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5 notes &
Today while leaving the farmers market and headed to the bus stop a woman sitting on the bench stopped me
She said:
"Hello, I don't mean to bother you, I don't drink, I don't do drugs, but I haven't eaten in 2 days. Can you help me?"
I told yes, and though I had some random produce on me (I'd be pissed if I was two days in and all i got was some lettuce) I offered to go back in with her and by her some of the hot food they had. She replied that she had fallen asleep on a bench there and couldn't go in the market. I then offered to go by myself and bring food back. At this point she stopped and then told me she was trying to get into the convention center so she needed the money. I told her I didn't have cash so all I could do was buy food. She told me thank you, but she would keep asking.
So the point of this story was not about how shameful it is that people lie for money (which I feel was happening here); we all lie. We lie when we say we are 'enthusiastic people persons" in job interviews or that we would return that $.25 cent item on one of those stupid personality/ ethic test they give u to work at big box stores. This story has less to do with the individual I spoke with and more to do with American culture. After I thought about it I realized that I had caught her off guard. Not that I was caring, sat down, listened to her life story, and gave her the pretty woman version of a Cinderella happy ending. Instead I stopped, like more than yes I heard you, stop talking here" stopped.
Poor folk are invisible, even when they speak to us. Most of us (including other poor folk) have two reactions to poor people's voices: Ignore- so we don't have to acknowledge their needs or Respond –typically in a way that is either verbally ignoring ("sorry, no change") or gives us self-gratification, i.e. the masturbatory incentive of the "I was generous and helped some" feel good hormone. I think the lady was use to people not actually hearing her and/ or only being giving in the financial sense and that worked to her advantage.
We are all in a hurry to get to work, lunch, appointments, the bar, sleep, nowhere. We are solely concerned with our needs, even our need to feel like a humanitarian, or at least to make up for treating people like shit, so we give arbitrarily. Not of our time or ourselves, but of our pockets. Why do u think rich people love fundraiser dinners? That $150 a plate would have been spent on food and entertainment that night regardless of the cause its going too. This is why companies love to advertise "a portion of the proceeds will go to…" and we don't bother to stop and ask how much "a portion", instead we just feel good our cabinets are full of pink ribbon cancer causing products.
We do this same thing to people in their face. A person we assume is homeless opens their mouth in our direction and we throw a $5 without breaking stride… and sometimes it's just a hipster looking for directions. We don't actually care. We don't teach our kids to care {look at service projects that are couched in the personal enjoyment of the student. We can't get kids to actually work with the people being affected, but we can do clothing drives in the form of baby showers or can drives as dunk tanks }. We teach that the issues of the minorities are invisible, not real, and the only issues are your own. We created the ME generation.
I'm not sure how I got from a story about a woman asking for food to a rant about the selfishness of America and not focus on any of the other obvious topics; but on the 1st level, levels before the system is to blame this is the issue, the same as hearing a homophobic comment and NOT saying anything or shrugging racism off as a nonissue cause ur not racist. This is an issue our personal responsibility to each other, so what the hell are we doing?


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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
I'm casual and I raided.
To me casual means, not willing to wait or spend more than an hour forming a raid...sure we'll clear Naxx with you but we end up in raid pugs more so than guild runs.
I loved raiding and doing 5 mans...just never wanted to wait for 3 hours on a Saturday to get the group together...I actually have things in my life I'd rather be doing than waiting in a game.
I also have alts, I needed something to do while guildies raided and I also love dailies and rep.
It's not so much how much time you play that makes you casual, it's the ability that at any second we can d/c and leave the game because our priorities might be friends, family or work.
I deactivated my WoW account whilst during uni semesters, activated and raided during holidays.
I believe I am a casual player.

subset: commoncrawl


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"With you, intimacy colours my voice. Even 'hello' sounds like 'come here'." – Warsan Shire (via arijoon)
Emily Ratajkowski // Polaroids by Andrew Kuykendall for Galore magazine
"Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am." – Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird (1962)
Joshua McCaghren Photography


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It was never about money. The Celtics offered Ray Allen a two-year deal worth $12 million. Miami offered him what they could, which was only $9 million over three years. If Allen wanted to make as much cash as he could before ending his NBA career, he would still be wearing green. Instead, he has decided to sleep with the enemy. The feeling of betrayal Boston fans are coping with has inspired them to come up with nicknames like "Judas Shuttlesworth" and "Benedict Allen." Despite those hard feelings, Allen says he will always be a Celtic.
"Forever, I'll always be a Celtic," he told the Boston media on Wednesday according to the Boston Herald. "Boston has so many great fans who were pivotal in being part of homecourt advantage, that that's what I look forward to. People, if they don't like me, doesn't change who I am. My character isn't going to change. I'm the same person. It's unfortunate, but I can't do anything about it."
Doc Rivers made it clear that he does not agree with Allen's decision for leaving Boston, and the Celtics coach may be right that Ray's feelings were hurt by the team's commitment to bringing back Kevin Garnett when the offseason began. Allen is a year older than K.G., but he felt as though the lengths of their contract offers should have been the same.


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and Comic Reviews
Sunday, June 29rd,
Walt Disney's Comics and Stories
#691 (April 2008).
What pleasure can possibly be extracted from reading an
April Fool's Day-themed story as June fades into July? I suppose it
could be thought of as an extension of the Presidential campaign.
Certainly, like a vintage campaign commercial, Robert Klein and Jan
Gulbransson's Donald Duck tale, "The Greatest Hoax of All
Time," requires one honkin' suspension of disbelief. A member of a
club of gagsters engaged in an April Fool's prank-pulling contest,
Donald boldly proclaims that he'll come up with the best trick of all
time to hoodwink Scrooge. 300-some-odd failed attempts later, Don dons
a cheesy scientist's disguise (and accent), employs a blackmailed HD&L
as fake Martians supposedly bent on stealing Scrooge's fortune… and,
heavens to von Braun, convinces a suddenly panicky Scrooge to send his
fortune to the Moon for safekeeping. Sorry, I don't buy it for a
second. I can accept an April Fool's Day story in which the Ducks are
engaged in private, relatively low-key gaggery – Barks did a
particularly funny one in the early 50s – but stretching it out to this
elephantine extent is really testing my patience. By the end,
Klein is padding the slim storyline to the extent that Donald's
inevitable dash for Timbuktu – with an angry Scrooge and equally peeved
club members on his heels – takes fully five panels to get under way.
Gulbransson's artwork is serviceable enough, but why does Donald look no
bigger than the Nephews in the opening splash panel? For a moment, I
thought Don was Genie from the DuckTales movie.
The Dutch Donald story "Unwelcome Income"
is also a little behind the temporal curve – "celebrating" as it does
the arrival of April 15, Tax Day – but it is more successful than
"Greatest Hoax." Donald discovers that he made so little income in the
previous year that he's owed a $250 refund (uh… a tax refund in a story
produced in Holland? We're talking science fiction, right?). As
the tax assessor gleefully tries to poke holes in Don's claim of extreme
poverty, Don gets an unwelcome visit from Gladstone, who's
inconveniently remembered that he owed his cousin $10 from the previous
year. The expected "keep Gladstone away" hijinx ensue, but the story
turns out to have a twist ending that leaves the put-upon Donald well
ahead, or reasonably close to it.
April foolery reformulates in the McGreals' and Xavi's
Mickey story "Mates in Mischief," which pleases all six fans
of the "Imp from the Eleventh Dimension" by bringing that irritating Mr.
Mxyzptlk rip-off back to torment Mickey. This time, the torture is
indirect in nature, as the Imp has befriended a clueless Goofy. Goofy
dismisses Mickey's warnings of the Imp's nature as jealous carping but
changes his mind after the Imp turns Mickey into a string of sausages
(thank heavens Pluto wasn't around, eh?). Let's just say the Imp didn't
improve with additional exposure. A far more interesting (and, frankly,
bizarre) Mickey effort, Jeff Hamill and Romano Scarpa's "A
Quiet Day at the Beach," gives us nine wordless and occasionally
baffling panels of Mickey encountering weird perils by the seashore,
interspersed with thought-balloon appearances by Minnie. After fighting
to avoid the temptation of investigating a genie in a magical lamp, an
alternative dimension, and a race of pollution-protesting aquatic
creatures who strongly resemble the "fish folk" in the DuckTales
episode "Aqua Ducks," Mickey's girlfriend finally shows up for real and
reveals the point of all this: she had challenged Mickey's claim that
he's "some sort of weirdness magnet," and the sojourn on the
beach was a test of sorts. Somewhat confusingly, Minnie adds the
comment that Mickey "only [finds] trouble because [he goes] looking
for it." So which is it, Minnie? Fate or free will? The tradition
established by Floyd Gottfredson argues vehemently for the latter, which
is why I find this claim of Mickey attracting weirdness to be
somewhat silly. Perhaps this was a version of a midlife crisis, in
which Mickey is getting tired of his perilous existence and temporarily
gave in to the pessimistic notion that adventure seeks him out,
rather than the reverse. There's nothing wrong with that that a nice,
long vacation with Minnie wouldn't cure – Hamill's tetchy last panel
The highlight of the rest of the issue is David
Gerstein's retrofitting of "The Molasses Well," a Brer Rabbit
Studio story drawn by Paul Murry in the 1960s. Brer R. sidesteps Brer
Fox's attempt to lure him into a molasses-baited trap by making Brer
Bear the (literal) fall guy. It's funny stuff that makes the most of
the relatively straightforward plot idea, with plenty of the Pogo-style
"spin" that David gives to these characters. Another Studio effort,
"The Ro-Brat," features evil inventor Emil Eagle (in his first
appearance in a Gemstone comic? I can't recall another) unsuccessfully
attempting to sabotage Gyro's lab with a programmed-for-destruction
"baby robot" (geez, wouldn't the machine that nearly "leveled Mouseton"
in that Marv Wolfman Disney Comics adventure have been more efficient,
albeit somewhat messier?). Finally, Carl Barks serves up the unsubtle
but funny 1946 tale "The Smugsnorkle Squatty," with Donald
turning his beak up at the Nephews' new mutt Tagalong and getting a
highly pedigreed do-nothing of a dog instead. Tagalong winds up saving
the Ducks' house following "Grand Genius III of Old Siwash"'s
inadvertent retrieval of a stick of dynamite. "Don't judge a bark by
its cover" is the simple message here, and it's an easy sell for me,
since three of the five dogs I've personally cared for have been
mixed-breed (though none nearly as piebald as Tagalong, who literally
appears to have been pieced together from disparate dog-parts).
Back to the Top
Movie Review
Get Smart
(Warner Bros./Village Roadshow Pictures).
Would you believe… I'm not going to do any more obvious homages to the
1960s TV series? The standard Get Smart shtick is trotted out
several times during this so-so movie adaptation, but never so much as
to become annoying. The "original" parts of the movie are more
problematic. Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is now a nebbish CONTROL
analyst who yearns to put the "Peter Principle" to the test by becoming
a full-fledged agent. After KAOS trashes CONTROL's compromised HQ
(which, in a bit of shoddy editing, reverts back to normal in a
subsequent scene before returning to its broken-down state), the Chief
(Alan Arkin) has no choice but to anoint Max Agent 86 and team him up
with ultra-competent but chilly Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) in an effort to
unravel the conspiracy, which turns out to be the fairly standard
"nuclear blackmail" fodder, with the added twist of a duplicitous
CONTROL agent. The movie borrows shamelessly from Moonraker,
True Lies, Entrapment and any number of other flicks and uses
more crude humor than I would have liked to have seen. Still, Carell
makes a reasonably believable Max without aping Don Adams' original.
Funny cameos include Bernie Kopell (from the original series) as a
peeved Opel driver and Patrick Warburton as Hymie, the robot agent,
whose appearance at the end practically screams "sequel." (A pair of
original characters – techno-dweebs who built and control Hymie – have
already spun off into a direct-to-TV feature of their own.)
Monday, June 23rd,
Uncle $crooge
#376 (April 2008).
If you squint real hard, you might catch a few fleeting
references to Easter – apart from the title, that is – in this issue's
opening story, "Uncle $crooge and the Easter Eggs-port." Given
the two-month delay in this issue's release, however, it may be best not
to squint. Instead, you should just sit back and enjoy David Gerstein's
superb (even by his elevated standards) dialoguing job on this
intriguing, albeit strangely drawn and borderline illogical, Romano
Scarpa-choreographed Italian effort from the mid-1960s. Faced with the
task of getting his rich gold deposits out of a Latin American country
that has just been taken over by a greedy dictator – the parallel to the
DuckTales episode "Allowance Day" is striking – Scrooge stumbles
upon the idea of mixing the gold with grain, feeding it to hens, and
shipping the gold out hidden inside the hens' eggs. Physiologically
speaking, this strikes me as improbable – though Scarpa has certainly
tested my patience in more severe ways -- but we accept cartoon physics
in most cases, so why not cartoon digestion as well? The Beagle Boys,
who're touring a neighboring country with their trained hawk in a
desperate attempt to make ends meet (and justify their
involvement in the story), get wise and launch "Operation Easter Parade"
to short-circuit Scrooge's smuggling and get the gold for themselves.
With Gyro Gearloose's help – plus a last-second deal that has the added
effect of toppling the government – Scrooge, Donald, and HD&L are NOT
left with egg on their faces. This summary does scant justice to David
G.'s script, which rustles up references from everywhere – classic rock,
Warner Bros. cartoons, you name it. Scarpa's bottom-heavy Ducks and
(especially) Beagles simply don't look right, so it's up to David to
carry this one across the finish line, and he succeeds grandly.
In Pat and Carol McGreal and Rodriquez' imaginative
"The Richest Tycoon in the World," Scrooge once again determines to
get that pesky sorceress Magica De Spell out of his feathers once and
for all. Forget hit squads, spies, and such; Scrooge does something
much more drastic – he surreptitiously helps retail tycoon Ike Amberson,
whom he'd earlier squelched at a "seminar for near-gazillionaires," to
temporarily become the richest man in the world, at least on paper. The
next time Magica shows up, Scrooge simply points out that his Old #1
Dime no longer has the talismanic power Magica craves. (Far be it from
me to question Scrooge's logic, but wouldn't a coin owned by one of
the world's richest men fit Magica's needs just as well?)
Unsurprisingly, Scrooge soon misses the thrill of being #1. We soon
learn why Scrooge didn't cede the pole position to the equally chintzy
Flintheart Glomgold as we watch the gleeful Amberson spend money left
and right to celebrate his newfound status. Since money has no
sentimental value to Ike – a failing earlier roasted by Scrooge at the
seminar – he has no problem giving his first dime (which he'd actually
lost before his mother returned it to him) to Magica. Scrooge
delays Magica's return to Mt. Vesuvius just long enough for Ike to break
his bank (actually, it really should have taken a lot longer than
one afternoon…) and returns to the top of the pile. The logic creaks
loudly in a couple of places, but the basic idea is strong enough for
the story as a whole to work for me.
Next, Lars Jensen, David Gerstein, and Vicar's "Happy
Birthday, Flintheart Glomgold" (which, judging by the date code,
was produced in time for the 50th anniversary of Flinty's
first appearance in Carl Barks' "The Second-Richest Duck") finds Scrooge
and Donald arriving at Glomgold's South African money bin to give
McDuck's misanthropic measuring stick some wholly unexpected birthday
greetings. The inevitable catch? As a "gift," Scrooge has dug up
Glomgold's nephew, Slackjaw Snorehead, and proceeds to foist the
heavy-lidded slacker on "Uncle Flinty." Having recently learned that
Flinty is close to overtaking him in wealth, Scrooge figures that trying
to find Slacky a decent job will keep Glomgold distracted long enough
for Scrooge to retrench. The kicker is that Slacky (who quickly finds
common cause with Donald, big surprise there) is actually an idiot
savant of sorts with a nose for business deals. Slacky and Donald
work together to get the oldsters out of their hair, and a coming sequel
is clearly telegraphed before story's end. Glomgold may have had
visiting relatives in other Egmont stories, but, even so, I'm amazed
that it took this long to hit upon so obvious an idea. Glomgold's
self-imposed isolation (he's left to wish himself "Happy
Birthday" in the final panel, with the aid of several strategically
placed mirrors) further burnishes his image as a Scrooge-like character
who never got out of the "Christmas on Bear Mountain" phase.
After a reprint of Carl Barks' 1964 story "Delivery
Dilemma," which actually abuts several other stories in the
issue – Donald trying to avoid being drafted into "business service" by
Scrooge a la Slackjaw with Glomgold, Scrooge's need to deliver valuable
cargo while fighting off the Beagle Boys, and, lest we forget, the
Beagles' use of supposed "wild rabbit eggs" as part of the scam effort –
the book ends quietly with a Dutch tale, "Driven to Distraction."
I should say, "ends with a snore," as Scrooge unaccountably falls asleep
while piloting Gyro's new computer-driven automobile to the money bin
with a load of cash in the trunk. A Beagle attempt to hijack the cash
is foiled by Gyro's nick-of-time redirection of his auto-pilot
automobile to the state prison. I put this one down to Scrooge's
advanced age, since I find it hard to believe that a younger McDuck
would be so careless as to nod off with so much money in tow.
DVD Review by Special Guest Reviewer Joe Torcivia
POPEYE THE SAILOR: Volume Two 1938-1940: Disc One (Partial Review:
First Eight Cartoons) DVD Set Released: June 17, 2008.
What a great series of Popeye cartoons we have to open
Disc One of this new set!
By 1938, Max and Dave Fleischer have clearly
broken with the formula they established early on… and the one that the
Famous Paramount studio would do to death in their later Popeye
cartoons. You know… Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto, triangle, spinach,
Sock-o, etc.
In the first EIGHT cartoons on the disc, Bluto –
and the formulaic conflict he brings with him – is nowhere in sight,
save for a cameo appearance AS A PHOTOGRAPH (!) in the first one. In
these eight alone, we have a diversity of cast that would be
unimaginable in later years. Popeye, Olive, Wimpy, Swee'Pea, Eugene
the Jeep, Poopdeck Pappy, the Goons… and, of course, the
photograph of Bluto that (not unexpectedly) steals the only scene
that it's in!
Before continuing, I should say that, despite my comments
above, Bluto is one of the great villains in the history of theatrical
animation, and most (if not all) of his appearances on the first
POPEYE set (1933-1938) were very enjoyable. But, in times to come,
he will wear out his welcome (at least to me) and it is with this
knowledge of what lies ahead that I take this position. But, if we go
much longer than these first eight without him, I'm going to really
start missing the big lug!
Here's a (relatively, but not completely)
Spoiler-Free recap of those first eight cartoons…
01: "I Yam Love Sick".
Enraptured in romance novels, and aided by a huge box of chocolates from
Bluto – and that scene-stealing photograph – Olive totally ignores
Popeye, to the point where he has to play sick-and-dying to get any
attention. "I must be losin' me sex repeal, or sumpthin'!"
mutters the sailor man, in one of those famous Jack Mercer
ad-libs where Popeye's mouth doesn't move! She takes him to the
hospital, where he continues to play almost-dead… until it's time to
02: "Plumbing is a Pipe".
I'm guessing that, in ye olde-tyme slang, if something was "a pipe", it
was easy or "a cinch". Olive springs a leak in her kitchen, which she
compounds – and Popeye compounds much further. Wimpy is great as the
plumber, who keeps forgetting things or has other excuses like Lunch to
keep from getting on the job. He gets his later!
03: "The Jeep".
Swee'Pea keeps trying to escape Olive's very high apartment, by crawling
out the window. She thwarts him (Saying that he's giving her "Populations
of the heart!" – on first play it sounds as if she says: "Copulations
of the heart!"), until he finally gets out! Popeye shows up with
Eugene the Jeep (a "magical dog"!) who can accurately answer any
question, disappear and reappear, and track anything with his uncanny
abilities to walk through walls, on air, or anywhere else. He tracks
the missing Swee'Pea, leading Popeye on a merry – and painful – chase
and to a great ending!
This is one of the two best cartoons on the disc so far!
Though it is not an origin for "The Jeep"… he's just there with Popeye,
visiting Olive. Oddly, his animated origin occurs in "Popeye
Presents Eugene the Jeep", which is the LAST cartoon on Disc Two –
and was apparently produced by the Fleischers about TWO YEARS after this
The latter Jeep cartoon contradicts the former, in
dealing with Eugene's origins, but that's to be expected from Golden Age
animation. The presence of the second cartoon, a good explanatory
commentary on this cartoon, and an extra feature
mini-documentary, "Eugene the Jeep: A Breed of His Own",
detailing the Jeep's comic strip origins, help ease (…or maybe they ADD
TO) the confusion over this odd and wonderful character.
Oh, and try to watch this one and not be reminded of
PFLIP, Eega Beeva's version of a "magical dog", from Floyd
Gottfredson and Bill Walsh's MICKEY MOUSE comic strip of the late
'40s – early '50s! Especially the story "Pflip's Strange Power"
that was reprinted in WDC&S # 667 (2006). Something tells me
that Pflip owes Eugene the Jeep a small debt, at the very least!
04: "Bulldozing the Bull".
Popeye's in Spain, Mexico, or somewhere that bullfighting is popular.
In this unexpectedly superior cartoon he demonstrates the more modern
attitude (…and certainly not the prevailing attitude when this cartoon
was made!) that the sport of bullfighting – and especially the killing
of the bull – is cruelty to animals! Olive is the obligatory senorita
(presaging the sort of role-playing she'd often do in later outings),
and a seating mix-up leads to Popeye being a reluctant toreador. Lots
of good gags, and a great surprise ending that I will not spoil!
Popeye's steadfast values here left me clapping! That's the Popeye I
love from the comics, unflagging ethics and all!
05: "Mutiny Ain't Nice".
One of my general complaints about the POPEYE series is that he
isn't shown often enough to be a SAILOR! Well, here he captains his own
cargo sailing ship, with a rough and dangerous crew to boot. Olive
falls into a trunk and is brought aboard as they shove off. The crew
believes that females are bad luck on a ship and, when they find Olive,
they mutiny against Captain Popeye and try to kill Olive. The great
thing about this one (…and it's only a small spoiler in the greater
scheme of things) is that Olive finds that she ACTUALLY ENJOYS leading
the murderous crew on a wild chase! Popeye, once regaining control,
enacts a solution that satisfies everyone – just not the way any of them
would like!
06: "Goonland".
The best cartoon on the disc so far – and more of an adventure in the
E.C. Segar comic strip tradition than the usual animated comedy. Popeye
sails (Yes, he's a sailor again!) to the mysterious "Goon Island", to
find his lost "Poopdeck Pappy" who left 40 years ago, when Popeye was a
baby! Was Pappy animation's first "deadbeat dad"? The Goons AND Pappy,
from the Segar strip, are introduced in this one!
Pappy is a prisoner of the Goons, and wants no part of
his son, until the Goons capture Popeye and try to kill him by staking
him at the foot of a cliff and dropping a boulder on him. Pappy downs
the spinach, which the Goons removed from Popeye, and saves the day.
The Goons are dealt with by a remarkable fourth-wall-breaking device
that is both extremely clever and looks somewhat out of place at the
same time. You judge for yourself. Its unexpected surprise value goes
a long way toward selling it, though!
This is a magnificently designed cartoon! Everything on
Goon Island is eerie looking… especially for a cartoon of this period!
As with the introduction of Eugene the Jeep, a good explanatory
commentary on this cartoon, and an extra feature mini-documentary, "Poopdeck
Pappy: The Nasty Old Man and the Sea" detail Pappy's comic strip
07: "A Date to Skate".
With Bluto still among the missing, Popeye convinces a VERY reluctant
Olive to roller skate in one of those old roller skating palaces. As
expected, Olive soon careens out of control, onto the street, wreaking
havoc on the outside world! The Fleischers continue to marvelously play
with "The Formula" by having Popeye FORGET TO BRING HIS SPINACH on the
skating date! "I must be gettin' OLD! Don't tell me I left it
HOME!" Don't worry; he gets some though a device we've seen in some
other cartoons. And, as when she was pursued by the crew of murderous
mutineers, Olive ends up enjoying her near-death-ride for the sheer
thrill of it all! This is a take on the usually timid Olive that we
seldom saw! I guess THAT'S what Popeye sees in the old scarecrow!
08: "Cops is Always Right".
A funnier than expected cartoon, where Popeye and his little
crank-start, puttering car continuously run afoul of a gruff police
officer. And he helps Olive with spring cleaning to boot. Popeye comes
across a little more ignorant of the law than you'd expect even a
one-eyed sailor to be, but it works anyway because the officer is such a
good one-shot antagonist.
The DVD set offers audio commentaries on SIX of the first
eight cartoons. These are actually good, informative commentaries by
animation figures with something of value to contribute – not seven
minutes of John Kricfalusi and friends laughing at what they see!
Alas, as was the Fleischer practice of the time, there
are no writing credits on any of these first eight cartoons. Though,
story credits begin during the period covered by this DVD set, as the
second Jeep cartoon lists a story credit. The lack of credits early-on
is a particular shame, as the cartoons discussed in this review
comprised a very innovative portion of the series, story-wise. I'd sure
love to know who wrote these!
The Fleischer animation is always tops, and Jack
Mercer and Mae Questel (though Questel is replaced in some of
these) are magnificent as Popeye and Olive – especially with their
frequent and outright funny ad-libs! Indeed, at this particular point
in the history of animation, they would have been the most entertaining
animation voice actors of their time. But, look out for Mel Blanc
lurking in the shadows…
So, on the basis of the first eight shorts (…and I have
little expectation that this will change over the balance of the set),
POPEYE THE SAILOR: Volume Two 1938-1940 is highly recommended by
this reviewer! And… Hey, Bluto? We'll see ya soon, ol' pal!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Jim McKay… Mr. Olympics and so much more. I'm a little young to clearly
remember the 1972 Munich Olympics and the job he did covering that awful
situation, but I definitely remember him introducing the 1980 "Miracle
on Ice" broadcast on tape delay. How hard it must have been for
him to have put on that poker face and kept the news to himself that the
U.S. had shocked the Soviets.
Also: Folks on the Disney Comics Mailing List are reporting that Don
Rosa has decided to retire permanently. Not that I had seriously
expected him to go on, given his all-too-evident state of creative
exhaustion (exacerbated by the insatiable demands of his European
acolytes) and the eye trouble that recently forced him to undergo an
operation, but this is unfortunate news. Perhaps it's time to begin
putting Rosa's work into some true historical perspective – though that
may be more of a task for an article in The Harveyville Fun Times!
(shameless plug) than a blog entry.
Back to the Top
Walt Disney's Spring Fever
(April 2008).
Three Gemstones finally found their way to the comics shop this past
week, but I'm reviewing the quarterly first because, well, Spring is
just about over. None of the stories have much of a connection to the
season, and even Bill Van Horn's cover gag of Donald blowing
heart-shaped soap bubbles to impress (or not) Daisy appears to owe more
to Valentine's Day than to the famed "a young man's fancy" conceit.
Still, it's a pretty decent package, all things considered.
Carl Barks' 1943 story "Too Many Pets" leads off, and completists
beware: This is a slightly altered version of the "Mummy's Ring"
backup. The phrase "Near a busy factory…" is deleted from the panel in
which the spy who has bought HD&L's mischievous pet monkey Jingo
prepares to reveal his plan to use the agile ape to steal military
secrets. Since we can plainly see the doggone factory in the
background, I don't have a problem with this. However, if superfluous
narration was targeted for elimination, then why wasn't the equally
de trop caption "The crook leans back with his hands behind his
head!" excised as well? And what happened to the writing on the
decorative "peace and love" banner in the first panel on the final
page? Strange doings, indeed. The key plot point involving Jingo
throwing things at anyone who puts his hands behind his head has always
struck me as "but awfully" contrived. Still, this "filler" story
compares favorably with most of the early three-tiered tales that Barks
produced for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.
Noel Van Horn's "Sticky Business," Goofy and Mickey run afoul of
Goofy's fastidious, posy-raising neighbor as they attempt to give The
Goof's roof a coat of rain-repelling tar. Noel's Dad probably would
have made the neighbor even lighter in the loafers, but Noel handles the
slapstick doings (which, perhaps inevitably, culminate with
everything in sight getting "sticky with it") reasonably well. Daan
Jippes, as is his wont, also does quite well by Barks' early-70s script
for the Junior Woodchucks tale "Music Hath Charms." This
story departs from the familiar formula of the JWs battling eco-ravaging
Scrooge to present a more standard Donald vs. HD&L scenario. In this
case, Donald uses Gyro Gearloose's rat-attracting musical pipes (which,
the inventor has discovered, can also charm children if tuned to the
correct frequency) in an attempt to prevent HD&L and their peers from
winning a race with the Littlest Chickadees and garnering additional
trophies and medals to clutter up the Duck residence. Here is one
instance in which I actually sympathize with Don – not least because the
boys make a big deal out of not wanting to lose to "mere" girls.
Needless to say, Jippes' art is much livelier than Kay Wright's ("It'd
be impossible not to be!" the Nephews chime in, in DuckTales
main highlight of the issue, Byron Erickson and Cesar Ferioli's "A
Blot on Their Friendship," teams up Mickey and Donald in an
adventure for the first time in a while, and it's a first-rate one.
Donald still harbors resentment towards Mickey for always getting him
into trouble on such jaunts – in this case, he even refers to a recent
escapade in which Mickey literally "got the girl" (do Minnie and Daisy
know about this??) – so his decision to ask Mickey to help him literally
"plunge into the jungle" and seek out Camcordia's "Lost Temple of
Banghor Mash" seems odd on the surface. Something peculiar is afoot,
though, and you can tell because Don's eyes glaze over on occasion.
Sure enough, The Phantom Blot turns out to be behind it all, having put
"that annoying waterfowl" (his words, not mine –though they very well
could be) under mind control and programmed him to lead The Mouse
into a deadly confrontation with a giant spider. Now, if it had been
me, I'd have told Donald to bump Mickey off in Duckburg, as
opposed to bringing him to a hideout where I'm planning to clone giant
spiders for a presumptive attempt to take over the world. This is The
Blot, however, and half the fun of his death traps for Mickey is their
sheer level of contrivance. Cleverly, the machete-wielding Don drives
off the spider not because he's suddenly braver than usual, but because
he's angry at being distracted from his upbraiding of Mickey for having
gotten him into yet another fine mess. Additional Erickson stories
along these same lines would be greatly appreciated.
The book wraps with
"Tabloid Tattletale," a rather silly Uncle $crooge story
from Holland in which Scrooge's long-ago "recruitment" by a band of
would-be bank robbers somehow results in his founding a popular gossip
magazine; a two-page Floyd Gottfredson Sunday-page gag from 1932; and,
amazingly, a Vic Lockman gag from the "Gladstone II" era that has not
aged well at all, even given the fact that it was rather overripe to
begin with.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Book Review
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East,
by Michael Oren (Norton). Any parochial notion that America only
recently stumbled into the maelstrom of Middle Eastern religious and
political conflict will not long survive this entertaining, though
flawed, survey of Americans' encounters with the region since the War of
Independence. Oren identifies three overarching themes that have shaped
the country's attitudes towards the Middle East (they're right there in
the title, in case that weren't already obvious) and sticks manfully to
this tripartite structure through the volume, though the last chapter,
which covers the period from the birth of Israel to the Iraq War, is
hopelessly rushed and inadequate. A large number of typos and avoidable
errors of fact, coupled with a prose style that can best be described as
earnestly clunky, will probably set one's teeth on edge more than once,
but there is plenty of information here that will come as a surprise to
the average reader (for example, did you know that American
veterans of the Civil War – both Union and Confederate – essentially
created the Egyptian army? I certainly didn't). It's not a book I care
to own, but I'm glad to have read it. One suggestion, Mr. Oren:
Describing each and every personage's physical appearance is a luxury,
not a requirement!
Movie Review
Iron Man
(Paramount/Marvel Studios).
I'll really have to pick and choose my "popcorn movies" of choice this
Summer. Speed Racer – nah. Get Smart – perhaps,
especially since Steve Carell is a good choice for the lead role.
Indiana Jones and the Midlife Crisis, er, Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull – probably not worth the exorbitant theater prices. Iron
Man, however, is the real deal, fully worthy of its excellent
reviews. Just as in the X-Men flicks, Iron Man provides a
to-the-point introduction to the Marvel comic-book hero without bogging
its storyline down in fanboy-targeted minutiae. To no one's surprise,
munitions magnate Tony Stark's main theater of operations is shifted
from Southeast Asia (in the early 60s, he originally fell into the hands
of Communists) to Afghanistan, but the film avoids taking political
sides concerning the War on Terror. Rather, the focus is on Stark's
gradual transformation from irresponsible playboy to defender of the
helpless. (Does the phrase "With great power comes great
responsibility" ring a bell? Too bad another Marvel star has already
co-opted it.) The acting performances are uniformly excellent, with the
much-put-upon Robert Downey Jr. in particularly good form. There's just
enough humor to lighten what could have been a drearily grim-faced plot
about corporate skullduggery and double-dealing. The ending kicker is
first-rate, as well. I do have a queasy feeling that Paramount should
stop right here and not even consider making a sequel that would
most likely take the short cut of emphasizing multiple punch-outs of the
"rock 'em sock 'em robots" variety, such as the one that dominates the
last 15 or 20 minutes of this movie. Even if they do, at least they got
it right the first time.
Back to the Top
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Comics Review
Comics Revue
Well, now, what did
I do for Rick Norwood and Donald Markstein to merit them sending me
a completely unexpected, unsolicited issue of their "classic comics"
reprint mag? I've seen this title on the racks at numerous comics
stores but never gave one a tumble. Sorry to say, I don't think I'll
start to purchase it based on this assumedly representative issue. Not
that Rick and Don choose unwisely; reprinted herein are hunks of
continuities from such fine strips as Steve Canyon, Gasoline
Alley, Rick O'Shay, Buz Sawyer, and Alley Oop
(from before Oop and friends began time-traveling). The fact
that the continuities are divided into parts – meaning that some stories
are concluded herein, while others are just getting underway – is
annoying. Far more problematic is the poor reproduction of some of the
strips. Poor Milton Caniff (whose massive biography, by R.C. Harvey, I
hope to be reading soon) comes off worst, with his characteristic dark
inking and shading being jumbled into muddy murkiness in several places.
Thanks, guys, but I think I'll pass on a subscription.
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After More Than Twenty-One Years, OpenGL Goes Mobile
Jul 31, 2013
NVIDIA is the first to put OpenGL into mobile devices with the Project Logan GPU announced at SIGGRAPH, more than twenty-one years after OpenGL was released. The Project Logan GPU is based on the same Kepler architecture that powers the latest generation of GPUs – including the GeForce GTX Titan and our GeForce GTX 780 GPUs — shrunk down to fit on a chip no bigger than a thumbnail.
Category: Developers • Processors •
Posted on 07/31 at 04:08 PM
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GREE acquires Funzio for $210M
Just two and half months after opening an office in San Francisco, GREE has acquired SF-based Funzio for $210M. This is GREE's second US-based acquisition and closes the gap of their goal to have 100 employees in the Bay Area by the end of the year.
GREE's goal is to take down Zynga and compete in the US mobile gaming market. They have been traditionally successful on the Japan iOS market with RPG titles like Doriland Expedition but haven't gotten a foothold in the english speaking market. Their first english title, Zombie Jombie peaked at #25 top grossing, but hasn't lasted. And when your revenues are in the billions, that doesn't quite cut it.
With the Funzio acquisition, GREE get's a team 100 strong, about $40M a year in revenue across three titles, and an english-speaking cross promo network. And unlike other developers, Funzio has held a Top 50 grossing spot for almost a year, proving that their titles aren't just flash in the pan.
Not bad compared to Zynga's $200M acquisition of OMGPOP, of which Draw Something has lost over 30% of its DAU in the last 30 days.
You can follow me on Twitter here
How I Nearly Ruined Our Launch
I'm co-founder of a startup called MinoMonsters, we make an iOS game by the same name. We went through YCombinator in the Winter 2011 batch. On December 18th, the eve of our big launch, I nearly fucked everything up. This is the story of what happened.
MinoMonsters is a monster battling game. Think of it as Pokémon for the iPhone. As is the case with many apps, our game is internet connected. During the course of play, the app talks to a backed server. The server diligently performs tasks like finding your friends, letting you purchase in-game items, and letting you play with others. When planning our server, we needed a solution that was quick to build, had fast performance, and was light over the wire. We chose to build the server in Ruby with EventMachine and Synchrony speaking in protocol buffers over TCP.
Since our soft launch on December 6th, the server has been chugging away without fault. But then the problems began to emerge. It all started with intermittent crashes. I would wake up to find that the running EventMachine process had simply stop running. The approach to understanding this problem is two-fold: recreate the crash to understand the "how" and capture a log to understand the "why". Since the crashes were intermittent, I had no way of predictably crashing the server. So instead I started with logging.
First, by adding logging to my init script:
#!/usr/bin/env /home/ubuntu/.rvm/bin/ruby-1.9.3-p0 require 'daemons' Daemons.run_proc(..., :backtrace => true) do ... end
Next, by logging errors in EventMachine's error_handler:
EM.synchrony do ... EM.error_handler do |e| MinoServer.log_error "Error raised during event loop: #{e.message}" MinoServer.log_error(e.backtrace.join "\n") end ... end
Between these two, I figured I was covered. The next step was to wait and watch it crash again. As I monitored the server, I started to see a variety of errors across my application:
#Errno::EMFILE: Too many open files - content/627/inventory.plist ... Error in .../new_relic/data_serialization.rb:27:in `read_and_write_to_file' ... #LoadError: no such file to load -- strscan ... HTTP request to https://graph.facebook.com/me returned HTTP 0, ""
I hadn't found the source of the crashes, but I had found some issues. Upon seeing these issues, my first gut reaction was that I must be running out of file descriptors.
$ ulimit -n 1024
Bingo. Let's fix that before doing anything else.
$ sudo sh -c '(echo "ubuntu soft nofile 40000" && echo "ubuntu hard nofile 40000") > /etc/security/limits.conf' $ ulimit -n 40000
Then I methodically went through each error and devised a solution. It wouldn't solve my problem, but it would narrow down the options. Over two weeks, I casually "fixed" more crashes as they cropped up and eventually they stopped.
Then the day came. We had planned to set the price of our game to free. As soon as we did, users started flooding in. And then the problems started anew.
As before, the server was crashing. I couldn't recreate the crash, but I didn't need to. At first, it was crashing every hour. Then it was every 30 minutes. Soon enough, the server crashed within seconds of starting up. Logs became increasingly useless, as the places in code that threw exceptions were random at best. Something was falling apart and I couldn't figure out what it was. Without a backend, we couldn't verify virtual goods purchases. And without virtual good purchases, we would make no money off the crazy initial traction we received. This was bad news.
I spent four hours trying everything I knew to solve the problem. I scoured the web for obscure bugs. I completely ripped out Synchrony. I triple checked OS resources like file descriptors, disk space, and others. I was out of ideas. That's when I sent out a distress beacon on Hacker News.
Within minutes I had dozens of people helping me get connected with the right Rubyists. In the end, two people helped me out: Ryan Stout and Aman Gupta. With Ryan, we immediately started with generic diagnosis steps. What does the server do? What systems does it touch? We systematically went through each touchpoint and observed it's potential contribution to the problem. This helped us eliminate any external factors (OS, Ruby, Library) as the culprit. Then we got Aman involved. As one of the maintainers of EventMachine, he was able to quickly start looking at my configuration. Within minutes, he noticed something odd in my setup code:
EM.synchrony do EM.epoll EM.start_server "0.0.0.0", 8090, MinoServer EM.error_handler do |e| MinoServer.log_error "Error raised during event loop: #{e.message}" MinoServer.log_error(e.backtrace.join "\n") end MinoServer.initialize_server end
This code was taken near-verbatim from an Ilya Grigorik post on EventMachine from 2008. The code from that post originally looked like this:
EventMachine::run { EventMachine.epoll EventMachine::start_server("0.0.0.0", 8080, Handler) puts "Listening..." }
Aman saw the issue right away. EventMachine.epoll is a configuration method that must be called before the run loop. From the documentation:
Call the method EventMachine#epoll anytime before you call EventMachine#run, and your program will automatically use epoll, if available
It turns out that this basic setup code that I copied from a 3-year-old blog post was incorrectly implemented. If I had been more careful about reading the documentation, it's possible I might've caught this issue myself. The fix is easy:
EM.synchrony do EM.start_server "0.0.0.0", 8090, MinoServer EM.error_handler do |e| MinoServer.log_error "Error raised during event loop: #{e.message}" MinoServer.log_error(e.backtrace.join "\n") end MinoServer.initialize_server end
I made that change, deployed, and crossed my fingers. Within minutes we knew that it worked. Users were connecting en masse. Thousands of monster battles started to ensue. Virtual goods transactions began flowing. All was right with the universe once more.
Let's look at what happened:
- EventMachine uses Ruby's select by default for network I/O. This is a sane default
- Ruby's select performance degrades as the number of persistant connections goes up. It has an upper limit of 1024 connections.
- I was aware of both EventMachine's default behavior and the limitations of select.
- Before the game launched I looked at the code to make sure I was making the configuration call to switch to epoll. It was there.
- I did not confirm that the configuration call was working. I never inspected the running state of the app and double-checked that it was using epoll instead of select.
Ultimately, I failed to ensure that a critical scaling component was activated before going live. Since being fixed, the rest of the system has run smoothly, resulting in thousands of concurrents and millions of monster battles.
Huge thanks to Aman Gupta, Ryan Stout, and the supportive Hacker News community for helping me come to a solution quickly. With you all, I was able to take a multi-day problem and get it fixed in a matter of hours. Thanks.
You can follow me on Twitter here
The Problem with Malaria
Let's talk about malaria.
Malaria is the one of the leading causes of death in the world. It's an important problem to solve. So important that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has dedicated billions of dollars to the cause.
But we havent fixed it yet. Why not?
As with every disease, It starts with what malaria has evolved to do. The lifecycle of malaria requires both a mosquito and a human. The disease starts inside a female mosquito, jumps to a human host for a while mucking about, and then jumps back to a different mosquito.
Like the common cold, malaria doesn't instantly kill its host. If malaria killed its host, it wouldn't last long enough to transmit to the next host. Since it require both a mosquito and a human host, the disease stops working if it isn't constantly jumping around. This means malaria must be good at least two things: going undetected and keeping its host moving. The longer it can stay in the current host, the more likely it'll get passed along to the next one. It turns out malaria is really, really good at this.
Malaria has lots of tricks to stay under the radar. Think of it like a stealthy assassin that's infiltrated your city. You know someone is killing your civilians, but you can't figure out who. When you have malaria, your body is trying to tackle this problem. We often use vaccinations to aid our bodies in solving this problem. But why don't we have a malaria vaccine?
It's important to understand how vaccinations work. There are four top strategies used today:
- Put a dead bugger in the body.
- Put a neutered bugger in the body.
- Put the bugger's coat (a virus-like particle) in the body.
- Put the bugger's perfume (a protein marker) in the body.
All four of these strategies work the same way. Your body recognizes an intruder and teaches itself how to eliminate the threat. With a vaccine, you teach your body what signs to look for in a disease. It's like equipping the police of your city with the physical description of the assassin. But for malaria it's a different story.
We know that malaria relies on going undetected. It needs to transmit from host to host to operate correctly. Malaria uses stealth to render the first two strategies ineffective. Introducing dead or neutered buggers into the body doesn't give the immune system enough information to respond when the real deal comes by.
We can't use the third strategy because Malaria isn't a virus. Viruses are organic robots that use some mechanical parts to inject their DNA into other cells. You can identify them by their distinctive exterior. Our third vaccination strategy doesn't apply when we're dealing with a non-virus disease.
That leaves us with only one option: a subunit vaccine.
A subunit vaccine works by taking the "smell" of a disease and giving it to the body. The immune system will then respond to anything with the "smell" with a heightened response. It's like giving the police of your city a bottle of perfume and telling them to interrogate anyone smelling of it. These are difficult vaccines to put together. Proteins, like perfume, are a carefully constructed work of art and are hard to replicate perfectly. The body can get confused since it's only given a small, complex piece of information to work with. This can render the immune system response ineffective.
It only gets worse. The malaria bugger goes through three different life stages while in the body. If targeted at the late stage, malaria has already done enough damage to kill the human host. The ideal is to target the early stage, preventing transmission and protecting the human from symptoms. Unfortunately, the first stage only lasts 5 minutes. If the body fails to identify the bugger and kick its ass in that time frame it effectively vanishes from sight.
So we have an assassin entering our city. We are already doing everything we can to destroy his transportation before he enters our borders (spraying DEET to kill mosquitos). We have a short time window to catch him before he masquerades as a citizen. If we fail in that time we will never find him. So our only option is to look for signs of a spy and ruthlessly eliminate anything that fits the bill.
It turns out there's a vaccine called RTS,S/AS01 and that's precisely what it does. In the 80s we were able to produce a protein from the malaria sporozoite (the first stage inside the human body) to get a small level of immunity in humans. The problem since then has been ramping up the immune response. The body needs to act fast (within 5 minutes of being infected) and with extreme prejudice (wiping out the sporozoites) using very little training (a single sporozoite protein). That's hard. Then we have to vet this vaccination which requires human field testing in Africa. That's even harder. Since that breakthrough in the 80s, researchers have been working hard to get the vaccination into a safe, sustainable condition. In 2012 they are really close, but still have a ways to go.
The problem with malaria is that it's tricky. It's taken time and some of the smartest people in the world to solve it. With RTS,S/AS01 we are nearly there. This vaccine is the culmination of 50 years of dedication, research, and hard work. It's also a miracle of modern science. Most importantly, it will save millions of human lives.
You can follow me on Twitter here


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Illinois legislature fails to pass anti-sprinkler bill
NFPA credits failure of legislation to 'grassroots coordination' by supporters
According to a statement issued Friday by the National Fire Protection Association, an Illinois bill that would have diminished local authorities' ability to enforce sprinkler requirements for homes has been defeated in committee by a 6-to-3 vote.
The NFPA credited the defeat of the bill to the "grassroots coordination" of a group of supporters that wrote letters to authorities and testified before a committee hearing on the legislation.
"These anti-sprinkler bills have been designed to take a step backward in public safety," NFPA President Jim Shannon said in the statement. "The bills ignore the success of a proven technology and inappropriately take away a community's ability to protect its citizens with this life-saving equipment. The fire service and other sprinkler advocates worked to defeat this safety threat in Illinois, but the threat of anti-sprinkler bills continues to be very real in other states."


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Whether it's the destination that is adventurous like Antarctica or the Galapagos Islands, or you can't wait to don your hiking boots or your scuba
gear on some thrilling shore excursions – there are a number of adventure cruises that will get your adrenaline pumping.
We offer a number of special hosted cruises throughout the year led by our experienced and knowledgeable hosts. Our hosts will welcome you into our
group for an exciting adventure with new friends.
Stunning scenery, charming towns and villages, and intimate modern river cruise ships are making river cruising one of the fastest growing trends in
travel. A river cruise provides a unique and authentic way to visit and explore Europe, Russia, Asia, America and the Amazon.
While it's usually best to plan your cruise ahead to get your pick of ships, itineraries and cabin selection, there may be some last minute cruise
inventory available if you have a flexible schedule.
Cruising is a great vacation option for single travelers as it is a safe way to travel on your own while enjoying plenty of opportunities to meet other travelers on and off the ship. Occasionally Cruise Specialists can secure special pricing for single cabins and we want to pass on these savings to you.
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Back by popular demand - Cruise Specialists Bridge Tournament Crui$e to Hawaii! This year we head for the Hawaiian Islands from the City By The Bay - San Francisco. There will be plenty of sea days to enjoy Bridge play for novices and experts alike, plus time for relaxation and getting familar with the Grand Princess.Cruise Specialists Bridge Tournament Crui$e
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What Do Financial Markets Think of War in Iraq?
AbstractWe analyze financial market data in order to produce an ex-ante assessment of the economic consequences of war with Iraq. The novel feature of our analysis derives from the existence of a market for Saddam Securities,' a new future traded on an online betting exchange that pays only if Saddam Hussein is ousted. A variety of tests suggest that this future's price provides a plausible estimate of the probability of war. The spot oil price has moved closely with the Saddam Security, suggesting that war raises oil prices by around $10 per barrel. Futures prices imply that markets expect these large immediate disruptions to dissipate quickly, with prices returning to pre-war levels within about a year and a half. Evidence on the long-run effects is fragile, and while prices are probably expected to fall a little as a result of war, any oil dividend' will be minimal. We find large effects in equity markets: and war lowers the value of U.S. equities by around 15 percent. This effect is concentrated in the consumer discretionary sector, airlines and IT; the prospect of war bolsters the gold and energy sectors. Analyzing option prices, we find that the large estimated average effects of war reflect the market pricing in a range of different scenarios - a 70 percent probability that it will lead to market declines of 0 to 15 percent, a 20 percent chance of 15 to 30 percent declines, and a 10 percent risk of a fall in excess of 30 percent. Across countries, the most extreme effects are on the stock markets of Turkey, Israel, and several European nations. Countries that are highly enmeshed in the world economy, or net oil importers, are most likely to experience adverse effects from war.
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Bibliographic InfoPaper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 9587.
Date of creation: Mar 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9587
Note: EFG AP
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Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Web page: http://www.nber.org
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Related researchKeywords:
Other versions of this item:
- Leigh, Andrew & Wolfers, Justin & Zitzewitz, Eric, 2003. "What do Financial Markets Think of War in Iraq?," Research Papers 1785, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
- E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
- G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2004-08-31 (All new papers)
- NEP-BEC-2004-08-31 (Business Economics)
- NEP-CFN-2004-08-31 (Corporate Finance)
- NEP-CWA-2004-08-31 (Central & Western Asia)
- NEP-FIN-2003-04-02 (Finance)
- NEP-FMK-2003-04-02 (Financial Markets)
- NEP-PKE-2004-08-31 (Post Keynesian Economics)
- NEP-RMG-2004-08-31 (Risk Management)
ReferencesReferences listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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IEW - Working Papers
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- Ramcharran, Harri, 2002. "Oil production responses to price changes: an empirical application of the competitive model to OPEC and non-OPEC countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 97-106, March.
- Bliss, Robert R. & Panigirtzoglou, Nikolaos, 2002. "Testing the stability of implied probability density functions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2-3), pages 381-422, March.
- Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Wang, Yubo & Yared, Francis, 2001. "Do option markets correctly price the probabilities of movement of the underlying asset?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 67-110, May.
- Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-54, May-June.
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If you are a foreign national and are engaged to a United States citizen, you probably have questions about how to get a fiancee visa so that you can get married in the United States. If you are successful in getting a fiancee visa, you will be able to travel to the United States in [...]Continue
Fiance Visas
The options you should consider when discussing immigration options with your fiance include:
If you are not yet married…
and your fiance is not in the United States, you should explore the fiance visa process.
The fiance visa process provides a path to a green card and permanent resident status for your future husband or wife. You can view the process as consisting of three main steps: (1) the fiance visa petition filed in the United States, (2) the fiance visa that is applied for at an embassy or consulate overseas, and (3) the adjustment of status application that takes place after you are married. Learn more about the fiance visa process.
If you are not yet married…
and your fiance is in the United States, you should explore both the fiance visa process and the adjustment of status process.
If your fiance is currently in the United States, you may be able to either follow the fiance visa process or the spouse adjustment of status process. The spouse adjustment of status process would only be possible if you marry while your fiance is in the United States and it is not appropriate for everyone. In fact, in some cases, if you marry your fiance and then apply for adjustment of status you may face serious negative immigration consequences. This is particularly true where a tourist visa is used to enter the United States when the true intent of the trip was to get married and remain in the United States permanently. Because of this risk, you should learn more about both the fiance visa process and the adjustment of status process before deciding which path to take.
"Do I need an immigration lawyer for my fiance visa case?"
"What is a fiance visa or a K1 visa?"
"How do I get a fiance visa or K1 visa?"
"How much will it cost to get a fiance visa?"
"How long will it take to get a fiance visa?"
"What happens after my fiance enters the United States using a fiance visa?"
"Can we just use a tourist visa to get married instead of waiting for a fiance visa?"
"What happens if we decide to get married overseas after we apply for the fiance visa?"
"Can my fiance visit me in the United States while we wait for the fiance visa?"
"How can I learn more about the fiance visa process?"
What is a K1 visa?
The K1 visa is a very important type of visa for many couples who decide to get married and one partner is a United States citizen while the other is from another country. The K1 visa is a way that allows such couples to get married in the United States by giving the foreign partner [...]Continue
Nonimmigrant Visa Fees Set to Increase on June 4, 2010
According to a recent Department of State announcement, nonimmigrant visa application processing fees are scheduled to increase on June 4, 2010. The increase in fees applies to both nonimmigrant visas placed in passports and to border crossing cards issued to certain people in Mexico. The new fees create a tiered structure with separate fees for [...]Continue
Can I visit the US while I wait for my K-1 fiance visa?
Applying for a K-1 fiance visa will not automatically disqualify you from visiting the United States on a tourist visa or other nonimmigrant visa, but it may make it more difficult. If you plan to enter the United States after your visa petition has been filed, you should first discuss your plans with your immigration [...]Continue


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February 11, 2013
Neon 80′s Dessert Table
My crazy fun friend Kaylee of Kaylee Eylander Photography threw the best Neon 80′s party for her daughter Estelle's 9th birthday. Being a child of the 80′s, I instantly loved the theme, and was thrilled to create a coordinating dessert table for Estelle's big bash.
With neon cake pops, cupcakes, 80′s shaped sugar cookies, and a two tier multicolor cake with a giant hot pink bow on top, I think we nailed it!
3 thoughts on "Neon 80′s Dessert Table"
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Brad Goreski Is Eating His Way Through Fashion Week
"Last night I got home kind of late and dug into some Peanut Butter M&Ms. Half of the wrapper was on my bed when I woke up."
Skip to content, or skip to search.
Skip to content, or skip to search.
"Last night I got home kind of late and dug into some Peanut Butter M&Ms. Half of the wrapper was on my bed when I woke up."
"She looks amazing and she's, like, 70 now."
If you can believe it, she's one of the last people on the planet who hasn't read the books.
"One doesn't title a book Gay Men Don't Get Fat and charge off to a place where everyone's drinking Mountain Dew."
"Personally, I keep it down."
She'll cut it all off for work, while he's growing it out just because.
There's fish oil, to start.
And more fashion nostalgia from last night's CFDA "Impact" opening.
That French Vogue video was her "dream come true."
"I don't think it's my thing."
"We have to defend Karl Lagerfeld's rights!"
"They both look straight. I'd date 'em"
"Like bubble gum! It really brings you to your childhood."
"I'll go to Target and I'll get a cute shirt, and it doesn't really fit right. So I'll take it to a tailor and for $4 or $5 they tailor it to my body."
Fashion folks and artsy bigwigs mingled at at Ouattara Watts's opening last night, hosted by Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld.
"The kind of stuff I would say about people would probably get me hurt."


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NBA >> Miami Heat
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Found February 06, 2013 on The Awesome Boston:
PLAYERS: Ray Allen
TEAMS: Miami Heat
TEAMS: Miami Heat
NESN: Ray Allen is back at it again on the real estate market, selling his last foundation in Boston, the harbor-view condo located in the North End. In his latest listing, the former Celtic is hoping for $2.99 million in exchange for a 1,831-square-foot home, according to Business Insider. A.B. I guess this means Ray Ray is never coming back. And I don't mean he's never playing for the Celtics again, I mean he is never coming back at all. First he sold his mansion in Wellesley and now he is selling his brick and exposed beam condo in the North End. Sad day for Celtics die-hards, great day for Boston realtors. Sidenote – Why an NBA player would have two homes in the same state is beyond me. Especially when that state is freezing cold 8 months out of the year. That whole "NBA players are going broke in record numbers" thing looks like it's here to stay. See the full gallery on Estately
Original Story: http://theawesomeboston.com/former-ce...
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Oh God Why Lebron James Meme
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Chris Bosh out with the flu; Shane Battier likely to start
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Mom Moment
RIP Brooke Shields' Mom Teri -- You'll Always Be the Original Momager
Kris Jenner has taken a lot of flack for "pimping out" her daughters, Khloe, Kourtney, and especially Kim. She's been blamed for everything from being the brains behind Kim's sex tape to arranging Kim's for-TV-only marriage to Kris Humphries. Kathy Griffin called her an "old school pimp -- top coat and fedora." But Kris Jenner had her predecessors. And one of the most famous of them, Teri Shields, mother of Brooke, has died of dementia-related illness. Teri was Brooke's momager before we even knew the word momager. She guided young Brooke through a career that was shocking for the time. Hell, it would be shocking now. Brooke was only 11 when she played a prostitute in Pretty Baby. At 14, she cooed, "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Kris could take some lessons from Teri!
That same year, Brooke filmed nude sex scenes in Blue Lagoon. She later testified before Congress that some of her scenes used a body double. Some of her scenes! At 15, she filmed yet more sex scenes in Endless Love. Whew. Guess Kim's sex tape isn't looking so scandalous now, does it?
More from The Stir: Paparazzi Checks Brooke Shield's Mother Out of Nursing Home
Teri certainly took her share of criticism throughout all this. But I think it would actually be worse today. Teri was criticized but at least Brooke's films were considered art, unlike the Kardashians' various reality shows.
It's hard to judge Teri. On the one hand, Brooke was incredibly young to be so sexualized. On the other, Brooke was an exquisitely beautiful and mature child, and Teri saw an opportunity to give her an amazing career. Brooke went on to do well in television and on Broadway and has written a bestseller.
In 1995, Brooke fired Teri as her momager. She felt that Teri wasn't taking her seriously enough as a talent and was just trying to "brand" her. I wonder if any of the Kardashian girls ever think the same? Nahh.
I also wonder if a dadager would reap the same criticism. You don't hear much about Jamie Spears "pimping out" Britney or Billy Ray Cyrus "pimping out" Miley, even though those two stars have done highly sexualized material in their teens. Then again, it's hard to beat letting your 11-year-old star as a child prostitute!
That said, Teri will go down in history as one of the most successful momagers of all time. And her daughter, Brooke, has had a career that has lasted longer than I'm betting the careers of the Kardashian clan will.
Who was more of a momager? Kris or Teri?
Image via Columbia Pictures
Piping Hot Posts
- --
PRIMA487November 6, 2012 at 6:00 PMUmm,Teri Garr?Think you mixed up your Teris.
- -- Nonmember comment from
AngelaNovember 6, 2012 at 6:03 PMYou mentioned Teri Shields AND Teri Garr at the end of the article. I'm guessing Teri Garr did not also pass away...
- -- Nonmember comment from
SarahNovember 6, 2012 at 6:40 PMLol wtf does Teri Garr have to do with this??


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Motor-Vehicle Batteries and Electrical Systems
Price: $24.95
The demands placed on the electrical power supply in automobiles are continually increasing. Powerful starter motors, complex control systems and growing numbers of instruments, electrically driven mechanisms and devices are the power consumers in modern mobiles.
Electrical systems, batteries and alternators are faced with ever greater and more extensive challenges including:
- high power demand at extreme temperatures (e.g. for heating windshield, vehicle interior and seats, for air-conditioning systems, fans, lights, etc.)
- high load capacity at low engine speeds (e.g. in urban driving conditions)
- reliable supply of power to all important control systems for engine management (e.g.Motronic or EDC) and electronic safety and convenience systems (e.g. Litronic, ABS, traction control, ESP, ACC, etc.) even in difficult circumstances, and
- trouble-free operation even when regularly subjected to high loads (e.g. frequent short journeys)
The battery and its ?power plant?, the alternator, are the fundamental requirement for easy motoring ? a fact that is all too often overlooked. The reliable functioning of those essential components ?in the background? is not a given fact but the result of consistent and innovative development of the technology.
This booklet explains how various types of battery work, how conventional and future vehicle electrical systems are designed and wired, and many other technical characteristics of these indispensable items of automotive equipment.


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Yvonne Alexa Henze
Abteilung Interkulturelle Germanistik
Heinrich-Düker-Weg 12, Raum 0.114
37073 Göttingen
Tel. +49 (0)551/ 39-21192
Melanie Brinkschulte
Abteilung Interkulturelle Germanistik
37073 Göttingen
Tel. +49 (0)551/ 39-92 56
Intercultural competence
Intercultural competence
Intercultural competence is an integrative, multidimensional concept for utilizing the synergy effects of diversity, that is, making allowances for ones own as well as the foreigners knowledge, perception and actions. It involves a deliberate search for common ground and continuous re-examination of the interaction between the cultures.
With a choice of training programmes, we offer you an educational opportunity to become an i²E (an intercultural interaction expert) and to acquire an International Certificate: Integration and Diversity (Zertifikat Internationales: Integration & Diversity) or to prepare and evaluate your study abroad (i²MoVe) from an intercultural point of view, so that you can subsequently acquire the International Certificate: Mobility (Zertifikat Internationales: Mobilität).


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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Deathknighty said...
Yeah, I'm hoping it's what they made out the Thrall chain to be originally - ie, an actual chain, where you do shiz that is interesting brings you close to an important lore character.
But seeing as it's supposedly meant to be "like the herulean labours where you have to go round helping each race" it's probably gonna be kill 25 wolves for the humans, 25 boars for the dwarves, 25 leper gnomes for the gnomes, 25 lumberjacks for the night elves, 25 spaceship autopilots for the draenei, and 2500 fleas for the worgen.
It was more: Kill 20 mobs while listening to someone talk about stuff I know nothing about, because apparently to know all about the game I love to play, I have to buy books as well.
So true. The Nagrand questline in BC was pretty good though... TBH I don't even want to see Varian as the Alliance hero, he's spent 99.9% of his development in books and comics, so he has no appeal to me, and Pretty much every other Alliance leader (including the newest, Greymane!) has more Character than him.
Bring back Turalyon from wherever he is to take over as the new Highlord, and bring the Alliance back to WCII levels of Awesome, pretty pretty please Metzen?
llcjay2003 said...
I want to see Varian on a battlefield or something, swinging his dual-wielding badassery, cleaving through bitches. I hope he unleashes the beast soon. It sucks when you have a badass leader who never gets to show it (outside of books).


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|Pio Decimo Center Childcare and Early Education
Children ages 3-5 participate in pre-school and pre-kinder classes that focus on building developmentally appropriate skills. Children are well-prepared for kindergarten both socially and educationally. Day care is provided before and after classes in a variety of combinations to assist working parents with safe, affordable child care. Our center is accredited by the National Association of Education for Young Children (NAEYC) and is fully licensed by the AZ Department of Health.
For more information on any of Pio Decimo's services or programs, please call 520-622-2801 and speak to the receptionist to be routed to the appropriate program person.


text: Strict Standards: Redefining already defined constructor for class XML_Parser in /home/sites/www.americanpoems.com/web/store/aom/includes/os.php on line 1188 Strict Standards: Declaration of XML_Parser::raiseError() should be compatible with PEAR::raiseError($message = NULL, $code = NULL, $mode = NULL, $options = NULL, $userinfo = NULL, $error_class = NULL, $skipmsg = false) in /home/sites/www.americanpoems.com/web/store/aom/includes/os.php on line 1604 Strict Standards: Declaration of XML_Unserializer::startHandler() should be compatible with XML_Parser::startHandler($xp, $elem, &$attribs) in /home/sites/www.americanpoems.com/web/store/aom/includes/os.php on line 3503 Strict Standards: Declaration of Cache_Lite_File::get() should be compatible with Cache_Lite::get($id, $group = 'default', $doNotTestCacheValidity = false) in /home/sites/www.americanpoems.com/web/store/aom/includes/cache.php on line 1020 American Poems: Books: Author Edith Wharton (Page 9) Home Apparel Appliances Books DVD Electronics Home & Garden Kindle eBooks Magazines Music Outdoor Living Software Tools & Hardware PC & Video Games Search All Products Apparel Appliances Arts & Crafts Automotive Baby Beauty Books Computers DVD Electronics Gourmet Food Grocery Health Home & Garden Industrial & Science Jewelry Kindle eBooks Kitchen Magazines Miscellaneous Mobile Apps MP3 Downloads Music Musical Instruments Office Products Outdoor Living Pet Supplies Photo & Camera Shoes Software Sporting Goods Tools & Hardware Toys VHS Video On Demand PC & Video Games Watches Wireless Wireless Accessories Advanced Search Sitemap View Cart Checkout Location: Home » Books » Author Edith Wharton Books: Author Edith Wharton Sort by Relevance Bestselling Reviews (High to Low) Price (Low to High) Price (High to Low) Publication Date (Newer to Older) Alphabetical (A-Z) Alphabetical (Z-A) Showing items 81-90 of 1259 ‹ Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next › View All Items » enlarge Ethan Frome Author: Edith Wharton Buy Used: $4.98 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details In Stock Used (18) Collectible (1) from $4.98 Publication Date:1922 enlarge Edith Wharton: Vol 1. Collected Stories:1891-1910 (Library of America) Author: Edith Wharton List Price: $40.00 Buy New: $2.00 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $38.00 (95%) In Stock New (31) Used (37) Collectible (1) from $2.00 Publication Date:January 29, 2001 enlarge Classic Women's Short Stories Manufacturer: Saland Publishing List Price: $12.91 Buy New: $6.95 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $5.96 (46%) In Stock Publication Date:June 10, 2013 enlarge The ABC Short Story Collection Manufacturer: Audio Book Contractors, LLC List Price: $13.96 Buy New: $9.95 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $4.01 (29%) In Stock New (10) from $9.95 Publication Date:February 16, 2012 enlarge Ethan Frome (Adaptation): Oxford Bookworms Library Manufacturer: Oxford University Press List Price: $5.04 Buy New: $2.95 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $2.09 (41%) In Stock Publication Date:December 20, 2010 enlarge Summer: Classic Collection (Classic Collection) [UNABRIDGED] Author: Grace Colin Edith Wharton List Price: $19.95 Buy New: $12.57 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $7.38 (37%) In Stock New (2) Used (3) from $10.99 Publication Date:May 15, 2006 enlarge The House of Mirth (Signet Classics) by Wharton, Edith published by Signet Classics (2000) [Mass Market Paperback] Author: Edith Wharton Buy New: $4.75 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details In Stock New (7) Used (12) from $4.68 Publication Date:1972 enlarge Ethan Frome & Summer (The World's Best Reading) Author: Edith Wharton Buy New: $15.99 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details In Stock New (4) Used (11) from $0.94 Publication Date:2009 enlarge The Lady's Maid's Bell Author: Edith Wharton List Price: $7.99 Buy New: $5.47 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $2.52 (32%) In Stock New (9) Used (2) from $5.47 Publication Date:January 24, 2013 enlarge Wharton: Four Novels (Library of America) Author: Edith Wharton List Price: $13.95 Buy New: $6.98 as of 9/18/2014 22:08 EDT details You Save: $6.97 (50%) In Stock New (22) Used (47) from $0.60 Publication Date:October 1, 1996 Showing items 81-90 of 1259 ‹ Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next › View All Items » CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. 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Times Square, Hong Kong
The absolute best BBQ pork buns I've ever had in my life so far.
LEE Jeans "Style Army" (Student Design Competition) at Philippine Fashion Week
My new home… for now :)
Born in the Philippines, childhood in the USA, went through "grownup-hood" in Canada, now back in Manila. Still… I AM CANADIAN :) Missing Toronto!
Had fun shooting these girls at their home today! The one on the right didn't need any direction at all! She just kept posing and smiling :) Makes my job so much easier!
Reminiscing an old family photoshoot from 2010. These kids were a blast! They must be all grown up now :)
Sam and Anna's engagement was fun! I won't be able to attend the wedding, so I'll count this shoot as my part of celebration :)
She loves playing in the garden.
Castle ruins at Ha Ha Tonka State Park


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Posts Tagged 'Netgear'
Wireless networking vendor Netgear is debuting a streamlined and more secure 802.11n access point with attractive features for solution providers looking to upgrade their small business customers from existing 802.11g WiFi.
We already know what companies like Google Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. think of patent trolling. Turns out, some politicians aren't particularly fond of the questionable practice, either.
The federal case that was supposed to bring a halt to patent troll Innovatio's ongoing shakedown of hotels, restaurants, and coffee shops took a strange turn when a federal judge threw out racketeering allegations brought by Cisco, Motorola and Netgear.
Netgear is carving out its niche in the fiercely competitive UTM space with the launch of a new appliance that ups the ante for its target SMB market with a several new and advanced features. At the end of the day, that gives partners a greater ability to hit up their smallest SMB customers with new and customizable services.
Netgear introduces a developer program designed to help ISVs build Java-based applications for Netgear's consumer and small-business gateways, routers, switches and NAS appliances. Apps help deliver services on these devices, which means Netgear resellers can deliver considerable value-add inside a networking package.
A recent survey suggests that — although hardware sales are in decline — wireless LAN technology is not. With enterprise demand for wireless infrastructure rising 26 percent year-over-year, can the channel continue to capitalize by specializing hardware sales with BYOD/MDM packages?


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The Best Arm Exercises
What kind of exercises are best for strengthening and toning the arms?
By Barbara Russi Sarnataro
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Admit it. It feels great when you can lift a child without a second thought, open a jar without asking for help, or carry in a 40-pound dog-food bag by yourself. You can thank your arm muscles, which is a huge part of many activities of daily life.
Unfortunately, we often neglect our arms until sleeveless season rolls around. But when you're ready to take that step, just what are the best arm exercises for strengthening and toning? WebMD asked fitness experts to share some of their tips for building stronger, tighter arm muscles.
The Benefits of Upper Body Strength
Arm toning and strengthening exercises are important throughout life, says Dan Agresti, exercise physiologist and owner of ProActive Health and Fitness in Denver. And the benefits go way beyond looking good in a tank top.
Life is a lot better when you're strong," says Agresti. "It's fun to know I can do just about any task."
Having upper body strength also helps us combat the physical pitfalls of our culture.
"We live in such a flexed-posture society, says Lori Incledon, athletic trainer and author of Strength Training for Women.
Being hunched over the computer, in front of the TV, and at the steering wheels of our cars takes a toll, she says. The shoulder girdle becomes stretched, the chest muscles get tighter, and we set ourselves up for decreased range of motion and potential injury.
"We're never going to be able to reach for the cup on the highest shelf anymore" if we don't balance out our muscles with exercise, says Incledon, of Chandler, Ariz.
Arm Toning Tips: The Whole-Body Prescription
As we all know by now, you cannot spot-reduce an area. So we need to think about the bigger picture. "The emphasis should be on the entire body -- and cardio and diet," says Nutting.
Diet and nutrition are a huge part of the equation, says Agresti. If you work the arms and don't see results, look at your whole program: "Underneath that fat is the most beautiful set of arms you've ever seen," he says.
Nutting, Agresti, and Incledon all use multi-muscle, multi-joint exercises for their clients, so they work more muscle at one time, thus increasing the calorie burn.
"We need to train the body the way it was designed to work," says Agresti. Otherwise, "there's not a lot of crossover into the real world."
You need to use some sort of resistance to really strengthen the upper body and tone the arms, whether it's weights, bands, machines, cables, grocery bags, or your own body weight.
You also need to be willing to push yourself a little, says Agresti.
"If you want to tone and shape your arms, you have to use a bigger weight," Agresti says. "I don't think women tend to push themselves with sufficient weight and to the level of effort and fatigue necessary."
It's all about motivation, says Agresti. "Could you have done more? For $100,000 could you have doubled the reps?" If your response is 'You bet,' he says, you're cheating yourself.
Bulking Up?
Women sometimes ask if the workouts will lead to too much bulking up. If you feel a little bigger at first, it may not be your imagination. "When you first start lifting, there's a big influx of carbohydrates and water to that area," as your body attempts to protect itself from something it's not accustomed to, says Incledon. "It's a beginner thing. At first, you'll get a bit more of a bulky feeling, but after a month, the body regulates."
Another reason you may look bulkier is because you're building muscle under a layer of fat. Once the fat comes off, the bulkiness gives way to the lean muscle underneath.
And you don't have to treadmill yourself to death to shed that layer of flab, says Incledon.
"It's a myth that the only way you can affect body composition is by cardiovascular exercise," she says. In a sense, "anything you do that is exercise is cardiovascular, because you have to work your heart and lungs to lift a weight."
If you're crunched for time (and who isn't?), work smart: Do exercises that use lots of body parts at once, minimize rest periods, and work to fatigue.
4 Multi-Tasking Arm Exercises
Try these four multi-joint, multi-muscle exercises from Agresti, Nutting, and Incledon to develop beautifully toned arms and upper body strength.
1. Push-up/Tricep Push-up


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The Walsgrave
Come to The Walsgrave in Coventry for traditional roast dinners and lunches exactly how you like them. Plus, from Monday to Saturday, you can tuck into tasty pub-food classics too.
With every plateful offering cracking value, it's no wonder locals in and around Bell Green, Binley and Walsgrave can't get enough.
Eating out in Coventry made easy
Our restaurant is relaxed and family friendly, and we don't stand on ceremony. There's no need to book; just pop in when you're hungry. We also offer Sky Sports, plus there's plenty of parking.
Opening times
- Mon-Sun: 9am - 11.30am
- 11am - 11pm
- Mon-Sun: 11.30am - 9.30pm
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