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I am convinced that books are the ultimate source of information. It is because of books that we come to know about the nuances of the worlds around us. There's a world of science that teaches us to distinguish between different textures. There's a world of art that makes our senses react. We gather information to learn how to respond to a particular situation. Individual differences may change the response but basic reactions are almost the same. Books and other sources of information add to our knowledge. We keep piling up this knowledge and believe that we have learnt all. Here lies my question, an extension to my article on 'Where India Lagged'.
Rote Learning – Not a Solution
School education, especially in India, stresses on gaining knowledge by memorising loads of books. There's a little difference between learning and memorizing if you ask our schools. Students are aware that their grades are completely dependent on how good their memorizing power is. Sad. A bright student who doesn't believe in rote learning has to accept poor grades. On the other hand, an average student with excellent rote power excels in academics. Irony. As a result of the faulty education system, students passed out of the schools with flying colours do not know how to operate simple apparatus like Vernier Callipers and Screw Gauge! When these students enter institutions for higher education, their grasping power further slows down. Result?
Most of the times, Indian students can't compete with students from Western countries.
Vicious Cycle Of Mediocrity
Knowledge without practical application fails at one point or the other. We should be prepared to put our knowledge into action. Without action, our knowledge is meaningless. I read somewhere that India has to cater to the education of millions of people. The country tries to impart basic information (read bookish) to most of the people. Not a very rich country as India is, it can't provide practical experience to everyone that comes with the unavoidable expenditure. If this is the severity of the situation, we will never be able to come out of the vicious cycle of mediocrity.
Where's the Respect for the Skilled
After Independence, in the process of developing, Indians lost respect for skilled people. People who work with hands are considered inferior to those who read and write. Shocking but true. You will be surprised to know that we prepare lakhs of engineers every year. Many of them, about 80-90% change their stream after graduation. Why?
Our engineering graduates are well-read people with little practical knowledge. The reason being the same; our grades largely depend on theoretical knowledge. Practical experience is required but only a formal certificate is enough to satisfy the authorities or the companies that hire them. After all, this is India.
These incomplete proofs of experience fall flat when our students get a chance to compete with the students of top foreign universities. Failure in the education system leads to many failed lives. Pause.
Analysing Application of Knowledge
*We are aware that acquiring knowledge is quite necessary for us. We can't survive the life-game if we lack knowledge. Another question pops up.
Is the application of knowledge as important as knowledge? When we talk about skill-based training, it can't be provided in confined places. Say, nobody can teach 'how to swim' within four walls of a classroom. Same is the case with many more things.
* Heard somewhere that a person with a lot of knowledge but no practical experience is like a library whose doors are closed. Convinced! The application complements the knowledge and strengthens the concepts learnt. Moreover, the interest in the subject increases once we are clear about the practical aspects.
* By practising what we gain as knowledge, we move towards perfection. It is true that the human brain always works for perfect results. One gets better results by bringing knowledge to practice. It boosts confidence as well as raises happiness level .
We strive to bring happiness in our lives and this is going to be one impeccable effort:)
This article is written for the prompt 'Knowing is not enough; we must apply' as a part of the #WeeklyBlogHop hosted by Alpana http://www.mothersgurukul.com and Neha Sharma http://www.growingwithnemit.com. I would like to thank Pragnya of https://lifewithmypenguin.com/ for introducing me to this blog hop and would further like to introduce Kushal of http://www.cafewhiz.com to share her take on the prompt.


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Transform frozen dough into lemony sticky buns
Maybe it's the bright color. Maybe it's the fresh, vibrant taste. Whatever the reason, Easter has become inextricably linked to lemon (and chocolate, of course).
So we decided to do a refresh of the conventional breakfast cinnamon bun, infusing it with lemony goodness three different ways.
We start by replacing the cinnamon sugar with sugar spiked with lemon zest. Then we fill the buns with purchased lemon curd (a decadent, tangy treat that also is good simply spread onto toast). Finally, we drizzle our finished buns with icing made from lemon juice and powdered sugar.
The result is vibrantly lemony, but not mouth-puckering. And to keep things fast and easy, we use purchased frozen bread dough as the base for the buns. All you need to do is thaw the dough, roll it out, fill it, then roll it back up before slicing and baking. These buns are the perfect way to start Easter — or any spring — morning.
Sticky Lemony Breakfast Buns
You'll find loaves of frozen bread dough in the grocer's freezer section. Jars of lemon curd are alongside the jams and jellies.
Start to finish: 1 1/2 hours (30 minutes active)
Servings: 15
1/4 cup granulated sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
Two 1-pound loaves frozen white bread dough, thawed and allowed to come to room temperature
1/2 cup lemon curd
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
Line a baking sheet with kitchen parchment.
In a small bowl, stir together the granulated sugar and lemon zest. Sprinkle half of it on a clean counter.
Place 1 loaf of the dough on the sprinkled counter, then roll it out to form an 8-by-16-inch rectangle (with one of the long sides facing you). Sprinkle the dough with the remaining sugar, then gently run the roller over the dough to ensure the sugar mixture sticks. Roll out the second loaf to the same size, then set it on top of the first.
Spread the lemon curd over the dough, leaving a 1-inch strip bare along the long edge farther from you. Starting at the edge closest to you, roll the dough up into a log. Pinch the dough along the seam to seal it.
Using a sharp knife, slice the roll into 1-inch-wide rounds. Arrange the rounds on the prepared baking sheet, then cover loosely with plastic wrap. Allow to rise for 30 minutes, or until puffy. After 15 minutes, heat the oven to 350 F.
When the buns have risen, uncover and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through. The internal temperature of the buns should read 185 F. Allow to cool slightly before icing.
To make the icing, in a small bowl whisk together the lemon juice and powdered sugar. Drizzle over the tops of the buns. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Nutrition information per serving: 250 calories; 50 calories from fat (20 percent of total calories); 6 g fat (1.5 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 25 mg cholesterol; 44 g carbohydrate; 2 g fiber; 17 g sugar; 7 g protein; 370 mg sodium.

subset: commoncrawl


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Boeing plans to carry on with 787 production
Boeing plans to keep building its flagship jetliner while engineers try to solve battery problems that have grounded most of the 787 fleet.
It's not clear how long the investigation - or the fix - will take. But it won't be cheap for Boeing or for the airlines that had sought the prestige of flying the world's most sophisticated passenger plane - a marvel of aviation technology that right now can't even leave the tarmac, let alone cross continents and oceans.
Boeing's newest jet was grounded worldwide Thursday after one suffered a battery fire and another had to make an emergency landing because pilots smelled something burning. Airlines and regulators canceled all Dreamliner flights.
The groundings were a sign of how seriously regulators take any threat of an in-flight fire. National Transportation Safety Board photos of the battery container from a Jan. 7 fire on a Japan Airlines plane showed a blue box with black smudges and blackened wiring and batteries inside.
LOT Polish Airlines suffered the highest-profile embarrassment of any of Boeing's customers late Wednesday, just as it was showing off new service between Warsaw and Chicago.
The plane's captain learned of the FAA grounding order while making the inaugural flight from Warsaw to Chicago. The airline canceled the return trip - and a ceremony at O'Hare Airport that was to include airline officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Passengers who were eager to ride the airline's first flight back to Warsaw had to look for a hotel room instead.
Bartek Pshyborvski was supposed to be on the canceled flight to Warsaw. Quoting from the sign behind the LOT ticket counter, he said: "It's funny to read 'First European airline to fly Boeing 787 Dreamliner.' Oops. Big oops."
The airline said Thursday that it may seek compensation from Boeing for the grounding of its two 787s.
Boeing currently builds five 787s per month. It hasn't delivered any since Jan. 3, before the plane started experiencing a spate of problems that also included fuel and oil leaks, a cracked cockpit window and a computer glitch that erroneously indicated a brake problem.
Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter said no deliveries had been scheduled during that time. She declined to discuss planned deliveries.
Regardless of delivery schedules, it's cheaper for Boeing to build the planes and then go back and fix them than it is to shut down production.
All Nippon Airways said its 18th 787 is due at the end of this month, but it won't take delivery until 787 flights resume.
The FAA grounding was a stunning setback for Boeing. The plane has been in the works since 2003, a time when modern jetliners were built of aluminum and powered many of their internal systems with incoming air from outside the plane. Boeing engineers figured they could get better fuel efficiency by making the plane out of carbon composites, a sort of lightweight, high-tech plastic. And they used electricity rather than air because it saved space and weight.
The 787 was tested extensively both before and after its first test flight in 2009. The FAA said its technical experts logged 200,000 hours testing and reviewing the plane's design before it was certified in August 2011.
Six test planes ran up some 4,645 flight hours. About a quarter of those hours were flown by FAA flight test crews, the agency said in 2011.
New 787s sell for more than $200 million at list prices. For that kind of money, airline customers get warranties and in some cases a promise from Boeing to cover costs if the plane is grounded.
Those agreements vary from customer to customer, so it wasn't known how much the grounding would cost Boeing. Analysts pointed out that there are few airplanes in the size range of the 787 that are available to be leased to replace 787s.
Even analysts who are most critical of Boeing believe that the company will eventually resolve the problems and the 787 will deliver on its promise.
Still, Jefferies analyst Howard A. Rubel estimated that re-working the jet to fix electrical problems could cost anywhere from $250 million to $625 million. He emphasized Thursday in a note to investors that little is known about what it will take to fix the problem. He also noted that some of Boeing's suppliers may bear some of that cost.
Fitch Ratings said the grounding will hurt Boeing's profits and cash flow, "but the company has the financial strength to withstand negative developments in the program."
Barclays analyst Carter Copeland predicted "relatively limited" impact on Boeing's finances or production. That might change if the groundings last for weeks or months, "but this isn't yet what we expect," he wrote Thursday in a note.
Payments to airlines for lost revenue are possible but not likely to be big enough to hurt the company, he added.
The grounding will force airlines to swap in a different plane - often, a Boeing 767 or 777. Even though all of those planes are built to carry a large number of passengers on long-haul flights, their seating layouts are different, and last-minute plane switches are a headache for airlines and passengers. As long as they don't have to cancel a flight, though, airlines will still collect their money from the ticket.
For most airlines, the 787 is a minor part of their fleet. United has six of them, versus 151 other large planes that it uses for international flights. ANA's 17 787s are a bigger portion of its fleet of roughly 120 big planes.
Even if Boeing doesn't have to pay airlines cash because of the problems, it may have to offer services to mollify airlines, such as discounted or free pilot training or discounted spare parts, said Carter Leake, an analyst at BB&T who downgraded Boeing quickly after the plane began having trouble.
Those services are worth something to the airline but don't show up as a cash expense for Boeing.
Despite the setbacks, he predicted that future orders would not be hurt. The 787 is the best plane in the 200- to 225-passenger range, he said.
Boeing has said it's 20 percent more fuel efficient than planes of a similar size. The competing Airbus A350 isn't scheduled to make its first test flight until later this year.
"The airlines don't have a choice. That's the truth," Leake said. "The airplane is unique."
The latest problems come just as Boeing is in contract talks with its unionized engineers. On Thursday, the company said it had made its "best-and-final" contract offer, saying it agreed with the union's approach to extend the terms of the previous contract for current employees.
But the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace indicated it would reject Boeing's offer because the union believes it would put retirement benefits at risk.
"Boeing's actions reiterate the company's growing disrespect for the engineers and technical workers who are essential to working issues and restoring confidence in the 787," the union said.
Because the 787 problems have arisen this late in the process, they could lead authorities to conclude that even tougher testing is needed.
"If the authorities get more stringent and take more time to certify planes, the first to be affected is going to be Airbus, which happens to be the next major company launching a plane," said Sandy Morris, an aerospace analyst with Jefferies in London.
Boeing Co. shares rose 92 cents Thursday to close at $75.26. Before the first battery problem arose, they closed Jan. 4 at $77.69.
Associated Press writers Carl Piovano in London and Greg Keller in Blagnac, France, contributed to this report, as well as video freelancer Rob Hess in Chicago.


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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is accusing Google and other U.S. tech companies of rigging search results about him "so that almost all stories & news is BAD" — and though he is offering no evidence, a top adviser says the White House is "taking a look" at whether Google should face federal regulation.
Google is pushing back sharply, saying Trump's claim simply wasn't true: "We never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."
The president's tweets Tuesday echoed his familiar attacks on the news media — and a conservative talking point that California-based tech companies run by CEOs with liberal leanings don't give equal weight to opposing political viewpoints. They also revealed anew his deep-seated frustration over not getting the credit he believes he deserves.
The president, who has said he runs on little sleep, jumped onto Twitter before dawn Tuesday to rehash his recent complaints about alleged suppression of conservative voices and positive news about him.
He followed that up with vague threats in Oval Office comments.
"I think Google has really taken advantage of a lot of people, and I think that's a very serious thing. That's a very serious charge," Trump said, adding that Google, Twitter, Facebook and others "better be careful, because you can't do that to people."
Trump claimed that "we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. ... So I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they're really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful."
Larry Kudlow, the president's top economic adviser, told reporters later that the White House is "taking a look" at whether Google searches should be subject to some government regulation. Trump often points proudly to his cutting of government regulations as a spur for economic gains.
In his tweets, Trump said — without offering evidence — that "Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?"
He added, again with no evidence, that "96% of results on "Trump News" are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous."
A search query Tuesday morning, several hours after the president tweeted, showed stories from CNN, ABC News, Fox News and the MarketWatch business site, among others. A similar search later in the day for "Trump" had Fox News, the president's favored cable network, among the top results.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, said its aim is to make sure its search engine users quickly get the most relevant answers.
"Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology," the company said in a statement. "Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users' queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."
Experts suggested that Trump's comments showed a misunderstanding of how search engines work.
Google searches aim to surface the most relevant pages in response to a user's query, even before he or she finishes typing. The answers that appear first are the ones Google's formulas, with some help from human content reviewers, deem to be the most authoritative, informative and relevant. Many factors help decide the initial results, including how much time people spend on a page, how many other pages link to it, how well it's designed and more.
Trump and some supporters have long accused Silicon Valley companies of being biased against them. While some company executives may lean liberal, they have long asserted that their products are without political bias.
Media analyst Ken Doctor said it doesn't make sense for mass-market businesses like Google to lean either way politically. He characterized the complaints as a "sign of our times," adding that, years ago, if the head of General Electric was supporting a Republican candidate, people who disagreed wouldn't then go out and boycott GE products.
"The temperature has risen on this," Doctor said.
Steven Andres, who teaches about management information systems at San Diego State University, said people often assume that if you give a computer the same inputs, no matter where you are, that you "get the same outputs."
But it doesn't work that way, he said. "You're seeing different things every moment of the day and the algorithms are always trying to change the results."
Trump didn't say what he based his tweets on. But conservative activist Paula Boylard had said in a weekend blog post that she found "blatant prioritization of left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets" in search results.
Boylard based her judgments on the political leanings of media outlets on a list by Sharyl Attkisson, host of Sinclair Television's "Full Measure" and author of "The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, Think, and How You Vote." Sinclair is a significant outlet for conservative views.
Trump began complaining about the issue earlier this month as social media companies moved to ban right-wing "Infowars" conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from their platforms. The president also argues regularly — and falsely — that the news media avoid writing positive stories about him and his administration.
Jones is being sued for saying the 2012 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was staged. Jones has since said he believes the shooting did occur and has argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because he was acting as a journalist.
Trump has praised Jones' "amazing" reputation.
The issue is also of concern on Capitol Hill, where the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., recently announced that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is scheduled to testify before the panel on Sept. 5 about the platform's algorithms and content monitoring.


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Pottstown, PA – The greater Pottstown community is cordially invited to the opening of ArtFusion 19464's latest educational exhibit. Rainbow Crow and Other Stories will feature artwork inspired by Native American stories. Each participating artist will have created a piece in their favorite medium, which range from clay to recycled cans to traditional acrylic and oil paints. The show runs September 20 through November 1, 2014.
The private reception is Friday, September 19 from 6-8pm. Tickets are only $20 and include wine, beverages, and delicious appetizers from Bause Catering. Native American singer-songwriter Terry Strongheart will be performing. Guests will be the first to see the incredible pieces imagined by talented local artists.
This exhibit is generously sponsored by The Foundation for Pottstown Education; Adam J. Sager and Family; David Garner, Attorney at Law; Heartland Abstract; J. H. White Financial Services; Judy and Jack Lupas; and Main Line Financial Advisors.
This show will be the fourth in ArtFusion's popular educational exhibit series. Previous topics included the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and environmental issues involving recycling and recycled art.
ArtFusion 19464 is a 501(c)3 non-profit community art center located at 254 E. High St. in downtown Pottstown. The school offers day, evening and weekend classes to all ages. The goal of these classes is to help students develop their creative skills through self-expression and independence. ArtFusion's gallery hosts rotating shows featuring local artists. The gallery also sells handcrafted, one-of-a-kind gift items. The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 10am-5pm and Saturday 10am-3pm. The gallery is closed Sunday and Monday.


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It's always fascinating to see the many ways people can interpret a proposition. So what did the participants in the 55th Wine Blogging Wednesday make of this idea of confronting North vs South?
From Michigan Riesling to Tasmania Pinot Noir, from Spanish Garnacha to Tennessee Chambourcin, there sure were a lot of possible pairings (and threesomes, and foursomes) put together by the 33 participants who took up the challenge. Three of those, I'm happy to say, were first timers in the world of Wine Blogging Wednesday (this one, this one and this one), showing how the concept is still going strong and breaking new ground.
A few stats
Two thirds of the WBW 55 bloggers placed their line of comparison over the equator, while the others kept distances closer or… cheated somewhat.
Twenty-two of the comparisons were between red wines, nine between white wines, two between dessert wines, one between sakes (!) and one between… no wines at all, even though that post was right on the money, theme-wise. I know that adds up to 34, but that is because one of the bloggers did both white and red.
In total, fourteen different grape varieties were tasted (fifteen, if you add the rice from the sake). As for the most popular varieties, six of the tastings involved syrah/shiraz, while five went for merlot, and three each for cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc.
So what is North? And what is South?
Throughout the tastings, the question kept popping up about whether the warmer climate would match with the more southerly location.
Simple answer? Not one bit.
OK, sometimes it did. Not surprisingly, Rob Bralow's Michigan Riesling was crisper than the highly aromatic, richer Aussie Riesling. The higher acidity of the Loire cabernet franc picked at the Cab Franco Files confirmed it as the northern wine to the Mendocino wine it faced off with. And the Okanagan merlot picked by Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson certainly didn't go to the jammy lengths that its Australian companion did.
Without counting the fact that in the Southern hemisphere, North is where the "South" is, the tasting notes reveal that the heat vs geography equation is much more complicated than just pointing a compass.
Chile, depending on the grape and on the Northern vineyard it was being compared to, played both North and South to the other wines. Sometimes it felt warmer, sometimes cooler. In California pinot noirs, the Anderson Valley pinot used for my trial run felt more southerly than its southern counterpart, and the same thing happened with Robbin Gheesling's fog-cooled Carneros pinot, compared with the warmer-feeling Russian River, from further up North. BrixChick Liza's chardonnays also were somewhat contrarian, with the Sonoma playing North to its South African counterpart, even though a quick look at a map will show you that The Cape is much closer to the pole than Sonoma. (And then again, the South African shiraz picked for the Wine Peeps tasting was the "northern" wine, compared to their Australian and Californian counterparts.)
There paradoxes involved, even, the most telling of which was probably Good Grape's ice wine, that most northerly of winemaking techniques, which resulted in highly concentrated tropical fruit flavors.
I have to say that in several cases, I wish that people would have pushed the argument further, in this North vs South comparison, to go beyond just two parallel tasting notes, into the characteristics that define a "southern" wine from a "northern" wine. Still, the whole set of tastings provides an interesting range of examples of contrasting climates and their effects on grapes and wines. Something which brings us straight back to the question of terroir, since the wines involved, always from the same variety, often showed tremendous differences in taste and feel.
So in the end, in the context of this Wine Blogging Wednesday, North and South appeared more as a concept we apply to the wines we taste than as a strictly geographical concept. The real question is climate, rather than strict geography.
The tastings
Here is a full list of the individual posts that were all part of this North vs South confrontation, separated in three categories (Two Hemispheres, Single Hemisphere, and Uncharted), and organized from whites to reds to dessert wines.
This is a tremendous amount of work. All together, these posts amount to a small book. A wealth of information for everyone. Thanks to all the bloggers who participated. It was a great pleasure to bring this passionate, opinionated crowd together through Wine Blogging Wednesday.
Two Hemispheres
- Andrew Barrow at Spittoon.biz went with chenin blanc, in its home vineyards of the Loire and in its South African adoptive home, the latter going tropical, while the Vouvray showed a more mineral side of this versatile grape.
- Rob Bralow, at the Wine Post, liked the Château Grand Traverse Riesling 2007, out of Michigan, on its own, but quite liked the Thorn Clarke Terra Barossa Eden Valley Single Vineyard Riesling 2008 with spicy chinese food.
- First timer Neil Maiers, at Wine Expedition, went for sauvignon blanc, comparing Napa with Chile, and finding, in this case, that the lighter, more mineral one (Source, from Napa), was better with food.
- Debbie Lessner-Gioquindo, aka the Hudson Valley Wine Goddess, went for chardonnay, with one wine from the Finger Lakes, one from the Hudson Valley (Rhinecliff, which I've actually tasted before), and one from South Africa.
- Both BrixChicks went to work for WBW 55, with Liza focusing on unoaked chardonnay from Sonoma (Windsor Oaks) and Australia (West Cape Howe). "Russian River in the house!", she exclaimed, showing her preference for the northern candidate.
- What does a Wannabe Wino want with wines from North and South? Viognier, that's what. Two rather hot-tempered versions, with a rare viognier from Chile (Secreto) and a Twisted one from Calaveras County.
- Tim, from Cheap Wine Ratings, also went with sauvignon blanc from California and Chile, with the Hess hailing from Lake County and facing off against the Chilean Errazuriz. But he didn't stop there, and actually compared four merlots from Cali and Chile. In this case, Chile showed up jammier.
- Although Tasmania is one of the coolest wine region in Australia, John, at Anything Wine, found its pinot noir to be darker and more powerful than the bottle he also picked up from Washington State.
- Gwendolyn, the Wine Predator (don't worry, she doesn't bite), was the first to submit a post about syrah and shiraz, this WBW's most popular grape.She also provided a food match with lamb.
- Matt is always looking to have A good time with wine, and his syrahs from Washington and Chile seemed to provide plenty for both him and his wine – there's even a video about the whole thing.
- The Wine Peeps don't do things halfway. They even do twice as much as everybody else, tasting four syrahs/shiraz from California, Washington, Australia and South Africa, with the rich syrah from Santa Barbara coming out on top for them.
- BrixChick Xandria was the only one in the trans-hemisphere group to pick a syrah from its home country, the Rhône. She matched up a Crozes-Hermitage with a Chilean syrah from the hot Cachapoal region.
- Dave Honig, at 2 Days per bottle, took a moment to decide whether or not he would join in with WBW 55, and finally compared grenaches from Spain and Australia, with the Spanish one, priced under 10$, beating the 25$ Aussie wine.
- Also on the Grenache front was the Winebard, a newcomer to blogging and a first timer for WBW, who similarly went for Spain and Australia, the Aussie showing as more fruit-forward. Keep going, Winebard!
- Ben MacPhee Sigurdson, wine columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press, posted a video entry, where he compared an older Okanagan merlot with a younger Australian wine.
- On the Drink What You Like blog, you'll find a very natural comparison: Malbec from its home turf in Cahors, and from its successful adoptive home in Argentina. Argentina showed as too sweet to our blogger – although his coworkers liked it better than the tightly wound Cahors.
- Robert Dwyer, at Wellesley Wine Press, blind tasted a cabernet sauvignon from Chile and a cabernet sauvignon from Napa, having no problem recognizing the latter, and liking it better overall.
- Victoria at Read Me, Drink Me, for her very first Wine Blogging Wednesday, went with two cabs: Souverain, from Napa, and Wolf Blass Gray Label from the Coonawarra, in Australia. And surprise, surprise, the fruit bomb was, she says, the Napa Cab, rather than the Australian.
- More cabernet sauvignon came from the Wine Brat at the Luscious Lushes – four bottles, actually, from Washington, Napa, and two different parts of Chile. Great tasting notes for each wine.
- Hosting a whole Wine Blogging Wednesday dedicated to dessert wines, Joe Roberts, the 1 Wine Dude, still had his sweet tooth out, comparing an ice wine from the Niagara with a late harvest from Chile, both from the wonderful riesling grape, one of the very best varieties for dessert wines.
Single Hemisphere
- A Flowery Song is the name for Paul Arthur's blog, and the place where he posted about our second Michigan wine, a sauvignon blanc, with its counterpart from Rutherford, in Napa, even using comparative charts to do his full analysis.
- Mike is a guy from Wicker Park, in Chicago, and being a neighborhood kind of guy (his blog is the Wicker Parker), he pulled chardonnay from two nearby regions of Burgundy, Chablis and Saint-Aubin, with the Saint-Aubin showing a more southerly character, in line with geography.
- Carneros is south of Sonoma, points out Robbin, on her Vineyard Adventures blog, yet it's the pinot noir from the Russian River, in Sonoma, that feels warmer and riper. Fog has more weight than latitude, in that part of the world.
- The Cabfrancophile at The Cab Franco files went, you guessed it, with cab franc, finding a little too much acidity in the Touraine wine, and too little acidity in the Mendocino cab franc. We hope he finds one that is just right.
- Like the Cab Franco Files, Remy at The Wine Case (that's me) went for cab franc, but only a few miles apart, in the Touraine region, actually finding a bit more heat on the southern end of this 10-mile drive.
- At Good Wine Under 20$, Dr Debs found two solid Quality Price Ratios from Washington State and the Napa Valley, with the Washington merlot showing more "hot" chocolate flavors and the Napa merlot showing more "cool" herbal notes. In both cases, she said, the wines were worth checking out "to convince any Merlot skeptic still having horrible flashbacks from the 90s that the grape is worth a second try".
- To find a different place for Syrah, the "Dr Strangelove of Wine" at Under the Grape Tree went to Sicily. Comparing the Planeta syrah with a Saint-Joseph from Domaine Faury, the Sicilian wine was found to be somewhat closer to California than to France.
- A special tip of the hat has to be given to Michelle Lentz, at My Wine Education, for thinking way outside the cabchard box and reviewing two Chambourcins, an interesting French hybrid grape. The comparison went a little unexpected, though, since a second look at the label revealed that the Tennessee wine was actually a dessert wine, which made it tough to compare to its dry, Niagara counterpart.
- Our other blogger with a (voluntary) sweet tooth was Jeff Lefevere, from Good Grape, who compared a vidal ice wine from the Niagara with an interesting late harvest blend (70% Chardonnay, 20% Gewürztraminer, and 10% Riesling) from Long Island.
Beyond the hemispheres, here are a few entries that stepped out of the ballpark somewhat, in their own opinionated, interesting ways.
- You won't be surprised that Catie, the Walla Walla Wine Woman, was extremely favorable to her home vines, giving high praise to the 2003 Forgeron Merlot. So much so, in fact, that she didn't quite get to that bottle from California…
- Jill, from Domaine 547, admitted to cheating a bit on her WBW entry, which is why I'm letting her hang out with the other "cheaters". Comparing Northern Rhône with Southern Rhône, she matched a Côte-Rôtie (100% syrah) with a 70% grenache Côtes-du-Rhône. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
- David McDuff, who hosted the 54th Wine Blogging Wednesday, actually didn't taste a wine for his Wine Blogging Wednesday 55 post. Instead, using his experience about Piedmont, he explains how a vineyard's exposure to the North or to the South influences the capacity to fully ripen the region's signature grape, nebbiolo, and give the full, complex flavor profile fans of the Piedmont seek with true passion.
- Richard, the Passionate Foodie, is mentioned here last, but certainly not least, as he demonstrates the superiority of northern daiginjo sake, thanks to a cooler growing and brewing season. Reading his tasting notes on sake makes me want to discover more about this underrated drink – underrated in North America, I mean.
Thanks again to everyone for these great worldwide travels. We'll see you next month with an Easter-ly theme: Kosher wines, according to the sneak preview Lenn Thompson, founder of the WBW, gave on Twitter a few days ago.


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(2012) Family (Disney) Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton, CJ Adams, Odeya Rush, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Rosemarie DeWitt, David Morse, Dianne Wiest, M. Emmett Walsh, Lois Smith, Common, Ron Livingston, James Rebhorn, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Directed by Peter Hedges
Raising children can be explained as an imperative drive programmed into our DNA. The urge to reproduce is part of our survival instinct – in this case, survival of the species. We are not always, however, able to reproduce in conventional ways. Sometimes we need a miracle.
Cindy (Garner) and Jim (Edgerton) Green need such a miracle. After years of trying everything to conceive a baby they've had to come to the hard realization that it wasn't going to happen. This is devastating to them both as it was one thing they both desperately wanted. So they grab a bottle of wine and write down all of the components that the fruit of their cohabitation would have had – a big heart, artistic talent (Picasso with a pencil), honest to a fault, and the sort of boy who could make an old man laugh but also score the winning goal.
They take these scraps of paper and bury them in a box in their garden. Lo and behold, as such movies are wont to do, a magic storm arises and lightning strikes. From out of the garden a young boy (Adams), covered in dirt, emerges. They are, of course, aghast and at first think he's some sort of runaway. But as he addresses them as Mom and Dad, they slowly realize that this is the perfect child they dreamed of.
Say you want about the good citizens of Stanleyville, Pencil Capital of the World, but this small town in the Heartland takes the sudden appearance of a child in their midst in stride. Amber alerts are for big city kids; why, the Greens say he's theirs so he must be. Of course Timothy (that's his name, after all – the only boy's name on the Greens' list of names – there are 53 girls names on there to give you an idea) has leaves growing out of his legs but he keeps those hidden. And he also has a tendency to turn his face to the sun and stretch, much like a plant. Me, I'd be looking for a pod somewhere.
However, Timothy isn't there to take over the planet. In fact, it's not quite certain what he's there for. He apparently is there to figure out if Cindy and Jim are decent parents and they appear to be, although they tell everyone repeatedly that they make a lot of mistakes. They're both under a lot of pressure though, particularly Jim. The pencil plant where he works, run by Franklin Crudstaff (Livingston), his father (Rebhorn) and his iceberg-cold Aunt Bernice (Wiest), is in danger of being shut down and layoffs are happening in waves.
Cindy works at the pencil museum which is run by Bernice, with whom Cindy doesn't get along well. Take You Kid to Work day is a recipe for disaster when you have a kid who's honest to a fault but that's not Timothy's doing so much.
Timothy is far more interested in wooing Joni Jerome (Rush), an outsider like himself who looks to be about five years older in the way of girls the same age. The two are both artistic, but in hidden ways and they bring out the best in each other. That lead to affection that is more than friendly. Still, Timothy has much to do and a limited time to do it in – because every bloom must one day fade to make way for the next bloom.
This was written by Ahmet Zappa, Dweezil's younger brother. It has the quirky element his dad would have appreciated, but it's much more mainstream than he would have liked. In fact, in a lot of ways, the story is pretty predictable which probably doesn't matter for the younger demographic of the target audience but their parents might not appreciate it as much.
The good thing is that the movie is well cast. Edgerton and Garner play like a sincere but somewhat inept couple who are in turns overprotective and at other times wanting their son to be his own man. These aren't perfect Ozzie and Harriet parents by any stretch of the imagination, which makes the movie far more accessible.
The story is told mostly as a flashback during an interview with an Adoption Agency official (Aghdashloo) who is determining if the Greens are ready for a child, so we know that Timothy is out of the picture in some way. Which way isn't clear, but it won't be hard to figure out.
The movie is frank about loss and grieving, and there are several scenes of pathos that might be a bit much for the really small children. The movie is frankly manipulative which I usually don't mind so much but I think that they could have been a little bit less formulaic about it.
I like the Midwestern charm here; the film seems to exist in a perpetual sunny autumn, a Hollywood Indian summer that allow for beautiful rainless days and harvest sunsets. It's beautiful to look at, and I'm a sucker for the fall anyway so my snide remarks about the seasons will remain unsaid.
This has the pitfalls and positives of the average 21st century family film. The elements of the supernatural harkens back to such Disney classics as Darby O'Gill and the Little People only with much better special effects. There's enough schmaltz to make an atheist choke and the inherent messages of accepting those who are different and never giving up no matter what the odds pass muster for Disney kid messages. Despite the fine performances from the adults and the fine chemistry between Adams and Rush, at the end of the day the movie is merely adequate and certainly fine if you want to take the family to a non-offensive family movie that isn't a blatant marketing ploy to sell toys and Happy Meals.
REASONS TO GO: Nice chemistry between Garner and Edgerton, and Adams and Rush. Very sweet in feeling. Doesn't shy away from pathos.
REASONS TO STAY: Feels manipulative. Not always true to its own internal logic.
FAMILY VALUES: There are a few bad words and some of the themes here might go over the heads of the very young.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The house used here was the same one where Halloween II was filmed.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/27/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 38% positive reviews. Metacritic: 48/100. The reviews are somewhat negative but more towards the mixed side.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Race to Witch Mountain
SOCCER LOVERS: Timothy shows off some pretty impressive moves in his moment of glory on the pitch.
NEXT: Burke and Hare


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Jackie Chan has officially passed on his torch as the #1 stunt fighting action star in Asia. And who has he passed this gigantic burden of fame and stardom onto? Why Jaycee Chan of course! With this lineage created and the dynasty struck, good things can only come from Jackie and Son. And this movie, Jacyee Chan's first debut on the big screen, Invisible Target promises great things from the son of a master.
In this cop vs bad guy film with a resonance of Police Story, Jaycee and fellow action stars Nicholas Tse and Shawn
Yue (the first name thing must be a sign of Chinese stardom) battle hand to hand and guns to guns with 7 of the most feared ex-military/con demons known in Shang Hai (or wherever this movie takes place. Bangkok?) After the intial heist of a armored truck that killed Carson Fong Yik Wei's (Shawn Yue) fiance, three detective/inspectors are hurled together from differing pasts and fighting/justice styles to band together for one stand against some of the worst crime China has seen.
Filled with corruption of the police force and some badass roundhouse kicks, this film promises actions scenes at an almost intermittent pace, mixed with a few car chases and explosions. I mean, come on, some guy is forced to eat bullets with a straight leg to the face. This movie delivers hard with at least a 35 minute lull between action scenes in one section. For you action fans out there, this may prove hard to move past, but all-in-all there are at least 4 action scenes that are worth checking out, most importantly the final battle. Through this entire 2 hour, 20 minute movie, a plot of intrigue unfolds among scenes of unnecessary violence.
As far as the good and bad things, nothing necessarily sticks out to me. Jaycee Chan, as far as Chinese and English acting, seems to excel in the former and it is yet to be seen if he excels in the latter. Hopefully he'll be given the chance. What's strange is that it seemed that Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan all gave children to star in this movie, following their very particular fighting styles. Amazing, if you ask me. Decent, yet semi-cheesy special effects and digital graphics, a decent foreign cast, and some fantastically orchestrated fight scenes. I give Benny Chan (relation?) and the whole crew of this movie a 7.3 out of 10.


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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'SF Pride' tag.
There's a brouhaha brewing in San Francisco. The Armory — home to legendary controversial fetish porn empire Kink.com — is to host an event to coincide with San Francisco Pride. The WE Party Prison Of Love is being billed as THE BIGGEST PRIDE PARTY … EVER.
The predictable format for the prison-themed discoteque includes chains, shackles, a dungeon, and likely a whole lot of improv domination roll play. The majority of the 3,000-strong crowd is expected to be gay men.
As a cisgender straight male, I tend not to have any opinions on gay culture worthy of public proclamation. But, a prison-themed rave does seem a little tacky, though. For San Francisco's trans-community, the Prison Of Love Party is far worse than tacky; it is an affront and a politically-clueless venture.
The Transgender Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project in San Francisco, in an open letter to San Francisco Pride at the Armory, points out that the prison industrial complex abuses transgendered people strategically and disproportionally.
The primary signatory is Miss Major, one of this years SF Pride Grand Marshals.
It reads:
This year at least three SF Pride grand marshals are trans women who have been directly affected by the Prison Industrial Complex. Chelsea Manning is currently incarcerated, Miss Major is previously incarcerated and was politicized at Attica just after the 1971 uprising, and Jewlyes Gutierrez was arrested for defending herself from bullies in her high school.
The prison industrial complex and the incarceration of generations of people of color, gender variant, trans people, and queer people is not a sexy trope to throw a play party around. It's not that we don't love sex, sex parties, sex workers, and kink. It's that we love it as much as we love justice, and are appalled by the casual use of the Prison Industrial Complex, which destroys the lives of millions of people and kills thousands every year, as a party theme.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In our own LGBTQI communities, incarceration and significant abuses perpetrated by the Prison Industrial Complex constitutes no less than a crisis. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, nearly 1 in 6 transgender people have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. Among Black transgender people, 47% have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These rates overwhelmingly reflect the experiences of transgender women and especially trans women of color, who are housed in men's prisons and face catastrophic rates of physical abuse, psychological terror, rape and sexual assault, and death. According to Just Detention International, 67% of LGBT prisoners reported being assaulted while in prison.
Not only is our queer community being harmed, the War on Drugs and the increasing privatization of prisons has created a phenomenon of mass incarceration of young Black and Latino men, and increasingly women too, which has economically, socially, and politically devastated these communities.
We are not interested in yucking anyone's yum or shaming anyone who has fantasies or fetishes about ideas of this real-life violence. We are not interested in censorship or policing anyone's sex life. We are interested in public space and party themes that get us closer to liberation from systemic and administrative violence and do not recreate a culture that normalizes or continues our oppression. Our push back is about navigating the legal and extra-legal targeting and criminalization of our communities.
At a time when public discussion and media finally has an eye toward the daily systemic violence against trans and queer people, your party theme and promotions are especially harmful and trivializing.
As individuals and organizations committed to justice and equality for LGBTQI peoples, we are working to end violence in our communities, and particularly at the hands of law enforcement, jails, detention centers and prisons. We've been doing this for years, and we'll be supporting our brothers, sisters and siblings behind prison walls while you're hosting a sex and dance event on Pride weekend that trivializes themes of incarceration and abuse as a good time.
We're calling on you to understand how important these issues are to every member of our community, even if you've had the good fortune to not be hyper-visible and profiled by police, locked up, and then trapped in a cycle of institutional violence perpetrated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, ICE, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
We're calling on you to immediately change the theme of your party, and not use themes of arrest and incarceration, correctional officers beating inmates, solitary confinement, prison yards, or suggestions of prison rape in promoting your event.
As a step towards accountability and redress we're also calling on you to donate a portion of the proceeds of your party to the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, El/La Para TransLatinas, and Communities United Against Violence, all organizations that are dedicated to ending police, prison, and systemic violence against trans and queer people in the Bay Area and beyond.
Miss Major, SF Pride Grand Marshal/Director of Transgender Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project
San Francisco Trans March, SF Pride Community Grand Marshal
Janet Mock, SF Pride Celebrity Grand Marshal/Author of "Redefining Realness"
Transgender Gender Varian Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP)
Community United Against Violence (CUAV)
El/La Para TransLatinas
Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)
Justice Now
California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP)
Community Justice Network for Youth
Sex Workers Outreach Project – Bay Area (SWOP)
All of Us or None
Dr. Annalise Ophelian, Filmmaker, Director/Producer – MAJOR! documentary
StormMiguel Florez, Musician & artist, Co-Producer – MAJOR! documentary
Courtney Trouble, Host of Queerly Beloved Pride Party, owner TROUBLEfilms
Well said.
Unfortunately, I don't think the protests nor the #NotProud Boycott SF Pride movement will stand in the way of this Pride At The Armory shindig. Half the tickets have already sold. It's large event long in the planning and those types of entertainment-ships don't turn.
That's a shame because facts are facts and the issue is undeniable.
- LGBT teens comprise as much as 15% of the general population in juvenile justice facilities; among girls alone, 27% are lesbian or bisexual.
- LGBT young people and adults face harsher penalties from the justice system. LGBT people face higher rates of abuse and assault in prison.
- The two 2 leading risk factors for prisoner rape are previous sexual abuse and being LGBT.
- Incarcerated homosexual and bisexual men are sexually assaulted at rates 10 times higher than their heterosexual counterparts.
- The federal definition of "rape" didn't even include men or non-vaginal penetration until 2010. Men assaulted in prison were not considered rape victims by the U.S. Department of Justice until 2010.
- Incarcerated trans women in men's prisons report rates of sexual assault nearly 13 times greater than that among groups of other people.
More depressing facts here.
Bad call. PR fail SF Pride.
As Jezebel puts it, "Call it Dungeons & Dragons themed, call it Party in Westeros, do something else that involves bars and chains and implements of "torture." But this? Taking one of the biggest issues facing the LGBT+ community and turning it into a party?"


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I was the pickiest eating child in the universe. Chicken tenders, macaroni & cheese, & Dunkaroos were my diet staples.
I'd probably have 18 clogged arteries if it weren't for those darn Flinstone Gummies I was force fed – lifesavers, I tell you.
One time, my dad decided he was sick of making me different meals every night so he put a hamburger on my plate… The AUDACITY! You would have thought he put a grilled kitten in front of me. I kicked & screamed & cried & there might have been a rolling around on the floor scene. I'm fuzzy on the details.
If you would have told my 8-year-old self I'd one day be eating artichokes & squash that wishes it was spaghetti, I would have fainted.
Don't feed this to your kids – they won't eat it.
Time: 1 hour (prep + cooking) | Serves: 2 (2 halves)
- 1 spaghetti squash, halved + seeded
- 1 cup of water
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 tbsp of garlic, minced
- 1 cup of low fat cream cheese
- 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup of marinated artichokes
- 1 cup of spinach leaves
- 1/2 cup of shredded mozzarella
- 1 tbsp. of olive oil
- S+P, to taste
How to:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Pour water into a baking dish and add squash, face up, to the dish
- Roast for 35 minutes or until fork tender
- Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet
- Add onion + garlic, cook until tender, about 6 minutes
- Add cream cheese + parmesan, cook until smooth and combined
- Add artichokes + spinach + S+P, cook until spinach is wilted
- Stuff mixture into each squash halve, stirring to combine with spaghetti squash strings
- Sprinkle each with equal amounts of mozzarella
- Broil for 4-5 minutes or until cheese is melted and golden brown
- Dig in!


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Sold Out
Size: one size fits all (L: 65 cm x W: 54 cm)
Material: Embroidered cotton
Brand: Rough Studios
The Daisy blouse by Rough Studios is so comfy to wear! A real piece to cherish as it's made with a lot of thought and effort. Every item is unique, 100% woven, keffiyeh print embroidered cotton.


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In much the same way that Java replaced C++ 15 years ago as the dominant programming language for enterprise software, Web development technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript and others might supplant traditional programming languages today, according to an Oracle software executive.
The reason for the shift is that new Web development technologies better fit today's mobile platforms, said Cameron Purdy, vice president of development for Oracle, at the QCon software conference in New York Tuesday.
"HTML5 and JavaScript together are becoming a programming platform onto themselves," Purdy said. "We haven't seen this magnitude of change in 15 years, since the Web came into public existence," Purdy said. Their growing popularity may be "quite analogous to what we saw with Java in 1996."
To boost his argument, Purdy examined the reasons behind Java's rise in popularity in the mid-1990s, when C++ was then the dominant programming language for building enterprise applications.
Many have attributed the rapid success of Java to the efforts of the company that created it, Sun Microsystems, but this wasn't strictly the case, Purdy argued. "Java wasn't big because it was well-marketed ... Sun couldn't market its way out of a paper bag," he said. (Oracle now owns the trademarks to Java.) Rather, Java grew in popularity because it best fit the needs of the developers at the time. "There were real technical reasons that Java was important," he said.
At the time, Java simplified programming in a number of ways. It automated garbage collection, the act of freeing up memory that is no longer used. Writing code to free memory in C++ programs can be burdensome to programmers. Also, by automating garbage collections, Java was able to pave the way for the greater use of frameworks, or sets of libraries that automated various routine tasks. Also, Java was better suited for running across multiple platforms, a capability C++ offered in theory though was difficult to implement.
C++ does have some upsides, Purdy admitted. It is faster, thanks to how the code is compiled directly against a specific hardware platform. Also, Java's garbage collection routine can slow the operation of a program at inopportune times, even with careful scheduling. Another upside: A C++ program does not take up as much memory as a Java program, because it does not need as many supporting files and is written for the specific architecture it is being run upon.
But these advantages weren't of high importance for programmers when the Web was just emerging. Memory wasn't a huge issue, because Java applications tended to be run from a server, which tended to have a generous supply of memory. Nor was speed a critical issue. Most of the long start-up times that are associated with Java programs come from times needed to start a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to run the program. But the application server software typically keeps the JVM running continuously, meaning that Java applications could be just as speedy as their C++ counterparts. "How often do you start your Web application? Once a day? Once a month?" Purdy asked.
Also, Java programs are better suited for running on multicore processors than C++ programs, Purdy argued. Programming for multicore processors can be a tedious task in C++. In contrast, Java's virtual machine handles the issue of which processors to use.
"All the benefits of C++ were not valuable. The strengths of Java are well-suited for this world," Purdy concluded. Though C and C++ are particularly suited for writing to a particular platform, crucial when developing an operating system or browser, such development efforts are not always called for. "How many browsers do we need?" he asked, rhetorically. "There are just not many places I need C++," he said.
The programming needs today promise a similar disruption as when Java supplanted C++, Purdy said. We are moving from a server-side architecture to what Purdy called a "thin server architecture," he said. He attributes this shift to a combination of cloud computing, HTML5 and mobile devices.
"These three things will conspire to be a perfect storm in our industry," Purdy said.
"Applications will shift from a very fat server model, where all the display logic is held on the server, to a much more thin server model where the display logic is in the browser itself," Purdy said. "Its communications with the server is with services and data."
Purdy's claim seems to get some backing from other parties who also see that Web application development is taking hold in the enterprise market. In a survey sponsored by Zend, a company that offers commercial support tools for the PHP Web programming language, 97 percent of 117 business and IT executives who said their organizations currently use PHP will use the Web programming language for additional applications in the future. Many cited the speed and flexibility of Web application development as a factor for choosing this approach over the more traditional approach of developing desktop applications.
The QCon conference runs through Wednesday.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is firstname.lastname@example.com


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by Carl V Phillips
This analysis, of this blog post, might seem a little more brutal than usual. That is because the author, Cheryl Healton (the former head of the leading anti-tobacco organization, American Legacy Foundation — a fact that is omitted in the introduction of her in the blog in question — and now head of the public health program at NYC), knows the truth. This is not a case of someone who is too innumerate to not know she is lying, or a useful idiot that is being used by the anti-tobacco extremists. Healton is one of the puppet masters who manipulates her useful idiots (like New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal), which she is doing in this post. Notice in particular the many times that she lies by using literally true but highly misleading statements, the mark of someone who knows she is lying but wants to be able to pretend otherwise.
The post appears in the blog of the "NYC Coalition for a Smoke-Free City", an obviously misnamed group since they are campaigning not against smoke, but against e-cigarette use. The thesis is that NYC should go ahead with its proposal to prohibit e-cigarette use anywhere that smoking is prohibited. It is remarkable how close Healton comes to lying in every single sentence. The first few about the fact that NYC is about to act on this are true, but most everything that follows is a lie:
Who is the e-cigarette industry? Increasingly the e-cigarette industry is owned by the tobacco industry, an industry that would not be permitted to exist were it invented tomorrow because it would violate the consumer protection laws of all states and virtually every country in the world.
As I have pointed out, this "would not be allowed to exist" claim is at best pure speculation, and probably wrong. But apart from that, it refers to a product (cigarettes), not an industry. If the industry came into being right now selling low-risk products like smokeless tobacco, e-cigarettes, and NRT (all of which are sold by "the tobacco industry"), it would be allowed to exist. But, of course, this soup of words is not meant to analyze the actual claim, but to lie about e-cigarettes, suggesting they are some industry plot. In case the innuendo is lost on the reader, she goes on to lie,
For this reason, a healthy degree of skepticism about the industry's ultimate goal in buying up e-cigarette manufacturers and creating more "efficient" e-cigarettes should prevail as policy makers establish regulations governing them. It is quite possible that the net effect of e-cigarettes will be to induce greater youth initiation of smoking and reduce the adult cessation rate, but the jury is still out.
I cannot imagine that Healton is stupid enough to actually believe that. It is impossible to come up with a story to explain why the existence of e-cigarettes (let alone the acquisition of a few companies that she led into that with) could cause smoking at all, let alone to cause a net increase in smoking initiation. E-cigarettes, like any popular low-risk alternative, will replace smoking initiation, not cause it.
Both youth and adult smoking rates are at their lowest levels in decades, so much is a stake for the health of the public.
Setting aside the fact that the "so" is a non sequitur, is what she is saying is that having almost 20% of the population smoking is such a success that harm reduction should be avoided? It appears so.
There is also much at stake for the tobacco industry as it seeks to apply its considerable marketing acumen and seemingly endless resources to maximize profit by increasing the number who start smoking by enticing youth worldwide to smoke and by trying to retain current smokers.
Complaining about "endless resources" is pretty funny coming from someone who is at the apex of the billions-per-year tobacco control industry. But the real question is what this passage has to do with e-cigarettes at all, let alone restricting where you can use them. It is typical tobacco control misdirection: "Cigarette manufacturers profit from more people smoking and remaining smokers, and therefore we should restrict where people can use e-cigarettes." Huh??!
Who might be hurt by e-cigarettes? The tobacco products the industry has historically manufactured and promoted as "reduced harm" are not benign products created to meet the broad range of consumer preferences in the United States, rather they are deadly products that when used as directed kill over 400,000 Americans each year and are predicted by the World Health Organization to kill a billion people worldwide this century, 10 fold more than they killed in the 20th century. To put the scope of the current tobacco-related epidemic in perspective, in a few years, global lung cancer deaths will surpass AIDS deaths as the steady march of tobacco industry marketing continues to engulf the world's poorest nations.
Again, huh??! Does anyone see any connection between that question and what follows? (Yes, I realize that the reader might now be questioning my assertion that Healton is too smart to not know she is lying.) Her allusion to historical products is the usual tobacco control canard about the introduction of "light" cigarettes four decades ago, products where there was no evidence to suggest they would be lower risk. And yet they were actively endorsed by the public health community, not just the manufacturers.
However, a mistake by everyone a couple of generations ago about what might be lower risk tells us nothing about the present world of products that are known to be lower risk. It is an utterly absurd and blatant lie to suggest otherwise.
None of what she says in this paragraph is true about the actual reduced harm products that have been introduced by the tobacco industry and by others. Smokeless tobacco, e-cigarettes, and other low-risk products do not cause the harms she is citing; cigarettes do. (Well, cigarettes cause and will cause a lot of harm, though not as much as she claims. But that is another story). She seems to be trying to invoke the conjunction lie, that cigarettes plus low-risk alternatives do that much harm (which implies the harm is shared, even though it is basically all caused by cigarettes), but she screws up doing even that. She actually is claiming that the low-risk products alone cause all the harm from smoking.
Nicotine addiction is in and of itself a gateway to tobacco product use because once addicted many will broaden the products they use and included among these will be the most dangerous products like cigars, cigarettes and hookah.
It is true that people who like to use one tobacco/nicotine product often try other products. But what she is trying to imply (carefully avoiding actually saying it) is that using e-cigarettes will cause people who would not have otherwise smoked to do so. There is no reason to believe this would be the case, and certainly no evidence of it occurring.
And it is worth pausing to remember that the title of this post says that NYC should include e-cigarettes in its smoking place restrictions. I have skipped a few sentences but have not left out anything that addresses that. There has been nothing yet. Even if the previous quote were not a lie, it would still only be an argument against letting kids use e-cigarettes, not about forbidding adults from using them at their desks or in bars.
Most tobacco-related deaths are the culmination of substantial suffering and societal cost from heart disease, emphysema or various cancers and are the direct result of nicotine addiction. Moreover, nicotine addiction is considered by many scientists as the most intractable of all addictions as measured by the percent of ever users who become addicted and the percent who remain addicted until death. Half of lifelong smokers lose their lives to tobacco addiction and among these people nearly half die before retirement age.
A pretty good argument in favor of encouraging e-cigarette use. The bit about "most intractable" is nonsense, of course. The reason users have more incentive to quit, say, meth than to quit smoking is the high level of short-term damage it is doing them. And the "half" is a made-up number that is higher than what the evidence suggests. Most important is that claims about the "addictiveness" of smoking tells us little about e-cigarettes, given the evidence that e-cigarettes are much easier to quit.
And, once again, this has nothing to do with whether there should be a place ban on e-cigarettes.
E-cigarettes are a complex product and their availability and the regulatory framework for governing them may have different implications and considerations for youth non-smokers compared to adult smokers. E-cigarette policy could produce sharply differing results by population sub-group. Data demonstrate that a significant swath of adolescents already are using e-cigarettes. Time will soon tell whether e-cigarettes function as one more point of entry to cigarette, cigar and hookah consumption among those using e-cigarettes initially. One thing is clear however, since cessation efforts have thus far not worked with teens, e-cigarettes will likely not do anything good for kids and may well entice many to start smoking in view of the broad array of sweet, candy flavors and slick e-cigarette marketing already blanketing the internet, mall kiosks, TV and radio, which have to date eluded regulation.
Blatant lies and clueless nonsense. (Ok, I will admit I am starting to doubt my previous assertion that Healton really understands what she is saying.) Skipping past the distractions that the first few sentences comprise, we have the lie that many adolescents are using e-cigarettes, a repeat of the lie that there is any reason they would cause smoking, the lie that because other cessation efforts do not work for kids that harm reduction will not work for them (it might be true, but probably is not, and it is nothing more than speculation asserted as fact), and of course the usual canard about marketing. Once again, the biggest lie here is that this has anything to do with restricting where adults can use e-cigarettes, or anything else about adult use.
Whether e-cigarettes will offer an incremental boost to cessation rates nationally also remains to be seen.
No, it doesn't. Close to every e-cigarette user is either a former smoker or a current smoker who has replaced some smoking with e-cigarettes and could be persuaded to complete the transition. Many of those who quit smoking report that they had not been able to succeed at cessation until they tried e-cigarettes, and only then did they quit. Therefore e-cigarettes have increased cessation. This is not really a difficult concept to understand. (She goes on in that paragraph to lie about what the research shows, but I will stop at debunking her thesis claim.)
This is the epitome of the ANTZ tactic of declaring every negative they can concoct to be a real concern, even if there is zero evidence and even if the evidence clearly shows it is a non-issue, while denying every positive by pretending that the evidence does not exist.
We should also remain open to another highly plausible effect of e-cigarettes-that they will function in the same manner "light" cigarettes did when they were introduced in the 70′s, promoted by the tobacco industry as a step smokers could take to feel safer without actually quitting smoking. As many subsequent studies showed, in fact they were not safer and millions who would have quit had they not been introduced failed to do so costing innumerable lives.
And (setting aside the lies about "light" cigarettes themselves) there is that lie about the situations being similar again. The obvious difference is that e-cigarette users are "actually quitting smoking", unlike light cigarette users, and they are using a product that genuinely is low risk. What does a public health failure of the 1970s have to do with e-cigarettes? Absolutely nothing. It is basically the same as saying leeches turned out to be harmful rather than helpful in treating infectious diseases, and therefore we should avoid antibiotics.
Do we really want everyone vaping where they once could smoke?
Oh, look, she is finally addressing the question she claims to be addressing.
The proposed extension of the SFAA to e-cigarettes, which will be voted on tomorrow, also will reduce the "walking billboard" effect of thousands of New Yorkers once again lighting up in bars, subways, parks, office buildings and restaurants throughout the city. But banning e-cigarettes in some locations solely for this reason is un-American in a country that prides itself on maximizing the freedom of its adult citizens to choose to engage in a range of risky and frisky behaviors.
Interesting. It is not a very risky behavior, of course, but it is nice to see that New York is still part of America.
The "billboard" claim is utter nonsense, of course. How is someone vaping in their office, rather than outside the front door, a billboard? E-cigarettes could still be restricted on the subway and restaurants could make their own choices about what is best for their patrons and vibe. The proposed ban would eliminate all discretion, reasonableness and common sense, going beyond a few specific restrictions that some might argue are reasonable and imposing rules that are clearly absurd and harmful.
Take a step back and see what she is doing with all of this. She is appealing to people who are worried about kids using e-cigarettes and do not like people vaping on the subway, and trying to trick them into supporting a rule that bars cannot choose to allow their patrons to vape. If she actually cared about kids and subways, she would propose something that affects kids (this rule would not) and would endorse a rule that just applies to the subways (which could probably be done by administrative fiat). Notice she never once offers any reason why banning vaping in bars, private offices, and many outdoor spaces would do any good for anyone, and indeed tries to hide the fact that this regulation would impose such restrictions. Classic tobacco control bait-and-switch.
It should be noted, however, that while we in general embrace this ethos, when it comes to public drinking we often do not. We do not embrace wandering down the street drinking a cocktail, hopping into the elevator rum and coke [sic] in hand or whipping out a flask of whiskey on a plane.
Ok, so no vaping on elevators and planes. I suspect that even most dedicated vapers would not find those to be terribly unreasonable restrictions. As for walking down that street, the street would be one of the few places vaping was still allowed under the restrictions. The anti-THR people cannot even keep their own stories straight.
Do we know enough to allow vaping in public spaces? So what are the real risks of public vaping? Is it as its promoters would like us to believe a benign, reduced harm practice that is at worst a passing fancy?
Um, no. Its promoters think it is here to stay. Also, the ban is mostly about private spaces, not public spaces.
Or is it a potentially toxic practice that places those in its immediate vicinity at risk. The answer is we do not completely know yet, although already studies have shown elevated nicotine levels among those exposed to secondhand vaping, and this in and of itself is ominous. Not definitively measured as yet among second hand vapers [sic] are the myriad other toxic substances which are contained in e-cigarettes.
Cute, huh, that use of "completely" and "definitively". Of course we know, from ample evidence, with a very high degree of certainty that the risk to bystanders is zero or utterly trivial. But we never know anything completely or definitively. Someone can always use weasel words like that to intentionally trick the reader into thinking she made a statement about what we really know, rather than merely a statement about the fact that there is never proof or complete information in the real world.
And if anyone is aware of any study that shows elevated nicotine levels from people exposed to "secondhand vapor", I would be quite interested in hearing about it.
Under these circumstances, the prudent course is to extend the SFAA to encompass e-cigarettes until, if ever, sufficient evidence exists demonstrating their safety.
Right. And what might that be? Oh, you say, no evidence would ever be sufficient for that. Thought so.
And why exactly would this be prudent? I do not think that word means what she thinks that word means. Is it prudent to restrict a very personal freedom when there appears to be no reason to do so, just because such a reason might be found later? (Sounds like an argument for banning, say, the building of mosques in America — there are many who would make the same "we just don't know if this will hurt the children" arguments about that.) Is it prudent to ensure that cigarettes remain as attractive as possible as compared to low-risk alternatives?
The only conceivable downside of not extending the SFAA to e-cigarette use is the loss of any incremental harm reduction for smokers associated with being permitted to smoke e-cigarettes in locations where smoking is now banned.
TrANTZlation: The harm it would inflict on those not able to vape at their desk, in bars, etc. is of absolutely no consequence. We are tobacco control. We don't actually care if tobacco users suffer. In fact, we prefer it.
And, of course, making e-cigarette use less attractive creates the public health harm of encouraging smokers to keep smoking.
It is highly unlikely that such a benefit, if it in fact exists, would outweigh the harms to youth, to non-smokers exposed to vaping nicotine laden vapors and potentially other toxins, and to recovering smokers who now stay quit in part because smoking has become less ubiquitous than it was 50 years ago when the Surgeon General released the first report on Smoking and Health.
Huh? It is highly unlikely? Care to quantify? I would love to hear about the harms to youth from people vaping at their desks. What harms are caused by (barely) "nicotine laden vapors"? What possible impact is there on "recovering smokers"?
Sadly e-cigarettes may lead to four negative outcomes: the initiation of more youth to nicotine dependence and subsequent conventional smoking; the use of e-cigarettes by current cigarette smokers who would otherwise have quit but instead use both conventional cigarettes and e-cigarettes in combination and therefore delay quitting or never quit and; the relapse to smoking by those who have already quit, first to smoking "benign" e-cigarettes and then to conventional cigarettes; and the exposure of people to e-cigarettes' emissions unknown risks.
And how does all of this other than the last bit (a lie that has already been addressed) relate to the question at hand?
Who loses, if anyone, by extending the SFAA to e-cigarette use? Virtually no one loses. Vapers can still smoke everywhere current smokers now do. Let's do what NYC has become known for and enact a policy that saves lives, not costs them.


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Jorja Fox, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California — Jorja Fox arriving at the 11th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. February 5, 2005 © Lee Roth / Roth Stock
Published by
Lee Roth
Working in Hollywood since 1995, Lee Roth has amassed a wealth of relationships with entertainers, executives and creatives at all levels of the entertainment industry. It is these relationships that Roth Stock Pictures draws upon today. We seek to bring quality content to market that will engage audiences on all platforms. View all posts by Lee Roth


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My husband and I are spending Thanksgiving alone—by choice. We had been invited out but graciously declined.
After having three sets of houseguests in six weeks, we are happy to be alone. By the way, the house has never been cleaner.
And we broke from the traditional Thanksgiving dinner—we are having lasagna.
I love leftover lasagna as much or more than leftover turkey, stuffing and gravy.
Over the years lasagna has become the ubiquitous casserole. You can find it premade in deli departments and frozen food cases in grocery stores. It's the go-to meal neighbors bring over to neighbors on happy occasions (childbirth) and solemn occasions (sickness or death in the family).
My love of lasagna goes back to my childhood when we visited Grandma in Jersey City. She lived in a second floor walk-up two blocks from my house. Who remembers what time she got up in the morning to begin cooking the lasagna and the rest of the meal, including homemade bread and a roasted chicken? As for the lasagna, she made the pasta from scratch. The tomato sauce (we called this gravy) simmered for hours on the stove. She used whole-milk ricotta and mozzarella cheeses that were made fresh at the Italian store down the block.
Being the oldest granddaughter, I sometimes helped by assembling the multiple layers of the dish. First the sauce, the pasta in one layer, a few spoonfuls of cheese mixture (ricotta, parmesan, eggs, oregano and parsley), sliced mozzarella, more sauce/gravy and then I started over again finishing with the mozzarella on top.
If the family ever had turkey for Thanksgiving, I don't remember.
In Grandma' s cramped kitchen the men ate first—Grandma's three sons, her five sons-in law and Grandpa. My cousins and I sat at the "children's table" that was cobbled together with end tables and folding chairs. The women served and cleared and eventually sat down to dinner with the windows open to let out the steam from the kitchen along with the delicious aromas of the Italian Thanksgiving feast.
So this Thanksgiving I am thankful for the usual, although not insignificant blessings, such as health, family, friends, but also for the memories that warm me and bring me back to Grandma's table laden with her gifts and in the company of my extended family—some long gone but not forgotten.
Wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving and joyful memories.


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I've no life event or personal anecdote to go with this post, except for this recipe. I've kept it a secret and not blogged about it for the past week. And so bit by bit it has been savoured with coffee over breakfast, elevenses, tea and as a midnight snack. I couldn't help it. On a rainy day, I just needed an excuse to use up the rhubarb I'd bought over last weekend and tried out the recipe from New Zealand's 'Pioneer Woman' – Annabel Langbein. And I realised the moment I took a bite that I've found my favourite cake. Where have you been all my life? I'm not going to rattle on anymore as you need to make this asap! I never liked recipe titles that brag theirs to be THE best (because its utter nonsense). So I'll tell you this… of all the rustic cakes I've made, this one's the most perfect to me. If you look closely, you'll see a very crunchy crumble top. The crunchy walnuts and raw sugar bits are to die for! And if you make it and eat it, you'll know how moist and soft the interior is. It tastes even better the next day. You'll need to be very careful as you cut the cake as the crumble surface is so crunchy, it breaks. Use a serrated knife and cut slowly. Bits will fall apart but don't you worry. That's the beauty of a rustic coffee cake.
If you've made any of my recipes, please post a picture on my Facebook Page or Instagram Account and tag your pictures with the hashtag #cupcakesncurries . I've already showcased a few of the recipes that readers have tried. I'm excited to see what you've made!
Very Crumbly Coconut Rhubarb Cake
Adapted from Annabel Langbein
For the cake
- 140g butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup / 200g caster sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tsp pure vanilla essence
- 3/4 cup coconut cream (from packet is fine)/ greek yoghurt
- 2 cups/ 250g plain flour
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp ground cardamom
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 200 g rhubarb, thinly sliced (any fruit can be used)
- 1/4 tsp salt
For the very crunchy crumble
- 1/2 cup / 50-55g raw sugar
- 1/2 cup / 45g walnuts, cut into quarters
- 4 tbsp plain flour
- 1/8 tsp ground cardamom
- 1/8 tsp ground ginger
- 3 tbsp long coconut threads
- 60 g cold butter, cubed
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350°F. Line and grease a 25 cm, 10 inch springform pan.
2. In a large bowl,sift plain flour, ground spices, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
3. In another bowl, rub the ingredients for the crumble between your fingers until most of them resemble 'marbles'. Set aside in freezer.
4. In your kitchen mixer, cream the caster sugar and butter till pale and creamy.
5. Add eggs, one at a time and then vanilla essence.
6. Add coconut cream and sifted flour mix alternately in 3 batches. Don't over mix. The last batch can be mix by hand using a spatula.
7. Fold in sliced rhubarb.
8. Pour cake batter into prepared tin.
9. Sprinkle over crumble mix evenly over the top.
10. Bake for 45-50 minutes. A skewer inserted in the middle should come out clean.
11. Cool in tin for 20 minutes before removing it.
Recipe Notes
- Any fruit can be used for this recipe. I think bananas, pears, apples or any stone fruit would be lovely.
- You can use any nuts for the topping. (How about bananas and salty peanuts?)
- You can omit the coconut threads and spices. Just use 1 tsp of mixed spice or cinnamon powder instead
- I prefer to freeze my crumble topping as they tend to keep their shape more when baked. If not they melt and spread like lava and sometimes they ted to burn, especially with a longer baking time.
- Also, raw sugar (also known as demerara sugar) is better than brown sugar for a crumble as it doesn't 'melt' into the mixture. But you could use brown sugar if that's what you have at home.
- You could add the fruit on top of the cake before adding the crumble mix but I think that would get in the way of its crumbly awesomeness. So I mixed the fruit into the cake batter. But either way should be fine.
I'm taking this dish to the Fiesta Friday party hosted by Angie and her co-hosts!


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Back on the farm the miracle of autumn is spectacular…
The crisp cold air, exploding colours everywhere, the harvesting of our own food, the playfulness of the animals and the smell of the soil underfoot.
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life. – Wendell Berry
- Related Post: The Heritage Farm – Sustainable Living…
- Related Video on the pigs: Mama & Piglets on Walkabout.
"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings." ― Masanobu Fukuoka
7:00am dark outside, Murray's Farm, Cambridge, Ontario "Pigs need a feeding, Turkeys need a watering, Eggs need collecting…"
I prefer to leave the city and spend time on this farm whenever we can. Doing chores from morning to night, experiencing a true heritage farm lifestyle. As I wrote in one of my previous posts "farm life is hard work yet there's something essential about growing your own food. Getting back into rhythm with the earth and animals that sustain you."
Why do I love spending time on a farm? I love to watch and nurture the crops & plants. I love to live in the presence of the animals. I love working outdoors. I love watching the weather. I love the independence that farm life provides.
Support Your Local Farmers…
Food performance surveys show that a majority of food shoppers are willing to pay more for food grown locally on small family farms. Follow that up with consumer buying habits and we will change the tradition of farming in North America.


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Toxic epidermal necrolysis is a life-threatening skin disorder that causes blistering and peeling of the skin. This disorder can be caused by a medicine reaction—often antibiotics or anticonvulsives.
The first symptoms are often fever and flu-like symptoms. After a few days, areas of skin (usually on the face and chest) blister and peel leaving raw areas without skin. The conditions spreads. This leaves large, raw areas exposed. The loss of skin lets fluids and salts ooze from the raw, damaged areas. These areas can easily become infected. The linings of the mouth, nose, respiratory system, urinary tract, eyes, and genitals can be affected. These are the other most common symptoms of toxic epidermal necrolysis:
A painful, red area that spreads quickly and blisters
Raw areas of skin
Flu-like symptoms
The symptoms of toxic epidermal necrolysis may seem like other skin conditions. This is a life-threatening condition. Talk with your healthcare provider for a diagnosis.
The disease progresses fast, usually within 3 days. It's important that it be treated as early as possible. Treatment usually includes a hospital stay, often in the burn unit. If a medicine is causing the skin reaction, it's stopped. Treatment may include:
Hospital stay
Isolation to prevent infection
Ointments and protective bandages
IV (intravenous) fluid and electrolytes
Intravenous immunoglobulin G


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Running TeamCity on EC2
One of Headspring's core mantras is to outsource everything that is not part of our core business. We are true believers on running the business in the cloud. We are even giving a talk about it. We use many cloud service providers on a daily basis. We use Google Apps for Email, Calendar, Voice and Intranet. We use Salesforce as our CRM. We use BitBucket to host our source code.
We use all this services to do things that are necessary in order to run the company but that we don't want to manage or build ourselves. So, we decided to do the same thing with our build system. As we were using TeamCity as our CI server and it has integration with EC2 out of the box we decided to go with EC2.
First, TeamCity is composed of two pieces. The build server, that runs TeamCity's dashboard and the build agents, that actually run the builds. As TeamCity Server is a Java application, a small Linux instance on EC2 is enough to run it. The server itself won't leverage the Elastic features on EC2, but having the server running on the same region and availability zone as the agents is important in order to avoid Data Transfer charges.
To install TeamCity server on Linux, follow this steps:
1) Get TeamCity from JetBrains.
2) Unpack the file Teamcity.tar.gz as documented in the docs.
3) Elevate your privileges to root:
> sudo su
This is needed because we want the server to listen to port 80 and ports below 1024 can only be listened by the root user.
4) Install Sun/Oracle JDK.
EC2 instance is a RedHat distribution, that uses OpenJDK by default. To the cloud integration on TeamCity to work properly, it needs Sun/Oracle's JDK.
5) With Sun/Oracle's JDK installed, set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to use it, instead of OpenJDK:
> JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk
6) Change TeamCity server port to 80 (if you need to)
7) Start the Server. On TeamCity's bin directory, run:
> ./teamcity-server.sh start
That's it. The server should be up and running. If you hit instance's public URL on your browser, after the server finishes starting up you should get a screen to accept TeamCity's EULA.
After accepting the EULA, you will be prompted to create an Administrator Account. With the Administrator Account created, TeamCity server is installed and running properly.
Installing the Build Agent
With the Server up and running it's time to create the agents that will run the builds.
To do so, first launch a instance ( I'm going to use a Windows one as we are doing .NET here) on EC2 and configure it to work as a TeamCity agent. In our case, we chose to use a Large Windows x64 instance.
As it's necessary to remote into the instance to configure it to run as a TeamCity agent, wait approximately 15 minutes after the instance is launched to Remote into it, otherwise you won't be able to get the password from AWS.
With the instance credentials, follow this steps:
1) Remote into the instance
2) Open the browser and go to TeamCity Server URL. After authenticating, go to the Agents tab and download MS Windows Installer.
3) Run the installer. After the agent is installed, a form to "Configure Build Agent Properties" will be prompted. Change the serverUrl property to point to the correct URI.
4) TeamCity agent-server communication uses port 9090 by default, unless you've changed it when configuring Build Agent properties on the previous step. So, in order to enable the communication between agent and server, create a inbound rule on Windows firewall to allow communication trough port 9090.
5) If everything is configured properly, you should have a Unauthorized agent showing up on TeamCity Server.
6) Authorize the agent and check that it's capable of running properly your builds.
Making the Build Agent Elastic
Right now we have a EC2 based TeamCity server and a TeamCity Agent running on a EC2 instance but it's not leveraging the Elastic features of TeamCity yet. To enable Elastic, Cloud Based, build agents one has to create a AMI image of the instance running the Agent.
1) On AWS, select the running instances and right-click on the instance running the Build Agent. On the context menu, select "Create Image (EBS AMI)"
2) When the AMI becomes available on aws, go to Cloud Tab under TeamCity Agents page:
3) On the configuration page, create a new Cloud Profile. As of now, the only option of Cloud Type is Amazon EC2. Choose your location and availability zone to match the ones the server instance is running in order to avoid extra Data Transfer costs.
That's it. TeamCity is configured to use Elastic Build Agents.
When a build is triggered, if there are no agents available to run it, the build will be placed on the Build Queue. A instance will be requested to EC2. It will take approximately 10 minutes for the instance to be running and authorized as a Build Agent on TeamCity.
My goal with this post was to document the process of migrating Headspring's build system to leverage EC2 features. I hope this helps not only me.
One last thing, can you do me a favor and vote for this TeamCity feature request?