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forum: Food & Drink
#4661 Sun 17 May 09 9:16pm
- Forum champ
- From North Carolina
- Member since Thu 15 Jul 04
Re: Foodology
Dave, It sounds great!! I'll take a look soon and join!
#4662 Mon 18 May 09 2:31am
Dave Barker
- Forum champ Occupation Chef
- From At the stove...
- Member since Tue 29 Jun 04
Re: Foodology
Hi again guys,
23 members now... exciting stuff!
Today here has been a restaurant recommondation by our old mate Sabs...
A question about getting children to enjoy food...
An amazing filo pastry feta and spinach pie posted by our food friend Angela...
A brilliant picture of "little Ramsay"... A little chef in the making no doubt!
And my mrs Stella has posted one of her favorite recipies of smoked salmon linguini... and some pictures of my youngest 2 kids Leo and kya cooking it!!!
A good first day eh! lets hope it continues to grow into something realy helpfull and a source of real inspiration and food help!
All the best guys...
Dave x
#4663 Thu 21 May 09 2:55am
- Forum champ Occupation Duty Free Lancome and Fragrance sales
- From Greater Vancouver
- Member since Mon 23 Oct 06
Re: Foodology
shammrok wrote:
I invited all my J/O friends on facebook, so hopefully more people will join!
coming soon
#4664 Tue 29 Jun 10 12:20am
- Forum super champ Occupation Mother of 2 working more than full time
- From Wallerawang, Oz
- Member since Wed 29 Jun 05
Re: Foodology
wow I havent seen this thread for ages... Im so glad it is still here as a reference - there are many great recipes here.
#4665 Fri 02 Jul 10 7:53pm
- Member
- Member since Thu 01 Jul 10
Re: Foodology
Hi guys,
I want to ask, what is the good vegetables for combining fish and chicken breast???
#4666 Sat 03 Jul 10 7:16pm
- Forum champ
- Member since Mon 09 Aug 04
Re: Foodology
Hiya Frizz,
Yeah , the recipes here are so inspirational. Great reference.
Hi cookingfor,
Welcome to these fora. It's a great place with lovely people sharing their knowledge of food and life.
With your question do you mean a recipe that combines fish and chicken in one dish or as in two separate dishes?
Anyway, a great vegetable to combine with fish is fennel, if you like the anise taste.
For more inspiration, take a look at the recipes from JO himself.
The following website is a great source of information about foodpairing. Type an ingredient in the right box and the site generates different pairings.
Eg : grilled beef.
http://www.foodpairing.be/FoodPairable. … ef+grilled
Good luck.
Last edited by Sabs (Sat 03 Jul 10 7:52pm)
#4667 Wed 13 Oct 10 10:31pm
- Member
- Member since Wed 13 Oct 10
Re: Foodology
Hi Elizabeth,
You can make an excellent risotto by starting it and then finishing when your guests arrive. It should be the first thing you serve since it be eaten immediately!
Have you tried any of jamies risotto recipes? They are great. I made the cauliflower one with the pangrattato and it was a hit. If not you can try a good classic mushroom medley risotto.
In any case you make your risotto with already half of your broth incorporated and then set aside and when guests are about to arrive to put it back on the stove and finish off. Maybe about 10 minutes or even less. A risotto takes about 16 to 18 minutes total.
hope this helps
#4668 Thu 14 Oct 10 11:26am
- Forum champ Occupation Why is the Rum always gone???!
- From out to lunch
- Member since Sat 07 Jan 06
Re: Foodology
hi buonaforchetta, welcome to the forum.. Very nice advice.
this thread is about 6 yrs old , and Elizabeth's dinner party is long past , but there are many newer threads going where we would be happy if you joined in .
Only a fool argues with a skunk, a mule or a cook. { cowboy saying}
#4669 Thu 14 Oct 10 9:39pm
- Forum super champ Occupation Mother of 2 working more than full time
- From Wallerawang, Oz
- Member since Wed 29 Jun 05
Re: Foodology
Hey Ashen, have you ever tried to read this? It has an amazing archival type thing about it.. so many amazing recipes swapped in the time this thread was active... think you would find some of them interesting....
#4670 Thu 21 Apr 11 5:46pm
- Member
- From Texas
- Member since Thu 21 Apr 11
Re: Foodology
I have put up a lot of my tips and tricks on my food blog, along with recipes to keep your family healthy check it out, and let me know if there is anything you want to see me write about - I'm always open for suggestions.
Thanks everyone!


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[quote user="allentown PA"][quote user="bandwgn86"]
[quote user="bandwgn86"][quote user="allentown PA"][quote user="bandwgn86"]4 more days till Draft.. and GO JAYS GO[/quote] giants are going DT in the first imo...and the jays need to get Bautista some protection in that lineup..tired of seeing him get walked.[/quote]hopefully a nasty DT that kills baby kittens just for fun.. we need someone mean.. im sure Joey Bats uses protection.. at the very least he could afford to buy it himself..[/quote]wooohoooo i bet Shaun Rogers does this and probably doesnt hold doors for people either.. we got our nasty DT!!!

[/quote] I heard rogers doesnt wear a watch because he decides what time it is.[/quote]

what are we getting today?

not sure about rb in the first.. was it a panic move?

subset: commoncrawl


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Fried fish
Add another one to the list. The list, that is, of amped-up, angry jocks who have had ugly confrontations with cops and managed to escape Tasering incidents without having their hearts blow out of their chests.
This past week's contestant was Scott Olsen, the stone-headed starting pitcher for the Florida Marlins. Olsen was lucky he didn't get shot — as in shot with an actual pistol. Clocked at 48 in a 35 mph zone, Olsen refused to pull over for patrol cops, and instead drove all the way to his house, ignoring lights, sirens — even running a stop sign on the way home.
Once he got to his abode, Olsen got out of his car and ignored police orders to show his hands, keeping them behind his back. He then ignored commands to stop and get on the ground, and started walking toward the arresting cops. Eventually he walked past them and sat in a plastic chair near the front of his house. Note to Olsen: if you were Haitian and lived in the Bronx, they'd have already emptied four clips into your stupid ass.
When cops tried to arrest him, Olsen — who apparently is a total dickhead — reportedly resisted and started kicking at the police. The cops finally had enough and Tasered the drunken 6-5 hurler. When he was brought in, the pitcher was rung up on charges of driving under the influence, resisting an officer with violence, and fleeing and eluding a police officer.
Olsen has a history of getting into fights and appearing in the news the next day with black eyes or big knots on his head. Last year he got into a fight with reliever Randy Messenger and then later ended up getting heated with toad-like teammate Miggy Cabrera and deposed manager Joe Girardi, the latter of whom grabbed Olsen by the jersey during their "talk."
Oh, and this year? After pulling a Vernon Maxwell and flipping off a fan in June, Olsen got into it with fellow Marlins pitcher Sergio Mitre during a game on July 15, resulting in a two-game suspension by his own team. He allegedly was abusing the clubhouse manager when Mitre reprimanded him for being a boorish jackass.
These days, almost every time you read about a famous athlete getting Tasered, it turns out that some other, decidedly less-celebrated sucker in some other part of the country has been killed by a Taser that very week. This time, there were two to accompany Olsen.
First, 27-year-old Carlos Rodriguez was killed after a pair of sheriff's deputies in Norcross, Georgia, subdued him in an arrest. (It was the third time that someone had died by Taser in that county since 2003.)
Further west, in a much weirder case, police in Phoenix Tasered one 49-year-old Ronald Marquez after he was caught performing an amateur exorcism on his three-year-old granddaughter. Police burst into Marquez's home and caught him holding the girl in a headlock while her mother was standing nearby, naked, covered in blood, and carrying a "religious icon." Police naturally and logically ended up Tasering Marquez, though sometime after handcuffing him they were puzzled to discover that he was not breathing. Marquez later died in the hospital.
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The familiar little bottle with the diamond label is sold in over 180 countries and territories worldwide.
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An international showcase and cuisine provided a sampling of cultural heritage from around the world during Hope College's "IMAGES: A Reflection of Cultures."
Held on Saturday, Nov. 17, "Images" began with a dinner featuring cuisine from Vietnam, Northern Italy, Japan, Ethiopia, Southern India, Mexico and more.
An international showcase featured an array of poetry, skits, dance, song and other clips of culture through languages and fashions. More than 60 students from several countries participated.
"IMAGES: A Reflection of Cultures" is sponsored annually by the Hope College Office of International Education.


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Town Square
Stimulus 101--A Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Original post made by stephen levy, University South, on Jan 31, 2010
Sometimes our economy hits a downturn. There is not enough spending to keep everyone employed. Production drops and unemployment rises as workers are laid off. Recessions can start as a result of an energy price shock as in 1974 or policies by the Federal Reserve Bank to raise interest rates to fight inflation as in the early 1980s or from a sharp slowdown in investment spending as in 2001 after the dot.com bust and the Y2K buildup..
The current recession started with a downturn in housing and quickly spread to the financial sector as lenders held loans that were facing default. The resulting financial market paralysis, stock market and housing price declines left consumers with high debt and losses on their homes and retirement portfolios. Consumer spending fell on top of the sharp drop in construction and the recession accelerated. Most businesses faced a loss of customers and had no reason to expand production or hiring. In fact businesses responded to the decline in sales with layoffs as they had fewer customers to serve.
It is the federal government's role to lead the fight to end recessions and help the economy grow. This is written in law, has been a widely accepted role for government and has been broadly supported in all previous recessions.
Federal policy has lots of tools to fight recessions. These tools fall into two broad categories—1) incentives for consumers and businesses to spend more and 2) direct additions to spending by governments. Another way to categorize anti-recession policies is that some are monetary policies dealing with interest rates and lending and some are fiscal policies dealing with tax rates and government spending.
The two most widely used policies historically have been interest rate cuts, tax cuts and increases in safety net spending, for example, for extended unemployment insurance benefits and food stamps... In this recession these policies have been used but in addition Americans are experiencing and now debating several other policy approaches that have been adopted.
In the current recession the Federal Reserve Bank has reduced short-term interest rates, the traditional policy, but in addition has extended large credit guarantees and become a major lender for housing. The most hotly discussed policy, though not the largest, was the TARP program to provide funding to banks, car companies and AIG in order to prevent further financial system collapse. Congress has approved two small general tax cuts in 2008 and 2009), the traditional policy, but, in addition, adopted specific tax cuts targeted at home and car purchases.
Congress boosted direct spending for extension of safety net programs such as unemployment insurance and food stamps, the traditional policy, as part of the $787 stimulus program adopted in February 2009. But in addition, the stimulus plan included support for state and local governments to minimize layoffs and service cuts and investments in construction projects and the beginning of long-term investments in energy, education and health care.
Although the $787 billion plan is called the "stimulus" plan, in fact all of these efforts are part of federal government policies to stimulate spending and economic growth.
Stimulus efforts are "a bridge over troubled waters" designed to support spending in the economy until private investors and consumers regain confidence and resources to increase spending that results in workers being hired and unemployment being reduced.
Good stimulus efforts, i.e. the sturdiest bridges over troubled waters meet three criteria. They are temporary, timely and targeted.
Stimulus programs should be temporary because they all contain long-term problems if they go too long. Too much monetary policy ease can lead to high inflation down the road. And too much deficit spending can create a high debt burden for future generations and damage America's credit rating.
The temporary tax cut and spending increases in the current stimulus efforts will increase the short-term federal deficit. That is actually the point—to borrow from the future to put extra money into the economy now while the private sector regains confidence. Stimulus efforts are designed to temporarily make up for the shortfall in spending that is leaving workers unemployed.
The problem is not the temporary deficit to jump start the economy but whether we have the will to reduce the deficit in the future when the recession is over.
The test for when to end stimulus efforts is when you think the private sector is strong enough to support sustained job growth, i.e., when we no longer need a bridge over troubled waters. I will write about this in the next blog. But there is a conflict—stopping too soon leaves the economy subject to high unemployment; stopping too late risks inflation and high debt levels.
The current stimulus efforts can be criticized for not being sufficiently timely or targeted. Both parties fudged the criteria in the current stimulus plan by including funding to eliminate the alternative minimum tax for 2009 and including funding for what are really long-term investment projects. As a result the infrastructure monies have taken very long to get into the economy in some cases.
CNN is running a series on uses of the $787 billion stimulus package. Some uses seem silly to viewers and raise legitimate questions. It is good to remember that local projects are chosen locally and submitted for funding. Doing better would involve more, not less, federal control.
While there is partisan debate about the stimulus (is there anything now that does not spark hot and partisan debate?), the evidence as to where we get the biggest bang for the buck is quite consistent whether you listen to the economist who advised John McCain or to the administration's economists.
The biggest bang for the buck comes from unemployment insurance and food stamps, followed by funding for infrastructure investment and state and local government followed by temporary payroll tax cuts.
We are still treading troubled economic waters. The calls for tough long-term budget discipline make sense. But the dangers of high unemployment remain serious. The next blogs will discuss whether the stimulus plans have worked, whether we need more stimulus and where this all fits into the debate we are having about the size and role of government.
Comments (23)
a resident of Palo Alto
on Feb 1, 2010 at 10:46 am
Paul Losch is a registered user.
Thanks for the article. There are two areas that I suggest you address in future commentary.
The first is permanent structural changes in the US economy, and the impact it has on jobs and a multitude of other aspects of how things will work going forward. Fiscal and monetary policy have their impacts, but if we are not investing in the right business and employment models, we are swimming against the tides of China, India, inter alia.
The second is the dilemma faced at the state and local government level. Even if the federal government is acting appropriately and responsibly going forward (which itself can be a subject of debate), there is, in my opinion, a national, highly distributed, financial crisis amongst city, county and state governments. This crisis is very intractable, and has impact on fundamentals such as roads, schools, and other key "infrastructure" components that are critical to enabling a healthy economy.
a resident of Palo Verde
on Feb 1, 2010 at 7:27 pm
What percentage of the federal budget is interest on the debt? Is is growing or shrinking? What effect will this have on the future well being of this country?
Most of these issues get resolved through inflation, because the politics does not suffer through program cuts. Is this a good time to buy real estate, and other hard assets, as an inflation hedge?
a resident of University South
on Feb 2, 2010 at 6:04 am
stephen levy is a registered user.
Thanks Paul and Kerry. I will have time to respond in a day or two.
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Feb 2, 2010 at 6:04 am
Bottom line: Look at history and what has worked and what has failed in the past.
Start with FDRs admin and what he learned to do by his second term.
Move forward to JFK and what he did to get us going.
Move forward to Reagan and what he did...and keep moving forward..when does our economy improve and how did it?
Ethereal discussions mean nothing without supportive, historical, real-life, human grounded data.
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Feb 2, 2010 at 6:30 am
For example...want to stim an economy? Stop punishing those who produce. Historically..every time taxes rise, the economy sinks more, the tax revenue shrinks.
Remember the promise "tax breaks for 95% of the people" Well...only 56% of us pay any taxes anyway, and it looks like most of us who actually pay any taxes at all are going to start paying MORE taxes now...with Obama's plan to sunset a lot of the tax cuts he/Dems liked to state were "for the rich"..( now defined as Middle Class)
See below
Web Link
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Feb 3, 2010 at 6:01 am
Largest Fed Payroll..ever
Web Link
Who, exactly, is going to pay for all these non-producing govt jobs, the largest increase in govt jobs since Carter, and the largest number ever..?
It is as if there is a systemic belief that we can grow the money on trees. I guess we are, since we are printing on paper non-stop, such that we have doubled the money supply in just 18 months..( How does inflation, massive, start??)
It would be interesting to add together ALL govt employees, city, state AND fed, and see what percent of our workforce is now tax paid by producers. Obviously, some "non-GDP producers" are necessary to a functioning society, those in service to our health and teachers, for example, road builders etc. But...
Carry it to its logical conclusion..if EVERYONE is a "govt employee", who is left to produce enough to pay them?
Answer: Nobody. It is all borrowed from others or future generations by then.
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Feb 3, 2010 at 6:44 am
Very scary, I just tried to re-access the story about Back Door tax increases on the middle class, and noticed that Reuters "pulled" the story about backdoor tax increases on the middle class due to "error in facts"..
Very, very scary....who pulled it and why, given that there wasn't one single error in that story?
The only reason they pulled it is here...
Web Link
It is entirely based on the Obama Admin's "word" that, no..they won't sunset the tax cuts for under $250,000/year...
Ummmm...ok.....so this is ridiculous. A bunch of tax cuts are scheduled to sunset this year, and Reuters can't allow a report on the upcoming sunsets? We have to just believe the Dear Leader that "he" won't let this happen?
Don't trust Reuters. If ever you needed proof of propoganda machine, this is it. Imagine if this were the story under Bush, and Reuters just "believed" that Bush wasn't going to raise taxes on everyone after all, cuz he said so.
a resident of Palo Verde
on Feb 3, 2010 at 10:24 pm
"Crucially, projections of the overall debt-to-GDP ratio for the US are seen rising from 53 per cent in 2009 to 73 per cent in 2015 and 77 per cent by 2020.
Moody's, however, says this understates the overall US debt level.
"Using the general government measure, including state and local governments as well as the federal government, which is used internationally, this ratio would be well over 100 per cent in 2020.""
Web Link
I find this to be remarkable. Am I just lacking in sophisticated economic thinking? Moody's seems to think it is important, becasue it is signaling that it will downgrade U.S. soverign credit rating. This sounds, to me, like hyperinflation is around the corner along with depressed economic growth, aka stagflation. We had this in the late 70's.
a resident of Meadow Park
on Feb 5, 2010 at 6:12 am
Web Link
Above is total job loss by CNN money in 2008
This is total job loss..period..since beginning of 2008. Made a big deal about "worst job loss since WW2". Who was in office?
Web Link
Above is total job losses since same period, for a total of 8.4 million job losses.
Ok..let's do the math.
2.6 million in 2008...8.4 million in 2009...8.4-2.6 is..about 6 million lost jobs in 2009.
Where is the critical journalism? Where is the thinking reporter who mentions that this number would be even higher in 2009 by hundreds of thousands of jobs had it not been for the massive increase in FEDERAL govt employees ( on our children's tax dollars, borrowed from other countries).
Normally this unemployment number should refer to lost PRIVATE SECTOR jobs in real economics. Otherwise one could say that everyone is employed in..say..Cuba..where all are on "govt" jobs.
Put that information into your cooker and let it steam a while. Add in all the state, county and govt workers ( anyone have the total number of State, County and City govt employees in our nation?).
So, why does CNN money make a HUGE deal out of 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008, but nowhere..and I mean nowhere..can I find anything about total private sector jobs lost ( almost 6 million) in 2009?
Do not trust the media. Think for yourself. Do your own math.
a resident of Meadow Park
on Feb 5, 2010 at 6:28 am
Web Link
Out of curiosity, I looked up total CA State Employees ( which actually isn't a "total" as the rest of us would think of it, but is their definition of "total". This doesn't include CHP nor National Guard.
And the number was 237,000 employees. Does anyone have the time to add up all the Country employees? ( On the same link).
Local city govts would be interesting also, but who has time for that?
Bottom line..by the time we are done, what are we betting in total number of tax paid employees in California alone? .5 million?
Multiplied by how much across all the states? Do you suppose we have perhaps another 5 million in State tax-paid employees?
Let's see a comparable sized in population State,when any of us have time..
a resident of Meadow Park
on Feb 6, 2010 at 5:32 am
What's up Palo Alto? You have no reaction to having 6 million lost jobs in 2009? 2.6 in 2008? Biggest growth in 2009 in Fed Govt spending ever? Biggest growth in Fed Govt employees in 2009 ever?
No interest in examining WHY and how to turn the tide back to prosperity?
Do you agree with Mr. Levy's posit..more "stimulus funding" with our children's taxes to pay back the borrowed money we are printing at 42cents/dollar borrowed rate is a good idea?
Or do you think there is a better way? Do you agree that this was a "bridge over troubled waters" idea, with the first Stimulus in Spring of 2008, and then again the second in Feb of 2009?
ONE TRILLION dollars borrowed so far from our kids and massive takeovers and threats to take over private industries..do you think it hurt or helped, as we continue to lose jobs monthly?
Should we borrow more, from our grandkids now? And give more private sector power to our tax paid employees? Or should we change course?
How many more jobs lost before we wake up?
a resident of Barron Park
on Feb 6, 2010 at 12:38 pm
6 million,
History shows that the only way to get the economy moving when demand dries up is through stimulus spending. It is unfortunate that we have to go into debt to save the economy, but we have republican deregulation going back to reagan to thank for this. Of course, it makes matters worse that Bush ran up the deficit while the economy was still growing.
Sadly, we do need more stimulus.
No one is happy about the number of jobs lost. What is your point? It is, unfortunately, time to pay the deregulation piper.
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Feb 6, 2010 at 3:06 pm
GHU...you are being sarcastic, right? When you say that borrowing money for welfare work gets the economy moving as shown through history..right?
If you are, it is going to go over the heads of a lot of folks.
If you aren't, then please cite a country or State in the last 100 years which has come out of a recession or depression by taking from its people born and unborn. I would love to have some hope that everyone since Keynes was disproved are actually the wrong ones, and that Keynes is being vindicated.
Keynes being the father of "Keynsian Economics" which you are talking about..and whose "multiplier factor" , though well meant, was disproven in the first time it was tried in the USA in the early 30s..and the second time in the 70s...and again in the early 90s...and now.
Work Projects, like the gorgeous little "Folly" at the Reservoir up by 280/92 are pretty, and better than people sitting at home listening to the radio, so that they are at least salvaging some pride by doing work for their welfare check ( the current equivalent of the "stimulus spending" programs. But they drain money from the producers of goods and services that others want to actually buy and trade for...thus drain the economy, not stimulate it.
When private individuals band together for a huge profit motive, and build a car, for example, that everyone wants to buy, it is called "producing". When some bureacrat takes money from your pocket to build a car that few can buy, or a road that few will use, let alone want, it is called "stimulus spending", and adds nothing to the economy. It is just called "distributing the wealth" and has led to economic failure every time it has been tried so far.
I hope this time we are doing it "right" so it doesn't fail...but thus far I can only see that it would have been better to not scare the *&^% out of monied people through takeovers of businesses, govt back up of contract-dissolutions, and constant denigration of anyone who works hard, bets their lives on a business, and then wins big... so that they dried up their businesses and investments and are riding this political tide out.
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Feb 7, 2010 at 6:41 am
Wait a sec....I just learned we lost 20,000 jobs in January.I thought our unemployment number "dropped" a whole .3% from 10% to 9.7%
Somebody explain this snow job math to me ..how can we lose jobs but gain employment?
Something is really, really wrong here, even beyond my initial post.
This whole journalism snow job stuff is getting beyond scary.
a resident of Barron Park
on Feb 7, 2010 at 7:22 am
Do you read economics? Look back to the 30s etc. and read up a little. Almost all economists now agree that Keynes has been vindicated.
The problem with your theory is that the the "producers of goods and services that others want to actually buy" cannot sell their services because people aren't buying. Either they've lost their jobs or are afraid they will. Haven't you been reading the news?
The major problem with the stimulus so far is that it was too small.
From your post, it seems that your big beef is giving money/jobs to the "non-producers" and the "non-monied people"--by which I take you to mean people who have lost a job or are poor, rather than with the economics of the stimulus. I suggest you get over it.
a resident of Palo Alto
on Feb 8, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Paul Losch is a registered user.
I don't want to get into abstract polemics around the economy. I am capable of doing so, but here is the bottom line as I see it as a small business owner:
Tax credits are not what is needed to support small business owners.
President W extolled the virtues of small businesses, and President O is doing the same. All well and good. And BS.
Sales, revenue, more income is what is needed. I don't expect the Federal Government to provide that to my company or other small businesses. That is my job and the people who work for me to do.
But tax credits to hire more people? No. Sales are what a small business bases its hiring decisions, not goofy stuff like this.
a resident of Palo Verde
on Feb 8, 2010 at 5:24 pm
I am not a big believer in the theory that we are condemned to repeat history that we ignore. However, there are certain trends in human behavior that seem to be reasonably constant. Self preservation and personal greed come to mind....
I happen to believe that the Great Depression was ended by WWII, not Keynesian economics. Remember the depresion within the Depression in 1938? Remember Morgenthau demanding that too much debt was being incurred? However, there was a hope that created by FDR. The question for me is what would have happened if WWII had not occurred?
Our current situation is not, necessarily, dependent on the model of the 1930s. However, large debt obligations tend be a dicey thing, and they are usually dealt with through economic growth and inflation. If various yield curves go in the wrong direction, we can end up with no economic growth and inflation. This is called stagflation. I am currently worried about stagflation.
a resident of Mountain View
on Feb 9, 2010 at 5:20 am
"...I hope this time we are doing it "right" so it doesn't fail...but thus far I can only see that it would have been better to not scare the *&^% out of monied people through takeovers of businesses,
What takeovers? GM? Putting money into banks, etc? Most people think that the big banks should have been given an FDIC-style takeover and selloff and it needed to be done first. The too big to fail problem has now been replaced with a too big to rescue problem and big banks are now really speculators backed by the taxpayers. Most people understand that Capitalism has been broken and needs to be reset on its way. I understand that to a Libertarian a bank is a temple. But if one mutates into a hedge fund, what is it then?
AFAIK, when the true-believer Communists took over China in 1949 they didn't fan out to all the businesses and close them. They just went around to the banks and closed them. RIP business. The 2001-2009 administration in Washington in many cases with Democratic votes set the stage for Wall Street to do the inevitable. That, and then recently setting them upright without further intervention was like the turtle giving the scorpion a ride across the river. They turned into hedge funds, not banks and with no supervision banks still don't trust one another enough to do normal banking. RIP business, wasting much of the stimulus which can't be done over again.
" govt back up of contract-dissolutions,"
?? is this people walking away from mortgages or declaring bankruptcy? There was a news story recently about Tishman, a huge company walking away from billions in a mortgage that was underwater. Normal business. "Moral risk" and morality in business conduct are always top-down, not bottom up. Trickle down economics is a failure, but trickle down morality isn't.
"and constant denigration of anyone who works hard, bets their lives on a business, and then wins big..."
This would sound like vanity and rationalization, but instead it probably comes from a Main Street person who mistakenly identifies with corporations that lobby for their environment in Washington. Main Street and Wall Street at this time are separated in concerns and interest more than I can remember at any time. Main Street is Capitalism and markets and where jobs come from. Main Street is not where a manager can bet other people's billions, fail, and walk off with $100 million in severance.
"so that they dried up their businesses and investments and are riding this political tide out."
The Atlas Shrugged scenario? Who cares. Entrepreneurs from around the world are here in California and will cheerfully replace a would be Atlas. One problem we have is that corporations have bought an environment here where they have an effective subsidy to eliminate engineering as a US core competence. In a decade or so science may follow. China's dollar set and peg makes making most things nearly impossible with at least a 10 to 1 cost difference and shut down development in Mexico giving us many new neighbors (we would do the same).
US politicians have a hard time acknowledging that China's economic war has simply beaten them. The last administration used the low prices to lull the voters and the deficit dollars to borrow back invisibly to fund wars, an oddly bloated government, and an economic program of writing checks for the few and turning our country into a Ponzi scheme. The President then must have thought Sun Tzu was a dessert and The Three Kingdoms a Disney theme park.
a resident of Leland Manor/Garland Drive
on Feb 11, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Interesting thing I JUST learned this morning. 1920 had about a 25% drop in GDP..went to ..umm..I think it was 13% unemployment..home values dropped 50%..
Never heard of it? Me neither. I guess it is because the response was to halve the government spending and cut taxes on all...which brought about the "Roaring 20s" and 1.8% unemployment..yes. that is correct. I wrote 1.8% unemployment..all within a couple years.
Hmm....Why has this massive depression not been ever talked about in our history books?
Answer: Who writes the history books? What are the poitics of most historians/academicians?
a resident of Leland Manor/Garland Drive
on Feb 13, 2010 at 5:41 am
Here is a link to some data about the 1920 Depression that nobody has heard about...history teaches, start learning.
a resident of Leland Manor/Garland Drive
on Feb 13, 2010 at 5:49 am
Web Link
Sorry..THIS is the link..forgot to place it.
a resident of Greenmeadow
on Jul 18, 2010 at 6:31 am
So, how's that bridge holding up? Did it reach the other side yet? Is there ANY good news anywhere to support the bridge?
If tax credits are not good for people and businesses, as posited a few posts up, then shouldn't we just tax everything every one earns above "enough" ( as defined by our POTUS) and distribute it and give it to people who don't earn "enough"? I am sure that everyone will keep working hard to support those who don't.
Somehow that bridge is just not working. I don't think it is because
1) we without PhDs in economics are too stupid to understand "abstract polemics around the economy"
2) we didn't do enough borrowing for more "stimulus" from China for our great-grandkids to pay back
3) didn't disincentive (scare) enough risk-taking hard workers
4) didn't disincentive enough investors
So, now what? Stick with the trickle up poverty model which rewards greedy government and greedy unproducers who want what the producers have earned, , or go back to that trickle down wealth model, which rewards hard work and risk taking...and get bureaucrats in government the heck out of our way, so we can get our economy back?
When we reward hard work and risk taking, we get more of it..which creates jobs. No fancy polemics needed, just good sense. The more we tell millions of hard workers how to spend their money ( regulate their businesses and lives), the more we interfere with the great results from a democracy of the wallet. The more we steal ( tax) from hard workers, the less they work for us to take the next year...simple economics.
At some point we have to stop trying to be "smarter" than our founders. They were brilliant people, setting up, for the first time in history, a government system that has, thus far, lasted longer than any other attempt to do so. Sticking to their philosophical underpinnings, gleaned from their experiences under tyranny and watching France et al struggle with theirs, would be best for us. I don't care how many PhDs/JDs there are in our nation or elsewhere, nobody comes close to topping the incredible beauty of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Let's go back to them. Anything else fails, every time.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."
Thomas Jefferson
a resident of Meadow Park
on Jul 20, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Much better said here
Web Link
than what I said above.
Quote from this Spectator opinion piece on the "political ruling class"..this refers to both Repubs AND Dems who ignored the will of the people even 2 years ago when we were screaming out in vast majorities in all polls..DON'T SPEND 700 BILLION on rescuing AIG etc!!
Today, few speak well of the ruling class. Not only has it burgeoned in size and pretense, but it also has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people. Americans' conviction that the ruling class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified. The polls tell us that only about a fifth of Americans trust the government to do the right thing. The rest expect that it will do more harm than good and are no longer afraid to say so.
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One more week to vote!
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New twist in Redmond girl's fight with leukemia
Avrey Walker's hope: Disabled HIV virus
REDMOND, Ore. - Nine-year-old Avrey Walker of Redmond has been battling leukemia for five years now. She and her family recently found out that she's relapsed once again, but they're about to try a brand new treatment that gives new hope to her many supporters.
In many ways, Avery is just your average fourth-grader. She likes hanging out with friends, going on trips and teaching her dog new tricks.
"I want to be a vet," Avrey said Friday. "I love animals, and I love my dog Lola."
Many people would not know it by looking at her today, but Avrey's been fighting a tough battle for most of her life.
"I missed last week, and my class has just been sending me notes, and they're like, 'Get well soon,'" said Avrey.
She was first diagnosed with leukemia in 2007. And now it's back.
"The first time it came back was devastating, the second time is even more so," said Avrey's mom, Christal. "But you know, you fight, and you fight hard. It's hard. It's really hard."
Avrey will undergo an experimental treatment in Philadelphia, where doctors will use a disabled HIV virus to attack her leukemia cells. Only four other children have tried it, and now they're in remission.
"We hope after these five years of chemo, we've gotten to this place where there is this new technology that's going to cure our little girl," said Avrey's dad, Aaron. "We're still here, and we're still fighting. That's our only option."
Pop star Justin Bieber even reached out to Avrey with a special video message a couple years ago. And the feeling is still mutual: When asked what Avrey thinks of Bieber, she replied, "I love him."
Since Avery's fight started, not only have celebrities been behind her, but the whole Redmond community.
"We live in a small town, and everyone rallies around you, and it makes you feel wealthy and it makes you feel great," Aaron said. "You look behind you, and you see everybody standing there, waiting to help you."
Because the experimental treatment is so new, Avrey's procedure will not be covered by the family's insurance.
A bingo night and silent auction will be held in Avrey's honor at Cascade Lakes Brewing Co. in Redmond on Thursday, Feb. 7 at 5 p.m. People can also donate to Avery and Aaron's bank account at Wells Fargo.


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Toe-Tappin' Tuesdays - Dixieland Jazz with the Gotham Jazzmen
February 26, 2013
The Gotham Jazzmen provide your weekly dose of Dixieland favorites. Please enter by 111 Amsterdam Avenue. Doors open at 11:45 a.m. just for the show. Plaza entrance opens at 12:00 p.m.
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Jon D. Miller
UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. xiv + 209 pp. Basic Books, 2009. $24.
I enjoyed Chris Mooney's 2005 book, The Republican War on Science, and have quoted it often in my own work on the public understanding of science and technology. I've also met Mooney and have heard him speak. When I learned this summer that he had coauthored a book with Sheril Kirshenbaum on a problem I've long been concerned with—scientific illiteracy—I was eager to read it. I wanted to like Unscientific America, but after reading it carefully twice (there are only 132 pages of text), I'm afraid I have to report that it is, at best, a thin and unsatisfying broth.
The problem of scientific illiteracy in major industrial societies is complex, and few countries have developed an adequate response to the fundamental difficulties it poses for democratic governance. A growing volume of literature addresses the roots of this problem and some of the potential solutions. But rather than engaging in the serious discussion already under way, Mooney and Kirshenbaum offer a media-centric diagnosis of the problem, and they ultimately fail to present any feasible set of suggestions for addressing it.
The first chapter is indicative of the level of analysis found throughout the book. "Why Pluto Matters" opens with a description of some of the journalistic chatter about whether or not Pluto should be classified as a planet. Mooney and Kirshenbaum cite the "furor over Pluto" as a "particularly colorful example of the rift today between the world of science and the rest of society." They note the formation of a Facebook page protesting Pluto's "demotion" and the creation of Pluto Planet Day by the New Mexico House of Representatives. Then, after quoting a couple of jokes from Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert, the authors ask, "Didn't the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry?" At this point, I began to worry that we were not thinking about the same problem. I've been doing national surveys of American attitudes about science and technology for 30 years, and I can't recall a single respondent ever mentioning the classification of Pluto as an issue of concern. The basic problem is that Mooney and Kirshenbaum's understanding of the public's attitudes is based substantially on what they read and hear in the media.
In Mooney and Kirshenbaum's view, a "scientific America" would be one in which citizens were aware of "the importance of science to politics, policy, and our collective future," not one in which citizens read and learn from high-quality lay materials such as the New York Times or a report from the National Research Council. Although the authors bemoan the lack of understanding of biology that leads some adults to reject biological evolution, they dismiss the idea that adults need to understand basic constructs such as a molecule or DNA; they seem to lean instead toward some version of science appreciation. "The lack of scientific knowledge probably isn't our main problem," they argue, and they don't see improvements to our educational system as the main solution. Rather, we need to remake our culture, say Mooney and Kirshenbaum, and this will involve having scientists collaborate with journalists, screenwriters, politicians and religious leaders.
Mooney and Kirshenbaum loosely embrace the "deficit model" critique—a view advanced by Brian Wynne and some of his British colleagues that all knowledge is socially constructed, including scientific knowledge, and that all socially constructed knowledge is inherently political. Wynne's solution is to always trust the socialist; Mooney and Kirshenbaum's solution is to always trust the science journalist. Neither Wynne and his colleagues nor Mooney and Kirshenbaum envision trusting the public to make sense of basic scientific ideas.
In chapter 3, the authors take a detour into the history of the problem and, in doing so, display a shockingly shallow understanding of it. Their opening declaration, "The modern history of American science begins with World War II," is a good journalistic sentence—short and punchy—but wrong. Mooney and Kirshenbaum note that Vannevar Bush was asked by President Franklin Roosevelt to study how science could serve the nation in peacetime, and they observe that the vision Bush outlined "largely came to pass." But the book makes no mention of Vannevar Bush's lasting contribution, which was the organization of scientific talent and resources into functioning national laboratories that survived the war years and the early development of grant mechanisms to provide resources to scientists in universities without the heavy hand of governmental bureaucracy. He didn't envision the science; he created the organizations that supported the science. The authors go on to dispense with the effect of the Soviet launch of Sputnik in less than two pages.
Chapter 4 provides a short, but useful, introduction to the Science Wars of the 1990s—the postmodernist attack on science and the counterattack by scientists on the poststructuralism of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and others. The postmodernists argued that the vaunted "objectivity" of science amounted to no more than a set of socially constructed assertions about reality. Mooney and Kirshenbaum appear not to recognize that the dismissal of scientific literacy as a "deficit model" is no more than an extension of the postmodernist argument.
Most of the remainder of the book is about the media. Chapter 5 is devoted primarily to the story of the unsuccessful attempt by a small group of science journalists to force a debate on science by the two major party presidential candidates in 2008. Chapter 6 discusses the shrinking number of jobs in science journalism, and chapter 7 is about the treatment of science in motion pictures.
Chapter 9 assesses the blogosphere's potential as a source of science communication today and in the future. (Mooney and Kirshenbaum have a blog on the Discover magazine site.) Although they offer some interesting anecdotes, the authors don't come to grips with the impact of the information revolution on the economic viability of traditional media. It is clear that they yearn both for more science writing jobs and for the advantages of the Internet, but they never suggest any economic model to get there. In the end, Mooney and Kirshenbaum recommend foundation support for the creation of "science ambassadors," who would be drawn from the ranks of those with recent graduate degrees in science and currently unemployed science writers. This is a band-aid solution for a systemic problem.
The issue of what constitutes scientific literacy is relevant here. If the media are to be the means by which citizens sustain and expand their understanding of science after formal schooling, then adults need to be able to read science at the level of the Tuesday New York Times Science Times section. For that reason, if for no other, we have to rebuild our educational system to produce high school and college graduates who understand the structure of matter and the nature of life at a conceptual level. This basic level of understanding will not come from a YouTube video or a blog. It will require students and parents to take education seriously and to actually work to acquire the survival skills necessary for the 21st century, which include reading, science and mathematics at a minimum, and history, economics and a few basic social and political constructs ideally. It was C. P. Snow who argued that an educated person should know both the second law of thermodynamics and the works of Shakespeare. This translates into studying science as well as the humanities and the social sciences at the university level.
To attain this kind of understanding, a strong and dynamic relationship between formal and informal learning throughout life is required. Mooney and Kirshenbaum note that in the 1980s Gerald Piel (then the publisher of Scientific American) said that "the task of crusading for the popularizing of science to large audiences has to await better education in our schools." The authors characterize this remark as defeatism; they appear to believe that the media can do the job without schools. Many thoughtful reports, including the National Research Council's Learning Science in Informal Environments (2009), point to the inherent linkage between formal learning and the ability of adults to find and make sense of scientific information throughout life. But Mooney and Kirshenbaum dismiss precollege science as "textbook science," and they completely ignore the substantial impact of college science courses on the development of adult scientific literacy in the United States.
The authors deserve credit for highlighting the issue of scientific illiteracy. However, readers in search of serious discussion of the problem will find little to nourish them in this light and journalistic treatment.
Jon D. Miller is John A. Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies and Director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
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to know her is to love her. if you are lucky to be in her presence you should count yourself as one of the blessed. she has an outgoing personality that draws others to her, when she smiles everyone around her smiles. she has a very big heart, and is known to be a real and true friend. she has a uniqueness about her that people are always intrigued by. Not only is she independent, but she is a real lover to the one she becomes committed to. kytra is known to be a honest person, who is always able to speak her mind. kytra has amazing writing skills, and amazes people with her many talents and skills.
by kittybangbang November 08, 2011


text: Betterbee and SABA are excited to host a microscopy seminar on Saturday October 26th from 9:00 AM until noon at Betterbee. Our speaker will be Dr Christina Wahl, anatomy professor at Wells College. Dr Wahl is an experienced beekeeper and actively involved with the New York Bee Wellness Program. Topics will include dissection of bees to determine whether there is infection with tracheal mites and Nosema. This is a hands on workshop and participants will learn to dissect bees themselves and check the samples using the microscope for tracheal mites and nosema levels. Cost is $10.00 with proceeds going to the NY Bell Wellness program. Class size is limited to 24 so sign up now at http://www.betterbee.com/Products/Cl...oscopy-seminar


text: Have you ever had one of those days! I've just got through 13 of the 15 photos and.... bang, I press a wrong button and the whole messgae has gone!!!! (35mins of uploads/notes wasted!) I'll start again! Read Grizz's analysis - it is fanatastic. Then perhaps work the photos in from there. My notes: 1 MB3 was outstanding today. Bill has stated that he is the most complete back at this stage. You could see why. 2 Drew Bledsoe moved the offense, but it wasn't the most inspiring display. 3 Tony Romo did well in his series. He led the team to score a couple of times. 4 Drew Henson was a major shock for me. He looked poised in the pocket, was on the money with most of his passes and he looked in general as though he was in command of his players. His stats were excellent too. I had already written him off - having watched every session thus far along with the 3 sessions last summer. 5 The chemistry was still there between Bledsoe and last year's primary recieving threats TG and JW. 6 Sam Hurd had 2 dazzling catches. At least one of them was over Nate Jones. 7 The 1st team offensive line did acceptably considering we are only 1 week into TC. They opened a few holes and kept Bledsoe safe for a suffcient amount of time- but obviously improvements have to be made! (This despite my next comment...) 8 Drew Bledsoe was sacked a number of times. He does still seem to hang on to the ball too long, but only the coaches will know for sure whether they were coverage sacks or his responsibility. 9 Carpenter looked fluid during his plays. He made 2 sacks, but generally looked as though he is NFL ready. 10 Burnett also impressed me with his play. I'm glad to see that he appears to be the player we thought we were drafting last year. He can be a destructive force and seemed to be around the ball frequently. 11 Canty caught the eye - particularly on the 1st series. 12 John Saldi surprised me. He hadn't shown much during TC, but I was impressed with the way he hussled for his sack, then launched himself at 90 degrees to ensure he got it. 13 I know the session was supposed to be without major contact, but there were 2 massive hits. The one from 'Killer', but another when T newman really laid the wood on Terrance Copper, forcing the ball loose. For a more complete analysis - I really do recommend you read Grizz's analysis, it's a remarkable read. A few photos: Canty about to sack Bledsoe - the 2nd play of the day Crayton couldn't make a one handed catch as Ware busted up Petitti but didn't get the sack in time. Newman about to break-up a pass intended for Crayton. Romo dumping off to Lousaka Polite on his 1st series. On a roll-out Romo hit Tony Curtis for 5yds. I think I may have been following MB3 there! To be fair, I'm not the only one fooled!! Curtis on far-right. Romo missing Curtis on the next play. Romo lead the offense to their 1st points - a 50ish yd field goal by Vandy. MB3 about to get stopped for no gain by Carpenter (hidden, but you can see his legs). Ryan Hannam makes a good one-handed catch from Henson. Carpenter about to sack Bledsoe. Henson in action - I think throwing it out of bounds. Henson going for the bomb to Hurd - pass interference. Romo in action. A number of the big boys on their sprints. Bradie James with Scott Shanle to his left.


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By Chris Harris
If Steven Sidwell was a few years older - or a few years younger - he might now be an Arsenal regular.
The 26-year-old was part of Arsenal's Youth Cup-winning squad in 1999 but found his route to the first-team blocked by a quartet of top-class central midfielders - Patrick Vieira, Gilberto, Edu and Ray Parlour.
With such an embarrassment of riches at his disposal, Arsène Wenger allowed Sidwell to leave for Reading in January 2003. He joined Aston Villa last summer from Chelsea and has played a vital role in his new club's surge up the Premier League table.
Wenger would prefer Sidwell to suffer a dip in form when Villa entertain Arsenal on Boxing Day but the Frenchman is delighted that his former charge has flourished since leaving North London.
"He is a good all-round player," said Wenger at his pre-match press conference.
"He is good defending, a hard defender. He goes in the box well. He is a bit similar to [Frank] Lampard in his game. He is very positive.
"I'm happy he has had a good career because we always knew he would make a career. It was difficult to assess at what level because when he was younger he had technical problems but he has improved that side of his game and is now a very good player.
"You can only play with 11, it's as simple as that. The 11 best play and at the time he was not within that [at Arsenal]. Even in the squad, it was difficult for him to get on the bench.
"At some stage, for his development, it was better for him to go and play somewhere. We don't forget - if you look at players educated here at Arsenal Football Club you will see we have produced many good players in the Premier League."Copyright 2017 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source


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Day 6 & 7: The Ride Back
Trip Start Jun 10, 2012
6Trip End Jun 16, 2012
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Where I stayed
Paradise aka The Parents' House
I began the day around 8 AM with a 5 mile run around Gatlinburg. There's no better way to truly investigate a town or city then by getting in a good run. Afterwards, Tory and I scarfed down a continental breakfast of toast and mini muffins, complimented a grandmother on her extraordinary grandmotherly voice, and got on the road. We took a different way back that was a bit quicker and it prevented us from traversing the mountain that was US-441. The car did not need another mountain :).
The drive back was quick, and it was nice to get on I-40 and see a 70 MPH speed limit. Right after we got into North Carolina, we saw a big construction crew rappelling of off the side of the mountain next to the interstate. We drove by too quick to get a picture, but it was pretty crazy seeing 5 people hanging from a mountain as we were driving
No drive through North Carolina would be complete without one more stop at Dairy Queen, putting our DQ Visit Total at 3 for the week. Unlike in Cherokee, the Dairy Queen in Old Fort had my favorite: A vanilla cone with cherry topping. Yum Yum.
At around 1:45, we finally made it back to the house in Lenoir. Boy oh boy was Tory happy. Within 15 minutes she was gone to see the boyfriend, leaving me to my own devices relax on the porch and watch Euro 2012. Heck yeah.
The Trip's Conclusion
At around 6 PM, my parents got back and we had burgers and beers on the deck. The view is absolutely ridiculous, and it always validates the 7-8 hour drive for me every time. They found themselves an oasis and I am more than happy to mooch of their view!
After another helping of North Carolina's best cuisine for lunch in the morning, I made my way back to Maryland. 8 hours later (including a $2.99 fill-up for gas!), I was sitting in front of the house in Columbia
Final Impressions
I had a fantastic time exploring the Smokies with my sister. The views were breathtaking, the hiking tough, and the company enjoyable. I very much recommend these and other trails in the Smokies if you like to hike or just see the beauty of nature. It's a good 9-10 hours from Maryland, but worth every minute in the car.
It was also a good, albeit small, taste of what I'll be facing in Wyoming come July 19. I simply cannot wait.


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Heckmann in court: accused of animal cruelty
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The man accused of torturing and killing a kitten was in court Monday morning.
Investigators say Robert Heckmann videotaped himself torturing a kitten named Loki and sent text messages about it.
Heckmann is charged with cruelty to animals.
In the court room Heckmann's lawyer said he will be filing a motion to limit pre-trial publicity.
We asked several lawyers about this. They told us if the motion passed it could mean information about the case will not be released to the media. But one lawyer told us this motion can sometimes create even more publicity, especially in such a controversial case.
There will be a pretrial conference this week to discuss the motion.
Heckmann will be in court again on Monday the 10th.
If convicted Heckmann could face up to 18 months in prison.


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Accused cop-killer left manifesto praising Obama, Hillary, Piers Morgan, gun control
posted at 4:41 pm on February 7, 2013 by Allahpundit
If that's not proof enough that he's a liberal, he also praised Chris Christie and Jon Huntsman.
The manifesto is predictably long and a bit lighter on Illuminati-type stuff than most other rampaging-nutjob screeds, but lest there's any doubt what sort of mind we're dealing with here, a quote:
It's kind of sad I won't be around to view and enjoy The Hangover III. What an awesome trilogy. Todd Phillips, don't make anymore Hangovers after the third, takes away the originality of its foundation. World War Z looks good and The Walking Dead season 3 (second half) looked intriguing. Damn, gonna miss shark week.
Charlie Sheen is also informed that he's "effin awesome." The suspected death toll thus far: Three people, including a cop, with other cops at grave risk given Dorner's apparent grudge against them. Federal marshals are now hunting him in four states.
If you don't want to pick through his rant for the references to Obama, Morgan, the assault-weapons ban, etc., Sooper Mexican and Breitbart have the key excerpts — some of which, as SM notes, were curiously redacted by media outlets after police asked them simply to excise the names of individual police officers who were identified by Dorner. The rest of this post you can write yourself, especially if you read yesterday's item about the egregious double standard between the media's treatment of Palin after Tucson and the SPLC after the FRC shooting. The left, needless to say, is blameless for Dorner's actions. Also needless to say, if his manifesto had extolled gun rights and called Obama "a vile and inhumane piece of sh*t" instead of Wayne LaPierre, this would be a five-alarm media inferno floating on a sea of sweaty rhetoric about The Conservative Movement turning to madness over gun control. The goal, as it was with Palin and as it always, always, always is in a situation like this, would be to cow law-abiding people on the right into softening their opposition to liberal policies or else be accused of complicity in some random crank's bloodletting. It's just a nastier version of Obama bringing kids up onstage when he signed those executive memos on guns last month: Instead of O implicitly accusing conservatives of being accomplices to murder, the immediate aftermath of a prominent act of violence tends to bring accusations that are more explicit. But when, as today, the facts don't lend themselves easily to a "right-wing apocalypse" narrative, then suddenly all of the grander meaning in the killer's political sympathies melts away. The double standard has become so obvious and so grotesque that I doubt most media liberals would even deny it anymore when challenged on it. It's unmistakable and indefensible and they know it. And rest assured, the next time some lunatic kills a bunch of people and it turns out his MySpace profile lists Ayn Rand as one of his "likes" or whatever, they'll do it all over again. Lessons will not be learned because this isn't about lessons. It's about reptilian political advantage.
But I repeat, the left is not to blame here. Although, in the interest of taking every precaution, maybe we should ask CNN to cancel Piers Morgan already. Exit question via John Ziegler: Now that we've ruled out blaming Dorner's actions on the font of all evil that is conservatism, which hobbyhorse will the media turn to in hopes of advancing other causes it supports? Ziegler thinks it'll be football-related concussions. Dorner did play football in college. Stay tuned.
Related Posts:
Breaking on Hot Air
Students demand UCLA allow conservative communications professor to keep teaching
Mayor of Paris condemns 'non-mixed' festival for black women only
- Killer in SoCal - Page 2 - Pelican Parts Technical BBS
- Ed Driscoll » Today's Top Story to be Buried by the MSM
- Leftist Obama-Supporting Gun-Hating Crooked LA Cop Goes On Killing Spree « The Patriot Perspective
- Former LAPD mass-murder suspect Chris Dorner leaves manifesto – Endorses Hillary Clinton for 2016, mad at those who don't like Obama and endorses Piers Morgan style Gun Control in manifesto : Fire Andrea Mitchell!
- Obamabot-Pier Morgan Fan Kills to Prove Guns Should Be Illegal | Grumpy Opinions
- SooperMexican Dares Tell The Truth « YouViewed/Editorial
- IMAO » Blog Archive » Obama Needs to Cancel the SOTU Before He Inspires Further Violence with His Rhetoric
- When Do a Criminal's Political Views Matter? Only When They Reinforce Liberal Stereotyping - Token Conservative


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I'm so enjoying "traveling" along with you! I love the pictures...you're lucky to be having such beautiful weather. I'm also enjoying your history and architect lessons!! Love you....safe journey.
Winchester & the Southern Cathedrals Festival
Trip Start Jul 06, 2011
16Trip End Aug 04, 2011
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On to more mundane things, my room at the Wykeham Arms is miniscule as you might be able to tell in the photo. Never mind, it has an en suite bathroom so I don't have to go down the hall to share with everyone, and windows on two walls for cross ventilation. And there is a great view. The building is timber framed with wattle and daub construction, which is the typical Tudor look. The stairway is steep and harrowing. Across the lane is the pub and dining room/breakfast room. The photo is slightly blurry, but you can see the typical breakfast fitting of a teapot, milk jug and toast rack. Yes, the toast is set in the rack to cool off.
At the end of the lane is the Kingsgate, one of the few remaining gates of the old city wall. Around the corner from my lodgings is the house where Jane Austen spent her last six weeks and died. The building, like many historical buildings in this country, has a commemorative plaque. Winchester College, founded in 1382, is thought to be the oldest continuously running school in England. On down College Street you run into the Wiers walk which runs between the ruins of Wolvesey Castle and the River Itchen. Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary, first daughter of King Henry VIII) was married to the king of Spain in Winchester Cathedral, and celebrated the marriage in this castle
Along the High Street (the British equivalent of Main Street) you find various Tudor buildings dating back 500 years or more and housing, amongst other things, Starbucks! Every once in a while if you are looking the right direction, you can catch a glimpse of the cathedral amongst the cities buildings. But, as always, part of any cathedral you go to visit is in scaffolding. Restoration and cleaning is a never-ending process. Around the corner from the cathedral is the Pilgrim's Hall, dating 1308, where pilgrims to the shrine of St. Swithun were housed.
The reason for my extended stay in Winchester is the Southern Cathedrals Festival which is four days of services and concerts with the choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester. Yesterday's festivities included a Sung Eucharist (communion service), Choral Evensong (late afternoon service without communion) and an organ recital. So far today I have been to another Sung Eucharist, and will go to the concert tonight which features the girl choristers and lay clerks instead of the boys. Tomorrow is Festival Evensong and a concert with the boys and the lay clerks. Sunday I will have to miss as I head up to London first thing in the morning. The music has been exquisite. The organ is stunning, and the boy's voices soar to the heights of the cathedral with angelic purity. If you have never heard a real boys choir you have really missed something. Boys, when properly trained, can sing higher than most women of today. Theirs is a purity of tone, without vibrato so that the pitch is absolutely perfect - no wobbling! The girls that we will hear tonight do just as well, but there has been such a long tradition of boys only singing at cathedrals that including girls choirs is only starting to happen, and only with the most forward-looking musicians
For you musicians, amongst other pieces, yesterday we heard Mozart's Missa Brevis in D, Durufl�'s Pr�lude et Fugue sur le nom d'Alain and several small Alain pieces. Today's mass setting was the Messe solennelle by Jean Langlais along with organ music by Vierne. Tonight's concert includes Elgar, Tallis, Palestrina, Bach, Rutter, Durufl� and Messiaen to name a few. Tomorrow we will enjoy Walton's Coronation Te Deum, some Bruckner, Gabrieli's In ecclesiis, P�rt and the Rutter Gloria. All a choral conductor's and organist's dream!
Hopefully I have not repeated myself too much. It is amazing to be here in such ancient history, beautiful architecture and such glorious music, and I am completely in awe.


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I was thinking,dangerous I know, but what if we beesource members designed a honey-beeswax soap recipe? We could brain storm and come up with a truly unique soap and label it as your basic beesource honey beeswax all natural soap. We could market it as such and people would get a truly nice bar of soap, beesource some advertisement and we a few dollars; plus it could be a good excersize in how to make cold process soap for those that haven't done it before. Maybe this isn't the proper forum?
What do you think?


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Conexant Video Wonder Pro II V2 WDM Video Capture Free Driver Download
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Graphics Card Drivers, Video Drivers, MEDIA
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Video Wonder Pro II V2 WDM Video Capture
Supported Operating Systems
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If you need an xp driver for a BT878 Video Capture card you can get the
Video Wonder Pro II V2 p2v2_xp-b.zip Beta Driver for WINDOWS XP!!! (BT878 CHIP), fix remote control issue 3.7MB 4/29/2002 from http://www.geniusnet.com.tw/download/queryresult.asp?plno=8 or directly downloading from this link: http://www.geniusnet.com.tw/ftp/video/p2v2_xp-b.zip
I tested it with my pixel view (conexant chiptset bt878) and works exellent, I tested with the windows movie maker. In reality isnt the manufacturer driver but its works just fine.
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p2v2_xpb.zip (3.8 MB)
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Bohemian Prague
Trip Start Jun 15, 2012
100Trip End Jan 12, 2013
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Yeaterday morning we decided to do a bike tour to see the city of Prague. But after mucking around trying to book the rugby tickets and failed because it required more information than I knew, we got into town just after it started. So we thought we would walk around the town ourselves and join a tour group tomorrow morning. We wandered through the town looking at all the amazing gothic like buildings, went and saw the palace, watched the changing of the guards and weaved our way through all the many streets only to see more amazing buildings and statues around each corner
We spent the full day in town and it was starting to get really cold, think the temperature was about 9 degrees.
This morning we got up with every intention to make our walking tour. A little tip when traveling is to keep an eye out for free walking tours. A tip is expected but you can pay them whatever you like, taking into consideration how good the tour was and your budget. I wouldn't be too stingy though. Anyway we got up early and jumped on the tram in plenty of time to make sure we could make this tour. But instead of taking our normal route into town we had jumped on the wrong tram, so we thought. We ended up getting off and running into town. But we missed it, again! Anyway during the day since we had missed our tour we decided to go for a walk up to the palace again and then up the top of the hill where the radio tower was, which they have turned into a mini Eiffel tour that you can climb. The walk was really nice with trees surrounding us in their autumn colours. We walked back down into the city to see the famous John Lennon Wall and the love lock bridge. After a late lunch we decided to head home as we have to go back into town tonight for a ghost tour whooooaaaahhhhh. Leaving town this afternoon we found out that they were doing track maintenance and all the lines had been changed. So on our way home we jumped on our tram only to find we went around in a giant loop and arrived back into the city centre. We were so confused and wondered why at another tram stop everyone got off the tram when an announcement took place but of course we couldn't understand as it was in Czech. We arrived back to our original stop that we had started at and gathered by looking at some posters that there was track maintenance. It was so frustrating not knowing how to get home and not being able to read anything. We decided to go to the info centre and they told us that we had to walk to the metro catch that to one stop, change to the tram and then we would be right. Thank goodness for that.


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Roald Hoffmann
What does the forthcoming political campaign have to do with tetrahedrane, a beautiful yet unstable hydrocarbon with four CH groups at the corners of a tetrahedron? Just look and listen (you'll have a hard time not doing so) to the onslaught of masterfully crafted oversimplifications thrown at you this fall by both parties. And think about why people—no, not you, of course—succumb to it. It has something to do with the reasons why we lust for the elegantly simple molecule in the shape of a Platonic solid or the beautiful (and preferably, soluble) equation. In this Marginalium I want to think about what gives us satisfaction in science when simplicity fails us, as it must, in a real world.
If one can make any generalization about the human mind, it is that it craves simple answers. The ideology of the simple reigns in science, as it does in politics. So we have the romantic dreams of theoreticians (for example, Dirac) preferring simple and/or beautiful equations. And the moment Richard Smalley, Sir Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and their coworkers intuited that the C60 peak in their laser-ablated carbon mass spectrum came from a molecule that should grace the flag of Brazil, I believed it. It could not be otherwise. And they were right.
Simplicity, symmetry and order ride a straight ray into our souls. I wonder why? Perhaps (this is far out) we have evolved a psychobiological predilection for the qualities of the world that rationalize our existence as locally contraentropic creatures that build molecules and poems. And I am a little unfair to the creative force implicit in the psychological imperative for the simple. The cult of mathematical simplicity as beauty is a reaching for essences that parallels the compact truth-telling of poetry. This is what Dalton, Dirac and Einstein aspired to. And this perspective has led to "the majesty, subtlety, and grace of science, and her deepest insights and discoveries," as Michael Fisher so aptly put it.
But what if the world is determined by us, by scientific us, to be complex, unsymmetrical and moderately chaotic? How do we find satisfaction, and I do mean psychological satisfaction, in such a world?
I think the answer is simple (I'm smiling). We construct with ease an aesthetic of the complicated, by adumbrating reasons and causes. We do so by structuring a narrative to make up for the lack of simplicity. And then we delight in the telling of the story. Nearly every seminar I go to brings evidence of this joy of story telling.
I suggest that narrative becomes the substitute for soaring simplicity in the operative aesthetic structures of chemists, and I think it's the same even for the most hard-core reductionist physicist. Continuing the story is the motive force for experimentation and the weaving of theories.
By way of example, here are three tales of chemical discovery:
Insects are the greatest chemists. In 1966 R. S. Berger identified the main sex pheromone of the cabbage looper moth, Trichoplusia ni (Noctuidae) as (Z)-7-dodecenyl acetate. Those were the halcyon days of early pheromone chemistry; everyone was happy with one molecule (as they were with one gene for each trait). Thirteen years later L. B. Bjostad et al. identified a second component, important especially in close-range courtship behavior—simple dodecyl acetate. Bjostad, C. E. Linn, W. L. Roelofs and their coworkers, at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York, then began to think through the biosynthetic relations between these two components and other molecules observed in the pheromone gland. Obviously, enzymes that shorten molecules, reduce or acylate them, remove hydrogens—all the wondrous machinery of the living—are at work. Figure 2 is a complex graph from one of their papers, showing the biochemical relations between the various kinds of fatty acids present. A blend of six components, suggested by their analysis, elicited complete courting flights against a stiff breeze in a wind tunnel. Clearly one needs six for sex. And would a human master perfumer be surprised?
The story is told with sufficient verve in the Bjostad, Linn, Du and Roelofs paper that even I, an outsider to the field, am pulled in by it. More than just an analysis of pheromone glands, the biochemical relations are clever. I am intrigued by their tale and begin to think of its sequel—how do the females evolve that blend? How do the males evolve the receptors to it? Thomas C. Baker and his coworkers at Iowa State University have actually located separate compartments for the six components (and one antagonist) near where the male antenna input is first processed.
Blood Red: Hemoglobin is the stumbling block to the simpleminded; there is a story in every turn in this best known of proteins. I will pick one of the oldest, that of the cooperativity of oxygen uptake by this molecule. Hemoglobin has four subunits, two consisting of 146 amino acids, two of 141, each cradling a porphyrin where an oxygen molecule binds to an iron atom. Oxygenation of one subunit makes the subsequent oxygenation of another easier. An important early phenomenological theory accounted for the kinetics. But how does it happen on the molecular level, over a distance of 25–30 angstroms between iron atoms?
Max Perutz, whose perseverance and talent first gave us the structure of hemoglobin, also built a bold theory of the cooperativity. It begins with an iron atom on one subunit moving into the heme plane upon oxygenation, pulling a proximal histidine with it. Movement of the histidine shifts a helix, it is suggested; eventually a geometry change at the subunit interface ensues, where a salt bridge between subunits is broken. A net conformational change in the protein occurs, influencing the binding of the next oxygen. Is this a Rube Goldberg (Heath Robinson in England) machine? Rube Goldberg studied some chemistry at Berkeley—maybe he learned something about reaction mechanisms. It is a mechanism, a story well told, remarkably convincing. And permitting elaboration, as work by Martin Karplus and his collaborators shows.
The Road to Cariporide: Once upon a time (1986), in a pharmaceutical company (Hoechst, now Aventis), the chemists Hans-Jochen Lang and Heinrich Englert became interested in the sodium (Na+)-hydrogen (H+) exchange (therefore called NHE) system, a fine biochemical machine for moving about protons and sodium ions, and thereby regulating cellular acidity. NHE had been first described in 1976 by Swiss physiologist Heini Murer as an ion-transport system in the proximal tubule of the kidney. There were many speculations about the role of this device, present in virtually every type of mammalian cell. For instance, might NHE affect the pathophysiology of brain edema caused by stroke?
Pharmacologists and chemists started looking for NHE inhibitors. As is often the case in drug development, the problem is not so much the chemical compounds to test, for chemists have certainly learned the lesson of Genesis, that we have been put on this earth to create. No, the problem is so often the assay. In the case at hand, a promising one, using renal membrane vesicles, proved insensitive.
At the same time Hoechst pharmacologist Wolfgang Scholz was working on a completely different system, the use of ion transport in red blood cells as an assay for the identification of diuretics. One day he was asked by a cardiovascular-research group to test the red blood cells of rabbits on a high-cholesterol diet for possible changes in their ion-transport mechanisms. Remarkably, whereas NHE activity is quite low in red blood cells under normal conditions, there was an approximately tenfold increase caused by the special cholesterol-rich diet.
Whatever the reason for the original experiment (rabbits emulating American junk-food consumers?), the Hoechst scientists saw an opportunity—these red blood cells provided an exquisitely sensitive NHE assay, 1,000 times as sensitive as the kidney membrane vesicles.
There was now momentum for synthetic chemists to ply their art. New classes of compounds were tried. One pharmacologist was reading a paper in the Russian literature, on a totally different subject, when he came across the statement that a sodium ion was roughly of the same size as a guanidinium group. Now that turns out to be somewhat farfetched, but no matter, it gave impetus to the synthesis (and testing with the new assay) of a variety of guanidine derivatives. Some of these compounds, the benzoyl guanidines, turned out to be potent and specific enough to test them for reduction of brain edema. The results were quite disappointing.
Thus, in late 1988, Lang, Englert and Scholz had in hand a new class of ion-transport inhibitors. The only problem was that there were no known clinical indications for them! It was then decided to test one of the best compounds in a broader range of pharmacological models. One of them was the isolated working rat heart in the lab of the pharmacologist Wolfgang Linz. When a benzoyl guanidine code-named HOE 694 was tested in this model, Linz was amazed to find it was about the most protective compound in cases of cardiac ischemia/reperfusion (blood vessel constriction and blood resupply) that he had ever seen.
At this point molecular biology kicks in. In 1989 the group of Jacques Pouyssegure in Nice cloned the NHE gene. In the following years, several subtypes of NHE were identified. A collaboration between the Hoechst team and Pouyssegure's group soon determined that NHE subtype 1 is not only ubiquitous but also the predominant subtype in the heart and blood cells. It was found that HOE 694 and most of the related benzoyl guanidine compounds were quite selective inhibitors of NHE subtype 1. The predominant subtype in the proximal tubule of the kidney was NHE-3. Compounds like HOE 694 were about 1,000 times more effective on NHE-1 than on NHE-3. So, finally, it was understood why the red-blood-cell assay had worked and the renal membranes had not!
All the laws that characterize the infinity of failures facing human beings apply to pharmaceutical research as well. Within weeks it was revealed that HOE 694 formed a metabolite that concentrated in the rat kidneys and precipitated in the tubular system, where it caused obstruction and inflammation. A strategy to construct compounds metabolized in a different way led to a new compound, HOE 642, synthesized by chemist Andreas Weichert. Now, HOE 642 (generic cariporide) has reached a late stage of clinical development and will it is hoped come to the market in three years. I have recounted three tales of discovery. They start simple, yet in each, the ornery complexity of the real is parlayed by the protaganist chemists into a delightful, deeper story.
Everywhere one looks in science, there are stories. I could have recounted the grand ones, of the inflationary universe, of evolution, of continental drift, of Fermat's theorem. I could have told about smaller ones, no less thrilling—the quest for octanitrocubane, the European duplication of Chinese porcelain or the discovery of sulfa drugs. I could have recounted Primo Levi's stories, of a" solitary chemistry, unarmed and on foot, at the measure of man."
All of these stories have the hallmarks that literary theorists have seen in narratives, small and grand:
—Temporality: a peaceful beginning, a disequilibrated, tense middle and a resolution that often sets the world upside down.
—Causation: essential in science, the most deterministic of narrative genres. Every thing must have reason, or why would you tell it to your peers?
—Human interest: Reflect—how much more interesting are lectures than articles? Our microsociety's ossified strictures on what should go into a paradigmatic article are relaxed in seminars. One tells a story, and the audience drinks it up, for it sees the why and wherefore. And the speaker naturally tells a heroic tale of blind alleys, serendipity, obstacles overcome and all-conquering logic. Who needs a samurai epic when I can hear Sam Danishefsky or K. C. Nicolau struggling with the synthesis of calicheamycin?
At times, when I've spoken of narrative as a motive force to scientists, I've encountered a certain queasiness. Could it be that if we admit we tell a story of our research, that we get uncomfortably close to "just so" stories, inventions, fiction? Or, God forbid, that we should render support to relativists, that nefarious social-construction-of-science gang?
Relax. What we study is real. Yet we live in a mansion furnished with real things and an infinity of mirrors. Modern science is a successful social invention for acquiring not truth, but reliable knowledge (to borrow a phrase from John M. Ziman). An essential part of the structure of science is a built-in alternation of flights of wild theoretical and narrative fancy with experimental probing of some underlying reality. The fancy is not unfettered. In the pursuit of the art, craft, science and business of chemistry, there are numerous checks with reality. To be sure, each is individually deconstructible, but their totality shapes a pretty reliable network of knowledge.
But this in no way precludes tall, fancy and mythical stories that fit into absolutely every category of folktale you have, for it is human beings that seek reliable knowledge. So we clothe the oral and written reports of our curious exploration with the fabric of narrative. Narrative is absolutely indestructible; it looms just under the surface in the driest chemical article. And I am so happy that I am privy to the codes, so that I may see the myth (and the approach to reliable knowledge) underneath.
John Polanyi has recently described the close relationship between science and story-telling:
Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts. This is, of course, flattering, since facts are incontrovertible. But it is also demeaning, since facts are meaningless. They contain no narrative.
Science, by contrast, is story-telling. That is evident in the way we use our primary scientific instrument, the eye. The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Scientia is knowledge. It is only in the popular mind that it is equated with facts. This is, of course, flattering, since facts are incontrovertible. But it is also demeaning, since facts are meaningless. They contain no narrative.
Science, by contrast, is story-telling. That is evident in the way we use our primary scientific instrument, the eye. The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The power of stories may indeed exceed that of facts. As Walter Benjamin has written:
The value of information does not survive the moment when it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely and explain itself to it without losing any time. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time.
In telling the story of scientific discovery, we form a praiseworthy bond with literature and myth, all the other ways that human beings have of telling stories. Yes, there are times when the story has to be told simply, the fire engine sent the shortest route to the fire. But a world without stories is fundamentally inhuman. It is a world where nothing is imagined. Could a chemist be creative in such a world?
© Roald Hoffmann
I am grateful to Wolfgang Scholz and Hans-Jochen Lang for telling me the story of cariporide, and Wendell Roelofs for that of the T. ni pheromone.
You can find this online at http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/narrative/5
© 2016 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society


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Kiwi international Ben Townley (Carlton Dry Honda) has the Woodville crown firmly in his sights.
It is just a week away now to the "greatest show on turf" the biggest dirt bike race in the Southern Hemisphere the annual New Zealand Motocross Grand Prix at Woodville.
This year's 52nd running of the big Honda-sponsored event, on the weekend of January 26 and 27, is set to be another superstar showdown.
British GP rider Alex Snow has arrived to make his Woodville motocross debut and he'll be joined by countryman Jake Nicholls, with Australian high-fliers Todd Waters, Kirk Gibbs and Jesse Dobson to arrive soon for their Woodville debuts.
But, even with international riders flying in, last season's Woodville winner, Bay of Plenty international Ben Townley (Carlton Dry Honda), remains the clear favourite. Former world and United States champion Townley dominated the main class at Woodville last year and has been in hot form lately, winning the Whakatane Summercross _ scoring an impressive four wins from four starts in the premier MX1 class.
As well as riders such as Snow (JCR Yamaha Racing), Waters (KTM Australia) and Gibbs (KTM Australia), Townley will be up against an impressive array of other Kiwi internationals, experienced campaigners such as multi-time former New Zealand motocross champion Cody Cooper (Moto City Suzuki), of Mount Maunganui, 2009 MX1 champion and 2010 Woodville winner Justin McDonald (Timaru Honda), of Christchurch, and Rotorua's Michael Phillips (Rowlinson Honda). Manawatu riders Tom Hughes (AFC Motorcycles KTM) and Jesse Donnelly (Precise Print Suzuki) also rate as potential threats in the MX1 class.
Nicholls (KTM) and Dobson (Kawasaki) are entered in the MX2 (250cc) class, where they will face New Zealand MX2 champion Darryll King (Fox DC Fuzion Yamaha), who is also the veteran's world champion, and fellow Kiwi internationals Rhys Carter (Moto City Suzuki), of Mount Maunganui, Queenstown's Scotty Columb (JCR Yamaha Racing) and Mangakino's Kayne Lamont (CMR Red Bull BikesportNZ.com KTM).
Townley has only raced at Woodville a couple of times in 10 years but he dominated the event last season and said he was looking forward to being there again.
Woodville is one of the biggest events on the Kiwi calendar and it will be an ideal build-up for Townley ahead of the New Zealand Motocross Championships, which start near Timaru on February 10, and then his Australian national series campaign that follows.
Since the stand-alone event was first staged half a century ago, in 1961, the Woodville Motocross has grown to become the jewel in New Zealand's motocross crown and hundreds of riders will battle over the weekend, including minis, juniors, seniors, women and veterans.
The famous Woodville river race is a huge sideline attraction, a race likely to be dominated by Pahiatua international Paul Whibley (Sargents BikesportNZ.com Yamaha), who is home for a break from his American adventures.
Whibley won two major cross-country championships in the United States last year and returns to begin his double title defence in just a few weeks' time.
The long and illustrious list of previous winners at Woodville includes 1996 500cc motocross world champion Shayne King, Australian champion Craig Dack, Britain's Greg Hanson, American Willie Surratt and Sweden's Gunnar Lindstrom.
But Townley is the name tipped to be etched on the trophy again this season.


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