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Tom Cotton has a golden resume, but questions linger about whether his style and politics fit Arkansas.
by David Ramsey
It was 85 degrees and humid at the Fourth of July picnic in Corning, just south of the Missouri border. Tom Cotton stood by the stage in Corning's Wynn Park, waiting his turn to give a short speech. Dressed in khakis and a crisp, light blue button-up, sleeves rolled up slightly, Cotton bounced gently on his heels, taking a moment to himself before the hobnobbing to come.
Corning's population is a little more than 3,000, but on the Fourth it's probably five times that, as people from all over the county and beyond pour in for the festivities: a parade, carnival rides, country music, $2 hot dogs, a beauty pageant, fireworks. Oh, and politics. In election years, candidates from both parties, for everything from governor to dogcatcher, show up to make their pitch and glad-hand.
This is the day-to-day grind of a politician on the trail, "gripping and grinning" as the campaign consultants say. In a small, rural state like Arkansas, as the prevailing wisdom goes, this kind of retail politics still matters. The Corning picnic is part of the circuit, which includes the Coon Supper in Gillett, the Oyster Supper in Slovak, the Chicken Fry in Mount Nebo and the Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival. (Cotton skipped this last one to attend a closed-door seminar with numerous billionaire donors and GOP elites in California, hosted by the Koch brothers. According to a report in The Nation, the Kochs served "oven roasted Angus natural filet mignon served in a fresh green peppercorn sauce," which sounds a little better than pink tomatoes, but Cotton's political opponents have attacked his choice as out of touch with Arkansas.)
Cotton, 37, is running for Senate, challenging incumbent Mark Pryor, and on paper he should be winning handily. He's running in an off-year election with an electorate likely favoring Republicans, in a state trending dead red. President Obama's approval ratings in Arkansas are in the low 30s. Pryor is the last Democrat in the state's congressional delegation; former Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln was trounced in 2010 by more than 20 points. And then there's Cotton's resume: Harvard undergrad, Harvard law, Army Ranger who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Last year, the national media had declared Pryor the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent in the Senate, a "dead man walking." Instead, with the election just four months away, the polls seem to indicate a tight race. The early prognosticators may have underestimated the Pryor brand in Arkansas, but with a pickup for Republicans now in some doubt, grumblings have emerged about Cotton himself, who had been considered a rising political superstar in the Republican ranks. "What's wrong with Tom Cotton?" asked a recent U.S. News & World Report article; a writer at The American Conservative followed up by blogging that the Cotton campaign was "flailing."
The assembled crowd in Corning waved political novelty fans ("I'm a FAN of Pryor") to keep cool. "Pryor's done Arkansas really good for a lot of years," one Pryor fan, Jerry Ladd of Corning, told me. "I don't think Obama's done good this year, or the last four years." But that wouldn't stop Ladd, who works for the Highway and Transportation Department, from voting for Pryor, he said. "He's helped Social Security, trying to keep it where it is. If you're the workingman and woman out there, when you get in your late 50s and 60s, your old body's not the same as it was. So you need help. That's why I really like Pryor. He's a family politician who has helped the state of Arkansas. I'll vote for Democrat or Republican — anybody that'll help the state of Arkansas and help me."
Paragould truck driver Michael Sanders said he was planning to support Cotton. "We definitely need a freaking change," he said. "From Biblical to what's actually right. What's ruining this country is all the freebie stuff. I'm a taxpayer, I still work and I'm probably going to have to work until I die. I feel like Mark Pryor's sold us out, supporting everything Obama goes for."
Obama, Obama, Obama. Republicans running for office in Arkansas this year are hoping that's the magic word. In particular, many Republican strategists believe that the president's signature health care law, bludgeoned to great success in Arkansas in the 2010 and 2012 elections cycles, is a political gift that will keep on giving. "Most definitely, 100 percent, it will work in 2014," GOP strategist Bill Vickery recently told Talk Business. "There are only three things for certain in life: death, taxes and the unpopularity of Obamacare in the South."
At his turn on stage in Corning, even Tim Griffin, the outgoing congressman running for lieutenant governor, vowed to continue to fight Obamacare, despite running for a state office that has nothing at all to do with the national health care law (an office so light on duties that when previous Lt. Gov. Mark Darr resigned in disgrace early this year, the state didn't bother to fill the vacancy). "My opponent [John Burkhalter] is the preferred candidate of President Obama," Griffin told the crowd with a straight face.
When Cotton's name was called, he bounded up the steps. While others walked to the middle of the stage to deliver their spiel, Cotton grabbed the microphone and took off at a trot to the front, fast enough that it appeared he might run off the edge. He held the mic close and spoke loudly, with the hard, thudding consonants of a cheerleader (or a drill sergeant).
You could hardly blame Cotton for being a little overeager. The candidate has been taking heat from the chattering classes over his skills as a retail politician. He's too cold, too stiff, too academic, too robotic, the story goes. As University of Arkansas professor and pollster Janine Parry told U.S. News & World Report, "Cotton has a reputation, bless his heart, for being a bit of a cold fish." Cotton himself joked to Politico, "I'm warm, dammit."
After his speech, Cotton began to make the rounds. He walks in big, forceful strides and speaks in a flat, facts-and-figures cadence. At 6-foot-5, he stands a head above the crowd. He's a political cartoonist's dream: angular and gangly, big ears, crew cut, a neck that seems two sizes too tall.
Cotton has an intensely formal manner, and that will probably never change, but he has steadily improved at the awkward business of making small talk with strangers. Both in Corning and other stops where I've watched him on the trail, he seemed confident and at ease in individual conversations with voters. He speaks directly, he's a patient listener and is quick to laugh.
A Cotton campaign worker told me that the criticism is the best thing that could have happened to the candidate, an extremely driven man used to willing his way to success. Cotton was a little stung by the press labeling him a subpar retail politician; now he was bound and determined to prove them wrong.
And once Cotton fixates on a goal, he is, by all accounts, a force to be reckoned with. He is methodical, hyper-focused and single-minded. A meticulous perfectionist and obsessive worker. Always has been. Surely his experience in the Army shaped him, but old friends say he already had a demeanor well suited to the military. If Bill Clinton — a politician who made a big impression on Cotton when he was growing up — was born with charm, Cotton was born with discipline.
Of course, while many things in life can be won by outworking the other guy, likability isn't one of them. Cotton can be stiff in public appearances and in front of the camera. He always hits his talking points, but he's still working on mastering the skill that has made more than a few Arkansas politicians famous: making all those talking points sound like aw-shucks empathy.
"He's a little more professorial," a former teacher of Cotton's who saw him recently at a fundraiser told me. "I don't see Tom as ever being the backslapping politician at the chicken fry."
One of the people Cotton met in Corning was Betty Foster, a retired resident of Knobel, sitting in a lawn chair near the stage. (Actually, he came to shake her hand twice — "He forgot the first one," she said. "Most of them have better memories than that.") Foster said that Cotton was polite and friendly, but she wasn't planning on voting for him. "He scares me," she said. "He's a little bit radical. There's too many people in this country who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They have got to be protected."
For all the talk of personality, it's Cotton's votes — and the bombardment of advertising over the last few months pointing them out — that seemed to be influencing the voters in Corning still skeptical of the challenger. Many Democratic operatives believe that Pryor got a lifeline drawing an opponent with Cotton's record.
Cotton voted against funding for disaster relief, against the farm bill and against bills to make student loans more affordable. He voted for a bill that would have eventually raised the retirement age for Medicare and Social Security and moved toward "voucherizing" Medicare. He was in the middle of the government shutdown fight and voted against the omnibus appropriations bill that kept the government running this year and included funding for Arkansas Children's Hospital and countless other local interests. The list goes on.
Team Cotton has arguments about why he did so, but the broad picture is hard to dispute: Cotton is an ideological purist on the far right end of the American political spectrum. He believes in an aggressive reimagining of the role of government and the social safety net in modern American life, and is more than willing to stand by his principles, even at the cost of federal dollars flowing into Arkansas. The Pryor campaign has been attempting to paint him as an "extremist" and "reckless," and his voting record gives them plenty of material.
Will Cotton's politics and personal style give him trouble in a state with a tradition of economic populism, folksy retail politics and an independent political streak? Or does it even matter? Perhaps Arkansas is destined for Republican rule no matter whose name is next to the R. Perhaps an all-Obamacare-all-the-time political message can't lose. Certainly, that's why many thought Pryor was toast to begin with.
We'll have our answers come November. Major implications for both Arkansas and the national political picture hang in the balance, as voters try to decide just what to make of Thomas B. Cotton.
When Cotton first emerged on the political scene in 2012, the conservative breitbart.com gushed that he was "one of the best candidates running for Congress this election cycle — and possibly ever." Unflagging neoconservative and GOP kingmaker Bill Kristol was also a big fan and his magazine, The Weekly Standard, has run dozens of fawning items on Cotton ("best read while listening to John Philip Sousa and cooling an apple pie" as Slate's Dave Weigel put it). A recent profile in National Review reported that Cotton had both read all of Thucydides and volunteered for the infantry, concluding that he "seems to have it all." Even the National Journal, ostensibly sober and above the fray, called him "The Immaculate Candidate."
(Cotton declined to be interviewed for this article; his Congressional office has responded to queries from the Times only once, when asked what Cotton's favorite song was for a sidebar in the Times' Music Issue. Answer: "Battle Hymn of the Republic.")
Cotton is the great hope for a splintered Republican party in search of a savior. He has both Tea Party cred and approval from the establishment, plus big-money backing from powerful right-wing advocacy groups like Club for Growth and Heritage Action. He is a hard-liner who appeals to both the anti-tax and the war hawk wings of the party. Perhaps most of all, there is that sparkling resume, a life story perfect for a political bio. Even the name: Tom Cotton. If a Hollywood movie gave that name to a fictional all-American Southern politician, it would almost be too on the nose.
Cotton grew up on a cattle farm just outside of Dardanelle in Yell County, son of Len, who worked for the state Department of Health, and Avis, a middle school principal.
Friends remember Cotton as unusually driven and methodically focused, even as a boy. He was a thoughtful kid who followed the rules, and he had the same serious bearing that he has today — he's often remembered as mature and "wise beyond his years" by both peers and adults who knew him growing up.
"He was a planner," said Marcia Lawrence, principal at Dardanelle High School, who taught Cotton AP English. "That was his makeup. He was gonna work that plan and do what it took to get that plan into fruition."
"He always seemed to have it together from day one," said Greg Judkins, a friend who grew up with Cotton in Dardanelle. "Always organized, no wasted effort. There was a group of us who would want to go party and hang out and be a little more rambunctious. He always just had things to do. There was always something on his mind, something big. He had a bigger picture. Just like you see today, he was motivated. Pretty much everything he did was efficient. He always had a plan. When he decided he wanted to go to Harvard, he made up a plan on how to do it."
In addition to his schoolwork, Cotton's big passion was basketball, and he played as a lanky center for the Dardanelle High School Sand Lizards. Cotton wasn't the best athlete, an old AAU coach remembered, "but he was intuitive as far as being able to be in the right position. He understood the angles. Very fundamental. He knew where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do."
Cotton's parents were Democrats and Clinton supporters when he was growing up, but by high school, Cotton considered himself a Republican, according to friends. When he arrived at Harvard's very liberal campus, his conservative perspective only hardened. He delighted in being an iconoclast. Cotton devoted his time at Harvard to "cultivating contrarianism," as he wrote in his column at the Harvard Crimson.
"He was never shy about it," said Adam Kovacevich, a close college friend of Cotton's now working for Google in Washington, D.C., who considers himself a moderate Democrat (after Harvard, he did a stint as New York Sen. Joe Lieberman's press secretary). "He always kind of knew himself, knew who he was. I certainly don't agree with Tom on all the issues, but we were both very interested in the ideas behind politics." Their rap sessions had a philosophical bent, and Cotton was as interested in Plato and Aristotle as he was in the news of the day.
Cotton wrote his senior thesis on the Federalist papers. "He thought a lot about what it means to be an American, what are the values that define American democracy," Kovacevich said.
Cotton also seemed to romanticize certain grand ideas that may have seemed antiquated to his classmates. In his columns, he wrote often of virtue, honor, glory, patriotism. "We dislike honor in this most democratic age," Cotton lamented in one. Another: "How little we hear of self-discipline in our indulgent and permissive society."
The summer after his freshman year, he re-read Jane Austen's novels, wanting to reflect on what they had to say about virtue and an ethical life. Some friends told him he seemed like he would be more comfortable in another century.
As a college columnist, Cotton was an oddball conservative intellectual. Undergrad scribblings from 20 years ago, of course, reveal no secret clues as to what sort of senator Cotton might make. They nonetheless make for interesting reading, in part because College Cotton was more engaging and recognizably human than the scripted Candidate Cotton is allowed to be. He could occasionally be prudish and hectoring, but his style — if stuffy and overstuffed — was endearing. It's actually too bad that we don't get more of Cotton the columnist on the campaign trail (imagine William F. Buckley in fatigues), rather than the robo-candidate repeating ready-made talking points.
"No, I could not have sought or expected popularity and its absence concerns me not at all," Cotton wrote. "This is the reason I have written polemical philippics: I have sought to counteract rampant prejudices. ... It was my intent to challenge with my writings; and by challenging, I meant to improve, to jolt slumbering minds into wakefulness." Harrumph! It's a long way from backslapping at barbecues.
Cotton eventually went on to Harvard Law, followed by a stint clerking for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Houston and gigs at private law firms in Washington, D.C. On his way to a lucrative career as an attorney, Cotton decided instead to take a sharp turn, enlisting in the U.S. Army. Someone with Cotton's background would typically have gone into the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, but Cotton wanted to be a soldier on the ground, and he volunteered for the infantry.
Friends who spoke to him at the time were surprised by his decision to enlist but described him as resolute and assured in his decision. (Cotton has said that the events of Sept. 11, when he was in his last year of law school, originally inspired him to join, but he first needed to pay off his student loans.) Cotton, whose father had volunteered to go to Vietnam, had always held soldiers in high esteem. His hero was Churchill, "the greatest man of our century," in Cotton's estimation. A Crimson column Cotton penned on Churchill might help in understanding his thinking: "Had Churchill not faced down death as a young man, would he have had the courage to face down Hitler in 1940?" In another, he wrote, "Americans once venerated their generals; today we venerate our sports heroes. This development is both healthy and sad; healthy because it means we do not suffer the depredations of war, but sad because it deprives of us displays of great virtue."
Cotton completed paratrooper and Ranger training and served as a platoon leader for the 101st Airborne in southern Baghdad in 2006, then later volunteered for a second combat tour, serving as captain on a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Laghman Province in Afghanistan.
Andrew Wilson, who served as a fellow captain with Cotton in Afghanistan, described him as "the moral compass of the PRT. I was probably always more of an emotional leader. Tom wasn't really that. He was more steadfast, he had a process. He's a very straightforward guy. He follows the rules, always plays by the rules."
After five years of active duty, Cotton took a job at the Washington, D.C., office of high-powered consulting firm McKinsey & Co. In 2011, he decided to run for Congress back in Arkansas, taking residency at a family home in Dardanelle. By that time, he had been gone for more than 15 years and was a relative unknown on the political scene. During the primary, he received a FedEx envelope from the Club for Growth, Politico reported: "Tucked inside that envelope and several to come were $300,000 in checks from Club members, enough to help lift the 35-year-old former Army captain from obscurity — and 47 percentage points down in his first internal poll — to the fourth floor of the Cannon House Office Building."
Thus Cotton emerged as a darling of the right: a well-funded, articulate, diehard conservative. Almost immediately, his fans began to dream of bigger things, including Pryor's Senate seat. "He's bound to attract attention in Washington, and ... blessed with bright prospects for gaining still higher office," wrote Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard. Cotton was thinking big too — he started polling a possible Senate race in February, a month after he was sworn in to the House.
"Some people say I'm a 'young man in a hurry,' "
Cotton told National Review last May. "They're right."
The stories and myths of Arkansas politics are dominated by the outsized personalities of charming good ol' boys like Dale Bumpers, Mike Huckabee, Mike Beebe and Mark Pryor's father, David, the popular former governor, congressman and senator (whose name still counts for something; a Pryor campaign worker told me that every time they go out on the trail, voters say things like "say hi to your daddy for me" or "make sure and tell your dad, thanks for everything"). Finally, of course, there was Bill Clinton, whose shadow hangs over any Arkansas politician on the rise.
Cotton's first column at the Crimson was about meeting Clinton with his family as a boy: "His eyes twinkled that twinkle that is now so familiar to all of us. He mouthed inaudible thanks, and then moved on to the next face. Forty-five seconds, at most. And he absolutely meant it all, the way young couples mean it when they say, 'I love you.'...Bill Clinton is the most successful campaigner of our time because he is the most sincere campaigner of our time."
Cotton has steadily improved as a campaigner, but no one will confuse him with Clinton. "It's almost like the minute he realizes he's smiling, he puts on a serious face again," said Julie Baldridge, who has been close to Cotton since he spent a summer working for her at age 19 in the Little Rock office of then-U.S. Congressman Ray Thornton, a Democrat. "He's simply a formal, serious person. ... It's hard for him not be himself." One old friend compared him to the characters on "The Big Bang Theory," the hit show about loveable but socially awkward brainiacs.
"I think the characterizations people try to make are amusing, pretty far off base," said Michael Lamoureux, a Republican state senator from Russellville who has known Cotton since they were basketball rivals as boys. "It seems like the intent is to describe him as some sort of robot. You know, he's a normal guy that happens to have a better resume than the average guy, but he's a human. I see some of the attacks and I think, maybe he's wrong on policy, but he's not from another — he's not a robot or something."
Politics is a funny business. Talk to those who really know Cotton and you'll hear about his dry sense of humor and what a loyal and generous friend he is. But that's a different matter altogether than translating the perfect political bio into a human being that Arkansans can relate to. Al Gore was reportedly charming once you really got to know him, but the caricatures in political narratives have a way of hardening. "He does have a great deal of empathy," one friend of Cotton's said. "It's just it's hard to see it."
Of course, there are other skills in a politician's toolbox beyond charm. Keeping to the same talking points over and over isn't easy, and it's probably no surprise that Cotton is extremely good at sticking to the script, making him unlikely to make an unforced error.
"He's disciplined in that regard," said Clint Reed, a Little Rock GOP strategist. "Not everybody has that skillset. As a guy who does politics for a living, man, I'd take candidates like that every day of the week."
One way of looking at the campaign, then, is that Cotton is a robot. Another way of looking at it (a frightening prospect if you don't like his politics) is that Tom Cotton is a political machine.
The Cotton campaign's big bet is that all he needs to do is perseverate on "Obama" and "Obamacare." Cotton's standard OPM rate — "Obama" per minute — is typically around 4 or 5, but can be as high as 10 when he really gets going. Ask him about student loans and he'll talk about repealing Obamacare. In an interview with the right-wing blog Hot Air, he was asked about America's sluggish economic recovery and responded with a sentence about jobs and a paragraph about Obamacare.
There is zero doubt that Obama, and Obamacare, are a net negative for Pryor. Antipathy for the president runs deep in Arkansas, ranging from honest, coherent critiques to the more unhinged variety. (A couple of voters at a campaign event in Pangburn told me they "wouldn't be surprised if we don't have another four years of Obama." When I noted that his term would be up, they responded, "All he's gotta do is declare war somewhere, and then we won't change presidents; think about that.")
Still, there is the risk that voters may start to tune out such a narrow message (not to mention the fact that nearly 200,000 Arkansans have gained coverage via the state's "private option" version of Medicaid expansion; Cotton has dodged taking a position on the private option, but it's funded by Obamacare, the law that Cotton is so eager to repeal). It's worth noting that Republican Asa Hutchinson, running for governor, has been offering a more diversified — and locally focused — campaign portfolio, and is doing a bit better in the polls.
Meanwhile, Pryor will continue to hammer Cotton on his votes. When Cotton voted against the farm bill, political analyst Charlie Cook wrote, "My hunch is that there is a lot of head-scratching over that vote among farmers and folks in rural and small-town Arkansas. ... my guess is, his vote on the farm bill will be a cudgel that Pryor will swing at him from now to November, providing an opening that the incumbent needed and the challenger could ill-afford to give. If Cotton doesn't regret the vote already, he soon will."
Cotton and his campaign were defiant — Cotton was going to stand by his beliefs even if doing so was politically risky. His backers believe that voters will appreciate Cotton's actions as principled even if they are unpopular.
The Pryor campaign has a different take, pointing out that Cotton's controversial votes — often as the lone member of the Arkansas delegation — track neatly with the scorecards put out by advocacy groups like the Club for Growth. (Cotton has been one of the top recipients of campaign donations from the Club over the last two election cycles, totaling around $500,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Club has also spent more than $700,000 in independent expenditures attacking Pryor.)
"The only guiding principle that explains all Congressman Cotton's votes against Arkansans is his principled interest in seeing himself get ahead," said Pryor deputy campaign manager Erik Dorey. "The Club for Growth is perfectly illustrative of exactly how loyal Congressman Cotton is to these out-of-state special interests and the billionaires backing his campaign, and has been from the very beginning of his political ambitions. ... There is a guiding principle when someone will ride the special interest dollars into Congress, then take an oath of office and immediately position himself to ride those same out-of-state backers into the next higher office, and that guiding principle is Tom Cotton looking out for Tom Cotton."
Of course, all politicians are seeking career advancement. What stands out about Cotton is the intensity of his ideological purity. Rather than running on personality or local issues, Cotton has said he wants to "run contests of ideas." Cotton is unbending in his commitment to those ideas — Tea Party economics and aggressively hawkish foreign policy — no matter the consequences and regardless of the parochial interests of Arkansas. Cotton has been a stickler for rules his entire life — it makes sense that he's rigid on first principles. Policy is messy; Cotton argues in black and white.
In the end, it doesn't much matter what Cotton's precise motivation was for voting the way that he did. We don't judge politicians on intentions. We shall know them by their works.
Cotton believes so fervently that the federal government should no longer be involved in subsidizing student loans (despite the fact that he took Stafford loans at Harvard) that he voted against bills that would have lightened the burden of loan repayment for more than 200,000 Arkansans. He is such a hard-liner on the debt that he was willing to drive right off the fiscal cliff into national default, a potential economic catastrophe that he called "short-term market corrections," saying, "I'd like to take the medicine now."
Voting against the Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Bill, Cotton said, "I don't think Arkansas needs to bail out the Northeast." He said that it was larded up with pet projects, but he also voted against a Sandy bill that included only funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Cotton complained that it wasn't offset with corresponding spending cuts).
On foreign policy, Cotton is an unreconstructed neoconservative. "George Bush did largely have it right," he said.
Cotton co-sponsored a bill that would likely ban certain forms of birth control, such as IUDs and the morning-after pill. He voted against the Violence Against Women Act and against the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Around half a million Arkansans get food stamps, but Cotton advocates for massive cuts to the program, claiming that "we've all been in a situation where we stand in the grocery line at Walmart" and see someone using a food stamp card with "steak in their basket, and they have a brand new iPhone, and they have a brand new SUV."
Cotton voted for the Paul Ryan budget, which would cut benefits for seniors, including preventative care, and eventually transition Medicare into a voucher-like system; he was also the only member of the Arkansas congressional delegation to vote for the Republican Study Committee Budget, which would eventually raise the eligibility age for both Social Security and Medicare to 70. Both budgets would give tax cuts to the wealthy and cut trillions of dollars in programs serving low-income Americans.
Cotton seems to be a true believer on all of this. He is resolute and uncompromising. He's not pretending to be someone he's not. It will be up to Arkansans to decide whether they like what they see.
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You are hereFree Shopping: Everyday Ways To Save Money For Travel
Free Shopping: Everyday Ways To Save Money For Travel
A few months ago I was browsing online when I came across a video about a woman who feeds her family of 6 on $4 a week. Wondering what the catch was, I watched it. The catch was - this woman knew how to find deals! I mean REAL deals. Her creed was that, if it's not free, or nearly free, she doesn't buy it.
I was intrigued. I went to her website and took a look around. I entered into a world that I never knew existed, I mean, why isn't everybody shopping like this? Getting groceries, toiletries, household stuff for free or nearly free?
My first attempt at this was really fun. I took the advice of starting small and went to Walgreens for two items. There was a sale on Campbell's soup – $.50 a can. I had a coupon for $1 off two cans. That made my soup free. I was a little nervous at the counter but I put my cans down and handed the cashier my coupon and waited to see what happened.
The check out lady rang the cans up and then scanned the coupon. When the total showed $0 she looked up at me in surprise, seemed like she wasn't sure what to do for a minute then said "Wow" and packed my free soup up. I replied with "I know, it's a pretty good deal" and walked out with my two free cans of soup! I was giddy with excitement and felt amazingly empowered. I ended up going back to Walgreen's two more times for free soup before venturing out to other stores and a longer list.
I'm not sure exactly how much money I've saved since I stated this experiment but it's been enough so that my piggy bank for travel is filling faster than it previously had been. Not only do I feel really good about saving so much at the register but very dollar that I save gets me one dollar closer to my next big trip. And that is worth every minute spent figuring out how to shop for next to nothing.
Here are some basic steps to get started:
- Set up a separate email account
- Register at least a handful of couponing sites
- Read through forums, follow links and do your own searches
- Set up RSS feed for up to the minute information on savings
- Clip coupons for items you don't use and find forums where you can trade them for items you do use
- Think about how much you are willing to spend for an item, set some goals as you are making your shopping list
- Start small, shop for one or two items your first trip out
- Make a clear list/spreadsheet before you go and only get what is on there, even if you see a 'great sale'
- Never buy a regular priced item, even if you have a coupon
- Stock pile items. If you don't need it now, if you can get it for free, or nearly free, you can use it later or give it away
- Prepare to spend some time figuring out how to organize coupons, make spreadsheets and match items for deals in a way that works best for you. It takes a bit of an investment of time at first and then becomes easier and will be worth it when you see how much money you will save
Sites to check out:
How To Shop For Free
The Krazy Coupon Lady
Living Rich With Coupons
Never Pay Retail Again
The Frugal Find


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Hiding patients in plain sight
Scrubbing detail could let researchers use records without privacy risk
A new technique allows medical records to be used for research on the genetics of disease while still protecting patients from prying eyes.
Databases that link thousands of people's DNA profiles to their medical histories are a powerful tool for researchers who want to use genetics to individualize the diagnosis and treatment of disease. But this promise of personalized medicine comes with concerns about patient privacy. Now scientists have come up with a way to alter personal medical information so it's still meaningful for research, but meaningless to someone trying to ID an individual in a database.
"We're hoping that it's a game-changer," says Bradley Malin, a biomedical informatics specialist from Vanderbilt University in Nashville who helped develop the method.
The new method, published online April 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, simply disguises parts of the medical histor


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There's nothing like a bit of good news before Christmas — especially for impoverished children.
Not to suggest that kids are going to raise a cheer about regular trips to the dentist, but Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews' plan to give an additional 70,000 low-income young people free dental treatment is a striking improvement for oral health. Anyone with long-term vision knows that good teeth make for healthier lives and a greater shot at upward mobility. For someone trying to escape from poverty, every bit helps.
As Matthews announced this week, the government is streamlining a patchwork of six low-income dental care programs (those on social assistance are automatically covered) into one major program called Healthy Smiles. It's also raising the income eligibility level so that more young people (under the age of 17) can sit in a public-health dentist's chair.
When the new program starts operating next April, oral health advocates like Jacquie Maund say it has the potential to care for some 500,000 young people in total. As Maund says, "This is a good news announcement." She's right — it's a strong step forward.
But if Matthews wants to succeed in reaching numbers that large she must ensure families are educated about Healthy Smiles and its far-reaching benefits. There's little value in a program that doesn't reach the people it aims to help.
The ministry must enable community workers to connect with low-income people in the community, providing information on the programs and the importance of early dental care.
Let's face it, not many people with rotten teeth end up in well-paid jobs. But as the Star has previously documented, bad teeth lead to infections that spread throughout the body, causing heart disease and even blindness. Clearly, teeth and health are inextricably linked. As Toronto Public Health's Dr. Hazel Stewart says, "Teeth are vital organs."
It's a shame that dental care was not originally included in Canada's medicare system so that oral care would be covered by OHIP. Instead, dentistry has flourished as a market-driven business. A basic visit to the dentist can set a patient back several hundred dollars and the cost of major care runs in the thousands of dollars. That's hard enough for the middle class to afford, let alone those who can barely make the month's rent.
Starting next year, the financial cut-off point for help will be increased to include families with a slightly higher income, but are still close to the poverty line. Those with an adjusted net income of $21,513 (with one child) are now eligible. For every additional child, an increase of $1,500 in annual income is allowed. Obviously, they could not afford dental care without assistance.
As the Star noted in an editorial last April, many of the young low-income people were shut out of the current patchwork of free dental care programs, which were designed in such a way that many did not qualify. As a result, the money went unused and was conveniently siphoned off to pay for sports promotion programs.
That was a low point. It was also a far cry from the Liberals' 2007 promise to provide a $45-million fund to low-income families after a Star investigation exposed the suffering of working poor adults who could not afford dental care.
Advocate Maund, of the Association of Ontario Health Centres, is right to remind the government that its attention should now turn to the adults who suffer with abscessed gums or remove aching teeth just to avoid the pain.
For Ontario's low-income families, the government's good step forward has the potential to be great.


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Lunasia is a little more expensive than the average San Gabriel dim summery. A standard shrimp har gow order, for example, is $3.08. But it's worthwhile, says wesleywong.
The pea-tip scallop dumplings are delectable and different, with soft skin, chewy toppings, and warm insides. Soft-shell crab is an atypical dish, and excellent: fried, spicy, and salty. Macao roasted pork belly, a $7 chef's specialty, is delicately sliced pork, with crispy skin, and just the right small amount of fat balancing out the meat. Hong Kong roasted duck has quality pieces of bird and nicely crispy skin.
Other stuff to try: black bean spareribs, which are lean and delicious rather than drenched in oil like at most other places; the shrimp rice noodles, which come with huge pieces of properly cooked shrimp; and egg custards, which have a rich filling and delightfully toasty crust.
The prices are a bit higher, says ipsedixit, but "any time I go to joints that compete solely on price, I always regret it and feel like for $1 or $2 more per dish I could be about $10 richer in the 'happiness quotient.'"
Lunasia Chinese Cuisine [San Gabriel Valley]
500 W. Main Street, Alhambra
Board Link: Lunasia: Does expensive dim sum mean better quality and taste? [Review w/ Pics]


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Bears center delivers education message in Waukegan
'You can achieve anything'
Bears center Roberto Garza lent his celebrity to a pizza party Friday night at Waukegan High School hosted by an organization helping at-risk children and families.
Garza spent about two hours with the 200 or so participants at the Lake County Area Project gathering.
The community-based Lake County group spawned from the Chicago Area Project.
After getting the crowd to yell "Bears!" when he hit the stage, Garza led with a message to the young children and teenagers about the importance of education.
He said college should be a goal if the youths want to achieve their dreams.
"You know, guys, believe in yourself. You can achieve anything," said Garza, who used some Spanish during his appearance.
Garza noted how hard work took him from a small college to becoming an Atlanta Falcons draft pick in 2001. He's been with the Bears since 2005.
Lake County Area Project Executive Director Sandra Thompson spoke to the crowd briefly before Garza came onstage. She gave a brief overview of the nonprofit group and said it's in need of volunteers.
"I hope you all came out to have some fun," Thompson said to those assembled in Waukegan High's auditorium.
Working toward the prevention and eradication of juvenile delinquency is part of the mission statement of the nonprofit Lake County Area Project.
To get there, the group says it tries to empower local residents -- organized as a neighborhood action club -- to engage in preventive measures aimed at encouraging children of all ages to make positive choices.
Thompson said the organization began in Lake County in 2001 and mostly serves adults and children from Gurnee, Park City, Waukegan, North Chicago and Zion. She said the group recently completed a youth employment program.
Chicago-based CelebEvents Inc. assembled what formally was called the Pro Players Pizza Party in Waukegan. CelebEvents' Prinses Hemphill, who shared the stage with Garza, said the company has done similar pizza parties across the country.
"Roberto Garza was selected this year to host (in Waukegan) because of his great ability to connect with young people," Hemphill said.
Garza has been active in school visits on behalf of the National Football League's Play 60 initiative in an effort to fight childhood obesity.
His stops included Hanover Park and Bartlett in 2012.


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How did a Russian teenager go from dreams of making it big in the states as a musician to a bona fide makeup mogul? The same entrepreneurial spirit that inspired Doe Deere to bring temporary tattoos to Russia at only 13 years old would later help her create Lime Crime and fulfill the need for makeup in a wide variety of unconventional colors.
Deere immigrated to New York City in 1998 at the age of 17 and quickly joined a band. A fellow songwriter and bandmate from this time would even eventually become both her business partner and her husband. It was also around this time that she attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and majored in fashion design.
Deere has credited her fashion background as being intertwined with her interest in makeup, and it is indeed what led to the very beginnings of Lime Crime. Inspired by her favorite color, Deere registered the name for her eBay account in 2004 so she could sell items from her original fashion line.
It would be a decade after she arrived in the United States when Deere would bring Lime Crime to the makeup industry. It was 2008 when Deere began to notice the lack of makeup options for more adventurous colors. The natural look was in and the shelves were full of blushes and beiges, but none of the wild colors that Deere and others like her craved.
Lime Crime produces a variety of lipsticks, nail polishes, eye shadows, and hair dye in bright, eye-catching colors that don't often otherwise get seen on the shelves in the beauty supply section. In keeping with her love of everything colorful and pastel, Deere refers to fans of her cosmetics as "unicorns."
One of Deere's self-proclaimed biggest accomplishments was making sure that Lime Crime was a cruelty-free and vegan brand of makeup, meaning Deere's makeup is neither tested on animals nor contains ingredients derived from animals. Lime Crime brand makeup is certified by both PETA and Leaping Bunny, one of the strictest certifiers of cruelty-free products.
Deere lived in New York for around 14 years before moving to Los Angeles in 2012. Her story inspires others to create what they want to see for the like-minded audience that is almost certainly out there. It will be very exciting to see what Deere has in store in the future for her unicorns. Learn more: http://doedeerefam.com/


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Manufacturing Document Translation for IdeaPaint
January 2017 – Boston, MA – Language Connections, a Boston-based translation agency, provides professional document translation services across the country and all industries, including the manufacturing industry. One of our clients, IdeaPaint, a high tech communication board production company, recently asked us to provide manufacturing document translation services. They specifically requested us to translate manufacturing installation instructions into multiple languages for export of their products into international markets.
The company has developed special technology for a more modern white board. Their cutting edge dry erase paint, either in white or clear, allows customers to turn various surfaces into collaboration spaces (from walls to tables) – ideal for business meetings or academic settings. Clear with Complete-Erase™ Technology and White with Complete-Erase™ Technology paints, as their names suggest, allow the user to write out and communicate their ideas with their colleagues on convenient surfaces, while at the same time being an easily removable product. Due to the popularity of the product, the client needed multilingual translation services for 10 different languages.
Manufacturing Document Translation Services
The client requested that we translate product instructions into the following languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Danish, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, French (France and Canada), Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Spanish (Spain and Latin America). Our linguists were chosen according to their ability to also provide French, Portuguese, and Spanish adapted for each respective target audience. When providing manufacturing translation services, special attention must be given to differences in measurement units. Our translation teams not only localized the text for the corresponding countries, but also any measurements such as feet, square feet, and degrees Fahrenheit were converted to metric system units accordingly.
About Language Connections:
Language Connections is a language service provider. We specialize in technical, medical and legal translation, software and website localization, simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, corporate language programs, and interpreter training. We provide certified, professional translation in 100+ languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, German, and French. With over 20 years of experience, we have expertise in all major industries including the life sciences, patent and immigration law, international business, global education, and advanced technology. Our cost-effective interpreting and conference solutions will meet your multilingual needs for all types of international events – business meetings, conferences, lectures or presentations.
Get a Free Quote for Your Project Today!
Language Connections Inc.
2001 Beacon Street, Suite 105,
Boston, MA 02135
Phone: +1-617-731-3510
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Los Angeles can be tough on newcomers, particularly among musicians. A key figure in the fertile Chicago jazz scene and member of the groundbreaking indie band Tortoise, guitarist Jeff Parker is midway through a relocation to L.A. that has found him straddling two cities during the last few months.
Though Parker never wanted for gigs in a city that found him collaborating with musicians who included the late saxophonist Fred Anderson, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and flutist Nicole Mitchell, Los Angeles has proved to be a bit of a challenge so far.
"There's so many great musicians out here, man.... You know, I haven't quite been able to figure out exactly how things work," he admitted, speaking by a hands-free phone connection while driving through Highland Park. "Because it seems like it's not as much of a live music scene out here in Los Angeles [as in Chicago].... I'm sure I could be wrong, but it seems like there's not as many places to play."
PHOTOS: Top 10 jazz albums of 2012
Still, with the help of some West Coast connections, including Wilco guitarist Nels Cline (who recently relocated to New York after many years as a crucial part of the L.A. scene), Parker is getting acclimated. He has appeared a number of times at the Little Tokyo club the Blue Whale in bands led by clarinetist Ben Goldberg, saxophonist Chris Speed and drummer Scott Amendola, and Thursday he headlines with his own trio.
Though Parker is still between two cities until sometime in the fall, he's found that his opportunities have increased since he stepped out of his comfort zone. He performed at New York City's Village Vanguard in a group with drummer Jeff Ballard, and last week with Jason Moran and the Bandwagon in the group's buzzed-about pairing with live skateboarding at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. Though grateful for the new opportunities as he leaves a scene he's been immersed in for 20 years, he's also a bit taken aback.
"I didn't really have a bigger perspective as far as how my music was getting out into the world," he said. "I came out here, and I'm definitely surprised there are people who are familiar with the things that I've done."
Relocating to L.A. was mostly due to family reasons (his partner is a filmmaker and teacher at California Institute of the Arts), but Parker says the move was also driven by artistic motives. "I just found myself playing with a lot of the same people over and over again," he said. "I mean, the scene [in Chicago] is amazing, but it kind of felt like I was getting a little complacent."
If Parker was in a rut, it didn't come across in his recordings. In addition to numerous recordings as a sideman, he released his third album under his own name in 2012, "Bright Light in Winter." The record, a collaborative effort with his longtime bassist Chris Lopes and drummer Chad Taylor, is marked by Parker's distinctively sharp, deliberate tone.
"It's a band. Those guys write as much music for the group as I do," he said. "I put my name out front because in jazz that's what people expect you to do."
That push-and-pull between Parker and his jazz roots is a bit of an ongoing issue. Relocating from New England to Chicago in the early '90s, Parker performed around the city's straight-ahead jazz scene before falling in with the members of Tortoise. Driven by a desire to kick against the limitations both he and the band saw in musical genres, Tortoise melded elements of electric jazz, dub and krautrock into a unique, all-instrumental sound that was informed by jazz and improvisation but not entirely part of it.
Though Parker's music outside of the group could easily be filed as jazz, particularly as the music's definition has undergone a welcome expansion in recent years, the guitarist still feels some ambivalence about the label.
"You know, I started playing because I love jazz. It was the first music, the first sound that made me want to become a musician," Parker said. "I would say [my music] comes from that, from jazz, but it's definitely not bound by it.
"I don't consider myself a jazz musician. But it's where I come from."
COACHELLA 2013: Full coverage
THE ENVELOPE: Awards Insider
PHOTOS: Grammy top winners


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Dialog Box
BioGrid is launching a new website in May 2019! Watch this space!
BioGrid Australia Limited operates a federated data sharing platform for collaborative translational health and medical research providing a secure infrastructure that advances health research by linking privacy-protected and ethically approved data among a wide network of health collaborators. BioGrid links real-time coded (i.e. with personal identifiers removed) health data across institutions, jurisdictions and diseases to assist researchers and clinicians improve their research and clinical outcomes. The web-based infrastructure provides ethical access while protecting both privacy and intellectual property.
In 2009 BioGrid became an independent not-for-profit company limited by guarantee with deductible gift recipient status. It's members are health services, universities and research institutes represented by 40 institutions representing 79 sites across every Australian state and the ACT. This legal and ethical arrangement with participating collaborators allows BioGrid to connect data through a common platform where data governance and access is managed by a highly skilled team.
Data governance, security and ethics are at the core of BioGrid's federated data sharing platform that securely links patient level clinical, biospecimen, genetic and imaging data sets across multiple sites and diseases for the purpose of medical research. BioGrid's infrastructure and data management strategies address the increasing need by authorised researchers to dynamically extract and analyse data from multiple sources whilst protecting patient privacy.
"Amongst the biggest problems that investigators face are data collection, data storage, data analysis, statistical analysis of data. A second order of problems is concerned with ethics and privacy and the amazing thing about BioGrid is that it addresses all those things."Sir Gustav Nossal, Professor Emeritus, Department of Pathology, The University of Melbourne
As health research and planning becomes more complex, the need for collaboration significantly increases. BioGrid's web-based infrastructure has the capacity to uniquely identify and ethically integrate real-time data collected about a patient across multiple institutions. BioGrid has the capability to link data with other datasets, produce tailored reports for auditing and reporting and provide statistical analysis tools to conduct more advanced research analysis.
In the health sector, BioGrid is a trusted independent virtual real-time data repository. Government investment in BioGrid has facilitated a combination of technology, collaboration and ethics approval processes for data sharing that exist nowhere else in the world.
View Videos and Animations about BioGrid Australia and how it works
BioGrid Australia
PO Box 2138
Royal Melbourne Hospital
Victoria 3050
Ph: +61 3 9342 2690
Fax: +61 3 9342 8548
For technical difficulties using SAS to access BioGrid Australia data, please log a request with the Royal Melbourne Hospital Help Desk Service for assistance.
State the application as 'BioGrid'.
RMH Helpdesk
Ph: +61 3 9342 8888
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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Canada Goose Snowy Fight
It was a snowy day and I was bored. Winter was almost over and spring hadn't yet sprung – it was brown and boring. The nature photographer's doldrums. Oh well, I needed out get out so I figured I'd check out the Magee Marsh Wildlife Area and see if there was anything interesting going on. 45 minutes later I was there – and as I feared, pretty much no action. As I drove through I noticed some geese – better then coming home with an empty memory card, right? I pulled over, shot a couple photos, and just sat there watching. As I put the camera back up to my eye for another snap, another goose decided to break up the fun! The other two were not pleased – but you can see that just by looking at the photo! At any rate, it just goes to show you – the most important part of any kind of nature photography is simply making time to get out and be there – you never know what you're gonna get!


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The Finnish Red Cross Blood Service shoulders its global responsibility for fostering the common good by sharing its expertise via its specialist services. We are participants in numerous international co-operative bodies and organisations. These include the Council of Europe, the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, The World Health Organisaton (WHO), the European Blood Alliance (EBA) and many professional organisations that promote the cause of the various blood services, blood transfusion medicine and stem cell, tissue and organ transplants.
Our specialists participate in the EU working groups in the capacity of experts sent by Finland, who help draft directives and recommendations that govern the work of the various blood services. In the Council of Europe, we participate in the work of the European Committee on Blood Transfusion and in the annual renewal process of the Guide to the preparation, use and quality assurance of blood components. In the European Blood Alliance, we are active participants in various development projects. As a co-operation body for national blood services, the Alliance seeks to promote and develop, in collaboration with the officials of the European Union, the work carried out by the various blood services and in blood transfusion medicine, as well as gathering and disseminating information that supports the work of the blood services.In Finland, the Ministry for Social Affairs and Health is in charge of legislation governing the work of blood services. The Finnish Medicines Agency Fimea, operating under the Ministry for Social Affairs and Health, supervises the operations of the Finnish Red Cross Blood Services. The Finnish Red Cross Blood Services works in close international co-operation with the authorities to develop blood services.


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Examples for Module 6: Primary sources
1. Jeremy Bentham: JB/088/179
This manuscript page was written by the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832).
This example encodes the prose text as a
 inside the  of a <text> structure. It distinguishes between a main heading (
[Limits]), and a subtitle (the phrase
Repugnancy, what, in the right margin), by means of the @type attribute on the  element. Since this is a prose text, the basic structural units are encoded as paragraphs (
), with line breaks encoded as <lb/> where they occur. Note how the usage of <lb/> is pointed out in a comment; although not the formal way to do it (that's what the <tagUsage> element in the header is for -- see TBE module 2. The TEI Header), it may serve as a valid reminder for future encoders. The sixth text line starts with a sequence of a deletion and addition:
onis deleted (marked with the  tag), and replaced with
emane(encoded as <add>). This sequence might as well have been encoded as a whole as a substitution, and wrapped in a <subst> element. This example features another interesting combination of deletion and addition on the penultimate line: the phrase
A law whichwas started as a replacement for the phrase starting with
Repugnancy. It was added above the line, but deleted again, without ever becoming an effective replacement. This is reflected in the encoding by encoding the addition first, but marking its contents as deleted:
Repugnancy
<add>A law which</add> may

A final point of interest is the use of empty <gap/> elements to indicate places where the transcriber has deliberately left out text. Often these are deletions that have been crossed out beyond readability. Note, how the reason for these omissions is not stated (which could be done in a @reason attribute).
[Limits]
Repugnancy, what

When two laws appear to disagree in their<lb/> terms,
it isa great question is often made<lb/> whether they are or are not repugnant. The<lb/> occasions on which it is brought upon the carpet<lb/>
is generally where the two laws in question<lb/>
<add>emane</add>the one of them
<gap/>from a
whichthe other from a superior legislature.<lb/> The question then is
<add>in truth</add>[properly speaking] a
<add>great</add>question<lb/> of constitutional law; but since the word which is<lb/> the subject of it is
aone of those which appears to be expressive of the
<hi rend="underline">aspect</hi>of a superventitious<lb/>
<add>law</add>to a primordial one, it seems to have<lb/> some claim to be consider'd here.

Hitherto the <gap/> primordial law <add>provision</add> and the<lb/> superventitious have been consider'd as the emaning<lb/> from the same authority <add>source</add>: so long as this is the case<lb/> the word repugnant may be looked upon as synonymous<lb/> to alterative. Repugnancy

<add>A law which</add> may accordingly be simply <gap/> revocative or reversive; and in either<lb/> case

2. Walt Whitman: After the Argument
This manuscript, featuring an early version of the poem After the Argument, was likely written in 1890 or early 1891, shortly before the poem's publication.
This example clearly illustrates how the TEI transcr module can be applied to verse texts as well. The entire poem is encoded inside <lg type="poem">, containing a heading () and two verse lines (<l>). In order to reflect the (typographic) segments of these lines, they are further divided into <seg> elements. As will be clear from the facsimile, this short manuscript features some complex editorial traces. Sequential deletions () and additions (<add>) are grouped into substitutions (<subst>). Moreover, inside the substitutions, the exact order of the editing interventions is specified by means of a sequence number in a @seq attribute, making explicit that the deletions occurred before the additions.
Note:The @seq attribute is a more advanced concept documented in the TEI Guidelines, 11. Representation of Primary Sources. Note how this explicit sequence number is not strictly needed here, as deletions logically precede additions, and only one deletion is involved.
This example illustrates nicely how additions and deletions can nest. In both cases in the example, an addition contains further deletions. The deletions are characterised as overstrike and overwrite in the respective @type attributes. The additions are characterised as insertion, overwrite, or unmarked; their @place attributes recording that they occurred supralinear, over existing text, or inline.
<pb xml:id="leaf01r" type="recto"/>
<lg type="poem">
After <subst>
an
<add place="supralinear" type="insertion" seq="2">the unsolv'd </add></subst> argument
The
<add place="supralinear" type="insertion">little children, and their</seg>
Coming in,
<subst>group of </add>
a
<add place="over" type="overwrite" seq="2">A </add></subst>
<seg>ways and chatter, flow</l>
<add place="inline" type="unmarked">in, </add>
</seg>
<add place="supralinear" type="unmarked">upon me</add>
<seg>Like <add place="supralinear" type="insertion">welcome </add> rippling water o'er my </seg>
<seg>heated <add place="supralinear" type="insertion">nerves and </add> flesh.</seg></l>
<signed>Walt Whitman</signed></closer>
[1] Encoding of Manuscripts of Jeremy Bentham, University College London Library: JB/088/179, a manuscript encoded and made available by the Bentham Project of University College London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/).
[2] Based on a TEI P4 XML encoding of Whitman, Walt, After the Argument , a manuscript encoded and made available by the Walt Whitman Archive at http://www.whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/transcriptions/loc.00001.html.


text: Organized by the Benjamin Marshall Society, this symposium will look at Chicago's great high-rise apartment buildings of the first half of the twentieth century and how traditional architects helped modernize Chicago. Combining ornamental treatments and modern streamlined interiors, these structures were both functionally efficient and luxurious dwellings rivaling the best of Chicago's single family mansions. The panel will consider the way these buildings evolved over the course of a half century and their relevance in today's society. The panel will feature the work of important but under-appreciated Chicago architects: Howard van Doren Shaw, Benjamin Marshall, Robert DeGolyer, Philip Maher and others. These architects responded to society's desire for a modern, functional architecture with increasingly simple silhouettes and surface treatments, and in many instances proved to be trailblazers in the creation of the city's built environment.


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If I've been quiet for a while, please forgive me. I've been busy playing at being God.
I'm halfway through the process of writing my second, World War Two romantic saga, and I realised that I'm a very lucky person to be doing something I enjoy so much. I spend days at my computer, writing and researching as I go to fill in the historical details as accurately as I can while keeping the flow and the tempo of the story.
It occurred to me today that writing fiction is like playing God. I create my fictional world, adding details as I go, filling in the streets and workplaces to make the stage as realistic as possible for my characters to dance across. Then I add the characters. I sculpt them with words and describe how they look in an unobtrusive way so as not to jar the course of the story. I have control of their emotions and feelings, I can make them happy or sad, angry or willful. I can decide if they are to be lovable rogues or demons, simpering idiots or suave heroes, heroines or harridans. It's a huge responsibility, but I love to make my little people believable in whatever role I choose for them to play.
As the story progresses, I have big decisions to make about the individuals who populate my world. Do I make them fall in love or do I make them become bitter enemies? Do I create more life by including a birth? Will I decide to kill anyone off? How will a death help to push the story forward? Who has a secret to hide, and what will that secret be?
I can become any one of those characters and get inside their head. I can hear what they are thinking, and I know how they will react to anything I wish to throw at them. I journey with them through years of their lives, and then I have to decide where to leave them. I like a happy ending and I think most readers do too, but I'm tempted, now and then, to allow the villain to triumph for a change.
It's not easy to play God, but I wouldn't swap my life as an author for anything else. It's so good to be in control of a microcosm of humanity. To see the final product of my imagination in print is the ultimate pleasure. My little world is complete and I set it free to spin through the universe of literature, watching and hoping that my creation finds its own momentum and attracts a following of happy readers.
If you'd like to see the first World War Two romantic saga, 'The Scent of Bluebells' is available on Amazon as a Kindle eBook and in paperback.
You'll find it here, or on your own country's Amazon website.


text:
Thomas Iannaccone
If you're in love with one designer's gowns, the best way to shop for his or her creations is by heading to a trunk show. Trunks shows normally feature brand-new gowns by the designer, as well as gowns not normally found in the store, and discounts on dresses purchased during the show—sometimes the designer him or herself will be on hand! Here's a round-up of some area trunk shows. Please note: most of these trunk shows are by appointment only so be sure to call the salons if you want to stop by.


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Join me in the A to Z Challenge 2016. This is a blog marathon for the soul!
30 days away from the A-Z challenge. I signed up during the first week and I'm number 502 on the list! There are currently almost 1,000 bloggers signed up to participate in this challenge! If you aren't familiar with this challenge (don't be embarrassed, I just found out about it when I signed up) the object is to post for 26 consecutive days (except Sundays) about anything that you want. The only catch is, the topic has to begin with the letter of the day. So we write our way through the month with posts topics from A-Z.
View original post 276 more words


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Enjoy Savings on your Seafood Meals with a Red Lobster Gift Card
Red Lobster gift cards are pre-paid cards which makes them the ideal gift for any person who may be on your list. If you have friends who you know enjoy fresh seafood, then a Red Lobster gift card may be just what you need. Continue reading


text:
According to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), there were 4,446 sales through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in December. Up by 9.6 per cent compared to December 2013.
December saw an average selling price of $556,602 - which is up by 7.0 per cent from the average selling price of $520,189 reported in December 2013.
"TREB's 2014 sales figures are a testament to the importance Greater Toronto Area households continue to place on home ownership. GTA households realize that home purchases have been a quality long-term investment. While home prices certainly increased substantially in 2014, the purchase of an average priced home remained affordable, in terms of the average household's ability to comfortably cover their monthly mortgage payments," said said Mr. Paul Etherington, President, Toronto Real Estate Board.
The median price in December 2014 was $455,750.
The median price in December 2013 was $432,000.
"The strong price growth we experienced in 2014 can be explained with two words: listings shortage. The constrained supply of listings was especially evident for low-rise home types like singles, semis and town houses. The number of households looking to purchase these home types increased, while the number of homes from which they could choose decreased. This situation resulted in more competition between buyers and more aggressive offers," said Jason Mercer, TREB's Director of Market Analysis.
*Market analysis based on numbers provided monthly by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB).


text:
Bethany Collins and Scott Ingram of Atlanta, and Rylan Steele and Orion Wertz of Columbus have been selected as finalists for the Hudgens Prize, a generous $50,000 prize given to a Georgia artist every two years by Duluth's Hudgens Center for the Arts.
The finalists were chosen by jurors Shannon Fitzgerald, executive director of the Rochester Art Center, Minnesota; artist Buzz Spector, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis; and Hamza Walker, associate curator of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, whose exhibition "Teen Paranormal Romance" at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center closed on January 17.
Work by the four finalists, who each receive a $1,500 stipend to create new work, will be on view in a solo show at the Hudgens from April 7 to June 27. Collins, who recently returned to Atlanta from a yearlong residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, also has a show that just opened at ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, January 17-March 8.
Ingram was a 2013-14 Working Artist Project fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, where his related exhibition was on view July 12-September 13, 2014.
Orion Wertz, a painter and BURNAWAY contributor, is interested in developing "a mythology suitable to a consumerist era" in works that borrow aspects of Renaissance painting and video games.
Photographer Rylan Steele has been documenting the landscape and insular Catholic community of Ave Maria in his native Florida.
The Hudgens Prize winner will be announced in a ceremony at the center on June 13, and will have a solo show there in spring 2016.
Previous winners of the Hudgens Prize are Gyun Hur and Pam Longobardi.
The Hudgens Prize winner will be announced in a ceremony at the center on June 13, and will have a solo show there in spring 2016.


text:
The popular photo sharing application- Instagram has been updated in the Android platform. The update fixes many bugs and supports the latest HTC One X Android 4.0 smartphones. The popular iOS app was released only recently in the Android platform. It has been already downloaded from the app store more than 5 million times.
Update Details
Most of the bugs that suffered the Android Instagram are now fixed. The fixed Instagram photos are now displayed in the gallery, better support is given to NVIDIA Tegra 3 based gadgets, increased hardware support for using built-in cameras and applying various filters, updating of geotag locations is now more frequent and many bug fixes for tablet uses.
However, perhaps the most notable bug fix is becoming compacted with the new HTC One X. The Android ICS device has a 1.5 GHz Tegra 3 quad core processor, 1 GB of RAM, has a 4.7-inch screen with 720 x 1280p resolution and 312ppi pixel density, and is just 0.35 inches thick.
Instagram Acquisition
Facebook has acquired popular photo sharing service Instagram for a whopping $1 billion in cash and stock. The unexpected acquisition has come just days after Instagram launched the Android version of the application.


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Takeover bid of PropEquity falls flat on Housing.com. Housing.com is in news for all the reasons since from few months. Housing.com was in negotiations with PropEquity, a Gurgaon based real estate data and analytics platform. The deal hit roadblock due to valuation differences. As we are all aware, Housing.com investors are exercising larger control over the company's daily operations, the deal with PropEquity is been revisited.
PropEquity generates revenue through subscription model. Their clients are real estate developers, real estate private equity investors apart from investors like banking and financial sector institutions. PropEquity platform spot the market trends and generate micro and macro analytics in the real estate sector segment. They cover 45,000 projects with new additions of 500 projects each month. Around 8,200 developers spread across 40 cities are covered by the company.
The deal is crucial for Housing.com, they can use the high quality analytics that PropEquity posses helps fueling further growth and provide the high quality data to the end users. This apart a steady revenue stream that is generated through B2B clients of PropEquity's . Apart from this Housing.com is under sheer pressure from the promoters to generate revenue. Products of Housing.com are still in development stage.
Housing.com's Chief Executive Officer Rahul Yadav, yesterday had announced in a town hall meeting , that he will transfer all the holdings to the employees. It was also stated that the valuation of holding will Rs. 150 to 200 crores. In fact investors have taken this issue seriously and generally institutional investors are tight lipped on the valuation part. Another reason for distaste is that Rahul Yadav had not consulted the promoters, since they hold the first right of refusal.
Rahul Yadav has now challenged Zomato and Ola CEO's publicly. In his Facebook post, he stated "Now I challenge Deepinder Goyal of Zomato and Bhavish Aggarwal of Olacabs to continue this noble act and give away HALF (not full) OF THEIR SHARES to their employees. And I hope both of them spread the nominations further."
Although Deepinder Goyal, Chief Executive Officer of Zomato and Ola's Chief Executive Officer, Bhavish Aggarwal have appreciated in the post. Rahul Yadav holds 4.5% of stake in Housing.com, however total stake of other founders has fallen to abysmally low of 8 to 9% after several rounds of funding raised by the company.
Japanese telecom and internet giant Softbank is planning to take over the reins of Housing.com. They already set up a 5 member team headed by Softbank representative Jonathan Bullock. Rahul Yadav is respected in the startup world and credited for creating one of the finest tech products in Housing.com. However the business of Housing.com has not scaled up, which has drawn ire of investors.
Rahul Yadav's earlier spat with Shailendra Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital and his spat with the media conglomerate Times Group owned MagicBricks.com had made lot of news. Housing.com is in direct competition with companies 99acres, MagicBricks and Common Floor. Funding also been done in a big way for online real estate portal business. It would be interesting to watch the further developments in the real estate sector.


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Called "game-changing" in Nobel Prize Laureate Summit on Biomedical Science (NPLS) publications, Anpac Bio's CDA technology and proprietary medical devices effectively reinvent early cancer screening and detection.
By analyzing simple, in vitro, "Blood Biopsies" and applying Anpac Bio's proprietary, multi-level, multi-parameter, diagnostic algorithms, CDA technology and testing identifies cancer and other diseases with measurably greater sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy than most current, conventional screening methods. And it does so without any harmful side-effects in patients; generating far fewer "false positives;" and at a cost substantially lower than traditional testing (such as imaging).
Anpac Bio's proprietary Cancer Differentiation Analysis (CDA) technology:
• Detects 20 different types of cancer in all stages of development—often identifying cancer at its earliest stages
• Distinguishes the cancer's likely location in the body; helping physicians identify the disease and best treatment options
• Is far more accurate than other, traditional cancer testing, with a 75%-90% sensitivity and specificity rate, in 50,000 cases to date
• Has screened out >450 cases of pre- and stage I cancer, and diseases which may lead to cancer, which were NOT screened out using current cancer screening technology.


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Interview by Christoph Paul
1) Did you get into writing to redeem your great great great grandfather who killed this country's most beloved ugly president?
I got into writing with the goal of killing more presidents.
2) You have been very critical of anthologies paying in signed photographs. Why do you hate photography, Max?
Photographs don't make any sense. They don't even move.
3) Are signed photographs Bitcoins for shitty writers?
Ask James Ward Kirk, he's the expert.
4) How long have you been publishing books for Civil Coping Mechanism?
Do I look like I smoke cigars, motherfucker?
\m/ \m/ \m/
5) You are under 25 but love nu-metal. Were you beat up by 1999 preps who are also time lords?
No, that sounds illogical.
6) You have a story in the upcoming anthology, Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath, that will edited by my lovely fiancé. Have you fucked your way to top, and if so would that make me a cuck?
I have not fucked my way to the top and my pussy does not taste like Pepsi Cola. More Diet Coke, if anything.
7) I once dated a girl named Maxine. She worked at Wendy's and she was awful, I'm glad I broke up with her.
Big goddamn mistake, pal. You could be having free baconator fries every night.
8) If you write a sequel of How to Successfully Kidnap Stranger, can you base a writer character after me that other writers will know it's me and laugh and make fun of me behind my back?
I have an idea of turning that book into an ongoing series called Shitheads and I've even planned a character out for you. So, yes.
9) Fuck, Kill, Marry: Stephen King, Richard Bachman, & Joe Hill?
This is tough question. Well, Richard Bachman is already dead, so obviously I'd fuck him. There's no way I could ever kill my father, Stephen King, so I'd have to end Joe's life, which leaves me with marrying SK. Obviously.
10 What are you writing now and what do you have to plug?
I am writing the answers to this terrible interview and I am plugging this goddamn patreon like some piece of shit: https://www.patreon.com/pmmpublishing
Also I'm on Twitter @GiveMeYourTeeth. I probably won't follow you back, though.
Max Booth III is the author of four novels. His mom has read at least one of them. He's the Editor-in-Chief of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and an ongoing columnist at Litreactor.com. He works as a hotel night auditor in a small town outside San Antonio, TX. Follow him on Twitter @GiveMeYourTeeth and visit him at www.talesfromthebooth.com.
Christoph Paul is an award-winning humor author. He writes non-fiction, YA, Bizarro, horror, and poetry including: The Passion of the Christoph, Great White House Volume 1 and Volume 2, Slasher Camp for Nerd Dorks, and Horror Film Poems, and A Confederacy of Hot Dogs. He is an editor for CLASH Media and CLASH Books and edited the anthologies Walk Hand in Hand Into Extinction: Stories Inspired by True Detective and This Book Ain't Nuttin to F*%k With: A Wu-Tang Tribute Anthology. Under the pen name Mandy De Sandra, he writes Bizarro Erotica that has been covered in VICE, Huffington Post, Jezebel, and AV Club. He is represented by Veronica Park at Corvisiero Literary Agency.


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As Donald White discussed on 03/11/2014 This is my latest Erg Nzung to my collection, and I must say that the tone of this thing is great awesome! I wanted because I had my eye on one Similar guitar in the past, but was not willing to shell out to do the money that has been requested to. This guitar has all the features I was looking for, but for a fraction of the cost. The pickups in this guitar are very different EMG 81/60 combo I'm used to, and the sound is much fuller and w Warmer.
The neck pickup has a lot more power than the EMG 60 bridge pickup is much w Warmer than the attack 81. The white s surface Che with the hardware and ebony black make for a beautiful nes instrument. The culmination is not really do it justice here. If you decide to buy it, you will probably want to install as it comes completely factory sealed. Overall, I would recommend this guitar to anyone who recommended the looks likes it because no matter what kind of music you are playing, you will not disappoint in the sound Uscht u
Show less
The Signature ESP LTD James Hetfield Iron Cross Electric Guitars for competition to its namesake performance requirements designed. It features a mahogany body with a maple top, striking graphics and set-neck construction. The mahogany neck has a thin U Shaped profile and smooth ebony handle. Black hardware is used throughout confinement Lich the bridge TonePros tune-o-matic and LTD locking tuners. A signature JH EMG Humbucker Set offers all the M Rder t Ne, players, metal.
How MEGHAN RAE checks on 03/08/2014, This is an amazing guitar. It was up right out of the box you set perfectly. I swung by Guitar Center, and to ensure that it will make any adjustments. The neck is fast, smooth and plays really well. I noticed a difference in my game almost immediately. It just oozes quality T in construction and design. The colors are bright and clear, I was fired from the fa It is stunning in person, will be well packed and not a single point. I love the signature JH EMG pickups, k Can the difference in the game more "old" regular strength active pickups to h Ren.


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WHEN: Every Monday Night from 4 pm to 7 pm (Come early for a drink AND to get a good seat and table in the dining room).
WHO: Only American Legion members or their Guests can purchase alcohol. Not a member?? Then, see the order desk to make sure you are signed in as a guest.
MENU: 1/3 lb charbroiled hamburger with lettuce, tomato, pickle, onions (raw or grilled), cheese (optional), French Fries or Potato Chips for only $6.
Optional Extras:
- "Legion Size" your burger for only $2 more. "Legion Size" is a DOUBLE cheeseburger; 2 burger patties, 2 pieces of cheese.
- Add Bacon: Bacon can be added for $1 more.
- Add Green Chilies: Roasted, mild green chilies can be added for $1 more.
1. Know What You Want BEFORE you get to the Order Desk (this decreases the line).
- Hamburger or Cheeseburger
- Extras? (Green Chilies and Bacon for $1 each)
- Onions? (Raw or Grilled)
- French Fries or Potato Chips?
- Lettuce, Tomato, and pickles come with all orders.
2. Obtain Your Meal Ticket: Tell the order desk what you want, one meal at a time.
3. Pay For Your Order: Pay cashier to get your completed meal ticket.
AFTER you get your meal ticket:
1. Find a Place to Sit (All seating is cafeteria style)
2. Obtain your Refreshments (Drinks may be purchased by members and their guests from the bar.)
3. Turn in Your Meal Ticket
- Order Change? Ask a server…Do not change the meal ticket yourself.
- When ready to eat, hand the Server your meal ticket.
- Please, do NOT change seats/tables AFTER turning in your order!
- If there is any problem with your order, tell the Server.
4. Utensils and Condiments:
- We serve this meal in paper-lined "Bar Baskets".
- No silverware "set-ups". If you do need something, please request this from a Server.
- Napkins and Condiments: These can be found on your or an adjacent table.
5. Enjoy Your Meal and Have a Great Time
- Restrooms: The ladies restroom is at the left front of the dining room. The men's restroom is located at the right front of the dining room.
- Gratuities – Always appreciated!! Your tips go toward Volunteer meals, drinks, and to the dishwasher (not a volunteer) for cleaning the kitchen and grill AFTER Burger Night.


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ATCsimulator2 (Windows)
Published by
Developed by
Critic Score
100 point score based on reviews from various critics.
User Score
5 point score based on user ratings.
Not an American user?
DescriptionATCsimulator2, much like its predecessor, simulates the no-holds-barred world of air traffic control, with every realistic detail. The game pulls no punches—it gives you the painstaking difficulty and stress that real air traffic controllers face. Like the previous version, it features authentic TRACONs, speech recognition (which is improved), and authentic keyboard interfaces.
Some new features include the ability to use the new STARS (Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System) ATC system which is rapidly replacing the old ARTS system in airports today. There is also a career mode, in which you must maintain a work quality level in order to receive pay raises and avoid demotion or firing. In addition, there are several options to make the game easier for new players. An add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator is also available so that you can act as air traffic controller for your friends playing Flight Simulator multiplayer.
Promo Images
There are no promo images for this game
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
There are no reviews for this game.
Critic Reviews
There are no critic reviews for this game.
There are currently no topics for this game.
Release delayOn November 19, 2003, the developer of ATCsimulator line of products, Russell B. Davis, was almost killed in a motorcycle accident. Mr. Davis struck a truck that crossed into his lane of travel at 50 mph while riding his 1999 Honda Aero 1100. He was catapulted 75 feet down the roadway after impact and suffered 6 broken ribs, broken right foot, right collapsed lung and all 5 lumber vertebrae were fractured. The L2 lumbar vertebrae exploded. Mr. Davis spent 12 days in ICU and required spinal fusion surgery to repair his broken back. It is a miracle he was not paralyzed. The release of ATCsimulator2 was delayed until Feb. of 2004 due to this accident.
Related Web Sites
- ATC Simulator Official Site (The official website of the ATC Simulator series of games)
Zack Green (1185) added ATCsimulator2 (Windows) on Jul 22, 2004
Author/Copyright Owner:


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Russell Brand cancels show after mum Barbara is diagnosed with breast cancer for second time
The 38-year-old comedian had been scheduled to perform at the Derby Assembly Rooms on Friday night, but made the decision to postpone the event in order to be with his family.
Russell took to Twitter to apologise to fans, explaining, "My mum ain't well".
He later expanded on the reason during his YouTube show The Trews.
"My mother has currently got breast cancer," he said in his video blog, while speaking of his dismay that the NHS is "being destroyed" by cuts.
Barbara, who has a very strong bond with her son, successfully battled uterus cancer when Russell was eight, and breast cancer a year later.
Russell often pays tribute to her for her bravery and love, in no small part because his parents split when he was just six-months-old and she raised him as a single parent.
It remains to be seen whether Russell will continue with his scheduled Messiah Complex shows in Plymouth and London this weekend.


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Austin is known for its music scene but there's so much more to Cap City culture. Whether you're a native or a visitor, indulge your curiosity and join us as we explore the wealth of ATX arts — just steps from our downtown B-cycle stations.
This month's spotlight — B-cultured — will take you to exhibits of different stripes both indoor and out. When you're out and about at our spotlight locations be sure to show your B-cycle culture on Twitter by using #bcultured.
And, yes, there could be a prize in store for those who venture to all eight locations.
See the map below and get rolling.


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Friends of NL Library selling poinsettias for the holidays
NORTH LIBERTY– The Friends of the North Liberty Community Library are now taking orders for poinsettias for the holidays. The cost is $13 per plant and the plants come in red, white and jingle bell. All orders must be prepaid. Plants are from Joyce's Greenhouse in North Liberty. The Friends will be taking orders until Nov. 18 and the plants can be picked up between Nov. 21-25. Special arrangements may be made to pick the plants up after Nov. 25. Please call 626-5701 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.


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|brian j. pardy
|Re: lynx-dev problem with tvgen
|Sat, 3 Oct 1998 17:43:45 -0700
Laura Eaves wrote: > > Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 16:31:11 -0700 > > From: "brian j. pardy" <address@hidden> > >... > > Are these two separate lines in your actual trace file? If so, there's > > probably a buffer that all those cookies won't all fit in in the HTTP > > request sending code. > > > > Anyone know offhand if it is acceptable for a browser to send two > > 'Cookie:' headers? If so, we can split cookies before this buffer limit, > > if not, can the buffer be increased? > > > > That is, assuming this is the problem. > > I looked in my trace file and there is a newline there. > Is that illegal? > I don't know anyting about the headers exchanged with http. Okay, then that would be illegal. > If you want to make sure the newline is there you could probably > run lynx on tvgen.com and see if you can reproduce the error. > I also renew my earlier request that someone try running netscape > and/or msie on this site. > Thanx in advance! I'll give it a try, and start taking a look. > > -- > > Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. > > -- Plato > > I disagree with thtis quuote btw...:) > --le Heh. I would tend to as well, but it's interesting at least... :) -- Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
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Largest Collection of Comics and Cartoon Art
It only seems appropriate that one of the largest and most academically accomplished universities in the nation also has the largest comic collection. With over 300,000 original cartoons, 45,000 books, and 2.5 million comic strip clippings (cartoons.osu.edu), the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at the Ohio State University has the largest collection of comics and cartoon art in the world! The comics can be found in a 30,000 square foot space located within the newly renovated Sullivant Hall. Some of the most popular pieces include Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Blondie, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse, Superman, Doonesbury, Spider-Man, Pogo, and many more. The exhibits are aimed at adults and children alike.
The collection began when OSU graduate and cartoonist Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) donated his collection to the university in 1977. Then, the collection was housed within the journalism department. Over the next couple of decades, Ohio State continued to receive comics and cartoons from other large institutions. In 2009, the university renamed the museum from "The Cartoon Library and Museum" to "The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum". The museum is named after Chillicothe native and cartoonist Billy Ireland.
Photo via: The Lantern


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A local man was found murdered in his home in
California over the weekend. Detectives at the
scene found the man face down in his bathtub.
The tub had been filled with milk and corn flakes,
and the deceased had a banana protruding from his
Police suspect a cereal killer.


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Hugh Grant Is an Affable, Goofy British Dad Again
Congrats to Hugh Grant! The ever charming - even when caught with hookers - British actor is a dad for the second time.
The 'Notting Hill' star announced the birth of his son on Twitter yesterday (Feb. 16), answering almost every possible question before anyone could think to ask them.
The lil' man's full name is Felix Chang Hong Grant, per The Daily Mail, which notes that "Felix is the Latin word for lucky and Chang in Chinese means long-lasting."
He was born Dec. 29 and registered on Valentine's Day.
As for the "fab mum"? It's Tinglan Hong, with whom Grant had his first child, an unplanned but graciously-welcomed daughter named Tabitha, in September 2011.
When Hong's pregnancy with Tabitha was first announced, Grant's rep described his relationship with the China-born Hong as "a fleeting affair," which wound up being something Grant regretted.
"I felt it was important to be honest and not have a wrong version, a twisted version, appear in the papers, which was that she was my girlfriend who had been dumped when she got pregnant, which was simply not the case, or that it was a planned pregnancy that I ran away from," he said.
He explained, "I was protecting her reputation -- I didn't want her to appear to be a jilted girlfriend. I was protecting mine -- I didn't want it to seem that I was a monster who ran away from his girlfriend. It's true I've been given a hard time for using those words because ... which is ironic seeing as it's actually the truth, but that doesn't seem to be very popular."
Still, it couldn't have been too fleeting if he knocked her up again. Rumor has it they got more serious after Tabitha's birth.
"Everyone was right all these years, saying, 'Hugh, why don't you have some children? It changes your life,'" the chronic bachelor told Ellen DeGeneres last year. "Now that I have one, it is life changing. I recommend it. Get some!"
Felix's birth was kept a secret -- Grant only told a handful of close friends, including his ex, Elizabeth Hurley, who's actually Tabitha's godmother. (Thanksgiving must be really interesting over there.)


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Get The Look: Boho Waves
Beachy, boho waves are made for summer, and look fabulous paired with a floral print dress or your favourite maxi. Here's how to get the look in 6 easy steps!
1. Scrunch Schwarzkopf Taft FULL ON Booster Volume Mousse to damp hair, at the roots.
?2. Blow dry your hair whilst holding your head upside-down. This will create effortless body and works for even the finest of hair.
?3. Add a little extra Taft FULL ON Smooth Operator Anti-Frizz Lotion to give amazing weightless lustre and softness whilst controlling flyaways.
?4. Spritz your hair with Taft FULL ON Guardian Angel Straightening Iron Spray and curl hair one section at a time.
5. Once curled, gently run fingers through hair, to soften the waves.
?6. Finish off the look with Taft FULL ON Fixing Hairspray for high performance that lasts, without any stickiness or residue.
Tip: Accessorise with a hippy headband across the forehead.
Are you a fan of boho waves?


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All in the Fast Food
I have come to realised something about fast food, besides the fact, that they provide us with extra unwanted calories and cholestral. They reflect the standard of living of a country, far better than the economists!
Forget about reading sheets and sheets of reports on a country. Just trot down to a McDonald's outlet and stare hard at the figures on the menus.
Prices (in S$) (Based on the cheapest menu, not taking into account, the Happy Meals. Therefore, please do not email me for comparisions on those. Thank you!)
Switzerland……….$14 (Believe it or not, this is the cheapest meal in Swiss.)
USA………………..$8.50 (Probably because of the internationl debt this country has chalked up. And afterall, it is only patriotic to price the meals in your homeland cheaper.)
Germany………….$8 (This is the cheapest meal you can get in Germany. I rather save the money and poison myself with my own cooking!!)
Not only that, Macs' meal reflect the affluence of a place, down to the microscopic view!!
With reference to Singapore :
Changi Airport……………………….$6.50 (Our worldclass airport)
Orchard Road……………………….$6.00 (The street that never sleeps)
Bedok & other neighbourhoods….$5.00 (Where the normal people live)
Therefore, discard your newspapers and financial magazines, just make your way to the nearest Macs outlet.
Disclaimer : I have not received a single cent from McDonald's (though I wish I will!!) and am certainly not their marketing manager. Although, I admit that they have one of the best marketing campaigns in the world! Argh! There I go again!
~~~ My One Cent Worth of Thoughts! ~~~


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Come Vote at the Annual Meeting! September 24th at 7 PM in the HS Media Room – Melissa Has More Info!!!
SO administration does not think the number of kids they lose do to open enrollment every year is a problem. Going to quote from Melissa's article here.
"Most informative about the data presented in the packet available at the school website involves open enrollment. From 2009 to present, the open enrollment imbalance has more than doubled from a loss of $124,014.24 in 2009 to a loss of $254,172 predicted for this year. And the administration isn't convinced there's a problem yet. This has a double whammy impact. It reduces the state aid next year by dwindling the enrollment and sucks out the funding for this year as well to pay outgoing tuition. Good grief. Anybody wants to have a competition on how we could have spent that 250 grand they let walk out the doors? How many Ipads would that have bought? Let's see here. I see them offered on amazon.com for $605 for the 32 gig high end one. That would pay for nearly 420 of the suckers. Or, if you scale back to the 16 gig model, they could buy 635 of them and supply over a third of the students with them. Good good in heaven, in 3 years they could get every kid in the district an Ipad with the money they are sending down the highway to other districts because "there's no problem here." Indeed."
SHE is absolutely correct the number of kids who leave is outstanding. It's predicted we will lose 254,172 this year alone. That is a ton of money. Think of all the things the school could do with that money!!! BUY IPADS like the Milton Middle school has done for each teacher and kid!!! REPLACE old out dated, beat up text books. Update some of the computer systems. I could go on and on.
The vote tonight is an advisory vote. SHOULD they really be voting on a night the Packer's play??? Do you think they could set up the Packer game in the next room so people could watch until they vote??? YES I know my priorities. But I have been to these meetings for voting before on the tax levy and in the end the board votes how they want any way. Always raising it.
Really what we need to do is get the city to have homes reassessed in town. Taxes are way high and home values have dropped. I do believe it's Clinton who had some homes reassessed recently and the taxes dropped substantially.