text:
6:39 a.m., Quail Hollow A woman on Hollow Drive said her granddaughter's car was broken into and a stereo and CDs were stolen.
9:20 a.m., Groveland A man on the 13000 block of Mokelumne Circle said his house was burglarized and food taken from the refrigerator.
9:43 a.m., Kennedy Meadows area A man said a woman in tattered clothes and "semi dirty" parked by the side of Highway 108 east of Kennedy Meadows seemed incoherent and acting strange.
10:39 a.m., Tuolumne area A man said a woman in blue clothing was hanging around the 19300 block of Cherokee Road acting disoriented.
11:02 a.m., Sonora A garage on the 19000 block of Sweet Gum Lane was broken into and tools were taken.
11:35 a.m., Long Barn area A house on the 26000 block of Slide Inn Street was broken into and various items and money were stolen.
12:16 p.m., Jamestown A man on the 10100 block of Peppermint Creek said registration tags were stolen from his vehicle.
2:58 p.m., Tuolumne A man driving on Tuolumne Road North near Cherokee Road said a woman was running in and out of traffic taking off her shirt. He said the woman had almost been hit several times.
3:53 p.m., Mono Village A woman on the 14500 block of Lolly Lane said a neighbor boy shot her 10-year-old son with a BB gun.
5:20 p.m., West County A 42-year-old woman was booked on suspicion of public drunkenness after an arrest on Highway 108 near Yosemite Junction. A caller saw a large pile of clothes in highway turnout area with the woman lying on top.
5:38 p.m., Columbia A caller said a heavyset man with dark hair and a small woman with brown hair were having sex on the lawn at Columbia Elementary School on the 22500 block of Parrotts Ferry Road. A deputy checked the area but was unable to find the couple.
6:57 p.m., Pinecrest A caller said a man wearing a blue shirt, jeans and flip-flops was walking along Highway 108 between Pinecrest and Cold Springs trying to start fires. A deputy checked and was unable to find the man.
8:31 p.m., Jamestown A caller said two women were fist fighting on Seventh Street near Eighth Avenue near a dark vehicle in the middle of the street.
Felony bookings
7:11 a.m., Sonora Pauline Edna Parette, 56, 400 block of Greenley Road, Sonora, booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and felony vandalism and misdemeanor battery and battery on a peace officer after an arrest on the 400 block of Greenley Road.
According to a Sonora police report, Parette hit a neighbor's door with a bat, then entered the neighbor's apartment and damaged a window and hit the woman on her arm with the bat. Parette then hit a man who walked with a cane at the apartment building.
When Officer John Mager arrived, Parette hit Mager in the head with her hand and tried to kick him, the report said.
She remained held this morning in lieu of $30,000 bail.
10:17 a.m., Soulsbyville area Leif Flls Jarvie, 27, 100 block of Cedar Street, Hathaway Pines, booked on a Calaveras County warrant charging him with felony battery and misdemeanor child endangerment and filing a false police report as well as on a Tuolumne County warrant charging him with drunken driving and failure to appear in court. He was arrested at a house on the 19900 block of Jack Rabbit Trail. He remained held this morning in lieu of $50,000 bail.
10:25 a.m., Sonora John Paul Frank Schowachert, 20, 19600 block of Elder Lane, Groveland, booked on suspicion of interfering with another's civil rights after an arrest on Green Street at Jackson Street. He remained in jail this morning on $25,000 bail.
2 p.m., Sonora Alex Brennan Lansdon, 19, 22400 block of South Airport Road, Columbia, booked on suspicion of possessing a stabbing instrument on school grounds and making criminal threats and misdemeanor battery after an arrest at Cassina High School.
According to a Sonora police report, Lansdon was on the school grounds to register for adult education. A teacher told Lansdon he needed to do so at the school office and escorted Lansdon to the office. While walking to the office Lansdon punched the teacher in the chest and took a swing at the school principal.
School resource officer Mike Christ arrived and arrested Lansdon. While searching him, Christ found a double-bladed locking knife.
Lansdon was released Friday on $25,000 bail.
11:30 p.m., Jamestown Forrest Richard Lowe, 24, no address given, Sonora, booked on suspicion of attempted assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a deadly weapon after an arrest on Harvard Mine Road at Highway 108.
According to a sheriff's report, Sgt. Robin Hunt saw Lowe running west on Harvard Mine Road after three teenage boys with a 2-by-4 board over his head. Hunt was in the area looking for Lowe after a caller said Lowe caused a disturbance at Jamestown Terrace Apartments on Preston Lane earlier.
Lowe said he was going to hit the boys because he thought they were the ones bothering him at the apartment complex.
Lowe remained in jail this morning, held in lieu of $200,000 bail.
6:05 a.m., Groveland area Anh Linh Zika, 32, 4600 block of Park Boulevard, Oakland, and Antonio Andrade Rodrigues, 3000 block of California Street, Oakland, both booked on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia after an arrest on Slate Gulch Road at Highway 120.
Zika was also booked on suspicion of transporting a controlled substance and misdemeanor possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. They were arrested after a traffic stop. Zika remained held this morning in lieu of $20,000 bail and Rodrigues was released on $10,000 bail.
5:30 p.m., Sonora John Paul Grazioli, 29, unknown address on Main Street, Tuolumne, booked on suspicion of receiving stolen property, criminal conspiracy and misdemeanor battery on a peace officer and on a Mariposa County warrant charging him with failure to pay child support. Also arrested was Brandi Marie Priest, 27, 4500 block of Highway 49 South, Mariposa. She was booked on suspicion of receiving stolen property, criminal conspiracy and resisting arrest.
Grazioli remained in jail this morning, held in lieu of $20,000 bail. Priest was held this morning in lieu of $10,000 bail.
Cited on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol:
Shasta Morris Duckworth, 19, 17400 block of Cemetery Road, Knights Ferry, booked at 11 p.m. Friday after arrest on Twain Harte Drive west of Joaquin Gully Road, Twain Harte.
Douglas Ray Jeske, 29, 22200 block of Colorado River Drive South, Sonora Meadows, booked at 12:29 a.m. Saturday after arrest on Stewart Street at Lyons Street, Sonora.
Bryan Patrick Kelly, 56, unknown address, Soulsbyville, booked at 3:30 a.m. Sunday after arrest on Stockton Road at Mother Lode Fairgrounds, Sonora.
James Fitzgerald Madnick, 40, 22500 block of Cedar Pines, Twain Harte, booked at 8 p.m. Sunday after arrest on Highway 108 at Twain Harte Drive, Twain Harte.
Jennifer Claire Shewbart, 22, 22500 block of Fireside Drive, Twain Harte, booked at 12:55 a.m. yesterday after arrest on South Washington Street at Calaveras Street in Sonora.
Sonora police reports
12:33 a.m., public intoxication A 39-year-old man was booked on suspicion of being drunk in public after an arrest on South Green Street, where an officer saw him stumbling.
1:51 a.m., assault A 34-year-old woman was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor battery and resisting arrest after an arrest on South Green Street at Linoberg Street.
2:01 a.m., assault A 26-year-old man was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor battery and resisting arrest after a caller said the man was fighting in front of a bar on the 100 block of South Washington Street.
2:29 a.m., warrant arrest A 23-year-old man was booked on a San Bernardino County misdemeanor warrant after a traffic stop on Greenley Road.
7:37 a.m., vandalism A rear window on a vehicle parked on the 100 block of Hope Lane was broken out.
9:44 a.m., animal complaints A caller found a brown and white border collie in Gibbs Ranch area Saturday night.
10:19 a.m., animal complaints A caller found a large brindle-colored dog wandering in the Mother Lode Fairgrounds dragging a rope with a choke collar. The dog was picked up by an animal control officer.
6:21 p.m., suspicious circumstances A caller said four people were smoking marijuana in Coffill Park.
8:11 p.m., suspicious circumstances A caller said two people in a blue Honda Accord were painting rocks along Sanguinetti Road pink.
8:43 p.m., suspicious circumstances A caller said a person was sleeping in bushes behind a business parking lot on the 200 block of South Washington Street.
2:19 a.m., Douglas Flat A beeping sound was reported on the 1400 block of Main Street. The fire department determined the sound to be an alarm clock.
4:16 a.m., San Andreas A woman was causing a disturbance in the emergency room at Mark Twain St. Joseph's Hospital.
8:05 a.m., Valley Springs An estranged husband and wife were reported arguing on the 2400 block of Danaher Drive.
9:06 a.m., Vallecito A party was reported on Camp Nine Road Saturday night. A deputy said people remaining at Camp Nine Sunday morning said others at the party cut down a tree so no one could leave intoxicated.
10:22 a.m., Vallecito A disabled motorist needed assistance at the intersection of Parrotts Ferry Road and Highway 4.
1:21 p.m., West Point An ongoing child custody issue was reported on the 400 block of Main Street.
1:34 p.m., Arnold A woman was harassing a clerk at Big Trees Market.
2:52 p.m., Murphys An employer and employee were arguing on the 400 block of Main Street.
3:56 p.m., Copperopolis A house was vandalized on the 300 block of Deerfield Circle.
4:20 p.m., Valley Springs area A boating accident was reported at New Hogan Reservoir.
4:24 p.m., Wallace A family dispute was reported on the 11700 block of Wade Lane.
4:34 p.m., Valley Springs Several people were fighting on the 100 block of Sequoia Avenue.
5:07 p.m., Valley Springs Fast driving spurred an argument between neighbors on the 2300 block of Highway 26.
5:44 p.m., Arnold An intoxicated person was arrested at Big Trees Market.
5:48 p.m., San Andreas A man was reported causing a disturbance in the emergency room at Mark Twain St. Joseph's Hospital.
6:47 p.m., Murphys An ongoing dispute between a mother and daughter was reported on the 3500 block of Murphys Grade Road.
11:05 p.m., West Point A loud party was reported on the 1200 block of Spink Road. A deputy contacted those at the party and they agreed to keep the noise down for the rest of the night.
12:27 p.m., Valley Springs Zachary Allan Victor, 18, 10500 Thompson Way, Valley Springs, booked on suspicion of growing marijuana. Victor was released from the Calaveras County Jail after posting $25,000 bail.
12:35 p.m., Angels Camp Glen Leroy Johnson, 40, 600 block of Stanislaus Avenue, Angels Camp, booked on suspicion of growing marijuana. As of this morning, Johnson remained in custody at the county jail in lieu of $35,000 bail.
9:30 a.m., Rail Road Flat Marty Wayne Cassel, 45, 2300 block of Wagner Road, Rail Road Flat, booked on suspicion of felony battery charge and of attempting to prevent a witness from reporting abuse. Cassel remained in custody this morning, held in lieu of $65,000 bail.
6:25 p.m., Wallace Sherri Marie Boris, 45, 11700 block of Wade Lane, Valley Springs, booked on suspicion of damaging a telephone line. As Boris remained in jail this morning, held in lieu of $15,000 bail.
Cited on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol:
Joseph Michael Beeghly, 58, of Oakland, booked at 11:54 p.m. Thursday after arrest at Highway 49 and Murphys Grade Road in Angels Camp.
Barbara Mary Groganperry, 68, 1500 block of Saddleback Drive, San Andreas, booked at 10:20 p.m. Friday after arrest at South Main Street and Murphys Grade Road in Angels Camp.


text:
Just got a warning ...hmmm?
Just got a warning from the mods in charge...
answering on the question about Dahon or Tern ... which I am somewhat an expert on. I think the problem was that I needed to add the common pricing to the various models. After all there are 4 of them. To make the decision at least a little bit more clear.
No link to the bikes was in the post.
Hmm? I am a little miffed about that, if thats the new direction around here I might just walk away and find other places which are not censored.
what you guys think ?
Thor goes, we all go. That's not (just) solidarity, its self interest - Thor's posts are a pillar of the folding community here....
Even though you've been as rude as hell to me on several occasions, and despite the fact that you seem to think that Dahons are the best thing to come along since sliced bread and will accept no criticism of them whatseover, I do hope that you won't be banned or decide to stop posting here as you do make an interesting post once in a blue moon.
I imagine the mods don't appreciate your using this subforum to peddle your merchandise. Can you blame them?
As for the warning, I've seen a lot of baseless warnings from the moderators of many forums... every Mayberry has their Barney Fife.
this is a moderated forum and you have pretty much free reign to plug your products on a very frequent basis. if once in a while you get checked it's probably for the good of the forum community as a whole.
if this were an "uncensored" forum it would frankly be abysmal. imagine endless flame wars and every other post being spam from faceless product hawkers. it would be useless to enthusiasts and the fact is they are the ones who give the forum vitality and attract new members.
you've got a pretty great social media marketing tool here. don't be a whiner threatening to take your toys and leave. it's unattractive. ;)
Here's a classic example of his intransigence: http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...dahon%2C+ekdog
More mirth served up here: http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...-heavier-rider
but, i'll see your thread and raise you two. i recalled reading these last year. thor and dahon steve trade licks on a bunch of hapless dahon/tern owners with shattered knees and broken toes after encounters with the dreaded "stock folding pedal". seems the pedals were great, its just that the owners weren't using them correctly! seems the numerous customers are injured idiots who need a class in the proper way to use a bicycle pedal. also, interestingly, as a result of numerous people experiencing catastrophic pedal failure, thor actually complains about that forum being uncensored - "lol thats the problem with the Interweb and unmoderated ( no censorship ) forums." whereas, here on bike forums he is complaining about being censored when trying to sell his wares.
Ok smallwheeler .. Now I have to bust in. I never said that the owners were using the pedals wrongly. Steve has a theory about foot placement, which I don NOT agree on. There is somewhere an official word from Tern about these pedals, which basically says that if you don't like them you can give them to your dealer and get different ones for free... Still I want to find out, why the same pedals which are used by many many other manufacturers including Dahon, obviously showing a higher failure rate on Terns than on any other bike.
Where do I complain about The Tern forum being uncensored ? The Tern forum allows every post, every picture of a broken part, every critique you want to write. Same as the old Dahon forum. I would not participate on a manufacturer owned forum if it would be censored. Somehow you clearly must have misunderstood me. Its the opposite what you write. Or did you quote me completely out of context ?
I also did not think that the folks who have broken a pedal are idiots and I did not say that. You are throwing stuff out there which is pretty hard core stuff.
while I am here .. Ekdog. Thanks for the links, as they clearly state that I helped Steely Dan to a new frame, even after the warranty was over and he got the official no, before I send him a new frame and fork. Not bad customer service for somebody who bought the bikes somewhere else, wouldn't you agree ?
Helping my friends on bikeforums with free parts, solve problems their own dealers couldn't handle, etc etc ...I thought that service through bikeforums would allow me a little wiggle room and push some info at times, which eventually leads to a sale once in a while. I must have thought wrongly. Yes if I ship stuff out of the country I need the freight paid, and for example to Spain its very expensive, I cannot pay that out of my pocket.
Its not whining, I spent a lot of time here. Much more time than dealers who sell ten times as much as I do.
So what happens if somebody ask for a spare wheel or sparepart he cannot find elsewhere ? I cannot say that I have in in stock ? Just because I am a dealer, who spends thousands of dollars to have said spare part, versus the majority of dealers who are happy to sell a bike but don't care about the customer down the road ?
again I thought that I had a little wiggle room at times, but it seems that's not the case
i have also had comments deleted by mods. don't take it too personally.
I happen to like brakemeister's posts. While I don't own a Dahon, his posts are generally interesting and informative. He is also far less pushy than a certain someone who remains nameless immediately asking me where I lived when I expressed interest in a bike.
Norman, Oklahoma USA
Hmmm...I was slowly scrolling my way down the thread, reading the posts and thinking to myself "It's about time for one of those cat pictures" when I came upon the short vid of Big Red enjoying the latest issue of Sensible Chuckle.
As for Thor, I say let him stay - he is not the most egregious violator of the solicitation clause, though I'll grant he is a rabid defender of his product. Just to be clear Thor, I'm a fan.
Also, I'm glad that I read those linked threads - I'll be sure to look for a "stomp" label on my pedals.
Well, this is from 2008.... more than 5 years ago - anything since ? The thing with the internet is stuff lasts forever, in the real world people will have moved on.
I am not committed to Dahon, but the free advice and wisdom Thor hands out are worth their weight in gold. Would we like each other if we met ? Who knows, and I don't really mind. Declarations of interest are good, but the inside info we get from Thor is really interesting.
I tend not to forget when I have a problem with a product I've purchased and someone who represents the company comes along and blames me instead of trying to help. Disgruntled customers have long memories.
Maybe other people are luckier than me. When it comes to the 2008 argument, it seems to me that it is accepted that Dahon has problems with parts (although when there was a grommet missing from my DH hammerhead I got new, it arrived the next day at the LBS, thanks to Mark Bickerton, now with Tern, and these forums). So one reason I come here is the expertise. The other is that I meet people from all walks of life I wouldn't otherwise, for whom the values of peace love and understanding are evidence in their joint commitment to small wheels and the fold. Most of the time, anyway ;)
However, if you have the good fortune in most respects to live in Seville (I am really enjoying the Inspector Falcon books set there at the moment, highly recommended) and are ordering your stuff from a guy Olney Illinois, then it seems to me the problem is with the manufacturer and distributor rather than the guy in the US. Who for all I know may be a grumpy old man, but then aint we all.
I personally don't want to see Thor leave. I've learned a lot from his posts. When I have posted on numerous occasions about finding a bike for my wife, Thor never once jumped in to try and push his products for a sale, and when I was having problems with my heart, Thor sent me a PM asking how I am doing.
Thor, you are a person of high integrity. Stay where you are please!!
I didn't know about those Inspector Falcon books. I think I'll read one. Thanks for the tip.
Most forums have a TOS/TOU that you agree to when you sign up for the forum. In many cases commercial members are held to a higher standard than the general populace. I moderate on a very large forum and we have about 2% of the people that "don't get it". FWIW on that one questioning moderators' decisions in public can get you banned. People quite often forget that forums are privately owned and the owner sets the rules. Also the moderation staff is typically all volunteer and they are human.
In this case I would inquire as to what the exact issue is. On the forum I moderate it takes a staff consensus prior to any real action. There are a few notable exceptions where an individual moderator can pull an offending post, but then it is followed up by a team effort. From what I have seen here on BF a similar system is used.
I have purchased parts from Thor and he has been helpful on the newer Dahon's. IMHO Dahon itself is quite often the problem.
Aaron :)
Norman, Oklahoma USA
|All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:20 AM.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Decision makers
- California Governor
NAME IT THE EMPEROR NORTON BRIDGE (Preserve Existing Names — Just Add This One)
NAME IT THE EMPEROR NORTON BRIDGE (Preserve Existing Names — Just Add This One)
0 have signed. Let's get to 7,500.
This petition about the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge does not call for a wholesale re-naming of this bridge system for Emperor Norton. Rather, it highlights a naming solution that simply would add a name like "Emperor Norton Bridge" for the system, which Emperor Norton decreed in 1872.
In this scenario, the existing names and signage for the system and its constituent parts ("spans," tunnel, pedestrian/bike path, etc.) would remain in place. The "Emperor Norton" name could be memorialized with a single prominent overhead sign on either end of the bridge and perhaps other such signs at a handful of key bridge approaches around the Bay Area.
This solution is consistent with the State of California's precedent and current practice of giving multiple names to certain state-owned bridges.
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August 2013
Updated September 2013 to reflect actions by the California State Legislature
"San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge." It's a name straight out of bureaucratic central casting. A clunky, hyphenated mouthful of a moniker that tries to please everyone — but winds up pleasing few. It's little wonder that, as soon as the bridge opened in 1936, local residents cropped the name down to the handier "Bay Bridge." Still a fundamentally technical, descriptive name that lacks poetry — but two syllables are better than eight.
After 80-plus years, though, the original name has earned its place. "The Bay Bridge" is here to stay. And yet...
For generations, the Bay Bridge has had a second name — a parallel name, if you like. This second name — which some consider to be the bridge's real name — never has graced any official highway sign. But it lives in the hearts of many.
It's time for the bridge's historical name to share the marquee with a name that has a history of its own. A name that speaks to a deeper history. A name that finally honors the bridge's original 19th-century visionary.
In short: It's time to make the alias official — time for the State of California to recognize that, before the first survey for the structure was begun in the early 1920s, this bridge was, and shall remain...
The Emperor Norton Bridge.
The San Francisco pioneer, Joshua Abraham Norton (c.1818–1880) — the self-styled "Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" — was considered eccentric, and so he was. Some considered him certifiable.
But Emperor Norton also was a visionary. He was:
- an adversary of corruption and fraud of all kinds — political, corporate and personal;
- a persistent voice for fair treatment and greater legal protections for marginalized and immigrant communities — including Chinese, African-Americans, Native Americans and women;
- a champion of religious unity who saw the dangers of religious puritanism and sectarianism — and advocated against it;
- an advocate for fair labor practices;
- a defender of the people's right to fair taxes and basic services, including well-maintained streets, streetcars, trains and ferries;
- an exponent of technological innovations that advanced the public welfare; and
- a general ambassador of his adopted city, who embodied and heralded the values of tolerance and the common good that came to be identified with San Francisco, Oakland and the Bay Area.
In January 1872, Emperor Norton issued a proclamation that declared, in part:
"Whereas, we observe that certain newspapers are agitating the project of bridging the Bay; and whereas, we are desirous of connecting the cities of San Francisco and Oakland by such means; now, therefore, we, Norton I, Dei gratia Emperor, do hereby...order that the bridge be built from Oakland Point to Telegraph Hill, via Goat Island [now Yerba Buena Island]."
In a second proclamation, in March 1872, the Emperor specified that the bridge should be a suspension bridge [emphasis added]:
"The following is decreed and ordered to be carried into execution as soon as convenient: That a suspension bridge be built from Oakland Point to Goat Island [now Yerba Buena Island], and then to Telegraph Hill; provided such bridge can be built without injury to the navigable waters of the Bay of San Francisco."
He repeated this decree with a third proclamation, in September 1872
"ordering the citizens of San Francisco and Oakland to appropriate funds for the survey of a suspension bridge from Oakland Point via Goat Island; also for a tunnel...."
[See the Resources section below for a link to view all three proclamations, as they originally appeared in The Pacific Appeal newspaper.
In adding, for consideration, the possibility of a cross-Bay tunnel — something he originally had called for in a separate proclamation in June 1872 — Emperor Norton anticipated by more than a century the 1974 opening of the Transbay Tube, which carries four of the five lines of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system under the Bay.]
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In essence, the Emperor's vision for a cross-Bay bridge came to pass in 1936, with the opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, known as "the Bay Bridge."
In fact, the "bridge" is a bridge system composed of two bridges. The monumental Western crossing, or "span," connecting San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island, is a suspension bridge, as the Emperor specified. The original Eastern crossing, connecting the island to Oakland, was built as a more conventional (at the time of its construction) cantilever-and-truss bridge.
The new Eastern crossing that opened in early September 2013 is a different kind of suspension bridge than the Western crossing.
But, in its way, the new crossing brings to full flower Emperor Norton's original vision of 1872, and makes it an especially appropriate time to finally name the entire Bay Bridge for him.
Well, yes and no.
It's true that, on 12 September 2013 — following an earlier 68-0-10 vote by the California State Assembly — the California State Senate, on a 26-7-6 vote, passed a non-binding resolution (Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 65, or ACR 65) to name the Western crossing of the Bay Bridge — the "San Francisco side" — the "Willie L. Brown, Jr., Bridge," for former California Assembly Speaker and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
But the state continues to recognize "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge" as the name of the entire bridge system.
Indeed, the 2015 Named Freeways, Highways, Structures and Other Appurtenances in California — the most recent edition of the authoritative listing produced regularly by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) (see Resources, below) — has separate and independent listings for both the "Willie L. Brown, Jr., Bridge" (p.143) and the "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge" (p.164) The former is listed with a citation for ACR 65; the latter is listed as "Not Officially Named."
In other words: For naming purposes, the State of California places these two things — (1) the constituent "spans" of the Bay Bridge and (2) the bridge as a whole — on two separate planes. Which means that the naming of the Western crossing of the Bay Bridge for Willie Brown and the naming of the entire Bay Bridge system for Emperor Norton is not an either-or proposition — it can be both-and.
Put another way...
In effect, the Willie Brown name now functions as one "subtitle" of the larger landmark.
But the main title of the landmark — "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge" — remains.
Addressing this main title is the opportunity and the imperative highlighted in this petition to name the Bay Bridge for Emperor Norton.
Not necessarily.
Today, the state of California has a dozen or so bridges that have multiple "main titles."
Following this precedent, it should be possible to simply add an official "Emperor Norton" name — say, "Emperor Norton Bridge" — to stand alongside the "Bay Bridge" name. The "Emperor Norton" name could be memorialized with a single prominent overhead highway sign on either end of the bridge and perhaps other such signs at a handful of key bridge approaches around the Bay Area.
In this scenario, the existing names for the bridge and its constituent parts, together with all existing highway signs for these names, would be left in place.
It's been widely recognized, since the opening of the Bay Bridge system in 1936, that the entire system — both Western and Eastern crossings, connected in the middle by Yerba Buena Tunnel — is a remarkable feat of architecture and engineering.
But it's not solely Emperor Norton's 1872 calls for the technological achievement of a Bay-spanning bridge connecting San Francisco with Oakland that warrants the Bay Bridge system's bearing his name.
What must be kept firmly in mind is that, in calling for a cross-Bay bridge, Emperor Norton also was planting the seed of inspiration that would enable those after him to water and reap the deeper possibility of what such a bridge could do — namely, to nurture the two-way commerce of goods, ideas and influence between people on both sides of the Bay.
From this perspective, the Emperor can be seen as an early, if unwitting, visionary of the whole idea of a local "regional economy."
Indeed, whatever the Emperor's specific intentions in calling for a cross-Bay bridge 140-plus years ago, it seems undeniable that a major result of the Bay Bridge system has been to facilitate and nurture such an economy, to the benefit of people on both sides — and that, without a bridge system connecting San Francisco and Oakland, we would not mean the same thing by "Bay Area" as we do today.
To be sure, Emperor Norton is identified as a San Francisco figure. But, the truth is that, for many years, day-trips to Oakland via ferry were part of the Emperor's weekly routine. In his day, Emperor Norton was very well-known in those streets.
Moreover, the Emperor's prescient proclamations calling for a cross-Bay bridge have blossomed, in the hearts and minds of succeeding generations of Bay Area visionaries, into a profound recognition that Oakland needs San Francisco — and that San Francisco needs Oakland.
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The 145-year-old vision for a bay-spanning suspension bridge that unites the people of San Francisco, Oakland and the East Bay via Yerba Buena Island — a vision that has shaped the lives of generations of the area's residents and visitors, and that has been advanced further than ever before with the opening of the new Eastern crossing as a suspension structure...
This vision is specific to Emperor Norton.
In recognition of this — and whatever name(s) might be given to the constituent sections of the bridge, i.e., the West Bay Crossing, the East Bay Crossing and Yerba Buena Tunnel...
This petition calls on the State of California to authorize and recognize a second name for the bridge system as a whole — the larger entity known as the "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge."
Name it the Emperor Norton Bridge.
San Francisco
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To learn much more about this project, visit
: : : : : :
This petition is the impetus for a nonprofit launched in September 2013:
Web site — http://www.EmperorsBridge.org
Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/EmperorsBridge
Twitter — https://twitter.com/EmperorsBridge
: : : : : :
Media coverage of this petition
WALL STREET JOURNAL — http://ow.ly/ReSZG
HOODLINE — http://ow.ly/ReSEV
SFist — http://bit.ly/12YCvfc & http://bit.ly/153c5Z9 & http://bit.ly/13Ok8YJ
SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN — http://bit.ly/13kBiz3 & http://bit.ly/17DcBeE
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE — http://bit.ly/17nSr9K & http://bit.ly/16lnhCI
KQED — http://bit.ly/1dbjOWV
LOS ANGELES TIMES — http://lat.ms/1aqM2vy
LAUGHING SQUID — http://bit.ly/145wjfy
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (and others) — http://bit.ly/1c19SPb & http://bit.ly/1fX70mj
GOOD DAY SACRAMENTO (local CBS morning show) — http://cbsloc.al/17xdZ2B
JAMIE ZAWINSKI (Mozilla and Netscape co-founder) — http://bit.ly/1464u6P & http://bit.ly/14n6gVW
THE RAW STORY — http://bit.ly/14vGqud
MISSION LOCAL — http://bit.ly/1eHMCrA
Emperor Norton's 1872 "Bridge" Proclamations (as originally published)
6 January 1872 — http://bit.ly/1dJC3Gs
23 March 1872 — http://bit.ly/1fssp6D
21 September 1872 — http://bit.ly/15wuWXR
Articles on Emperor Norton
Short Documentary Film on Emperor Norton
Named Freeways, Highways, Structures and
Other Appurtenances in California (2015)
Policy on Measures Naming Highways
or Structures | California State Senate
Transportation & Housing Committee
Text of Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 65
("Willie L. Brown, Jr., Bridge")
Analysis of ACR 65 by the State of California's
nonpartisan Office of Legislative Counsel
- California Governor
- California State Senate
- California State House
The 200th birthday of the 19th-century California eccentric and visionary Emperor Norton (c.1818-1880) is coming up on 4 February 2018.
I'm writing to add my voice to the thousands of others — including thousands of California voters — who are calling upon you and your colleagues in the California State Legislature to use the opportunity of this momentous bicentennial simply to adopt a joint resolution to name the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for Emperor Norton.
Not to *rename* the bridge, but simply to...
*Add* "Emperor Norton Bridge" as a *parallel* name — leaving in place all existing names and signage for the bridge and its parts.
The State of California already employs bridge-naming practices — at the Bay Bridge and in general — that support this approach:
1) The state continues to recognize "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge" as the "main title" and unofficial name of the entire bridge system.
2) The state has provided a number of its bridges with *multiple* "main titles."
Based on these practices, the state legislature can authorize a name like "Emperor Norton Bridge" for the Bay Bridge system *independent* of both (a) the "Bay Bridge" name for the system and (b) the names given separately to the bridge's constituent elements.
An official "Emperor Norton Bridge" name could stand *alongside* the name "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge," just as the name "John F. McCarthy Memorial Bridge" stands alongside the name "Richmond-San Rafael Bridge."
Depending on the availability of private funds, highway signage for the name could be implemented with one sign at the San Francisco end of the bridge, one sign at the Oakland end and possibly other signs at key access points around the Bay Area.
The existing names and signage for the bridge and its parts could remain as is.
This "both-and-and" approach to placing Emperor Norton's name on his bridge has been developed and championed since 2013 by The Emperor's Bridge Campaign, a California nonprofit that works on a variety of fronts — research, education, advocacy — to advance the legacy of Emperor Norton.
To learn much more about this effort, you can access the section of the Campaign's Web site that details the Emperor Norton Bridge project via:
:: :: ::
It was Emperor Norton who set out the original vision for the Bay Bridge with three newspaper proclamations in 1872, calling for the design and construction of a great bay-spanning suspension bridge linking San Francisco and Oakland via Yerba Buena Island, then known as Goat Island.
This is but one example of how Emperor Norton was a visionary. Proclamations and other statements written and published by Emperor Norton in the 1860s and '70s show that — well ahead of his time — the Emperor was:
+ an adversary of political corruption and corporate fraud;
+ a persistent voice for the fair treatment of racial and ethnic minorities;
+ a champion of religious unity who saw the folly of sectarianism;
+ an advocate for fair labor practices; an exponent of technological innovations that advanced the public welfare;
+ a supporter of women's suffrage;
+ a defender of the people's right to fair taxes and basic services, including well-maintained streets and streetcars; and
+ a general ambassador of his adopted city, who embodied and heralded the values of tolerance and the common good that came to be identified with San Francisco, Oakland and the Bay Area.
In other words: Emperor Norton not only *called* for a bridge. He *was* a bridge who embodied and heralded the values of fairness, tolerance, self-determination and the common good that came to be associated with San Francisco, Oakland and the Bay Area.
Placing the Emperor's name on his bridge would give those who live in — and love — the Bay Area a wonderful tool for telling the local story of these universal values .
And it finally would imbue the name of the bridge with a sense of history and poetry and flavor that previously has been enjoyed only by the bridge's International Orange sister to the north.
:: :: ::
Worth noting: Although Emperor Norton often is identified as a San Francisco figure, he actually spent quite a bit of time in the East Bay, especially Brooklyn, Calif. — present-day East Oakland, which he is said to have considered his "summer capital" — and Berkeley, where he both attended and gave public lectures, as well as reviewed the cadets, at the new University of California.
:: :: ::
I hope that you and your colleagues in the California State Legislature will agree that naming the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for Emperor Norton is an idea whose time has come.
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text: RT Book, Whole DB /z-wcorg/ DS http://worldcat.org ID 34818133 LA English T1 Do androids dream of electric sheep? A1 Dick, Philip K.,, Dick, Philip K., YR 1996 SN 0345404475 9780345404473 AB The inspiration for Blade Runner. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968. Grim and foreboding, even today it is a masterpiece ahead of its time. By 2021, the World War had killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remained coveted any living creature, and for people who couldn't afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacrae: horses, birds, cats, sheep. . . They even built humans. Emigrees to Mars received androids so sophisticated it was impossible to tell them from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans could wreak, the government banned them from Earth. But when androids didn't want to be identified, they just blended in. Rick Deckard was an officially sanctioned bounty hunter whose job was to find rogue androids and retire them. But cornered, androids tended to fight back, with deadly results.


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PROTESTERS who tried to stop last year's Dale Farm clearance claim they will try to evict communities secretary Eric Pickles on Friday.
They will target the offices of the Department for Communities and Local Government to mark the anniversary of the Dale Farm eviction.
They will try to disrupt operations at his offices from 1pm, Intending to give Mr Pickles "a taste of his own medicine", as they hold him responsible for the eviction by releasing money to allow Basildon Council to carry it out and since strengthening powers against illegal sites.
Some protesters will be dressed as "the people's bailiffs" on the day. Oscar Farrell, a supporter who resisted the eviction last year, said, "Last year I couldn't believe I was seeing 83 families made homeless by the government; but it's not just Dale Farm, it's happening all over the UK and Eric Pickles is leading the attack on travellers. Evictions can only ever lead to more evictions."


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MSN Cars test drive of the Bentley Continental Flying Spur
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At this time - James May drives the Bentley Continental Flying Spur in Dubai! Jeremy despises the new four-door Bentley, calling it "the most dreary styling" he's ever seen. Subscribe if you liked this video! (;
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FOR MORE CAR VIDEOS & REVIEWS VISIT: http://www.kbb.com/kbb/NewsAndReviews/VideoLibrary.aspx Bentley Continental Flying Spur. Do you have an extra two hundred grand or so burning a hole in your pocket? Neither do we, but if we did it might be nice to impress the people around us with an unbridled display of automotive excess. With that dream in mind we present the Bentley Continental Flying Spur, the ideal conveyance for those whose ship has already come in. Welcome to our comprehensive Kelley Blue Book review of the Bentley Continental Flying Spur. Exclusivity is its own reward, and nothing ensures exclusivity like the Continental Flying Spurs price tag of nearly $200,000. For those who expect more of their cars than just a huge monthly payment, the Bentley also offers enough prestige, power, luxury and style to satisfy the most discriminating Sultan, baron or heiress. For more new car reviews, interviews and automotive news visit http://www.kbb.com today.


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Virginia's Governor Terry McAuliffe: An Exit Interview
We speak to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) as he prepares to leave office after four years at the helm.
In the past year, the Food and Drug Administration approved 35 new medicines — a near-record for the last decade. After years of slow but steady drug approvals, the FDA is considering speedier review and acceptance of innovative medicines, especially obesity treatments, antibiotics and drugs to fight infectious diseases. But scientists warn expedited approvals come with enhanced risks. We explore the push for new medications and the struggle to balance risks and benefits.
MR. KOJO NNAMDIIn the early 1940s, Australian scientist Howard Florey and a team of researchers developed penicillin, an antibiotic that went on to save millions of lives. Florey would live to see the development of 13 new classes of antibiotics. But since his death in 1968, just two classes have made it through the drug pipeline. Now many infections are resistant to standard antibiotics so the Food and Drug Administration is putting priority on fast tracking new antibiotics, as well as medicines for weight loss and other diseases through a traditionally slow approval process.
MR. KOJO NNAMDIWhile many patients in dire straits may applaud a speedier route for badly needed drugs, some experts wonder if safety is being sacrificed in the process. So how do you balance safety and speed in products where millions of lives might be at stake? Joining us in studio to discuss this is Thomas Moore. He's senior scientist in Drug Safety and Policy at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. He's also the project director for "Quarter Watch," an independent drug safety publication that examines side effects data reported to the FDA. Tom Moore, thank you for joining us.
MR. THOMAS MOOREIt's a pleasure to be here.
NNAMDIAlso with us in studio is Allan Coukell, director of the Pew Health Group's medical programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Allan Coukell, thank you for joining us.
MR. ALLAN COUKELLGood to be here, Kojo.
NNAMDIAnd Dr. Robert Temple is deputy director for Clinical Science at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Bob Temple, thank you for joining us.
DR. ROBERT TEMPLEGood to be here.
NNAMDIIf you'd like to join the conversation feel free. Call us at 800-433-8850. Would you take a drug that's gone through faster, smaller clinical trials if it meant alleviating a dire condition? 800-433-8850 is the number to call. You can send us email to firstname.lastname@example.com or send us a Tweet at kojoshow. Bob Temple, I'll start with you. Usually about 20 to 30 drugs are approved each year by the FDA. Now we're seeing some very public plans by your agency to speed approval of some new medicines. Can you give us some context on why we're seeing this new push?
TEMPLEWell, I think it starts with the fact that there're certain diseases and conditions that don't have any good treatment. There may be something but it doesn't work very well. And these are usually serious and life-threatening diseases. Almost everybody agrees -- even people who aren't sure about how much safety data we get -- that you want new treatments for diseases that don't have a treatment. So if there's a resistant bacterium and nothing now treats it, there really isn't anybody who doesn't think there ought to be something that'll treat it.
TEMPLEBad neurological diseases need treatment. Bad diseases like cystic fibrosis need treatment. When we've talked to people -- that includes physicians, patients, actually legislatures -- they pretty much all agree that if you had something that worked when nothing else did for a serious or life-threatening disease you would probably accept somewhat greater risk. And I think everybody agrees with that. I'm sure almost everybody does. There is some people, however, who think we give up too much and that's the question.
NNAMDIIn the past year, the FDA has approved 35 new drugs and almost half of them received some sort of shortened review or expedited approval. Can you tell us about one or two of those drugs and why they got through faster?
TEMPLEThe term expedited approval has a lot of different meanings. One thing we do, for example, is if a drug looks very hot we might review it in six months instead of the usual ten months. So one of the drugs that Tom Moore singled out was a drug called Fingolimod. That got a priority review and that was a drug that treated -- I just went blank.
MOOREMultiple sclerosis.
TEMPLE...that treated multiple sclerosis, sorry. The first very effective oral drug that did so and it worked almost as well as the drug that people were quite worried about called Tysabri, which causes a rare neurologic disease. So that got a priority review because it worked extremely well and that meant we gave it a six-month review. That doesn't mean we think that we decreased the level of review in any way. It just -- we did it faster, we devoted more resources to it.
MOOREI'd like to...
NNAMDIWell, Tom, what he was referring to is the September article that you wrote in the Journal of American Medical Association where you looked at three newly approved drugs that received these speedy reviews. And you found that you had some safety concerns. What is it that left you uneasy?
MOOREWell, I agree with Bob Temple in part and I disagree with him in part. First, I think the metric of speed of approval is sort of misleading and without value. I mean, the whole idea that the way we should judge the performance of the most important safety regulatory agency in the world is how fast they can move. That seems to me sort of an unhealthy proposition to start with.
MOOREThe real underlying question is two parts, I think, which is what kind of safety questions remain unanswered. And so in the case of one of the drugs that I described in the article, there were seven different safety questions that we really didn't know the answer to. So my sort of cautionary note here is speeding new drugs with less testing to the public is at best a mixed blessing, and if we're unlucky can lead to a serious drug disaster.
NNAMDIWell, before I bring Allan Coukell in, just one bit of clarification.
TEMPLEI'd like to respond...
NNAMDIBob, I know you'd like to respond to that and as you respond could you just briefly go into the weeds a little bit and talk about the four designations that drugs in the fast lane get at the FDA and what it means about the scientific testing behind them.
TEMPLEYou mean the four different categories that might...
NNAMDIFast track, accelerated approval, priority review, breakthrough therapy.
TEMPLEThey're all quite different. Priority review refers to how soon we have a response. It doesn't mean a yes -- how soon we'll have a response after the drug comes in, six months or ten months. That's all it refers to. Fast track doesn't refer to approving the drug at all. It refers to getting in contact with the company that is developing the drug, trying to help them do the most efficient possible studies, making it clear what the requirements are going to be and things like that. It also does say we will accept what's called a rolling review, which means they're allowed to put their chemistry data in before they put their clinical data.
NNAMDIAccelerated approval?
TEMPLENow accelerated approval is something of a misnomer. That refers to basing approval on what's called a surrogate endpoint. A surrogate endpoint -- the usual endpoints of a clinical trial are whether you live longer, function better or have fewer symptoms. A surrogate endpoint is a measure like blood pressure that isn't a measure of that but that you think will predict improved survival or fewer strokes.
NNAMDIAnd breakthrough therapy?
TEMPLEWell, hold on. The surrogate endpoints we use in accelerated approval are surrogate endpoints that we're not 100 percent sure are going to be predictive. But we think they're reasonably likely to be predictive. And you can often get an answer on such a surrogate endpoint long before the survival data come in. When we use that for approval it's on condition that the real endpoint be studied in further studies afterward. The major place we use that is in cancer. And the surrogate endpoint we use is shrinking the tumor or delaying the progress of the tumor. A very plausible surrogate endpoint, but it isn't actually survival.
TEMPLEOkay. What have I done...
NNAMDIBreakthrough therapy.
TEMPLEBreakthrough therapy.
MOOREWell, there's an important element of accelerated approval that he omitted.
NNAMDIBreakthrough therapy?
TEMPLEBreakthrough therapy is a new term. It's in the recent law (word?) . And it resembles a number of the other things but it means that early clinical evidence have suggested that the drug treats a serious or life-threatening disease that is not currently well treated. And, once again, what we're going to do in that case is work closely with the companies to try to get studies that will be efficient. We have various ways to make studies more efficient, work with them to do that. It doesn't suggest a change in standards at all.
TEMPLEThe reality is though if a drug does something wonderful that's never been done before we will often accept the smaller safety database but not always.
NNAMDIAllan Coukell, I have a question for you, but you go ahead. You wanted to jump into this conversation anyway.
COUKELLYeah, well, thank you. I want to talk about antibiotics, but first I wanted to respond to something that Tom said, which is that speed of drug approval is without value. And I think if you're a patient with a serious disease and you're lacking an effective treatment, then speed of drug approval is of immense value. It's also of immense value if you're a company and you're burning capital to get a product to market.
COUKELLSo let's say that over the last decade-and-a-half drug approval times at the FDA have fallen. We commissioned a study that was published earlier this year in the New England Journal that showed that the FDA is now approving drugs faster in the United States than European authorities are, than Canadian authorities. You know, two-thirds of drugs come to market here first.
COUKELLBut I think the right question is not how fast are they coming to market. It's are we getting the evidence that we need, both for the effectiveness of the drugs and the safety. And as we look about are there better ways to get antibiotics to market, that's what we need to be looking at.
NNAMDILet's be specific. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg recently mentioned three categories of drugs for accelerated approval, weight-loss treatments, antibiotics and drugs to treat infectious diseases. I'd like to delve into the first category I mentioned, since I think some people may wonder why weight-loss drugs are getting this treatment. Why obesity medications, Allan?
COUKELLI'll talk more about obesity drugs...
COUKELL...but obesity drugs have -- some of the recent ones have had some serious cardiac risks. And so, you know, what FDA is talking about there is making sure that if we're going to take drugs that have a certain risk profile we're making sure that the patients who get them are the ones who stand to benefit most, if I can oversimplify. Similarly when we look at antibiotics we, as you know, have emerging infections in this country that can't be treated or often can't be treated by very many drugs.
COUKELLThere was a big outbreak not long ago at the NIH clinical center not far from where we're sitting now in Washington. And so we have to be sure that when we have these bugs that can't be treated -- patients that can't be treated with existing drugs, we have available therapies for them.
MOOREYeah, I'd like to just pick up one point where I think that the public may not understand part of the underlying structure here. And that's starting with accelerated approval.
MOOREAccelerated approval, as Bob Temple said, is based on a measurement of the drug benefit that might not be a real benefit. But the second important part to remember about accelerated approval -- and it could be well justified in some cases -- is that it is typically based on a single phase II clinical trial, 200 or 300 patients. So we have to understand we are taking risks here when we launch a drug into clinical use that only a few patients have taken in a single trial. Not that it hasn't worked out well for some drugs, not so well for -- occasionally for others, but you have to understand here, we're not getting a free ride.
MOOREThe other part I would just sort of refocus is I believe that the commissioner was talking about obesity drug sort of as a priority, not that it was going to be used in this legal mechanism, but that this was an area where the agency would welcome new drugs and evaluate them carefully. Because the obesity drugs that we have historically have proven -- have been accounted for a disproportionate number of drug disasters. And the two newest ones we have are marginal at best and are available only after the FDA changed its view of them.
NNAMDIYeah, but Allan, we have statistics saying that 36 percent of U.S. adults are obese. Is it fair to say that we're at the point where the benefits of reducing our waistlines might outweigh the risks that have delayed these kinds of drugs in the past?
COUKELLI think any time we look at the value of new drugs, the real question to ask is are we making people's lives better and are we preventing a illness or curing illness? So as we look at obesity drugs, that's the question we have to ask.
NNAMDIWell, Tom, both of the obesity drugs that were approved this year were rejected in 2010 because of safety risks. As an independent drug safety expert have you looked at the research behind these drugs that now make them marketable?
MOOREI have looked at them and they do indeed have some serious risks that you'd want to consider. And you would have questions about whether it's a close call at best as to whether some of these drugs have benefits that outweigh their risks. One of them is a combination of two drugs we've had for 20 or 30 years. One of them is a stimulant that has addictive properties and probably some cardiac adverse affects. The other half of that old combination is a drug for epilepsy.
MOOREDrugs for epilepsy have warnings about suicidal behaviors, hallucinations and some psychiatric effects in some people. Also it has a very serious risk of birth defects. So we have a drug that is a hard balance between its risks and benefits. And the FDA initially had sort of reversed it. There was really a huge political organizational pressure on the FDA saying we have to have drugs.
MOORENow my question is, are we better off as a society with a marginal drug whose weight loss was really extremely modest with less than 10 percent of body weight in most patients and a lot of risks? Or do we want to ask our regulatory agency to be, if you will, our better angel and say, you know, we set a standard based on experience and these drugs don't make it.
NNAMDI800-433-8850 is the number to call if you'd like to join the conversation. What kinds of drugs do you think should get fast track at the FDA, if at all, or do you feel should all drugs get the same rigorous testing before they come to market? Let us know how you feel, 800-433-8850. You can send email to email@example.com. Bob Temple, I would imagine that the FDA has to be extra careful about approving weight-loss drugs since more than just obese people might be taking them. How is the FDA communicating to doctors and patients that these fast track drugs are for patients with the most dire need?
TEMPLEWell, we are being careful and one of the things we're talking about is the possibility -- but this is not established yet by any means -- that an initial approval could be for people who are really in trouble, morbidly obese, you know, can't get out of their chairs and things like that. Whether we can find a way to do that I don't think is a settled question yet. But clearly those people with the greater degree of weigh loss are both more needful and potentially at greater risk. So this is a difficult balance.
TEMPLEI should note that nobody's talking about small databases here. We're looking at big databases and in many cases we're asking for people to do what are called outcome studies, actually give the drug to some people, give the drug to others and look at the rate of heart attack, stroke and other things like that. We have not done that in every case where we were reassured enough not to do it. But that's what's on our mind.
TEMPLEJust what you said before, morbid obesity is a major health quest in this country. People are dying because of these things. You don't want to make them worse, but you don't want to ignore that. And it's perfectly true that some people who don't have that kind of need use these drugs. And we're worried about that. We don't want them to.
NNAMDITom Moore.
MOOREWell, the problem I have is with an obesity drug that had a dramatic effect in a morbidly obese population and caused them to perhaps lose 25 percent of their body weight and come closer to normal. But the fact of the matter is these two drugs had very marginal effects. People who are morbidly obese are going to be very little better off on the average than they were before the treatment, and they will have accepted to risks.
MOOREThat's the hard judgment call. If we had drugs here that were very effective and were working, it might be that some of the most obese people would be willing to take those risks, although if they lost the roulette game, I don't know how they would feel then, and obesity drugs have featured, if you will, some of the worst things that we've had happened. We had the Fen-Phen drug tragedy in which tens of thousands of people suffered irreversible damage to their heart valves.
MOOREOne of these two new drugs might or might not share that same risk. We can't tell. We hope it won't, but we can't tell.
NNAMDIWell, we're tossing...
MOORESo we're talking about serious risks.
NNAMDI...numbers around here. What you're saying is that weight loss drugs have been approved if somebody weighs 500 pounds, and that the weight loss is only going to take 10 percent of that weight off, that that drug will only take that person down to 450 pounds.
MOOREAnd it would be probably less than that.
TEMPLEThe trouble is you don't know that. All of us do this, and it's a mistake. We tend to look at the average weight loss.
TEMPLEThat's a mistake. There's distribution of weight losses, and you see this in weight loss trials and in every other kind of trial where some people have a considerably greater response than others, and so one of the things we've thought about labeling for these drugs is to say if you don't lose X amount of weight in the first four months, or three months, or whatever it is, stop taking the drug. It's not going to do you any good. And that's not an unreasonable possibility.
TEMPLEIt's very important to know the distribution of responses, and for all of these drugs. Some people lose a lot more than five percent of their weight.
NNAMDIWell, Allan...
TEMPLEAnd many people don't.
NNAMDIAllan Coukell, this might be the major question. Once the FDA fast tracks a medication and it's approved, what kind of follow up goes on afterwards? Is it hard to put the genie back in the bottle so to speak?
COUKELLI think your, you know, the question is -- there are two questions there, Kojo. One is, once the drugs are out on the market, are our systems as good as they could be at monitoring safety and detecting adverse events, and I think the answer is we have made progress in recent years. There's a system called Sentinel which is being built to more systematically look at the safety of the drugs when they're on the market, and certainly when things are approved by the FDA in many cases they order the companies to do studies once the drugs are out, and it's really important that we keep looking at long-term outcomes, keep looking at safety so that we know the answer to those questions.
NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, we will continue this conversation on the Food and Drug Administration's fast track drug approvals. If you have called, stay on the line, we'll try to get to your calls. The number is 800-433-8850. Have you ever taken a drug that's brand new to the market? How did it work for you? 800-433-8850. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.
NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation on the FDA's fast track drug approvals. We're talking with Dr. Robert Temple. He is deputy director for clinical science at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Allan Coukell is director of the Pew Health Group's medical programs at the Pew Charitable Trust, and Thomas Moore is senior scientist in drug safety and policy at the Institute for safe medication practices. He's also project director for QuarterWatch, an independent drug safety publication that examines side effects data reported to the FDA.
NNAMDIAnd Tom Moore, you wanted to continue the conversation about post-market scrutiny of drugs.
MOOREYes. I believe we are making some progress, but that the public does not understand how primitive our systems are once a drug has been approved and run that first gauntlet of approval. The first point, and this is a study I'm just working on right now, looked at all the drugs in 2008, and the issue in my mind really is not how long it takes the FDA to think about and discuss the scientific results of testing, but how long the testing takes all together.
MOORESo we studied every drug that was approved by the FDA in 2008, and started the clock going from the first human testing. And we found that drugs we get today, the ones that were in 2008, took about seven years from the very first human testing to enter the market. We also did a study of every major safety decision in post-market made by the FDA, and we found -- in 2009 actually, and we found 181 of these major, major safety issues that the FDA had to address after approval, and the median time it took was 11 years.
MOORESo we have actually a post-market system that is working much more slowly than our drug-approval system. And so we need to think very carefully about if we lower the risk -- if we lower the amount of testing that we require for new drugs, we don't really have a system for catching up with those risks once that approve that is very good.
NNAMDII am sure that Bob Temple wants to respond.
TEMPLEWell, the first thing we have to do is see the data. I assume you mean 11 years after approval.
TEMPLEYeah. Well, I can tell you, a lot of those are going to be things like when we discovered that whole class of drugs has a problem. For example, we, somewhere around that time, relabeled all antidepressants with the possibility that they could cause suicidality, and I'm sure that was many years after many of them were first approved. We also labeled all anti-epileptic drugs with the same label.
TEMPLESo to the extent these things are that which took accumulated data for decades, I'm sure you're right, that the number could be large. But if a drug causes something overt, it doesn't take us 11 years to figure it out. The other thing is, a recent experience shows that some of the new systems we have in place may well be of value. One of the drugs that was talked about by Tom was an anti-coagulant called Dabigatran, which is an alternative to Coumadin which has been in the marketplace for decades and decades.
TEMPLEIt was not approved on the basis of a small data base at all. There were 18,000 people in the clinical trial. There was no difference in bleeding rates between the new drug, Dabigatran, and Coumadin. It was actually slightly less, but there was nothing obviously bad. But shortly after approval we got hundreds of reports of people bleeding on the new drug.
TEMPLEWe couldn't tell whether that was because people report more on a new drug than on the same old drug, but anyway, we put out a public announcement about it and said we were going to use this mini Sentinel system to look at that. We just on Friday reported the results of that. There was really no evidence at all that bleeding rates were higher in the Dabigatran group. They looked slightly lower, but we don't think that's a reasonable conclusion.
TEMPLEBut they didn't look higher. Meanwhile, the drug that's available, at least in the way it was used in the large 18,000 trial, had a bigger effect on preventing strokes, both strokes that -- this is in people who have atrial fibrillation, both the strokes that occur because clots form in the atrium and go off to the brain, that kind, and also because, for reasons that aren't quite clear, Coumadin itself causes bleeding strokes in the brain, and these drugs do it -- the new drug does it less.
TEMPLESo we thought we got a very valuable drug out. Hardly -- I mean, we certainly gave it a priority review, but we didn't think we were skimping on anything, and we were able to take care of this quite, you know, signal that has to be of concern, everybody's bleeding, with the mini Sentinel thing which looks at nine different sites and none of them showed an increased rate of bleeding. So we're pretty excited about the ability of that program to at least detect large effects.
NNAMDIAllan Coukell, the FDA gets its money to review and approve new drugs from something called user-fee agreements, which the drug industry will pay to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars over the next five years it's my understanding. Can you give us an idea of how this money is used, not only to get drugs to market faster, but also how it's used to follow up on the safety of what's released?
COUKELLSo depending which part of the FDA you're talking about now. Getting close to half the budget comes from the fees that the industry pays. Most of that money goes to funding the reviewers who look at the new drug applications. In some cases, the user fees can also be used to support some of the other science that the agency does in some of this post-market safety work that we're talking about. But in general, most of it is just for the review, and I think this does point to a real challenge when we're looking at what should the FDA look like into the future and what do we all want.
COUKELLWe have to recognize that there's lots of new science out there that we need to build an infrastructure both for detecting safety problems, and also so that the scientists at the FDA are up-to-date and answering questions that we'll need to answer to approve or evaluate new drugs and technologies that we haven't even thought of yet.
COUKELLSo there's going to be an ongoing need from one source or another for this kind of, what's sometimes called regulatory science, the science that supports the decision makers that -- the decisions that the regulator has to make.
NNAMDIGentlemen, please don your headphones all because I'm going to the phones. We'll start with Lisa who is in Fairfax County, Va. Lisa, you are now on the air. Go ahead, please.
LISAYeah, hi. I'm not sure, in the late '80s or early '90s, I was I think involved in a study. I had to go to Georgetown Hospital Department of Neurology. They had a special headache center, and was involved with the -- what was the new product at the time, it was one of the Triptan drugs for migraines, and was able to get on it really, really early. And I remember the neurologist telling me that one of the other patients in the study was a woman who had 12 children, and the only reason she had 12 children was because the only time she didn't have migraines was when she was pregnant.
LISAAnd I remember that that was how desperate we all were to find something for migraine, and we were -- we had to go through a whole bunch of -- almost like MRI-type tests to make sure that the drug was interacting safely with us because it was so new. Absolutely saved me. Without it, I wouldn't have made it into the '90s. It was really bad. I was happy to do it. It worked out really well, and now I think there's almost generics of the Triptans now. There's three or four different companies -- or versions of it, and it was well worth whatever it took to get in early on a drug like that for me.
NNAMDIWell, thank you very much for your call, Lisa, because I want to go to Jof in Crofton, Md., who apparently did not get in as early as you did on a trial, but we'll hear how it worked out for Jof. Lisa, thank you for your call. Jof, you're now on the air. Go ahead, please.
JOFHi. My name's Jof. I have MS, and have had MS for seven years. I've been on the drug tysabri you guys were talking about. It got me back to able to run. I couldn't run a mile without falling down. Now I'm trying to run a half marathon. I had question...
NNAMDIAnd you got in you said on the tail end of the program, right?
JOFI actually came in right after it was reapproved. It went off the market because people got brain disease or brain infection and died. It came back on the market, and a couple months later I got on the drug, and I'm now beyond any of the studies for length of time on the drug in terms of how safe it is.
NNAMDIOkay. You had a question?
JOFMine was on the positive results for the FDA, those go through, but what about all the ones that are rejected? I know that a lot of the drugs that are rejected, the papers aren't ever published on the actual trials. Is there anything they can do to actually try and publish those so that we don't keep retesting things?
NNAMDIBob Temple?
TEMPLEWell, under current rules, actually the reports of these studies do have to be put into clintrials.gov. Whether they actually get published or not is another question, but there's a fair amount of detail that goes in there, and we think people are complying with it, but, you know, we don't know for sure. We certainly -- we would all agree that the results of the study ought to be published and made available both to the people in the trial and to everybody else.
MOOREThere's also another step that the FDA could take that is taken in Europe, which is, it is public information when a new drug approval is rejected. But it's extremely difficult to find it or identify it, and there's several classes of information -- valuable information. Now, the FDA overall I want to say has the best record in the world for transparency. But this one is an exception, and the FDA could make much more readily available and accessible to the public it's decisions to turn down a drug, and also its decision to open up drug testing when IND...
MOOREAnd this would leave us all better about what drugs were -- better informed about what drugs were in the pipeline, and what drugs had had problems.
NNAMDIJof, thank you for your call. Glad you brought up the Europe experience, Tom, because, Allan, drug makers have long complained that the FDA is too bureaucratic and demanding in terms of proving the safety of experimental medicines. How does the U.S. to compare to Europe and to Canada in how fast we approve new drugs?
COUKELLWell, I mentioned this briefly earlier, Kojo, but we commissioned a study that looked at this and it was published in the New England Journal earlier this year. And what we found is that in general drugs come to market faster in the U.S. than they do in Europe and Canada. About two-thirds of the drugs that were approved in, you know, two of those markets came first in the U.S. and in general it was about three months quicker.
COUKELLSo, you know, there are important questions about whether we can reduce the cost of drug development by getting better and faster at doing clinical trials, but in terms of approval times and who's getting access to the treatments first, right now the U.S. looks pretty good.
NNAMDITom, let's talk about Canada for a minute, because researchers there recently found some troubling issues with drugs that have been on the Canadian market for as long as 15 years. Can you tell us about that?
MOOREWell, that was a study of priority reviews, which are somewhat similar, but not identical with the priority reviews of the FDA, and that study simply showed that priority review drugs were more likely to have had an important safety problem overlooked than ones that receive the standard review. But I would like to just return to the speed...
NNAMDIAnd we only have one minute left, but go ahead, please.
MOOREOkay. To return to the speed derby. I mean, you can get a drug out quicker by simply lowering your standards, and that that should be our principle metric I think is really a mistake, and if you just simply do sloppier or more rapid reviews you can get drugs out quicker. And so I think we have to look more carefully at what questions there are about the drug that have been answered and not answered.
TEMPLEIt's very important to say that there is not the slightest evidence that we've compromised the evidence of effectiveness or safety, other than in ways we've been very explicit about. That Canadian study was really quite uninformative. It was two pages that didn't say what things they found that went in the labeling later. Remember, priority drugs are drugs that are less familiar to us, so it wouldn't be surprising if something novel turned up in those cases. So I didn't find that very useful.
NNAMDIAnd this is obviously a conversation we'll have to continue at another time. But thank you, Dr. Robert Temple for joining us. Bob Temple is deputy director for clinical science at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Tom Moore, thank you for joining us. Thomas Moore is senior scientist in drug safety and policy at the Institute for safe medication practices. He's also project director for QuarterWatch, an independent drug safety publication that examines side effects data reported to the FDA. And Allan Coukell, thank you for joining us. Allan Coukell is director of the Pew Health Group's medical programs at the Pew Charitable Trust. Thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.
We speak to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) as he prepares to leave office after four years at the helm.
Native Washingtonian Rosalind Wiseman went to school with mean girls, then grew up to study them and the wider social dynamics of young women. She joins Kojo with former student Alexandra Petri to discuss the complexities of womanhood at different stages of life.
We discuss the Montgomery County school board decision to shorten spring break by two days and look at the challenges local jurisdictions face when developing academic calendars.
The end-of-year holiday season often inspires Washingtonians to donate time, money or talents to their communities. Kojo explores different opportunities to give back in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.


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Tiger Beat
A note from Principal Mike Coquyt -
Parent teacher conferences are just around the corner. Parent Teacher Conferences will be held Nov. 11 in the high school. They will be held from 11 - 1 p.m., 2-5 p.m., and 6-8 p.m. Conferences will be held in the high school gymnasium. The teachers will be located in various spots and the parents can, at their leisure, talk to any teacher they choose. Once you arrive at the high school, you can stop at the front of the gym and you will be able to pick up your child's report card and MCA-II results from last spring. Mr. Coquyt will be providing information in the form of a short presentation on the GRAD 9th grade Writing, 10th Reading, and 11th Math tests. These presentations will be advertised (time and location) in the front of the gymnasium. If you have any questions about these tests or about how to decipher the Individual Student Report (ISR), make sure you ask Mr. Coquyt.
There will also be information about our College in the School courses that students can take for college credit. College in the School courses are taught here at the high school, by our teachers, and the best part of it is that the students enrolled in these courses can earn college credit. If you would like more information about our College in the School offerings, please pick up a brochure or talk to Mr. Coquyt.
Upcoming Events
Monday, Nov. 8 - Fall Awards Night in the Concert Hall at 7 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 9 - 7-12th Band Concert at 8 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 9 - Career and Technical Education Night from 6-7:30 p.m. Parents and students are invited to visit with representatives from Colleges, Universities, and Technical Schools from Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Parents and students can also visit with area business representatives and discuss future employment opportunities. A free meal will be served from 6 - 7:15 p.m. There will be tons of door prizes with a grand prize drawing for an I-Pod.
Thursday, Nov. 11 - Parent teacher conferences
Friday, Nov. 12 - No School
A Glance Ahead
Tuesday, Nov. 16 - Parent Teacher Conferences from 5 - 7 p.m.
Nov. 18-20 - MAHS Fall Musical "The Man of La Mancha" will start at 7:30 p.m. in the High School Auditorium.
Please visit our website at www.morris.k12.mn.us to learn more about Morris Area School. If you have any questions concerning our policies or events, please call us at 589-4400.


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Gold Plated Tear Dropped Garnet Pendant
An elegant and timeless classic the unique shape of this necklace offers a show stopping, eye catching piece of jewellery to be treasure in any collection. The deep, richness in colour ooze luxury and admiration from every eye. Placed in position, the ruby is surrounded by outer beauty in the form of cubic zirconia's and the gold plated chain.
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Thoracic aortic pulsatility decreases during hypovolemic shock: Implications for stent-graft sizing
Purpose: To investigate the thoracic aortic pulsatility during hypovolemic shock in an experimental porcine model. Methods: The circulating blood volume of 7 healthy Yorkshire pigs was gradually lowered until the subjects had lost 40% of their normal blood volume. Intravascular ultrasound was used to assess the aortic pulsatility in normovolemic and hypovolemic state at the level of the ascending and descending thoracic aorta. Results: The mean aortic pulsatility at the level of the ascending aorta decreased from 15.9%±7.2% (range 6.3%-25.7%) in normovolemia to 6.2%±2.8% (range 2.9%-10.7%, p=0.018) in hypovolemia. At the level of the descending thoracic aorta, the mean aortic pulsatility decreased from 8.7%±2.8% (range 4.4%-12.2%) at baseline to 5.6%×2.5% (range 1.5%-9.5%, p=0.028) in hypovolemia. The maximum mean aortic diameter, obtained in cardiac systole, was significantly smaller as well at both evaluated levels during hypovolemic shock compared with the mean diameter in normovolemia. Conclusion: The thoracic aortic diameter and pulsatility decreased significantly during hypovolemic shock in this porcine model, most impressively at the level of the ascending aorta. Electrocardiographically-gated imaging may not be necessary for hypovolemic patients with acute aortic disease requiring endovascular repair because of the minimal aortic pulsatility.
|Additional Metadata
|Aortic pulsatility, Blood loss, Hypovolemic shock, Imaging, Porcine model, Thoracic aorta, Thoracic endovascular aortic repair
|Persistent URL
|dx.doi.org/10.1583/10-3374.1, hdl.handle.net/1765/31079
|Journal of Endovascular Therapy
Jonker, F.H.W, van Keulen, J.W, Schlösser, F.J.V, Indes, J.E, Moll, F.L, Verhagen, H.J.M, & Muhs, B.E. (2011). Thoracic aortic pulsatility decreases during hypovolemic shock: Implications for stent-graft sizing. Journal of Endovascular Therapy, 18(4), 491–496. doi:10.1583/10-3374.1


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BEREA, Ohio -- Cleveland Browns quarterback Brian Hoyer knows exactly how St. Louis Rams signal-caller Sam Bradford was feeling and what was going through his mind when he limped off the field at FirstEnergy Stadium on Saturday night.
Bradford suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee after getting run into by Browns defensive lineman Armonty Bryant in the first quarter of the Rams' 33-14 win, and Hoyer knows that feeling because it was last October when he tore the ACL in his right knee and lost the remainder of the 2013 season the last time he was on the field at FirstEnergy Stadium.
"My heart goes out to him, especially now just recently going through it," Hoyer said. "I know how much work I put into my rehab. I know he was hurt even maybe a week or two after me, so I'm sure he did the same. You definitely feel for the guy.
"I've tried to reach out through people who know people in St. Louis and just tell him I'm thinking about him, but it doesn't affect my approach. I felt great. Going forward it's not anything I'll think about, but obviously, you just feel bad for a guy who's gone through a similar situation that I have, and now, it's happened again."
Bradford was back on the football field less than a year tearing the same ACL, which cost him nine games last season.
Hoyer himself returned to the football field less than a year after suffering his torn ACL. Although Hoyer was only four months out from surgery back in April, he was on the field for the offseason workouts and took 11-on-11 repetitions in practice from the very start of training camp.
Despite Bradford's injury, Hoyer is not concerned about players with season-ending injuries coming back before their bodies are physically ready to handle the demands of an NFL regular season.
"For me, it was my first injury ever, so I was devastated at the time, but then, you talk to the doctors and the trainers," Hoyer said. "They lay out the process for you, and you can kind of see how it's advanced even in the past 10 years to even 20 years ago.
"I think they used to put you in a straight-leg cast for months and your leg would just deteriorate. For me, my whole process was (smooth). There was never a setback. I was always looking forward. I can only talk for myself, and I feel great.
"This is actually the best I've felt, and as my trainer tells me, each day you're away from surgery, it should get better and better and better. Even the amount of swelling is so minimal, you have to really try to dig in there to try to find it. I feel great, and like I said, I can only speak for myself."


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Kim Kardashian unfortunately has a new boyfriend, James Franco and Anne Hathaway are hosting the Oscars, and Soldier Field moves from killing championship dreams to just plain killing fans...ain't no Mantenna like the one I've got!
Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
Kim Kardashian Has a New Boyfriend
Things are heating up in Kim Kardashian's love life. The sexy reality star has stepped out with a new boyfriend, male model Gabriel Aubry. Aubry is perhaps most famous for being Halle Berry's ex and the father of her child. Kim and Gabriel were spotted together last week at a Lakers game and reportedly spent Thanksgiving together. Later they were photographed going to the movies together. Sources close to Kim say that the 34-year-old male model is her "official boyfriend." Ahh, the good ones always get snapped up quickly. [NY Daily News]
Lady Gaga Got Anderson Cooper Drunk
Lady Gaga and Anderson Cooper are drinking buddies. The two got their whiskey on when Cooper was in London to interview the pop diva for a 60 Minutes Grammy special. Somehow the silver-haired journalist and the costume crazy pop star ended up in a bar. Cooper tells The Insider, "We actually ended up that day in a pub in London drinking Jameson, which I don't really drink. So, she got me to drink, like, two of them. And by the end, I was ready to have the interview be over, because I really sort of couldn't ask anymore questions." The special isn't due to air until next year, but from the sounds of things it should be interesting. [Pop Eater]
James Franco and Anne Hathaway to Host the Oscars
Source: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
It's been confirmed that James Franco and Anne Hathaway will share the hosting for the 83rd annual Academy Awards. "James Franco and Anne Hathaway personify the next generation of Hollywood icons – fresh, exciting and multi-talented," Oscar telecast producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer said earlier today. The Oscars air live on ABC from the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 27. This is easily the weirdest news I've heard all day. Looks like the people over at the Oscars are really tryin' to make the award show hip again. Good luck with that. [AOL]
Andre Johnson Given Stern Slap on Wrist for Violent Temper Tantrum
On Sunday, Houston Texans wide receiver Andre Johnson decided to get a little punch happy all over the face of Tennessee Titan's defensive back Cortland Finnegan. For his efforts, Johnson will be fined less than one percent of his total pay and a brief warning from the commissioner's office. Fox Houston reports that it's "huge news for the Texans because that means their All-Pro receiver will be able to play when Houston takes on the Eagles Thursday night in Philadelphia." Yes, t'is a glorious day for football! [Fox]
Soldier Field Moves from Killing Championship Dreams to Just Plain Killing Fans
A 23-year-old man lost his life after falling from the bleachers at Soldier Field on Sunday. According to reports "The Chicago Fire Department said the man, who has not been identified pending family notification, was in the west colonnade of Soldier Field, 1400 South Museum Campus Drive, when he fell 50 feet to a ledge below. The Chicago Fire Department had to use an aerial tower with a basket to get the man down." [ABC]
Check out previous installments of Mantenna:
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text: Description: Cabbage is round in shape with layers of superimposed leaves with the inner leaves often lighter in color than the outer leaves because they are protected from the sunlight. Availability: Harvested Late fall and winter months Facts: Cabbage is sturdy, abundant and inexpensive. A longstanding dietary staple throughout the world, it is widely cultivated… Continue reading


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Foreign direct investment in China rose 2.35 percent in November relative to the same month of 2012 to $8.48 billion, the Commerce Ministry said Wednesday.
It marked the 10th consecutive month in which FDI inflows into China increased compared to last year.
FDI for the JanuaryNovember period climbed to $105.5 billion, up 5.48 percent from the same period of 2012.
A total of 20,434 companies were established in China during those 11 months, down 9.19 percent from 2012.
FDI from the European Union surged 17.36 percent to $6.82 billion in the year's first 11 months, while investment from the United States rose 8.6 percent to $3.16 billion and FDI from Japan climbed 2.29 percent to $6.76 billion, the ministry said.
Foreign direct investment in the services industry which receives 51.4 percent of all FDI inflows into China rose 14.04 percent to $54.25 billion between January and November, while the flow of FDI to the manufacturing sector declined by 5.71 percent to $41.46 billion.
Separately, Chinese direct investment abroad in the first 11 months of the year climbed to $80.24 billion, up 28.3 percent from JanuaryNovember 2012.


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Brit stars rule the pop world
BRITISH music is taking over the world, with UK artists dominating global charts.
It's a great time to be a British artist.
One Direction also had two records in the top five, making them the highest-selling act in the world in 2012.
The boyband's Up All Night and Take Me Home shifted around 4.5million copies each, while 24-year-old superstar Adele sold more than 8m.
Fellow Brits Rod Stewart, 68, Ed Sheeran, 22, Mumford & Sons, Muse and The Wanted also flew the flag for the UK music industry.
Experts say the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies sparked huge global interest in our bands and singers.
And the surge went into overdrive when Adele's theme to Bond movie Skyfall was released in October.
A spokesman for the British Phonographic Industry said: "It's a great time to be a British artist.
"Music is one of the things we as a nation do extremely well. It's something we should be proud of and something that is keeping us on the map globally."
Music executives feared illegal downloads would devastate their industry, leaving it impossible for anyone to make money.
But the record labels have fought back and last year saw their first increase in takings for more than a decade.
Frances Moore from chart compilers IFPI said: "It's hard to remember a year that has begun with such a buzz in the air. The music industry has adapted to the internet world, learned how to meet the needs of consumers and monetised the digital marketplace."
Music bosses are making comparisons with the 1960s, when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones commanded a global following.
It is hoped the latest gold rush will lead to a surge in tourism in the UK.


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I knew the black skinny tie was a good choice tonight. The whole place is filled with smoke, like when people still used to smoke inside. I experience the entire evening in photographs as the strobe light just manages to commandeer my vision. The neon colors of everyone's clothing flash like lights from the cityscape disappearing and reappearing between buildings and alleys and intersections. The entire floor is the drum machine, I decide, unable to locate where the music is coming from. What did I do today? Who are all of these party-goers when the sun is still out, not just rising as the evening ends? No one, I suppose. We are Night People.
• Some Ember: https://soundcloud.com/some-ember
• Night People: http://raccoo-oo-oon.org/np
More about: Some Ember


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Spoilers ahead!
A few not-so-shocking giveaways about this week's new movie releases, including Justice League and Frank Serpico
Matthew Lickona 6 p.m., Nov. 17
(Page 2 of 2)
"I'll wash the dishes."
"I already did that," said David.
"No, you loaded the dishwasher," I said. "I'll wash the dishes by hand."
David shrugged and stepped aside so I could get to the sink. For 20 minutes I fixated on the hot water as I scrubbed away the demons. When I'd finished, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I turned off the water and David appeared at my side. "Are you ready for bed now?" he asked. David led me upstairs, where I crawled beneath the comforter and pressed my face to the pillow. As the fog of sleep began to envelop me, I mumbled to David, "You don't think I'm crazy, do you?" I wasn't awake long enough to hear his reply.
We don't start out crazy. We DRIVE ourselves crazy. And we can drive ourselves sane. High achievers have high anxiety. No one is ever as disappointed in us as ourselves.
It's okay. We're Italians. It is our JOB to live life with so much passion that it sometimes explodes out the top of our heads.
What you need is a little wine, something with garlic and a good fight with someone -- like a Republican who still thinks Bush did a good job as president. Then go home and have a lot of hot monkey sex. It's better than the Xanax.
Pat (The Italian Dr. Ruth)
MsGrant, those are wise words. I do believe I am my harshest critic (except perhaps for one scathing psycho I used to work with).
Oh, Pat, I love the idea of wine and a garlic food fight! I wonder if Bush-lovers react to garlic the same way vampires do. ;)
love the music in your clip...Satie is one of my favorite composers:)))
Sometimes I cry like a little bitch too...like when Taco Bell runs out of Tacos.
Oh Pete, you are such the charmer. ;)
Oh Barb we have up days and down days, the thing is to just get past them, and you do. You picked a Very good one in David. Some men, (well most) would just throw up there hands and tell up to "such it up". In Him you have a wall to lean on, A strong, warm and loving wall that will hold you till you can stand again and face the world. Love you much MLynn


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Run, Run, Run / You Say
Ronny Douglas
Amoeba Review
Early 60s R&B single from a relatively unknown Detroit singer, Ronny Douglas. Both tracks have a sparse dreamy feel aided by crisp airy production that bring out the best of Ronny and his back-up singers.
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Sony has unveiled its Vaio E Series 14 laptops which come with a design refresh.
The range comes in black, pink and white in a 'wrap-around' design which sees "complementary colour flourishes around the laptop's edge, lid, touchpad and keyboard." The laptop also offers motion gesture control via its built-in webcam.
This Xbox Kinect-like feature will allow users to do tasks like flick through photos, control media and scroll through web pages. It works in conjunction with software such as Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer 9 and PowerPoint.
On the hardware front, the range boasts an Intel Core i3 processor, AMD Radeon HD 7670M graphics card, 4GB of RAM and a 14in screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768.
Sony has included a wide range of connectivity consisting of 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI out and VGA out.
Good sound quality is a feature of the laptop, according to Sony. xLOUD and Clear Phase technologies apparently boost volume levels without distortion and there's also Dolby Home Theatre V4 for cinema-style audio.
The Vaio E Series 14 is a little heavy at 2.3kg but you do get a built-in DVD drive and up to seven hours of battery life. Sony said the price will start at around £649.


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Valencia striker David Villa has shrugged off reports linking him with Barcelona.
The Spain international has been the subject of intense transfer speculation over the past few summers with Real Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester United linked with the 28-year-old in recent years.
Valencia have managed to resist the temptation of cashing in on their prized asset despite their precarious financial position but it appears likely that the forward will move on in the next few months.
However with the World Cup looming Villa is determined to concentrate on matters on the pitch.
"Now I am focused on my work and on the World Cup," he said. "I do not desire to enter into controversies and rumours like last summer."