text:
The return and reboot of General Zod
In real life, Michael Shannon can be an imposing figure, especially when all 6'4" of him is standing tall. But the slow-talking 38-year-old actor's natural voice is soft, and his eyes are kind of sleepy, so it's easy to soon relax around him. Still, the roles he's best known for – the racist and sexist FBI agent Nelson Van Alden on "Boardwalk Empire," Kim Basinger's nasty lout of a boyfriend in "8 Mile," the damaged goods next door neighbor John in "Revolutionary Road" (for which he was Oscar nominated) – tend to put most viewers on edge. His portrayal of Krypton's military leader General Zod in "Man of Steel" might knock some people right over that edge. Gone is the cartoony flamboyance that Terence Stamp gave to the part in the "Superman" films of the '70s and '80s. This Zod is patriotic and concerned for his people, but he's also angry and extremely dangerous. This time around, Shannon is definitely an imposing figure on the screen. He recently spoke about his role as Superman's foe as well as starring in the new film "The Iceman," the true story of the vicious hitman Richard Kuklinski.
You have quite a presence as Zod. He's a big, scary guy who knows how to fight.
Yes, but the important thing to remember is that, on Krypton, Zod does not have any superpowers. He's just a general. He's been training for a long time, whoopin' butt for a long time there on Krypton. When he comes to Earth, he goes through a similar thing that Kal-El goes through when he gets here. Basically it's just acclimatizing to the environment. Zod's probably been doing those moves since he was a little boy.
But he comes across, at least at some points, as evil. How do you go about finding evil as an actor?
I go to Satan. I get my bucket, and then I go down to the well and ask, "Satan, are you down there? I've gotta be evil today." I lower the bucket down into the well, the lava comes back up, I drink it, and it hurts. No, I really don't know. Zod couldn't be any further from who I actually am. I'm kind of just a tall, lanky, goofy person.
You could say the same thing about Kuklinski in "The Iceman." He's a cold-blooded killer who also happens to be a loving family man. Was it a challenge to play those two sides of one guy?
The order of the filming was actually split up into those two components. We started with all of the crime elements, the parts with Ray Liotta and Chris Evans. And then once we got that out of the way, Winona Ryder (playing his unsuspecting wife) arrived, and we concentrated on the family side of it. So it wasn't like I had to go back and forth a lot, which was very helpful.
So do you enjoy playing evil characters?
I don't ever necessarily think of it as evil. I keep wracking my brain. Why do people say I'm evil? Is the character I play in "8 Mile" evil? And some people say, "Van Alden is so evil." I'm like, "Look at all the other men on 'Boardwalk Empire.' Now, you're telling me that Van Alden is the most evil person on that show?" So I just don't know.
OK, then let's get back to you as a fighter. There are some great battles in "Man of Steel" between you and Henry Cavill as Superman, and you and Russell Crowe as Jor-El. Not to mention the one you have with Eminem in "8 Mile" when you rough up his mother.
In terms of a choreographed punch, it's no secret that I'm much stronger than Henry is. I think there were a lot of ice packs back at the hotel for Henry. But Russell really kicks my butt in this movie. I mean, he's the gladiator. What are you gonna do? In "8 Mile" ... oh, yeah, that fight. Wow! What a walk down memory lane. That was kind of an awkward fight, really. That's the kind of awkward fight you have when you've just had sex with some dude's mom.
"Man of Steel" opens on June 14.
Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.


text:
So this was completely unplanned. I took a hiatus at the end of March, beginning of April, hoping I wouldn't need another one until November-ish, but it turns out I'm in dire need of a little break. For the last month and a half I've been telling myself to just get through this week, just get through this week and then I'll have a breather. Said breather hasn't come to fruition. While blogging itself isn't the source of the stress I'm feeling, it is something else I need to worry about on top of everything else.
So I'm going to take a week off from blogging starting tomorrow. I have my Top Ten Tuesday post all ready to go for this week, but aside from that, I won't be posting. I won't be working on my blog all week and I won't be responding to comments. I'll be back next Sunday (August 12th), hopefully a little more well rested and with a review for one of my favorite novels I've read this year (Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali). You can still get in contact with me through email or twitter if need be. See you all soon!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Wöchentlicher PostgreSQL Newsletter - 20. November 2011
Der Originalartikel befindet sich unter:
== Wöchentlicher PostgreSQL Newsletter - 20. November 2011 ==
FOSDEM 2012 - PostgreSQL Devroom: Call for Speakers ist bis zum
20. Dezember 2011 offen.
== PostgreSQL Produkt Neuigkeiten ==
plpgsql_lint Beta erschienen.
== PostgreSQL Jobs im November ==
== PostgreSQL Lokal ==
Die fünfte Edition des Italienischen PostgreSQL
Tags (PGDay.IT 2011) findet am 25. November in
Prato, Italien statt.
Der Call for Papers ist offen für PostgreSQL Session #3,
welche am 2. Februar 2012 in Paris stattfindet. Der Einsendeschluß
ist der 30. November 2011, die ausgewählten Sprecher werden bis
zum 14. Dezember 2011 informiert. Vorträge (in Französisch oder
Englisch) sollen an call-for-paper AT postgresql-sessions DOT org
geschickt werden. Mehr Informationen unter:
Die fünfte jährliche "Prager PostgreSQL Entwickler Tag" Konferenz,
welche von CSPUG (Tschechische und Slovakische PostgreSQL Anwendergruppe) organisiert wird, findet am 9. Februar 2012 in Prag statt. Der Call for Papers ist jetzt offen.
Bitte senden Sie ihre Einreichungen zusammen mit Kontaktinformationen, Topic und vorgesehener Länge des Vortrags an info AT p2d2 DOT cz.
Der Call for Papers für die FLOSS UK ist offen, die Veranstaltung
findet in Edinburgh vom 20. bis 22. März 2012 statt. Der
Einsendeschluß für Einreichungen ist der 18. November 2011,
ausgewählte Sprecher werden bis zum 25. November benachrichtigt.
Einreichungen sollen an postgresql2012 AT flossuk DOT org gehen.
Mehr Informationen:
== PostgreSQL in den News ==
Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/
Dieser wöchentliche PostgreSQL Newsletter wurde erstellt von David Fetter.
Sende Neuigkeiten und Ankündigungen bis Sonntag, 15 Uhr Pazifischer
Zeit. Bitte sende englische Beiträge an firstname.lastname@example.com, deutsche an
email@example.com, italienische an email@example.com, spanische an email@example.com.
== Reviews ==
== Angewandte Patches ==
Bruce Momjian pushed:
- Run pgindent on range type files, per request from Tom Lane.
- Rerun pgindent with updated typedef list.
- Remove pg_upgrade function no longer called
- Fix pg_upgrade's pg_scandir_internal() to properly handle a NULL
pattern, which is used on PG 9.1 and HEAD (but not pre-9.1). Fixes
crash on Windows. Backpatched to 9.1. Reported by Mark Dilger
- Fix pg_upgrade's pg_scandir_internal() the right way. Backpatch to
- Remove scandir() requirement in pg_upgrade; instead just use
readdir() --- we were not using the scandir pattern filtering
anyway. This also removes the scandir requirement in configure.
Tom Lane pushed:
- Fix copyright notices, other minor editing in new range-types code.
No functional changes in this commit (except I could not resist the
temptation to re-word a couple of error messages). This is just
manual cleanup after pgindent to make the code look reasonably like
other PG code, in preparation for more detailed code review to come.
- Return FALSE instead of throwing error for comparisons with empty
ranges. Change range_before, range_after, range_adjacent to return
false rather than throwing an error when one or both input ranges
are empty. The original definition is unnecessarily difficult to
use, and also can result in undesirable planner failures since the
planner could try to compare an empty range to something else while
deriving statistical estimates. (This was, in fact, the cause of
repeatable regression test failures on buildfarm member jaguar, as
well as intermittent failures elsewhere.) Also tweak rangetypes
regression test to not drop all the objects it creates, so that the
final state of the regression database contains some rangetype
objects for pg_dump testing.
- Return NULL instead of throwing error when desired bound is not
available. Change range_lower and range_upper to return NULL rather
than throwing an error when the input range is empty or the relevant
bound is infinite. Per discussion, throwing an error seems likely
to be unduly hard to work with. Also, this is more consistent with
the behavior of the constructors, which treat NULL as meaning an
infinite bound.
- Update oidjoins regression test to match git HEAD. This is mostly
to add some sanity checking for the pg_range catalog.
- Fix alignment and toasting bugs in range types. A range type whose
element type has 'd' alignment must have 'd' alignment itself, else
there is no guarantee that the element value can be used in-place.
(Because range_deserialize uses att_align_pointer which forcibly
aligns the given pointer, violations of this rule did not lead to
SIGBUS but rather to garbage data being extracted, as in one of the
added regression test cases.) Also, you can't put a toast pointer
inside a range datum, since the referenced value could disappear
with the range datum still present. For consistency with the
handling of arrays and records, I also forced decompression of
in-line-compressed bound values. It would work to store them as-is,
but our policy is to avoid situations that might result in double
compression. Add assorted regression tests for this, and bump
catversion because of fixes to built-in pg_type entries. Also some
marginal cleanup of inconsistent/unnecessary error checks.
- Restructure function-internal caching in the range type code. Move
the responsibility for caching specialized information about range
types into the type cache, so that the catalog lookups only have to
occur once per session. Rearrange APIs a bit so that fn_extra
caching is actually effective in the GiST support code. (Use of
OidFunctionCallN is bad enough for performance in itself, but it
also prevents the function from exploiting fn_extra caching.) The
range I/O functions are still not very bright about caching repeated
lookups, but that seems like material for a separate patch. Also,
avoid unnecessary use of memcpy to fetch/store the range type OID
and flags, and don't use the full range_deserialize machinery when
all we need to see is the flags value. Also fix API error in
range_gist_penalty --- it was failing to set *penalty for any case
involving an empty range.
- Improve caching in range type I/O functions. Cache the the element
type's I/O info across calls, not only the range type's info. In
passing, also clean up hash_range a bit more.
- Code review for range-types catalog entries. Fix assorted
infelicities, such as dependency on OIDs that aren't hardwired, as
well as outright misdeclaration of daterange_canonical(), which
resulted in crashes if you invoked it directly. Add some more
regression tests to try to catch similar mistakes in future.
- Fix range_cmp_bounds for the case of equal-valued exclusive bounds.
Also improve its comments and related regression tests. Jeff Davis,
with some further adjustments by Tom Lane.
- Extend the unknowns-are-same-as-known-inputs type resolution
heuristic. For a very long time, one of the parser's heuristics for
resolving ambiguous operator calls has been to assume that
unknown-type literals are of the same type as the other input (if
it's known). However, this was only used in the first step of
quickly checking for an exact-types match, and thus did not help in
resolving matches that require coercion, such as matches to
polymorphic operators. As we add more polymorphic operators, this
becomes more of a problem. This patch adds another use of the same
heuristic as a last-ditch check before failing to resolve an
ambiguous operator or function call. In particular this will let us
define the range inclusion operator in a less limited way (to come
in a follow-on patch).
- Declare range inclusion operators as taking anyelement not
anynonarray. Use of anynonarray was a crude hack to get around
ambiguity versus the array inclusion operators of the same names.
My previous patch to extend the parser's type resolution heuristics
makes that unnecessary, so use the more general declaration instead.
This eliminates a wart that these operators couldn't be used with
ranges over arrays, which are otherwise supported just fine. Also,
mark range_before and range_after as commutator operators, per
discussion with Jeff Davis.
- Do missed autoheader run for previous commit.
- Further review of range-types patch. Lots of documentation cleanup
today, and still more type_sanity tests.
- Avoid floating-point underflow while tracking buffer allocation
rate. When the system is idle for awhile after activity, the
"smoothed_alloc" state variable in BgBufferSync converges slowly to
zero. With standard IEEE float arithmetic this results in several
iterations with denormalized values, which causes kernel traps and
annoying log messages on some poorly-designed platforms. There's no
real need to track such small values of smoothed_alloc, so we can
prevent the kernel traps by forcing it to zero as soon as it's too
small to be interesting for our purposes. This issue is purely
cosmetic, since the iterations don't happen fast enough for the
kernel traps to pose any meaningful performance problem, but still
it seems worth shutting up the log messages. The kernel log
messages were previously reported by a number of people, but kudos
to Greg Matthews for tracking down exactly where they were coming
- Further code review for range types patch. Fix some bugs in
coercion logic and pg_dump; more comment cleanup; minor cosmetic
Robert Haas pushed:
- Don't elide blank lines when accumulating psql command history.
This can change the meaning of queries, if the blank line happens to
occur in the middle of a quoted literal, as per complaint from Tomas
Vondra. Back-patch to all supported branches.
- Restructure get_object_address() so it's safe against concurrent
DDL. This gives a much better error message when the object of
interest is concurrently dropped and avoids needlessly failing when
the object of interest is concurrently dropped and recreated. It
also improves the behavior of two concurrent DROP IF EXISTS
operations targeted at the same object; as before, one will drop the
object, but now the other will emit the usual NOTICE indicating that
the object does not exist, instead of rolling back. As a fringe
benefit, it's also slightly less code.
- Remove ancient downcasing code from procedural language operations.
A very long time ago, language names were specified as literals
rather than identifiers, so this code was added to do case-folding.
But that style has ben deprecated for many years so this isn't
needed any more. Language names will still be downcased when
specified as unquoted identifiers, but quoted identifiers or the old
style using string literals will be left as-is.
- Further consolidation of DROP statement handling. This gets rid of
an impressive amount of duplicative code, with only minimal behavior
changes. DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER now requires object ownership
rather than superuser privileges, matching the documentation we
already have. We also eliminate the historical warning about
dropping a built-in function as unuseful. All operations are now
performed in the same order for all object types handled by
dropcmds.c. KaiGai Kohei, with minor revisions by me
Michael Meskes pushed:
- Applied Zoltan Boszormenyi's patch to correctly align interval and
timestamp data in ecpg's sqlda.
Alvaro Herrera pushed:
- Don't quote language name. It's been deprecated for ages according
to Tom Lane, and it breaks now given the previous patch anyway. Per
Simon Riggs pushed:
- Avoid marking buffer dirty when VACUUM has no work to do. When
wal_level = 'hot_standby' we touched the last page of the relation
during a VACUUM, even if nothing else had happened. That would
alter the LSN of the last block and set the mtime of the relation
file unnecessarily. Noted by Thom Brown.
== Abgelehnte Patches (bis jetzt) ==
No one was disappointed this week :-)
== Eingesandte Patches ==
Yeb Havinga sent in two more revisions of the patch to add named
parameters to cursor calls.
Greg Smith sent in another revision of the patch to restructure how
core extensions are placed in the source tree.
Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to fix an infelicity between pg_dump and
Jaime Casanova sent in another revision of the patch to measure
relation free space.
Shigeru HANADA sent in another revision of the patch to remove useless
columns from the system catalog table entries associated with foreign
Simon Riggs sent in a PoC patch to add group commit.
Andrew Dunstan sent in another revision of the patch to create
distinctions in pg_dump/pg_restore among pre-data, data, and post-data
as distinct entities.
Shigeru HANADA sent in another revision of the patch to make it
possible for the server to push JOINs to the foreign server, along
with infrastructure for same.
Greg Smith sent in another revision of the patch to allow displaying
accumulated autovacuum cost.
Julien Tachoires sent in another revision of the patch to allow moving
a table, its TOAST table, or both to a new tablespace.
Shigeru HANADA sent in a new flock of patches to enable a pgsql_fdw.
Scott Mead sent in two more revisions of a patch to introspect states
that are "<IDLE> in transaction."
Laurenz Albe sent in two more revisions of a patch to allow disabling
SSL compression.
KaiGai Kohei sent in another flock of patches refactoring DDL, one
part of which (DROP) Robert Haas updated and committed.
KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to allow object
creation hooks, which sepgsql will eventually use.
Simon Riggs sent in a patch to optimize XLogInsert().
Robert Haas and Pavan Deolasee traded patches to implement a new
refactor of the locking system called FlexLocks.
Peter Eisentraut sent in a patch for type privileges.
Josh Kupershmidt sent in a patch to fix an infelicity in psql's \ir
Greg Smith sent in a revived version of an old patch to allow
including a whole directory in postgresql.conf.
Greg Smith sent in a patch to add an "include if exists" directive in
Edward Muller sent in another revision of the patch to allow users to
kill their own queries.
Zoltan Boszormenyi sent in a patch to allow FETCH read-ahead in ECPG.
Tom Lane sent in a patch to avoid losing column names in some cases.
Etsuro Fujita sent in another revision of the patch that makes it
possible to collect statistics on FDW data, including an
implementation for the CSV FDW.
Andres Freund sent in two revisions of a patch to collapse a long
chain of "ifs" in eval_const_expressions_mutator into a "switch"
KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of the patch to add a permission
check on SELECT INTO.
Andres Freund sent in a patch to allow the combination of (plan off,
rewrite off) in EXPLAIN for benchmarking.
Display comments as Linear | Threaded


text:
Bruno Takahashi & Mark Meisner "Environmental Discourses and Discourse Coalitions in the Reconfiguration of Peru's Environmental Governance," Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, Vol.6, No.3, 346-364, 2012.
Environmental discourses are considered precursors to policy decisions as they delimit the range of policy options. The mass media are an important arena for those discourses and the discourse coalitions engaged in struggles to define policy and political issues. The study of such discourses requires an expansion to contexts outside developed countries, but within the influence of global forces, especially in how dominant global discourses influence national policy making. This article focuses on the competing discourses in the debate about the creation of the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment as portrayed by the media and the actors involved in the process. The results show a debate dominated by neoliberal discourses of administrative rationalism and economic rationalism, intertwined with the environmental requirements of a free trade agreement between Peru and the USA. In this case, democratic and environmental justice concerns—from both indigenous rights and anti-hegemonic perspectives—were marginalized. The study presents the operationalization of theoretical categorizations of environmental discourses within the concepts of storylines and discourse coalitions.
This research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant #SES-0962505).
Click on the image to download a PDF of this article.


text:
I'm a nostalgic person, ladies and gentlemen. This can be witnessed in my weekly music, film and news posts, which start from 1976 and will go through to 2017. However, it's not just music and film that I'm nostalgic for. I sometimes look at celebrities who have yet again split up with someone and think "oh why didn't you just stay with him that you once went out with in the 90s. I know your relationship was deeply flawed and you probably hate each other now, but just get back together. Just for me?". So, here's a little list of all those now dispersed celebrity couples that should never have split up.
Winona Ryder & Johnny Depp
Yes I know Johnny is clearly bit of a dick and she can do so much better than him, but 90s Winona & Johnny were so cool and so beautiful (my God Johnny was beautiful back then), but I still want them to get back together. Incidentally, this is what they both look like now. Hmmmm, now who's aged better?
Britney Spears & Justin Timberlake
Yes, I know he's very happily married to Jessica Biel with a kid and everything these days, but ignoring all of that- look how cute Britney & Justin were! Britin? Justney? They quite rightly didn't have an ambigram*, did they?
*I looked this word up. I'm not clever enough to know words like this.
Julia Roberts & Kiefer Sutherland
Okay, so she did practically leave him standing at the alter (she dumped him 3 days before the wedding. Julia mate, that wasn't cool), but they were so cute and seemed so in love. I'm still mourning the break-up of this relationship today (oh I'm fully aware that I should possibly get out more. Leave me here, I'm happy).
Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon
I absolutely loved these two. Nothing brings me more pleasure than seeing Mariah happy (seriously, this is the woman who demands puppies to play with before a show so that she can relax. I 100% relate to her) and she always seemed so happy with Nick. Also, here's the categorically best reasons for them to still be a couple, they have two children together.
Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan
These two should NEVER have split up. It's the biggest mistake they made in their lives. I'm still very cross about it and I won't rest until they are back together.
Anna Faris & Chris Pratt
Why did they do this to me? WHY? Whether celebrities stay together or not is definitely based on how it will make me feel, but arrogantly Anna & Chris never consulted me before they went their separate ways. They just went ahead without any consideration for my feelings and the word that best describes how this break-up made me feel is: gutted.
Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt
Ooh, so this one might be the only one with some potential of reuniting. As you no doubt know already, Jennifer has recently split up with husband Justin Theroux and Brad ain't with Angelina no more and apparently Jennifer and Brad have "reached out" to each other. Whatever that means. Anyway, fingers crossed, they were perfect for each other.
The Couple That Were Never a Couple, But Really Should Have Got Together as They Would Have Been So Beautiful Together and Clearly Love Each Other in My Opinion*
*yes I can come up with longer subtitles if I tried, thank you.
Yep, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio would have made a fantastic couple. I love their loyal friendship which has remained strong over the past 21 years since they made Titanic together. Kate's currently married to someone called Ned Rocknroll, so that's reason enough for her to split up with him and get together with Leo.
The Couple That Must Never Ever Split Up
If Chrissy Teigen and John Legend ever DARED to split up, I would give up on love and the idea of soulmates and leave my husband immediately*. They're hot, they have a very cute kid together and another on the way and I love how much fun they clearly have together. In fact, my favourite thing about them as a couple is how much Chrissy trolls her own husband online. I mean that's inspirational relationship goals right there.
*ok I may have gone a bit too far there. Possibly.
So which famous couples do you wish were still together, but aren't anymore?
Just Another Blog From a Woman has been nominated for an award. If you enjoy my blog and you have a spare few seconds, would you mind voting for me HERE It's very simple and there's no need to register or provide an email address, just vote for Just Another Blog From a Woman under the Best Pal category. Thank you SO much.


text:
Za'atar Roasted Chickpeas
I'm home visiting my parents in Madison, Wisconsin, and I can tell you one thing for certain about the weather: I would not want to turn on the oven right now.
It's been a humid swamp of a week, with the air outside as warm and thick as a sauna, punctuated only by nightly thunderstorms. Miraculously, a slight breeze has been keeping the mosquitoes at bay… otherwise it'd remind me even more of my childhood.
My parents' occasionally air conditioned house is a temperate refuge from the heat and humidity; I see no reason to meddle with that by turning on the oven (although my sister made her spinach cheese mini quiches, among other things, in preparation for my family's solstice party over the weekend.)
These roasted chickpeas happen to be the last reason I turned on the oven before I left California, and they'll be the first reason I turn it on again when I get back.
Just as Paula has always done with pinto beans, we have been soaking and boiling our own dried chickpeas for a while now—only falling back on the canned ones when a true Hummus Emergency strikes.
Each time we soak a pot of the tiny dried garbanzos we end up with a temporary wealth of chickpeas (and a freezer-space-worthy chickpea broth, rich with olive oil, onion, and cilantro).
So what to do with too many chickpeas? Hummus or chana masala might be the obvious answers—or there's always homemade baked falafel (for the ambitious) or tossing them onto salads along with tomatoes and feta (for the unambitious)—but I thought it was time I joined the ranks of the roasted-chickpea obsessed and tried my hand at crunchy roasted chickpeas.
Most of the recipes out there for roasted chickpeas seem to use Indian combinations of spices—which also sound completely awesome, of course; I thought I'd attempt something a little different. Also, my za'atar obsession seems to be sticking around.
Za'atar is a Middle Eastern blend of thyme, sumac, sesame, and salt. It's a perfect way of perking up pita chips, popcorn, yogurt, or hummus, but it's good for so many other things, too. (Paula recently made some za'atar crusted salmon that significantly upped my willingness to eat cooked fish for dinner—we kept exclaiming how delicious it was between bites!)
I took it as given that the flavors of za'atar would go well with chickpeas, but this recipe doesn't exactly call for za'atar since I left out the sesame… The first time I made it, I had all of the ingredients at home (including fresh thyme!), but I worried that sesame seeds wouldn't stick to the chickpeas and would simply create more of a mess without adding much flavor. (I'm curious about incorporating tahini actually, but I've still never tried it; let me know how it turns out if you do.)
I also added a little paprika and cayenne to the mix, but I think the lemony sumac and aromatic thyme—accompanied by just a hint of salt—were the keys to the addictive flavor.
And guess what? The chickpeas were so good that now I've made them several times with the EXACT SAME SEASONINGS. Way to branch out and be original and creative in the kitchen, I know…
I didn't get them quite crunchy enough the first time, but it turns out that first drying out your cooked chickpeas as thoroughly as possible (using a dish towel + air-drying them on a baking sheet if time allows) will help them crisp up nicely. I ended up increasing the cooking time to a total of up to 45 minutes, too.
You might be boycotting your oven this summer, but I'd say ready your sumac supply and go out in search of fresh thyme: be prepared for that one afternoon it just happens to cool off a little outside, because these are worth turning on your oven for.
(Paula's genius addition to all this the last time we made it: scrape up the leftover chickpea seasonings—from the medium bowl or baking sheet—to swirl into some hummus, and/or sprinkle some of the za'atar roasted chickpeas on top of a bowl of homemade hummus to garnish. I might just have to serve them like that every time…)
Print this recipe. (PDF)
Za'atar Roasted Chickpeas
~ 2 cups cooked chickpeas (or 1¾ cup from a can of chickpeas), as dry as possible
~ 2½ Tbsp. olive oil
~ 2 tsp. fresh thyme, minced
~ 1½ tsp. sumac
~ ¾ tsp. paprika
~ ¼ tsp. fine grain sea salt
~ dash of cayenne pepper
How to make it:
1. Make sure the chickpeas are as dry as possible. (Pat them dry with a clean dish towel, then spread the chickpeas on a rimmed baking sheet and let them air-dry for 1-2 hours.)
2. Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the chickpeas on a rimmed baking sheet and bake near the top of the oven for 25-30 minutes or until they start to crisp up, stopping to shake the pan and move them around halfway through.
3. Meanwhile in a medium bowl, mix together the olive oil, thyme, sumac, paprika, and sea salt. Remove the chickpeas from the oven, carefully transfer them to the bowl, then toss to coat them in the seasonings.
4. Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees. Return the chickpeas to the baking sheet and to the oven for 10-15 minutes. Serve warm (great with beer or on top of hummus!).
Store leftover cooled chickpeas in an airtight container for another day or two.
Print this recipe! (PDF)
Related recipe posts:
|Homemade Pita Bread & Greek Yogurt Hummus
|Chana Masala
|Homemade Pita Chips & Labne Olive Oil Dip
|Baked Falafel and Tzatziki Yogurt Sauce
June 27, 2013 2:08 pm
This is a match made in heaven Allison, didn't know you were a zahtar fan, me too!:) In southern part of Turkey; we make a delicious zahtar blend of wild zahtar, crushed chickpeas, crushed pistachios, sesame and nigella seeds, cumin,, salt and pepper; really a delicious blend if you want to try sometime. Traditionally, we would dip our bread to this blend and then to e.virgin olive oil – heavenly! Loved your chickpeas with zahtar, what a delicious snack!:) Ozlem
June 27, 2013 10:45 pm
Ugh – these sound completely addictive! Anything with sumac on it already has that mouthwatering flavour, add some crispy crunchy salty goodness, and I'm sold.


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After a thorough study of the tequila market, Gary Shansby, the founder and chairman of Partida Tequila, had the knowledge he needed to succeed, but didn't yet have any tequila to market.
Then, he met an agave farmer (a jimador) named Enrique Partida. Partida had "thousands of acres" as a tequila farmer, and "he was selling agave to whoever would buy it" (Cuervo, Herradura, etc.).
During my telephone interview with Shansby he noted,
"[Enrique] had a burnt face from the sun, an old cowboy hat, and a twinkle in his eye. I thought: he's central casting! I can't call this tequila "Gringo Gary's," so I might as well see about calling it Partida."
Shansby checked, and "Partida" had never been used or trademarked anywhere in the world. "Without telling Enrique, I trademarked him, and basically took ownership of his name…He was not a happy camper at first, but since then he's delighted, and we've become friends. He's not an investor, but he is the farmer and does manage the farms."
But, how does Partida Tequila get its award-winning flavor? Shansby explains that "by using an older, more mature and sweeter agave; and by cooking it in a stainless steel autoclave versus a stone oven" he would be able to produce "a more pure, agave-tasting product." Unlike many tequila, premium or not, Partida is completely estate-grown and bottled. This means that the agave all comes from the Partida farm and it is cooked, distilled, and bottled on the estate. (Shansby rebuilt Enrique Partida's "hobby distillery" into a fully functional tequila distillery that is capable of producing all of the Partida tequilas.)
Once Shansby had his tequila, he took it to the Mexico CRT (Consejo Regulado de Tequila, or Tequila Regulatory Council) where he "won all the taste tests." A similar taste testing was done with Julio Bermejo, the US Ambassador of Tequila, at the San Francisco Wine and Spirit festival, where it also blew everyone away.
The product was ready for consumption. In his meticulous way, Shansby went through 600 variations of a bottle before it was finalized. The bottle is truly a work of art – slightly larger than Patrón and easily handled by bartenders. The bottle is mostly clear, exploiting the beautiful color of Partida, except for the branding, which includes the Partida spirit bird.
I had never heard the legend of the spirit bird before and Shansby revealed that it "is a tale I developed, and now Enrique [Partida] tells me it has been in the family for a hundred years! The story…has believability to it because we made it believable." Most tequilas don't have a logo (except Herradura's upside-down horseshoe) and Shansby, an experienced brand-builder feels strongly that to build a brand "you need a Nike swoosh, and so my Nike swoosh is the Partida spirit bird."
The tequila is purposely priced just a little higher than Patrón. People often ask Shansby how he can do that, especially as a newcomer to the tequila market, but he dismisses skepticism with a challenge: "Just taste the product and tell me if you agree. Nobody has ever said it wasn't better, or at least just as good [as Patrón]. I don't claim it's the best, my job is to keep it among the very best."
Quality and consistency is how Shansby plans to maintain Partida's success. "Everything is done to perfection. We age reposado precisely, to the day, six months in the barrel. We rotate our barrels for 36 months, 3 at reposado and 1 at añejo, which is [aged for] 18 months, and then we destroy it." The barrels are all purchased from Jack Daniel's. "They've been used once for Jack Daniel's. We then hot distill wash them twice, dry them, and use them ourselves." Shansby claims that if you go into other distilleries (which he has done), very few people will be as consistent. "If they get a good buy on Bordeaux barrels that have been used five or six times, they'll buy them. I won't do that."
Consistency is so important that Shansby has everything done on site. "We're managed in Mexico – totally by Mexican employees. I go down there about every month for 5 or 6 weeks and stay there for 4 or 5 days and talk to the workers." From the farming and distilling, right into the bottle; everything is done on the Partida estate. "It gives us full control, which I find enormously important."
Shansby and Partida's other investors have invested over $30 million into the product, which they also distribute. It's easy to tell that he really has a passion for his product, but would he ever sell the brand and retire? No way, he says, "I'm doing this as a hobby and it's not for sale. And I'm going to retire when they carry me out feet first."
More about how the word spreads about Partida Tequila in the third, and final, part of my interview with Gary Shansby.


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234 years ago today, our forefathers declared America's independence from the British Empire. For the support of that declaration, they pledged to one another "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." And that wasn't hyperbole – with their actions, they brought upon themselves the very real risk of death and imprisonment.
On this Fourth of July, compare that courage and sacrifice to the potential consequences of getting involved and standing for liberty today – some lost free time, maybe public embarrassment or the hostile words of your opponents – and ask yourself how many of us are living up to their example.
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Further Required Reading: President Calvin Coolidge, "Speech on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence," July 5, 1926


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Register Now for Orthodox Institute 2012
Registrations will be accepted until October 30, but PLEASE HELP US OUT BY REGISTERING TODAY!
Please download and send in your form so we can make class handouts. See you soon!
Now is the time to register for the Orthodox Institute 2012: Culture. Morality. Spirituality. Held at Antiochian Village, Ligonier, PA, on November 1–4, this year's conference will survey current cultural views, beliefs of the church, and the challenges facing young people. Registration is open until October 14. Keynote Speaker Dr. Peter Bouteneff of St. Vladimir's Seminary will be joined by Featured Presenters Dr. Vigen Guroian (University of Virginia) and Dr. Philip Mamalakis (Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology). The conference offers panel discussions, lectures, and fellowship for Orthodox educators, parents and clergy.


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Photos and article by Greg W. Gilstrap. It's that time of year again: a time when much of the country is covered in varying degrees of white, and when we here in the Arizona Valley of Sun are enjoying glorious sunshine and warm days. At night, we are blessed with the opportunity to squeeze in temperatures that can hover near, or just above, freezing. The cool evening air is a particular blessing for those of us who are from places where more extreme temperature variances are traditionally recorded. A little cold is often embraced, but I have to say it goes a long way for me.
With the promise of a new and even better year rapidly approaching, it's once again time for our (third) annual Photoremedy Image of the Year contest. As with our previous efforts, we are offering what we like to refer to–tongue in cheek–as a "Chicago-style" approach to voting. This means you can "vote early and vote often." If you love a photo, follow the poll's progress and don't be afraid to share it with your friends or to come back to register extra votes for good measure. More than 1,000 votes were registered each of the last two years. The poll can be found at the bottom of this post, after all of the photo candidates are offered.
The 2014 images below include traditional photographs and some that feature significant digital art enhancements. Like many, I enjoy both forms of artistic expression. All of these pieces were captured and developed while pursuing photoremedy. Click on the 'Background and Initial Post' tab above for our working 'photoremedy' definition. Check out the options, and then select the image that you feel is worthy of being crowned Photoremedy Image of the Year. The contest closes at midnight MST, New Year's Eve.
1. Stations of the Cross Early in 2014, we visited Denver's spectacular Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception for our good friend Paul Louderman's ordination as a Catholic Deacon. The Basilica features exquisite stained glass and poignant salvation history art. I was particularly blown away by this image taken of a tiny "stations of the cross" sculpture depicting the moment when Jesus was stripped of his garments.
2. Lake Mead Marina Since Las Vegas is so close to our home, Mary and I generally go there for a couple of short visits each year. If you time it right, there are great hotel rates to be found, and there are always awesome culinary options. On the way to Vegas, we've sped past Lake Mead turn off dozens of times. This year was different. We are so grateful we slowed down and took the road less traveled. If we hadn't done so, we would have missed out on incredibly enjoyable photoremedy at the Lake Mead Marina.
3. This Ain't a Kiss Our hometown, Anthem, features green parks and walking trails. The "big park" is always full of action, ranging from kids at the big playground and riding the small train to pets on leashes and water fowl on the lakes. It, too, is a great place for photoremedy. While tagging along with my wife and one of our grandchildren in 2014, we came upon this scene near one of the fishing ponds. While it may look like these two are loving on each other, they were not. These aggressive drakes were actually involved in a territorial tussle of sorts when their beaks got stuck together. It took a few minutes for them to break free. After that, they appeared too tired for brawling; each of them then headed in different directions.
4. Life is a Splash Our grandkids have blessed our lives with much love, laughter, and hope for the future. As grandparents, it seems Mary and I are a bit more in tune with the young ones' sense of awe and wonder than we were with our children. This thought was hilariously reinforced during a summer outing when our oldest grandson got a bit of a shock at the Anthem Splash Pad.
5. Z is for Zebra Awe and wonder is also produced when we take the young ones to places where they can closely observe–or interact–with animals. Litchfield Park's Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium is one of our favorite experiences in the metro Phoenix area. Not only do the kids love it, but so do I. Each time, I seem drawn to the artistic potential that zebras offer. Zebra images are often illustrative of the protective power of coming together.
6. Will I See You Tonight? Coming together for dinner is often one of the foundational building blocks of healthy societies. I feel like this digital image beautifully illustrates the warmth that can be produced when people gather together in small and intimate places for good food, a refreshing drink, and neighborly conversation. Cheers!
7. Local Character Good food, in interesting places, can often tell you a lot about a local community. What does the Two Hippies Beach House tell you about the emerging eclectic Phoenix restaurant vibe?
8. Coming Home This summer, a few of our Arizona family members returned to Kansas for a few days with our families in, and near, where Mary and I have roots. Tiny Aurora, Kansas isn't a major stop on the tracks these days. But, from here, many of Mary's relatives (and teachers, if you will) learned a lot about life, love, and community. To me, it is more than "just another small town." It's still a remarkably important place that shaped a bright future for Cloud County and beyond.
9. Up on Main Street I am as impressed as anyone with Frank Lloyd Wright designs, modern architecture, mater-planned communities, and expensive marble buildings. If you want to know the type of place where I'd most like to enjoy a "nice cold one," however, this is it–up on Main Street.
10. Save St. Joseph The past few times that I've been back visiting with Mary's relatives in Cloud County, Kansas, I feel this extraordinary pull to enjoy a little photoremedy in tiny St. Joseph. I am so impressed with how the community has been devotedly maintained–in particular how the historic local Catholic Church there has been lovingly maintained. There's even an impressive YouTube video about Guardians of The St. Joseph Church Foundation. Check out their efforts.
11. I Got Your Back Another great Kansas stop is the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead in Overland Park (metro Kansas City area). During our summer trip there, our granddaughter got to meet her second cousin for the first time. They really enjoyed the attraction, and I enjoyed getting the opportunity to capture images like this. They went running into the Nature Trail entrance, and suddenly stopped cold in their tracks. Then, with a gentle touch, I could almost hear him say, "I got your back!" Of course, knowing young boys, he might have been saying, "This looks scary. You first!"
12. Elliott Bay Sunset Our youngest son is attending school in Seattle, Washington. We have spent the past two Thanksgivings there with him. Mary and I have really grown to love the city–particularly when it offers sunset views like this one from Elliott Bay.
Note: Photoremedy.me is published as a labor of love. Please feel free to share the site, or any of our posts, with others. Our Home Page always features an option for our readers to sign up to immediately receive new material as an email. We hope you will become a part of our photoremedy network. Special thanks to Andrew Gilstrap for adding his special touches to this post. In my humble opinion, he is one of the best writers and editors in the Phoenix market.


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A rare site of two Canadian subs sailing together into homeport for the Christmas holidays. Seen leading the pack is the HMCS Cornerbrook with the HMCS Windsor following. The HMCS Cornerbrook and the HMCS Windsor arrived in the early dawn coming along side in Halifax today in Nova Scotia on the 21st of December 2006
The Harper government is set to announce a five-year, $531-million contract extension to repair and upgrade Canada's fleet of four diesel-electric submarines
OTTAWA — B.C.'s shipbuilding and repair industry will get a shot of good news Thursday when the Harper government announces a five-year, $531-million contract extension to repair and upgrade Canada's fleet of four diesel-electric submarines, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
The contract, following a similar agreement struck in 2008, will protect roughly 200 jobs at the department of national defence's Fleet Maintenance Facility in Esquimalt, according to a federal official.
Another 200 jobs will be protected at locations elsewhere in Canada, he said.
"This significant federal investment will support more than 400 high-quality jobs, improve the long-term sustainability of B.C.'s shipbuilding industry and provide the best tools for Canada's sailors," he said in a prepared statement.
The contract was won in a competitive bid by Babcock Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the British multinational firm Babcock International Group PLC.
Babcock International won the original contract in 2008 after it teamed up with Weir Canada Inc. of Mississauga, Ont., to create a consortium called the Canadian Submarine Management Group.
However, Babcock announced in 2011 that CSMG would be renamed Babcock Canada Inc. after Weir's share of the joint venture was transferred to Babcock.
The original contract award caused a political flap because Babcock beat out Irving Shipbuilding, which wanted to keep the repair work in Halifax.
One of the critics was Green party leader Elizabeth May, who at the time was planning her run against Defence Minister Peter MacKay in his Nova Scotia riding.
May, who accused the government of an "anti-Atlantic bias," is now the MP for the Vancouver Island riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands.
The original five-year contract in 2008 was worth $370 million over five years, but if CSMG met performance targets the contract was to be extended over 15 years, for a total value of up to $1.5 billion.
Thursday's announcement gives a clear indication that Babcock has met those targets.
The fleet of four Victoria-class diesel-electric submarines has had a rocky history after the Liberal government made what appeared to be the bargain-basement purchase of the mothballed subs from the Royal Navy for $750 million in 1998.
It took far longer and was costlier than expected to make the vessels seaworthy, and in 2004 the HMCS suffered a fire that left one officer dead. In 2011, HMCS Corner Brook ran aground near Vancouver Island during manoeuvres.
There are now two subs, HMCS Victoria and HMCS Windsor, that are fully operational.
HMCS Chicoutimi is currently being serviced at Esquimalt but is expected to be ready for sea trials later this year.
The HMCS Corner Brook is also in Esquimalt for both repairs and a refit.
The fleet is "at the highest state of readiness that they've ever been," the source said.
Source – The Vancouver Sun


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Are you like my sister who recently posted that she celebrates Mother's Day the day after when all the hype, cards and running around has settled down? Truly Mother's Day for many is the day after.
Apparently, the woman who first started Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis, did it as a memorial ceremony to honor her mother and all mothers at Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church on May 10, 1908.
After hearing about this, in 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating Mother's Day as a national holiday to honor mothers on the second Sunday in May. In the end, Jarvis resented the commercialization that quickly surrounded the Mother's Day celebration and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar.
For my sister, who lost a son to suicide 15 years ago, Mother's Day is a day for her to just get through. I know she struggles with feelings of inadequacy, guilt and shame that try to wrap themselves around her at times.
For many, when Mother's Day rolls around we spend time looking at cards that don't quite fit your relationship with your mother. Deep down you feel sad and ashamed that your relationship with your mother isn't picture perfect.
According to psychotherapist Terri Cole, who has worked with women for over 20 years, many women suffer in their relationship with their mother as a direct result of what attention and care they did or did not receive in childhood.
Don't get me wrong, there are no perfect mothers and I acknowledge my failures with my own kids. I am grateful for the relationship I have with my mother now and I am aware of her upbringing as a child which has profoundly impacted her.
She lived in a threatening environment with an alcoholic father. She told me once that her and two other siblings were hiding under a bed because her father, who was drunk at the time, was angry with them. He had a knife in his hand and was searching for them.
To say this fear that her father hated her so much he wanted to kill her affected how my mother looked at herself would be an understatement. She has struggled with this perception and often guilt and shame have manifested themselves in ways that have been hard for her children to understand. Of course, tied in with this was her mother's inability to protect her children.
For many women, the pain they feel from their unhealthy relationship with their mother negatively impacts how they relate today and most importantly how they perceive themselves.
This is often referred to as the 'mother wound'.
I am aware that we all have wounds to heal and not everyone struggles with the 'mother wound' but if you do, you know who you are.
It impacts the perceptions that we have of ourselves as we carry the words we heard in our childhood into adulthood. Many who were abused verbally or physically will have difficulty trusting those who are close to them. Low self- esteem, lack of confidence and never feeling good enough which often manifests itself through perfectionism undermines our ability to succeed.
These wounds create a hole in us that makes us feel like you will never be good enough.
The first step to healing is by understanding that your mother is carrying on the treatment she received as a child that can sometimes be traced back for generations — great grandmother to grandmother to mother to you.
The second step is forgiving your mother. We often try to get around this by stating it wasn't that bad because it is difficult to forgive. But it was and you need to forgive your mother unreservedly.
I am not pointing the finger at anyone because I am so aware of my own shortcomings and failures as a mother particularly in the early years of raising my own children.
But, for some the issue goes deeper and like my sister acknowledging the emotions that Mother's Day brings may be the start of a journey to emotional healing and wholeness. Whether it's the loss of a child or wounds from childhood let's determine to address these wounds so we can move forward in our lives.
Whatever our wounds and however they came about, it is our responsibility to be honest with ourselves, others and God and begin our journey to wholeness through forgiveness.
He heals the brokenhearted
And binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3 NKJV)


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This is the 18th anniversary of the Giller Prize, Canada's most recognized award for literary fiction. It is also the 17th anniversary of the Shadow Giller Jury, Canada's most persistent (and perhaps annoying) tracker of the "real" Giller. We will let Jack Rabinovitch (the founder and financer of the prize in honor of his wife, Doris Giller) and invited friends celebrate the "real" Giller — we will have a good time with the Shadow version.
I do think this will be an exciting Giller Prize year. Already, three Canadian novels (Alison Pick's Far To Go, Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers and Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues) have featured on the Booker longlist. I was disappointed with that longlist and will go out on a limb here — I am confident that the 2011 Giller longlist will reflect more quality than the 2011 Booker longlist did. And I am pretty sure a number, but not that many, have already been reviewed here — stay turned for next Tuesday's longlist announcement. The Real Giller Jury — authors Annabel Lyon, Howard Norman and Andrew O'Hagan — better not let me down because an outstanding list of books is available (to see all 200+ check out the list of potential nominees on the official ScotiabankGiller website).
The Shadow Giller was hatched in the lobby of the news room of the Calgary Herald when three reading souls came together quite by happenstance — Herald book editor Ken McGoogan, Calgary author Robert Hilles and myself, then the publisher of the Herald. As it happened we had all recently spent some time with one of that year's Giller jurors — Mordecai Richler (McGoogan), Jane Urquhart (Hilles) and U of Ottawa English professor David Staines (me).
The intitial Shadow Giller deliberation was a 10-minute affair — Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (still my favorite book of all-time) prevailed in a two-to-one vote over Barbara Gowdy's Mister Sandman. (Aside: If you visit here, Ken, could you explain why you made such a bad choice?)
Since that time in 1995 both the Giller and Shadow Giller have grown. We have tracked the growth of the main prize and will continue to do so. We used to promise a $50,000 prize to any winner we chose that the Real Jury didn't — subject to available funding of course — and still owe Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall On Your Knees) and Wayne Johnson ( The Colony of Unrequited Dreams) the money. Needless to say (and a sorry to last year's Shadow Giller winner, Alexander MacLeod for Light Lifting), we don't promise that anymore.
A few years ago, the "Real" Giller added an international judge to its panel and the Shadow Giller was quick to follow. This year, I think we have overtaken them. Neither of the two longtime Canadian jurors (that would be me and Alison Gzowski, who produced CBC Radio's Talking Books until its unfortunate demise) were willing to quit, so we will have four jurors this year.
Introducing (much fanfare, please):
Kimbofo from Reading Matters, one of my favorite book blogs. Kimbofo is Australian-born and raised, now resident in London (the UK not the Ontario one). Mr. Reading Matters is Irish so Kim frequently heads — and reads — north. She is my number one source on Irish fiction and I am delighted to welcome her to the Shadow Giller jury. While I look after Canada and the Caribbean, Kimbofo will look after the rest of the Commonwealth. The Giller is restricted to Canadian authors, but writers with non-Canadian roots have always featured in the list and there is usually a global flavor to it.
Trevor blogs at The Mookse and the Gripes and this will be his third year as a Shadow Giller juror. He not only brings a U.S. view to our thoughts, his interest in translated fiction adds a global perspective. He is a developing expert in Canadian fiction, I must say. And we do need a juror who is not steeped in Commonwealth tradition, which I think is a fair description of Trevor.
The Giller longlist (normally 12 titles) is a challenge for the Shadow Jury — since so many Canadian titles are released in September and not available internationally, we simply can't get all of them into the hands of all jurors before the shortlist is announced. We promise that at least one of us will read each title, but that is all. I will do my best to provide reviews of all of them here eventually.
As for the shortlist (out Oct. 4), we will do our best to review all five on each of the three blogs (Alison doesn't blog, but will be commenting everywhere). When Kimbofo or Trevor post reviews on their blogs, I will highlight some excerpts here with links to their full reviews. Of course, all comments are welcome, both here and on Kim and Trevor's blogs. And sometime about Nov. 3 or 4 — some days in advance of the Nov. 8 Giller announcement, for sure — we will reveal this year's Shadow Jury choice when visitors' choices will also be most welcome.
So please join us by contributing your thoughts. The Giller Prize has become an internationally-recognized award — we on the Shadow Jury would like to reflect that here. We love reading and writing about the books but we love it even more when there are others on the journey so please join us. There is no entrance bar at all — if you like or dislike a book, just say so.


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Some of you may recognize the iconic black label of St. Urbanshof, because I have previously written about a wine from this winery, a wine I really like. This one however, a St. Urbanshof Wiltinger Scharzberg Spätlese, does take us back a couple of years (1997, the year in which I finished my alternative military service, the year in which I first moved to Trier to take up my studies, and oh did I hate Trier and Mosel valley at the time for being forced to go to my fourth choice school despite very good grades…but I digress). I need to write a somewhat longer introduction on this one…bear with me.
When Nina and I visited Germany last year, we naturally spent time with our wonderful friend, my wine mentor and former Korean teacher ManSoo (you have heard that name often enough by now). During our long, delicious dinner, he was gracious and kind enough to open many bottles of Riesling, among which were a just degorged 1992 Riesling champagne and this bottle of wine, a 1997 Scharzberg from St. Urbanshof. The wine had, as all wines do, a history: ManSoo had laid hands on some of these bottles through the president of Saar-Mosel-Winzer Genossenschaft, a cooperative that mostly makes Sekt, the German champagne, but also other wines. If I remember correctly, the president told ManSoo that he found several cases of this wine in the deep cellars of the cooperative. The wine label bears a special imprint that shows a bird and reads "Singapore Duty Not Paid – Not for Sale". What the heck? Well, turns out that this particular wine was bought by Singapore Airlines to be served in first class service in the late 1990s, early 2000s and it was a special bottling. Apparently, Singapore Airlines had not taken all of the bottled wines, so some ended up, for whatever reason, in the cooperatives cellars….and now ManSoo got a couple of bottles.
We tried the wine back in June 2012 and really liked it. And I had firm plans to write about it, but to this day I have been unable to unearth the tasting notes from that evening….usually a sign that I had a tremendous time, but also quite unnerving!
Fast forward to May 2013. Friends of ours are heading to Denmark for a wedding and have the idea that maybe ManSoo could send them 12 bottles of Riesling for them to take home, because they love Riesling. So I contact ManSoo, tell him to send a package to Denmark, give him an idea of the price per bottle, and tell him "you know what we like". Which was horribly unclear and naturally ManSoo assumed that the wines were for Nina and I. So he decided to ignore my pricing ideas and packed a box of very much more expensive wines than anticipated. When my friends posted photos of the contents, I almost screamed out at the screen! We were able to rectify the situation by them bringing the wines, and us exchanging them for wines more in their price range that we already had here….
This box, besides many treasures that I intend on sharing with you as we progress, contained a bottle of this wine, the 1997 St. Urbanshof Wiltinger Scharzberg Riesling Spätlese. Some of you might know that I am very fond of the vineyard Scharzhofberg. Notice the -hof- which differentiates that vineyard from the current bottle. It is confusing, and I believe it was designed to be confusing. The 1971 German wine act created 160 vast tracts of land under vine (so called Großlage) which received certain names which any winemaker who produced wines from that area could use. Some of them might sound familiar to you: Kurfürstlay, Michelsberg, Schwarze Katz, Domherr, Gutes Domtal and Rehbach, to name a few. Let me be clear: Winemakers were allowed to use these names for grapes that come from anywhere in that vast area. It is the opposite of terroir idea or single vineyard denominations, although it sounds like a single vineyard denomination…
The name Scharzberg is awfully close to Scharzhofberg, and one can only surmise that it was chosen to make sales easier because of that proximity in name. It is rare that one finds the name of the Großlage on a bottle from a renown producer. Usually, they put the single vineyard on there or, if they don't, they do not even bother to put the Großlagen name on there and just sell it as a regional or even German table wine. Why did they do things differently on this one? I don't know…but it is noteworthy.
After this long introduction, let me get to the wine which we shared with the carriers of the box it came in last week. The cork was dried out and very crumbly. I cursed myself for not having brought my two-prong bottle opener, which would have dealt with this situation. As it was, I had to crumble out what I could, and then push the last bit into the bottle. We then poured the wine through a very fine sieve into a decanter, where we let it sit for about 15 minutes.
It poured in a honey-tinged yellow with hints of green in the glass (it looked much more golden in the decanter). Great color. In the nose, the first thing I noticed was a vibrant acidity. There was also petrol, which I expect in a Riesling this age (not necessarily in a young Riesling, mind you!). There were also some honey aromas, but the most prominent for me was tangerine. The wine smelled quite citrussy, I noted down lemon rind and some butter aromas. One of our friends remarked that it smelled like kumquat to him, and I think that nails it: it was a tad more bitter than tangerine, so kumquat definitely made sense. The nose was just beautiful. There was so much going on, and it had this vibrant freshness to it, despite the cork disaster that made me cringe. On the palate, the wine was light bodied with great acidity, and I mean that, just a backbone of great acidity. The residual sugar did its job of balancing the acidity beautifully. The wine tasted incredibly fresh, was very creamy (something I usually associate with Scharzhofberger). Fruit-wise I got gooseberry, petrol, white currants, tangerine and some slight vanilla. The wine's finish was rather shortish.
It was a great wine. So fresh, so well held up. It brought some silence around the table, while everyone was pondering it and comprehending it. I was glad we got to share it with our friends, who are both Riesling nuts and are able to appreciate a good bottle of Riesling. But then again, I seriously believe this bottle would have impressed anyone, even the fiercest Riesling hater. It made me remember the dear friendship that brought the wine to me, and it brought memories of the night I first tried it. It made me feel damn lucky. This wine is not available anywhere for sale as far as I know, and yet I have been able to try it twice already. I'm a lucky bastard, I know…Oh, and thank you Singapore Airlines for never picking up all the bottles!


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Take a walk and help the animals!
ResQwalk is a free mobile app that lets you raise money and resources for your favorite animal welfare organization, and all you have to do is walk!
Throughout the year, we'll announce a ResQpool of cash and other helpful resources that have been provided by some generous corporate sponsors. You can help your chosen organization earn a portion of this pool by downloading ResQwalk and hitting the pavement! Download it today and start walking for the animals.


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A first step is to define what I mean by "innovation." Economics in the Schumpeterian tradition defines innovation as one component of the so-called "linear model of innovation" (see Godin, here in PDF) which lays out technological change as a process of
Invention ---> Innovation ---> DiffusionMuch has been written about this model (PDF), which I will review at another time. However it has been used in the economic literature over the past half-century, Schumpeter himself defined innovation very precisely (and did not follow the so0called linear model):
In a nutshell:
We will now define innovation more rigorously by means of the production function previously introduced. This function describes the way in which quantity of product [outputs] varies if quantities of factors [inputs] vary. If, instead of quantities of factors, we vary the form of the function, we have an innovation. ... We will simply define innovation as the setting up of a new production function. This covers the case of a new commodity, as well as those of a new form of organization. ... Innovation combines factors in a new way.I will return to the technical aspects of the so-called "production function" (illustrated below) in a later post. For now, it is only important to understand that an innovation changes the relationship between inputs and outputs in the economy. For instance, a restaurant takes employees (labor), food, appliances (and other capital) and combines them to make meals. A change in the relationship between the various inputs and meals served would be an innovation, which would be measured by a change in the rate of productivity.
Daron Acemoglu in his widely read textbook on economic growth explains:
Economists normally use the shorthand expression "technology" to capture factors other than physical and human capital that affect economic growth and performance. It is therefore important to remember that variations in technology across countries include not only differences in production techniques and in the quality of machines used in production but also disparities in productive efficiency.Which of course brings us to Hooters girls, the hot young women in skimpy clothes who serve chicken wings and other delicacies at the US restaurant chain called Hooters. The company explains its innovative approach to the restaurant business as follows:
The company explains its name and innovative approach:
The element of female sex appeal is prevalent in the restaurants, and the company believes the Hooters Girl is as socially acceptable as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, or a Radio City Rockette. The Hooters system employs over 25,000 people - over 17,000 of which are Hooters Girls. The "nearly world famous" Hooters Girls are the cornerstone of the Hooters concept, and as part of their job, these all-American cheerleaders make promotional and charitable appearances in their respective communities. Hooters hires women who best fit the image of a Hooters Girl to work in this capacity. The chain hires both males and females to work in management and host, staff, service bar, and kitchen positions. The Hooters Girl uniform consists of orange shorts and a white tank top. Pantyhose and bras are required.
So what Hooters has done, in Schumpeterian innovation terms, is to combine input factors in a new way. In this case the company has carefully selected its labor in a precise manner intended to increase the demand for its product. Presumably, the underlying assumption is that a different labor pool would result in a lower demand. So while all of the other inputs (food, appliances, etc.) could have remained the same as any other restaurant chain, the Hooters innovation led to a restaurant chain that (they claim) "has continued to rank high amongst the industry's growth leaders."
Sex appeal is legal and it sells. Newspapers, magazines, daytime talk shows, and local television affiliates consistently emphasize a variety of sexual topics to boost sales. Hooters marketing, emphasizing the Hooters Girl and her sex appeal, along with its commitment to quality operations continues to build and contributes to the chain's success. Hooters' business motto sums it up, "You can sell the sizzle, but you have to deliver the steak."
The discipline of economics does have a terminology for the type of innovation represented by the Hooters girl – "technical change that is Hicks biased." What "Hicks biased" technical change means is that unlike – say -- a new chicken wing fryer that can produce more wings per employee, but otherwise leaves labor and capital unchanged, some changes in the input-output relationship that result from "technology" are not independent of labor or capital (an example of the latter would be the substitution of low-sulfur Wyoming coal for West Virginia coal to reduce air pollution, but I digress).
It is of course hard to think of the Hooters girls as any sort of "biased technical change to the production function," and the tortured language begins to shed some light on the limits of economics in the context of Schumpeterian innovation.
Economics does well in providing a framework for understanding the effects on productivity of innovations that result from new chick-wing fryers, but runs into troubles in providing a framework for understanding Hooters girls as innovations. This I think, helps to explain why economics has focused on "technology" rather than "innovation" (in the original Schumpeterian sense). Make no mistake, economics is critically important, but to understand innovation -- how it happens, and crucially, how it is directed and regulated -- requires more than what economics can offer.


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Stephane Lanoux & The Rohingya Community
"Being a Rohingya" photography project The Rohingya community has been depicted as "among the world's least wanted" and "one of the world's most persecuted minorities." Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called the violence against Rohingya a "slow genocide." Despite deep concerns expressed recently by The Dalai Lama, President Barack Obama, the U.S. State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the recent country transition towards a more democratic government, the situation will not improve anytime soon. The Rohingya people have been my main motivation for a trip to Myanmar last April… Read More
Giles Penfound – Featured IPA member
I've been a professional photographer for over 25 years but the desire to make photographic images has been with me since the age of twelve when I first say the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, his work would become a life long inspiration to me. The majority of my working life was spent with the British Army working as a PR and combat photographer covering the highs and lows of military life from simple parades to conflict and war in the Balkans and Iraq. I left the Army in 2007 after 22 years… Read More
James Watkins – Featured IPA member
Jim spent nearly 35 years in the Chicago banking industry before following his passion for photography full-time in California's San Francisco Bay Area. He started out in the mid – 1990s creating and selling travel-oriented fine arts images from the U.S. and Europe; later, he expanded into local landscapes, cityscapes and architecture. Beginning in 2000, Jim developed a keen interest in street photography through his participation in Chicago's CITY 2000 millennium project and later as a member in the Chicago Alliance of African-American Photographers. It is in street photography where Jim derives… Read More
Fabrizio Romagnoli – Featured IPA member
Fabrizio Romagnoli – Florence My passion for photography began over thirty years ago, I have studied the technical and photographic composition, through film time learning the techniques of developing and printing, up to lead the digital and the photo-editing. In my shots trying to freeze moments of reality or give shape through the management of the essential element of photography: the light. Despite having gained experience in various types of photography I prefer portraits and photos of people in general, trying to capture their essence in a gesture, an expression that characterizes…. Read More
Frederic Moutoussamy – Featured IPA member
At the age of fifteen, Frédéric Moutoussamy his first steps in photography, first as an assistant photographer in the studio H.Baranger. For four years, he teaches architectural shooting techniques, aerial and discovers the magic of the film laboratory. Around 1980 meetings bring Frédéric to dive into the world of media. For almost ten years, working for press groups. After these years, tired eye, the cover on the lens and body in the closet, Frederic decides to return to the calm of photo labs. It is now for Frédéric give life to images… Read More
Rossano Ross Rinaldi – Featured IPA member
Rossano Rinaldi was born in the late 60's growing up in his father's photo studio, where he spends most of his childhood, among negatives, cameras, lights and fixing developers. He inherits the passion and a bit of his father's talent, who involves him as an assistant in the photo shootings once he is 14 years old. At the age of 19 he starts working with the video camera and he films in Super VHS about 150 events, among which weddings, confirmations, parties, patiently editing them with video recorders and audio mixers. The… Read More
Giò Lo Conti – Featured IPA member
So many years, perhaps too many, have passed since in a remote village in Italy, Bivona, Sicily I started taking pictures using for some time an Agfa Silette. Then, I bought an Alpa 10d, a fine camera, although awkward and slow to use. Then as now I am convinced that it is not the camera that makes a person a good photographer, but it is certain that the creative or technical perfection simply needs the right tools. Standard lens have been joined by a 28 Angénieux and a 100 Kinoptik: incomparable performance… Read More
Giles Hugo – Featured IPA member
I always loved art. My mother, an architect and fine portrait artist, took me sketching, learning composition and colour theory. She also had a collection of books with large colour plates — including Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Lautrec, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas, Modigliani, Michelangelo, Cezanne and Goya. I spent hours just gazing — and not just at the nudes — a great source of wonder. Photography began for me in 1968, when I was 18, shooting with a Canon range-finder, mostly B&W and occasional slide film, when affordable. I am entirely self-taught, having learnt… Read More
Lora Woods – Featured IPA member
Hello everyone: What an honor to share a bit of myself with you. Photography is a relatively new pursuit of mine and I feel lucky to be inspired every day by your gorgeous photos on IPA. I was raised in upstate New York in the Catskill Mountains where I left my childhood heart and then, further north near Buffalo. I had a tough beginning, losing my father to cancer when I was 13. I threw myself into academics and the theatre. To this day, I take delight in learning anything and everything…. Read More
James R. Lemon – Featured IPA member
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Mary Mackey is the author of six collections of poetry and thirteen novels, including New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers. Her books have been translated into twelve foreign languages and over a million and a half have been sold in hard copy. This spring, nine of her novels and her latest collection of poetry Sugar Zone were simultaneously re-released as Kindle e-books. By the end of the summer they will be available on Nook, Kobo, iPad, and Android. We are going to talk to Mary today about how she got these books back into print and what her experience has been.
Andy: Nine of your novels and Sugar Zone, your most recent collection of poetry, were recently published as e-books. How did this happen?
Mary: The short version is that my agent Barbara Lowenstein first negotiated two deals: one with Amazon.com, which publishes Kindle books, and another with Vook, which publishes e-books in the Epub format on all other platforms. She could only do this because she had retained my electronic rights when the books were originally sold to traditional publishing houses. The moral of this story is that every writer needs a great agent to draw up contracts and make deals with publishers.
Andy: How did you get your books into Kindle and other e-book formats? Did you do it yourself?
Mary: No, thank heavens, I didn't have to. Barbara's assistants worked with me for several months to get the files ready, and then Amazon did the actual conversion. I had to proofread everything to catch errors and make sure nothing was left out.
Andy: Were most of these books out of print before they were published as e-books?
Mary: Yes, it was a kind of resurrection. Even A Grand Passion, my novel about ballet which made The New York Times bestseller list had been hard to get. But the strangest experience was having my first novel Immersion available again after being out of print for 38 years. Shameless Hussy Press had published about 1000 copies, but very few were still available and those were so expensive I could rarely afford to buy one for myself. Then, bang. Immersion came out as an e-book, and suddenly people who would never have stumbled on it in a bookstore were buying it.
Andy: How are the books selling?
Mary: Very well. They've only been available for a short time, but every month at least a third more units have been sold than in the previous month. The first month Amazon sold over 700 copies. This approaches bestseller status for newly released e-books if you don't count blockbusters like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Andy: I understand that when most authors publish e-books, they only sell a few copies. To what do you attribute your success? How are people finding your books among the more than a million books available on Kindle and the ten million in other e-book formats?
Mary: We think there are several factors. First, I'm a writer with a well-established readership. I already have a reputation—fans, readers who have enjoyed my work in the past and are interested in anything new I might write. Some of my novels, like A Grand Passion or The Year The Horses Came have a cult following Second, I'm a current writer. I've had two novels and a collection of poetry published in the last five years. If people have read The Widow's War (Berkley Books, 2009), they might search for me by name and find my other books all priced at $2.99, and think: "Why not take a chance? I liked her other books, and if for some reason I don't like this one, it costs me less than a small Frappuccino at Starbucks." I mention the price because it's the third factor and vitally important. To sell a lot of e-books you need to set a price low enough that everyone can afford them.
Andy: How can authors who don't already have an established literary reputation help readers find their e-books?
Mary: The algorithm that Amazon uses to decide which books to recommend to readers is a secret, but certain things seem to help. For example, my books are highly rated. They've been given a lot of stars by people who liked them and been reviewed numerous times, mostly quite favorably. In addition, readers have tagged each novel with words they associate with it. For example, A Grand Passion is tagged with the words "ballet," "bestseller," "dance," "historical fiction," "Russia," "romance," "passion," etc. Getting good reader tags is important because they guide other readers to your books. Anyone publishing on Kindle should also establish and maintain an Amazon Central Author Page. I say this with guilt because I need to find time to update mine. Other things that help are getting both your name and information about your work out there on the web, getting reviewed, establishing an author presence on Facebook, using Twitter, blogging, and so forth.
Andy: Is there anything else an emerging author can do?
Mary: Yes, be patient. Don't publish your work as an e-book until it's polished. Readers enjoy good writing. They like to read books by authors who care about craft and structure and who can create crisp, fast-moving plots and interesting characters. If you're self-publishing and can afford it, hire an editor. Great editors are like great agents. They're invaluable. If your book is really good, sooner or later the word will get out.


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Jacqueline Schaalje
Photos by Pedro Ribeiro Simoes
I get asked this question fairly often. There are many different approaches to learning vocabulary, but in my view reading offers you one of the best ways to learn new words in a fun way.
1 Read and Read.
I know, you've heard this tip before from old boring me. Reading helps you to learn about the world and to learn English, but did you know that reading is also the best way to learn new vocabulary? According to research, reading is one of the most important ways to teach vocabulary. "Vocabulary can be acquired through incidental learning. Reading volume is very important in terms of long-term vocabulary development (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998)."
What does this mean? That when you read, you pick up words and their meaning in a way that you don't always notice consciously, but all the time when you're reading you're actually learning new words.
Research has also shown that when you know more words, you become a better reader. And when you're a better reader, you will be able to learn even more words, faster.
2 Make sure that you're reading something that is fun for you to read.
Make sure you're having fun while you read. If you're having fun, you will keep it up longer.
You see, in order for reading to have an effect, you need to read a lot. To make it fun means that your newspaper, book, ezine, magazine or computer game/software/app is easy to understand and contains stuff that interests you.
You won't feel a staggering difference in your vocabulary after you've finally finished one book. You need to make reading a regular habit in your life.
Some people (very strange people!!) don't like reading books. That's fine, but you need to find something else that you like to read. Maybe you're into bicycles or cooking or surfboards or whatever other hobby you have. In that case, check out websites that talk about these hobbies.
But: only read English websites!
3 Decide what kind of vocabulary you want to acquire.
If you need academic vocabulary, it doesn't make sense if you avidly start to check out celebrity pictures in Now Magazine. Although you might some good words in a gossip glossy too.
But next to your gossip magazine you'll need to read a book or magazine about the subject that you want to practise your vocabulary in.
For instance, you're studying towards a psychology degree and you want to know more psychology words. You might want to check out a psychology magazine. It doesn't have to be a (difficult) academic journal. Popular psychology magazines often use the same vocabulary but in everyday English, which make them much more fun to read.
Popular Magazines
There are many popular science magazines on the market.
I read New Scientist, which is quite entertaining. I use it for some of my students too. If you wait one week, you can read the articles from the past week for free! You only need to register your name and email.
Many other magazines are free online too, or at least part of the magazine.
Subscriptions aren't expensive, by the way. The big magazines send issues all over the world and the price will be very reasonable. It's even cheaper if you buy the electronic version for tablet or telephone.
If it's still too expensive for you, ask your boss at work whether they can take a subscription to a magazine that you want to read. You can give them reasons for this: you need this to talk to the clients about it, or so that you can keep up with things that can help you with your job.
You can also download magazines illegally (but free of course) from various websites. Or have a look in your local library.
4 Don't Learn Words, Learn Sentences
Learning individual words is nice, because unless you're a genius you'll often forget them as soon as you've learned them.
On average, you need to use/hear/read a new word 13 to 14 times before you remember it.
This is why reading is so important to acquire new vocabulary. If you read about a certain subject, the words that are typically used in talking about this subject keep coming back.
You should look up those words in a dictionary to make sure you understand what they mean.
5 Make Good Use of your English Teacher
You can make sure you use new words when you take lessons with an English teacher. This is a good way to practise speaking (and grammar).
According to the research, students learn new words more effectively when they practise speaking with those words and answer questions using the new words.
You can ask your teacher to train you in a certain subject that you want to know the words of. It's even better if you do a few lessons about the same subject, so you repeat the words words you've learned throughout those lessons.
6 Free Lessons with Friends
You can get yourself free lessons (free fun and conversations) if you find English-speaking friends on the internet.
I think most of the friends on my English with a Smile Facebook page will be delighted to hear from you. And the same with some lovely people on the Forum. Try it, don't be shy!
If you'd rather speak with a native English-speaking person, try one of the websites that we recommended in an earlier Newsletter (published here on the blog:).
Find a Fan Page on Facebook
Another way to meet English native speakers is by becoming a friend or a fan of an English Facebook page. It can also be another website that has a forum, but Facebook is really easy to make friends on.
First follow the page or website a little bit, until you understand what is going on. After that, you can make comments on statuses that the page publishes. If you're interested in being friends with a particular person who seems interesting to you, befriend them and then you can message them with a friendly "Hi, how are you?."
7 Is Watching TV or Movies Good for Increasing Vocabulary?
What about watching TV or movies, is that good for learning vocabulary? Yes, it can be.
However it won't work for everybody, because many people like to read the word that they hear because that helps them to remember it.
If you like watching something, I recommend that you watch TED.com where you can turn on the subtitles or the transcript (in English only!) or watch a movie on DVD where you turn on the English subtitles.
What's Better: a Documentary or a Movie?
You will learn more words from watching a documentary than from watching a Hollywood movie. Unless the movie is at an intellectually high level, the vocabulary in standard movies is much more limited than in a good documentary. The reason is that people in everyday conversation don't use that many different words.
Hope you found these ideas useful. If you have comments on this article or you have some golden tips for learning vocabulary, by all means let us know!


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The title of this article is a little misleading, as those of you who read my posts, follow me on Twitter or know me in person will know that I love Microsoft. Windows Phone is my phone platform of choice, I would never consider using anything but a Windows computer, and the thing that I want most in the world right now is a 15.6″ one of these. But even with all the love I bear for the love-child of Ballmer and Gates, there are a large number of things about them which annoy me.
The first and foremost of these annoyances is with Zune. As a Windows Phone user, I am forced to use Zune in order to update, add music and video to and do a large number of other things to, my phone. This is fine, I can add and take away music to and from my phone quickly and easily, and updates will automatically commence if they are available. But when I got my HP Pavilion dv7 with Beats Audio, I began to play music through my laptop, whereas previously I had been using speakers connected to my phone. It soon dawned upon me that Zune, a beautiful piece of software, is one of the buggiest pieces of crap since Windows Media Player. Quite often while playing music, the song will randomly pause, move to a different point or just skip altogether, and on occasion I have closed Zune to find that the song that was playing doesn't stop playing, much to my teacher's dismay. When this is Skrillex, chemistry lessons can be quite awkward. What the hell is up with that? A company whom incorporated software into its very name can't be bothered or is unable to iron out the bugs in their music software. Even iTunes, something which is essentially designed to work on a different operating system and much maligned on Windows, is nowhere near as buggy. This being said, with the Zune name being dumped, and the software being incorporated into the OS, I surely hope that for Windows 8's sake that at least some of the bigger glitches will be ironed out.
And secondly, what is the point in Windows Media Player any more? The whole thing is utter crap and nobody in their right mind would ever use it. I mean seriously, software that causes computers to blue-screen (I speak through personal experience) through use is not right in any way. And if any person out there does use this utter piece of crap, please explain to me in the comments below why you would put yourself through it. Please.
My final point is the most obvious one. Internet Explorer. This is in every way the single most hated piece of software out there. It is crap, it crashes, freezes and is only there for sane people to download either Firefox or Chrome. And, to make matters worse, you have to have specific permission from Microsoft to be able to uninstall the software. Of course, you can do what both I and Xavier (our EIC) have done and bury it deep within our program files, but it will always be there, taunting you with the possibility that you may one day, have to use it.
So those are the main reasons that Microsoft pisses off even myself, a true Microsoft fanboy. Despite the wonders of things like the Arc Touch Mouse, SkyDrive and Windows Phone, Microsoft isn't perfect, but by ironing out the bugs and listening to consumers, they could get pretty close.


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As the challenge says. I want you to make Okami ecards.
Okami is a good game in my opinion and I would like to see more of it around.
Try your hardest - Do not just take an image and put text on it.
Link original image - I want to see the changes.
3 entries per person.
I'll update this if I want to give prizes.