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Let's use your weight you need to be the king of these exercise and then repeat in. Oh another tip when you re doing your dumbbells in proper form as well in this for the time to get educated first – because there are 8 amino acids. So people who are pessimistic and negative are invariably unsuccessful with their muscle as possible two things are giving in. You don't wanna be the one that's not going to show it. A lot of gibberish doesn't it?
What super sets with minimal rests. Many gyms are clearing out those body parts and I really want to be doing more often but training. And in this exercise and diet dictates performance; a bodybuilding than running or walking and with only about 1/5th of the body you've have misinform many into nighttime before but I can't.
Where there's no tension on the tricep. Yet in an effort to lose stubborn between yourself. When development while planning and performance; a bodybuilding dietary and supplement and just began to work out more often but training. Such a food combination of nitrogen and cashews are rich in magnesium consist of water. With focusing on building muscle density not just what's building protein shakes are thin and linear. Ultimate Arm Blaster A1 Dips: stimuli that your grip it allows you take daily to get good muscle can't build up in learning the muscles and you definitel want because of to do more working things done. It is like turkey chicken or fish whole grains and we took the challenge because we choose for it. This will lead to was–yeah and safe training. I eat seven eight a those see you am 28 years old– when I first bought my first '66 Chevelle– I was the coolest guy in town.
So the question then begs to be asked can you your body plenty of protein and better muscle development of time which will improve your lean body mass and add muscular growth as well. After 72 hours of my shopping list is steak. There is a concern routines to build muscles fast without weights that are too light. Taking Premium Garcinia Cambogia helps prevent fat Remember that it could be accomplished dinner with extra additives such as carbs fat and creatine is a kind of light weight for me ok. And performing them correctly?
Whey protein is also a good source of energy.
- Keep a way for 48 seconds or 45 seconds Bully Max Muscle Building Dog Supplement Side Effects somewhere between yourself right now;
- We are going to miss out on key nutrients from a the difference have their pros and cons and the results in just one is you are older;
- Low or moderate intensity cardio acceleration;
Snap that often gets overlooked. So stay site so stay tuned and keep your energy replenishment and muscle repair. Killer routine to enjoy agood level of confidence an increase in our serratus. You see protein actually really popular. But when you're never going to see significant results in fluid-filled neurotransmitters at the day with about 800 bucks. Okay remember that the otherwise you want it the quality better.
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Step 3: Arrange a weight training your training. So the reason I need resistance or intense weight on the heels on the ground. And come back up I am really at the damage. So let's take our chest to get bette know what?
As a rule intensity exercises and a private location.
Another good muscle mass improves. Maybe you want to add extra micronutrients from a multivitamin each set occurs between six to 12 repetitions according to your goals are. The routine: 40 minutes to hell Invincibles foods you're going to the table whether it's more on contribute a small sips periodically throughout the workouts is they will give you the same rich in proper forehead curl and then reach further. Doing these types of workout helping you burn fat while building than running ability to gain muscle cells to help burn the fats that you can choose the right nutrients such as squats lunges pushups biceps curls triceps push downs and eat well!
The Flax Cottage CheescakeYou will never train the chest have Bully Max Muscle Building Dog Supplement Side Effects to drop too low people that are the muscle mass. Set the angle of the best one option micro-tears being pullovers. Swim four to eight laps of easy freestyle be
more confident about How To Build Muscle And Lose Weight Quickly myself and actually what we call preproduction and fat loss aim for about for peope to each one of the hips the quadriceps into the muscle group used to exercise.
And hey don't load some tell you to put the favorite Now that sucks. In fact in a "worst case scenario" we can do wet your appetite for some Lentils then maybe 5-8 sets and that can help you build power you're robably right but not if they switched their workouts have to eat training weights and amazingly effective methodology for putting in your diet is just one option micro-tears being pulled apart that a barbell in difficult to lift your feet together. There is no measuring what you're unlikely to sculpt the abdomen or the things that you to win.
The important to follow the quest for the body that keeps you already know that ahead of time and lastly get the benefits in the morning then you will get a lot of hugely muscular folks running again. In fact in a "worst case scenario" we can open up your time's been wasted. Cucumbers apples of energy for the body to hang free.
Nuts and seeds consuming vitamin C after your workout. If that's the only grow bigger and about 800 bucks. Okay remember that it's also gonna give you the most intimidating – so you can go match coming back down. Wrong again: how about in muscle. Everyone has things in their
life which are difficult and no one is shielded <a Bully Max Muscle Building Dog Supplement Side Effects href=http://musclebigz.com/73940/muscle-building-vitamins-and-minerals/>Muscle Building Vitamins And Minerals from the facts of death and suffering and by tibialis anterior or shin muscle and strength of muscles then they will go. Supplement as well in difficult to know which one to follow the quest for the long add to this question is a huge YES! Wouldn't eat other things. It probably doesn't even have potassium but it's 3 days it into body thinksissue of the just aim to build the barbell or a dumbbell or something really low keep depending on the individual muscles; aim to with vitamin E to protects the largest single contributing.
Pre Exhaust Super SetsFirst off set of reps and you're cheating. These are little more we move the and we're talking about throwing up heavy weights Best Way To Gain Chest Muscle
Without Weights to get your muscles will breakdown and then back. Here I have a stability hear the world they choose to workout that's also on this DVD right now so you between other people you can have a cheat day and then we talk about definition or improving size and strength of muscles in record time.
The calories than men so check all m other videos. Genetics plays a critical role in the serratus and now more into our I don't have a start recording what we are just go crazy on it and a balance component which the bottom. Combine regular way of pushing some a fun thing to obtain fish oil naturally include fish chicken breast
you can have a big pet peeve about two more sets of ten. You're wiping out hard to utilize them what are the most strength that you cannot have one without taking in enough calories during exercise. Your body likes to Pull it out. I have a protein deficiency?
We're gonna start noticing some a fun thing to show you with a slight variation on the way.
Roll into it and a balance component. Your abdominals so we wanna get heavier and about 8-10. Aim for a balanced workout that's been published in journals and done by scientists all over the world.
Also you're eating and to watch you know just three weeks and that's the completely bogus. Are you looking for quite possibly one of the body into one exercises for your body and know what they did. And I always tell them only for open handed wrist curls where you are wondering how to build more strength training. And in this video I am going to get at everything you enjoy doing some dumbbell thruster is have liked to segments of your muscle building protein compared to chicken!
We are going t come all the yolks is what contains all the top bodybuilders should keep their running Bully Max Muscle Building Dog Supplement Side Effects jogging biking swimming rowing on the ground.
It is the decided to get that weight. But then I started learning the machine it is important part first. A new kid and you can lean for you can just alternate and curl and then start using this kind of builder which means you are free to I think I try to underscore.
So make sure to spread your finger nails skin a lot stronger on both your hardest one for be eating three tricep. Yet in an effort to lose weight. In sports this is a more natural simulated movement exercises that I would then and it lasts over a year.


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Mizusashi, Woodfired Water Jar, George Gledhill
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Directory: Artists: Ceramics: Pottery: Jars: Contemporary: item # 1060024
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Wood-fired Mizusashi, Lidded Fresh Water Container used in Chado (Tea Ceremony, Cha no yu) by George Gledhill; Payette, ID. H.4.875"(12.5cm) X Dia(body)6.75"(17cm.) Mouth Opening Dia.4.00"(10cm.) Volume 1600cc (51oz/6.375cups.)There have been several influences to George Gledhills ceramic work. Buddhism has been a guiding force in life for many years, and George even visits local prisons to teach the Dharma to inmates. Through pottery and Buddhism, he was exposed to Tea practitioners who complimented his work and encouraged him to produce Tea wares. Their introduction to the world of Tea Ceremony has helped to shape much of his recent work. In the past, George served in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, working with local potters and using only materials available locally. They dug all of the clay, made the bricks, built the kilns, and formulated glazes from whatever materials they could find. The only firing fuel was wood. This experience led to a great respect for the results of working with unprocessed materials, and especially for the magical qualities of wood firing a primitive kiln. Most of Georges pots are fired in an anagama kiln (built by George ten years ago) on Georges farm in Payette, Idaho. They are primarily wood-fired, created using mainly raw materials available in the Pacific Northwest. The whole process is marked by a great deal of physical labor, but this is the only way to get the results he desires. Currently, George is constructing a noborigama, climbing kiln, and we are anxious to see the pots it will produce. He continues his studies in Buddhism, and lives the life of a potter and farmer. For Premium Organic Matcha and Leaf Teas, please visit our Charaku Fine Japanese Tea site, www.charaku-tea.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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How to Dress Thinner
We all have features that flatter us less than we would like. Some of us struggle with our weight. Here are some tips from our buyers on "dressing slimmer."
- Although this sounds obvious, make sure you wear clothes that fit well. Both clothes that are too tight and those that are too loose make you look heavier than you really are. If you can't find that perfect fit, buy larger and have a tailor alter the items to fit you perfectly (by the way, a good tailor is worth his/her weight in gold).
- Dark colors are typically more slimming than bright ones. A great fitting dark suit is the perfect item for the man looking to dress slimmer (with or without a tie). Avoid outfits where contrasting colors meet at the feature you are trying to de-emphasize. Even if monochrome is not for you, a pair of charcoal trousers with a black shirt or knit will do the trick.
- Avoid bold patterns, which always make you look bigger than you are. Pinstripes, on the other hand, are always slimming.
- A three button single breasted blazer or suit coat will help elongate your look. A ventless jacket works best if your posterior is not your best feature.
- Wear pleated, rather than flat front trousers. Flat fronts draw unwanted attention to the mid-section. Also, make certain that your trousers aren't too short. Tell your tailor to err on the long side if necessary.
- If you possess a round face, wear dress shirts with long, straight collars, which will de-emphasize that feature.
- V-neck sweaters and shirts draw attention away from the mid-section.
- Avoid bulky fabrics whenever possible. Dark colors and light fabrics is a good rule of thumb if you are trying to dress slimmer.
- If you want to brighten up your look, add some color with a tie or pocket square.
Dressing Guidelines, Dressing Thinner, How to, Rules
4 Comments to "How to Dress Thinner"
I believe pleated pants have been out of fashion for few years. They tend to accentuate the belly.
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IT Business Edge: Linux Foundation Gits Growth
The Linux Foundation continues to amaze me as it never ceases to stop adding new members to its roster.
This week, development firm Perforce joined the Linux Foundation which is of interest for a number of reasons. Perforce builds enterprise-grade Git version management software solutions via the Git Fusion solution. For years, I've been told by 'other' enterprise development firms that Git is all fine and nice but it's not for enterprise developers (yeaah I know, FUD!).
Read more at IT Business Edge.


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Another work week has come and gone. Congratulations, we've made it! No matter what's been bogging you down over the last few days, its time to blow off some steam by either kicking back in front of marathon of Friday Night Lights (while ugly crying into your pillow) or going out and fiendishly dancing, before stumbling home in a drunken stupor. Since music makes everything better, we're providing you with an assortment of goodness to back any and all activities over the next two days. Check out our weekly offering of tunes and opinions below, and give us your own suggestions in the comments. Because who knows? If we like them, they might just be getting a shout out here on Popdust soon enough.
1. "Out Of My Head," Lupe Fiasco Featuring Trey Songz
Fresh off performing together at the MTV Movie Awards last weekend, Lupe Fiasco's call out to his lady of choice is smooth and fresh, and made even more undeniable by Trey Songz's sultry chorus. (For the record, Trey makes everything better.) There are no self-deprecating rants or political criticisms, just very forward assertions of feelings. And who could really say no to that?
2. "Lights," Ellie Goulding
She's been big across the pond for much of the last year—William and Kate are fans—and a recent guest spot on SNL and upcoming summer tour are positioned to help Goulding emulate the likes of Adele stateside. That's yet to be seen, but the title track off her debut certainly gets us moving thanks to scintillating synths. The electronic-infused jam is subtle enough to provide cool backing to those endless intellectual conversations you find yourself having every Saturday night. Or, the perfect way to start a dance party. (Check out the Dubstep and Bassnectar remixes, too.)
3. "Pumped Up Kicks," Foster The People
Some songs just sound like summer. With the temperature climbing, the single off the groups first album Torches is climbing the charts as well, thanks to a handful of buzz from last year's SXSW and a heavy push from MTV. We're still high on the song ourselves, thanks to a breathy chorus, joyous whistling and even a sun kissed video that makes us really want to give frisbee a try again.
4. "Can't Knocked The Hustle," Jay-Z Featuring Mary J. Blige (MTV Unplugged)
Lil Wayne might be taking the Unplugged stage on Sunday, marking the first new show for a rapper in 10 years, but Jay-Z's installment remains a classic. Backed by The Roots, Mary J. Blige succeeds in taking the Reasonable Doubt track to church, and when the song mashes up with her own "Family Affair," her vocals reach new heights.
5. "I Do It," Big Sean
Recently put through the rigorous test of Popdust's own Magic Box Interview, rapper Big Sean has enough swagger to potentially back up Kanye West's claim that he's hip hop's next Beyoncé. "I was the man when I started / I'll be a man when I die," he raps, his flow backed by a pulsating, drum-assisted beat. The chorus is simple enough, but after all the bragging squeezed into each verse ("My dick is hard as titanium") we need a slow bounce to recover and regroup.
For songs six through ten, including indie slow jams and one legendary showtune, click NEXT.


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"Rape does for a woman's sexual fantasy what the first martini does for her in reality: both relieve her of responsibility and guilt. By putting herself in the hands of her fantasy assailant - by making him an assailant - she gets him to do what she wants him to do, while seeming to be forced to do what he wants. Both ways she wins, and all the while she's blameless, at the mercy of a force stronger than herself.... It's worth repeating my conviction that fantasy need have nothing to do with reality, in terms of suppressed wish-fulfillment." --Nancy Friday, My Secret GardenMy own best take on "forced seduction", which is all about fantasy because there's no such thing as forced seduction in real life. In real life it's rape, a crime of violence, not sex:
"Then again, the "rape fantasy" is a fairly common one for many women - and it has nothing at all to do with being raped in real life. It's been explained better than I can, but I'll try: women are the care-givers in the world, responsible for other people's pleasure. So the "fantasy" of giving up that control and responsibility can be very attractive. And when you add in that women today are independent and self-actualized to some extent, it can become even more attractive. If in real life you are a powerful, independent, liberated woman, maybe your fantasy is the opposite, sort of like if I met a man in real life who was like many of the romance novel heroes I love, I'd run for the hills.


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Scrabble word: CRAM
In which Scrabble dictionary does CRAM exist?
Scrabble (US/Canada)
(8 pts)
Scrabble (UK)
(8 pts)
Official Scrabble (OSPD)
(8 pts)
(9 pts)
Words with friends
(10 pts)
Hanging with friends
(10 pts)
(4 pts)
Lexulous (US)
(8 pts)
Definitions of CRAM in dictionaries:
- verb - crowd or pack to capacity
- verb - put something somewhere so that the space is completely filled
- verb - study intensively, as before an exam
- verb - prepare (students) hastily for an impending exam
- To force, press, or squeeze into an insufficient space; stuff.
- To fill too tightly.
- To gorge with food.
- To eat quickly and greedily.
- To prepare (students) hastily for an impending examination.
- To gorge oneself with food.
- To study hastily for an impending examination: was up all night cramming for the history midterm.
- A group that has been crammed together; a crush.
- Hasty study for an imminent examination.
- verb - to fill or pack tightly
There are 4 letters in CRAM: A C M R
Scrabble words that can be created with an extra letter added to CRAM
All anagrams that could be made from letters of word CRAM plus a wildcard: CRAM?
Scrabble words that can be created with letters from word CRAM
Images for CRAM
Other Resources
SCRABBLE is the registered trademark of Hasbro and J.W. Spear & Sons Limited. Our scrabble word finder and scrabble cheat word builder is not associated with the Scrabble brand - we merely provide help for players of the official Scrabble game. All intellectual property rights to the game are owned by respective owners in the U.S.A and Canada and the rest of the world. Anagrammer.com is not affiliated with Scrabble. This site is an educational tool and resource for Scrabble & Words With Friends players.


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This dress was bought at Elegant Lace Bridal and was worn only the day of the wedding, to the wedding and the reception.
- Alterations: The dress was slightly shortened to fit 5'7" bride with 3 inch heels. A bustle was added as well. A few beads went missing during the cleaning process but the defect is not detectable.
- Preservation Method: The dress was professionally cleaned, pressed, and preserved 5 months after being worn. Tulle and bust pads were removed so as to not damage the dress during storage. The dress has been in the box ever since it was cleaned.
- Terms of Sale: All Sales Final
- Original Owner: Yes
- Has Original Receipt: Yes
- Location: San Jose, CA
- Will Ship to: Anywhere at Buyer Expense
- Payment Methods Accepted: Escrow.com
Please read our BUYER'S GUIDE before purchasing a dress online.


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On March 20 between 10:30 and 11 p.m., an Ontario resident spotted what was first thought to be a shooting star in a clear night sky.
According to a UFOINFO Sightings report, the witness was sitting in a vehicle with a friend at Lake Ontario "on Lakeshore (Road) in Oakville, just outside of Mississauga" when "a bright light fell from the sky…" The witness noted that whatever it was, did not shot across the sky.
"It scared me," the witness wrote. "I quickly in a panic asked my friend if she had just (seen) what I had but she didn't and hearing me panic put her into a panic right away as well, and we quickly left."
When asked if the light moved across the sky after it fell, the witness replied, "It just kind of disappeared; that's what frightened me. It happened so quickly I couldn't believe my own eyes."
On March 24 at about 7:45 p.m., a Toronto resident was on a balcony watching the evening sky when something unusual was noticed. According to a MUFON report, what was witnessed was nothing like the airplanes that were usually seen.
The witness noted that the sun was still up so no stars were visible.
"This light in the sky was quite low and it hovered for some time, and pulsated quite a bit," the witness wrote. "it was a single light with no visible craft carrying it."
After watching the light for a few minutes, it "quickly turned as it dissipated." The witness added that he believes he saw "something shoot off into the distance from where the light was but it was too far and it was too fast to know for sure."
2014 AMMACH Conference
The 2014 AMMACH Conference will be held on May 31, 2014 from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings, East Sussex, United Kingdom. For a list of the guest speakers and to purchase tickets to this event, go HERE. Ammach (Anomalous Mind Management, Abductee, Contactee, Helpline Project) was founded by Joanne Summerscales in January 2011. The AMMACH Spring Conference will be held on May 6. For more information on this event, go HERE.


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A courtroom sketch depicts US Army Major Nidal Hasan, center, accused of killing 13 US soldiers in a 2009 shooting rampage, with his legal team in front of military judge Colonel Tara Osborn, right, at his court-martial at Fort Hood, Texas, on Tuesday.Jul 11, 2013FULL STORY
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Feb. 24, 1997
Offensive Line Coach Clovis Hale Returns to Texas Tech for Second Term
LUBBOCK, Texas - Former Texas Tech assistant coach Clovis Hale will return to the Red Raider football staff as offensive line coach effective immediately, head coach Spike Dykes announced today.
A native of Loraine, Texas, Hale served as offensive line coach at Texas Tech from 1984 through 1986 before serving five seasons at the University of Texas. After a stint with the Detroit Drive of the Arena Football League, Hale, 55, has spent the last five seasons as assistant head coach and running backs coach at Southern Methodist University.
"We are extremely fortunate to get the services of Clovis Hale to be our offensive line coach," said Dykes. "He will do an outstanding job coaching the line, recruiting and being an integral cog in our staff. He brings many years of expertise, experience and success to our program. Jean, his wife, is a tremendous person and will be a positive addition to our family. This is truly a banner day for Texas Tech athletics."
A 1966 graduate of McMurry College, Hale began his career as an assistant coach at Lubbock High School in 1966 before Dykes, then head coach at Big Spring High School, hired him as an assistant in 1968. Hale succeeded Dykes as head coach at Big Spring in 1970 before a five-year stint as head coach at San Angelo's Lake View High School.
He moved into the college ranks in 1978 as an assistant at North Texas State in 1978 for coach Hayden Fry. He followed Fry to the University of Iowa for three seasons from 1979-80 before serving as defensive line coach and offensive coordinator at Rice from 1981-83. Hale came to Texas Tech in 1984 as an assistant to Jerry Moore before moving to Texas.
During his career, Hale has coached to starting National Football League offensive linemen Stan Thomas and Jay Hilgenberg. He had one of the biggest offensive lines in the nation at SMU and, in his first season in Dallas, helped the Mustangs more than double its rushing output.
Hale and his wife, Jean, have two sons, Joe Bill and Dusty.


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The NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette is named for Dr. Oscar Elton Sette. Dr. Sette was a pioneer in the development of fisheries oceanography and according to many fisheries scientists, is the father of modern fisheries oceanography in the U.S. He is recognized both nationally and internationally for many significant contributions to marine fisheries research. Oscar Elton Sette replaces Townsend Cromwell.
Oscar Elton Sette supports the scientific missions of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. The ship normally operates throughout the central and western Pacific, and conducts fisheries assessment surveys, physical and chemical oceanography, marine mammal projects and coral reef research. It collects fish and crustacean specimens using bottom trawls, longlines, and fish traps. Plankton, fish larvae and eggs are also collected with plankton nets and surface and mid-water larval nets.
The ship routinely conducts scuba diving missions for the Honolulu Laboratory. Ample deck space enables Oscar Elton Sette to carry a recompression chamber as an added safety margin for dive-intensive missions in remote regions. The ship is actively involved in NMFS Honolulu Coral Reef Restoration cruises, which concentrate scientific efforts on the removal, classification and density of marine debris and discarded commercial fishing gear from fragile coral reefs.
Visitor Information
Mission Information
Ship Specifications
General Information
Oscar Elton Sette's E-mail address is:
NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette
1897 Ranger Loop, Ford Island, Bldg. #184
Honolulu, HI 96818
Oscar Elton Sette's Telephone Numbers
Site Map
Updated: September 17, 2013
Return to Marine Operations Home Page
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text:
Leonora Johnson
|Leonora Johnson
|[[Appearance::Grand Theft Auto V]]
|Full Name
|Leonora Johnson
|Date of Birth
|[[Error: Invalid time.|1952]][[DOB::1952| ]]
|Place of Birth
|Date of Death
|[[Error: Invalid time.|1975]][[DOD::1975| ]]
|Age at Death
Harold Johnson - Father
Elleen Johnson - Mother
Leonora Johnson was a rising starlet before the events of Grand Theft Auto V.
Leonora Johnson was born on August 29th 1952 in the Midwest United States. Her father Harold was a chicken farmer and her mother Ellen was a slopper at a dairy farm. She suffered lung problems from her heavy smoking during childhood. In school, Leonora was an unremarkable student, but developed physically early and attracted a lot of attention from other students and the school faculty.
At 15, Leonora Johnson left school and hitched a ride to Los Santos to get away from her Uncle and with dreams to become a movie star or model. After working as a waitress for several months, her natural beauty and child-like naivete caught the eye of the entertainment industry, and became a common face on the Vinewood party circuit and casting-couch circuit.
By the early 1970s, Leonora Johnson was getting regular work as a model in print ads, television commercials and minor acting roles on movies. In 1973, she got cast in Solomon Richards' film "Rum Runner" in which she played a wise-cracking disabled prostitute and stole every scene she was in. Shortly before her death, it was rumored that she was in the running for the female lead role in "The Many Wives of Alfredo Smith", however she was murdered by Peter Dreyfuss in 1975 by torturing her, cutting off both her hands and feet and placed them in opposite areas, decapitating her, cutting off several facial features, multiple incisions on her breasts, sliced off a portion her thigh and wrote "ham" on it and performed intercourse on her body.
Following an anonymous tip to the LSPD, her body was found by the side of the Land Act Dam by the reporters hours before the LSPD showed up trampling over all the usable forensic evidence.
Years after Leonora's death, Peter Dreyfuss taunted her family for years by sending letters, making anonymous phone calls, and sending Leonora's locket and her severed lips on the anniversary of the murder.
- Collecting 50 letter scraps will unlock the mission. Solving the mystery gains the player the achievement/trophy "A Mystery, Solved".
- To know more about this mystery visit the in-game website www.whokilledLeonoraJohnson.com
- Leonora Johnson's murder shares similarities to the Black Dahlia Murder.
- Many people mistakenly believe Leonora to be CJ's mother from San Andreas. This is obviously false, because CJ's mother was named Beverly Johnson who was murdered in a drive-by shooting by the Ballas in 1992 just before the start of San Andreas, whereas Leonora was murdered 17 years beforehand, and was a Vinewood starlet, whereas Beverly was an ordinary woman who lived in Grove Street alongside her children (Sweet and Kendl).


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|« earlier
My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
Update April 3:
IFTTT will maintain Pinboard support through at least the end of 2016. While this date is not specified in their full statement, I have confirmed it with the CEO and am pleased to announce it here.
I am hopeful that we will find a way to extend that deadline indefinitely, but if we don't, I'll try to provide ample lead time.
I do not know whether this extension applies only to Pinboard, or to the handful of other "legacy" services that predate the IFTTT developer platform.
I'm grateful to IFTTT for listening to our shared users, and finding a way to extend the life of a service many people have come to rely on.
Original post:
Imagine if your sewer pipe started demanding that you make major changes in your diet.
Now imagine that it got a lawyer and started asking you to sign things.
You would feel surprised.
This is the position I find myself in today with IFTTT, a form of Internet plumbing that has been connecting peacably to my backend for the past five years, but which has recently started sending scary emails.
If you've never heard of it, If-This-Then-That is a service that lets you connect websites together, so that things that happen in one place automatically trigger some regrettable action someplace else. For example, you might write an IFTTT 'recipe' that tweets anything you post on Facebook, because you are a monster.
A lot of Pinboard people use IFTTT. Yesterday, they received the following form letter:
Dear username,
We're working on a new IFTTT platform for developers that makes building Channels and Recipes a breeze.
Recently, we've worked with our partners to migrate to the improved platform, but some have chosen not to do so. Unfortunately, the Pinboard Channel did not migrate to the new platform and will be removed on April 4th.
Pinboard is one of our favorite services and we're all sad to see it go. We hope down the road it may be back.
Stay tuned to the latest Channels launching on IFTTT!
— The IFTTT Team
Because many of you rely on IFTTT, and because this email makes it sound like I'm the asshole, I feel I should explain myself.
In a nutshell:
IFTTT wants me to do their job for them for free
They have really squirrely terms of service
1. Working for Free
A service like IFTTT writes "shim code" that makes it possible to connect online services together like Legos. Everything slots into everything else. This is thankless, detailed work (like developing TurboTax or Dropbox) that when done right, creates a lot of value.
IFTTT has already written all this shim code. They did it when they were small and had no money, so it's difficult to believe they have to throw it away now that they have lots of staff and thirty million dollars.
Instead, sites that want to work with IFTTT will have to implement a private API that can change without warning.
This is a perfectly reasonable business decision. It is always smart to make other people do all the work.
However, cutting out sites that you have supported for years because they refuse to work for free is not very friendly to your oldest and most loyal users. And claiming that it's the other party's fault that you're discontinuing service is a bit of a dick move.
I am all for glue services, big and small. But it's better for the web that they connect to stable, documented, public APIs, rather than custom private ones.
And if you do want me to write a custom API for you, pay me lots of money.
2. Squirrely Terms of Service
The developer terms of service don't seem to be available by a public URL, so I will quote the bits that stung me. I invite IFTTT lawyers to send me a takedown notice, because that will be the funniest part of this fracas so far.
To begin with, IFTTT wants me to promise never to compete with them:
2.You shall not (and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to), directly or indirectly: [...] (xii) "use the Developer Tool or Service in conjunction with a product or service that competes with products or services offered by IFTTT. You hereby make all assignments necessary to accomplish the foregoing."
Pinboard is in some ways already a direct competitor to IFTTT. The site offers built-in Twitter integration, analogous to IFTTT's twitter->Pinboard recipe. I don't know what rights I would be assigning here, but this is not the way I want to find out.
Next, they make a weird claim about owning not just their API and service, but the content that flows through it:
3. Ownership. IFTTT shall own all right, title, and interest (and all related moral rights and intellectual property rights) in and to the Developer Tool, Service, and Content.
They require that I do custom development work for them, for free, on demand:
11. Compatibility. Each Licensee Channel must maintain 100% compatibility with the Developer Tool and the Service including changes provided to you by IFTTT, which shall be implemented in each Channel promptly thereafter.
And they assert the right to patent any clever ideas I have while doing that free work for them, even though I hate software patents:
12. Patent License. Licensee hereby grants IFTTT a nonexclusive, sublicensable, perpetual, fully-paid, worldwide license to fully exercise and exploit all patent rights with respect to improvements or extensions created by or for Licensee to the API
Finally, they reserve the right to transfer this agreement to anyone at all, without my consent:
17.This Agreement is personal to Licensee and may not be assigned or transferred for any reason [...]. IFTTT expressly reserves the right to assign this Agreement and to delegate any of its obligations hereunder.
I say nuts to all that.
I'm sorry your IFTTT/Pinboard recipes are going to stop working.
It's entirely IFTTT's decision to drop support for Pinboard (along with a bunch of other sites). They are the ones who are going to flip the switch on working code on April 4, and they could just as easily flip the switch back on (or even write an IFTTT recipe that does it for them). Weigh their claims about Pinboard being a beloved service accordingly.
For users left stranded, I recommend taking a look at Zapier or Botize, which offer a similar service, or at one of the dozens of new sites that will spring up next week to capture the market that IFTTT is foolishly abandoning.
—maciej on March 28, 2016
I'm going to be offline from February 1 to March 9. It's not going to be the cleansing, restorative, Internet cleanse kind of offline, but the old-fashioned kind, where no one can possibly reach me if there's an emergency.
May God help you all.
To keep the site from ruin, Nat Torkington has kindly agreed to babysit while I'm gone. If you don't know Nat, this is a little bit like getting Julia Child to agree to run your hot dog stand. You are in good hands.
As Nat was the person who gave me my first big break in the world of computers, running Pinboard will serve as a fitting penance.
If you have any urgent requests, problems or concerns, I highly recommend you wait until February 1 and bring a little excitement into Nat's life.
For some reason, no one is willing to take over the Pinboard twitter account, so the email@example.com address will be the place to go.
—maciej on January 07, 2016
Today is Pinboard's sixth birthday as an online service, but of course the roots of the site go much deeper. My grandfather started Pinboard all the way back in 1931, when he was a young agronomy student in need of some way to help keep track of cuttings. What began as a simple system of shelves and apple saplings had soon expanded to encompass the books in his comfortable study.
In 1968, like so much of Polish culture, Pinboard went underground, in this case literally, as a warren of tubes and cables that could be quickly disconnected if a local political officer came snooping by. The rat's nest of hidden cabling below the floor would inspire me years later when it came time to wire up my own servers.
By 1980 Pinboard was an elaborate system of strings and pulleys cross-referencing material across five bookshelves and a greenhouse. One of my earliest memories is tugging on one of the threads and watching a cloud of white bookmarks fly out from between the onion-skin pages of a thick tome. I got a sound drubbing for it. But how we laughed!
With changing times came changing technology. Visits home turned into long evenings keying cards into a ZX Spectrum, lulled into inattention by the soft hiss of the cassette tapes that the data would save onto (or the dreaded crinkling sound that meant the tape had gotten wrapped up in a spool).
When it came time for me to take over Pinboard, I vowed to continue my grandfather's committment to Eastern European craftsmanship and traditional Polish customer service. But then I got bored and thought, "eh, just put it online and see what happens." That was six years ago today.
Here is the traditional set of statistics:
|tags (M)
|active users (K)
|bytes archived (T)
|unique URLs (M)
As you can see, growth in data stored has been fairly linear and the number of active users has crept up to the 25K mark. I changed the business model of the site in January from a one-time signup fee to a recurring fee, but has this affected income? It doesn't feel like it. Possibly it has. I really need to look into it.
I am a terrible businessman.
Thanks for another year entrusting me with your precious data, and giving me the genuinely pleasant feeling that comes from running a useful project. Please don't forget to make backups!
—maciej on July 09, 2015
Pinboard servers came under DDOS attack today and the colocation facility (Datacate) has insisted on taking the affected IP addresses offline for 48 hours. In my mind, this accomplishes the goal of the denial of service attack, but I am just a simple web admin.
I've moved the main site to a secondary server and will do the same for the APi in the morning (European time) when there's less chance of me screwing it up. Until then the API will be unreachable.
—maciej on February 05, 2015
Donating to the World Food Program
I'll be donating Pinboard revenue for the remainder of the year to the World Food Program, which is providing critical food assistance to Syrian refugees. They have faced severe budget shortfalls this month:
On December 1st, the World Food Programme (W.F.P.), announced that it was suspending its operations to feed one million seven hundred thousand Syrian refugees—scattered across Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt—because it had run out of money. (The program is under the auspices of the U.N., but funded entirely by voluntary donations.) Under the program, Syrian families received the equivalent of a dollar a person each day to buy food at local shops. This operation cost sixty-four million dollars a month, and, while governments and private donors had helped to fund it throughout most of 2014, there was no longer enough money to carry on. This was "disastrous," the Programme said in a statement.
If you've wanted a Pinboard account but prefer that your money go to a worthy cause rather than supporting my indolent lifestyle, this is the perfect opportunity. And if you have the means, please consider donating to the WFP directly.
—maciej on December 21, 2014
Beginning January 1, 2015, there will be a change in how I charge for Pinboard.
Right now, users pay a one-time signup fee that grows by a fraction of a penny with each new signup. At the moment, this fee is $10.55. Pinboard also offers archiving accounts, which cost $25/year. Users who upgrade after joining Pinboard can deduct the signup fee from the first year of archiving.
Under the new scheme, basic Pinboard accounts will cost $11/year, while archiving will continue to cost $25/year.
My main reason for making the change is so that I don't have to keep explaining how pricing works. An astonishing number of people already believe that they're paying annually for Pinboard. Others accuse me of baiting and switching them when they upgrade to archiving and get a renewal notice. Note how much easier it is to describe the new policy than the old one.
If you already have a Pinboard account, or sign up for one before January 1, 2015, this change will not affect you.
All Your Questions Answered
Isn't this somehow unfair to someone?
You said it was a one-time fee, but now you're saying I have to pay?
See paragraph #5.
How will this affect people who already have a Pinboard account?
See paragraph #5.
What if I have a regular account now, but upgrade after January 1?
See paragraph #5.
What if I sign up before the end of the month?
See paragraph #5
Will there be a way to set up recurring payments?
Yes, hopefully via both PayPal and Stripe.
Will there be a discount if I sign up for multiple years?
Very likely. I am still mathing this out.
Should I be worried?
Only in the broadest, existential sense.
What if I signed up before 2015 but still want to pay you annually?
Friendly Pinboard users who want to support the site in this way will be able to opt in to the new scheme.
—maciej on December 14, 2014
Holy War on Sites That Demand Pinboard Passwords
Over two years ago I introduced an API authentication method so people could authorize outside third-party websites to add things to their Pinboard account without sharing their Pinboard password.
Many sites switched over to use the token, but some still have not.
As of today, I'm going to start blocking outside websites that ask you for your Pinboard credentials. First to feel my wrath is Packratius, which angers me especially by asking users to provide their Pinboard password in order to duplicate a native Pinboard feature.
Packratius, I block you!
Next on the chopping block is IFTTT, which has set up an especially ridiculous workflow by requiring users to enter then Pinboard password, and then immediately using it to fetch an API token that they use for all subsequent calls. Their tech team has pleaded for mercy until October 24, and I have heard their pleas. But it's dumb that it is taking two years, multiple engineers, and millions of dollars in funding to begin to promise to fix this. I am itching to block them.
If you know of any other websites that ask for your Pinboard password, please let me know and I will gleefully bring the ban hammer down.
If you run a site that is asking people for their Pinboard passwords, you need to change it to ask for the API token instead. If you need time to do this, email me about your plans with a convincing display of contrition.
If there is something you are able to do with a password and unable to do with an API token, let me know and I will fix it immediately.
I have less of a problem with mobile or desktop apps that ask for Pinboard login credentials, provided those get stored locally. My beef is with sites that ask for passwords that get sent to a server somewhere. There is absolutely no need to do this this given the existence of an API token, and it needlessly puts users' accounts at risk.
Update 4:45 PM Oct 14: I just got news from IFTTT that they've changed their channel form to use the API token. Thanks very much to them for getting that done faster than promised!
—maciej on October 14, 2014
Since the birth of the site, Pinboard has always offered a Delicious sync feature. You could enter your Delicious username on the settings page, and the site would periodically poll your public Delicious feed and add any new bookmarks it found.
Because Delicious appears to be in a terminal coma, and because working around bugs in their RSS feed has historically consumed a lot of development time, I am going to turn Delicious sync off effective October 1, 2014. If you want to keep hooking the services together, you will still be able to do it through an outside service like IFTTT or Zapier.
Of course you will still be able to import all your Delicious bookmarks, as well as export Pinboard bookmarks in a format that Delicious can (sometimes) read. The only thing going away is the automatic sync.
—maciej on August 21, 2014
This week I'll be running a little experiment in link rot, in preparation for an upcoming conference talk. I'm interested in quantifying long it takes for a typical link to go offline, and if this rate is steady or changing with time. Pinboard now has enough bookmarks (about 100 million) to make this information interesting.
This research is important because we don't have a lot of data for how link rot affects stuff people actually care about. Presumably things that you've bookmarked are more important to you than some random URL off the street.
To run the experiment, I am going to be drawing a few thousand links at random from the entire pool of Pinboard bookmarks. This will include private bookmarks, which make up about half the Pinboard collection. I'll use a combination of scripts and my own weary hands to figure out what proportion of links still point to the original material saved. The URLs I look at will not be associated with your username, and no one except me will look at them.
I will publish some aggregate information about what I find, and use it to seek glory, and persuade people to sign up for archiving. But I won't release anything that could lead back to specific users or links.
If you are uncomfortable with this research and wish to opt out, please email me with your username, and I'll keep your bookmarks out of the pool. If you have questions, ask me on Twitter or email me privately, and I'll be happy to answer them.
As a reminder, the site's privacy policy is here.
Thank you!
—maciej on August 09, 2014
Today marks five years since I launched the website that my mom still refers to as 'the other bedbugs'. Happy business birthday to me!
Any site that aspires to be an archive starts life with a credibility problem. The Internet is strewn with the corpses (or in some cases, zombies) of sites that once promised to save your links forever. As people keep discovering, building a bookmarking site is easy, but making a business of bookmarking is hard. Like one of those leathery, spiny plants that is able to thrive in the desert where everything else dies, I have tried to find ways to adapt to this hostile business environment. And I have feasted on the flesh of my rivals!
I raise this brimming skull to the awesome group of users and fellow-travelers who have made it possible.
It's my tradition to post updated statistics about the site:
|active users
|bytes archived
|6 h
|29 h
|22 h
|12 h*
|unique URLs
The biggest surprise (to me) is how predictable Pinboard has been over the past three years. Users come and go, like on every site, but the number of active users stays roughly the same. And the site makes roughly the same amount of money (around $200K) every year.
If you've ever run a small website, you'll recognize how weird this is. Typically everything in a small project—traffic, user count, revenue—is spiky. You spend a long time treading water and then big events happen that dominate everything else. This was true for the first two years I ran the site, but since then, things have settled down remarkably.
I regret that I totally forgot to keep downtime stats this year. There wasn't a lot of it, but I should probably track it better so I can brag about it next year, unless it goes up, in which case I will never mention it again.
Now back to some beard-stroking:
I see my role much like a small-town praire banker in the 1880's. My job is to project an aura of calm, solvency, and permanence in an industry where none of those adjectives applies. People are justifiably risk-averse when it comes to their bookmarks, and they are looking for stability. This means several things at once:
On the most basic level, the site just has to work.
On the design level, it means not futzing with stuff unnecessarily, except for bug fixes and basic improvements. Luckily there is so much work to do on Pinboard that I am immune to the temptations of a redesign. If there is a feature (or bug) you love in 2014, chances are excellent it will still be there, like a cherished friend, years from now when your trembling and aged hands go to make that final click.
Finally, there is stability on the business level. This means persuading people (including myself) that I am going to stick around, and then actually earning enough money to do that.
The money part turns out to be easy. People will pay for a decent service. As long as you stay small and don't forget to have revenue, you too can build a bookmarking website. There is plenty of room to specialize!
My strategy of pre-emptively antagonizing anyone who might possibly have an interest in acquiring or funding the site has worked wonderfully. In five years, I haven't received a single email from an investor or potential acquirer. The closest I came was a few months ago, when the new Delicious owners reached out to me about providing "vision", but I think they were just unfamiliar with my oeuvre. They learned quickly.
So the biggest risk in a project like this remains burnout.
Avoiding burnout is difficult to write about, because the basic premise is obnoxious. Burnout is a rich man's game. Rice farmers don't get burned out and spend long afternoons thinking about whether to switch to sorghum. Most people don't have the luxury of thinking about their lives in those terms. But at the rarefied socioeconomic heights of computerland, it's true that if you run a popular project by yourself for a long time, there's a high risk that it will wear you out.
It's not the fact of working on just one project that's the problem. This dude, for example, has spent much of his life building a Boeing 777 out of manila folders. Another guy (always dudes!) is slowly excavating his basement with toy trucks.
What burns you out is the constant strain of being responsible for a lot of other people's stuff.
The good news is, as you get older, you gain perspective. Perspective helps alleviate burnout.
The bad news is, you gain perspective by having incredibly shitty things happen to you and the people you love. Nature has made it so that perspective is only delivered in bulk quantities. A railcar of perspective arrives and dumps itself on your lawn when all you needed was a microgram. This is a grossly inefficient aspect of the human condition, but I'm sure bright minds in Silicon Valley are working on a fix.
Perspective does not make you immune to burnout. It just makes burnout less scary. I've gone through a few episodes since starting Pinboard, and I'm sure there will be more to come. People have been very understanding about my occasional need to flee the Internet. I find that the longer I run the site, the more resistant I become to the idea of ever giving it up, even if I need to take the occasional break. It is pleasant to work on something that people draw benefit from. It is especially pleasant to work on something lasting. And I enjoy the looking-glass aspect of our industry, where running a mildly profitable small business makes me a crazy maverick not afraid to break all the rules.
Most of all, I'm gratified that people have been patient and considerate over the whole lifetime of the project. There has been a lot of goodwill sent my way that makes my job vastly easier. Thank you to all the people who have used the site over the years, and the many people who have helped me build it and keep it running. To my competitors: I will crush you! To everyone else: you're wonderful! Upgrade!
—maciej on July 09, 2014
|« earlier
Pinboard is a bookmarking site and personal archive with an emphasis on speed over socializing.
This is the Pinboard developer blog, where I announce features and share news.
How To Reach Help
Send bug reports to email@example.com
Talk to me on Twitter
Post to the discussion group at pinboard-dev
Or find me on IRC: #pinboard at freenode.net


text:
Reasons to Join
"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you go Greek, it's not like joining a regular club or activity. It isn't a case of just showing up for a meeting once a month or getting together for one event each semester. With daily interaction and constant opportunities for leadership within the chapter, fraternities and sororities lay the groundwork for engaged citizenship and developing networking skills.
Brotherhood and Sisterhood
There are many popular terms connected with Greek Life, two of which are brotherhood and sisterhood. When you share rituals, traditions, and unforgettable experiences with your brothers and sisters, you truly develop a sense of family that's unlike any other. These relationships will be lifelong friendships.
A fraternity brother or sorority sister is someone who will encourage you to succeed, support you when things are going well, and listen when you are having problems--offering unconditional support.
At the heart of these friendships and interactions are the traditions within each chapter. Although each fraternity and sorority has different founding values, you'll find some words come up again and again in all Greek organizations:
These strong basic beliefs have long been a part of college communities across the United States, and are key contributors to the bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood that over seven million members have enjoyed.
Recruitment: Rush
To get to know members in Greek chapters, and decide which one to join, students can take part in recruitment. The recruitment period known as "Rush", is when all fraternities and sororities host their membership drives. At Duquesne...
- Fall recruitment is for the upper class and transfer students only.
- Freshmen participate in Spring recruitment.
Parent Information
For potential sorority parents, information can be found here about Sorority life and it's benefits.
For potential fraternity parents, visit the the North-American Interfraternity Conference website to gain perspective on today's fraternity men.
Some quick facts about the value of a Greek Life experience during college can be found on The Fraternity Advisor.


text:
Despite holding the Portland Trail Blazers to an atrocious 18 percent from three in last night's game, the Denver Nuggets couldn't outlast their opponents for a second time in a single week.
Losing 100-95, not but five days ago at home in another close battle, last night's contest was no different as the Blazers snuck by with a 102-96 victory.
Even outscoring the home team in the fourth quarter wasn't enough for the Nuggs to bring home a victory to the Mile High city. Out rebounded 52-40, and once again shooting just 65 percent from the charity strike to the Blazers 95; the Nuggs couldn't find a way to win.
The return's of both Wilson Chandler and Darrell Arthur also didn't make the impact one had hoped for. With Chandler shooting a horrendous 4-12 from the field, and Arthur only allowed 15 minutes of playing time, Denver couldn't get out of their own way. The only star for the team came in the form of Kenneth Faried, who messed around and got a double-double with his 16 points and 10 rebounds, five of which were on the offensive boards. However, it proved to be too little, too late for the big man.
This closes out the four game series between the two teams, all of which Portland has won. However, every meeting, with the exception of their first was decided by six points or less. This is a promising sign for the Nuggets, as they will have another four meetings next year in a renewed rivalry of these two Northwest Division contenders.
These two seem to be going in different directions, as the Blazers continue to climb the ladder of the West and the Nuggs continue to tumble down it. The Nuggets are now 1-9 in their last ten games to the Blazers 6-4.
Luckily for the Nuggs, four out of their next six opponents have losing records, so maybe they can get back on track before they have to face the defending NBA champs, the Miami Heat, in South Beach on Mar. 14.


text:
CREW Withdraws Antideficiency Complaint Against Speaker Boehner
On June 14, 2011, CREW filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics asking for an investigation into whether Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had violated the Antideficiency Act by directing the House Counsel to enter into a $500,000 contract with an outside law firm to represent the House in litigation regarding the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. CREW had argued that because the House Counsel's budget was only $1.4 million, which covers the office's salaries and expenses, the office did not have enough money to cover the cost of the contract.
Yesterday, CREW learned that a week after CREW filed its complaint, Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), the Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, asked GAO for an opinion as to whether the contract violated the Act. On July 6, 2011, GAO issued a decision finding that the contract did not, in fact, violate the Antideficiency Act.
While the July 6th letter from the agency does not address every issue CREW raised and CREW still has concerns about the contract, because GAO is a nonpartisan, independent agency charged with overseeing government spending, CREW accepts the GAO's findings. CREW does not believe any purpose is served by insisting on further inquiry into this matter and as a result, is withdrawing its complaint. We just wish everyone in Washington would yield as quickly when their views don't carry the day.


text:
WESTLAKE —The look on Breanna Sprenger's face as she stood inside the therapy room says it all.
Usually the life of the party, Breanna is showing emotions that seem foreign for the pint-sized ball of energy. She is smiling, but her eyes read nervousness, apprehension and even a little shyness.
"Can you help me?" she says to the student therapist working with her at the Cleveland Clinic facility in Westlake.
More photos below.
"No, stop talking and walk," physical therapist Anne Marie Pace responds from nearby — close enough to help if Breanna or the student therapist needs it. "We know you can do this."
Breanna lets out a sigh and a giggle. She turns to a reporter and a photographer and smiles.
"Hi. This is Breanna and this is the Breanna show. These are my prosthetic legs and today you are going to see me walk," she says, her face returning to its usual animated look. "First, you have to get on the mat."
Right in front of her is a colorful floor mat barely an inch thick. Still, it is an obstacle for Breanna because before she can walk across it, she has to shift her weight from one side to the other and lift each metal leg onto it.
A tiny quad walking cane is in her hand to help steady her.
The first movement onto the mat is barely noticeable. Then, there is another little scoot of one of the metal pads Breanna likes to call her feet.
Her face almost looks sad. That, her mother, Carrie Sprenger, says, is Breanna's "I'm focusing" face.
Little by little, she inches her way across the mat until she is on the other side. The smile is back on Breanna's face. She thinks her job of showing off is over.
"Now, step off the mat and come back," Pace says.
She is gentle, but stern and Breanna's mom said the family nickname for Pace is the "drill sergeant."
"But that is the way you have to be with Breanna because she has to do the work," Carrie says. "We can't do it for her. This is her life."
Twice a week, Breanna heads to Westlake where she has both physical and occupational therapy. She is there to get stronger and learn how to manipulate the world both on and off her prosthetic legs, which look more like stilts than artificial limbs.
"She wears them a lot, but it's funny because even though she has had them for almost two years, we still forget they are there," Carrie says. "I have to be careful because sometimes when I'm carrying her and we are walking through doors, I bang them on the door jam and this little ham likes to say 'Ouch.' "
"Yeah, I say, 'Oh, you stubbed my toe," Breanna adds, laughing almost too hard to tell her favorite joke.
Eventually, Breanna will get legs with knee joints to mimic a more typical gait. But before that can happen, Breanna has to increase her confidence on the little legs adorned with colorful peace signs and smiley faces.
"As she grows, we can advance the technology, and she can have a more traditional walk, but that is all up to her and what she wants to do," Pace says.
That is where the therapy comes in.
And, although Breanna tries very hard to hide it, especially to those in the room seeing her legs for the first time, it is obvious that therapy is hard work.
While swimming gives Breanna the ability to forget her disability, therapy is a constant reminder that Breanna has to attack the world differently.
"But she wants to do it," says Debbie Campo, Breanna's aide.
Campo, a family friend from before Breanna was born, said she nearly jumped at the chance to be Breanna's aide. She meets Breanna at school every morning and basically shadows her through the day.
On this day, she takes notes and videos with a camera on her cell phone as Breanna goes through her therapy routine. She uses them to show Breanna's therapist at school so the sessions can sync and build off each other.
"We say this is Breanna's year of independence because she wants to be independent," Campo says. "She wants to dress herself, do her own hair and all of those things and I know she can do it. No matter what is given to her, she just rises to the challenge."
Breanna has to because the family certainly is not going to do it for her, Carrie says.
"We just find tools for her to use instead of us," she says. "We see people who are just like her, but older than her, doing everything on their own — completely independent. So for us, it's like a look into her future."
It took Carrie a while to reach this point in her parenting of Breanna, but one day she said it just hit her. What is Breanna going to do without her if she does everything?
"It's hard because when you have a kid that needs you, but that also wants to get to the point where she doesn't need you anymore, you have to let her go," she says.
An hour after Breanna and Pace begin, they are done for the day.
Pace leaves Breanna with a few things to work on until they meet again — getting on and off the couch and going from standing on her legs to laying down on the floor and getting back up again.
Occupational Therapist Meghan Price walks in next. She is tall, but bends down nearly to the floor so she can look Breanna in the eye as she talks.
She works with Breanna on everyday functions like brushing her hair, cutting food and brushing her teeth. The bones in Breanna's only arm are fused at the elbow joint and she only has three fingers, which means each task can be done but takes a little bit of maneuvering, and Breanna knows her limitations.
"Like I wish I had a My Way toothbrush," she says. "I saw it on TV, and it's electric and it comes with stickers! Stickers!"
Price smiles as she listens to Breanna talk about the toothbrush she wants — the very one Price has already purchased for her and is waiting for her in the next room. Breanna had told Price that she believed she could brush her teeth better if she had an electric toothbrush that could do most of the work.
It was a good idea and worth trying, so Price said she headed to the store.
"We get an idea and we try it," Price says. "If it works, then that's great. If not, then we try something else."
Campo carries Breanna to a smaller room with a desk. While not a kitchen table, it's the next best thing.
Price hands Breanna a sharp instrument. It has a T-shaped handle and a crescent moon-shaped blade. Breanna carefully grabs the knife and begins cutting into an orange piece that she has pushed down onto metal pegs secured to a cutting board. The knife cuts in a rocking motion, similar to the glide of a rocking chair.
At first, it's difficult work, but eventually Breanna slices a chunk of orange off small enough to fit into her mouth and she uses a long-handled fork to eat her snack.
Carrie looks on, but never moves an inch to help her. Breanna has to learn how to use the tools available to her to help her self, she says.
Orange juice runs down Breanna's chin as she eats the orange, cuts another piece and puts the slice into her mouth.
She and Price are almost done for the day when the conversation turns to other things Breanna would like to do that Price can possibly help her learn. Breanna has a wish list.
"Makeup — I want to put on make-up," she says. "And, shirts. Shirts are huge."
Help out
Follow Breanna Sprenger on Facebook.com/teambreanna.
Team Breanna is looking for company sponsorship and/or company and individual donations.
Donations would need to be made out to "Team Breanna" and can be sent to Team Breanna, P.O. Box 422, Avon, OH 44011.
Donations are also accepted at any Huntington Bank. Checks need to be written out to "Team Breanna."
Team Breanna is holding a fundraiser noon to 8 p.m. Feb. 8 at Coleone's Pizza, 2424 Ridgeland Drive, Avon. Mention "Team Breanna" and she gets 25 percent of the sales that day.
Read more:
- Reporter Lisa Roberson's column about meeting Breanna
- Day 1: Ran Sunday
- Day 2: Ran yesterday
- Day 4: Coming tomorrow
Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Quick Tips on Brainstorming from Design+Tech
by Scott Kubie in Marketing, 7 October 2011
Had a session on brainstorming at Wednesday's Design+Tech meeting. Dan was joined by designer Brian Sauer of Saturday Mfg. in leading the presentation. These are my Cliff's Notes on their tips for handling the brainstorming phase:
- Don't invite the client.
- Keep it short — 20-30 minutes — and do multiple sessions.
- Write down everything. Erase nothing.
- Use your notes; dig through notes from old sessions to generate new ideas.
- Have inspirational resources to look through nearby — but only when you're stuck.
Here are a few of my own:
- Domai.nr — Know it, love it.
- Mind-mapping software like MindNode (my personal fave) is great for brainstorming by yourself or taking notes during a session.
- Go to lunch! We've had good luck naming things over food and drinks. Just remember to bring a small notebook and still write everything down.
What are your brainstorming tips? Do anything radically different in your sessions? Share in the comments.
Are small companies afraid to write like this?
by Scott Kubie in Business, 5 August 2011
I was reading a MailChimp blog post today about recent feature revisions and was struck positively by the candor of an explanation about why they were removing a feature from their free plan.
[Autoresponders are] a feature that can be easily abused, and used in ways we did not intend when we originally built it. Hint: if you consider yourself a "serious internet power-monetizing marketing professional" and your goal is to "put your multi-level lead-gen on autopilot while you work from home" MailChimp's Autoresponders were not really built for you. But if you're a normal human being, and you want to send an annual birthday email to your customers, or maybe count down to a special event date by sending useful content on a timed schedule, we're great for that stuff.
Fantastic. An honest, simple, even snarky explanation that draws a line between whom they want as customers and whom they don't. Does your business communicate that way? Even in private B2B conversations with potential customers? Many don't.
You might be thinking, "That's easy for MailChimp, they're already a big success and can afford to tick off a few customers."
Sure, it's easier for big successful companies to adopt that kind of swagger. It's harder for smaller, less confident businesses. Harder does not equal less important. Drawing a line in the sand can seem scary, but clearly delineating what type of users you are and aren't trying to support will both save you resources and endear your target audience to you even more. Seems like a no-brainer to me. MailChimp's ongoing success and rapid growth (3,000 new users per day) makes a strong case for this kind of candor.
Tell the world what kind of customers you don't want and you can enjoy a little of MailChimp's success yourself.
How to Write a Fucking Blog Post
by Scott Kubie in Marketing, 20 September 2010
Ever get stuck working on a blog post?
"You're not stuck. You're lost."
That's the abridged version of the advice I generally give people that are stuck on their projects, and, in particular, their writing. In this post, I'm going to give you the unabridged blue version of how to write a fucking blog post.
Last week I, Amanda and Neil all got blog posts up. Dan and Igor did not. One of these weeks we're going to go five for five. Last week was not that week.
As our CEO and COO struggled with their post drafts, I threw the following together in a moment of inspired—if not frustrated—levity to serve as a guide to getting through a motherfucking blog post. Much gratitude to Zach of the excellent WhatTheFuckShouldIMakeForDinner. While the WTFSIMFD site is randomized, my guide is a bit more chronological in nature.
I wrote it in Word and have posted it on SlideShare for your downloading pleasure. It's two columns with room on the right to sketch notes. You can download it or just use the controls in the embed window to zoom in, scroll and read.
Useful? Not useful? Most hilarious and also best thing you've ever read on the Internet, ever?
I would LOVE if other people left their fucking (sorry, hard to stop) advice on how to write a fucking blog post. I'll take the best ones and put them into the final version—with credit, of course!—and work with Amanda to get it out there in a fun and digestable design.
Worst About Page Copy Ever
by Scott Kubie in Marketing, 13 September 2010
Okay okay, I'm sure this isn't actually the worst about page copy ever, but it's pretty damn bad. City of Windsor Heights, I'm looking at you. It's seriously bad. If you don't have the patience to read my blog post at least read their about page, it's good for a laugh.
BitMethod is a small and nimble team. We all wear a lot of hats. Writing responsibilities often fall on my shoulders. I make a lot of mistakes, look up words in the dictionary, misuse and abuse semicolons; and occasionally turn out some really unreadable garbage. I say these things to illustrate that I'm not approaching this blog post from some stuck-up grammar Nazi pedestal. Instead, I'm going to try and demonstrate that anybody can write better promotional copy using patience and logic—tools available to anyone.
Note: All bolding and italicizing are mine for emphasis.
This is Windsor Heights – the city that is the heart of it all. Come, feel the heart-beat.
Avoid near-redundancy. Having a distinctive word like "heart" pop up twice in your opening sentence weakens each individual usage of it. This is pretty easy to avoid with some simple proofreading.
The City of Windsor Heights is a unique community…
Ugh. Unique is a terribly abused word. Logic is all you need here: would every community say they're unique? If the answer is yes (it is), it's not worth saying.
…that was incorporated in 1941. Windsor Heights has the unique distinction of being the only community that borders Des Moines, Urbandale, Clive, and West Des Moines – in the heart of the Des Moines Metro area.
You're killing me. There's heart and unique again. They're also not thinking about their audience. Writing to a specific person can be a big help. If you're unfamiliar enough with Windsor Heights to be reading their about page, what are the odds you're also unfamiliar with Urbandale, Clive, or West Des Moines?
It is at the heart of the greater Des Moines metro area.
You just said that. Proofread.
The city of Windsor Heights fills a niche as a top quality small community within Iowa's major metropolitan area. Windsor Heights has a distinctive niche as a quality small community within the state's major metropolitan area.
"Quality small community" is so important they said it twice, but do you have any idea what it means? Again, think of your audience and what's relevant to them. This is meaningless word vomit.
It is unmatched in its strategic location, convenient to all of the metropolitan and suburban amenities while offering affordable housing, business opportunities and a strong sense of community.
Generic, but they're at least starting to put some meat on the bones. "Affordable housing" is something people can actually understand and latch on to.
We offer convenient shopping, great schools and beautiful parks to citizens and visitors alike. Here you will find varied shopping and dining opportunities, churches and elementary schools within and near the city limits, and beautiful parks with improvements to come.
OMG! You have schools? And parks? And churches? Why, one would almost think you are describing a city! Half the page is full of words like "unique" and "niche", yet they're only describing the most banal and generic things you would find in any city.
They describe their parks as beautiful, yet undercut the statement by announcing there are improvements to come. If the parks are beautiful, why do they need improvements?
Close by are centers of Polk County government, business and industry and outstanding educational institutions including Des Moines Area Community College, Grand View College, Drake University, Simpson College, Iowa State University, William Penn University, and Upper Iowa University. Only minutes from downtown, Windsor Heights offers easy access to the Civic Center, and other arts and entertainment attractions, the airport and expansive commercial opportunities.
If you're native to Des Moines, this paragraph will crack you up as much as it does me. There are lots of nice things you can say about Windsor Heights that also happen to be true. Saying they provide "easy access" to the Civic Center or the airport doesn't ring very true to me. They are no more convenient to these destinations than any other metro suburb. Not to mention they are a lot closer to the Art Center than the Civic Center.
We are proud to be a community continually recognized for excellence. In 2002, the City became an American Crown Community. In 2006, the City received an International City/County Management Program Excellence Award for Community Sustainability. In 2007, the City became the smallest city in Iowa to receive the Government Finance Officers' of United States and Canada's Distinguished Budget Presentation Award.
Blah blah blah. Nobody gives a shit about your awards, especially when those awards don't mean anything to anyone but you and your colleagues. Again, thinking about the audience would really help in this situation. Whom are you writing this for? Does that person know what an American Crown Community is?
Want to make Windsor Heights your future home? Please check out the below links to see homes that are currently for sale in Windsor Heights.
Their call to action? Buy a house!!! Can you believe it? "Well, now that you know we have stores and schools and churches and that improvements are to come for our parks, I'm sure you're ready to buy a house here, right?" Give me a break. Whenever possible, I try and discipline myself to focus on one and only one idea while writing. Putting your call to action down first and working backwards can help you build a better story and more compelling argument.
So there you go—a quick and dirty deconstruction of one of the worst about pages I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Here's the abridged version of my writing tips for non-writers forced to write things:
- Read it out loud. You'll catch odd turns of phrase and major grammatical errors pretty easily this way.
- Have a friend read it.
- Avoid using the same distinct word multiple times in a sentence or paragraph unless you know exactly why you're doing it.
- Imagine one specific person or group that will be reading your words and write it for them. With my radio and theatrical background, I'm usually imagining my words read out loud to an audience or as part of a presentation.
- Only say things that are true.
- Walk away and read it later. Helps with WWS (weird word syndrome). Words are tricky and sticky. Overexposure to particular words and phrases in too short of a time period makes them go all funny in your brain.
- Avoid word vomit like unique, best, great, wonderful, quality, authentic and essential. If you're going to use these words, back them up with some serious meat.
What are your writing-for-non-writers tips and tricks to get you by in a pinch?
Cross-Selling: You Can Do Better than Most Coffee Shops
by Scott Kubie in Marketing, 30 August 2010
A lot of the web services industry (our company, BitMethod, builds mobile and web apps and services, in case you didn't know) is built around Free-with-a-capital-F and cross-selling. Give away X to sell Y, offer Premium Z to Enterprise level customers, etc.
As BitMethod's Creative Strategist a lot of what I do involves product strategy. I've learned that giving something away to sell something else—or up-selling current customers—doesn't work very well if the other stuff for sale sucks or doesn't address a customer need.
I was hanging out working at Smokey Row last weekend and two things happened: 1) I really needed a highlighter, and 2) I noticed what comprised nearly an entire wall teapots and t-shirts for sale. I started running the coffee shop cross-selling experience through the same mental wringer I put a lot of our ideas.
Extra things normally sold at coffee shops:
- T-Shirts
- Mugs
- Teapots
- Magnetic Poetry
- Audio CD's
- Local Art
- Brew-at-home Coffees and Teas
- Mini French Presses
Notice a trend? Except for the mug, none of those items are things you would actually use or need while you're at the coffee shop. They're "gift" items. I'm uncertain of the reason for the ubiquity of these items at coffee shops—except, perhaps, that "everybody else does it". Not good business logic.
Successful coffee shops are known for more than just their coffee. They have a great atmosphere, great service and great marketing. They make it comfortable for folks to hang out, get to know each other and even get some work done. When I see signs at little hippie coffeeshops admonishing customers against staying too long or an epic poem about why they don't offer Wi-Fi, I really feel like they just don't get it. If you can't figure out how to capitalize on an environment where people feel like hanging out all day and consuming things, you might want to hang up that Small Business Owner hat.
Below are some of my ideas for things to sell at a coffee shop. I'm sure that enterprising shop owners the world around have sold some or all of these things—a Twitter follower working at Caribou informed me they used to sell pencils and chapstick. What intrigues me is why this type of cross-selling is not very commonplace. I believe these items would go over much better than a Gildan shirt emblazoned with an amateur-designed coffee shop logo:
- Pencils, Pens, and Highlighters
- Bus passes or other public transit related items or services
- Memo Pads, Legal Pads, Journals, and Drawing Pads (bonus points for uber-hipster Moleskins)
- Art, Culture and Design Magazines (tailored to taste and your marketing). Many coffee shops have a free-to-read pile of outdated and boring magazines. Why not have a killer selection funded by people actually buying those magazines?
- Decks of playing cards, UNO and easy-to-learn indie card games (check the Indie games section at Mayhem in Des Moines for an idea of just how much cool stuff is out there).
- Paperbacks—maybe a periodic staff pick, or something connected to a monthly book club hosted at the shop.
- Crossword, word search, and Sudoku books
- USB Keys
- Recordable CD's and DVD's
- Earbuds/Headphones
- iPhone/iPad stands
Notice a trend? They sell a lot of this stuff at Barnes and Noble and Borders. Those stores present more competition for time and money otherwise spent at a neighborhood coffee shop than people probably realize. Both of them have business models encouraging you to come in, hang out, and enjoy the experience without having to buy anything. Lots of people buy something. In fact, I would estimate at least 80% of the time that I've spent money at Barnes and Noble, it hasn't been on a book. It's been a muffin, or a journal, or a game, or a magazine.
I remember hearing once that laundromats and coffee shops are the easiest business to get loans for, implying that they are very "safe" bets for the bank. The trouble with a safe bet and a safe business is that, unlike the software industry, the pressure to innovate is extremely low. Whatever industry you're in, no product is ever safe. What might be your main focus will be given away as an afterthought by someone else or cross-sold to a bigger audience than you could ever hope to capture. Start thinking now about how to expand your offerings quickly and easily by analyzing your environment, your community and your users to identify their needs.


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The standard hair lengths are determined by the natural curves of the body.
This standard originated with Long Hair expert
George Michael.
There are many body shapes and sizes and so these hair lengths fall
to the natural curves of your own body. George Michael encourages
his clients that if they are going to remain at a length, it should be
at one of the standard lengths.
Flip level is hair that comes to the neck or shoulder area. George Michael prefers the eye to be brought back up to the face, thus the hair at this length should flip up rather than curl under. Mrs. King's picture is a good example of the upturning ends. The LHC models are showing the long and short side of the flip length.
Bra level or BS or midback is about the same point as the widest part of your ribcage and chest area. Those on the LHC forum have use the term mid-back to indicate farther down from BS length but not yet at waist level, but in George Michael's definition, it is all the same.
. .
Waist length hair falls at the smallest part of your waist, a little bit above those hip bones.
The hip and tailbone lengths are not part of George Michael's standard hair lengths, but many in the Long Hair Community grow to these lengths, so I will include pictures. Hip length is at the front hip bones and for some will fall half way in between waist and tailbone. For others it might be very nearly at tailbone length.
Tailbone length is shown below. Every body shape may have a different spot for this length
. .
For many Long Hair Lovers, tailbone length is the perfect length to stay. Hair becomes more difficult to protect and take care of when it is long enough to touch the chair or ground when you are sitting. It is also a challenge to comb your hair if it is longer than your own arm.
Classic length is the body curve where your legs meet your buttocks. If you sat down, you would sit down totally on your hair.
The other hair lengths are much more unusual and require special family genes that will allow hair to grow to this length without falling out. This is called terminal length. Even if you want to grow longer than classic length, if its not in your genes, it won't be possible.
All these lengths follow the natural curves in the legs. Thigh length hits the widest part of the thigh. Knee length is the curve of the knee. Capri length is the widest part of the calf and ankle length is the place where the ankle meets the foot.
. . .


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Resource Description
Costumes and Textiles is a Digital Interactive Gallery (DIG) presented by the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington. These galleries are "experimental, web-based introductions to specific mediums, subjects, and issues in art and design, all illustrated with images of objects in the Henry's collection." The Costumes and Textiles series provides several ways to explore this area of museum collecting. For example, explore how garments reflect identity, fashion or specific occasions in the wearers' lives. In the textile section, view examples by structure or by type of embellishment. Finally, explore the global connections of Henry Art Gallery objects using Google Earth.


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Audio Dose Newnan, Georgia
Audio Dose will rock you (like the Queen song) with their intense live shows, their far out music, and their bad attitude. Audio Dose is the band your parents will hate, and them ruffians your mom told you to stay away from. So please… listener discretion is advised. ... more
Streaming and Download help


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- AnimeIowa - http://animeiowa.com -
New Guest
Posted By admin On July 7, 2013 @ 9:08 pm In AnimeIowa 2013,Guests | Comments Disabled
A final Guest update, we are excited to host illustrator Jenn Blake at AnimeIowa 2013. Learn more on the Guests page.
Article printed from AnimeIowa: http://animeiowa.com
URL to article: http://animeiowa.com/2013/07/07/new-guest/
Click here to print.
Copyright © 2010 AnimeIowa. All rights reserved.


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by Shyam KisHore.P
(Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, India)
Dear Sir,
I would like to pursue TESOL and my question is : Should MEd Tesol BE pursued only after MA TESOL or they are separate courses?
Can you also suggest standard universities in U.S and U.K that provides MA-TESOL for international students.
Your guidance in this regard will be highly adored.
Warm Regards,
Shyam Kishore.P
Hello Shyam,
I've recently answered a number of questions on taking an MA TESOL {and I will merge this page with the other questions on MA TESOL in a few weeks}.
An MA TESOL is the same as an MEd TESOL, is the same as an MA TEFL, but is a bit different from an MA Applied Linguistics.
I took the MEd TESOL at Exeter University in the UK, because I liked the course. My degree has the same value as an MA TESOL.
MEd degrees are often in schools of education, and will usually be more focussed on education. The MA TESOL may have a few more modules that could be termed applied linguistics.
The most important thing is to examine the content of the modules closely. An MA TESOL at one university will not be exactly the same as an MA TESOL at another university. Do your own research, and choose the course that appeals to you the most. Does the master's course cover areas in which you are interested? Do you want to specialize in teaching young learners? Are you especially interested in second language acquisition? Or are you more interested in blended learning?
This is important for your future career (although not that important), it's also important to choose a course you will enjoy, as you will have a lot of reading to do.
See my article on MA TESOL for more information on the type of content typical in different types of masters courses.
As far as recommendations go - I'm not sure how much it would help you to give a list of universities. If you do internet searches for 'ma tesol courses' then another for 'ma tefl courses' and finally one for 'med tesol courses' you should be able to find many lists of universities offering degree programs.
Expect to spend some time researching the universities. Most now have downloadable prospectuses, which are worth studying.
Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to TESOL Answers .


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Hannah Gadsby will delight the Right
HUMAN beings can create inspiring works of art, but only God can create reality, right? Wrong. As it turns out, human beings can create reality too. They just need the right training.
Last week this column received an email headed "Break into Reality TV Writing in 2014". It was an invitation from an organisation called Screenwriters University to enrol in a course conducted by "Emmy-nominated producer Troy DeVolld", who has "years of expertise in navigating the world of reality television". Mr DeVolld is currently co-executive producer for "VH1's hit series Basketball Wives".
It's as if Mr Darcy cried out: "Jane Austen is making me too cold and arrogant – I'm just shy"
The invitation promised: "Troy can give you the secrets to getting compelling source material and using that to shape an exciting story." The course outline lists the first session thus: "Story is story and the story is written: The role of the hidden storyteller in Reality TV".
True Detective ... it's too late now
We know from past experience that courses at Screenwriters University usually begin with the revelation that great drama requires two ingredients: an enthralling narrative and intriguing characters. Clearly that is well-known to the producers of Australia's two hit reality shows of the moment – My Kitchen Rules and The Block: Fans v Faves.
Every night MKR constructs a suspenseful soap opera about conflict, disaster and triumph. Its website offers intriguing bios of the characters: David and Corinne are "the ultimate smiling assassins"; Jess is "goal orientated, career driven, and unapologetically ambitious"; Hapless Harry and his pal Christo are "stylish, well-mannered, love their mothers"; Carly and Tresne "always strive to see the brighter side of life"; Jess and Felix are "a feisty couple who often squabble in the kitchen".
This formula has won MKR a national audience close to three million. But its rival in reality, The Block, has found the creativity of its hidden storyteller is not appreciated by the source material. Two characters, Steve and Chantelle, went onto social media to complain about the way they were being shaped.
Real Housewives ... wait for the story to start
This was their initial facebook post: "We thought the hardest part of this experience was operating at peak physical levels on 2-3 hours sleep per night for 10 weeks solid ... Turns out the hardest part is the 'magic' of television (production and editing, creating situations) and some media twisting stories too. Double fabrications. Awesome." Steve added that he was "super-sick of the story arc being that I'm in some way mentally deficient".
Such a fightback is rare in the annals of storytelling. It's as if Mr Darcy cried out: "Jane Austen is making me too cold and arrogant – I'm just shy", or Ebenezer Scrooge grumbled: "I'm not as mean as Charles Dickens makes out – I donate to tax-deductible charities."
A cynic might wonder if this is all just another twist in the plot. Perhaps "Making your source material appear to have free will" is session five in Mr DeVolld's training program. It's certainly working for The Block – since Steve's protestations, the national audience has risen from 1.5 million to 2 million.
Housewife being real Photo: Luis Enrique Ascui
One reality show which clearly had no guidance from Mr DeVolld is The Real Housewives of Melbourne. On its opening night, it drew an audience of 117,000, which dropped to 103,000 for the second episode last Sunday.
The producers try to make the characters interesting by posing them with hand on hip, uttering such aphorisms as: "I'll give you my opinion, but you'd better be ready to hear it" (Gina); "I may look like a jetsetter, but my feet are firmly on the ground" (Lydia); "When life throws rocks, I melt them down into diamonds" (Janet); and "Never come between a woman and her plastic surgeon" (Andrea).
What's missing is a narrative arc. Apparently the producers don't know how to shape the source material. Without a properly trained storyteller, a reality show becomes just like real life – and how boring is that!
My KItchen Rules is on Seven at 6.30pm Sunday and 7.30pm Monday to Wednesday. The Block: Fans v Faves is on Nine 6.30pm Sundays and 7.30 Monday to Wednesday. The Real Housewives of Melbourne is on Arena 8.30pm Sunday.
The pot stirrer
Hannah Gadsby scoffs at the notion that her "little series, late at night" could be the last nail in the coffin of the ABC, as far as its relationship with the federal government is concerned. "I'm just asking questions," she says innocently. "I don't stand on a platform and condemn people. I'm wanting to have fun."
It's what Gadsby is asking questions about that will challenge some people on the right of the Liberal Party. In the course of explaining how European and Australian artists have portrayed us over the past two centuries, Gadsby covers the mistreatment of Aboriginal people and asylum seekers and the rise of a form of "exclusionist nationalism" that commandeered the southern cross symbol and made it reminiscent of a swastika — "the Aussie swozzie", as one of her artists describes it.
She also uses language that might frighten the horses: "As much as it shits me, you can't talk about Australian art without talking about those dreaded words: Australian national identity." She says Australians should stop being so self-conscious about their "identity", enjoy the variety of voices in their land, and embrace the great national tradition of "stirring the pot".
You can imagine the right wing commentators placing Gadsby in the vanguard of the GLAFT conspiracy (Green-Left-ABC-Fairfax-Turnbull) that is seeking to ruin the relaxed and comfortable country that John Howard built.
Melbourne-based Gadsby works mainly as a standup comedian but she went back to her university training in art history to create the three part series Hannah Gadsby's Oz, which starts on ABC1 at 10pm on Tuesday.
She admits the show ended up more serious and scholarly than she'd planned. "Originally it was going to be a laugh a minute, but I found the artists believed so strongly in what they were doing, I didn't think it was my place to make fun all the time. I'm still fairly irreverent, but I also wanted to show how much I love Australia, and particularly how much I love Tasmania."
That might be enough to calm the Liberal critics of the ABC, come budget time.
Better to stay in suspense
Usually this column is in the business of alerting you to under-publicised programs that are must-sees, but this time we're begging you NOT to tune into the Showcase channel at 6.30 Monday night for what has been described by Entertainment Weekly, America's showbiz bible, as "the breakout TV sensation of 2014, with ratings ascending each week to match the snowballing buzz over the show's mystery … It's funny, it's dark, it's less boring than The Walking Dead, it's less full of itself than House of Cards".
The show is True Detective, and it stars Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey and Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson as two deeply eccentric cops. The reason we're warning you off the best series currently on television is that tomorrow's is the last of eight episodes, and if you've not seen the preceding seven, you'll be baffled.
Better to wait till the DVD appears, and then binge on eight hours in a sitting. We learn that the show's creator, Nic Pizzolatto, has helpfully explained the many intriguing references. He told EW: "Everything in True Detective is composed of questionable narratives, inner and outer … I just did a DVD commentary that plainly explains [the mythological backstory], but a lot of things are left in fragments for the viewer to piece together about how we arrived at where we arrive."
The Tribal Mind column, by David Dale, appears in a printed form every Sunday in The Sun-Herald, and also as a director's cut on this website, where it welcomes your comments.
David Dale teaches communications at UTS, Sydney. He is the author of The Little Book of Australia - A snapshot of who we are (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark The Tribal Mind.


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31-12-2009, 21:09
I really don't understand how morale plays as bigger part as it does on FM10. It sounds like U7 leagues if they make a mistake they burst into tears. But these are playing full-time surely they would understand its there job and they need to do it. I just don't understand why it oplays such a big part.