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Sorghum Syrup was a staple in southern households in the days before refined sugar became available. Our Bourbon Barrel Aged Pure Cane ("Sweet") Sorghum is estate grown by a fifth-generation farmer in Eastern Kentucky. It is harvested by hand and then aged in a bourbon barrel to draw out the intensity of flavors. This all-natural sweetener is a favorite of chefs and adds an earthiness and hint of spice that other sweeteners cannot provide. We love adding a drizzle of Bourbon Barrel Aged Sorghum with a sprinkle of pepper over local goat cheese or serving as a condiment to an artisan cheese tray.
8 fluid ounces (240 ml)
Glass Jar
Pure Cane Sorghum is Kentucky's maple syrup. It's earthy and sweet with a hint of exotic spice. Use in place of molasses, corn syrup, honey, or maple syrup drizzle of biscuits and cheese sweeten your cocktails or beverages. Try this recipe from our friend Joyce Pinson at Friends Drift Inn for Sorghum Cookies.
Check out how our Pure Cane Sorghum is produced at Townsend Sorghum Mill.
More information about Pure Cane Sorghum, Bourbon Barrel Aged:
Refrigerate after opening
Serving Size is 1 Tablespoon
16 servings per container
70 calories
0g fat
2.5mg sodium
18g carbohydrates
16 g sugar
All orders to Canada will be shipped via UPS standard (negotiated) shipping. All applicable customs and import duties and fees, taxes and any other charges and fees are the responsibility of the customer (even if you refuse any shipments upon delivery). We ship your package DDU, "duties and taxes unpaid", and we do not collect the VAT, duties and/or taxes and cannot predict what your particular charges may be. If your order does require these additional charges, they must be paid by you in order for your package to clear customs. Some countries may require additional fees paid Collect on Delivery (COD). These fees are paid to the local carrier and are not collected by Bourbon Barrel Foods.
Customs authorities require that we state the value of your order directly on your package(s). Customs agents have the right to release or deny release of your package(s), and in rare cases, they may also delay delivery.
Additional information
|1.4 lbs
|2 × 2 × 6.5 in
8 oz. Tin, Gallon
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Halloween in Berkeley
As a newbie in this fair land, there is much I love about America. I say this because so many of the blog posts that I, and my esteemed colleagues at Left Coast Voices, are critical of one thing or another. I love the freedom, liberty and Halloween.
I know this ancient, spiritual festival is now commercial, sugar and additive prone. I know these are the hazy remnants and perhaps denigration of the customs and culture of a downtrodden religion. But I love how everyone throws on a costume for a few hours, get all excited and friendly, and for a few hours share the sandpit together without squabbling over toys or elections … and I enjoy the kids doing it too.
Perhaps it's living in Berkeley (I have no experience outside of cold, awkward England), but when whole streets get into the swing together, something very special happens, if only for an evening.
My first novel, A Gardener's Tale, illustrated the struggle between the Pagan religions and Christianity in rural England. It follows two years in the lives of the villagers and a mysterious stranger who comes into their community. One of the elements felt by the villagers is the breakdown of their community, how they are becoming increasingly estranged from their neighbors.
Through reigniting the Pagan religion that once united them, the protagonist offers an opportunity to reclaim their community. We need this today more than ever. How many of us really know our neighbors and those living across the road? My neighborhood began a community initiative to get to know each other after a woman was attacked by a man who tried to steal her purse. As she screamed for help, there was a spontaneous outpouring of people from their houses. Out of nowhere, that street became a community. But it lasted only a year or so and we returned to our own little connected/unconnected worlds.
We need Halloweens to bind us together rather than crimes. With so much violence and conflict in the world that sees to revolve around religion, perhaps we also need the gentler, older religions. The earth certainly does.
So here's to candy and spontaneous celebration. Happy Samhain, everyone. And I know that a week before the Presidential elections it is probably a relief to read something that is politic-free, but I couldn't resist the pumpkin below. After all, this is Halloween in Berkeley.
Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener's Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).

subset: commoncrawl


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This video is called British Army Cuts Mean More Private Contractors.
By Solomon Hughes in Britain:
British firms muscle in on Middle East
Thursday 11 October 2012
The government wants big companies working in the Middle East to use British private armed security firms where possible. They are promoting a private security strategy that was disastrous in Iraq and Afghanistan after discussions with a security company whose director is a Tory donor.
Trade Minister Lord Green runs a "Middle East task force" of company bosses to advice on government policy in the region.
Under Freedom of Information rules I got hold of papers from the task force covering meetings that took place in February 2012 and July 2011. The papers show the task force paid particular attention to the export of armed guards – what we used to call mercenaries.
According to the notes, "Security was a relatively new but increasingly important market for the UK in the region." The task force wants big companies to get business for the typically smaller armed security firms by using them to guard their staff and facilities instead of relying on local police forces.
The notes say that security "crossed several sectors, particularly infrastructure" and argue that "it was important for larger companies to help the smaller in these markets." Small and medium-sized enterprises "would not win business independently."
Lord Green is promoting a strategy already tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, which acted as laboratories for testing the widespread use of armed private security guards.
The experiment has been disastrous, leaving these countries with fragmented security and problems of corruption. International contractors using private armed guards stops fragile post-conflict countries developing their own security forces.
Chris St George, co-chairman of a company called Olive Group, is a member of Lord Green's task force. Olive describes itself as "a leading provider of innovative safety, security and technology solutions."
Former army officers like St George built their business supplying armed men to defend businesses in Iraq during the occupation.
Chris's brother and fellow Olive Group director David St George has given the Conservatives over £190,000 since 2006. The money entitled him to membership of the Conservative Party "leaders' group" which regularly meets with David Cameron and the front bench over dinner and drinks. Olive is one of the private security firms flooding into Libya looking for work.
Lord Green's task force said: "The suggested key markets for the group to focus on would be Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt and Libya (particularly post-unrest)."
The task force also recommends promoting the more traditional arms industry in the Middle East. Last year there was some worry in Whitehall that Lord Green, who is an ordained Anglican priest, would not back the arms trade for religious reasons. However, the task force minutes show he has overcome any ethical worries. Mind you, his ethics are quite flexible – he was also chairman of HSBC from 2005-2011.
His task force says: "Key sectors for the UK economy would include infrastructure, energy, defence and security."
The emphasis on defence reflects the group's membership – many are bosses of weapons-making firms. They include Ian King, CEO of Britain's leading arms firm BAE Systems.
He is joined by Sir Kevin Tebbit, chairman of Finmeccanica, the Italian-owned military helicopter and missile maker which dropped its National Gallery sponsorship this week after a series of protests. Sir Kevin used to be the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence and is still chairman of the government's advisory group on arms exports.
Douglas Caster of Ultra Electronics is also a task force member. His firm has big civil contracts like a recent £200 million deal to do the IT on Oman airports.
But Ultra is best known as an arms contractor, building the high-tech kit inside drones, fighter jets and tanks. It even provides "adventure" training to all recruits in the United Arab Emirates army.
Other firms with a mixture of civil and military business are represented on the task force. Qinetiq chief Leo Quinn is a member. His technology firm was spun out of privatisation of the boffins at British military science facility Porton Down.
QinetiQ is currently working on developing military robots – I know that sounds like a Terminator film, but it is true – with the Saudi and Bahraini autocrats.
Keith Clarke is also a member. He is chief of engineering firm Atkins, which is trying to sell various "security solutions" in the Middle East.
These defence firms told Lord Green that they needed both Cameron and the British army to help them sell weapons in the Middle East. And they wanted the PM and the generals to stay friendly with potential Middle Eastern clients without wavering.
The task force notes say that defence needed "continuity of political support from both governments throughout the project cycle. Intensive and ongoing government support was needed in these sectors – including prime ministerial support and engagement with senior military contacts – and a long-term outlook."
The task force isn't all about guns. It's also about oil and gas. Malcolm Brindred of Shell is a member, as is Sir Robert Wilson of BG Group.
Engineering firms which work in the oil industry, such as Kier and Mott MacDonald, are also represented.
Oddly, the task force includes two members from Formula One team Williams.
Presumably this is one reason the British government refused to call for the cancellation of this year's Bahraini Grand Prix when the kingdom's dictators were trying to buy some glory and distract from the way they were shooting their own citizens in the streets.
This mix of arms firms, oil firms, mercenaries and Formula One drivers are getting a big voice in government through the task force.
According to Lord Green, "the government hoped that the METF (Middle East task force) could help ensure that strategic business considerations were fully factored into HMG's (Her Majesty's government's) policies in the Middle East, and provide strategic business advice going forward, drawing on the huge experience and capabilities represented around the table.
"The Middle East would remain for the foreseeable future a vital region for the UK's political and economic security including trade and investment."


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They might not be your roommate, but they're somebody's roommate, and you're likely to hear the complaints at some point during your college years.
Later on, we might tackle how to survive rooming with these ten types of roommates from hell, especially in instances where you have already signed on to leases you cannot break.
But for now, let's take a look at the roommates and what it is that makes them so difficult to live with.
The Best Friend
Growing up, most of us naively think of buying a home and living with our best friends all the way into retirement. But best friends rooming together rarely works. Not only does it usually ruin the friendship, but sometimes even the parents get involved and the rift grows several generations wide.
But why? Best friends bond on a level that removes all boundaries. This is great for sleepovers as teens, but grows tiresome for long-term living arrangements as adults. Best friends expect each other to 'understand' and may take liberties with each other that they would not with others.
Due to habits they developed earlier in life together, they are also usually less respectful of each other's personal space and things, thus causing added friction over time.
The Broke One
One of the most common, bad roommates you may have is the one who never pays the bills on time. They may even go as far as to hide from you when the bills are due, or may give ridiculous excuses for why they don't have the money.
You may find yourself spending every month trying to pick up their loose ends. Don't be surprised if they then break the lease and leave you to clean up the financial mess.
The Food Thief
Another bad roommate is the one who eats your food. If there are multiple people in the household, you may have difficulty figuring out who the culprit is. But there goes your leftovers that you dreamed about all through class, or tomorrow's carefully made lunch — turning up missing at the most inconvenient times.
In place of this, you may end up with the roommate who does not eat your pre-made food, but who may use your groceries and not replace them. This can be just as annoying when halfway through cooking your meal you realise you are out of cheese or salad dressing.
The One who Wears your Clothes
This is usually most common in instances where relatives and friends room together. Not only does this roommate run off with your favorite dress or sweater, but the clothes then often turns up in your laundry basket, dirty and stained. Sometimes it's not returned at all.
The One in a Crazy Relationship
Whether they're breezing through way too many lovers or just have one that has lost their absolute minds, this roommate can not only make you uncomfortable, but put you in danger.
Along with a lot of arguments and paranoia, there is just no telling when the lover will snap, and what may happen to you if you're around at the time it happens.
The Noisy One who Never Sleeps
Perhaps even more annoying than the roommate who wears your clothes and eats your food, is the noisy roommate who reps for #TeamNoSleep. This roommate is usually up at odd hours of the night, watching the TV at max volume, blasting music, or entertaining friends.
They may even be up studying, but whatever the reason, that light streaming under your door at three in the morning isn't likely to do you any favors.
The One who Never Showers
This roommate is more likely to be male than female. This is the roommate who marks clean enough laundry by sniffing the armpits, and who goes days without paying a visit to the shower.
If they are extremely active on the field, at the gym, or in the bedroom, you can expect to get an especially smelly treat every day.
The Messy One
Just as gross as the roommate who never showers is the messy roommate. They may tend to their own personal hygiene, but often leave the apartment or dorm room in disarray. You can expect week old pizza on the coffee table and dishes piled sky high in the sink.
Even roommates who leave the rest of the apartment clean and just their private room in a mess can invite pests to make a home in their living space.
The Junkie
Your clothes will never smell clean again; nor will your sofa, or anything else in your apartment. Every time you have friends over, you will have to explain to them what the smell is, or why they can't see two feet in front of their faces from all the smoke.
If you are a drug user yourself and trying to buckle down for college, then the temptation to join in on the 24/7 get-high campaign might be more than you can comfortably take. Your roommate may also bring dealers by on occasion, and other questionable company.
The One who's Never Home
Certainly not the worst of all bad roommates, the one who's never home nonetheless can become a difficult person to live with. The roommate may question paying half of utilities since they are usually away, and may be difficult to reach in cases of emergencies.
There is also limited opportunity to bond, which may be preferable for some, but awkward in the long run. This is after all, someone you live with. Who wants to live with a prefect stranger?
Of course many students go through college and early adulthood without running into these characters, but they do make for interesting stories. For starters, check out this post on how living with a terrible roommate resulted in me being homeless in college for several months.
About the Author
Alexis Chateau is the Founder of College Mate and Managing Director at Alexis Chateau PR. She is an activist, writer, and explorer. Follow her stories of trial and triumph at www.alexischateau.com.


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Holy Week Treasure Map
Turning Crisis into Compassion and Care
Devotionals that empower, engage, and equip women each day
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Daily Thoughts and Meditations as we journey together with our Lord.
Trust me, I've been there, I've looked, I've searched and I know now, that there are no answers to be found in the bottom of a bottle or on the edge of a blade! Fighting Hard, Recovering, Rebuilding, REBORN. Moving on from addiction to a new life.
For millennials seeking the abundant life of Jesus
God's blessings through his word
Grace, hope and Truth for each day.
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Sharing God's love with the world, one heart at a time.
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Woman to Woman and Heart to Heart...helping each other on our journey
Get accessed to sound biblical teachings regarding how to fruitfully live the Christian life that God intended you to live.
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Becoming the oil and wine in today's society
prophetic words, scribal prophet
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My site has inspiration for you and TRUTH.
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Merely everything of what exactly seen around the world; know the rope of history, race and religion, relationships and pace with the technology.
Executive Chef Robbie Joseph brings more than 35 years of culinary experience to his Montego Bay, Jamaica based restaurants and bars: THE SEAHORSE GRILL and ROBBIES KITCHEN. Specializing in fresh seafood, steaks, pastas, local Jamaican favourites and world class, gobal cuisine with a twist of west indian flare. Combine this simply great food with the casual elegant ambiance of both restaurants and you have an experience you won't soon forget!!!


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When the Palm Desert Food & Wine asked to pair me up with one of five headlining chefs doing demos at the festival to re-create their recipe using the SideChef app, I was very curious as to whom they would pair me with. When I got Cat Cora, I was ecstatic!
Not only is she insanely talented in the kitchen, but she was the first female Iron Chef on Iron Chef America. That's definitely someone to look up to, as a female culinary enthusiast!
I was anxious to see what recipe I would be making, and boy was I shocked when I got a huge bag of Whole Foods ingredients, hand delivered fresh to my doorstep thanks to SideChef. When I peeked into the bag (while Snapchatting it all live at MsTanayaG), I was definitely surprised, in both a good way and a kind of sad way initially. You see, it was all the ingredients for Cat Cora's Crab and Avocado Sandwiches with Mango Coulis.
While that sounds pretty incredible, the only problem was that I wouldn't be able to taste any of it! You see, a few years back, I developed a slight (and VERY unfortunate) allergy to crustaceans, including crab! Quite the ironic bummer, right?
Still, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to work with an ingredient I normally wouldn't choose to cook, for obvious reasons. So I got prepping, and followed the super simple step-by-step instructions with crisp visuals and audio cues on the SideChef app to create the full dish with all three components!
Here's a quick video of some of the steps that went into making the dish:
In the end, I had essentially created a slider made with warm, crispy crab cake buns, cool, refreshing avocado salsa, and a tangy-sweet mango coulis to bring it all together. I can only imagine how it all tasted together (I definitely tried the avocado salsa & mango coulis!), but according to my family for whom I cooked the meal, it turned out "incredibly delicious!"
What I love just as much as eating, is making something with my own hands to feed the people I love. So that worked out well, allergy or not! Also, shoutout to Cat Cora for sharing this post with her awesome followers… I hope I did your recipe justice! 😉
So what's the deal with the giveaway, you ask? Well, I'm giving away TWO PAIRS of tickets to the Palm Desert Food & Wine Festival happening all of next weekend! AND, the grand prize winner will receive VIP tickets! To win, do ONE or BOTH of the following by 11:59 p.m. PST tonight:
- Follow @tanayas.table on Instagram and tag 3 friends in the comments of my crab cake slider photo.
- Subscribe to my Nom channel at Nom.com/TanayasTable and pop in to say hi on my live show tonight from Hollywood at 7:30 p.m. PST! It's interactive, so you can ask us questions and more. 🙂
Winners will be announced tomorrow on those platforms! GOOD LUCK!!
For the full recipe to make these crab cakes at home, download the SideChef app. They're celebrating a whopping 1 million meals made through the app by donating 1,000 meals to charity… and they will donate 3,000 if they make it into the top 10 in the app store! So let's make it happen to feed more people who really need it, guys.
If you do make this recipe by Cat Cora through SideChef, please do let me know how they turn out for you! Big thank you to PDFW, SideChef and Iron Chef Cat Cora for the fun collaboration.
Until next time, cheers! ❤


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30 Days in the Kruger National Park: Details & Maps of all the Drives in The Kruger Park
The Kruger National Park is situated in the north eastern part of South Africa. Its eastern border is the geographical border between South Africa and Mozambique. Its northern edge adjoins Zimbabwe. The red lines in the map below represent tarred roads, the green lines are sand or gravel roads. A couple of years ago the fences in the upper eastern parts of The Kruger were removed to allow a more natural migration of animals to take place and to allow the newly created Transfrontier Park to become populated with animals that had been decimated during the civil war in Mozambique.
"The Kruger National Park, situated in the Limpopo province, is arguably one of the most diverse and spectacular conservation areas on this planet! The Kruger Park supports so many varieties of so many things. Besides the birds, mammals and the Big 5, there is a myriad of different insect, reptile and amphibian species. The Kruger National Park is also home to some magnificent types of trees, flowers and shrubs - flora. It is my personal favourite destination in the world and on this page there will be links to pages that contain my experiences in the Kruger, the birds of the Kruger and the all the mammal species that live in the Kruger National Park... The world's greatest game reserve! " Gareth Roocroft
This Kruger National Park website was developed by my father, Tony Roocroft, to map all the roads in this wonderful wildlife heritage site. He completed the project and at the time of writing this is unfortunately not very well. His last wish was for all the information he gathered and put together over years of hard work was to be published... And this has become a reality, together with lots of help from Africa On Paper publishers the book is now available for sale, as you will see on the left. It is unlike any other Kruger National Park and shares everything you can imagine about the park... Please have a look at it, its great, just click the picture to learn more about the book.
About This Kruger National Park Site
In 2006 and 2007 I drove more than 3,000 kms covering every publicly accessible road over a period of some 30 days. I took along a GPS and was able to create useful maps for each drive. I was also able to record much of the wildlife, flora and fauna of The Kruger National. There are many highlights from the drives and lots of lingering memories for me and I hope that in reading these many articles you find them useful in preparing your own "safari".
The Kruger is far more than a safe haven for wild animals in a true wilderness environment. It is more than a game reserve. It is blessed with an amazing variety of landscapes which are responsible for the significant biodiversity within its borders. It is impossible to become bored with The Kruger.
In summary I hope you enjoy this unique Kruger website and that it might even inspire you to visit this wonderful place which is far more than the Big 5 for which it is truly famous. The Kruger National Park is a BIG place.
New Information Being Added To This Kruger Website!
This website is constantly being updated with new info, stories and images, keep us bookmarked! In 2013 after being inspired by my fathers hard work when his book got published (Please see above) I decided to carry on with his research legacy and to gather information from all the roads, camps, hides, picnic spots, rivers, birds, reptiles, trees, mammals, insects, bodies of water and points of interest. I will do this in a completely different way to our my father approached it, so you as the end user, can make the absolute most of your Kruger National Park visit. A special emphasis will be placed on the animals; mammals from the striped mouse to the African elephant, birds from the common Laughing Dove to the rare Bat Hawk - how to find them, where to look and in general the areas where they occur... Please see below for interesting articles added more recently.
Read about all of Kruger's large and small mammals, see pictures, where they occur in the Kruger Park and read interesting stories and facts about them.
- Where to find animals in the Kruger Park?
- Discovering Kruger
- Kruger Park Gates
- Kruger Camps
- The Best Places To Visit In The Park On Your Travels
- Kruger's Birds
- Kruger's Mammals
- The Nile Crocodile
- Kruger's Tree Species
- Latest Kruger Animal Count & Census
The Backbone of this Kruger Park Site
Using each of The Kruger's main camps as a base all the roads within these regions were explored. You can use the links to the left and follow along with each of the drives I completed. The camps in the list are from north to south. This was the order in which I made the 6 visits to the Kruger.
Have a look at our new website that covers everything on the Kruger National Park, and tells you all our adventures, here: Stories Of The Kruger. Lots of video content available, an online shop, and our very own custom made map! Launched February 2018!
What's in the Kruger Park?
Species: 507 birds, 148 mammals, 404 trees, 118 reptiles, 53 fish and 35 amphibians. List of mammals ...
The Kruger National park is world famous for the high density of the Big 5.
The map above is an example of a distribution I map created from data supplied by the KNP... each black spot on this graph represents the sighting of one of the Big 5 (in this case the distribution of elephants).
Click the links below to view similar distribution maps for all the Big 5 animals found in the Kruger National Park.
Big 5 Distribution Maps
The larger coloured dots on the maps identify the various rest camps or Kruger Park Lodges and trails available inside the Kruger Park itself. As can be seen the density of elephants is at its highest in the north eastern quartile of the Kruger National Park. There are relatively few elephants in the western half of the Kruger. The reason is much to do with the underlying geological differences between the eastern and western portions of the KNP.
The Kruger National Park. Home of the Big 5
Lion ... This is a map showing park-wide distribution of the king of beasts, the majestic African lion. Seen on 4 separate occasions during June 2006.
|Leopard ... The leopard is probably the most beautiful wild cat to be seen anywhere. It is also the most widely spread big cat but still not easily seen because of its nocturnal and stealth habits. Saw result of Impala kill in June 2006.
|Elephant ... the big and generally gentle giant. The elephant once seen in the wild cannot ever be forgotten. I was charged twice in May 2006.
|Buffalo ... So often described as the most dangerous of animals and I have a friend, Robin Morris, who can personally attest to this. He was literally saved from certain death by a ranger's gunshot that resulted in a charging wounded buffalo dropping dead at his feet. The incident happened in the 1980's in Botswana during a walking trail.
|White Rhino ... The white rhino is massive, and a site everybody should see at some stage in their life. Under careful supervision by armed rangers these animals can often be approached to within a few metres. The map will show Pretoriuskop as a perfect venue to see these large animals.


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A new file backup feature in Windows 8 that Microsoft trumpeted this week will help users protect their data but it is incomplete and far from unique, according to analysts.
The feature, called File History, is innovative because it makes backup and restore much simpler for users to set up, use and maintain, and because it stores multiple versions of each file, creating a history of its changes, according to Microsoft.
While usage of backup and restore utilities has been very low historically among Windows users, Microsoft expects it to be significantly higher in Windows 8, thanks to the enhancements in File History.
IDC analyst Al Gillen said the functionality in File History isn't ground-breaking, because there are many stand-alone utilities available that do similar things, including some that are inexpensive and even free.
The File History advantage is that it is already part of the OS. "The use of the feature is likely to be gated directly by how easy it is to find and use," Gillen said via email.
Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst, is skeptical about how simple end users will find File History to be, especially because he found Microsoft's explanation of how the feature can and can't interact with the company's SkyDrive cloud storage service to be confusing.
In its blog post detailing File History, Microsoft states that the feature doesn't work with cloud storage services — it is designed to place file copies on external drives or on network locations. However, Microsoft outlines a roundabout way of synchronizing local SkyDrive folders with File History.
"They mention SkyDrive, but say it's not part of this. Hopefully it will be integrated in some way — otherwise this could be a confusing and incomplete solution," Silver said via e-mail.
For David Johnson, a Forrester Research analyst, File History is a step in the right direction but it should do cloud storage backups.
"The key to success though will be making it obvious that the feature is there without annoying the user," he said via e-mail.
It's good that Microsoft is addressing what has become a critical issue for end users, analysts said.
"Having the ability to do regular backups is increasingly important," Gillen said.
However, it would have been better if the company had tackled the problem earlier. "It's about time," Silver said. "The loss of data and files due to hard drive failure, accidental deletion and other anomalies have been common on personal computers for years. Why has it taken so long to solve the problem once and for all?"
According to Microsoft, the process of setting up File History is simple. Users only need to turn on the feature and select the external drive or network location where the files will be stored. Once users do this, File History will run unassisted and transparently, activating itself every hour by default to back up files.
Users have the option of modifying File History's default settings to adjust elements like the frequency of backups, how long file copies are kept and whether certain folders should be excluded from the process.
Users should know that File History only backs up personal files, not the entire contents of a PC, so it copies the contents of the Libraries, Desktop, Favorites and Contacts folders, but will not back up the OS or applications.
Microsoft also designed File History to use system resources efficiently by factoring in, for example, how many applications are active and whether the device is plugged in to an outlet or running on batteries. File History also only copies files that have been modified by checking the NTFS (New Technology File System) change journal, instead of scanning each file individually.
File History was designed primarily for use by consumers, but it can also be used in workplace PCs, although Microsoft warns in its blog post that its use in enterprises may not comply with organizations' "security, access and retention policies." For this reason, Windows 8 has a group policy setting that lets IT administrators disable the feature in their company's PCs.
Microsoft said this week that it expects Windows 8 to be released to PC makers in August and to be available commercially in October.
Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.


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Living the Story: 'Sweetgrass' Exposed Filmmaker to Rigors of Herders' Lifestyle
The mountains were far from family, too, far enough that he couldn't go home when the work day was through.
Climbing around boulders, up and down hills, working with domestic sheep that become half wild over several months grazing in the high country was tough enough. Add to this the dangers, the storms and lightning, the predators.
It was quiet, with few to talk to and fewer still who talk back, though there was plenty of time for telling stories with those sharing the labors and experience.
Often the only voices were the grumbles and bleats of the sheep, the barking dogs, a whinny and snort from a horse or maybe a wild song from a bull elk or a coyote. And always that of the wind.
The pay wasn't much, but the benefits of working in the Absaroka Mountains, often alone, bound less by the schedules of society and more those of nature, provided its own compensation.
Castaing-Taylor, however, wasn't working as a sheepherder over those three summers in the wilderness south of Big Timber. He was filming the documentary Sweetgrass, which is showing at the Martin Theater.
"It's not that easy to go in and out, it's such a long way," Castaing-Taylor said of the mountains when he was in town for the premiere. "Plus, the first year I was a total greenhorn. I was clueless about the mountains. When I was in the lead, if I went the wrong way, the ewes would stop following me."
After first hearing about the herders and their sheep who travel over 150 miles to grazing allotments in the mountains, Castaing-Taylor did not know what he would find when he came out to investigate the possible documentary subject. And the Absarokas are a long way from his native United Kingdom and urban Colorado where he was working.
"Greenhorn" and "stupidly" are words he used often when describing his first adventures in the mountains, like with his first bear encounter. "The first grizzly I saw charged me," he said.
As Pat Connolly, one of the herders featured in the film, told it, Castaing-Taylor had been loaned a .357-revolver.
"It was useless," Castaing-Taylor grumbled. "The best I could have done with it if a bear had mauled me would have been to shoot myself in the head."
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heard gun shots, Connolly continued, and then on the radio one of the other herders reported seeing the bear running away. Then Castaing-Taylor came bursting through the bush, and "his eyes were this big," Connolly laughed with eyes showing no lids, "his nostrils were flarin', and he was packin' this pistol around."
"It's a good thing I'm such a bad shot, and didn't hit the thing in six shots," Castaing-Taylor concluded.
But over the coming summers, he would gain more experience in the backcountry and a real love for the Absarokas. With his family living in Big Timber over that time and sharing some of the experience – his kids, aged 3 and 5 at the time, even helped with trailing the sheep up the Boulder Road to Box Canyon – they felt at home here, too.
"The Allestads," who hold the grazing permit, "are like a second family to me," he said.
He would also get an idea of how the film was going to be made.
The movie has no script, no narrator, and no director. According to the credits, Castaing-Taylor recorded, not directed, the film. This isn't just because sheep do not take direction well – just ask the herders about that – it is also because Castaing-Taylor wants the audience to be more involved when viewing the film.
In conventional documentaries, a narrator "talks down to the audience" by explaining everything, he said, and the film simply reinforces what the narrator said. The people in those films, even if they are the real people and not actors, usually just tell their stories. The films don't show the people living those stories.
In Sweetgrass, Castaing-Taylor wanted the "pictures to stand alone and the audience to interpret it for themselves," even though some viewers were frustrated by the lack of explanation – a few couldn't even figure out why one would bother taking sheep into the mountains to begin with.
To do this, he recorded the sights and sounds of everyday life in the mountains as experienced by participants in that lifestyle, similar to the concepts he currently teaches students at Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab.
"We spent more money
on the sound than on the cameras," he said of Sweetgrass, explaining that microphones and wireless transmitters with a mile and a half mile range could be attached to subjects.
"Occasionally, I would put a (mic) on a horse or a dog or a sheep, but they often broke them, and they are expensive," Castaing-Taylor said. "But people broke them occasionally, too."
All this electronic equipment ran on batteries, which were charged with solar panels packed into the wilderness on a mule, with the hope that it would be sunny. (Often it wasn't, and he would run out of power.)
And while there is a division of labor between those trailing the sheep into the high country or guarding them once they are there, Castaing-Taylor was all over the place filming it all.
"I wanted to be everywhere," he said. "I wanted to be with the sheep, with the packstring, with the camp. Everything had the potential to be interesting." He also spent a lot of time by himself sweeping his camera across the rolling, rocky landscapes under the big sky's biggest clouds.
Running all over the mountains like this, often with a heavy camera mounted on a pole craning over his head suspended by a shoulder harness "so I could occasionally put my hands down and get some blood back into them," took its toll on Castaing-Taylor. Later, he needed surgery on both feet and now has to wear special orthopedic shoes.
But the 200 hours of film he recorded has been "whittled down to two hours," by him and his wife, Ilisa Barbash, into a movie that has been well received at film festivals internationally.
Initially the film was rejected by festivals, "dozens of them," said Taylor, until it was finally accepted by the prestigious Berlin Film Festival.
After its positive reception there, others took interest.
Since then, it has been translated into five languages — French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and German.
At the New York Film Festival, the most selective in the world, it was considered one of the best films of the year, "an incredible honor," Castaing-Taylor said.
Sweetgrass was then slated to be shown for a week at Film Forum, New York's leading independent theater, but it ended up playing five weeks in three different New York theaters, four times a day. And
that long would my.
the New York Times' number one film critic, Manohla Dargis, who "makes Hollywood studio bosses quake in their shoes," according to Castaing-Taylor, not only reviewed the film but lavished praise on it. Even urban audiences enjoyed the film, he said, and empathized with the stress the herders undergo. But in some of the international showings, other herders came to see their American counterparts.
In the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, the film was shown after mass in church in a sheepherding village. Spanish herders from the Pyrenees mountains appreciated how the Americans took good care of their animals, too, and the Germans who came to the Berlin Film Festival were amazed that the American herders "cuss just like we do," Castaing-Taylor laughed.
For a film with very little dialogue, much of it is cussing, with some phrases proving difficult for some of the translators writing the foreign-language subtitles.
One scene, in which herder Connolly lays into the sheep after they have climbed over a
ridge and dropped into another basin, has been described as "the best cussing scene in the history of movies," according to Castaing-Taylor. It is followed by a scene where Connolly makes an emotional phone call to his mother when the big man appears "tender, raw, vulnerable," Castaing-Taylor said.
Though another cleaner version of the film
has been made for screenings at church camps up the Boulder, he said the shorter version "loses something."
"There's a certain potency that keeps you on the edge of your seat during those scenes," he said, adding that even the most righteous preacher would
get a foul mouth if he had to herd sheep.
That ticked-off herder, Connolly, was pleased with how the film came out, though he hopes viewers don't take the offensive language the wrong way.
"At first, you wanna hide since its embarrassing," he said with an easy grin. "But then people come up to you and say, 'hey, I do this too once a week.' It's life."
There is a lot of responsibility watching over someone's sheep and horses, "you're left with a man's life savings," Connolly explained, and the sheep can "get away in an afternoon and it will take you a couple days to get them back where they belong. It's a tough job."
During the cussing scene, Connolly explained that he had been pushing the "soured out" sheep too hard and they just "quit me."
"They're gonna stand there and say, 'what are you going to do about it?' and I'm standin' there beating myself in the head," he said.
The grizzlies come every few hours almost every night and sometimes even in the middle of the day, Connolly said, bears that would have been secretive if it wasn't for the easy prey.
"I don't know if it's
religious," as Castaing-Taylor put it, "but sheepherders feel this almost biblical charge to protect their sheep."
And on top of this, Connolly was a single dad worrying about a six-year-old daughter.
"Plus, he had to tolerate me asking moronic questions and always being in the way," Castaing-Taylor added.
But not all of the film's viewers were empathetic, and some posted online criticisms of Connolly. While they do not bother him much, his daughter, Clancy, now 16, takes the criticism more "to heart."
In January, she wrote a letter to the New York Times, pointing out the challenges her dad faced, saying that he was "not being a baby" during the phone call scene, and that his
life was "no vacation in the mountains."
"She sticks up for her dad," Connolly said. Castaing-Taylor said the letter made him cry. He has read it aloud at a number of international screenings.
Connolly also pointed out that he wasn't the only person working with the sheep who was caught swearing on film, "I'm just the one that got picked
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and got shown doing it."
Another complete film could be made with the cut footage, Castaing-Taylor said, and though he said he did his best, he called Sweetgrass "fragmentary, flawed and limited."
"Film is never the equal of reality," he said, adding that he was humbled by the task. "You can never do the world as much justice as it deserves."
But Connolly
praised the film, saying "you couldn't change it. It's as authentic as you can do."
PATRICK CROSS. May 16 2010. Big Timber Pioneer.


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(CNN) -- Honduran authorities on Monday clashed with supporters of deposed President Jose Manuel Zelaya, but the extent of the unrest appeared limited.
Zelaya supporters burn tires Monday near the presidential palace in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
The Telesur TV network showed soldiers advancing on some streets of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and blue-helmeted police clashing with noisy demonstrators, one day after military troops detained Zelaya and sent him into exile. Other images showed troops, tanks and other military assets deployed around the presidential grounds.
The station, a conglomerate formed by several Latin American governments and partially funded by the pro-Zelaya Venezuelan government, also aired images of demonstrators setting fires in the streets.
Gauging the size and scope of the demonstrations and clashes was difficult because of limitations that journalists reported.
Adriana Sivori, a reporter for Telesur, reported that she and other journalists were briefly detained and mistreated by Honduran soldiers. She was live on television as she described the troops transporting them at gunpoint.
Two national television stations were taken off the air following Sunday's military-led coup, and a third station told CNN en Español that its content was being limited by authorities.
CNN en Español correspondent Krupskaia Alis, who witnessed Monday's protests, said the demonstrators numbered in the hundreds.
At least 15 were injured Monday, the newspaper La Prensa reported. iReport.com: Are you there? Share your photos, videos
The military deposed Zelaya early Sunday and flew him to Costa Rica. Roberto Micheletti, president of the Congress, was sworn in as provisional president.
Zelaya had been at odds with the other branches of government over a referendum he wanted to hold Sunday. The nation's Supreme Court ruled the referendum was illegal and Congress voted not to hold it.
The Supreme Court also overturned Zelaya's dismissal of Honduras' top general, who said the military would not participate in the referendum. The court ordered he general be reinstated immediately.
Zelaya disregarded those actions and vowed to hold the vote Sunday anyway. Watch details on "curious situation" in Honduras »
On Monday, Micheletti began to build his provisional government. He named seven new members to his cabinet, which he said will be in place until the planned presidential elections slated for November of this year.
Micheletti, formerly the president of Congress, has said the change in power was not a coup, but a democratic process that saw the ousting of a president who had exceeded his power.
The Honduran Supreme Court said after the coup that it had authorized the military action.
The United States and most Latin American nations have condemned the coup, the first in Latin America since the end of the Cold War.
While military interventions were once routine in Latin America, civilian governments have held sway across the region since the 1980s, and previously all-powerful militaries have receded into the background.
"That history is a thing of the past, and it should be buried so that it never happens again," Jorge Arturo Reina, Honduras' ambassador to the U.N. told CNN en Español, following a meeting of the General Assembly to address the issue.
The head of the Organization of American States also condemned the coup.
President Obama on Monday called the turmoil in Honduras a step backward from the "enormous progress of the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Latin America." Watch what Obama has to say about the coup »
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras," Obama said.
Though deposed, Zelaya continued to carry out his presidential duties, attending a special meeting of the leftist group ALBA, the Spanish acronym for Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas, in Nicaragua.
ALBA, founded by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004 to counter U.S. influence in Latin America, said member nations would withdraw ambassadors and top diplomats from Honduras until Zelaya is restored to power.
Zelaya is expected to travel to the United Nations on Tuesday.
Despite widespread condemnation for the coup, analysts see plenty of blame to go around -- and no easy solution. iReport.com: Are you there? Share your photos, videos
"There are no heroes in this story," said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "These people are caricatures of rectitude rather than examples of it."
The Honduran Supreme Court, he said, is "one of the most corrupt institutions in Latin America."
And Zelaya overplayed his hand, Birns and others said.
"Zelaya was part of the problem," said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue policy institute. "He's partly responsible for what happened. He was pushing too hard on a very fragile political institution. He was just plowing ahead against the wishes of every political institution, including his own political party."
Zelaya's removal also raises larger issues for many fragile Latin American democracies.
"What happens when the Supreme Court decides against the president and the president ignores it? Who enforces it?" asked Robert Pastor, a Latin America national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
What happens next is clearly unknown.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that an OAS delegation would travel to Honduras as early as Tuesday to begin working on restoring a constitutional government.
That might not be an easy task.
"According to mainstream Honduran media sources, Zelaya's removal has the widespread support of the political and business elite and the military, and it appears doubtful that he will be able to return to power," said Heather Berkman, an analyst with the Eurasia Group consulting firm.
"An exit strategy is needed," Birns said. "But it's going to be extremely difficult to come out with an exit strategy unless they get consent of key players like the national legislature."
Pastor holds out some hope.
"I don't think it's impossible," he said.
Said Hakim: "You can never put the toothpaste back in the tube. But you can provide a peaceful transition process."
CNN's Arthur Brice contributed to this report.
All About Honduras • Organization of American States


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16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, April 30, 1911: Pa and Ma and Jimmie went away today. Ruth had invited Helen Wesner and Blanche Bryson to come and do justice to her very excellent cooking. I rode home from Sunday school with them. I choked at the dinner table which displayed my most excellent manners.
Her middle-aged granddaughter's comments 100 years later:
It sounds like Grandma's sister Ruth had fun cooking a meal for friends—and that Grandma displayed her sense of humor by pretending to choke on the food. A few days ago (see the April 25 and April 27 postings) two of my cousins shared memories about how much Grandma enjoyed practical jokes when she was an older woman. I can now see that this was a trait that she had throughout her life.
I wonder what her sister Ruth cooked. A hundred years ago Good Housekeeping magazine included sample menus each month. One of the April, 1911 Sunday dinner menus is below:
Sunday Dinner
Tomato bouillon
Roast veal, brown sauce
Mashed potatoes
String beans
Boiled custard*
Sponge cake
An asterisk meant that the magazine contained the recipe. For the Sunday dinner menu, the only included recipe was for Boiled Custard:
Boiled Custard
Scald one pint of milk in a double boiler. Unless for some special reason milk should always be scaled, not boiled.
Beat the yolks of two eggs, or one whole egg, very light with two tablespoonfuls of sugar; and when the milk has scalded, pour it slowly on to the eggs and sugar, stirring all the while. The milk is added to the eggs and sugar instead of these being added to it, for two reasons. The slow addition of a small amount of hot liquid cools the egg, already divided by the beating in of the sugar, without coagulating it until it is so hard that it separates and permits the custard to separate. Also, in this way all of the egg and sugar is mixed with the milk. When an attempt is made to add adds to milk it is difficult, especially with a small amount, to clean out the dish properly. A little lost with small proportions may spoil or deduce the deliciousness of the dish.
Return the milk, eggs and sugar to the double boiler and cook for three minutes, stirring slowly, but steadily and carefully. A minute's carelessness here may spoil the custard. If not sufficiently cooked the custard will have a raw "eggy" taste, and a minute too long cooks the egg too hard and the custard seemingly curdles. As soon as the custard coats the spoon, or as soon as it begins to feel thicker as one stirs, add the salt. [Note: I used ½ teaspoon salt.] Strain into a cool dish and flavor with a teaspoonful of vanilla. Properly made, the custard will be smooth and the consistency of rich cream.
I made this recipe using a sauce pan since I don't own a double boiler, and it turned out fine.
The stirred custard had a nice flavor—but the recipe directions are definitely right when it says that the custard has the consistency of rich cream. As I look back at the menu in the old magazine, I see that it also lists sponge cake. After seeing the consistency of the Stirred Custard, I now think that it may have been used as a sauce on the cake.


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Monthly Archives: April 2017
Guarding Your Expert from Aggressive Counsel
Preparation is your greatest tool to avoid problems caused by difficult or agressive
attorneys. Ultimately, once you are at the deposition there is little you can do without risking
sanctions. Harassing behavior. If an attorney engages in ongoing harassing behavior which
is truly beyond the pale, call the magistrate of court and have a discovery conference. However,
make sure it is truly exceptional.
As mentioned earlier, your best tool to control the deposition is to prepare your expert. If
truly extraordinary harassment or name calling occurs and persists even after you have addressed
it on the record, and the Court is not available to resolve your dispute, you can move to terminate
the deposition. Rule 30(d)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows a litigant to suspend
a deposition at any point for the purpose of filing a motion to terminate or limit the deposition on the grounds that it is "being conducted in a manner that unreasonably annoys, embarrasses or oppresses the deponent or the litigant." Obscenity or insults, persistent questioning that embarrasses a witness or concerns privileged matter are sufficient grounds for suspending or terminating a deposition. See Redwood v. Dobson, 476 F.3d 462 (7th Cir. 2007); Lewis v. United Air Lines Transp. Corp., 32 F. Supp. 21 (W.D. Pa. 1940); Broadbent v. Moore-McCormack Lines, 5 F.R.D. 220 (E.D. Pa. 1946); Shapiro v. Freeman, 38 F.R.D. 308 (S.D.N.Y. 1965).
If a suspension is sought, the deposition remains postponed until such time as the court issues an
order. The loser is subject to fees and sanctions under Rule 37(a)(5). Smith v. Logansport Community Schools Corp., 139 F.R.D. 637 (N.D. Ind. 1991).


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"Storror Summer: Malta Cliff Diving" from Sacha Powell on Vimeo.
Malta cliff diving into clear, teal water and living to do it again and again: a short summary of time spent on vacation for the young men in this video, it seems. Rust-colored sunsets and fuchsia sunspots meet slow motion falling and the smiles worn before the falls in this video from Sacha Powell on Vimeo. With music by The Naked and Famous, this video speaks of summertime fun loudly, with conviction that's difficult to ignore. You might just feel more refreshed and inclined to hunt down a good spot for cliff diving yourself after watching this one.


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There came a point in the creation of my memoir when I started thinking of myself less as a writer and more as a literary exorcist. I wasn't telling stories so much as I was conjuring up old demons. I began to think of the people in my memoir that I'd lost touch with as ghosts who existed only in the past tense. Oh sure, some part of me realized they were alive as I was, if not more so—I'm not very good at this whole "life" thing—and were going about their daily business, but some lizard part of my brain assumes that, in a strange fundamental sense, people cease to exist the moment they leave my field of vision.
The world is filled with these strange ghosts. Even more disconcertingly, as my book neared its release date, some of these ghosts of my past began e-mailing, calling, befriending me on various social networking sites, and generally behaving in a most unghostly fashion. Part of me wanted to scream, "No! You belong in memory, in the past, in moments lost forever, not in my inbox!" Conjuring up spirits can be a tricky proposition.
Steven Soderbergh's 2002 adaptation of Solaris, a 1961 novel by Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, is obsessed with these elusive specters of memory and the delicate interplay of past and present. It's about what happens when the ghost of one man's past pops up on a spaceship looking to make a new beginning, and the tragedy that ensues. There are really only two kinds of science-fiction films: the kind with Wookies, and the kind that would benefit from the addition of Wookies. Solaris belongs in neither category. In a genre of epics, it's boldly intimate; in a realm of spectacle, it's a film of almost heroic quiet.
Coming on the heels of the widely reviled Full Frontal, it served notice that writer-director Steven Soderbergh was going to do whatever the hell he wanted, even if it meant playing to a tiny audience or losing studios a bundle. Soderbergh is a one-man New Wave who has figured out a way to satisfy his restless muse while keeping one foot firmly in the realm of mainstream commercial filmmaking. He's living the cinephile dream, cranking out movies at a rapid clip while shifting effortlessly between genres, styles, and budgets.
In the past decade alone, he's executive produced groundbreaking, reality-bending, wholly improvised television comedy-dramas populated with politicos playing themselves (2003's intriguing K Street) and actors doing likewise (Unscripted). He wrote and directed a quirky digital-video comedy of Hollywood manners with major movie stars (Full Frontal). He went über-indie with the grimly proletarian 2005 crime drama Bubble, and got Warner Bros. to finance and release a black-and-white Michael Curtiz homage (2006's The Good German). Oh, and he made a two-part, wildly uncommercial, four-and-a-half-hour biopic of Che Guevera. And a zeitgeist-friendly Godardian digital-video drama (The Girlfriend Experience) starring a porn star. Other filmmakers have long lists of dream projects they'd love to get made someday, maybe, if fortune smiles upon them. Soderbergh gets a dream project made every couple of months. He's a champion talker, but more importantly, he's a doer who leads a charmed life. Verily, he is a god among men.
It would be bad enough if Soderbergh merely wrote, directed, and/or produced a nonstop barrage of provocative, eclectic films and television shows. But that isn't enough for our greedy little friend. No, he has to shoot his own films and edit them under pseudonyms. Quite frankly, I find it a little sickening that one bald, bespectacled little man is able to do so many things so brilliantly. It isn't fair. Soderbergh is throwing off the curve. Maybe the reason Hollywood is filled with so many mouth-breathing troglodytes is because he's hogged all the talent. Either he's one of the most remarkable talents in American film, or there's a very busy genie out there granting all his wishes. Alternately, he's cloned himself Multiplicity style, and has six or seven exact copies helping him get shit done.
So while directing a $50 million adaptation of a seminal science-fiction novel that was already the source material for a masterpiece—Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film of the same name—would be a huge gamble for anyone else, 2002's Solaris only ranks about a 5 on the Soderbergh risk-ometer. Also adding to the riskiness of the endeavor: Solaris has the proverbial cast of several, it features almost no action, and it primarily deals with the psychological torment of a single lost man in space.
Handsome actor George Clooney plays a heartbroken psychiatrist enshrouded in a fog of despair following the suicide of mentally ill wife Natascha McElhone. Clooney is roused from his stupor by a despairing message from a friend beckoning him to travel to a ship hovering outside a mysterious entity known as Solaris, and rescue what remains of the crew. Clooney arrives to find the ship in the grips of what Ren and Stimpy might call space madness. Something has gone horribly, horribly awry on a spiritual, metaphysical, and physical level. Clooney's friend has killed himself, leaving Viola Davis, Jeremy Davies, and a spooky little mystery boy as the ship's sole inhabitants. Or so it would seem.
When Clooney asks Davies what's happening to the ship and its deeply freaked-out passengers, Davies delivers a wonderful line that succinctly captures a horror and mystery so vast and mind-blowing, it can't be put into something as reductive as words: "I could tell you what's happening. But I dunno if that'd really tell you what's happening."
A lot of people don't care for the sentient ball of twitches and tics that is Jeremy Davies, because let's face it: He's fucking annoying. He's creepy. He always seems to be playing Charles Manson. Even when he's trying to sell you a fucking car, he still seems to be channeling Manson.
During my Random Roles interview with him, Davies mentioned that just for larfs, he decided to videotape himself playing Charles Manson years before he actually played Manson in 2004's Helter Skelter. That kind of dedication either gets you a plum role as a famous lunatic in a TV miniseries, or gets you taken into protective custody. Yet the unbearable fidgetiness of Davies' being works in Solaris' favor, since his character has seen and experienced things that have scarred him irrevocably and left him a twitchy, anxious, Jeremy Davies-like mess of a man. It also adds an additional urgency to the dire situation in which Clooney finds himself. Is there a fate worse than being trapped in outer space with Charles Manson?
Viola Davis brings her usual no-nonsense gravity to the role of the ship's other melancholy survivor, a tough, smart woman fighting a brave but losing struggle to hold onto her sanity. Soon Clooney receives a visitor simultaneously wanted and unwanted: a strange creature professing to be McElhone. At first, Clooney is freaked out and tries to get rid of this exact double of his dead wife. That doesn't work, and he's torn between the dictates of his rational mind and irrational heart. Logically, he understands that the beautiful woman before him cannot possibly be his dead wife, yet there she is all the same, flesh and blood and hungry eyes and Mona Lisa smile.
Clooney must decide whether to believe a beautiful fiction—that, to paraphrase a particularly resonant phrase from the Dylan Thomas poem that serves as one of the film's motifs, in the brave new world of outer space, death has no dominion, history is not destiny, and the past can be rewritten—or the soul-crushing truth that the woman gazing adoringly at him is a trick of imagination, a phantom being created by a mysterious alien intelligence using the raw material of Clooney's memories of his late wife. She's an alien who looks and feels like home.
Soderbergh asserts his authorial voice in part by fracturing the film's chronology and cutting back and forth elliptically between the present, and flashbacks of Clooney and McElhone meeting, falling in love, getting married, and growing apart. It's a testament to the film's dreamlike mood and hushed, hypnotic tone that the flashbacks cover a great deal of thematic ground—including McElhone's suicide after Clooney leaves her—while still seeming like a random assemblage of wonderful little moments captured out of time.
Solaris author Stanislaw Lem was disappointed with Soderbergh's adaptation because he felt it highlighted the central emotional dynamic between Clooney and McElhone over his novel's science-fiction aspects. I was deeply moved by it for the same reason. Clooney and McElhone create a sense of psychological intimacy that pervades the film. They communicate through a secret language of half-smiles and charged looks. Solaris captures the way a couple can form a sort of private universe; Clooney and McElhone don't have to go to outer space to feel like no one and nothing in the world matters but them. Clooney longs to hold onto that connection at any cost. The woman on the ship with him may not be McElhone, but it's the closest thing to her this side of heaven.
Solaris is a profoundly sensual film in mood and visuals, but the spectacle always serves the story. McElhone plays her part with a heartbreaking combination of vulnerability and otherworldliness. She possesses a fragile beauty that's just a hair's breath away from ugliness; if her nose or chin were an inch or two longer, she wouldn't need makeup to look like a witch. McElhone may not be anybody's idea of a big movie star, but she has an unforced chemistry with Clooney that's essential to the film's success. Clooney, meanwhile, manages not to lapse into histrionics while playing a man consumed with grief and a fatal eagerness to rewrite the past.
I was tempted to revisit Solaris in part because it reminds me of this year's Moon, another cerebral, Kubrick-inspired science-fiction film about outer space as inner space. It also recalls Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind—one of my favorite films of the decade—in its deeply moving depiction of a man who learns the absolute necessity of holding onto the most difficult parts of our past even if they cause us unimaginable pain. The tragedy of Clooney here is that he isn't willing to let go, that he ultimately chooses fantasy and delusion over the agonies of real life. To paraphrase "Midnight Train To Georgia," Clooney would rather live in her world—even if it's not really her or her world—than live without her, or at least a synthetic substitute. He'd rather hold onto a ghost rendered flesh than have her only as a memory.
Solaris shocked no one by failing to recoup its budget, and it received respectful but far-from-fawning reviews. It isn't the kind of science-fiction film that draws huge crowds, but it is the kind of haunting, resonant romantic tragedy that leaves a lingering impression.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Secret Success


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Georgia will play for SEC title if it wins at Auburn
Auburn, AL – Seeking a second straight appearance in the SEC Championship Game, the fifth-ranked Georgia Bulldogs head to Alabama to take on the Auburn Tigers on Saturday night.
Georgia has reached the SEC Championship Game four times previously, all under current head coach Mark Richt, and at 6-1 in conference play will earn its second straight trip with a win in this contest. The Bulldogs, who have won three consecutive games following their lone loss of the season -- 35-7 at South Carolina on Oct. 6 -- have only bouts with FCS foe Georgia Southern and ACC rival Georgia Tech left in the regular season. Last week, UGA took care of visiting Ole Miss in a 37-10 final.
Auburn is at the opposite end of the success spectrum, as the team is a dismal 2-7 on the year, and has yet to win an SEC game (0-6). The Tigers put the brakes on a five-game slide last weekend when they stepped out of conference to entertain New Mexico State, whipping the Aggies in a 42-7 final. Auburn's only two wins this season have come against NMSU, and in overtime versus ULM back in mid-September. AU is 2-3 at home this season.
The Georgia-Auburn series is the seventh-most played rivalry in FBS history, and the Tigers own a narrow 54-53-8 advantage despite dropping five of the last six meetings. The Bulldogs easily won last year's matchup, 45-7.
With a poised signal-caller at the controls, the Georgia offense has been highly productive this season in averaging 36.8 points and 468.2 total yards per game. Aaron Murray is completing nearly 65 percent of his passes for an average of 272 ypg, and he has thrown 21 TDs against only seven interceptions. A total of four players have caught at least 24 passes, with Tavarres King (27 rec., 551 yards, six TDs) now the top guy in the receiving corps after both Michael Bennett (24 rec., 345 yards, four TDs) and just recently, Marlon Brown (27 rec., 469 yards, four TDs), were lost for the remainder of the season due to injury.
Todd Gurley spearheads the UGA rushing attack with 857 yards and 10 TDs, while Keith Marshall adds 520 yards and five scores. Both average in excess of six yards per attempt.
The strength of the Georgia defense is its ability to curtail the opposition's passing attack (197.3 ypg, 10 TDs), as the Bulldogs have logged 19 turnovers and 20 sacks. Amarlo Herrera and Shawn Williams both have 61 tackles on the year, and Jarvis Jones has made a significant impact along the line of scrimmage with 15 TFL and 8.5 sacks.
Ole Miss actually led 10-0 last week in Athens, but the Bulldogs came to life about five minutes into the second quarter and scored the next 37 points en route to the relatively easy victory. Murray threw for 384 yards and four TDs, hitting 21-of-28 passes, and while he was sacked five times he did not throw an interception. Brown made his final collegiate game a good one as he finished with 113 yards and one TD receiving, while Gurley rumbled his way to 117 yards on 18 carries.
As for the Rebels, they finished with just 46 net rushing yards and only 234 yards total, and they were guilty of three turnovers, converted just 2-of-13 third-down tries and were on the field for fewer than 25 minutes. The Bulldogs were credited with four sacks, and Alec Ogletree led the way with 11 total tackles. His stat line also included a pick and a sack.
Despite Auburn's struggles this season, coach Richt knows his team is going to have to fight tooth and nail to come out victorious this week.
"We know they've got great players. We know that they have outstanding coaches, and we have a lot of respect for them. We know that the rival game certainly brings the best out of both teams, so we're expecting quite a challenge and quite a battle."
Ranking near the bottom of the SEC in nearly every major statistical category, it's no wonder Auburn has yet to win a conference game and is in the midst of one its worst seasons ever. The Tigers generate just 305.2 ypg in putting up a mere 19.2 ppg, and their effort in the passing game has resulted in just seven scoring strikes and a scant 161.8 ypg. The run has produced 11 trips to the end zone, but the team averages just 3.9 ypc. Four different guys have attempted a pass this season, with sophomore Kiehl Frazier connecting on just 62-of-115 attempts for 753 yards with two TDs and eight interceptions. Despite the inefficiency of his quarterbacks, Emory Blake has 39 receptions for 609 yards and three scores. Tre Mason and Onterio McCalebb have combined for 1,159 yards and 10 TDs on the ground, and each averages better than 5.5 ypc.
The Auburn defense allows roughly 200 ypg rushing, and foes have scored 17 of their 30 TDs that way. From a pass defense perspective, the Tigers give up 229.4 ypg, and they've come up with only one interception. The unit has posted 18 sacks, with Corey Lemonier being credited with five of them. Daren Bates and Demetruce McNeal both have more than 80 tackles this year, with the former owning the team's lone pick.
Auburn exploded in the second half of last week's clash with New Mexico State by turning a 7-0 halftime lead into a 42-7 rout. Both Mason and McCalebb went over 100 yards rushing in the game, and they combined for three TDs. The aerial attack saw first-time starter Jonathan Wallace complete 9-of-16 passes for 164 yards, one TD and an interception, with Blake making the most of his four catches by turning them into 78 yards. Auburn finished with a season-high 475 yards of total offense.
Defensively, the Tigers allowed just 83 net rushing yards and only one meaningless fourth-quarter TD. The Aggies lost a pair of fumbles and gave up four sacks, one of which went to McNeal, who led the team with 10 total stops and he also forced and recovered a fumble while breaking up two passes.
Auburn head coach Gene Chizik is hopeful his team will use the recent win over NMSU as a stepping stone to closing the season on a high note.
"Obviously, it was great to get a win today. That is just as simple as I can put it. I am very proud of our team because again I feel like they have worked every week. I feel like again today, they deserved it." he continued, "We have a great SEC game coming up next weekend, and it is going to be extremely tough, but we will take some things that we did a little better this week than last week, and we will try to build on those, and we will continue to work every day in practice and try to improve."