text:
A NOVEL TAKING place in Marin in the 1970s could practically write itself, what with the hot tubs, restless housewives and touchy-feely peace, love and understanding ethos.
It wasn't quite that easy for Christie Nelson; it fact, it took decades for her to write 1998's "Woodacre" and "Dreaming Mill Valley," which was published last year. But the San Rafael author had all the material she needed — she lived it.
"The book is dedicated to my sons who survived the '70s along with all the other children in Mill Valley. It wasn't easy," she says. "We came out of the '60s expecting to make changes. So we were left in the '70s with the debris, the consequences of that."
Her books are not quite "The Serial," Cyra McFadden's sarcastic classic, but Marin is Marin after all, and some things are "only in Marin" things.
"Cyra wrote a fantastic satire of Marin in the '70s. I wish I could write funny," Nelson says with a laugh. "My message, my themes are more emotional themes, having to do with the single parenting that was going on and the children who ran in the streets. There was this great sense of freedom, but it was also post-feminism, post-hippiedom, and there was great social and political turmoil."
Nelson will talk about how Marin and San Francisco have influenced her writing along with Elisabeth Ptak of Inverness, author of "Marin's Mountain Play, One Hundred Years of Theatre on Mount Tamalpais," and San Rafael's Betsy Graziani Fasbinder, author of "Fire & Water," in "Two Love Stories and an Ode to the Mountain Play: Three Marin Authors in Conversation," a free event at Dominican University on March 12.
There were two things Nelson knew she wanted to do while growing up in San Francisco — dance and write.
"I started to write, but I didn't have anything to say," says Nelson, 70, who studied psychology and dance at Dominican University.
Nelson did dance, forming a three-person troupe that performed around the Bay Area when she was in her 30s, but life — an early marriage, motherhood, divorce, work — got in the way of her dream of writing.
But the urge kept gnawing at her. It wasn't until she took a writing class with Fairfax's Anne Lamott and formed a writing group with Ptak and four others 23 years ago that she realized she actually did have something to say.
"It was frightening, pedal to the metal, show up and have something, but I learned a lot and I got support," she says. "That's the other thing about Marin; this a tremendous community not only for writers, but people in the arts."
One member of that community, author and writing coach Guy Biederman of Sausalito — "my teacher, my mentor and my friend," she gushes — calls her latest book "an unforgettable novel of recovery, renewal and grace.'
"Where you live has an impact on us. She's very good at evoking those kinds of characteristics of people and place," says Ptak. "She's a very stylish, very sensitive, very warm person, and all those elements show up in her books."
Nelson loosely based Jess McCarty, a single mom in both "Woodacre," which takes place in 1972, and "Dreaming Mill Valley," which takes place two years later, on her own experiences. She, too, was a single mom of two boys for 10 years in Mill Valley.
"'Woodacre' is about two people perfectly wrong for each other, it's a love story, whereas 'Dreaming Mill Valley' is a cautionary love story of dreamers, innocents and fools," says Nelson, who lives with her husband of 30 years, Ron Moore, in the former San Rafael Brewery's brewmeister house.
But both books are also love stories for her native San Francisco and her longtime home, Marin.
"My love affair with the glorious and gritty town of San Francisco and beauty and the majesty of Marin County has no end in sight," she writes in her acknowledgements in "Dreaming Mill Valley."
"I love when place is a character," she says. "Marin really is a character."
Vicki Larson can be reached at email@example.com; follow her on Twitter at @OMGchronicles, fan her on Facebook at Vicki-Larson-OMG-Chronicles
What: "Two Love Stories and an Ode to the Mountain Play: Three Marin Authors in Conversation"
When: 7 to 8 p.m. March 12
Where: Alemany Library Reading Room, Dominican University, 50 Acacia Ave., San Rafael
Admission: Free
Information: 457-4440; http://calendar.dominican.edu


text:
S.H.I.E.L.D. Vol 1 2
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- Once, long ago, I led this group. The great men of this place believed in the future -- in the infinite human experience. Now, I have been warned that the council -- these new men of the shield -- believe in something different: a logical conclusion...inevitability...an end. I have come to shatter this notion. And on that rubble, reconstruct a better way. I am a builder of great things, Leonid...and these men have stood on my shoulders for far too long.
Appearing in "Newton's Theory of Eternal Life"Edit
Featured Characters:
- Leonid (Flashback and main story)
Supporting Characters:
- Brotherhood of the Shield
- High Council of the Shield
- Nostradamus
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Agent Richards
- Agent Stark
- Night Machine (Flashback and main story)
Other Characters:
- Morda (Only in flashback)
- Forever Man (Only in flashback)
- Leonid's Foster Mother (Flashback and main story)
- Italy
- New York City (Mentioned)
- Ashomia (Flashback and main story)
- Leonardo da Vinci's Armor
- Human Machine (Mentioned)
Solicit Synopsis:Edit
Why don't we know about the first super heroes of the Marvel Universe? Leonardo Da Vinci, Imhotep, Sir Issac Newton, Nostradamus and Galileo are among the members of the Brotherhood of the Shield and have saved us all countless times. What events did they set in motion that still affect the Marvel U today? Do not miss the book that will be talked about for the next ten years.
- No special notes.
- No trivia.
See AlsoEdit
Recommended ReadingEdit
- None.
Links and ReferencesEdit
|Like this? Let us know!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Ben Rosehart
Location: Davenport, IA
To reach client call STAA:
KWQC-TV (NBC 6 Quad Cities) (July '11-present)
Denise Killian
Dan Pearson
- Sports Anchor/Reporter
- - Anchored/produced 6, 9 & 10 pm weekend sportscasts; report, shoot & edit stories/highlights and fill-in sports anchor on weekdays
- - Stories primarily focused on University of Iowa, Illinois, local colleges & high schools in 2 states, the PGA's John Deere Classic; Bix 7 Race & Chicago pro teams
- - Anchored/produced "The Highlight Zone" – our Emmy-nominated Friday night high school football & basketball show that features a weekly theme, skits with HS students & interns, & all 4 co-anchors reading highlights
- Sports Anchor/Reporter (Sept '06-July '11)
- - Anchored/produced 5:30 & 10 pm sportscasts; report, shoot, & edit stories/highlights.
- - Stories primarily focused on University of Wyoming, Colorado State, high schools, Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo and Denver pro teams
- - Introduced unique "Ben There, Done That" and "Rapid Fire with Rosehart" segments featuring sports challenges and trivia questions with local athletes
- - Honored in "Best Sports" category by Wyoming Association of Broadcasters
- - Started station's first Twitter account
- News Anchor/Reporter (Aug '09-Dec '10)
- - One-man-band news reporter, 10pm co-anchor and morning show fill-in anchor.
- - Anchored/produced weekend newscasts AND sportscasts. (Sept '10-Dec '10)
- - Proficient with ENPS and non-linear editing Edius & Final Cut Pro software; Shoots on Panasonic Cameras with p2 cards
- - NBC Olympics - 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy: Production Assistant (Feb '06)
- - NFL Network & Philadelphia Eagles - Media Relations Coordinator during entire season culminating with Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville. (Sept '04-Feb '05)
- - Tracks: Mass Media Writing/Mass Communication, 3.4 GPA in Honors Program
- - Commencement Keynote Speaker at La Salle University as graduating senior.
Thom Cornelis
Longtime KWQC-TV Sports Director
Denise Killian
KSNW-TV News Director
Dan Pearson
Fellowship of Christian Athletes


text:
Location: Adaptive Cropping Systems LaboratoryTitle: Modeling potato root growth and water uptake under water stress conditions) Author
|Dathe, Annette
|Fleisher, David
|Timlin, Dennis
|Fisher, Jackson
|Reddy, Vangimalla
Submitted to: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/16/2014
Publication Date: 4/12/2014
Publication URL: http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/59631
Citation: Dathe, A., Fleisher, D.H., Timlin, D.J., Fisher, J.K., Reddy, V. 2014. Modeling potato root growth and water uptake under water stress conditions. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 194:37-49. Interpretive Summary: Potato is one of the major crops worldwide and the United States is one of the largest producers. The potato crop is sensitive to drought, starting at low levels of water stress. Plants take up water with their roots and it is important to know where in the soil profile these roots are situated and whether they can reach the soil water. It is difficult and tedious to investigate a root system in the field and that is why scientists use mathematical models to describe it. Nevertheless, a root model has to be compared to roots growing in the real-world. The root module in the potato model SPUDSIM was improved by implementing a diffusive root model. A diffusive root model describes densities of roots in a soil profile, and how these densities increase and move in the soil profile over time. Three parameters describe the direction of root growth, and their values were adjusted that the modeled root systems resembled the structure and function of a natural root profile. Experimental potato root data were available from an already published experiment, where potatoes had been grown under different irrigation levels and soil water content and water transpired by the plants had been measured. The improved root growth module implemented into SPUDSIM can guide in understanding interactions between spatial root distribution and efficient water uptake especially under drought conditions. Farmers who are irrigating their potato crops and plant breeders who breed drought resistant potato varieties will benefit from this knowledge.
Technical Abstract: Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) growth and yield are sensitive to drought starting at mild stress levels. Accurate simulation of root growth is critical for estimating water and nutrient uptake dynamics of major crops and improving agricultural decision support tools for natural resource management. Not many data sets for potato roots are available in literature, because examination of root systems is a laborious task. In this work, we utilize experimental root data obtained from our soil-plant-atmospheric-research (SPAR) chambers to test the newly developed root growth module of the potato crop model SPUDSIM. Root growth of potato, water uptake by the roots, and above ground and tuber growth were simulated for six different irrigation treatments. A two dimensional diffusive root growth model was implemented. Parameters controlling the direction of root growth are the diffusion coefficients in x- and z- direction, and a convective term in z-direction (downwards). Carbon distribution between roots and shoot is simulated as a function of plant development stage, leaf growth and water status of the plant and soil. Water transport in the soil is estimated with the Richard's equation and solute transport with the convection-diffusion equation. The improved SPUDSIM version was tested against observed root distribution in the soil profile at harvest, plant organ dry weights (DW) for leaves, stem, roots and tuber, and water uptake patterns observed with time-domain reflectometry (TDR) probes and transpiration measurements. The model was able to reproduce potato response to drought after the SPUDSIM variety coefficients were calibrated with the non-stressed treatment data and soil hydraulic properties and root diffusivity coefficients were calibrated towards the 25, 75 and 100% irrigation treatments. Agreement between simulated and observed plant organ DW was very good overall, though root DW were over predicted by the model for less water stressed plants. Patterns of root distribution in the soil profile were reproduced well by the model. Water contents per soil layer for different drought scenarios could be reproduced well, but the model estimated a higher water uptake from soil layers close to the surface than observed. With the root diffusivity coefficients kept constant for all irrigation treatments, differences in root growth patterns were solely caused by the position in the soil profile where carbon was assigned to and by the value of the convective term of the diffusion equation, both functions of water status of the soil, bulk density and root density.


text:
Our facility is constructed to be a "kid" friendly environment with an emphasis on helping to entertain and distract children of all ages.
If your child is sick and you want to see the doctor- you are seen the same day. If you just want to ask the doctor a question- your call is returned the same day.
We believe in teaching parents and children about medical issues and how to manage medical issues in children. Our bodies are amazing machines and work pretty well by themselves. We try to teach parents how to manage most common childhood issues and when a trip to the doctor's office is warranted.
We also are strong advocates for breastfeeding infants as we see the benefits of breastfeeding on children and their families. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for at least 1 year, and we all applaud moms who continue breastfeeding for this length of time.
In todays' world, we believe a pediatrician is a member of a team whose goal is to raise a healthy and happy child.


text:
Rings and seals replacement??
im looking for some advice!! i have a smoke problem and my guy tells me its a valve seal issue!! he says i should replace the rings and seals and that will stop the smoking and loss of oil! he also said if i wanted to save money and time i could just replace the seals and see if that works?? now my question is what are the chances of the rings being in need of replacement?? my car has 55000 mls on it so it seems a bit low to have this problem but im aware the seals could be gone from overheating and this could happen at any millage!! i dont want to spend the money getting only seals done (around 400) only to have to go again with rings (around 1000) can anyone tell me their views on this problem please!!! thank you!!
Who is your guy? Your mechanic?
Please describe your smoke problem. What color is the smoke, when does it happen, does it smell like anything (sweet, like burning oil, rotten/really bad smelling), are you burning oil or loosing coolant ect...
It could also be a head gasket issue.
Yeah my mechanic! its grey smoke at random times and sometimes real bad. coolant is fine, he is not worried about the head gasket and also changed the manafold air breather! he said its a seal problem but im just wondering if i might get away with just doing the seals and not the rings???
dose nobody know what im talking about?? :( shame!! thanks anyway for looking!
Did he do a compression test?
yes, he said the compression looked fine!! he said he has tried everything, washes and stuff expand the seals and that! he assures me the next step is rings and seals!! im just wondering do i take a chance and take a short cut and just do seals?? will only take about 4 hours compared to 10 hours doing the propper job! he said worse case i will see an improvement!! it will kill me to have to spend all that money! i just bought the car last month!! :/
If the compression is good I doubt it's the seals. Replace your oil separator.
i think he changed the oil separator already but ill be talking to him today so i can ask. ok thanks for that!
Is the smoke your talking about coming out the tail pipe(muffler) or is coming from under the hood?
Do you have any oil loss?
Also don't see how the compression could be ok if it's valve seals or piston rings.
How could either go bad at such a low mileage? What's oil are you using and what's your oil change interval?
Really really bad valves and/or valve seats could cause a lower compression reading, but would have nothing to do with oil consumption. (A cylinder leak-down test is more useful for finding bad valves.)
I don't think that a compression test could say anything at all about how good or bad the valve stem seals are. Am I wrong in this?
^wouldnt bad valve stem seals cause oil to leak into the cylinders from the valve/camshaft area?
usually bad seals leak oil into the cylinders and you get white smoke when you start it. if it happens at random times you might need rings, but at 55k rings shouldnt be an issue. maybe a sticky valve combined with bad seals might do what you describe
We need more info, or, just trust your mechanic.
I didn't see where you said what kind of engine is in your E46.
What year is it? Seems like low mileage to be burning oil due to valve seals or piston rings.
Do you know anything about its history?
The normal cause of exhaust smoke in an E46 seems to be CCV system (aka oil separator). But that is just what I've read, and may only apply to USA destined engines.
If yours has a diesel, or 4 cyl, you probably want to ignore advice from anybody posting from the USA. I don't think we got those engines here.
It is hard to believe oil burning started in the short time you've owned this car. If it really started to happen all of a sudden it might be a known problem with your engine.
If you trust your mechanic - go for it. If you are not sure - get a second opinion.
Valve seals/guides should not effect compression. The closed valve should prevent any leaking.
It is possible (easy) for oil to leak down the valve stem when the valve is open and the seal/guide is bad.
edit: just looked at some of your other posts. 2003 318 convertible. Apparently with known bad engine, and top, when you bought it. I'm hoping you got it cheap. If you are paying people to fix your car, you might be better off starting again with a good one. If you cannot afford a good one - wait - work hard - your time will come. Assuming you got it cheap - drive it - have fun - dump it before you spend too much money on it. My tuppence worth of advice.
the smoke it from the exhaust and i would say it is white! very light anyway! someone said blue but i didnt think so but im not a mechanic!! haha well i wouldnt say i got it cheap but the roof was taken into concideration! its not a bad looking car and if i have to spend a couple of grand on her i wouldnt be loosing much when i sell it on! i trust my mechanic, ive been using him for a while now and he hasnt put me wrong yet!! as i said he tried all the cheaper jobs first but now is convinced its a seal problem! im just gonna go for it and do the seals and take a chance the rings are ok! i dont do a lot of mileage so id hope that even if the rings are bad it wont effect me too much till i sell it on! and there is always a chance they are fine anyway! i only have the car a short time and i have put the recomended oil spec into it, also there is a good service history up to 43000/ year and a half ago! and appart from a couple of oil leaks there is nothing of concern done to it! thanks again for all ur comments! gives me something to think about! :)
don't listen to your boyfriend. It's not the vanos seals.
Replace whole CCV system.
wow some of you people just guess. I'm glad that most of you don't fix cars for a living. there would be a lot of mad people or cars that don't get fixed. I'm not there with the car, however, if ur guys has done you well in the past then why question him now. there are ways to eliminate the rings and or valve stem seals. hint : if its costing you 400 dollars jump on it even if it is wrong. head should come off and valve job done with the seals. if you can get that done for 400 I would question that. unless ur really hot.
well the seals are only a few euro each and estimated time is 4-5 hours so not expensive and his labour costs are low so 400 is about right!just bought upgraded vanos seal kit as well so gonna get that in too! im told its a must with any vanos engine so an extra 40 for that! fingers crossed it will be ok! thanks again to everyone who posted!
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Prince David, Book 1: Enter the Heir
eBook (PDF), 172 Pages
Price: $4.99
At the age of six, Zachary Bolitho discovers that his very kind, small town, neighbors are actually the Monarch's grandson and family. By the age of seven, Zachary has lost his father, met the Queen, and become an assistant caregiver to his little brother, Austin, and Austin's same-age best friend, David, who just happens to be a royal prince. When a national tragedy strikes seven years later, Zachary finds himself in a role he is hardly prepared for, placating senior government officials while trying to protect young David. Going purely on guesswork and instinct, Zachary tries hard to do what he thinks is right while at the same time working to assist a much younger David to do the same. Dealing with cranky, older advisors, a lack of clear direction, plus a traitorous and Machiavellian uncle, Zachary struggles to make sense of what has happened while trying to prepare his young friend for the most important role of his life.
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The Russian connection: See all our coverage | Read about our investigation
Tom PhilpottJan. 8, 2014 7:00 AM
Caution: hazardous material
Correction: In the original version of this post, I reported that a Consumer Reports' study found that chicken labeled organic and no-antibiotic had just as much antibiotic-resistant bacteria as conventional chicken. In fact, Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability for Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, has informed me, "We found slightly fewer multidrug-resistant bacteria in the no antibiotics/organic pool compared to conventional. That difference was even greater when we pulled Purdue out of the conventional pool. The issue was really that we didn't see the bigger difference we expected, not that it was exactly the same." I've corrected the text below.
As a student of the meat industry and its practices, I wasn't surprised by the recent Consumer Reports finding that nearly half of all the chicken samples it plucked from supermarket shelves nationwide carried "at least one bacterium that was resistant to three or more commonly prescribed antibiotics." Factory-scale poultry facilities have relied on daily antibiotic doses for decades, contributing to a surge of life-threatening pathogens, and the Food and Drug Administration has only recently taken tentative steps to rein in the practice.
What got me was that chicken samples labeled "organic" or "no antibiotics" (list of all brands tested here) were almost as likely to contain these potentially deadly, drug-defying pathogens.* Notably, organic and antibiotic-free chicken both carry substantial premiums over conventional—at my local H-E-B supermarket in Austin, organic boneless chicken breast is fetching $7.97 per pound—vs. $4.99 for no-antibiotic and $1.97 for regular.
[Read more]
Tom PhilpottJan. 7, 2014 3:46 PM
Over the weekend, listservs, blogs, and Twitter feeds lit up with reactions to Amy Harmon's New York Times deep dive into the politics behind a partial ban on growing genetically modified crops on Hawaii's main island. The fuss obscured a much more significant development that occurred with little fanfare (and no Times attention) on Friday, when the US Department of Agriculture took a giant step toward approving a controversial new crop promoted by Dow Agrosciences that could significantly ramp up the chemical war on weeds being waged in the Midwest's corn and soybean fields. Since the '90s, the widespread use of corn and soy crops genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide Roundup has led more weeds to resist that chemical. Farmers have responded by using even more chemicals, as this Food and Water Watch chart shows.
Dow's new product promises to fix that problem. The company is peddling corn and soy seeds engineered to withstand not just Roundup, but also an older and much more toxic herbicide called 2,4-D. In a January 3 press release, the company noted that "an astonishing 86 percent of corn, soybean and cotton growers in the South have herbicide-resistant or hard-to-control weeds on their farms," as do more than 61 percent of farms in the Midwest. "Growers need new tools now to address this challenge," Dow insisted.
Use of 2,4-D—the less toxic half of the infamous Vietnam-era defoliant Agent Orange—had been dwindling for years, but the rise of Roundup-resistant superweeds has revived it.
Farmers have been using it to "burn down" superweed-ridden fields before the spring planting of corn and soybeans. But if Dow gets its way, they'll be able to resort to it even after the crops emerge. Dow has downplayed the concern that the new products will lead weeds to develop resistance to 2,4-D. But in a 2011 paper (abstract here), weed experts from Penn State University—hardly a hotbed of anti-GMO activism—concluded that chances are "actually quite high" that Dow's new product will unleash a new plague of super-duper-weeds that resist both Roundup and 2,4-D. (I laid out the details of their argument in this post.) Here's their model for how the new product would affect herbicide application rates on soybeans. Note how they project that glyphosate (Roundup) use will hold steady, but that "other herbicides," mostly 2,4-D, will spike—meaning a windfall for Dow but nothing good for the environment.
The USDA, which oversees the introduction of new GMO crops, appeared set to green-light Dow's new wonderseeds at the end of 2012. But in May of last year, after a firestorm of criticism from environmental groups, the department slowed down the process, announcing in a press release it had decided that release of the novel products "may significantly affect the quality of the human environment," and that a thorough environmental impact statement (EIS) was necessary before such a decision could be made.
Then on Friday, the USDA reversed itself—it released the draft of the promised EIS, and in it, the department recommended that Dow's 2,4-D-ready crops be unleashed upon the land. Once the draft is published in the Federal Register on January 10, there will be a 45-day public comment period, after which the USDA will make its final decision. At this point, approval seems imminent—probably in time for the 2015 growing season, as Dow suggested in its press release reacting to the news.
Why did the USDA switch from "may significantly affect the quality of the human environment" to a meek call for deregulation? As the USDA itself admits in its Friday press release, the department ultimately assesses new GMO crops through an extremely narrow lens: whether or not they act as a "pest" to other plants—that is, they'll withhold approval only if the crops themselves, and not the herbicide tsunami and upsurge in resistant weeds they seem set to bring forth, pose a threat to other plants. And Dow's new corn and soy crops don't cross that line, the USDA claims. I explained the tortured history and logic behind the USDA's "plant pest" test in this 2011 post. Long story short: It's an antiquated, fictional standard that doesn't allow for much actual regulation.
US farmers planted about 170 million acres of corn and soy in 2013—a combined land mass roughly equal to the footprint of Texas. Every year, upwards of 80 percent of it is now engineered to resist Monsanto's Roundup. It's chilling to imagine that Dow's 2,4-D-ready products might soon enjoy a similar range.
Given the USDA's regulatory impotence in the face of such a specter, perhaps the Hawaiian activists who pushed for that ban aren't quite as daft as the New York Times portrayed them in its recent piece. The big biotech companies don't operate on the island that imposed the partial ban on GMOs. But as another New York Times piece, this one from 2011, shows, they do operate on other islands within the state—using them as a testing ground for novel crops and a place to grow out GMO seeds, taking advantage of the warm climate that allows several crops per year. According to the Times, GMO seeds are now bigger business in Hawaii than tropical staples like coffee, sugarcane, and pineapples—and the GMO/agrichemical giants have "have stepped into the leading, and sometimes domineering role, once played by the islands' sugar barons." As for Dow, it cops to having field-tested its 2,4-D-ready corn there.
Tom PhilpottDec. 18, 2013 7:00 AM
Eugene Sergeev/Shutterstock
The food-politics beat took a carnivorous turn in 2013. It's not that all the year's biggest stories involved the meat industry, but most seemed to. Here they are, in no particular order.
We're emerging as the globe's factory farm.
First, Virginia-headquartered pork giant Smithfield Foods announced it was phasing out ractopamine, a growth-enhancing, stress-inducing drug banned in China, the European Union, and Russia. Then it shocked the world by announcing it had been bought out by Shuanghui International, a Chinese conglomerate. And then several huge beef processors announced they were dropping Zilmax, a ractopamine-like growth enhancer for cows, also banned in big foreign markets. Meanwhile, China's expanding industrial footprint is rapidly degrading its farmland even as its appetite for meat continues to grow. What do all these data points have in common? They signal a US meat industry increasingly looking to foreign markets for growth as America's meat appetite wanes. And that means that even as we eat less meat, American communities will have to deal with the consequences of ever-intensifying meat production: water pollution, hollowed-out local economies, "egregious" food safety violations, deplorable working conditions, and an ongoing explosive manure foam problem.
The USDA really, really wants to speed up poultry slaughterhouse kill lines while reducing its inspection responsibilities.
Shaking off fierce opposition from food safety and worker advocates and a scathing report from the Government Accountability Office, the Obama administration tenaciously clung to long-brewing plans to cut inspectors on poultry kill lines while simultaneously allowing those lines to speed up, a move that would save the poultry industry a cool quarter billion dollars per year. The gory details are here and here. Meanwhile, the Obama administration isn't alone in its eagerness for the change—this week, a bipartisan group of 13 US senators, mostly from chicken-heavy states like Arkansas, Missouri, and North Carolina, signed a letter to the USDA urging finalization of the speedup.
The FDA took tentative but important steps to curtail antibiotic abuse on meat farms. Finally. Sort of.
Way back in 1977, the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged the obvious: When you stuff animals together by the thousands and give them low daily doses of antibiotics, their bacteria will evolve to resist those drugs. Thirty-six years later—just this month—the administration finally did something about it. Kind of. True, most of the new rules curtailing antibiotics are voluntary. But as I noted, it rolled out a new proposal that would force meat producers to get a veterinarian's approval before treating animals with antibiotics that are commonly used to treat human infections—a potentially (depending on how it's enforced) significant reform.
Fast-food workers push back against low wages.
One major way Americans access the meat industry's product is through fast-food chains, those $200 billion a year emporia of burgers, chicken nuggets, and the like. The industry profit model hinges on selling high volumes of cheap food while clamping down on costs, including labor. The nation's 2.9 million fast-food workers make a median wage of $8.69 an hour, a level that has risen by (literally) just a dime in real terms since 1999. Contrary to the industry's reputation as a benign source of mad money for moonlighting high schoolers, 70 percent of fast-food workers are 20 and older, and more than a third are 25 and older. Adults can't support themselves, much less their families, on such stingy wages, so taxpayer-funded safety nets pick up the industry's slack—to the tune of $7 billion per year, according to a 2013 University of California-Berkeley study. And 2013 marked year two of a high profile pushback, coordinated by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and punctuated by a series of one-day walkouts. Maybe slaughterhouse workers—who make a median hourly wage of $12.03 in one of the nation's most hazardous jobs—will be next?
Europe says "no" to bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticides.
What do pesticides have to do with meat? Well, US livestock farms rely heavily on abundant corn and soy crops for feed, and those crops in turn are largely grown from seeds treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. A growing weight of science links widespread neonicotinoid use with the declining health of honeybees and other pollinators—and birds, too. In response, the European Union issued a two-year moratorium on the use of the chemicals, enraging their makers, European agrichemical giants Bayer and Syngenta. The US Environmental Protection Agency, for its part, has no plans of changing its laissez-faire position on neonics.
Tom PhilpottDec. 13, 2013 7:00 AM
It's an udder triumph.
The long-simmering debate over whether organically grown food packs more nutritional punch than conventional has a new data point. In a recent study published in the peer-reviewed PLOS-One, a research team led by Washington State University's Charles Benbrook found that organic milk delivers significantly healthier fats than its non-organic counterpart.
The team took samples of organic and non-organic whole milk taken from 14 commercial milk processors across the United States over the course of 18 months and analyzed their fat content. They found that organic milk delivered on average 62 percent more omega-3 fatty acids, and 25 percent fewer omega-6 fatty acids.
Tom PhilpottDec. 12, 2013 7:00 AM
Almost 80 percent of antibiotics consumed in the United States go to livestock farms; antibiotic-resistant pathogens affecting people are on the rise; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made the connection between those two developments. So what's the Food and Drug Administration doing to curb overuse of these key drugs on animal farms?
On Wednesday, the FDA spelled it out by releasing recommendations (text [PDF]; press release) on how drugmakers should "voluntarily" modify the way they administer antibiotics to the meat industry. It also released a proposal that would require a veterinarian's signoff for antibiotics that are commonly used in human medicine—which would represent a major departure from the antibiotics free-for-all that holds sway today.
Some of these "medically important" antibiotics are widely used on livestock farms. Take tetracycline, a drug used in human medicine to treat urinary-tract infections, acne, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and other maladies. In 2009, for example, an analysis of FDA data by Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found that US livestock farms burned through more than 10 million pounds of tetracycline—compared to total human consumption of all antibiotics of just 7.3 million pounds.
The FDA will be taking comments on this proposal, known as the Veterinarian Feed Directive, for the next 90 days.
Meanwhile, the new recommendations—also released Wednesday—narrows the "prevention" loophole, which I pointed out when the FDA first floated the new system in April 2012. Currently, factory livestock farms use antibiotics in three ways. The first is what the FDA calls "production": the livestock industry discovered in the 1950s that when animals get small daily antibiotic doses, they put on weight faster, and the practice has been embraced ever since. No. 2 is disease "prevention": when you concentrate animals together, they're prone to illness and pass diseases among themselves quickly. Daily antibiotic doses can boost their immune systems and keep them from coming down with bugs. The third use is disease treatment, the one we humans are familiar with: you come down with a bacterial bug and and treat it with antibiotics.
Of course, there's little distinction between giving animals small daily doses of antibiotics to prevent disease and giving them small daily doses to make them put on weight. The industry can simply claim it's using antibiotics "preventively," continuing to reap the benefits of growth promotion and continuing to generate resistant bacteria. That's the loophole.
But the document released Wednesday delivers five pretty specific guidelines on how "prevention" should be defined, including that antibiotics prescribed preventively should be "targeted to animals at risk of developing a specific disease," i.e., not given willy-nilly to "prevent" the theoretical possibility of some hypothetical disease. It adds: "FDA would not consider the administration of a drug to apparently healthy animals in the absence of any information that such animals were at risk of a specific disease to be judicious." That's the strongest statement I've seen from the FDA on the prevention loophole.
Laura Rogers, who directs the Pew Charitable Trusts' human health and industrial-farming campaign, calls that language "promising." She adds: "This is the first official FDA policy on disease prevention, acknowledging that it is a problem."
There does, of course, remain the whole "voluntary" problem, as Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, stressed. "We have urged that these changes be mandatory, given how urgent the problem of antibiotic resistance is," Halloran said in a statement.
And US Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who since 2007 has been heroically pushing legislation that would definitively crack down on antibiotic use on farms, issued the following lament:
The FDA's voluntary guidance is an inadequate response to the overuse of antibiotics on the farm with no mechanism for enforcement and no metric for success. Sadly, this guidance is the biggest step the FDA has taken in a generation to combat the overuse of antibiotics in corporate agriculture, and it falls woefully short of what is needed to address a public health crisis.
The FDA's voluntary guidance is an inadequate response to the overuse of antibiotics on the farm with no mechanism for enforcement and no metric for success. Sadly, this guidance is the biggest step the FDA has taken in a generation to combat the overuse of antibiotics in corporate agriculture, and it falls woefully short of what is needed to address a public health crisis.
The fate of Slaughter's antibiotic crackdown proposal, called the "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act," illustrates the industry's power in shaping policy. Check out the roster of groups that lined up to lobby on the 2011 version of Slaughter's bill, courtesy of OpenSecrets—it reads like a meat/pharma industry trade convention floor show. The groups have lavished millions on the effort to defeat Slaughter's bill, which has thus far never come close to passing.
With congressional action looking impossible, the FDA's weak tea is all we have. But it could be weaker—at least the FDA gummed up that loophole with a few potentially substantial obstacles to agribusiness as usual.
Tom PhilpottDec. 11, 2013 6:55 AM
Like a marvelous baguette half eaten and left out, the golden age of American cookbooks opened with a flourish—the 1962 publication of Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking—and then went stale over time. The impulse to create "authentic" versions of dishes from faraway lands turned into a mania. Then, celebrity chefs got into the act, churning out high-minded tomes that seemed to presume one had a brigade of prep cooks on hand. For me, the turning point came in 2004, when I left New York City and moved to a farm in rural North Carolina. I brought along my copy of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's exacting and brilliant Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, but my will—and ability—to chase down South Asian ingredients eventually waned (coriander root in Boone, N.C.?). Something similar happened with Daniel Boulud's Cooking With Daniel Boulud and its fussy techniques. Moreover, in the scrum of farm work, the patience to attack a tower of dirty pots for a single meal also dwindled. Simplicity and seasonality came to the fore. I grew tired of cookbooks, even though I had largely learned to cook from them.
Then, two years ago, I identified a new wave of the genre, one driven by writers who are tied to their surrounding foodsheds and dedicated to simple technique without sacrificing flavor. These writers have reenchanted the form for me, and 2013 was another banner year. Here are my favorites.
Vegetable Literacy
By Deborah Madison
Any chef will tell you that meat is easy: You sear the tender cuts and slow-cook the tough ones. Vegetables are where cooking gets tricky—and interesting. Deborah Madison, founding chef of the pioneering San Francisco vegetarian temple Greens (launched 1979), is our foremost authority on the topic. She has come out with a masterpiece, a gorgeously illustrated, recipe-laden cook's almanac of the vegetable kingdom. The book is structured like an encyclopedia—the 12 chapters span the entire vegetable kingdom, from the carrot family (which includes celery, parsnips, and parsley) to brassicas (cabbage, kale, broccoli, etc.) to grasses (grains) and legumes (peas and beans). Each opens with a brief, information-packed essay, including anecdotes from a life spent in the kitchen as well as gardening and cooking tips. And then it's recipes, the great majority of them dead-simple and illustrated with photos that will send you clamoring out to the garden or the farmers market and back to the kitchen. This is the book I'll be reaching for when I've gone crazy at the market and wonder, what am I going to do with all these turnips?
Great gift for: Anyone who loves cooking, vegetarian or omnivore
Killer dish: Kale and potato mash with Romesco sauce
Dish I'm dying to try: A new-millennium carrot cake—one that's single-layered, bolstered with ground almonds, and adorned with ricotta cream instead of the "obligatory pavement of cream-cheese frosting."
River Cottage Veg
By Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
UK chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has emerged as a classic-cookbook-generating machine—2013 marks the third straight year that his latest model has made my best-of-year list (see 2011 and 2012). He established his bona-fides with the magisterial River Cottage Meat Book, tattered copies of which have found a place in many an omnivore's kitchen since its 2007 US debut. But alongside his devotion to sustainably produced meat, Fearnley-Whittingstall has always insisted that the vegetable kingdom, not the animal one, should take precedence on the plate. And as he showed in the quirky, irresistible River Cottage Every Day (2011), he has a gift for coming up with practical recipes for harried home cooks. His new book delivers more of the same, this time strictly for vegetable-based dishes. It's set up for someone looking to plan a week's family meals—chapter headings include "Bready things" (pizzas, sandwiches, and wraps), "Hefty soups," and "Pantry suppers." Yet it has things to teach even a veteran cook like me—for example, to get a flavorful vegetable stock in just 10 minutes of simmering, grate the carrots, onion, and celery first.
Great gift for: A family of tentative cooks looking to eat healthier
Killer dish: Salad of red cabbage, parsnip, orange, and dates
Dish I'm dying to try: Pea and parsley soup
Notes From the Larder
By Nigel Slater
Masterful gardeners can come off as boastful and off-putting when they write about their home-grown kitchen exploits, flaunting their perfection and hinting that anything less just won't do. In his 2011 book Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch (which made my list in '11), UK food writer Nigel Slater avoids that trap—even though his London flat's backyard has one of the most gorgeous and charming culinary gardens I've ever seen (to judge from the photos of it included in the book). It's through his gentle, encouraging prose that Slater manages to make you want to get your hands dirty in garden and kitchen alike—that, and his simple, ingenious seasonal dinner ideas. His latest, a yearlong "kitchen diary with recipes," has won me over as well. I love it because it gives you a view into a master home cook's thinking process—how he goes from "what's on hand" to "what's for dinner," over the course of four seasons. Sometimes it's bluntly simple, like the November evening after Slater spent hours putting his garden to bed for winter: He describes whipping up a plain miso soup, and adds, "And then I attacked the cheese and wine." Most entries are more elaborate, but never too elaborate—like the late-summer night when he salvages what's left of his tomato crop, which is beginning to wither in the rain, in an easy baked dish with chicken thighs, olives, and garlic. Altogether, the entries sum up to a kind of meandering portrait of a well-lived London life—and a useful cookbook to boot.
Great gift for: That friend of yours who loves to cook and to read about it, too
Killer dish: Lentil and spinach pie with potato crust
Dish I'm dying to try: Beet fritters with gravlax
Manresa: An Edible Reflection
By David Kinch
I don't have much appetite for the classic chef's opus—a gaudily illustrated, absurdly oversized document of some wizard's culinary Xanadu. What's in it for me, when I'll never have the ambition to either attempt to cook the high-wire dishes at home, or the coin to experience them in person? David Kinch's tribute to his farm-to-table temple Manresa in Northern California's Santa Cruz Mountains bears all the hallmarks of the genre, but it won me over all the same. It did so after I had been idly leafing through the sumptuous photographs and marveling at the complexity of the recipes: the rhubarb foam that gilded a dish of rhubarb jam and mint granita, the black truffle (retail price: about $150) deemed necessary for an "old-fashioned omelet" for four. "Yum," I sighed, preparing to close the book and forget it.
Then I happened upon the preamble to a dish called "Into the vegetable garden…" Kinch introduces it as an homage to the celebrated French country chef Michel Bras, who, back in the 1970s, on his daily run through the countryside on a day when the hills were "in full bloom," decided to "try to translate the fields." And thus, Kinch reports, a "local dish of ham and potatoes" turned into "a garden's worth of herbs and vegetables—raw and cooked, cultivated and foraged—at all stages of growth, from stem to flower." Anyone, I think, who cooks passionately and has fallen in love with a piece of farmland has felt that stir, that ambition to "translate" the beauty of a field at the height of its fecundity onto the plate. I have. And so I read, rapt, Kinch's Bras-inspired recipe in tribute to the small farm that he collaborates with in California. The dish combines multiple elements: "dirt" of dehydrated, ground root vegetables; root-vegatable purees; gently cooked vegetables; shaved raw ones; a riot of edible flowers; and, as a final flourish, a "dew" of champagne vinegar emulsified with an elaborate vegetable broth. The preparation is utterly absurd and I doubt I'll ever try it, but loved imagining it, and it drew me into Kinch's quirky project and made the rest of the book an irresistible read.
Great gift for: An aspiring young chef or a farm-loving aesthete of any age
Killer dish: I didn't have the guts to try a single one.
Dish I'm dying to try: "Into the vegetable garden…" (maybe someday).
Honorable mentions:
Roberta's Cookbook, by Carlo Mirarchi, Brandon Hoy, Chris Parachini, and Katherine Wheelock
An idiosyncratic, not-too-chefy guide to pizza, pasta, and vegetables from the creators of the instant-classic hipster canteen in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Spain, by Jeff Koehler
A brisk survey of the Iberian culinary landscape, with fresh takes on classic preparations.
The Art of Simple Food II: Recipes, Flavor, and Inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden, by Alice Waters
In a follow-up to her 2007 compendium of home cooking (which I reviewed here), the Berkeley legend and doyenne of sustainable cooking delivers her wisdom on transforming the bounty of a well-tended garden into unfussy, delicious meals.
Tom PhilpottDec. 7, 2013 7:00 AM
Deloitte Touche is one of the globe's "big four" auditing and consulting firms. It's a player in the Big Food/Ag space—Deloitte's clients include "75% of the Fortune 500 food production companies." The firm's US subsidiary, Deloitte & Touche LLP, has a shiny new asset to dangle before its agribusiness clients: It has hired the US Department of Agriculture's Undersecretary for Food Safety, Elisabeth Hagen. She will "join Deloitte's consumer products practice as a food safety senior advisor," the firm stated in a press release. The firm also trumpeted her USDA affiliation:
"Elisabeth will bring to Deloitte an impressive blend of regulatory level oversight and hands-on experience, stemming from her role as the highest ranking food safety official in the U.S.," said Pat Conroy, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP, and Deloitte's U.S. consumer products practice leader.
"Elisabeth will bring to Deloitte an impressive blend of regulatory level oversight and hands-on experience, stemming from her role as the highest ranking food safety official in the U.S.," said Pat Conroy, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP, and Deloitte's U.S. consumer products practice leader.
Last month, Hagen announced her imminent resignation from her USDA post, declaring she would be "embarking in mid-December on a new challenge in the private sector." Now we know what that "challenge" is. It's impressive that Deloitte managed to bag a sitting USDA undersecretary—especially the one holding the food safety portfolio, charged with overseeing the nation's slaughterhouses. Awkwardly, Hagen is still "currently serving" her USDA role, the Deloitte press release states. I'm sure the challenge of watchdogging the meat industry while preparing to offer it consulting services won't last long. The USDA has not announced a time frame for replacing Hagen.
Hagen won't be the only member of Deloitte's US food-safety team with ties to the federal agencies charged with overseeing the food industry. You know those new poultry-slaughter rules that Hagen's erstwhile fiefdom, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, keeps touting, the ones that would save Big Poultry a quarter-billion dollars a year but likely endanger consumers and workers alike, as I laid out most recently here? Craig Henry, a director within Deloitte's food & product safety practice, served on the USDA-appointed National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, which advised the FSIS on precisely those rules, as this 2012 Federal Register notice shows.
Then there's Faye Feldstein, who serves Deloitte as a senior adviser for food safety issues, the latest post in what her Deloitte bio calls a "33-year career in senior positions in the food industry and in federal and state regulatory agencies." Before setting up shop as a consultant, Feldstein served a ten-year stint at the Food and Drug Administration in various food-safety roles. Before that, she worked for 12 years at W.R. Grace, a chemical conglomerate with interests in food additives and packaging.
Apart from Hagen's new career direction, some food-safety advocates have offered praise for her tenure at USDA. They point out that, under her leadership, the FSIS cracked down on certain strains of E. coli in ground beef, an important and long-overdue move explained in this post by the veteran journalist Maryn McKenna. On his blog, Bill Marler, a prominent litigator of food-borne illness cases on behalf of consumers, called Hagen "one of the very best who has ever held that position," adding that she'll be "sorely missed."
But if the USDA does make good on its oft-stated intention to finalize those awful new poultry rules, I think Hagen will be remembered most for pushing them ahead, to the delight of the poultry industry and the despair of worker and consumer-safety advocates.
Tom PhilpottDec. 5, 2013 7:00 AM
Remember the proposal that Obama's US Department of Agriculture has been pushing since spring 2012, the one that would speed up kill lines in poultry slaughterhouses while simultaneously slashing the number of federal inspectors who oversee them? As I've reported before, the plan involves a unleashing a barrage of anti-microbial sprays onto chicken carcasses as they zip down the line.
The Washington Post's Kimberly Kindy has shown that these sprays, whose use is already on the upswing, harm workers and may even mask, not decrease, salmonella contamination. As for the traces of them that remain on supermarket chicken, "government agencies have not conducted independent research into the possible side effects on consumers of using the chemicals," Kindy reported.
Back in April, as I reported at the time, USDA chief Tom Vilsack declared that the department would roll out the plan "very soon." The USDA claims that it would save taxpayers $30 million per year by laying off inspectors, and save the poultry industry "at least" $256 million annually. The chicken industry—dominated by Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride (now mostly owned by JBS), Perdue, and Sanderson—strongly supports the proposal.
But it caused an uproar among food safety and labor advocates—who argued that the combination of more speed and fewer inspectors would lead to dangerous conditions for both consumers and line workers, sparking hopes the USDA might back away from it. A scathing Government Accountability Office assessment (my analysis here) bolstered those hopes.
But over the past week, the administration has sent two signals indicating that it plans to move ahead with the rules. Just before Thanksgiving, the administration released its Fall 2013 Regulatory Agenda, including for the USDA, which states that in 2014, the department's meat inspection service "plans to finalize regulations to establish new systems for poultry slaughter inspection, which would improve food safety and save money for establishments and taxpayers."
And then, on Wednesday, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service released its action plan to reduce salmonella contamination of the meat supply. What's No. 1 on its 10-point list? "[M]odernization of poultry slaughter inspection," the USDA's preferred phrase for its speedup plan. What does firing inspectors and jacking up line speeds have to do with fighting salmonella?
The timeline on exactly when the administration plans to move on the plan remains cloudy—but its determination to do so seems as strong as ever.
Tom PhilpottDec. 3, 2013 7:00 AM
Yes, you can make lots of money selling BPA.
Bisphenol A, a chemical used in can linings and plastic bottles, is pretty nasty stuff. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration banished it from baby bottles (at the behest of the chemical industry itself, after baby bottle producers had already phased it out under consumer pressure). BPA, as it's known, is an endocrine-disrupting chemical, meaning that it likely causes hormonal damage at extremely low levels. The packaging industry uses it to make plastics more flexible and to delay spoilage in canned foods.
You might think that such a substance would lose popularity as evidence of its likely harms piles up and up. Instead, however, the global market for it will boom over the next six years, according to a proprietary, paywall-protected report from the consultancy Transparency Market Research. The group expects global BPA sales to reach $18.8 billion by 2019, from $13.1 billion in 2012—about a 44 percent jump.
TMR researchers declined to be interviewed by me and wouldn't give me access to a full copy of their report. But they did send me a heavily redacted sample. One of the few trends I could glean from it is that the "steady growth" in global BPA consumption is driven by "increasing demand in the Asia-Pacific region." (According to this 2012 paper by Hong Kong researchers, Chinese BPA production and consumption have both "grown rapidly" in recent years, meaning "much more BPA contamination" for the nation's environment and citizens.) As for the United States, the report says that North America is the globe's "third largest regional market for BPA," behind Asia and Europe. North American BPA consumption is growing, but a "at a very slow rate," the report states. As a result, our share of the global BPA is expected to experience a "slight decline" by 2019. Not exactly comforting.
The sample that Transparency Market Research sent me blacked out its analysis of which companies have what share of the global BPA market. This 2012 US Department of Agriculture report claims that just two companies, German chemical giant Bayer and its US rival Dow, "produce the bulk of BPA in the world." Another major producer is Saudi Basic Industries Corp., or SABIC, a company 70 percent owned by the Saudi government. This charming corporate crew looks set to cash in on handsomely on the ongoing BPA boom.
Tom PhilpottDec. 2, 2013 7:00 AM
I have a friend who claims to have stopped reading me because I ruin all of her favorite foods for her: rice, quinoa, chicken… After writing this post, I may boycott me as well. In a study (hat tip: LiveScience) apparently designed by my friend for revenge on me, Dartmouth researchers found an association between bodily arsenic loads and consumption of the following substances I have swooned over in print (and enjoy in really life pretty much every chance I get): white wine, beer, Brussels sprouts, and "dark meat fish," a category that includes my beloved sardines.
For people who drink 2.5 beers or glasses of white wine per day, they found, arsenic levels were 20 percent to 30 percent higher than for nondrinkers. Gulp. Or, perhaps better: Stop gulping.
LiveScience's Bahar Gholipour raises an important caveat: The researchers acknowledge that it's unclear whether the arsenic levels the researchers found in their subjects are high enough to trigger the compound's negative effects, which include, according to the study, "skin lesions; skin, lung, and bladder cancer; vascular diseases; low birth weight; and potentially diabetes mellitus and increased susceptibility to infection." More research, they say, is needed, and I'll be following closely.
As for rice, which has been shown in recent studies to have high arsenic loads, the researchers found "no clear relationship" between consumption and arsenic loads. So my friend can go back to eating her favorite staple—seasoned with a lashing of schadenfreude. Excuse me while I whip up my dinner: air-poached air, accompanied by well-filtered water.
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Grand Hotel Bohemia
Select your stay dates to check availability
Grand Hotel Bohemia
About the hotel
Property Location
With a stay at Grand Hotel Bohemia, you'll be centrally located in Prague, steps from House of the Black Madonna and Powder Tower. This 5-star hotel is close to Old Town Square and Prague Castle.
Make yourself at home in one of the 79 air-conditioned rooms featuring minibars and LCD televisions. Complimentary wired and wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and satellite programming provides entertainment. Private bathrooms with bathtubs feature hair dryers and bathrobes. Conveniences include phones, as well as safes and desks.
Make use of convenient amenities such as complimentary wireless Internet access, concierge services, and wedding services.
Satisfy your appetite at the hotel's restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Dining is also available at a coffee shop/café, and 24-hour room service is provided. Quench your thirst with your favorite drink at a bar/lounge.
Business, Other Amenities
Featured amenities include a business center, limo/town car service, and complimentary newspapers in the lobby. This hotel has 2 meeting rooms available for events. A roundtrip airport shuttle is available for a surcharge.
Hotel Facilities
- Airport transportation (surcharge)
- Multilingual staff
- In-room accessibility
- Limo or Town Car service available
- Free WiFi
- Conference space
- Accessible bathroom
- Bar/lounge
- Wedding services
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Roll-in shower
- Coffee/tea in common areas
- Number of floors - 8
- Laundry facilities
- Restaurant
- Coffee shop or café
- Conference center
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Airport transportation
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Year Built 1927
- Concierge services
- Business center
- Total number of rooms - 79
- Number of meeting rooms - 2
- Elevator/lift
- 24-hour front desk
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Valet parking (surcharge)
- Luggage storage
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
Room Facilities
- Iron/ironing board (on request)
- Blackout drapes/curtains
- Room service (24 hours)
- Hair dryer
- In-room safe
- Phone
- Private bathroom
- Air conditioning
- Daily housekeeping
- Rollaway/extra beds (surcharge)
- In-room climate control (air conditioning)
- Free WiFi
- Minibar
- Satellite TV service
- Desk
- Bathtub only
- Bathrobes
- In-room massage available
- Hypo-allergenic bedding available
- Free newspaper
- Turndown service
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
- Free wired high-speed Internet
Hotel Policy
Know Before You Go
- Children 11 years old and younger stay free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding.
The following fees and deposits are charged by the property at time of service, check-in, or check-out.
- Breakfast fee: EUR 10 per person (approximately)
- Airport shuttle fee: EUR 33 per vehicle (one way)
- Valet parking fee: EUR 30 per day
- Pet fee: EUR 15 per pet, per night
- Rollaway bed fee: EUR 55 per day
The above list may not be comprehensive. Fees and deposits may not include tax and are subject to change.
Mandatory Fees and Taxes
You'll be asked to pay the following charges at the property:
- A tax is imposed by the city: EUR 0.60 per person, per night. This tax does not apply to children under 12 years of age.
We have included all charges provided to us by the property. However, charges can vary, for example, based on length of stay or the room you book.Show all hotel policy Show less hotel policy


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Singing the part of the murderer
Michael Mayes is an accomplished baritone from the tiny town of Cut and Shoot, Texas. "Look it up," he said. "It's a place." Mayes is... Read More
Praise for Salome!
The reviews are in and the praise is high. But don't take our word for it, here are the links so you can find out... Read More
Diva bares all for art in New Orleans 'Salome'
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The Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash (gr. I) headlines Saturday's Fall Festival Of Racing at Laurel Park. The day will feature six stakes races and $725,000 in purses.Eight runners, including Thunderello, who nearly wired the field in last month's NAPA Auto Part's Breeders' Cup Sprint (gr. I), and a pair of grade II winners from Southern California D'wildcat & Avanzado., are expected to go postward for the De Francis.Thunderello, who is trained by Scott Lake for Charles G. Mady, finished just a half-length behind winner Orientate in the Breeders' Cup Sprint. The Florida-bred son of Montbrook entered the Breeders' Cup Sprint off back-to-back wins, including a 1 1/2 length score over fellow De Francis Dash runner Boston Common in the Oct. 5 Gallant Bob Handicap at Philadelphia Park. Thunderello will carry 114 pounds, including rider Edgar Prado.California invader D'wildcat, who is trained by Bob Hess Jr. for David Shimon's Fog City Stable, will carry 122 pounds, including jockey Jorge Chavez. D'wildcat (Forest Wildcat -- D'Enough, by D'Accord) hasn't raced since finishing eighth in the Oct. 5 Oak Tree Breeders' Cup Mile (gr. II) at Oak Tree at Santa Anita. D'wildcat hasn't won since scoring a 10 1/2 length-victory in the Swale Stakes (gr. III) last year at Gulfstream Park. However, twice this year D'wildcat has been the beneficiary of disqualifications by the stewards in stakes races. He finished second, but placed first, after Snow Ridge was disqualified for interfering in the final strides of the Churchill Downs Handicap (gr. II) on the Kentucky Derby (gr. I) undercard. He again was moved to first in the Sept. 11 Live the Dream Handicap on the turf at Del Mar when Devine Wind was moved back for interference.The field for the $300,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash (gr. I) includes:
1--Outstander (Jozbin Santana, 114, 15/1)
2-- Boston Common (open, 116, 9/2)
3-- D'wildcat (Jorge Chavez, 122, 9/2)
4-- Rusty Spur (Mark Johnston, 118, 15/1)
5-- Deer Run (Mario Pino 118, 20/1)
6-- Avaanzado (Tyler Baze, 122, 5/2)
7-- Thunderello (Edgar Prado, 114, 9/5)
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text: You are here: Home > Course > Beverages > Milkshakes & Smoothies > Apple and Date Smoothie ( Burgers and Smoothie Recipe) Apple and Date Smoothie ( Burgers and Smoothie Recipe)by Tarla Dalal 27 Feb 2012 You are not signed in. Please sign in to access your cookbooksExisting members click here to sign inNew visitors click here to sign up Please sign in to create shopping lists! 5/5 stars 100% LIKED IT 1 REVIEW ALL GOOD Added to 37 cookbooks This recipe has been viewed 23325 times The apple and date smoothie is very soothing to the palate as both apples and dates lend a very balanced taste without any overpowering flavours. The smoothie also imbibes the natural sweetness of dates, making it all the more pleasing. Add your private note Apple and Date Smoothie ( Burgers and Smoothie Recipe) recipe - How to make Apple and Date Smoothie ( Burgers and Smoothie Recipe) Tags Milkshakes & SmoothiesNo Cooking Preparation Time: 10 mins   Cooking Time: 0 mins Total Time: 10 mins     Makes 2 big glasses (2 big glass ) Show me for big glasses Ingredients 2 cups chilled , peeled and roughly chopped apples8 black dates (kala khajur) , deseeded and chopped1/2 cup chilled fresh curds (dahi) mixed with 1/2 cup chilled full-fat milk4 tbsp sugar1/2 cup ice-cubesFor The Garnish2 apple cubes Method Combine the curds-milk mixture, apples, dates, sugar and ice-cubes and blend in a juicer till the mixture is smooth and frothy.Pour equal quantities of the smoothie into 2 individual glasses.Serve immediately garnished with an apple cube on the rim of each glass. Other Related Recipes Nutrient values per big glassEnergy284 calProtein2.6 gCarbohydrates56.6 gFiber5.3 gFat3.9 gCholesterol0 mgVitamin A80 mcgVitamin B10 mgVitamin B20.1 mgVitamin B30.1 mgVitamin C1.7 mgFolic Acid2.8 mcgCalcium121 mgIron1.1 mgMagnesium0 mgPhosphorus0 mgSodium42 mgPotassium132 mgZinc0.1 mg RECIPE SOURCE : Burgers and Smoothies


text:
The Joint Commission Revises Its Interpretation of Respiratory Care Orders
December 1, 2009
Back in August we notified our members of CMS' interpretation of the Hospital Conditions of Participation Standard that requires respiratory care orders to be written only on, and in accordance with, the orders of a doctor of medicine or osteopathy (MD/DO).
CMS stated at the time that nurse practitioners and physician assistants could also write orders if they were eligible to do so under state law and the physician had delegated authority for them to do so. But, under that scenario, the physician would have to co-sign the order in a timely manner based on established hospital policies. The Joint Commission, however, held fast to their interpretation of the standard that only a MD/DO could write respiratory care orders. The differences in interpretation have caused confusion and the AARC has received numerous inquires since we published the CMS clarification.
We are pleased to report that the Joint Commission is now on the same page as CMS. In hopes of resolving the issue, the Government Affairs staff went back to CMS asking that they contact the Joint Commission to discuss CMS' interpretation of the standard. Once again, our diligence has paid off. In the Joint Commission's online newsletter, dated October 28, 2009, they have published a clarification of respiratory care orders. It states:


text:
Victors Photography Photographer
Anishya Sue ReyesModel Female Orlando, Florida, US
My MM URL: http://www.modelmayhem.com/AnishyaSueReyes
Mayhem # 689982
About Me
Bueno! My name is Anishya Sue Reyes and I'm a Latina model originally from Dorado, Puerto Rico and Upstate New York. I am based in central Florida but im absolutly opened to traveling. At the moment Im looking to book mainly payed assigments depends on the job. welcome to do TFP with selected photographers so please message me I will gladly respond back. You can also email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. I'm definetly looking foward to working with you. xoxo
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Credit Notes
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OTB photography
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Nvd photography
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Promos and Events
Girls in Wonderland events-2009-2010
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La Mega Orlando calender 2007
Berjam auto creations HIN 2006-2008
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November 18, 2013
Judge Paul Sachs, middle, Roger Good, left, and Joey Andrew sign oaths of office Monday evening. Good and Andrew are the Steamboat Springs School Board's newest members.
Stories this photo appears in:
Steamboat's new school board members sworn into office
Newly elected Steamboat Springs School Board members Joey Andrew and Roger Good were officially sworn into office Monday evening, but one seat remains vacant on the five-person board.
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text:
Trey Songz New Video 'What I Be On' With Fabolous – Plus A New Movie [Video]
Trey Songz is a busy man. His five-song EP "Inevitable" just came out and he also just finished filming a remake of a legendary scary movie. Not only did he drop the video for his first single with Fabolous, but he talks about filming a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
On his EP, Trey said:
"Today, it's kind of difficult to make a conscious record and still be successful, however brash that sounds. As much as is going on in the world, people aren't really checking for that real conscious record. They want to dance, they want to hear bragging, all that stuff. With that song, it was about telling people I worked hard for what I have-and I have a lot. I'm very fortunate. But by that same token, I will give back to as many people as I can."
He also just wrapped up filming "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3-D," which drops in October.
He said:
"It's going to be crazy. It's very real. Especially when you put yourself in the mind-set that it is real, it's an ill experience."
Subscribe to Club 93.7 on


text:
More Rumblings Of Trouble Between Madonna & Guy
It seems like the latest issue dividing the famous couple is over their children's education. Madonna would prefer to have her two children, Lourdes and Rocco accompany her on her Confessions world tour, much to the chagrin of her husband, Guy Ritchie.
The Daily Mail reports:
Guy, 37, and the queen of pop, 48, have had a series of furious rows because he thinks the children should stay in one place to be educated. He is growing increasingly fed up with them moving every few weeks because of the tour, which goes on until October.
How should this be resolved? Well, there are a few obvious choices: a Vogueing competition, yoga pose-down or British-accent contest.
May the best man win.
More photos of Madonna and her children leaving the Hotel de Crillon in Paris are after the jump.
Written by Lisa Timmons
(Image source)


text: Many plastic containers have a polymer identification numbers embossed on the base, sometimes within a triangle made from three arrows. The purpose of these symbols is to assist in sorting plastic containers for recycling. They were first recommended by the Society for the Plastics Industry (SPI) in the USA and have been adopted widely throughout the world. The use of the symbols is voluntary and it must be stressed that the purpose is to identify the type of plastic used. They are not a claim for recyclability. Whether a particular container or material can be effectively recycled or not, depends on local conditions.


text:
Surveying at QUT NEWS: Industry report October 2003
Webb, Robert M. (2003) Surveying at QUT NEWS: Industry report October 2003. Spatial Science Queensland, 2003(2), p. 19.
Administrators only
Third year surveying students have recently undertaken the field work component to assist in the geodetic GPS co-ordination of some twenty control points in and around the Pinjarra Hills Veterinary Science project area in the Western Suburbs of Brisbane. Final year Surveying and Mapping students will be giving formal presentations of their project topics on Monday 13th October starting at 9am in Room M306. The Faculty is poised to enter its quinquennial review in February 2004 at a time of great opportunity and change with a range of significant achievements to its credit. It is a high achieving provider of teaching and learning with an excellent reputation for the qualities and suitability of its graduates in the professions it serves in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and the international workplaces.
Impact and interest:
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These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science® generally from 1980 onwards.
Citations counts from the Google Scholar™ indexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.
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text:
Radio) The Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill is enthusiastic about the
pontificate of Pope Francis. So the
Patriarch of Moscow told Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity, last week in the capital of the Russian
Federation. The Swiss cardinal and Curia
official met for the second time with the Russian Orthodox Primate on Wednesday
and Thursday, December 18 and 19, 2013.
In a German-language interview with Mario Galgano, Cardinal Koch
considers the topics that he discussed with Patriarch Kirill. [Translated for CWR by Michael J. Miller]
Cardinal Kurt
Koch: Of course it was mainly about the general
relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic
Church. But we also conferred about the
theological discussions and how it [i.e. the ecumenical dialogue] can
continue. Another topic was the
challenge of today's society for Christians.
The patriarch and I also spoke about the political situation worldwide,
however. In this connection we were very
concerned about the situation in Syria and generally in the Near East.
Mario Galgano: Many people expect that in an official conversation
between a representative of the Catholic Church and the Patriarch of the
Russian Orthodox Church there will be discussion of a possible meeting with the
Pope. Were there concrete plans for it
this time?
Koch: Again and again there is talk about
that. The one in charge of ecumenical
relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion, has
repeatedly emphasized that there is something more important than the date of
the meeting, namely the preparation for it.
And I support that attitude. It
takes time for that, too.
Galgano: What did Patriarch Kiril
say specifically about Pope Francis?
Koch: He is very pleased with this pontificate and
even said so in his first speech. He
especially admires how Pope Francis is leading the Church and his way of
dealing with people. Kirill also
mentioned the special emphasis that Pope Francis places on the encounter with
the poor. Another area of discussion is
the Pope's stance toward the family.
Galgano: In Eastern Europe at the
moment the situation is very tense, especially in Ukraine. There both the Catholic Church and also the
Russian Orthodox Church have made statements about the political
conflicts. Was that another topic that
you discussed with the patriarch?
Koch: Ukraine is a topic that is again and again a
cause of concern for the Russian Orthodox Church. Above all they are worried about the
Greek-Catholic Church* in Ukraine, which is united with Rome. This was addressed repeatedly. But political developments in Ukraine were
another topic, because the country is leaning precariously toward a
division. That is a very urgent
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text:
Look at it this way; Based on the rant, you're lucky you didn't come home with a small arsenal ( I might have.)
Yes I mean the title. I'm absolutely despising shopping for a handgun. I figured first it would be my birthday present to myself, then I figured it would be my Christmas present to myself, now it's my New Years Resolution.
Just who the hell first decided it was a good idea to start building handguns that started out in one caliber, like the Taurus Pt92, and then make them in another (PT100, the .40 PT92)? Whoever he was he needs to be dropped in the middle of Nebraska because it's absolutely freezing there right now and it would ruin his thought processes.
I started out looking for a 9mm. Preferably something with fifteen round magazines, made from all metal, and a full-size pistol (5 inch barrel). Then along came the XD(M) in 9mm, so I thought, "plastics are okay! They make condoms out of the same stuff right? And those have saved me from trouble more than once." Then I found what I had considered a relic of the past, and to top it off it was going for nothing. I found a man selling a Sistema Colt pistol for just $300. So I widened my search, and after finding out that .45 ACP is nearly a dollar a cartridge depending on which store you walk into I went back to 9mm. By now the Taurus PT92 AND XD(M) I had been looking at were sold.
Just today I found a S&W M&P in 9mm, a Beretta CX4 in 9mm, and they were both $400. Right, this means I'm buying a 9mm you think? Wrong, because I went to the MVACA show today to find a Hungarian knock-off of the Browning Hi-Power for just $300 (LNIB!), and then an RIA 1911 in .45 for only $380! One ammunition seller their had target .45 ACP from Winchest for $25 a box of 100!
DAMNIT ALL TO HELL! /end rant.
Last edited by Hammerhead6814; 01-09-2010 at 08:15 PM. Reason: I'm venting.
Look at it this way; Based on the rant, you're lucky you didn't come home with a small arsenal ( I might have.)
It appears the problem is you are shopping for ONE gun. If you shop until you find the least expensive gun instead of the gun you really want you will continue to hate rge experiance. Buy the one you want that feels good to you. Then get another one. Then get your third one.
It sounds like you hate spending money more then you hate shopping for a gun. You appear to constantly be shopping it's buying you aren't so good at
Good luck man buying a gun is fun really it is.
Problem is I can't find the one gun for me. ARG.
I think this is similar to the problem I have except I like shopping......after the 9 came a 40 and now looking at revolvers. Who knows what I will "need" after it?
Something worth considering......
For a good number of .40 S&W caliber guns you can buy a conversion barrel to shoot .357sig but more importantly 9mm. The Lone Wolf 9mm conversion barrel for the Glock would be a good example. The plus to this is that it is easier to find ammo since you can shoot both.
I have a buying problem. Started my handgun experience buying an Beretta M9 then needed a .22 to plink with. Then realized I wanted to Conceal Carry and the M9 was too big. So, I bought a Kahr PM9. Now my wife wants a hand gun so I take her to the LGS and she picks out a Beretta 84 SS. I then discover the PM9 is a little big to carry during the summer so my wife purchases a Ruger LCP for me. Then Beretta comes out with a PX4sc and since I like Beretta's so well I get one of those.
Now my son wants his own to shoot with me and one I can pass on to him in his twenties. My wife and I get him a Springfield XD9sc. For the winter, my local gun range will only allow .22's with light loads and since my son has conveniently laid claim to the before mentioned .22 I need to have my own. I get a Kimber Rimfire .22.
In 4 years I end up with over 8 hand guns. I have a very good and shooting companion wife.
There is a giant difference in being better with it (what ever ..it ...is) then haveing the right it for the situation you need it for.
The reason they make big vehicles is to haul big stuff, the reason they make lttle ones is to run around and get good mileage. The reason they make super fast hi res computers is for gaming and complicated software, the reason the make 350 dollar laptops is for students to store pics and word process their papers. Knowing what you have, means knowing the limits and expectation. Knowing what is really important in your buying decision make what you buy easier.
From the list of guns you put up here, PT92's 1911's M&P's, High Power knock offs, all with a very reasonable price tag at the time. My advice is make a list of what is REALLY important to you then find the gun that has the most and the most closest to the top of your list and buy it. Look at a Bersa Hi Cap Thunder 9mm.....They are pretty good guns and don't cost much new.
Next save yourself the worry - buy them all.
Gun shopping is my favorite thing to do. But I will get an idea what I want to look for and I don't listen to counter jockeys that will tell you all kinds of mall ninja crap because this or that rep is running a contest to see who can sell the most brand X weapons.
Know what you are looking for, then go get it. That does not mean that you have to lock into one brand but you know what you are wanting the weapon for It's just a matter of finding the one that fits the bill for a price you can live with. Running around to a bunch of shops looking at this or that and comparing bells and whistles will drive you nuts.You just have to pull the trigger so to speak. Unless you are going to have jut one gun (I have no idea how people do that but I've heard stories/myths about these people), that's what your next purchase is for. The best fit in YOUR hand and a caliber you are comfortable with is all that matters. It wont matter what you get you will see something late that will catch your eye and the addiction will do the rest.
Have never seen 45acp in the St.Louis area near a dollar a round but I have seen prices that get pretty close to 50cents a round.


text:
Cream of the Crop
Matt Kalil, USC
Playing in the trenches seems to be the "family business" for the Kalils,
Kalil's father, Frank, was a center at Arkansas and Arizona and was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 1982, before playing for the United States Football League's Arizona Wranglers in 1983 and Houston Gamblers in 1984. His brother, Ryan, was an All-American at Southern California and is the starting center with the Carolina Panthers.
Matt Kalil
Brian Spurlock/US Presswire
As a junior, Kalil was a consensus All-American, joining Ryan in giving USC the third All-American first-team family in school history. Other sets of brothers to receive that lofty postseason honor were Marlin and Mike McKeever and the renowned Matthews brothers, Clay and Bruce.
Manning the trenches with Heisman Trophy hopeful Matt Barkley at quarterback, Kalil made sure his teammate had one of the cleanest uniforms on the team, as no defender would get past Kalil on 447 pass plays. In fact, with Kalil leading the front wall, the Trojans allowed a league-low eight sacks for the season. Continuing to excel on special teams, he blocked two extra point tries and a pair of field goals, including a potential game-winner in the Utah contest.
The All-Pac 12 Conference first-team choice was named the winner of the 32nd annual Morris Trophy, which is awarded annually to the league's top offensive lineman as selected by the league's starting defensive linemen.
Compares to: Tony Boselli, ex-Jacksonville Jaguars — Kalil plays with great awareness, knowing how to use his size to engulf and his quickness to get in front and lead on sweeps. He needs minimal reps to retain and has a firm grasp of the playbook. He is the unquestioned leader of the offensive line and knows all of his other linemates' assignments. He is quick to pick up the game plan and it is rare to see him make a mental error. He appears destined to wear a Vikings uniform, despite smoke screens being bandied about by their coach and general manager that they feel the third pick in the draft needs to be a playmaker. Look for the Vikes to possibly trade with Tampa Bay (fifth) or the Rams (sixth), as both covet tailback Trent Richardson. With either of those choices, Kalil should still be on the draft board for Minnesota.
Best of the Rest
Riley Reiff, Iowa
Reiff is a former tight end who made the move to defensive tackle, then to offensive guard before stepping in for former All-American Bryan Bulaga at left offensive tackle when Bulaga was injured for several games in 2009. With Bulaga off to the National Football League as a first-round selection by the Green Bay Packers, the Hawkeyes have enjoyed the same dominating presence at the left tackle position, which has been handled capably by Reiff the last two seasons.
After struggling to match up with the top pass rushers he faced when thrust into the demanding left tackle position as a sophomore, Reiff worked hard that offseason and has developed into a highly competitive blocker for a program with a recent history of producing NFL linemen. With his big frame, long arms and strong hand punch, he has more than enough ability to keep pass rushers at bay, along with the quick feet to get out on the edge and clear rush lanes for the ground game.
Along with right tackle Markus Zusevics, the Hawkeyes proudly laid claim to the title of having the best bookend blockers in the Big Ten Conference last season, as Iowa totaled 43 touchdowns by their offense. The previous season, with that pair adjusting to life as starters, the Hawkeyes managed 42 drives that produced touchdowns.
Compares to: Eugene Monroe, Jackonsville Jaguars — Reiff plays on his feet well, thanks to superb balance, and shows the body control to play and adjust in space and pick up blocks on the move down field. He can slide and readjust to mirror edge rushers in pass protection. He also displays the lower-body flexibility to drop his pads and anchor firmly vs. stunts and the bull rush. He shows ease of movement accelerating into the second level and excellent change-of-direction agility to make plays working down the line. He plays with a strong base, keeping his feet wide and pad level low to generate enough explosion coming off the snap. Most draft value boards have the Hawkeye becoming a Buffalo Bill with the draft's 10th pick, but if they pass, he could still be around at No. 13 (Cardinals) or No. 19 (Bears).
Most Overrated
Mike Adams, Ohio State
Bruce Thorson/US Presswire
It's not just the positive drug test that has me putting him here. It's the fact that he all but disappears for long stretches in the game. It's as if he just lacks the fire in his belly to play this game. Adams has just adequate instincts on the field, thanks to a lack of effort in the film room and practices. He shows some ability to learn, but will need some reps, as he is not quick to take plays from the chalkboard to the playing field (still lacks high football intelligence).
Adams is a player who needs to be monitored in the training room (poor work habits) and lacks the maturity needed to handle the mental aspect of playing on an island at left tackle (might be a better fit on the right side). He moves adequately for his size, but lacks the quick feet to recover if he gets beat off the snap.
He struggles quite a bit in space, as he lacks the balance to reach and cut off in the second level. He shows adequate foot quickness to get off the ball, but can be late at times (will get lazy playing on his feet and struggles to bounce back up when cut). When he keeps his pads down, he is quick to gain advantage, but he does not do this on an every-down basis.
Compares to: Jason Smith, St. Louis Rams — From first eye contact, I can see why teams love his frame, with that excellent wingspan and big "paws," but there is a lot of "quit" in his game and that concerns me, especially if I am a general manager needing to find an offensive tackle in the first round.
Most Underrated
Zebrie Sanders, Florida State
More comfortable at his natural position on the right side of the line, Sanders filled in capably for an injured Andrew Danko at the demanding left tackle position for the final eight games of the 2011 campaign. A starter ever arriving on campus as a freshman, his 50 starting assignments (36 consecutive) is tied for second-best in school history. During his career, he was credited with 139 knockdown blocks.
Under the guidance of renowned position coach Rick Trickett, Sanders developed and refined excellent zone blocking skills. A student of the game who has served as a mentor in the offseason for FSU's younger linemen, he has the long limbs, fluid footwork and outstanding reach to get out on the edge and mirror pass rushers.
What separates Sanders from most tall tackles is his ability to play at a low pad level. With his loose hips, he can easily cut off the second-level defenders when turning the corner and leading on sweeps. He needs to show confidence in his hands and develop a stronger punch, but with his tenacity and experience, the Atlantic Coast Conference's runner-up the Jacobs Blocking Award in 2011 has the frame to add the needed bulk and power to compete effectively at the next level.
Compares to: D'Brickashaw Ferguson, New York Jets — Sanders' initial quickness lets him gain position, and on contact, he has the hand punch, long reach and strength to adjust, sustain and finish. He uses his size and upper-body strength well to absorb smaller defenders. He works hard to stay on his feet, but must maintain a low pad level to be effective. He is rarely on the ground, doing a solid job of using his hands to tie up his opponent. With his ability to play both tackle positions, look for a team like Pittsburgh or New England to get serious about drafting him by the third or fourth round.
Super Sleeper
Tom Compton, South Dakota
Tom Compton
Phil Sears/US Presswire
Compton's blocking consistency grade of 89.00 percent is the highest among active blockers in the Football Championship Subdivision, impressing talent evaluators with his all-around skills. He further cemented his elite status by running 5.08 in the 40-yard dash during USD's pro day, and the tackle has boasted times as low as 4.92, along with showing a well-built frame that lost no quickness, despite adding close to 60 pounds of bulk since enrolling at South Dakota prior to the 2007 season. That speed has allowed the coaches to utilize him much like the Chicago Bears did with William "Refrigerator" Perry, as a lead-blocking fullback out of the backfield in short-yardage situations.
Compares to: Rodger Saffold, St. Louis Rams — Compton has good timed speed and footwork, along with the ability to quickly recover when out on an island with an edge rusher, but might find a quicker route to an NFL starting job on the right side of the line. When he gets out of position, he is quick to redirect, thanks to good hip snap. He shows good strength and good explosion out of his stance, as he consistently plays with a good base. He doesn't bend too much at the waist and is a solid second level blocker, thanks to his foot speed and good agility in the open field. Look for the Chiefs and Bears to strongly consider him in the fourth round.
Dave-Te Thomas has more than 40 years of experience scouting for the NFL. With the NFL Draft Report, Thomas handles a staff that evaluates and tests college players before the draft and prepares the NFL's official Draft Packet, which is distributed to all 32 teams prior to the draft.