text:
4th Thursday Update
May 26, 2016
Fasting Glucose: 96 mg/dl.
Glucose 1 hour after dinner: 116 mg/dl.
Weight: 199 pounds.
Blood pressure, resting pulse: 122/79 mmHg, 63 bpm.
Exercise: 9.2 mile trail run in the evening
Management by walking around
The company I work for used to be a part of a much larger and more famous corporation, and once upon a time there was a management philosophy in that corporation known as "management by walking around", the core concept of which was that high-level executives should get in touch with what was really going on within their organizations by wandering about the place at random, noticing employees engaged in tasks, and stopping to talk with them about what they were doing. The idea was that this simple reality-check would often reveal to the executive that there was some kind of surprising disconnection between the highest priorities of the corporation and the tasks its employees were actually spending most of their time on. Management by walking around was seen as a simple cure for the commonplace problem of a company's operations failing to support its goals, without management realizing it.
I won't try to judge the degree to which this management philosophy is actually put into practice today (or was in the past) in large corporations. Managing corporate behemoths is not our concern on this blog. Managing diabetes is, however -- and diabetes is, in some ways, as difficult to manage as any corporate behemoth ever was. Can management by walking around have an application to diabetes management? I think it can -- provided we understand that the "walking around" part is what's important, not the "stopping to talk" part.
Recent research from Canada finds that urban neighborhoods which are more conducive to pedestrian activity ("those with high population density, high numbers of destinations within walking distance of residential areas, and well-connected streets") not only had higher rates of walking and bicycle use, they also had lower rates of obesity and diabetes. Apparently, people get healthier when they spend more time walking around.
I don't happen to live in the kind of dense urban neighborhood where such basic destinations as grocery stores and drug stores are easy to walk to. I live half-way up a very steep hill which makes any kind of local walking a sweaty, time-consuming workout. In theory I could walk to the supermarket, and in fact I did it once, but only a complete absence of transportation alternatives would make me devote that much time and energy to grocery shopping in the future. I might go for a stroll after dinner in the summertime, but any sort of walking more purposeful than that would be impractical. So, if I'm going to get any walking-around time in, it will need to something I'm setting aside as an exercise activity, not something that just happens naturally as a regular consequence of my routine daily activities.
In other words, like a lot of people, I need a reason to walk around, and therefore I need to give myself a reason to walk around. My solution to that problem, lately, has been nature photography.
Some months back I invested in a fairly serious camera -- a Nikon D5300. It has an 18-200 mm zoom lens, and this very wide range of focal lengths gives it a lot of versatility. For example, it can take very wide-angle shots of the landscape...
...or telephoto shots of animals at a distance...
...or extreme close-ups of flowers (and their pollinators).
And, of course, when you're out there walking around, looking for photo opportunities, you sometimes have an opportunity to see interesting and unusual things happening. Yesterday evening, in the local state park, I saw what I thought at first as a helicopter rescue operation. Such things do happen in the park, after all; people sometimes hurt themselves in the park when they are far from roads, and helicopter-based evacuation is the only practical option. I have seen such rescues happening. In this case, however, it was the county sheriff's department conducting a training exercise on helicopter rescues.
A hovering helicopter was repeatedly hoisting up two guys on the ground, sometimes separately and sometimes together.
The 200 mm extension of the zoom range made it possible for me to get shots which make it appear I was much closer (dangerously closer) to the action than I actually was.
As I'm now 59, and heavy-duty workouts (such as this evening's 9.3-mile trail run) are inevitably becoming harder on the body than they once would have been, I feel the need to cultivate habits which will at least get me moving around outdoors, even if not in a heavily strenuous way. Walking around taking pictures of the world I live in seems like a pretty good long-term solution to the problem.
Unhappy marriage as therapy
I remember, as a child, reading a letter in the Ann Landers advice column, from a woman who boasted of the way she nagged her husband constantly in order to force him to adopt better health habits. She advised other woman to nag their husbands, on the grounds that "you'll add years to his life". To which the pragmatic Ann Landers replied, "Who wants more years like that?".
At least the letter-writer appears to have a valid point, so far as it goes: researchers are reporting that marital unhappiness (in men, not women) correlates with a lower risk of diabetes, and with better success in managing diabetes if it develops. So far, researchers have found that happy marriages equate with better health -- and for women, that's still true. But men do better, in terms of diabetes, if their wives are making them miserable. "The most surprising finding was that, for men, an increase in negative marital quality lowered the risk of developing diabetes and increased the chances of managing the disease after its onset. Diabetes requires frequent monitoring that the wives could be prodding the husband to do, boosting his health but also increasing marital strain over time."
This seems like something we will have to let patients decide, on an individual basis. If the price of living longer is having to endure constant personal criticism from the person best qualified to make it hurt, do you want to pay that price?
And if you can increase a man's lifespan by making him wish he'd died young, are you going to?
I don't think those are decisions that the medical profession can make on behalf of anybody.
People claiming to be healthy
Medscape it claiming to be shocked to find that two thirds of Americans rate their own health as very good or excellent, even though a lot of Americans have chronic health problems. "More Americans suffer psychological distress today than 10 years ago, yet two thirds rate their overall health as very good or excellent, according to "early release" data from the National Health Interview Survey released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. According to the 2015 data, the percentage of adults aged 18 years or older who said they experienced serious psychological distress in the past month rose to 3.6%, up from 2.9% a decade ago in 2005. Yet, 66.1% of Americans of all ages report they are in very good or excellent health."
Okay, wait a minute. How is it a contradiction for 66.1% of Americans to think they're healthy even though 3.6% of them have recently experienced serious psychological distress? It seems to me that, if 66.1% of people say they're healthy, that leaves 33.9% of them not saying they're healthy, and presumably the 3.6% of people who are in psychological distress fit somewhere into that 33.9%.
Medscape goes on to point out that 30.4% of Americans are obese. Okay, but maybe they, too, fit into that 33.9% of people not claiming to be healthy.
Admittedly, a lot of Americans would not think that "psychological distress" counted as a health problem, and some of them wouldn't think obesity counted as a health problem, either, a least until it had produced some kind of specific disease condition. But even if no one was making such assumptions, problems that affect less than a third of the population do not make it unreasonable for two thirds of the population to say they're in good health.
3rd Thursday Update
May 19, 2016
Fasting Glucose: 91 mg/dl.
Glucose 1 hour after dinner: 131 mg/dl.
Weight: 199 pounds.
Blood pressure, resting pulse: 113/69 mmHg, 71 bpm.
Exercise: 7.6 mile trail-run.
All aboard for unintended consequences!
Every medical treatment aims to change one bad thing that's going on within the human body, in the hope that this can be done without accidentally changing something else which isn't bad and shouldn't be changed. Generally speaking, we cannot expect any treatment to accomplish this flawlessly -- some kind of "side effect" is to be expected. Therefore, all medical treatments need to be evaluated carefully in terms of risk/benefit analysis. How likely is Drug X to have an undesirable effect? How bad will that effect be if it happens? What benefit does the patient get in exchange for taking that risk?
If a drug causes 10% of patients to experience low-level muscle soreness, but it reverses congestive heart failure, doctors are not going to be leery of recommending it to patients whose lives can probably be saved by it. Small risk, big benefit: the choice is clear.
That's not a very realistic example, however. Most real drugs involve more serious risks than that, and less dramatic benefits. This makes it hard for medical organizations, and agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, to make decisions about whether a given treatment is "worth it". Sometimes they approve a treatment and then change their minds, because new and unwelcome clinical information came to light.
Even exercise can't be said to be free of side-effects. Several of its side-effects are beneficial ones, but still, there's no denying that you can hurt yourself exercising, and exercise can cause cumulative trauma over the long haul. Certainly exercise doesn't get any easier with age. Yesterday someone at the office asked me why I was limping; I hadn't been conscious of doing it, but I realized that my right heel tends to get sore after a run these days, and that was what he'd spotted. I was able to do a long trail-run after work tonight, and my heel didn't bother me during the run itself, but it did feel sore afterwards. If it wasn't my right heel, it would be something else: when you run regularly, you're always dealing with sore muscle or joint someplace. I've had problems with hips, knees, shins, and calf muscles. These problems have never become incapacitating -- I've always found ways to work through them, and I've been using yoga to alleviate them. Still, I suppose the day will come when I won't be able to exercise, or at least won't be able to do it the way I have been. Even a therapy that works is not guaranteed to work forever.
Anyway, because medical treatments usually involve an unintended consequence of one kind or another, I think it's best to read the fine print when medical research breakthroughs are being reported about promising new treatments, or newly discovered biochemical pathways which could be used to create a new treatment. We should never hear about a treatment having some very desirable impact on lab rats without asking "but what else does it do?".
Currently there is a lot of excitement among medical researchers about "brown" fat cells (that is, fat cells which burn fat instead of storing it) and especially about the possibility of turning ordinary white fat cells (which store fat instead of burning it) into the brown variety. The obvious reason for the excitement is that transforming white fat cells into brown fat cells would result in weight loss; a drug which brought this about could be sold as a an obesity treatment, and make billions of dollars.
Humans are born with a fair amount of brown fat, for the simple reason that babies are small, and have a high surface-to-volume ratio -- which makes it harder for babies than adults to maintain body heat. Brown fat cells in babies burn fat for the heat energy it releases. Adults tend to lose most of their brown fat -- but what if they could turn a large share of their white fat cells into brown fat, so that their bodies were constantly burning up fat instead of retaining it? Air-conditioning would have to become more aggressive under this scenario, but it would probably be a pretty effective way of controlling body weight. When I heard about this, I thought it sounded like a concept worth investigating.
Today I read a report on some proof-of-concept testing going on in this area -- a report of the kind I usually categorize mentally as the "It Works In Mice!" genre. The Science Daily summary begins: "Researchers have uncovered a new molecular pathway for stimulating the body to burn fat -- a discovery that could help fight obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In a study published in the journal Genes & Development, a team led by researchers from the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University focus on a protein known as folliculin and its role in regulating the activity of fat cells. By knocking out the gene that produces folliculin in fat cells in mice, the researchers triggered a series of biomolecular signals that switched the cells from storing fat to burning it."
I had never heard of this protein called folliculin, but the name suggested to me that it must have some kind of connection with hair follicles. (It does, but I'll get to the connection later.) Curious to learn more, I followed a link back to an abstract of the original research paper, which turns out to describe the findings with a slight but significant difference in the opening line: "The tumor suppressor folliculin (FLCN) forms a repressor complex with AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)..."
Now just a god-damned minute! Folliculin is a tumor-suppressor? And the researchers are inactivating it?
I looked up folliculin. It is thought to be a tumor-suppressor because a defect in the gene for folliculin is known to cause a genetic disease which results in tumor formation in hair-follicles (and also in the lungs, and sometimes in other organs).
Call me paranoid, but it's hard for me to get excited about a potential obesity drug which works by eliminating a protein which is supposed to suppress tumor formation! Would you want to be the first in line to take a drug which knocks out folliculin, knowing that people without normal folliculin production end up getting what amounts to Hair Cancer? Obviously some people would, but not me!
I feel more or less the same way about research into potential cures that involve restoring telomeres (the little structures on the end of chromosomes, similar to the aglets on the end of a shoelace, which serve to protect the DNA strand from fraying). If the only thing the telomeres did was protect the integrity of our DNA, I'd be all for restoring them when they get worn down to the nub. The trouble is, telomeres have another function: they are supposed to fight cancer, by placing an upper limit on how many times a cell can divide. What if a drug which restores telomeres also has the fringe benefit of enabling micro-tumors to grow without limit?
I don't think I'm going to be the first in line for that drug, either.
It's easy to feel, as a mere spectator to medical research (albeit a spectator with a personal stake in the results) that scientists ought to just develop a drug which cures an illness and does absolutely nothing else, but human physiology is a mighty complicated system to be interfering with; we should not expect to find many options for consequence-free intervention. That is why it is still necessary, this late in history, to adopt a bias in favor of less treatment rather than more treatment, and also in favor of well-studied treatments rather than new and exciting ones.
2nd Thursday Update
May 12, 2016
Fasting Glucose: 106 mg/dl.
Glucose 1 hour after dinner: 118 mg/dl.
Weight: 200 pounds.
Blood pressure, resting pulse: 119/83 mmHg, 63 bpm.
Exercise: 8.4 mile trail run in the evening
I was surprised that my fasting result was as high as 106 this morning, but the combination of a late dinner last night and not enough sleep could have played a role in the matter. At least my result after dinner was good.
While trail-running tonight, climbing the first steep hill, I wondered if I would have to cut the run short, because my back was bothering me, and going uphill seemed to put an extra strain on it. I came to feel that part of the problem was that I was holding my back too rigidly straight, and that making an effort to swing my hips more, to rotate my spine left and right a bit, might give me relief. I tried it. Not only did it make my back feel better, it made running seem less effortful. I don't know if I was actually going any faster, but it felt as if I was going faster without working as hard. And it took me till now to learn this? What's wrong with me?
Melatonin & diabetes
Melatonin is a hormone which the body produces to regulate the day/night cycle of human metabolism (the dark of night triggers a boost in melatonin production). Babies develop a regular cycle of melatonin production within about ten days after they are born, and thereafter this determines their hours of sleep. During the teenage years, the timing of melatonin release is delayed, and sleep times adjust accordingly. Melatonin production decreases as we age, which apparently is why difficulty with sleeping is more common in older people. Many people who suffer from insomnia use melatonin supplements to help them fall asleep.
None of this information makes it sound as if melatonin could be relevant to diabetes, but apparently it is. Pretty much everything is relevant to diabetes, it seems; there is a connection of one sort or another between diabetes and just about every aspect of the processes by which the body regulates its own functioning.
Melatonin does not simply determine when you get sleepy. (That's the tricky thing about endocrinology: no hormone ever does just one thing.) Melatonin also has an impact on other ways in which the body adjusts itself to the day/night cycle. Everything that goes on when we're sleeping is of importance to diabetes, because this is a period when we're neither eating (thus adding sugar to the blood) nor physically active (thus subtracting sugar from the blood), and therefore our blood glucose level needs to be controlled entirely by the body's automatic processes. If those processes aren't working quite right, blood sugar tends to drift well above or below the normal range.
Type 2 diabetes (and specifically the diminished sensitivity to insulin which drives it) is notoriously linked with sleep problems. For reasons unknown, sleep deprivation suppresses insulin sensitivity, thus promoting Type diabetes. This, however, isn't the reason melatonin has a direct bearing on Type 2 diabetes.
It turns out that melatonin plays a role in the body's production of insulin. Regardless of how sensitive you are to insulin, it is a problem to be producing abnormally low amounts of the stuff -- and in certain circumstances, melatonin can cause you to produce too little insulin.
The beta cells in the pancreas (which produce our insulin supply) are wired to reduce their production of insulin when stimulated by melatonin. The reason for this is that, during the long night-time fast, no sugar is entering he bloodstream as a result of digestion, so less insulin is needed. Therefore, when the beta cell's melatonin receptors (known as MTNR1B receptors) are stimulated by melatonin, they produce a reaction which inhibits the production of "cAMP", or cyclic adenosine monophosphate, the signaling molecule which triggers the cell to generate insulin. In short, the effect of melatonin on beta cells is to make them produce less insulin.
However, according to research recently published in Cell Metabolism, a common genetic variation (up to 30% of people have it) causes the MTNR1B receptors to be extra-sensitive to melatonin; people with this genetic variant inhibit insulin production, in response to the nightly release of melatonin, more than is healthy. The strong association between this genetic variation and Type 2 diabetes indicates that the genetic variation is a causal factor in the disease.
However, the researchers note that over a hundred different genetic variants are associated with Type 2 diabetes, so there isn't any single genetic factor which is "the cause" of the condition. Many people with Type 2 diabetes do not have an abnormal sensitivity to melatonin in their beta cells -- they have some other genetic issue which makes them vulnerable to becoming diabetic.
However, if you're diabetic, and you're taking melatonin supplements to get to sleep, and you're getting high fasting glucose test results in the morning, maybe it's worth looking into this -- to see if your fasting numbers improve, if you stop taking melatonin in the evenings to get to sleep. If you make that change and there is no difference in your fasting tests, then you needn't worry too much about having beta cells which over-react to melatonin. But if you get better fasting results when you stop taking melatonin, that's a pretty good indicator that, like a lot of other people, you have a genetic variation which makes you especially vulnerable to melatonin's tendency to drive insulin production downward.
What's interesting here, if you ask me, is that the MTNR1B genetic variation (which makes some people reduce their insulin production excessively when melatonin levels rise) is just one of over a hundred different genetic variations associated with diabetes. Not one of these genetic variations is present in everyone with diabetes, but any one of these variations might be present in a given person with diabetes.
In other words, diabetes patients vary, because the genes which made them diabetic vary. Presumably that explains why what works for one diabetes patient doesn't work for another. There are too many ways to become diabetic for there to be a single, reliable remedy for it. An approach to diabetes management which worked brilliantly for your cousin might not be right for you.
This is why I feel that diabetes patients need to treat their condition as their own personal science-fair project, and that their approach to science needs to be more experimental than theoretical. The goal of diabetes management is not to find the approach which would work for a statistically typical patient, but to find the approach which actually works for you.
1st Thursday Update
May 5, 2016
Fasting Glucose: 98 mg/dl.
Glucose 1 hour after lunch: 129 mg/dl.
Weight: 199 pounds.
Blood pressure, resting pulse: 124/72 mmHg, 72 bpm.
Exercise: 7.4 mile trail run
Maintenance visits
Today I had office visits to my eye doctor and my dentist on the same morning. The Honda dealer also tried to give me a service appointment today, but I figured there was only so much excitement I could cram into one day, so I'm taking my car in tomorrow instead.
My eye doctor keeps up with the latest in diagnostic testing, and in addition to the usual retinal scan (which produces creepy red and green pictures which look as if NASA took them from a space probe orbiting Mars), he gave me a new test which doesn't even have a standard clinical procedure for interpreting it yet. It uses some kind of laser scan to capture a high-contrast monochrome image of the retina which, it is hoped, will reveal diabetes-related retinal damage earlier than it can be detected by earlier scanning methods.
Researchers are finding that diabetes can start doing harm to the eye a lot earlier than they had previously thought, and technologies are being developed to help eye doctors do a better job of detecting such problems and suggesting interventions. My own scans today showed no signs of trouble. I almost feel as if my eye doctor is disappointed that he still can't find anything wrong with my retinas. He's just going to have to be patient with me!
My dental visit was fine, too. Gums in good shape. Again, I felt as if I was causing disappointment by not having anything wrong. I guess my dentist will need to be patient with me, too.
Threats to your survival: realistic and unrealistic
We human beings have a natural tendency to worry about things that might kill us someday. However, we are often hilariously incompetent at estimating the odds. We focus on unlikely risks and disregard likely ones. Whatever your favorite nightmare is, about some outlandish and horrible death which fate might have in store for you, it probably isn't going to happen. Stressing out about dying in a plane crash is a waste of time, especially if it leads you to send somebody a text on the subject while you're driving to the airport: the risk of dying in a plane crash is low, but the risk of dying in a car crash while texting is high. We should prioritize our worries a little better, and concentrate on the things that really are likely to kill us, instead of worrying pointlessly about things that won't happen anyway. (Of course, it could be that the reason we worry pointlessly about unlikely threats is that we're aware that they are unlikely, and we find it a pleasant distraction to focus on unrealistic threats instead of realistic ones.)
A great many people could accurately guess what the two leading causes of death are in the US: heart disease and cancer. Most of us will die from one of those two things -- not from plummeting elevators or killer bees. Everyone would get cancer if they lived long enough; the only reason we don't all get cancer is that a lot of us die of something else first, and that "something else" is usually heart disease. Sometimes doctors talk as if heart disease and cancer were the only two causes of death, because the others are so much less common.
Not many of us, though, would be likely to make a correct guess about what the third leading cause of death is. A new report from the BMJ says that "If medical error was a disease, it would rank as the third leading cause of death in the US." Yes, you read that right: mistakes made during medical treatments are the third most common cause of death in the US.
To be fair to those of use who were unaware of this, we're unaware of it for a good reason: medical error is usually not included in cause-of-death statistics. It isn't mentioned on death certificates, and medical records use a coding scheme (the infamous ICD-10) which sets aside codes for the most unimaginably unlikely causes of injury (including being struck by a turtle, and being burned because your water-skis caught fire) but does not have codes to capture most types of common medical error. The BMJ report is uncovering a large problem which is usually hidden from view.
An example case history: "A young woman recovered well after a successful transplant operation. However, she was readmitted for non-specific complaints that were evaluated with extensive tests, some of which were unnecessary, including a pericardiocentesis. She was discharged but came back to the hospital days later with intra-abdominal hemorrhage and cardiopulmonary arrest. An autopsy revealed that the needle inserted during the pericardiocentesis grazed the liver causing a pseudoaneurysm that resulted in subsequent rupture and death. The death certificate listed the cause of death as cardiovascular."
If you die because you were accidentally stabbed in the liver with a needle during a medical procedure -- especially an unnecessary procedure -- it is not accurate to list the cause of death as "cardiovascular". It sounds like a freakish and rare event, and yet this kind of thing happens often enough that, if it weren't being artificially excluded from the mortality statistics, it would be the third leading cause of death!
My motive for bringing this up is that I think it helps explain why the non-medicated approach to diabetes management offers a significant advantage. Medical treatment of any kind involves risks. Drugs have undesirable (and sometimes unforeseen) side effects. Surgeries go wrong. Even diagnostic tests (as in the case history above) can be dangerous. We tend to assume the risks involved in a medical intervention must be very low, or else that form of treatment wouldn't be standard practice. But obviously standard practice allows for a lot of risky things to be done, if the consequences of medical interventions gone wrong are the third leading cause of death! I think the BMJ report is a useful corrective to the widespread assumption that medical treatments aren't hazardous.
This isn't an argument against medical intervention -- it's an argument against resorting to medical intervention when you don't really need to (because some less invasive solution is available to you). Every drug you take, and every surgical procedure you undergo, adds to your risk of something going very wrong; when there's an effective a way to deal with a problem without the drugs or the surgeries, why not take advantage of it?
It used to be said that a physician's job was to keep the patient distracted while nature was carrying out the cure. That was said at a time when effective treatments were few, and nature's capacity to heal the patient was the only thing that could be relied upon. However, to a degree the principle applies even today, when there are treatments available which actually do something. The available medical treatments are more effective now than in the past, but they are not risk-free. Where satisfactory results can be achieved by natural means, they probably should be, for the sake of risk-management.
Older Posts:
Feedback &
Reading the Stats
What this is about
I am going to use this space to report on my daily process of staying healthy -- what I'm doing, and what results I'm getting, and how I interpret the connection between the two.
I am not trying to taunt anybody, by reporting better results than they are getting themselves. I'm doing this to provide encouragement, not irritation.
Regardless of what your own health situation is now, you can probably pick up some useful ideas by tracking what I'm doing, and seeing what the results are. I don't mean that you should do whatever I do, or that imitating my behavior will get you the same results I get. We all have to figure out what works for us. Let's just say that I'm giving you an example of some things to try, and they might help. If they don't, try something else!
Extreme sports
One word of warning: I sometimes participate in endurance sporting events (including "century" bike rides and the occasional marathon), but please don't assume that you would have to participate in extreme sports to get the kind of results I'm getting. Most of the year I'm not working out nearly that hard, and I still get very good results. For some people, vigorous walking may be enough. (But if it isn't in your case, don't cling to the idea that it ought to be enough -- do whatever it takes to get good results!)


text:
The Cullens are a family of vampires that run and star in a local burlesque show. When a young inhibited girl contacts Esme to help her come out of her socially awkward shell she takes the family for a wild ride. Cannon pairings, sexual experimentation and lemonade.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement is intended.
"NO! NO NO NO!" I yelled after the fifth try, "If you keep messing up I'm going to break your knee caps!"
"What was wrong this time?" asked the annoying human girl. We were adding another act to the show and with just the three of us girls it was hard to keep a variety and the allure of her blood pumping doubly hard behind her veins from the dancing was making us all a little edgy, especially Jasper.
"You think too much. Your moves aren't sensual and sinuous; they are over-rehearsed and stiff." I said walking across the stage towards her. I started to emphasize the oomph in my step and when I got center stage I performed the sequence that we were working on perfectly. I had the advantage over the young human girl, being a vampire and knowing that I could do the same sequence over and over again with out tiring and exactly the same. In all reality she was doing well, but I needed her to think that I was a taskmaster for perfection to explain the consistency of our burlesque routines. I was Dommine Atrix (Domin-Atrix) afterall, and I loved the role of hard ass when it was time to play.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
"The curve of those shoulders has been sculpted
by the stares of men."
From the libretto of Prokofiev's opera, War and Peace, based on Tolstoy's novel.
If you live in Toronto and get a chance to see this opera, now playing at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, please do. It's a great night of theatre, a theatrical triumph for the creative team, led by director Tim Albery. And don't make the awful mistake of arriving late and missing the first half as the first 10 minutes alone is worth the price of admission. Prokofiev was forced to bolster up the war bits for propoganda purposes by the Soviets, but despite that, this is theatre first, opera second and it's a thrill. Russell Braun as Andrei, Elena Semenova as Natasha, and Mikhail Agafanov as Pierre, are heart-breaking and wonderful.


text:
Julia Roberts swaps her box office smile to take on the role of Laura Burney a woman who is emotionally and physically abused by her controlling husband Martin. Even faking her own death in an attempt to start a new life away from him.
Continue reading "Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) Review"


text:
The mom approves. Marisa Bruni-Tedeschi is speaking out about her daughter Carla Bruni's wedding to French President Nicolas Sarkozy over the weekend. She tells Italian national newsbroadcaster TG1: "It was a very moving ceremony, during which our thoughts went out to Carla's father and brother who are no longer with us."
When asked whether the Bruni and Sarkozy got married because they were expecting a child, Mrs. Bruni-Tedeschi replied: "We'll see."
Finally, the new mother-in-law of the French president said: "I hope that Carla will carry on with her artistic career. It really would be a shame if she were to give up her work."


text:
This property has been removed by the agent. It may be sold or temporarily removed from the market
3 bedroom detached house for saleWestern Avenue, Market Harborough
Sold STC £217,000
Property Description
Key features
- Link detached
- Three bedrooms
- Gardens
Full description
Tenure: Freehold
A THREE BEDROOM LINKED DETACHED property located within a RESIDENTIAL LOCATION in the town of Market Harborough. This home has a converted garage, off road car parking and GARDEN to the rear. The accommodation consists of a through lounge / diner, kitchen, utility area and three bedrooms.
A three bedroom linked detached property located in the popular town of Market Harborough. This home has a converted garage, off road car parking and garden to the rear. The accommodation consists of a through lounge / diner, kitchen, utility area, three bedrooms to the first floor and a family bathroom. Internal inspection is recommended to appreciate this property in full
Enter through the front door into the entrance porch. The entrance porch has a door to the front elevation and a door off through to the entrance hall.
Entrance Hall
Stairs rising to the first floor and a central heating radiator. Understairs storage cupboard. Doors off through to the lounge / diner and the kitchen.
Lounge / Diner 21' 8" x 12' 1" max ( 6.60m x 3.68m max )
UPVC double glazed window to the front elevation and a central heating radiator. Patio doors to the rear elevation.
Kitchen 9' 9" x 8' ( 2.97m x 2.44m )
UPVC double glazed window to the rear elevation. A fitted kitchen with a range of eye and base level units with work surfaces above. Plumbing for automatic washing machine. Doorway leading off to the utility area.
Utility Area
Which has access to the downstairs cloakroom and the converted garage.
Converted Garage 16' 4" x 7' 10" ( 4.98m x 2.39m )
With access to the roof void.
First Floor
UPVC double glazed window to the side elevation. Central heating radiator. Landing accessing the bedrooms and the bathroom.
Bedroom One 12' 9" x 11' 4" ( 3.89m x 3.45m )
UPVC double glazed window to the front elevation. Central heating radiator.
Bedroom Two 10' 4" x 10' ( 3.15m x 3.05m )
UPVC double glazed window to the rear elevation. Central heating radiator.
Bedroom Three 8' x 7' ( 2.44m x 2.13m )
UPVC double glazed window to the front elevation. Central heating radiator.
UPVC double glazed window to the rear elevation. Suite consists of a wash hand basin, low level wc and bath. Matching tiled splashbacks.
The front garden has ample off road car parking and is mainly laid to hardstanding.
The rear garden which is enclosed by fencing has a patio area which leads onto mainly lawned area.
1. MONEY LAUNDERING REGULATIONS - Intending purchasers will be asked to produce identification documentation at a later stage and we would ask for your co-operation in order that there will be no delay in agreeing the sale.
2: These particulars do not constitute part or all of an offer or contract.
3: The measurements indicated are supplied for guidance only and as such must be considered incorrect.
4: Potential buyers are advised to recheck the measurements before committing to any expense.
5: Connells has not tested any apparatus, equipment, fixtures, fittings or services and it is the buyers interests to check the working condition of any appliances.
6: Connells has not sought to verify the legal title of the property and the buyers must obtain verification from their solicitor.
More information from this agent
To view this media, please visit the on-line version of this page at www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-59110565.html
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) graphs
Listing History
Map & Street View
View in fullscreenView in fullscreen
Street View is unavailable in this location
Market Info
Disclaimer - Property reference MKH303737. The information displayed about this property comprises a property advertisement. Rightmove.co.uk makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the advertisement or any linked or associated information, and Rightmove has no control over the content. This property advertisement does not constitute property particulars. The information is provided and maintained by Connells, Market Harborough. Please contact the selling agent or developer directly to obtain any information which may be available under the terms of The Energy Performance of Buildings (Certificates and Inspections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007 or the Home Report if in relation to a residential property in Scotland.
Map data ©OpenStreetMap contributors.


text:
Imagine, if only we had...
Recently, during one of those national conferences, I got together with a number of my old library friends over dinner. I admit it. We talked shop. Conversation turned to speculation on what we could do if only we had this, that, or the other thing.
Cast of characters:
- Mr. Serials - the name for a systematic process I created for collecting, archiving, storing, and indexing electronic serials early in my career
- Larry - a pseudonym for St. Lawrence (Laurence), the patron saint of librarians who, as legend has it, told his executioners to turn him over while being burned on a gridiron since he had been cooked one side
- Mr D. - Melvil Dewey
- Mr. R. - S.R. Ranganathan
- Alcuin - a librarian and advisor to Charlemagne
Mr. Serials, who was still stuck on the issues of access versus ownership, copyright, and scholarly communication, wanted a better Network spider for collecting electronic journals. "I need a better tool for collecting Network-based data. It has to be able to penetrate basic authentication. It has to be able to mirror remote sites locally. It has to be able to extract identifying pieces of information about the remote documents like author, title, subjects, and dates effectively. I want to be able to create meta-data describing these sites in any format I desire. If we don't use tools like this to collect and archive electronic serials, then scholarly information will only be available to the people who have the money."
Larry piped up and said, "We've all heard this before, Serials. You're like a broken record or a single song musician. Sing a different tune and get used to the fact that information costs money, especially in an information economy."
Mr. D. thought a massive, portable, storage medium would be a good thing for every librarian's desktop. "The Network is nice but I don't trust it", he explained. "We need to archive much of this stuff. It comes and it goes, never to be seen again. True, not all of it is worth saving, but who am I to say what is good and what is not? If I only had something that could store massive amounts of information and then be given away. I would create archives of literature. American and English literature as well as Western philosophy texts. I would then put some sort of search engine on the medium to make it more accessible."
"What's so special about that?", I asked.
"For one thing," he continued, "I, in consultation with individual faculty, would be able to create customized collections of these texts and consequently save loads of time for the reader who wouldn't have to find the texts for themselves. Isn't that right Mr. R?"
Mr. R., who was perpetually off in his own world, perked up. "Oh yes. Most certainly." Wagging his finger, "After all, that's what I always say. 'Save the time of the reader.'"
Larry, who was recooperating from severe burns, then interjected, "These things sound like textbooks or anthologies, only made for individuals and not necessarily mass markets."
"Yes, that's right," said Mr. D. "By the way Larry," Mr. D. said sarcastically, "your roast beef looks very well done on one side but not the other. Don't you think you should turn it over and start eating?"
We all laughed knowingly but Larry just gave Mr. D. the evil eye and continued. "That search engine of yours would probably need to be improved. I myself desire a better indexer/search engine combination. First of all, the indexer would need to be completely incorporated with a thesaurus. This thesaurus would include known controlled vocabulary terms as well as the vocabulary of the user for whom the index was created. Furthermore, the indexer would be able to analyse things other than text. Yea, we can index graphic images now but only their file names. After all, in my day, illuminated texts were the big thing and I think in pictures, not words. More importantly, I want to index the relationships between the shapes in pictures. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I can't spend the time assigning those thousand words to each image."
Nods of agreement went around the table.
"The search engine could stand some improvement as well," he said. "It's got to have all the usual features like Boolean logic, phrase searching, set searching, relevance ranking, right- and left-hand truncation, and customized sorting. Additionally, I have to be able to browse the index as well as the thesaurus. It needs to be graphical. I want displayed for me spacial representations of my data and search results. I want to be able to draw simple figures on the tablet and have those figures become queries against the index. Finally, I want to save these queries to a file and apply them to other indexes or give the queries to friends so they can use them for their own purposes." He paused. "Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers."
"All of this is very well and good," remarked Alcuin. "But you all know as well as I do that no matter how good your indexes are, how good your search engines are, or how intuitive the interfaces, you will still have plenty of people who won't find what they are looking for, even when the thing they are seeking exists in the database or index. Its not that they're stupid. No, its just that one size does not fit all; everybody is different. Everybody's 'information cosmology' is unique. Consequently, what we need are personal librarians. Everybody should have their own information/knowledge expert who understands the particular needs of its patron. I'm a perfect example. Do you think Charlemange would have been able to accomplish as much he did without having me around?"
"Alcuin, your head is the fattest one around this table," interjected Mr. D., "but tell us more anyway. We're listening."
Taking another hefty draught of mead, Alcuin continued. "Mind you, I do not believe we will ever be able to create something that learns, but I do believe we can analyze our own thought processes and mimic many of them in computer programs. If we could capture the question and answer process, the process of conversation, and combine it with the vast amounts of data and additive powers available to computers, then we might be able to create a computer program what will assist our learning capabilities. Over time such a computer program would come to 'know' its user and be able to 'remember' things that may not be immediately apparent. The program would then be able to assist its user when making queries against Larry's index or Mr. D.'s collection by making suggestions and comparing the results to older queries. The program would be an advisor."
Mr. R. then said, "Your solutions are all based on technology. Technology changes. It changes so fast that no one can keep up. Instead, what we need is a more structured framework for understanding. In other words, we need to shore up the foundations supporting our assumptions about information, knowledge, and wisdom. Exactly what are information, knowledge, and wisdom? How are they related to the process of understanding? If librarianship is about data, information, and knowledge, then shouldn't we have more definitive explanations describing them? If this is the 'Information Age' then should we know what that means? Personally, I believe we should be spending a bit more time debating these sorts of issues. Through these debates we will become more aware of different points of view. Then, and only then, will we be able to use technology effectively. Otherwise we will only be building our house on sand."
We all looked at Mr. R. as if he were a bit off his rocker. He often tries to philosophize will little apparent success.
Then Larry asked, "Eric, what do you want?"
"Me? I only want a good book and permission to write in its margins with my pencil or pen."
They all thought I was silly. Librarians shouldn't write in books.
Creator: Eric Lease Morgan <firstname.lastname@example.com>
Source: This is a pre-edited version of Eric Lease Morgan "Dreaming about what we wish we could have" Computers in Libraries 18(10):40-41 November/December 1998.
Date created: 1998-11-27
Date updated: 2004-11-07
Subject(s): fiction; emerging technologies;
URL: http://infomotions.com/musings/emerging-technologies/


text:
Guest Writer
Don Burnside is an IT consultant, specializing in Point-of-Sale systems and introducing or upgrading technology to small and mid-sized companies. He is also a professional trainer, and believes that proper, thorough training with adequate documentation is always better than not, and cheaper too.
What can I say about db? An icon of innovation. He can do things with open source that DreamWeaver addicts only 'dream' about. His technical background is extensive. I am so glad to have him posting an article here.
Now if I could just get him to live at altitude…we would own this town.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.


text:
Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission has notified regarding the recruitment of 2371 Assistant Professors for different subjects. The vacancies are to be filled for various educational institutions under Higher Education Department, Madhya Pradesh. All the details regarding Application Form, … [Read more...]
MPPSC Assistant Professor Answer Key 2016
The Answer Key of MPPSC Assistant Professor 2016 exam is to be released after the exam has been conducted successfully. The official website will host the Answer Key and the links to download the same will be provided here for the ease of all the candidates. MPPSC Assistant Professor Answer Key … [Read more...]


text:
short hairstyles 2015 wedding
Wedding hairstyles are the most important thing for brides. Last updated on october 5, 2015 still searching for the perfect hairstyle for your fall wedding day? these gorgeous hair ideas will inspire you! our 10 favorite wedding hairstyles for short hair.
Home ›. Jan 9, 2015 bridesmaid hairstyles to copy at home on glamour.com. It must be special. Attention, short-haired ladies. bridesmaid hair special: the styles for 2015 wedding hairstyles: long v short whether you're rapunzel or tinkerbell, we've got a wedding style for you. If you're looking for bridal hair and bridesmaid hair, click here.


text:
amorra week, 'illusion'Sep. 29th, 2012 11:54 am
Summary: AU. Korra has to deal with being the Avatar born to the country that started the 100 Year War that splintered and corrupted many of the Air Nomads. It doesn't help that now she needs to find an airbending teacher.
A/N: For Amorra Week, prompt 'illusion.' Cast consists of airbender!Amon and Secretive!Korra and a female sky bison named after Leela of "Futurama." Inspired by this fic at http://beckyh2112.livejournal.com/
Everything changed when the Water Tribes attacked. They sought the Avatar, master of all four elements, their only obstacle--but he had vanished. The Airbenders, to whom the Avatar should've been born to, could not find him. The nomads splintered as the war went on, but endured. There were those who stayed out of the conflict, and those who chose to fight. All bore the stigma of the lost Avatar.
But then Avatar Aang returned, and calmed the war.
When he died, knowing the next Avatar would be born to the waterbenders, the world threatened to break into full-out war again....
Leela gave a low pleased growl as Amon scratched her ear. He tugged gently on her reigns, then mounted the sky bison.
"No," he told the young girl--Korin, she said her name was--and Leela began to walk away.
"But it has to be you!" He heard Korin shout, and the thump of her boots as she raced after Leela and he.
"Clearly not, since I refuse," Amon said, refusing to look back. Finally the girl outpaced Leela, though admittedly the bison's walk was lumbering and leisurely. Her blue eyes blazed up at him--then shifted, trying not to laugh as Leela began to lick at her again.
"See, your bison likes me!" Korin experimentally petted the bison again, even rubbing up the length of one of her broken horns.
"You gave her apples," the masked and hooded nomad dryly pointed out as Leela nuzzled Korin.
The girl moved her face from the bison's friendly lapping tongue, trying to speak again. "Please, I'm begging you, I--"
"Why me?"
For a second the girl's eyes darted away. Then she looked back to him, beaming. "I had a vision!" Korin said, perking up and pumping her fist in delight.
Behind the mask, Amon arched a brow as much as he could despite the scars. "So spiritually attuned, and yet you need a teacher to learn airbending? And how can you be a complete novice, bending usually reveals itself before your age...."
Amon let his voice trail off, skeptical, and closely watched the way the girl shuffled her feet. "Look, m-my parents learned I could airbend when I was really little--" She couldn't keep her eyes on him. "--but they didn't want either of the monk or warrior sects to take me, so they tried to hide it, w-what I could do, y'know--but I really want to learn how to control it, I can't deal with random puffs or gales of air anymore--!"
"I don't believe you," Amon said flatly, his patience growing thin.
"What, it could happen!" The girl snapped, her nostrils flaring. Not it's the truth!
"Yes, it could, and it does, but I don't think it happened to you," Amon said, and gently pulled Leela's reigns just so, guiding her to bypass Korin, and again to signal the bison to crouch down and slap down her tail, getting ready to fly. "And even if I were interested in an apprentice, I'd have no desire to teach a deceptive one."
Leela slapped down her tail the last time, the air began to rush up, they rose--and Korin grabbed onto the reigns. And kept going as Leela accidentally swung her up.
Amon rolled his eyes--then stopped, narrowing them, when the girl yelped, "I'm the Avatar!"
With no prompting from him, Leela settled down somewhat, landing on and standing up only on her hind legs. Korin slammed down on the bison's nose, and squealed as she made sure not to fall off. All the while, Leela just watched the girl, curious.
"You're the what?" Amon asked, now propping himself up on the currently vertically aligned saddle, leaning against Leela's head with folded arms and looking at the girl, feeling a headache come on. She was the right age, looked the right nationality, and it would justify her attempt to hide her identity.
"I'm the Avatar--" the girl repeated, and she blew out a small blaze of fire
the battle had not gone well and master would not be pleased and he was weak and tired and the lightninbenders held him up as their leader lowered her burning hand toward his face and Amon closed his eyes knowing he deserved this for serving his master so
"--and my real name's Korra, not Korin."
Amon grunted. "How creative."
Korra pouted, "It was the best I could come up with spur of the moment, and it just stuck, okay?!"
The masked nomad clucked to Leela, and the bison lowered back down to all fours, and Korra clung as tightly as a rabbit-cat clinging to a branch above water.
Slowly she let go once Leela was on solid ground, and again Amon stared very closely at her.
"You're not good with heights, are you?"
Korra crossed her arms, looked away. "Not...exactly...."
Amon sighed.
The girl's arms flailed. "Hey, I can totally get over that, I can learn, if you--"
"A vision told you I was your best choice for an airbending teacher?" Amon sneered. "Or was that part of your cover?"
"No, I really did have a vision!" Korra was smiling, excited. Then she rubbed the back of her neck, looking away. "But, I did hear about you before that, from my waterbending teacher," she said, and a small fond smile spread on Korra's face.
Amon had stiffened, and Korra kept going, "Tarrlok said you were really--"
His hand instinctively twisted around Leela's reigns, though he had enough of his mind not to pull and disturb her--but a sudden rough wind still flared up and shoved Korra back.
The Avatar's eyes bugged out, and Amon's voice became harsh. "Why not your predecessor's own son, Tenzin?"
"No!" Korra snapped, her eyes even wider. Then she deflated, biting her lip. "I mean, no--no, I don't want anything to do with Katara. Or anymore to do with Aang than what I already have to." Her eyes lowered, and she looked away.
Amon knew how complicated the Avatar's place in the world had become in recent history, and how twisted it was by rumor and myth and heresy. He would not pry or try to untangle that for now.
"The vision," he repeated instead, his voice low.
Korra rubbed the back of her neck, frowning. "I went to the swamp Aang had gone to when he was a boy, because it's a spiritual hot spot, you know? I was looking for more guidance--and I found it!" She beamed. "You were there, or a future vision of you--well, future for me, that vision looks just like you right now, and Aang said it reminded him of Toph Bei Fong, he saw a vision of someone he hadn't met before, and then he met her, so that vision came true, since 'time is an illusion,' and the swamp's priestess still says that, and have you ever been to the swamp before--?"
"It's been years," Amon said, slower than Korra's rushed words.
"See, you've been to the swamp, you've sought out the spiritual hot spots, you're perfect--!"
Amon's headache was growing. "How can you think it's exactly like Toph's situation?" Amon grunted. "Even the stories say that Avatar Aang had to see Toph in action--"
"And I saw you in action!"
Amon actually blinked. "Excuse me?"
"I was in the crowds that watched you take down Lightning Bolt Zolt, I was all incognito-like, and you'd stepped in to help the farmers before I could, you were so fast--"
"You're interested in the energybending," Amon flatly said.
"Avatar Aang could do it, the highest form of airbending--I have to too--!"
"Other than that, I didn't airbend." .
"Exactly! You chiblocked like Ty Lee too, just one touch and bam--!" Korra punched a fist in her hand, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. "--Zolt's goons were down for the count! You moved like the air, but I'm pretty sure you didn't actually bend the air, you didn't need to, not until, y'know, you had to neutralize Zolt--you just did what was necessary, not any of the extra stuff, though that would've been way cool--but Aang did say that my airbending teacher should know restraint and act really precisely, but still be able to change at a moment's notice in every way--"
Amon's headache grew as the girl again spoke in a rush, and he wondered how she breathed, exactly, when she got like this.
"--and you're pretty much a neutral, not with either of the sects," Korra said, her voice still bright.
Amon considered. "I suppose it makes sense for you to want a teacher who essentially avoids taking either side. And Tenzin has definitely picked a side."
"So you'll take me on as an apprentice?" Korra perked up, looking up at him expectantly.
"No," Amon said, and swept the reigns, Leela taking off.
He carefully watched Korra follow below on foot, on a wave of earth, cursing up a storm.
Korra followed Amon everywhere, like a persistent polarbeardog pup.
"You're a rather good tracker," he called down conversationally to Korra as she climbed the mountain, and he sat against a napping Leela.
"I had a good teacher," Korra snarled back, then refocused her attention on the rock.
Amon tilted his head. "Why don't you use a more dramatic display of your bending to come up here? It's not like the mountain is made up of platinum or wood."
He saw the girl pout, but she uncharacteristically kept quiet. Amon continued to watch her closely.
Amon stirred slightly, but made no move to help when Korra slipped and fell. The drop hadn't been far, though the girl had shouted at the impact. Again he wondered why she didn't bend. He thought she would at least do it with water to heal whatever scrape or injury she now carried, but when Korra struggled up, she just continued to ascend the mountain again. She only pulled out one of her waterskins to quench her thirst.
When it got too dark and Amon knew her energy was spent, Korra stopped and curled up, sleeping. Amon meditated, before he too slept.
He woke up early, and he found that Korra did too, albeit sluggishly, waterbenders typically did not do well in the mornings (Tarrlok rarely did). She continued on, and he watched her climb, and fall; get back up and climb again.
When she finally reached his cliff, Korra laid flat on her stomach, chin propped up on the dirt. She gave a low groan.
Amon stared at her. Then he slipped out his staff from Leela's saddlebag. When he tapped it in front of Korra' propped up chin, her nose, she stared entranced, her eyes crossing. Amon began to draw a curving line in the dirt.
"Airbending is about spiral movements."
A/N: I couldn't figure out a way to fit in more backstory, particularly about Airbender!Amon, so here, let him be mysterious for now--he does mystery really well. Hoped the hints at worldbuidling were enough, 'cause--well, I try to be pretty careful about exposition. Also, with this Amon, he's more of an AU of my 'misbegotten sons' fic than canon AmoNoatak--for one, being actually scarred.
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to the Legend of Korra.


text:
If you are a teacher and you have to teach about culture, you have to prepare the lesson carefully so your students can understand the materials well. To ease you and your students, you should make a powerpoint presentation. For example, you will explain about culture in Australia, you need to make a power point presentation using Australia picture as the background of your powerpoint presentation. You can make the powerpoint background by using various pictures of Australian culture.
If you don't have the picture and enough time, you can simply find the Australia powerpoint template from the internet. You can find many of them there and you can find of it by clicking the link in this article. The Australia template from this website is the picture of Australian theater. To use the power point template, you need to download it first to your hard drive.
After you have downloaded the powerpoint template you can then open the template on your Powerpoint software and edit the title and content. Just copy and paste your presentation materials to the powerpoint template and then save it. To present the Australia powerpoint presentation, you can use projector so all of your students can see the presentation.
Related Posts:
Need Professional and High Quality UNLIMITED Animated Powerpoint Templates, Clipart, and 3d graphics? Get it on Presenter Media.For Limited Time Only, get 40% Discount just for USD $ 59.95 a year (normal price: USD 39.95/month)Use this link to activate discount
Posted: August 17th, 2011 under beautiful.
Comments: none


text:
The one and only Zippy I'm not usually one for making resolutions, but I've eaten a … [Read more...]
🎶 I Wish You A Happy New Year . . . 🎵
One Step Beyond: Wheatless Wonder Breads
Ready to make great gluten free bread? Let's bake together at Kitchen Conservatory in St. … [Read more...]
Notes from bread class
Thanks to everyone who attended the bread class at Kitchen Conservatory on Sunday. Like I … [Read more...]