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Husky Softball Classic Title Remains In Seattle
Washington's winning streak stretches to 14.
Huskies Take Colorado State Classic Title
Junior Hooch Fagaly had five RBI in game one vs. UNO.
Husky Bats Come Alive In 8-0 Win
Bryana Walker was near-perfect in the circle pitching the complete game shutout.
Huskies Take Tournament Title In Hawai'i
Hooch Fagaly was named the tournament MVP.
UW Softball Preview Part 3: Pitchers & Catchers
Seniors Shawna Wright and Lindsay Monk will lead the Huskies behind the plate.
NCAA Softball Press Conference
NCAA Softball Press Conference
Head Softball Coach Heather Tarr
Tarr news and features:
Tarr Brings Washington Full Circle - ESPN.com (June 3, 2009)
There's No Question: Tarr Was the Right Hire - Seattle Times (June 3, 2007)
Let the Good Times Roll as UW Heads to World Series - Seattle Times (June 9, 2007)
Q & A with coach Heather Tarr - gohuskies.com (Oct. 6, 2004)
UW softball puts on a new face - Seattle PI (July 7, 2004)
UW names Tarr to head softball program - Tacoma News-Tribune (July 7, 2004)
Heather Tarr Named Washington Softball Coach - gohuskies.com (July 6, 2004)
Heather Tarr will enter her ninth year at the helm of the Husky Softball team in 2013. In 2012, Tarr led the Huskies to a 39-19 record and the right to host the NCAA Regional. UW went 3-0 in that regional and advanced to face No. 1 and Pac-12 foe Cal in Berkeley. It was the 19th-straight NCAA Tournament appearance for the Huskies. Sophomore Kaitlin Inglesby was named an All-American. Kimi Pohlman and Niki Williams were drafted into the NPF.
The 2011 team made its 18th-straight NCAA Tournament appearance and earned the right to host NCAA Regionals once again. UW went 3-0 in that tournament, defeating BYU twice and Portland State. The Huskies advanced to the Super Regionals, falling to the higher seed Missouri in two games. UW finished the season with a 37-16 overall record and a 9-12 record in a tough Pac-10 Conference. UW was a 12 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies were the last undefeated team in the country, going 20-0 to start the season. UW got some big wins on the year including its first win at UCLA since 2007. Jenn Salling and Niki Williams earned Second-Team All-America honors while six total Huskies were named to the All-Pacific Region First-Team and five to the All-Pac-10 team. UW ended the season ranked 12th in the NFCA poll and 15th in the ESPN.com/USA Today poll after reaching as high as No. 4/4 on the year.
In 2010 Tarr led the Huskies back to the Women's College World Series for the second-straight season. She was named the Pac-10 Coach of the Year after guiding UW to the conference championship. The Huskies were ranked No. 1 in the preseason polls and all throughout the season until they earned the No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They posted a 50-9 overall record, 20-4 home record and 17-4 conference record. The season began with five-straight wins. They also posted an 18-game winning streak from Feb. 19-March 19.
In Pac-10 play, the Huskies dropped just four games but won every series and headed into the NCAA Regionals with a five-game winning streak. Hosting the NCAA Regional (making their 17-straight NCAA Tournament appearance) in Seattle, the Huskies went a perfect 3-0, defeating North Dakota State (3-0) and North Carolina twice (1-0 and 2-1 in eight innings). The Huskies also earned the right to host the Super Regionals as Oklahoma came into town. The Sooners dominated game one, 6-1 and made the Huskies chances of getting back to the WCWS look bleak. However, coach Tarr rallied her team to win the next two games in shutout fashion, 3-0 and 4-0. UW became the highest seed remaining in the NCAA Tournament to make the WCWS as both No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Michigan both lost in the Super Regionals. They entered the tournament with a target on their backs and just fell short of a repeat, falling in game one to Georgia, 6-3 and in game two to Arizona, 4-3. She guided Danielle Lawrie to her second-straight Player of the Year honor. Lawrie left UW as one of the greatest pitchers in NCAA history, ranking near the top of every pitching category. A total of nine Huskies earned Pac-10 honors, five were named First-Team All-Region and three earned All-American honors.
After leading the program to its 16th-consecutive postseason berth in 2009, Tarr and her team gutted out the longest game in program history in the NCAA Regional final, defeating UMass 6-1 on the Minutewomen's home field in 15 innings. The Huskies then swept through the best-of-three Super Regionals over Georgia Tech in Atlanta before the three-week road trip continued in Oklahoma City. In their ninth Women's College World Series appearance and second in Tarr's five seasons, the Huskies won their first two games before falling to Georgia in the first semifinal game. But the Huskies showed their grit again, defeating Georgia that night to advance to the Championship Series, where they dominated the Gators to bring home the title in two games.
The Huskies finished the 2009 season atop both the NFCA and ESPN.com polls for the first time in program history. Their 51 wins equaled the fourth-most in program history and the most for a Tarr-led Husky team. Following the season, Tarr and her staff were not only named the Pacific Region Coaching Staff of the Year, but also the NFCA National Coaching Staff of the Year. Individual honors also came pouring in, as Danielle Lawrie was named the USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year and the Honda Award winner, the first Husky softball player to ever earn such honors. Lawrie and senior Ashley Charters were named First Team All-Americans and were each named to National Teams following the season, with Charters being named to Team USA and Lawrie re-joining Canada.
Tarr's team peaked at the right time in 2009, with their offensive prowess on display at the World Series in addition to Lawrie's outstanding pitching which led to her being named the Women's College World Series Most Outstanding Player. Husky players set several College World Series records, with Niki Williams breaking records for most RBI in a game (7) and series (10) and Morgan Stuart breaking the record for most doubles in a series (4). Five Huskies were named to the All-Tournament team, including freshmen Kimi Pohlman and Niki Williams, sophomore Morgan Stuart, junior Danielle Lawrie and senior Ashley Charters. The Huskies showed signs of what was to come early in the season when they jumped out to a school-record 18-0 start, including a Championship Series preview against Florida, which the Huskies also won, 1-0. UW swept through the first four tournaments unscathed to take over the No. 1 spot in the ESPN.com/USA Today polls, the first No. 1 ranking for a UW team since 2000.
The Huskies then traveled across the country to Alabama for the Easton SEC/Pac-10/Big 12 Challenge which featured another Women's College World Series preview, with the Huskies and Georgia splitting two games. UW and eventual WCWS participant Alabama also split two games, with the Tide handing UW its first loss of the season. After finishing the pre-season at 27-3, UW embarked on the Pac-10 campaign, finishing second in the conference with a 14-7 mark, their highest finish in the league since 2000. They also closed out the regular season with a 41-10 record, their most regular season victories since 2003. UW then went 10-2 over the next three weeks to end the program's 16-year championship drought.
The 2009 season was a stark contrast to the 2008 season when UW was without Lawrie, Charters and All-Pac-10 performer Lauren Greer due to redshirt seasons. Tarr still managed to lead the team to its 15th-consecutive postseason appearance and a 30-25-1 season - their 15th consecutive 30+ win season - to advance to the NCAA Regionals before falling to host Houston. In 2007, Tarr led the Huskies back to the Women's College World Series for the first time since 2004. Washington finished tied for third in the Pac-10 and went on to win the Lincoln, Neb. Regional before sweeping Alabama in the Super Regionals in Seattle to advance to the WCWS for the eighth time in school history. The Huskies defeated DePaul, 3-1, to open the WCWS as sophomore All-American pitcher Danielle Lawrie pitched the 16th no-hitter in WCWS history and the first since 2003. Washington followed that up by defeating Northwestern, 9-0, as Lawrie threw a one-hitter. Washington then ran into eventual national champion Arizona and lost two games to the Wildcats to finish tied for third in the country.
The Huskies finished the season with a 42-19 record and had three players earn All-America honors. Lawrie and senior first baseman Dena Tyson both were named to the Louisville Slugger/NFCA First Team, while junior shortstop Ashley Charters was a second team selection. The trio of players were also named to the WCWS All-Tournament team, marking the first UW players selected to the team since 2000, and earned All-Pacific Region honors. In addition, Charters, Lawrie, Tyson and three other UW players earned All-Pac-10 honors. The Huskies tallied 14 wins over opponents ranked in the top-25, including a win on the road at No. 3 Arizona and a pair of wins over No. 2 Alabama in the Super Regionals. Washington also swept the season series with Oregon, which was ranked No. 10 during the two teams first matchup and No. 16 during the final two games, and picked up wins over No. 7 Arizona State, No. 8 Texas, No. 12 UCLA, No. 15/16 Stanford and No. 16 Oregon State. The Huskies also swept a pair of games from No. 6 LSU.
In 2006, Tarr and the Huskies swept through the Provo Regional as a No. 1 seed with tournament MVP Danielle Lawrie not allowing a run in three starts. The Huskies advanced to the Austin Super Regional where they fell to Cat Osterman's Texas Longhorns to just miss out on the WCWS berth. Junior second baseman Dominique Lastrapes and sophomore utility Ashley Charters each earned third team All-America honors and five players received All-Pac-10 honors. Washington finished the season with a 35-25 overall record and a No. 15 national ranking. The Huskies tallied 11 wins over opponents ranked in the top-25, including victories over No. 1 UCLA, No. 5 Oregon State and No. 5 Stanford.
In Tarr's first season at the UW, she led the Huskies to the Super Regional where they fell one game short of advancing to the WCWS. The Huskies' season came to an end when they lost a three-game series to eventual national champion Michigan in Ann Arbor and finished the year with a No. 14 national ranking. Seven Huskies earned All-Pac-10 honors, including Kristen Rivera, who was named Co-Pac-10 Player of the Year. Rivera also became the Huskies' first-ever four-time All-American, earning first team honors as a catcher.
Three Washington players earned All-Pacific Region honors and three were named to the Pac-10 All-Academic team for their successes in the classroom. Washington finished the season with a 35-22 record and finished sixth in the Pac-10 Conference with a 10-11 mark after four teams log-jammed in a tie for first place with 13-8 records. The Huskies tallied 13 wins over opponents ranked in the top-25, including victories over No. 1 Michigan, No. 3 California and No. 4 Stanford. Before taking over the Washington program, Tarr had a six-year stint at Pacific, starting as an assistant coach before being promoted to associate head coach in April of 2004. During her six seasons at Pacific, the Tigers posted a 232-124 (.652) overall record and 90-44 (.672) mark in the Big West Conference. In 2004 Tarr guided the Tigers to a top-20 national batting average.
In 2001, she and Pacific head coach Brian Kolze were named the 2001 NFCA West Region Coaching Staff of the Year after guiding the Tigers to within one win of the Women's College World Series and a No. 18 final national ranking. That team also finished the season with a .973 fielding percentage, ranking second-best in the country. Tarr joined Pacific prior to the 1999 season after an outstanding career as a Husky.
As a four-year letterwinner, Tarr helped lead the UW to a second place finish at the Women's College World Series in 1996 and a third place finish in 1997. She earned various honors while playing softball at Washington. A three-year member of the Pac-10 All-Academic team from 1994-97, she was named to the Pac-10 All-Conference team from 1995-97 and the NFCA All-West Region team in 1996 and 1997.
Tarr also worked at Washington as an undergraduate assistant coach during the 1998 season, helping the Huskies to a third-place finish at the 1998 Women's College World Series. In addition to her collegiate experience, Tarr brings experience from the professional level as she spent the summer of 1997 as a member of the Women's Professional Fastpitch Softball League's Tampa Bay Fire Stix. She was the league leader in fielding percentage for first basemen and also led the league in walks. Tarr earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Geography from Washington in 1998. She completed her Masters Degree in Education at Pacific in the fall of 2003. Tarr is a native of Redmond, Wash., and is a graduate of Redmond High School.


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UPDATE: apparently, I misdiagnosed memory stick B. It doesn't boot up in any slot. I was led to believe it did because the motherboard would beep (one short beep, the code for successful boot for this motherboard) and I would turn it off to test other slots before I got to see the message it was going to show: "Overclocking failed. Press F1 for setup and F2 to load setup defaults."
Once I went to setup and reset the defaults and tried to boot again, it wouldn't (same symptom I described: no video, no beep).
I think then that this stick must be defective. Is there any way I can be sure?
I bought two identical Corsair XMS2 2GB 800Mhz memory sticks and I can`t get them to work in pairs, although they work fine separately.
I`m trying to install them in a Asus P5K Deluxe motherboard. This mobo has four memory slots, two yellow (1st and 3rd from left to right) and two black (2nd and 4th).
Memory stick A (I differentiate them by the serial numbers) works solo in any of the four slots. Memory stick B
, however, works fine in any slot BUT slot #1 (what seems really really strange to me). doesn't boot up.
I then tried to make them work in pairs in the yellow slots (1 and 3). The machine doesn`t boot up (fans turn on, but no video and no beep happens). If I remove either of them (leaving just one), the machine boots.
Both memories (which even have consecutive serial numbers) have 5-5-5-18 timings. My CMOS settings for DRAM timings are on auto. I tried to set them explicitly to 5-5-5-18 and the PC doesn`t boot (even with only one stick).
My situation is similar to Memory works fine separately, but not together, but I can`t even get one pair to work.
PS: I do have another pair of almost identical memories (Corsair XMS2 1GB 800Mhz, 5-5-5-12) that I want to install together with the 2GB pair, but not before I even get the 2GB pair to work.
How can I even diagnose what's to blame here?!

subset: commoncrawl


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Am I gaining too much weight?
I'm only 10 weeks along and have already gained at least 14 pounds! Is this too much already?
Posted: 09/10/2007 by lisam84
Mom Answers
Sort by: best answers | most recent answers
21 - 30 of 69 answers
I think its defiantly normal. I've always been pretty skinny and fit never had weight issues but then i got pregnant (I'm 7 weeks along) and i've gained about 15 pounds. Im exercising, trying to eat healthy, except although i do eat a little bit of candy every once in a while, but i did even when i wasn't pregnant. i really think its on your body and your genetics on how much weight your gonna gain. my mom had the same thing happen to her and she's always been tiny. And don't get too hard on yourself most of it garenteed is due to water weight, bloat, and if your like me, the horrible thing called constipation... but It happens! and i think its a joke when people say your only to gain "25 pounds" HA. i think only about 20 percent of women gain a little amount of weight durning pregnancy.posted 06/12/2010 by jupac_08
Don't worry about it. With my first pregnancy I gained like 14 lbs in the first 12 weeks. But by the time I delivered at 39 wks I only gained 25 lbs total. I think your body knows what it needs to do to have a healthy baby. I am on my second pregnancy now I am 20 weeks and have gained 9-10 lbs. Every pregnancy is different. So don't worry just see how it goes.posted 05/15/2008 by tmm28
i have to agree with all of the smart women who have said that your body knows what it needs and that every pregnancy is different. i had my first one at 25 gained about 70 lbs, but being my first pregnancy and not listening to the doc and exercising like i should have, i developed preeclamcia, it was no fun, now 2 1/2 years later i still have on about 25 lbs from my daughter and we are 14 weeks prego, but this time i have listened and ate good and am auctally exercising, unlike my first pregnancy (where i gained most of my weight in the first 5 months) i have lost weight in the first trimester (dr said not to worry every thing is just fine), so when people say every pregnancy is different it is so very true, everything about my second one is nothing like the first one. just exercise, eat healthy, talk to your belly, and really enjoy it, it is the most amazing thing ever, and it is only the begining of many wonderful things to come!!!!!posted 05/14/2008 by mamabaskins
alright i am really sick of reading all your comments, about oh i was 120lbs this and 140lbs that when i started out..where the hell are the really women? i was 180 pounds when i got pregnant with my first and guess what i gained 77 pounds. No i shouldn't have gained that much and i am lucky i didn't have any problems, my daughter was 8lbs 5 oz. Now i am pregnant with my second child and i started off at 184 pounds i am at 20 weeks with 15 pounds gained, i am doing better this time around. but i think when you have your first baby its ok to gain you learn your lesson and you will know better the next time around..Just remember dont stress just enjoy!posted 09/19/2011 by nyc_babe882007
.... everybody is different and many women lose a fair amount of weight in the beginning, and yes it is possible to lose it right away especially if you are healthy, and active to begin with... and it if it is an early pregnancy (1st or 2nd) But it does get harder to lose the weight with each pregnancy and as you get older because of the stress on your body, which plays havoc on your Metabolism... I am a paramedic, working on my masters in nursing, with my under-grad being in Kinesiology (human movement ----meaning pre-med for Sport medicine and physical therapy.... If you are really worried make sure to ask your ob/gyn or midwife.... and yes some people can gain a large amount of weight and be predisposed to diabetes and never get it..... weight is not the only cause of diabetes it is a malfunction of the pancreas creating insulin which can happen for a lot of reasons.posted 03/24/2008 by a BabyCenter Member
Try not to worry too much about it. I gained fast too. Just remember, it can all come back off after birthposted 02/27/2012 by a BabyCenter Member
Everyone is different. If you study this site and the comments on it, you'll find every woman has her own phases of weight gain. Don't let other women tell you what's too much, because it could be this is the only time you'll want food! For me, the first trimester I lost weight, and that is typical because of morning sickness, but I've found you are most hormonally unstable during the 1st and 3rd trimester and that can certainly change eating habits. For me, my appetite picked up 2nd tri, which is also typical. I still have only gained 12 Ibs and I'm 29 wks. If it really bothers you, just try to have a meal plan. If you aren't worried about having to lose later, then do what makes you comfortable and number one thing to remember during pregnancy(for your sanity) is not to let other people make you feel bad. Just look after that baby and forget all else. U can get gestational diabetes thin or fat btw, don't worry too much.posted 03/31/2008 by Irishbrwnie
I gained about 12 weeks in my first trimester with my first pregnancy and just found out that I've gained the same amount with my second (currently pregnant again!). I ended up gaining a total of 70 lbs wtih my first, but at LEAST 30 of that was water weight due to my PIH and retaining water. I lost it all within 4 days of delivery. So just watch what you eat, don't go crazy but don't deny yourself your cravings either. For example, if you crave chocolate, get some Hershey's kisses so you can get little tastes of it but don't eat a full sleeve of Oreo's. Drink lots of water!! While you don't want to get too big and risk your health or have a very hard time losing it all later...you also don't want to be miserable.posted 01/09/2008 by lil' aimilita
HA! I had gained 10 pounds by the time I had my first doctors appt at 6 weeks! And it didn't stop there. Total I gained a CRAZY amount of weight, 72lbs! I shot up from 160 to 232! But you know what, I spent way too much time crying about it, and way too much time being nervous about what others were saying about it, (including my midwives). I ate well, lots of salads, veggies and fruit, but I also indulged. The second my 8th month started, my weight gain stopped, I haven't gained a pound since. I didn't develop gestational diabetes, my blood pressure is right on, and in these last few weeks I have (I'm 38 weeks) I have calmed down and am finally able to concentrate on how amazing this whole experience is. Give yourself a break, be healthy, take your vitamins, eat plenty of fresh food and ignore everyone else. You do what is right for you and your baby.posted 08/20/2008 by Marbie85
With my first child I was weighting 93 pounds all my life i haven't got over 105 and when I got 5 months with him my weight gain went up alot!!! by the time i had him i was weighting 191! I am pregnant now and my son is only 7 months old! but i have only gained 5 pounds so far! and i am 9 weeks! so i think i am doing good! but i think if you were like me always wanting to eat then have fun with it! but only if you know you can get if back off! i lost 60 pounds when my son was only 6 months old! now i am about to do it all over again!posted 02/11/2009 by a BabyCenter Member
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Follow us on:
Sire: Imported Friesian Stallion "Hotse" refer to black swan friesians website
Dam: Thoroughbred Mare "Ray Of Hope" (her Sire: Thoroughbred Stallion "Semipalatinsk").
This is a gorgeous, leggy, athletic filly with a very kind eye. She is very friendly, easy to handle and always the first out of the herd to come up to you in the paddock. The Friesian crosses (known as Friesian Warmbloods) are becoming more and more popular every day because of there great temperament and athletic ability. This is the breed of the future for performance and pleasure!


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Terminating a whole life insurance policy is a big financial decision that should not be taken lightly. Whole life insurance is an insurance policy that ties together a term life policy with an annuity product. Each month, the insured person pays into a whole life policy increases the value of the annuity and keeps up coverage on the term life policy. When the policy is terminated or cashed out, the insured can only get the value of the annuity up to that point.
The amount that a person can receive by terminating their whole life policy depends on several factors. The type of annuity, the age of the person, the length of time he or she has had the policy, and sometimes even market conditions will all work together to determine how much a whole life policy is worth.
It can take decades for the annuity attached to a whole life policy to reach its full potential. During the first several years of investing, it is not uncommon for the annuity to be worth less than what has been paid into it. The only way to know for sure how much your annuity is worth is to contact your insurance agent and ask what the cash out value of the policy is.
Because of the potential to lose money by cashing out a policy, the decision to stop making payments on a while life policy is very important. In many cases, people purchase these policies as a way of providing for themselves in retirement. By cashing out the policy, these individuals must start their retirement saving all over.
To make the decision on whether cashing out is the right decision for you, consider how much the money you pay each month would earn in a standard investment such as stocks or government bonds. Consider several different scenarios in order to determine if it makes sense to keep investing in a whole life policy, or cash out and purchase a term life policy if you still need some type of life insurance for your family. There are several online calculators that can help you to look at different scenarios and make a decision.


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Chris 'Blocka' Dutton has hit the ground in London ... and stumbled on an opening ceremony rehearsal. Illustration: Marco Mana
By Chris Dutton
In London
Bleary-eyed and confused after 23 hours of travel, I couldn't believe I was sitting in the Olympic Stadium in an eery silence just days before 80,000 people get swept up in the euphoria of the games.
Strangely deserted ... the London Olympic preccinct. Photo: Chris Dutton
Maybe it was the jetlag or the relaxed London attitude ahead of the biggest sporting event in the world, but I had stumbled into somewhere I didn't think I was allowed to be.
But instead of turning around, fellow Fairfax journalist Tim Barrow and I sat down in the front row trying to imagine what would happen in the coming days.
The details of the opening ceremony are under guard, but there is already a buzz that it will be one of the most spectacular shows.
A security guard let us through one of the gates and it was a strange feeling in an empty stadium.
I'd stumbled into the end of what seemed to be the end of some sort of non-official dress rehearsal.
There were workers in hard hats putting the finishing touches on the hidden displays and there are strict rules about what the media can reveal before the opening ceremony fireworks.
We sat for about 20 minutes trying to soak it all up, waiting for a glimpse of something extraordinary three days before the rest of the world gets to see the show.
And judging by the small insights we gathered and the rumours we've heard, it's going to be a cracker.
Around 60,000 people got a sneak peak of the opening ceremony on Tuesday morning, but they've been sworn to secrecy in the lead-up to Saturday morning's event.
It could have been the calm before the Olympic storm as the precinct was deserted with only volunteers and journalists roaming the empty roads between venues.
The land of warm beer and the Barmy Army had turned on a spectacular welcome and getting an up-close look inside the main stadium was the perfect beginning.
When we arrived for the first time there were no crowds and no boundaries. Even the volunteers were unsure where to send us, so we forged our own path.
We won't be able to do that in a couple of days when the precinct is overflowing with over-enthusiastic Poms keen to win gold and rub it in our noses.
A couple of times we over-stepped the line and walked into restricted areas before we were ejected in the nicest possible way.
When we arrived there were tractors racing around with scaffolding to finish stands at the outdoor hockey and BMX venues while power tools grinding metal screeched across the industrial area which has been transformed to an Olympic hub.
The venues look outstanding.
Before sneaking into the main stadium we walked into the BMX track where Canberra's Caroline Buchanan hopes to claim a gold medal in two weeks.
It's a makeshift track in between the hockey and basketball arenas.
The Australian athletes are starting to trickle back into the village after spending a large chunk of time at separate European trianing bases.
The excitement around London is slowly building with pink-shirt volunteers at every train station and around every corner.
Unfortunately I won't be able to get into the opening ceremony when it kicks off, I'll be stuck on the outside trying to get a glimpse or watching it in a pub.
But while I'll miss the extravagant show, I've already had my own experience in the stadium.


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Google vs Facebook – The Battle – Part 2
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Google Take Out: is Google Taking Privacy Serious Now?
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We are seeing the same pattern as when Google launched Google Wave: people begging, screaming almost for an invite. The invites seemed to have been put out there randomly, even...
Measure your +1 metrics in WebmasterTools and Analytics
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Google + is here, big time. If it will become a success or not, we'll have to wait and see. But Google doesn't stop there. It is just the...
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29 June 2011
The ink is still fresh, only a few actually have access, but there is no denying it: Google + is here. Tons of articles and posts already being published,...
Google's social network is here, we saw the signals, but will it succeed?
29 June 2011
It's been buzzing for months, is Google going for the Facebook attack? Are they going to build a new Social Network? And last night they finally did. And even...


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You had me at the nomenclature, but I have to say that it's the pretty herbaceous green hue I like to call "pistachio" that drew me to Caesars Man. However, this is definitely a "man's man" type of fragrance with none of the candy-like sweetness promised by some online reviews! However, it's blending possibilities are endless…
Launched by Caesars World in 1988, Caesars Man Legendary Cologne Spray has been most closely compared to Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche, though with far fewer notes and thus lacking in complexity, comparatively. Priced at a fraction of Drakkar Noir, it has become a favorite of men who like a drier, uncomplicated masculine scent with herbaceous overtones.
The top and most prominent note is definitely rosemary, which gives this dry scent a decidedly bitter quality which somewhat lessens after its dry-down. A pretty apt description online by the Fragrance Foundation's Fragrance Directory spells that Caesars Man is a "rich combination of armoise, verbena, juniper berry, Italian bergamot, Alpine lavender, and fir balsam then balanced with warm, woody notes of fresh amber, Indian patchouli, treemoss, sandalwood and Haitian vetiver."
Appropriately, Caesars Man's squarish bottle is embellished with olive leaves, with the gold cap sporting a pretty accurate profile of the legendary Roman general Julius Caesar himself. Likewise, the box sports a rich black marble with gold veins and angular gold lettering as though they were chiseled into the stone, invoking ancient Rome itself.
As a woman smelling this fragrance, I want to add that I personally would layer it with orange blossom water for a citrusy sweetness, green tea and perhaps another floral like lily of the valley, jasmine, honeysuckle or even carnation to balance out all that masculinity. Subsequently, I experimented by layering Caesars Man with Miss Dior, and later Diorissimo, which both have Lilly of the Valley and Jasmine.
I also have an old bottle of Mari Mari by The Body Shop, which has ingredients made from Amazon plants (the word goes!), that I have found too sweet alone. Together with Caesars Man, and/or Elizabeth Arden's Green Tea and Sanborns Orange Blossom Cologne, the results are amazing!
As stated earlier, the very prominent rosemary top note makes this is a decidedly masculine scent that needs layering with florals. Unless you're prepared to do some creative layering ladies, Caesars Man is strictly for the boys and even then it needs to be tempered to add a little sweetness to the masculine mix! I'll still give Caesars Man five stars for its endless blending possibilities.
Fortunately, the spray nozzle does unscrew so that you can alter the cologne to your satisfaction – if need be! So, you might be wondering what Caesars Woman smells like? Stay tuned…


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Flower colour
Skill level
Like spring onions, 'spring greens' may be had almost all the year round, by using up-to-date varieties and sowing several times in succession. The traditional harvesting season is March and April, with plants started in late July in the north and early August in the south. Most varieties eventually produce solid hearts, and it is usual to transplant seedlings at close spacing so that alternate plants can be used as loose greens, leaving the others to mature as small hearted cabbages. In cold windy gardens, plants can be earthed up slightly in late autumn.
Family: Brassicaceae
Genus: Brassica
Species: oleracea capitata group
Cultivar: Durham Early
Plant type: Vegetable
Flower colour: Yellow
Foliage colour: Dark green
Sun exposure: Full sun
Soil: Well-drained/light, Clay/heavy, Dry
Hardiness: Hardy
Skill level: Experienced
Height: 38cm
Spread: 10cm
Time to plant seeds: July to August
Be the first reader to review the Brassica oleracea capitata group 'Durham Early' Spring cabbage!


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Technical Writing For Success
ISBN13:by Smith-Worthington, Darlene; Jefferson, Sue
South-Western Educational Pub
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Technical Writing for Success 2E is a practical approach to workplace writing. This comprehensive text is designed to focus on skills that employers demand in today's workplace -- thinking, listening, composing, revising, and editing skills. Using a learn-by-doing approach, these skills are introduced and applied so that mastering technical writing is relevant and exciting. This popular text provides the foundation skills needed to become a successful writer.
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Psycho Jennifer Fichter Fired by Polk County School District
The 29 year old woman who allegedly slept with her 17 year old student and then aborted the baby after she found herself pregnant is now out of a job.
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Looking for love in all the wrong places. For more click here.


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- Why China Has A Love/Hate Relationship With Social Media
Huffington Post's Peter Goodman discusses how China's leaders view social media with Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television's "Bloomberg West."
- Study: Teens Taking Steps to Avoid Identity Theft
You might think that kids and teens don't need to worry about identity theft but that's not the case. It turns out that ID thieves love kids because most have a clean credit record. And often teens won't find out that their identity has been stolen until they apply for their first credit card or a college loan.
That's the bad news. The good news is that teens are starting to get the message that they should guard their identity. A study commissioned by the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) and conducted by Hart Research Associates, found that the percentage of teens who say they are "very concerned" about their identity being stolen has gone from 43 percent a year ago to 51 percent this year. Just under three quarters (73 percent) agree that "because teens are more likely to have clean credit histories and are less likely to monitor their credit, it is reasonable to think they could be victims of identity theft."
But, when it comes to their own situation, only 29 percent of teens think they they are personally vulnerable to having their identity stolen.
Risky and not-so risky behaviors
Just over a third (34 percent) of teens said that they have shared at least one username and password with someone other than their parents. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) say they have shared it with a friend or significant other.
Password sharing is a particularly risky behavior because it can not only lead to crimes but can result in impersonation such as someone logging onto your social networking account and posting as if they were you.
The study was released at FOSI'a annual convention taking place November 6 and 7 in Washington, DC. The research consisted of two focus groups held in September 2013 and a nationwide online survey conducted in October 2013 among 558 teens ages 13 to 17 who access the Internet.
Kids are posting other information online that isn't particularly risk such as their full name (75 percnt), a photo (69 percent), their date of birth (54 percent), the name of their school (48 percent), and their e-mail address (47 percent). With the possible exception of full date of birth (it's a good idea to leave off the year), none of these types of information constitute high risk, considering the hundreds of millions of people who post this type of information on Facebook and other social networks.
There are some good signs when it comes to teens and privacy. More than three fourths (76 percent) of teens said that they are very or somewhat concerned about the privacy of their personal information while 69 percent have set up one or more devices to auto-lock so that a password or PIN is required to access the device (or maybe a fingerprint if it's an iPhone 5S).
Take aways for teens and parents
It's a good idea to remind teens that they are vulnerable to both financial crimes and an impersonation and that it's important to keep their passwords confidential. Friends can sometimes become ex-friends so even if they trust someone, its a good idea to keep their passwords to themselves. And while teens will of course want to share some information — and that's OK — but they need to realize that some data is best kept secret. Have a conversation with your kids but don't make it a lecture. Start by asking what they know about identity theft and if they know how to protect themselves.
Tips from Identity Theft Resource Center
The Identity Theft Resource Center offers tips to prevent ID theft, including:
- Don't give out your SSN unnecessarily (only for tax reasons, credit or verified employment.) Before providing personal identifiers, know how it will be used and if it will be shared.
- Use a cross-cut shredder to dispose of documents with personal information. Also, use a specialized gel pen when writing out checks.
- Place outgoing mail in collection boxes or the U.S. Post Office.
- Password protect your financial accounts. A strong password should be more than eight characters in length, and contain both capital letters and at least one numeric or other non alphabetical character. Use of non-dictionary words is also recommended.
- Don't give out personal information on the phone, through the mail or over the Internet unless you initiated the contact.
- Use firewall software to protect computer information. Keep virus and spyware software programs updated.
For more on identity theft and other security issues, see A Parents' Guide to Cybersecurity from ConnectSafely.org.
- Well, Martha, Most Bloggers Really ARE Experts
This is a wonderful time to be a real person. Ordinary people — folks just like you and me — are popping up all over the place. You see us in ads for e-readers, Fords, and room fresheners. Today's conventional wisdom, according to AdWeek, suggests that real people make a brand seem "more genuine and authentic." If you happen to be a real person and possess an opinion, Madison Avenue wants to know what you have to say. Martha Stewart? If the brouhaha in the blogosphere is any indication, maybe not so much.
The domestic diva got herself in the soup for remarks she made in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle of Bloomberg Television. By now, everyone on the world wide web knows what Stewart said:
Who are these bloggers? They're not trained editors at Vogue magazine. I mean, there are bloggers writing recipes that aren't tested, that aren't necessarily very good, or are copies of everything that really good editors have created and done. So bloggers create kind of a popularity, but they are not the experts. And we have to understand that. [Emphasis added].
Stewart ignited a firestorm in the blogosphere, especially since many bloggers gauged her comments as hypocritical; she has been a keynote speaker at BlogHer, and her publicists actively seek bloggers to help promote her merchandise.
I've sat this out until now, but after considering the incident, it does seem to merit discussion about nuance, authenticity, the nature of expertise, and what bloggers can and shouldn't do.
Some disclosure is probably in order. Stewart's aides have never reached out to me, although as a member of the Viewpoints Blogger Reviews Panel and a contributor to its website I have offered my opinion on the Kindle Paperwhite and the KitchenAid Pro Line Dicing Food Processor, among other items. And a publicist for Verizon Wireless invited me to become a member of its Verizon Boomer Voices program, in which I offer my opinion on such mobile devices as the DROID RAZR MAXX HD smart phone and the Fitbit One.
I don't at all mind that I've not been asked to serve as one of Martha Stewart's brand ambassadors, although, had I been approached, I would have said yes. I have admired Stewart's aesthetic and contributions to the domestic arts for years. But I find her comments troubling, especially in light of her active recruitment of bloggers. As many bloggers will tell you, our authenticity as real people who use real products gives us enormous credibility. There's a case to be made for life experience contributing to expertise. It would appear as though the Martha Stewart brand was looking for this authenticity.
So what exactly do we mean by the word "expert" anyway?
Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, defines an expert as one "having special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience." Let's deconstruct this a moment, using my blog and one of its sections as an example.
In naming my site "The Midlife Second Wife," I made two explicit declarations: I have lived a fair number of years and am therefore no spring chicken, and I have married for the second time. I am, at the present moment, 57 years old and have been cooking for at least 35 years. A section on my blog features recipes, many of which are mine and all of which I have prepared. In working with these recipes over the course of a lifetime, it's fair to say that I have "tested" them. Every recipe I've shared on the blog has been wildly popular with my family and friends (trust me, I'm not about to share the occasional flop with you), so it's safe to assume they are "very good." In cases where I include recipes from some of my favorite cookbook authors–dishes I also have in my regular cooking rotation–I have asked for, and received, permission to reprint them. I make no claims to be chef, professional cook, or restaurateur; in that sense I am not an expert. But you can take to the bank the fact that I'm an excellent home cook with decades of experience in the kitchen. In that respect, I am an expert.
As for blogging, I bring experience as a published writer and editor to the enterprise. While the Oberlin Conservatory Magazine is hardly Vogue, it is nevertheless a beautiful publication featuring the students, faculty, and alumni of one of the most renowned music schools in the United States. I served as its editor for 10 years, from 2001 to 2010. I also majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing at Oberlin College, so I learned a thing or two about what it takes to craft a narrative.
These are my credentials — I know many other bloggers who have résumés with similar bona fides. I present mine here not because this incident is about me, but because I'm a blogger, and the Stewart incident raises the question about what we choose to blog about, what our experience has been, and how we go about the whole enterprise. I'm happy to offer my opinion in areas where I believe I have something worthwhile to contribute, and where I can provide useful and enlightening information in what I hope is an enjoyable read for you. I also tend to agree with Linda Lacina, who posits in Entrepreneur.com that the real battle bloggers might consider waging isn't necessarily with Martha Stewart, but with shoddy content. That could have been the point Stewart was trying to make, but unfortunately, her remarks painted all bloggers with a push broom-sized brush.
Let me add that I have never — and I promise you that I will never — pass myself off as an expert by adding to the critical literature on figure-skating, cross-bow hunting, parachuting, or hand surgery. What I will do is write, to the best of my ability, about what I know. In cases where I feel compelled to write about what I don't know, but wonder about (hand surgery, anyone?), I'll bring in the experts. (I've already interviewed a few on Monday Morning Q&A.)
And I promise to edit myself as carefully as I can.
Related articles:
"Martha Stewart Speaks Out: Bloggers are not Experts," Bloomberg.com
"Note to Bloggers: Fight Bad Content, not Martha Stewart" by Linda Lacina, Entrepreneur.com
"Whatever, Martha" by Adam Roberts, The Huffington Post
"Does Martha Stewart Owe Food, Lifestyle Bloggers an Apology?" by Rene Lynch, the Los Angeles Times
"Dear Martha Stewart, Here's What You Should Have Said About Bloggers" by Julie Ross Godar, BlogHer.com
"Martha Stewart Likes Bloggers. I Have Proof." by Gabrielle Blair, DesignMom.com
"Martha Stewart and the Case of the Not-So-Expert Food Blogger" by Tracy Beckerman, LostinSuburbia.com
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
- 15 Remarkable Colorized Photos Will Let You Relive History
One thing we really need to thank the internet for: colorized historical photographs. Of course, the phenomenon comes to us courtesy of Photoshop and the talented editors who transformed black and white images into digital works of art. We're just happy we get to feast our eyes upon them.
Thanks to a Reddit user named Brinkman87, we have a plethora of polychromatic snapshots that bring history back to life. Behold, 15 of the best colorized photos on the web:
1. This boy clutching a stuffed toy in 1945 London.
2. Albert Einstein enjoying a Long Island summer in 1939.
3. This young boy in Baltimore in 1938.
4. This stunning snapshot of Audrey Hepburn.
5. This unemployed lumber worker in 1939.
6. These Japanese archers circa 1860.
7. The tragic Hindenburg Disaster of 1937.
8. These British troops on the first stage of their trip to the front lines in England, 1939.
9. This startling picture of Joseph Goebbels allegedly frowning at photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt after finding out he's Jewish, 1933.
10. This 'Old Gold' store in 1939.
11. This portrait of Walt Whitman in 1887.
12. This car crash in Washington D.C. in 1921.
13. Mark Twain lounging circa 1900.
14. Charlie Chaplin in 1916, at the beautiful age of 27.
15. Elizabeth Taylor in 1956.
- Should Your Children Be The Center Of Your World?
In the latest parenting post to go viral, Stephanie Metz reaches an important conclusion for all the wrong reasons.
"Why My Kids Are NOT The Center of My World," is the title of her piece, and in it she worries that today's parents have raised a generation that won't be able to cope. How will our sheltered, coddled, indulged children — raised to believe the world revolves around them — handle their first critical professor or unhappy boss?
A question worth asking, to be sure. But Metz' examples of our misguided parenting? Her definition of the kind of choices that are bubble-wrapping our children? Those are confusing at best and damaging at worst. She begins with the moment her son decided not to take his favorite action figure to show and tell because an accessory to that toy, which her son had always treated as "a drill", she writes, might look like a gun to the teacher "and then I'll get in trouble."
Which led her to this:
My boys are typical little boys. They love to play guns. They love to play good guy versus bad guy. They love to wrestle and be rowdy. That's the nature of little boys, as it has been since the beginning of time.
How long will it be before their typical boy-ish behavior gets them suspended from school? How long before they get suspended from daycare??? How long will it be before one of them gets upset with a friend, tells that friend to go away and leave them alone, and subsequently gets labeled as a bully?
The mentality of our society in 2013 is nauseating to me, friends.
She goes on to lament that time was when bullying was "slamming someone up against a locker and stealing their lunch money," not merely calling names, and she yearns for the good old days when "kids got called names and got picked on, and they brushed it off." Nowadays, she writes, "if Sally calls Susie a bitch (please excuse my language if that offends you), Susie's whole world crumbles around her, she contemplates suicide, and this society encourages her to feel like her world truly has ended, and she should feel entitled to a world-wide pity party. And Sally – phew! She should be jailed! She should be thrown in juvenile detention for acting like – gasp – a teenage girl acts."
Oh please.
Have we gone overboard as a society in protecting our children? Yes. I think we all agree that we have. But Metz' view that all these OTHER parents are crazy and if we could only go back to the good old days all would be dandy, is simplistic to the point of caricature.
First, she discusses these changes as if they occurred in a vacuum –as if one morning parents just woke up and decided to hover over their kids while, in that same moment, schools decided on a whim to enforce no tolerance policies against bullying and violence.
In reality, of course, this new paradigm is a reaction more than a cause. It's a direct result of a long list of reasons, starting with the fact that the good old days Metz misses weren't always that good at all and ending with the reality that the new days are more complicated.
Did kids used to "brush it off" when called names or threatened? Some did, but others carried scars for decades, which we failed to notice back then. Also, social media now acts as a magnifying lens for bullies, multiplying the damage and the danger.
Did parents used to insert themselves into their children's schooling as much as they do now? No. But learning issues also went unrecognized, and expectations of what a child needed to achieve in order to successfully navigate the classroom were lower then, too. College admissions was not the arms race that it is today, and the job market was not an impenetrable fortress.
Could "boys be boys" and shoot 'em up for fun on the playground? Yes. Did shooting up playgrounds carry the same history and baggage that it does right now? No. Did boys being boys in preschool lead to a culture of macho swagger and college campus violence? Not necessarily. But maybe. And that's enough reason to question the way things used to be.
Metz is angry about the new ways. I am sad. Her anger is rooted in the fact that she sees these changes as frivolous political correctness. I am sad because I see them as heartfelt scrambling by concerned parents reacting to real dangers. And the answer is to fix rather than ignore those dangers. To figure out how to ward off bullying without shackling our kids, how to help those who learn differently without spoon feeding them, how to allow boys to be boys and girls to be girls — heck, children to be children — without fear that their pretend play will reflect an armed camp of a world.
Our first reactions have been over-reactions, but many first drafts of social change are. So Metz is right that we need to recalibrate — not so we can go back to the way things were, but so we can finally get to wherever they are supposed to be.
- How One Scientist Learned to Tweet and Love to Blog
Recently I surpassed 5,000 followers on Twitter, achieving a milestone I set for myself when I began to use the social media platform in November 2011. I initially used Twitter in support of a gathering we hosted here at the Gates Foundation for grantees and partners working on Achieving Impact at Scale in Family Health. Passing this milestone caused me to pause and reflect on my journey with social media, and ask myself some questions: Why do I spend time engaging in social media? What do I get out of it? What does it achieve for the women and children in poor communities that I strive to reach with global health and development solutions? Might I do things differently going forward?
I originally engaged in social media as a means to be more transparent about our strategies in Maternal Newborn and Child Health, Nutrition, and Family Planning. The Gates Foundation has been and continues to be criticized for a lack of transparency, so I was looking for new ways to communicate and dialogue more effectively and comprehensively with our grantees and partners around the world. I wanted our grantees, partners and engaged public to have a better idea of who we are, what we focus our work on and why, how we work and who we work with to achieve our goals, what we are learning along the way, and what we are doing to improve our performance and impact.
Publishing results in peer reviewed journals is critically important, but our obligation for knowledge sharing does not stop there.
I was responding, in part, to a deeply held belief that our fundamental "currency" or value-add as a foundation is the knowledge and learning that we create. In order to optimize the spread and use of this knowledge, and ultimately to "leverage" our investments and fulfill our mission to give everyone the chance to live a healthy and productive life, we must reach out proactively to share this learning and to catalyze the adoption of knowledge by policy makers, researchers, program managers, frontline health workers, mothers, etc. Publishing results in peer reviewed journals is critically important, but our obligation for knowledge sharing does not stop there. The learning generated by our investments must be made more widely available, and ultimately be adopted, for it to impact women, children, families and communities.
A favorite social media activity of mine has been twitter chats linked to blog series each spring which attempt to capture our learning and stimulate dialogue on key challenges we are facing. The twitter chats were highly engaging, but the blog series seemed to be primarily a one-way flow of information out, with relatively little commentary coming back outside of the "chats." And the twitter chats didn't have the reach into poor communities that I look for. I felt that we were primarily "preaching to the choir," although it was encouraging to see many partners grappling with us to solve our most pressing challenges.
I continue to wrestle with these questions (as I know others do as well): How do I increase the two-way dialogue, and how do I achieve greater reach to women and families in poor communities?
In addition to using Twitter and blogging to share what we are learning, I use these vehicles as a chief means for my own learning. My "followers" become my teachers.
One mechanism that I have been excited to be part of as a founding curator is Catapult. This crowd-funding site enables me to link followers and people I meet in person and in social media spaces to a place where they can engage, identify projects and partners doing work they want to support, and follow the impact of their investments, which can be of any size. It's been very exciting for me to see several of the projects I highlighted become fully funded, and to see the boost this gives to the organizations and the communities that are supported.
In addition to using Twitter and blogging to share what we are learning, I use these vehicles as a chief means for my own learning. My "followers" become my teachers! I learn new perspectives and gain factual information on topics of interest, I become aware of important events, and I learn more about what resonates with an engaged public and how to communicate ideas more clearly and compellingly.
My followers also become catalysts for change through further spread of ideas and information. In tweeting out a message, I often imagine myself standing in front of an audience of 5000 enthusiastic listeners, each of whom, in turn, is speaking to an audience of their own. What do I want to tell them and how can I say it in a way that captures their interest and sparks their imagination, and stimulates them to spread the idea? What an amazing network of passionate individuals that I can tap into at any moment!
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter has offered an analogy: While television shows were previously limited to the people watching in any one room, "Twitter expands the room… you're often better off focusing on the people who are likely to watch a particular program and then be inclined to talk about it."
In this way, I see Twitter and blogging as ways to reach a select group of people who are inclined to action, providing an important avenue for "leverage" and for achieving impact in the lives of women and children at scale.
Being a scientist who is driven by data and evidence, another shortcoming of social media that I also continue to grapple with is defining the return on the time I am investing in these vehicles. I have fun. I learn. I feel better connected. I am gratified to know that people are "listening" to my ideas. But what tangible impact is really being achieved by my presence on social media channels? This is a rapidly evolving and exciting area for monitoring and evaluation. I don't have an answer yet but I'm still tweeting and still blogging… for the health (and development) of it.
This post was written by Dr. Gary Darmstadt, Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You can follow him at @gdarmsta.
- Few Options For Obama To Fix Cancellations Problem
WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he'll do everything he can to help people coping with health insurance cancellations, but legally and practically his options appear limited.
That means the latest political problem engulfing Obama's health care overhaul may not be resolved quickly, cleanly or completely. White House deputy spokesman Josh Earnest said Friday that the president has asked his team to look at administrative fixes to help people whose plans are being canceled as a result of new federal coverage rules. Obama, in an NBC interview Thursday, said "I am sorry" to people who are losing coverage and had relied on his assurances that if they liked their plan, they could keep it.
The focus appears to be on easing the impact for a specific group: people whose policies have been canceled and who don't qualify for tax credits to offset higher premiums. The administration has not settled on a particular fix and it's possible the final decision would apply to a broader group.
Still, a president can't just pick up the phone and order the Treasury to cut checks for people suffering from insurance premium sticker shock. Spending would have to be authorized by law.
Another obstacle: Most of the discontinued policies appear to have been issued after the law was enacted, according to insurers and independent experts. Legally, that means they would have never been eligible for cancellation protections offered by the statute. Its grandfather clause applies only to policies that were in effect when the law passed in 2010.
More than five weeks after open-enrollment season started for uninsured Americans, Obama's signature domestic policy achievement is still struggling. Persistent website problems appear to have kept most interested customers from signing up. Repairs are underway. Friday the administration said the website's income verification component will be offline for maintenance until Tuesday morning. An enrollment report expected next week is likely to reflect only paltry sign-ups.
Website woes have been eclipsed by the uproar over cancellation notices sent to millions of people who have individual plans that don't measure up to the benefits package and level of financial protection required by the law.
"It was clear from the beginning that there were going to be some winners and losers," said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, who supports the health overhaul. "But the losers are calling reporters, and the winners can't get on the website."
In the House, a Republican-sponsored bill that would give insurers another year to sell individual policies that were in effect Jan. 1, 2013, is expected to get a floor vote late next week. In the Senate, Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu has introduced legislation that would require insurers to keep offering current individual plans. Democrats, who as a group have stood firmly behind the new law so far, may start to splinter if the uproar continues.
The legislation faces long odds to begin with, but it may not do the job even if it passes. The reason: States, not the federal government, regulate the individual insurance market. State insurance commissioners have already approved the plans that will be offered for next year. It may be too late to wind back to where things stood at the beginning of this year.
"It has taken the industry many months to rejigger their systems to comply with the law," said Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant. "The cancellation letters have already gone out. What are these guys supposed to do, go down to the post office and buy a million stamps?"
The insurance industry doesn't like the legislative route either. "We have some significant concerns with how that would work operationally," said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans.
Behind the political and legal issues, a powerful economic logic is also at work.
Shifting people who already have individual coverage into the new health insurance markets under Obama's law would bring in customers already known to insurers, reducing overall financial risks for the insurance pool.
That's painful for those who end up paying higher premiums for upgraded policies. But it could save money for the taxpayers who are subsidizing the new coverage.
Compared with the uninsured, people with coverage are less likely to have a pent-up need for medical services. At one point, they were all prescreened for health problems.
A sizable share of the uninsured people expected to gain coverage under Obama's law have health problems that have kept them from getting coverage. They'll be the costly cases.
Obama sold the overhaul as a win all around. Uninsured Americans would get coverage and people who liked their insurance could keep it, he said. In hindsight, the president might have wanted to say that you could keep your plan as long as your insurer or your employer did not change it beyond limits prescribed by the government.
Associated Press writers Julie Pace, David Espo and Kevin Vineys contributed to this report.
- Putting Computers in Their Place: <em>Computer Chess</em> and The Nerd Origins of Today's Technopoly
Computers need to be put in their place. They really do.
That's why I've been looking forward to the DVD release this week of Andrew Bujalski's cult Sundance hit Computer Chess. Computer Chess finally spills the beans about where these little monsters came from in the first place.
Every time I pick up a newspaper these days — I'm one of the twelve people left who still read physical newspapers — I read about how computers are spying on us, destroying jobs, or infuriating health insurance customers. Like a hungry Rottweiler off its leash, computers are getting out of control and tearing up the neighborhood.
If you believe what you read, computers are also in the process of wrecking the book publishing and music industries, eliminating celluloid photography — and just this week computers claimed their latest victim, one near and dear to my heart: the local video store, as Blockbuster finally succumbed to laptops, smartphones and tablets as the preferred ways of renting all those movies you couldn't afford to see (or were too embarrassed to see) when they were in theaters.
No more video stores — who would've believed it, even just ten years ago? That means no more pimply teenagers to recommend midnight horror movies to me ("Sir, I definitely recommend C.H.U.D. over TerrorVision"), no more aimless browsing or listening to neighbors argue over which Steven Seagal movie to rent, no more cheap licorice sticks at the checkout counter.
I never thought I'd miss those things so much — but suddenly I do. And it's all because of our 'friend' the computer. Computers are becoming like the Yankees during the '90s: gobbling up everybody else's talent, then telling us how good it is for baseball.
The propaganda over the wonders that computers supposedly bring to our lives is getting out of hand. In the very least, it's out of proportion to the destruction computers are simultaneously causing — that 'disruptive' effect Silicon Valley gurus salivate over, like vampires at a blood drive.
So as Twitter — the company currently reducing our public discourse to snarky, 140-character outbursts — celebrates its gaudy IPO right now, I'd like to recommend a new movie out on DVD this week that casts digital technology in a very different light: Computer Chess.
You probably haven't heard of Computer Chess. After all, it has no stars in it. Neither Disney nor Sony are building spin-off franchises around its characters. Chris Hemsworth doesn't swing a hammer in the film, and Kate Upton wasn't invited to the premiere (although it would've been funny if she was).
What Computer Chess has going for it, though, is that it tells the unvarnished, gawky truth about the early days of this public menace we've come to know as the 'computer.'
Actually, Computer Chess isn't all that obscure a film. Written and directed by mumblecore auteur Andrew Bujalski, the film debuted to critical acclaim earlier this year at Sundance (where it won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize), where I had the pleasure of seeing the funky little movie in a packed house with an appreciative crowd. It was a total hoot, especially for people like me who remember how uncool computers used to be before Steve Jobs arrived on the scene. In fact, you arguably can't appreciate Jobs' legacy properly unless you've seen Computer Chess — and witnessed what a clunky, nerdy, socially maladroit computer world Jobs inherited.
Computer Chess is set around 1980, in a shabby suburban motel that serves as the film's entire setting over the course of one weekend. The aristocracy of the computer science world – the geek gods of Cal Tech, MIT, Bell Labs and elsewhere — have gathered for their annual computer chess tournament, with the winning machine getting the chance to face off against the pompous tournament host, who has never yet lost a game to a computer.
So it's game on, as Apple IIs and Tandy TRS-80s — and their nerd jockeys — take each other on for all the marbles.
The film follows the impossibly awkward programmers as they compete with each other for the (slightly dubious) title, haul blocky computer mainframes around on push-carts, debate the future of computers in late-night bull sessions, and make cringe-inducing attempts at romance and/or sexual conquest with the tournament's lone female competitor, a hopelessly bespectacled programmer named Shelly. The programmers also have a few droll encounters with a New Age group that shares the motel with them, who try to open up the nerdy programmers' repressed emotional lives.
Good luck with that.
The performances Bujalski gets out of his mostly non-professional cast are uniformly natural and believable — with special kudos going out to Patrick Riester and Wiley Wiggins as the no-nonsense leads, Myles Paige as the egomaniac/would-be lothario 'Michael Papageorge,' and Robin Schwartz as the sweet, ungainly female programmer.
Indeed, Bujalski's strategy of keeping things real (several cast members are actually programmers themselves) is the best thing Computer Chess has going for it. It's easy to see how this film could've been botched by importing a Michael Cera or Jonah Hill into the mix with their pre-packaged nerd schtick. Computer Chess is too austere and genuinely indie for such Hollywoodisms — to the point that the movie was actually shot in low-res, black-and-white 4:3 analog video using a Sony AVC-3260 camera, dating from the late 1960s.
Bujalski clearly intends Computer Chess to feel like a 'found object' of the era — and the film does seem incredibly authentic as a depiction of early-80s geek culture.
The special kick of watching Computer Chess, though, is knowing how the awkward misfits depicted in the film — and the big, blocky, semi-functional machines they cart around — will someday conquer the world. Today's gods of Silicon Valley (who are apparently getting pretty full of themselves these days) — the slick young guys in hoodies who debut their stock offerings with multi-billion dollar valuations, or who get played by Jesse Eisenberg or Justin Timberlake in the movies are of course no longer the introverted weenies of yesteryear, as depicted in Bujalski's film. Today's techies are more likely to drive Porsche 918 Spyder-hybrids, date swimsuit models, or eat granola parfait at Palo Alto's University Cafe.
What a difference 30 years makes.
Computer Chess is probably not the kind of movie these newer guys — and they're still mostly guys (with all due respect to Sheryl Sandberg) — want to watch, because it doesn't suit their current self-image. Computer Chess is like that embarrassing family album from the '70s you keep in the attic, filled with horrid images of bad hair, braces and bell-bottom jeans — where everybody looks like they just stepped off the set of The Hardy Boys. It's the kind of thing your relatives pull out during the holidays to keep you humble.
And this is actually why Silicon Valley's geek aristocracy — and you know who you are – should embrace this film, because it does something vital: it humanizes them, at a time when a lot of us feel that what they're doing to our society is, well, inhuman. Reading about the NSA and Healthcare.gov these days is depressing enough, but it's even worse after years of reading about how companies like Google and Facebook have been undermining our basic sense of privacy, which is the delicate foundation of our freedom.
By the way, Computer Chess actually hints — in a sly, fun way — that the Cal Tech team's fictional TSAR chess program might be the forerunner of dystopian supermachines of the future, like Skynet from the Terminator films. But the movie is pretty gentle and non-conspiratorial about these things. It could get much worse.
For example, Computer Chess could've more been more hard-edged, like Panos Cosmatos' dystopian cult thriller Beyond the Black Rainbow, released here in the U.S. in 2012. Similarly set in the early 1980s, Black Rainbow depicts a young woman's escape from a controlling, futuristic New Age research institute. The film's high-tech 'Arboria Institute' — led by a psychotic, permanently disfigured scientist — harbors pretentions of harnessing technology in the achievement of higher spirituality. (By the way, the 'Arboria Institute' could easily have been the forerunner to the sinister, New Agey internet company 'The Circle' from Dave Eggers' new novel of the same name.) Black Rainbow's Dr. Barry Nyle — along with his mentor, Dr. Mercurio Arboria – represents the dark side of the early '80s tech and self-actualization gurus depicted comedically in Computer Chess.
Of course, even Black Rainbow doesn't compare to a film recently unearthed by Criterion: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 sci-fi classic World on a Wire, which originally aired on German television as a two-part miniseries. In World on a Wire (based on American author Daniel F. Galouye's novel Simulacron-3), an 'Institute for Cybernetics and Future Research' develops a computer simulation program featuring an artificial world — based on the real one — with over 9,000 avatars living as human beings, unaware that their world is only a simulation subject to manipulation. The purpose of the simulation? Advanced market research, of course. Things get dicey when the movie's hero, Dr. Fred Stiller (actor Klaus Löwitsch), begins to suspect that this simulation may actually have multiple layers — and that he himself might be one such avatar.
Such dark visions suggest the will-to-power, the urge to control and manipulate, that many people now associate — with good reason — with a fully computerized society (what Neil Postman back in 1992 called a 'technopoly'). Whether that society is controlled by unseen government bureaucracies or huge and indifferent corporations hardly seems to matter anymore.
So the honeymoon is now over. Computers just aren't that cool any more — mainly because of all the precious things in our lives that they're destroying. That's why a lot of us are now looking at the fine print when we buy in to the latest gadget or app, as we ask ourselves this basic question: as shiny and empowering as this new piece of digital technology is, what is it going to destroy that I don't know about?
All of this stuff seemed a lot more innocent back in 1980, when Computer Chess is set. Of course, it's worth pointing out that Computer Chess is basically about the race to create a machine that can outperform and (thereby replace) a human being. Back in 1980, that premise just seemed a lot funnier and more charming than it does right now.
Right now computers just don't know their place.
- Schildi, Abandoned And Disabled Tortoise, Gets Lego Wheel Prosthetic Leg (PHOTO, VIDEO)
When an abandoned tortoise called Schildi lost his leg, most likely from an accident, he had trouble adapting to his new prosthetic. The artificial leg given to him by his German rescuers had a double-wheel structure that made it difficult to turn corners, according the Local. But one of his veterinarians found a positively charming solution — he fitted Schildi with a single Lego wheel leg.
Story continues below.
Dr. Panagiotis Azmanis, of a veterinary called Bird Consulting International, came up with the idea, and found the Lego piece after raiding a co-worker's daughter's toy box, according to Bild.de.
Now, with his new Lego leg, Schildi is back on the move, recovering at an animal rescue and "doing really well again."
"We will see him again once in a while for check-ups," Azmanis told the Local. "If he gets a 'flat tire' it will be a simple matter to replace the wheel. They move around quite a lot so I'd expect to see him for a new wheel about once a year."
We're dying from the cuteness.
H/T: msnNOW
- Angry Mom Uncovers 'Toddler Bashing' Facebook Group That Makes Fun Of 'Ugly' Babies
A Florida mother is speaking out against a group of mean moms after uncovering a secret Facebook group apparently dedicated to "toddler bashing."
Melissa Antenucci, of Boca Raton, told ABC-affiliate WPBF 25 News that she was horrified when she accidentally found the Facebook group online. She said the group comprised mothers who were secretly taking photos of children from other Facebook accounts before re-posting them online and making fun of the kids.
"It's horrible," Antenucci said. "The things that these mothers said were the most horrific things I have ever seen, being a mom and knowing that they are moms."
Antenucci says that many of the group's targets were children with disabilities. Toddlers that were dubbed "ugly" were also subject to ridicule.
Describing some of the group's Facebook posts, Fox 10 News wrote:
Under one photo of a baby, a woman wrote, "It's hideous." Another woman commented, "You can absolutely not fix ugly." Another wrote, "An ugly baby thread.. I have died and gone to heaven. Why can't you guys live near me so we can do this over cocktails?"
A mom named Ellen Veach, who says her 2-year-old daughter was a victim of this online bullying, told Fox 10 News that she was shocked when she saw her child's photo being ridiculed by strangers.
"So I'm posting pictures of my [kids], just naively posting it up there so my friends can see, not realizing there's a group that takes these pictures and targets these children and makes fun of them. Like that's just something I wouldn't even think a mother or grown woman would do," she said.
News of the group has prompted worldwide outrage, with The Stir's Nicole Fabian-Weber calling the practice "disgusting."
Internet cruelty rarely comes as a shock these days, because sadly, it's so pervasive. But making fun of random babies and toddlers — the most innocent people there are — truly takes things to a new low and just makes me, personally, sad about humanity. Imagine finding your kid's photo up on a website with a string of comments underneath it from strangers, talking about how ugly they are. It's disgusting.
The "toddler bashing" page has reportedly been taken down, and many of the moms associated with the page are said to have disabled their Facebook accounts. However, some moms involved with the group have defended themselves, citing freedom of speech.
"This is Facebook, not the Salem witch hunt," one woman wrote on Facebook, according to WPBF. "This is a free country and I was laughing because it was funny… Thanks for your comments, next."
- WATCH Captain Disillusion Debunk The Viral Ping Pong Knife Act
Here's where this ping pong video went wrong.
Last month, Tumba Ping Pong Show released a particularly impressive video that showcased their ping pong knife act with Miss Ping.
The video attracted as much skepticism as attention, because the death-defying stunts look too sharp to be real.
Luckily, Captain Disillusion is here to put an end to the head-scratching. Watch him give a play-by-play commentary outlining how each trick might have been accomplished with some simple sleight of hand and digital erasing.
We're sorry to ruin the magic, but we still have mad respect for the crafty skills of Miss Ping, Slightly Mad Max and DJ Coolman.
[H/t Tastefully Offensive]
- Is Online Learning Transforming Education?
"Brick and mortar schools will still exist, and the overwhelming majority of children will attend them, but the schools will be center of individualized learning, with engaging interactive content rather than a series of chalk-and-textbook, grade-delineated classrooms. At high school and potentially middle school, each child will have a computer to work at his or her own pace in customized programs; technology will deliver it to them in ways best suited to their individual needs and strengths."
Is this scenario science fiction? Can this type of set up ever happen? And if it did, would it even improve quality? What then would be the role of our teachers in managing these disruptive changes?
Ron Packard addresses these important questions in his recent book Education Transformation. In particular, he highlights the specific ways in which technology can provide meaningful educational alternatives, especially for lower-income students in communities with struggling schools.
While Packard writes about the US, his arguments also hold true in Latin America. As he said to me in a recent interview, "In South America, online education could leapfrog brick-and-mortar schools in many remote places where building infrastructure is more expensive."
Indeed, expanded online education could help thousands of schools in the region where children of different ages often study together due to lack of teachers and other resources. The personalization of content that it allows could make a big difference in allowing each student to progress at his or her level, and it can be distributed at a low marginal cost. This can impact the students who drop out of school, the athlete that can't make regular school hours, the bored but gifted child, and the kids with special needs of all types. They can all study – and advance – at their own rhythm.
Nor is the use of such technologies foreign to this generation. "Kids in even the poorest countries have smart phones now," as Packard argues. "The US has long been ahead but I think that's changing pretty rapidly."
But while education is one of the largest sectors of Latin America's economies, these technologies haven't yet had the impact one might expect. As with health care and other public services, education lags behind sectors like manufacturing, services, and consumer goods in adapting to and taking advantage of the productivity gains and disruptive effects of the "knowledge society".
It is ironic — and troubling — that those technological advances haven't permeated the one sector that is most crucial to preparing our citizens for the challenges and opportunities of this knowledge society.
As Packard says, "Schools have not adequately incorporated the advances in how technology can deliver information, communicate, respond and shape learning. The ineffective use of technology has left education behind in the enormous productivity gains the economy has achieved over the past twenty to twenty five years."
But Packard offers more than an analysis of the problem — for over a decade he has been successfully implementing his ideas in the real world as CEO and founder of K12, the largest online education provider in the US. Founded in 1999, K12 has worked with more than 2,000 school districts, and is used by students in all 50 US states and 70 countries. The company has poured more than $320 million into its curriculums and programs. Despite at times heavy criticism from political opponents as well as some investors, Packard has persisted, proving that a for-profit company can apply innovation to education.
Nor is he a stranger to Latin America, having lived three years in Chile, and having traveled to almost every country in the region. K12 serves thousands of students in Latin American schools, which utilize its programs to complement their curriculums. He foresees an expanding role for online education in the region.
And the Chilean entrepreneur Carlos Ortiz, a pioneer in education technology and founder of KalaKai, agrees with him. Ortiz says that "technology is changing how we teach. The biggest opportunity it gives us is to recognize the diversity of learning styles, and put the student back at the center of teaching and learning. In this sense, technology is a catalyst for the democratization of education."
A number of other innovators, both from the non-profit and the for-profit sectors, agree with this vision and are offering new models of education to students and teachers in Latin America. There is Educabilia, Educatina, and many other online services offering content for students and parents. Mexico's Carlos Slim Foundation, for example, has partnered with the online Khan Academy to provide its content in Spanish.
All of this has led Packard to the conclusion that "Our school system won't work the way it should until we can offer different choice so that a child can find the education that is right for them." In this light, online education is just one more option to be considered among many. While it may not be the best for everyone, it is clear that the "one-size-fits-all" approach that currently predominates is no longer an option if we want our children to be prepared for the 21st century.
- Wikipedia Entries On Professors Mean Nothing, Study Finds
Just because your professor has a Wikipedia entry doesn't mean they're special.
A new study from Anna Samoilenko and Taha Yasseri at the University of Oxford shows that Wikipedia entries or citations attributed to researchers and professors does not indicate that they are more prominent scholars.
"Our findings suggest that the inspection of Wikipedia is not useful in finding highly cited researchers," Samoilenko and Yasseri wrote.
The study, submitted on Oct. 31, looked at 400 biographical Wikipedia entries in four disciplines and concluded prominent researchers in a field were not more likely to be cited on Wikipedia than less influential sources.
"Wikipedia metrics of the articles about the prominent researchers … were not statistically larger than the same metrics from the less cited subset," the study said.
The only thing Wikipedia references are good for, the study found, is measuring social impact or public engagement of a scientist.
Why does this matter? Because Wikipedia is read by so many people.
Despite Wikipedia inconsistency with the traditional view of scientific c impact, its content is highly visible and virtually unavoidable. The encyclopedia is making its way into society, playing a role in forming public image on a variety of issues, not excluding science; and this rise of Wikipedia is di fficult to ignore. As its articles are being actively edited and viewed, individual scientists, their fi elds, and entire academic institutions, can be easily aff ected by the way they are represented in this important online medium.
In addition, the study noted that three percent of scholars edited their own Wikipedia entry and a quarter check in their own references on the site.
[h/t The Atlantic]
- YouTube Founder Says What We're All Thinking About Google+
Stop trying to make Google+ happen. It's not going to happen.
Google's perpetual insistence upon shoving its social network down everyone's throats has finally reached a boiling point. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim came out of the woodwork to post his first comment in eight years on the video-sharing site he helped create, bashing Google. In 2006, he and his two fellow co-founders sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion.
Screenshot via Mashable's Todd Olmstead
Karim is reacting specifically to Google's integration of YouTube comments with Google+, a change made on Thursday. You now must have a Google+ account in order to comment on a YouTube video. Google argues that the new system will streamline the commenting system and lower the high number of inflammatory and offensive comments on the site.
Reining in YouTube trolls, among the worst on the Internet, is a worthy goal. The problem is: A lot of people don't like Google+, and are mad that they are being forced to create Google+ accounts in order to participate on YouTube.
Popular YouTuber Cr1TiKaL created this video, calling the new system "soggy dog sh*t":
Cr1TiKaL isn't the only one taking the news poorly. YouTuber Snazzapplesweet also made a video called "Dear Google," which made its anti-Google+ message clear:
As the video so eloquently puts it:
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'Cash for Appliances' Running Strong
Before you throw that old air conditioner, gas furnace or washing machine in the trash and on to a landfill, you may want to check out what your state can offer you through the Cash for Appliances rebate program. No, it's not too good to be true.
After exhausting the funds available for the program, some states are getting ready to close up shop. Vermont, for example, doled out $559,000 and collected everything from washing machines and refrigerators to gas furnaces and tankless water heaters. But there are still 33 states and territories just waiting to hand out those rebates.
Tennessee has a whopping $5,936,000 allocated for the program, but like Washington, D.C., they aren't ready to launch quite yet. Other states like California are deciding whether they should extend the program to include more appliances, such as dishwashers, washing machines and refrigerators.
What is that old appliance doing for you, anyway? Wouldn't it look much better as money in the bank?
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