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2010 Volkswagen New Beetle Convertible Values
The 2010 Volkswagen New Beetle Convertible is a two-door convertible with seating for up to four passengers. The New Beetle Convertible is powered by a 2.5L five-cylinder engine that produces 150 hp. The 2.5L engine is linked to either a five-speed manual or a six-speed automatic, and pushes the car along at 28 mpg on the highway. The 2010 New Beetle is a carryover.Read more Read less
The New Beetle has been an icon for a decade now, and Volkswagen is giving it another year without any substantial changes.
Retro styling; comfortable, nimble ride; supportive front seats; good array safety systems for the price
A design this distinctive and instantly recognizable for under $20,000 is a pretty good deal. Plus, a slew of high-tech safety systems, such as Volkswagen's Electronic Stabilization Program, are standard equipment. The New Beetle gets up to 29 mpg on the highway in either sedan or convertible form.
Select a 2010 Volkswagen New Beetle Convertible trim level
New Beetle-5 Cyl.


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Men's Jerusalem Sandals Leather Golan Sandal
Men's Jerusalem Sandals Leather Golan Sandal
Designed as a tribute to 2,000-year-old footwear found at archaeological digs in the Middle East, these natural-leather sandals are handmade in Israel by skilled craftsman. We're not saying that they'll last for 40 years in the wilderness, but they sure are comfortable.
With such an artful approach to men's and women's wear, it's not surprising Assembly's founder began his career in the art world. Greg Armas was at the helm of galleries before opening his store on the Lower East Side in 2008. A namesake line followed in 2012 and a second forward-thinking retail environment in Los Angeles three years later. In addition to their own label, Assembly New York and Los Angeles focus on international and otherwise independent designers who maintain an emphasis on craft and design as an ethos, regardless of trend.
Do you have questions about this product? We're here to help!

subset: commoncrawl


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Democrats and the Obama campaign are rolling out a new voter registration website as part of an aggressive early effort to help get supporters back to the polls.
GottaRegister.com, officially a project of the Democratic National Committee, is intended to offer one-stop-shopping for voters with interactive registration instructions for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
While Democrats have launched similar tools in the past, such as e.g. VoteForChange.com in 2008, an Obama campaign official said the new system features accompanying smartphone and tablet apps, and automated email reminders to help voters follow through.
The website comes as part of a broader campaign to educate voters about new laws in a handful of states that impose stricter voter ID requirements and shorter early voting periods, among other restrictions. Democrats worry the laws, coupled with waning voter enthusiasm, could hurt them in battleground states in 2012.
Obama tapped into 15 million first-time voters in 2008. Since then, Democrats have seen registrations slip in a number of key states.
In Florida, for example, 4.8 million voters registered as Democrats in 2008. As of Aug. 31, just 4.5 million had identified as the same. Meanwhile, Republican registrations have held steady, and the number of unaffiliated voters remains high at 2.2 million.
Another snapshot: in Pennsylvania, officials reported just 4.15 million Democrats registered through May of this year, compared with 4.48 million registered for the presidential election three years ago.
Democrats are working to close those gaps in a bid to keep Obama in the White House.


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Snooki Dumps Boyfriend For Intruding On Reality Star Territory
Uh oh, it looks like Jersey Shore's Snooki is having some problems in the love department.
The wee guidette broke things off with her boyfriend Emilio while filming the second season of the Jersey Shore because, according to Emilio, he dared to audition for a MTV reality show.
Yep, apparently there is only room for one reality television star in Snooki's relationships, and that star is going to be Snooks.
Emilio told TMZ that Snooki was afraid that he was using her for fame and that when he told her that he auditioned for The Real World while she was filming in Miami, she broke things off with him via text. Here is Emilio's message to TMZ, which will either make you shed tears for the public school system in America or make you upset that there is no true love within the guidos:
All i kno is she was upset i tried out fornreal world nd left me a message sayin im single. Next i kno i wake up [Monday] morning and facebook says im single.
We think Snooki should reconsider her breakup with Emilio, these two are obviously made for each other.


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Jacob and BoboJun 12th, 2012 | By Editorial Staff | Category: Tow Dogs
"These two spoiled-rotten tow dogs would be a great addition to your magazine. We have enjoyed their company at our office since they were six weeks old. They run the office, doctor and both often think they are pit bulls.
"They enjoy riding with our drivers in the wreckers for tows and service calls. When at home, this web all we have to do is mention work and they run to the door ready to go. Jacob belongs to secretary Kayla Sharp, malady and Bad Bobo belong to owners Tim and Peggy Clark. They are best buddies and love nap time, treat time and play time outside."
Clark Towing
West Memphis, Ark.
Memphis, Tenn.
Name: Jacob
Breed: Miniature Schnauzer
Color: Black
Sex: Male
Age: 1
Favorite Regulars: When the uniform man makes his weekly rounds.
Name: Bobo
Color: White/Brown
Breed: Shih Tzu
Sex: Male
Age: 7 months
Favorite Regulars: When Zack (driver), arrives for work.


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Being born to a parent with a university degree is more likely to guarantee a child top grades at school in England than it is in the US, Australia and Germany, a study has revealed. Researchers found England was "significantly behind similar nations" in creating an equal chance of achieving high exam scores for pupils from the least well-educated homes compared with those from the most well-educated families. A study of 16,000 14-year-olds, commissioned by the educational charity the Sutton Trust, found that in England, 56 per cent of teenagers whose parents had degrees scored high enough grades to perform in the top quarter of their peer group. This was the case for just 9 per cent of teenagers whose parents had left school without qualifications. The gap of 47 percentage points is more than twice Australia's (23 percentage points), and higher than Germany's and the US's (37 and 43 percentage points respectively). The Guardian
Swinburne University of Technology will guarantee entry to an undergraduate degree for students who successfully complete a TAFE diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree. Swinburne is a dual-sector institution, which means it offers both university and TAFE qualifications. Places will be guaranteed for up to four years. Students moving into university courses from TAFE will get credit for prior study. Joanna Mather
ASX-listed education provider
Rachel Lebihan
Want to donate your body to science when you die? Queensland University of Technology has launched a body bequest program to be used to train surgeons, doctors, nurses and allied health professionals. QUT is interested in hearing from people who want to donate, or would consider donating, their bodies for medical and scientific research.Rachel Lebihan
The Australian Financial Review


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|The Impact of Gender on Bargaining Interactions
|Examines how the female can be equally competitive with the male in their interactions in negotiations when bargaining as opponents.
In their new book, Women Don't Ask (2003), Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever remark that while 57 percent of male Carnegie Mellon graduate business students negotiate their starting salaries, only 7 percent of women do so – resulting in male starting salaries 7.6 percent higher than those attained by women. Why don't women attempt to negotiate as often as men? If they did so, is there any reason to think they would not do as well?
When men and women negotiate with members of the opposite gender – and even the same gender – stereotypical beliefs affect their interactions. Many men and women assume that males are highly competitive, manipulative, win-lose negotiators who want to attain good deals from their opponents. Females are thought to be more accommodating, win-win negotiators who seek to preserve existing relationships by expanding the joint returns achieved by negotiating parties. If these stereotypical assumptions are right, we might expect male lawyers and business persons to obtain better negotiating results than female attorneys and business persons.
Men are believed to be rational and logical; women are thought to be emotional and intuitive. Men are expected to emphasize objective fact; women focus more on the maintenance of relationships. Men are expected to be dominant and authoritative; women are supposed to be passive and submissive. When men and women interact, males tend to talk for longer periods of time and to interrupt more often than women. (Deborah Tannen, Talking From 9 to 5 53-77 (1994)). Men utilize more direct language, while women often reveal tentative and deferential speech patterns. During personal interactions, men are more likely than women to use "highly intensive language" to persuade others, and they are more effective using this approach. Females tend to employ language containing more disclaimers ("I think"; "you know") than their male cohorts, which causes women to be perceived as less forceful. This gender-based factor is counterbalanced by the fact that women continue to be more sensitive to nonverbal signals than their male cohorts. As a consequence, they are more likely to be attuned to the subtle messages conveyed by opponents during bargaining encounters.
Gender-based stereotypes cause many people difficulty when they interact with attorneys and business people of the opposite gender. Men often expect women to act like "ladies" during their bargaining interactions. Overt aggressiveness that would be considered vigorous advocacy if employed by men may be characterized as offensive and threatening when employed by women. This is especially true when females use foul language and loud voices. Male negotiators, who would immediately counter such tactics by other men with quid pro quo responses, frequently find it difficult to adopt retaliatory approaches against women. When men allow such an irrelevant factor to influence and restrict their responsive behaviour, they allow their female opponents with a bargaining advantage. Some men also find it difficult to act as competitively toward female opponents as they would toward male opponents. These men give further leverage to their female opponents.
Male attorneys and business people occasionally make the mistake of assuming that their female opponents will not use as many negotiating "games" as their male adversaries. Even quite a few women erroneously assume that other females won't apply the Machiavellian tactics stereotypically associated with members of the competitive male culture. Men and women who expect their female adversaries to behave less competitively and more cooperatively often ignore the realities of their negotiation encounters and provide a significant bargaining advantage to women who are willing to employ manipulative tactics.
Some male negotiators try to gain a psychological advantage against aggressive females by casting aspersions on the femininity of those individuals. They hope to embarrass those bargainers and make them feel self-conscious with respect to the tactics they are using. Female negotiators should never permit adversaries to employ this tactic. They have the right to use any techniques they think appropriate, regardless of the stereotypes those tactics might contradict. To male opponents who raise baseless objections to their otherwise proper conduct, they should reply that they do not wish to be seen as "ladies," but merely as participants in bargaining interactions in which their gender should be irrelevant.
Women do not feel as comfortable in overtly competitive situations as their male colleagues. This factor may explain why a higher percentage of women (39%) take my Legal Negotiation course, in which final grades are influenced by performance on bargaining exercises, on a credit/no-credit basis than men (27%). Many women are anxious regarding the negative consequences they relate with competitive achievement, fearing that competitive success will alienate them from others. Males in my Legal Negotiation course tend to be more accepting of excessive results obtained by other men than by such results achieved by women. Even female students tend to be more critical of women who attain exceptional results than they are of men who do so. A number of males have privately admitted to me that they are also fearful of "losing" to female opponents, preferring the risk of non-settlements than the humiliation of being defeated by women.
Males tend to convey more confidence than women in performance-oriented settings. Even when minimally prepared, men believe they can "wing it" and get through successfully. On the other hand, no matter how thoroughly prepared women are, they tend to feel unprepared. I have frequently observed this difference among my Legal Negotiation students. Successful males think they can obtain beneficial results in future settings, while successful females continue to express doubts about their own capabilities. I find this frustrating, because the accomplished women are as proficient as their accomplished male cohorts.
Male and female self-confidence is influenced by the stereotypical ways in which others evaluate their performances. When men are successful, their performance tends to be ascribed to intrinsic factors such as diligent work and intelligence; when women are successful, their performance is often to be attributed to extrinsic factors such as luck or the aid of others. This factor causes male success to be overvalued, and female success to be undervalued.
Gender-based competitive differences may be attributable to the different acculturation process for boys and girls. Parents are likely to be more protective of their daughters than their sons. Most boys are exposed to competitive situations at an early age. They have been encouraged to engage in little league baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and other competitive athletic endeavours. These activities introduce boys to the "thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" during their formative years. "Traditional girls" games like jump rope and hopscotch are turn-taking games, where competition is indirect since one person's success does not necessarily signify another's failure." While it is true that little league and interscholastic sports for women have become more competitive in recent years, most continue to be less overtly competitive than corresponding male athletic endeavours. (Gail Evans, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman 80 (2000)).
Since 1973, I have taught Legal Negotiation courses in which we study the negotiation process and the factors that influence bargaining interactions. My students participate in a series of bargaining exercises, the results of which affect their course grades. Over the past thirty years, I have performed a number of statistical analyses of student negotiation performance based upon gender. (Charles B. Craver & David W. Barnes, "Gender, Risk Taking and Negotiation Performance," 5 Michigan Journal of Gender & Law 299 (1999)). I have found absolutely no statistically significant differences between the results attained by men and by women. The average results are almost similar. Several people suggested to me that while the average results might be equal, the male results would be more widely distributed. This theory was based upon the premise that women are more accommodating and less competitive, generating more results in the mid-range, while more competitive, win-lose males would either obtain highly beneficial results or well below average results. If this hypothesis were true, the standard deviations for the more dispersed males would be greater than those for the centrally concentrated females. The fact that I have found no statistically significant differences with respect to the male and female standard deviations contradicts this theory.
Over the past thirty years, I have discovered that practicing attorneys, business persons, and law students of both genders allow gender-based stereotypes to influence their negotiating interactions with persons of the opposite gender – and even people of the same gender. Many individuals believe that men are highly competitive, manipulative negotiators who always strive to obtain maximum results for themselves, while female negotiators are more accommodating and less competitive interactants who try to maximize the joint returns achieved by the parties.
Legal practitioners and business firm officials should acknowledge the impact that gender-based stereotypes may have upon negotiation interactions. Male attorneys who believe that female opponents will not be as competitive or manipulative as their male colleagues provide women adversaries with an inherent advantage. They let their guards down and behave less competitively against female opponents than they would with male opponents. Female negotiators must also reject gender-based stereotypical beliefs regarding both male and female opponents. Women who conclude that adversaries are treating them less seriously because of their gender should not hesitate to take advantage of the situation. The favourable bargaining outcomes accomplished by these women should teach chauvinistic opponents a crucial lesson.
Law firm and business managers should be careful to minimize the impart of gender stereotyping when they assess male and female performance. They should not over-value the success of men and under-value the success of women by assigning male accomplishment to intrinsic factors but female achievement to extrinsic factors. They should also try not to be critical of women whose negotiation styles would be seen favourably if employed by males but negatively when implemented by women.
Charles Craver is a Professor of Law, George Washington University.
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NEW YORK (Sep. 17)
Lindbergh's and Senator Nye's insinuations that the Jews are conducting war propaganda in America received an indirect, sarcastic reply yesterday from President Roosevelt at a press conference at which he indicated that his personal attitude is one of good-humored derion.
By way of comment, the President read a telegram received by a Senator whose name, he emphasized, he was not at liberty to disclose. The telegram said: "Have just been reading a book called the Holy Bible. Has a large circulation in this country. Written entirely by foreign born, mostly Jews. First part full of warmongering propaganda. Second part condemned isolationism with a story about a Good Samaritan which is dangerous. Should be added to your list and suppressed."
Without mentioning Lindbergh's name, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Governor Lehman, and a number of Protestant and Catholic leaders united last night in denouncing anti-Jewish and anti-religious propaganda of all kinds as a grave threat to American democracy. They spoke at the Fordham University centenary dinner given in the hotel Waldorf-Astoria, here, as part of the three-day celebration of the 100th anniversary of the largest Catholic university in the United States.
As President Roosevelt's representative, Vice President Wallace told the 2,300 eminent guests at the dinner that "no true Christian can speak bitterly against the Jew, the Negro or the yellow man." The faith of Americans, he said is "totally different from believing in the inherent superiority of one race over all other races."
Governor Lehman condemned "the sinister forces" who are sowing the seeds of discord between those of different faiths. Division between our people," the Governor said, "must not be allowed to exist if democracy is to be preserved. Hate begets hate. Intolerance begets intolerance. Oppression of the individual or of groups inevitably leads to the oppression of other individuals and groups. Wherever racial or religious division has raised its ugly head, the death knell of human liberties has been sounded. An attack on one religion weakens all religious faiths, since the basis of all true religion is identical – charity, justice and tolerance."
The New York Herald-Tribune, in a forceful editorial today says that though many isolationists do not approve of anti-Semitism, "the evidence that their leaders are deliberately taking up this despicable, disruptive and profoundly inhuman and un-American weapon to bolster a lost cause is too strong to be disregarded." Referring to Lindbergh's speech and to Senator Nye's anti-Jewish insinuations, the editorial comments:
"Anti-Semitism was the most contemptible, as it was also the most dangerous, of all the weapons in the armory with which Hitler subverted Germany and set out to enslave the world. And from time immemorial the meanest, the most contemptible, as well as the safest and easiest, excuse of those who have spread this poison – whether Nazis, or their sympathizers or their counterparts in other times and places – has been the pretense that the poisoner was really only a great-hearted friend of the Jews, trying to save them from the prejudices which their 'unwisdom' or their 'excesses' would otherwise arouse. One encountered it, ad nauseam, in the early days of the Hitler movement in Germany; one has met it over and over again elsewhere. Its viciousness is apparent; it is an obvious and despicable device for spreading the bigotry it pretends to combat. Yet this is the precise defense which Senator Nye has raised against the plain inference that the isolationists' precious 'investigation' into the motion-picture industry is primarily an attempt to light the fires of Nazi anti-Semitism in aid of a cause already desperate. Senator Nye, America First and the other isolationist leaders alone know their own inner motives. Others, endeavoring to assess them, can only look at the evidence. They can only infer that the increasing persistence with which the anti-Semitic poison has appeared in isolationist pronouncements is not an accident. It was hardly an accidental choice of names when Senator Wheeler, in an isolationist speech as long ago as last February, was denouncing 'political control by a financial oligarchy, whether it be the Thyssens and Krupps in Germany, the Rothschilds in England and France, the Sassoons in India and China, or the Morgans, the Warburgs, the Kuhn-Loebs and other international bankers in the United States."
Dorothy Thompson in her syndicated column, today, repudiates Lindbergh's and Senator Nye's anti-Jewish assertions by proving that in the ranks of the leading interventionists in this country Jews constitute an insignificant proportion. Also that the moving picture industry is actually controlled by non-Jewish banks. Miss Thompson gives a list of leading American newspapers and magazines disproving Lindbergh's allegation about "Jewish influence" in the press. "In fact, if every American Jew died tomorrow it would make not the slightest difference in the policy of the movies, the radio, the government, and the press – unless, of course, Mr. Lindbergh and his followers could fill whatever positions were left vacant from the lists of the America First Committee," Miss Thompson writes.
Hugh S. Johnson, Wold-Telegram columnist, in a statement today declared that he is "opposing many of Lindbergh's views and specifically any attempt to link American Jewry with warmongering."


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To determine the association between environmental tobacco smoke and middle ear disease in preschool-age children.
A population-based case-control study with verification of disease history and exposure reporting in a subsample.
Setting and Participants
Participants were identified through a population-based probability sample of 1320 first-grade students in 36 schools in Calgary, Alberta. The parents of 625 children meeting case (n=227) or control (n=398) definitions were interviewed by telephone for their children's exposure history. The adequacy of exposure and disease measures was assessed using hair cotinine measurements, home visits, and physician medical records for 92 children.
Main Outcome Measures and Results
A history of middle ear disease was found in 23.9% of the sample. Relationships were found between middle ear disease and 2 or more household smokers (crude odds ratio [OR], 1.85; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.15-2.97), 10 or more cigarettes smoked by the mother per day (crude OR, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.12-2.52), and 10 or more cigarettes smoked in total in the household per day (crude OR, 1.40; 95% CI, 0.98-2.00) during the first 3 years of life. In logistic regression modeling, these effects persisted after adjusting for child care (type, age started, duration, and group size), infant feeding (type and duration), socioeconomic status, maternal educational level, number of prenatal ultrasonographic examinations, and health services use. The mean current hair cotinine levels were higher for children living in homes with 1 or more smokers vs no smokers (0.51 vs 0.31 ng/mg, P=.01). There was fair agreement (75.3%) between physician medical records and parental report of disease history, but some misclassification bias toward the null hypothesis is likely.
Environmental tobacco smoke is an important risk factor for middle ear disease in urban preschool-age children, even in a relatively affluent population.
MIDDLE EAR disease (MED) or otitis media (OM) affects up to 46% of children by the age of 3 years1 and is the most frequent reason for ambulatory care visits and the administration of prescription drugs in this age group.2- 5 In addition, OM is the most common reason for surgery in children in developed countries.2,6,7 The total costs associated with OM are estimated to be more than $3.5 billion (1989 data) in the United States alone.8 The fluctuating hearing losses associated with frequent or recurrent MED may place young children at risk of adverse language, cognitive, and motor developmental outcomes.9,10
Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) may be the most common indoor air contaminant for young children, with estimates ranging from 38% to 60% of all children exposed to passive smoke in their homes.10- 13 The US Environmental Protection Agency linked numerous adverse outcomes in young children with passive smoke exposure, including MED; however, the evidence is suggestive but not conclusive. Following the Environmental Protection Agency's report, controversy has continued in the English-language literature; the ETS-MED association seems well accepted in some professional literature but denied in other literature.14- 17 As recently as March 1997, the ETS-MED relationship was found to be positive in about as many studies as it was found to be negative in.17 This inconsistency in findings may be partly due to methodological issues, such as insufficient power, inadequate measurement of exposure and disease, lack of confounder control, and non–population-based study subjects.17- 25
This study examines the relationship between ETS and MED in a population-based case-control study with adequate sample size, independent collection of information on the adequacy of exposure and disease measures, multivariate analysis for confounder control, and blinding of the interviewer and study participants.
The subjects were identified through stratified cluster sampling of all 207 first-grade classrooms in publicly funded elementary schools in Calgary, Alberta. Schools were stratified into 5 categories based on a social risk index of the immediate surrounding community. The social risk index was computed using relative proportions of 1-parent families, families receiving social assistance, adult unemployment, and median annual income in each community, ranking these values according to distance from the "average" community risk score and taking the average rank overall. Thirty-six schools were sampled using the first-grade census.
All parents of the first-grade students received a preschool health history questionnaire. The preschool health history questionnaire was developed using questions from standard child health surveys (ie, the National Population Health Survey and the Longitudinal Survey of Children) and included items on various early childhood health problems, such as physician-diagnosed asthma and developmental concerns, as well as questions on MED history. It was pretested with 33 families to identify ambiguous or incomprehensible questions. The preschool health history questionnaire was implemented using modified Dillman total survey design techniques.26 Participants were blind to the primary hypothesis in that it was presented as a general study of environmental factors in child health, and ETS and MED questions were imbedded among various other items.
Children in the case and control groups were identified based on the responses to MED questions. Children were classified as cases if they had a history (to their sixth birthday) of any of (1) persistent middle ear fluid that lasted 3 months or longer; (2) 4 or more episodes of OM in any 12-month period; (3) antimicrobial treatment or prophylaxis that lasted 3 months or longer for OM; or (4) myringotomy, auditory tube surgery, or both or otolaryngological recommendation for surgery. Children were classified as controls if they had a history (to their sixth birthday) of 2 or fewer episodes of OM and neither of 1 through 4 previously noted. We chose not to use "pure" controls (ie, children with no episodes of OM), given that OM is prevalent in this age group such that 1 or 2 episodes likely represent the normal course. Children were deemed ineligible for the study if they were born out of the country (to avoid disease detection bias because of lack of primary health care), if they had health conditions associated with increased frequency of OM (sensorineural hearing loss, craniofacial anomalies, and some congenital syndromes), or if they did not meet either the case or control definition.
The parents of children classified as cases or controls completed a telephone interview adapted from the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Inventory Questionnaire.27 This questionnaire ascertained exposure to ETS and other indoor air contaminants as well as information on possible confounding variables during 3 age periods: 0 to 12, 13 to 36, and 37 to 72 months. Environmental tobacco smoke or passive smoke was defined as the particulate and gas-phase compounds released into the air from a burning tobacco product (including cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco), the same compounds exhaled by the active smoker, or both. Questions on ETS exposure included household, child care setting, and other outside home exposures (such as public places, vehicles, and other homes). Exposure management behaviors in the household (eg, restricting smoking to specific rooms or outdoors) were also ascertained. The primary exposure measure was number of household smokers during the child's first 3 years of life to ensure that exposure preceded disease status; this measure was dichotomized as 0 to 1 or 2 or more household smokers, based on evidence in this study that exposure was frequently minimized by spouses in single-smoker households. The number of cigarettes smoked in the household per day by the mother, father, and all household smokers was used as a secondary exposure measure and categorized as fewer than 10 and 10 or more using standard national cut points.28
Information was also collected on the following potential confounding variables: age, sex, low birth weight, preterm birth, history of allergies, history of asthma, upper and lower respiratory tract infections, health care use (hospital admissions and emergency department and physician visits), resistance and susceptibility to illnesses, general health status, family history of respiratory morbidity (including OM), child care (type, age started, duration, and group size), infant feeding (type and duration), number of maternal prenatal ultrasonographic examinations (PUEs), maternal and paternal educational level, household income, tenure (home owned or rented by occupants), age and size of the home, crowding, type of heating, gas appliances, fireplace (type and use), relative humidity, condensation and molds, pets, and chemical-producing renovations and hobbies. Telephone interviews for the collection of exposure and confounder data were conducted by a single interviewer blinded to case or control status and trained in cognitive interviewing techniques.29,30
Sample size was determined using the national survey-based estimates of the prevalence of passive smoke exposure and population-based studies of the prevalence of MED, a 1:2 case-control ratio with a power of 80%, an α=.05, and the typical effect size found in previous studies. The required sample size was then inflated for an estimated nonresponse of 25%.
A 15% random sample of 92 children was selected from which independent information on OM history and exposure reports were collected. For OM history, agreement between parental reports and physician medical records was reviewed by mailing questionnaires to family physicians containing the same standard items about OM episodes and surgery as had been presented to the parents. In the exposure validation substudy, homes were visited for the observation of smoking behaviors and the sampling of hair for the measurement of cotinine. The objective of this part of the study was to assess the extent to which reported current household smoking was congruent with current evidence of smoke exposure in the home and in the hair of the children. We assumed that the extent to which respondents were truthful about the reporting of current household smoking would be generalizable to the extent to which they were truthful about the reporting of household smoking for the exposure period used in the analysis. Hair samples were collected by clipping about a dozen 1-cm strands from the back of the neck with sterile scissors; they were shipped in new coin envelopes wrapped in plastic bags via courier to the laboratory. Cotinine, the major metabolite of nicotine, was measured in the samples using a radioimmunoassay technique.31,32
The Conjoint Medical Research Ethics Board of the University of Calgary, Calgary, reviewed and approved the study. Written informed consent was obtained from the parents for interviews, and verbal informed consent was obtained from the children prior to the collection of hair samples.
Differences between the cases and controls on categorical variables were tested using the z test. Odds ratios (ORs) were also computed along with Mantel-Haenszel χ2 tests and Cornfield approximate 95% confidence intervals (CIs).33 Unconditional logistic regression models were computed to examine the association between number of household smokers and number of maternal cigarettes smoked per day and history of MED after adjusting for potential confounders. The Pearson χ2 goodness-of-fit test was applied to evaluate the fit of the models.34 Analyses of variance and F tests were used to compare mean cotinine values (in nanograms per milligram) by reported exposure level. The Mantel-Haenszel extension χ2 test was used to explore differences in effect by level of exposure.35 The percentage agreement and the κ were used to compare physician and parent disease classifications.33
Thirty-six (90%) of 40 schools agreed to participate, and 1780 children made up the initial sample. Of these children, 146 were ineligible because of country of birth and OM-related birth defects and chronic health problems, leaving a pool of 1634 children. Parents of 1320 (80.8%) of the 1634 eligible children completed the preschool health history questionnaire; 852 (64.5%) of the 1320 parents consented to be interviewed. Parents provided interviews for 230 (72.8%) of 316 children who fit the case criteria and 401 (64.8%) of 619 children who fit the control criteria; the other 385 children did not fit either criterion. The parents of 3 cases and 3 controls who consented to interviews were unavailable for follow-up, leaving data for 227 cases and 398 controls (n=625).
The cumulative incidence of parent-reported MED was 23.9%; and of auditory tube surgery, 9.8%. These values were comparable with those found in other population-based studies.36- 38 As seen in Table 1, cases were more likely to have been cared for in a day care or day home (government-sponsored home-based child care), to have been cared for in larger groups, and to have started child care during their first year. Cases were also less likely to have mothers with 12 or fewer years of education, less likely to have mothers who underwent fewer than 2 PUEs, and more likely to have had 4 or more visits to health care providers (hospital or clinic physicians or hospital, public health, or walk-in clinic nurses) during the past year.
Of the cases, 19.8% had lived with 2 or more smokers during their first 3 years of life compared with 11.8% of the controls. Table 2 displays the crude Ors and 95% CIs for this primary finding and other indicators of exposure.
Table 3 and Table 4 provide the results of logistic regression modeling for number of household smokers and number of maternal cigarettes smoked per day, respectively, as these were the exposures shown to be most important in previous analyses. The model reduction strategy involved an examination of the contribution of groups of related variables to the overall significance of the models until the most parsimonious model was found. In separate models, the number of household smokers, the number of cigarettes smoked by the mother per day during the child's first 3 years of life, and child care location were strong and independent predictors of MED, after adjustment for other significant predictors in the models. Thirteen or more years of maternal education, 3 or more PUEs, and past year health services use were also significant correlates of MED in the models. Attendance at day care was a significant correlate of MED when the exposure was coded as number of maternal cigarettes smoked per day, but this variable failed to reach statistical significance when the exposure was coded as number of household smokers.
Table 5 displays a pattern suggestive of a dose-response relationship for level of exposure by number of maternal cigarettes smoked per day and MED. In this analysis, exposure categories were adjusted slightly because of small numbers in the 1 to 10 cigarettes smoked per day exposure level.
In the validation study, as shown in Figure 1, cotinine levels in the hair samples were compared by number of household smokers. Because the cotinine measures represented recent exposures, parental reports of smoke exposure for the most recent exposure period (age 3-6 years) were used for comparison. Cotinine distributions were positively skewed so distributions were transformed such that assumptions for statistical testing were more adequately met. The results were similar with and without variable transformation. The mean cotinine values were statistically higher according to reported number of household smokers, grouped as 0, 1, and 2 or more (P=.03). There was concordance between reports of current household smoking and in-home observations conducted by pairs of study personnel (including C.E.A.-B. for approximately 10% of the visits) for 95.7% of the visits.
Distribution of cotinine values by number of current household smokers according to parental report. The shaded areas represent the proportion of the distribution of cotinine values falling between the 25th and 75th percentiles; the middle bars, the distribution medians, which separate the number of total values in half; and the open circles, outliers, which are data points that lie outside the distribution. The distribution means are reported adjacent to each plot. The difference between groups was significant (P=.03, F test).
The percentage agreement on case or control status as reported by parents compared with physician records was 75.3% (55 of the 73 children for whom physician medical record information was available for at least 3 years of the preschool-age period). The κ for agreement between proportions was 0.56 (95% confidence interval, 0.39-0.72; P<.001). Of the 18 children for whom there was disagreement, 15 (83.3%) were classified by physicians as nondiseased when they had been classified by parental report as diseased and 3 (16.7%) were classified as diseased by physician report but nondiseased by parental report. For 7 of these children, sufficient information was available from the interview to confirm the original classification. However, uncertainty in status for the remaining 11 suggests a potential level of disease misclassification in the study of about 15%.
This study showed an elevated risk of frequent or persistent MED in children exposed to ETS during their first 3 years of life, even after consideration of many possible confounders. The biological mechanism for this association is unknown but could include impaired mucociliary clearance and irritation of adenoid tissue, resulting in increased histamine production, both of which can lead to eustachian tube dysfunction, or reduced immune response through altered phagocytic antibacterial defenses leading to more upper respiratory tract infections.
Because the proportion of the target population consenting to interviews was less than ideal, selection bias is a possible alternate explanation for this finding if smoking parents were less likely to participate. Because a low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with smoking prevalence, we examined this issue with a regression analysis. Schools with a higher social risk (ie, those with more students with a low SES) had a slight tendency to provide fewer responses (response to interviews correlated with the social risk score of the school community, but the correlation was small [r=−0.25, r2=0.06]). The possibility of selection bias based on exposure classification was also assessed by reviewing the prevalence of exposure among controls. The proportion of households with 2 or more smokers was similar but slightly below the anticipated proportion based on recent Canadian population-based surveys (12% vs 16%).11,39 This type of bias would likely distort the finding toward the null hypothesis.
Selection bias for disease was also reviewed. The proportions of cases and controls whose parents consented to the interview were similar to those eligible overall (23.9% vs 27.0% for cases and 46.9% vs 47.1% for controls). Finally, the exposure-disease relationship was calculated for high-response schools (n=3 schools [53 children]), defined as those with 73% or more parents consenting to interviews, and the calculated OR for the primary hypothesis was higher than that of the original analysis (OR, 2.76; 95% CI, 0.44-18.35). Thus, several lines of evidence suggest that the direction of selection bias was toward the null hypothesis and that its magnitude was not large.
Blinding of the subjects to the primary study hypothesis probably provided some protection against selection bias based on differential exposure. Other indications also suggested that the reporting of exposure was reasonably valid. Cotinine values were significantly (P=.03) higher in a direction that concurred with reported number of household smokers. In-home observations noted clear evidence of household smoking in only 1 home that had been reported to have no smokers, and there was indirect evidence in 3 others. Thus, the proportion of incongruence in smoking reporting would have ranged from 1.1% to 4.3% at a maximum, which is consistent with that found in the literature.40 Finally, most parents interviewed were mothers, and associations were stronger for exposure indicators associated in part or exclusively with the mother. The pattern of associations found does not suggest large-scale deception about self-reported smoking status.
On the other hand, well-documented difficulties in the measurement of MED retrospectively,41,42 along with evidence from physician medical records in the substudy, suggest a greater magnitude of misclassification of disease. Whether this level of inaccuracy in reporting MED differed according to exposure status is a critical question in the assessment of misclassification bias. Smoking is more prevalent among adults with lower educational attainment and SES. However, in this study, a higher maternal educational level was independently associated with MED, possibly through better detection of symptoms, increased use of health services, or better reporting. Therefore, parents in smoking households, in which the maternal educational level and SES were lower, may have reported less disease than those in nonsmoking households.
There was good consistency with the literature for the finding of elevated risk of MED associated with out-of-home child care during the first 3 years of life.43 In bivariate analyses, elevated risk was evident for all child care indicator variables, including group size, age beginning group care, and duration of out-of-home care. However, collinearity problems required removal of some of these variables from the final models. On the other hand, breast-feeding was not independently associated with MED; in fact, the sign of model coefficient sizes suggested an association of risk. This is not congruent with the results of other studies, including a recent, well-designed, large, prospective cohort study that demonstrated a protective effect of breast-feeding.44 The study population may have been too homogeneous for SES and infant nutrition for such effects to manifest themselves. Mothers whose infants had early episodes of OM may have chosen or may have been counseled to extend the period of breast-feeding as a preventive measure against more episodes, as earlier episodes are predictive of subsequent episodes. Also, retrospective reporting of breast-feeding duration may have lacked precision. Finally, more highly educated mothers might have been more likely to breast-feed and less likely to smoke45; they also may have been better reporters of disease history.
None of various SES indicators, including tenure, crowding, income adjusted for family size and cost of living, and paternal educational level, was independently associated with MED apart from maternal educational level. The study population may have been too socioeconomically homogeneous for such an effect to manifest itself. The statistically significant elevated risk of MED found for maternal postsecondary education is counterintuitive, but it fits with an explanation proposed previously, ie, these mothers display a better awareness of early life symptoms, increased use of health services, and more accurate reporting. If the study was not sensitive enough to detect previously demonstrated associations for other risk or protective factors under the conditions of imperfect reporting and a fairly homogeneous population, this would suggest that passive smoke exposure must indeed be a robust risk factor.
The statistically significant independent association between the number of PUEs and MED was an unexpected finding. Estimates of the actual number of examinations were requested, but it is unknown how accurate reporting may have been. A study conducted in this same geographic area suggested that there is an association between number of PUEs and delayed speech (for which MED could be an intermediate outcome),46 but much more research, as well as a plausible biological mechanism, would be required before causality could be inferred. Perhaps women whose pregnancies are considered to be at risk tend to undergo more PUEs, and MED might be 1 of several adverse outcomes of high-risk pregnancies.
Although health services use is clearly a consequence of MED (ie, on the causal pathway), it was retained in the models for several reasons. There was some evidence from preliminary analyses that exposed children had increased health services use. Also, Froom and Culpepper43 have shown that children attending group child care are taken for health service visits more frequently. Under either of these scenarios, health care use may have operated as a confounding variable. Increased use may also lead to the identification of more episodes of MED.
The findings reported in this article are reasonably congruent with those reported in other recent articles. Kitchens47 and Ey et al,48 despite using different exposure and disease measurement strategies, found similar ORs of 1.65 (95% CI, 1.02-2.66) and 1.75 (95% CI, 1.03-2.95), respectively, for MED and ETS exposure. Stenstrom et al24 found a significant association between MED and having 1 or more smoking caregivers (OR, 2.68; 95% CI, 1.27-5.65). The larger effect size may have been the result of a comparison with pure controls. Finally, Collet et al49 found a statistically significant OR of 1.80 for 20 or more maternal cigarettes smoked per day after adjustment for maternal educational level, family income, family history of OM, group child care attendance, and sex.
Evidence was found in this study that heavy exposure to ETS among preschool-age children is associated with a history of MED, even after consideration of the role of confounding variables. In addition, a pattern suggestive of a dose-response relationship was found for the number of cigarettes smoked per day by mothers during their children's first 3 years of life and a history of recurrent or persistent OM in their first-grade children. However, the results may not be generalizable beyond relatively affluent and homogeneous urban populations; the ETS-MED association might well be stronger in children with greater social disadvantage, increased exposure to ETS, or both. The avoidance of passive smoke exposure by preschool-age children may have a considerable effect on the burden of morbidity due to MED.
Accepted for publication October 7, 1997.
This study was supported in part by funds from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (Dr Adair-Bischoff), Edmonton, and the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation, Calgary.
Presented in part at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, August 18, 1996, and at the American Pediatric Society/Society for Pediatric Research Meeting, Washington, DC, May 5, 1997.
We thank the study staff and volunteers Cheryl Heynen, Jeanne Vidacovich, and Orasa Kovindha; staff of the Calgary Board of Education schools and the Calgary Catholic School District schools, Calgary, for allowing recruitment of families in their facilities; Barry Kimberley, MD, PhD, for clinical input; and Rollin Brant, PhD, for statistical consultation.
Editor's Note: Here is another example of children "taking it in the ear" for adults' trangressions.—Catherine D. DeAngelis, MD
Corresponding author: Carol E. Adair-Bischoff, MD, Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Calgary, 3330 Hospital Dr NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 4N1 (e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com).
Adair-Bischoff CE, Sauve RS. Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Middle Ear Disease in Preschool-Age Children. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1998;152(2):127–133. doi:10.1001/archpedi.152.2.127
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An expectant Rebecca Gayheart flashed a smile in Beverly Hills on Tuesday (December 29). The 38-year-old former Beverly Hills, 90210 actress – who is expecting a girl! – sported a striped tank as she ran errands with a friend.
I wonder if Rebecca has checked in with her pal Brooke Mueller? There was a domestic assault between Brooke and hubby Charlie Sheen on Christmas Day.
On a positive note, Rebecca seems to be living a healthy lifestyle in recent months. At the beginning of her pregnancy, we spotted the curly-haired beauty smoking a cigarette.View Slideshow »»


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Enjoy exclusive savings during your stay.
Conference Planning
F our Seasons Hotel Houston has developed a number of environmentally friendly practices and services that can help you "green" your meeting. You choose the services that best suit the needs and desires of your group, and we deliver. It couldn't be easier to go green.
The following services are available at every Four Seasons hotel and resort worldwide and can be selected in any combination, at no additional cost. Your journey to Greener Meetings starts here.
Meeting services
- All meeting correspondence is sent electronically, including sales proposals, catering menus and banquet orders, except for legal documents where hard copies are required.
- Clients are provided with opportunities to donate their decorations and display materials to local organizations.
- Dry-erase boards are provided as an alternative to flip charts.
- Recycling bins are placed in all meeting rooms.
- Temperatures in meeting rooms are set conservatively to save energy.
- Local printing services can be arranged on behalf of clients to lower transportation emissions.
Food and Beverage Services
- China and silverware are used instead of disposable plating and utensils.
- Condiments are served in bulk rather than in individual packages.
- Menus are planned around abundant, local, seasonal and artisanal ingredients.
- Chefs create menus with more vegan and vegetarian options to lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with animal farming.
- Guests have the option to reuse linen, which reduces the consumption of water associated with laundering.
- Leftover or gently used amenities, including shampoo and conditioner, are collected and donated to Clean the World.
- Newspapers are delivered to guests in reusable bags.
- Energy-efficient measures and processes are in place to improve water and electricity conservation.
- Staff are instructed to shut blinds, turn off lights and turn down heat/air conditioning when rooms are unoccupied.
- To conserve paper, guests may have their folios emailed to them upon departure.
- On-site recycling is provided for paper, cardboard, metals, glass, plastics and other recyclable materials, and recycling bins are available to be placed in guest rooms where facilities exist.


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Johannesburg - Academic, human rights and gender activist Rhoda Kadalie on Wednesday called for decisive action against rape, in an opinion piece in Beeld newspaper.
"CNN reported that the Bredasdorp murder was the 'tipping point' for South Africa. How many tipping points do we need?" she said in a column published in the Afrikaans daily, 12 days after 17-year-old Anene Booysen was found disembowelled and dying on a Bredasdorp construction site in the Western Cape.
"Prominent citizens like Jay Naidoo deliver passionate pleas to men to stop... the Gender Commission adds its voice to the angry chorus, but does nothing to educate the public."
Kadalie said she despaired about the government's "inability to stem the tide of this epidemic."
The annual 16 days of activism against gender violence was a futile campaign to combat violence that, to some men, had become second nature, she said.
As with the high rate of poverty and unemployment, men would continue to use women as "shock absorbers for their frustrations and emasculation".
During her 21 years as an academic at the University of the Western Cape, she had worked with student leaders and observed significant progress in the fight against sexual violence and harassment, Kadalie said.
"The university established a tribunal where cases were heard and the law was applied. Offenders were suspended and professors who exploited women students were disciplined."
She called for commissioners who could sit in magistrate's courts to report on how rape cases were processed in the criminal justice process.
"They should monitor police stations to see if victims are treated with dignity... they should ensure that the number of convictions is improved upon annually and they should insist on sexual offences courts."
Furthermore, they should co-operate with NGOs working for teachers and principals to encourage the inclusion of sex education and reproductive health in the curriculum, she said. - Sapa


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Feather Trend Fall 2010
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For those of you who like to stand out sartorially, OnSugar blog sale alert shopping is here to help you take flight. Read about how to incorporate the feather trend into your wardrobe, and shop some killer pieces!
Fashion Trend Watch — feathers. From earrings to hair accessories and dresses, feathers are a look that is getting noticed. Whether the look is plain, colorful or just plain loud, you can rock feathers in just about every style this season, even as a shawl. To follow this trend in a small way you can wear feather-style earrings or try a headband, or hair pins that feature feathers. You can also find some styles that just have a feather print. To really show off your love for feathers you can wear a skirt or dress with feathers, or grab a feathered coat. Just be sure when wearing this trend you only showcase one feather style at a time; after all you don't want to look like you're gonna fly away.
Want to see more? Follow OnSugar blog sale alert shopping now! Or start your own OnSugar blog. We may just feature your post on FabSugar!


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Whether you own a house or are looking to buy, rising mortgage rates are your enemy.
You think you know that, right? With Monday's announcements that Toronto-Dominion Bank and CIBC are raising some of their fixed-term mortgage rates by as much as one-quarter of a percentage point, let's see if you do.
Rising rates will make affording a first home much harder - so much so that you'll pay more even if housing prices decline. Higher mortgage costs will also shrink the cash flow of families that stretched to buy a home but were getting by in a low-rate world - potentially by thousands of dollars a year.
People looking for a home face astronomically high prices in some cities, but they benefit hugely from very low mortgage rates. What a dilemma these people face - buy now to lock in manageable borrowing costs for a while, or risk higher mortgage rates while hoping for housing prices to fall.
That could happen. A firm called Capital Economics has raised the possibility of housing prices falling 25 per cent in the next few years, in large part because of rising interest rates. Even the Canadian Real Estate Association has projected a price drop of 1.3 per cent this year.
Let's say prices fall 5 per cent over the next 12 months, enough to take the national average house price in December to $327,322 from $344,550. How would this play out from the borrower's point of view?
With a five-year fixed-rate mortgage at 3.9 per cent and a 10-per-cent down payment, you'd be looking at payments every two weeks of $823 (includes mortgage insurance and a 25-year amortization) if you bought now.
Now, we flash ahead a year to find that mortgage rates have climbed a full percentage point. You're now buying a $327,322 house and taking a five-year mortgage at 4.9 per cent. The new biweekly payment: $865, which plays out to an extra cost of $5,460 or so over the five-year mortgage term.
Imagine you use your year on the housing market sidelines to build up your down payment by, say, $5,000. This lowers your biweekly payment only modestly to $850, which means a total extra cost of about $3,540 over what you would have paid if you bought a year earlier.
Renewing Your Mortgage
There's definitely an argument to be made for buying a house now to lock in low mortgage rates, even though home prices are potentially at their peak. But then you will be in the position of having to renew your mortgage in a few years, when mortgage rates will almost certainly be a lot higher.
Assuming that's the case, recent buyers will be especially vulnerable because they'll be renewing at a point in their mortgages where they've paid off very little principal. Remember, the early years of your mortgage are spent primarily paying off interest.
Long-amortization mortgages of 30 or 35 years only make the situation worse. The 35-year amortization will disappear next month for people with down payments of less than 20 per cent, but it has been popular in recent years.
Maybe you bought a $333,000 house in the spring of 2009 and decided to pay it off over 35 years. You put 10 per cent down and ended up with biweekly payments of $629 by choosing a 3.5-per-cent rate over five years. If, on renewal, you went with a five-year mortgage at 5 per cent, your payment every two weeks could be almost $800. Over a year, the extra costs would top $4,000.
People who are further along in paying off their mortgages won't be hit as hard when rates rise, and they have more latitude to cope if higher payments become a problem by lengthening their amortization period at renewal. That's much less of a big deal if you have 12 or 15 years left on your mortgage than if you have 25 or 30 years to go.
I'm much closer to the end of the mortgage on our family home than the beginning, but I'm still planning ahead for higher rates. Here's what I'm doing to get ready. For each weekly mortgage payment over the past several months, we've been adding an extra $100 through what are known as double-up payments.
I arranged them online through my Web-based banking service, setting a start and stop date. It's an easy way to whittle down the outstanding principal in a way that will lighten our load if rates climb and help reduce our overall mortgage interest bill.
Pay down your mortgage or find a way to carve out some cash flow to pay for higher payments. That's how you fight the enemy of rising mortgage rates.
Housing Affordability
How higher rates can hurt affordability, even if housing prices fall.
3.90%: Cost of a five-year fixed rate mortgage
$344,550: Average house price in Canada at December 2010
$316,297: Amount to borrow if you bought the average house with a 10% downpayment*
$823: Accelerated biweekly payments amortized over 25 years
4.90%: Cost of a five-year fixed rate mortgage
$327,322: Average house price after a decline of 5% from a year earlier
$300,482: Amount to borrow if you bought the average house with a 10% downpayment*
$865: Accelerated biweekly payments amortized over 25 years
*includes mortgage insurance
Source: Canequity.comReport Typo/Error
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1996 and 2008
Here's an interesting comparison of the 1996 and 2008 Republican presidential fields from frequent E-mailer Ironman:
I think the present GOP race is shaking out [like] the last time no Bush was running
Putative Frontrunner: Charismatic warrior hero with no DC political experience. Very popular with voters outside traditional Republican base. Has image as can-do, no nonsense man of action. Political insiders discount his chances due to a litany of issues where he has been at odds with standard party positions. Remains to be seen if these issues deflate the early enthusiasm for his candidacy.
The in-the-wings mainstreamer: Innovative former Governor runs as most electable candidate and one able to bridge party divides. Lacks either the establishment edge of "OF" or the generic popularity of "PF". Critics think this candidate is running a gimmick laden campaign appealing to recent fashion.
The new ideas candidate: This candidate is staking his campaign on one issue he believes the other candidates are not addressing and is advocating a new solution for this issue. He lacks the experience or popularity starting the race of his opponents.
The grievance candidate: This candidate hopes to round up enough angry white men (and women, even) to get nominated. His candidacy is based on the inadequacies of the other candidates in the race regarding conservative social issues, reducing taxes and spending, and protecting working Americans from a flood of foreign products and immigrants. On an experience basis this candidate should not be in the race.
So, my read is:
McCain = Bob Dole
Giuliani = Colin Powell
Romney = Lamar Alexander
Gingrich = Steve Forbes
Hunter, Brownback = Pat Buchanan
Your thoughts? We know at the end in 1996, the Putative Frontrunner did not make it to the primaries, and the Original Frontrunner barely survived because the party establishment would never permit a grievance candidate to be the nominee. What is somewhat forgotten is the analog to Romney (Lamar) nearly finished ahead of Dole in N.H., and entertained the live expectation of becoming the "Stop Buchanan" candidate had that happened.
Of course, GigaTuesday will greatly compress the decision process for anyone interested in a tactical nomination, as opposed to the partisan true believers.
By Michael Barone


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Thai foreign exchange student looking forward to holidays, learning more English while at Fillmore Central
By Anton Adamek
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 3:22 AM
Nutthawadee "Elle" Chughate, a foreign exchange student from Bangkok, Thailand, has been eagerly learning more of the English language and American culture during her time in the Fillmore Central School District. SUBMITTED PHOTO
Thai foreign exchange student Nutthawadee Chughate has been in the United States for only three months. She came from Bangkok, the largest city in Thailand with over 8 million people residing within the city and over 14 million people living in a larger metropolitan area. The differences between where she came from and her current life at the Dale and Linda Polesky home in Harmony are many, but she has already begun feeling more comfortable in new surroundings.
Nutthawadee is her first name, but everyone calls her Elle. It's her nickname. According to Elle, many people in Thailand have two first names, one long and one short. She has had her nickname from birth. Even her city has another name, one that is the longest in the world for a place and takes over 10 seconds to say.
Elle has lived in Bangkok for most of her life. When she was very young, she lived at her grandparent's home outside of the city. Now, she lives with her father in Bangkok, where the climate is warmer. In fact, Elle compared the weather to what she experienced in Florida during a trip she recently had there. Many of the plants and trees were similar and she enjoyed being close to the ocean as Bangkok is situated on the coastline.
Elle has had to become acclimated to southern Minnesota weather. She had never seen snow prior to a week ago when little more than an inch fell and stuck around for a few days. She is very excited to see it again. Overall, the weather is just colder.
The most noticeable difference to Elle has been the space around her. "I like this. It's quiet and not too much noise. No one to bother me when I'm working on homework," she remarked.
Not having as many people around her has helped eliminate many of the stresses that would have prevented Elle from learning many of the things she has learned so far. English is at the top of the list.
In Thailand, Elle had taken English classes, but said she never got to use it outside of the classroom. She wanted to learn English because it is used all around the world. When she attended school at Fillmore Central for the first time, it was "totally crazy" to her.
"The teacher was talking so fast," she explained. "I thought, 'Why are they talking so fast? I don't understand!'"
With time, Elle has been progressing quickly in her language skills. Linda said they had to use many more gestures when Elle first arrived in order to communicate, but that she has learned quickly.
"She comes home with words everyday and asks me what they are," Linda said.
Elle appreciates the help her host parents, students and teachers at school have given her. With improved English skills, she has been able to steadily improve her scores in her classes.
Elle's school experience in America has even been very different from home. Prior to arriving, she had watched a television series about high school in America, yet found the real thing completely different. At her school in Bangkok, Elle and the other students wear a school uniform and must follow certain grooming rules as well. Her class schedule is weekly, so she takes on about 13 different classes.
At Fillmore Central, she has each class every single day. She is also able to take classes like art and choir. In Thailand, these activities are offered as clubs, but not in the school. She said there is a lot more studying done in Thailand, but also an expectation to not ask questions. Asking questions has been something she has been learning how to do through her American classes. She is taking English, history, geometry, choir, Spanish and a mixed media art class.
Interested in possibly pursuing an education and career as an artist, Elle loves to draw. She has been learning how to use other materials in her art class this semester.
Once Elle returns to Thailand, she will have two more years in high school and then she wants to return to the U.S. to go to college.
Elle initially got interested in doing an exchange to Australia. Her dad had talked to her about it and encouraged her to instead go to the U.S., saying it was a good choice.
"He helped change my mind," she admitted. "I think it was a perfect choice."
Her older brother had gone on an exchange to Canada and enjoyed it. Once she had applied and been accepted to come to the United States, Elle still had about a year to prepare for the exchange. She attended a camp for exchange students where she heard a former exchange student speak about his experiences.
She didn't know too much about the U.S. except that "it was a freedom country." Elle had travelled only within nearby Asian countries and cities.
Now, she can't imagine where else she would rather be. Elle said she isn't homesick, she likes the food and doesn't feel like she's sacrificed anything even though she is far away from her parents and friends.
She is looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas and enjoyed experiencing Halloween for the first time.
Elle has been enjoying her time in Harmony and Fillmore Central so far and is looking forward to everything else she will yet experience.
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Dear Elle. Thank you very much for sharing your story. My name is Donald (Ajarn Donald) and I am originally from Chicago. I have been living and teaching English in your beautiful country Thailand since 2001. I really do admire you for your enthusiasm as well as your personal desire to get the most out of your education learning experience. I would like to wish you as with Dale & Linda Polesky a very Happy Thanksgiving 2013 and remember to stay warm during the winter months. I hope to have the opportunity to meet you in person once you return to Bangkok. I live near The Mall Bangkae. I wish you very Good-Luck Elle!
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Donald Patnaude
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Congrats to Elle. Being an international student isn't easy, given our complex culture and language. Assistance must come from various sources. A new award-winning worldwide book/ebook to help anyone coming to the US is "What Foreigners Need To Know About America From A To Z: How to Understand Crazy American Culture, People, Government, Business, Language and More." It paints a revealing picture of America for those who will benefit from a better understanding, including international students. Endorsed worldwide by ambassadors, educators, and editors, it also identifies "foreigners" who became successful in the US and how they contributed to our society, including students.
A chapter on education identifies schools that are free and explains how to be accepted to an American university and cope with a new culture, friendship process and classroom differences they will encounter. Some stay after graduation. It has chapters that explain how US businesses operate and how to get a job (which differs from most countries), a must for those who want to work for an American firm here or overseas. It also has chapters that identify the most common English grammar and speech problems foreigners have and tips for easily overcoming them, the number one stumbling block they say they have to succeeding here.
Most struggle in their efforts and need guidance from schools' international departments, immigration protection, host families, concerned neighbors and fellow students, and books like this to extend a cultural helping hand so we all have a win-win situation. Good luck to all wherever you study!
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Has the president done enough to condemn the hate groups, such as the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists rallying in Charlottesville, Virginia?
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Lori Neilitz, PT, LAT Print Friendly Page
Lori practices physical therapy at the UW Health Sports Rehabilitation Clinic. She is an athletic trainer at Middleton High School and previously at the the Capital Volleyball Academy. Lori specializes in rehabilitation of athletic injuries of the extremities as well as aquatic therapy.
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reducing the flow at a key Louisiana spillway that's taking pressure off big cities by diverting Mississippi River floodwaters into Cajun country.
The corps says lower levels on the Mississippi led to the closure of one Morganza spillway bay on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday. That leaves 14 of the spillway's 125 bays open.
The Morganza was opened May 14 for the first time since 1973 to ease pressure on levees at Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Also Wednesday in Mississippi, Tunica County authorities say some flood victims from the community of Cutoff could go home for the first time next week accompanied by federal inspectors. For hard-hit communities like Vicksburg, it could take weeks for evacuees to be allowed home.


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Sri Lanka boasts of having three of the finest 18 hole Golf courses comparable to those in Asia. The three courses are situated in Colombo, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. The elevations and climatic conditions in each location differ to the extent that some golfers often comment that it is like playing in three different countries.
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Day 3: Colombo - Kandy - Digana. After breakfast, proceed to Kandy, en-route visit the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage and watch orphaned baby elephants numbering around 50 are being bathed and fed. Proceed to Kandy, and in the evening witness a Cultural show featuring Kandyan dancers, drummers and fire walking. Overnight Hotel Suisse Kandy.
Day 4: Victoria International Golf and Country Club. After breakfast proceed to the Victoria Golf Club. Spend rest of the day playing golf. Overnight at Hotel Suisse Kandy.
Day 5: Kandy-Nuwara Eliya. Proceed to Nuwara Eliya – passing tea plantations and waterfalls. En route visit a tea factory Overnight at Hill Club in Nuwara Eliya.
Day 6: Nuwara Eliya Golf Club. After breakfast proceed to the NuwaraEliya Golf club. Spend the entire day playing golf. Overnight at Hill Club.
Day 7: Nuwara Eliya – Colombo. After breakfast proceed to Colombo - shopping in Colombo if time permits and transfer to airport to catch connecting flight.
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How much do Electronic Arts employees make in Redwood City, CA? Glassdoor has salaries, wages, tips, bonuses, and hourly pay submitted anonymously by 506 Electronic Arts employees in Redwood City, CA.
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You know that weird feeling when your best friend from college pops up on your news feed, and you suddenly realize it's been ages since you've heard from her?
It's a common enough experience to warrant another social media study. Despite your hundreds—or even thousands—of connections on social networking sites, most people tend to invest the majority of their time on just a small number of friends, says a new Oxford University study. And in an effort to avoid relationship overload, we often make room for new friends by devoting less time to others in our social circles.
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Over an 18-month period, researchers followed 24 students during their transition from high school to college or the workforce, a period when relationships are typically in flux. Using a combination of cell phone data and corresponding surveys, the experts tracked students' communication patterns and created ranking systems for members of each student's social network based on emotional closeness. The data also revealed how much effort students put into maintaining their close relationships: what the authors called a "social signature". "We don't know for sure, but it's probably that we develop or have a personal social style, some elements of which could be genetically inherited, like personality traits," says study co-author Robin Dunbar, PhD, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford.
While students' levels of emotional closeness to different friends tended to change over time, their general communication patterns stayed the same. In other words, students wouldn't invest more time on their relationships overall just because they made new friends. Instead, they'd just invest less time in other relationships.
That might sound like a bummer at first. (Whatever happened to making new friends, but keeping the old?) But you shouldn't feel too bad, since most of us trade one friend for another unconsciously. Likely, it's just because we don't have the mental bandwidth to keep up with everyone—even with the help of modern stay-in-touch technology like texting, videochatting, and social media, the study authors say.
Instead of silently fretting (or fuming) about what seems to be a fading relationship, cut your friend some slack. Realize she's probably just caught up in other stuff—then just give her a call to break the pattern.Copyright © 2017 Rodale Inc.
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GREEN Party in Wales leader Pippa Bartolotti has dubbed proposals for extra tunnels at Brynglas to tackle congestion on the M4 in Newport as 'a badly thought out scheme'.
Ms Bartolotti, who lives in Malpas, accused the Welsh Government of: "As usual, always looking to spend huge amounts of money on a badly thought out scheme."
The Assembly is consulting on four alternatives to combat the problem of traffic between junctions 24 and 29, one of which would involving drilling a third tunnel at Brynglas as part of widening the carriageway to four lanes in each direction at a cost of £550 million.
Ms Bartolotti claims the motorway is only congested at peak times and said it made no sense to spend millions on a road which only needs different travelling options for two or three hours a day.
She said the Welsh government should be looking at alternatives such as compulsory school buses and better public transport.
She said: "It would be better to spend the money on a network of charging points for electric cars and clear our air of harmful pollution. It would be better still to overhaul our public transport infrastructure and develop a truly sustainable transport system which goes to where people need to be, costs little and runs often."
Two of the four proposals involve improvements to the Southern Distributor Road and the other is building a new dual carriageway to the south of Newport, for £830 million.
The Welsh government is consulting until July 6 – see wales.gov.uk/consultations


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NEW YORK (Jul. 18)
Grants by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for the academic year 1966-1967 were announced today by Label A. Katz, president, following action of the Foundation's Board of Directors.
Eleven fellowships were awarded to students who are completing their doctoral work in the fields of Jewish History, Semitics, Philosophy, Hebrew Literature and Culture, and Sociology. Universities at which these scholars are studying include: Brandeis, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, New York University, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
Among the grants-in-aid awarded by the Foundation for the coming year is one to Professor Irving Halperin of San Francisco State College for the preparation of a book on the Literature of the Holocaust; and to Dr. Seymour Lainoff for the completion of the American Jewish Novel.
Other awards made on the recommendation of the Grants Committee under the Chairmanship of Edwin Wolf, 2nd, are to the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies in behalf of the Index to Jewish Periodicals; to Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel for the publication of the Jewish journal "Mosaic;" to Vassar College to assist in its course on Contemporary Jewish Thought; and to the Conference of Jewish Philosophy.
Mr. Katz pointed out the awarding of grants is one of the significant functions of the Foundation whereby students are encouraged to prepare themselves for careers in various fields of Jewish scholarship. Almost $250, 000 in grants have been made by the Foundation in five years. Many of the recipients are now engaged as teachers in Judaica at universities, as writers, archivists, librarians, researchers, lecturers, and other personnel devoted to creative Jewish cultural activity.
The National Foundation for Jewish Culture was formed in 1960 upon the recommendation of a national study on Jewish culture sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. In addition to its grants program, the Foundation provides consultation service to national Jewish cultural agencies, colleges and universities and to Jewish communities, and seeks to enrich and strengthen the total field of American Jewish culture.