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The Amicus Curiae Committee's mission is to provide amicus assistance on the federal and state level in those cases that present issues of importance to criminal defendants, criminal defense lawyers, and/or the criminal justice system as a whole. Membership in NACDL is not a prerequisite either for amicus assistance from the Committee, or for authorship of an NACDL amicus brief. However, the Committee's amicus endeavors offer an excellent opportunity to recruit new members among those we assist, and those who author NACDL amicus briefs. In that context, members who bring amicus issues to the Committee's attention are encouraged to urge attorneys for parties benefitting from such assistance to recognize the work NACDL performs on behalf of the criminal defense community, and to join NACDL to support further activities of the organization.
This mission statement and the accompanying protocols linked below were adopted by NACDL's Board of Directors on July 26, 2015. If you have any questions concerning the procedure by which to submit a request for amicus support in your case, counsel for the party or parties may contact:
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NACDL Amicus Curiae Committee Mission Statement
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Jury Management
Effective and efficient juror management will save juror compensation dollars and minimize the inconvenience of those who serve as jurors and their employers.
Standard Jury Instructions
The state's Standard Criminal & Civil Jury Instructions now are on-line. The instructions are available in a form that easily can be cut and pasted into a final version during the often intense negotiations among lawyers at the end of a criminal or civil trial.
Jury Orientation
Title: Jury Service: A Privilege and a Responsibility
Length: 10 minutes; 45 seconds
More Information and Resources for Jury Managers
Effective and efficient juror management will save juror compensation dollars and minimize the inconvenience of those who serve as jurors and their employers.
Through the efforts of the jury management project initiated in the early 1990's, the Florida State Courts System and diligent jury staff, both in the trial court administrator offices and local clerks offices, have saved millions in juror compensation costs and hopefully made it more convenient to serve as a juror in the Florida State Courts System.
- The Jury Management Manual (1996)
- Work Group on Standards for Jury Panel Sizes (March 2006)
- The Final Report from the Jury Innovations Committee (May 2001)
For more jury analysis and reports, go to the Jury Management Dashboard in Publications.
Related Links
- Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts
- Jur-E Bulletin from the Center for Jury Studies
- National Jury Center Homepage from the American Judicature Society
- State Court Organization 1998 providing jury and other information on all state court systems
- American Bar Association
- Florida Bar Association

subset: commoncrawl


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I wish IE6's days were numbered – I just checked the stats for a website with a worldwide and mainly corporate-only audience, and nearly 50% of the visitors are using IE6. Looks to me like corporations are very reluctant to upgrade their infrastructure. Which is one of Microsoft's big problems. And for a website with a UK home audience, just over 25% are using IE6, down from 33% at the beginning of the year.
I see myself designing so IE6 looks and performs very similarly to IE7 for some time to come. I don't see a time versus effort tradeoff usually being practical for IE6 just yet. Same goes for IE7 (which also has its frailties). Hopefully, IE 8 when out of beta will perform as well as the other web standards compliant browsers (which is what I state that I design for).
My experience with clients is the same as Paul Burgess': they don't know about the problems. And they aren't really interested – they just want a website which reflects well on their business. So, along with as much education as the client will take, I've been trying to limit my risks, in writing, without making it into an issue.
Seeing what Malarkey uses contractually, I'm encouraged to be a lot more specific. Browser bug fixing can be a significant cost and time problem. I also include this line (I'm referring to web standards compliant browsers) "The website should be forward compatible, but as we have no control over browser makers, we cannot guarantee this."


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Michael Hoey captured last year's Madeira Islands Open by two shots in a windswept week on the Portuguese island. Here, in an excerpt from The European Tour Yearbook 2012, we recap how the Northern Irishman claimed his second European Tour title in Madeira.
The phrase horses for courses could well have been designed to describe Michael Hoey's success story for, two years after picking up his maiden European Tour title at the windswept Estoril Open de Portugal, the Northern Irishman once again conquered the breeze in Portugal to claim the Madeira Islands Open.
Having grown up on the majestic links courses of the Province and having honed his game to such an extent in the wind that he went on to win The Amateur Championship in 2001 and be part of the winning Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup team later that year, Hoey was always going to start favourite in the blustery final round.
He began the day tied with Englishman Jamie Elson but used his experience to par the first seven holes before moving ahead with a birdie at the eighth. With another Englishman, Chris Gane, closing in at the top of the leaderboard, Hoey gave the left hander a glimmer of hope with a dropped shot at the 13th but recovered admirably with a birdie at the next to re-establish his superiority and he pushed on to close with a 71 for a ten under par total of 278 and a two shot winning margin over Elson and Gane.
Earlier in the final round another Englishman, Simon Wakefield, broke the Porto Santo Golfe course record with a magnificent 63 which, for a moment, threatened to be the Tour's first official 59 before he double bogeyed the final hole.
To order your copy of The European Tour Yearbook 2012, a 240-page, full colour hardback Official Publication with iconic pictures by Getty Images and essays from some of the game's top writers that takes you every step of the way through 52 tournaments and 29 destinations on The 2011 Race to Dubai, click here.


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Martin Scorsese's Wall-Street-gone-wild epic, "The Wolf of Wall Street," was not the leader of the pack at the box office this weekend.
The alpha film was "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," which topped the charts for the third time in as many weeks of wide release. The second part of the "Hobbit" trilogy based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien racked up $29.9 million over three days, while Paramount's "Wolf," which cost $100 million to make, made a meager $18.5 million.
The latter's performance was particularly disappointing as it was expected to challenge Warner Bros. tale of strife in Middle-earth for the top spot. Instead, it came in at No. 5, just after Sony's David O. Russell-directed Oscar contender "American Hustle," which pulled in a solid $19.6 million in its second week of wide release.
"Wolf's" stock plummeted further based on viewer esteem. The film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a crooked New York City stockbroker, was given the dismal, and surprising, grade of "C" by audiences, according to CinemaScore, which tracks moviegoers' reactions on opening night. Critical reception has been warm but not too welcoming as indicated by a 74% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Still, this last number is solid and the film has already been nominated for two Golden Globe awards, best picture and lead actor. It also made $34.3 million over the five days it has been in release, which was a touch more than Paramount estimated it would.
"Our movie has controversial content in it, so it's very water-cooler. Everywhere I go I hear people talking about it," said Megan Colligan, head of domestic marketing and distribution for Paramount, on Sunday. "It's a movie that people will keep on finding. It also has a great shot with the academy, which will give it a whole new round of life."
Colligan feels that if anything is shocking people about the film it's the racy sexual content, not American fatigue with the sore subject of stock market shenanigans. The film is a black comedy that soundly condemns the kind of behavior that resulted in the most recent market meltdown.
Rounding the weekend bend at No. 2 is Disney's animated family-pleaser "Frozen," which pulled in a cool $28.8 million. This brings its cumulative gross over nearly six weeks to an impressive $248 million.
Paramount's Will Ferrell-starring comedy "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues," which posted a lukewarm start last weekend, rallied at No. 3 with $20.2 million.
The performance of Universal Picture's "47 Ronin," which stars Keanu Reeves as a revenge-minded samurai alongside an all-Japanese cast, left much to be desired. That film, which cost a whopping $175 million to make, scared up a dismal $9.9 million for the No. 9 spot.
The film is also being lambasted by critics. it recieved a 12% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Another big-budget release that failed to take flight was 20th Century Fox's long-awaited comedy "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," directed by and starring Ben Stiller. It cost $91 million but made only $13 million to claim the No. 7 spot at the box office.
The film is based on a two-page short story by James Thurber that was published in the New Yorker in 1939, and has been accused by critics of stretching its material way too thin.
With awards season already underway, word of mouth is heating up for Disney's "Saving Mr. Banks," which tells the story of how the film "Mary Poppins" came to be. It earned $14 million to place just above "Walter Mitty" on the charts.
Spike Jonze's "Her," about a man who falls in love with his computer operating system, is also on the Oscar watch list, although it barely squeaked into the top 20 with $645,000.
All told, the final crop of 2013 films made this year a record-breaking one at the box office. The year is poised to break last year's record of $10.8 billion in ticket sales by close to 1%, making a $10.9 billion year end within sight.


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View your community's facilities and features online with the new Facilities Module.View the new Facilities
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Did you know that East Chelmsford has a playground? Well, it is currently in very poor shape and needs to be re-built. The Town Manager has appointed a committee to look at options to enhance the neighborhood and rebuild this playground. We need funds and volunteers! Join us to bring Harmony Park back to life!


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COLUMBIA - The developers of PACE Healthcare Commons have asked regulators for an extension on two of their state permits to build a Bluffton complex.
"PACE has encountered several unanticipated challenges with respect to the funding of the project," reads a letter from Sunnyside Healthcare Commons of Hilton Head, LLC, to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, dated Nov. 11.
Brian Cain, managing partner, said Monday the project is "making great progress."
In a subsequent email, he said it should break ground in September or October of next year. Cain said the project has secured financing through an Ohio lender but had to find a new source of capital earlier in the year when another firm split in two.
The $55 million project will be unique to South Carolina.
PACE will rely in part on a program administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to raise capital. The immigrant-investor program allows a foreigner - largely Chinese, according to federal records - to earn a green card in exchange for chipping in $500,000 to $1 million to support an American enterprise. The investment must also create or preserve at least 10 jobs.
The commons will create 325 full-time jobs with an average salary of $48,000, according to company documents submitted to DHEC.
Initial documents filed by the corporation outline a plan to build a non-Medicaid nursing facility with a 10-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital. It would also include a 32-bed long-term acute care hospital and a 22-bed geriatric psychiatric hospital.
This month, PACE applied for 12-month extensions on two of its four certificates of need. One request is for the nursing home and the other is for the geriatric-psychiatric facility.
The DHEC board will consider whether to grant PACE the two permit extensions during its January board meeting, according to agency spokesman Mark Plowden.
A so-called certificate of need is a hotly sought license which is sometimes contested by rival health systems. The state health agency awards a limited number of certificates to medical expansion projects, based on demand for service, among other factors.
It's not the first time PACE has needed more time.
In March, the agency board was happy to grant it and did so after state regulators praised the Bluffton proposal.
"This unique project will co-locate several individually licensed facilities into one operation, and being able to construct them under one contract will generate considerable cost savings," wrote the agency staff.
The healthcare complex will also "help reduce the extensive need for nursing care services in Beaufort County."
PACE is far from the only one on the medical landscape struggling with funding.
This month the DHEC board reluctantly granted Kershaw Health a nine-month extension on its certificate to build an outpatient center. It was the project's fifth extension.
"The need for the project has not gone away," chief executive officer Donnie Weeks told the board.
"The reason we haven't done it is for the same reasons we haven't done it all along - the economy, the financial performance of the organization.
He said the property, a mostly vacant strip mall now, was purchased for $1.4 million.
DHEC board members Ann Kirol and Clarence Batts had misgivings about allowing a fifth extension.
"To ask for four extensions, I think we've got to draw the line someplace," said Batts, who represents part of the Upstate. "And we have no guarantee. The projection is in nine months, they'll be back again. When you get to 10, do you say, 'we can't do it?'"
Another worry: If a medical center is allowed to sit on its certificate of need indefinitely, does that ward off others who might have been better prepared?
Weeks had emphasized that no other health systems had expressed a desire or readiness to build the facility, so his proposal wasn't standing in anyone else's way. The same dynamic may apply to the PACE complex. Project leaders have said their array of certificates of need had not been challenged by competitors.
But state board members also showed sympathy for health systems.
As Kenyon Wells of Lexington of saw it: "In the economic situation that we're in, the hospitals are taking a beating."


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COWs Mobile Storage comes to the Copper Country
HOUGHTON – At the beginning of the month, RPM Secure Self Storage in Houghton began offering a new storage solution to Copper Country residents. In order to provide more convenient temporary storage for its customers, RPM now offers COWs mobile storage units in addition to their stationary units on Sharon Avenue in Houghton.
"With our stationary storage units customers have to MUST transport their goods to our facility, where COWs are delivered right to their door," said Reid Susmark, owner of RPM Secure Self Storage. "Many students don't have a truck for moving and even homeowners might not be able to transport their refrigerator, dishwasher or washing machine or large furnishings. If we can bring this right to their door they don't need to transport anything. It's convenient for people not to be concerned with how to transport their items for storage."
COWs differ in more ways than mobility to the stationary storage units. The minimal rental period is only one day, compared to one month for the stationary units. RPM will deliver the COW to the residence and pick it up when the customer no longer needs it. This fills a need for business owners, renters and home-owners alike.
The COWs Mobile Storage Company, based in Miama, Fla., works with dealerships nationwide but RPM is the first dealership in the state of Michigan to offer COWs mobile storage. Susmark saw a need for temporary storage in the Copper Country and decided COWs mobile units could help his customers, especially those with large appliances or household furniture that may be difficult to transfer to the stationary units. Because COWs units are delivered directly to the residence, customers do not need to find a vehicle capable of moving those large items as they would if using a stationary unit.
"We have a lot of calls (at RPM Secure Self Storage) for short-term rentals for students in between apartments – they may have to move out of one apartment but the next one is not ready for couple weeks and they need someplace to store their belongings," said Susmark. "Or a lot of people are moving, remodeling or have fire or water damage and it's a lot more convenient to come to their house than for them to bring everything to our stationary storage units. With the COWs we can offer short-term rentals – week-to-week or even just one day."
RPM offers two sizes of COW mobile storage – eight-feet and 16-feet long. The units have daily rates that go down the longer they are kept. Prices will vary based on location, duration and size of the unit, but customers can simply call RPM at (906) 482-7233 for an estimate or with any questions or go to COWs website at www.866-GET-A-COW.com.
"We work on our customers' terms, on their schedule," Susmark said. "They don't have to adjust their schedule to ours – we will be there for our customers when the need us, at their location."
Editor's note: This feature is part of a paid advertising package purchased by RPM?Secure Self Storage. Businesses interested in being featured on the Business page may call Yvonne Robillard at 483-2220.


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Anyway, Scrum, XP, and all the rest I've come to understand as each a record of a reaction against some bad condition, with transitional practices to get a team away form that condition to a better one. Fo example, as Michael Feathers says in this post, regular, fixed-length Iterations require (and enable) a certain kind of discipline, force a certain set of tradeoffs. And maybe doing that can help a team a lot. And maybe not, as the case may be.
That doesn't mean that, once the use of that practice has taken the team away from the bad condition then no further change to practices can be beneficial. In the specific case of regular fixed-length iterations I mainly see the application being to teams moving from a condition where no-one ever has any idea at all when anything is going to be delivered to a condition where everyone always knows a date when something is going to be delivered. In many settings that would be considered a major improvement by those paying the team. And consistently working that way is a great way for a team to gain the trust of the business.
Once that trust is established, and once the conditions are in place for frequent delivery, what need for the fixed-length iterations? I suspect that what worries a lot of people who've seen the transition from chaos to iterations is that they can't imagine a world without iterations which is not also a (return to) chaos. Michael suggests an experiment:
Suppose that you had an iteration of one week, followed by an iteration of 2 days, followed by an iteration of 1 day, followed by an iteration of one-half a day, and so on. If you still had your sanity at the end of this process, would you have learned anything? I haven't tried it with a team yet, but here's the thing that I hope would come across: if you apply enough ingenuity and you've acquired enough skill, you can deliver business value in shorter times than you can currently imagine.That would be cool. Of course, the Kanbanista's seem to suggest going straight to that world in one step. And maybe that can work in a certain setting, and maybe not. The idea scares me, whe I look at most of the teams I help.
The aspect of this sort of thing that really interests me, though, is this: if what the Certified Scrum Masters say about software development living on the "edge of chaos" is right and if what the Cynefin people say about that being exactly the place where "emergent practice" lives then by their own argument, we would expect Scrum to consist of mostly transitional practices.
Fixed-length iterations (excuse me, "sprints") seem like a good candidate to be one.


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It is highly unlikely that Rachel Alexandra will earn $10 million beneath Jackson's colors, which she will likely carry into the Preakness next week. Her value as a broodmare is nowhere near that figure since she is likely to deliver no more than 10 foals in her lifetime. But really rich people can have almost anything they want and this is an example.
The warm and fuzzy part of this story – the small-time owners and aging small-time trainer with the horse of a lifetime – no longer applies. Jackson travels with a cadre of dour and menacing security people far removed from warm and fuzzy and is never far removed from a publicist. He also loves the limelight and finding himself removed from the center of attention after the retirement of his two-time Horse of the Year, he bought his way back in and for another $100,000, he will buy his way into the Triple Crown, put himself in position, in fact, to go down in history as the owner of the Horse of the Year for three consecutive seasons.
This is not an accomplishment but a transaction in the style of IEAH Stable or Arab nobility. The Kentucky Oaks winner is in Steve Asmussen's barn now, one of hundreds scattered at racetracks from Louisiana to New York. Hal Wiggins, her former trainer, feels the loss more than acutely than Asmussen will celebrate the addition to his arsenal. He trained Curlin and scores of stakes winners. The second-best horse Wiggins trained is …?
Jackson is an important patron of the sport, but there is something crass about his acquisition of the season's most celebrated 3-year-old filly. The good feeling part of this story has evaporated with the reminder that regular people fortunate enough to own extraordinary horses seldom live the dream to its conclusion. Someone with a bigger ego and unlimited resources will make an offer that is impossible to refuse. -- PM


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Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain became the surprise winner of the first Republican presidential primary debate, after a focus group organized by Fox News overwhelming embraced him.
What he did say that was so compelling to conservatives?
Cain received the highest marks from the conservative focus group when he said, "Government doesn't create jobs. Businesses create jobs. We need to get government out of the way, including trying to tell a company where they can build a new plant."
This is great candy for die-hard conservatives.
But most Americans would ask how well did "getting government out of the way" work in the previous decade, which ended with the biggest financial market meltdown since the Great Depression.
Cain's answer was in response to a question about the GOP being perceived as the "union-busting" party. Cain rejected the charge, then attacked our federal government's National Labor Relations Board for trying to hold Boeing accountable for union-busting.
Boeing literally announced it decided to move jobs away from a union-organized factory to an anti-union state for the explicit purpose of denying union workers their legal right to strike. But deep in the conservative fever swamp, the rights of workers are irrelevant to the argument that it's "outrageous" for our government to "tell a company where they can build a new plant."
Cain is a perfect representative for what our economy would look like if government simply "got out of the way," since when he was CEO of Godfather's Pizza, he wanted government to get out of his way so he did not have to pay his workers a minimum wage.
He was quoted by Mother Jones in 1996 saying bluntly, "I don't want to pay minimum wage."
You might take that as mere grousing from a CEO, except that in the previous year he had pleaded with Congress not raise the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5.15 an hour.
He warned Congress in formal congressional testimony that a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage could "put me under." He suggested that minimum wage laws weren't even necessary because "the laws of supply and demand do a pretty good job of setting wages according to the specific conditions of specific markets."
Since he made that statement, to Congress in 1995 the minimum wage has risen to $7.25 an hour. During the same period, Godfather's Pizza has more than quadrupled from 150 units to over 500.
The success of Godfather's Pizza, despite all that government meddling with what Herman Cain had to pay his workers, doesn't seem to have prompted Cain to reassess his anti-government views.
Yet that doesn't seem to be bothering conservatives one bit. Because Cain promotes a vision that conservatives heartily embrace: an economy where CEOs can do whatever they like, to whomever they like.


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Hello all! During my wonderful stay in Manchester this past foliage vacation, I had the opportunity to finally visit the top notch Dorset Farmer's Market (after my 3rd trip to the Dorset Quarry). What a fantastic organization and the most wonderful booths featuring everything Vermont you can imagine! The displays of locally sourced vegetables were a feast for the eyes to say the least! All kinds of local crafters, entertainment in the center aisle, maple syrup, honey, clothing, meats, the list goes on. I got some excellent maple syrup and some hand crafted greeting cards with moose figures (of course). There was also food to buy as well. The quality of the products I saw in the many vendors' tents, was impeccable. Because they operate all year round, and are now moved into winter digs, I hope you can visit the Dorset Farmers Market some day. I know you will come away with some very high quality crafts or food items, not to mention the very welcoming attitude of the vendors themselves. This is a must stop if you are in the Manchester/Dorset area. The backroads around there are beautiful! I can't wait to return next year and I'm very glad that I arrived just as they were opening up. They get quite busy as many of the area residents/restaurants buy their goods here, and now I can see why. Hope you can come here next autumn or anytime during the year! The mood was so festive and the sights and sounds of folks enjoying themselves amidst the fall season was the best I've even been to. Enjoy! CT
Dorset Farmers Market, Dorset VT
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Dorset Farmers Market, Dorset VT
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Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot
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So I like the idea of a modern take on the dragon theme. Specifically, in this story, dragons will represent the 21st century fear of the opressive state... like Orwell or Julian Assange. I'm not going to get too cerebral with it. It's basically 1984 meets Middle Earth."In the early 20th century sculpture of the Norwegian artist Gustav Vigeland, inspired by Medieval art, dragons are a frequent theme—as symbols of sin but also as a nature force, fighting against man."
Anyway, in this setting, dragons descend upon a quiet kingdom and lay it to waste. They offer mercy at a price; that the kingdom cast away their gods and worship the dragons instead. The dragons already have done this to a far away kingdom of orcs who they've brought with them in force. One farmboy escapes into the wild and dedicates his life to getting revenge on the dragons. He acts as a mentor to the PCs as the dragons attack again. This is the start of the adventure.
I like the theme. I think it can work. Feedback?


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The Front, Middle and Back Line
"Do you know why I've stopped you, madam?"
What outrages those of us who can describe exactly how budget cuts are affecting the front line is the eerie silence from most of our Chief Constables. Which is the biggest indicator of all that the Home Office has systematically taken control of the nation's police forces and an environment has sprung up in which it is impossible for dissenters to make their views known. In Blair's Britain, if you spoke about issues that you couldn't solve, you were an incompetent - after all, no one else was whinging about the problem. And now, under the new Coalition government, any Chief Constable who moans that the cuts will affect how his/her force delivers policing is clearly still spending too much on bureaucracy and performance measures. This mantra is trotted out regardless of whether or not it is the case.
"That is correct: you were going too fast, over a stop line, and you weren't wearing your seatbelt."
"Shouldn't you be out catching burglars and rapists?"
'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.


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Compare our pricing and variety of course offerings to our competitors like New Horizons, Netcom Learning, Certstaff and Ed2Go and you will see that Business Computer Skills is your best option.


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- Shakeology® and P90X®
- Shakeology®—The Healthiest Meal of the Day®
- 5 Ways to Break through Dreaded Weight Loss Plateaus
- Shakeology Success Story
- Recipe: Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Shakeology
Shakeology® and P90X®By Steve Edwards
The whole Beachbody® community is buzzing about Shakeology and all the great health benefits it provides. Now Steve Edwards answers your questions about how best to incorporate Shakeology into your P90X regimen.
Can Shakeology replace one of my meals in the P90X nutrition plan?
I'd hope so, given that it's a meal replacement shake! But seriously, Xers do have a different nutritional equation to consider than most other people do. Generally, meal replacement shakes are designed so you drink one of them instead of eating a meal to help you lose weight. Of course, Shakeology fits into this mold just fine. In fact, given how nutrient-dense it is, I'd say it's better than anything on the market. And even though it contains an entire day's worth of many nutrients, it's still only 140 to 150 calories.
Aren't most of the meals in the P90X nutrition plan in the 400 to 500 calorie range?
Exactly. And it won't serve the average Xer well to cut out calories. This is because as you get fitter, your nutritional requirements change along with your body composition. When you first start to exercise, you can lose weight just by restricting your caloric intake. But as you gain muscle, you need to eat more to continue losing weight, and this is often a lot more than you ate when you first began losing weight—sometimes it's more than double. If you eat too little during P90X, your weight loss can plateau, along with your ability to do the workouts.
This is why we give you a lot of smoothie recipes and options. Shakeology, like many other meal replacement shakes, can be a component of something larger. For meals, we suggest adding more calories from healthy fat sources, like nut butters (almonds, cashews, etc.), along with more standard smoothie-like ingredients, like fruit. Doing this not only brings your calories into line with your diet plan, but helps you balance your meals so they digest more slowly, like ordinary meals generally do.
I'm doing the portion approach in P90X. What block(s) could Shakeology replace?
The portion plan is basically little chunks of macronutrients portioned out to help you easily balance your diet. Shakeology is equal parts carbs and protein, with almost no fat. So Shakeology can replace one block of protein and one block of carbs.
Can Shakeology replace one of the snacks in the P90X nutrition plan?
Shakeology is an incredibly nutrient-rich snack, a perfect snack for Xers. Again, because it doesn't have much fat, its nutrients are put to use very quickly by your body. This makes it an ideal pick-me-up snack when you're on the go. It's better, in fact, than a lot of energy drinks. While something like Red Bull® might give you more up-front punch, Shakeology will give you sustained energy because it's providing nutrients your body needs to get things done, and it has a low glycemic impact, which helps keep blood sugar levels stable.
Shakeology's macronutrient ratio splits the difference among sports drink, protein shake, and recovery drink, but it can substitute for any or all of them, because it also has an excellent micronutrient profile. Most people are focused only on macronutrients (proteins, fats, and carbs), but macronutrients are only part of your nutritional equation. Micronutrients are things like phytonutrients, adaptogens, and other scientific-sounding stuff. While we refer to these as "micro," nutritionally, they're anything but small. Many of them are absolutely essential for a healthy life. Shakeology speeds these micronutrients into your system, which enables you to perform better.
Why don't we hear more about the importance of micronutrients?
Not to dwell too much on conspiracy theories, but "Big Food," as we call the American food industry, doesn't want us focusing on micronutrients because most of them have been destroyed in many of the foods we eat, killed by things like processing and pasteurization. These processed foods are then sprinkled with what have been lobbied to be "important" ingredients, but which in reality barely provide enough nutrition for basic survival, as opposed to thriving. As you can observe by watching the American population grow "larger," this is leading to all sorts of problems.
In nature, of course, food doesn't come packaged and processed and robbed of vital nutrients that make it good for us. It has a balance of nutrients that help sustain life. It's possible for food scientists to recreate this balance in processed foods, but this is expensive. Essentially, if it doesn't fit the numbers, shareholders don't want to see it happen. So the Big Food corporations make cheap food and keep us in the dark about nutrition. This is exactly why we're in the predicament we're in today, with obesity and poor health, because it's much cheaper to make calorie-rich, nutrient-poor food than it is to produce natural food.
This is why Shakeology has been designed the way it has. There isn't any one food in nature that has all the micronutrients we need to fill the nutritional gaps in our diets—that's why we need to eat a variety of foods. But most of us don't do that. So at its core, this is what Shakeology is doing—filling in our nutritional gaps.
Can Shakeology substitute for P90X® Results and Recovery Formula®?
It's not an exact swap, but you could do a lot worse. When you're training very hard, like those times when your body is shaking—during, say, P90X Chest & Back—Results and Recovery Formula is better because your body is "bonking"; it's essentially run out of glycogen, or blood sugar. Any time you're in this state, the more quickly you can recharge your glycogen, the less damage you'll do to your muscle cells, and the faster you'll recover. It's the one and only time sugar is a preferred nutrient in your diet.
Shakeology doesn't have nearly as much sugar as Results and Recovery Formula does. Shakeology only has a little, for nutrient transport. But because Shakeology's other ingredients also support your digestive processes, it helps you assimilate nutrients more rapidly. The latest science showing that a small amount of protein can "piggyback" on sugar, helping your body put the protein to use more rapidly, during or after exercise, holds true for Shakeology. It's not as effective as a Results and Recovery Formula for your hardest workouts, but at any other time, it's pretty darn good.
How's Shakeology as a protein shake?
Shakeology has an ample amount of protein. While many protein shakes on the market may have more grams of protein, the type of protein they use often digests so slowly you can't drink them when you're active. Shakeology uses whey protein, which is one of the most (if not the most) bioavailable sources of protein. That means it absorbs more quickly into the system than other proteins do. Most proteins, especially when you get them in a whole food, take forever to digest. This means that eating protein right before, during, or right after exercise is generally a waste, because your body is using energy to digest something that won't help you for hours, energy that it could be using to enhance your workout or recovery. But when you combine whey protein along with Shakeology's other nutrients, you have a high-protein shake that can fit into many different nutritional slots in your day, something a standard protein drink can't do.
Should I still bother taking P90X® Peak Health Formula or ActiVit® multivitamins if I'm drinking Shakeology every day?
We get the vitamin question a lot, because Shakeology has so many vitamins in it already. However, using my previous example involving processed foods, on any given day, most of us only get a fraction of the nutrients we should be consuming, even when we're eating more calories than we should. This is exactly why we have vitamin supplements in the first place. Throw exercise into the equation, which accelerates your body's usage of nutrients, and you can see why we recommend so many times the recommended daily allowance* (RDA) for certain vitamins and minerals.
For an average person, Shakeology might eliminate the need for a multivitamin. But if you remember the movie Supersize Me, you may recall that the average American takes about 600 steps a day—which isn't even your warm-up for a P90X workout! No one doing a Beachbody program is average. Xers, especially, are advised to take additional vitamin supplements.
It's also great to take your supplements along with Shakeology because they'll digest more easily with help from Shakeology's digestive enzymes and whole-food sources of nutrients. One of the limiting factors with supplements is how well (or not so well) your body can assimilate them. Adding them to something you know your digestive system can break down easily is a plus.
It's important to mention two other variables here as well. First, many—if not most—of our customers are trying to lose weight. This requires reducing caloric intake while adding exercise, which increases nutrient requirements. Starting to see an equation where multivitamins and supplements make sense? The body can be a complex organism, but this comes down to simple math. The key to losing weight isn't just reducing calories; it's also finding a way to reduce your caloric intake and still get enough nutrients to keep you body functioning at its highest level. To do this, you need to seek out nutrient-dense foods. As I said before, you'd be hard-pressed to find something else that's as nutrient-dense as Shakeology.
Then there's the RDA, which is the "recommended daily allowance" for everybody. Imagine one nutritional number for every person on the planet, from a 100-pound computer programmer who sits all day to a 350-pound NFL lineman. How absurd is that? Anybody who's doing P90X is no longer an average individual. So chances are the RDA won't fit the bill if you want your body to perform as well as it can.
When's the best time to drink Shakeology during a P90X day?
One of the beautiful things about Shakeology is how versatile it is. Because it helps you digest anything you consume along with it, there isn't really a wrong time to have it. Ideally, its best slot in an Xer's day is as a pre-workout snack, taken about 1 hour prior to your warm-up. Then your workout will help you get the most out of Shakeology, and the Shakeology will help you during the latter part of your workout, especially if your glycogen stores have been depleted slightly. Shakeology can also be effective pre-workout, post-workout, or any time during the day when your energy's flagging and you need a pick-me-up. Or you can make Shakeology smoothies and simply replace your meals. Basically, you can't go wrong.
Is there anything else you'd like to add about Shakeology?
Price holds a lot of people back, and I can understand that on the surface, Shakeology might look expensive. We tend to look at foods in a cost-to-calorie ratio, instead of a cost-to-nutrient ratio. Sure, you can buy a Big Gulp® and you get 800 calories for a dollar (or something like that). But what good are they? There are no micronutrients. They're full of man-made sugar, chemicals, and the by-products of genetically modified corn and soy production—no nutrition whatsoever. Whereas if you tried to assemble all the nutrients in Shakeology independently, you'd have to spend 40 bucks.
If you're serious about your health, you should consider what you spend your money on. People drop 3 to 4 bucks a day on things that are a detriment to their health without batting an eye. We're talking the retail price of a latte or a smoothie, or any number of things that are even less healthy. The consumer is essentially at war with a bunch of corporations that seem to be trying to poison them to make a quick buck. The obesity trend will only end when we take some responsibility for our health and begin to make better food choices.
If you have any questions about Shakeology, please use our helpful Shakeology FAQ page at faq.shakeology.com.
Related Articles
"What's New with the P90X2™ Nutrition Guide?"
"Metabolic Efficiency: Working Hard or Working Smart?"
"Fighting the Obesity Trend"
Questions about your workout program, diet, the latest newsletter, or anything wellness related? Chat with Steve Edwards, the overseer of Beachbody's fitness and diet development, in the Beachbody Chat Room on Monday, October 24th, at 3:00 PM ET, 12:00 PM PT.
If you'd like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, click here to add a comment in the newsletter review section or you can email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Check out our Fitness Advisor's responses to your comments in The Beachbody Mailbag on the Message Boards. If you'd like to receive The Beachbody Mailbag by email, click here to subscribe.
And if you'd like to know more about Beachbody Director of Results Steve Edwards' views on fitness, nutrition, and outdoor sports, read his blog, The Straight Dope, recently named one of the Top 50 blogs covering the sports industry by the Masters in Sports Administration.
5 Ways to Break through Dreaded Weight Loss PlateausBy Justine Holberg
You're tracking calories, working out each day, then bam! For a week or two, the scale refuses to budge . . . and you realize you've hit a dreaded weight loss plateau. Now what?
Even though it's completely normal to hit a snag in your fitness journey, a perceived setback like this can send even the most dedicated dieter off course, away from healthy eating and toward cookies, cake, and pizza. But you can be strong and start getting back on the weight-loss track again. Try at least one of the following techniques, and there's a good chance you'll burst through your plateau in no time.
Here are 5 important things to know about hydration and exercise:
Zigzag your daily calorie intake. In theory, you've got to eat less to lose more, but this isn't always the case. Sometimes you just have to shake things up. Here's one way to do it: If your average daily intake is 1,400 calories, try dropping to 1,200 one day, going up to 1,800 the next day, and then dropping back to 1,400. The idea is to keep your metabolism guessing. There's no magic number that works for everyone, so you'll have to experiment until you find the right calorie levels for you.
According to Beachbody® Director of Results Steve Edwards, what happens when you zigzag is that you force your body to choose how many calories it needs to recover from the rigors of your exercise program.
"Most people who hit a plateau are undereating. If you are indeed undereating, adding calories for a few days, then lowering them again, will help you force your body into a hormonal response that will not only help you break out of a plateau, but—as you learn to recognize the signals—will teach you how much food you should be eating."
Switch up your exercise routine.
If you do the same workout each day, eventually it can start to become less challenging, and (unfortunately) less effective. If you push yourself to new levels of strength or exhaustion, you'll almost certainly see a shift. Here are some ways you can challenge your body:
- Swap your jog for a bike ride.
- Try weights with your cardio routine. (ChaLEAN Extreme® or RevAbs® can help you do this.)
- Add intervals of high intensity to really make you sweat. (INSANITY® is a great workout for this.)
- Drop to the floor for 10 push-ups right now!
The idea is to try something different. According to Edwards, "The better you get at something, the easier it becomes. That's why we're always telling you to add more weight as you get stronger, and to move faster and jump higher as our programs progress. But it's also why all of our programs have phases of training. As your body adapts to stimulus, you need to change that stimulus in order to keep results happening."
- Eat some almonds.
Almonds are a great snack, plus there's some research that indicates that they can help you burn fat. That's because they contain fiber and fatty acids—the good kind of fat that helps you lose weight. A study published in the International Journal of Obesity compared two groups of people who ate a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet. As part of their daily diet, one group ate 3 ounces of almonds every day. The other group ate a mix of complex carbs. What happened? The group that ate the almonds lost more weight.
So next time you grab a snack, try a small handful of almonds, or as Edwards says, "Any nut, really. While almonds are one of the better nuts, all of them have a similar nutritional profile and make excellent snacks. That research probably would have turned out similarly if they'd used walnuts or filberts or whatever."
- Get more sleep.
This may seem like the opposite of number 2, but the truth is is that you could be training too hard, which is about the quickest way to hit a weight loss plateau, because an over-trained body holds on to weight as if it were starving to death. There's no better way to test this than to try and sleep more. The reason is that your body recovers much more quickly from exercise while it's asleep, and if you're burning the midnight oil while trying to do INSANITY, you could easily plateau from lack of recovery time.
In a recent study at the University of Chicago Medical School, researchers found that during a period when study participants were deprived of sleep, they metabolized glucose less effectively. Additionally, they had higher levels of the hormone cortisol, which has been shown to impair memory, increase insulin resistance, and slow recovery in athletes.
"There's a good reason why five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx said, 'The Tour is won in bed,'" says Edwards. Your body's recovery response during deep sleep is only rivaled by performance-enhancing drugs. When you're on the borderline of overtraining, getting more sleep is the first thing anyone should try."
- Relax. Believe it or not, the one big thing besides diet and exercise that can cause you to plateau is stress.
When you're stressed, your body sends out higher levels of the hormone cortisol that, as stated in number 4, can encourage your body to hang on to fat. "Cortisol is actually a performance-enhancing hormone," says Edwards. "But it's gotten a bad rap because we've begun living our lives at too high a volume. Cortisol is released at times when the body is in an emergency state. It increases performance, but only over a short period of time. When cortisol is released and forced into action at regular intervals, it causes your body to wear down and switch to more drastic means of survival, like holding on to excess amounts of body fat. Your life shouldn't feel like one big emergency. As a society, we need to learn to be more tranquilo, as the Spanish say."
We get stressed for many reasons, almost all of which are influenced by the society around us. One of the best ways to combat stress is to get some alone time to chill. If you're the type who can't let go, try some forced relaxation techniques, of which yoga seems to be one of the most effective. There's something special about the mind/body interaction of yoga that forces a relaxed state even from the most stressed of us.
If you feel you need a lot of help, dig into an intense course, like P90X Yoga X. For others, something lighter, like Yoga Booty Ballet® Pure and Simple Yoga, will do the trick. If you're not into yoga, then consider at least adding some stretching into your schedule. Most of Beachbody's programs have at least one stretching session. TurboFire® even has two!
Now are you ready to break through that plateau?
Related Articles
"8 Insider Tips to Help You Burn Fat Faster"
"6 Healthy Foods That Are Easy on Your Wallet"
"9 Foods That Can Fool You"
Questions about your workout program, diet, the latest newsletter, or anything wellness related? Chat with Steve Edwards, the overseer of Beachbody's fitness and diet development, in the Beachbody Chat Room on Monday, October 24th, at 3:00 PM ET, 12:00 PM PT.
If you'd like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, click here to add a comment in the newsletter review section or you can email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Check out our Fitness Advisor's responses to your comments in The Beachbody Mailbag on the Message Boards. If you'd like to receive The Beachbody Mailbag by email, click here to subscribe.
And if you'd like to know more about Beachbody Director of Results Steve Edwards' views on fitness, nutrition, and outdoor sports, read his blog, The Straight Dope, recently named one of the Top 50 blogs covering the sports industry by the Masters in Sports Administration.
Shakeology® Success Story
Watch how Shakeology helped Deb, a Southern-fried food fanatic, control her cravings and supercharge her weight loss results—she's lost more than 60 pounds and counting! Click below to see the video.
If you'd like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, click here to add a comment in the newsletter review section or you can email us at email@example.com.
Recipe: Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Shakeology®
One of the best things about Shakeology (besides the great taste, and the way it helps you cram so many different nutrients into one glass) is the way you can customize it any way you like! Here's a yummy recipe that brings together the cuckoo-for-cocoa goodness of Chocolate Shakeology with ripe, juicy strawberries for a tasty treat that's hard to beat.
- 1 scoop Chocolate Shakeology
- 1/2 cup sliced fresh or frozen strawberries
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 cup nonfat milk (or soy, rice, or almond milk)
- Ice (to taste)
Place water, milk, Shakeology powder, strawberries, and ice in a blender and whirl until creamy, then enjoy! Makes 1 serving.
Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Nutritional Information (per serving):
|Fat Total
|Saturated Fat
|23 g
|5 g
|30 g
|1 g
|0 g
If you'd like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, click here to add a comment in the newsletter review section or you can email us at email@example.com.
All trademarks, products, and service names are the property of their respective owners.
*Percent Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
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AWESOME article in the Advocate about traffic. It starts: Stamford is a city of speeders, red-light runners, tailgaters, lane-changers, horn-honkers and ignorers of stop signs and double yellow lines. Mitch Mailman thinks he knows why. Too many traffic lights.
Essentially, we are being driven insane by traffic lights. Well, guess what. I have a solution. Instead of fuming as you are sitting at a light, open your smart phone and check your email. Problem solved. I don't think that's dangerous. Make the most of your time.
The article focuses a lot of Havemeyer Lane, the road b/w Greenwich and Stamford near Stillwater. I travel that road all the time on the way to work. From the article:
Besides all the stop-and-go, the signals create backups blocks away, prevent cars from moving when traffic is light, and fuel aggressive behavior, he said. Since the city replaced three stop signs with a traffic light at Palmer's Hill Road and Havemeyer Lane about six weeks ago, Mailman has heard two crashes... That's because the signs forced cars coming from all three directions to slow down then stop. But "with the signal, people accelerate into the intersection when it's green, and may even speed up when it's yellow," he said.
I was kind of pissed when they put in the light, because I saw NO NEED for it. For the most part, people completely respected those stop signs. Occasionally, maybe once a week, people would come to a rolling stop. I'd shake my fist at them, but then continue on my merry, unimpeded-by-a-stoplight way. POINTLESS. That's a POINTLESS light. It took away the ONE daily opportunity I had to cooperate with fellow drivers, waving on the person whose turn it was. For the most part, people behaved really well at those stoplights. Now, we're just jerks trying to fly through the intersection before the light changes. I'm guilty of that. When I'm coming from Greenwich via Palmer's Hill, and my baby is screaming in the backseat, and I see that green light, I go a little faster to make sure I make the light. If there were a stop sign, I'd be starting to slow, making it a safer intersection, and making less chance of me T-boning someone who tries to make a left in front of me onto Havemeyer.
The article also mentions the roundabout on Havemeyer: Drivers didn't like it, for example, when the city installed a landscaped roundabout on Havemeyer Lane instead of a light, Poola said. "We got a lot of complaints," he said.
Complaints about what? Having to slow down from 45 on that 25 mph road? Before that traffic circle, people flew- very dangerous on that residential road. Calm the freak down, people. Actually, a couple days ago I almost giggled out loud at that circle as I watched two motorists try to weave through the circle without slowing down. They looked like total idiots yanking the wheel and swerving, but I had to admire their ambitious, NASCAR-like moves.
Anyway, my point: the traffic light at Palmer's Hill/Havemeyer: STUPID.
The traffic circle: annoying but OK, because people exiting their neighborhoods need to be protected from speeding jerks. I don't speed on that road, but I do accelerate to make the light at Palmer's Hill.
I realize I sound a bit hypocritical because I admit I speed sometimes, but you can't deny the effect that lights have on driving. If a safe driver like me is encouraged to speed by a light, that's bad.
See, the city of Stamford IS making us bad drivers!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Bad Drivers: City of Stamford's Fault!
AWESOME article in the Advocate about traffic. It starts: Stamford is a city of speeders, red-light runners, tailgaters, lane-changers, horn-honkers and ignorers of stop signs and double yellow lines. Mitch Mailman thinks he knows why. Too many traffic lights.
17 comments:
Two weeks ago my husband and I moved to Stamford from the midwest. I've never in my life seen drivers like I have here. I read the Advocate article and since we're still new here I can't say whether it's the placement of traffic lights or not. I do know that people are reckless! I hate being on the road here and having my life flash before my eyes as cars cut in without signaling, speed through red lights, honk relentlessly and go WELL above the speed limit. It's dangerous.
- August 19, 2009 at 9:45 AM
I think the lights are OK but they should either have timers in the downtown area (to minimize the stop & go due to ill timed lights) and/or have sensors in the pavement so that they react to heavy or light traffic. Or simply install some traffic cameras, fake ones if necessary for the effect.
- August 19, 2009 at 10:01 AM
- Doug said...
This is one guy's opinion of why the traffic is bad, but the professional traffic engineers who monitor the traffic all day don't agree with him.
The city has done a lot of work - with tons of community input - over the past two years to come up with a master plan for easing traffic and getting drivers to slow down.
Here is the web site that explains what they plan to do.
Now the trick is to get the funding that competes with everyone else's priorities when no one wants taxes to go up.
- August 19, 2009 at 10:18 AM
- RNZ said...
Don't be fooled by the city's "master traffic calming plan". I participated in a neighborhood meeting 2 years ago and most of the suggestions residents brought up were shot down by the consultants or the city's engineer. They seemed to already have their own plan. Most disconcerting was that most of the locations we mentioned for the worst traffic issues are on state roads that run through Stamford, and the city claimed that they could not do anything about them. The people running the meeting didn't even offer to forward this feedback to whatever state contacts they may have. Also, after the consultant begged for attendees to volunteer for follow up committees, I did so, and I never heard from them again. So much for community involvement. I don't want to be so negative, but I'm not expecting much calming to happen.
- August 19, 2009 at 10:35 AM
- Doug said...
Point taken, RNZ.
If you look at the maps they have on that web site, they show the planned traffic calming measures in every neighborhood in the city. Of course all of these depend on the budget, and would take years to all be put in place.
I would be interested to know what's not in the plan that you think should be, or areas that were not addressed. Definitely some of the biggest challenges are on the state roads - High Ridge, Long Ridge, and the Post Road.
- August 19, 2009 at 11:04 AM
- Jeff said...
Give me traffic circles/roundabouts over lights (on secondary/tertiary roads, at least) any day. In addition to forcing jackasses who drive too fast to slow down, they keep traffic flowing on the main road. As someone who lives off of Havemeyer and regularly walks my dog there, I love that circle. They probably could replace a third of the traffic lights on the Post Road with roundabouts and help the situation immensely.
To the commenter who was disappointed that the traffic engineer didn't listen, I'm sorry, but sometimes you have to let the pros handle things. If I had my druthers, Greenwich would be full of bike lanes and sidewalks, like on every thru street. However, I'm an English teacher, not an urban planner or traffic engineer, so I'll just stick to my areas of expertise and allow the people who are actually trained in such matters to try new solutions to our traffic disaster.
- August 19, 2009 at 11:10 AM
- Dora said...
I've lived in Stamford a long time and the traffic and reckless driving just seems to have gotten worse over the years. I keep thinking that with the combination of poor planning and infrastructure and a general sense of NY metro sense of entitlement and the need to get where it is you're going at the fastest pace have created a monster. Not sure if city planners can get around the general sense of "I'm more important than you and will run you down if I have to prove it."
- August 19, 2009 at 12:42 PM
I dunno. I've been living and driving here for ten years and I don't really see the problem. The only place I have trouble is the nightmarish 5-way intersection at the top of Hoyt Street.
Does baby Q really scream in the car all the time?
- August 19, 2009 at 1:13 PM
- Jeff said...
I grew up in Westport, went away to college in the mid-90s, lived in a couple of other places, and was back in Stamford in 2003--and it's definitely worse than it used to be throughout the whole Greenwich-Fairfield corridor. I don't know if the population's increased around here, or if it's just that everyone's cars are bigger than they were when I was first learning to drive, but I always feel really hemmed in when I try to do anything on main road after about 3pm on a weekday or any time on a weekend.
- August 19, 2009 at 4:09 PM
- Whitemist said...
I totally agree with Dora! i still think the paintball squad would be a good idea, but people do think they are more important than anyone else and "have" to get there NOW.
The reality is, we do not. Now I don't drive, it becomes more interesting as people try to run me down with my cane.
Traffic lights are somewhat synchronized (they could be better), but is the rush that every one is in that causes the main issues.
- August 19, 2009 at 4:12 PM
- RNZ said...
I live in the Glenbrook/West Side area off of Courtland Avenue. I work downtown. The area of concern for most residents who attended the initial community meeting for my area involved intersections along Route 1 from Exit 9 into downtown Stamford. None of these could be addressed by the city's consultants. I understand the reason, but the situation was frustrating nonetheless. The consultants did listen to other areas of concern, which gratefully will be taken care of in the near future, although they are nowhere nearly as busy as the Route 1 concerns.
I do agree wholeheartedly that drivers have gotten into some very bad (and dangerous) habits. I've never seen a city in which people recklessly blow through yellow lights and do not bother to look at pedestrian signals in crosswalks. I work a mile and a half from home, and what I see on a daily basis is astounding. I've given up trying to bike and walk to work.
Great blog, BTW. : )
- August 19, 2009 at 6:07 PM
- Stamford Talk said...
Thanks RNZ!
Liz, if Q is really tired, he fusses- he's a crappy napper, so his first few months, most drives over 10 min would usually have some screaming. he hated being strapped in tight when he was tired. I've gotten better at putting him to sleep, so I less often end up in the car with a crabby baby! Today I put him to sleep (naps) twice at home, once at Panera, and once at physical therapy.
we run around a lot, so even tho he is a better rider as he is almost 5 months, we still have lots of fussing opportunities bc he does not fall asleep in the car- he screams if he is tired.
Hence, some white knuckle drives for me in the Stamford-Greenwich area.
- August 19, 2009 at 8:13 PM
- Doug said...
Jeff and RNZ - totally agree with you about the stretch of Route 1 between Exit 9 and downtown.
There IS a state DOT plan to improve East Main Street (the stretch of Route 1 east of Glenbrook Road) with turning lanes, median strips (I think), and some other improvements. Question is whether or when the state will ever actually approve the funding for it. Also, the plan for the second phase of the Urban Transitway includes some improvements to East Main Street near Myrtle Ave, where the transitway will meet East Main, and where some of the worst bottlenecks happen.
It is true that there has been a significant increase in population since the mid-90s, with more downtown housing, more immigration, and also more corporate jobs coming here.
Stamford now has as many or more commuters coming here every day to work as it has commuting to New York - and not because there are fewer commuters to New York, but because there are more jobs here. That has got to have an effect on traffic - sadly, they're not all taking the train. Compared to the slow pace of state and federal funding, it's still a relatively recent development that planners and funders haven't kept pace with.
But the city has a huge role to play, and citizens must both stay involved, demand change and be willing to pay taxes for the city's share of improvements. I've sat at many zoning meetings where there was not much public comment that supported development CONDITIONALLY - it was either all for it because the development was the new Rockefeller Center that would solve all of the city's problems, or all against it because the developers were the great Satan. The Zoning Board tends to discount the all-or-nothing folks, but so few say, I am very in favor of this development, BUT you MUST force the developers to pay for traffic improvements.
I've also seen the city's traffic engineers plead with the Zoning Board to force developers to include more traffic improvements, then have the developers successfully argue that those demands would kill the project financially.
Still, most approved developments I've seen tend to have some pretty major traffic improvements - most of them having to do with better traffic signals and pedestrian-friendly features such as raised crosswalks, traffic islands, sidewalks etc.
Finally, I agree that there is a sense of urgency and possibly entitlement on Lower Fairfield County roads. Somehow whatever I'm doing and wherever I'm going is more important than what you're doing and where you're going. When I cut somebody off, I'm totally justified because he was going too slow or not paying attention. When you do it, you're an aggressive road-raging idiot. Most of these traffic-calming measures are designed to trick the driver's brain into thinking he needs to chill out and slow down.
- August 19, 2009 at 11:28 PM
- Whitemist said...
There was one more item, lights vs stop signs, srory all people run the stop signs actually less than the lights. That is a now pedestrian view.
- August 21, 2009 at 7:19 AM
Just returned from Canada and it was so nice to drive on straight roads with little or no traffic. No sooner was I back on the Merritt than one guy, going about 100mph, tailgates me with his lights flashing and horn honking. Then, when I pull over as soon as is humanly possible, he opens his window and yells abuse. I thought the lack of courtesy and incidents of road rage were bad in England but they are nothing compared to Stamford and the stretch between Greenwich and Westport. The root of the problem (if you'll pardon the pun) is too many people using an infrastructure that was not designed to cope with a population so big. A journey that should take 5 mins turns into 15 mins and in this day and age, when everyone is in a hurry all the time, that leads to frustration. It's an old cliche that people change character behind a steering wheel but it's so true.
- August 21, 2009 at 5:33 PM
To be fair, bruceb, I've never seen so many people ride in the left-hand lane as in the northeast. I don't know if it's an extension of the entitlement mindset ("I'm going as fast as anyone could want") or a lack of education on passing lanes, but there are enough people who don't get over when possible that I find myself getting frustrated. It is definitely exacerbated by poor design and overcrowding - I agree with you there.
- August 24, 2009 at 9:19 PM
Wow, I totally agree. Only in the northeast do people not understand the left lane is for fast traffic and passing. Believe it or not, the NE has the nations slowest drivers in the left lane. Absurd.
That is not how the world works.
- August 27, 2009 at 1:37 AM


text:
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BOSTON - Patrice Bergeron scored a power-play goal early in the third period and Tuukka Rask stopped 33 shots, lifting the Boston Bruins to a 3-1 win over Toronto on Saturday night in the teams' first meeting since their playoff series last spring.
Bergeron also added an empty-netter with 22 seconds to play, and Zdeno Chara also had a power-play goal for Boston. The Bruins won for only the third time in seven games.
Joffrey Lupul scored for the Maple Leafs, who lost for just the second time in six games.
Skating during the closing part of James van Riemsdyk's double-minor penalty for high-sticking Johnny Boychuk late in the second period, Bergeron jumped in on a rebound in front and fired it past sprawling goaltender James Reimer 1:06 into the final period.
Winger Carl Soderberg backhanded the puck on net from near the bottom of the right circle.
Reimer made 31 saves.
ST. LOUIS (AP) ? Kevin Shattenkirk's first goal of the season midway through the third period sent St. Louis over Pittsburgh.
Ryan Reaves also scored for St. Louis and Jaroslav Halak stopped 19 shots as the Blues won for the 11th time in 15 games to start the season. It's the first time they've done that since 2003-04, also the best start in franchise history.
It was St. Louis' first regulation victory against the Penguins since a 4-1 win Dec. 19, 2006, in Pittsburgh.
Jussi Jokinen scored and Marc-Andre Fleury made 30 saves for the Penguins, who have dropped two straight after a four-game winning streak. The 20 shots were a season low for Pittsburgh.
DETROIT (AP) ??? Teddy Purcell's goal at 3:51 of overtime gave Tampa Bay a win over Detroit.
Ryan Malone and Steven Stamkos also scored for Tampa Bay, which got its first win in Detroit since Jan. 12, 1994. Ben Bishop stopped 25 shots.
Henrik Zetterberg scored both goals for Detroit, which lost its fifth straight at home. Jimmy Howard made 31 saves.
Purcell got his fifth goal, from the slot, after a turnover by Kyle Quincey behind the Detroit net.
Zetterberg tied the game with 4:12 left in the third on a slap shot from the right circle for his second of the game and 10th goal of the season.
DALLAS (AP) ??? Marian Hossa scored two goals and Chicago defeated Dallas.
Patrick Sharp assisted on the first four goals for Chicago.
Patrick Kane added a power-play goal and Niklas Hjalmarsson had a short-handed empty-net goal and Jonathan Toews also scored for Chicago.
The Blackhawks used two short passes across the ice, from Sharp and Andrew Shaw across the ice to Kane, to set up the game-winning shot at 18:15 of the second period.
Against Chicago's penalty-killing unit, which ranked last in the NHL, Dallas failed to score on six power plays. The Stars are 0 for 24 at home this season.
Hossa evened the score 1-1 in the first period after Cody Eakin had scored for Dallas. Toews scored midway through the second period, after a goal by Tyler Seguin.
OTTAWA (AP) ??? Kyle Turris had a goal and an assist to help Ottawa beat Florida, spoiling Peter Horachek's debut as the Panthers' coach.
Horachek was promoted from the team's American Hockey League affiliate in San Antonio on Friday after the club fired Kevin Dineen and assistant coaches Gord Murphy and Craig Ramsay. The Panthers have lost eight in a row to fall to 3-10-4.
Original Florida captain Brian Skrudland ??? who had been serving as the team's director of player development ??? and former Panthers centre John Madden replaced Murphy and Ramsay.
Mika Zibanejad and Clarke McArthur also scored for Ottawa, and Robin Lehner made 25 saves. The Senators have won three straight to improve to 7-6-4.
Nick Bjugstad and Marcel Goc scored for Florida. Tim Thomas made 28 saves in his first game back after missing six straight because of a lower-body injury.
GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) ????????? Shane Doan scored his second goal to cap a rally late in regulation and Phoenix scored on both attempts in the shootout to end Washington's five-game winning streak.
Troy Brouwer and John Carlson scored two of Washington's three goals on power plays in a strange second period that included a string of penalties and rare delay of game call against Phoenix goalie Mike Smith for playing the puck across the red line.
Trailing 3-1, Phoenix rallied late in the third period on goals by Lauri Korpikoski, who scored as he was falling to the ice, and Doan's fourth goal in three games on a power play with 1:46 left.
Antoine Vermette and Mikkel Boedker scored in the shootout and Washington failed on its two attempts to lose for the first time in five shootouts.
Joel Ward also scored for the Capitals, who have scored seven power-play goals in three games.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) ????????? Jason Pominville scored a goal in regulation and the game-winner in the shootout to lift Minnesota over Carolina.
All three Wild players scored in the shootout: Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu and Pominville.
Justin Fontaine got the tying goal midway through the second period and Josh Harding made 27 saves for Minnesota, which won for the seventh time in nine games.
Jiri Tlusty and Ryan Murphy scored for the Hurricanes, who had won two straight. Justin Peters stopped 28 shots.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ????????? Philadelphia captain Claude Giroux ended his 21-game goal drought and Jay Rosehill, Scott Hartnell and Vinny Lecavalier also scored in a win over Edmonton.
David Perron and Taylor Hall scored for the Oilers.
Philadelphia's win was its first at home since Oct. 24 against the New York Rangers and ended a stretch of 175:22 without a goal at home.
Flyers goalie Steve Mason finished with 24 saves.
Giroux connected at 11:26 in the third period, giving the Flyers a 3-1 lead. The crowd gave him an extended ovation.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) ??????????????????????????? Ryan Johansen and Brandon Dubinsky each had a goal and two assists, and Columbus beat New York to snap a five-game losing streak.
Cam Atkinson and R.J. Umberger also scored for the Blue Jackets, who pulled away with three goals in the third period. James Wisniewski added an empty-net goal and an assist.
The line of Dubinsky, Johansen and Atkinson led the way, ending Columbus' longest skid in two years.
Last season's Vezina Trophy winner, Sergei Bobrovsky, who had struggled of late, played his second consecutive strong game. He made 24 saves and punctuated his performance with an assist on Wisniewski's goal.
The Blue Jackets went 2 for 4 on the power play and now hit the road for seven of their next eight games, including a long-distance swing through Western Canada.


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Anybody in Newport Beach interested in hitting for about 45 minutes to an hour around lunch time in Newport Beach? I work near Fashion Island and there are public courts about 5 minutes from FI. I am pretty flexible with the schedule so can schedule an hour anytime between 11 to 1.
Ideally we can rally at 4.0+ level, but lmk if there's any interest. It's not a lot of time to hit, but we can still get some good drills and points in.
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I will be in town this Thursday and Friday and would like to hit. Not a 4.0 player but my weak point is my serve. I should be able to keep up if we are just going to rally. I will be staying at the Marriott. I think it is close to that fashion center. So if you are up, I can meet at 11 on Thursday?
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In the previous issue, we addressed three of the six body areas that may require personal protective equipment (PPE). The following are the other three:
- Arms, legs, and torso. PPE for these include special sleeves, coveralls, and suits.
- Hands. Using the correct gloves for the task can protect your hands from burns, punctures, and abrasions. Don't substitute for a specific glove recommended by the MSDS.
- Feet. In addition to reducing fatigue, good workshoes or workboots protect your feet from many common dangers. But sometimes you need additional protection. Look at where you'll be working and think out the tasks involved. Is there a chance of freezing, burning, or crushing your feet?
For any of these body areas, wear what's indicated in your work procedures and the MSDS of any chemicals being used. If you're unsure if something is necessary, wear it anyway. It's better to wear something you didn't need, than to need it but not be wearing it.
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