text:
January 16, 2003LOS ANGELES — The Anderson School at UCLA is the recipient of a $50,000 grant from AT&T to conduct research on the use of information technologies for business continuity in the retail sector.
AT&T recently commissioned a survey conducted by Digital Research Inc. that revealed about one in four companies in the United States do not have business continuity-disaster plans in place, showing the need for companies to focus more attention on issues relating to disaster recovery. Therefore, the AT&T Foundation developed a grant for select universities to fund a series of studies to identify best practices in business continuity plans in specific industries.
The AT&T Foundation identified five universities, including UCLA, to conduct a review of best practices in the financial, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, retail and travel & leisure industries. A grant of $50,000 went to each university to conduct the research. The research grants will help researchers explore areas such as strategic planning, security policies, risk assessment and back-up plans, and procedures, assisting companies in developing the essential tools needed to recover from a disaster.
The UCLA project will be conducted within the Center for Management in the Information Economy (CMIE) at The Anderson School. The principal investigator is Dr. Uday Karmarkar, Times Mirror Professor of Management Strategy and Policy, who co-directs the Center with Bob Foster, adjunct associate professor, decisions, operations and technology management.
"In the course of the project the Anderson team will conduct case studies and surveys to document best practices, as well as to identify emerging issues and to project the impact and utilization of information and communication technologies," said Karmarkar. This study dovetails with CMIE's Business and Information Technology (BIT) program, which is being conducted in collaboration with the Center for Communication Policy and Entertainment/Media at The Anderson School.
This research project will provide the business community with the tools to address disaster recovery, and help firms gain the proper knowledge to maintain continuity of business operations.
About AT&T Foundation
The AT&T Foundation invests globally in projects that address a range of public concerns. Emphasis is placed on programmes that serve the needs of people in communities served by AT&T, initiatives that use technology in innovative ways, and programmes in which AT&T employees are actively involved as contributors and/or volunteers. Support is focused on Education, Civic and Community Service, and Arts and Culture Programmes.
About The Anderson School at UCLA
The Anderson School at UCLA is perennially ranked among the top-tier business schools in the world. Award winning faculty renowned for their research and teaching, highly selective students, successful alumni and world-class facilities combine to provide an extraordinary learning opportunity. Established in 1935, The Anderson School provides management education to more than 1,300 students enrolled in full-time, part-time and executive MBA programs and academic master's and Ph.D. programs.
The Anderson School's faculty includes outstanding educators and researchers who share their scholarship and expertise in such fundamental areas as finance, marketing, accounting, business economics, decisions, operations and technology management, human resources and organizational behavior, information systems, strategy and policy.
Offering unparalleled expertise in management education, the world's business community turns to The Anderson School at UCLA as a center of influence for the ideas, innovations, strategies, and talent that will shape the future.


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Taylor Lautner för GQ Magazine
The hysterical children. That's what stands out most. The red carpet is lined with these screaming tykes, hundreds of small wonders packed ten feet deep on raised platforms. They are reaching out their hands for Him, shoving little notebooks and pink pens into His hand. The desperation in their cries has a familiar, specific timbre; they sound like hungry newborn infants.
It is March 27, and I am inching down the red carpet at Nickelodeon's annual Kids' Choice Awards—embedded with Taylor Lautner, Twilight's boy werewolf, now reportedly the highest-paid teenage actor in Hollywood. He's one of the highest-paid actors period, having just signed a $7.5 million deal to play Stretch Armstrong in a big-screen take on a toy no one has seen in thirty years. Lautner's regular security guard, a professional badass, notices me flinching at the shrieking. He smiles: "On the New Moon tour, I took Advil. Preventively."
Lautner—dressed in a wool blazer over a white V-neck T-shirt (both gifts from the designer Neil Barrett), his dark hair shellacked into a skyward-pointing spear—seems unfazed. Is it always like this? I ask. So he tells me about Brazil. How he and his Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart were trapped in a hotel suite when hundreds of teenage fans stormed the lobby, outwitted security, and charged the stairs to get to them. "We were in lockdown in this little room for forty-five minutes waiting for the SWAT team to arrive," Lautner says, his eyes wide. "We said to each other, 'Let's say they get into this room. What are they going to do? Tear us to shreds? What do they want?' "
Finally we are at the door to UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, finally inside the building, finally moving toward our seats in the front row, when I notice: For a kids' show, this is one fucking starry room. Adam Sandler, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Robert Downey Jr., Rihanna—they're all within earshot. Avatar's Zoe Saldana is sitting three seats away. Rosario Dawson and Olympic champion Shaun White will present the first award. It's a tribute to the primacy of the youth market. They've all come to kiss the (candy) ring.
Lautner, 18, sits down and begins to tell me how honored he is to be here, how honored he's been to be everywhere lately. Like at this year's Oscars, where he introduced a tribute to horror films alongside Stewart. "I would have passed out if she wasn't there!" Lautner says. "You're looking down and you're talking to George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio—and they're listening to you!" This is his baseline sentiment: honest, enthusiastic bafflement. It's probably the only suitable reaction. He talks about the MTV Video Music Awards, where he presented a trophy to his then maybe-girlfriend Taylor Swift, only to watch Kanye snatch the microphone. "I was standing behind her as it was happening, and 100 percent I was sure it was staged!" Lautner says, eyebrows raised. "I thought, 'This was something that they rehearsed.' I was enjoying the show! But then Taylor turned around and I saw her face."
Just then, at the UCLA auditorium, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, suddenly interrupts the conversation with a question. Katzenberg—59 years old, V-neck sweater, pleated khakis—leans in close. "Taylor," he says, "do you have two minutes? Will Smith wants to meet you."
A minute later, Lautner returns to his seat, winded. He looks around the arena, at the 7,000 fans and the lights and the cameras, and asks out loud, "Is this really happening? Am I really here?"
Those are pretty good questions. He might also ask: What on earth did I do to deserve that $7.5 million contract and the adoration of millions? He's handsome, yes. But in two Twilight films, Lautner has logged fifty minutes of screen time. Total. In the first movie, he spoke 239 words. Oh, and he was nearly fired from the sequel before filming began. (More on that soon.)
Finally the lights inside the UCLA arena dim, signaling the start of the show, and when Lautner's photograph appears on the JumboTron, the shrieking resumes. Lautner's security guard rushes over with one last message, whispering something into his ear before disappearing again into the darkness.
"What did he just say to you?"
Lautner locks eyes with me, touches my leg and laughs. "He said, 'If anything happens—' " Lautner points towards the exit sign—" 'we're going left.' "
One week after the Kids' Choice Awards, Taylor Lautner pulls up for lunch in Valencia, California, a suburb forty-five minutes north of Hollywood. This is where he lives, with his parents and younger sister, in a home that's almost indistinguishable from the others in the neighborhood. Lautner suggests the Olive Garden for lunch. "Do you like this place?" he asks, a little unsure, adding: "My father turned me on to it." Without glancing at the menu, Lautner orders the Toscana soup, then asks to substitute the Caesar salad for the house. Before the waiter can reply, Lautner interrupts innocently: "I know," he says, "it'll be a dollar fifty extra. That's fine." Well, yes. Yes, it will be.
If the Olive Garden seems an unlikely place to meet one of the most watched teenagers in America, so be it. The location is as clear an indication as any of how far he's come, and how fast. His is a story filled with extreme coincidence, as if the heavens opened up and said, You. You with the teeth. Next year at this time, people will be able to draw your abs from memory.
Because he's only 18, his creation story takes about thirty seconds, but it begins at a karate school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is 7 years old when (Random Fate-Sealing Circumstance #1) the school's owner invites his students to a martial-arts tournament in Louisville, Kentucky. There, Lautner meets Mike Chat, a karate coach who's been (Random Fate-Sealing Circumstance #2) a successful actor. Okay, he was the Blue Power Ranger, but still. Chat encourages Lautner to come out to L.A. for a martial-arts summer camp and later a monthlong stay. He hooks the boy up with an agent, and while Lautner returns home to Michigan without a job, he's still getting calls about auditions.
The story might end there, except that (Random Fate-Sealing Circumstance #3) Lautner's father happens to be a pilot for Midwest Airlines, and the family can fly standby for almost nothing. "I'd go to sleep at nine in Michigan, and my parents would get a phone call, Can you be in L.A. tomorrow for an audition?" Lautner says. "They'd wake me up at four in the morning, and we'd fly to L.A. I'd get home the next morning and just miss the bus for school." When the Herman Miller production plant Lautner's mother works at shuts down (Random Fate-Sealing Circumstance #4), the family takes it as a sign to move west, renting a two-bedroom apartment a few blocks from the Olive Garden, on one of those fakey Main Streets popular in preplanned communities like this one. His most high-profile booking: playing a 3-D fish in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Our food comes quickly, followed immediately by the Olive Garden's service manager, José, who'd like to "make sure everything is tasting just fine so far." Beat. "I just wanted to say it's a pleasure having you. Go, Team Jacob!"
Ah yes. Jacob. Lautner's biggest and most intense bit of luck was Twilight. And as if to underscore the idea that luck is massively fleeting, he almost lost the part. In 2008, Lautner was cast as Jacob Black, Native American teenager and platonic best friend to Bella Swan. (Lautner had just four scenes in the film and missed a week of school.) Released on November 21, 2008, the movie made instant tabloid stars of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Lautner was worse than an afterthought: The studio hinted at replacing him. (A press release was issued trumpeting the return of Kristen and Robert; Lautner was MIA.) Jacob discovers he's a werewolf in book two and grows from a skinny wannabe into a six-foot-seven man-wolf. Offscreen, Lautner still looked like a pup. He had a Twilight lunchbox with his face on it but would have to audition for the sequel.
Lautner admits to some dark, if brief, moments of self-doubt. He hired a personal trainer on his own dime and started practicing some Tony Robbins mind tricks. "I'm in the gym," Lautner says, "and I'm doing reps, and I'm reading the books, and I'm studying the character. I'm just saying to myself, 'I want this role. I love this role. I'm not gonna lose it. And I'm gonna know it better than anybody, and I'm gonna do that extra rep, because I'm gonna be Jacob Black.' " He ate every two hours, mostly meat his parents cooked and then packed in a cooler he kept in the car. Sitting in traffic, Lautner would eat cold ground chuck from plastic Baggies. He put on thirty pounds of muscle, consented to a screen test with Stewart (who lobbied on his behalf), and kept his job. He also solved the film's marketing issues when his abdominal muscles became New Moon's main talking point, not to mention his calling card. In one scene, Stewart crashes a motorcycle, and Lautner rushes to her aid. "It's just blood, Bella," he says. "No big deal." And then pauses to peel off his shirt.
As if on cue, a twentysomething man slides up to our table. "I'm sorry," he says, "can I take a photo? Uh, my niece is a big fan."
Over lunch, Lautner signs a dozen autographs and poses for everyone with a cell phone. His cultural momentum is obvious—and as enthusiastically as he hit the weight room and the bags of meat, he has worked to keep it that way. Lautner was out promoting New Moon for months after its release, to the point that Stewart—his de facto older sister offscreen—sent him a text message: "Stop working and come home already. I miss you." New Moon has made $297 million, and since its release, Lautner's name has been attached to no less than five major projects. He was reportedly offered seven figures to star in Max Steel, another would-be blockbuster based on a toy, but choseStretch Armstrong, because, he says, it was "ready." ("Ready" is a relative term in Hollywood. There was no script, nor was there a director. But Hasbro, coming off Transformers, had a reputation for getting films made.) When Lautner begged off Max Steel, producer Joe Roth (Alice in Wonderland) complained to the Daily Beast that Lautner was "getting bad advice."
"I heard about that," Lautner says diplomatically, "It's funny you'd mention that. Because I ran into Joe Roth last night at the Lakers game." Awkward? "No. I walked up to him and said hello. He's very nice!" How were your seats? "Great. Courtside!"
There are many such perils facing Nickelodeon's favorite male actor. For starters, he has to be careful about his rep as beefcake. He tells a story reminiscent of the plight of young female starlets in town: Lautner had a small role in the surprise hit Valentine's Day, playing a high school athlete. The role was written speciffically for him. "Originally I was supposed to take off my shirt," he says. "The script said we were walking into school and Willy takes off his shirt. I said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out. He's gonna take off his shirt in the middle of school? No, no, no. The reason I took off my shirt for New Moon is because it's written in the book that way. And there's reasons behind it."
A note to future pop-culture historians: This may have been the precise moment it became okay to sell a young male's physique the same way Hollywood sells Megan Fox.
It's a funny thing, that $7.5 million deal. Taylor Lautner is being offered action-star tentpole money. But he hasn't actually been in an action film yet. If Hollywood is hoping Eclipse, out this month, will answer any lingering doubts about whether he can carry one, guess again. The big fight scenes? Lautner's not in them. His twelve-foot CGI avatar is. "When Jacob fights," explains Eclipse director David Slade, "he's furry." What Slade can tell us about Lautner's potential is how much he's improved as an actor. He recalls filming one moment where Lautner transitions back to human form at the end of a battle. Slade says, "I saw Taylor standing behind a tree beating his chest" to prepare himself. "He was playing pain."
Whether Lautner is worth that kind of payday or not is an impossible question to answer, and perhaps even an unfair one. Hollywood's in a panic, throwing money at anyone who looks like he can hold a gun convincingly. "I can't get caught up in that," Lautner says. "If I start thinking, Is this movie going to open? Is this movie going to do well?I'm not focusing on the job. The job is to make a good movie."
Still, the pressure is on. Later this month, Lautner heads to Pittsburgh to shoot his first solo vehicle, Abduction. It's sort of a teen Bourne Identity, the story of a high school senior whose parents are killed the same day he finds his own photograph on a Web site for missing persons. This will be Lautner's first chance to carry a movie and to answer that other lingering question: Is he a movie star or a fleeting—albeit suddenly rich—curiosity? He says he wants to follow the "Tom Cruise model," and that's probably the right way to go. Lautner has the chance to be one of those nonthreatening boyish action heroes, the type that can cross ethnic lines and gender divides and bring people to the box office in droves. Random Fate-Sealing Circumstance may have brought him here, but it's undeniable that he's made the most of the moment. It reminds me of something Chris Weitz, the director of New Moon, told me about Lautner's appeal. Weitz fought to keep Lautner on the project because, he says, "it was easier for Taylor to bulk up than for us to find some hunky, brooding guy and make him seem like the best friend of an 18-year-old girl." A strange skill, sure, but also a hell of an asset if you're trying to sell tickets.
Or toys, for that matter. Finishing up lunch, Lautner launches back into Is this really happening? story hour. Like when Hasbro flew him out to the corporate headquarters to present him with a Stretch Armstrong action figure cast in his likeness. The doll so closely resembled Lautner, the actor says giddily, that "I literally thought it was me in a little miniature size." Or when he went on Oprah: "I got the famous Oprah hug!" Or when he met Robert Downey Jr. at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. "He's awesome!" Lautner says. "He was wearing these blue glasses, and he introduced me to his wife, Susan. He's as nice as could be."
After lunch we climb into Lautner's 5 Series BMW—"My first car!" he says—for a tour of his new hometown. The windows are tinted so dark they appear to be presidential-grade.
"The paparazzi," he says, shrugging his shoulders.
Does it get to you?
"There's some things you just have to live with," Lautner says, pulling out of the parking lot. "Like twelve cars camping outside your house, and when you wake up in the morning, they're going to follow you wherever you go. It helps that I live in Valencia. It eliminates some. But they're still here."
We keep driving, past the movie theater, past the gym where he works out. We drive past the Promenade, where the Lautners first lived in Valencia, where his sister turned the walk-in closet into her own bedroom. Ask if he's considered getting his own place, now that his career is on solid ground, and he looks like the thought never occurred to him. "Um, you know, not so much," he says. Really? What 18-year-old movie star with millions wouldn't move out of his parents' house? "There's really no point. I'm so busy. I really haven't thought about it."
I think he likes it in this small town, with its strip malls and Olive Gardens. Because there's too much at stake, and he can't get into any trouble here. "There's some of that," he says. "The thing I love is that my home life hasn't changed. I still help out with the garbage. I still help out with the lawn."
Lautner has to get home, he says. In the morning, he and his team will leave for Madrid for a promotional gig. Lautner has been to Europe a handful of times, but always for work. "It's a tease, is what it is," he says. "You show up in Paris, and on the drive from the airport to the hotel you're like, 'This is so cool! I want to see something! I want to go to the Eiffel Tower!' And then you leave the next morning. You think, Oh, I didn't get to do anything." He pauses. "I tell people: I've been just about everywhere, but I've seen nothing."
Mickey Rapkin is a GQ senior editor.
Bakom scenerna:
Extra TV's Candid Photobooth-shots med TwiCast
Christian Serratos för MAXIM
Ashley Green & Kellan Lutz i Women's health
Bakom Kulisserna med The Wolf Pack - InStyle.com
Kellan Lutz i Men's Health Magazine
Robert Pattinson - Famous Magazine
Robert Pattinson i Premiere Magazine (Franska)
Charlie Bewley i Cosmo UK!
Ashley Green pratar Rob & Kellan i Seventeen
Ashley Greene is NOT robsessed! The gorgeous Twilight "vampire-ness" looks striking as Seventeen magazine's June cover girl
and she gives us the low down on her super sexy co-stars, Robert
Pattinson and Kellan Lutz. You would think it would be hard to remember
your lines when gazing into the eyes of these leading men but Ashley
appears to be all together unfazed by the outside obsession with her
"When I met Rob, I didn't think twice about him," admits Ashley. "He's really attractive, but that chemistry wasn't there. He also
doesn't understand girls."
What? Rob doesn't understand girls? Hmm … wonder what his girlfriend Kristen Stewart thinks about this. We figured Rob was Mr.
Smooth when it came to wooing the ladies!
"He gets a lot of attention from girls," says Ashley. "But he doesn't quite understand it because before Twilight, he was just a guy
from Harry Potter."
Even though there aren't sparks with her other co-star Kellan, she does divulge that the thought of hooking up with the buff, blond vamp
has crossed her pretty little mind.
"I've definitely thought about it," says Ashley. "He and I met through our agent five years ago, and we've been best friends ever
since and filming together has made us even closer."
So why haven't the two ever given a chance to a possible budding romance?
"He's one of my best friends," she says. "But if we were going to be romantic, we would have done it years ago! I like having him to talk
to about other guys to get that male perspective. I really cherish our
relationship, so I wouldn't want to mess that up by dating."
Outtakes från USA Today med Kristen, Taylor & Robert
Photoshoot med Jackson Rathbone
Christian Serratos för Maxim (Magazine Scans)
OBS! Spoilers för mycket naket!
Anna Kendrick i L'Uomo Vogue
Ashley Greene InStyle - Scans
Nya outtakes från La Times
Nya outtakes från Cosmopolitan Magazine med Kellan Lutz
Här kommer andra delen av photoshooten från Cosmopolitan Magazine med Kellan Lutz och här går det hett till. :D

subset: commoncrawl


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Published in goodhousekeeping.com on July, 2008
Traditional Provençal ratatouille is a mélange of best-of-summer vegetables slowly simmered in olive oil. Our version is quicker and packs less of a caloric punch, since the veggies are lightly brushed with a vinaigrette mixture, not braised in oil. Chop leftover ratatouille and toss with your favorite short pasta, or layer into a roll, top with some fresh mozzarella, and toast in a panini press or skillet.
- 3 tbsp. red wine vinegar
- 1 clove garlic
- ¾ tsp. salt
- ¼ tsp. coarsely ground black pepper
- ¼ c. olive oil
- 2 lb. plum tomatoes
- 2 medium red peppers
- 2 medium zucchini
- 1 large eggplant
- 1 large onion
- ½ c. fresh basil leaves
- 2 oz. ricotta salata or Parmesan cheese
- Prepare outdoor grill for covered, direct grilling on medium.
- Prepare vinaigrette: In small bowl, whisk together vinegar, garlic, salt, and pepper. In slow, steady stream, whisk in oil until blended.
- On 2 jelly-roll pans, lightly brush tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and onion slices with some vinaigrette. With tongs, transfer vegetables to hot grill grate. Cover grill and cook tomatoes about 6 minutes; peppers, zucchini, and eggplant about 8 minutes; and onion about 12 minutes or until all vegetables are tender and lightly charred on both sides. Return vegetables to jelly-roll pans.
- To serve, on platter, arrange grilled vegetables; drizzle with remaining vinaigrette and sprinkle with basil. With vegetable peeler, shave ricotta salata into large pieces over vegetables.


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I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that many of the readers of "The Public Humanist" delight, as I do, in the process of drawing our own conclusions about the past based on primary source artifacts. There's something enchanting about reading the unmediated words of people from the past, especially when those writings are unedited, brief, factual notations drawn from the writer's daily life. Such snippets make up the contents of the "daybooks" and pocket diaries that have been kept by our fellow humans throughout history, and that enjoyed such popularity in 19th century America. Through these brief daily jottings, we are treated to an unmediated look at daily life long ago from the vantage point of a fly-on-the-wall, as people describe what they did, where they went, and who they saw – often, and notably, refraining from including "how they felt" and "what they thought" in the process.
A fly-on-the-wall in a 19th century kitchen would have observed the surface details of people's lives, including some quite unfamiliar to a 21st century fly: the joys of sleighing, a full day of heavy labor to do the wash, renting a horse and carriage for a day trip, blindfolding a nursing infant to help (?!) wean him to a wetnurse ("March 9th, 1864. We blind folded Johnny the first day and he nursed, but it frightened him–"). The daily snippets sometimes touch on situations whose details are fully known only to the writer, mysteries that can sometimes be resolved through further research but that sometimes must remain forever unclear, which is part of the reality, part of the fun.
When I read in teenager Sarah Louise Lawrence's unpublished 1869 pocket diary that she "attended church 3 times today and sunday school" – Sunday after Sunday – I couldn't help but sense her committed religiosity, if not her spirituality. When she wrote that an acquaintance who died suddenly lacked sufficient religiosity ("Wed, Jan 13, 1869. Clara Norwood buried today after a short illness of one week in which she endured intense suffering. No shure evidence that she entertained any Christian hope."), it wasn't clear whether Sarah meant that Clara was defiantly anti-religious or simply free-thinking or even clinically depressed or perhaps just a bit laid back, given that she was living among folks who went to church three times per Sunday. To really understand this snippet, one would need to know more about religious practice and belief in this community in 1860s Beverly, Massachusetts, and more about Clara Norwood in particular. Through such evocative, off-hand statements, primary source documents draw us flies-on-the-wall into investigating the wider context in order to fully understand the snippet in question. In the case of Sarah's doomed friend, one definitely wants to learn more (I'm having trouble right now resisting to head for the online vital records at NEHGS to at least uncover how Clara Norwood died – a lightening bolt perhaps??)* That irresistable lure to explore the wider context is one of the best arguments for providing primary source artifacts online, however spare their content, for students and interested others to 'do history' from scratch.
Many daybooks are preserved in libraries or archives and are discoverable through the "finding aids" that archives maintain to describe their holdings. In some cases members of the general public can request the transcript or even the original through the wonders of Interlibrary Loan services at their local or university library. WorldCat is an ever-growing link to these finding aids, using the OAIster union catalog of millions of records representing open archive resources. Nowadays, we also of course have the option – impossible a generation ago – to examine the original documents online in order to see for ourselves what the writer wrote. A number of individuals and historical societies have daybooks in their collections and have made them available online. In some cases the diary pages are transcribed in print publications only, in some cases they are available online but are not transcribed, in other cases they are fully transcribed online but the page images are not digitized and in some happy instances, they fully transcribed and digitized online. In all of these categories there are gems, and here follow some of my personal favorites.
Transcribed and published in print only:
Growing Up in Boston's Gilded Age: the Journal of Alice Stone Blackewell, 1872 – 1874. Yes, this Alice was the daughter of two famous civil rights activists and came from a clan where merely describing a family gathering was an exercise in historical documentation. But she was also a smart, rough-and-tumble 15 year old Boston girl whose fresh way of describing her world is spirited and delightful and forever realigns readers' presumptions about demure buttoned-down females of the 19th century. Alice's diary was published many years after her death, edited and richly annotated by Marlene Deahl Merrill. This engaging diary is not viewable online, but must be read the old-fashioned way, from cover to cover, which of course has its own charms.
"The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke" edited by Brenda Stevenson and published in 1988 as part of the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, covers Grimke's daily writings from 1854 (age 17) to 1892 (age 54) and provide a window into life as an activist, educator and poet. A preview of the journals is available through Google books, but the printed version is the only way to fully immerse oneself in Grimke's day-to-day world.
Also in the academic vein, the Massachusetts Historical Society and Northeastern University Press co-publish the "New England women's Diaries" Series, which has produced 2 documentary editions, the 1833 diary of Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy and the 1831-32 travel diary of Mary Gardner Lowell. Like the journals of Grimke and Stone Blackwell, these diaries are more extensive than the writings of the average pocket diarist, which is doubtless part of the reason they were deemed worthy of documentary editing and publication.
Nonetheless, many, many pocket diaries have been published in limited print runs over the years by small historical societies or individuals, such as "An Amish Girl's Daily Life: Mary Fisher's Diary, 1885", published in 1992 in the Journal of the Pennsylvania German Society (Der Reggeboge), Vol. 26: 1, or "The Short Diary of a School Girl: Louisa Salome Cutler, 1881", published by the Florence Civic and Buisness Association Book Committee, Florence Massachusetts in 1993, or "Caught Between Two Worlds: the diary of a Lowell Mill Girl" (edited by Mary H. Blewett) and published in 1984 by the Lowell Museum in Lowell, MA. There are scores of these little pamphlet transcriptions of daybooks floating around in archives and historical societies, and it would make a highly useful project for students or volunteers to scan and OCR them for online publication!
Digitized page images, but alas no transcriptions:
The Library of Congress has countless fascinating artifacts in its collections, but often its diaries are presented with page images only, without transcription, e.g. George Washington's 1760 jottings or the 1909 diary of Wilbur Wright or the 1906 and 1907 diaries of Joseph Sanders. Some, like John Powel's description of his overland journey from Illinois to Oregon in 1851 do include both transcription and page image. The LOC offers over 100 diaries online in one or the other format.
Transcribed online, but alas without digitized page images:
Some transcriptionists are using the web's blogging options to present snippets of daily life from the past. Samuel Pepys' diaries are presented online by Phil Gyford in a fantastically well-organized effort that aims to post and annotate all online over the course of ten years, starting back on Jan 1 2003 with entries from Jan 1 1660. The Pepys diaries website is based on five interrelated Moveable Type weblogs (diaries, encyclopedia, in-depth articles, site news and the 'story so far' ) that provide relevant maps, annotations, weather information and an active user community that energetically analyzes and discusses the language, people and events of the Pepys' day. George Orwell and other prominent figures are having their daily notes blogged by their respective repository managers. Microblogging formats can be great for presenting line-a-day diary entries; the relatives of Genny Spencer are posting her 1937-41 daybook entries on Twitter, and John Quincy Adams's daily jottings during his 1809 trip to Russia are being tweeted daily by the Massachusetts Historical Society,
Transcribed AND digitized page images online:
Martha Ballard's Online Diary is wonderfully annotated and contextualized by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, with the added benefit of being fully digitized, transcribed and made available online with many helpful tools for delving into Ballard's world. (Patricia Bruttamesso describes this inspiring resource here on the Public Humanist in the post "Personal Histories: the Written Record and How to Evaluate It".) The completeness of the diary entries and the range of tools made available to explore them is unbelievably helpful for see-for-yourselfers, and constitute an example of 'doing history' done right. The site's "Magic Lens" and transcription exercises highlight the fact that paleography can be quite a stumbling block in figuring out the scribbles of days gone by, overcome only through practice, experience and training.
It is wonderful to have transcriptions and page images available online for hundreds of daybooks and pocket diaries. It will be even better once data standards for interoperability are fully formulated and widely adopted so that everything out there can be simultaneously searched, explored, annotated and recombined. There is something a bit too ephemeral about Twitter postings that do not also reside somewhere within a more robust and permanent structures.
Since this is the final Public Humanist blog posting for 2009, I would like to propose this New Year's resolution for 2010: that anyone who feels so inclined go out and find a little notebook and start chronicling the stuff of your own life on paper in short, mundane snippets, in your own handwriting. Our lives includes so many things that may or may not be recognizable to readers hundreds of years from now, things like oil-powered transportation, terror alerts, social media experiments, privacy considerations, household routines, social structures and so much more. No need to bare your soul, just jot down a few notes about where you go, who you see, what you do. Why? Because there may come a day when the Internet blows a fuse, so to speak, in which case hardy artifacts like those little leather bound books will provide our descendents with as much insight and enjoyment as our predecessors' jottings do for us today.
* p.s. Clara B. Norwood was born in Washington, MA in 1852, and died in Beverly MA on January 10, 1969 at the age of 17. Cause of death: "Internal inflammation." (Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841–1910. From original records held by the Massachusetts Archives. Online database: NewEnglandAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004.)


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NASA are about to attempt to send a spacecraft to drill deep into Jupiter's ice moon Europa searching for microbial life. Water is the key and research on Earth in the Arctic and Antarctic several Kilometers below the surface have proven life can exist in the most unlikely of places. Sulfur loving microbial live has also recently been found in deep caves systems in Mexico. These slimes resemble primordial life from the early Archean that have also recently been found in WAs mud stones. The remains of Hadean Earth. 4 billion years ago. Nasas Jet Propulsion Labs are attempting to send the next craft to Jupiters moons using a space launched system (SLS) that will reduce travel time to 2.4 years from the existing 6 year travel time. Much faster than previously possible.
Astrobiologist Kevin Hand prepares to deploy a rover beneath the ice of Alaska's Sukok Lake. When a probe finally reaches Europa, its search for life may be modeled on trial runs like this. And with the powerful SLS rocket NASA is designing, he says, "we could potentially get to Jupiter and Europa very quickly."
An electronic signal travels from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, to a robotic rover clinging to the underside of foot-thick ice on an Alaskan lake. The rover's spotlight begins to glow. "It worked!" exclaims John Leichty, a young JPL engineer huddled in a tent on the lake ice nearby. It may not sound like a technological tour de force, but this could be the first small step toward the exploration of a distant moon.
More than 4,000 miles to the south, geomicrobiologist Penelope Boston sloshes through murky, calf-deep water in a pitch-dark cavern in Mexico, more than 50 feet underground. Like the other scientists with her, Boston wears an industrial-strength respirator and carries a canister of spare air to cope with the poisonous hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide gases that frequently permeate the cave. The rushing water around her feet is laced with sulfuric acid. Suddenly her headlamp illuminates an elongated droplet of thick, semitransparent fluid oozing from the chalky, crumbling wall. "Isn't it cute?" she exclaims.
These two sites—a frozen Arctic lake and a toxic tropical cave—could provide clues to one of the oldest, most compelling mysteries on Earth: Is there life beyond our planet? Life on other worlds, whether in our own solar system or orbiting distant stars, might well have to survive in ice-covered oceans, like those on Jupiter's moon Europa, or in sealed, gas-filled caves, which could be plentiful on Mars. If you can figure out how to isolate and identify life-forms that thrive in similarly extreme surroundings on Earth, you're a step ahead in searching for life elsewhere.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) inspect a probe like one that might someday travel beneath the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa.
It's difficult to pin down when the search for life among the stars morphed from science fiction to science, but one key milestone was an astronomy meeting in November 1961. It was organized by Frank Drake, a young radio astronomer who was intrigued with the idea of searching for alien radio transmissions.
When he called the meeting, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, "was essentially taboo in astronomy," Drake, now 84, remembers. But with his lab director's blessing, he brought in a handful of astronomers, chemists, biologists, and engineers, including a young planetary scientist named Carl Sagan, to discuss what is now called astrobiology, the science of life beyond Earth. In particular, Drake wanted some expert help in deciding how sensible it might be to devote significant radio telescope time to listening for alien broadcasts and what might be the most promising way to search. How many civilizations might reasonably be out there? he wondered. So before his guests arrived, he scribbled an equation on the blackboard.
That scribble, now famous as the Drake equation, lays out a process for answering his question. You start out with the formation rate of sunlike stars in the Milky Way, then multiply that by the fraction of such stars that have planetary systems. Take the resulting number and multiply that by the number of life-friendly planets on average in each such system—planets, that is, that are about the size of Earth and orbit at the right distance from their star to be hospitable to life. Multiply that by the fraction of those planets where life arises, then by the fraction of those where life evolves intelligence, and then by the fraction of those that might develop the technology to emit radio signals we could detect.
Astronomer Frank Drake helped found the science of astrobiology in the 1960s by searching for radio broadcasts from alien civilizations. Now 84, he's got a new target: flashes from alien light sources. "We know how to do SETI much better these days," he says. "Our biggest challenge is coming up with the funding."
Frank Drake Formula
The Drake equation, formulated in 1961, estimates the number of alien civilizations we could detect. Recent discoveries of numerous planets in the Milky Way have raised the odds.
The final step: Multiply the number of radio-savvy civilizations by the average time they're likely to keep broadcasting or even to survive. If such advanced societies typically blow themselves up in a nuclear holocaust just a few decades after developing radio technology, for example, there would probably be very few to listen for at any given time.
The equation made perfect sense, but there was one problem. Nobody had a clue what any of those fractions or numbers were, except for the very first variable in the equation: the formation rate of sunlike stars. The rest was pure guesswork. If SETI scientists managed to snag an extraterrestrial radio signal, of course, these uncertainties wouldn't matter. But until that happened, experts on every item in the Drake equation would have to try to fill it in by nailing down the numbers—by finding the occurrence rate for planets around sunlike stars or by trying to solve the mystery of how life took root on Earth.
It would be a third of a century before scientists could even begin to put rough estimates into the equation. In 1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva detected the first planet orbiting a sun like star outside our solar system. That world, known as 51 Pegasi b, about 50 light-years from Earth, is a huge, gaseous blob about half the size of Jupiter, with an orbit so tight that its "year" is only four days long and its surface temperature close to 2000°F.
Nobody thought for a moment that life could ever take hold in such hellish conditions. But the discovery of even a single planet was an enormous breakthrough. Early the next year Geoffrey Marcy, then at San Francisco State University and now at UC Berkeley, would lead his own team in finding a second extrasolar planet, then a third. After that, the floodgates opened. To date, astronomers have confirmed nearly two thousand so-called exoplanets, ranging in size from smaller than Earth to bigger than Jupiter; thousands more—most found by the exquisitely sensitive Kepler space telescope, which went into orbit in 2009—await confirmation.
None of these planets is an exact match for Earth, but scientists are confident they'll find one that is before too long. Based on the discoveries of somewhat larger planets made to date, astronomers recently calculated that more than a fifth of stars like the sun harbor habitable, Earth Like planets. Statistically speaking, the nearest one could be a mere 12 light-years away, which is practically next door in cosmic terms.
That's good news for astrobiologists. But in recent years planet hunters have realized that there's no reason to limit their search to stars just like our sun. "When I was in high school," says David Charbonneau, an astronomer at Harvard, "we were taught that Earth orbits an average star. But that's a lie." In fact, about 80 percent of the stars in the Milky Way are small, cool, dim, reddish bodies known as M dwarfs. If an Earthlike planet circled an M dwarf at the right distance—it would have to be closer in than the Earth is to our sun to avoid being too cold—it could provide a place where life could gain a foothold just as easily as on an Earthlike planet orbiting a sun like star.
Moreover, scientists now believe a planet doesn't have to be the same size as Earth to be habitable. "If you ask me," says Dimitar Sasselov, another Harvard astronomer, "anywhere from one to five Earth masses is ideal." In short, the variety of habitable planets and the stars they might orbit is likely to be far greater than what Drake and his fellow conferees conservatively assumed at that meeting back in 1961.
A microbe retrieved in 2013 from Lake Whillans, half a mile beneath the Antarctic ice, reveals life's ability to take hold even in the most extreme environments. TRISTA VICK-MAJORS AND PAMELA SANTIBÁÑEZ, PRISCU RESEARCH GROUP, MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY, BOZEMAN
That's not all: It turns out that the range of temperatures and chemical environments where extremophilic organisms might be able to thrive is also greater than anyone at Drake's meeting could have imagined. In the 1970s oceanographers such as National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard discovered superheated gushers, known as hydrothermal vents, nourishing a rich ecosystem of bacteria. Feasting on hydrogen sulfide and other chemicals dissolved in the water, these microbes in turn feed higher organisms. Scientists have also found life-forms that flourish in hot springs, in frigid lakes thousands of feet below the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet, in highly acidic or highly alkaline or extremely salty or radioactive locations, and even in minute cracks in solid rock a mile or more underground. "On Earth these are niche environments," says Lisa Kaltenegger, who holds joint appointments at Harvard and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. "But on another planet you can easily envision that they could be dominant scenarios."
The one factor that biologists argue is critical for life as we know it is water in liquid form—a powerful solvent capable of transporting dissolved nutrients to all parts of an organism. In our own solar system we've known since the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter mission in 1971 that water once likely flowed freely on the red planet. So life might have existed there, at least in microbial form—and it's plausible that remnants of that life could still endure underground, where liquid water may linger. Jupiter's moon Europa also shows cracks in its relatively young, ice-covered surface—evidence that beneath the ice lies an ocean of liquid water. At a half billion miles or so from the sun, Europa's water should be frozen solid. But this moon is constantly flexing under the tidal push and pull of Jupiter and several of its other moons, generating heat that could keep the water below liquid. In theory, life could exist in that water too.
In 2005 NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted jets of water erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus; subsequent measurements by the spacecraft reported in April of this year confirm an underground source of water on that moon as well. Scientists still don't know how much water might be under Enceladus's icy shell, however, or whether it's been liquid long enough to permit life to exist. The surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has rivers, lakes, and rain. But Titan's meteorological cycle is based on liquid hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, not water. Something might be alive there, but what it would be like is very hard to guess.
Mars is far more Earthlike, and far closer, than any of these distant moons. The search for life has driven virtually every mission to the red planet. The NASA rover Curiosity is currently exploring Gale crater, where a huge lake sat billions of years ago and where it's now clear that the chemical environment would have been hospitable to microbes, if they existed.
Penelope Boston of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and the National Cave and Karst Research Institute captures a drop of biofilm from the Cueva de Villa Luz ("cave of the lighted house") in Mexico. The viscous goo—dubbed a snottite—harbors bacteria that derive energy from hydrogen sulfide within the toxic cave. Life-forms in such extreme ecosystems serve as earthly analogues for organisms that might thrive in extraterrestrial environments.
A cave in Mexico isn't Mars, of course, and a lake in northern Alaska isn't Europa. But it's the search for extraterrestrial life that has taken JPL astrobiologist Kevin Hand and the other members of his team, including John Leichty, to Sukok Lake, 20 miles from Barrow, Alaska. The same quest has lured Penelope Boston and her colleagues multiple times to the poisonous Cueva de Villa Luz, a cave near Tapijulapa in Mexico. Both sites let the researchers test new techniques for searching for life in environments that are at least broadly similar to what space probes might encounter. In particular, they're looking for biosignatures—visual or chemical clues that signal the presence of life, past or present, in places where scientists won't have the luxury of doing sophisticated laboratory experiments.
Take the Mexican cave. Orbiting spacecraft have shown that caves do exist on Mars, and they're just the sorts of places where microbes might have taken refuge when the planet lost its atmosphere and surface water some three billion years ago. Such Martian cave dwellers would have had to survive on an energy source other than sunlight—like the dripping ooze that has Boston so enchanted. The scientists refer to these unlovely droplets as "snottites." One of thousands in the cave, varying in length from a fraction of an inch to a couple of feet, it does look uncannily like mucus. It's actually a biofilm, a community of microbes bound together in a viscous, gooey blob.
The snottite microbes are chemotrophs, Boston explains. "They oxidize hydrogen sulfide—that's their only energy source—and they produce this goo as part of their lifestyle."
Snottites are just one of the microbial communities that exist here. Boston, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, says that all told there are about a dozen communities of microbes in the cave. "Each one has a very distinct physical appearance. Each one is tapping into different nutrient systems."
One of these communities is especially intriguing to Boston and her colleagues. It doesn't form drips or blobs but instead makes patterns on the cave walls, including spots, lines, and even networks of lines that look almost like hieroglyphics. Astrobiologists have come to call these patterns biovermiculations, or bioverms for short, from the word "vermiculation," meaning decorated with "irregular patterns of lines, as though made by worm tracks."
Microbe-rich biofilms—referred to as snottites—drip from the sunless walls of Cueva de Villa Luz in Mexico. Living off sulfur compounds, the microbes in turn feed midges that live in the cave.
It turns out that patterns like these aren't made only by microorganisms growing on cave walls. "It happens on a variety of different scales, usually in places where some resource is in short supply," says Keith Schubert, a Baylor University engineer who specializes in imaging systems and who came to Cueva de Villa Luz to set up cameras for long-term monitoring inside the cave. Grasses and trees in arid regions create bioverm patterns as well, says Schubert. So do soil crusts, which are communities of bacteria, mosses, and lichens that cover the ground in deserts.
If this hypothesis holds up—and it's still only a hypothesis—then Boston, Schubert, and other scientists who are documenting bioverms may have found something crucially important. Until now, many of the markers of life astrobiologists have looked for are gases, like oxygen, that are given off by organisms on Earth. But life that produces an oxygen biosignature may be only one kind among many.
"What excites me about bioverms," says Boston, "is that we've seen them at all these different scales and in all these wildly different environments, and yet the characters of the patterns are very similar." It's highly plausible, she and Schubert believe, that these patterns, based on simple rules of growth and competition for resources, could be literally a universal signature of life. In caves, moreover, even when the microbial communities die, they leave the patterns behind. If a rover should see something like this on the wall of a Martian cave, says Schubert, "it could direct you where to focus your attention."
At the opposite end of North America, the scientists and engineers shivering at Sukok Lake are on a similar mission. They're working at two different locations on the lake, one next to a cluster of three small tents the scientists have dubbed "Nasaville," and the other, with just a single tent, about a half mile away as the crow flies. Because methane gas bubbling from the lake bottom churns up the water, ice has a hard time forming in some places. To snowmobile from one camp to the other, the scientists have to take a curving, indirect route to avoid a potentially fatal dunking.
It was the methane that first drew the scientists to Sukok and other nearby Alaska lakes back in 2009. This common hydrocarbon gas is generated by microbes, known collectively as methanogens, that decompose organic matter, making it another potential biosignature astrobiologists could look for on other worlds. But methane also comes from volcanic eruptions and other nonbiological sources, and it forms naturally in the atmosphere of giant planets like Jupiter as well as on Saturn's moon Titan. So it's crucial that scientists be able to distinguish biological methane from its nonbiological cousin. If you're focused on ice-covered Europa, as Kevin Hand is, ice-covered, methane-rich Sukok Lake isn't a bad place to get your feet wet—as long as you don't do it literally.
COLD CASE Astrobiologist Kevin Hand talks about the rover and its trial run in Alaska.
Hand, a National Geographic emerging explorer, favors Europa over Mars as a place to do astrobiology, for one key reason. Suppose we do go to Mars, he says, and find living organisms in the subsurface that are DNA based, like life on Earth. That could mean that DNA is a universal molecule of life, which is certainly possible. But it could also mean that life on Earth and life on Mars share a common origin. We know for certain that rocks blasted off the surface of Mars by asteroid impacts have ended up on Earth. It's also likely that Earth rocks have traveled to Mars. If living microbes were trapped inside such spacefaring rocks and survived the journey, which is at least plausible, they could have seeded whichever planet they ended up on. "If life on Mars were found to be DNA based," says Hand, "I think we would have some confusion as to whether or not that was a separate origin of DNA." But Europa is vastly farther away. If life were found there, it would point to a second, independent origin—even if it were DNA based.
Europa certainly seems to have the basic ingredients for life. Liquid water is abundant, and the ocean floor may also have hydrothermal vents, similar to Earth's, that could provide nutrients for any life that might exist there. Up at the surface, comets periodically crash into Europa, depositing organic chemicals that might also serve as the building blocks of life. Particles from Jupiter's radiation belts split apart the hydrogen and oxygen that makes up the ice, forming a whole suite of molecules that living organisms could use to metabolize chemical nutrients from the vents.
The big unknown is how those chemicals could make it all the way down through the ice, which is probably 10 to 15 miles thick. The Voyager and Galileo missions made it clear, however, that the ice is riddled with cracks. Early in 2013 Hand and Caltech astronomer Mike Brown used the Keck II telescope to show that salts from Europa's ocean were likely making their way to the surface, possibly through some of those cracks. And late in 2013 another team of observers, using the Hubble Space Telescope, reported plumes of liquid water spraying from Europa's south pole. Europa's ice is evidently not impenetrable.
This makes the idea of sending a probe to orbit Europa all the more compelling. Unfortunately the orbiter mission the National Research Council evaluated in its 2011 report was deemed scientifically sound but, at $4.7 billion, too expensive. A JPL team led by Robert Pappalardo went back to the drawing board and reimagined the mission. Their Europa Clipper probe would orbit Jupiter, not Europa, which would require less propellant and save money, but it would make something like 45 flybys of the moon in an attempt to understand its surface and atmospheric chemistry, and indirectly the chemistry of the ocean.
All told, Pappalardo says, the redesigned mission should come in at under two billion dollars over its whole life span. If the mission concept goes forward, he says, "we envision a launch sometime in the early to mid 2020s." If that launch takes place aboard an Atlas V rocket, the trip to Europa will take about six years. "But it's also possible," he says, "that we could launch on the new SLS, the Space Launch System, that NASA is currently developing. It's a big rocket, and with that we could get there in 2.7 years."
BRUIE (Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration) crawls along the underside of the surface ice in a test in Sukok Lake. Bubbles of methane and other compounds signal the presence of life below.
The Clipper likely wouldn't be able to find life on Europa, but it could help make the case for a follow-up lander that could dig into the surface, studying its chemistry the way rovers have studied Mars's. The Clipper could also scout out the best places for such a lander to set down. The next logical step after a lander—sending a probe down to explore Europa's ocean—could be a lot tougher, depending on how thick the ice is. As an alternative, mission scientists might try to reach a lake that may be entirely contained within the ice near the surface. "When that undersea explorer eventually does come to fruition," says Hand, "in evolutionary terms, it'll be like Homo sapiens to the Australopithecus we've been testing in Alaska."
Frank Drake is still looking for extraterrestrial signals—a discovery that would trump everything else.
The relatively crude rover Hand and his crew are testing at Sukok Lake crawls along under a foot of ice, its built-in buoyancy keeping it firmly pressed against the frozen subsurface, sensors measuring the temperature, salinity, pH, and other characteristics of the water. It doesn't look for organisms directly, however; that's currently the job of the scientists working on another aspect of Hand's project across the lake, including John Priscu of Montana State University, who last year extracted living bacteria from Lake Whillans, half a mile under the West Antarctic ice sheet. Along with geobiologist Alison Murray, of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, and her graduate student Paula Matheus-Carnevali, Priscu is investigating what characteristics frigid environments need to make them friendly to life and what sorts of organisms actually live there.
Useful as the study of extremophiles is to contemplating the nature of life beyond our planet, it can only provide terrestrial clues to an extraterrestrial mystery. Soon, however, we will have other means to fill in missing parts of the Drake equation. NASA has approved a new planet-hunting telescope known as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Scheduled to launch in 2017, TESS will look for planets around our nearest neighboring stars, finding targets for astrophysicists searching planetary atmospheres for biosignature gases. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for a 2018 launch, will make those searches far easier than they are today— although recent observations with the Hubble, including the discovery of clouds on a super-Earth known as GJ 1214b, make it clear that nobody is sitting around waiting for the Webb.
Listening for life.
Some astrobiologists are even investigating a possibility that sounds more like science fiction than science. All of the focus on biosignatures and extremophiles assumes that life on other worlds, like life on Earth, will be built from complex molecules that incorporate carbon as an essential part of their structures—and use water as a solvent. One reason is that carbon and water are abundant throughout the Milky Way. Another is that we don't know how to look for non-carbon life, since we don't know what biosignatures it might leave.
"If we limit our search this way, we could fail," says Harvard's Sasselov. "We need to make an effort to understand at least some of the alternatives and what their atmospheric signatures might be." So Sasselov's group at Harvard is looking at alternate biologies that could plausibly exist on distant worlds, where, for instance, a sulfur cycle might replace the carbon cycle that dominates terrestrial biology.
In the background of all this research is the project that got astrobiology started more than half a century ago. Although he's technically retired, Frank Drake is still looking for extraterrestrial signals—a discovery that would trump everything else. Though Drake is frustrated that the funding for SETI has mostly dried up, he's excited about a brand-new project that would try to detect flashes of light, rather than radio transmissions, from alien civilizations. "It's wise to try every possible approach," he says, "because we're not very good at psyching out what extraterrestrials might actually be doing."
Michael Lemonick's latest book is Mirror Earth: The Search for Our Planet's Twin. Mark Thiessen shot our story on the solar system in the July 2013 issue.
Society Grant: Penelope Boston's research was funded in part by your Society membership.
source: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/astro ... f3512220=1
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NYRA trustees cede control to governor
Cuomo takes reins of racing franchise, ending concerns about Saratoga season
ALBANY -— The trustees of the New York Racing Association on Tuesday agreed to turn over control of the board and management to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The action ends concerns about the Saratoga season, a fight that appeared to be headed toward legal confrontations and continued threats from the state to revoke its horse racing franchise.
The reorganization of NYRA was part of "cleaning up problems we inherited" on a host of fronts, Cuomo said.
"This is a good day for racing; we've turned a page on a dark relationship," said John Hendrickson, a NYRA trustee from Saratoga Springs. "It's better to have government on your side. We're grateful that Gov. Cuomo has lent his brand to racing."
The governor's move also allays growing uncertainty within New York's horse racing community that Saratoga could have suffered with its summer racing season quickly approaching.
The newly reconstituted NYRA should be in place by the next NYRA board meeting in early August during the Saratoga meet, although it may take weeks to choose members and for required background checks to be finished.
The deal gives the governor the power to choose the chairman of the association and to control a board that will select the next chief executive officer, who will be chosen following a nationwide search for a CEO and general counsel.
In his 17th month of office, Cuomo accomplished something no other governor has been able to do in the 57-year history of NYRA: He seized the reins of the not-for-profit group that operates Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga tracks.
Cuomo wrested control of NYRA by getting directors to unanimously vote to give him a total of eight seats on a smaller board, including the future chairman's seat. The association will be restructured once new legislation is passed before the end of June giving legislative leaders four seats on a 17-member board, with just five NYRA-selected appointees.
Appearing at a news conference with three NYRA trustees as well as Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Cuomo unveiled an agreement arranged in recent days following some muscling by the Cuomo administration that put NYRA in a position of playing along with the governor or planning for legal action to prevent its long-term franchise from being pulled.
"Lawyers have gotten rich on the relationship between NYRA and the state," Cuomo said about the tense history between the two sides. "We decided not to do that."
Cuomo made the trade-off of power easier for NYRA board members to accept by promising a cut of casino revenues if the state ends up legalizing gambling halls via a constitutional amendment.
"The governor was offering to include the breeders and NYRA in prospective casino revenues, so that's a significant data point to those of us who are concerned about the future of racing," said NYRA Executive Committee Member Barry Ostrager. He said the franchise agreement that runs through 2033 only gives NYRA a cut of video lottery terminal money from the Aqueduct VLT parlor, and the new commitment from Cuomo for some casino cash was attractive.
The plan, to be part of a gaming bill submitted to the Legislature soon, will result in a board of trustees dominated by government appointees who will assure public control of the association for the remainder of the governor's term.
The "turn-around board," as one board member called it, will have eight fewer members than the 25-member panel now allowed under NYRA's current structure.
Cuomo said this reorganized board will be in place for three years and would include seven governor appointees, five private NYRA appointees, two members each from the Senate and Assembly majority conferences and two non-voting ex-officio representatives of the horsemen's and breeders' associations. Cuomo said he did not have anyone in mind for chairman, his eighth slot on the board, or other members.
Cuomo emphasized his optimism for the future of the racing industry in New York, which relies heavily on video lottery terminal revenues, saying he expects it to be a growing part of the state economy. Cuomo had gotten the attention of NYRA in many ways in the past few weeks, particularly when his administration steered NYRA's VLT revenues to a Lottery account and his surrogates made public statements questioning NYRA's judgment and eligibility to keep the franchise. That put pressure on the trouble-plagued NYRA board to agree to demands for change.
The overhaul is tied to the governor's concerns about NYRA amid a slew of missteps by the operators of Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga tracks. Cuomo, after meeting privately with NYRA board members twice this month, demanded state control after NYRA's recently fired president and general counsel were implicated in a state investigation.
The investigators said former CEO Charles Hayward knowingly allowed bettors to be cheated of $8.5 million in winnings during 15 months until state auditors figured out the overcharging last December. Hayward has described the overcharge matter as a mistake and said he would be exonerated once state investigations conclude.
General Counsel Patrick Kehoe and Hayward were fired by NYRA's board, but the directors then replaced Hayward with one of the top executives on duty during the 15-month period, Ellen McClain. That vote infuriated Cuomo, leading to the freezing of NYRA's VLT dollars, more than $3 million per month.
NYRA has the franchise to operate racing through 2033 and is preparing to host a potential Triple Crown championship at the Belmont Stakes in less than three weeks.
NYRA Chairman C. Steven Duncker, a Florida resident who did not attend the news conference, said in a statement that he appreciated Cuomo and pledged a "smooth transition."
Although NYRA will be under "temporary public control" Cuomo said he could not say if NYRA board meetings and records will be subject to state open government laws. But the association will continue to be under the watch of the Franchise Oversight Board, a group of gubernatorial and legislative appointees.
Ostrager said he expects that NYRA's five board seats will come from the current representatives on the board. Around the summer of 2015, NYRA would likely return to private control, according to the plan.
email@example.com • 518-454-5083 • @JamesMOdato


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Fact 1: CakeSpy Loves to bake.
Fact 2: CakeSpy is a prolific baker.
Fact 3: CakeSpy Loves mischief.
It may not be scientific or anything, but what all of these facts add up to is generally lots of fun. Here's how it went down last night.
Now, it is true that I had recently made truffles, gooey butter cake, and millionaire's shortbread for various baking experiments and projects, but when I received a parcel of the new Naturally Nora cookie mixes, I couldn't help but bake up a batch or two.
The chocolate chip cookies were my quarry, and I made two batches: one "plain", and one with two tablespoons of peanut butter added. The cookies came out quite nicely, I think, with a nice, nugget-y look and a soft on the inside, lightly crispy on the outside texture. The peanut butter, while not necessary for deliciousness, sure didn't hurt things (does it ever?).
But now I had a problem: a cookie surplus!
Luckily, this is, as problems go, not such a bad one, so I decided to share my sweet bounty with the world at large. Yup: time to Take it to the Sweet!
and so I put the cookies in sweet twosomes in bags, tied them with ribbon, and wrote sweet little notes to go along with them.
and then I decided on the best place to have a positive and sweet impact: the newsstand! Why? Well, the news can be--how do we say, kind of a downer--so this seemed like a natural and especially good place to brighten someone's day. I think that even if the finder might not be brave enough to eat these mystery cookies, the fact that they found them might just, you know, kind of give them pause in their everyday life, add a sweet aspect to their day, and at least give them a good story.
I chose this lineup on 15th Avenue East because it was under a streetlight and just seemed like a nice little row.
I put some cookies inside of each box, but in the case of USA today, which had not yet been stocked, I put it on the outside, near the payment slot--maybe it would brighten the night of the newspaper delivery-person?
Here's proof that Tom Skerrit loves cookies:
I thought this one, on top of Seattle Weekly, worked especially well.
So there you go--even the news can be made sweeter!
Have a totally sweet day, love CakeSpy.
P.S. Giveaway Alert! Naturally Nora has also kindly offered up a sweet giveaway! Want to win some cookie mix? Sweet! To enter, simply leave a comment below (US only, giveaway closes next friday, May 27 at noon PST) or on the CakeSpy Facebook Page saying how you'd make the world (or maybe just a friend's day) sweeter with these cookies!


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This webpage provides a very useful illustrated timeline of ships and boats.
You need to be signed in the make a comment, it's free to join so why not, don't worry, we won't spam you, we are a school IT support firm and do this to help our community.
We'd like top hear what you think the problem is.
The 123HUB is a FREE resource bank and teaching community for primary school teachers. It has been designed to assist teachers in finding good quality online resources. Our aim is to take the effort and guesswork out of finding the best online resources that are available for the primary school curriculum. All of the resources on the 123HUB have been hand picked by teachers.
Iceberg straight ahead!!! On the 14th of April 1912, the famous passenger ship, thought to be unsinkable, the RMS Titanic, sank on her maiden voyage from the UK to America with great loss of life. The story of this tragic ship and its ill-fated sea voyage forms the centrepiece of this month's featured theme
We explore:
We have 34 excellent themed resources that will provide answers to the above questions, look at other ships, sea travel and much more besides. The resources comprise of a mixture of: information, facts, research, hands-on activities, illustrations and video clips, as well as some detailed planning - each of which will successfully support this fascinating topic.
Art and Design. June's featured theme was the creative subject of art and design. In primary school, art and design can be fun, it can be decorative and it can also be used to convey a message, or tell a story. It can be created for exhibition, demonstration and illustration purposes, or it can simply be produced for personal enjoyment and as a vehicle for expressing the artist's imagination and creativity. There can be little doubt that the subject has wide-ranging appeal and artistic creation is really enjoyed by many - children and adults alike!
We have 47 great art and design themed websites on offer; they include resources for both KS1 and KS2. The resources embrace the different artistic disciplines, elements, materials, designs, artists and much more besides. They comprise of a mixture of: art examples and ideas, art and design information and lessons, video clips, as well as some detailed planning - each of which will effectively support this great theme.
Copyright © 2019 OFEC.


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Through their actions, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman have become forever entwined in the history of race relations of America.
Both had cell phones.
One saw what he thought was suspicious activity (someone walking on someone else's property, between houses, late at night) and called the police. Because he was not in the street, but between houses, Zimmerman apparently continued to follow Martin. He did so against the advice of the 911 operator, supposedly to get an address.
Allegedly, at this point, Zimmerman was attacked and beaten, leading to him shooting his attacker.
Trayvon Martin, the other man in this case, recognized that he was being followed and possibly in danger of attack. He was not attacked; the mortician said there was no evidence of any physical violence upon Martin's body, nor any defensive scratches or bruises. Martin did not call anyone, did not report his fear, and did not report what he felt was suspicious activity or something possibly illegal.
Apparently and allegedly, without any physical provocation, he attacked Zimmerman, breaking his nose and beating his head repeatedly into the ground. At this time, he was shot and killed by Zimmerman.
Did Zimmerman's actions (before the physical altercation) constitute stalking? Yes.
Is he partially responsible for triggering the events that followed? Yes.
Did any of his actions constitute a physical threat to anyone? No.
Did Zimmerman attempt to call for assistance in what he thought was a security breach in his community? Yes.
Did Martin's actions (before the physical altercation) constitute trespassing or anything a reasonable person would consider suspicious? Yes.
Is he partially responsible for triggering the events that followed? Yes.
Did his actions, (before the physical altercation), constitute a physical threat to anyone? No.
Did he attempt to call for assistance or ask the person on the phone to call for assistance when he thought he was being followed or threatened? No.
Did he physically attack the person who had been following him? Apparently and allegedly.
Trayvon Martin would be alive today had he called the police when he thought he was being followed or threatened.
Jesse "Rainbow Coalition shakedown" Jackson, Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton, Louie "I've been on a UFO" Farrakhan, Eric "screw civil rights for whites" Holder and President "the cops acted stupidly" Obama are all responsible for Trayvon's death. Their continual racist positions poison the minds of our black youths against the police.
Their collective acceptance and support of the lack of cooperation and wall of silence surrounding the open drug sales and lawlessness in the black community, as well as their failure to lead or even speak out on the crisis of black-on black-murder and violence, proves they're not fit to lead. They don't care about these issues, other than to keep them inflamed for their own race-driven ends.
Their continual grandstanding and denigrating those trying to protect Americans in the street on a daily basis have led to a lack of confidence and outright hostility towards those one would turn to in times of trouble.
Martin and Zimmerman are both victims of race-baiting leaders and their policies.
Who has the courage to call out the real perpetrators?


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You are in big trouble, Espn Turbo Smith
It took me days to name my children. People would harass me in the hospital, noting I would not be allowed to leave until the Social Security forms were completed with the baby's full name entered in the appropriate spaces. However, I took the naming part of my job as a new parent very seriously. I refused to be bullied into making the wrong decision.
It took me days to name my children. People would harass me in the hospital, noting I would not be allowed to leave until the Social Security forms were completed with the baby's full name entered in the appropriate spaces. However, I took the naming part of my job as a new parent very seriously. I refused to be bullied into making the wrong decision.
In the hospital nurseries, my boys were easy to find. Their bassinets were labeled "Baby Boy," which was written in black on blue name cards. While they were lacking first and middle names, they were clearly identified as boys. They were given blue blankets, blue caps, and blue booties. Our society likes to provide a solid foundation for differentiation and sexism right out of the womb.
Admittedly, there might have been too much thought put into naming the boys. They all go by their middle names, which all begin with the letter E.
Thankfully, we live in a country in which we are free to name our children as we please. No parent in America could ever be forced to change their child's name by our judicial system. Unless you live in Tennessee.
The child's name was Messiah. But the magistrate ordered the name be changed to Martin. From what I read, the parents were in court due to a dispute over the child's last name. The magistrate ruled on both the child's first and last names. The magistrate explained that "Messiah" was a title and not a name, and that only one person earned the title. She went on to explain that the name could cause problems for the child if he were to grow up in the mostly Christian town.
Based on the reasoning of the Tennessee magistrate, parents should not be allowed to use titles to name their children. Those of you who named your child King, which was ranked the 256th most popular name in 2012, beware. Unless your child is of royal descent, heir to the throne, and the reigning monarch is on his or her deathbed, the name could be challenged.
Of course, the parent of a child named King who is challenged in court could always fall back on The Offspring Formally Known as King.
I'm more concerned with the magistrate noting the name could cause the child problems.
As for the Christian implications, I was under the impression naming a child after someone great was the highest compliment to that person. Isn't that why Great Aunt Lilly left her fortune to her grand niece, Lilly? Or why Great-grandma Hildegard felt slighted when hers was the only family name not given to any of her female descendants?
The name Jesus was the 101st most popular name in America in 2012. Messiah was ranked 387. These names just might be gaining in popularity because of the great reverence, admiration, and love new parents have for their religion and their savior. Therefore, I find it hard to believe that the name Messiah could offend people in a locale that is predominantly Christian.
If, on appeal, this decision is overturned, parents can breathe a sigh of relief. They will be able to resume, without fear of persecution, naming their children anything from Kaixin to Espn—yes, parents actually chose those names in 2012.
However, should the decision hold up, it will become much more difficult to name a baby. Based on this precedence, parents would have to avoid names that haven't been previously deemed names. They'd have to consider how the community in which they live will react to the name and whether it could cause the child to be subject to teasing. In addition, parents would have to weigh carefully who might be offended by the name.
On the bright side, should the ruling be upheld, Great-grandma Hildegard's name might actually make a comeback.
Micki Bare is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Courier-Tribune in Asheboro, N.C., and the author of Thurston T. Turtle children's books. She and her family live in North Carolina. Her e-mail address is email@example.com.


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Franco: a biography
BasicBooks, a division of HarperCollins, Oct 20, 1994 - Biography & Autobiography - 1002 pages
To many, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was Spain incarnate. This is a definitive portrait of the complex, elusive man credited with saving Spain from both the communists and Hitler, modernizing the country, and orchestrating the Spanish economic miracle of the 1960s. 32 photos.
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It is harder to write a biography of a dull man than an interesting one. This biography was very hard work, but is admirable in the depth of the portrait, and the research. Perforce, it is a history ... Read full review
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A definitive but dull biography of the least known of Europe's 20th-century dictators. Preston (International History/London School of Economics) makes some significant changes in the generally ... Read full review
Franco and the Second Republic 19311933
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Weight gain after breast cancer treatment
Dear OncoLink "Ask The Experts,"
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago in July. She underwent an axillary dissection along with a lumpectomy. She had aggressive chemotherapy for 9 months. She has been on Tamoxifen for about 3 months. She has gained about 65lbs since she had started the chemo. She went from a size 8 to a size 16. I would like to know how she is gaining so much weight and what we could do or whom we can talk to so we can make her better? Is it from the medications, or is it a side effect from the chemo. We have had blood work done and she has no cancer, no diabetes, and no lyme disease. We are stuck. She does not over eat so that is not the problem either. Please could you help us find the solution? Or give me someone who can help. We have gone to the primary doc, oncologist and the surgeon that did her surgery. None of them have any idea what is going on, they all say she is healthy.
Katrina Claghorn, MS, RD, registered dietitian at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, responds:
We are still trying to pin point the cause for the weight gain that often occurs in women who have received chemotherapy. Research has found that overeating is not a cause, but lack of activity may be a factor. (J Clin Oncol 2001;19:2367-2368,2381-2389). Loss of muscle and an increase in body fat may contribute to weight gain by lowering the metabolism.
Your mother should see a registered dietitian to have her diet and nutrition status assessed. The dietitian would review her medical history, medications, and food intake to determine if other factors may be contributing to the weight gain. She may be unknowingly consuming more calories than she is burning. The dietitian would also instruct her on a diet that would encourage weight loss. Exercise, especially strength training which develops muscle, is critical in this effort. However, have a physical therapist review any exercise regimen if you have had surgery for the breast cancer.


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Minnesota State's Zach Stepan survived the final cut and made the final 23-player roster for the U.S. Junior National Team, which is playing in the IIHF World Junior Championships this week in Malmo, Sweden.
Stepan, a freshman forward, is the first MSU player to play for Team USA in the championships and the second Maverick to participate in the tournament. Last year, Teddy Blueger, now a sophomore forward, played for Latvia.
Stepan was in the lineup on Thursday for Team USA's 5-1,tournament-opening victory over the Czech Republic. He was plus-1 and credited with one shot on goal. However, he departed the game in the third period with what was reported to be a lower-body injury. The report said his status is day to day.
Team USA will play Slovakia at 6:30 a.m. Friday. All U.S. games are available on the NHL Network and NHL.com.
The rest of the U.S. schedule is as follows (all times CST):
Sunday vs. Germany, 8 a.m.
Tuesday vs. Canada, 10:30 a.m.
If Team USA advances, the quarterfinals are Thursday, Jan. 2, with the semifinals on Saturday, Jan. 4, and the finals Sunday, Jan. 5.