spill their waste into the canals.


The houseboats’ lack of toilet training is their dirty little secret, one that sits uncomfortably with a new generation of wealthier, more demanding owners who are leading a gentrification of the houseboat scene. In the process, they are displacing the less affluent boat people, many of whom are relics of the 1960s and 1970s era of flower power now struggling to pay the upkeep on their boats.


“The water is cleaner than it looks,” said Monique J. M. Jacobs, an official of the city agency responsible for water and the boats. The canals, she explained, are flushed by opening and closing locks about twice a week, and in summer more often. “Small fish are coming back, and also birds that feed off the fish,” she said. “In the old days it was awful. It stank in summer.”


The city wants to go further. It plans to install sewage pipes along the canals for the boats to hook into. This poses a threat to boat people like Ms. Wijnakker, who will have to pay about $28,000 to link up to the new system. The threat is not imminent; boat owners will have until 2017 to hook up.


Houseboats were traditionally the refuge of people without the means to live on dry land. After World War II, working-class families took to the water when housing on land was unavailable, and old canal barges were cheap, as the Dutch renewed their fleet.


“It’s difficult to find a good house on land,” said Pom Dupré, who has lived for 20 years on a 65-foot boat, the Nova Cura, along the canal. “And of course, this is a fine neighborhood,” she added, glancing at the stately 17th-century homes along the canal, many of them law offices or professional services.


There are drawbacks, she admits. Every four years the boat has to be hauled to a dry dock to have its hull checked for canal-worthiness. The family must find a place to stay, or live on the boat in the wharf; water pipes, which are exposed to the air between boat and canal wall, often freeze in the winter.


To make ends meet, or simply to enjoy onboard company, some boat owners have transformed their boats into bed-and-breakfasts. Ms. Wijnakker began taking in guests three years ago and now does a busy trade in summer.


Two years ago, Luc Couvée, 51, a graphic artist, and his wife, Laura Tollenaar, bought a canal freighter on the canal, then added two showers and two bedrooms to take in paying guests. “I’m a very boat-minded person,” Mr. Couvée said. “And it’s cheaper than an apartment, though not by much.”


The couple paid about $420,000 for the boat, which they renamed Vreiheid, or freedom. An apartment in the neighborhood would have cost about $700,000. They have solved the sewage problem, installing the necessary plumbing and a cesspool that can be emptied regularly. When the city’s plumbing is in place, they will be ready.


The popularity of houseboats reflects a general awakening in Amsterdam to the beauty of water. “Up to the 1970s and ’80s, Amsterdam’s water was forgotten,” said Maarten Kloos, an architect who runs Arcam, an independent foundation that promotes architecture. “Now, not only houseboats, floating has gained currency.”


Indeed, the architecture of some new apartment buildings near the center of Amsterdam suggests huge houseboats. “Talking about water is now the topic,” Mr. Kloos said. “People used to say, ‘With the beauty of our 17th-century canals, why can’t we get rid of those boats?’ ” he said. “Now, like all of Amsterdam, the boats are more and more bourgeois.”


Mr. Kloos might have been thinking of a squat, sleek houseboat on the River Amstel that suggests Mies van der Rohe more than Peter Stuyvesant. Five years ago, Steven Westerop, a personnel executive, left his home in Leiden, a short train ride from Amsterdam, to buy a dilapidated boat on the Amstel from an elderly German who came to Holland during the flower power days. With an architect’s help, Mr. Westerop, 46, designed and built a split-level home on a hull that was essentially a reinforced concrete shoebox.


“There are many kinds of boats I didn’t like,” he said. “I wanted people to say, ‘O.K.!’ Maybe even a little over the top.”


“It’s now a yuppie market,” he said. “You need a good job, otherwise you can’t afford it.” The old boat people, like his German, are selling, he said, and all of the houseboats on both sides of his have changed owners in the past five years.


“Sometimes, though, I still feel like a Gypsy,” he went on. “But I have a big mortgage.”







:D Who's ready to go? I'd spend some time here. Amsterdam ROCKS!!! (l)




(f)






Carpe Carpio.

Seize the carp. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



Splash Cast Media


Be a cyber-TV producer...


Looking to add streaming media to your Web site, blog, or social-networking page? Splash Cast Media provides a "skinless" player that lets users seamlessly mix video, music, photos, narration, text, RSS feeds, and more! Named one of PC World magazine's "25 Web sites to watch."


No paddle required:



http://web.splashcast.net/




(y) (y)






Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)




Cowboy Poetry

What rhymes with cattle prod?


As wide-ranging as the western skies, this site keeps fans of cowboy verse connected through a roundup of CDs, newsletters, public readings, and a heckuva lot more. Git along, rhymin' doggies!


Oh, give me a—Who's eatin' beans?



http://www.cowboypoetry.com/



http://www.cowboypoetry.com/




;)



:| :| What's up with the SLOW LATENCY this morning? I'm heading out soon - and I guess I'll have to post later when the download times from the server are significantly faster. I have a cable modem and am sitting here waiting as if I have an old 28.8 dial-up modem.



(f)








Semper ubi sub ubi.

Always wear underwear.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



Approver

No CC required

If your day involves sending and receiving multiple email attachments—and outfoxing over-zealous spam filters—this freeware is your reprieve. Users can upload, share, edit, and approve documents created with MS Office, Adobe PDF, JPGs, GIFs, PNGs, FrameMaker, Autocad, and more—without wondering if it got there.


I can't blame cyber goblins?



http://www.approver.com/





(y) Collaborators unite. Or something like that. ;)




(f)





Carpe Carpio.

Seize the carp. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

<:o) <:o) <:o)



MyPunchbowl

Juice up your party...

Want your get-together to be "off tha hizzy?" That takes planning—or it used to. With MyPunchbowl, any regular Joe or Jane can create custom invitations (with maps), locate the nearest party store, share party photos, create a public or private guest list, and lots more!


Am I early?



http://www.mypunchbowl.com/



<:o) <:o)


(f)





Absentem lædit, qui cum ebrio litigat.

He who quarrels with a drunk hurts an absentee. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:s



Klingon Language Institute

"Hab SoSlI' Quch!"


Translation: "Your mother has a smooth forehead." That's a nasty insult in Klingon; users beware. You’ll find plenty more pithy phrases, as well as sound bites, pronunciation guides, a Klingon alphabet, and lots more on this Trek-tastic site.


To boldly go...outside the house:


http://www.kli.org/




|-) |-) However, to each their own, right?


;)



(f)




Ad astra.

To the stars!


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



The Gyros Project

Greek fast food, or pop art?


If you're Jonesin' for a gyro, Chicago's your kind of town. The Windy City has more colorful places to purchase this Grecian fast food delight than you can shake a skewer at. And this site reverently chronicles the kooky and creative street art the gyro inspires.


Sophocles had a little lamb:


http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/gyros/gyros.htm






:) :) Opa!!! (In Detroit, Michigan that is....) :)


http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/detroit/d12.htm



(f)






Amicus optima vitae possessio.

A friend is the greatest treasure in life. (f)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



LogonStudio — Windows

Flip your welcome mat

Change your Windows XP logon screen with LogonStudio. It comes with several logon screens to choose from, along with access to thousands that are available online from Web sites. It also includes an editor for creating your own logon screen.


http://www.download.com/LogonStudio/3000-2344_4-10328444.html



:)




(f)




Aut dosce, aut disce, aut discede.

Either teach, or study, or leave. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-| 8-|



Game: Brain Hotel — Mac

Check-out time is...


Brain Hotel is a point-and-click adventure game in the tradition of such classics as Maniac Mansion and the Monkey Island series. You play the role of Ed Arnold, a hapless deliveryman who gets tangled in the annual supervillain convention at the Brain Hotel and a plot to defeat one of the more ruthless supervillains at the convention.


http://www.otterarchives.com/brainhotel/



(y) (y)



(f)





Bona valetudo melior est quam maximæ divitiæ.

Good health is worth more than the greatest wealth.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l) <Sigh>



August 15, 2007

In the Fruit Belt, Selling Summer Off the Truck

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

BENTON HARBOR, Mich.


THE sky was still pitch-black and crickets chirped as trucks began pulling through the gates at the Benton Harbor Fruit Market well before 6 o’clock on a recent August morning.


As the drivers eased into their assigned stalls, the scent of summer produce began to pierce the muggy air: fat red tomatoes, just arriving at ripeness, voluptuous Red Haven peaches, their fuzzy skins colored deep red and gold, and tender bicolor sweet corn, piled high on truck beds.


Fruit and vegetables are king in Benton Harbor, the heart of the legendary Midwestern fruit belt. Since 1860, the city has had a wholesale market that claims to be the world’s biggest for fresh produce.


Once sprawled across downtown Benton Harbor, the market moved in 1970 to a 25-acre site that features three types of commerce. There are brokers, who buy from the biggest farms and supply distributors patronized by supermarket chains. There are also out-of-town wholesalers, who bring produce from elsewhere to sell here, and return with Benton Harbor’s bounty.


Finally, there is the daily market. Here small farmers from the region sell produce ripened to a peak of sweetness on the plant, often picked just hours earlier. It is the kind of summer produce many people pine for. And yet it is not what most of them will end up eating.


Today the daily market, which still functions much as it did a century ago, is dwarfed by the rest of the commerce here. The farmers who keep it going don’t grow enough produce to interest the brokers and wholesalers. And their exquisitely ripe fruit here wouldn’t survive a cross-country trek or last long in a supermarket.


“It is too bad that agriculture here is but a shred of its former glory,” said Lee LaVanway, Benton Harbor’s market master. Mr. LaVanway, a tireless advocate for local food, is frustrated that so few people in Michigan actually eat its fruit, even though the western part of the state leads the nation in the production of 15 different crops.


Even in Berrien County, where the market is located, Mr. LaVanway estimates that only one-quarter of the food eaten by local residents is raised nearby. Local supermarkets, he said, are far more likely to stock varieties shipped from thousands of miles away than the fruit grown in their backyards.


Since 1969, the number of farms in the area has declined by 60 percent, while strawberry production has all but vanished. A number of farmers who sell at Benton Harbor own family farms that are just big enough to stay in business. They lack the acreage or the production power of the big corporate farms who sell to distributors with familiar supermarket names, like Dole, Driscoll or Del Monte. Although Benton Harbor has 1,000 farmers registered to sell here, only about 70 arrived on a recent summer Friday, to sell to a similar number of customers.


But the buyers who still shop at Benton Harbor come because of its reputation for ripe produce, ready to eat, from a region long recognized for its agricultural products.


“We’re not going because it’s cheaper, we’re not going because it’s an easy trip, we’re going because it tastes better,” said Rick Peshkin, the owner of the Produce Station in Ann Arbor, Mich., a specialty fruit and vegetable store.


In early August, the variety here ranged from peaches so juicy they stained a T-shirt on the first bite, to blueberries packed carefully in 10-pound cartons to protect their dusty white bloom, not a defect but the sign of a fresh berry, and bushel baskets piled with bright green peppers.


By and large, the biggest customers at the cash market are other growers who buy for their own roadside stands or fruit and vegetable markets, which are plentiful in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.


That might come as a surprise to food shoppers who deliberately trek to places like Perrysburg, Ohio; Fennville, Mich.; or LaPorte, Ind., expecting that they are buying directly from the farmer. But many of those vendors no longer have the ability or inclination to stock their stalls by themselves.


Some of the Benton Harbor farmers also sell their produce, flowers and other food items at the sprawling farmers’ markets in big Midwestern cities, such as Chicago and Madison, Wis. Typically, they can command double the prices they charge customers here.


Joining the farm stand owners and fruit sellers are a few individual buyers like Ron and Loida Mueller of Sibley, Ill., who drove three hours the night before to buy produce for their family of 14. Mrs. Mueller, who had bought a truckload of peaches for jam, declared, “You can’t get a good peach like a Michigan peach.”


At some trucks, farmers held auctions, scribbling down the prices that buyers were willing to pay for their truckloads. Prices here can be high when the first varieties of the year arrive. If the weather is hot or a type of fruit or vegetable is in ample supply, farmers sometimes leave Benton Harbor without making a sale.


On a recent Friday, when the temperature soared above 90 degrees, peaches went for only $12 to $14 per half bushel. “It’s bloody today,” said Mr. LaVanway, with a scowl.


But a week later, in cooler weather, peaches were fetching as much as $18.


Weather plays a critical role, since the peaches, tomatoes and truckloads of corn sold here generally are not refrigerated in advance, as are many of the products sold at the big terminal markets around the country, in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles and at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx.


Nor, for the most part, are they organically grown, like the fruits and vegetables fast becoming the rage at farmer’s markets.


Lacking both the trend factor and the shelf life of terminal market produce, these products must find their customers quickly — factors that are combining to reduce the number of buyers and sellers in Benton Harbor.


But no matter the number, the action moves swiftly. The buyers are eager to load up and get back on the road, so they can stock their stores by early afternoon. Sellers, meanwhile, must ponder whether to cut prices or take leftovers home to sell at their own roadside stands.


Don Karaus, of Glenn, Mich., had driven 30 miles to select produce for his market, Dee’s Lakeshore Farm, which sits in the heart of the lakeside vacation area in southwestern Michigan.


Mr. Karaus, who has farmed since 1965, grows his own peaches, apples and plums, but buys produce in Benton Harbor to round out his offerings.


Vacationers to Lake Michigan “want to shop at the fruit market,” said Mr. Karaus, who had loaded his GMC pickup with 75 dozen ears of sweet corn. He paid $175 and expected to sell it for twice that.


At Benton Harbor, “I’ve gotten to know the farmers, I’ve gotten to know their quality and I’m buying what I consider to be the best,” he said.


Rose Moser, of Perrysburg, Ohio, said the shoppers at her farm market outside Toledo had come to expect her to carry top-quality fruit, grown close by. “More and more, they want to know where it came from,” said Ms. Moser, who was making the three-hour trip home with blueberries and peaches.


Back in Ann Arbor, the Produce Station’s general manager, Andrew Gorsuch, was arranging Honey Rock melons, peaches, blueberries, and sweet corn, all labeled as Michigan grown. Tracy Jones, of Ann Arbor, was already waiting to select her favorites.


“As I pulled in, I said, ‘Michigan sweet corn, yea!’ ” said Ms. Jones, who was accompanied by her children, Olivia, 11; Sophie, 8; and Charlie, 11 months.


While Charlie reached for a plastic sack of bright red tomatoes, Ms. Jones confided, “Honestly, I would pay more for it. But don’t tell them.”



(l) (l)







Cibi condimentum est fames.

Hunger is a spice for any meal.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

^o) (i) ^o) (i)



Home Is Where the Art Is:

Slide Show: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/14/realestate/greathomes/20070814_MEXICO_SLIDESHOW_index.html




Breathtaking!!

The nighttime view from the roof of Ms. Mead's house highlights La Parroquia, the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel, and a panoramic view of San Miguel.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/14/realestate/IHT7.jpg




August 15, 2007

Vacation Homes as Art Projects

By SHERMAKAYE BASS


To Susan Mead, a Dallas attorney, old houses are canvases and she is the painter. Even the most dilapidated structures become striking compositions, three-dimensional landscapes for Ms. Mead’s blend of contemporary and antique furnishings, folk art and fine art — and always with an architectural twist.


“My mother was an art major in college before she went into law,” said Ms. Mead’s daughter Katya Jestin, herself an attorney based in New York, “and I think that for her, renovating houses is a form of art. She uses the raw frame of a house and imagines how beautiful she could make it.”


In addition to her Dallas apartment, Ms. Mead now has four “works”: a 3,500-square-foot rental in Akumal, Mexico, on the Caribbean Mayan Coast; a tiny whaler’s cottage in Sag Harbor, New York; a multilevel beauty overlooking San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico and a Pacific Ocean cliff-house in the fishing town of Puerto Angel, Mexico.


The latter is her latest purchase, bought in 2005, and renovated to emphasize the dramatic ocean views. Ms. Mead has put it on the market but she is keeping the Sag Harbor and San Miguel houses for herself, friends and family.


Over the past 30-odd years, however, she has renovated a dozen homes, from New England to southern Mexico. Her first was a 1840s farmhouse in Simsbury, Conn., which she tackled when she was 20 years old.

“I was in college and my husband at the time was teaching high school. We couldn’t afford a livable house,” said Ms. Mead, now in her late 50s. “So we bought one that had been uninhabited for 20 years.”


“We renovated while we lived in it, an eye-opening experience,” she said. “At that point, I started hanging out in hardware stores and learned how to rebuild chimneys, lay shingles. The notion of scraping plaster out of your bed every morning was new to me.”


Nonetheless, she was hooked. Next, she bought and refurbished a home in Beverly Farms, outside Boston. Then in the 1980s and ’90s, after returning to Dallas for law school, she restored and sold a half-dozen historic homes in dilapidated neighborhoods that now are trendy and high-priced.


Ms. Mead is not an investor, although her talent for finding old homes in the right place at the right time helped pay for law school for both her and her daughter, now 37. But it is the bones of a house, the feeling of a property, that attracts Ms. Mead.


“I just really love architecture, especially historic architecture,” she said. “I grew up in my grandmother’s house in Dallas, which was built in 1938, so that’s kind of historic — for Dallas.”


Of the places Ms. Mead owns now, she said the one that reflects her personality most is in San Miguel.


An airy, vertical home built into a hillside during the 1930s, its seven levels and 4,000 square feet include four bedrooms — one on each main level and one with a balcony overlooking the courtyard garden — and four- and-a-half bathrooms. A split-level rooftop area offers a view of San Miguel’s historic center.


Throughout the house, a dual attitude of elegance and whimsy prevails. Contemporary Mexican paintings by Manuel Velásquez of Veracruz and Gilberto Sanchez of San Miguel, among others, are hung along with carved masks and various folk-art pieces.


The most striking of these is a 6-foot plaster/wood/papier-mâché woman in pious dress and pose, which stands sentinel at the bottom of the main stairwell. “I call her my Mexican virgin. She’s at least 100 years old,” Ms. Mead said. “She’s from an old chapel owned by a family outside of Mexico City, and they were selling some of the statuary. I loved her right away.”


When she bought the house in 2002 there was work to be done. “It took six months of rehab to heighten the original ceilings, which were ‘shed’ ceiling that went from 7 to 11 feet high and now slopes from about 11 to 15 feet,” she said. “Then I enclosed the salon, or what had been a patio with a large fireplace, and I kept the fireplace. Otherwise, the building was in pretty good shape.”


Ms. Mead said that comparable houses in the neighborhood now are selling for around $1 million but, when she bought, prices were far less. In fact, she said, “I couldn’t afford to buy any of these houses as they are now.”


As is typical of homes in San Miguel, this one does not look like much from the street: A large, carved wooden door next to a discreet two-car garage. But the door opens onto interior stairs, which lead up to the salon and an immediate view of the courtyard and bougainvillea cascading down its 30-foot-high walls. The salon then opens onto the kitchen, a formal dining room and a sitting room.


In 2003, the year after buying in San Miguel, Ms. Mead and her daughter found the 1,100-square-foot, two-bedroom and one-bath cottage in Sag Harbor.


“I’d just sold my house in Dallas, the one I’d redone and lived in for 18 years, and moved into a small apartment downtown,” she said. “I knew I wanted to buy something small near Katya and her husband and my grandson, who live in New York. But I also knew it couldn’t be in the city. I love trees and water too much.”


The two wandered over to Sag Harbor and discovered the cottage for sale. It is one of the village’s oldest, built in 1693, and its historic designation limited any renovations, but Ms. Mead said very little work was needed. She added a kitchen, with cabinets and counter tops — “there had been only a free-standing stove and refrigerator,” she recalled. Now the low-ceiling cottage doubles as a getaway for her daughter’s family and, several weeks a year, a refuge for Ms. Mead.


Discussing her properties, Ms. Mead returns again and again to potential projects: Perhaps redoing the house at Akumal (Casa Pantera, it’s called), and the Puerto Angel house needs to be painted. And the Sag Harbor bathroom could use some work ...


Then she stops herself.


“I’ve got too many houses. That’s why Angel is for sale,” Ms. Mead said. “It takes a whole day just to get there, whereas I can be in San Miguel or Akumal or Sag Harbor in four-to-six hours. I’m trying to simplify as I get closer to retirement age.”


The statement makes Ms. Mead laugh. “You do get attached to these houses,” she admitted. “They can be hard to sell. I guess because they become an extension of yourself; they reflect who you are.”






^o) If anything ever happened between the U.S. and Mexico, this lady would be in deep financial straits with most of her homes being located in Mexico, IMHO.


Very impressive though, what she's done. (y) Beautiful. I would love to re-do old homes with someone who knew how!



(f)






Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Any man can make a mistake; only a fool keeps making the same one. :)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



http://karmaconsolidation.com/



:o



;)



(f)





Ab esse ad posse.

From being to knowing.

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



http://bored.com/boomshine/index.htm




:|



:)



(f)




Audiatur et altera pars.

The other part should be heard as well.


Sweetlady and Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



http://brain.lis.uiuc.edu:2323/opencms/export/sites/default/dhq/vol/001/2/000009.html




:)







Quantus il cannus in es fenestrum.

How much is that doggy in the window? (&)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o


:)




Broadband over powerline gets boost from US

Jo Best, ZDNet Australia

16 August 2007 02:37 PM


A new initiative in the US could give broadband over powerline (BPL) a kick-start, with two US companies getting together to provide Internet connectivity through electricity cables.


DirecTV, a satellite TV company, has reached a deal to resell BPL provider Current's service in parts of Texas, around Dallas-Fort Worth, from the end of this year.


Under the deal, 1.8 million homes will be covered by broadband over powerline connectivity over the coming years, at a speed of up to 3Mbps, according to reports.


The satellite TV company intends to offer its customers an Internet and VoIP package using the BPL connectivity, and plans to expand its user base as Current increases its network coverage.


The controversial technology has already been trialled in several places across Australia. Utility company Aurora Energy reported favourable results when it trialled the tech in 2006. Silk Telecom and Country Energy have also previously expressed an interest in the technology.


So far, however, the technology has gained little real foothold in the Asia Pacific region. In the US, however, BPL subscriber numbers are expected to reach around 2.5 million by 2011, according to industry watchers Parks Associates -- up from an estimated 400,000 this year.



http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Broadband-over-powerline-gets-boost-from-US/0,130061791,339281236,00.htm





(y) (y) Depending on power company. More critical would be whether they had both top execs as well as field service technicians who migrated over to the electric utility business from the broadcasting (digital video transmission) industry. Success depends on SENIOR people with decades of experience, IMHO.

<Grinning....>



8-|8-|8-|8-|8-|




(f)






Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself. (y)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)


VERY, VERY COOL:



STARDUST: Viewed in ultraviolet, the star Mira A has an unexpected wake of stardust stretching 13 light-years that began forming an estimated 30,000 years ago.

http://www.sciam.com/media/inline/6AE74053-E7F2-99DF-353EB7B9AE43FCF6_1.gif



August 15, 2007

Shooting Bullet Star Leaves Vast Ultraviolet Wake

Fluctuating star discovered four centuries ago still holds surprises for astronomers

By JR Minkel

Scientific American


Like witnessing a bullet's supersonic trail through the air, astronomers have discovered a vast ultraviolet contrail streaming from the red giant variable star Mira A, about 420 light-years away. Spanning a full two degrees of sky as viewed from Earth, the muddied wake may consist of cold hydrogen and heavier elements that have sloughed off from the star over the past 30,000 years and interacted with interstellar dust in the object's path.


The wake stretches 13 light-years, or about three times the distance between the sun and the next closest star.


Researchers say the finding provides an unprecedented record of the twilight years of stars like our own, including the kind of stellar breeze from spent stars that was the source of, among other things, the carbon in our bodies and the oxygen we inhale. "If Neanderthal man had had ultraviolet eyes and could look above the atmosphere, he could have seen the beginning of this tail forming," says astronomer and team leader Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.


Seventeenth-century astronomers marveled at the star Mira A, or Omicron Ceti, for its dramatic changes in brightness every 332 days. (Mira is Latin for "wonderful.") Researchers now believe this variation occurs because the star has burned all the hydrogen-helium nuclear fuel in its core into the heavier carbon and oxygen and puffed up into a cooler red giant, heated by unsteady nuclear fusion reactions in its remaining fuel shell. Such burned-out stars are thought to seed still-forming stars and planets with medium-weight elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen that blow off of the spent stars' envelopes.


Martin and his colleagues noticed Mira's tail in images captured by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) ultraviolet satellite, launched in 2003. The imagery revealed a bow shock—like the wave that piles beneath the prow of a moving ship—in front of the star and its smaller companion, Mira B, as well as a wake broken into turbulent knots or loops, according to a report in Nature.


The researchers suggest that because the star is moving at a relatively quick pace of 130 kilometers per second (or three times a bullet's speed) relative to the galaxy, it has compressed and heated the interstellar gas in front of it. This hot gas excited the cool, five-kilometer-per-second breeze of hydrogen molecules and heavier elements emanating from Mira, causing it to glow in the ultraviolet.


The team estimates that Mira A loses one millionth of the sun's mass a year, out of its total bulk of perhaps 1.5 solar masses.


Martin says ultraviolet tails may be quite common despite going unnoticed until now. The red giant phase awaits many smaller stars, including our own sun in four billion to five billion years.



http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=6AE74053-E7F2-99DF-353EB7B9AE43FCF6&chanID=sa007




8-|8-|8-|






Quidquid id est timeo puellas et oscula dantes.

Whatever it is, I fear the girls, even those giving kisses. ;) ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l)



August 14, 2007

A Grass-Roots Effort to Grow Old at Home

By JANE GROSS


WASHINGTON — On a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, George and Anne Allen, both 82, struggle to remain in their beloved three-story house and neighborhood, despite the frailty, danger and isolation of old age.


Mr. Allen has been hobbled since he fractured his spine in a fall down the stairs, and he expects to lose his driver’s license when it comes up for renewal. Mrs. Allen recently broke four ribs getting out of bed. Neither can climb a ladder to change a light bulb or crouch under the kitchen sink to fix a leak. Stores and public transportation are an uncomfortable hike.


So the Allens have banded together with their neighbors, who are equally determined to avoid being forced from their homes by dependence. Along with more than 100 communities nationwide — a dozen of them planned here in Washington and its suburbs — their group is part of a movement to make neighborhoods comfortable places to grow old, both for elderly men and women in need of help and for baby boomers anticipating the future.


“We are totally dependent on ourselves,” Mr. Allen said. “But I want to live in a mixed community, not just with the elderly. And as long as we can do it here, that’s what we want.”


Their group has registered as a nonprofit corporation, is setting membership dues, and is lining up providers of transportation, home repair, companionship, security and other services to meet their needs at home for as long as possible.


Urban planners and senior housing experts say this movement, organized by residents rather than government agencies or social service providers, could make “aging in place” safe and affordable for a majority of elderly people. Almost 9 in 10 Americans over the age of 60, according to AARP polls, share the Allens’ wish to live out their lives in familiar surroundings.


Many of these self-help communities are calling themselves villages, playing on the notion that it takes a village to raise a child and also support the aged in their decline. Some are expected to open this fall on Capitol Hill; in Cambridge, Mass.; New Canaan, Conn.; Palo Alto, Calif.; and Bronxville, N.Y.


“Providers don’t always need to do things for the elderly,” said Philip McCallion, director of the Center for Excellence in Aging Services at the State University of New York at Albany. “There are plenty of ideas how to do this within the aging community.”


Although not a panacea for those with complicated medical needs, the approach addresses what experts say can be a premature decision by older people to give up their homes in response to relatively minor problems: No way to get to the grocery store. Tradesmen unwilling to take on small repairs. The isolation of a snowy winter.


As these small problems mount, sometimes accompanied by pressure from adult children, experts say, the elderly homeowner is caught off guard. Remaining at home without sufficient help is frightening. But moving to an assisted-living center is often an overreaction that can be avoided or postponed.


“A few neighborhood-based, relatively inexpensive strategies can have an enormous effect,” Mr. McCallion said. “If people don’t feel so overwhelmed, they don’t feel pushed into precipitous decisions that can’t always be reversed.”


For inspiration, the nascent groups looked to Beacon Hill Village in Boston, which pioneered the approach six years ago. Beacon Hill’s 400 members pay yearly dues — $580 for an individual and $780 for a couple, plus à la carte fees — in exchange for the security of knowing that a prescreened carpenter, chef, computer expert or home health aide is one phone call away.


Experts in aging say the self-help approach provides a sense of mastery, often lost with the move to an institution or even an adult child’s spare bedroom. That can-do spirit is attractive to baby boomers like Alisia Juarrero, 59, who is a board member of the Allens’ group, which spans the Palisades neighborhood, an enclave of single-family houses northwest of Georgetown, and Foxhall, an adjacent area of attached Tudor homes.


Ms. Juarrero is mindful of the future because of the struggles of her 89-year-old mother and 92-year-old aunt in Coral Gables, Fla. “This is where we’re all headed,” she said. “If I help set this up, it’ll be there when I need it.”


So far, most of the villages are in places where residents are well connected and skilled in finance, law, medicine and philanthropy as a result of their own careers. That raises the question of whether the model is viable only in neighborhoods of privilege. But experts point out that most care for the elderly is already out of reach for all but the wealthy.


The amenities of an assisted-living center are far more expensive than a village’s membership fee. Medicare does not pay for long-term care, and private help is costly. Only the destitute are protected in old age because Medicaid pays their nursing home fees.


A few villages are cropping up where low-income families live, such as in the Richmond District of San Francisco, with its recent wave of Russian immigrants; Falmouth, Mass., where year-round residents struggle when the summer crowd is gone; and in pockets in Westchester County, like Yonkers, with diverse populations.


In such locations, social service organizations are likely to organize the project, instead of the older residents, and they rely on volunteers or bartered services to keep fees down. One member fixes another’s faucet, banks the time and in exchange gets a ride to a medical appointment.


Groups also share expertise online and at local and national conferences, including several this past spring. Some have access to regional resource centers that help with matters like hiring an executive director or buying liability insurance.


In terms of government support, New York State is at the forefront, with a 20-year-old model known as a NORC, or naturally occurring retirement community. Since 1995, the state has financed social services, including nurses and case managers, in many apartment buildings with a concentration of residents over 60. Last year, it added a few suburban neighborhoods, so-called horizontal NORCs.


On the federal level, Congress authorized experiments in aging in place in the 2006 Older American Act but did not finance them.


The sprawl of suburbia presents challenges to the elderly once they cannot drive. Amid the rolling hills of Fairfax County, Va., one group is grappling with how to serve prospective members in a place with a single general store and five-acre lots. Taxi vouchers may be too costly when running errands can take hours. Recruiting volunteer drivers from 118 home owners’ associations and 17 churches presents liability issues.


“The question is distance and time, and the money that relates to that,” said William Cole, 77, the founder of the group. Mr. Cole anticipates yearly dues of $1,000, which may be prohibitive for neighbors who are real estate rich but cash poor. One likely service, Mr. Cole said, will be advice about reverse mortgages.


Many of the villages are concerned about whether they can provide adequate support once the founding members, who tend to be vigorous regardless of age, decline either physically or cognitively. In this regard, the New Canaan group, with annual dues of $360 and $480, may be less vulnerable than most. The suburb already has a home health care agency, an assisted-living center and a nursing home, thanks to years of advocacy by a local physician, an 87-year-old board member.


Because of that, “we have the confidence to live without these problems getting the best of us,” said Tom Towers, 69, the board president of the group, Staying Put in New Canaan. “And if they do, we can take care of it right here.”


The first village in the Washington area is expected to be on Capitol Hill. When it opens for business on Oct. 1, annual memberships will be $750 for a couple and $500 for an individual.


Among those eager to join are Marie Spiro, 74, and Georgine Reed, 78, who share a rambling house that they insist they will only leave “feet first.” Between them, Ms. Spiro, an emeritus professor of art history and archaeology, and Ms. Reed, a retired designer of museum exhibits, have already endured three knee replacements and an array of other ailments.


Ms. Spiro describes huffing and puffing while grocery shopping; Ms. Reed is increasingly reluctant to visit friends across town. Both women, who are childless, would already welcome help with meals, transportation and paperwork. If they need home care, Capitol Hill Village will be able to organize that.


“I’ve never had to rely on other people, and I never wanted to,” Ms. Spiro said. “But I’d rather pay a fee than have to ask favors.”


Members of all these groups share an independent streak — and the willingness to plan for the future. Those characteristics were on view recently in a living room in Hollin Hills, a post-World War II development in Alexandria, Va., where a half-dozen neighbors who once organized baby-sitting co-ops are now organizing for their final years.


Now, in their 70s and 80s, they still drive, play tennis and travel the world. None has yet lost a spouse, but they fear what will happen to the one left behind.


“The vast majority of people don’t have the capacity to be realistic,” said Ruth Morduch, 71. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in X number of years, but we know we’re going to need help. In my own home, that’s less likely to be humiliating. And an organization like this gives me a sense that we’re all in this together, our last grand adventure.”






(y) (y) With a few folks I know already worrying about "being allowed" (their words, not mine) to buy into an assisted living or 50+ or 55+ residential community - this article seemed to provide at least one solution. And definitely an opportunity for entrepreneurs to provide services to older members of the GLBT community. (l) (l)


^o) Food for thought for those of us starting to think about where to live and continue to be self-employed as well as self sufficient. (f) There is nothing like having one's own home. And, I can't even imagine what it would be like for a transgendered person to live and grow older in a retirement "home", rather than their own home.



(f)







Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l)



"The agreement to participate in this life is a pact with grief." - Mark Doty




Mr. Doty is nothing if not opinionated: sentimentality is a mask for anger; "compassion for animals is an excellent predictor of one's ability to care for one's fellow human beings;" "no death equals another;" "the wounds of loss, the nicks and cuts made by our own sense of powerlessness, must form a sort of carapace, an armor."



http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41l9gI7V8VL._SS500_.jpg



Dog Years: A Memoir

by Mark Doty (Author)



Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly


Starred Review. Award-winning memoirist (Firebird) and poet (School of the Arts) Doty explores, with compassion and intelligence, the complicated, loving territory inhabited by devoted dogs and their loyal humans. In 1994, when the author's longtime lover was dying of AIDS, beloved pet Arden kept the surviving partner afloat. A new adoptee, the rambunctious Beau, in his "sloppy dog way," becomes a part of the tribe and carries some of the burden of grief. Doty says Beau "carried something else for me too, which was my will to live." In a time of devastating pain, as well as in happier times, Doty's two dogs are the "secret heroes of my own vitality." The dog characters in the book are irresistible, and the arcs of their lives are delineated with the tenderness and passion of the truly smitten. Arden's quiet nobility and slow decline breaks the heart, while Beau's goofy enthusiasm peaks with youth and mellows in illness. With a marvelous ability to present the pain of mourning with a poet's delicate hand, and an irrepressible instinct for joy, Doty delivers a soulful love story which illuminates no less than the big human mysteries: attachment, death, grief, loyalty, happiness. The book nimbly sidesteps sentimentality and lands squarely on a philosophical, inquisitive tone as intellectually evocative as it is emotionally resonant. (Mar.)




From Booklist

To be loved by Doty, as a human or a canine, is to be elevated into a realm of utter glory, where one is cherished and cradled, sheltered and supported, and, most of all, where one's very essence is acknowledged and appreciated in a manner both simple and sublime. In his latest elegant and elegiac memoir, poet Doty recounts how the love of two dogs, Arden and Beau, sustained him during times of his most grievous losses, and how he, in turn, came to nurse them through their inevitable years of failing health. On the brink of a life-threatening depression, Doty recognized the necessity of caring for his beloved dogs, which then metamorphosed into a life-affirming realization that he was, in fact, the one being attended. Sprinkled among poignant and merry anecdotes about typical and peculiar doggie behavior are Doty's tender yet cogent reflections on the underlying truths such conduct reveals about the canine species, observations that transcendently celebrate the essential connection between man and pet. Carol Haggas







(l) (&) (l) (&) (l) I LOVE this quote: "Compassion for animals is an excellent predictor of one's ability to care for one's fellow human beings." If we are talking about pet parents of big dogs, talk about profound, in my view. And one that I have found to be frighteningly true.





(f)







Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l)



Just Gus: A Rescued Dog and the Woman He Loved

by Laurie Williams (Author), Roslyn Banish (Photographer)



Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Gus was a lucky dog. Injured and abandoned, he could have become another of the 7 million animals euthanized every year. Then Stephanie Williams entered the picture. A successful journalist, she had been diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at the age of 30. On medical leave and living alone, she wanted a warm four-legged companion. When she saw Gus's soulful eyes and goofy grin, it was love at first sight: she would rescue him, and he would return the favor. Just Gus is about how much one dog did to make a dying woman happy — giving tireless love, comfort, and support. This extraordinary story shows how one dog brought joy and hope to a woman's last days.




What a wonderful book for both young and old. This is such a beautiful story about the bond between humans and their canine companions. The photography is fantastic as well. This one should not be missed!




(y) :( (y) :(



(f)






Sic Itur Ad Astra.

Thus do we reach the stars. (*)(*)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(y) (y) (y)



August 16, 2007

At Netflix, Victory for Voices Over Keystrokes

By KATIE HAFNER


HILLSBORO, Ore. — Megan Funk had been on the phone for 30 minutes and had already untangled one billing knot, listened to a woman insist that she had returned a Pilates DVD when it was clear she had lost it and received one request to replace a cracked copy of “Hotel Rwanda” and another to replace a disappointing husband.


Ms. Funk is one of 200 customer service representatives at the Netflix call center here, 20 miles west of Portland, where she is on the front lines of the online movie rental company’s efforts to use customer service as a strategic weapon against Blockbuster’s similar DVD-mailing service.


Netflix set up shop here a year ago, shunning other lower-cost places in the United States and overseas, because it thought that Oregonians would present a friendlier voice to its customers. Then in July, Netflix took an unusual step for a Web-based company: it eliminated e-mail-based customer service inquiries. Now all questions, complaints and suggestions go to the Hillsboro call center, which is open 24 hours a day. The company’s toll-free number, previously buried on the Web site, is now prominently displayed.


Netflix is bucking several trends in customer service. Booz Allen Hamilton, a management consulting firm, and Duke University studied 600 companies last year and found a continued increase not just in outsourcing, but also offshoring, in which call centers are moved overseas.


“I don’t think there’s any trend to pull back,” said Matt Mani, a senior associate at Booz Allen. “This is a unique strategy for Netflix. There’s so much more competition, this is something they’ve done to get closer to the customer, because without that, there’s really no connection a customer has to Netflix.”


Netflix’s decision to greet anxious consumers with a human voice, not an e-mail, is also unusual in corporate customer service. “It’s very interesting and counter to everything anybody else is doing,” said Tom Adams, the president of Adams Media Research, a market research firm in Carmel, Calif. “Everyone else is making it almost impossible to find a human.”


In contrast, Blockbuster outsources a portion of its customer service, and when people do call, they are encouraged to use the Web site instead. Its call center is open only during business hours, said Shane Evangelist, senior vice president and general manager for Blockbuster Online, because the majority of customers prefer e-mail support, which is available 24 hours a day. “Our online customers are comfortable using e-mail to communicate,” he said.


The decision to invest heavily in telephone customer service was an expensive one for Netflix, but it may be one advantage that the company with the familiar red envelopes has over its rival with the blue ones, analysts say. “It’s vital in a world where they’re no longer growing their customer base," Mr. Adams said.


Indeed, for the first time in its eight-year existence, Netflix has found itself losing customers. It is not the quality of customer service that is driving them away, but rather the heightened competition from Blockbuster. Late last year, soon after Blockbuster introduced its Total Access program, which allows members to swap a movie they have rented online for an in-store movie, the nationwide chain began gaining on Netflix’s base of 6.7 million subscribers.


By the first quarter this year, after years of outstripping Blockbuster in subscriber growth, Netflix added 480,000 new subscribers while Blockbuster signed up 780,000 new members. And in the second quarter of this year, Netflix, which prides itself on customer loyalty, lost 55,000 customers. Blockbuster added 525,000, bringing its total to 3.6 million.


The Hillsboro operation, which occupies about 30,000 square feet of a low building in an office park, is intended to keep the red envelopes coming. Michael Osier, vice president for information technology operations and customer service, said he rejected cities like Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, which are known as call-center capitals, because of their high employee turnover rates. He settled on the greater Portland area because of the genial attitude on the part of most service workers.


“In hotels and coffee shops and the airport, it’s amazing how consistent people are in their politeness and empathy,” said Mr. Osier, who is based at Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif. “There’s an operational language in the industry that people are so jaded about — phrases like ‘due to high caller volume.’ We’re very consciously trying to counter that mentality.”


Netflix’s decision to eliminate the e-mail feature was made after a great deal of research, Mr. Osier said. He looked at two other companies with reputations for superb phone-based customer service, Southwest Airlines and American Express, and saw that customers preferred human interaction over e-mail messages. “My assessment was that a world-class e-mail program was still going to be consistently lower in quality and effectiveness than a phone program,” he said.


When Mr. Osier presented his findings in January to fellow executives, Reed Hastings, the Netflix chief executive, sent an enthusiastic message, BlackBerry to BlackBerry, from across the room. Mr. Hastings quickly became a supporter of the e-mail elimination project.


The company has tried to give the service representatives more discretion in deciding when to assuage disgruntled callers with bonus discs and account credits — and they are allowed to err on the side of generosity. More often than not, a month’s credit will be issued or a missing disc marked simply as lost, and the customer will not be charged. Netflix places no particular requirements on call duration, preferring that customer service representatives take the time they need to keep a customer happy and loyal.


Ms. Funk, 36, said some people call because they are lonely. Her lengthiest call of that kind lasted 35 minutes. Others need basic help with their computers or with the Internet. Some people do not own a computer and call regularly to have a call center employee rearrange the titles in their queue.


More often than Netflix might like these days, people call to cancel their subscriptions. One reason for emphasizing direct phone contact over e-mail messages is that on the phone, a Netflix employee has a fighting chance of persuading the customer to stay.


And it is up to the call center representatives to help retain customers. Autumn Daste, 30, who has worked at the call center for two months, managed to halt one potential defection recently when a call was routed to her from a polite but unhappy woman in New Jersey who had not received any movies recently.


Ms. Daste called up the member’s account information on her screen, including the type of service to which she subscribed, the frequency with which the member ordered movies, the number of months she had been a member, the number of times she had contacted Netflix in the past and a brief description of what those calls had been about.


Ms. Daste pointed out, ever so politely, that no movies had been sent to her because the woman’s queue was empty. “There’s nothing on your list that’s of interest to me,” said the caller, referring to the 80,000 movies Netflix carries.


Undeterred, Ms. Daste suggested they find a movie together. The woman mentioned one she had been wanting to see for a while, an Indian film titled “Fire.” Within seconds, Ms. Daste had it on her screen. She added it to the customer’s queue and told her she would be receiving it shortly. Customer pleased. Disaster averted.


Ms. Funk has been working at Netflix for eight months, a veteran by call center standards. (Mr. Osier said his goal was to keep people there for an average of two years, twice as long as the industry average.) At $12.50 an hour, she said, the pay is slightly higher than in her previous job, in retail sales.


One of the first questions customers ask, Ms. Funk said, is where she is, and they express their approval at the answer. “They like hearing it’s not being outsourced,” she said. Very few callers have asked about the disappearance of the e-mail option, she said.


Disappearance of discs, though, remains a common customer anxiety. Shortly before clocking out for the day recently, Ms. Funk took a call from woman who had just found a DVD she had reported lost a few weeks earlier. It was in her husband’s car. “All right, I need to get a new husband,” she told Ms. Funk, who gave a sympathetic chortle in reply.






(l) (y) (l) This strategy is a winner and I hope it beats Blockbuster. Netflix has an amazing number of GLBT films while Blockbuster prides itself on being a "family" company. (and does not have much in terms of their film library....)


:| :| Who would YOU want to do business with? I've been a member with netflix since they started a few years back. Blockbuster could not PAY me to be a member.


(l) Netflix rocks and I sincerely hope they survive the competitive machinations. ;)




(f)






Ab Iove principium.

Let's start with the most important.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

.....and here's what they came up with...........

(y) (y)





http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/17/404-error-pages-reloaded/






(f)





What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:s :s



http://www.suck.uk.com/product.php?rangeID=69





:| :|






Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)




http://www.pubcon.com/blog/index.cgi?mode=viewone&blog=1187123220




:D



(f)





Amicus optima vitae possessio.

A friend is the greatest treasure in life.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



Before the 2001 inauguration of George Bush, George
was invited to a get acquainted tour of the White House.



After drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked
Bill Clinton if he could use his personal bathroom.
When he entered Clinton's private toilet, he was
astonished to see that President Clinton had a solid
gold urinal.



That afternoon, George told his wife, Laura, about the
urinal. "Just think," he said, "when I am president, I
could have a gold urinal too. But I wouldn't do
something that self indulgent!"



Later when Laura had lunch with Hilary at her tour of
the White House, she told Hilary how impressed George
had been at his discovery of the fact that, in the
President's private bathroom, the President had a
gold urinal.



That evening, when Bill and Hilary were getting ready
for bed Hilary smiled, and said to Bill "I found out
who pissed in your saxophone!!"



:)



(f)





Ars longa, vita brevis.

Art is long, life is short.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)

August 20, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Pore Me

By SHALOM AUSLANDER


THE main thing is not to rush. If my pace accelerates past “Leisurely Stroll,” I’m done for. So I give myself time. I allow 30 minutes for a 10-minute walk. I head out at 5 o’clock for a 7 o’clock meeting 10 blocks away. Men hurry past. Women tut as they shoulder by. “It’s called a sidewalk,” mutters an old lady with a cane.


“Easy,” I tell myself, “It’s not a race.” I meander. I saunter. I mosey. And just when the day is ending and I think I’ve made it — one day without being covered in sweat, one day without coming home drenched — they switch my train from Track 6 to Track 11.


“Anyone sitting here?” I ask the unluckiest passenger on the train, pointing to the empty seat beside her. She looks at my shirt — at the dark patches under my arm, at the other one forming on my chest, at the streams of salt water sheeting down my forehead and stinging my eyes — and she smiles kindly.


“Yes,” she says. “Yes, there is.”


I sweat. I am a sweater. I sweat in T-shirts, I sweat in shorts, I sweat in the shower. It is not a certain dampness. It is not a masculine bit of moist. Sweat spurts out the top of my head like I’m a lawn sprinkler. I sit down on the curb at lunchtime and a little girl leaps over my head.


When I was young, the first thing my teachers told me about hell was that it was hot; after that, the punishments seemed redundant. “Yes, yes, hung by my tongue, eyes gouged out, boiled alive. How hot is hot, exactly? How about fans, do they have any fans?”


Summertime, when the living’s theoretically easy, is three long months of hell. The cold is easy — there’s no limit to the clothing you can put on. You can layer yourself so thick that your arms stick out and you can’t bend your legs at the knees. But heat — once you’re naked, there’s nowhere left to go.


So I plan ahead. By Memorial Day, I am usually rummaging the stores, preparing for the looming meltdown, hoping for salvation in linen pants and moisture-wicking shirts. I keep hoping that some sort of full-body sweatband will be the must-have this season, but the shop windows fill, as they always do, with easily-stained white shirts, off-white shirts, tan shirts. I stand in the men’s department and seethe.


In this season of blue skies and white beaches, I wear black. Black holds more heat than white but it shows damp patches less, the universe’s twisted sartorial/thermodynamic joke. I dress like an undertaker on Casual Friday: black T-shirt, black khakis and a pocket full of paper towels that will not suffice when the levee of my hairline eventually breaks.


As the solstice approaches, my mood darkens like the collar of a red button-down. I stare at the men on the subway in three-piece suits, each one dry as a bone. Something’s going on. Someone’s not telling me something.


I try to figure it out. Is it something I’m eating? Something I’m drinking? Am I drinking too much — or not enough? I drop caffeine. I eat less salt. I eat more salt. Last summer I thought it was my weight. I lost 10 pounds and seemed to sweat twice as much as I did before. Maybe if I gain 20 pounds I’ll stop sweating completely? Maybe if I gain 100 I’ll just drop dead, giving my washing machine a much-needed break?


The globe turns. The globe warms. July arrives. I look to science: Aisle 4, Anti-Perspirants. I’m a rabid anti-perspirant. I want the perspirants rounded up. I want them killed. I find Dry. I find Extra Dry. I find Cool Wave. I find Extra Dry Cool Wave Extreme.


I end up choosing one from the bottom shelf — that’s where they keep the good stuff: hair gel that sets like concrete, Advil 6000 for Fast Relief of Sudden Dismemberment and a roll-on deodorant so strong you’re supposed to put it on at night so it has time to alter your gene structure. I put it on that night, and sweated twice as much out of the top of my head the following day as I had the day before.


August. Misery now. I spend my time trying to figure out a way to earn a living without leaving the pool. I watch reports of global warming with evil glee: Soon you will know how I feel. Soon you will all know.


I try to take my mind off the thousands of small leaks my body has sprung by sitting still in the dark and watching movies; for me, “March of the Penguins” was an 85-minute, sub-zero happy ending. I replay the storm scenes. Look at all that ice! Look at all that snow!


And then, finally, Aug. 1 turns to Aug. 10, and Aug. 10 turns to Aug. 20, and I realize that the march of this urban penguin will soon be over. Soon it will be September and then fall and with fall will come a return to normality, a return to dryness, maybe even a white shirt now and again.


And one day, as the ice forms on the Hudson and the snow whips across Broadway, I’ll be sitting on the train and a woman will appear, a woman in earmuffs and mittens, a woman covered in so many layers that her arms stick out and she can’t bend her legs at the knee.


“Anyone sitting there?” she will ask, trying to point to the empty seat beside me.


“Yes,” I will smile kindly. “Yes, there is.”





:D :D (y) (y)



:)





Ab Iove principium.

Let's start with the most important.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-| 8-|



August 19, 2007

Questions for William Gibson

Back From the Future

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON


Although you’re known as the father of cyberpunk science fiction, your new novel, “Spook Country,” is set in the post-9/11 present and endows the whole culture with a noirish gloom. At what point did American life become stranger than science fiction? If I had gone into a publisher in New York in 1981 and told them I wanted to write a novel that is set in a world where the climate is out of whack and Mideast terrorists have hijacked airplanes and in response the U.S. has invaded the wrong country — it’s too much. Contemporary reality is like an overlapping set of dire science-fictional scenarios.


Your main character is a female journalist who’s researching “locative art,” which is basically mural-making that is so cutting-edge you can’t even see it except digitally. Where did you get that idea? I wanted something that was lowbrow, like something in Juxtapoz magazine. It’s the magazine of the lowbrow-art movement. It’s actually the only art magazine that I read on a regular basis.


I’m not sure that’s something to boast about. I’m a very pro-art kind of guy, but I’m not that visually literate. My inner redneck looks at something and says, “Oh, that’s so cool.” At home I bump into a couple of artists. When I was starting to write, two of my neighbors were Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham.


This is in Vancouver, British Columbia. Did you, as a transplanted American, move to Canada to escape the draft? I was always registered for the draft. Like a lot of people in the Bush administration, somehow I wasn’t called.


What leads a novelist to dedicate himself to imagining the future as opposed to the vanished past? I wanted to immigrate to the future as a boy because all the physical artifacts around me were very old. I wanted the future that was pouring out of the television screen.


Television no longer represents the future? No, television is going away. It’s going to be like radio. It’s going to be appropriated into the realm of the digital.


You had an uncommonly sad childhood, losing your father to a choking accident when you were 6. It was a pre-Heimlich restaurant. He was away on a business trip. My mother never told me. She couldn’t tell me. She had someone else tell me.


Then your mom died suddenly when you were in your teens. Loss is not without its curious advantages for the artist. Major traumatic breaks are pretty common in the biographies of artists I respect. Not that I’d wish that on anyone.


Do you feel that you’ve transcended the science-fiction genre in your work? My roots are in a genre. That is the funny thing. Novels are called novels because, ideally, they provide a novel experience. But in genre, you’re sort of buying a guarantee that you are going to have essentially the same experience again and again. It’s a novel. It won’t be too novel. Don’t worry.


Are you sick of being known as the writer who coined the word “cyberspace” in 1982? I think I’d miss it if it went way.


What is the derivation of the word? “Cyber” is from the Greek word for navigator. Norbert Wiener coined “cybernetics” around 1948 to denote the study of “teleological mechanisms.”


What is your hope for the future? That we’ll turn out not to have already terminally soiled our unthinkably rare and lovely little sphere of water and air.


Isn’t that a rather perfumed way to describe the earth? I suppose it’s a bit wet, but I’m from Vancouver. Green streak a mile wide.




(y) (y)



(f)



Carpe Diem,

SL &b WTB (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



The 60 most popular names each for male and female, dog and cat in the United States and Australia:

www.bowwow.com.au/top20/index.asp



August 19, 2007

On Language

Gifts of Gab

By WILLIAM SAFIRE


PET NAMES

“Names” is the apt appellation of “A Journal of Onomastics,” a scholarly quarterly dealing with the study of proper names. A recent article caught my eye: “Stereotypic Gender Naming Practices for American and Australian Dogs and Cats.”


I have two dogs, the older named Geneva because she is a Bernese mountain dog and the city of Geneva is not far from Bern, Switzerland, where the breed originated. The other is a Portuguese water dog (similar to a standard poodle, but with a square face and fearless demeanor) that I wanted to name Neptune or Poseidon, but my neighbors with the same breed already took those watery names, so my Sobachka name for him is Daniel.


What are other owners around the world naming their pets? Ernest L. Abel and Michael L. Kruger at Wayne State University in Detroit used “a database listing the 60 most popular names each for male and female, dog and cat in the United States and Australia (www.bowwow.com.au/top20/index.asp).” The criterion for popularity was based on a pet identification-tag business that claims to process tens of thousands of orders from both countries. Disclaimer: Your survey may differ.


The onomastic envelope, please. Most popular female names: Maggie, Molly, Daisy, Bailey and Abby. Males: Buddy, Jake, Max, Hunter and Cody. Both sexes, raining both cats and dogs, but probably mainly cats: Tiger.


What ever happened to Spot and Rover and Kitty? They went the way of yesterday’s kids named Jack and Jill.



:o :o



(f)





Die dulci fruimini.

Have a nice day.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o


:)


Need a quick wardrobe tuneup? Fall’s auto-inspired parts only look high maintenance.



SLIDE SHOW: Fall Preview: Spiffy Lube:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/17/magazine/20070819_STYLE_SLIDESHOW_index.html



(f)




Carpe Carpium.

Seize the Carp. ;)

SL & WTB (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l) (l)



At Wooster Square Farmers’ Market in New Haven, customers have their choice of produce.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/19/nyregion/food01600.jpg





August 19, 2007

In Pursuit of Farm Fresh Flavor

By KIM SEVERSON


MY church is a farm. Give me a few chickens, a long row of carrots and the smell of dirt, and I’ll find the open heart and inner peace others might seek from a prayer book or a pew.


The connection between what I put in my body, the land around me and the miracle of things that grow makes me feel as if I’m part of something bigger than myself.


But before you dismiss me as some sort of patchouli-scented wacko, allow me to share my hedonistic bottom line: a perfect ear of Long Island corn or a lovely little lump of Hudson Valley goat cheese simply tastes better to me than anything I may find at the supermarket.


Of course, in the city or the suburbs, a farm is a really impractical church to have. So in a pinch, I’ll go to a farmers’ market. And on some days, a bin of local apples at the supermarket will do.


But luckily, it’s getting easier to find something local to eat. All over the tristate area, the church of local food is growing at rates that have farmers, serious cooks and even the most casual farm stand shoppers in awe.


“We have people calling every week wanting to start farmers’ markets,” said Linda Piotrowicz of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. “It’s gotten to the point where we’ve had trouble recruiting enough farmers.” That’s a bold statement, when you consider that the state has about 4,000 farms.


This year, about 90 farmers’ markets are operating across Connecticut. Twenty years ago, there were only 22. The story is the same in other areas. New Jersey has 95 farmers’ markets, almost double the number from five years ago. New York has almost 300.


And local food fever is stretching beyond farmers’ markets. Dairies in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut are promoting 100 percent local milk and getting a dollar or two more a half gallon for it. Grocery stores like Whole Foods Market and the regional chain Wegmans have developed special programs to get locally produced food on store shelves.


That is not as easy as it may seem. In the Northeast, regional pride is at stake, said Jeff Turnas, vice president of purchasing for Whole Foods in the region that covers its tristate stores. “It is pretty territorial,” he said. “If they live in Connecticut, they want to see products from Connecticut. If they’re from New York, they want to see products from New York.”


Of course, in the summer, there are so many other options, who cares what’s in the produce aisle at the supermarket? On Long Island, humble roadside farm stands and more elaborate farmers’ markets are jammed with day trippers and locals who try to avoid the grocery store.


“If you live here you know that the supermarket is for winter,” said Sandra Fox, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Southampton.


Sure, shopping at a grocery store is more convenient and sometimes cheaper, conceded Lisa Tamra of Yonkers. She was at the Bronxville farmers’ market recently, picking up nectarines for $2 a pound.


“My fiancé thinks I’m a nut that I come down here,” she said. “But I go to the grocery stores and it’s not up to par.”


For some, even a trip to the farmers’ market isn’t good enough. They want to connect directly with the farm. So they sign up for community-supported agriculture projects. These nifty little pieces of commerce allow customers to buy shares in a farm for a few hundred dollars and then get boxes of whatever the farm is producing that week. Some are so popular there are waiting lists.


Jane Hutnik, who lives in Lake Shawnee in northern New Jersey, is one of 140 people who bought a share in Upper Meadow Farm this summer. Boxes of Chinese cabbage and Rose Gold potatoes help her feel more connected to her food and the people who grow it.


“You’re involved in the same gamble as the farmer,” she said. “If there’s been a bad storm and there’s no broccoli, then you don’t get broccoli.”


Gail Brussel of Larchmont, N.Y., started Farm Share in June, and already 200 people have signed up. The program delivers organic, local fruits and vegetables to chefs and home cooks in Westchester and parts of Connecticut. In May, Maryanne Hedrick of Peekskill, N.Y., started My Personal Farmer, which allows people in Westchester to shop online and eat the best of Hudson Valley farms without having to leave home. The food comes from farms within 150 miles of New York City.


“We’re losing the equivalent of seven acres of farmland a day in the Hudson Valley,” Ms. Hedrick said. “I’m using new technology to support an old idea: that there is great bounty in this region that we should all be enjoying.”


Of course, even the most ardent supporters of local food draw the line. Merilyn Rovira, who lives in Princeton, N.J., has been a member of the Honey Brook Organic Farm, a community-supported agriculture project in Pennington, N.J., for a dozen years. She loves the farm, but she has her limits.


“We’re not going to be 100 percent local,” she said. “I’m not convinced enough to buy New Jersey wine and I’m not giving up olive oil, but from May to November eating locally is an important thing.”


So why is local fever gripping the region? The trend is a case study in cultural and environmental changes.


Let’s start with the runaway train called organics. In 2000 when the federal Department of Agriculture announced a set of standards, the spirit of the organic food movement was changed forever. You would think people who wanted to eat food from small, well-run, pesticide-free farms would have welcomed a national set of rules. But it unleashed a monster.


Now, the market is more than $15 billion a year and draws players like Wal-Mart and General Mills. Somehow, organic garlic from China doesn’t have quite the same appeal as some hard-neck variety from the Hudson Valley.


For small farmers, the paperwork can be expensive and cumbersome so they don’t apply for organic certification, even though their practices are in line with organic principles. And the organic label doesn’t mean a product is from a farm that uses sustainable practices.


So local has become the new organic, helped in large part by a growing concern over the environmental impact of transporting food thousands of miles. A few years ago, the term food miles moved into the lexicon. Dedicated people calling themselves locavores began limiting their diets to food that came from a radius of a couple hundred miles.


The author Barbara Kingsolver became a locavore and in May published “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (HarperCollins Publishers), which chronicles her family’s yearlong adventure trying to eat locally. That book and Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” (Penguin Press) have become the bibles of the church of local food. Laura Singer, a resident of Trumbull, Conn., who shops at the Westport Farmers’ Market, has read both.


“I’m on this total guilt trip about buying food and having it shipped halfway across the world,” she said. “My consciousness has really been raised about supporting local farmers and the amount of fossil fuel it takes to get food from long distances.”


The desire to save shrinking farmland in densely populated areas also figures into the equation. There is no better way to save a small farm than to buy the farmer’s food. And buying directly at a farmers’ market or through a community-supported agriculture project brings in more money for farmers than the wholesale market, said Tim Warner of Orient, N.Y., who helps run his family’s 120-acre farm. “The farmers’ markets are our only outlet,” he said. “That’s what keeps us going. We couldn’t wholesale anymore. It was just really hard.”


The last two threads of the local food trend come from concerns over food safety and the talent of area chefs.


Mix a little mad cow disease, bags of spinach infected with E. coli and an obesity epidemic and people begin to question what is happening to the food supply. A bunch of kale from Hepworth Farms in Milton, N.Y., may not solve those problems, but it is one sure, small step toward a healthier family dinner table.


The modern notion that food grown organically and close to home tasted better might have been pioneered in the 1970s by people like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., but chefs like Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills in Westchester County and Michel Nischan at the Dressing Room in Westport, Conn., are perfecting what Adam Platt from New York Magazine calls haute barnyard cuisine.


Of course, trying to buy more local meat and produce isn’t without its problems. Finding what you want isn’t convenient, and it can be more expensive. And food coming directly from the farm means washing your own lettuce and learning how to cook beets.


But there is value beyond the price per pound. Mr. Pollan points out that the American food system is devoted to increasing quantities and reducing prices. The average American spends less than 10 percent of his or her income on food. In 1947, the figure was 24 percent. Mr. Pollan believes people who can afford to pay more for better food should.


Still, we all become misers at the supermarket. There are those of us — and I certainly have done this — who will happily spend $4 for a cup of warm milk and coffee but balk if organic tomatoes cost 40 cents a pound more than something shipped from Mexico.


The farmers know customers are price- sensitive.


“Getting people to understand why things are more expensive is a challenge,” said John Ramsey, who runs a four-acre family farm in the heart of Scarsdale, N.Y. “For years we’ve had the same prices. A bunch of basil was always 50 cents.”


Now, with fuel prices up and a year of tough weather, he is going to have to raise it to 75 cents. But imagine what that brings. You get the basil, and you get to be part of a community and help save some farmland.


Earlier this month, I visited Cindy Burke, an old friend who created the recipes for a book I wrote on trans fat. She lives in a Seattle suburb and recently published her book, “To Buy or Not to Buy Organic: What You Need to Know to Choose the Healthiest, Safest, Most Earth-Friendly Food” (Marlowe & Company). She knows more about the dynamics of buying local than most people I know. And like me, farms are her church.


I asked her about why people were so interested in buying local as we drove with her young daughter to a farm about a half-hour from her West Seattle home. We were picking up a pig. Half a pig, actually. She had bought a share in a Berkshire-Duroc mix. It had been cut into chops and roasts and was ready for her freezer. In all, the meat cost a little more than $4 a pound.


Local food is more delicious, true. But buying it does more than fill our bellies, she said. It keeps us connected. Technology, the mass media, long commutes and the never-ending pressure to earn more money keeps us separate from our neighbors and families, she said. And these days, people are so mobile that they don’t necessarily live in the place where they grew up.


“Eating locally ties us to a place,” she said. “It give us roots in the local community where we live. It makes us think about other people, and how we’re connected. It puts us in touch with a life force we can’t find anywhere else.”


To which I say, amen.




(y) (y) (y) (y)



(f)





Amicus optima vitae possessio.

A friend is the greatest treasure in life.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)



HEALTHY ECONOMY The Union Square Greenmarket, free yoga in the park, and juice bars have created a blend of commune and commerce in this part of Manhattan.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/19/fashion/19gree600.1.jpg




August 19, 2007

A Harmonic Convergence in Union Square

By MELENA RYZIK


IN the taxonomy of New York City, the mere mention of a certain neighborhood conjures an image of its local tribe: the Williamsburg hipster. The meatpacking district club-goer. The Park Slope Earth Mama. But whom does Union Square conjure?


People like Amanda Bird, for one. On a recent Wednesday, Ms. Bird was ommming away the city’s distractions at the free weekly yoga class in the park. Afterward she strolled through the Greenmarket, looking for snacks free of trans fats.


Ms. Bird, 25, comes to Union Square from her home in Brooklyn regularly: to work out and to shop at the farmers’ stalls; to see her doctor, who advocates holistic health; and to eat curry supreme at Zen Palate, a favorite vegetarian restaurant.


If she wanted, she could also leave clothing at Union Cleaners in the neighborhood, one of the city’s few organic dry cleaners. Or shop for a reclaimed wood table at Environment Furniture.


If she wanted to apply green thinking to her night life, she could stop by the Village Pourhouse, a pub that recently began using recycled paper products.


Though other areas of the city offer one or a few of these services, Union Square is becoming a one-stop destination for those who consider themselves health-conscious, eco-friendly and deserving of the kind of spiritual and bodily nurturing that in the past was mainly the province of spa vacations. If the meatpacking district is where you go to party, Union Square is where you detoxify.


“We call it the wheatpacking district,” said Lisa Blau, who with Amanda Freeman founded VitalJuiceDaily.com, an e-mail newsletter devoted to healthy living that they publish from an office in the neighborhood.


With its high concentration of popular organic food suppliers like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, plus gyms (a half-dozen major ones in a 10-block radius), yoga and Pilates studios, alternative health practitioners, spas and other peddlers of vitality, Union Square may be the city’s greenest neighborhood.


“This is a new face of new New York: an upscale, health-conscious district,” said Robert Snyder, a professor of journalism and American studies at Rutgers who has written about the history of Union Square, a longtime site of political rallies and of the first Labor Day parade in 1882. But leave your Birkenstocks at home. “It’s not granola,” Ms. Freeman said of the area. “Formerly, if something was environmentally friendly, it was oatmeal-colored and styleless. Because eco-consciousness and the green movement has become popular, it’s risen to appeal to the luxury class.”


OVER the last six years, there has been a proliferation of spas and other personal care businesses in the area. Acupuncturists and massage therapists cluster there and, according to SpaFinder, whose offices are three blocks north of Union Square, there are more day spas there than on the Upper East Side. (The neighborhood’s borders, according to the Union Square Partnership, are First and Sixth Avenues on the east and west, and 18th and 13th Streets on the north and south.)


But this focus on luxury does come at a price, Dr. Snyder said. “Good health and environmental consciousness expressed as a habit of consumption” has the tinge of elitism, he said. “Looking at the real estate and prices around the area, I do grow concerned that the new Union Square will be less inclusive than the old one.”


Rosie Kanellis, 41, a textile designer who comes from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to shop at the Greenmarket, said that the area had become too corporate, and that she was “opposed to the Whole Foods” because “it’s quick-fix healthy.”


Nonetheless, businesses are capitalizing on the area’s new personality. Davide Berruto, chief executive of Environment Furniture, a Los Angeles-based store that opened its first East Coast outpost in Union Square last month, said an eco-conscious energy is “in the air, it’s in the people walking around.” But that wouldn’t matter, he said, if people had no money to spend. “If you said, ‘Oh there is this neighborhood and it’s very green but it’s not commercial,’ we couldn’t have done that.”


Andrew Tanner, a managing partner of Tao Yoga & Tai Chi, spent months walking around the city looking for space for a new flagship studio before finding what he called the ideal 4,000-square-foot spot on Union Square West last year.


“It’s the yoga haven of New York City,” he said, ticking off a few of the dozen major studios and schools located there, like Om Yoga, Prana Power, Bikram and Jivamukti. “The energy field around Union Square is one of the best places around New York City,” Mr. Tanner said. “There’s a lot of happiness here.”


Jeffrey Williams, 22, a fashion designer from Harlem, agrees. He comes to Union Square almost daily for a healthy lunch and a berry smoothie. “It feels fresh,” he said of the area. “When I think of Union Square, I think of unity and a good vibration and a connection to the earth.”


Mr. Williams’s generation may be the first to feel that way.


“Twenty, 30 years ago, you took your life in your hands going in there,” said Joyce Mendelsohn, a city historian and the author of “Touring the Flatiron: Walks in Four Historic Neighborhoods,” which includes Union Square. Once considered a needle park, it was a refuge for drugs and prostitution. “Any middle-class people who lived in the neighborhood didn’t feel comfortable using the park,” she said. “It was such a gloomy place.”


Not until the Greenmarket arrived, in 1976, did the park begin to attract crowds. In interviews, historians, city officials, business owners and residents credited the Greenmarket, the city’s largest farmers’ market — along with the restaurateur Danny Meyer, whose Union Square Cafe began offering a Greenmarket-inspired menu in 1985 — with helping transform the area.


“The Greenmarket was able to fill a vacuum to give Union Square a citywide identity,” said Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University.


As a major subway switching point, Union Square is “the dividing line between hip New York and the old fogies,” said Dr. Moss, who occasionally ventures into fogy territory.


The park has not totally lost its roots as an activist center: The Critical Mass bike ride, meant to promote oil-free transportation, departs from there monthly, and protesters coexist with skateboarders and vendors of antiwar T-shirts. Plus, there is near-constant canvassing and promotion: “Do you have a minute to save the planet?” or “Free energy bar!” is the 21st-century version of getting onto one’s soapbox.


“It’s become a place to talk about greening and environmental issues and things that relate to the earth,” said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, whose father, Barry Benepe, was a founder of the Greenmarket. When the city wanted to launch a pilot program of public recycling bins, it chose Union Square as one of two Manhattan locations. Next month, the Department of Sanitation will add electronics recycling there. It’s also the only site that offers both composting and clothing recycling in conjunction with the Greenmarket, whose shoppers are sought after as eco-guinea pigs.


All of this helped draw people like Kate Sinding, a wheatpacking convert who moved to Union Square from Lower Manhattan in 2002. Like Ms. Bird, she does yoga, inspects labels, eats organic, conserves energy and rides a bike.


“It was very easy to have a relatively green lifestyle” in Union Square, said Ms. Sinding, 36, a senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council (whose headquarters are three blocks north of Union Square). But, she added, “It’s more of yuppie green lifestyle than a hippie green lifestyle. You can go to the Diesel store before or after you hit Whole Foods or the Greenmarket.”


That juxtaposition is perhaps most indicative of the new Union Square, where the onetime headquarters of the Communist Party, on the east side of the park, is now a Babies “R” Us, and the allure of selecting a perfectly ripe peach is often trumped by rubbing shoulders with a television chef doing the same. It’s no eco-topia, like Berkeley or even its New York equivalent, Park Slope.


“Park Slope has really great energy,” said Mr. Tanner, who considered placing Tao Yoga in that neighborhood. “But Union Square just takes the cake. I see celebrities there all the time.”






(y) Nice for New Yorkers to have a place like this. I have to drive all over hell's half acre AND still order things (such as Stevia Plus sweetener) via the Internet. The lack of a concentrated area of organic + "spiritual services" in many suburbs and rural areas - also seems to prevent the fellowship and sense of community as well.


(f) (f)





Ad astra!

To the stars!


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)



(h) Who knew how television shows and the lunch box would be combined into what now are long-ago memories this time of year?? (And for some, quite an expensive hobby...)



Lunch boxes bring back a lot of memories to many older Americans. It reminds us of the days when the lunch box you chose was one of your biggest decisions when getting ready to go back to school in the fall.



For generations, the lunch containers many of us have hauled to school and work have reflected American culture. No meal has received more cultural attention to its transport than our lunch. Of all the bags, boxes, trays, cans, and cartons carried over the past century, the most message-laden is the child's metal lunch box. This selection of boxes and their drink containers from the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History explores that colorful heritage.


http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/




The First Generation

American industrial workers have often carried their lunch in plain metal buckets. Since the mid-19th century, miners, factory workers, dock hands, and other laborers have used sturdy dinner pails to hold hard-boiled eggs, vegetables, meat, coffee, pie, and other hardy fare. In 1904, "thermos" vacuum bottles began keeping workers' drinks hot or cold until the noon whistle blew.

Parents 100 years ago often gave their schoolchildren an empty tobacco or coffee tin to carry some fresh-picked strawberries and bread, a wedge of cheese, and possibly a handful of shelled hickory nuts. Other children carried a fancy store-bought lunch pail, a paper sack, or no lunch at all.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/section1.htm





The Other Box

Television transformed the lunch box from an ordinary food conveyor into a storyteller. Beginning in the 1950s, the screen-like sides of the lunch box offered children a new form of self-expression.

Box makers paid for the right to use TV shows to promote box sales. The studios used boxes to gain market exposure. And children acquired a new statement of their power and influence in the emerging world of mass-marketed consumer goods.


http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/section2.htm




The Flying Nun Lunch Box:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/images/02-07_full.jpg






Cowboys and Astronauts

Comic books, radio shows, and television introduced a cast of action characters to American school children. Fearless champions of a mythical Old West joined with explorers of outer space on the illustrated metal lunch box and its companion drink container.

The steel box had reached its ideal form. Change shifted to the action circulating around all sides of the two containers. Manufacturers competed for rights to the latest horseback hero or starship warrior.


http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/section3.htm






Cool Lunches and Cold Steel

As grade school children became teenagers, box makers devised new themes to keep boxes selling. Musical groups, hit movies, athletes, bold TV shows, and wild geometric patterns added zip to boxes of the 1960s and 1970s.

By the mid-1980s, box makers had replaced steel with less costly synthetic materials. The rule of the metal lunch box was over.


http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/section4.htm



Barbie Vinyl: http://americanhistory.si.edu/lunchboxes/images/04-08_full.jpg




http://www.greenbankcabins.com/images/lunchbox.jpg



http://www.mygrannysatticantiques.com/assets/images/wildfronteir-lunch-box-larg.jpg





The Lunch Box Museum in Columbus Ga., has over 4,000 different lunch boxes and thermoses that depict just about every cartoon character, comic book hero and television series. Down in Columbus, Ga., Allen Woodall displays his collection of 4,000 lunch boxes and thermoses, one for practically every cartoon and superhero ever invented, including a mint condition 1954 Superman lunch box worth around $10,000 and one with PacMan, the hungry video game character shown scarfing down ghosts.


"When they come in and they spot the box that they had back in school, the smile really comes on their face," said Woodall, who started his collection in 1985. "I've had many people tell me that we should install a video camera at the end of the room to catch their expression."


http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2006-11-14/cohn-weirdmuseums/


http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2006-11-14/cohn-weirdmuseums/Lunchbox2.JPG/asset_small.jpg





http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/GACOLlunch.html



http://www.nothingtoseehere.net/images/lunchbox-museum.jpg





Another Lunch Box Museum, in CA:

http://www.retrodeb.com/museum_news.html





http://collectibles.about.com/od/lunchboxcollecting/Lunch_Box_Collecting_and_Collectibles.htm





Lunchbox Heaven


Molded orange plastic Dukes of Hazard and Flash Gordon lunch boxes (complete with rocket-styled thermos)... blue Transformers and Star Wars lunch boxes... these are as much a part of childhood as Sunday morning cartoons and cooties. And while it may be years yet before the Smurfs are recognized for their invaluable contribution to television history, their contribution to lunchtime elementary gastronomy is not forgotten.


Behold: The Lunchbox as a work of art!


The Atlanta Museum of Design (formerly the Atlanta International Museum of Art and Design) will host an exhibition of 75 rare metal lunch boxes beginning January 8th and continuing through February 14th. An opening reception will be held from 6pm to 8pm on the evening of Thursday, January 8, 2004.


The exhibition, Lunch Box Memories, is a nostalgic new Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition that illustrates the transformation of the lunch box from a practical, functional object to a prized possession.


The collection is comprised of illustrated metal lunch boxes – dating from the 1880’s to the 1980’s, and including one of the last metal lunch boxes manufactured in 1984 – from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and other rare examples on loan from Allen Woodall, a private collector from Columbus, Georgia. According to the Museum's web site, "the design of these everyday objects celebrates America’s fads and fantasies, heroes and heroines, reflecting trends in 20th century popular culture."


The exhibition features a wide variety of designs, from recycled tobacco tins and lard pails to classic boxes illustrating figures such as Batman and Robin, the Harlem Globetrotters, Annie Oakley, Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers, Popeye, Garfield, a VW bus, the Bionic Woman, Superman, H.R. Pufnstuf, Sesame Street, the Lone Ranger, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Indiana Jones.


The lunch boxes featured in the exhibition include some of the most rare and most significant boxes available to collectors today. Among the most prized in the collection are: the Mickey Mouse Oval (1935), the first character lunch box; Hopalong Cassidy (1950), the first box based on a well known TV hero; and The Beatles (1965), the first metal lunch box to use pop music performers, embossed 3-D portraits, and individual signatures.


Lunch Box Memories was developed and organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Behring Center, and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).


Look for your Cloudjammer friends at the exhibition. We'll be the ones with the Harry Potter lunch boxes clutched to our chests.


http://www.fightboredom.net/2004/01/lunchbox-heaven.html





:o Seems there were thousands of these:

http://www.anotherbigsale.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/lunch2.jpg



Jetsons: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/8515_23559_4.jpg





;) Oh like, wow: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/8515_23557_2.jpg


http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/news_images/8515_23558_3.jpg



http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Hollow/4131/vyngo.gif





My folks would never let me have one of these. I always carried a metal one:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Hollow/4131/Vinyl.html




(l) (l)



(f)




De gustibus non est disputandum.

In matters of taste there is no dispute. ;)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:s :s


;)



http://www.stpetersinterparish.org/imgs/thmuni.jpg





:o No wonder I am such a clothes horse now.........;)



(f)






Aut disce aut discede,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)



Tafi Toleafoa has a male body, but was raised in Samoa as a female.


Tafi Toleafoa answers questions after her presentation on fa'afafine at the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on a recent Sunday in West Anchorage. Her talk was titled "What Do I Call You? What Are You? Gender and Sexual Identity at American Universities."

http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/183-TafiDSC_0056-243-x-370.jpg



http://www.adn.com/photos/multimedia/slideshows/gender/





Cultural contradictions

Tafi Toleafoa explains what it means to be fa'afafine


By JULIA O'MALLEY


(Published: August 19, 2007)


"What are you?"


The question came at Tafi Toleafoa from a young woman across the computer lab.


People always want to know, but they rarely ask out loud. Students wear the question on their faces the first day of class. Professors trip over pronouns. It's been that way since Tafi came from Samoa two years ago to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage.


"Are you a boy or a girl?"


Now, one more time, Tafi had to explain, to untangle the contradiction of her long thick hair and plump, glossy lips with the masculine tenor of her voice and her tall, substantial body. She had to tell the girl that, no, she isn't a boy, or a girl, exactly. She's something else.


"I'm fa'afafine," Tafi said. "That means I have a boy's body, but I was raised in Samoa as a girl."


Tafi could have explained that in the islands, nobody ever asked. She could have told the girl that a Samoan mother with a fa'afafine among her children is considered lucky. Fa'afafine help with babies and cooking, they tend the elderly and the sick. They are presumed to have the best traits of both men and women.


But the girl didn't want to know more. She picked up her things and left, giving Tafi one last look over her shoulder.


The way most Americans understand it, gender breaks down simply: there are men and there are women. But across Asia and the Pacific Islands, many cultures recognize a third gender with characteristics both male and female. In Samoa, when a son or a daughter prefers the work and clothes of the opposite sex, they are called fa'afafine "like a woman" or, far less commonly, fa'atama, "like a man."


Tafi has a male body, but she lives her life as a female and asks that people refer to her as "she." That's how she will be described in this story.


In the islands Tafi was more accepted, but her life was still complicated. Many fa'afafine live as women, the maleness of their bodies ignored by those around them.


Outside of the cities, especially in Christian families, they must follow strict social rules binding them to household duties.


Many families, including Tafi's, expect they will remain celibate. In a culture that prizes both its tradition and Christianity, fa'afafine are tolerated, but behavior that hints at homosexuality is not.


Still, many fa'afafine, who see themselves as women, do have discreet relationships with men.


In her ideal world, Tafi, who was raised as an oldest girl-child named Alicia, wouldn't have to change her body to be accepted here. She wouldn't have to rearrange her outside to make people accept what she is inside: a straight woman who is attracted to straight men.


But the world isn't ideal. Since she came to Anchorage, Tafi's family, who loves her as she is, has pressured her to dress like a man. They have decided she needs to fit in to avoid ugliness she isn't used to.


Now, at 23, she's torn between the expectations of her family who accept her as an asexual helper, and American culture that's less accepting but offers her what she wants most: a chance to become physically female, to find a husband and have a family of her own.


Tafi wasn't surprised that the girl in the computer lab didn't know what she was seeing. Sometimes Tafi doesn't know how to see herself -- or her future.



ALICIA

Ropeta Toleafoa knew her son was fa'afafine at age 4. Unlike his brothers, he stayed close to her and didn't like getting dirty, she said, speaking in Samoan with her son Taivaleoaana "Seven" Toleafoa translating.


"He didn't like going outside and doing what men do," she said.


Tafi's life wasn't like the stories she watched on re-runs of American talk shows as she grew up in Samoa. She never felt she was a woman trapped in a man's body. She never felt shame.


Samoa is a tribal, communal society, different from America where individual desires rule. Samoan parents hold a powerful role and commonly influence their children's decisions far into adulthood. Children don't choose to be fa'afafine; their mothers decide for them.


At 5, Tafi, a sweet, outspoken child, began hoisting babies on her hip, filling bottles for her mother and helping with the dishes. Ropeta, a mother of eight, was pregnant or nursing for many years and welcomed Tafi's help.


Tafi wasn't encouraged to dress like a girl, but she gravitated toward her sisters' clothing, playing dress-up in private. "I loved skirts, short skirts to be specific," she said. "I always had to be pretty."


At school, Tafi bonded with girls and other fa'afafine among her classmates and teachers. By third grade, most everyone called her Alicia. Her younger siblings, all girls, saw her as an oldest sister.


Tafi's father, Saunoa "Noah" Toleafoa is a religious man, an elder in the Seventh Day Adventist church that missionaries brought to the islands along with Western ideas about gender. Noah had fa'afafine in his family, but he held on longest to the idea that Tafi would be like her older brothers. A boy dressing as a girl is not what God intended, he said.


He tried forcing her to change her clothes and cut her hair like a boy's, but nothing worked. Tafi couldn't be forced.


"This one thing I know," he said. "Tafi is different."


By the time Tafi reached her teens, the idea of an actual sex change consumed her. Tafi found many examples of adult fa'afafine around her, some of whom had surgery. To each other they spoke a fa'afafine language, a mixture of English and Samoan. Tafi soon caught on.


"It wasn't hard to ask them, 'Hey, how did you get boobs?'" she said.


Out of respect for her father, Tafi dressed "androgenous," wearing women's pants, a T-shirt, and her long hair pulled into a bun. Her one indulgence was glitter.


"Lots of glitter," she said. "I loved shiny stuff."


Ropeta and her daughters insulated Tafi from her father's disapproval, which gradually waned. For junior prom, Ropeta saved two paychecks to buy Tafi the material to make a pink dress.


By 2002, all the Toleafoas had immigrated to Anchorage, following family connections and the promise of better jobs. Tafi stayed behind, her immigration status complicated because she was born in western Samoa, which is an independent country, different from the U.S. territory of American Samoa. She'd graduated from high school and was working on her associates degree.


"That's when I started dressing like a woman full-out," she said.


In a snap-shot from that period posted on her MySpace.com site, Tafi glows, her chest full under a black blouse.


"It felt right," she said. "Perfect."



AMERICA

In 2005, on her way to Anchorage to start at UAA, Tafi took her first step on U.S. soil in Hawaii, wearing platform sandals and short-shorts. She always imagined Americans, with their gay celebrities and liberal attitudes, would accept her. She remembered RuPaul and the movie "To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything!" a drag queen comedy she'd watched in high school.


"I thought, 'OK if there's people like that, then probably I don't have to explain myself,' " she said. "I didn't know that it was going to be like there's nobody that dresses like that in a real everyday life."


When she showed her passport, which said she was a man, customs officials singled her out for two special searches. Standing in the balmy Honolulu airport, she felt the disapproval of strangers for the first time.


The collapse of her expectations continued in Anchorage. The first day of her liberal studies class, when she answered a professor's question, she heard whispers. Her voice betrayed her.


"When they look at your face and you have earrings on and you have make-up on and you have long hair, then automatically you're supposed to have this kind of voice," she said. "If you are not going to have that voice, then you are kind of like an alien or something."


After her first two weeks of school, her father sat Tafi down. He had four fa'afafine on his mother's side, he said. One of them came to America 10 years ago, to California. People didn't understand her there, he said. At a party, Americans beat her and threw her from a window. She was killed.


"He said he's concerned about my life and my safety," Tafi said. "That's why he advised me that I should change my style to kind of like, umm, androgenous, sort of like professional."


There would be no more short-shorts or glitter. Instead, it was T-shirts, and slacks. And if her professor asked about pronouns, she'd go by "he." But, even in her toned-down outfits, Tafi seemed feminine. Her professors struggled with what to call her in class.


"Even the most inclusive people do not know what this is," said her professor Ann Jache. "They don't know how to talk about a person that is both male and female."


Tafi took her classmates' judgment as a challenge. A gregarious "he," she excelled in class, tackling complicated literature, winning a seat on the student senate, making a loyal group of friends in the school Polynesian association.


Tafi didn't want to hide, Jache said, she wanted to explain. Jache and Tafi crafted a project on fa'afafine over the generations. Tafi gave a presentation to her class, and then to the campus, and then to a Unitarian church. Each time, she grew more confident.


Tafi began to see it as her job to inform the campus about fa'afafine.


"I knew that they are not educated about it. They wouldn't be mean like that if they knew ... Fa'afafine are all coming to Alaska," she said. "If they are running into the same problems, I have to do something about it."



LOVE

Tafi's west Anchorage home is crowded with her parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and in-laws, 13 in all. Tropical flowers decorate the walls and a grass mat covers the carpet. Among her sisters, she's Alicia, a dutiful oldest daughter with a flower behind her ear, chasing her toddling niece, carrying dishes from the kitchen.


Tafi's brothers and sisters have a better idea than her parents about how Americans view her. They know that some people with a sibling like her would feel ashamed. Her brothers, who see her alternately as a sister and a cross-dressing brother, defend her fiercely.


"Samoan culture believe that God gave you a freedom of choice, you are who you are and it doesn't matter," said her brother, Asosaotama, a security guard who goes by "Ace."


"Shame is nothing when it comes down to blood," said Seven, a soldier on Fort Richardson. "Blood is blood."


But for her father and her brothers, one thing is very important. Tafi must follow the rules. A fa'afafine brother is one thing, but a gay brother is quite another.


Living as women in Samoa, fa'afafine do have relationships with men, but they are rarely, if ever, public. Tafi has heard of older fa'afafine, those whose parents have died, who live like closeted gay men in America, pretending their partner is a platonic friend. More commonly fa'afafine live with a large family, and have strings of short, secret relationships with straight men who may later marry, sometimes leaving them brokenhearted.


When the subject of a boyfriend came up at the table after church, Tafi's mother and sisters cheered with approval. Her brother shook his head.


"Tafi can act like a girl, dress up like a girl, but if he had a boyfriend, that's too far," said Seven.


Tafi excused herself to the kitchen.


"My sister-in-law, my mom, my sisters, they want me to be happy, they know who I'm attracted to, what I'm attracted to, which is men, and they accept that," she said later. "My dad and my brothers, no. It's probably because they just have that expectation of me marrying a woman because I was born male. But then I'm not a male now, it's obvious I'm not male."


If anything makes Tafi unhappy, it's this. Growing up she thought she'd be like other fa'afafine, staying with her aging parents until they passed away, caring for her sister Narese, who has Down syndrome.


But since she's been in America, and read in her classes about people born male becoming female, she dreams of a future more like her sisters, with a partner of her own.


She thinks of taking hormones and eventually getting surgery to make her body match the way she feels. Her mother and sisters would understand. Her father and brothers would eventually accept it. But even then, if she chose to have a relationship with a man, she would be breaking the rules. She would have to keep it from them.

"Everything else is okay," she said. "But, boyfriend? No."



SIN

Saturday morning at Anchorage Community Seventh Day Adventist church in Airport Heights, and the youth choir lines up on the altar. Tafi's sisters Sina and Cherish clap and sing "This little light of mine" in their aloha-print dresses, their long hair in heavy buns, glittery gloss on their lips.


Outside of family, church is the most important thing for Tafi. But it's also a place where she feels conflicted. At first the family attended with a mostly Samoan congregation who understood her, but when they moved to a mixed-race church, things changed. Once again, Tafi's father asked her to dress like a man.


"Now I have to be a certain way because some of the members' culture do not have a kind of person like that," she said.


Her brothers and father are leaders in the church. People have approached them about her.


"I hope that if they want to understand they would feel free to come and ask me because, I mean, how friendly could I get?" Tafi said.


Pastor Edson Joseph, who is from Antigua, has led the evangelical Christian church for 20 years. The congregation's become increasingly diverse, with American blacks, Africans, people from the Caribbean and Pacific Islanders. A church should welcome everyone, but Tafi and other fa'afafine have raised troublesome questions, he said.


"I have had to defend him," he said, meaning Tafi. "I have been accused of encouraging or upholding his unbiblical behavior."


But, he said, all people are sinners and Jesus welcomed everyone, even prostitutes and criminals. So long as Tafi isn't influencing children, there is a place for him and others like him. It would be a very different matter if Tafi were in a relationship with a man, he said. Then, he would have to intervene.


Tafi, dressed in slacks and a man's dress shirt, carrying a knock-off designer purse, fills a back pew every Saturday, belting out harmonies to her sister's songs. She's made her peace with Jesus.


"I don't think God sent his son for perfect people, he sent his son for sinners, whatever kind of sinner that is," she said. "Jesus came to wash away the sins. I don't think he came just to wash away the straight people's sins."



HERSELF

Away from church and school, there is one place where Tafi feels most like herself: among the women of her family.


One sunny day in June, the first birthday of Tafi's niece, the Toleafoa family threw a barbecue for a hundred guests at the park behind the YMCA on Lake Otis.


Under the picnic shelter, where meat marinated in super-sized coolers and giant grills smoked, Tafi filled foil-covered lunch boxes with turkey tails, taro, flank steak, sausage, potato salad and rice.


"Faster, Alicia, faster," called her sisters.


In her sarong, a flower behind her ear, Tafi carried plates of food to the elders from church, she dished out salad and chow mein, she sliced the elaborate banana cake. A child fell; She picked him up and shushed his tears.


R&B rolled out of a big set of speakers and the rhythm took hold of her sisters. They stopped work to dance, raising their palms to the sky. The mood captured their mother, Ropeta, who bounced her shoulders and swayed. Tafi put down her big spoon and let the song catch her hips in a slow groove.


Cherish and Sina hooted. Aunties cracked up. Ropeta looked at her happy child dancing in the barbecue smoke and felt moved to cheer her on in English: "Go, girl! Go, girl! Go, girl!"



http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/anchorage/newcity/story/9234642p-9150171c.html




(f) (f)




Respectfully,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :|


America's Wildest Weather Cities

By Tom Van Riper, Forbes.com

July 20, 2007


Visiting Disney World anytime soon? Have fun, but watch for storms moving in. The odds of having to duck away from a bolt of lightning in the land of Disney's Magic Kingdom, Orlando, Fla., are greater than anywhere else in America.


That's what happens when hot air that rises during the summer months in the state's central region draws the wet air from both coasts; the resulting mix means a ton of late-day thunderstorms that spew out as many as 40,000 bolts of lightning. Overall, Florida has been home to over 1,500 lightning deaths and injuries since 1959, according to the National Weather Service.


Ask yourself--how important is weather in your day-to-day life? If you can't stand humidity, be sure to steer clear of Quillayute and Olympia, in the state of Washington, which both average about 80% humidity during the year.


Washington is also one of the rainiest states in the country, though it doesn't even compare with parts of Hawaii. The city of Hilo, on the state's main island, gets 277 days of rain per year, more than any other town. There's plenty of sunshine, too, though most every day sees a shower come through. That combination keeps the local area at a consistent tropical green year-round.


At the other end of the spectrum is Yuma, Ariz., where it rains an average of 17 days per year, or just once every three weeks.


As for temperatures, those who don't mind trading extreme winter cold for a relatively cool summer might like International Falls, Minn., near the Canadian border, which averages 36 degrees year-round. Midsummer temperatures can hit the 70s and 80s around midday, but only for a handful of days each summer. Then they often drop to the 40s at night.


Dan Baker, who by day works a loss prevention expert for Sears Holdings in Dallas, has spent a chunk of his free time indulging his hobby of tracking weather facts across the U.S. since 1998. His Web site not only provides information on all things Texas, but tells readers where they can find the wettest, driest, snowiest and most volatile weather cities in America.


"Growing up in Dallas, with severe weather, my parents gave me an anemometer, which measures wind," he says, and his interest took off from there.


Some of Baker's findings are surprising. Who but the most informed would know that Flagstaff, Ariz., is among the top 10 U.S. cities for snow, with 99 inches per year? That's what happens to a city more than a mile above sea level, no matter how close to the desert it might be.


The windiest city? It's not Chicago, which doesn't even make the top 10. The distinction goes to Milton, Mass. (elevation 628 feet), the highest peak within 10 miles of the Atlantic that's a sitting duck for strong ocean breezes. And Baker reports that his hometown of Dallas is hotter in the summertime than downstate Houston, which is more known for sweltering heat. Dallas averages 96 degree highs during July and August, four degrees hotter than Houston, which nonetheless has daily downtown employees walking from their cars to their office buildings through air-conditioned breezeways.


Overall, the title of hottest American city (weatherwise, that is) goes to Key West, Fla., which averages 78 degrees year-round.


And for those who don't like the weather, or at least changes in it, there's the West Coast. Eight of the top 10 cities described as having the "least variety" are in California, led by the big three of San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles. Why? Cities on the water don't heat up and cool down as extremely as landlocked areas do, and the relatively calmer waters of the left coast means less volatility. "The Pacific coast current keeps the water cool," Baker explains.


http://promo.realestate.yahoo.com/americas_wildest_weather_cities.html




In Pictures: America's Wildest Weather Cities:

http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/20/weather-storms-united-states-biz-cx_tvr_0720weather_slide_2.html?partner=yahoore






:o :o Who knew? I learn something new (at least) everyday. :)



(f)





Vive Ut Vitas!!

Live, so that you may live." or "Live life to the fullest.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:)




YOU MAY GET RESULTS AFTER ALL !!


An elderly lady phoned her telephone company to report that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called -- and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always moaned right before the phone rang. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady.


He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned loudly and the telephone began to ring.


Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:


1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire via a steel chain and collar.


2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.


3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the phone number was called.


4. After a couple of such jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate on himself and the ground.


5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring.


Which goes to show that some problems can be fixed by pissing and moaning.





;) ;)



Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



What do you think is the most important weather invention of all time?


Thermometer 26.6%


Air conditioning 68.4%


Umbrella 3.35%


Rain coat 1.55%



http://www.weather.com/common/onlinepoll/results/lap_undeclared.html?generic_poll145







:) What is the most important weather invention of all time?


The refrigerator!


;)




(f)





Semper ubi sub ubi.

Always wear underwear.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



Q U O T E D


"Anything less than being the next Yahoo, Google, or eBay is a failure as far as I'm concerned."


-- Jason Calacanis, now launching human-powered search outfit Mahalo, is not known for aiming low.


http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/man-vs-machine.html








(um) (um) May Your Smile Be Your Umbrella. (um) (um)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o



http://sovietposter.blogspot.com/






|-) |-) |-)


:)






Carpe Carpio.

Seize the carp.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :|


;)



http://www.framebox.de/creations/3d/salad/




(f)




Carpe Diem,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

^o) ^o)



http://jalopnik.com/cars/oh-yeahhh/a-faux-stick-on-sunroof-is-the-ultimate-car-accessory-291340.php



:|


;)





(f) (f) 's,

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)



http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/index.html



:o



(f)







Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

;)


(l) (l)



http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VHSAH95WL.jpg




http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AF3HNHF4L.jpg




:)



(f)





Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (l)


Last Call at Maud's (1993)


A look at the world's longest-running lesbian bar and its colorful and sometimes tragic past, from the the underground days of the 40's to 1989, when it closed its doors for good.


Director: Paris Poirier



(~) (~) Review:


"I can think of no place better to have suspense and a real eerie feeling of decadence than a lesbian bar, because lesbians are outlaws, we've always been outlaws and I hope we always stay outlaws, and lesbianbars are our secret hiding places." With these remarks by lesbian mystery writer Mary Wings, Last Call at Maud's begins its descent into the underground "secret sorority" of the lesbian bar scene from the 1940s to the present. For the next seventy-five minutes, both drinks and conversation are free flowing, as a who's who list of lesbian luminaries and local bar regulars recount tales of coming out, first bar visits, pick ups and affairs, police raids, hippie lesbians, the women's movement, Castro Street clones, Anita Bryant, and AIDS.


The occasion and setting for this documentary by first-time director Paris Poirier is the closing of Maud's, the world's oldest and longest- running lesbian-owned bar, located in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. Maud's is the most recent in a growing subgenre of historical documentaries within queer cinema (Silent Pioneers, Before Stonewall, Tiny And Ruby: Hell Divin' Women, Comrades In Arms, Women Like Us, and the classic Word Is Out) that reconstruct pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian his/herstories using oral histories, personal photographs and memoirs, home movies, and archival materials. Within this tradition, personal stories and social histories blend and blur in an attempt to make real for audiences the not-so-distant, but often hidden or ignored queer past in a homophobic America.


In Last Call at Maud's, the memories of the women interviewed are frequently accompanied by personal photographs of younger selves and lovers. When Rikki Streicher, of Maud's' describes the post-World War II bar scene crowded with butches with their slicked-back hair and femmes with their lipsticked mouths and drop-dead dresses, youthful photos of Streicher in earnest boy drag serve to both illustrate and verify her reminiscences. The film displays a fascinating wealth of archival material testifying to repressive police actions and media coverage which, in those days, had no qualms of outing' those arrested in bar raids by listing their names and addresses. These events and counterstrategies are fleshed out through individual accounts given by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first international organization of lesbians) and political activist Sally Gearhart. Gearhart remembers going to mixed' bars (gay and lesbian) that had panic alarms alerting patrons to possible raids. By the time the police arrived, they found a myriad of heterosexual' couples dancing sedately. The most arresting' moments of the film are those which powerfully remind viewers not only of the sanctioned police harassment and the Alcoholic Beverage Control's threat to revoke the liquor license, but also of the risk every lesbian ran simply by patronizing the bar.


While Maud's tends toward the maudlin at times, its historic reevaluation of the lesbian bar scene as both a site of cultural and sexual exchanges and as a space of growing political activism puts the post-Stonewall spectator firmly in her place. Poirier describes Maud's as a "maternal cuffing" at a younger generation of lesbians that she feels has taken for granted certain freedoms, such as having a safe social space for lesbians. Judy Grahn, author of Another Mother Tongue, drives this point home in the film when she remarks, "It wasn't just about loving women, but it was about a whole cultural underground that didn't exist anywhere else except in that milieu which at the same time was dangerous to us."


It is this image of Fifties dykes as rebt. with a cause that younger lipstick lesbians are increasingly reconsidering as compelling historical role' models (evidenced in part by a renewed interest in butch/femme role playing). Many older lesbians may find this outlaw image reaffirming after bearing much criticism by second wave feminists who argued that such roles merely reproduced heterosexual norms.


Yet, for all its claims of representing lesbians as outlaws, the film remains conventional, glossing over internal conflicts within the lesbian communities, particularly regarding race and class, in favor of a seamless and linear historical narrative in which the butch/femme couples are suddenly and effortlessly replaced by psychedelic, long-haired, braless hippie dykes who are just as suddenly eclipsed by Harvey Milk's assassination, Anita Bryant's antigay crusades, and AIDS. (Historical transitions are conventionally made through photo montages with appropriate accompanying music.) The historical interactions and conflicts between lesbians and gay men are somewhat more fully sketched out, but are uncomfortably subsumed under the AIDS epidemic where lesbians appear as comforting supporters (which they have been), but do not seem to be at risk themselves.


Thus, the film's balance between the personal and the social, between memory and history, between revision and nostalgia, is at best precarious. The choice of subject matter, the closing of Maud's, provides the film with a sense of urgency that asks important questions about what effects these bar closings will have on lesbian culture. (Streicher recently shut down Amelia's, another prominent San Francisco lesbian bar.) At the same time, its narrow focus is at times claustrophobic (all the inter-views and moving footage take place in or around the bar) and the spectator is limited to only tantalizing peeks outside Maud's of the broader historical, social, and political issues of the time.


MORE: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/LastCallatMauds.html




(*)(*)(*) (y) (y) It was kind of a sad film in some ways - but great documentary - meaning it was entertaining AND I learned new things.



(f)






Ad astra!

To the stars!


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (l)



Shirley Valentine (1989)


Pauline Collins reprises a role she originated onstage in this Academy Award-nominated drama about Shirley Valentine, a housewife who decides in her middle age that there's more to life than stifling domesticity. An unplanned trip to Greece with a friend expands her horizons in ways she could never have predicted, allowing her to fall in love again beyond the bounds of marriage, find herself and grab the reins of her future.


Cast: Pauline Collins, Tom Conti, Julia McKenzie, Alison Steadman, Joanna Lumley and Bernard Hill



(~) (~) Reviews:

This is one of my top 10 movies ever! It is very rich... and very real! I am ecstatic to see that it is coming out on DVD so that I can ditch my VHS (crappy) copy! All the characters are great, from Shirley's "street poet" son, whiney spoiled daughter to her school-yard-nemesis, the "air hostess"! HA!! Ah, and Tom Conti... perfect as the reticent Greek paramour who has one of the shockingly best and most intriguing pick-up lines I have ever heard... "boat is boat...." And then there is Shirley's crazy neighbor with the vegetarian dog...who unwittingly sets the ball in motion causing Shirley's half-unexpected trip to Greece. Every time I watch this movie, I come away with some new insight... this last time, I realized that I had not listened closely enough to Shirley's last lines in the movie...listen closely to what she says and decide for yourself which way the movie "really" ends! "Eh, wall?"




(~) Shirley Valentine far exceeded my expectations. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long-time. In the genre of "chick flick," Shirley Valentine tells a wonderful story of living and loving oneself.




(~) Pauline Collins is perfect as Shirley, an over-the-hill London housewife - but not so far over that she can't make a credible comeback on a Holiday in Greece. R-rated, but not that steamy, really. Supporting cast is excellent, as is the Mykonos scenery. More a woman's movie than a man's, but solid entertainment for all. Music is also a big plus.




(y) (y)



(f)






Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

Any man can make a mistake; only a fool keeps making the same one.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o :o



Rent or buy? Do the math

15:32 ET, Wed 15 Aug 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The American Dream of home ownership may not be quite as dreamy as it once was.


Sky-high prices, risky mortgages, and job instability have made home buying a bigger investment than it used to be. For some folks, it's an investment not worth making.


"I see people giving up the American Dream because it's not the reality they can afford," says San Francisco financial adviser Barry Taylor. Even people who can afford to buy a house may have reasons not to do so, he says. Lately he's been crunching numbers and telling some of his clients to rent instead.


Of course, owning your own home is still a great way to use leverage and build equity, and Taylor himself owns several, including some that he rents out.


In general, it's good to own your home, but there are some reasons not to. Here are some situations where renting makes sense.


-- If you don't have a downpayment. Taylor has doctor clients with good incomes who haven't been out of medical school long enough to save up a down payment. He has advised them to wait. Given their salaries, they can probably save the downpayment in a year. Even if the homes appreciate modestly, they'll end up with a lower monthly payment and a better mortgage. Mortgages for folks who have no downpayment are usually at higher rates and have extra insurance fees attached.


-- If you're getting a divorce. A common scenario when couples with children get divorced if for the husband to get the retirement account and the wife to get the house. She'll often cling to the family home as the center of familiarity for the kids. But she may need cash more than she needs the house, and the mortgage payments can dominate her future. Sell the house, settle the divorce, rent while you figure out where you stand and then shop for a new home if that's what you want.


-- If you're downsizing into retirement. This is tricky. Many people do want to own their homes in retirement, they just want less expensive homes and no mortgage payments. But if they tie up too much cash in the home, they may not have the money available to invest for future cash to fund the rest of their long-term retirement. Someone who sells their home for $600,000 and plunks down $400,000 in cash for their retirement home will only have $200,000 from that sale to invest for income. And with stocks averaging over 10 percent over the long term and real estate averaging 6.6 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors, the rent-and-invest plan could afford some people better retirements.


-- If you think you're going to have to move soon. If you think you may have to relocate, you may not be in the house long enough to make buying it worthwhile. People who bought houses in the hot hot 2003-2004 markets are now sitting on places they can't sell. In some areas, properties have been on the market for more than a year, and home sellers have to bring cash to settlement to unload a house. Unless you've got at least five years to stay put -- or you are looking in an area where you'd be able to rent out your home if necessary -- rent, don't buy.


Take a cold, hard look at your job prospects and your own housing market before buying a property with an adjustable rate loan. And rent, if you can't get into the house unless you go with an interest-only loan or one that allows "negative amortization" -- (keeping payments down but the amount you owe keeps going up). Just forget it and rent, until you're in a better place financially.


-- If you live in an area where homes are overpriced. How would you know that? It's not easy, but you can ask real estate agents in your local market what's been happening with sales and prices. You can check data at www.realtor.org, the Web site for the National Association of Realtors. Then get someone to crunch the numbers for you, but remember that all professionals have their own agendas. Realtors will want you to buy. Financial planners will want you to rent, and turn over extra money for them to manage. Look at properties you like, collect the relevant data (property taxes, rental fees, etc.), and then compare the costs. You can use an online calculator, like the one at Freddie Mac's site to make your comparisons.


Remember that the big difference between renting and owning is this: After you've been making your payments for a few decades, buyers will own a house. And renters will just have another monthly bill coming their way.



http://features.us.reuters.com/personalfinance/news/DC2198C4-4B5D-11DC-A47D-BC73467B.html




8-|8-|



(f)




(um) (um) May Your Smile Be Your Umbrella. (um) (um)

Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f)



http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=911




(f)




Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:D



http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=USL2283624620070822&start=1


LONDON (Reuters) - The Eagles will release "Long Road Out of Eden", their first full studio album for 28 years, in October, Universal Music Group said on Wednesday.


Eagles to release first studio album in 28 years

Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:14AM EDT


LONDON (Reuters) - The Eagles will release "Long Road Out of Eden", their first full studio album for 28 years, in October, Universal Music Group said on Wednesday.


The top-selling band, whose hits include "Hotel California" and "Life in the Fast Lane", split in 1980 but reunited 14 years later and have toured intermittently since.


Universal will distribute the new album outside North America, while in the United States the record will be released through Wal-Mart stores, warehouse retail chain Sam's Club and the band's Web site www.eaglesband.com.


It will hit the shelves internationally on October 29 and in the United States one day later, Universal added.


The first single from the album, "How Long", has already had its video and radio premiere.


"It's rare to have the opportunity to be involved with a band of their stature, as they define popular music in so many ways," said Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group International.


The Eagles, comprising Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, last released a studio album of new songs -- "The Long Road" -- in 1979.


The band's "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" is the best-selling album in recorded music history in the United States, with sales of more than 29 million copies, according to Universal. The Eagles have sold around 120 million albums worldwide.



http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSL2283624620070822



(8) (y) (8) (y)



(f)





Ab Iove principium.

Let's start with the most important.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (l) (f) (l) (f) (l)



http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20070822&t=2&i=1336873&w=r=2007-08-22T142338Z_01_L22878358_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0



http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20070822&t=2&i=1336874&w=r=2007-08-22T142338Z_01_L22878358_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1



http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=USL2287835820070822&start=3


LONDON (Reuters) - In life and death, Princess Diana shook the House of Windsor to the core.


In life and death, Diana shook the House of Windsor

Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:23AM EDT


By Paul Majendie


LONDON (Reuters) - In life and death, Princess Diana shook the House of Windsor to the core.


Critics have not always been kind to "The People's Princess" in the decade since her death in a Paris car crash on Aug 31, 1997, but none would deny she mattered.


Among royal watchers who spent their careers following the world's most photographed woman live out a royal soap opera, few doubt her effect on a staid royal household that abhorred histrionics and never abandoned the British stiffer upper lip.


"She gave the monarchy a jolt. She was determined to make it less remote and she led by example on that," said former BBC royal correspondent Jenni Bond, who spent almost 15 years covering the tribulations of the royals.


"The Queen said afterwards that lessons had to be learned from Diana's death. Slowly they have been. There has not been a massive change -- it's a question of evolution not revolution."


The Observer newspaper, summing up her contradictions when reviewing a flood of Diana biographies, asked "Was she shy or just sly? Compassionate or coldly calculating? The Queen of Hearts or the self-promoting chief executive of Brand Diana?"


Diana espoused a string of causes -- AIDS patients, lepers and landmine victims -- which, by the force of her fame, became headline news.


"The royal family are not stupid and they looked at the effect she was having and realized they were missing a trick," said royal biographer Penny Junor.


"She was behind a lot of modernization. The way that things are done now has been largely influenced by her."



Continued...


http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSL2287835820070822





(f) (f)






Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The times are changed, and we are changed in them.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l)



Princess Diana was our fairy-tale, our gossip story, our style icon, our humanitarian hero and our heartbreak. A decade after her death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, our fascination with the Princess of Wales is as strong as ever.


Timeline photos:

http://www.news.com.au/feature/0,,5013055,00.html



(f) (f)






Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l)



British aristocrat ... Diana was known to be shy in early and later life:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514433,00.jpg




Poised ... she enjoyed ballet:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514473,00.jpg




Infamous fashion choice ... and was a kindergarten assistant when she started dating Charle:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514461,00.jpg




Cherished ... she wasn't afraid to show her love for sons William and Harry:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514447,00.jpg




Thrill ... and was known to be a fun-loving mother:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514457,00.jpg




Dress ... she was admired for her fashion sense:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514442,00.jpg




Classic ... which never went out of style:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514435,00.jpg




Versace funeral ... she was equally at home among A-listers:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5515670,00.jpg




Charity ... but was also dedicated to causes:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5515639,00.jpg




Mother Theresa ... and meeting with the poor:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514429,00.jpg




Hassled ... and was known to be the most photographed woman in the world:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514448,00.jpg




BBC interview ... and divulged how media pressure and her marriage breakdown led to bulimia:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514421,00.jpg




Moving on ... after her divorce to Charles in 1996, Diana found happines with Harrods heir Dodi Al Fayed:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514471,00.jpg




Fresh start ... she was estranged from the royal family but was satisfied with her new life:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5514451,00.jpg




Ominous ... but her new-found happiness was tragically cut short:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5515674,00.jpg






More photos and articles: http://www.news.com.au/feature/0,,5013055,00.html




(f) (f)









Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(l) (f) (l) (f) (l)



http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5598474,00.jpg




(l) (l) Start of the Diana Slide Show:

http://www.news.com.au/travel/gallery/0,23492,5024792-5007153,00.html#




In the picture ... call by the National Portrait Gallery for an exhibition /no spamming of other sites/ on the walls until January 2008 /no spamming of other sites/ of portraits of the "people's princess" by some of the world's leading portrait photographers:

http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5612999,00.jpg




More Diana ... Princess Diana: Ten Years On: our fairy-tale, our gossip story, our style icon, our humanitarian hero and our heartbreak. A decade after her death in a Paris car crash on August 31, 1997, our fascination with the Princess of Wales is as strong as ever:


http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5613020,00.jpg




(l) (f) (l) (f) (l)







Quidquid discis, tibi discis.

Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o

:)

;)



Women comedians are strutting their stuff on stage as never before.



Muscling in on the men: Zoe Lyons:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/08/22/women.jpg



Fringe finds its feminine side

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 22/08/2007


This year, women comedians are strutting their stuff on stage as never before, but are they just too nice to triumph over their male rivals, asks Dominic Cavendish


I can't remember an Edinburgh Fringe like it. Ten years ago, I would have been hard pushed to scrape together a list of half a dozen acts from the XX side of the chromosome divide worthy of much excited attention. Now, every Charlotte, Joanna and Zoe is muscling in on what has for too long been too much a male preserve.


Whether any of those female comics I've taken most delight in will make it on to the shortlist for the if.comedy awards (formerly the Perrier), announced today, is open to question. Their defining characteristic is that they're an incredibly nice bunch and in the cut-throat world of Edinburgh, kind hearts as a rule don't win comedy coronets.


Mind you, if any female comedian deserves to be on the list, it's the kindest kidult on the block, Josie Long (Trying is Good, Pleasance). Long is no Florence Nightingale but symptomatic of her benign outlook is the fact that she kicks off her set with a description of an incident she witnessed at a local pool.


A tubby boy, she explains, was prevented from clambering on to an inflatable slide by a vindictive staff-member armed with a jet hose. Instead of poking fun at the obese, Long, a tomboyish figure with a permanent grin, takes only delight at the lad's eventual hard-won victory. "He got stuck as he went down," she adds, but it's the trying that counts.


Hence the title of her show. "I love people who put in the effort - no matter how misplaced that effort may be," she says, building by twists and rambling turns to a celebration of the American folk artist Edward Hicks, who painted the biblical scene on the theme of the "Peaceable Kingdom" at least 100 times. To make something so gentle the theme of your show requires real courage, I reckon.


Elsewhere at the Pleasance, Joanna Neary (Joanna Neary's Little Moments) also has a huge amount of quirk-appeal. She's been likened to Joyce Grenfell, and again, as with Long, there's a goodness and a goofiness about this elfin entertainer that's utterly enchanting.


Her idea of crossing Celia Johnson's character from Brief Encounter with a contemporary (trapped) housewife - relaying her diary's 1940s-styled entries to us throughout the show - is so inspired, and beautifully executed, it deserves its own Radio 4 series.


Neary's own teenage diaries are also read out as a source of running mirth, and if the remainder of her skits are more hit-and-miss, she's still a talent to watch.


In Fight or Flight, personable Zoe Lyons tackles the wide-ranging subject of things we fear. Mercifully, she steers clear of fundamentalist terrors, instead reminding people of the days when the government pamphlet Protect and Survive laughably advised you to phone the council in the event of a nuclear strike. You know you're getting old when the audience around you looks blank at such things - genuinely terrifying.


Charlotte Hudson and Leila Hackett, appearing as "Two Left Hands", struggle to keep the laughs coming with their seaside-themed show.


Their hour's three saving graces, though, are a running skit about a hairdresser whose nattering clients are famous women from history, a rubbish clairvoyant whose range of names doesn't fit the demographic of her posh clients and a wonderful bitch-off between Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson, on account of their differing fortunes since the duet I Know Him So Well.


Brassiest act of the bunch this year is Tameka Empson - star of 3 Non Blondes - who's in character as "Marcia Brown", a hurricane-strength black American diva plugging her album "Always and Forever in Love, Vol 1". She belts out Motown classics, themed round the fictive highs and lows of her love life, sending herself up something rotten: "I've given men diabetes in my time, 'cos I'm sweet."


Never was a truer word spoken; she instantly has the whole audience wrapped around her beckoning finger.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/08/22/btwomen122.xml



(y) (y)



(f) (f)





Sic Itur Ad Astra.

Thus do we reach the stars.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:| :| :|


:s :s


8o|



Court tries 18 for cross-dressing

Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:53AM EDT

By Estelle Shirbon


BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Eighteen Nigerian men accused of dressing up as women during a party at a hotel went on trial Tuesday before an Islamic sharia court in the northern state of Bauchi.


Dozens of residents shouted abuse and hurled stones at the men as they were escorted into an armored prison vehicle after the hearing, prompting police to fire tear-gas at the crowd.


The men, mostly in their 20s, were arrested in a Bauchi hotel on August 4. Police say they were dressed as women, which is illegal under the state's sharia penal code.


The offence is punishable by up to a year in prison and 20 lashes by cane.


The accused, who tried to hide their faces as they were jeered on their way in and out of court, deny the charge. One of them told Reuters they went to the hotel for a graduation party.


Muhammad Bununu of the Hisbah Commission, a body charged with enforcing sharia law in the state, told reporters the accused were "addressing each other as women and dressing themselves as women."


"They said they went to the hotel to witness a wedding between a male and a male," he said.


The police brought handbags and suitcases containing women's high-heel shoes and clothing to the court as evidence.


The 18 are not formally charged with homosexuality, which is illegal in Nigeria and considered immoral by the vast majority of people, both Muslims and Christians.



SHARIA LAW

Bauchi is one of 12 states in the predominantly Muslim north that started a stricter enforcement of sharia law in 2000 -- a decision that alienated sizeable Christian minorities and sparked bouts of sectarian violence that killed thousands.


Sharia courts have been active for centuries but under British colonial rule their powers were curtailed. In the 12 states, they regained the right to impose strict punishments such as death for adultery or sodomy and amputation for theft.


Only one man, a convicted murderer hanged in 2002, is known to have been executed under sharia law since it was reinforced in the 12 states.


Nigerian media had originally reported that the 18 men arrested in Bauchi were charged with sodomy and facing death by stoning, raising concerns among human rights groups who sent observers to Tuesday's hearings.


But Bununu said the reports were incorrect.


Judge Tanimu Abubakar adjourned the case until September 13 to allow time for a Bauchi state prosecutor who is taking over from the police to familiarize himself with the evidence.



http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL2184376820070821




:| When I read news such as this, I realize that despite the "increasing reduction" of civil liberties and freedoms here in the U.S. - THIS would/could not happen here. At least I hope so. Everyone has the right and freedom to "be" whom they are. (f)



(f) (f)






Sapientia est potentia.

Wisdom is power.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

(f) (f) (f)




AKARTA (Reuters) - A plan to carry out virginity tests on female high school students in a district in Indonesia's West Java province has been dropped after a public outcry, media reports said.



Indonesia district drops school virginity test plan


Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:52AM EDT


JAKARTA (Reuters) - A plan to carry out virginity tests on female high school students in a district in Indonesia's West Java province has been dropped after a public outcry, media reports said.


The head of Indramayu district, Irianto Syafiuddin, is reported to have made the proposal for virginity tests after a video showing two high school students having sex circulated via mobile phones.


"Because many people oppose it, we cancelled (the plan)," Syafiuddin was quoted as saying by online news service Detik.com.


Syafiuddin could not immediately be contacted, but according to media reports he will look for an alternative way to prevent students from engaging in pre-marital sex.


Students, parents and activists viewed the planned virginity tests on thousands of high school students in the district as a violation of human rights, the Jakarta Post said.


"We can't accept this idea. It's unfair as the porn video was just an isolated case," a female student, Gita, was quoted as saying by the Post.


Many in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, place high value on virginity, although pre-marital sex is not uncommon among the younger generation.



http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSJAK9668320070821



:| :|



(f)






What goes around, comes around.

Id quot circumiret, circumveniat.


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

8-| 8-| 8-|


LONDON (Reuters) - Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a "virtual telescope" that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.



Google Earth to launch new service for stargazers

Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:13AM EDT


By Kate Holton


LONDON (Reuters) - Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a "virtual telescope" that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.


Google, which created Google Earth to give Internet users an astronaut's view that can zoom to street level, said the service would be a playground for learning about space.


"Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team.


"Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer."


Like Google Earth, Sky will enable users to float and zoom in on over 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. Users will view the sky as seen from earth.


It has created different layers which will show the life of a star, constellations, high-resolution images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope and a users guide to galaxies.


A backyard astronomy layer lets users click through stars, galaxies and nebulae visible to the eye, binoculars and small telescopes.


The imagery was stitched together from numerous third parties including the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The imagery will be updated over time.


"We're excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they're seeing and tell their own stories," said Google Product Manager Lior Ron in a statement.


"By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope."


Google Earth launched in June 2005 to combine its search service with satellite imagery, maps and 3D building to display geographical information of the world. The search engine says over 250 million people have downloaded it.


The Sky service will be available on all Google Earth domains, in 13 languages from later on Wednesday. Users will need to download the newest version of Google Earth which can be found at www.earth.google.com



http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL2181344720070822





One of the photos at the article URL:

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=USL2181344720070822&start=3



Another "pretty", facinating photo:

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=USL2181344720070822&start=4





(o) Time is marching on and I have an appointment and an errand yet to run today. :)




(f)






(um) (um) May Your Smile Be Your Umbrella. (um) (um)


Sweetlady & Wyatt the Boxer (l) (&) (l)

[sweetlady]

:o :o


;)




Hemlines are back hovering below the knee again, says Clare Coulson.



SLIDE SHOW:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Slideshow/slideshowContentFrameFragXL.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2007/08/22/pixmidi122.xml&site=fashion




From maxi to midi: winter's new trend will be the midi skirt:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/graphics/2007/08/22/midi.jpg




It's time for a Midi moment

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 22/08/2007


City analysts caught out by last week's stock market slump would have done well to heed the autumn/winter fashion collections unveiled at the start of the year.


The first shoots