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What Went Wrong
On the Rocks: ENERGY 5501
Dockwalk magazine's regular column, What Went Wrong by Kelly Sanford, highlights a different marine accident each month, focusing on the lessons learned. We've received feedback that some readers would like to comment on it. So we're republishing it in the forum so you can have your say.This month's column is about a vessel that ran hard aground.
In the summer and fall of 2009 there seemed to be a rash of yachts running hard aground. With many of these wounds still fresh and very raw, finding full disclosure regarding these specific incidents proved to be nearly impossible. But with the yachting community wondering what may have gone wrong, we were able to track down a marine incident from the commercial industry that may offer some insight regarding the need for caution in near coastal navigation.
In the winter of 2003, the tug North Service was pushing the tank barge Energy 5501 when it ran aground near the Norwalk Islands off Connecticut, puncturing holes in all six starboard tanks and spilling 2,500 gallons of heating oil into the water.
According to documents provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, the captain had plotted a foul weather route using the electronic chart navigation tools. The official cause of the accident was that neither the captain nor the mate had double checked the route against a paper chart and they had failed to recognize a charted navigation hazard on the plotted course – in other words, human error.
In a separate review by the Gulf Coast Mariners Association, it is noted that the mate was navigating with the tug's electronic chart plotter and radar. "His course at the time of the impact was left two degrees, or approximately 300 yards, from the intended track line on the chart plotter. This difference placed the tug and barge on a course taking them directly over the 18-foot rock. Had the mate maintained the intended track line, the tug and barge would have missed the 18-foot rock. It is possible the master and mate…were using the electronic chart plotter beyond the scale it was designed for. That could explain why the 18-foot mark was not shaded in blue when zoomed out."
The review also noted that the foul-weather route had been created by the master to keep the ride smoother in bad weather. The route kept the tug and the barge away from noted chart obstructions, including the rock. But the master did not note the rock's position when he plotted the foul-weather route, the report maintained.
According to one of the Coast Guard investigators, "This case highlights the fact that mariners are using electronic chart systems (ECS) without adequate knowledge of how to best use these systems. Nor do they necessarily understand the functional differences that exist between paper and electronic charts…. This is evident in the manner in which the master plotted for the heavy weather by zooming out to maximize the area displayed on the screen rather than ensuring that the chart was displayed at the proper scale."
One veteran commercial captain now working in the yachting industry says that he is familiar with the incident and the findings. "Once again, an utter failure in Bridge Resource Management. The master failed the system," he says. "Electronics are no more a part of casualties than poorly maintained machinery and crew. The master in this case did not establish proper night orders, nor did the master instruct the mate to confirm through other navigational methods the proper fix/location of the vessel, nor did he establish a plan with the mate stating the tolerances for route maintenance; the mate was over three hundred yards off course in an area of tight constraints."
"That's a pretty bad mistake, but I guess I could see how that could happen," says another captain, who requested his name not be used. "That's why I plot my course, check it on a paper chart and then zoom back in so these things show up…even then, if I am not personally on watch, I keep the navigation display on in my cabin because there is always room for error."
He says that even when captains assume the utmost caution in plotting a proper course, there is still a risk of crew becoming complacent or placing too much trust in the electronic navigation systems, particularly on extended passages when everyone gets fatigued and even the captain eventually has to sleep.
"There was a time I woke up because my internal clock told me I should have felt a course change by now," he says. "I looked up and saw that the crew on watch had totally missed a waypoint…we were miles off course – the boat icon was not even on the screen." In an attempt to try and counter this kind of mistake, "I purposely will not set the nav mode on the autopilot," this captain says. "I want the crew to be watching the chart and making the course changes themselves, but that is still no guarantee that they won't just tune out. It drives me crazy because it's common sense, and they act like they have no idea how dangerous that can be."
Nav mode appears to be a hot topic in itself. There are captains who say they will not connect that option, and others who tell their crew that the function is not operational even when it is, because they feel the crew on watch will be disengaged if the autopilot automatically alters course at each waypoint. According to Geir Skoglund, vice president of loss prevention for the Norwegian Hull Club, "Despite having far more sophisticated equipment, [boats] are currently twice as likely to have an accident due to navigational error than they were five or six years ago."
Among the recommendations in the Energy 5501 Coast Guard Report is the following: "The steadily increasing influx of electronic navigation equipment and plotting practices begs for the inclusion of training and proficiency exams as part of the [vessel] operator's licensing and license endorsement process."However, a counterpoint in the same report states that unless Electronic Chart Systems and Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems (ECS/ECDIS) ultimately are required on all vessels, there cannot be a requirement for ECS/ECDIS training and/or examination for licensing.
And, although paper chart proficiency is currently all that is required for USCG licensing, their own report states, "It should be noted that vessels may make more use of electronic charts than paper charts insofar as most ECS displays…are located where they can be viewed by the officer on watch while they are conning the vessel, whereas most chart tables are located at the back of the pilot house."
Infinitely easier and more convenient, electronic navigation systems have significantly changed navigation and navigation planning and are nearly ubiquitous aboard yachts. Though profoundly useful, no system is 100 percent foolproof and the level of reliance and trust in these devices may be potentially problematic.
I think people play join the dots with transas too much and don't really do passage plans like they should. Bounching of the bottom is occuring more often and I thinks this a direct outcome of the over reliance of technology.


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Tsovak, Armenia
Tsovak, Armenia
Offset: +04 is 4 hours ahead Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and is used in Asia
Countries: It is used in following countries: United Arab Emirates, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mauritius, Oman, Réunion, Russia, Seychelles
Principal Cities: The largest city in the +04 timezone is Dubai from United Arab Emirates with population about 1.137 million people. Other major cities in the area are Samara, Baku, Yerevan, Tbilisi
Daylight Saving: (+04) is not adjusted for daylight saving therefore +04 remains the same through out the year. This means, unlike some time zones where the clock is set forward by one hour every summer and backward by one hour during winter to adjust for daylight saving, remains the same
Tsovak, Armenia representations, usage and related time zones
W3C/ISO-8601: International standard covering representation and exchange of dates and time-related data
- +04 - basic short
- +0400 - basic
- +04:00 - extended
Email/RFC-2822: Internet Message Format Date Standard, typically used for timestamps in email headers
- +0400 - sign character (+) followed by a four digit time providing hours (04) and minutes (00) of the offset. Indicates four hour and zero minutes time differences to the east of the zero meridian.
Military/NATO: Used by the U.S. military, Chinese military and others
- Delta - Military abbreviation for +04
- D - short form of 'Delta'
IANA/Olson: Reflects +04 time zone boundaries defined by political bodies, primarily intended for use with computer programs and operating systems
- Asia/Baku
- Asia/Dubai
- Asia/Muscat
- Asia/Tbilisi
- Asia/Yerevan
- Etc/GMT-4
- Europe/Astrakhan
- Europe/Samara
- Europe/Saratov
- Europe/Ulyanovsk
- Europe/Volgograd
- Indian/Mahe
- Indian/Mauritius
- Indian/Reunion
Time zones with the GMT +4 offset:
- KUYT - Kuybyshev Time
- MSD - Moscow Daylight Time
- SAMT - Samara Time
- AMT - Armenia Time
- AZT - Azerbaijan Time
- D - Delta Time Zone
- GET - Georgia Standard Time
- GST - Gulf Standard Time
- MUT - Mauritius Time
- RET - Reunion Time
- SCT - Seychelles Time
- +04 -

subset: commoncrawl


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Dated: 28-Nov-19
People are being urged to keep an extra special eye on themselves and the people they care for over the winter period so minor illnesses don't become more serious.
Those who are older or have long term conditions may be particularly vulnerable to winter bugs which could become serious and require hospital treatment. Getting help earlier may prevent this from happening.
To make sure winter bugs don't become more serious:
Further Information


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Friday, November 29, 2013
Butch Warren: In Memoriam
Sunday, June 17, 2012
It is dumb luck then that Papilles (French for papillae) opened in another dank elbow of a strip center, almost below a bridge in a notably Lynchian section of Hollywood. Papilles may not be in my neighborhood, but it is in one that I can embrace. The restaurant rather boldly claims inspiration from so-called bistronomy, the Parisian trend that emphasizes intelligent, high quality food at affordable prices, frequently on prix fixe menus, and convivial, casual settings. Bistronomy has lured several modernist titans including Le Comptoir's Yves Camdeborde into eschewing the chase for three Michelin stars with its attendant superfluous frills (and greater financial risk) which perhaps explains its allure to restaurateurs in Los Angeles. Papilles honors this new Parisian way: For $35, the customer gets two options in each of three courses and may choose from a shelf of wines that are reliably left-wing if not as recondite or enjoyable as those Messrs. Jancou and Amdur would pour. The interior matches the prices; 10 or so tables and an open kitchen squeeze into a tight space whose dark colors and assorted pictures of flowers offer traces of outer arrondissement charm.
The chef is Tim Carey, who despite an apprenticeship with a local Ducasse alumnus, is a kid in a Dodger cap with a chef's knack for profanity, or at least that is his schtick. With help from an assistant or two, Carey cooks his heart out on a nightly basis under what I imagine are serious financial and self-evident spatial constraints. Accordingly, the preparations are straightforward and, this being California and not Paris, more Chez Panisse than Le Comptoir.[1]
With the statewide ban on foie gras weeks away (which will affect only the few restaurants statewide that serve the luxury item), restaurant insouciance is at a premium these days. Naturally Papilles added a genuine torchon to the appetizer list that is helped along by a syrup or coulis made from those ever famous Harry's strawberries plus a few berry wedges for good measure. Forget any asinine comparison to foie gras in France, the foie was good, and any avian suffering, therefore, worthwhile. Let's hope Papilles practices civil disobedience post-July 1. After all, the de rigueur distribution of ashtrays in K-town watering holes poses an irrefutably greater health risk (and thus deeper moral problem) than the alleged mistreatment of a few birds, and the L.A.P.D. does not seem so feared at Toe Bang.
The Wife loved her soft-shelled crab which was as fresh as can be. Deftly fried to emphasize the crab's essential lightness and accompanied by piquant mustard greens, my delectable single bite was superior to the one served at Lucques a few weeks later. (Maybe the season had already changed?) At an unavoidable stop-and-chat at the Hollywood Farmer's Market, I learned that Papilles failed to sell what must have been a minuscule allotment of soft-shelled crabs. So don't expect kidneys on the menu anytime soon. I will lodge no complaints against the roast tomato veloute soup, bright orange in color with a couple of whole, baby sun tomatoes sitting in the mix, but I should have ordered the crab.
My main course, sautéed local halibut served with fennel, olives, baby sun tomato, encapsulates what I love about Papilles. The chef has a knack with halibut, emphasizing the fish's inherent flavor by cooking to a soft texture. The first time I had the halibut, a small part was slightly undercooked, a mistake not replicated a few weeks later when serving the halibut in a light bourride broth with perfectly tender baby squid and manila clams.
The desserts tend to be a cheese and a sweet. Accordingly, we bifurcated into a separate cheese course, sharing a plate of Brillat Savarin, the soft cow's milk cheese that was delicious enough to offset the mild nausea I experienced from seeing raisins (the conservative variety!) served as an accompaniment. We ended with a classic strawberry tart that will ensure our return. Anyway, let's hope Lou reopens soon. I miss the scallops, the Faugeres and even that platter of domestic cheeses.
6221 Franklin Ave.
(323) 871-2026
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Daniel et Denise
Three blocks from Halles de Lyon is Daniel et Denise, a restaurant that may or may not be a genuine bouchon—its business card claims the status even if that douche tiger Bill Buford demurs. Owned since 2004 by Joseph Viola, a chef with a stellar pedigree and the narrowly defined ambition to refine and interpret – without deconstructing or otherwise destroying – the Lyonnais classics, Daniel et Denise would be the perfect place to test Bill Buford's incendiary claim that Lyon is, in fact, the food capital of the world.[2]
After 18 hours of travel and grappling with the Wife's concomitant jet lag, I was afraid disaster had quickly struck. (What he means to say is that I was fucking pissed because I wanted a cute, dark, romantical ristorante, and instead the lighting was positively FLUORESCENT, so, upon entry, I wanted to punch Steve in the face. But that could have been because I thought he could have been more polite. But, yes, the rest of the stuff bugged me, too.) My nonexistent "bonsoir" to the maître d' provoked her irritability (See what I mean? Say "bonsoir." It won't kill you.), which quickly became acute when we were seated in the restaurant's incandescent back dining room. (Did you not hear what I said? Fluorescent, NOT INCANDESCENT. DON'T YOU READ THE NEW YORK TIMES?) For all its traditional décor, the room was as bewitching as an operating room. On a Friday evening, the restaurant's final service of the week, the restaurant was filled with ordinary people dressed ordinarily, in sweatshirts and the like. It dawned on me that Lyon was not Paris. (Thanks, Genius.)
The Wife's lingering displeasure proved fleeting once she was served a salad of greens on which the kitchen overlaid haricot verts, then a few creamy pieces of crayfish, and finally a thin wedge of foie gras terrine, all in a row. (I'm easy like that.) This salad and, let's be honest, this preparation of foie gras still haunts Marisa's dreams. (Does it? Does it now? Like I fucking sleep long enough to dream? STOP BLOGGING ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK MY DREAMS ARE, STEVE, AND GO CHANGE A DIAPER.) I stayed out of the way, but for a single, ethereal bite of foie gras that was unmatched the entire trip. At our waitress's recommendation, I ordered the house terrine of God-knows-what; it was one of those sallow, jellied concoctions of different layers of animal parts, artisanal Mystery Meat for all intents and purposes, forced into the shape of a slice of Wonder Bread. I'll confess that I enjoyed it, but there is no need to order it again. (It was fucking gross. And I say that as someone who walked around covered in my younger daughter's vomit for an hour today before realizing the smell that was bothering me was coming from my own damn shirt.)
Marisa then struck gold with a Lyonnais classic, quenelles au brochet, sauce Nantua. The sauce is a béchamel plus crayfish, a local staple which provided the requisite fluvial nuance – a grand, seemingly weightless soufflé of pike, molecular cuisine if there ever was one, in which Monsieur Viola tossed in a few mushrooms and yet more crayfish for good measure. [3] (Oh my god, you're verbose.)
I ordered a personal favorite, Le Boudin noir fait Maison aux Pommes, that is, black pudding with sautéed apples, a perfect autumn dish and accordingly a rara avis in the City of Angels. (Accordingly, this non-chef just had to master Bryan Miller's straightforward recipe.) Daniel et Denise's rendition uniquely served the pudding in two small casseroles, dispensing with the formality of encasing the meats. The sweet apples were of course the hoary, necessary counterpoint to the rich boudin noir, its globules of pork held together with delicious blood and fat. Ultimately, Viola's goal was to prepare a Gallic standard to the best of his considerable abilities and with all due intelligence. I loved it. (Not for me, says the wifely mouse.)
The kitchen brought out two side dishes. The first was a platter of fried discs of potatoes, seasoned just right with salt and torn little shards of basil – just perfect for sopping up the remainder of the Wife's sauce Nantua. But the heavenly gratin of what amounted to macaroni and cheese stole our hearts. Think the best macaroni and cheese hails from some venerable Memphis soul food house in spitting distance of an old-timey juke joint? Guess again. Crazy Joe Viola is responsible for the best. Creamy and rich and made with cheese from, yes, France, this dish is the very reason that comfort food is so comforting.
Dessert, a "floating island of pink pralines" (Ile flottante aux Pralines de Saint Genix) was in actuality a giant cone of iridescent, pink sugar, the color provided by Lyon's ubiquitous pink pralines. I remain bewildered by the dessert and frustrated that I didn't have the presence of mind to order the poached pears au vin rouge. Oh well.
As for the matter of Lyon's status as the world's gastronomic capital, why not? Lyonnais allez lyonnais allez lyonnais allez. Even the Wife liked it.
Restaurant Daniel et Denise
156 rue de Créqui
Tél. 04 78 60 66 53
[1] Les Halles is the home of the fantastic centenarian, Maison Rousseau, a lunch counter beloved for bringing the best of the Atlantic coast and Mediterranean to the Rhône-Alpes region, including impeccable Belon and Papin-Poget oysters, subtle sea urchins which were much smaller than their Santa Barbara cousins, an absolutely epic fish soup—burgundy in color, smelling of the sea that, depending on one's perspective and power of persuasion over the spouse, either moots or necessitates a visit to Marseilles—and plenty of personality and personalities, naturally.
[2] Paul Bocuse may be a deity, but his eponymous restaurant, located nine kilometers north of Lyon in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or, like any house of worship, involves too much entertainment and kitsch, and is prohibitively expensive. Seven years ago, we found Paul Bocuse to be a theme park of itself: Bocuse's image was emblazoned on every wall, plate, and mug. The preparations felt more like the nineteenth century than the mid-twentieth. One example, a plate of Bresse chicken in loads of cream epitomized blandness. Toward the end of that meal, Bocuse found his way to our table to greet us and receive our plaudits. For the Vegas-level mediocrity and showmanship, we had to oblige.
[3]As a matter of course, we'll order the labor-intensive quenelles when appropriate, which is to say, whenever a restaurant will make them with pike. I ordered quenelles the following night at Café Comptoir Abel, whose chef, Alain Vigneron, is the only practitioner (and holder) of Eugenie Brazier's original crayfish-less recipe. Ms. Brazier was the first French woman to earn three Michelin stars, over 70 years ago. With such a noble provenance, quenelles would seem the very essence of fancy, fusty French food as stereotyped in both the States and increasingly in France itself. For example, La Grenouille, the New York dinosaur that insists that its patrons wear jackets, sells quenelles to septuagenarians for $36.oo per serving. But in Lyon, the dish is standard fare for regular people. For all of his troubles and for such amazing quality, Joseph Viola charges a mere 15€.
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Olive Tree
Nearly half a billion people inhabit the Middle East, a region that sprawls from Morocco all the way to Iran and comprises nearly 19 countries, that is, because the Palestinians seem intent on taking their chances on statehood at the United Nations this fall. While portions of southern California share the same arid climate as the Middle East, the various cuisines of the vast Middle East are popularly conflated into something sunny and light. Falafel and tabbouleh, both Levantine staples, have long been popular among the unusual breed of people who are acolytes of Dennis! Kucinich. For carnivores, the smattering of kebabs and of course the shawarma, or jahy-roh as it is known in most parts of America, constitute the full breadth of the Middle Eastern diet.
However, these items would not seem to provide the succor requisite by inhabitants of the Arab World--a narrow corner of which is today's topic--and you may have heard is unstable politically, fraught with autocracy and theocracy, howbeit now under sustained challenge, riddled by poverty and war, but nothing if not gritty. Amidst such strife, the Arab peoples would seem to prize comfort in their food and concomitantly soulfulness. While there is outstanding Middle Eastern food in Los Angeles, as a general matter, it tends to be, to adapt the embarrassing Angelenan coinage, Cal-Levantine in nature.
To eat lustful, comforting Arab food, shorn of any sense of a Californian sensibility, for example, what a Hamas fighter might crave after assassinating a few collaborators and then joining his friends in a game of whack-a-mole with the IDF, the intrepid Angeleno must venture down to the Olive Tree in Anaheim's Little Gaza section. While the Olive Tree may be initially unsettling to the kafir, the restaurant's lusty, heartfelt food assuages those anxieties with the ease that it soothes the locals' craving for a taste of the old country or, as it were, the occupied territory.
The Olive Tree occupies a drab dining room in an anonymous strip center, minimally decorated with Arab bric-a-brac, junk really, with the only noticeable color coming from the green and red in the small Jordanian and Palestinian flags, the so-called Flags of the Arab Revolt (designed of course by a Brit who later supported the Balfour Declaration before reclaiming what I am sure was his deeply held anti-Semitism) that hang by the front door.
At 7:30 or so, despite being moderately busy, not a single female customer was present, and the man who exited the restroom had an addled, malevolent gaze directed at no one in particular. My brother and I hoped his peculiar behavior was the product of nothing more than cocaine. Did I mention that we were the only Jews, not that anyone would care or notice since we were without our Jew-caps, and in Anaheim of all places, a "town somewhere between Buchenwald and Belsen" according to Ed? That is now two distinct sets of anxieties with which we were forced to grapple.
We ordered the two specials of the day, a lamb shank with rice and the meatballs in yogurt or, kibbe labneh and then took in the scene. The well-coiffed chef with movie star looks toiled assiduously in the open kitchen behind a deli counter of sorts. We attempted to keep abreast of our intoxicated friend, but our eyes could only follow those massive portions of lamb being distributed to the tables and which could have been served in a mead hall feast. I read the menu carefully, but saw no item described as a full-fledged Iftar. What could we have missed?
Nothing as it turned out. An order of the lamb shank was a feast for one. After they brought our shank, two middle-aged gentlemen, who by their physiognomies could have suffered at least a few scrapes at the hands of TSA, ordered by simply pointing at our shanks as if we were the experts, two Jews from Pepper Pike, Ohio. By this point, any lingering unease of ours was neutralized.
Most importantly, the shank was so tender, so delicious that our server's failure to provide us with knives could have been a stroke of the restaurant's bravado or maybe mere server forgetfulness. Regardless, only the four tines of our forks were needed to carve the shank up into bite-sized portions. Accompanying the shank was the Olive Tree's version of an Arabian peninsular rice dish called kabsa, a fantastic and hearty agglomeration of innumerable spices, deftly balancing, inter alia, cinnamon, cardamom, and saffron plus currants and almonds. I asked our waitress what spices the chef used, but she declined to answer as if I might steal the recipe.
The kibbee labneh was equally as satisfying. The labneh yogurt was served like a tangy soup-sauce, with old-fashioned kibbee intermixed with bulgur wheat and spices. I remain infatuated with what was for me a dish of first impression. The thickly textured hummus also exuded hominess and careful preparation.
The Olive Tree's traditional Arabic coffee was just as I like it: ugly and unsweetened. Before making the trek back to antipodal Beverly-La Brea, we walked over to the Forn Al Hara bakery and shared assorted baklava and other treats which in that late hour were fresh and restrained in their sweetness, a fitting finale to a surprisingly fun dinner.
The Olive Tree
512 South Brookhurst Street, Suite 3
(714) 535-2878
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Espresso Profeta
According to Husret Hoja of Erzurum,* "Coffeehouses are places where pleasure-seekers and wealthy gadabouts sit knee-to-knee, involving themselves in all sorts of vulgar behavior. . . Do the poor have enough money to drink coffee? Men frequent these places, become besotted with coffee and lose control of their mental faculties to the point that they actually listen to and believe what dogs and mongrels have to say." While this may be an accurate portrayal of the scene at the Intelligentsia over on Sunset Boulevard, the Hoja would have overlooked Espresso Profeta. He simply never would have found it. I struggled to find it, concealed as it is in a jewel of a old brick building on a quiet stretch of Glendon Avenue, closer to Westwood's office towers than to the UCLA campus.
Espresso Profeta is a beacon of quality and independence among all the Starbucks and Coffee Beans in Westwood Village where there is an alarming scarcity of charming collegiate cafés serving our local branch of the University of California, that is, unless Boba Loca draws your fancy. Drawing a crowd of actual intelligentsia -- graduate students and professors, and even a few undergrads -- Profeta is all UCLA has. Profeta offers a serene courtyard with plenty of seats for reading and quiet discourse. Whoever designed Profeta's sunny interior understood that an appropriate amount of table space is required to read the newspaper and enjoy a coffee.
The Hoja might remonstrate that Profeta's espresso is of such superior quality that men are sure to become besotted with coffee. Profeta's baristas draw short, thick espresso shots using the dolce beans from Espresso Vivace, the Seattle institution dating to the Queen City's halcyon flannel-and-grunge era. (Pace Longfellow, there is nothing queenlike about Cincinnati or Catawba wine.) The Vivace beans, as interpreted by Profeta's baristas. have their own style: they are darker than most and taste on the chocolatey side with no residual bitterness or saccharine fruitiness.
It may be a shame that UCLA undergrads lack a proper coffeehouse with the requisite clunky brown mugs, racks of local weeklies, and late hours, but my guess is that Bruins do not care. After all, the UCLA campus is graced by a branch of a certain restaurant famed for its cheeseburgers and crossed palm trees which happens to be open very late. If their coffee sucks, who cares?
*Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red, p. 12 (Translated by Erdag Goknar.)
Espresso Profeta
1129 Glendon Avenue
(310) 208-3375
Monday, January 10, 2011
San Francisco, Day Two: The 'cation Continues
On Saturday morning, we followed the essential ritual, coffee at Blue Bottle, and then a big breakfast at Tartine. We devoured an orange bun, exquisite frangipane and ham and cheese croissants, and another order of brioche pudding. If one has to discriminate, the brioche pudding was still fantastic with apples, but lacking the blackberries from Day One, it was not as gaspingly majestic. The de rigueur quiche was cooked on this particular morning with swiss chard and chanterelles.
After the Incanto debacle, we decided not to fuck around. Accordingly, we strolled down to perennial favorite, Zuni Café, which opened in 1979 and, in a stroke of genius, lured Judy Rodgers to its kitchen in 1987. Still reveling in San Francisco sunshine, we sat in a nook along Market Street, pondering the most logical way to approach Zuni's indispensible roasted chicken, the one served atop a bread salad that soaks up all the fat and drippings. It also happens to be a dish that takes a good hour to cook. Of course the key to avoiding table listlessness, especially at Zuni, is more eating. So we ordered three antecedent courses, beginning with a plate of magnificent cured anchovies, accompanied by thin shavings of parmesan cheese; thinner, hyperbolic shavings of fresh green celery; and tiny black niçoise olives. Celery, it should be remembered, is foul: Its peculiar bitterness and disturbing crunchiness suit the vegetable for diets. It is probably the reason that kids hate vegetables. So I submit that the knife work necessary to extract celery's concealed sweetness, somehow a natural accompaniment to the cured anchovies, is a technical feat on par with whatever biochemical tricks those zany Catalan folks are attempting.
After Incanto's reckless evisceration of chanterelles from the night before, we required continued corrective action, which took the form of a slender cheese and chanterelle pizza, deftly executed and cooked to an enviable point on the crispiness-chewiness continuum. Always offering one pasta dish during its lunch service, Zuni coaxes improbably rich flavors out of ingredients that would be humdrum at most other restaurants. On this day, I happen to be talking about spaghetti al farro, a wheat trendy during those halcyon days of the Roman Republic. A decade ago in San Francisco, farro returned to prominence, according to the Chronicle, as "chefs like Judy Rodgers of Zuni … seem to be taken with farro's rusticity and its association with rural Italian peasant cooking." History aside, our spaghetti al farro was in a sense a pauper's dish in that it contained no luxury ingredients — that is, other than the farro which I'll guess cannot be found at Ralph's, but is subject to a healthy mark-up at Whole Foods. In other words, the spaghetti was prepared with julienned red and green peppers and onions in olive oil and was completely satisfying on this warm afternoon with the few sips of Bandol remaining in my glass. Cooked to the tooth, the spaghetti and those delicious peppers epitomized clarity of flavor and purpose, giving the dish the aura of effortlessness just like so many other delicious items on the Zuni menu.
As for that roasted chicken, there are few dishes as classic yet consistently botched in kitchens beyond 1658 Market Street. For at least 24 hours, Zuni salts its chickens, which, according to the restaurant's accompanying cookbook, should weigh 2.75 to 3.25 pounds, as such chickens "flourish at high heat, roasting quickly and evenly, and, with lots of skin per ounce of meat…are virtually designed to stay succulent."
But, arguably, it is the bread salad, the dish's literal substratum, soaking up all the glorious chicken drippings, that has propelled the dish to great heights. A stuffing for all intents and purposes, Rodgers's euphemistic bread salad, is awesome proof that Zuni has earned its timelessness while yielding none of its modernity. Those hunks of bread, some chewy and some crispy, are moistened by wine vinaigrette and dripping fat. Emboldened by garlic, scallions, currants and pine nuts, the bread salad brings a necessary lustiness to the perfectly cooked chicken.
We were just getting started. Flaneuring up Valencia Street, we stopped for an espresso at Four Barrel, a café whose odious poseurdom matched its grotesquely over extracted coffee. Like Sight Glass, Four Barrel has a massive, industrial storefront, most of which is dedicated to roasting; only the front section is used for beverage preparation and seating. Four Barrel is so affected that it conspicuously employs disc jockeys to spin vinyl, as if to say, We and our record collection are hipper than thou. Let's be clear: Four Barrel is the Dave Eggers of coffeehouses. Its espresso is heartbreakingly overdone and its disc jockey is a pointless footnote. (I do concur that vinyl is superior; there is no other medium that does Bud Powell justice. But Dave Eggers is loathsome, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius could be the most grating literary work published in English.) On their own, Four Barrel coffee beans are of unimpeachable quality and are far better utilized by the skillful hands of Tartine Bakery's baristas.
We wound up the afternoon at Humphrey Slocombe where we encountered a gaggle of nerds manipulating their DSLRs while their ice cream melted. After a long meander up Harrison Street, I enjoyed my refreshing olive oil ice cream, which was much more lemony than Otto's standard-bearer. But the black sesame confounded me. We all loved J-Wy's tin roof sundae; the Tahitian vanilla was so pure and rich that the recipe could have been stolen from Guy Savoy, and hot fudge and the salty sweet genius of frosted peanuts only amplified its greatness.
Building to an appropriate crescendo, we and our already full stomachs, later made the 50-mile jaunt south to Los Gatos for a dinner at Manresa, a restaurant swiftly becoming the Chez Panisse of its day. David Kinch, Manresa's chef, believes that he builds on Alice Waters's emphasis on quality local produce by insisting on vegetables that are "biodynamically" grown at the Love Apple Farm, located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a mere 20 miles away from the restaurant. Biodynamics is little understood, but its proponents can be accused of lunacy — literally. After all, biodynamics, the brainchild of Rudolf Steiner in 1924, involves planting seeds based on lunar phases because of the "link between growth and the life force of the moon and sun."
Steiner actually favored "burying a cowhorn stuffed with manure at the time of the autumnal equinox," because—and here is where the logic sputters—through the burial "we preserve in the horn the etheric and astral force that the horn was accustomed to reflect when it was on the cow. Because the cow horn is now outwardly surrounded by the Earth, all the Earth's etherizing and astralizing rays stream into its inner cavity. The manure inside the horn attracts these forces and is inwardly enlivened by them. If the horn is buried for the entire winter—the season when the Earth is most inwardly alive—all this life will be preserved in the manure, turning the contents of the horn into an extremely concentrated, enlivening and fertilizing force." Jesus fucking Christ.
To those of us philosophy grads overly steeped in Berkeley and Hume, biodynamics would seem to be the object of cacchination, not strict adherence. But somehow Steiner's ravings captured Kinch's attention. All that aside, my sensory experiences over three meals at Manresa entail a conclusion that Kinch's vegetables are the finest I have eaten in recent memory, at least since lunch with Jim (and, oh yeah, our wives) at L'Astrance in 2005, when it was a hungry Michelin two-star. Biodynamics is also employed by Domaine Romanée Conti and Domaine Leroy, which "are widely acknowledged to be among the greatest wineries on the planet" according to J-Mc. Where that leaves Steiner's theory is another story. But I'll chalk up Steiner's recent prominence to being at the goofy nexus between hippydom and hipsterdom and to the meticulous, intensive, and small-scale farming that goes on in such agriculturally advantaged locales as Santa Cruz and the Cote D'Or.
Kinch differs from the Panisse mafia in that he takes enormous conceptual and technical risks, exemplifying his apprenticeships in Burgundy and San Sebastian, Spain, as well as in the Axis countries. Meals at Manresa always begin most propitiously with a rendition of the L'Arpege egg, paying homage to his ideological comrade Alain Passard, the iconoclastic and vegetable-focused chef of L'Arpege who first concocted this amuse bouche. This "hot-cold egg" contrasts a warm poached egg yolk served in its brown shell with cold cream and sherry vinegar as well as maple syrup with sea salt, plus some chives for good measure. It would seem that only an alchemist could transform a poached egg and cream into such a sophisticated little jewel that still tastes downright homey, owing to the presence of maple syrup. But we have Kinch (and Passard) to thank for this treat.
Manresa's gargouillou, its "Into the Vegetable Garden" salad, is another modern French showstopper that in the right hands and with pristine produce, is a composition "of vegetables, leaves and flowers, each prepared in a different way and set upon a black 'dirt' of roasted chicory root and dried potatoes" that "showcase[s] the farm's daily offerings, from roots to leaves." Each vegetable is individually braised, and all of their collective juices are "combined to make the foamy emulsion that represents dew." Michel Bras, a chef from Laguiole, France, specializing in modern haute cuisine, originated the dish over thirty years ago, and it tends to be served only in the most rarefied restaurants. Mugaritz near San Sebastian, Spain, serves it, as does Coi in San Francisco. Corton in TriBeCa achieves admirable results despite being in an unfavorable location, agriculturally speaking. Manresa's gargouillou manages to be even snobbier. Kinch credits NOMA's René Redzepi, a Dane who is perhaps the most cutting edge chef in the world, for inspiring the edible black dirt that is supposed to approximate the dirt at the Love Apple Farm. The dish is a perfect vehicle for testing Kinch's thesis about a restaurant's sense of place, and his work with vegetables that were grown 20 miles of the kitchen is electrifying. Perforce I examined each vegetable, considering and savoring every delicious bite.
My favorite dish of the night, Kinch's own creation, was the ingenious rice-less risotto of big fin squid and Vietnamese lemon balm, mushroom, and parmesan. But I must first cavil before I kvell. I doubt that Manresa was serving big fin squid, which would seem impossible to capture. (This squid, which can be up to 23 feet in length, lives at depths thousands of meters under sea level, safe from commercial fishing operations. No adult specimen has ever been captured according to Wikipedia.) Regardless, Kinch and his staff, demonstrating tremendous physical stamina above all else, transform their squid into simulacra of grains of rice, possessing the same texture and color of an al dente risotto. With mushrooms and lemon imparted into the mix, parmesan would seem not to jibe. Yet at Manresa, the parmesan worked wonders as if the risotto really were rice, and not a delectable creature from the deep.
Totally sated after a weekend of hedonism, a full dessert course was not in the cards. But we managed to sample a few cheeses from the traditional cheese cart. Collectively we were most taken by a Portuguese cow's milk cheese and an Oregon blue, and it is a shame that we—in our food-induced haze—never got their names.
Zuni Café
1658 Market Street
San Francisco
(415) 552-2522
Four Barrel Coffee
375 Valencia Street
San Francisco
(415) 252-0800
Humphrey Slocombe
2790 Harrison Street
San Francisco
(415) 550-6971
Manresa Restaurant
320 Village Lane
Los Gatos
(408) 354-4330


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"AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL ALL-STARS" - (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET)
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When Apple execs debuted the new Mac lineup for the holidays last month, they noted that the 13-in. MacBook Pro was already the best-selling Mac. Both its power and small size have been key to this success.
After spending some time with the new 13-in. MacBook Pro with Retina display, I came away quite impressed. I've been a 15-in. MacBook Pro owner for years, and I initially regarded the smaller screen with skepticism, but this machine has quickly won me over. The killer Retina display in concert with the laptop's light weight and processing power make this computer a compelling package.
With this new model, Apple engineers have basically applied the playbook used for the 15-in. MacBook Pro with Retina display, only in the smaller form factor. (Apple loaned me this particular laptop for review.)
Starting at $1,699, this MacBook Pro is a pound lighter and 20% thinner than the previous generation -- it weighs 3.5 lbs. and is three-quarters of an inch thick when the lid is closed. That's a pound less than the regular 13-in. MacBook Pro. The reduction in size and weight comes with a few caveats, but sturdiness isn't one of them. Apple's unibody design -- featuring a frame carved from a single block of aluminum -- feels good to the touch, doesn't flex when the laptop is picked up from a corner, and exudes quality.
That quality is especially apparent in the 2560-x-1600-pixel screen, which is so packed with pixels -- 227 pixels per inch in its native resolution -- that you can't really discern them discretely. It's more like looking at a backlit printed page, with vibrant colors, good contrast and text that is sharp so as to still be legible even in smaller font sizes; you really have to see it in person. If you've seen an iPhone or the screen on this year's iPads, you have an idea of how gorgeous the Retina display is.
Of course, that screen comes with a higher price tag compared to other 13-in. MacBook Pros, which start at $1,199. That's something to keep in mind if this is on your -- or someone else's -- holiday wish list.
Specs and hardware details
Let's start from the outside and work our way in.
This latest MacBook Pro offers several modern connectivity ports, but due to size constraints, not the full retinue of them. On the left, next to the MagSafe 2 power connection, are two Thunderbolt ports (Thunderbolt is the wide-bandwidth I/O technology that allows you to connect everything from a display to a hard drive), a USB 3.0 port and a headphone jack. On the right side is another USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port and a SDXC card reader. There are also two mics, which help with noise canceling now that OS X Mountain Lion has dictation built in, and improved stereo speakers. For a laptop this size, the speakers sound pretty good.
As with other Apple laptops, there's also a 720p camera hidden in the black border at the top of the screen, which is great for FaceTime calls to other Macs, iPhones and iPads, as well as Skype and Vidyo sessions. All of the major 802.11 wireless standards are supported, including a/b/g/n, as is Bluetooth 4.0. The full-sized keyboard is backlit, and the brightness adjusts based on ambient lighting conditions. There's also the now-standard glass trackpad, capable of multitouch gestures.
What's missing? Apple has been pushing for an all-digital future for quite some time, and there have been casualties along the way. This round, Ethernet and the optical drive bite the dust, but this has allowed Apple to shave inches and ounces. If you still use CDs or DVDs, and you want a Retina display MacBook Pro, you'll need to buy one of Apple's external SuperDrives for $79. If you need Ethernet, there's a Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter that goes for $29.
The loss of the optical drive also means a slight change to the keyboard layout. The power button is now located where the Eject key used to be, at the upper right of the of the keyboard next to the volume increase key.
Inside, the system architecture is based on Intel's Ivy Bridge chipset, and there are different options depending on how much speed you need. The entry-level model, as noted earlier, starts at $1,699 and is powered by an Intel Core i5 chipset, which operates both processor cores at 2.5GHz but can use Turbo Boost to push the speed to 3.1GHz when needed. For an extra $200, you can upgrade to a 2.9GHz dual-core i7, with a Turbo Boost speed up to 3.6GHz. If you can afford it, I recommend the upgrade.
The 13-in. MacBook Pro sits on top of an older 15-in. MacBook Pro.
Both the $1,699 and $1,999 models come with 8GB of memory, which should be plenty for today's computing needs. But it's important to note that this memory is fixed; you cannot upgrade the RAM later on (and you can't order 16GB, as you can with the 15-in. MacBook Pro).
Storage is a different story, as you have more options here, either through Apple or a third party. The $1,699 comes with a 128GB SSD, eliminating the traditional hard drive as a bottleneck on speed; the $1,999 version comes with twice that, 256GB, which accounts for the $300 difference in price. If that's not enough, you can opt for more storage when buying from Apple's online store, but it'll cost you. Apple's storage options add up quickly, with the top-end 768GB capacity costing an additional $1,300 on the base model.
More on the Retina display
To power the Retina screen, Apple uses an integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip, which handles graphics pretty well. Scrolling was smooth in regular use, for the most part. Built-in animations such as swiping through Spaces, activating Mission Control, zooming into pictures, or calling up Launch Pad played smoothly. Some animations did become a bit choppy specifically on a few code-heavy websites -- such as theverge.com and bgr.com -- especially as content was loading. But in general, the Intel graphics card isn't the hindrance it once was. I found that it performs quite capably.
Better yet, this laptop can output video to two external displays using the Thunderbolt or HDMI connections. (Yes, there are three such ports -- two Thunderbolt and the single HDMI -- but you can only power two external screens. The limitation is the graphics card.)
Of course, the main draw here is clearly the Retina display. The display's native 2560-x-1600-pixel resolution crams more than four million pixels into a 13.3-in screen -- two million more than on a typical HDTV. This makes it one of the highest resolution notebooks on the market, second only to the 15-in. MacBook Pro with Retina display. (That one features three million more pixels than an HDTV.)
Note: That native resolution isn't the same resolution you see when you fire up the MacBook Pro. If it were, everything on screen would be very tiny. The maximum supported resolution in the Displays preference pane is 1680 x 1050 pixels. That, and lesser resolutions, are achieved by downscaling the native resolution, though some third-party apps like SetResX and ChangeResolution will likely allow you to go higher ( as they do on the 15-in. model). But you better have really good eyesight. Apple offers more information on Retina display resolutions online.
Apple claims this screen has a 29% higher contrast ratio with a reduction in reflections on the non-matte screen. I definitely noticed that the reflectivity of the screen has been reduced when I realized a kitchen light that used to bug me when using my own 15-in. MacBook Pro was no longer an issue with this laptop. This isn't to say reflections aren't there, mind you, but I was not distracted by them. Your mileage may vary.
Setup and day-to-day use
Initial impressions out of the box? I love the size and weight of this computer; it makes the previous-generation 13-in. seem archaic -- which is impressive, given the praise that's been showered on that model in the past. The minimalist glass and unibody aluminum design is as good as it gets -- so good that competitors aren't ashamed of outright copying it.
I thought I'd have issues using this computer because I am used to the larger 15-in. MacBook Pro, but the smaller wrist area flanking the glass trackpad was enough space to operate comfortably. It really, really helps that the keyboard and trackpad are the same size as on the larger model, which, to me, is perfect. I love that the 13-in. version doesn't compromise on the quality of the keyboard or trackpad.
As for the keyboard, while the unit feels good to type on -- the throw is short and the keyboard springs are reactive -- the keys themselves feel a bit flimsy compared to the sturdiness inherent to the rest of the machine. It's an admittedly minor complaint, though; the keys are pretty much the same as those used in other Apple notebooks.
On first boot, I approached setup as a typical new owner would: without being able to take advantage of the only supported direct connection, Thunderbolt, for transferring data from my old laptop to the new computer. (Read: I didn't purchase any Thunderbolt accessories, so I didn't have a Thunderbolt cable to connect them.) Unlike the MacBook Pros I've been using, the Retina MacBooks have no FireWire or Ethernet ports for direct transfers, and you can't use Target Disk Mode via USB.
The Migration Assistant, which is an option offered during the initial setup, does allow you to transfer data from a Time Machine backup drive over USB. Or you can do a wireless transfer, which is what I ended up doing.
One thing to keep in mind: If you've already run through the initial setup and created your account using your old account name, you can't be logged into that account and use the Migration Assistant in the Utilities folder to transfer data from your old computer. You have to create an account with a different name, log in to that account, and then run Migration Assistant to set up your new computer using your old account name and password. It's a surprisingly kludgey move from Apple.
Migration Assistant finished a 235GB wireless transfer in six hours and 24 minutes. (When I was finally able to connect the two laptops, using a FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapter, I restored the laptop and ran that setup again. This time, that same 235GB transferred in an hour and seven minutes.)
Better than the 15-in. model?
Initially, I was skeptical that the 13-in. screen would be enough for me. I've been using one variant or another of the 15-in. PowerBook/MacBook Pro for most of my professional life. And even with the larger screen, I have to use the pinch-to-zoom feature of OS X to read some text-heavy sites. From past experiences, I wasn't convinced that the 13-in. display would be better, Retina display or not.
The first time I turned the new computer on, text jumped out right away; it's very smooth and crisp. After a few weeks, I noticed that I didn't really need to zoom in on text-heavy sites like I used to. That's entirely due to the Retina display. It didn't take long to see that the sharp text and graphics make it easy to love the 13-in. screen. Even better, the size/weight combo is perfect for sliding into a backpack or briefcase. I find myself now wondering: Do I really need the 15-in. MacBook Pro anymore?
It's not all roses, though. In real life, the arrival of Retina displays means one of two things: content looks great, or it looks like crap. Why? Because, while some content and apps have been designed for high-res displays, many other things have not. Photos that would look fine on a normal display might look pixelated here; the same is true for video, apps and even webpages that don't yet support high-resolution graphics.
Sure, text is crystal clear, but other elements depend on the quality of the source. So, while the display is great, as with the iPhone and iPad before it, if your day-to-day apps haven't been updated to take advantage of the technology, you'll notice the lower quality.
Even so, it's safe to say that the Intel chipset inside the computer will show its age long before the display will.
I'm accustomed to the i7 processor in my own MacBook Pro, so I really wanted to put this machine's i5 chip through its paces. In the end, I was impressed. Performance-wise, the 13-incher had more than enough horsepower to run Windows XP using Parallels, along with Office and other programs in both the Windows and Mac operating systems at the same time without lagging. I usually had about a dozen programs running in the background at any given time, and switching among them and operating the computer didn't cause any obvious slowdowns.
One thing that surprised me was how eerily silent the 13-in. MacBook Pro ran. Actions that cause the fan to rev loudly on my own laptop merely warmed up the new laptop. (I could feel some heat escape from around the keys, but that was it.) Even when I had a dozen apps open, including XP in Parallels and Handbrake exporting different versions of an iMovie video, this machine was quiet: No clicking and clacking of hard drives, and no whir of fan noise. I had to double-check to see if the 13-in. MacBook Pro even had an internal fan. (It does, by the way; two of them.)
Battery life is impressive. Although I run this computer plugged in at work all day, when at home, I tend to leave it on the coffee table beside me, unplugged. Apple's estimate of seven-hour battery life isn't far off the mark. I got about six hours of use before receiving the 10% left warning.
Final thoughts
In terms of actual performance, the Intel i5 processor isn't as fast as the quad-core i7 I'm used to -- which is obvious, but it was interesting to see the difference. Encoding a two-and-a-half hour video took an hour longer than on my own laptop. So while the 13-in. Retina MacBook is not the fastest laptop you can buy from Apple, it more than holds its own in everyday tasks.
And that's the tradeoff, really. You give up an optical drive, some legacy ports and customization in exchange for less weight, a smaller form factor and a stunning screen. At $500 more than a standard 13-in. model -- and $100 less than the low end 15-in. model -- the decision right now on whether to buy one depends on your priorities and your pocketbook.
My take is that the Retina display MacBook Pro offers a compelling bundle of features housed in an impressive chassis, with plenty of horsepower and, of course, the screen that makes it special. In short, this machine has won me over. It scores high marks everywhere it counts: performance, battery life, stability, quality, weight/portability and design. There are tradeoffs, but if you can live with them, you can't go wrong with this MacBook Pro.
The 13-in. Retina display MacBook Pro (left) and the larger 15-in. Retina display MacBook Pro (right). (Image: Apple)
Michael deAgonia, a frequent contributor to Computerworld, is a writer, computer consultant and technology geek who has been working on computers since 1993. You can find him on Twitter ( @mdeagonia).
Read more about macintosh in Computerworld's Macintosh Topic Center.


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!! History Commons Alert, Exciting News
This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event June 28, 2002: Rumsfeld Sends Pat Tillman a Personal Note. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.
Corporal Pat Tillman. [Source: US Army / Public domain]St. Louis Cardinals safety Pat Tillman visits the team complex in Tempe, Arizona to tell his coach he will enlist in the Army. Although he has been offered a three-year, multi-million dollar contract, he wants to become a US Ranger and fight in Afghanistan. He clears his locker and sees to his insurance, but does not yet disclose his plan to teammates. [East Valley Tribune (Mesa), 5/29/2002] However, the story breaks the next day. [Orlando Sentinel, 5/26/2002] Both Tillman and his brother, Kevin Tillman, a former minor league baseball player in Cleveland, dodge media attention by refusing to be interviewed and driving to Denver, Colorado to enlist, rather than enlist in their home state of Arizona where they are better known. [Express (London), 5/30/2002; New York Times, 6/1/2002] Tillman Does Not Want to Be 'Poster Boy' for Military - Tillman continues to refuse media interviews, denying requests from sources such as the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, as well as most major television networks. He asks that the Army not "use him as a poster boy." [San Jose Mercury News, 5/29/2002] Nancy Hutchinson, a public affairs officer for Army recruitment in Phoenix, Arizona, confirms that Tillman has requested that the military not publicize his enlistment and says that this should ensure his privacy. [East Valley Tribune (Mesa), 5/29/2002] Lionized by Media - Despite Tillman's best efforts to avoid the limelight, the media gives the story widespread coverage, characterizing him as a "hero" and "an inspiration." [Orlando Sentinel, 5/26/2002; Daily Herald(Arlington Heights), 5/27/2002] The Philadelphia Inquirer writes that his desire to join the Rangers is "a special calling," and that both brothers are "volunteering to give up the life of privilege and perks for the opportunity to kill terrorists." The Tampa Tribune describes Tillman as that "one in a million" who has "got your back." The Tribune interviews former Rangers who recount the extreme hardships recruits endure, noting that "65 percent of would-be Rangers" do not complete the training. However, it predicts that the Tillmans will go on to "defend our country." Former Education Secretary William Bennett calls Tillman "a patriot, somebody with a deep, abiding love for our people, our country, and constitution." [Tampa Tribune, 5/26/2002; Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/27/2002] Although Tillman never discusses his reasons for wanting to join the Rangers publicly [East Valley Tribune (Mesa), 5/29/2002; New York Times, 6/1/2002] , several news stories see his choice as a patriotic reaction to the events of 9/11, with David Whitely of the Orlando Sentinel writing, "Oh, for Osama bin Laden to run a crossing pattern in front of Pvt. Tillman." [Orlando Sentinel, 5/26/2002]
Entity Tags: David Whitely, William J. Bennett, US Department of the Army, Nancy Hutchinson, Philadelphia Inquirer, Tampa Tribune, Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Within a week of NFL football player Pat Tillman telling his coach that he is joining the US infantry (see May 23-June 1, 2002), the story goes nationwide in the press. [New York Times, 6/1/2002] Sources abroad also cover Tillman's decision, attributing it to his desire to be a part of the war on terror. London's Express says that "this unnervingly selfless act was inspired… by the terrorist attacks against America last September." London's Daily Telegraph titles its feature article, "Footballer joins hunt for bin Laden," and the Guardian reprises the narrative in "The man who wants to tackle terrorism." [Express (London), 5/30/2002; Daily Telegraph, 6/4/2002; Guardian, 7/9/2002]
Entity Tags: The Guardian, London Express, Daily Telegraph, Pat Tillman
John McCain. [Source: Associated Press]Senator John McCain (R-AZ) says of Pat Tillman's enlistment (see May 23-June 1, 2002), "Perhaps [those] last vestiges of the Vietnam War have disappeared in the rubble of the World Trade Center." Recalling when it was "uncool" to join the military, McCain notes Tillman's potential as a "recruiting tool," saying that he will "motivate other young Americans to serve as well." [Los Angeles Times, 5/31/2002]
Entity Tags: Pat Tillman, John McCain
The Tillman brothers (see May 23-June 1, 2002) complete 14 weeks of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, in October 2002, and then take the three-week Basic Airborne Course. Apparently their aim is to enlist in the Army Rangers. [Associated Press, 7/8/2002; ESPN (.com), 7/12/2006]
Entity Tags: Army Rangers, Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman
Rumsfeld before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. [Source: AP]Three days before paying personal tribute to Pat Tillman (seeJune 28, 2002), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld forwards a news article on the former football star's recent enlistment in the US Army to the Secretary of the Army, Tom White, calling Tillman "world-class." In the informal communication accompanying the June 2 story, Rumsfeld says, "We might want to keep an eye on him." White responds, agreeing that Tillman is "a world-class American." However, when testifying in 2007 before the Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, Rumsfeld will say that he does not remember when or how he learned that Tillman was not killed in action by the Taliban, but was a victim of fratricide. [House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, 8/16/2009]
Entity Tags: US Department of the Army, Pat Tillman, Donald Rumsfeld, Thomas E. White
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld writes to Pat Tillman, a former NFL star, congratulating his choice to leave a $3.6 million contract behind to join the Army (see May 23-June 1, 2002) and calling it "proud and patriotic." Tillman had received laudatory press coverage worldwide and been noticed by Senator John McCain (R-AZ—see May 31, 2002). The letter will surface five years later, when a congressional hearing is held to ascertain if Rumsfeld was involved in the effort to conceal the true circumstances of Tillman's death in Afghanistan. [House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, 8/16/2009]
Entity Tags: Pat Tillman, John McCain, Donald Rumsfeld
New Army enlistees Pat and Kevin Tillman (see May 23-June 1, 2002), both former pro athletes, undergo the Army's three-week "Ranger Indoctrination Program." They then attend Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and are finally posted to Fort Lewis, Washington as members of the Second Battalion in the 75th Ranger Regiment, serving in the same unit. [ESPN (.com), 4/2006]
Entity Tags: Army Rangers, Pat Tillman, Kevin Tillman
The Tillman brothers (see May 23-June 1, 2002), Pat and Kevin, are sent to Iraq, where they will participate in the invasion (see March 19, 2003). [ESPN (.com), 4/2006]
Entity Tags: Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman
Pat and Kevin Tillman, pro athletes who joined the Army Rangers and participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom (see May 23-June 1, 2002), are presented with the annual Arthur Ashe Courage Award by ESPN. Both refuse to attend the awards ceremony, another example of their continued effort to avoid the public acclaim surrounding their joining the military. Younger brother Richard accepts on their behalf, and for the first time since their enlistment, their friends and parents speak publicly of the brothers in the ESPN televised tribute. ESPN senior vice president Ron Semiao says of the occasion: "The Tillman brothers' story is remarkably inspiring. They turned their backs on stardom and potential fortune, dedicated themselves to a larger cause and never once sought glory or recognition. Pat and Kevin's approach of leading by example is reminiscent of the way Arthur Ashe lived his life and like Arthur, the Tillmans' decisions have had a profound impact." [ESPN (.com), 7/2003]
Entity Tags: Kevin Tillman, Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards, Pat Tillman, Richard Tillman, Ron Semiao, Arthur Ashe
Noam Chomsky, noted linguist and and "anti-imperialism" activist. [Source: Convencion Bautista (.com)]Pat Tillman (see May 23-June 1, 2002) enlists a friend, MIT graduate student Jared Schrieber, to email MIT linguistics and philosophy professor Noam Chomsky. Tillman wants to set up a meeting with Chomsky, an opponent of the Bush administration's war on terror and someone Tillman has long admired. Later, Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, will say that Tillman and Chomsky were to meet after her son completed his military tour of duty in July 2005, a meeting later confirmed by Chomsky. [ESPN (.com), 4/2006] After Tillman's death (see April 23, 2004), it will emerge that, like his brother Kevin, a philosophy major, he read widely and was known to family and friends as a deep and independent thinker. Russell Baer, a fellow Ranger who served with the brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan, will recall Tillman saying of the Iraq war, "this war is so f_cking illegal." His mother will state that, while feeling that the Afghan war was "justified by the September 11 attacks," her son was against "the whole Iraq war." Further, a soldier who requests anonymity will say that Tillman "urged him to vote for Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator John Kerry." [San Francisco Chronicle, 9/25/2005; Sports Illustrated, 9/11/2006] Ann Coulter, conservative political commentator, and Sean Hannity, co-host of the Fox News show Hannity & Colmes, will dispute reports that say Tillman respected Chomsky, endorsed Senator John Kerry, or opposed Bush. "I don't believe it," Coulter will say. "I don't believe it either," Hannity will agree. [Media Matters, 9/24/2005; Nation, 10/24/2005]
Entity Tags: Pat Tillman, Russell Baer, Sean Hannity, Mary Tillman, Kevin Tillman, Noam Chomsky, Jared Schrieber, Ann Coulter, John Kerry
After a tour of duty in Iraq, the Army Ranger platoon containing Pat and Kevin Tillman, the Black Sheep—officially, 2nd Platoon, A Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment—ship out from Fort Lewis, Washington, to Afghanistan. It is to participate in a new offensive codenamed Operation Mountain Storm (OMS) (see May 23-June 1, 2002 and Early 2003). Tillman 'Battled Steadfastly' - The year before, the Tillman brothers' platoon had been sent to Iraq (see March 2003). There, in place of his fallen lead gunner, Pat Tillman stepped up to his first firefight and "battled steadfastly." Although Tillman voices opposition to the war in Iraq, he originally joined the military because he wanted to fight in Afghanistan (see Early 2004). Redeployed for Operation Mountain Storm - Assigned to the newly-minted OMS campaign, the infantrymen in the Tillmans' platoon are to act as "special operators," tasked to "flush out and entrap enemy guerrillas," sweeping zones "grid by grid," and traveling in "small, mobile, lethal units." As Rangers, the soldiers are trained in the use of unconventional, commando-style tactics in which small units conduct search-and-destroy missions rather than larger combat operations. The US Department of Defense has developed a strategy designed to eliminate insurgents along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border relying on searching for weapons and guerrilla fighters by "sweeping and clearing" villages. It is while on such a search and destroy mission during OMS that Pat Tillman will meet his death under circumstances triggering a military criminal probe (see April 23, 2004). [Washington Post, 12/5/2004]
Entity Tags: Pat Tillman, Operation Mountain Storm, US Army Rangers, US Department of Defense, Kevin Tillman
The Army notifies the Tillman family that Pat Tillman (see May 23-June 1, 2002) has been killed in combat in Afghanistan. It reports that Tillman, a 27 year old Ranger who gave up a lucrative football career to join the US Army, was airlifted to the nearest field hospital in Salerno, where he died an hour later. It will be another five weeks before the family learns Tillman died, not in combat with the enemy, but in a "friendly fire" incident. Eventually, they will also learn that the Salerno field hospital report, apparently written up the day of his death, stating that he died an hour after arrival, contradicts fellow soldiers who will testify that he was clearly dead at the scene of the attack. [San Francisco Chronicle, 9/25/2005]
Entity Tags: Pat Tillman, US Department of the Army
Ordered by command to split up into two convoys, Kevin and Pat Tillman's platoon leaves Magarah (see April 22, 2004 and May 23-June 1, 2002) en route to clear the village of Manah near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Both convoys must move through a narrow canyon, presided over by steep cliffs where they are easy targets for enemy fighters. Brothers in Separate Convoys - The brothers ride in separate convoys, Pat in designated Serial One, advancing to the village; Kevin, in designated Serial Two, escorting a local tow truck with the platoon's disabled Humvee (see April 20-22,2004). Platoon Leader Did Not Want Split - The platoon's leader, Lieutenant David Uthlaut, who has strongly resisted the split-up—believing it compromises security in terms of weapons, communications, personnel, and command—leads Serial One. Sergeant Greg Baker commands "the heaviest armed vehicle" in Serial Two. Subsequent investigations will determine that two of Baker's men have never been under fire before. [CounterPunch, 8/9/2007; Krakauer, 2009, pp. 250-276]
Entity Tags: Kevin Tillman, Greg Baker, US Army Rangers, David Uthlaut, Pat Tillman
Kevin and Pat Tillman. [Source: IraqHeroes (.com)]The Tillman brothers (see May 23-June 1, 2002) ride in separate convoys to complete a mission, Pat Tillman in designated Serial One and Kevin Tillman in Serial Two; while One moves safely through a dangerous canyon, Two, following shortly behind, runs into an ambush ( see April 22, 2004 and 6:14 p.m.-6:34 p.m. April 22, 2004). Trapped in 'Kill Zone' - Serial Two—in the canyon only a minute—hears an explosion. Thinking they have hit a land mine or that an IED has been detonated, Sergeant Greg Baker and his men follow Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and dismount their "machine gun-laden" vehicle. Baker, in command of that vehicle, will later testify that he "noticed rocks falling," and "then… saw the second and third mortar rounds hit." He also will say that he could hear the "rattle of enemy small arms fire." Now, realizing they are in an ambush, Two tries to get out of the "kill zone," but the tow truck, which has been at the head of the convoy, blocks the way, its driver "cowering behind rocks." Baker grabs the driver, throws him back in the truck, and gets him to move out, while he unloads his weapon "up the canyon walls" until it is out of ammunition. He dismounts the tow truck, racing back to his own vehicle—a roofless Humvee open on all sides—reloads, and continues firing. [Washington Post, 12/5/2004; Krakauer, 2009, pp. 264] Serial Two 'Trigger-Happy' - Ranger Corporal Jason Parsons, a Serial Two member, will describe a scene of "tunnel vision" and "panic," as his "trigger-happy crew"—men in the convoy's last vehicle—fire at dark shapes they perceive above, to their north. Both Black Sheep soldiers, Pedro Arreola and Kyle Jones, shoot multiple rounds at this area, the northern ridge line. Kevin Tillman, riding atop Parson's Humvee, holds his fire, fearing a ricochet effect will land his ordinance on a fellow Ranger's head, but when he does finally see an opportunity to get off a shot, he finds his Mark 19 machine gun jammed, perhaps due to all the jostling, and he cannot get off a grenade during the entire incident. [Krakauer, 2009, pp. 250-276]
Entity Tags: Kevin Tillman, Jason Parsons, Greg Baker, US Army Rangers, Kyle Jones, Pat Tillman, Pedro Arreolo
Half of Pat Tillman's platoon, the Black Sheep, attempts to exit a narrow canyon-slot in southeastern Afghanistan where it has been ambushed (see 6:34 p.m. April 22, 2004). Coming out of the ambush, the part of the platoon known as Serial Two, in which Tillman's brother Kevin rides, fires on Serial One, Pat Tillman's convoy (see May 23-June 1, 2002 and 6:34 p.m. April 22, 2004). Serial Two out of Canyon, Keeps Firing - As the men in Serial Two race out of the canyon, firing at an enemy they believe surrounds them, they do not know where One is positioned. And they do not know that One is trying to provide them with cover. Testifying in the Army's later criminal investigation, Pat Tillman's squad leader, Sergeant Matthew Weeks, will state that he "heard over the radio" of Two's change in route. But he does not recall being able to get through to Two to coordinate their positions. Yet, he will state that because Two had been briefed as to One's route, according to "Ranger training," its men should have been able to maintain "situational awareness." He will add that he does not think, however, that they "had any idea how close we were." [US Department of the Army, 3/19/2007 ] Pat Tillman Leads Fire Team - Specialist Bryan O'Neal is nearest in proximity to Pat Tillman during the whole of the firefight. Initially, upon hearing an explosion, Lieutenant David Uthlaut orders the first convoy to dismount and "press the fight." He assigns Tillman as one of the three fire team leaders. Tillman dismounts the second vehicle in the convoy and beckons for O'Neal, in the lead vehicle, to hurry up and follow him. One of the Allied Militia Forces (AMF) soldiers, an Afghani armed with an AK 47, has dismounted the vehicle he shares with four other AMFs and their interpreter, and he catches up with O'Neal and Tillman, the three of them then taking a position on a spur on the outskirts of a nearby village. Testifying in the third Army investigation which will, subsequent to this day's events, be conducted by Brigadier General Gary Jones, O'Neal will state that he follows Tillman's fire, opening up where he believes Tillman thinks the attackers are firing from. O'Neal can see muzzle flashes up on top of the ridge line. [Washington Post, 12/5/2004; ESPN, 7/19/2006; US Army, 7/19/2006 ; US Department of the Army, 3/19/2007, pp. 77-79 ] Serial Two Draws Fire; AMF Soldier Fires AK-47 over Road - Weeks will report seeing muzzle flashes and silhouettes and that the first convoy "received fire from across the valley as well." Tillman runs back to his squad's leader to ask him if he can take off his body armor and also to let him know where he is positioned. According to Army regulations, Weeks cannot allow him to drop his body armor. O'Neal will tell Army criminal investigators that while Tillman seeks orders from Weeks, the AMF soldier is "firing in all directions… firing over the main road." Coming back to position, Tillman tells the small firing team that it will be running up a hill. Squad Leader Weeks Gives Cease-Fire Signal; Sets off Flare - At this time, Weeks gets a radio transmission with the information that "Serial Two [is] mounting up to get around the tow truck vehicle." He will state: "I remember the lead vehicle starting to make its way out of the canyon, after I had to stand up and look over the spur. I told everybody on the fire teams that friendlies [were] coming out of the low ground, and the lead vehicle was coming out of the canyon, and they mimiced [sic] the call. When I saw the vehicle coming out I also saw [Tillman's] position. I knew Serial Two did not know where we were." He will further relate that he rolls on his back and prepares a pen flare gun, then sees a vehicle carrying Sergeant Greg Baker and others stop and "the M240B gunner in the back… fire a burst of fire towards me." Weeks sets off the flare and gives the cease-fire signal; although some of the soldiers will state to criminal investigators that there is no such signal known, others confirm that the signal is made by waving a hand and arm over the front of the face, palm out. As Weeks does this, he hears another burst, and then people in Baker's vehicle shouting "cease fire." [US Department of the Army, 3/19/2007, pp. 77-79 ]
Entity Tags: Bryan O'Neal, David Uthlaut, Greg Baker, Matthew Weeks, Pat Tillman, Kevin Tillman
Specialist Pat Tillman marching in
graduation ceremony at Fort Benning, GA. [Source: National Ledger]The Pentagon reports that Army Ranger Pat Tillman has died in combat with enemy fighters in Afghanistan. Tillman gave up a multi-million dollar NFL contract to fight against al-Qaeda ( seeMay 23-June 1, 2002, and was was perhaps the most well-known US soldier in the Middle East. [Rich, 2006] White House Calls Tillman Death "Ultimate Sacrifice" - In a statement made a day after Tillman's death, Taylor Goss, a White House spokesman, says: "Pat Tillman was an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror. His family is in the thoughts and prayers of President and Mrs. Bush." [MSNBC, 4/26/2004] Military Spokesman Tells NBC Tillman Died at Hands of Enemy - According to Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Beevers, Tillman died at the hand of enemy fighters in an ambush near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Pentagon will release more details of Tillman's death a week later. [Rich, 2006]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Taliban, Matthew Beevers, Pat Tillman, Al-Qaeda
Mary and Pat Tillman Sr. in 2002 at a halftime ceremony held during an Arizona Cardinals game in honor of their son. [Source: Associated Press]Mary Tillman, mother of Ranger Pat Tillman (see May 23-June 1, 2002), a former NFL star killed under disputed circumstances in Afghanistan in 2002 (see April 23, 2004), sends a one-sentence email to the Associated Press: "It is imperative that General [Stanley] McChrystal be scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings." McChrystal, once a 'black ops' Special Forces chief, is to head up the war in Afghanistan, replacing fired General David McKiernan. Due for Confirmation, McChrystal Participated in Tillman Death Cover-Up - On April 29, 2004, McChrystal, then a lieutenant general, urged top generals to warn "our nation's leaders," particularly the president, not to refer to "the devastating enemy fire" story cited in paperwork he had already approved to award Tillman the Silver Star (see April 29, 2004) posthumously. He wrote that it was "highly possible" Tillman's death was due to friendly fire. [USA Today, 5/13/2009] Pentagon Wanted McCrystal Punished, but Senate Voted to Promote - When these facts regarding McCrystal's role in the Pentagon's suppression of the truth about the circumstances of Tillman's death became known in 2007, the Pentagon wanted him to be sanctioned. However, in 2008, the Senate overwhelmingly voted for his promotion from a two-star to a three-star general. Father Accuses McChrystal of Being on Board with Deception - In an interview with the Associated Press, Tillman's father, Pat Sr., says that McChrystal had joined a "falsified" investigation into criminal conduct in an earlier Army probe. McChrystal's confirmation process is slated to be finalized in late June. [USA Today, 5/13/2009]
Entity Tags: Pat Tillman, Mary Tillman, David D. McKiernan, Pat Tillman Sr., Stanley A. McChrystal
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
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Served: Hello Groceries and Cheesemongering!
Hannah Howard has worked in several restaurants, but she's made the switch to the grocery side of the industry. She's now a cheesemonger for a small market chain, and will share her experience here.
For several hours, he walked me through the rules and regulations of my new place of employ. Enter and leave through the front doors, not the back doors or receiving dock. After six months, the staff are inducted into the union and must take a thirty-minute lunch break. As management, I'm not a member of the union, but responsible for making sure all their policies get followed.
I also learned I would be circling my way through different departments of different stores. Three weeks in organics, two in produce. Three in deli, one in receiving. One week in HR and one in marketing. I would be learning how the business worked from the ground up.
My stint would commence with six weeks in the cheese department of the newest store. My bosses know I am cheese-obsessed and cheese-experienced, and so this would be the first and longest leg of my training tour. Through percussive rain, my training mentor and I rode the bus to the shiny, new store.
Impeccable rainbow rows of candy! All the chocolates a serious baker could want! Olive oils as far as the eye can see! He introduced me to the cheese manager, wished me luck, and bid me goodbye.
The cheese manager threw me a white chef's jacket and a baseball cap emblazoned with the store's logo, and I got to work. I wrapped up buttons of ash-coated chevre in slick bundles of plastic, labeled and dated them, stacked them symmetrically on the shelves. I scooped up feta and feta brine and weighed out the packages. I built beautiful sculptures of goat gouda, and comte, and sheep's milk yogurt.
Meet Team Cheese
The cheese guys—there is one woman to a dozen men—are great. One has been with the company for 30 years, and most for at least several. They were warm and welcoming and showed me how to slice big wheels of Etorki with wire, explained the difference between the Greek, French, and Bulgarian fetas, and took me through the aisles of cream cheese, mascarpone, jalepelno spiked cheddar, figgy stilton, and mozzerella di bufala.
It's been a few days, and I'm feeling pretty comfortable behind the cheese counter. Here I am explaining the difference between the 6, 12, and 15 month Manchegos. Here I am hawking samples of mozzarella, just made downstairs by the tattoo-ed Indonesian man with a big laugh, and still warm.
I helped a posh lady plan a cheese plate for her gallery's fashion show. I introduced a fifth grade blue cheese-lover to buttery sweet Cambozola. I guided a stinky cheese adoring couple through the stinkers: Grayson, Stinking Bishop, a particularly offensive, ripe, wonderful batch of French Munster.
Sometimes, I enjoy the challenges of the cheese novices the best.
"I'm looking for a cheese that's aged several years, and also very soft."
The best response: "What are some cheeses you like?" I go from there.
Different World
Like restaurants, we are all about service. There are a million places to shop in Manhattan, and our goal is to make people happy to choose us. The staff is a hospitable, patient bunch. At the deli, they will slice "lite" cheese into perfect one ounce slices for a grumpy dieter. At the cheese counter, we will let the little old lady try cheeses until her taste buds must be confused, knowing full well that she might buy a quarter pound of our most affordable selection, or nothing at all.
This operation is on a different scale than a restaurant, even a big one. At one time, there are some 300 workers making sure the store shelves are full of plums and peaches and beautiful teas and fresh bread. At our flagship location, there are about 80,000 customers a week! 80,000! At my restaurant, a busy week entailed about 400 covers.
Cooks and servers and even managers do a lot of cleaning at restaurants. I'm used to breaking down boxes, taking out trash, even plunging toilets. At the grocery store, there are a whole army of porters who float in and out of the cheese counter, emptying our garbage and sweeping the floor.
Like a restaurant, the work goes by fastest when the place is busy and buzzing, which it most often is. It's a beautiful controlled chaos. It's been three days, and I already feel I could get addicted.
Just replace folding linens with pricing Parmesan, and selling meals with selling their ingredients. We are a part of people's lives—every day lives, not just special occasion lives. That makes me happy, and it makes me feel good.
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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This is...I don't know what this is. It's Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse.
Here's more on it, maybe. These guys directed it. Both those links are seizure-inducing and explain nothing.
The least annoying guy from Limp Bizkit did the music.
This is a line from the film: "Hello. I'm the Miami Heat player. Mike Miller." He's also a multidimensional wolfman in disguise.
Bosh's lawyers apparently served the filmmakers with a cease and desist letter, but they neither ceased nor desisted. I still have no idea what I just watched. It was awesome.


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Do I really need a pelvic exam?
Heather Corinna replies:Why is a pelvic exam really necessary? I am sexually active, but my boyfriend and I have only ever done anything sexual with each other, and neither of us have anything. I've asked this question to other people and they always say that "You don't KNOW," or that I shouldn't just take my boyfriend's word for it. I trust him, so I'm not considering that part, so ignoring a possibility of disease (which I doubt there is any), why is it so important that I have a pelvic exam?
The thing is, other things can go wrong with your reproductive cycle that have nothing to do with sexual activity.
Things like ovarian cysts or PCOS, irregular menstrual cycles or unexplained vaginal bleeding, yeast or bacterial infections, endocrine imbalances, urinary tract or bladder infections and more are all issues which people with vaginas who have never even had one sexual partner may experience. They are also issues which can occur among sexually active people when neither partner has or is exposed to a sexually transmitted infection.
That's why some regular, preventative reproductive healthcare is recommended even for people who have never been sexually active. A pelvic exam -- rather than tests for sexually transmitted infections -- is simply a checkup of your reproductive system like a yearly visit to the dentist is a checkup of your teeth. During a pelvic or bimanual exam, a healthcare provider is just going to do a visual exam of your genitals, then just use gloved fingers to feel your uterus and ovaries to be sure everything is okay.
If you are sexually active -- or you've reached the age of twenty-one -- you may also get a pap smear, which is a swab of your cervix to check for cervical cell changes which can alert you and your doctor to cervical cancer risks and other issues. As we know so far, cervical cancer is primarily related to the human papillomavirus (HPV), but it may not always be. The jury is still out there. As well, if you are sexually active, a sexual healthcare professional should be doing STI tests with some regularity: at least once every year or two, or more often for people who are switching partners more often than that. If you and your boyfriend have only ever been with each other, for real, you're right: your STI risks are very minimal, and probably limited to infections which can be sexually transmitted, but which also can be contracted through more casual contact, like oral herpes (which can also be transmitted genitally through oral sex) or pubic lice.
However, your friends have a salient point, which is that we can never completely know if and when a partner is both remaining faithful and is being honest about never having had previous partners: the hard truth is that even the people we love and trust will not always be honest, especially when the stakes are high. By all means, we want to trust our partners, but we can still be trustworthy while also getting the tests we should to assure our continued health. A partner's word isn't a test and it isn't preventative healthcare. If I had a dollar for everyone I've counseled over the years who got an STI from a partner they were assured presented no risks, and with whom they decided that trust somehow negated a need for healthcare, I'd be doing much better financially than I am right now. (And some of that has to do with the fact that two partners assured they are each other's firsts also will less often be sure to use latex barriers for oral, vaginal and/or anal sex.) Why not combine that trust with tests? As well, if you're in your teens, know that your risks of some infections or complications from some infections -- even something like a basic bacterial infection -- are higher because your cervix has not yet finished developing, which makes it more suceptible to infections and complications.
So, the best bet for anyone is to practice safer sex -- which includes getting a pelvic exam for you and STI testing for both of you -- for at least the first six months. If after that six month period, you both test negatively, and remain monogamous, you can consider going without barriers and reducing how often you get that testing. How infrequently you get tested is just one of those things which is up to you. I personally encourage everyone to just get in the habit of tests and exams each year -- especially since given you are young, it's unlikely this will be your only partner, so you're probably going to need to get into that habit eventually. Once you get in that habit, you'll find out that those exams really are no big shakes, and it won't seem like such a huge deal.
I don't know how old you are, but if you were in your teens and had never been in any way sexually active, it's usually okay to go ahead and wait to have pelvic exams and pap smears until you are, unless you experience things like very painful periods or uterine or ovarian pain at other times, excess or unexplained bleeding, absent periods after your cycle has regulated, pain when urinating, strange discharges, genital sores or suspected pregnancy. But since you are sexually active, you really will want to start your exams, both because again, trust is a big deal, but it doesn't actually provide any protection and because sex does create risks for your reproductive health, no matter how you have it or with whom, that you want to be proactive about when it comes to being sure your sexual health is up to par.
Here are a few links to round this all out for you:


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Oh, the menace of childhood
I was stunned by news that the Montgomery County, Md., public school system had suspended a first-grader for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow."
I was stunned that he was the only one rounded up.
First-graders have been getting away with horrible, heinous crimes for far too long. Just because you're 6 is no excuse.
What about all the children who get away, every year, with spreading "cooties"? Clearly, this is a threat of biological warfare. They should be expelled -- and then quarantined.
What about all the kids who climb into boxes and announce that they are rocket ships? This violates lots of building codes, and those crafts are clearly not spaceworthy.
What about the kids who simulate car crashes with their plastic cars? Cars are far deadlier weapons than finger guns, and you need a license to drive them. Where are their licenses?
Do you know the number of innocent cruise ships, liners and rubber ducks sunk by careless 6-year-old children daily? It makes the Pol Pot regime pale in comparison.
Hide and seek? Sounds Nazi.
What about all the kids who build block towers? Surely that's a violation of union rules and safety codes. Where are their helmets? Why aren't they being compensated? How dare they do it on weekends?
What about all of the children, 6 and older, who create Monopolies, control large swaths of Boardwalk and charge onerous rates to hotel visitors?
Play doctor? That's definitely malpractice. Ring around the rosy? That's a reference to bubonic plague, which should not be taken so lightly.
Look at all of the countless Operations performed by 6-year-olds in which the patient is carelessly left to die, nose flaring red. How can we stand by and allow this to happen?
Every day, children go rampaging through imaginary cities. Their tea parties are strafed by rogue dinosaurs, riding in bombers. In the middle of Very Important Telephone Calls From Hospitals or the president, they get bored and walk away. They create monarchies and destroy them. They bury teddy bears alive in exploding volcanoes. They strand endangered species in the middle of lagoons, take Furbies prisoner and subject stuffed rabbits to unspeakable head traumas. They create multicar pileups. Then, after arrogating such arbitrary power to themselves, they have the gall to go take naps.
I was distressed to learn that those trains of first-graders tied together between teachers and marching single-file were not, in fact, chain gangs of tiny Jean Valjeans being made to pay for their crimes. What kind of a society are we, where children can play and use their imaginations and not have their actions be taken as threats?
I believe in the power of the imagination as much as the next human, but this is a bit much.
This is a parody of itself. A 6-year-old boy had to sit down with a counselor and have it explained to him that he couldn't make this threatening gesture? Can we hear ourselves?
The school system, hearing the outcry, has rescinded the suspension. But what's next?
Soon, 6-year-old children will be forced to sit indoors playing Sensitivity Training and delivering PowerPoint lectures to each other on Safety Within the Home and Workforce Best Practices.
If we have a problem with 6-year-old boys pointing fake guns, the place to start is not the kids. We are the ones who populate their imaginations. They are only doing what they are taught. Children used to play Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers. These days, they'd be arraigned for genocide and theft. If we have a problem with children with imaginary guns, the answer is not to clamp down on their imaginations. They only put out what we put in.
Petri writes the ComPost blog at washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost.


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Embedded below is a video of the presentation Chris Messina gave at the 2010 Google I/O developer's conference a couple of weeks ago.
Chris has been instrumental in birthing and evangelizing many of the social web's protocols for sharing data across sites and applications (ActivityStrea.ms, OpenID, OAuth), and he recently went to work on these technologies at Google. Chris is a designer, not necessarily a programmer, so his presentation is light on code. But it very clearly presents the concepts behind social sharing protocols – how they work, why they're important and how they are currently implemented across the web.
Plus, he apes Lost, and it's funny.
See Also:


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goldielocke76 wrote:JRC3 wrote:How can you live with yourself for keeping a betta in such deplorable conditions? Put him in a tiny bowl where he belongs.
You know, if I didn't see the number of posts you already have, I would have called you out as a troll. So I am assuming you are being sarcastic LoL. Without a winky face or anything, the sarcasm doesn't come across very well :p
Really like the tank and the ferns J-P! Makes me miss my betta ='(
Thanks for having my back If trolling was truly the case, I'd have had him gone quick JRC (the third) is pretty cool around here