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In a document, Crystalline Canopy Theory, emailed in the summer of 2013, Carl Baugh considers a canopy theory in which the earth before the flood was surrounded by a thin, rigid canopy. A canopy is some kind of a structure above the atmosphere and created in the beginning. Originally, canopy theories viewed the canopy as a source of water for the flood, but Baugh does not assume that this canopy was a significant source of water for the flood. This document is an evaluation of Baugh's theory.
Creationists have considered various canopy theories for some time. Baugh discusses a possible rigid canopy surrounding the earth. It is natural to consider a rigid canopy because of the Hebrew word for firmament, and because of ancient Hebrews' understanding of the firmament. One question to consider is whether man would have been trapped in the earth by such a canopy, or whether there were holes in the canopy for people to pass through. Also, would such a canopy have stayed in place, or would it have fallen to the earth or hit the earth?
Much of the material in this summary seems to be unscientific, but it has some plausible elements, and there may have been a thin canopy before the flood.
The Firmament
Baugh discusses ancient Hebrew references to a rigid firmament over the earth.
Ancient Firmament Concepts:
The Jewish historian Josephus gave a concise description of the Hebrew conception of the firmament: "After this, on the second day, He placed the heavens over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts; and determined that it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline firmament around it, and put together in a manner agreeable to the earth, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews."1
The Hebrew Targums and Rabbinin Literature offer further details: "And God made the firmament, its thickness being three fingers between the limits of the heavens and the waters of the ocean."2
The Hebrew Midrash Rabbah sheds further light: "And God said: 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters.' It is written, 'Who roofs Thine upper chambers with water, or Who layest the beams of Thine upper chambers in the waters'…When the Holy One, blessed be He, ordered, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,' the middle layer of water solidified, and the nether heavens and the uppermost heavens were formed."3 In this passage we have the Jewish distinction between the "solidified firmament" (in which energies would be received to bathe Earth) separating the "nether- heavens" (in which the birds would fly under the firmamental canopy), and the "uppermost heavens" (in which stellar bodies would be placed). Scripture holds to three (and only three) "heavens" (2 Corinthians 12:2).
Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ideas erroneously envision a "vault" in which the celestial bodies were located.4 In contradistinction, the Hebrew concept refers to the Earth (Josephus), the crystalline firmament (Josephus, Targums, and Midrash), and the expanded heavens (Josephus, Targums, and Midrash) as being distinctive entities, yet each interrelated and each containing water from the first day of creation. Of notable distinction was the crystalline firmament whose structure would benefit the Earth by stimulating the production of moisture and heavy dews (dews that sometimes condensed as light rain). (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 3)
Even the Hebrew may give some support for this concept of a firmament, but the Hebrew root for firmament need not be taken as its implied meaning, as Baugh does (Crystalline Canopy Theory, pages 2, 3).
The Jewish references about the firmament are interesting. The scientific information about the web of the universe and of the vacuum are also (Crystalline Canopy Theory, pp. 4-7). The latter "firmament" comes from science and has no problem, of course.
The Crystalline Canopy
Baugh discusses a rigid mineral canopy beginning on page 7. In general, this seems plausible. However, there are problems with some of the specific statements. Would electrolysis really operate as stated on page 7? Would hydrogen and oxygen really collect in the flux lines of earth's magnetic field as stated on pages 7 and 8? This does not seem correct, unless the hydrogen and oxygen were ionized.
Silicate Sugilite Canopy
Baugh suggests a canopy consisting of silicate sugilite. He quotes work of Boudreaux and Baxter:
Their work demonstrates that a 2-cm-thick Silicate Sugilite Crystalline Canopy could be suspended eleven miles above the pre-Flood Earth.5 The model envisions a 95% radius to the Earth under pre-Flood conditions. In further consideration, if we propose a 1-cm-thick canopy suspended ten miles above a pre-Flood Earth with a 95% radius, the energy required to keep it suspended is appreciably less. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 8)
What is sugilite? It would be helpful at least to give its chemical composition. Also, it should be made clearer that by a 95% radius you mean 95% of today's value.
This observation is interesting, and appears to be correct:
… earth's gravity does not exert significant force on the canopy. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 9)
Also, the following observation, which seems to be correct, deals with the issue of the canopy falling to the earth:
this balance of forces would have held the canopy in place. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 11)
Rotation of the atmosphere under the canopy is discussed on pages 11 and 12. Why wouldn't the canopy just rotate with the atmosphere, so that no force would be exerted by the rotation? Or is Baugh thinking about centrifugal force?
The greenhouse effect is discussed on page 12.
The Sun is optically transparent in the wavelength range of 8-12 μm, so if an IR wavelength of about 10μm is reflected into the atmosphere (any black-body radiation reflected from the earth would have to exceed 3.5μm at a temperature of 295 K), this would have the greatest potential for atmospheric radiative heating. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 12)
Why would the optical transparence of the sun matter here? Probably it is meant that the atmosphere is transparent. Maybe this summary should be shown to people with specialized scientific knowledge so that they can make it easier to understand. It might also be more clearly explained what is meant by an atmospheric shear force. Perhaps this is due to the atmosphere moving under a fixed canopy?
Baugh asserts that there would be no convective heating in the pre-flood earth:
Since there would have been no air currents presumed to have existed in the pre-Flood earth (there would have been no source for pressure differentials within the stable atmospheric environment, enclosed by the canopy), there would not have been any convective heating of the atmosphere. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 13)
It's not clear that there would have been no convective movements of the atmosphere. There would have been temperature differences between day and night, and between the equator and the poles, that could have led to winds in the atmosphere. Even the earth's rotation might have caused the atmosphere to move. However, it is reasonable to believe that the canopy would not have been under much stress, and would not have caused much heating of the atmosphere.
Other Canopy Candidates
Other candidates for the canopy are presented starting on page 16.
Benefits to Planet Earth
Baugh lists benefits to the plant earth of having a crystalline canopy. Many of these are plausible, but some are not. For example, this material does not sound scientific:
Living systems depend on the energy of this magnetic field; it affects everything from molecules to man.6 In view of the fact that cosmic energy squeezes and strengthens the EMF, and sends electrons toward the poles,7 an appropriate recharging of its energy would sustain its optimal moment. Short-wave radiation would be assimilated into the charging mechanism, while mid-range and long-wave spectra would be transferred through the canopy to the benefit of systems below. The crystalline canopy provides the mechanism to perennially sustain the field. Physical evidence indicates that our EMF was at least ten times as powerful in the past.8
Having lost the recharging mechanism at the time of the Flood, our EMF is now left to natural decay.9 10
Also, the fact that magnetism affects living things does not mean that they have to live in an external magnetic field at all. How could the magnetic field be "recharged" without an input of energy? It sounds like perpetual motion.
Baugh also states that the magnetic field would not have decayed in the original creation:
Both "vapor canopy" and "expanse firmament" postures essentially mandate that the Creator wrote decay of the magnetic field into the creation event. This is inconsistent with the Genesis description of man being created to live forever and the promise of Earth's inhabitants living forever on the restored planet. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 22)
It is possible that the magnetic field would not have decayed, for whatever reason, but an external magnetic field does not seem to be necessary for life.
Baugh claims that the canopy would amplify light passing through it:
The physical features of the crystalline canopy would give the structure potential as a photomultiplier. In the photomultiplier, dopants or impurities are denser than ordinary IR-sensitive material. More impurities mean electrons move more freely from ion to ion. The higher the field, the higher the probability of an electron ionizing another pair, setting off an avalanche until a single electron has set in motion 50,000 or more additional electrons. Using this effect in exploring the heavens, astronomers have detected galaxies in the deepest regions of space.11 Since the crystalline canopy would have a rather rigid structure, a problem of lens focusing has been anticipated. However, the eye of the trilobite created on Day Five possessed a fixed internal crystalline "optical-doublet" structure that corrected focusing problems, both near and far.12 (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 23)
This material does not make sense. However, a canopy might have had some amazing visual and auditory effects.
Baugh asserts that cell division is influenced by the electromagnetic field:
Proper cell division is primary in the optimal function of living systems, and this delicate procedure is synchronized by Earth's EMF.13 (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 25)
This quote doesn't seem right. There are body cycles regulated by day and night, for example, but the EMF of the earth has little or nothing to do with cell division. However, magnetic fields may indeed have some beneficial effect on the growth of plants or even on animals.
Baugh makes some statements about the earth reducing in volume:
After the Flood the Earth expanded in diameter during the days of Peleg.14 This expansion was due to the continued disruption of radioactive elements in the planet's structured interior.15 In an attempt to determine Earth's original size, our environmental engineers have approximated the planet's original radius to be 95% of its current measurement.16 (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 25)
This material does not appear to be scientifically reasonable, and needs more explanation. Does Baugh mean that heating of the earth made it larger?
Baugh discusses benefits of a higher atmospheric pressure before the flood:
Higher ratios of oxygen17 and carbon dioxide18 in the enhanced atmospheric pressure further multiplied the benefits under these optimal conditions. Hyperbaric oxygen specialist William Fife (Texas A & M University, A.P. Beutel Health Center) has run extensive laboratory experiments using enhanced atmospheric pressure. Applying appropriate oxygen under these conditions, the entire blood plasma is quickly saturated with oxygen.19 20 National Geographic reports the phenomenal overnight healing of an aquanaut who cut his hand during long-term exposure to elevated atmospheric pressure and elevated oxygen.21 Living under these conditions human beings would receive adequate oxygen supply to the fetal brain, providing retention of all 200 billion brain cells that are genetically produced during fetal development. Normal humans would thus be provided with optimal functioning abilities, as well as the phenomenal gifts of the savant.
Elevation of oxygen ratio, and its saturation in a fluid medium, explains the large size of some insects in the fossil record.22 This further solves the long-standing dinosaur mystery of their small lungs being able to sustain tremendous bulk sizes.23 Due to the effects of Boyles Law, the water table was saturated with free oxygen. Anaerobic bacteria would not thrive under these conditions, and marine life could grow to gargantuan sizes, such as those found in the fossil record.
Research physicist Sherwood Idso has found that plants, when enriched with more CO2, "grow bigger and better, much like the plants of past geological epochs of biological prominence…[T]he efficiency with which plants use water to produce organic matter, essentially doubles with a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Moreover, for a tripling of the amount of CO2 in the air, it nearly triples!"24 Researcher Suan-Chin Wong grew cotton plants under normal ambient partial pressure of CO2, and under enriched partial pressure of CO2. Thirty-five days after planting, the total dry weights of high CO2-grown plants were 2 to 3.5 fold greater than plants grown in normal ambient CO2.25 (Crystalline Canopy Theory, pages 26, 27)
It is plausible that higher atmospheric pressure would have many benefits, and might explain the giant fossils. However, there could be other reasons for this higher pressure than the earth being smaller in the past.
Mechanism for the flood
A plausible candidate as a trigger mechanism in disrupting Earth's internal aligned nuclear elements is the interaction of simple water molecules, acted upon by microwave radiation. Vast reservoirs of water have existed, and some still exist, deep within Earth's structure.26 If God used microwave radiation of sufficient intensity in bodies of water, vast amounts of radioactive elements would be jostled from their aligned positions, and the Earth would melt in designated areas while cracking at the surface like a giant eggshell.27 This is due to the specific nature of microwaves,28 and the unique response of the water molecule to such radiation.29 (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 27)
It is not clear why microwave radiation is specified here, but some mechanism of heating could have caused the flood. It is not plausible that microwave radiation would have affected radioactive elements in any significant way.
Baugh seems to accept some features of Walt Brown's theory (Crystalline Canopy Theory, pages 27, 28). He also states that tidal waves could have had an influence during the flood in depositing sediments.
This quote is very interesting:
The mechanism that triggered the Flood was the voice of God in judgmental disruption of Earth's internal structure.30 This mechanism simultaneously disrupted the raqiya in its structure as a localized microcosm (canopy suspended over Earth) and as a universal macrocosm (expanse of space). "The skies sent out a sound."31 … (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 30)
Perhaps the voice of God did somehow heat the earth and cause the flood. But how does this relate to the microwaves mentioned earlier?
Objections to the Crystalline Canopy Theory
Baugh discusses some objections to the canopy theory. One of these has to do with how it would be held in place. In fact, the canopy would be held in place by the atmosphere under it. If it moved to one side, then a lot of air would be pushed further from the earth, increasing the total potential energy of the system. A particle inside a hollow sphere feels no net gravitational force from it. The same calculation shows that a hollow sphere feels no net gravitational attraction to what's inside it, that is, the gravitational forces cancel out. Also, because the air pressure is about 15 pounds per square inch but the canopy would weigh much less than this, the force of the air might be significant on the canopy. Another point is that the canopy could have compressed the air somewhat, increasing air pressure under it before the flood.
Baugh attempts to counter this objection by an unusual argument:
Another objection centers on a mechanism to hold the crystalline firmament in place. References cited in this paper list various thin ice cloud formations observed to be currently suspended over Earth, mostly near the polar regions where the EMF is concentrated in stronger flux lines. Some of these ice formations actually hold metallic elements, such as iron, in suspension with thin ice clouds. Emphasis is placed on the strength of the magnetic field which could readily hold such a thin canopy in place. (Crystalline Canopy Theory, page 29)
This material appears to be unscientific, but as mentioned above, the atmosphere itself would hold the canopy in place.
In general, there may have been a canopy around the earth at the creation. It may have had various benefits, but it would not have supplied a significant amount of water for the flood, unless the laws of nature were different in the beginning. There are and always will be questions about the nature of such a canopy, but in evaluating matters having to do with the creation, we should realize our limitations:
The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."32 Only the Creator knows the specific details involved in the creation, but it is a gratifying pursuit to "think God's thoughts after Him.
1 Josephus, Book I, chapter I
2 John Bowers, from P.S. Jonathan translation, The Targums and Rabbinin Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 95
3 Midrash Rabbah, Chapter IV (Bereshith), p. 27
4 R. Laird Harris, et al, op cit, p. 862
5 Ibid., p. 116
6 A.P. Dubrov, "The Geomagnetic Field and Life," Plenum Press, New York, 1978, p. 61
7 Marcia Bartusiak, "The Sunspot Syndrome," Discover, Nov. 1989, p. 46
8 D. Russell Humphreys, "Earth's Magnetic Field is Young," Impact, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, No. 242
9 Thomas G. Barnes, "Dwindling Resource, Evidence of a Young Earth," Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 170-171
10 K.L. McDonald and R.H. Gunst, "An Analysis of the Earth's Magnetic Field from 1935 to 1965," ESSA Technical Report IER 46-IES, July, 1967, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, Table 3, p 14
11 Eric J. Lerner, "Solid-State Photomultiplier," NASA Tech Briefs / Aerospace America, November 1988, pp. 40,41
12 Levi-Setti, Riccardo, Trilobites, University of Chicago Press, 1993
13 Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric, William Morrow, New York, 1985, p. 248
14 Genesis 10:25
15 H.G. Owen, "Has the Earth Increased in Size?" New Concepts in Global Tectonics, Texas Tech University Press, Lubbock, 1992, p. 289
16 Neal Teague, Environmental Atmospheric Calculations, Personal Correspondence, Sept. 26, 1994
17 Robert A. Berner and Gary P. Landis, "Gas Bubbles in Fossil Amber as Possible Indication of the Major Gas Composition of Ancient Air," Science, Vol. 239, p. 1406
18 J.C.G. Walker, "Atmospheric Evolution," Science, Vol. 230, p. 164
19 William Fife, Personal Correspondence, March 29, 1995
20 Arthur J. Vander, James H. Sherman, and Dorothy S. Luciano, Human Physiology: The Mechanics of Body Function, p. 315
21 Jacques-Yves Cousteau, "At Home in the Sea," National Geographic, Washington, DC, 1964, p. 496
22 Jon Harrison, "Air's Oxygen Content Constrains Insect Growth," Science News, Vol. 170, October 21, 2006, p. 270
23 Kirby Anderson, "Lung Capacity of Dinosaurs Small," Personal Correspondence from Joseph Dillow, August 22, 1977
24 Sherwood B. Idso, "Carbon Dioxide Can Revitalize the Planet," OPEC Bulletin, March 1992, pp. 22-27
25 Suan-Chin Wong, "Elevated Atmospheric Partial Pressure of CO2 and Plant Growth," Photosynthesis Research, Springer Netherlands, Vol. 23, Number 2, Feb., 1990, pp. 171-180
26 Carl Zimmer, "The Ocean Within," Discover, Oct., 1994, p. 20
27 Jonathon Weiner, "Earth's Surface Cracked like a Giant Eggshell," Bantam Books, New York, 1986, p. 31
28 Thomas Klenck, "Microwave Over," Popular Mechanics, Sept., 1989, p. 78
29 "Microwaves," Discover, Nov., 1989, p. 57
30 Psalm 46:6
31 Psalm 77:17
32 Deuteronomy 29:29


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With its residential programs divided into junior (ages 7-13) and teen (ages 14-16) sessions, Vacamas offers a broad range of activities that includes canoeing, backpacking, camping, music, dance, theater and leadership training. A 50-acre private lake provides ample opportunities for waterfront pursuits. Residential camp fees are determined along a sliding scale.
|Camp Vacamas
|West Milford, NJ
|Year-round Contacts
|Program Focuses & Features
|Aquatics, Archery, Baseball, Basketball, Bicycle Tours, Boating, Canoeing, Climbing Wall, Conservation, Cooking, Crafts, Creative Writing, Dance, Drama, Ecology, Environmental Science, Exploration, Farming, Fine Arts, Fishing, Health/Weight Reduction, Hiking, Mountain Biking, Mountain Trips, Mountaineering, Music, Outdoor Education, Rock Climbing, Ropes Course, Soccer, Softball, Survival Training, Swimming, Volleyball, Wilderness Camping, Wilderness Canoeing, Woodcraft, Writing/Journalism
|Grade Range (rising grades)
|Age Range
|Residential — Coed Ages 7-17; Day — Coed 5-14
|Application Deadline
|Elly Newberry, Director
|Day Fee
|$250-2000, 1-8 weeks.
|Year Established
|Vacamas Programs for Youth
|Dates & Sessions
|June-Aug; 3 sessions, 3 weeks long

subset: commoncrawl


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New Hampshire is in the Northeastern United States and Northern New England. It borders the states of Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont as well as the Canadian Province of Quebec. New Hampshire is a well known vacation destination for its seashore, the Lakes Region, as well as the White Mountains.
Following are the RV campgrounds in the State of New Hampshire:
Alexandria, NH
Alton, NH
Ashland, NH
Barrington, NH
Bath, NH
Bethlehem, NH
Bridgewater, NH
Bristol, NH
Brookline, NH
Campton, NH
Canaan, NH
Center Ossipee, NH
Chichester, NH
Chocorua, NH
Colebrook, NH
Conway, NH
Coontoocook, NH
E. Wakefield, NH
Epsom, NH
Errol, NH
Exeter, NH
Franconia, NH
Freedom, NH
Glen, NH
Hampstead, NH
Hampton, NH
Hancock, NH
Harts Location, NH
Henniker, NH
Hillsboro, NH
Hinsdale, NH
Holderness, NH
Jefferson, NH
Laconia, NH
Lancaster, NH
Lebanon, NH
Lee, NH
Lincoln, NH
Lisbon, NH
Littleton, NH
Loudon, NH
Madbury, NH
Madison, NH
Meredith, NH
Milton, NH
Moultonboro, NH
New Hampton, NH
Newfields, NH
Newport, NH
North Conway, NH
North Hampton, NH
North Stratford, NH
North Woodstock, NH
Orford, NH
Ossipee, NH
Pittsburg, NH
Plaistow, NH
Rindge, NH
Rochester, NH
Rumney, NH
Salisbury, NH
Sandown, NH
Shelburne, NH
South Hampton, NH
Strafford, NH
Swanzey, NH
Tamworth, NH
Twin Mountain, NH
W. Ossipee, NH
Warren, NH
Weare, NH
Wentworth, NH
Winchester, NH
Wolfeboro, NH
Woodstock, NH


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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Meaningful Slowdown In Asia & in other Emerging Economies
"In Asia and in other emerging economies we have a very meaningful slowdown in economic activity. I wouldn't call all the emerging economies being in recession yet, but it's just very little growth in present time in real terms and in some cases it has been a downturn, a meaningful downturn, like say in retail sales in Hong Kong or in Singapore … so I don't believe that the global economy is healing, all that was in the context of massive interventions with fiscal and monetary measures by the authorities." Faber says "the bigger the government is, the less dynamic the economy can be and the less growth there will be." He also offers his thoughts on Hong Kong, and Japan's "Abenomics".
Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions of the stock market and futures markets around the world.Dr. Doom also trades currencies and commodity futures like Gold and Oil.
Posted by Nicole Bourbaki
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zE.identify won't update organization답변함
I'm using zE.identify from the web widget api and it sets the organization for the user, but only for the first time.
If i send a second ticket with a different organization, it won't change the current value
If i manually delete the organization from the user profile as an agent, the zE.identify won't set a new value when the user sends another ticket.
How can i fix this?
1 댓글
Hey Luis, this is expected behavior. There's a similar thread here that explains further:
Basically, if the user already exists within Zendesk we don't set the organization.
댓글을 남기려면 로그인하세요.


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November Predictions - Best Animated Feature Film
Big Hero 6
How to Train Your Dragon 2
The Lego Movie
Song of the Sea
The Tale of Princess Kaguya
Other Contenders - The Book of Life, The Boxtrolls, The Penguins of Madagascar, Rocks in My Pockets, Rio 2, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Postman Pat: The Movie
Commentary - Big Hero 6 landed squarely in the Oscar race, with great reviews, and a great opening and second box office weekend. That being said, it may not be able to unseat the two early favorites, which honestly look like they will have more critical support going into the race, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Lego Movie. Either way, three big, well-received studio flicks will make for an interesting race. But we should also not forget GKids, who may not have been able to unseat one of the big studios yet, but continues to make an incredible impact on the Oscar race. So far, we know that The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a huge critical hit, and animators in the nomination stage will eat it up. But there is still that last slot that could be tricky. The Book of Life and The Boxtrolls have landed well, but neither has been a big enough hit to have a guaranteed spot. Early contenders Mr. Peabody and Sherman and Rio 2, as well as the upcoming Penguins of Madagascar, are all outside possibilities. But I am going with the other major GKids contender Song of the Sea. They have proven before they can get one more in, and I think they will do it again.
November Predictions - Best Foreign Language Film
Force Majeure (Sweden)
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Mommy (Canada)
Winter Sleep (Turkey)
Other Contenders - Wild Tales (Argentina), Two Days, One Night (Belgium), Timbuktu (Mauritania), White God (Hungary), Beloved Sisters (Germany), The Liberator (Venezuela), The Dark Valley (Austria), Living is Easy With Eyes Closed (Spain), A Few Cubic Meters of Love (Afghanistan), 1001 Grams (Norway), The Japanese Dog (Romania), The Way He Looks (Brazil), Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Israel), Invasion (Panama)
Commentary - This is always a tricky category. There are so many contenders, and not that many precursors of significance to help us sort it out. So a lot of my guesses are based on reviews out of film festivals at this point, which could significantly change as the critics weigh it (although in terms of Oscar, they can sometimes be way off). We know with the European Film Award nominations that Ida (which I recently saw) and Force Majeure are going to be the European favorites this year. I think Ida is the clear front runner at this point, as it has the most press, has already been released on DVD, and has a story line that goes back to WWII and the Holocaust, a subject voters eat up in this category. Beyond that I really don't know. From Canada Mommy hit well at the fall festivals, but could have a subject matter that is out of the scope of Academy voters, and Leviathan and Winter Sleep have had decent runs so far. But films like Wild Tales, Timbuktu, and Two Days, One Night, with Oscar winner Marion Cotillard are sure to grab some voters. And honestly, that's it. I know that I am probably only going to get 2 or 3 of these right when it comes down to the final five, and I will be waiting and not placing too much hope on my predictions, until the surprise hits us Oscar nomination morning.
November Predictions - Best Documentary Feature
I will come back to this category once the finalists are announced, because if last year is any indication, early predictions would be futile. Check back soon!!


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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Though yesterday was no weirder than you'd expect.
People showed up for work about an hour after I got that call. I told the chief, he sent me over there with a couple of officers to investigate. I could tell the whole place was worried, but I just tried to keep a cool head.
Eric lives in a house on the west end of town, not too far from where Jessica Albright's family lives. It's more of a two-story shack than anything else, but it's pretty homely, at least, on the outside. Blue paint, green shutters, even a little garden out front. I never took Eric for the type, but then again, you learn something new every day.
We tried not to make a scene. We just went up to the door and I knocked. They stood on either side, ready to go in on my mark.
"Eric? It's Zeke, you home?"
No answer. I open the door, my gun's out, and we all but storm inside.
Eric's place was a wreck. The couch was overturned and the stuffing was torn out of one of the cushions. The TV was smashed up, the vase was shattered, and almost every single picture that was hanging on the wall had the glass smashed or was hanging crooked. The only picture that wasn't in shambles was the one on his table, the one of him and his old partner, Mickey Scott. I'm still not sure why it was the only one untouched.
I must have searched the entire first floor twice before I moved upstairs. The rest of downstairs was just as big a wreck. The kitchen lost every single dish it had had all over the floor, the bathroom was just unrecognizable (not to mention flooding somewhat), and the dryer in the laundry room had actually been overturned. Over-fucking-turned. Now that's something I've never seen before.
But no Eric.
His bedroom was a mess. The mattress was flipped so that it was leaning against the wall, the springs on the underside twisted and broken. His dresser was rummaged through, and clothes were all over the place. His alarm clock was on the floor in hundreds of little pieces, and the mirror on his door was cracked so bad you couldn't pick your reflection out of it.
The whole place is just a fucking mess. Some of it is just too extreme. This wasn't a robbery or a kidnapping, somebody waged the Vietnam War Part Two in here and bombed the shit out of it. And still, no sign of Eric. No wallet, keys were found under one of his jackets, no visible sign of him anywhere.
Something new happened here. None of this matches the patterns we've been seeing so far. The other kids were taken with almost no effort, and yet here it looks like a fucking rhinoceros charged through here to grab him. Conaghan couldn't have done all this without help...so who else did he have do this?
I told one of the officers to call the station and get more people over here, and I told the other one to start marking outside, make sure no one decided to come snooping. The first one immediately took off, but the second one just stood there looking up at the ceiling like he had mental issues. I snapped my fingers in front of his face to bring him back down to Earth, and he just looked at me for a minute and then went right back to looking up at the ceiling again. Annoyed, I looked up to see what had him so damn transfixed...and saw what was quickly becoming the most redundant part of this whole fucking case. A damn message:
Yeah, I am officially getting sick and tired of that fucking line. If I wanted a preacher's quote, I'd go back to church.
Well, at least it wasn't ALL blood writing this time. But the letters...assuming my memory hasn't gotten fuzzy, because I haven't thought about it much since we discovered it... those are the letters from Albright's diary, right? The capitals from that freaky-ass rhyme-thing she wrote? Some of it's written in what I'm guessing is paint or tar or something...and then the specific letters and the last line are written in blood (for some reason, there's no color options on this damn thing, so I just bolded them so that it would be easier to understand).
I guess there was a message in there after all. Though I don't if it's intentional or just coincidence.
The rest of the department got there and immediately got to work, taking pictures, dusting for prints, all that. Someone was going to take a blood sample, but based off of experience I believed it was safe to assume we weren't going to get anything off of it. Lizzie got here, and when she saw the writing on the ceiling she just gave me that look I knew all too well.
This just got personal.
I'm back at the office now. Eric's face is being printed on a million "Missing" posters as we speak. I look over at his desk, thinking about the conversation we had had barely two weeks ago...and wondering how the hell he got targeted.
He wasn't a threat. He wasn't a major player. He was just doing his job.
And I know what I'm going to hear; how this coincides with the latest Marble Hornets entry. Yeah, well, fuck you. You're saying Eric was kidnapped so that it could be in sync with a fucking video? Kiss my ass. I don't know how you'd plan something like this around a fucking video; especially one that just got put up hours before.
Eric is missing. I don't care what happened in the stupid entry. I care about finding him and the others.
So Slender Heads, piss the fuck off.
I'm finishing this entry before I get angry.
I'll write again when I know more.
9 comments:
Holy shit, I wanna see some jackass brought to justice Zeke! Do you have any folks over there who are cryptographers? I bet that those jumbled letters are a code and have a key somewhere. This man was sane days ago. No way he went batshit insane enough to just put a jumble of letters on the ceiling. It's gotta mean something.ReplyDelete
Do you guys have a Behavioral Unit around? You might want top get them to construct a profile, even if it's not Conaghan, you'll know some behavior to look for.
Stay safe and watch your back.
You could try constantly calling his phone, tracing it, and finding where he might POSSIBLY be.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 21, 2010 at 9:27 PM
Eli said it already but I could swear the weird jumbled letters we've seen from a few people are actually a letter scramble with a key. I could have sworn my English teacher gave it to me years ago as an extra credit thing or at least one very similar, it's like a key but half of it is scrambled too it took us days to figure out from what I recall. You may want to see what you can glean from it because a random jumble of letters from Eric seems strange for a man who was sane days ago. Unless he was involved without knowing somehow.ReplyDelete
Obviously we've tried tracing his cell phone. Every obvious step in the book is being thrown back in our faces on this case; we're not getting a lock.ReplyDelete
Eric isn't insane. He was fine. Sure, he was sick as a dog, but nothing showing insanity. Someone else had to have done this.
What does this guy want to tell us in these letters? The bolded ones seem to narrow it down...anagram, maybe? I hate anagrams, I can never figure them out.
Eric helped out with the evidance, I think he and Lizzie were going over a few things together. I'm going to go looking through his desk today, see if I can find anything.
Have you reached out to state or federal resources? I know a lot of departments like to keep this within a department, especially when it's one of their own, but fresh eyes might make a difference. And you need to hit this up quickly.ReplyDelete
Again, if this guy is so bold as to attack a detective, in his own house ... Well, I'm sure you don't want him to get away with it.
Has the media gotten wind of it? I'm sure they've been reporting on the teenagers, but do they know about Eric? In the case of missing teenagers, they could help, but I doubt they'd be useful in this situation.
We're trying to keep it as small as we can. No one wants to hear how a detective working the case has now become a victim. It makes the situation go from bad to worse real quick. Chief can't avoid the press forever, though...ReplyDelete
Yeah, the chief or the mayor or whoever is gonna have the get the FBI in here somewhere.ReplyDelete
I don't understand! :(ReplyDelete
I haven't seen the video, or any of Marble Hornets, really. Maybe I should.


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Many of the appliances you use at home use gas as the powering fuel because it's more economical than electricity, but what you might ignore is that they can pose a risk to your health. The carbon monoxide resulted from burning gas can be toxic and even deadly in case of long term exposure. To determine whether or not the gas based appliances you use at home are threatening you health, here are some details to pay attention to and some solutions to solve potential problems.
The hidden danger
What makes carbon monoxide so dangerous is the fact that you can't smell, see, or taste it so you won't even know you are being affected until you detect the signs. These include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, headaches, loss of consciousness, and can lead to death in more severe cases. Most people don't even notice that their gas appliances are making them feel sick and they often attribute the symptoms to other health problems.
The risk in indoor gas based appliances
The indoor appliances that work on gas, such as the heaters, the dryers or the stoves release carbon monoxide into the air and inhaling it can make you feel sick. Appliances that work very well are not dangerous but even the slightest malfunction can increase the level of CO released into the air. Gas heaters are particularly dangerous because they create CO in large amounts, given the long operating time. You should never sleep in a room with a gas heater on and you must ensure proper ventilation so your health will not be at risk. Never leave a stove unsupervised and try to limit the use of gas based appliances although they are more convenient.
The risk outdoors
Outdoor appliances that work on gas can also pose a risk to your health, although their emissions spread into the air. If you are using a gas lawn mower or a gas snow blower and you experience any of the symptoms, the answer could be in the carbon monoxide emissions. Many cases of gas poisoning have been reported by people using gas tools so the outdoor risk is as high as the indoor one. Check your lawn mower and snow blower regularly to make sure they work properly and choose quality models that will run smoothly.


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The Fours Walls of early modern European military historians
For those familiar with the early Reformation, you might recall one of Martin Luther's classic criticisms of the Catholic Church, from his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Respecting the Reformation of the Christian Estate (1520): "The Romanists have, with great adroitness, drawn three walls round themselves, with which they have hitherto protected themselves, so that no one could reform them, whereby all Christendom has fallen terribly." I'll spare you a description of the Catholic fortifications, and of the tactics Luther used to besiege this fortified opponent. But I won't spare you my maladroit use of this metaphor to introduce my own version of the four walls that separate early modern European military historians from each other. There are, I would argue, four significant obstacles that tend to isolate EMEMHians, and which make it treacherous for us to overgeneralize beyond our particular area of focus. Like a trace italienne fortification, knowledge of EMEMH is protected by four defensive layers. Gaining access to the secrets within requires besieging and breaking past these formidable barriers.
The First Wall: A Focus on a Particular Country
Even today, early modern European military historians still tend to focus on a single country, mostly either France or England. Gaining knowledge of the field of EMEMH requires you first penetrate this veritable covered way. Mutual understanding between EMEMHians is hindered first and foremost by a language barrier, which requires charging up the glacis and breaking through the linguistic palisades. Having successfully prepared an assault on the covered way with an initial bombardment of foreign language classes and paleography lessons, an invader from another country then finds himself confronted with the defenders therein, hundreds of culturally-specific events, individuals, and structures, all armed with their own histories and patterns that require a concerted effort to wrestle into comprehension. Each new allusion and curious reference in your sources is yet another traverse that needs to be passed and secured on your way to understanding a country's military history.
The Second Wall: A Focus on a Particular War
Capturing the widely-arcing covered way around a fortress only provides you a hazy overview of the fortifications still to penetrate. The chronological boundaries between one war and the next serve as yet another obstacle, a moat or ditch, if you will. Inconveniently for historians like myself, Louis XIV fought five majors wars, about 34 years worth, each with enough information for a scholarly career. Thus we find most specialists of the era from c. 1660-c. 1715 devoting their attention to one of these wars, or perhaps specializing in either the early, middle, or late reign. To cross this yawning chasm requires a facility with an overview of each war as a whole: its diplomatic and political origins, the grand strategic objectives of the belligerents, its overall narrative, and its resolution. Usually the ditch is wet, and filled with flotsam and jetsam from previous wars. Yet more obstacles to drain away and build your fascine bridge-of-understanding on top of.
The Third Wall: A Focus on a Particular Theater of Operations
The multiple theaters in which military operations were conducted are a third type of boundary the generalizing EMEMHian must overcome. At the time most theater boundaries were easily crossed, but for historians these different theaters are individual ravelins within the outworks, each one requiring its own conquest. A country (or its most successful commander) might concentrate their attention in one specific geographical outwork, a massive crownwork to be occupied. The ditches between such theatrical outworks are further policed by the structure of many archives, where Flanders documents are physically separated from those on Italy, and so on. Thus the larger wars, e.g. the 9YW and WSS, witnessed sustained operations in four major European theaters, sub-theaters within each. Each had a unique combinations of nationalities; their operational constraints (divergent topography, climate, demographies, and economic and transportation networks) operated as yet another réduit to overcome. No surprise that the operational arcs of different theaters were often, well, different.
The Fourth Wall: A Focus on a Particular Level of War
Most works on EMEMH are also isolated from a broader readership by their focus on a particular topic. When scholars have managed to overcome the first three barriers to greater early modern understanding (the chronological impediment more easily breached than the national), they are still confronted by numerous studies that focus on one particular aspect of the war. Thus we have works on battles, on infantry tactics and drill, on cavalry, on sieges, on artillery, on small war, on logistics, on financial administration, on army administration, on the political assimilation of frontier provinces, on military-civilian interactions, and so on. Most of the detailed research on these subjects has only appeared over the past decade or two, and rarely are all the topical components integrated into any one of them, and even less likely for more than one country.
These four walls resist historical attempts to truly understand a single war, much less the military history of a single country. These specializations – national, chronological, geographical and topical – are necessary, but so is our need to break them down. The shortcomings of most attempts to study war X from the perspective of country Y (which is, most often, actually a study of the single theater Z) can be illustrated by the average Confederate (i.e. Allied) army during the 9YW and WSS. In Flanders, this average army would comprise units from the United Provinces, Britain (England and Scotland), Spain, Germany, and Bavaria. In the WSS we can occasionally add Imperial and Austrian troops, while subtracting the Spanish and Bavarians. Some of these units, and their commanders, would shift from one theater to another, just as defenders might readjust their personnel from one outwork to another during a siege. To get the full picture of who these Allied troops were and what they did requires plowing through archives (and god-awful handwriting) in multiple countries, in English, French, Dutch, Spanish and German tongues. And we'd have to repeat the same siege operations in order to delve into the operations of another theater, and then again for another war.
Acknowledging these walls is not necessarily a criticism of the work many EMEMHians (including myself) have undertaken. It is, however, a warning about how far we should generalize from our particular particulars. Perhaps it's even a call to action. Integrating together countries and themes and wars remains, I would suggest, the next challenge for early modern European military historians.
So if you wondered what our SMH panel on Anglo-Germanic relations was like (without the strained fortress metaphor), you just got a peek. And yes, I did complete my post-conference checklist.
Once again, the French take us Anglos to visualization school
I've commented before on how impressed I am when I read old French history from the 1970s (e.g. here). I just happened across another example as I tracked down a classic book that I'd seen cited on occasion, but had never actually looked at. And this is what I find on page 144, a map indicating how widely commentary on the 1214 battle of Bouvines spread in various medieval accounts:
This map includes a few different point and area symbols (mostly nominal and ordinal data), and is, to my mind, as interesting for the questions it raises as what 'argument' it makes. But that's what good visualizations should do, encourage us to dive into the details.
And if you really want to know what I think about visualizing historical information, and have an extra hour or two, I pontificated on the subject here.
* Yes, I know, it's the English 1990 translation and not the 1973 French original. But I don't have a massive research library at my beck and call, so it'll do.
When it rains, it pours
Early modern European military history (EMEMH) is a small field. Or so I thought, until I started to dust off my old grad school projects (late 1990s) on the French side of the Louis XIV's last war. Then I discover, as I've already detailed, that there are quite a few French scholars now interested in the subject.
So it's only fitting that, as I draft the final few pages of my book chapter on siege capitulations (only 18 years in the making!), I discover yet another scholar (not-French) interested in this particular subject:
Swart, Erik. "Defeat, Honour and the News: The Case of the Fall of Breda (1625) and the Dutch Republic." European History Quarterly 46, no. 1 (January 2016): 6–26.
2015: The Year of the Military Revolution in French historiography
Yet more Xmas gifts. But at a price.
Oh, don't worry – I'll spare you the checklist, but I'll belabor you instead with what I've learned (and why I didn't learn it sooner) over the past year.
But if you're a busy person, the TL;DR version: there are a lot of French scholars of early modern military history, particularly of Louis XIV's reign. And I'm giving you a bibliography, for free.
Read More…
Now it's your turn
The first week of the Spring semester, and as usual I'm behind already. I'm teaching the Historical Research and Writing course, a senior seminar on Late Stuart England, and my Religion, War and Peace in Early Modern Europe – tomorrow's lesson: the Old Testament!
So I'll just throw this out there until I have time to compose a real post:
A colleague wants to know what the latest consensus is (if one exists) about the old saw that British red coats in the American Revolution stood up proud and tall in nice straight linear formations while American militiamen fired at them behind trees and rocks with their rifles.
I've read Spring's With Zeal and With Bayonets Only and Grenier's First American Way of War and a couple of the recent works on Native American warfare, but since several skulkers focus on the American Revolutionary era and since I have enough trouble keeping up with works on Europe between 1650 and 1750 while doing my own research, I thought I'd check to see what the current status of the topic is. So for this post only, consider this EMEMH blog temporarily a EMAMH blog.
Comment away!
Again with the historiography
Beginning of the school year again – sigh. This semester I'm teaching more Western Civ and Tudor/Stuart England.
As I write papers, I often find myself wondering how much coverage should be dedicated to the historiography. As I've said before, I never really know what the vast unwashed masses of historians think about a particular subject – only what a much smaller subset of them have written. And there is always the disturbing possibility that unpublished historians might apply common sense to a topic, which could easily contradict the published literature. Scientists would argue that even negative results need to be published, though it doesn't sound like they follow their own advice very often. Thus you often wonder whether you're wasting your time arguing for something that is "obvious" to the silent majority. I haven't yet figured out which is worse: that the effort of your labors is greeted with a rebuttal, or with a shrug?
This uncertainty is particularly true with topical questions. It's easy, for example, to find accounts and explanations of various events, but it's much harder to find more than a single "in-depth" (definitions vary) analysis of a particular thematic subject, say, the "laws" of Vauban-era siegecraft, or a longitudinal study of a subject (beyond a single war or reign), or most topics in EMEMH for that matter. What's a scholar to do?
First, I think we need to be a bit more systematic with our historiography. Unfortunately, publishers (in theory at least) don't really want us to do this. If the Internet is to be believed, some editors see historiographical discussion as a waste of ink; undoubtedly that would be the only thing stopping my future book on Marlburian battle from rocketing up the New York Times Bestsellers list. To seriously analyze a historiography would also require scanning it all in and OCRing it before analyzing the text. Some might construe this as violating copyright. But, as physicists like to joke, let's start by assuming a spherical cow.
The most common practice seems to be for a historian to summarize the literature in some multiple of a paragraph or page – this has become a veritable ritual in any literature involving the Military Revolution, for example. Summarizing a historiography in your own prose is sometimes necessary, but it is the ultimate in the "Trust-me-I'm-an-expert" game that we academics play. I hate that game.
What else can we do? We could start by including specific quotes from other published historians. Admittedly this is often difficult because we're a long-winded lot, and a narration of the disputations can get pretty boring: "X said A, Y said not-A, Z says B…". Not ideal, but we could at least throw in a few key phrases from an author or two. It helps if the historian we're quoting is actually making an argument, with a clearly-stated thesis.
Perhaps our beloved word cloud could give us a hand, or we could look at which words are highly associated with each other (collocation). Heck, make a collage of all the keywords used to describe a topic. Maybe we need to do some network analysis on citations, like they do in the social/natural sciences – citation analysis, bibliometrics and the like. There are even some software packages that apparently do that. Just do something a bit more systematic.
Another option is to explicitly discuss the rhetoric used by other historians – Keegan's "rhetoric of battle history" (or my "rhetoric of siege history"), for example. Are there consistent terms used to describe/explain a subject? Are there specific examples/authors/sources that are constantly cited? Are there particular metaphors that historians use when explaining an event or phenomenon? For example, what does it suggest that traditional military historians compare early modern sieges so often to dances, theater, and chess? And do these descriptors and metaphors vary from author to author (or country to country), or change over time?
And then there's the thorny question of when to stop collecting more historiography. Undoubtedly even the most minutely-focused monograph might pass judgment on all sorts of historical conventional wisdom. Ideally, we have all those secondary sources text-searchable, either in Google Books or in your own database. But I think it's best to start with certain types of works, those that have the most impact. Thus, we should focus foremost on accessible works. So start by analyzing works that are still in print or have been reissued. Look at works written by prolific authors, e.g. I came to Vaubanian siege warfare via Christopher Duffy's Russia's Military Way to the West. (This applies to primary sources as well as secondary.) The most systematic method would be to scan a bunch of notes/bibliographies from other secondary sources and see which titles pop up over and over. (I'll leave it to others to decide whether that's a "transformative" use or not.)
We should also look for works that are dedicated to the topic, using the most common synonyms ("laws of war") and important peoples' names (Marlborough, Vauban…). And we really need to pay attention to titles that are just begging to be cited by everyone and their brother: The Art of Warfare in the Age of _____. Knowing where to look also matters on the micro level. If you want to know what an author thinks about sieges 'in the abstract' for example, look in the art of war sections dedicated to summarizing the subject. You might be surprised at how different their abstract view is from the picture that emerges from the details in their narrative, or from the data in their own appendices.
However we choose to address historiography, we need to give our readers a sense of how many authors we are discussing. Has one solitary historian discussed the topic (and if so, does it get cited a lot?), or is it a topic touched on by most works in the field? If more than a couple of authors are involved, it's helpful to group them into various schools or positions. And it wouldn't hurt to explicitly relate the size of the historiography to its importance: lots of works on topic X presumably signal importance, but does a small number of publications on topic Y indicate the opposite? I'm not so sure. Especially when that topic is widely exclaimed to be of critical importance to the period.
Another possibility is to 'just ask historians.' This seems a good idea in theory, but I'm not sure how it would work in practice. Possibly someone will develop a survey to administer to fellow historians, as mentioned in an earlier post – perhaps the Society for Military History should look into sponsoring a survey or two? Though I wonder what we should conclude from the rarity of such polling; that the example mentioned in the earlier post was performed by economic historians is also noteworthy I think. Personally I'm a little daunted by the effort needed to craft a questionnaire, identify and contact the responders, follow up to get a good response rate, and analyze the results. Nevertheless, such a survey would probably be a good measure of 'public opinion' – might be interesting to start with the state of the Military Revolution debate. That being said, I'm not really sure how we would deal with the inevitable contradictions between public opinion and what the 'experts' have said. What other response is there but to berate the respondents for not keeping up with the literature? Nor does this really answer the question of whether your research should respond to what the experts in your field think, or to what most historians, immersed in their own subfields, think. An interesting possibility, but lots of questions to resolve as well.
Thoughts? Good models to follow?
The Ostwald Test: Historiography for Dummies
These ideas aren't particularly original to me, but I'll pretend like they are by giving them a name.
How good (how rigorous, how scholarly, how systematic, how analytical, how serious, how developed…) is the historiography on any particular topic? The sophistication of a research field isn't necessarily the same thing as being able to tell whether any given historiographical argument is true or not, but there's a pretty high correlation between the two.
There are so many ways to test this idea of historiographical sophistication – I'll assume everyone knows to ask whether any non-published, i.e. archival, sources are used (unless you're only looking at the media or the public sphere). But here are a few really simple and easy rules of thumb that I rely upon. An individual work should, ideally, pass at least two (probably three) of the following criteria, It's much more damning, however, to find multiple works within a field that fail these tests. That's a sign of some systemic problems within the field.
Step 1: Look at the subject of a work (a book, an article…) on the topic of interest.
Step 2: Look at the other sources that secondary source uses (e.g. in the footnotes and bibliography).
Step 3: Ask the following four questions:
I. Citations' Age
Do the sources incorporate recent thinking on the subject? How old is your historiography, i.e. how old are your citations? Is it past its Best Before date? Examples that have jumped out at me over my career:
- Scholars in the 1990s or later still basing their understanding of Vaubanian siegecraft upon Guerlac's analysis from the 1940s, or Blomfield's 1930s-era analysis. Not a good sign.
- Scholars in the 1990s or later relying upon hagiographical treatments of the Duke of Marlborough that are 70+ years old. Not a good sign.
- Scholars in the 1990s or later relying upon Wright's 1930s-era discussion of the customs of siege warfare. Not a good sign.
In short, if no significant reassessment of a field has occurred in 70+ years, that's a bad sign.
The diagnosticity of the first question can be improved by asking the next question as well:
II. Pages-to-Coverage Ratio
Is the coverage adequately deep or pathetically shallow? For the sources cited in a secondary source (and for the secondary source itself), what is the ratio of page length to number of years/countries/topics covered? Is it 100 pages on one decade of a single country's 'life', or 100 pages covering an entire continent's 1000-year 'age'? If the basis for a discussion in the modern literature comes purely from topical "art of war" works that claim to describe a continent's worth of conduct across three centuries in 25 pages, that's a bad sign.
Not every source needs to be a monograph, but if there are almost no recent monographs cited on a subject, that's a bad sign. Either it means nobody has looked at it closely, or perhaps somebody has, but the author you're reading hasn't. That's a bad sign.
We can add a further corollary:
III. Argument Coverage-to-Sources Coverage Ratio
Does the argument match the sources? Compare the geographical and chronological coverage claimed in an author's argument with what their sources actually cover. You can probably cut their title a little slack. Does someone covering western European siege warfare in the War of the Spanish Succession claim that this equally applies to siegecraft in 1500 Poland? If so, that's a bad sign.
One final, should-be-obvious, rule of thumb:
IV. Language Correspondence
Is the author bothering to see what his subjects actually thought? Does the language of the citations match the language of the people under study? Do the languages used in the author's sources coincide with the languages spoken where the events took place? If, for example, you're trying to explain why the Dutch did something, it would help if you could point to Dutch sources.
Four simple questions that will tell you a lot about the state of your historiography. In active (which I think we can use as a reasonable proxy for rigorous) subfields, a majority of academic works will almost always pass these four tests. I'd really love to see them used (as summary statistics) in book reviews – would tell us a lot.
So try it for yourself. And feel free to recommend any additional tests in the comments.
The Ostwald Test. Kinda like the Turing Test, but with no chance of research funding.


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New antivirals that could block the flu virus
It's been a nasty flu season in Quebec. If you were laid low with flu this winter, you may be encouraged by our next story.
Researchers at Sherbrooke's university hospital have discovered new anti-virals that can actually block the flu virus before it infects us.
Host Susan Campbell spoke to Dr. Martin Richter the Sherbrooke-born and educated pharmacologist who led this project at the CHUS' Etienne LeBel research centre.
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How new pension fund rules could increase life expectancy
With the news that the tax charge on pension funds will be removed before age 75, some commentators have suggested that over 90% of people retiring in good health should expect to live beyond age 75. For someone with moderate levels of health issues, over 80% might expect to live to at least 75. The tax landscape beyond age 75 is different, with tax being paid on monies passed on.
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Creative Momentum


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happy spring!
i'm so excited for spring! spring is such a great time of year, with all the beautiful flowers blooming and color entering back into the world. i always get a tad depressed come winter because everything dies and turns all gray. i love color.. and when color goes away a little piece of me goes with it. spring is like my heart waking up again!
another reason i love spring is because it ushers in summer. i love summer. more than spring. i'm looking forward to summer break with my son after his first year of school. i can't wait to spend all day everyday with him! no school to dictate our routine, just having fun swimming, camping, beaching...but lets not get ahead of ourselves.
back to spring. i know i should be posting an inspiration board about all the ways you can decorate an egg for Easter, or my favorite floral prints - and maybe i will later - but honestly, right now, i'm LOVING polka dots.
here are a few that are inspiring me now.
No.1} i know this isn't EXACTLY a polka dot pattern, but its circular and fabulous. get it on my finger.
No.2} this dress is adorable for little a. it would be a great Easter dress, and i would love one for myself... twinners?
No.3} classy and fun tumblers, right here.
No.4} orrrrrr.... i could wear THIS for Easter. or everyday. even when i'm sleeping. mkay.
No.5} these little bobby pins are perfect for growing out bangs.
No.6} if the idea of scalding my mouth weren't an issue, i would drink tea straight from this tea pot. that's how much i love it.
No.7} i have this mug and i drink all liquids from it. all day. it's heavy, feels wonderful texturally in my hand, and makes my eyes happy. i should probably have more than one.
No.8} how am i living without this sweater?
No.9} i'd love to see this wallpaper in my bedroom, or wrap myself in it like a blanket.
ok. so i'm seeing a lot of gold. and i'm feeling a little weird about it because i can vividly remember the day (back in the late 80's early 90's) when white gold was all the rage and i decided as a young girl NEVER to love gold. and it's creeping in on me. why do i want it in my house? where i can see it all day? because i like it now. maybe love. not sure.
what about you, do you prefer silver to gold or vise versa?
anyway, random tangent.
i hope you have a great first day of spring!


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My Story on how ThetaHealing changed my life
Years ago I always questioned why was it that I felt so much pain in my life and at every moment felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I remember praying to God every day begging for answers to get out of the dark hole I felt I was in. For years I suffered from "depression" and refused to take medication because even though I was diagnosed, I refused to believe that I had it.
I remember studying graphic design and thinking to myself that it was not for me. So I asked myself, what do I love doing the most in my life? My answer was helping people. So I started studying counselling. I then found myself in a room full of people who needed more help then anybody else did. I then thought "okay. How am I meant to help other people when I need help first?"
I was in a relationship, fell in love, and he questioned my faith and who I believed in. I went soul searching to different churches, priests, Christians to find out more bout God and who they believed in. All the while my AuntyTheresa kept asking me to come along to these courses in ThetaHealing. I kept denying it until I got to a point in my life where everything felt like it came crashing down. I thought I had nothing to lose if I go and do this course that my Uncle Mark was teaching.
After taking the first class, I felt absolutely scared, petrified, wanting to run out of the room and had no idea why until we partnered up for the first exercise and to my surprise, everything I was feeling was exactly what the person next to me was feeling. This was the first time I truly learnt what my intuition was. I was picking up feelings from other people that were not mine yet I thought they were. After learning this, I was able to know the difference between my stuff and other peoples. Also the fact that I had a brilliant teacher to show me all of this was amazing (Thank you Uncle Mark and Aunty Theresa for supporting me throughout all of this. My love for you both runs so deep!)
Once I had completed my first class I learnt all about belief systems, the subconscious and how 95% of our life is controlled by our subconscious mind and also learnt about God, or the universal energy, energy of creation, collective consciousness, Mohammed, Buddha, what ever name you want to call it. For some reason all of this clicked with me. I know everybody has different beliefs when it comes to faith, but for me I believe we all have a central belief in that "higher consciousness", we just choose to take different routes to get there.
ThetaHealing has taught me to be me. It has taught me how my own body can heal itself through changing beliefs and letting go of what's no longer serving me. I have let go of a lot (not just 20kgs) but gained more then i could have ever imagine. To identify myself with what feels right and live the life that I absolutely deserve. It has shown me how to step out of my comfort zone time and time again as I travel through life. But most importantly it has shown me how I can make a difference in somebody else's life that needs help. It is my tool of improving my life and empowering others through there's.
So whatever it is for you, as long as it works, I 100% support you. This is my way of stepping out of my comfort zone to hopefully give you some insight as to how my life was and where I am now because I stepped out of my comfort zone to ask for help.
I am so proud to say I have cried a shit load of tears, embraced fear and converted it into faith in my life and received my Certificate of Science in ThetaHealing while doing it.
Thank you to every single person who I have shared this amazing journey with and will continue to share this journey with. But especially to my mumJoyce & my dad Arthur (for all the lessons you have taught me and giving birth to me :P) Uncle Mark, Aunty Theresa, Zoe Joseph (we have been there since 2011 and wow what a journey it has been), Nikki White, Gabe Morahan, Dale Bond, Jiuliana Rawson, Sandra Matulick and to every ThetaHealer out there!! You are all amazing!!!!
And a special thanks to @Vianna Stibal and Guy Stibal. Without you both there would be no ThetaHealing.


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Get closer to your customers with Google+ for business, available in English & French
When making decisions, people often turn to those they trust for recommendations. Now with the Google +1 button, people can recommend your site's content or ads to their friends and contacts right when it's most useful – on Google search.
If you're a site owner based in Canada, and you've been waiting to include Google +1 button on your site, now it is the time to get started. Start by visiting Google +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central where the Google +1 button code is already available in English and French.
Adding Google +1 button will help your site to stand out by putting personal recommendations right at the moment of decision, on Google search results page. So if you have users and friends who are fans of your content, encourage them to add their voice with Google +1 button!
How Google +1 button works?
Let's say you own a hotel in Toronto. Karen had a lovely stay at your hotel last summer. When Adam starts researching accommodations for his next trip to Toronto, he searches on Google.com while signed into his Google account, and sees your ad. He clicks the +1 button on the ad to recommend it to his contacts.
When Karen's friend Ann plans her trip to Toroto, she signs in to her Google account, searches, and also sees your ad and the Google +1 that Karen added to it. Knowing that Karen recommends your hotel helps Ann decide where to stay during her visit to Canada.
Stand out in Google search
Personalized annotations will help users know when your ads and organic search results are relevant to them, increasing the chances that they'll end up on your site. Since January 2010, Google have been using data from social services, such as Twitter and Flickr, as signals in organic search rankings. Now Google is using +1 button as an additional signal in organic search to help users find recommendations from their friends and contacts. Quality scores and ad rankings will not be impacted by Google +1.
Higher quality traffic
As results become more personal and relevant, Google believes that users are not only more likely to click, but they're more likely to act as well. Personalized annotations bring you pre-qualified users, who just received recommendations from their friends and are actively looking for your content. This powerful combination may result in more conversion and deeper engagement with your site overall.
How to get Google +1 button on your site
Google has +1 button code ready that you can put on your pages , making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site. Get Google +1 button code for your website now!
Will the +1 button affect my Adwords clickthrough or conversion rates?
Each Adwords campaign performs differently, so we can't predict how your clickthrough rate (CTR) will change for individual campaigns. However, Google believes that including the +1 button on ads will increase the overall CTR of campaigns as personalized annotations increase user engagement.
Will the +1 button impact how Google determine quality score?
No, this does not change how Google determines your Adwords ad's relevance of quality. As always, Google looks at your ad's performance relative to that of other ads for the same query, position, and UI treatment.
Should I change my ads or landing pages?
No, there is no need to change the copy or landing pages of your campaigns. Google is adding +1 buttons to ads and search results on Google.com and Google.ca. Simple, compelling ads directing to a relevant landing page will continue to perform best.
Where can I see how many +1s my ads are receiving?
Currently reporting is not available. However, soon you will be able to see how many +1s your search campaigns are getting on the Dimensions tab in AdWords.


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In Spanish the term for sackcloth is sayal, and at the time of the La Florida missions (1573-1763) was the fabric most used in the habits of these Franciscan friars. Despite its widespread employment, however, no known example of sayal survives today as its use declined toward the end of the eighteenth-century and has not been manufactured since.[2] So what do we know about sayal? Is the Spanish sayal at the time of the missions the same as the sackcloth used by the earliest Franciscans, or did it change over the almost 600 years "sackcloth" was in use by the friars? What exactly is sayal? And how do we incorporate what we know in reproducing an appropriate habit for doing living history portrayals as a Florida Franciscan friar?
Saint Francis' Sackcloth
The adoption of sackcloth into the Rule of 1223 by Saint Francis was rooted in his own religious development. Habited in "a sort of hermit's attire, a leather belt around his waist and a staff in his hands, and… wearing shoes," Saint Francis focused on renovating a number of dilapidated chapels around Assisi for the three years following his conversion at San Damiano.[3] While Francis was involved in repairing the Portiuncula chapel, however, a priest arrived and preached on the gospel tale in Matthew 10: 9-10, where Jesus sends his disciples into the world without money, bags, extra tunics, staffs, or shoes. According to the chronicler Thomas of Celano,
Francis, rejoicing in the spirit of God, said, "This is what I want! This is what I'm looking for! This is what I want to do from the bottom of my heart!" Thus the holy father, overflowing with joy, hurried to fulfill those healing words….He took off his shoes, tossed away his staff, was satisfied with a single tunic, and exchanged his leather belt for a cord. He made himself a tunic that looked like the cross so that he could beat off the temptations of the devil. It was rough in order to crucify the vices and sins of the flesh. It was poor and mean so that the world would not covet it. With the greatest diligence and reverence he tried to do everything else that he had heard, for he was not a deaf hearer of the gospel but, laudably committing all that he had heard to memory, he diligent1y attempted to fulfill them to the letter.[4]
This rough, poor, tunic was most likely sackcloth or very similar to it, and was eventually adopted by the rest of the early Franciscan community.
[2] http://www.spanishcolonial.org/page54.php
[3] http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/stfran-lives.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/05/us-italy-saint-idUSL0586082220070905
[6] http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/assisi-santa-chiara-pictures/slides/xti_0837.htm


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'Sampieri & GMC': blissed-out psychedelic free folk from Argentina
I've recently discovered the wonderful Pakapi Records, an Argentina-based label that focuses on promoting South American artists. The standout for me so far is this 2015 collaboration between Sebastian Sampieri (Sampieri) and Guillermo M. Cerredo (GMC). 'Sampieri & GMC,' when you're in the right mindset, is a blissed-out collage of psychedelic free folk.
From CassetteBlog.com:
"This new lysergic adventure is a blunt split plagued by experimental music, sampledelia, electronic and acoustic sounds, synthesizing a cross of folcklore, tribal mantras to pure electronic and a narcotic and descriptive shared collage."
'Sampieri & GMC'/Pakapi Records: Bandcamp Facebook
Brady is the founder of Headphone Nation. He's responsible for all this mess. Sorry about that. He's also on Twitter @BradyWGerber


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An eclectic little guide to help with those last few gifts you need to buy.
The Palomar PinWorld map: a family favorite.
We at Eat Your World are notoriously last-minute holiday-gift buyers, but we've learned a lesson over the years: It's never too late, especially when the perfect gift is only a click away. Our first-ever gift guide is a bit eclectic: Some of these items we own and love (or have given as gifts ourselves), some we want to own (hint, hint), and others are just random cool things on our radar. If you're stuck on that one person you never know what to buy, we're here to help.
Yes, it's old-school, and, yes, much of...


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Se você gostou deste post, assine nossas atualizações (é grátis)
I would like to show my gratitude for your generosity for men and women that require help on this important question. Your special commitment to passing the solution all around was exceptionally useful and have truly allowed somebody much like me to achieve their targets. This valuable suggestions signifies much to me and especially to my office colleagues. Regards; from all of us.
coach outlet online http://www.coachsonline.us.com


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Renovated Airstream Trailer Showcases Stylish Off-Grid Living
An off-grid, mobile lifestyle may be a far-off dream for some of us settled schmucks. But not for Cece Reinhardt and Brenda Daugherty, who realized that dream by getting sponsors to help renovate a 2003 Airstream Safari into an impressive mobile eco-home. The enterprising pair are now taking it on the road to demonstrate how simple, off-grid living can still be stylish. To see how they transformed a ho-hum RV into a green dream, check out the 'before' and 'after':
The eco-credo of the two women (plus a dog and a cat) is to "Conserve. Explore. Inspire":
We are driving towards sustainability one mile at a time. We owned a home. We sold a home. We rented a house that was 1500 s.f. Now we're living in under 200 s.f. We are living on less and living more purposefully.
Spotted over at Jetson Green, this project is titled "On the Green Road" and is essentially a converted 25-foot trailer, powered by solar panels and pulled by a veggie oil-powered diesel truck. Of course, don't forget the composting toilet and rainwater harvester:
In terms of materials, the 200 square-foot renovation has American Clay walls and ceiling, a 500-w solar system from Applied Solar Energy, whole-house filtration by Blue Gold for Life, an eco-friendly mattress from Keetsa, Vida cork planks, natural linoleum flooring, PaperStone countertops, Hardwoods Inc. veneer cabinets from Eco Craft Cabinetry, LEDs from Elemental LED, a Lumicor recycled resin shower door, a Kirei board office desk, and a waterless Nature's Head composting toilet.
Pretty sweet, and inspirational for people who are contemplating the same existential leap. For those who are interested in the full list of modifications, check out this list.
To see more 'before' and 'after' images, track the project's progress, check out the website or follow @greenrvlife on Twitter.
Like this? Follow Kimberley on Twitter or subscribe via RSS
More on Mobile Living & Caravans
Mobile Living: The Unicat
Sheep Wagons Converted Into Mobile Living Spaces Of Rustic Charm
QTvan: Camping Out in World's Smallest Scooter Caravan
Artist Turns Secondhand Cars Into Whimsical Geometric Caravans
Cool Camping Hotel: Guests at Berlin's Hüttenpalast Sleep in Refurbished Caravans
FEMA Trailer Transformed Into "Garden On Wheels" & Donated To Mobile Art Center


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Hobbes (Warren)Username: Hobbes
Alternate Name: Warren
Vidder Rank: Council Member
Other Fandoms: King Kong
Website: www.lostvideo.net
Email: email@example.com
(antispam: remove 'LVI' from address)
Bio: My true name is Warren, but you can call me whatever you please. Vidder and CM ever since the forums here opened. If you're reading this, then thanks for being a fan! I hope my vids can make some sort of impact. Go LVI!!
1-14 of 14 Videos 1
Hobbes's VideosSort by: All | Viewer Picks | Council Picks | Awaiting Judgement
Dark Rabbit - The Lost Tangentby Hobbes 04-24-2008Lost: A mysterious force compels Locke to fulfill his destiny. It's name... is Frank. A Donnie Darko/Lost Crossover.
Don't Botherby Hobbes 10-09-2006Lost: AU: Ana Lucia is desperate for Sayid's attention.
It's Not Easyby Hobbes 04-15-2006Lost: Even heroes like Jack can feel unwanted sometimes. An abstract Jack character study - with animation.
LVI: Orientationby Hobbes 12-26-2005Lost: With help from our good friend Billy, Hobbes outlines the basics of making a video great. Official Training Video.
Hallelujahby Hobbes 11-21-2005Lost: Jack and Kate tell the story of their relationship.
Speed of Soundby Hobbes 10-14-2005Lost: Locke does things not all of us agree with. But if you could see things from his point of view then you might just understand him.
Your Horoscope for Todayby Hobbes 06-19-2005Lost: An astrological forecast courtesy of Weird Al! What would a fandom be without it? WARNING: This film may be misleading to some viewers. Viewer's discretion is advised.
The Gameby Hobbes 03-02-2005Lost: It's all a game to Locke and the others are his pawns. But which side does he play on? Light or dark? You decide.
Part 2 - We Need a Hero!by Hobbes 02-03-2005Lost: Hobbes gives some helpful tips to make your video great in this educational video. Old LVI Training Video.
Part 1 - The Montageby Hobbes 02-02-2005Lost: Hobbes shows you what NOT to do in this educational video.. Old LVI Training Video.
SkaterboyLost: Hobbes proves that a Charlie Claire video doesn't have to be slow OR boring!
Staring at the SunLost: Fun, fast-paced, headbanger that'll keep you on your toes.
Simple and CleanLost: A very well done ubeat pop song that really captures the strange feel of the island.
Beautiful Goodbyeby Hobbes 01-26-2005Lost: A desperate, passionate look at Jack and Kate, their unsure relationship, and the danger on the island.
1-14 of 14 Videos 1


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The star says her "traumatic year" has made her a better actress
Just four months ago, when her divorce from Tao Ruspoli was being finalized, Olivia Wilde described herself as "wobbly." But now, it seems like the actress is starting to stand tall again.
"When you go through a breakup, you lose faith for a while," Wilde, 27, tells Town & Country.
"It makes you feel like such a failure, but I think this whole traumatic year has made me a better actor. And the good thing about getting divorced young – if there is a good thing – is that it makes you realize there's no schedule in life. It blasts you wide open and frees you to be honest with yourself."
RELATED: Olivia Wilde & Jason Sudeikis Enjoy Palm Springs Weekend with Dog Paco
Looking back, Wilde may describe her decision to elope with Ruspoli at age 18 (they were wed on a bus) as impulsive. "The danger is that you evolve over the years and find yourself in a different place," she says of marrying at a young age.
Though Wilde filed for divorce nearly a year ago, she seems to have nothing but respect and admiration for Ruspoli.
"Tao was, and is, totally involved with his work, and for me there's nothing sexier than a man who is busy and obsessed with what he's doing," she tells Town & Country. "I guess I saw that in my parents' marriage. They had real respect for their work and for each other."
It was Wilde's parents, in fact, who gave their daughter her first taste of Hollywood.
"My dad took me to see Saturday Night Live as a birthday treat, and I knew at that moment that this was what I wanted to do," she says.
Later, as a teen, Wilde remembers having lunch with George Clooney on the set of The Peacemaker, the 1997 movie for which her parents, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn, wrote the screenplay.
"Having George Clooney be the first Hollywood actor I met set a pretty high standard," she said. "He's genuinely sincere, smart, gracious, and I like his politics, too, which always helps."
Another influential Hollywood leading man? Wilde's costar on House, Hugh Laurie.
RELATED: Olivia Wilde Dazzles at Charity Dinner in L.A.
"I spent four years on House and learned so much from Hugh," she tells Town & Country. "I owe my entire film career to him. I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am now without Hugh and the series. It was the first time I'd been allowed to play somebody not defined by my looks."
Meanwhile, Wilde's formative experience with SNL may not be her only connection to the show. Though she confirmed to Town & Country that she's seeing someone in the entertainment business, Wilde stopped short of specifically naming SNL cast member Jason Sudeikis, whom she's been spotted with in recent months, as her boyfriend.


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The Winning Solar Car
A successful solar car team must have a good car, good drivers, good weather information, good strategy, and a well-trained support team. Based on the author's experiences designing and building five solar cars over a ten year period, this book focuses on the most imporant aspects of designing a competitive solar car, including developing a racing strategy, efficient solar car driving, project management, and designing the specific subsystems of the car. Chapters cover: Design Methodology Aerodynamics of Solar Cars Composite Materials Car Balance and Spring Rates and more


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O&R Prepares for Severe Weather, Declares Storm Watch
O&R has declared a Storm Watch as a strong storm system packing high winds, heavy rains and snow is expected to hit our region tonight and continue into Saturday.
Severe storm activity has the potential to cause power line damage and electric service interruptions. O&R is ready to repair storm damage and restore service as needed. In addition to its company crews, O&R has secured 40 additional overhead line technicians and 20 vehicles to supplement its own field forces for this event.
Weather forecasters expect the storm to begin this evening with rain, heavy at times with winds 10-15 mph, gusting to 25 mph. On Friday, the wind picks up to 15-25, and gusts of 35-50 mph. Rain continues, heavy at times, with the chance of wet snow. On Saturday, scattered rain/snow showers are expected early with winds 10-15 and gusts of 45 mph.
To prepare for the severe weather, O&R electric and gas crews are securing active work sites today to prevent wind and water damage from the predicted storm.
Company and contractor overhead line crews and tree removal crews are preparing to ramp up for a high-volume outage response Friday morning and through Sunday at least as are damage assessment, site safety, customer service operations and the wide array of O&R teams that support those functions.
There are several ways O&R customers can report outages and check service restoration status:
- Go to the O&R website from any computer or web-enabled mobile device;
- Download the O&R Mobile app through the App Store or Google Play Store;
- Text "OUT" to 69678 (myORU); or
- Call Customer Assistance at 1-877-434-4100
To help its customers prepare to weather a storm, O&R offers these tips:
- For safety's sake, don't touch or approach any downed wire. Assume it is energized and dangerous. Call O&R immediately toll-free 1-877-434-4100. Depending on the situation, you may also want to call your local police to divert traffic until an O&R crew arrives.
- Maintain a distance of at least 50 feet from downed wires and anything they are in contact with including puddles of water and fences. Supervise your children so that they are not in the vicinity and keep pets on a leash or otherwise secure.
- If a fallen wire is draped over a car, do not approach the car and make rescue attempts. Remain a safe distance away, and try to keep the occupant of the vehicle calm. If possible, emergency personnel should handle the situation.
- Have emergency equipment within reach — portable radio, flashlights, spare batteries, first aid kit, cell phone and important medications. Keep O&R's toll-free number 1-877-434-4100 near the phone to report power outages.
- If you experience a power outage, don't assume that O&R automatically knows about it or that someone else will report it. To be sure the outage is reported, please call O&R toll-free at 1-877-434-4100 to let O&R know what happened. The more information you can provide, the more O&R can help you.
- Remember: if the base station of your cordless phone plugs into the wall, your phone will be unusable during a power outage.
For more information, visit O&R's Storm Center at www.oru.com/storms.
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Mustard Chicken
- a few sprigs of fresh rosemary
- 4 x 6-ounce chicken breasts, skin on
- 4 teaspoons English mustard
- 3 baby leeks or 1 large leek
- 4 cloves garlic
- white wine
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- 1 heaping teaspoon whole-grain mustard
- TO START Get all your ingredients and equipment ready. Put a medium saucepan and a large ovenproof frying pan on a low heat. Fit the thick slicer disc attachment into the food processor and turn the oven on to 425°F. Fill and boil the kettle.
- Turn the heat under the frying pan up to medium. Pick and finely chop the leaves from the rosemary sprigs and sprinkle them into the package of chicken. Smear 1 teaspoon of mustard over each breast, then season and drizzle some olive oil over the chicken and into the frying pan. Massage and rub these flavors all over the meat. Put the chicken breasts in the frying pan, skin side down. Wash your hands well. Use a slotted spatula to press down on the chicken to help it cook. It should take around 18 minutes in total.
- Quickly trim the leeks and halve lengthways. Wash them under the cold tap, then thinly slice them and add to one side of the chicken pan.
- Crush 4 unpeeled cloves of garlic into the pan of chicken. Flip the chicken breasts skin side up, then press down on them again. Stir the leeks and add a good slug of white wine.
- Check the chicken is cooked through, then pour ¼ cup of cream into the frying pan. Cover the pan with aluminum foil. Quickly check on the dauphinoise.
- Turn the heat off. Transfer the chicken breasts to a board and slice into uneven pieces. Stir 1 heaping teaspoon of whole-grain mustard into the sauce, then taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Spoon the sauce onto a platter and put the sliced chicken on top. Drizzle over some extra virgin olive oil and take straight to the table.
- Take to the table. Get your ice cream out of the freezer to soften for later.
- TO SERVE After dinner, stir some boiling water into the pitcher of coffee and sugar. Take to the table with the ice cream and spoon a scoop into each espresso cup. Grate over some chocolate, then pour over just enough hot coffee (or espresso) to start melting the chocolate. So delicious!
Tomato Soup & Croutons
- 2¼ pounds ripe cherry tomatoes on the vine, red and yellow if you can get them
- 4 large tomatoes
- 1 fresh red chile
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 ciabatta loaf
- 2 small red onions
- ¼ cup balsamic vinegar
- a small bunch of fresh basil
- a few dollops of crème fraîche or sour cream, to serve
- TO START Get all your ingredients and equipment ready. Turn the oven on to 425?F and put a large saucepan on a low heat. Put the standard blade attachment into the food processor.
- TOMATO SOUP Pull the tomatoes off the vines, but leave some of their green tops on. Quarter the larger tomatoes, then put all the tomatoes onto a baking sheet. Drizzle over a good lug of olive oil and season. Halve and seed the red chile and add to the pan. Crush in 4 peeled cloves of garlic. Quickly toss everything, then put on the top shelf of the oven for 12 to 15 minutes.
- CROUTONS Get another baking sheet and rip the ciabatta loaf into 8 equal chunks. Add a good lug of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and put on the bottom shelf of the oven.
- TOMATO SOUP Peel and roughly chop the onions and put them into the hot saucepan with a lug of olive oil and a good pinch of salt. Turn the heat up to medium and leave to soften, stirring occasionally.
- TOMATO SOUP Stir ¼ cup of balsamic vinegar into the onions and let it cook away and reduce down.
- TOMATO SOUP Take the pan of tomatoes out of the oven and add everything to the pan of onions.
- CROUTONS Check them—if they are crisp and golden, turn off the oven, but leave them in there to keep warm.
- TOMATO SOUP In 2 batches, carefully pour the vegetables from the saucepan into a blender. Add most of the basil, put the lid on, cover with a tea towel, and whiz to a fairly rustic consistency, pouring the mixture into a large saucepan or serving bowl as you go. Once finished, mix well, season to taste, and top with a dollop of crème fraîche, a few basil leaves, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Take to the table with a stack of soup bowls and the pan of croutons from the oven.
- TO SERVE Put a crouton or two in the bottom of each soup bowl. Ladle the soup on top, then dig in.
Zucchini Salad
- 3 large sprigs of fresh mint
- ½ fresh red chile
- 1 lemon
- 8 ounces baby zucchini, mixed colors
- 4 ounces bocconcini di mozzarella (baby mozzarella balls)
- TO START Get all your ingredients and equipment ready. Put the fine grater attachment into the food processor. Fill and boil the kettle. Put a large frying pan on a low heat.
- Pick the mint leaves over a cutting board. Add ½ a red chile. Zest over ½ the lemon, then chop the chile and mint together until really fine. Spoon into the middle of a serving platter, drizzle over about 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and squeeze in the juice of ½ the lemon. Add a pinch of salt & pepper, then taste and adjust the flavors if necessary. Peel the zucchini into ribbons over this dressing. Drain the container of baby mozzarella, then tip over the zucchini and take to the table to toss and dress at the last minute.
- TO SERVE When everyone is ready to eat, use 2 forks to toss the zucchini ribbons and baby mozzarella. Serve next to some of that lovely pasta and the prosciutto and melon salad.
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Here we go again…
August is particularly difficult for some families – especially if they're new to homeschooling/unschooling. Everywhere they look they're reminded that they're out of step, bucking the system, going against the status quo. Most of the time, this fact goes by relatively unnoticed. But not at this time of year. It seems that as soon as the 4th of July (in the U.S.) displays come down, the Back to School banners emerge.
For some families, it's a reason to celebrate – especially if their school experience was a bad one. They're happy to see that school bus roll on by because they know it means shorter lines at their favorite hangouts, price drops for airfare and hotels, and simply less commotion in their lives. For families that have been at this longer, it's even less of a concern. All the school focus simply has less relevance… they've moved into a place where schools simply don't factor into their world. (I know, new folks are eager to get to that phase!)
Some families are still struggling with all of this. Their kids' friends are acting like they're going back to some big "kid reunion" – completely forgetting how they felt about the experience just last May. All the superficial chit-chat at the check out lines or wherever they seem to go are all about,
"Are you excited to go back?"
"What grade will you be in?"
Some kids are particularly sensitive to this and find it upsetting. Some parents get triggered as well – suddenly having doubts and second thoughts about the decision to keep their children home.
My subscribers received this as an email, offering a little support in that arena. I'm sharing my inspiring collection to help you counter all the Back-to-School marketing that is attacking everyone daily! You'll find:
- A collection of blogposts helping people through this time of year
- A collection of graphics inspiring you to press on
- A discounted rate for a quick coaching call (August) if you need a little 1:1 help
Feel free to share the articles and the graphics. Pin them, re-gram them, Facebook "like" them – whatever it takes to help you offset the deluge of stories and photos of kids heading off to their first day of school.
(Did you know that some have already started this week?? YIKES!)
More to Read…
Don't Do It!
This blogpost sent people into a tailspin. When I first published it, I think it must have been shared on some teachers' group, because they hit my blog like a thunderstorm! All I was suggesting was thatif someone is hesitating or wondering if they could do something different this year, consider not sending the kids back. I offered answers to the most common obstacles and shared a few personal reminders.
"Back to School" is A-OK!
Take a look at my Top Ten Advantages to this time of year! Sometimes it's better to set your fear aside so you can see all the perks you're going to experience at this time of year!
Coping with the Frenzy
The Back-to-School frenzy is almost a rite of passage. But we all know it fades – for some sooner than others! If you're struggling though, here are some things you can do to help yourself.
Last year, we shared our own
"NOT-Back-to-School" photos over on the Unschooling Mom2mom group. (Lots of photos of kids sleeping in! lol) Maybe we should do that again this year too!
What can you actually do to counter this madness to ship the kids off? LOTS! Here are some suggestions to do with your family AND some activities that you can do for yourself if you're feeling a little wistful about those old school days of yours.
Dear Suburban Mom,
Back in May, it may have been clear that school wasn't working. But now you're down to the wire and have to figure out if you can really do such a unconventional thing!
Does it have to look like school-at-home?
What about legalities?
Am I qualified?
What about socialization?
How will they learn?
Can there be too much togetherness?
Click here to find out the answers!