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Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev buried in Virginia, uncle says
BOSTON -- Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried in a cemetery in Virginia with the help of a faith coalition, his uncle said Friday.
The secret burial this week ended a frustrating search for a community willing to take the body, which had been kept at a funeral parlor in Worcester, Mass., as cemeteries in Massachusetts and several other states refused to accept the remains.
Tsarnaev was killed April 19 in a getaway attempt after a gunbattle with police. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured later and remains in custody.
The Tsarnaevs' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland, took responsibility for arranging the burial after Tamerlan's wife, Katherine Russell, said she wanted the body released to her in-laws.
Tsarni said Tsarnaev was buried in a cemetery in Doswell, Va., near Richmond, though he would not say more about the faith coalition that helped.
"The body's buried. That's it," he said.
With costs to protect the funeral home mounting, Worcester police earlier appealed for help finding a place to bury Tsarnaev. They announced Thursday that "as a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased."
Tsarnaev was pronounced dead at a hospital in Boston, where he could have been buried under state law, because the city was his place of death. But Boston officials said they wouldn't take the body because Tsarnaev lived in Cambridge, and Cambridge also refused.
His mother also said Russia refused to allow his body into the country so she could bury him in her native Dagestan, but Russian authorities would not comment on that contention.


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Grenson G-Two Jacob Boot
The Grenson brand goes back to 1866, when William Green, who had been making boots in his childhood cottage in Northamptonshire, England, set up a more formal production system. Greens Yard, launched in 1874, became the first factory in the world to use Goodyear welt construction, a game-changing method of attaching the boot upper and insole to the bottom sole by means of a "welt" strip. You don't have to know the ins and outs of cobbling to appreciate the chief advantage of Goodyear welting: This time-consuming manufacturing process means that shoes can be resoled repeatedly, over decades and sometimes indefinitely. Grenson shoes have a hell of a half-life.
The heritage English shoes are an investment few men make lightly, but the arithmetic works out. They say you haven't even broken these expensive shoes in until you've had them resoled multiple times. And, despite its Victorian roots, the company is less stodgy than one might suspect. Grenson wares are smartly offered in three classes: G:Zero, G:One, and G:Two, plus the limited-edition G:Lab series, which includes experimental options in mixed materials, including a suede-and-camo canvas, crepe-sole derby. The more accessibly priced G:Twos are the entry-level option.
Our pick of the collection is the G:Two Jacob boot, a city-ready merger of two iconic British styles, the punched wing-tip brogue and the Chelsea boot (the short jodhpur boot worn by a varied cast over the years, including Beatles, Stones, and Stormtroopers). The elastic siding and back pull tab make these a breeze to get on and off. We're also fans of the natural-colored double leather sole, which provides a little gentle visual texture against the all-black body. Classic, hard-wearing, and undeniably cool, this is one pair you'll keep around for the long haul. Good news: Grenson itself does some top-notch resoling work. [Jacob boot, $435; grenson.co.uk]
For access to exclusive gear videos, celebrity interviews, and more, subscribe on YouTube!Back to top

subset: commoncrawl


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LOS ANGELES, March 8 (UPI) -- Jaromir Jagr scored twice Thursday and took part in a three-goal third period that brought Dallas a 5-2 victory over Los Angeles.
Jagr, playing in his 19th NHL season, had his first multi-goal game since the opening night of the season Jan. 19.
He began the scoring with a power-play goal 5:28 into the contest and then delivered the second of the three goals Dallas used in the final period to break open the game.
The Stars won their second in a row and jumped from last place into a tie for second in the tightly packed Pacific Division.
Los Angeles took a 2-1 lead with 4:30 to play in the second period, but could not put another shot past Kari Lehtonen.
Cody Eakin tied it on the power play with 1:14 left in the second and Dallas then dominated the third period. Brenden Morrow gave the Stars the lead 5:16 into the stanza, Jagr scored his ninth of the season midway through and Antoine Roussel added an empty-net goal with 1:41 to play.
The Kings had won two in a row and seven out of eight.
Lehtonen stopped 31 shots while Jamie Quick surrendered four goals on just 21 shots.


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'Durrell' is an international charity dedicated to 'Saving Species From Extinction'. Founded by author and naturalist Gerald Durrell, we've been saving some of the world's most endangered animals for over half a century. Through our Wildlife Park in Jersey, conservation academies in Mauritius and Jersey, and 45 field projects worldwide, our unique approach tackles conservation from all angles.
Durrell animal adoptions feed directly into our vital conservation work, so in supporting your favourite animal, you also know that you are joining us in our mission of saving species from extinction. Thank you!


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Death at Yosemite
Bruce Barcott | Outside | 18 December 2012
The story behind the outbreak of deadly hantavirus in summer 2012. The park had upgraded its accommodation to offer hard-sided cabins as well as tents for visitors. In doing so, it had unwittingly provided the perfect environment for a killer virus. Three people were to lose their lives, but it messed with the psyche of the rest of us, too.
Crazy far
Tim Folger | National Geographic | 17 December 2012
Will humans ever travel to the stars? To get an idea of the challenge, it would take the fastest spacecraft ever built 17,000 years to reach the nearest star. "It's Mars or nowhere," say some space experts. Others believe a form of interstellar exploration may be possible within 100 years. This piece investigates what it would take.
When you swallow a grenade
Carl Zimmer | Loom | 18 December 2012
We've come a long way in medical terms from the time when a scratch from a rose thorn could lead to death. The discovery of penicillin saw to that. But antibiotics also had unintended consequences, which scientists are now having to come to grips with. In the future, we'll need new antibiotics, we'll use them more sparingly and we may even learn to fight bacteria with bacteria.
Self-driving cars can navigate the road, but can they navigate the law?
Russell Brandom | Verge | 14 December 2012
The great American question: Whom do you sue? If accident victims are incentivised to sue developers and manufacturers of driverless cars, companies won't make the cars. If liability rests with owners of cars, people won't buy them. It would be a shame if genuinely good ideas get stymied by legal issues. So what is the future of the fully automated, self-parking car?
Imitation of life
Brian Hayes | American Scientist | 13 December 2012
Can a computer program reproduce everything that happens inside a living cell? A program with exactly that goal was published last summer. It included all the major processes of life. So are we on the threshold of "completing" molecular biology? This is how the researchers' simulation worked.
Gun control and 3D printers
Devin Coldewey | TechCrunch | 16 December 2012
You can download a file and fabricate a toy gun on a 3D printer. How long will it be before you can make a real one? "Like the digitization of music, the digitization of objects, guns or otherwise, is a one-way street. Every step forward is ineffaceable." What, if anything, should we do about it?
No flying cars, but the future is bright
Virginia Postrel | Bloomberg | 16 December 2012
This is a rejoinder to tech commentators and investors who evoke 1950s visions of the future — including space colonies and flying cars — as evidence that we used to think big, and no longer do. But life has advanced in ways that weren't even imaginable in the 1950s.
Bonus read: Special report on the Mind and Brain
The Browser's report collects reading on everything you wanted – or perhaps didn't want – to know about your mind. From how we make memories and how many friends we can cope with, to zombie brains, head injury and what we can learn from psychopaths. Start your weekend reading here.
For more articles worth reading, visit The Browser. If you would like to comment on this article or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.


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Beyuna Energy is a vitamin-enriched energy drink. It also contains the patented ingredient PowerGrape®, acerola cherry and American Ginseng (Cereboost). Beyuna Energy supports energy levels and contributes to normal mental performance. Beyuna Energy has a positive influence on the functioning of the nervous system and helps the immune system.
Contains: 14 sachets of 4.5 g
The recommended daily dosage for adults is 1 sachet per day.
|1 sachet contain:
|Thickeners: acacia gum, xanthan gum;
|Powergrape® (Vitis vinifera L. fruit d.e.);
|400 mg
|flavours; acidity regulator: citric acid;
|Acerola (Malpighia glabra L. fruits) juice powder standardised at 17% Vitamin C;
|17 mg
|American ginseng Cereboost® (Panax quinquefolius L., root) d.e.;
|100 mg
|Sweetener: steviol glycosides;
|Rice concentrate Rice Hulls Nu-FLOW®;
|Colour: beta-carotene
*RI = Reference intake of an average adult
|Vitamine C
|Vitamin C contributes to maintain the normal function of the immune system during and after intense physical exercise
|Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of blood vessels
|Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of bones
|Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of cartilage
|Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of gums
|Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin
|Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of teeth
|Vitamin C contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism
|Vitamin C contributes to normal functioning of the nervous system
|Vitamin C contributes to normal psychological function
|Vitamin C contributes to the normal function of the immune system
|Vitamin C contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress
|Vitamin C contributes to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue
|Vitamin C contributes to the regeneration of the reduced form of vitamin E
|Vitamin C increases iron absorption
|Take 1 sachet of Beyuna Energy* per day dissolving the powder into a glass of water.
|Do not exceed the recommended daily dosage.
|Food supplements are not a substitute for a balanced diet.
|A healthy lifestyle and a varied, balanced diet is vital to maintaining good health.
|Dark, sealed, cool and out of the reach of young children.
|The expiry date refers to the unopened product, correctly stored.
According to EC Directives 2000/13, 2003/89, 2005/26, 2005/63, 2006/142, 2007/68 and updates.
|Cereals containing gluten and products thereof
|Crustaceans and products thereof
|Eggs and products thereof
|Fish and products thereof
|Peanuts and products thereof
|Soy/ Soyderivatives
|Milk and products thereof, including lactose
|Nuts and products thereof
|Celery and products thereof
|Mustard and products thereof
|Sesame seeds and products thereof
|Sulphur dioxide and sulphites at concentrations of more than 10 mg/l, expressed as SO
|Lupin and products thereof
|Molluscs and products thereof
European legislation was adopted in 2012 relating to nutrition and health claims made on foods (the Commission Regulation). The Commission Regulation is a European Regulation (432/2012) which sets out what information may be provided regarding the effect of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients on products (on packaging, labels, websites, advertisements, in brochures, books and on social media).
Only approved health claims may be made. These claims provide information about the effect a particular ingredient has on health. Approved health claims are recommended by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). For many years, it was possible for companies to submit health claims, but unfortunately very few of them were approved. Because many of the claims submitted were rejected, some nutrients have no approved claims which relate to them.
Food supplements are not a medication and may only promote health. This means medical claims can never be made in relation to supplements. We all enjoy free speech, and it is possible to make claims about the effect of certain nutrients in articles and brochures and on websites, but in this case there should be no advertising of a specific product or any reference made to it.
The Inspection Board for the Promotion of Health Products
Public advertising of self-care medicines, medical (self-care) aids or health products is in the interest of public health, though it does require clear regulations. Industry, the media and advertisers recognise their social responsibilities, and have created rules with which public advertising must comply.
These rules are drawn up by the Dutch Foundation for Monitoring Medicinal Product Advertising (KOAG) and the Dutch Foundation for the Promotion of Health Products (KAG). On behalf of the KOAG and KAG, the Inspection Board monitors the public advertising of medicines, medical (self-care) aids and health products.
Companies can have their claims verified by KOAG KAG. If a claim is verified and permitted, the company is given an approval number. This can be found on claims made in, e.g., brochures.
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Wednesday: ADP Employment, Beige Book
4 hours ago
World View & Market Commentary.
Forest first; Trees second.
Focused on Real & Knowable facts that filter through the "experts" fluff and media hyperbole. Where we've been, what the future may hold and developing a better way forward.
Retail sales spiked in February on higher auto sales and on higher gasoline sales. But other components were mostly robust. And we got a large upward revision to January. Overall retail sales surged 1.0 percent, following a revised 0.7 percent boost in January and a revised 0.6 percent increase in December. The February posting matched analysts' expectation for a 1.0 percent jump. January and December had previously been estimated to be up 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. Excluding autos, sales advanced 0.7 percent, following a 0.6 percent gain in January. A notable part of this increase was price related on higher gasoline prices. The median market forecast called for a 0.7 percent increase. Nonetheless, sales excluding autos and gasoline improved a strong 0.6 percent, following a 0.5 percent rise in January.
The February boost in sales was led by a 2.3 percent jump in sales of motor vehicles & parts with gasoline sales up 1.4 percent. Nearly all other major components were quite robust. Other notably strong components were sporting goods, hobby, book & music stores, up 1.3 percent, and food services & drinking places, up 1.2 percent. The latter is especially encouraging as it is a very discretionary category. Even the price depressed electronics component made a 0.9 percent comeback. The weakest major category was the housing-depressed furniture & home furnishings category, down a monthly 0.8 percent.
Overall retail sales on a year-ago basis in February rose to 8.9 percent from 8.1 percent the month before. Excluding motor vehicles, sales were up a year-ago 6.0 percent, compared to 6.4 percent in January.
Despite price effects, the latest retail sales numbers reflect a strong showing by the consumer. The February numbers plus upward revisions will have economists revising their estimates for first quarter GDP but his time it will be upward. Equity markets firmed a bit on the upward revisions but remained negative over concern about the economic impact of the earthquake in Japan and ensuing tsunami.
Debit cards: $50 spending limit coming?
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Declined! Your debit card may soon be denied for purchases greater than $100 -- or even as little as $50.
JPMorgan Chase, one of the nation's largest banks, is considering capping debit card transactions at either $50 or $100, according to a source with knowledge of the proposal.
Why? Because of a tricky thing called interchange fees.
Right now, every time you swipe your debit card, your bank charges the retailer an average fee of 44 cents, which it shares with its partners. Those little fees, however, add up to about $16 billion per year, according to 2009 data from the Federal Reserve.
But as part of the Wall Street reform legislation that was passed last year, these fees are being slashed. The Fed is currently proposing rules that would go into effect in July and would cap interchange fees at 12 cents.
That's a big enough cut to cost Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) more than $1 billion a year. And Chase may not be alone. Other major issuers are also projecting huge losses from the interchange fee cap.
Joe Price, president of consumer banking for Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), said in an e-mailed statement that the lower fee wouldn't fairly compensate the bank for the infrastructure and services it provides to retailers.
The U.S. trade deficit worsened sharply and oil had only a small role in it. But the detail in imports indicates it may be a response to healthy demand. The overall U.S. trade deficit in January widened to $46.3 billion from a revised $40.3 billion shortfall in December. The January gap came in worse than analysts' forecast for a $41.0 billion deficit. Exports gained 2.7 percent, following a 2.0 percent boost the prior month. Imports posted a huge 5.2 percent increase after rising 2.6 percent in December.
The expansion of the trade deficit was led by the nonpetroleum goods gap which grew to $32.0 billion from $27.0 billion in December. The petroleum shortfall widened moderately to $26.7 billion from $25.5 billion the prior month.
Looking at end use categories for goods, the jump in imports was led by a $4.4 billion spike in industrial supplies but only $1.7 billion came from oil imports. Notably, capital goods imports excluding autos jumped $2.1 billion while automotive imports increased $2.7 billion. The surge in these imports may be related to meeting expected demand and this actually would be a positive sign for forward momentum although for the near term, it means a downward revision to first quarter GDP growth estimates.
By end-use categories, the boost in goods exports was led by a $3.7 billion jump in industrial supplies with automotive exports advancing $1.3 billion. Capital goods exports slipped 0.4 billion-largely on lower aircraft shipments. Consumer goods exports edged down $0.6 billion while food, feeds & beverages were essentially unchanged.
On a not seasonally adjusted basis, the January figures show surpluses, in billions of dollars, with Hong Kong $2.2 ($2.2 for December), Australia $1.2 ($1.2), Singapore $0.8 ($1.3), and Egypt $0.5 ($0.7). Deficits were recorded, in billions of dollars, with China $23.3 ($20.7), OPEC $9.9 ($8.3), European Union $5.6 ($6.6), Japan $5.0 ($5.9), Mexico $4.9 ($4.7), Canada $3.7 ($3.9), Germany $3.1 ($3.3), Nigeria $2.9 ($2.5), Venezuela $2.8 ($2.0), Ireland $1.9 ($2.6), Korea $1.0 ($0.7), and Taiwan $0.9 ($0.6).
On the news, equity futures dipped on the belief that first quarter GDP is not as strong as earlier believed. Also, a rebound in initial jobless claims weighed on equity futures-though the weekly volatility led to some discounting of the rise.
A catch-up from the prior holiday week fed a 26,000 increase in initial jobless claims for the March 5 week to a higher-than-expected level of 397,000 (prior week revised 3,000 higher to 371,000). The gain follows two prior weeks of sharp decreases reflected in the four-week average which rose only slightly to 392,250. A month-ago comparison still shows significant improvement of nearly 25,000. The Labor Department noted that a school break in New England, when bus drivers and other personnel are laid off, also increased claims.
Continuing claims extended their decline, down 20,000 in data for the February 26 week to 3.771 million. Continuing claims have fallen for five of the last six weekly periods. The unemployment rate for insured workers is unchanged at 3.0 percent.
Today's report will cut short hopes for strong momentum on the jobs front but not expectations for continued meaningful improvement. Markets are showing no significant immediate reaction.
One week's data is only one week's data but the Mortgage Bankers Association believes improvement in the jobs market is "beginning to pave the way" for improvement in the housing market. MBA's purchase index, which measures volume of mortgage applications for home purchases, surged 12.5 percent in the March 4 week for its best reading of the year. Rates remain favorable, at 4.93 percent for 30-year loans. The refinancing index also revived in the week, up 17.2 percent for its best reading since mid-January.
BofA Segregates Almost Half of its Mortgages Into 'Bad Bank'
March 8 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender by assets, is segregating almost half its 13.9 million mortgages into a "bad" bank comprised of its riskiest and worst-performing "legacy" loans, said Terry Laughlin, who is running the new unit.
"We are creating a classic good bank, bad bank structure," Laughlin told investors at a meeting in New York today. He was promoted last month to manage the costs of resolving disputes stemming from the company's 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp. "We're going to get after this, we're going to do it the right way and we're going to put it to bed in the next 36 months," he said.
The legacy portfolio will hold 6.7 million loans with outstanding principal balance of about $1 trillion, according to a presentation to investors today. The split leaves home loan President Barbara Desoer with about half her previous portfolio, as well as new lending going forward.
Laughlin's portfolio will include loans that are currently 60 or more days delinquent as well as riskier types of loans the bank no longer originates, such as subprime, Alt-A, interest- only and option adjustable-rate mortgages, he said. He said the portfolios will be completely split by March 31 and that his will be liquidated over time. Of the 13.9 million loans Bank of America services, about 3.5 million are held by the company on its balance sheet. The rest are owned by other investors.
"It's a way to get investors focus on the good," said Paul Miller, a former examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia. "It's a way to talk about good things and ignore the bad."


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When a non-global zone is installed, the audit_control file and the audit_user file in the global zone are copied to the zone's /etc/security directory. These files might require modification to reflect the zone's audit needs.
For example, each zone can be configured to audit some users differently from others. To apply different per-user preselection criteria, both the audit_control and the audit_user files must be edited. The audit_user file in the non-global zone might also require revisions to reflect the user base for the zone if necessary. Because each zone can be configured differently with regard to auditing users, it is possible for the audit_user file to be empty.
For additional information, see the audit_control(4) and audit_user(4) man pages.


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To join my team and start your own Usborne business, selling award-winning children's books, please click the Join now button below.Join now
You're about to enter the Registration process where you can join Usborne and set up details of your account.
Please note if you live outside of the UK, there is a £12 delivery charge. I can only accept registrations from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, BFPO, Channel Islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Isle of Man, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
If your country is not on the list, please email our head office.
If you have any further questions about registering or need help with the registration process, please do not hesitate to contact me.


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Skechers Go Golf Max Mojo Golf Shoesview other products
Skechers must-have shoe for this year is the Max Mojo; boasting a sleek versatile look coupled with maximum performance on and off the course, we cannot get enough of this stylish piece of footwear.
Lightweight responsive ULTRA FLIGHT midsole cushioning promotes comfort like never before, while a spikeless durable TPU grip outsole keeps you steady on feet no matter what shot you are playing.
Key features and benefits include:
- Full grain leather upper improves durability
- Goga Max technology insole for high-rebound cushioning
- Dri-Lex moisture management interior for water resistance
- Lightweight ULTRA FLIGHT midsole enhances comfort
- Leather side and heel saddle overlays improve stability
- Three stylish colour designs
We love this shoe for a sporty look that performs to the highest level. Come down to the shop and try it on for size today.


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Without Cruz, Rangers mull outfield options
ANAHEIM -- Life without Nelson Cruz began for the Rangers on Monday night against the Angels. It began with outfielders Joey Butler and Engel Beltre being called up from Triple-A Round Rock and infielder Adam Rosales being designated for assignment.
It also began with David Murphy in right field on Monday night with right-hander Jerome Williams on the mound for the Angels. Beltre started in left and Leonys Martin in center, giving the Rangers three left-handed hitters in the outfield.
The Rangers also had three right-handed hitters on the bench who can play the outfielder in Butler, Craig Gentry and Jeff Baker. The Rangers could end up platooning at all three outfield spots while Cruz is suspended.
"We're going to use the whole roster and continue to play Texas Rangers baseball," manager Ron Washington said.
Murphy could alternate between right and left field. Butler has a plus arm, so when he's in the lineup, Washington will likely start him in right field. Butler will likely see most of his playing time against left-handers. He was hitting .321 with a .532 slugging percentage against left-handers at Round Rock. This is his first time in the big leagues.
"Joey's done everything we've asked of him," general manager Jon Daniels said. "He's hit every way up the ladder, every spot in the organization. Especially, he's always hit against left-handers, he plays a solid right field, he has a strong arm. The way the roster is constructed right now there is no way to replace Nellie's production with any one player. We're looking to get guys who are going to fit together as a team and probably utilize platoons in a couple of spots."
The Rangers are still talking to other teams about possible outfielders who are available. But Daniels isn't optimistic, especially because players who are traded must first pass through waivers.
"We go through the waiver balloon every day and make decisions on who we would claim," Daniels said. "Obviously there's some strategy to it for potentially blocking guys. We're mainly looking at it as guys we can use on our club. We're realistic about it. You don't see that many impactful trades made this time of year.
"We're looking at this as we're looking this going forward with our club and we like our team. Obviously Nelson is a big source of power and production for us and again we're not expecting to truly replace that. But we have some other players here who we think can do some different things and give Wash some options to mix and match. Wash has done a tremendous job of that all year and we're going to have to keep doing it."
Butler was a 15th-round pick for the Rangers in the 2008 First-Year Player Draft out of the University of New Orleans. He has played in 688 Minor League games before finally getting the call on Monday. That includes 347 games over the past three years at Triple-A.
"I'm at a loss for words," Butler said. "It's a humbling experience. I'm excited, there's not much more to say."


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Posts Tagged 'evaluate'
HBase vs Cassandra: why we moved
My team is currently working on a brand new product – the forthcoming MMO www.FightMyMonster.com. This has given us the luxury of building against a NOSQL database, which means we can put the horrors of MySQL sharding and expensive scalability behind us. Recently a few people have been asking why we seem to have changed our preference from HBase to Cassandra. I can confirm the change is true and that we have in fact almost completed porting our code to Cassandra, and here I will seek to provide an explanation.
For those that are new to NOSQL, in a following post I will write about why I think we will see a seismic shift from SQL to NOSQL over the coming years, which will be just as important as the move to cloud computing. That post will also seek to explain why I think NOSQL might be the right choice for your company. But for now I will simply relay the reasons why we have chosen Cassandra as our NOSQL solution.
Caveat Emptor – if you're looking for a shortcut to engaging your neurons be aware this isn't an exhaustive critical comparison, it just summarizes the logic of just another startup in a hurry with limited time and resources!!
Did Cassandra's bloodline foretell the future?
One of my favourite tuppences for engineers struggling to find a bug is "breadth first not depth first". This can be annoying for someone working through complex technical details, because it implies that the solution is actually much simpler if they only looked (advice: only use this saying with established colleagues who will forgive you). I coined this saying because in software matters I find that if we force ourselves to examine the top level considerations first, before tunnelling down into the detail of a particular line of enquiry, we can save enormous time.
So before getting technical, I'll mention I might have heeded my motto better when we were making our initial choice between HBase and Cassandra. The technical conclusions behind our eventual switch might have been predicted: HBase and Cassandra have dramatically different bloodlines and genes, and I think this influenced their applicability within our business.
Loosely speaking, HBase and its required supporting systems are derived from what is known of the original Google BigTable and Google File System designs (as known from the Google File System paper Google published in 2003, and the BigTable paper published in 2006). Cassandra on the other hand is a recent open source fork of a standalone database system initially coded by Facebook, which while implementing the BigTable data model, uses a system inspired by Amazon's Dynamo for storing data (in fact much of the initial development work on Cassandra was performed by two Dynamo engineers recruited to Facebook from Amazon).
In my opinion, these differing histories have resulted in HBase being more suitable for data warehousing, and large scale data processing and analysis (for example, such as that involved when indexing the Web) and Cassandra being more suitable for real time transaction processing and the serving of interactive data. Writing a proper study of that hypothesis is well beyond this post, but I believe you will be able to detect this theme recurring when considering the databases.
NOTE: if you are looking for lightweight validation you'll find the current makeup of the key committers interesting: the primary committers to HBase work for Bing (M$ bought their search company last year, and gave them permission to continue submitting open source code after a couple of months). By contrast the primary committers on Cassandra work for Rackspace, which supports the idea of an advanced general purpose NOSQL solution being freely available to counter the threat of companies becoming locked in to the proprietary NOSQL solutions offered by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Amazon EC2.
Malcolm Gladwell would say my unconscious brain would have known immediately that my business would eventually prefer Cassandra based upon these differing backgrounds. It is horses for courses. But of course, justifying a business decision made in the blink of an eye is difficult…
Which NOSQL database has the most momentum?
Another consideration that has persuaded us to move to Cassandra is a belief that it is now has the most general momentum in our community. As you know, in the business of software platforms the bigger you get the bigger you get – where platforms are perceived as similar, people tend to aggregate around the platform that is going to offer the best supporting ecosystem in the long term (i.e. where the most supporting software is available from the community, and where the most developers are available for hire). This effect is self-reinforcing.
When starting with HBase, my impression then was that it had the greatest community momentum behind it, but I now believe that Cassandra is coming through much stronger. The original impression was partly created by two very persuasive and excellently delivered presentations given by the CTOs of StumpleUpon and Streamy, two big players in the Web industry who committed to HBase some time before Cassandra was really an option, and also from a quick reading of an article entitled "HBase vs Cassandra: NoSQL Battle!" (much of which has now been widely debunked).
Proving momentum comprehensively is difficult to do, and you will have to poke about for yourself, but one simple pointer I offer you is the developer activity on IRC. If you connect to freenode.org and compare the #hbase and #cassandra developer channels, you will find Cassandra typically has twice the number of developers online at any time.
If you consider Cassandra has been around for half as long as HBase, you can see why this is quite a clear indication of the accelerating momentum behind Cassandra. You might also take note of the big names coming on board, such as Twitter, where they plan broad usage (see here).
Note: Cassandra's supporting website looks much lovelier than HBase's, but seriously, this could be a trend driven by more than the marketing. Read on!
Deep down and technical: CAP and the myth of CA vs AP
There is a very powerful theorem that applies to the development of distributed systems (and here we are talking about distributed databases, as I'm sure you've noticed). This is known as the CAP Theorem, and was developed by Professor Eric Brewer, Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Inktomi.
The theorem states, that a distributed (or "shared data") system design, can offer at most two out of three desirable properties – Consistency, Availability and tolerance to network Partitions. Very basically, "consistency" means that if someone writes a value to a database, thereafter other users will immediately be able to read the same value back, "availability" means that if some number of nodes fail in your cluster the distributed system can remain operational, and "tolerance to partitions" means that if the nodes in your cluster are divided into two groups that can no longer communicate by a network failure, again the system remains operational.
Professor Brewer is an eminent man and many developers, including many in the HBase community, have taken it to heart that their systems can only support two of these properties and have accordingly worked to this design principle. Indeed, if you search online posts related to HBase and Cassandra comparisons, you will regularly find the HBase community explaining that they have chosen CP, while Cassandra has chosen AP – no doubt mindful of the fact that most developers need consistency (the C) at some level.
However I need to draw to your attention to the fact that these claims are based on a complete non sequitur. The CAP theorem only applies to a single distributed algorithm (and here I hope Professor Brewer would agree). But there is no reason why you cannot design a single system where for any given operation, the underlying algorithm and thus the trade-off achieved is selectable. Thus while it is true that a system may only offer two of these properties per operation, what has been widely missed is that a system can be designed that allows a caller to choose which properties they want when any given operation is performed. Not only that, reality is not nearly so black and white, and it is possible to offer differing degrees of balance between consistency, availability and tolerance to partition. This is Cassandra.
This is such an important point I will reiterate: the beauty of Cassandra is that you can choose the trade-offs you want on a case by case basis such that they best match the requirements of the particular operation you are performing. Cassandra proves you can go beyond the popular interpretation of the CAP Theorem and the world keeps on spinning!
For example, let's look at two different extremes. Let us say that I must read a value from the database with very high consistency – that is, where I will be 100% sure to receive the last copy of that data which was previously written. In this case, I can read the value from Cassandra specifying consistency level "ALL", which requires that all the nodes that hold replicated copies of that data agree on its value. In this case, I have zero tolerance to either node failure, or network partition. At the other extreme, if I do not care about consistency particularly, and simply want the maximum possible performance, I can read the value from Cassandra using consistency level "ONE". In this case, a copy is simply taken from a random node amongst those holding the replicas – and in this case, if the data is replicated three times, it does not matter if either of the two other nodes holding copies have failed or been partitioned from us, although now of course it is also possible that such conditions may mean the data I read is stale.
And better still, you are not forced to live in a black and white world. For example, in our particular application important read/write operations typically use consistency level "QUORUM", which basically means – and I simplify so please research before writing your Cassandra app – that a majority of nodes in the replication factor agree. From our perspective, this provides both a reasonable degree of resilience to node failure and network partition, while still delivering an extremely high level of consistency. In the general case, we typically use the aforementioned consistency level of "ONE", which provides maximum performance. Nice!
For us this is a very big plus for Cassandra. Not only can we now easily tune our system, we can also design it so that, for example, when a certain number of nodes fail, or the network connecting those nodes falters, our service continues operating in many respects, and only those aspects that require data consistency fail. HBase is not nearly so flexible, and the pursuit of a single approach within the system (CP) reminds me of the wall that exists between SQL developers and the query optimizer – something it is good to get beyond!
In our project then, Cassandra has proven by far the most flexible system, although you may find your brain at first loses consistency when considering your QUORUMs.
When is monolithic better than modular?
An important distinction between Cassandra and HBase, is that while Cassandra comes as a single Java process to be run per node, a complete HBase solution is really comprised of several parts: you have the database process itself, which may run in several modes, a properly configured and operational hadoop HDFS distributed file system setup, and a Zookeeper system to coordinate the different HBase processes. Does this mean then that this is a modularity win for HBase?
Although it is true that such a setup might promise to leverage the collective benefits of different development teams, in terms of systems administration the modularity of HBase cannot be considered a plus. In fact, especially for a smaller startup company, the modularity of HBase might be a big negative. Let me explain…
The underpinnings of HBase are pretty complex, and anyone in doubt of this should read the original Google File System and BigTable papers. Even setting up HBase in pseudo distributed mode on a single server is difficult – so difficult in fact that I did my best to write a guide that takes you past all the various gotchas in the minimum time (see https://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/setup-hbase-in-pseudo-distributed-mode-and-connect-java-client/ if you wish to try it). As you will see from that guide, getting HBase up and running in this mode actually involves setting up two different system systems manually: first hadoop HDFS, then HBase itself.
Now to the point: the HBase configuration files are monsters, and your setup is vulnerable to the quirks in default network configurations (in which I include both the default networking setups on Ubuntu boxes, and the subtleties of Elastic IPs and internally assigned domain names on EC2). When things go wrong, you will be presented with reams of output in the log file. All the information you need to fix things is in there, and if you are a skilled admin you are going to get through it.
But what happens if it does wrong in production and you need to fix it in a hurry? And what happens if like us, you have a small team of developers with big ambitions and can't afford a team of crack admins to be on standby 247?
Look seriously, if you're an advanced db admin wanting to learn a NOSQL system, choose HBase. It's so damn complex that safe pairs of hands are going to get paid well.
But if you're a small team just trying to get to the end of the tunnel like us, wait 'til you hear the Gossip…
It's Gossip talk dude, Gossip!
Cassandra is a completely symmetric system. That is to say, there are no master nodes or region servers like in HBase – every node plays a completely equal role in the system. Rather than any particular node or entity taking on a coordination role, the nodes in your cluster coordinate their activities using a pure P2P communication protocol called "Gossip".
A description of Gossip and the model using it is beyond this post, but the application of P2P communication within Cassandra has been mathematically modelled to show that, for example, the time taken for the detection of node failure to be propagated across the system, or for a client request to be routed to the node(s) holding the data, occur deterministically within well bounded timeframes that are surprisingly small. Personally I believe that Cassandra represents one of the most exciting uses of P2P technology to date, but of course this idea is not relevant to choosing your NOSQL database!
What is relevant are the real benefits that the Gossip-based architecture gives to Cassandra's users. Firstly, continuing with the theme of systems administration, life becomes much simpler. For example, adding a new node to the system becomes as simple as bootstrapping its Cassandra process and pointing it at a seed node (an existing node within your cluster). When you think of the underlying complexity of a distributed database running across, potentially, hundreds of nodes, the ability to add new nodes to scale up with such ease is incredible. Furthermore, when things go wrong you no longer have to consider what kind of nodes you are dealing with – everything is the same, which can make debugging a more progressive and repeatable process.
Secondly I have come to the conclusion that Cassandra's P2P architecture provides it with performance and availability advantages. Load can be very evenly balanced across system nodes thus maximizing the potential for parallelism, the ability to continue seamlessly in the face of network partitions or node failures is greatly increased, and the symmetry between nodes prevents the temporary instabilities in performance that have been reported with HBase when nodes are added and removed (Cassandra boots quickly, and its performance scales smoothly as new nodes are added).
If you are looking for more evidence, you will be interested to read a report from a team with a vested interest in hadoop (i.e. which should favor HBase)…
A report is worth a thousand words. I mean graph right?
The first comprehensive benchmarking of NOSQL systems performed by Yahoo! Research now seems to bear out the general performance advantage that Cassandra enjoys, and on the face of it the figures do currently look very good for Cassandra.
At the time of writing these papers are in draft form and you can check them out here:
NOTE: in this report HBase performs better than Cassandra only respect of range scans over records. Although the Cassandra team believes they will quickly approach the HBase times, it is also worth pointing out that in a common configuration of Cassandra range scans aren't even possible. I recommend this to you as being of no matter, because actually in practice you should implement your indexes on top of Cassandra, rather than seek to use range scans. If you are interested in issues relating to range scans and storing indexes in Cassandra, see my post here https://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/cassandra-randompartitioner-vs-orderpreservingpartitioner/).
FINAL POINT OF INTEREST: the Yahoo! Research team behind this paper are trying to get their benchmarking application past their legal department and make it available to the community. If they succeed, and I hope they do, we will be treated to an ongoing speed competition galore, and both HBase and Cassandra will doubtless be improving their times further.
A word on locking, and useful modularity
You may no doubt hear from the HBase camp that their more complex architecture is able to give you things that Cassandra's P2P architecture can't. An example that may be raised is the fact that HBase provides the developer with row locking facilities whereas Cassandra cannot (in HBase row locking can be controlled by a region server since data replication occurs within the hadoop layer below, whereas in Cassandra's P2P architecture all nodes are equal, and therefore none can act as a gateway that takes responsibility for locking replicated data).
However, I would reflect this back as an argument about modularity, which actually favours Cassandra. Cassandra implements the BigTable data model but uses a design where data storage is distributed over symmetric nodes. It does that, and that's all, but in the most flexible and performant manner possible. But if you need locking, transactions or any other functionality then that can be added to your system in a modular manner – for example we have found scalable locking quite simple to add to our application using Zookeeper and its associated recipes (and other systems such as Hazelcast might also exist for these purposes, although we have not explored them).
By minimizing its function to a narrower purpose, it seems to me that Cassandra manages to implement a design that executes that purpose better – as indicated for example by its selectable CAP tradeoffs. This modularity means you can build a system as you need it – want locking, grab yourself Zookeeper, want to store a full text index, grab yourself Lucandra, and so on. For developers like us, this means we don't have to take on board more complexity than we actually need, and ultimately provides us with a more flexible route to building the application we want.
MapReduce, don't mention MapReduce!
One thing Cassandra can't do well yet is MapReduce! For those not versed in this technology, it is a system for the parallel processing of vast amounts of data, such as the extraction of statistics from millions of pages that have been downloaded from the Web. MapReduce and related systems such as Pig and Hive work well with HBase because it uses hadoop HDFS to store its data, which is the platform these systems were primarily designed to work with. If you need to do that kind of data crunching and analysis, HBase may currently be your best option.
Remember, it's horses for courses!
Therefore as I finish off my impassioned extolation of Cassandra's relative virtues, I should point out HBase and Cassandra should not necessarily be viewed as out and out competitors. While it is true that they may often be used for the same purpose, in much the same way as MySQL and Postgres, what I believe will likely emerge is that they will become preferred solutions for different applications. For example, as I understand StumbleUpon has been using HBase with the associated hadoop MapReduce technologies to crunch the vast amounts of data added to its service. Twitter is now using Cassandra for real time interactive community posts. Our needs fit better with the interactive serving and processing of data and so we are using Cassandra, and probably to some degree there you have it.
As a controversial parting shot though the gloves are off for the next point!
NOTE: before I continue I should point out Cassandra has hadoop support in 0.6, so its MapReduce integration may be about to get a whole load better.
O boy, I can't afford to lose that data…
Perhaps as a result of the early CAP Theorem debates, an impression has grown that data is somehow safer in HBase than Cassandra. This is a final myth that I wish to debunk: in Cassandra, when you write new data it is actually immediately written to the commit log on one of the nodes in the quorum that will hold the replicas, as well as being replicated across the memory of the nodes. This means that if you have a complete power failure across your cluster, you will likely lose little data. Furthermore once in the system, data entropy is prevented using Merkle trees, which further add to the security of your data 🙂
In truth I am not clear exactly what the situation with HBase is – and I will endeavour to update this post as soon as possible with details – but my current understanding is that because hadoop does not yet support append, HBase cannot efficiently regularly flush its modified blocks of data to HDFS (whereupon the new mutations to data will be replicated and persisted). This means that there is a much larger window where your latest changes are vulnerable (if I am wrong, as I may be, please tell me and I will update the post).
So while the Cassandra of Greek mythology had a rather terrible time, the data inside your Cassandra shouldn't.
NOTE: Wade Arnold points out below that (at the time of writing this) hadoop .21 is about to be released, which will solve this problem with HBase.


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Reality Check: Wendy's New Hot 'N Juicy
Reviews of fast food burgers and a look at how the real life version compares to the advertised beauty shot.
Change is tough. When I learned that Wendy's intended to introduce new burgers, I felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation. "It seems like they're trying to make thicker burgers to compete with Five Guys," someone said to me. Wendy's has struggled with new products like their breakfast, so I was very interested in trying their new Hot 'N Juicy burgers.
What's new? First, and most importantly, the new burgers are thicker. They still have a square shape, but with rounder edges. Their toppings have changed as well, with sweet red onions replacing white onions, crinkle cut pickles, whole-fat mayo, and the removal of mustard from the burger. They've also scaled back on the amount of toppings. As for procedural changes, the buns are now buttered and toasted, and the cheese is stored at a warmer temperature, to make it melt faster over the burgers. Many of these changes were implemented to emphasize the flavor of their beef.
So how did it taste? As someone that really hates red onion, that was my primary focus on the first bite (call me odd, picky, and unfocused). I liked these: they were mostly innocuous, but they added a little sting to the burger. Similarly, the crinkle cut pickles were more textural than taste. The lettuce and tomato were almost in the background. Overall, the toppings were an accent, as opposed to something bold.
The bigger changes, in my opinion, are the bun, cheese, and beef. As advertised, the american cheese had melted all over my patties, which Wendy's struggled with in the past. Coming to the bun, it did taste bready and soft, like a Five Guys bun, as opposed to the dry, spongy Kaiser role of the past. Mine wasn't toasted well—I could barely see any carbon, but they're still in the first few weeks. I could taste the butter, which felt heavy, but not greasy—more like a layer of glaze. It mixed well with the whole fat mayo—and did make the burger feel rich and round, as opposed to dry and flat.
As for the piece de resistance, I didn't notice too much change. The meat tasted slightly different: much less salty than in the past. There is more crust on the outside of the burger than before, and they are about 33 percent larger. Most importantly, though, they aren't very juicy. I had drops of liquid dripping onto the wrapping paper, but they were a mix of butter and mayo. In the meat department, it's not a huge change, in my opinion.
Ultimately, the "Juicy" didn't come from the beef—it came from everything else. Don't get me wrong, the burgers are good. I really enjoyed mine, and would go back for more. But it feels like they tweaked things more than they overhauled. Since I've been working at a software company, I've learned the meaning of the word "iterate": to improve something consistently over time rather than big sweeping changes all at once. The Hot 'N Juicy feels like an iteration on the burger, as opposed to a huge sweeping overhaul.
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


text: In this project, the evolution and timing of the so-called "Urgonian" platform is investigated in the Helvetic Alps. Urgonian-type platform carbonates include the remains of typical photozoan carbonate-producing ecosystems composed of corals, rudists, stromatoporoids, chaetetids, green algae, benthic foraminifera and calcareous sponges, which were widespread in tropical and subtropical regions during the late Early Cretaceous. Goals of this research are the establishment of the exact timing of the arrival of this platform in the Helvetic segment of the northern Tethyan realm, facies and microfacies, sequence stratigraphy, geochemical and mineralogical records (i.e., carbon isotopes, phosphorus contents), in order to better understand the development of this mainly oligotrophic platform in a time which was characterized by frequent environmental change and regional to global marine anoxia.


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Is your business unique? Can you prove it?
In my experience, every business owner will tell you that their business is unique, 'cutting-edge', different from the rest.
And they are quite right to do so – you wouldn't get very far in business by promoting the message that you are average, one of many or a bit behind the times. When it comes to selling a business, if everyone is saying the same thing, it becomes difficult to sort the genuine unique from the creative marketing spin. Unless, of course, you can prove it.
So when the Chief Engineer of Reading Buses says they want to "get the image of bus transport away from being dirty, smelly and slow; we're modern, fast, and at the cutting edge of innovation," you could be forgiven for being a little sceptical. Except for the fact that Reading Buses has just set a speed record for a regular service bus at 76.785mph – and not only that, but they did it in a bus fuelled by cow poo.
Yes, this black and white liveried bus runs on biomethane compressed natural gas and can normally be seen carrying passengers around the Reading area. It is now a little harder for people to argue that Reading Buses are not modern, fast, and at the cutting edge of innovation!
So if you are looking to stand-out from the crowd, don't just tell everyone you are different – anyone can say that – find a way to prove it.
BBC News article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-32801974


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With yesterday's patch 1.1 player-versus-player debacle stemming a flood of threatened account cancellations, BioWare has released a video showing off what the coming months have in store for Star Wars: The Old Republic, in case you choose to stick around.
In case you missed yesterday's story, patch 1.1 basically transformed the high-end PVP planet of Ilum into a slaughterhouse for whichever faction was in the minority on any given server (generally the Republic, because good is dumb). Outraged players called for a rollback (reverting the game to a state before the patch hit) and instead got a quick patch that didn't fix the game to their satisfaction.
Now the players that can find the cancel subscription button on their account page are threatening to cancel their accounts before their first month of free play time is up, the forums are awash with anger, and I'm sure more than a few BioWare developers are feeling very angry and/or sad right now. I feel for them. They're just trying to bring a fun game to the nice people.
Where I would have just taken my game and gone home, BioWare soldiers on, posting a video today outlining what kind of fun and frivolity are heading The Old Republic's way in the next few months. Things like guild banks, PVP rankings, and user interface customization. Other MMOs take these things for granted. Currently they are not granted in The Old Republic, so we can't take them for it. Not for a couple of months.
And there's the oft-mentioned Legacy system, which lets you make an entire Star Wars family complete with special powers. If I didn't already have a server full of alts that would be amazing!
Come on, folks. As a wise man once said, "Things can only get better. O-o-ooo-o-o- o - o - o".


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Cast Away
Every time ABC runs an episode of its hit TV series Lost, Evanston's Jeffrey Lieber gets an onscreen credit and his bank account gets a nice pop. But the twisting tale of his Hollywood triumph has left Lieber feeling a bit … well, lost.
The ABC series Lost is the sort of extraordinary hit that TV dreams are made of.
Centering on a band of plane-crash survivors marooned on a mysterious island, Lost has mixed sci-fi and plot twists into a huge phenomenon, attracting millions of viewers and propelling ABC out of a long prime-time ratings slump. When fans tune in to the show for the start of its fourth season in February 2008, one of the names they will see rolling in the opening credits as co-creator is Jeffrey Lieber. That's Jeffrey Lieber, Evanston Township High School, class of '87; U. of I., class of '91.
Lieber's success should lend itself to a heartwarming tale about a local kid who defied odds and made it big in show business. But the story is not that simple. In the Chutes & Ladders world that is Hollywood, Lieber finds his biggest triumph discomfiting. The network fired him after he wrote Lost's original series pilot. He doesn't know the crew or cast. He has never visited the writers' offices for the show and never set foot on the set in Hawaii, where much of the series is shot. Lieber won his credit only after a fight for recognition with ABC.
Nobody needs to feel sorry for Jeffrey Lieber: because of that successful arbitration, Lost has served him quite well financially. But he finds that a hollow victory. "It's money for therapy," he says, with a laugh.
Jeffrey Lieber's story provides a case study in the rigors, pitfalls, and payoffs of a business that remains deeply alluring. Every year, countless wannabe film and television writers from all over the world descend on Hollywood to try to break in. Besides the glamour, the payoff can be golden: top movie and TV writers typically receive annual paychecks in the high six figures; with back-end profits, they can sometimes earn millions.
Still, only about 4,000 writers actually earn a living at the trade, according to the Writers Guild of America. Jeffrey Stepakoff, a TV veteran whose recently published book Billion-Dollar Kiss offers a behind-the-scenes look at the business, says about two-thirds of those paid writers work in television, many on the staffs of shows. The business is tough enough, says Stepakoff, that about 20 percent of working writers cycle out of the industry every year. "It's a very small, insular community," he says.
Sitting on the upstairs back porch of his 1912 Craftsman bungalow in L.A.'s Venice Beach on a recent chilly night, Lieber, 38, with black hair, longish sideburns, and a goatee, recounts how he became Lost's unknown castaway. The tale begins in Evanston, where he grew up the son of Susan, a clinical psychologist, and Roland, an architect. He got his start in show business in high school. "I went to see a production of Scapino," he recalls. "There was this really hot blonde named Suzy Moore onstage, and I kept thinking, I want to do anything I can to get closer to her. So I just started doing plays." (As it happens, his future wife, Holly Long, was also in Scapino.)
After high school, Lieber enrolled in the theatre department at the University of Illinois and later came to Chicago to break into the city's theatre scene-meaning, he moved into a roach-infested two-flat in Bucktown, worked part-time at Starbucks, and took roles in shows at Victory Gardens, Shakespeare Repertory, and the National Jewish Theatre.
Tired of being a struggling actor, Lieber teamed up with another struggling actor from the U. of I., Michael Shapiro, to write scripts for TV sitcoms on spec (that is, without any promise of being paid). An actress friend in Los Angeles passed the scripts to her agent at Writers & Artists, a respected talent agency. Lieber says he recalls the man today only as "Jerry." Jerry liked their scripts and told them that he'd sign them on as clients. Soon, Lieber and Shapiro flew out to L.A. for a meeting. Lieber says that afterward, while lunching on Melrose Boulevard-in shorts, in January-he and Shapiro decided: "That's it: we're moving to California. Hallelujah!"
A month or two after arriving in Los Angeles, in March 1995, Lieber and Shapiro met with Jerry one morning to discuss a movie project. Later that day, Lieber called Jerry at his office with a question, only to find out that as of that afternoon, Jerry no longer worked at Writers & Artists. That meant Lieber and Shapiro were out, too. Lieber now suspects that they were never actually signed as clients: "We were probably what's known as 'hip-pocketed,'" he explains, "where an agent says, 'Oh, yeah, I'll work with you.' But he doesn't tell anyone else, and if you pan out on your own, great, then he'll sign you. If not, no one knows you exist. We didn't exist."
Eight months passed with no agent or job offers. Lieber toiled at a $10-an-hour day job for a company that developed video games and in his spare time he churned out screenplays. Shapiro, hobbled by writer's block, ultimately gave up on his Hollywood dreams and returned to Chicago, where today he is the new principal of Shepard Middle School in Deerfield. "I've always said that Jeff's like a shark-if he stops moving, he dies," says Shapiro. "So he's up at five o'clock in the morning, sitting in front of the laptop; then he falls asleep at about 8:30 [p.m.], and then he gets up in the middle of the night and he writes."
In the fine tradition of Hollywood networking, Lieber passed his scripts on to an old high-school friend whose girlfriend worked as an assistant to a talent agent who was friends with an assistant to a literary agent, who read them. The agent agreed to sign Lieber, but with a catch: she was in the process of switching agencies and would seal the deal when she settled in elsewhere. Two weeks later, she called Lieber from her new agency. "Have you ever heard of Writers & Artists?" she asked. Lieber recalls thinking, "Oh, God, how could this be happening?"
Still, he signed with her and finally got his break. The studio Dreamworks liked one of his pitches and he became a finalist to write a romantic movie comedy. Unfortunately, he was up against John Patrick Shanley, the Academy Award–winning writer of Moonstruck. "I think I'm toast," recalls Lieber. "So, I go out and I buy a fishbowl and a goldfish, and I send it to [the Dreamworks executive] with a card that says, 'Just remember-the little fish take up less room and they're easier to care for; hire the little fish.'" Lo and behold, Lieber got the job.
About a week later, Lieber met with the executive in his office, and the fishbowl was empty on the desk: "I said, 'What happened to the fish?' And he says, 'The fish is dead-we overfed it.'" (Later, Lieber was fired from the project and the movie was never made.)
The idea for Lost was born in the summer of 2003 in the banquet room of the Grand Californian hotel at Disney's California Adventure, in Anaheim. ABC had gathered its executive team, some 50 or so people, for the yearly management retreat, with a goal to generate fresh ideas for new shows and suggest ways to improve its existing ones. At the time, ABC-which is owned by Disney-was desperate for hits. The network had slipped to fourth in the ratings, behind NBC, CBS, and Fox, and development executives were feeling the heat.
At one point, the group sat around the banquet room and one by one suggested ideas for shows. When his turn came, Lloyd Braun, then the chairman of ABC Entertainment, suggested coming up with something along the lines of his favorite movie of that year, Cast Away, the stranded-on-a-deserted-island tale starring Tom Hanks. "A lot of people sort of laughed at the idea," recalls Thom Sherman, a former senior vice president at ABC, now with the CW network. Some skeptics compared the idea to Gilligan's Island, the goofy sixties sitcom.
But Sherman liked the idea (after all, Braun was his boss), and he called his good friend Ted Gold, then at Spelling Productions, the hit-making production company founded by TV legend Aaron Spelling. As it happened, says Gold, Spelling had toyed with a similar idea-a scripted series inspired by the reality TV show Survivor-but found no takers. So, when Sherman called with Braun's idea for the series, it seemed like the perfect marriage. And Gold had the perfect writer for the project: Jeffrey Lieber.
By this time, Lieber was enjoying some success, at least by Hollywood standards. He'd sold his first screenplay, a postcollege love-triangle drama titled Conspiracy of Weeds, and he got hired to write scripts for Warner Brothers and Paramount. Of those projects, only Weeds ever made it to the big screen. Picked up by Miramax, renamed Tangled, rewritten as a thriller, and miscast with a teen-comedy actress as the lead, the film flopped when it came out in 2003. (Lieber recalls being in a Paris train station on vacation and seeing a poster for his film, now called Sex Trouble.) Next, Disney hired Lieber to put a new twist on a film version of Natalie Babbitt's children's classic Tuck Everlasting.
He'd been hired and fired from other projects-a practice that is almost as old as Hollywood itself-but he'd come to know a producer who ended up at Spelling, and she had introduced him to Ted Gold, the company's drama chief. Gold worked with Lieber on a pilot pitch that got no takers, followed by another project that UPN hired Lieber to write but never made. Gold liked Lieber, however, and the exec signed him to a so-called blind deal-an agreement for a future project that's not necessarily identified. Lost became that project.
Gold recalls that ABC wanted its survivor drama to be a hyperrealistic portrayal of life on a deserted island: "Thom [Sherman] said to me, 'We want to do Cast Away-the Series.' That's the only line that was ever pitched."
Lieber imagined something like Lord of the Flies-a "realistic show about a society putting itself back together after a catastrophe." In roughly a week's time, he concocted a general story line centered on what happens to a few dozen plane-crash survivors when they are stuck on a far-off Pacific island. The show, as Lieber saw it, would focus heavily on eight to ten main characters-in particular, two half brothers, avowed rivals, competing for leadership of their fellow castaways, who include a doctor, a con man, a fugitive, a pregnant woman, a drug-addicted man, a military officer, and a spoiled rich girl. (Sound familiar, Lost fans?)
In September 2003, Lieber pitched his premise for the show, then titled Nowhere, to Sherman and his lieutenants. "I won't be so presumptuous as to say it was one of the best pitches ever," recalls Gold, who was there. "I will say it was one of the more well-thought-out pitches I've been in." Afterward, continues Gold, "Thom called me and he told me, quote-unquote, 'The best project of the year.' He greenlights it enthusiastically."
Lieber then spent weeks writing an elaborate outline, fleshing out the characters and story lines. Spelling brought in National Geographic experts as consultants to help Lieber ground his fictional island in reality. Soon enough, Lieber made another presentation to Sherman and the ABC development team. Lieber recalls that they had only one major complaint: they told him to cut a scene in which a shark killed one of the castaways. Too unrealistic, Lieber recalls them saying.
Next came six weeks writing the pilot. Just after Thanksgiving, Lieber met with ABC executives for a session at which they made suggestions for changes. He recalls only minor quibbles-things like refining a couple of characters and tweaking some dialogue. "We're really happy," he says Sherman told him after the meeting. "If you don't hand in blank pages on the rewrite, we're shooting this thing." Lieber was ecstatic. "Nobody tells you they're shooting anything-ever. That's the best news you can get."
Indeed, the networks consider hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pitches for new show ideas every television season. Jeffrey Stepakoff says each network typically buys 100 or so projects (ABC bought 80 that season), out of which only about 15 actually get produced. And of those, only seven or so actually make it on the air, with maybe two or three of those surviving beyond the first year. "The odds are remarkable," says Stepakoff.
Still, Lieber felt he had a good shot; so did Gold. "I thought it was a done deal," Gold says. The last step was to get Lloyd Braun to sign off. Over the Christmas holidays, Braun took Lieber's script with him to the La Quinta resort near Palm Springs.
"It was not received well," Jonathan Levin, then the president of Spelling, told Lieber a few days after Christmas. So the writer went back to work, but he had little time to revise the script and little to go on. Lieber was "rewriting like hell," he says, but he "didn't know what to do. I wasn't being told really what the problem was-all I was being told was that Lloyd didn't like it." He handed in a new draft a week later, just after the new year, and then waited nervously.
A few days later, Sherman called. "He says, 'Great job on the rewrite,'" Lieber recalls. "'I really like it.'" Sherman told him that he had some more notes and would call again in an hour. Lieber was hugely relieved. But hours passed with no word from Sherman or anyone else at ABC. Finally, in the late afternoon, Levin called. "Are you sitting down?" he asked. "It's over; you're done."
What happened next to Lost has become industry lore. Braun decided to give the project to a young hot shot named J. J. Abrams, who had helped create the ABC cult favorite Alias, among other things. But Abrams was tied up writing another pilot and he was skeptical that the show's premise could be extended to a whole season of episodes. Braun told him to take the weekend to think about it. Abrams did, and came back with a far-out idea to get around the show's limitations: What if the island were a character-a supernatural place where strange things happened? Braun loved it.
By this time, it was extremely late to be starting over from scratch. "But Lloyd was so passionate about it, he wanted to take an eleventh-hour stab at saving it," Sherman says. So Abrams teamed up with a promising writer named Damon Lindelof, and together they came up with another ingenious idea: a flashback device that focuses on one character each episode and allows the show to get off the island. Four days later, they submitted a 20-page outline to Braun. "Lloyd called me up screaming, 'They've done it-it's ER, it's ER!'" recalls Sherman, referring to NBC's longtime hit series.
ABC picked up the pilot without a script, based solely on the outline by Abrams and Lindelof-an almost unheard-of move; less than three months later the pair were making a two-hour-long, $12-million pilot, one of the most expensive pilots in TV history. "I don't know if there's another story like this in the annals of television," says Sherman.
Lieber went into a funk for weeks. "I was angry and depressed and confused," he says. The hardest part was that he never saw it coming. "It's the flip between 'We love it' to 'There's a problem' that I've never really gotten over. Had somebody said, 'Lloyd thinks it's too real-maybe we need a monster or an otherworldly element'-I would've said, 'OK, no problem.' But I just never got the chance."
Sherman acknowledges that Lieber did "yeoman's work," but he says that ultimately ABC felt more comfortable putting the show in Abrams's hands. It was nothing personal, adds Sherman: "Business is business."
In May, ABC announced that it would put the show in its 2004 fall lineup. Lieber felt even more disheartened: "Not only do they boot me off the island; now I look back and they're throwing a party on the island, and I'm sitting there floating 100 feet in the water on a shitty raft that's going nowhere."
But before ABC could put Lost on the air, the network had to straighten out the credits mess. By tradition, the Writers Guild of America settles disputes over who gets screenplay and story credit for film and television productions. The guild's arbitration process amounts to high-powered fisticuffs, with fame and fortune-sometimes millions of dollars-potentially at stake. Each side makes its case with a detailed and laborious examination of all the written material that goes into the evolution of the final script. A committee of three anonymous guild members makes a final ruling.
ABC and Touchstone, another Disney unit that co-produces Lost, initially tried to head off a potentially nasty arbitration battle, claiming to the guild that Lieber (and Spelling) had no creative input on Lost-that his project was completely different from the show that was eventually made. "They just tried to write us, particularly Jeffrey, completely out of the picture, as if we had nothing to do with it," recalls Gold.
"Now I feel like I've been kicked off the island, I'm on a shitty raft 100 feet out, they're having a party, and they're throwing chum in the water at me," Lieber says.
The guild rejected Touchstone's argument, and the parties agreed to arbitration. Lieber readily acknowledges that he has nothing to do with the current show (which, he jokes, seems more like Lord of the Rings than Lord of the Flies). But, he adds, "I felt like, if credit was going to be handed out, somewhere in that pile, I deserved something." He spent the next two weeks comparing his draft with the final shooting script, poring over them line by line to find similar plot developments, character traits, relationships, and even dialogue.
"It was easy to point out the parallels," he says. "I didn't feel as if I'd been robbed, but [comparing the scripts] I was able to go, 'A equals A, B equals B,'" and so on. He compiled a ten-page digest of similarities and sent the list to the guild for a ruling. Then he waited.
About a month later, Lieber says, a representative of the guild called and said, "Congratulations." The guild had sided with Lieber, ruling that the coveted 'created by' credit should be shared three ways. Specifically, Lieber says, he received 60 percent of the 'created by' credit, while Abrams and Lindelof split the remaining 40 percent. (Guild officials refused to discuss the specifics of Lieber's case, saying that all arbitration proceedings are confidential. Braun, Abrams, and Lindelof declined to be interviewed for this story, as did executives for ABC.)
"This was the first of a thousand times someone said 'Congrats' regarding the show, where it felt hollow and embarrassing, because I wanted to say, 'But I didn't do anything,'" Lieber says. "'I mean, I did something-and what I did was important-but it wasn't the thing you're congratulating me for.'"
On September 22, 2004, Lieber spent a quiet night at home with his wife, Holly, watching the première of Lost. There was the terrifying plane crash, the chaotic aftermath on a remote tropical island, and the introduction of the cast-all similar to what Lieber had sketched out in his script. But soon, there were strange, loud noises, followed by a mysterious force snatching up an injured pilot. Later on, a polar bear attacked the survivors.
Lieber was shocked at how the series had veered away from hyperreality to Jurassic Park. "Monsters?" he thought. "Really?" He recalled how ABC executives had told him to cut the "unrealistic" scene of a shark attack. "Had I pitched the same ideas that were in the pilot that aired," he says today, "I would have been laughed out of the room."
His discomfort peaked the following September at the 2005 Emmy Award ceremonies in L.A.'s famed Shrine Auditorium. Lost had the most nominations for a drama series, with 12 bids, including one for Lieber in the drama writing category-a nomination for the pilot episode in part "created by" him. Dressed in a newly purchased tuxedo, Lieber sat next to Lindelof. Abrams, who was also up for a directing award, sat a few rows in front of them. Lieber felt like a red-carpetbagger. He felt, well, lost. "To be in the midst of them, and have them be like, Who the hell is this guy? What's he doing here?" recalls Lieber. "It was utterly painful; I couldn't wait for it to be over. It was like being at a party where you know your mom has called and gotten you invited."
But at the urging of his lawyer and his agent, Lieber had decided to attend. "To not go, to sit at home and isolate myself, would only reinforce for me that I hadn't done anything," he says. "I wasn't under the delusion that it was going to be all fun."
As things turned out, the awkward moment of sharing the stage with the show's other principals never materialized: though Lost won six Emmys, the writing award for drama ended up going to the new medical drama House.
Notwithstanding the guild's ruling, some former members of ABC's development team think Lieber has received an undeserved break. After all, given the success of the show, it's hard to fault the decisions made by the network. One former executive, who asked not to be identified because Hollywood is a small town, says, "The fact that Jeff arbitrated and got credit and takes money away from J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, who literally work on this show till two in the morning every day-I just don't feel bad for Jeffrey. He's collecting a buttload of cash. He should be laughing all the way to the bank."
Lieber says he gets paid every time an episode airs and again when episodes are rerun, annually collecting in the "low six figures." Once the show is sold into syndication, he could potentially earn much more in royalties. He doesn't apologize for the payout. "I own part of the genesis. That's what the 'created by' credit is about. Lots of things happened subsequently, but what I did is somehow buried deep within the DNA of the show."
Another former ABC executive who also requested anonymity is skeptical. "If you gave the script [idea] to ten writers in town," the executive says, "the characters would've been the same."
As it turns out, the success of Lost has left others besides Lieber in its wake. Most of the top executives at ABC were gone before the show aired. Meanwhile, Lieber's career hasn't stalled. He's written a pilot that got shot but never aired, and multiple screenplays. One, The Express, a biopic about Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner-who died young of leukemia-was shot in Chicago from April through June. Lieber is currently working on pilots for Lifetime and Showtime-both six-figure deals.
He is no longer the little fish that he called himself years ago to the Dreamworks executive, but he still feels as if he's swimming against the current in Hollywood's high seas, and he still feels he has something to prove. "That's the hardest part-my greatest moment of disappointment is my greatest moment of recognition. And finding peace in that is a daily, weekly, monthly type of thing."
Click on the links to read excerpts from Nowhere, the precursor to the pilot episode of Lost.
Leiber: "In my draft of Lost, I was working off a Lord of the Flies model, wherein a small group of people, cut off from the real world, are forced to reinvent society. What version of law and order who they create? What kind of morality would win out? Would the people who rose to power be benevolent, or is power itself corrupting? At the center of the society I imagined two half brothers, connected by their father, but raised very differently. This is their introduction."
Lieber: "The biggest challenge with the show was removing, for the most part, the idea that these people would be saved any time soon. One doesn't want to have to spend every episode dwelling on "rescuers" or plans of escape. This scene that follows was my attempt to get the viewer to buy into the survivors' permanent residency."
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Siri may deny knowing Samuel L. Jackson and be irritated by certain members of the Deschanel family that insist on asking insipid questions about the weather, but she apparently does like some people. In the newest ad for Apple's iPhone 4S, she and John Malkovich seem to share quite a deep connection. Well, as deep a connection as one can really have with a sociopathic glorified search engine.
[Via Ad Age]


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Unless the Lord Builds the House...
- Barry R. Leventhal, Ph.D. Two Becoming One
- 2010 17 Jul
One sign of a growing economy is the increase of building projects. And in the divine economy, the same is true. However else we may measure spiritual growth and development, especially in our marriages and families, one thing is for sure: "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." That is the way the wise King Solomon put it in Psalm 127.
He knew what we need to constantly bear in mind: We are totally dependent on God to build our marriages and families. Without such a total reliance upon Him, all of our marriage seminars, biblical principles, and church activities are doomed to failure. So what does this kind of total dependency on God look like? If we are to keep from "laboring in vain" in our marriages and families, how can we trust Him in all aspects of our lives? In Psalm 127, King Solomon gives us the divine blueprint for marriage and family faith. This building blueprint comprises three spiritual bricks that we must lay in building our marriage and family life of faith.
1. Faith Building Brick #1: The realization that we are inadequate on our own to build our marriages and families (Psalm 127:1)
"Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand in guard in vain."
Most of us think that if we can just go to more marriage seminars or learn more biblical principles, our marriages and families will thrive. But although these kinds of things are necessary, without a conscious dependence on the Lord of heaven and earth, all of our good efforts will be futile and our homes will ultimately collapse into ruins, as many current Christian marriages are now experiencing.
Along with the truths of God for marriage and family, we need to seek the Lord in dependent worship and prayer on a regular basis. For He alone can "build" and "watch over" our marriages and families. The only way that we can truly reflect God's image in our marriages is to develop a faith relationship with Him and with each other.
2. Faith Building Brick #2: The refusal to get caught up in the typical rat race and workaholic syndrome (Psalm 127:2):
"In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat — for He grants sleep to those He loves."
It is so easy to get caught up in the worldly rat race to keep getting more and more stuff: working 12-hour plus days or husbands and wives both dashing off to jobs that will keep them in a lifestyle that matches the neighbors or that will get them more things to keep the happy veneer intact.
But the awful reality is that none of these workaholic pursuits will ever give us the sustaining joy and fulfillment that God desires to freely give us. Not only does He provide for proper seasons of rest, He also provides for us while we are resting: gifts like physical and emotional recovery; spiritual renewal and vision; new and wonderful surprises for the dawning day. Is it any wonder that so many Christians are collapsing under the weight of such an enslaving lifestyle? If we are going to rein in spiritual warfare in our marriages, for the glory of God, then we are going to have to put the brakes on our rat race lifestyle and trust God to provide all that we will ever need.
3. Faith Building Brick #3: The recognition that children, when God grants them, are His gifts (Psalm 127:3-5):
"Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate."
God is committed to glorifying Himself generation after generation. And when He grants us the gift of children, He will also empower us to reproduce a godly heritage for His sake. Not only are children a gift and a blessing from God to us, they are also His special disciples for the coming years, shot out like arrows against His enemies.
In light of God's total commitment to building your marriage and family, prayerfully consider the following questions:
1. Who are you trusting to build your marriage and family? Your parents? Your mate? Your job? Your savings or investments? Your church? Etc.? Or the Lord?
2. How much of your typical day is given over to work? To play? To rest? Where do you need to adjust your priorities and schedule in order to escape from the typical rat race?
3. If God has given you children, how do you view them? As a pain in the neck? As a nuisance? Or as God's gifts and blessings to be launched out for Him to make an impact for the kingdom and glory of God?
© 2003 Christian Family Life


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Access to immediate advice and assessment from paediatrician with Level 3 safeguarding
This page provides a best practice example for standard 10 of Facing the Future: Standards for acute general paediatric services. The RCPCH Child Protection Standing Committee have developed this model for teams to have access to immediate advice and assessment from a paediatrician with child protec...
Adverse childhood experiences – consultation response
In 2017 we responded to the Science and Technology Committee's inquiry into evidence-based early-years intervention.
Being me - supporting children and young people
What keeps children in care happy, healthy and well? Care-experienced children and young people worked with RCPCH &Us to create these free resources, including 'health and wellbeing passports', a poster and games to help share who they are, how they are feeling and what support they would like - as ...
Best practice examples of health transition
The page highlights examples of good practice from across the UK of effective transition from children's to adults' health services.
Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) in child protection briefings
Serious Case Reviews (SCR) in child protection have been identified and compiled by NSPCC and Knowledge and Information for the RCPCH. They are relevant to all paediatricians and key points have been outlined in bold.
Cannabis-derived medicinal products - questions and answers
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and British Paediatric Neurology Association has developed this Q&A in light of recent developments in this area. It advises on the legality and safety of cannabis-based products and considers the evidence base for their potential harms and benefits.
Care of unaccompanied migrant children and child victims of modern slavery – consultation response
We responded to the Department for Education in 2017 with recommendations that child health professionals be included in the assessment process to determine whether a child is the victim of modern slavery and human trafficking. Government must allocate more financial resource in order for Local Auth...
Chatterbox game on five ways of healthy wellbeing
Based on the classic children's game, this game provides 'Facts vs Myths' surrounding the subject of mental health, which can enable a teacher/healthcare professional to facilitate a discussion regarding this issue.
Child protection - external guidance
Here are some recommended online resources in child protection - for RCPCH members, clinicians, policymakers and parents/carers. You can access all links below.
Child protection and the anaesthetist
This document - published by Royal College of Anaesthetists in partnership with the RCPCH, Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, and Association of Paediatric Anaesthetists of Great Britain - aims to assist anaesthetists and theatre personnel where safeguarding concerns are rais...


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