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Baker, Nicholson
Nicholson Baker 1957-
American novelist, nonfiction writer, and essayist.
The following entry presents an overview of Baker's career through 2001.
With the publication of his debut novel, The Mezzanine (1988), Baker earned critical appreciation for imbuing the minute trivialities of a modern lunch break with unseen philosophical and personal significance. In subsequent novels, including Room Temperature (1990), Vox (1992), The Fermata (1994), and The Everlasting Story of Nory (1998), Baker similarly turned his obsessive, microscopic vision to dissections of parenthood, sexual fantasy, and childhood. Baker has also published an idiosyncratic, self-deprecating homage to author John Updike, U and I (1991), for whom Baker harbors a special fascination. During the mid-1990s Baker generated considerable controversy through his condemnation of library policies that dictate the disposal of card catalogs and the wholesale destruction of valuable newspaper collections, as detailed in Double Fold (2001).
Biographical Information
Born in Rochester, New York, Baker displayed an early interest in mechanical inventions and the arts, a creative disposition encouraged by his parents, who met each other while attending the Parson's School of Design in New York City. Baker began playing the bassoon as a fourth-grader, and his love for music later became evident in his writing. He spent his first year of college at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, where he enrolled with the intention of becoming a composer. However, he changed his major to English and transferred to Haverford College, earning his undergraduate degree in 1980. Baker then went to work on Wall Street, first as an oil analyst, then briefly as a stockbroker. After more than a year in New York City, Baker moved to Berkeley, California, to be with Margaret Brentano, whom he married in 1985. While living in Berkeley, he attended a two-week writing seminar with Donald Barthelme at the University of California. After successfully publishing several pieces of short fiction in the New Yorker and the Atlantic, Baker moved his family back to the East Coast, where they settled in Boston. He worked at various temporary jobs as a technical writer and word processor, while continuing to develop his fiction writing skills. Baker's literary experiments prompted him to consider that his peculiar approach to storytelling would be better served by abandoning traditional plot structure. This culminated in the publication of his first major work, The Mezzanine, in 1988. Baker continued to build his literary reputation with his novels as well as his collected essays in The Size of Thoughts (1996). During the 1998 Bill Clinton presidential scandal involving Monica Lewinsky, interest in Baker's novel Vox soared when it was revealed that Lewinsky had apparently purchased a copy of the book—which centers around a phone sex relationship—for President Clinton. In a 1994 article published in the New Yorker, titled "Discards," Baker admonished library administrators for destroying card catalogs, a bibliographic format that Baker views as invaluable accretions of unique, specialized knowledge. Baker has asserted that this knowledge and data is lost in the conversion to electronic databases. Baker subsequently became an ardent advocate for the preservation of deaccessioned library copies of original late nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century American newspapers. In 1999 he purchased a segment of a large newspaper collection auctioned off by the British Library, a sale that he was unable to prevent despite his public activism. He subsequently founded the American Newspaper Repository in a New Hampshire warehouse, over which he presides in an effort to save other newspapers of historical value from destruction.
Major Works
Exhibiting an affinity for minutiae and ponderous disquisition, Baker is noted for transforming otherwise banal human activities into finely wrought descriptions of thought and serious consideration. His technique of extreme magnification and loitering contemplation is described as creating a "clogging" effect in his fiction, thus slowing narrative time to a near standstill while retraining the reader's attention on otherwise overlooked objects and minor events, all presented through Baker's scrupulous authorial subjectivity. The Mezzanine, an essentially plotless, stream-of-consciousness novel, examines in great detail the lunch-hour activities of a young office worker named Howie. His simple lunch—a hot dog, cookie, and milk—and purchase of a new pair of shoelaces are juxtaposed against his reading of a paperback edition of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Baker's digressive novel contains copious footnotes, some of which are several pages long, while following the ruminations of Howie as he contemplates a variety of everyday objects and occurrences, including how paper milk cartons replaced glass milk bottles, the miracle of perforation, and the nature of plastic straws, vending machines, paper towel dispensers, and popcorn poppers. Room Temperature, like The Mezzanine, is structured around an isolated segment of time, in this case a period of twenty minutes during which the protagonist, Mike, feeds his infant daughter her bottle. In this compressed time frame, Mike reflects upon his life, moving randomly through his childhood, college days, and tender moments with his wife and their new baby. Baker's next book, U and I, is a genre-defying departure from his previous novels. Ostensibly a paean to John Updike, whom Baker considers his literary mentor though the two have hardly met, U and I chronicles Baker's sincere—and somewhat pathological—admiration of Updike as well as his peevish envy of the gifted older author. In addition to celebrating Updike's genius and inventing fantasies of meaningful interactions with the author, Baker employs a self-styled form of "memory criticism," in which he relies on his own—often faulty—memory of Updike's writings, rather than rereading or studying them in preparation. This method is intended to reveal the essence of the author's influence without the distorting effects of scholarship.
Baker's next two novels, Vox and The Fermata, are provocative forays into literary pornography. Vox revolves around an extended phone sex call between two single adults, Jim and Abby, who exchange highly explicit sexual fantasies. As in Baker's earlier novels, time in Vox is compressed, in this case limited to the duration of an actual telephone conversation. The Fermata, presented as the autobiography of a man named Arno Strine, takes as its premise the protagonist's ability to stop time for everyone in the world except himself—the book's title refers to the musical notation for a pause or hold. Rather than use this suspended period, which he calls the "Fold," to steal money or possessions, Arno uses it to fondle and sexually exploit women or to write pornography and then masturbate. Though adamant that he is harmless—because he refrains from raping the women outright and because he is clean-cut, conscientious, neat, and well educated—Arno is still a chilling voyeur and stalker. Eventually he finds true love and returns to graduate school, relinquishing his supernatural power over time. In The Size of Thoughts, a collection of essays, Baker delves deeply into his preoccupation with triviality, including model airplane kits, nail clippers, and a recipe for a chocolate confection. The volume includes two major essays, "Discards," Baker's previously published exposé on the destruction of library card catalogs, and "Lumber," a lengthy etymological study of the word "lumber." Together, these essays reaffirm Baker's belief that the sum of tiny details, often overlooked or ignored by most, is what makes the objects we see and use every day both relevant and meaningful. As Baker suggests, by exploring the connections that form the histories of words, manufacturing processes, or the accumulated knowledge contained in card catalogs, people build understanding and knowledge and thus honor the wisdom of the past. The Everlasting Story of Nory describes one year in the life of a nine-year-old girl whose family has moved from California to a small town in England. In company with Baker's other novels, there is no actual plot but instead the work is formatted as a record of Nory's thoughts and observations during her fourth grade year. Double Fold is a philippic written against the practice in libraries of destroying original documents in order to make them accessible in other ways, such as microfilm or microfiche. A major departure from Baker's usual work, the book describes his personal and costly crusade to save as many bound, original, complete runs of major United States newspapers as possible. Unfortunately, in the name of creating space on library shelves, many have been pulped or sold to dealers who supply pages for personal birthdays, anniversaries, or other events. Baker singles out the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the British Library, and the libraries of Yale University and the University of Chicago for special criticism and traces the funding for the debacle to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford and Mellon foundations. Baker makes a number of recommendations—portions of which are now being implemented in major research libraries in the United States—and calls into question the current trend of creating digital images of print originals, suggesting that this new technology may lead to the wholesale pulping of the actual books and periodicals.
Critical Reception
Baker's approach to fiction, particularly in The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, has been critically acclaimed for its originality and linguistic virtuosity. As critics have noted, these novels showcase Baker's trademark style: highly descriptive, focused prose; fierce attention to detail; and delight in the odd, the mundane, and discrete slices of time. However, reviewers have been sharply divided regarding the literary merit of his subsequent work. While many commentators have disapproved of Vox and The Fermata due to their perceived vulgarity, others have found them fascinating, erotic explorations of contemporary, post-AIDS sexual mores. The Fermata has been strongly criticized as chauvinistic and dull at best, and insidiously misogynistic at worst, even leading some reviewers to demand a reevaluation of Baker's previous work. Even more sympathetic critics have conceded that, at three hundred pages, Baker's longest work of fiction, the masturbation fantasies of The Fermata exceed the reader's patience and interest. Baker's literary experiment in The Everlasting Story of Nory has met with mixed reviews. While some found his effort to convey the inner life and experiences of a nine-year-old year girl perceptive and touching, others viewed Baker's project as ill-conceived and tiresomely sentimental. Likewise, Baker's eccentric perspective and unorthodox approach have led to uneven assessments of his essays and nonfiction works. His homage to Updike in U and I has been viewed as an engaging and innovative literary autobiography by some, though others have found Baker's use of Updike as a foil for himself egotistical and disingenuous. The Size of Lumber has been generally praised for its two major essays, despite the suggested inferiority of the collection's slighter pieces. As with his essay "Discards," Baker's attack on library policy in Double Fold has attracted heated debate among librarians, bibliophiles, and scholars. Though undoubtedly winning sympathy and a measure of publicity for his cause, Baker has been criticized for undermining his case by arguing polemically and ignoring the realities of historical inquiry. His fiction has been favorably compared to that of Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Powers, and Steven Millhauser.
Principal Works
The Mezzanine (novel) 1988
Room Temperature (novel) 1990
U and I: A True Story (nonfiction) 1991
Vox (novel) 1992
The Fermata (novel) 1994
The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber (essays) 1996
The Everlasting Story of Nory (novel) 1998
Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (nonfiction) 2001
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Michael Harris (review date 1 April 1990)
SOURCE: Harris, Michael. Review of Room Temperature, by Nicholson Baker. Los Angeles Times Book Review (1 April 1990): 6.
[In the following review, Harris praises the details and intricate observations recorded in Room Temperature.]
Many look but few observe, as Sherlock Holmes noted to Dr. Watson, and a technical writer named Mike, the narrator of [Room Temperature, a] short second novel by Nicholson Baker (the first was Mezzanine) is definitely one of the observers. Bottle-feeding his six-month-old daughter, nicknamed "the Bug," on a fall afternoon in Quincy, Mass., in the apartment he shares with his working wife, Patty, he asserts that...
(The entire section is 355 words.)
Julian Loose (review date 19 April 1991)
SOURCE: Loose, Julian. "Odd Couple." New Statesman and Society 4, no. 147 (19 April 1991): 34.
[In the following review, Loose commends the comedy and complex ruminations in U and I, noting its examination of the rivalry between Baker and author John Updike.]
U and I, an idiosyncratic essay on John Updike (the "U" of the title), is a creepy piece of madness, and its author, Nicholson Baker, an enragingly irreverent smart-ass. If this sounds a little severe, I should explain that these comments come from U and I itself. To anticipate criticism is often to disarm it, as Baker knows well ("Who will sort out the self-servingness of...
(The entire section is 523 words.)
Galen Strawson (review date 19 April 1991)
SOURCE: Strawson, Galen. "Writing under the Influence." Times Literary Supplement, no. 4594 (19 April 1991): 20-1.
[In the following review of U and I, Strawson objects to Baker's egocentric view of literary interpretation and his erroneous assessment of John Updike.]
U is for Updike, and U and I records Nicholson Baker's admiration for the man and his writing. The psychopathology of his relation to Updike is fairly remarkable, and the book raises some familiar questions about the phenomenon of literary influence. It is written in free fantasia form, and it may be an act of love. But it is also highly ambivalent, and it is astoundingly egocentric....
(The entire section is 3421 words.)
Richard Eder (review date 12 May 1991)
SOURCE: Eder, Richard. "Psoriasis and All." Los Angeles Times Book Review (12 May 1991): 3, 9.
[In the following review, Eder discusses U and I, commenting that the work seems to be a plea directed at John Updike for acknowledgment.]
In The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker extracted a whole personal cosmology out of a lunch hour, much of it spent on the escalator returning to his office. In Room Temperature, he harvested another crop of autobiography and musings from an hour spent giving his baby a bottle and putting her to sleep.
Miniaturist of time and experience, one of our most original and gifted new writers, Baker is the...
(The entire section is 1370 words.)
William Scammell (review date 25 May 1991)
SOURCE: Scammell, William. "Sorry It's Late, Will This Do?" Spectator 266, no. 8458 (25 May 1991): 32.
[In the following review, Scammell offers a negative assessment of U and I.]
First I made the usual phone call, to a man I've never met, sitting in a building I've never visited, presiding over the literary half of a magazine I seldom read and whose politics I disapprove of. 'Anything to review?', I said. For some perverse reason I like reviewing. It brings in a little money, it flushes out the opposition (those with erroneous attachments), it keeps my name vaguely afloat in the public prints, it allows me to sound off or let fall a quotation (my overnight bag...
(The entire section is 571 words.)
Cyra McFadden (review date 9 February 1992)
SOURCE: McFadden, Cyra. "All the Right Buttons." Los Angeles Times Book Review (9 February 1992): 2, 9.
[In the following review, McFadden examines the plot, style, and characters in Vox, noting the clever humor and wordplay.]
Reader, would you pick up the phone? Thank you.
Nicholson Baker's novel Vox is cast in the form of a telephone conversation. I thought that we ought to discuss it the same way, except that our chat will be cheaper. In the book, Jim and Abby meet on an adult party line, VOX2, with a $2-per-minute charge.
Their conversation is explicit, often funny and, above all, erotic. Talk about "reach...
(The entire section is 1079 words.)
Peter Kemp (review date 6 March 1992)
SOURCE: Kemp, Peter. "Answering Machines." Times Literary Supplement, no. 4640 (6 March 1992): 20.
[In the following review, Kemp criticizes Vox, noting that its intended erotically-charged prose ultimately is more boring than arousing.]
In U and I (1991), Nicholson Baker expresses an especial admiration for John Updike's Self-Consciousness. It is a predictable preference. For self-consciousness, it's increasingly apparent, is Baker's mainstay as a writer. Immersed in circumstances close to his own, the narrators of his first two novels, The Mezzanine (1989) and Room Temperature (1990), characteristically alternate between...
(The entire section is 1092 words.)
James Buchan (review date 14 March 1992)
SOURCE: Buchan, James. "It Makes You Go Blind." Spectator 268, no. 8540 (14 March 1992): 31-2.
[In the following review, Buchan comments on Vox and U and I, acknowledging that Baker is a talented writer, but panning the works for their descriptions of common, everyday events in minute detail.]
Anybody who has travelled on public transportation in the United States will know that many Americans delight in telling their intimate histories: it is part of their notion of Liberty.
Nicholson Baker is an artist of this confession compulsion. His people plump themselves down, pale and atwitch from long study and self-abuse, and quite soon...
(The entire section is 1086 words.)
Julian Loose (review date 26 March 1992)
SOURCE: Loose, Julian. "Keep Talking." London Review of Books (26 March 1992): 18-19.
[In the following review, Loose provides a favorable assessment of Vox and an extended discussion of Baker's previous writings.]
Howard Rheingold, in his recent Virtual Reality, explained the idea of 'cyber-sex': how someday we will be able to don sensor suits, plug into the telecommunications network and 'reach out and touch someone' in ways entirely unforeseen by Alexander Graham Bell. Speculating about the impact of such artificial erotic experience, Rheingold turned to an already up-and-running technology—to 'telephone sex', the adult party lines...
(The entire section is 3240 words.)
Robert Towers (review date 9 April 1992)
SOURCE: Towers, Robert. "Secret Histories." New York Review of Books 39, no. 7 (9 April 1992): 35-6.
[In the following excerpt, Towers discusses the dialogue, characters, and storyline in Vox, noting that the work is an amusing read.]
Nicholson Baker is a fiction writer of great charm who may or may not be a novelist. Certainly narrative is the least of his concerns. In The Mezzanine (1988) the "action" begins with the narrator's entrance into the office building where he works and concludes with his ascent of the escalator to the mezzanine floor. The interval between these two events occupies almost as many pages (135) as Laurence Sterne devoted...
(The entire section is 1265 words.)
William H. Pritchard (review date autumn 1992)
SOURCE: Pritchard, William H. "Tradition and Some Individual Talents." Hudson Review 45, no. 3 (autumn 1992): 481-90.
[In the following excerpt, Pritchard offers a favorable review of Vox, praising the "finely-tuned conversational sentences" and "inventive words."]
The most original and ambitious novel published earlier this year was Robert Stone's Outerbridge Reach, about which I've had my say in another place. After Stone, the two novels that seemed to me most fully realized and distinct are Nicholson Baker's Vox and Caryl Phillips' Cambridge. Baker is thirty-five, Phillips thirty-four; Baker is a WASP and Phillips is a West...
(The entire section is 756 words.)
Ross Chambers (essay date winter 1994)
SOURCE: Chambers, Ross. "Meditation and the Escalator Principle (on Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine)." Modern Fiction Studies 40, no. 4 (winter 1994): 765-806.
[In the following essay, Chambers explores the narratological and philosophical significance of open-ended digressions and subjective contemplation in The Mezzanine. Contrasting Baker's novel with Descartes's Meditations, Chambers contends that the discontinuous narrative and trivial private preoccupations of The Mezzanine serve to shift the narrative structure of the novel in favor of "progressive extenuation" and "paradigmatic lingering" rather than closure.]
(The entire section is 17067 words.)
Joanne Trestail (review date 6 February 1994)
SOURCE: Trestail, Joanne. "Riding the Pause Control: What Would We Do, Asks Nicholson Baker, If We Could Step in and out of Time?" Chicago Tribune Books (6 February 1994): 3.
[In the following review, Trestail discusses the plot and style of The Fermata, acknowledging that the work is original, funny, and contains descriptions of precise detail.]
One way to talk about Nicholson Baker's books is in terms of their subject matter, and that's easy. The Mezzanine (1986), Baker's heavily footnoted first novel, follows an office worker through his lunch hour as he buys shoelaces, uses the men's room, rides escalators and ponders his stapler. The second,...
(The entire section is 1357 words.)
Richard Eder (review date 13 February 1994)
SOURCE: Eder, Richard. "Time in a Bottle." Los Angeles Times Book Review (13 February 1994): 3, 8.
[In the following review of The Fermata, Eder finds fault in the novel's distasteful preoccupation with voyeurism and sexual exploitation.]
Poor Achilles. He never could catch that tortoise, not because he was slow or the tortoise speedy but because Zeno wouldn't let him. In the famous paradox, the tortoise gets a 10-meter start, say, and by the time Achilles runs the 10 meters, the tortoise has crept 10 centimeters; when Achilles goes the 10 centimeters, the tortoise has done a millimeter, and so on. But the rules are stacked. Achilles doesn't catch up in the...
(The entire section is 1187 words.)
Trev Broughton (review date 18 February 1994)
SOURCE: Broughton, Trev. "Clever-Diction." Times Literary Supplement, no. 4742 (18 February 1994): 20.
[In the following review, Broughton provides an unfavorable assessment of The Fermata, faulting the book for its excessive use of puns and euphemisms.]
Arno Strine [in The Fermata] can stop time. Or rather, he can stop time for everyone else while he indulges his passion for interfering with women's clothing, preferably while they are frozen in the act of interfering with themselves. To do this, he has developed elaborate routines in which he stops time to plant dildos in wastepaper bins, or to write raunchy short stories for women to discover by...
(The entire section is 757 words.)
Tim Parks (review date 19 February 1994)
SOURCE: Parks, Tim. "Time Must Have a Stop." Spectator 272, no. 8641 (19 February 1994): 28.
[In the following review, Parks criticizes The Fermata, noting that despite "the hilarity of some of the set pieces" and many astute observations, the book quickly becomes overbearing.]
[The Fermata's] Arnold Strine pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and time stops, the world around him stops. But Arnold is free to move. He can walk around and observe his frozen fellow beings, he can, or could, steal anything he wants, go anywhere he wants, or just catch up on his work before starting the world again with a second adjustment of his glasses....
(The entire section is 838 words.)
Adam Mars-Jones (review date 24 March 1994)
SOURCE: Mars-Jones, Adam. "Larceny." London Review of Books (24 March 1994): 3, 6.
[In the following review, Mars-Jones examines the plot and structure of The Fermata, faulting the book for its overusage of euphemisms and its adolescent stance towards sex.]
The hero of The Fermata has an intermittent gift for stopping time, which he exploits entirely for purposes of sexual satisfaction, but Nicholson Baker's trademark as a novelist has always been a fetishising descriptiveness that retards the speed of events almost to the point of non-existence and has in the past generated much literary joy. The 'action' of his first, novel, The...
(The entire section is 3045 words.)
Cathleen Schine (review date 7 April 1994)
SOURCE: Schine, Cathleen. "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off." New York Review of Books 41, no. 7 (7 April 1994): 14-15.
[In the following review, Schine provides a negative evaluation of The Fermata, denouncing the repetitive use of euphemisms and the tedium associated with the retelling of an act over and over.]
In his new novel [The Fermata], Nicholson Baker turns his full attention to the lonely art, the art of masturbation. The narrator, Arno Strine, possesses a strange gift: he can stop time, halting the world around him. "I first stopped time because I liked my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Dobzhansky, and wanted to see her with fewer clothes...
(The entire section is 2720 words.)
Francis Spufford (review date 22 March 1996)
SOURCE: Spufford, Francis. "Consuming Passions." New Statesman and Society 9, no. 395 (22 March 1996): 40.
[In the following review, Spufford offers an unfavorable assessment of The Size of Thoughts.]
There was a Victorian naturalist named Frank Buckland who liked to eat what he studied: jaguar steaks, armadillo stew. Nicholson Baker displays something of the same urge, only refined and let loose on the zoo of consumable things. They don't have to be consumer goods, let's be clear. The sensibility that gave the chief character of The Mezzanine "Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of" as his sixth most frequent thought ever, didn't have its...
(The entire section is 718 words.)
Eric Korn (review date 5 April 1996)
SOURCE: Korn, Eric. "A Clippings Job." Times Literary Supplement, no. 4853 (5 April 1996): 22.
[In the following review, Korn offers a generally positive assessment of The Size of Thoughts, though criticizes the inclusion of several unworthy pieces in the volume.]
After the entertaining phonoerotic Vox and the deplorable Fermata (which gave a new, literalist interpretation to the cry, "Stop the world, I want to get off"), Nicholson Baker, to the relief of the rest of us, has turned his hand elsewhere. He is a man of enormous lexical talent, a talent recently deployed largely to describe underwear; and so clinging is literary repute or...
(The entire section is 1164 words.)
Jim Krusoe (review date 5 May 1996)
SOURCE: Krusoe, Jim. "Head Case." Los Angeles Times Book Review (5 May 1996): 1, 10.
[In the following review, Krusoe praises The Size of Thoughts, complimenting the obsessive detail and evolution of style presented in the essays.]
I suppose that the two things I've always resented most about sports are exactly the two things most people watch them for: that desire to know the final score and the moment (the one when I'm invariably looking somewhere else) that proves to be decisive. That's why I like six-day bike racing. Not only is the end so far off that I can go out to breakfast (several times, in fact) before it arrives, but when I miss a "decisive...
(The entire section is 1106 words.)
Nicholson Baker and David Dodd (interview date 15 May 1996)
SOURCE: Baker, Nicholas, and David Dodd. "Requiem for the Discarded." Library Journal 121, no. 9 (15 May 1996): 31-2.
[In the following interview, Baker discusses his controversial 1994 New Yorker essay "Discards," in which he opposed the destruction of library card catalogs.]
Nicholson Baker's new book taps the author's uncanny ability to capture in prose those minute, seemingly insignificant aspects of our daily lives and thought processes and turn them into inspiring reflections. The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber is a collection of essays on topics ranging from the evolution of punctuation (in which he defends, for example, the...
(The entire section is 1826 words.)
Michael Wood (review date 20 June 1996)
SOURCE: Wood, Michael. "Up to the Minutiae." New York Review of Books 43, no. 8 (20 June 1996): 65-6.
[In the following review, Wood examines the variety of essays in The Size of Thoughts, commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of various pieces. Wood praises the humor and passion evident in several essays, focusing on "Discards" and "Lumber" in particular.]
There is much to be said for tiny signs, and we don't have to laugh at the idea of what Erich Heller once called a "profound" semicolon in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Borges's story "The Library of Babel" opens with a pretty deep parenthesis: "The universe...
(The entire section is 3423 words.)
Irving Malin (review date fall 1996)
SOURCE: Malin, Irving. Review of The Size of Thoughts, by Nicholson Baker. Review of Contemporary Fiction 16, no. 3 (fall 1996): 201.
[In the following review, Malin offers a positive assessment of The Size of Thoughts, commenting on the deeper themes within the collection and Baker's other works such as Vox and The Fermata.]
I remember my first reading of The Mezzanine, I was puzzled by the obsessive attention to detail (especially in the footnotes). Baker used much space for references to Marcus Aurelius and mall design. Why did he consciously cultivate the details? Was he linking consciousness to detail? Was he, in effect, writing...
(The entire section is 319 words.)
Richard Eder (review date 10 May 1998)
SOURCE: Eder, Richard. "Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum." Los Angeles Times Book Review (10 May 1998): 2.
[In the following review, Eder criticizes The Everlasting Story of Nory, asserting that the book fails in its attempt to depict the perspective and language of a nine-year-old girl.]
As a child late in the last century, Daisy Ashford assumed a grown-up's voice—or her notion of one—to write the romance of Ethel Montacue and her admirer, Mr. Salteena. In its comic misapprehensions of tone, likelihood and spelling, "The Young Visiters," unearthed years later by J. M. Barrie, became a minor English classic.
Nicholson Baker has reversed the...
(The entire section is 1139 words.)
Caroline Moore (review date 13 June 1998)
SOURCE: Moore, Caroline. "Sugar and Spice." Spectator 280, no. 8862 (13 June 1998): 38.
[In the following review, Moore presents a negative assessment of The Everlasting Story of Nory, noting that the work is overly cute and sweet.]
You need a strong stomach to be a critic of modern novels, which collectively give the impression of a world in which children who have not been sexually abused by their near relations are pretty thin on the ground. I thought I had supped full of horrors, but nothing quite prepared me for the stomach-churning qualities of Nicholson Baker's latest novel [The Everlasting Story of Nory]. Professional duty got me through it,...
(The entire section is 704 words.)
Ron Charles (review date 25 June 1998)
SOURCE: Charles, Ron. "Giraffes, Children, and Stories." Christian Science Monitor (25 June 1998): B7, B11.
[In the following review, Charles praises The Everlasting Story of Nory, lauding its ability to evoke the innocent, simple, and "miraculous" world of childhood.]
My six-year-old daughter recently asked me about the giraffe in our house.
"What giraffe?" I asked.
"That giraffe you and Mom felt coming down the stairs."
"That was a draft, some cold air, you know, a breeze."
She nodded skeptically, as though she'd stumbled upon an exotic smuggling ring. For...
(The entire section is 610 words.)
Eric Lorberer (review date fall 1998)
SOURCE: Lorberer, Eric. Review of The Everlasting Story of Nory, by Nicholson Baker. Review of Contemporary Fiction 18, no. 3 (fall 1998): 242-43.
[In the following review, Lorberer applauds The Everlasting Story of Nory for its vivid portrayal of the thoughts and internal feelings of Nory, its nine-year-old protagonist.]
Nicholson Baker, well-known for his phone-sex novel Vox and his voyeuristic fantasy The Fermata, here attempts what in some ways might be his most risky book yet. The Everlasting Story of Nory depicts a year in the life of a nine-year-old American girl attending school in England; its quiet, pastoral tone is more...
(The entire section is 330 words.)
Arthur Saltzman (essay date 1999)
SOURCE: Saltzman, Arthur. "A Columbus of the Near-at-Hand." In Understanding Nicholson Baker, pp. 1-14. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
[In the following essay, Saltzman provides an overview of Baker's life, writings, literary style and thematic concerns, and critical reception.]
Nicholson Baker has established himself as contemporary fiction's principal detective and dissector of epics that await the reader at close range. Thanks to Baker's extraordinary attention to ordinary objects and processes, restroom paper towels and computer paper perforations have been accorded the same descriptive indulgence as Achilles' shield; tying shoes and...
(The entire section is 3854 words.)
Leonard Kniffel (essay date April 2001)
SOURCE: Kniffel, Leonard. "Nicholson Baker Returns in Prose and Prank." American Libraries 32, no. 4 (April 2001): 28-9.
[In the following essay, Kniffel discusses Double Fold and Baker's efforts to preserve historical newspaper collections from destruction.]
Author and activist Nicholson Baker has again taken aim at library preservation practices—twice. Once for real, in a new book, and once as the butt of a hoax perpetrated by someone he calls "a misguided supporter."
Baker's new book, Double Fold, published this month by Random House, is a scathing assessment of the state of newspaper and book preservation. He is incensed by...
(The entire section is 877 words.)
Robert Darnton (review date 26 April 2001)
SOURCE: Darnton, Robert. "The Great Book Massacre." New York Review of Books 48, no. 7 (26 April 2001): 16-19.
[In the following review, Darnton offers a generally favorable assessment of Double Fold, though finds shortcomings in Baker's rhetorical exaggerations and his view of historical sources.]
When journalists discuss their craft, they invoke contradictory clichés: "Today's newspaper is the first draft of history," and "Nothing is more dead than yesterday's newspaper." Both in a way are true. News feeds history with facts, yet most of it is forgotten. Suppose newspapers disappeared from libraries: Would history...
(The entire section is 6156 words.)
Alexander Star (review date 28 May 2001)
SOURCE: Star, Alexander. "The Paper Pusher." New Republic (28 May 2001): 38-41.
[In the following review, Star compliments Double Fold, but finds flaws in Baker's narrow defense of print artifacts and his failure to consider content value as a criterion for preservation.]
In the opening pages of The Mezzanine, his first novel, Nicholson Baker speculates that the world changed suddenly sometime around 1970. He is referring to the unfortunate moment when "all the major straw vendors switched from paper to plastic straws, and we entered that uncomfortable era of the floating straw." How did this come about? Presumably the engineers had supposed that...
(The entire section is 3747 words.)
Nicholson Baker and Andrew Richard Albanese (interview date 1 June 2001)
SOURCE: Baker, Nicholson, and Andrew Richard Albanese. "Double-Edged: Is Nicholson Baker a Friend of Libraries?" Library Journal 126, no. 10 (1 June 2001): 103-04.
[In the following interview, Baker discusses his arguments for book and newspaper preservation, as put forth in Double Fold, and the controversy among librarians in response to his condemnation of library policies that promote the destruction of print collections.]
Since its publication in April 2001, Nicholson Baker's Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper has generated a hailstorm of controversy in the library community. It is somewhat ironic then that Baker, sitting in a New...
(The entire section is 1807 words.)
Further Reading
Birkerts, Sven. "Details." New York Times Book Review (14 April 1996): 12.
Birkerts praises The Size of Thoughts, extolling Baker's writing abilities, wit, and verbal skill.
Cavanaugh, Tim. "Paper Tigers." Reason 33, no. 4 (August-September 2001): 78-9.
Cavanaugh offers a negative assessment of Double Fold.
Fialkoff, Francine. "Baker's Book Is Half-Baked." Library Journal (15 May 2001): 102.
Fialkoff, the editor of Library Journal, disagrees with Baker's arguments against the digitization of newspapers and periodicals in Double...
(The entire section is 496 words.)


text:
Glass Tower World Level 35 Tips and Strategies
- App name: Glass Tower World
- Developer: Gadgetcrafts
- Genre: Family
- Release: Dec 7, 2013
If you are stuck on Glass Tower World level 35 you came to the right place. Below you will find a video walkthrough and some written tips that will guide you through that level. Have fun and enjoy this great game.
Level 35 Walkthrough
This page contains Glass Tower World video walkthroughs for iOS (iPhone/iPad) called "- - solution/walkthrough - android/ios" and has been uploaded on JGamer official channel at Jan 24, 2014.
Still need help with this level? Here you can ask questions and discuss with other Glass Tower World users.
Hit like if this helped you!
Stuck on some levels in Glass Tower World? This walkthrough can help you finish the game.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Skip to comments.Will you please pray for me and my wife?
Posted on 11/30/2011 10:46:06 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
click here to read article
Heartfelt prayers for you and your wife, 2ndDivisionVet. Hang in there!
God, 2ndDivisionVet needs his health and his wife, so please don't take both.
Prayers up for both of you, 2nd. I didn't realize you were so unwell. :( Very sorry.
Prayers up.
You will be in my prayers, and those of my children, tonight. God bless you and keep you and your wife.
many many prayers for you.
Prayers will help you.
God Bless you
Prayers for your health for both of you.
God bless you and your wife. Prayers up. I enjoy your posts!
Prayers for both of you.
Yes, may the Lord have mercy on you and spare you and your wife from this terrible diease-In Christ's name, Amen!
You absolutely will be in my thoughts and prayers, 2ndDivisionVet. You have been one of the shining beacons of FR and we need you back in shape to care for your wife, and to keep us all fired up and looking forward.
Best of luck my FRiend.
Prayers up!
Prayers for both of you. Your service to our country and to the cause of liberty is well-noted. Please get well...
Sorry to hear this.
Hope Hope Pray Pray
Pax Domeni, sit semper vobiscum. May God be with you buddy.
God Bless you 2ndDivisionVet, God Bless your wife, and may God Bless those around you that might be in a position to help.
Of course!
Prayers up, brother!
Prayers done. In Jesus' name.
Big time prayers for you and your wife from my family!
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
Matthew 11:28-30
Rest in your Saviour, my brother.
Prayers sent.
Prayers said 2ndDivisionVet-San for you and your wife. God Bless you both.
May God bless both of you and hold you up in his everlasting arms.
Take care brother.
Prayer up! May God continue to bless...
Dear Heavenly Father, We ask that You heal our brother, 2ndDivisionVet and his beautiful wife. Please remove all ailments. Give them strength and courage during this difficult time. Please give knowledge and skill to their doctors so they may treat them. Please surround this wonderful couple with Your love and grace. In this I pray. Amen.
Of course. Prayers up for both of you.
Praying for you both - with faith and blessings for a good recovery.
Prayers UP !!
We all need God's grace. An extra helping for you and your today.
You got it shipmate.
Navy Vet - 34 years
Prayers up FRiend!
Prayers up!
My fervent prayer is for your heart to be encouraged, for an increased physical comfort for you, and for your much improved health. Our sufferings are not in vain in the Heavenlies. God be with you. Love, Rita
PS: If possible and except for getting there, and a hotel room, Mayo Clinic charges no more than your local clinic down the block (and sometimes less). You leave Mayo with the facts and a resolution to the problem, and all the guessing and wondering is history. Maybe three days tops, typically. If possible.....
Prayers are on the way.
God bless and keep you my FRiend!
prayers up for you and your wife Vet..
I'll definitely pray for you and your wife.
Prayers up for you and your wife
in a word....YES!...yes, yes, yes...all of our prayers...we're here for you....please keep us posted...if you can love somebody over the internet, rest assured...you are loved....
You and your wife will be in my prayers! Hang in there!
Prayers up, Sir:
"What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee"
Thank you for your service!
Have you and your wife got good medical care?
I pray that you and your wife get a full recovery.
A Novena headed your way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.


text:
Levis A Claims 2013 Laura Walker Tournament Title
Nine teams from across the United States and Canada competed in the annual Laura Walker Invitational Tournament this pasted weekend, March 29-31.
Hosted by West Point Women's Team Handball, the tournament consisted of 22 games over a three day span, with Levis A of Quebec, Canada edging New York City Team Handball Club in the championship match. Chicago Inter claimed third.
New York City Team Handball Club took home both the most valuable player and most valuable goalkeeper honors as Helena Gustavsson was named tournament MVP and Marianne Vanier was named tournament MVG.
Ashton Wolf of West Point Gold took home top scoring honors as she scored 22 goals in just three games of play.
Looking ahead, a number of the teams that participated in the Laura Walker tournament will face off again this weekend in Northeast League play in Rockville, Maryland as they attempt to qualify for Club Nationals in Reno, Nevada May 17-19.
In addition to the tournament, West Point held a social where all competing teams had the opportunity to establish lasting relationships with their competitors. The social concluded with a remembrance ceremony for First Lieutenant Laura Walker, a 2003 West Point graduate killed in Afghanistan in 2005. The ceremony was led by her father, active duty Lieutenant General Keith Walker and her great friend and former teammate, Jacque Messel (currently Chicago Inter team captain). In all, the tournament and social were a huge success and the team is looking forward to hosting the tournament again next year.
2013 Laura Walker Tournament Results
1. Levis A
2. NYC Team Handball
3. Chicago Inter
4. Levis B
5. WP Black
6. Boston
7. Carolina Blue (Alumni)
8. WP Gold
9. Carolina


text:
Oct. 22, 2012
Justice Barry Schaller
WEST HAVEN, CONN. -- Retired Justice Barry Schaller of the Connecticut Supreme Court, the author of a new book about veterans and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), will speak at the University of New Haven on Oct. 31 from 10:50 a.m. to 12:05 p.m.
The talk will take place in the Alumni Lounge of Bartels Hall, the student center, on UNH's Main Campus, 300 Boston Post Road. It is co-sponsored by the Legal Society, a student group, and the UNH Legal Studies Program.
Schaller's newest book, "Veterans on Trial: The Coming Court Battles Over PTSD," was released in September.
"People ask frequently whether our society is ready to address the problems arising from PTSD in our returning veterans. My response is to ask: "Who bears the primary responsibility?" Schaller said. "When veterans appear in court, it is, in a real sense, too late -- too late to provide them with a smooth, successful transition to civilian life. They need -- and will receive -- help at that point even though it is not right to take it for granted that these problems can simply be left to the courts to fix. In assessing our readiness, we cannot ignore the fact that these problems will remain with us for years -- decades -- to come."
Schaller was asked to speak by the UNH Legal Studies Program, which is exploring additional ways to provide services to veterans, said Donna Decker Morris, associate professor and director of the program. "We regularly invite speakers on legal subjects of current interest. PTSD is a serious problem facing many veterans, the criminal justice system and society," said Morris.
Schaller is the author of two other books, "A Vision of American Law: Judging Law, Literature, and the Stories We Tell," published in 1997 and the winner of the 1997 Quinnipiac Law School Book Award for excellence, and "Understanding Bioethics and the Law: The Promises and Perils of the Brave New World of Biotechnology" published in 2007.
Schaller received his B.A. degree from Yale College and his J.D. from the Yale Law School. He practiced law in New Haven, Conn. from 1963 to 1974.
He served on the Connecticut Board of Pardons from 1971-74 and the Connecticut Planning Committee for Criminal Administration. He was appointed to the Connecticut trial bench in 1974, appointed to the Appellate Court in 1992 and to the Supreme Court in 2007.
After retiring from the Connecticut Supreme Court, he resumed judicial service as a judge trial referee at the Appellate Court.
Justice Schaller is Chair of the Connecticut Committee on Judicial Ethics, a charter life fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, and a member of the American Law Institute. He serves as an expert on bioethics and the law as a member of the Answer Board of the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, at the National Constitution Center.
The University of New Haven is a private, top-tier comprehensive institution recognized as a national leader in experiential education. Founded in 1920 on the campus of Yale University in cooperation with Northeastern University, UNH moved to its current West Haven campus in 1960. The University provides its students with a unique combination of a solid liberal arts education and real-world, hands-on career and research opportunities. UNH enrolls approximately 6,400 students, including nearly 1,800 graduate students and more than 4,600 undergraduates – the majority of whom reside in University housing. Through its College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business, Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, Tagliatela College of Engineering, and College of Lifelong & eLearning, UNH offers 75 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. UNH students have access to more than 50 study abroad programs worldwide and its student-athletes compete in 16 varsity sports in the NCAA Division II's highly competitive Northeast-10 Conference.


text:
Share Your Reflection

Beautiful and inspiring...

Beautiful and inspiring...

Those outside of traditional religious categories are not
Those outside of traditional religious categories are not immune to overloading of our common labels for ways of seeing the world. I am reminded of Ann Rice's explanation for her "leaving Christianity," which essentially amounted to no religious or theological change in herself but rather a rejection of, in her words, the "quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group" that lays claim to the label Christianity.
So what of the "quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group" that has latched on to the atheist label like a rabid pitbull? What place is there for the thoughtful, "spiritual", humble, amiable nonbeliever?
The religion of bigotry, misogyny, exclusion, and oppression that goes by the name Christianity is as far from the religion practiced by millions of Christians as "radical Islam" (a problematic label itself) is from the religion of any of my Muslim friends and as the obnoxious (and mislabelled) "New Atheism" is from my thoughtful a-religious friends.
There is power to be had by defining away undersirables from communities built around shared belief or nonbelief. As long as this is true the intellectually independent will never belong anywhere.

Wondrous program.
Thank You.
Just so you know the
Wondrous program.
Thank You.
Just so you know the podcast from iTunes runs only 47:47 and cuts off mid-sentence so we had to wait for the broadcast to hear the ending.


text:
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text:
Here's how RW members rated this race in the past (86 votes).
In short: Felt a fraud running without costume but a really nice race on a really nice sunny winter morningIn full: 15 minutes from home which always helps. Unusual distance so PBs are almost guaranteed unless you were slower last year. Can't comment on the quality of the prize, two weeks to wait for that. I felt a bit of a fraud in t-shirt and shorts so I felt obliged to let Santa overtake me in the last thirty metres.Date of review: December 11, 2006
In short: Great light hearted run full of Christmas cheerDate of review: December 11, 2006
In short: Festive frolics!In full: Another enjoyable Swanley caper. Easily manageable distance even in fancy dress. And a nice Christmas pud for finishing. ho ho ho!Date of review: December 11, 2006
In short: very goodDate of review: December 10, 2006
In short: A festive run indeed, good to see the younger runners doing so well and the great costumes that really added to the atmosphere!Date of review: December 10, 2006
In short: Did this race for the first time last year .....hooked wouldn't miss it for the world. Hence back again this year.In full: Loved seeing the effort people made in dressing up.....Ideal for first time racers as there is no pressure just the pressure to have fun fun fun.Lynn :)Date of review: December 10, 2006
In short: 1st Class Christmassy runIn full: Good to see more people making the effort to dress up this year, there was a real fancy dress presence which was great!Really well marshalled and good police support. Course it mildly undulating with a lightning quick 1st mile, I always do my fastest 5k of the year on this course even in full Santa gear.Nice pud and spot prize of some chocolates! Only minor gripe is they could do with something other than water at the finish, squash at least would be nice after breathing through a santa beard for 30 minutes :)Date of review: December 10, 2006
In short: A good run and gets you into the spirit of thingsIn full: By this time I am already sick of christmas, but the atmosphere and friendliness of the race makes it well worth doing, even dressing up for!!! Only gripe is the cars, as usual everyone is in a hurry to be somewhere and some cars were practically nudging the runners heels even tooting them. How rude and totally inconsiderate. But organisation was great and marshalls were encouraging. Suffice to say I now have my christmas pud for the day.Date of review: December 10, 2006
In short: Great way to get into the Christmas spiritDate of review: December 10, 2006
In short: Nasty for newcomers 2nd-3rd mile!!In full: Really enjoyed this overall, got a PB so really happy!! Date of review: December 10, 2006
Visit the official Runner's World page
Follow Runner's World on Twitter
Click here
Other Natmag-Rodale Sites
Run For Charity
Injury Clinics
About Runner's World


text:
Click on the image to open a larger version in a new window.
If you are interested in using this image, please consult Acknowledging the Website.
Image Reference
Nicolas Ponce, Recueil des vues des lieux principaux de la colonie Francaise de Saint-Domingue (Paris, 1791), fig. 25; from a painting by Agostino Brunias. (Copy in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
Captioned, "Costumes des Affranchis et Des Esclaves des Colonies" (clothing worn by free people of color and slaves in the colonies), this shows three free women of color in an urban setting. Engraving by Ponce for Moreau de Saint Mery, Loix et Constitution des Colonies Francais (Paris, 1784, 1790). This image is reversed from the original Brunias print (not shown on this website, but a copy is owned by the Barbados Museum), one edition of which was published in London in 1790. The engraving, in turn, is derived from the Brunias painting, "A West Indian Flower Girl," ca. 1769; for a b/w photo of this painting, see Malcolm Cormack, A Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, 1985, pp. 44-45). For biographical details on Brunias, see image NW0016.


text:
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assistance is needed, ask about the Care Credit program.
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As part of the VCA family, we have over 83 specialty hospitals across the US and Canada which provide referral specialty care, so there may be one near you. Enter ZIP to find VCA specialty care hospitals near you.


text:
Students are refusing to eat the new healthier lunches at Los Angeles schools, reports the LA Times. The black bean burgers, tostada salad and pears on the menu at Van Nuys High is "nasty, rotty stuff," says Mayra Gutierrez, who lunches on Flamin' Hot Cheetos and soda instead.
Earlier this year, the district got rid of chocolate and strawberry milk, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, nachos and other food high in fat, sugar and sodium. Instead, district chefs concocted such healthful alternatives as vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles.
. . . Participation in the school lunch program has dropped by thousands of students. Principals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away. Students are ditching lunch, and some say they're suffering from headaches, stomach pains and even anemia. At many campuses, an underground market for chips, candy, fast-food burgers and other taboo fare is thriving.
Andre Jahchan, a 16-year-old sophomore at Esteban Torres High School, said the food was "super good" at the summer tasting at L.A. Unified's central kitchen. But on campus, he said, the chicken pozole was watery, the vegetable tamale was burned and hard, and noodles were soggy.
"It's nasty, nasty," said Andre, a member of InnerCity Struggle, an East L.A. nonprofit working to improve school lunch access and quality. "No matter how healthy it is, if it's not appetizing, people won't eat it."
It's a lesson from the universe, writes McArdle: Promising pilot programs don't always scale up.
In the testing phase, when the program was small, they were probably working with a small group of schools which had been specially chosen to participate. They did not have a sprawling supply chain to manage. The kids and the workers knew they were being studied. And they were asking the kids which food they liked–a question which, social science researchers will tell you, is highly likely to elicit the answer that they liked something.
Furthermore, it's easier to cook a palatable meal for a dozen testers than to cook mass amounts on a modest budget.
. . . the things that make us fat are, by and large, also the things that are palatable when mass-produced. Bleached grains and processed fats have a much longer shelf life than fresh produce, and can take a hell of a lot more handling. Salt and sugar are delicious, but they are also preservatives that, among other things, disguise the flavor of stale food.
In response to complaints that salads with an Oct. 7 "best served by" date were served on Oct. 17, a manager said lettuce wasn't actually rotten. Then the district removed the dates because they were "confusing."
Nobody eats 10-day old lettuce voluntarily, writes McArdle. The old mentality — "don't poison anybody" — may still dominate the cafeteria staff, she speculates. "There isn't much difference between Chicken nuggets that won't poison you, and Chicken nuggets at their absolute peak of freshness. And the employees just sort of assumed that the same set of rules would work for lettuce."


text:
by Anton Shilov
Oracle's decision to drop support of Intel Corp.'s Itanium platform with its business software was motivated by business reasons and was an attempt to gain additional customers for mission-critical Sun SPARC server platform, says Technology Business Research, a technology market research and consulting firm specializing in the business and financial analyses.
According to TBR, Oracle made a measured decision to drop support for Itanium processors because this processor directly competes with its own UltraSPARC-based servers. The shift will give Oracle an opportunity to try to shift customers to SPARC servers as it is the core product in Oracle's high-margin hardware strategy. But the move definitely impacts Oracle's image in the eyes of its own customers.
"Oracle de-emphasized commodity hardware, but continues to provide strong software support for the x86. HP-UX customers will feel the hit as HP-UX runs specifically on Itanium processors. HP announced that it would continue to support Itanium; however, the move places customers in a precarious position with Oracle software as they may not be able to upgrade," said Jessica Breen, an analyst for enterprise software for TBR.
Oracle on Tuesday said it stopped developing software for Intel Itanium-based platforms due to the fact that the Itanium was nearing the end of life. The company said that Intel and HP were going to can the mission-critical server platform in favour of more traditional x86-64 that was gaining RAS [reliability, availability, scalability] features. Both HP and Intel denied such a plan claiming that the IA64 roadmap spanned for more than a decade. Oracle noted that a number of hardware and software companies had already dropped the Itanium. Still, Oracle is motivated to cancel development of software for Itanium in order to promote its own SPARC platform.
"The Itanium disruption will allow Oracle to gain hardware customers among existing software subscribers; however, the aggressive move will also enable competitors IBM to provide alternative options to customers who are unhappy with Oracle's tactics. Ultimately, TBR believes the disruptive Itanium tactic will only drive a partial transition from Itanium to SPARC as competitors capitalize on an opportunity to poach unhappy customers," said Ms. Breen.
But while the Oracle's move may influence sales of HP's Intel Itanium-based machines (and cause questions to HP's sales people), IBM remains the strongest alternative to SPARC with its Power-based servers, notes TBR.


text:
Helen Frankenthaler was born in New York in 1928. She studied at The Dalton School, New York, under the Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo and at Bennington College, Vermont, under the American cubist Paul Feeley. In 1950 Frankenthaler met the critic Clement Greenberg and began mixing with the artists of the New York School, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. As a much younger artist, she emerged as one of the 'second generation' of Abstract Expressionists.
At the age of 23, Frankenthaler found her individual style with the large oil painting Mountains and sea. Frankenthaler placed the canvas on the floor, thinned her oil paint with turpentine and painted with the diluted wash in a technique she called 'soak-stain'. The 'soak-stain' technique was a radical departure from her earlier work and had an immediate impact on many artists, including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland who successfully adopted the technique for their Color Field paintings.
Jaklyn Babington
Read more...
Last updated January 2017


text:
The Yakima ArmLock secures your precious two-wheeler to your DoubleDown Ace rack, so you can enjoy a post-ride pint without keeping one eye on your beer and the other car, and you can have peace of mind during pit stops or hotel stays on your next road trip. The cable conveniently stows in the arm of your rack when not in use, just waiting for the next epic adventure.
- For use with the Yakima DoubleDown Ace hitch carrier; stows in the arm when not in use
- Secures outside bike to the mount for simple, safe security
- Includes two cores, so your rack and lock conveniently share the same key
Tech Specs
Yakima DoubleDown Ace
Part Number:
Recommended Use:
bike security
Manufacturer Warranty:


text:
iHerb Customer Reviews
Savings of: $8.98 (30% off)
Posted by Reviewer2287175 on Nov 23, 2007
CLA has been proven to maintain muscle mass as we age, and reduces fat accumulation.
Good brand of CLA...
Posted by Reviewer2963961 on May 02, 2011
Seems to be a good brand of CLA, all the companies make about the same size capsule to get the 1,000 mg. CLA is not in our food anymore and is beneficial for all kinds of health problems. Helps lose the fat around mid section too.
Posted by Reviewer2717476 on Jun 16, 2008
This order came qickly within 4 days to Nova Scotia. The product itself I have only been on for a little over a week and I have noticed that I have lost 1 half inch off my waist and hips. I think this is an excellant product. However to get the recommended amout of 3.4g of tonalin a day you haft to take 5 capsols a day. Other brands are more cost effective.
great product and price.
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CLA seems to help with metabolism...providing the other factors are there, like exercise and a good diet. I notice a difference.
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Items 1-5 of 5 total


text:
LINGUIST List 23.5089
Wed Dec 05 2012
Calls: Romance, General Linguistics/USA
Editor for this issue: Alison Zaharee <alison
Christina Tortora <ctortora
43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages
E-mail this message to a friend
Full Title: 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages
Short Title: LSRL43
Date: 17-Apr-2013 - 19-Apr-2013
Location: New York, NY, USA
Contact Person: Christina Tortora
Meeting Email:
< click here to access email >
Web Site:
Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
Language Family(ies): Romance
Call Deadline: 16-Dec-2012
Meeting Description:
The Linguistics Program at the CUNY Graduate Center will host the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, April 17-19, 2013. On April 18, 2013, there will be a Special Plenary Session on Romance Parsed Corpora.
Invited Speakers for Main Session:
Paola Benincà, University of Padua
Ricardo Otheguy, CUNY Graduate Center
Lori Repetti, Stony Brook University
Special Session on Romance Parsed Corpora:
Alongside providing a general platform for dissemination of research on Romance linguistics, the LSRL43 organizers would like to place a special focus on an important emerging area of research in Romance: Parsed Corpora. Our Special Session on Romance Parsed Corpora will be a Plenary event, so that all conference participants will have the opportunity to learn about some of the most exciting advances in syntax which are based on these very recently created and innovative tools. Invited speakers for the Special Plenary Session on Romance Parsed Corpora are:
Charlotte Galves, University of Campinas
Anthony Kroch and Beatrice Santorini, University of Pennsylvania
Ana Maria Martins, University of Lisbon
Final Call for Papers:
Note: The abstract submission deadline has been extended to December 16, 2012.
The organizers of LSRL43 invite abstracts for 20-minute talks (plus 10 minutes for discussion) on any aspect of Romance Linguistics. In the spirit of the focus of the Special Plenary Session on Romance Parsed Corpora (see above), we also welcome abstract submissions for regular parallel session (20-minute) talks, which are on research based on parsed corpora in Romance.
Abstract Submission Guidelines:
All abstracts should be no more than two pages in length (including examples and references), in 12-point type, 8.5x11-inch page setup (= US Letter), with 1-inch margins. Submissions are limited to one individual and one joint abstract per author.
Authors are asked to submit their abstracts (.pdf format only) through EasyAbs at:
Deadline for receipt of abstracts: Extended to December 16, 2012
Notification of acceptance: no later than February 5, 2013
Read more issues
LINGUIST home page
Top of issue
Page Updated: 05-Dec-2012
About LINGUIST
Contact Us
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.


text:
Sorry. I had a whole polite thing worked up. Lots of statistics. Reasonable. All points of view represented. But this is just deeply, impossibly stupid. In fact, the more I think about it, the angrier I get, and the more I realize that any owner who can't break even on professional sports in this country is a moron. Or a liar. Honestly. If you can't manage a pro team at a modest profit in the United States of America in the early years of the 21st century, you shouldn't be allowed to vote or operate a motor vehicle. You shouldn't be allowed near the stove.
At a time when the production and consumption of distraction are the only healthy sectors of the American economy, and when city, county, state and federal tax dollars pay for the arenas and the stadiums, to lose money on the operation of a pro sports franchise has to be grounds for involuntary psychiatric commitment. Or prosecution.
And if any of this sounds familiar, consider where we've heard it before.
The NBA, too big to fail!
I really really hate David Stern.


text:
"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. "
Gulfstream G650
Production models of Gulfstream's new, near-supersonic flagship G650—which received FAA certification in the U.S. on September 7—have been rolling off the assembly line and winging their way to completion centers. The manufacturer expects to have the $64.5 million, 12,963-kilometer-range bizjet into the hands of customers before the end of this year.
The G650 is by far Gulfstream's most ambitious project to date. It has not been without a few problems along the way, including the loss of a certification aircraft and crew in April 2011 that temporarily halted flight testing, and some software issues. However, the aircraft has been thoroughly tested and deemed airworthy, and more than 200 customers have lined up for deliveries, making the G650 one of the most successful business jet launches ever. The aircraft's two chief attributes—size and speed—account for this popularity.
The G650 features 28 percent more cabin volume than the G550, itself a large 12- to 16-passenger jet. The G650's main cabin door is 190 centimeters high, the cabin floor is 203 centimeters wide and the finished cabin ceiling is 196 centimeters tall. In back, you'll find a cavernous, 5.5 cubic meters baggage compartment. All that space means room for larger seats, windows and monuments.
The cabin can be configured for up to 18 passengers in any of 12 floor plans, with either forward or aft galleys and with or without a dedicated crew rest area. The conference area is expandable from four seats to six by replacing the center cabin credenza with two single seats. With forward-galley layouts, an optional stateroom is available just forward of the aft lavatory.
The G650 cabin benefits from a combination of clean lines, high-tech accents and hints of art deco on the curved-edge cabinets. The absence of clutter and visible switching on this airplane is striking. The galley is large and decidedly high-tech.
The G650 mates its stylish, spacious and highly functional cabin to near-supersonic maximum cruise speeds. Earlier this year, the G650 set a speed record for business jets, making the trip from Washington, D.C., to Geneva, Switzerland, in 6 hours, 55 minutes, for a speed that averaged between Mach 0.90 and 0.92. It also flew from Los Angeles to Savannah, Georgia, in just 3 hours, 26 minutes. The G650 has a maximum cruising speed of Mach 0.925, making it the world's fastest business jet.
Thanks to its comfort and advanced technology, the G650 sets a new world standard. Thanks to its blistering speed, that world just got a little smaller.
At a Glance
Price: $64.5 million
Passengers: 8-18
Crew: 2-5
Range:* 12,963 kilometers
Maximum cruise speed: Mach 0.925
Cabin Length: 8.18 meters
Cabin Width: 2.59 meters
Cabin Height: 1.95 meters
Cabin Volume: 60.54 cubic meters
*at long-range-cruise speed of Mach 0.85 with 8 passengers, 4 crew, NBAA IFR reserves.
Source: Gulfstream
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text:
Corn and Crab Bisque
- 1 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 cup minced onions
- 1 cup uncooked sweet corn from the cob
- 2 tablespoons minced shallots
- 1 tablespoons minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons minced celery
- Essence, recipe follows
- 1 cup crab stock or fish stock
- 3 bay leaves
- Salt and pepper
- 2 cup milk
- 2 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoons liquid crab boil
- 3 tablespoons blond roux
- 1/2 lump crab meat, picked over for shells and cartilage
- 1/4 cup chopped green onions
- 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
- Chives for garnish
- Emeril's ESSENCE Creole Seasoning (also referred to as Bayou Blast):
- 2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
- 2 tablespoons salt
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1 tablespoon dried thyme
In a large sauce pot, heat the olive oil. When the oil is smoking hot, add the onions, corn, shallots, garlic, celery and saute for 1 minute. Season with Essence. Add the stock, and bay leaves. Season with salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil. Whisk in the milk, cream, and crab boil.Bring back to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 5-7 minutes. Whisk in the roux, 1 tablespoon at a time. Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook, whisking until the mixture thickens. Stir in the crab meat, green onions, and Worcestershire and simmer for 6-8 minutes. Reseason if needed. Ladle into a shallow bowl and garnish with chives.
Combine all ingredients thoroughly.
Yield: 2/3 cup
Recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse
Cooking Tips
More Recipes and Ideas
Colossal Crab Asparagus Bisque
Recipe courtesy of Robert Irvine
Smoky Black Bean Bisque
Recipe courtesy of Geoffrey Zakarian
Butternut Squash-Chipotle Bisque
Recipe courtesy of Marcela Valladolid


text:
"The other key point worth making about this scenario is that storage behind a z10 must conform to IBM DASD rules. That means no more BS standards wars between knuckle-draggers in the storage world who continue to mitigate the heterogeneous interoperability and manageability of distributed systems storage using proprietary lock in technologies designed as much to lock in the consumer and lock out the competition as to deliver any real value. That has got to be worth something."
For z/OS and TPF operating systems, disk must support CCW commands over ESCON or FICON connections, or NFS commandsover the Local Area Network. However, most of the workloads that are being ported over from x86 platforms willprobably be running Linux on System z images, and as such Linux supports both CCW and SCSI protocols, the latterover native FCP connections through a Storage Area Network (SAN) or via iSCSI over the Local Area Network. Many SAN directors support both FCP and FICON, and the z10 also supports both 1Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet, so you may not have to invest in any new networking gear.
The best part is that you may not have to migrate your data. The IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller is supported for Linux on System z, and with "image mode" you can leave the data in its original format on its original disk array. Many file systems are now supported by Linux, including Windows NTFS with the latest NTFS-3G driver.
If your data is already on NAS storage, such as the IBM System Storage N series disk systems, then the IBM z10can access it directly, from z/OS, z/VM or Linux.
Have lots of LTO tape data? Linux on System z supports LTO as well.
Jon continues his rant with a question about porting Microsoft Windows applications. Here's another excerpt:
"For one, what do we do with all the Microsoft servers. There is no Redmond-sanctioned approach to my knowledge for virtualizing Microsoft SQL Server or Exchange Server in a mainframe partition."
Yes, it is possible to run Windows on a mainframe through emulation, but I feel that's the wrong approach. Instead, the focus should be on running "functionally equivalent" programs on the native mainframe operating systems, and again Linuxis often the best choice for this. Switching from Windows to Linux may not be "Redmond-sanctioned", but it getsthe job done.
Instead of SQL Server, consider something functionally equivalent like IBM's DB2 Universal Database, or perhaps an open source database like MySQL, PostgreSQL or Apache Derby. Well-written applications use standard SQL calls, so ifthe application does not try to use unique, proprietary features of MS SQL Server, you are in good shape.
In my discussion last November on [Microsoft Exchange email server], I mentioned that Bynari makes a functionally equivalent email server on Linux that works with your existing Microsoft Outlook clients. Your end-users wouldn't know you migrated to a mainframe! (well, they might notice their email runs faster)
So if your data center has three or more racks of Sun, Dell or HP "pizza box" or "blade" x86 servers, chances are you can migrate the processing over to a shiny new IBM z10 EC mainframe, save some money in the process, without too much impact to your existing Ethernet, SAN or storage system infrastructure. IBM can even help you dispose of the oldx86 machines so that their toxic chemicals don't end up in any landfill.
technorati tags: Jon Toigo, DrunkenData, IBM, z10, CCW, ESCON, FICON, SCSI, FCP, iSCSI, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, N series, NAS, NFS, NTFS, SAN, LAN, Ethernet, z/OS, TPF, z/VM, Linux, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache Derby, Microsoft, Windows


text: The Spitfire Mountain OG Flash Wheels is an awesome wide wheel with a some tread. The wheels have a really cool tattoo flash graphic on just one side of the. This wheel was shaped by Lance Mountain. The colors and sizes that are available are shown below. Wheels are sold in sets of four.


text:
Purchase Tickets
Show Details
- Ticket Price: $0.00
- Door Time: 9:45 PM
- Show Type: Stand Up
- Tags: Theater
"Critics' Pick!" - Time Out Chicago
New York City-based comedian and actor Todd Barry is widely recognized for his roles as the bongo-playing "Third Conchord" on HBO's Flight of the Conchords and Mickey Rourke's deli boss in 2009 Oscar winner The Wrestler, and renowned throughout the entertainment industry for his nuanced, measured, and thoroughly original approach to stand-up. Drawing audience members in with his deadpan self-deprecation and ability to pile punchline upon punchline, his decidedly low-key stage persona belies a deeply intelligent, often biting, occasionally absurdist worldview, one lauded by discerning fans who seek a fresh yet honest update to traditional observation and social commentary.
Boasting multiple stand-up appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and two Comedy Central Presents specials, Todd's resume also includes such hit TV shows as Louie, Delocated, Bored to Death, Tim and Eric, Chappelle's Show, Sex and the City, and even Sesame Street. Among his additional feature-film highlights are Todd Phillips's Road Trip, Louis CK's Pootie Tang, and Mitch Hedberg's Los Enchiladas. You can see him soon at Sigourney Weaver's right hand man in Amy Heckerling's Vamps, and as Paul Rudd's co-worker in David Wain's Wanderlust. Internationally he has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Montreal's Just For Laughs Festival, the Vancouver International Comedy Festival, and Kilkenny, Ireland's Cat Laughs Festival.
Todd has been heard on both The Howard Stern Show and The Bob & Tom Show, and his albums Medium Energy, Falling Off the Bone, and From Heaven are available from Comedy Central Records, Amazon and iTunes. He has earned the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival's Jury Award, praise from Ricky Gervais as one of the best comedians of 2009, and accolades from The Onion's A.V. Club, which declared Medium Energy one of the best comedy albums of the decade.
"Comedy savants revere this Conan and Letterman veteran's hushed, singsong sarcasm." – Entertainment Weekly
"Piercing, blinding, slaying, violating wit." – NPR
"Infuses his observational comedy with a wonderfully individual disdain." – The Times of London
"He doesn't suffer fools, and fortunately for his comedy his definition of 'fool' doesn't discriminate." – Pitchfork.com
"Acerbic wit, deadpan delivery and wickedly smart punchlines." – Time Out New York
"Barry is so beautifully arid he is positively parched." – London Evening Standard
"The success lies with the delivery, and in his ability to seamlessly merge ad-libbed material with his prepared schtick." – The Age, Melbourne
90 minutes with no intermission.
Tickets for the UP Comedy Club can be purchased over the phone at (312) 662-4562 or online at UP Comedy Club.
UP Comedy Club Box Office
230 W. North Ave
Chicago, IL 60614
(312) 662-4562
Box Office hours:
Mon-Thur 9am-9pm
Fri 9am-11:30pm
Sat 10am-11:30pm
Sun 11am-8pm
If you're hungry or looking for a drink, we have a full bar and dinner menu available throughout all performances.
Got kids?
UP Comedy Club has a nightclub atmosphere and alcohol is served. Our shows contain adult content and language. Most of our shows are the equivalent of an R-rated movie. Minors must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian when coming to the 11pm shows due to Chicago curfew laws. Please note we're not able to admit anyone under the age of 10. UP Comedy Club is best for savvy teen and adult audiences.
If you require special seating or accommodations (wheelchair-bound, hearing impaired, or visually impaired) please contact our box office at (312) 662-4562 to ensure the best service.
Want to join a larger party but pay separately? Give us a call at (312) 662-4562 and we'll be sure you're seated with your party.Planning your visit to Chicago? Let us help! Click here for ideas.


text:
Search Charity Events
Latest Events
Hope Abounds Charity Event
Shag-4-Hope Weekend Getaway
The Moroccan organisation AVEC is looking for volunteers who like to work in Morocco
Pure Barre Los Gatos #PureGratitude Holiday Give-a-Thon
Holiday Give-a-Thon with Pure Barre Los Gatos
4th Annual Wishing Well Winter Gala
Join Make-A-Wish this December in L.A
In-Sight Photography Project's 18th Annual Photography Auction and Exhibition
2016 Benefit Auction opened on October 7 at Vermont Center for Photography
Fashion Sale
Shopping to support a worthy cause
Breast Ever Brunch
Help create change in the lives of women with breast cancer by hosting a Breast ever Brunch this October.
Light the Night Esperance
Raise funds and walk with us this October 22 to help more Australians beat blood cancer
Light the Night Bunbury
Raise funds and walk with us this October 7 & beat blood cancer through research and support.
Kokoda Trek To Beat Cancer 2017
The trek of a lifetime, 96 km over 8 days raising funds for people living with cancer.
Cupcake Day for the RSPCA
Hold your own Cupcake Day party to help animals in need
Lunch for the Lads 2016
Join us for the 6th annual Lunch For The Lads
Charity Concert Evening this July
Charity concert evening on 20th July 2016 for children's cancer charity CLIC Sargent
Jon Huertas Hosts Wildlands Network Benefit Event
Celebrating 25 Years of Rewinding North America
San Diego History 2016
MADCAPS in Partner with San Diego History Center this June
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Support and Join us in Superior Home Care & Hospice
Off Peak Pink Walk
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2016 7KM Magical Forest Charity Run
KJazz Summer Benefit Concert Walt Disney Concert Hall
A Benefit Concert with KJazz Summer
30h Annual Figawi Charity Ball
Cape's Best Charity Event This May
Join English teaching project in rural India
Need worldwide volunteers for this Teaching English project
VINO-Palooza Wine & Music Festival
Wine Tasting and Acoustic Music Concert Benefitting Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Art in the Afternoon
Annual Art Festival
Michael Phelps Charity Donation and Charitable Foundation
Olympic swimming champion and world record breaker Michael Phelps has used his million dollar Beijing bonus to establish a new charity, the Michael Phelps Foundation.
Phelps announced that the Foundation will share out his prize money amongst various charitable programs promoting water safety and encouraging youths through swimming and sport.
Phelps will go on an eight-city US tour for the foundation, visiting children and sharing his experiences in Beijing, as well as launching an education program, Dream, Plan, Reach, based on a program from the gold medalists' childhood.
'Now, my goals reach beyond the pool, to helping others realize their dreams, and continuing to grow the sport I love so much. I feel it's only appropriate that I continue the momentum ... by committing my bonus to the establishment of the Michael Phelps Foundation, which I hope will help me inspire others to achieve their dreams, and give back to the sport that has given me so much,' Michael Phelps said about his new charity endeavor, proving himself a winner not only in the pool but also in life.
Check these Categories below for more on Michael Phelps Charity
Charity News, Charity Donation, Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps Foundation, Michael Phelps Charity Tour
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text:
Topic: One or two apps?
I have a site which has two distinct functions: forum and inventory listing. They could share a CSS though it's not necessary but must share a users table so that only one registration/login is required.
Would I be better off writing two distinct apps that share a single database or lumping all of it together in one app?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.


text:
Podcast for 28 Feb 10
In this podcast, Bruce, Michael and Dale discuss the Obama Administration's security policies and the healthcare summit. The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
The intro and outro music is Vena Cava by 50 Foot Wave, and is available for free download here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don't forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don't have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2009, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.[ad#Banner]


text:
Learn from the past to reach your golden years
Most of us want to be Methuselah. You know, Noah's grandfather, the guy in Genesis who lived to the ripe old age of 969. But we only want longevity – realistically, 70 to 90 years – if good health comes with it.
Have you ever thought about people in previous eras who didn't enjoy the benefits so common now: retirement, a chance to do activities you couldn't enjoy in your working and child rearing days, medically enhanced golden years? Our medical care and diagnostic technologies undoubtedly surpass pre-germ-theory wisdom. However, it's possible we overestimate our longevity relative to that of the 19th and previous centuries. Modern data aside, it's hard to pin down any era's life expectancy because of wildly varied genetics, lifestyles, environments, and causes of death. A walk through any cemetery is enough to further muddy this era's life expectancy claims.
Forest Hill Cemetery in Fredonia is just one cemetery filled with people who lived long, and undoubtedly – just like us – well. Lydia and Jacob Houghton, for instance, born in 1780 and 1777 respectively. They lived through the Constitutional Convention, the War of 1812 (remembered it even), and the War with Mexico (how exciting to watch their country grow), and she lived past the Civil War. He died at 84. Another pair included Lena (age 82) and Charles (age 81) Schlining – their lives spanned the Civil War to World War II.
Forest Hill is a large cemetery. There's Ammon Cobb (1842-1925), his wife Eunice (died at 83), daughter Edith (1873-1957), and son Clifford, who died at 73, a year before Eisenhower's election to the Presidency. A quick walk through Forest Hill yields fistfuls of geriatric forebears, many of them married couples: Louisa and Henry Goodman (76 and 84); Winifred and Benjamin Martignoni (73 and 80); Mary and William Hannan (84 and 82); Edith and John Bourne (76 and 81). Get the picture? There are lots more, but the point will rest on this pair of Americans born just after the Constitutional Convention: Ann Chamberlin (age 79) and Joseph Thompson (age 84). Their portfolio includes the War of 1812, the War with Mexico, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. Their official cause of death is "old age." Pretty impressive for people born without modern medicine!
Are these merely exceptions? There are an awful lot of them. How did these people make it through typhoid and cholera epidemics, childbearing, smallpox and whooping cough, consumption, dropsy? How did they survive on presumably inferior diets?
Imagine what would happen if our forebears traded their lifestyle for ours. It's possible the tradeoff would result in net equality – neither gain nor loss. Yes, there was cholera; take a point away. For us, there are EMF's and exhaust pollution; take a point from us. Before refrigerators, food was hard to preserve, so take away a point. Our food is filled with chemicals and organ-ruining additives like corn syrup and aspartame, so we lose a point. Consumption; lung cancer. Risk of puerperal infection after childbirth: OK, we come out ahead there. Typhus infantum; we score another point against the past. Mesothelioma and radiation poisoning – there goes our advantage.
Here's the problem: we never eliminate deadly circumstances without creating new ones. Just watch any drug commercial for the list of "side effects … including death." Pretty much the only side effect of the 19th-century elixir was a drunken buzz. We buy our food packaged and processed, salted and pressed and modified. In the agrarian past, food was fresher, at least in villages like Fredonia with its numerous markets and general stores. Those who could – and there were many gardeners as well as farmers in this area – grew their food, harvested it, butchered it, dried, stored, and canned it.
All of this was hard work. Undoubtedly, we have more leisure time now. Or at least we did, until the recent invention of twenty-four-hour availability and multitasking. Isn't that just like us, to make life easier so we can make it harder?
It's likely the Cobbs and the Bournes and the other permanent residents of Marble City lived long because they managed to avoid putting toxins in their bodies and because the everyday business of laboring and cooking and farming and washing and running machines kept them fit. Now, we have to invent ways to move our bodies.
If we want to live as long as modern science claims, we need to become a community of fit people. It wouldn't hurt to take lessons from the past. We may not make it as far as Methuselah, but we can have a good run anyway.
Renee Gravelle is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to email@example.com


text:
Anybody going to the Charity Game Saturday at Browns' Stadium stop by the D1 Football Ultimate High School Football Tailgate Party in the west parking lot adjacent to the stadium. FREE food, drinks, giveaways, a DJ starting at noon and the D1 Football Roundtable. You never know who will show up at this event. A lot of big names last year all season long.
www.d1football.net for more scoop!
Week 2 at Newbury
week 3 VASJ vs Maple Hts @Euclid


text:
MAA Department Liaisons and MAA Sections
Click Here to be redireted to the Liaisons Program Page.
The MAA Department Liaisons Program is designed to facilitate two-way communication between the national MAA organization and its members. Originally, the program's goals included:
- providing timely information of professional interest to mathematics department;
- publicizing MAA programs, publications, and activities; and,
- increasing responsiveness of the MAA to member needs and interests.
As the program has developed, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of involvement of MAA Sections. This involvement has the potential both for service by, as well as benefit to, MAA Sections. In the first place, sections provide a natural stage for regional input to the national program. Information that is readily accessible to leaders in sections can be completely unknown outside the section.
At the same time, sections offer opportunities for interacting with the Liaisons on a much more personal and immediate level than what is possible from the national office. In the second place, section programs and activities have much to gain from the access to departments that Liaisons provide. From publicizing section meetings and workshops, to encouraging nominations for section awards; from gathering information for newsletters, to identifying candidates for section office, liaisons can be a tremendous asset to the success of MAA Section programs.
Diversity of MAA Sections is one of the great strengths of the MAA. The MAA Sections have rich traditions of their own, and a history of serving their regions in their own individual styles. Accordingly, it is to be expected that each Section will find its own best way to interact with the Liaisons Program. In the past two years, discussions of the Liaison program have been held at several section meetings, producing a wealth of good ideas for Section Liaison activities. A number of these are outlined below. We hope that these will be useful to Section officers who are developing their own ideas for working with Liaisons in their Sections.
The ideas to follow can be separated into three categories. First, there are things that the liaisons can do to contribute to the activities and programs of the section. Second, there are activities that can be organized by the section to contribute to the development of a vital and effective liaisons program within the section. Third, there are steps that can be taken by the section to contribute to the operation of the national program. In all of these areas, some sort of coordination within the section would be required. Some sections may choose to create a new officer to serve as a liaison coordinator. In other sections, this may become one of the duties of an existing officer.
Liaison Contributions to the Section
There are many ways that the section can make use of the liaisons network. Here is a list of possibilities:
- Provide distribution of information from the section to members within a department: newsletters, calls for papers for section meetings, information about meeting location and registration, etc.
- Obtain information for the section: formal or informal surveys on section activities, news items for the newsletter, participation rates among department members at section activities, etc.
- Encourage a department to nominate someone for section awards, such as the outstanding teaching award.
- Serve as a Liaison between the section organization and a student chapter if there is one. For example, the secretary of MD, VA, DC section made use of liaisons to get some information to the students at each school who made presentations at a section meeting.
- Provide a pool of nominees for other roles in the section, such as committee members and candidates for officers.
- Encourage departments to offer to host section meetings. Serve as a conduit for information on what is involved in hosting a section meeting. Facilitate communication between local organizers and program committee members.
- Serve as collection point for sectional dues. If a section wished to collect a voluntary dues supplement of a few dollars per person, the expense of doing the solicitation by mail from a central organization might easily consume a significant portion of any funds raised. However, if each departmental liaison collected the contributions of whoever wished to contribute, then forwarded that to the section treasurer or secretary, that would be essentially free of overhead. The same thing might be said for any kind of section fund raising effort.
- Welcome new faculty to the section, and make them aware of section activities.
Section Support for Liaisons
Here is a list of possible steps that a section can take to develop a vital liaisons program. We emphasize that these cover a wide variety of approaches. Not every section will want to do all of them, and indeed, some of these would not make much sense in combination. But we hope that these will provide some ideas that would be appropriate for your section.
- Appoint a coordinator for liaisons. Duties might include maintaining an up to date email mailing list for liaisons, controlling what messages are distributed to that list, calling meetings of liaisons, organizing activities for liaisons at section meetings, sending letters of welcome and appreciation, and generally facilitating whatever activities the section develops for liaisons. A liaison coordinator could be involved in most or all of the remaining suggestions.
- Create a standing committee on Liaisons in the section. Appoint the members from the liaisons network, involve them in the leadership of the section, have a report from the committee at the business meeting, and so on.
- Create an organization of all liaisons in the section. This organization could have its own officers, elected by the liaisons, could decide on activities and goals for each year, hold annual meetings, and so on. Examples of activities and goals might be to recruit liaisons at institutions without one, raise funds for a section project, increase membership in the MAA or attendance at section meetings, facilitate formation of student chapters, or any other worthwhile contribution to collegiate mathematics in the section. Such an organization would also be a natural pool from which to recruit candidates for section officers.
- Create a special newsletter for liaisons in the section.
- Host special activities for liaisons at section meetings, either as a working or a social session.
- Provide special perks for liaisons at the section level: reduced section meeting registration, priority registration for workshops, are examples.
- Recognize the accomplishments of the liaisons in the section in some way. Examples: asking all the liaisons to rise and be acknowledged at section meeting banquets or luncheons; mention in newsletters; identification of liaisons on meeting name badges (with stickers available from the national office or produced locally); letters of appreciation from the section to the liaison at the end of each year.
- If the section has a home page, provide information about and for liaisons in the section on that page.
Section Support for National Liaisons Program
We conclude with a few things that the sections can do to contribute to the national program.
- Make contact with institutions in the section without liaisons, and encourage them to appoint a liaison.
- Participate in gatherings of liaisons and section officers at national meetings. Share ideas developed in your section at these gatherings.
- Participate in the liaison reappointment process. Details of this kind of involvement have not been worked out, but there is definitely a need for local participation.