text: Icon is going to be the 11th Coaster currently at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, it is going to be a Mack Launch Coaster, and the first in the United Kingdom to feature two LSM launches. Icon will also feature two inversions an in-line twist and an Immelmann. The colour scheme of the track is light grey, with what to me look like dark grey supports similar to the support colour scheme of The Swarm.


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Israeli civil rights pioneer Shulamit Aloni dies
January 24, 2014
JERUSALEM (AP) — Shulamit Aloni, an Israeli legislator who championed civil rights and was fiercely critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, died on Friday. She was 85.
Meretz, the party she helped found and led, announced her death in a statement on its website. The party did not reveal the cause of death. Aloni was born in Tel Aviv and fought in the 1948 war that led to Israel's creation. First elected to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, in 1965, she served for 28 years and held a number of Cabinet posts.
An audacious speaker and one of few women to openly challenge the nation's rabbis, Aloni fought for civil liberties, women's rights and a separation of church and state. But her boisterous crusade for secular rights was perceived as offensive by some ultra-Orthodox.
She irritated religious Israelis by being photographed at an Arab restaurant with a breadbasket during Passover, when observant Jews don't eat bread. She created the Citizens' Rights Movement, or Ratz, in 1973, with the primary goal of ridding Israel of Orthodox rabbis' monopoly over marriage and divorce.
But the party later took up peace issues and the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Aloni became a loud dissenting voice in the governments she served in, often criticizing new settlement construction in territories she believed should be reserved for a future Palestinians state.
She helped found Meretz in 1991, winning the party 12 seats in the 1992 elections and leading it into Israel's governing coalition, which, with the ruling Labor party, made strides toward Mideast peace. She stepped down in 1996.
Israeli lawmakers from across the political spectrum praised Aloni. "Despite the deep disagreements we had over the years, I appreciated her contribution to the Israeli public and Aloni's determination to stand firmly for the things she believed in," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
Israeli President Shimon Peres called Aloni "a warrior for peace and civil rights in Israel." Aloni was recognized for her devotion to civil liberties in 2000, when she was awarded the Israel Prize, the country's highest distinction.
Her funeral is to be held on Sunday.

subset: commoncrawl


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I've noticed this for ages now. I'm guessing maybe they snagged them off some captured rebels, or, in addition to being the rebel's main sidearm, the DH-17 pistol is also in use in the Imperial military as well. Me being a stickler for accesories, it would've been nice to see a DH-17 packed in with the wave 2 DS Trooper, in addition to the E-11.
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intelligence history
Spycraft in TURN: Nathaniel Sackett's Anachronistic Gadgets (Or: What year is this again?)
Here's a rhetorical question for you, fellow TURNcoats: Why make a show about Revolutionary War espionage when the spy technology you focus on most is from the 15th, 19th, and even 20th centuries?
You might reply: "Well… because it's fun. And I can make a cool story out of it." Great! That's certainly a fair answer. But in that case — why would you try so hard to convince people that your story is fact-based and "authentic" to the 18th century when that argument is pretty much impossible to support?
I found myself asking these very questions while updating the TURN Historical Timeline to reflect the events portrayed in the last few episodes (thought admittedly not for the first time). We had to reconfigure the location of a few things on the Timeline this week in order to fit in more events at the tail end of it – two which occurred in the 19th century and one that even occurred in the early 20th century, well over 100 years after the end of the Revolutionary War! (You can check out the updated version by clicking on the image below, or visiting the Timeline page for additional information.)
"Nice gadgets you have there. But what happened to the 18th century?"
Historians might ask themselves "What year is this supposed to be again?" while watching TURN for a multitude of reasons (issues with clothing, uniforms, other material culture, language, false historical claims, premature character deaths, etc.) — but for this post, we're focusing on intelligence history, which is what TURN is supposed to be about. Heck, they even changed the official name of the show after Season 1 to clarify that the show is all about "Washington's Spies"! Thus far, however, TURN's treatment of Revolutionary War espionage has been erratic at best.
When it comes to spycraft, Season 1 of TURN definitely started off in the right place, featuring period-correct techniques like Cardan grilles and even the original Culper Spy code — exciting, cunning, and historically-accurate stuff! And TURN's opening credits have been teasing us for over a year with a silhouette of the Turtle, the world's first military submarine that actually debuted in 1776. (I'm saving a fuller discussion about the Turtle for later, in hopes that we'll see it in the show soon.)
We've also seen the occasional use of invisible inks (or, as they were often called in the 18th century, "sympathetic stains") – but even that element of Revolutionary spycraft has been given a strange and uneven treatment in TURN. Instead of focusing on the state-of-the-art chemical compound developed by James Jay for the use of Washington's spies (which is a fascinating true story) the show seems near-obsessed with the novelty of writing invisible messages through the shells of hard-boiled eggs – a centuries-old technique that the Culper Spy Ring never actually used.
In his book Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution, John Nagy sums up the origins and functionality of the "egg method" we've seen so often in TURN:
In the fifteenth century Italian scientist Giovanni Porta described how to conceal a message in a hard-boiled egg. An ink is made with an ounce of alum and a pint of vinegar. This special penetrating ink is then used to write on the hard boiled egg shell. The solution penetrates the shell leaving no visible trace and is deposited on the surface of the hardened egg. When the shell is removed, the message can be read. (Invisible Ink, p. 7)
It's a fascinating technique, and leads to quite a few dramatic (and highly amusing) moments in TURN. The only problem is that, according to the historical record, the Culper spies ever used the egg method — and neither did anyone else in the Revolutionary War, for that matter. There is no record of the technique ever being used by either side.
But if Season 1's use of Revolutionary War spycraft was fairly solid with a few aberrations, Season 2 is just the opposite — with anachronistic techniques far outnumbering the period-correct ones thus far. Nathaniel Sackett's "spy laboratory," with its vials and beakers and fantastical super-weapons, is better suited to a steampunk movie than anything resembling the 18th century. (So is the bearded, blunderbuss-carrying, leather-trenchcoat-wearing version of Caleb Brewster, but that's a whole other post in itself.)
Now, in terms of making a storyline easy to follow, creating a centralized place as a sort of "spy headquarters" might make sense for a work of historical fiction, even if such a place never actually existed. However, nearly everything we've seen featured in Nathaniel Sackett's anachronistic "spy lab" is from the 19th century – or even later. Besides the never-actually-used egg method discussed above, both of the most prominent examples of spy technology showcased in Season 2 so far were both invented long after the American Revolution was over:
1) John Hawkins' letter-copying machine, or "polygraph," which Tallmadge uses to forge a letter in the episode "False Flag." Patented in 1803 – twenty years after the end of the Revolution – Hawkins' machine greatly facilitated the arduous tasking of letter copying. Thomas Jefferson bought one for himself which visitors can still see today at Monticello. Jefferson was a huge fan of the innovative device, and he later said "the use of the polygraph has spoiled me for the old copying press the copies of which are hardly ever legible." Before the late 19th century, the term "polygraph" was used to described copying devices like this one. You can read more about Hawkins' polygraph machine in the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia.
2) Nathaniel Sackett's bogus "lie detector" from the episode "Sealed Fate." I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. For starters, the modern-day polygraph or "lie detector" wasn't invented until 1923. Italian scientists (who always seem to be at the forefront of spy technology!) started experimenting with measuring physical responses to lying and truth-telling in the late 1870s – which is still 100 years ahead of TURN's Revolutionary War storyline. TURN's version of Nathaniel Sackett must have been a true visionary to be able to throw together a prototype of a machine that wasn't invented until after World War I. Too bad they decided to kill him off thirty years too early in the show. (Or as another viewer said on Twitter: "If only Sackett had lived. The Continental Army may have had tanks by 1781."
Even if the bizarre machine wasn't supposed to be taken seriously, Tallmadge's use of the faux-polygraph as a form of psychological torture in order to extract information is just as historically inaccurate as the machine itself. We've covered the topic of torture extensively here in the blog. If you haven't read the original post, you should, but to make a long story short: Torture was very rarely used as a means to obtain intelligence in the Revolutionary War, in sharp contrast to what we've seen portrayed multiple times in TURN.
Now here's the frustrating thing: The American Revolution DID have plenty of awesome and innovative spycraft of its own – from creative concealment techniques to cyphers, masks and grilles, invisible ink, flamboyant messengers, and even "strange but true" experimental technology like the Turtle. It's not as if the writers of TURN are starved for real-life examples of 18th century innovation. (I'd like to point out that John Nagy's book referenced above, which only deals with Revolutionary-era spycraft, is nearly 400 pages long. There's a LOT of historical material to work with.) It's disappointing to see a show that was supposed to focus exclusively on Revolutionary War espionage morph into an anachronistic drama that has little regard for the time period in which it takes place — especially when the series started off on a much stronger footing.
Returning to our updated timeline: Season 2 seems to have left the 18th century behind in several other ways as well. In addition to using "futuristic" spy technology, we've recently seen real historical characters killed off decades too early and King George III turned into a drooling, raving lunatic long before his first recorded bouts of mental instability. For all you viewers who were devastated at Nathaniel Sackett's untimely death, you'll be pleased to know that in reality, Sackett survived the Revolution intact, dying at age 68 in 1805. Indeed, he served the contributed to the cause of American independence in a number of different capacities — in addition to his covert operations for Washington, he also was an active member of the Congressional Committee of Safety and later served as a sutler (merchant) for the Continental Army.
Like we've said many times before, here at the blog we understand the necessity of shuffling around some historical events in order to present a dramatic narrative that's easier to follow. Plenty of events in TURN are off by only a year or two, which is reasonable by most people's definitions. But as the episodes roll on, we're finding we need to plot more and more events at the extremes of the historical timeline — including major events that play a central role in TURN's unfolding storylines. Regarding intelligence history — which is what the entire show is supposed to be about — the most prominently-featured spy techniques of TURN's second season were never used in the Revolutionary War at all. The evidence strongly suggests that the writers and producers of TURN are increasing their disregard for the historical record as Season 2 progresses. That's not to say, of course, that there's no hope left — indeed, my personal favorite episode of the entire series, chock-full of excellent historically-informed intrigue, occurred after the halfway point of the first season. (Episode 6 of Season 1, "Mr. Culpepper," for the record.) So while the show is in the midst of a rather disappointing trend, there's still plenty of time left in Season 2 for things to turn a corner. Here's hoping the 18th century makes a comeback, and soon!


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Today I visited the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA to see the " Invention of Glory, Alfonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries." The four large tapestries are stunning, and amazing in their detail, including stylized waves, incredible woven chain mail, and fabric and faces and flowers enough for any tapestry enthusiast.
I love the color palette of the tapestries. All colors that remain are seen in the image above, which I have shared from the Museum website ( no photos allowed in the exhibit.) I believe some color has faded over time, as there are some 'ghost- like' images that seem to have resulted from faded bits- possibly a faded green. But I love the remaining red, blue, gold and tan that remain. Everything is colorful enough with this limited palette, and there is certainly enough detail visible, in spite of the faded bits.
For more about the exhibit, check out the museum website: http://www.pem.org/exhibitions/151-the_invention_of_glory_afonso_v_and_the_pastrana_tapestries
Posted from my iPad


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#35: I Want My (Black) Hat Back
Mike and Chris are joined by returning guest "Black Hat" Matt McFarland! The hosts discuss the latest White Wolf news, including kickstarter and Mummy: the [Moaning] news. Darker Days also introduces a new segment, Beyond the Kirlian Camera, exploring film and television for World of Darkness inspiration. Next there is a listener inspired review of three sourcebooks regarding cults and infernalism - World of Darkness Inferno, Ashen Cults, and Devil's Due. The hosts discuss how this information can be used in Dark Ages settings, and how the ideas can be applied to other games, such as Werewolf: the Forsaken. Finally, the episode introduces Matt McFarland's new roleplaying game, Curse the Darkness - a post apocalyptic game of oppression, fear, and hope. Be sure to check us out at http://www.facebook.com/DarkerDaysRadio or our Posterous forum at http://darkerdaysradio.posterous.com/#!/. Be sure to subscribe through iTunes! Curse the Darkness kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/playattentiongames/curse-the-darkness-a-roleplaying-game Curse the Darkness website: http://cursethedarkness.net/ Mummy: the [Moaning] blog: http://whitewolfblogs.com/mummy/


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FIFA has today announced the names of the six players on the shortlist for the adidas Golden Ball, awarded as always to the best player of the tournament.
All the nominees come from Brazil, Italy, Spain and Uruguay, the four semi-finalists. The winner of the prestigious honour for the outstanding individual at the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 will be determined by media representatives accredited for the event.
The winner will be announced immediately after the final at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro on 30 June. The runner-up wins the adidas Silver Ball, with the adidas Bronze Ball awarded to the player in third.
The candidates were selected by the FIFA Technical Study Group (TSG).
Candidates for the adidas Golden Ball at the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 (in alphabetical order):
Andres Iniesta (Spain): Iniesta's reputation as an established global star of the game was sealed by his winning goal for Spain in the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ final against the Netherlands. He has been a hot contender for the FIFA Ballon d'Or for a number of years in succession, and despite a blizzard of winner's medals with La* Roja* and Barcelona, his energy and commitment in Brazil prove he is far from sated yet. The 29-year-old was named Man of the Match in his country's 2-1 victory over Uruguay in their first group fixture.
Neymar (Brazil): The striker, one of the hottest properties in world football, underlined his immense value to A Seleção in the group stage with three goals in three games. He scored early on against Japan (after three minutes) and Mexico (after nine) to hand the hosts a precious lead, and struck shortly after the break against Italy to put his side 2-1 ahead, just four minutes after the Squadra Azzurra had equalised. He has caught the eye with his exceptional pace on the ball, silky dribbling skills, fulminating long-range shots with either foot, deadly composure in the penalty box, and the ability to provide textbook lay-offs to better placed team-mates even in crowded areas of the field. The Brazilian is the only player to be named Man of the Match twice so far.
Paulinho (Brazil): Paulinho is not only exceptionally strong in the air, an attribute based on his powerful leaping ability and outstanding positional play, but is also highly regarded for his sudden thrusts from deep towards the opposing penalty area. As a result, he has scored twice in three matches at the tournament so far, an impressive return for a midfielder. Following a strike in Brazil's opening match against Japan, Paulinho crowned a fine display in the semi-final against Uruguay with the winning goal four minutes from time, sealing his side's 2-1 victory.
Andrea Pirlo (Italy): Just like Uruguay veteran Diego Forlan, Pirlo seems only to be getting better with age. And in another parallel with the South American master, the 35-year-old Italian also marked his 100th international with a goal: he scored in a 2-1 victory over Mexico, was named Man of the Match, and set his side on the road to the last four. However, it was not only the goal which impressed the fans and experts. Pirlo's elegance makes sublime passes look like child's play as he prompts, probes and initiates attacking moves from his central midfield position. The Italians came within an ace of eliminating world and European champions Spain in the semi-finals, but with Pirlo carrying an injury, he and his team-mates were unable to exact revenge for defeat in the final at EURO 2012.
Sergio Ramos (Spain): True to form, the defender has been a near-insurmountable obstacle at the heart of the Spain defence. Despite the goals raining in during the group stage, the defender topped the Castrol Index at the conclusion of the preliminary round, ahead of all the star strikers at the tournament. The Real Madrid stalwart is living proof of the quality running through Vicente del Bosque's team not just in attack but in every area of the park. Ramos has made a vital contribution to the Spaniards restricting their opponents to a solitary goal so far. He tops the rankings for ball-winning and is also the outfield player who has made the most clearances.
Luis Suarez (Uruguay): The 26-year-old rates as one of the top strikers in the global game, and he is a revered star of the Uruguayan team. His free kicks can be deadly, as he has proved again in Brazil: in the opening match, the striker curled a perfectly-struck shot past Iker Casillas and into the right corner of the Spanish net. Suarez' three goals in Brazil mean he has also become his country's all-time leading scorer, overtaking no less a living legend than team-mate Forlan.
Previous winners of the adidas Golden Ball at the FIFA Confederations Cup
1997 - Denilson (Brazil)
1999 - Ronaldinho (Brazil)
2001 - Robert Pires (France)
2003 - Thierry Henry (France)
2005 - Adriano (Brazil)
2009 - Kaka (Brazil)


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Pity this woman. She fell into that trap.
This is Hugh yesterday in London leaving a tapas bar after spending two and a half hours with this lovely lady. He seems tender with her, non? Touching her head, holding out his arm to her…and in his hand a book – Only Love Is Real: A Story of Soulmates Reunited by Dr Brian Weiss.
Oh no…
You can see what's happening right? This girl, she's all over it. She thinks she's changed him.
Hugh Grant?
Hugh Grant isn't changeable. He also hasn't made a movie in two years. Did You Hear About the Morgans? is the last item on his resumé. Might want to do something about that, yeah?
Photos from INF
Tender loving Hugh


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Tagged: Da'quan Bowers
All I want for Christmas (err 4th of July) is a friggin' pitcher…
This has not been a good
year for Yankees pitchers (or potential pitchers). First, prime free agent target Cliff Lee signed with the Philadelphia
Phillies. Then, Andy Pettitte decided it was time to stay home in Deer Park, Texas
to spend time with his family. And now, Phil Hughes is on the DL and it doesn't
sound like he'll be coming off any time soon.
Fortunately, the Yankees
have gotten very solid pitching from Ivan
Nova, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon (much better than almost
anyone had expected). But from the 'glass
is half empty' approach, can they keep it up?
Most likely, there will be a few hiccups along the way. Considering the Yankees have to decide by
Sunday whether to call up Kevin Millwood
or release, my guess is that they'll bring him up as the long man in the pen
and send Buddy Carlyle back to
Scranton-Wilkes Barre. Millwood would be
the first to start should Nova, Garcia or Colon suffer any setbacks. At this point, I don't think the Yankees can
afford to let Millwood slip away.
As I write this post, I am
watching the 2011 NFL Draft. I am
waiting to see who the Minnesota Vikings select with the #12 pick. As it stands right now, the Buffalo Bills
just selected Marcell Dareus, DT
from Alabama with the #3 pick. I want
the Vikings to pick a QB of the future, so I am okay if they reach with their
pick or trade down to get their man. My
personal favorite for selection is QB Jake
Locker from the University of Washington.
We'll see how the choice goes down later in this post. If the Vikings don't get Locker, I'd like to
see them find a way to get Christian
Ponder or Andy Dalton. As a fan of the University of Iowa, I'd love
to see Ricky Stanzi get a shot but I
recognize his talent and potential is below the other name QB's.
For as great as the Yankees
bullpen is supposed to be, it's disturbing to see the breakdowns of Rafael Soriano and Mariano Rivera. It would
seem that pitching the 9th is more difficult than pitching the 8th,
but Soriano is making the 8th look the hardest. Mo recently went through a stretch of two
blown saves although he did right the ship against the Chicago White Sox on
Wednesday night. Hopefully, the guys in
the pen grow accustomed to their roles and manager Joe Girardi is able to resist the temptation to bring Mo in for
anything other than the 9th.
Although Mo leads the AL in saves with 8, it's strange to see former
Yankees gasoline artist Kyle Farnsworth,
now Tampa Bay Rays closer, in the top 5.
Why do I cringe when I see Eric Chavez playing first base? I know that he can handle the position, but
after watching him with the Oakland A's the last few years, it's hard not to
think that the next play could be the one that puts Chavez on the DL…
We are through the first 5
picks of the NFL Draft and Blaine
Gabbert is still on the board. Why
is that important? Because as long as
Gabbert is on the board, Jake Locker
is only the 2nd best QB still available. Here's to still hoping for Jake Locker in purple, but I can't see
Gabbert getting by the San Francisco 49ers at #7.
It was strange to see the
Yankees score their first two runs of tonight's game against the Chicago White
Sox without recording a hit against Sox starter Edwin Jackson (courtesy of four walks in the inning). With CC
Sabathia on the mound, I feel fairly confident that the Yankees will be
able to exit the four game series with a split.
Well, so long as Soriano and Rivera don't implode in their respective
Surprise, the 49ers didn't
go for Gabbert so perhaps it helps improve the chances for Locker in the Land
of 10,000 Lakes…
Ugh, the Tennessee Titans
just took Locker!
Wow, I don't know what I
want the Vikings to do now. There's no
way that Gabbert will still be available if the Vikings don't try to move
up. It would be way too early to go
after Ponder so it would appear that the Vikes pick will most likely be a
defensive selection. Bummer for me…
This is how I felt many
years ago when the Titans took Steve
McNair when I was hoping that he'd fall to the Vikings. Drats, those Titans!
Meanwhile, on the Yankees
front, they seem to be having a good night as it is now 5-0 in the bottom of
the 5th inning. The sole
Yankees home run was by Brett Gardner
so maybe his bat is starting to come around.
It's not that I'd expect Gardy to hit homers since that isn't his forte,
but still, it's nice to see him in the offensive mix.
The Yankees game is up to
7-0, and the only players without either a run scored or a RBI are Eric Chavez (two walks) and Jorge Posada. Speaking of Posada, I am not certain how long
the Yankees give Posada to start hitting.
His batting average stands at .134.
If I were the Yankees GM, it would be hard to resist the urge to recall Jorge Vazquez and insert him as a
part-time DH. Of course, I'd have
absolutely no idea who to send down to the farm so that's why Brian Cashman has the job and I don't.
Well, give Posada a RBI on a
walk. 8-0 Yanks in a 6-run 5th
(so far). So I guess that makes Chavez
the only one who hasn't produced a run in this game.
It looks like the
Jacksonville Jaguars will take Blaine
Gabbert with their trade up with the Washington Redskins. So much for the QB for the future for
Minnesota… Does this mean that the Vikings QB will be
someone like Carson Palmer, Vince Young, or Donovan McNabb? Very
disappointing when you play in a division with Aaron Rodgers, Jay Cutler, and Matthew
My guess is that the Vikings
will make a play for Ponder or Dalton later in the draft. Man, I really wish that QB Joe Webb wouldn't have engineered that
upset of the Philadelphia Eagles last year.
With the 12th
pick of the 2011 NFL Draft, the Minnesota Vikings take…QB Christian Ponder, Florida State.
Wow, as much as I wanted a QB and I thought that Ponder was the next
best option, #12 is probably a bit early.
But still, with the likes of Joe
Webb and Rhett Bomar as the only
QB options in Minnesota, I do like the upside of Ponder at the position. I just never expected Ponder to go that
early, especially with defensive greats like Nick Fairley and Da'quan
Bowers just sitting there for the taking.
Oh well, Go Seminoles!
Meanwhile, it is still 8-0
in New York in the bottom of the 6th. Oops, 9-0. Nice…


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Happy 1st Anniversary to LMC Open Heart Surgery!
March 28th marks an important milestone for Lexington Medical Center. It's the one year annivesary of our open heart surgery program.
Lexington Medical Center has completed nearly 200 open heart surgeries in the first year of its comprehensive cardiovascular care program. The number of surgeries far surpasses Lexington Medical Center's estimate of 100 to 150 surgeries for the first year. Importantly, it demonstrates the need for comprehensive cardiovascular care in our community.
Lexington Medical Center performed its first open heart surgery on March 28, 2012, after a decade long journey of working to receive state approval for a heart program. The ability to provide comprehensive cardiovascular care, including open heart surgery and therapeutic cardiac catheterizations, helps Lexington Medical Center meet its mission of providing quality health services that meet the needs of our community and enhances the delivery of health care to the Midlands. It has been a priority of the hospital for many years. Lexington Medical Center's heart program is affiliated with Duke Medicine, home to one of the best heart surgery programs in the country.
The most common types of surgery performed in the first year of the heart program were coronary artery bypass and aortic valve replacement. Each of the patients has a unique and compelling story about their experience with cardiovascular disease and surgery.
The cardiovascular surgery program began in 2012 with Dr. Jeffrey Travis. This year, Lexington Medical Center hired a second heart surgeon, Dr. Steven Marra. In the second year of the program, Lexington Medical Center will work on growing the cardiovascular program's technology and services inside the cardiac surgery operating room and the hospital's two busy catheterization labs. In addition, Lexington Medical Center is now expanding electrophysiology, a cardiology specialty that focuses on the treatment of abnormal heart rhythms. That includes catheter ablations for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. The hospital is also looking toward providing minimally invasive aortic valve replacement in the future.
Many of Lexington Medical Center's heart surgery patients participated in cardiac rehabilitation. Patients worked with staff members to develop a personalized wellness plan that helped them rebuild strength, endurance, emotional well-being and confidence.
The work in Lexington Medical Center's cardiac care program extends into the community with a robust heart education program and a strong resource for people who want to be involved.
Cardiovascular disease is responsible for one out of every three deaths in our state. According to the American Heart Association, each year in South Carolina, 9,000 people die from heart disease. Life expectancy in the United States would rise by 7 years if all forms of major cardiovascular disease were eliminated.
For more information about Lexington Medical Center's comprehensive cardiovascular program, visit www.lexmed.com.


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The European East Pass is the most comprehensive pass to visit the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary.
All four countries have a rich cultural and historical background. Discover Slovakia, the gateway to Eastern Europe and UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Czech Republic and Austria. Have a relaxing moment in one of the excellent thermal baths in Hungary.
The European East Pass allows you unlimited travel with the freedom to hit the tracks whenever and wherever you want! You can take as many trains as you like and there is no limit on the distance you can travel within a travel day. All of this at a fixed price.
Hop on and off trains at any time according to your desires and encounters. Just show up at the nearest train station and get ready to go and explore a new destination. (See 'Things to know' for more information about seat reservations).
The European East Pass is packed with bonuses to make your trip even more enjoyable. Hotel discounts, reduced museum fares and more are included in your pass.
Whether you are the adventurous traveller or the avid planner the European East Pass is your pass to freedom and the key to an unforgettable trip!


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The 2011 American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Workshop on Women Rethinking Equality will be held June 20-22 at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. According to the brochure, the workshop "will appeal to a full range of teachers and scholars in all subject areas. It will challenge us to think about the meaning, contours and status of equality for women: in legal, social, and institutional settings – and in the specific context of legal education." The full program is here. Many panels include, and/or will be of interest to, legal historians; a sampling appears after the jump.
A plenary panel on "Meanings and Contexts of Gender Equality" includes Reva Siegel, Yale Law School and Angela Harris, UC Davis School of Law. Jill Hasday, University of Minnesota Law School, will speak about "Recasting the Canon of Family Law," as part of a break-out panel on Gender and the Family. Works-in-progress selected for workshop panels include "The Noisy Revolution: A Reexamination of Divorce Reform, 1970-1983," by Mary Ziegler, St. Louis University Law School; "Racially Inadmissible Wives: Uncovering Immigration Law's Role in Restricting Interracial Marriages," by Rose Cuison Villazor, Hofstra University School of Law; "Historical Breaks: Race and Legal Memory Making in the Supreme Court Jurisprudence of the Death Penalty, by Melynda J. Price, University of Kentucky College of Law; and "Feminist Legal Realism? Reforming Reality from the Trenches, on the Benches and Beyond," by Mae Quinn, Washington University-St. Louis.
Both lunchtime plenary sessions have a historical bent: on Tuesday, June 21, Barbara Babcock of Stanford Law School, Herma Hill Kay of UC Berkeley School of Law, and Judge Nancy Gertner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts will reflect on "Women Advocates: Teachers and Scholars Across Generations," moderated by Angela Onwuachi-Willig of the University of Iowa College of Law. On Wednesday, June 22, the topic is "Race, Sexuality, and the roots of Feminist Legal Advocacy," featuring Kenneth Mack of Harvard Law School and Tomiko Brown-Nagin of the University of Virginia School of Law, and moderated by Serena Mayeri, University of Pennsylvania Law School.


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Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools
L. Erlbaum Associates, 1997 - 191 páginas
Imagine a group of primary students debating whether Christopher Columbus should be considered a hero, or eighth graders producing a video to examine whether a historic document -- the Bill of Rights -- speaks to current issues. Imagine classrooms where students regularly, and actively, dohistory -- frame questions, gather data from primary and secondary sources, organize and interpret that data, and share their work with different audiences. Imagine, too, a history curriculum that reflects the rich diversity of people in the United States and around the world.
The authors have spent a number of years working with teachers in just such classrooms. They have seen powerful historical study in classes where many of the children were recent immigrants, as well as in classes where children's families have lived in the same area for nearly two hundred years. Some classes are full inclusion programs where the special education and "regular" teachers team teach; most include students with special needs, at least for social studies. The classrooms range from urban and suburban to rural settings. But despite their differences, these communities of inquiry have several things in common. In each one, even the youngest children describe historical study as interesting and important. Moreover, historical study in each of these classrooms deals with important historical content and engages students in authentic historical inquiry. Allstudents are invited to be historical participants. Throughout the book, the authors draw on these classrooms to provide models of instructionally sound, thoughtful, and thought provoking history teaching with students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Most chapters also begin with a vignette from one of these classrooms.
These vignettes serve as snapshots of history in action -- including some of the obstacles even good teachers face. Each is a glimpse of a particular experience of teaching and learning history. The chapters put each vignette in perspective -- explaining why it is sound instruction and sound history and providing examples of activities ranging from the first years of primary school through the end of the middle grades. In structuring the book this way, the authors suggest a framework for rethinking history instruction at the elementary and middle school levels. Their goal is to stimulate readers' thinking relative to applying the ideas presented here to their own classrooms and students.
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History Is Explained Through Narratives
Instruction Must Build on Students Prior Knowledge
Imaginative Entry
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Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools
Linda S. Levstik,Keith C. Barton
Vista de fragmentos - 1997
Doing History: Investigating With Children in Elementary and Middle Schools
Linda S. Levstik
Sin vista previa disponible - 2005
Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools
Linda S. Levstik,Keith C. Barton
Sin vista previa disponible - 2005
Términos y frases comunes
activities African African Americans American history American Revolution Amy's Anne Frank answer artifacts asked students assessment assignment authentic Barton building Called Birdy changed chapter chart children's literature Christopher Columbus classroom Columbus conflict context controversial culture curriculum decided Dehea disciplined inquiry discussion European Americans evaluation example experience explain family history focus focused grade graphic organizers HarperCollins help students historians historical arts historical inquiry historical thinking human ideas immigrants important instruction interest interviews investigate issues Jeanette Johnny Appleseed kind LeeAnn Levstik literature lives look narrative Native Americans organized past perspective photographs present primary problems questions Rebecca response Rhoda Salem witch trials slaves social studies sources South Africa story students develop students learn students need task teachers teaching tell textbooks things timeline Tina topic visual Walt writing Zlata's Diary


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Two North Carolina lawyers are arguing that sex offenders should have the right to use Facebook and are also trying to strike down a 2008 state law that bars them from using social networking sites.
About 75 sex offenders were charged in North Carolina last year, and eight had accounts on Facebook and MySpace. Two of those men, Christian Martin Johnson and Lester Gerard Packingham, hired lawyers to fight the law they believe violates their freedom of speech, according to All Facebook.
Johnson's lawyer, Glenn Gerding, said the law is too broad and would prevent registered sex offenders from using Google or Amazon.com, because these sites allow a user to create a profile and to share information with other members, the Raleigh News and Observer reported.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
"That could include sharing a recipe on BettyCrocker.com, exchanging information about heart disease on MedHelp.com, or speculating about the University of North Carolina Tar Heels sports teams on (sports website) www.Scout.com," Gerding told the News and Observer. "JesusKlub.com and GodTube.com would be off-limits to a registered sex offender."
Despite the alleged infringing on the online religious freedom of sex offenders, there may be reason to be concerned about sexual predators on Facebook.
Jason Turner, 29, was charged with using his Facebook account to proposition underage girls. Turner already had a past history of at least one sexual offense, according to the The Star. From the story:
A woman who wouldn't give her name but said she was Turner's mother answered the phone number listed for him in court documents Friday.
"All he did was have a Facebook account," she said. "He is a human being and not an animal. I think it's cruel to treat sex offenders like that while every fool in the county has a Facebook."


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It's been a little while since 5.4 was released, and I've still been tweaking my WeakAuras here and there as I go. I've finally made enough tweaks that I thought it was worth sharing with the class.
Again, the updated Paladin auras can all be grabbed at http://www.sacredduty.net/weakauras-strings/ along with auras for all of the other class/spec combinations I use regularly.
Weakened Blows
The first change is actually the removal of an aura that doesn't have much meaning anymore. Now that Crusader Strike applies Weakened Blows, there's no reason to be tracking it's uptime. So I've removed that aura entirely and shifted the Eternal Flame & Sacred Shield icons over to fill the empty space.
Priority Row Shuffle
I've tweaked the order of the spells on the priority row a bit. I've been using Holy Prism more frequently lately – or to be more specific, I've been swapping that talent more frequently and using all three choices. Nowadays, my sims are telling me that all three of these choices fall above Consecration in priority. And more importantly, I found that I tended to forget about those spells since I had their icons so far off to the right.
So I've re-ordered the last few icons on the priority row. I've moved Execution Sentence, Light's Hammer, and Holy Prism to the left and moved Consecration and Sacred Shield to the right. Now the order looks like:
CS – J – AS – HW – HoW – (ES/LH/HPr) – Cons – SS
Swapping Consecration and Sacred Shield is a last-minute change that I made after recording the videos (and taking the screenshots) shown later in this post, so in those Consecrate appears to be way off to the right. It looks a little cleaner now with that last-minute change though (which is why I decided to make it!).
Tier 16 4-piece Indicator
The first new indicator is one that tells you the status of your Tier 16 4-piece bonus. When you reach 3 stacks of Bastion of Glory, you get a buff called Bastion of Power that makes your next Word of Glory or Eternal Flame free. It's a very simple matter to track this buff in WeakAuras so you know when it's available.
The indicator pulses if you have a 5-stack of Bastion of Glory to remind you that it's at full strength. As per this comment on last week's blog post, refreshing the buff immediately at 5 stacks of BoG tends to be an ideal strategy in the steady-state (i.e. at constant Vengeance). In practice you'd want to consider your current Vengeance level, of course.
Eternal Flame Stoplight
To that end, I've added a new indicator. In this comment, Zil asked me if I could write an aura that would tell you whether refreshing Eternal Flame would give you a larger or smaller HoT. So I wrote up this "stoplight" indicator to give us that information.
Every time you cast EF, it calculates the strength of that EF and stores that value (much like the text indicators store the effective HP used, BoG level, haste, and AP you had at the time of the cast). It then calculates the value of a new EF given the current conditions and compares that to the stored value.
If the new value is at least 10% larger than the existing one, the indicator turns green. If it's not, it stays red. Yes, this is the reverse of how I have the text indicators working, but if that bothers you the colors are easily tweaked on the display tab of each aura. I tend to think of green as "good," in this case the stoplight means "It would be good to cast EF" while the text auras are telling me about the status the existing EF ("Your current EF is good, don't mess with it"). I suspect most people will only use one or the other anyway.
There's also a text indicator that shows exactly how much better the new EF will be. It's literally just showing you (new EF value)/(old EF value) as a percentage, so if it reads 115% (as it does in the image above) it means recasting EF at this point will be a 15% increase in healing throughput. Note that this percentage can get very large in cases where you have a one-HP Eternal Flame active and you're sitting on 5 stacks of Bastion of Glory.
Note that this indicator takes into account everything, as far as I know. It should accurately reflect changes in mastery, haste, Bastion of Glory stacks, spellpower, holy power, crit, and even Avenging Wrath. The only thing I've omitted are constant factors like the 50% increase from self-casting (which you should always have) and the 5% Seal of Insight healing bonus (which you should probably also always have, since I don't think many players are switching to Seal of Truth/Righteousness).
The video below shows the indicator during development at 4x the final size to make it easier to see how it works:
It didn't occur to me to write a Sacred Shield stoplight until writing this post, but I'll probably put one together in the next few weeks. I'll toss it on pastebin, update the WeakAuras page with a link to it, and probably tweet about it, but probably won't give it it's own blog post.
Jan 15 2014 edit: SS stoplight added, bundled with the EF stoplight. Also added crit scaling to the EF stoplight.
Aura Group Re-organization
Finally, I've had to re-organize the aura groups a little bit. Adding the code to support the EF Stoplight aura caused one of the other groups to get too large for Ace Serializer, which in turn broke importing. So I had to split them up. They're now organized a little differently. The three big groups haven't changed:
Theck – Prot – Priority Row
Theck – Prot – Cooldowns Row
Vengeance Bars
Those aura groups are all independent and work perfectly well all by themselves. You can import any combination of those and they should work seamlessly.
All of the auras that give you specific information about Vengeance, Sacred Shield, and Eternal Flame now have a dependency: the "Vengeance/SS/EF Helper Auras" group. This group contains the code that saves a snapshot of your stats when you cast EF or SS, which is why it's required for the other aura sets to work. They all perform calculations on that information to determine what to display, so without it, they don't work.
Vengeance/SS/EF Helper Auras (required for the three sets below)
And finally, the auras that display EF and SS information; again, none of these work without the aura group linked above:
SS/EF Vengeance Bar Overlays
Vengeance/SS/EF text indicators
EF/SS Stoplight Auras
(Technically speaking, the simple Vengeance text indicator doesn't require the helper auras, so if you're a non-paladin tank class and want that, you can just grab the "Vengeance/SS/EF text indicators" group and delete everything with EF/SS in the title and that Vengeance indicator should still work).
Final Product
And after all of that, here's how it looks in practice on a target dummy:
If you want to see the Vengeance Bar indicators at work, check out the old 5.4 video on the WeakAuras Strings page. And as always, that page contains the auras for all of the other classes I play or have played. If you have a question about what addon I'm using to create a certain UI element, check out the UI Construction and Key Bindings post, which should still be mostly accurate. If that doesn't answer your question, feel free to ask in the comments.
Other Stuff
A handful of quick comments regarding Simulationcraft stuff before I go:
- There's a bug with Execution Sentence in Simcraft at the moment (in 542-1 at least, and several earlier builds). For some reason it's not ramping up the damage of each tick appropriately for protection, even though it works perfectly for retribution. This is a non-trivial issue caused by some piece of code deep in the core, and at this point I couldn't even give you a completely satisfactory answer for why it happens. But top men (meaning: people more competent than I) are on it. Top men, I say. Hopefully should be fixed for next build.
- There's also a small bug in the last couple revisions that causes Eternal Flame to be slightly undervalued. I put some code in there to handle the hotfix applied in September (when EF's self-healing bonus was nerfed from 100% to 50%) and forgot to take it out once the spell database was updated to include that information. So EF was only getting a 25% bonus from being self-cast rather than a 50% bonus for a while, thus being undervalued by about 17%. Oops. Bad Theck. This will be fixed in version 542-2.
- I'm almost done with the MATLAB automation code that runs the rotation simulation. This turned out to be a much larger and more annoying project than I expected (and I already expected it to be large and annoying). It's arguably the most complicated of all of the sims because I had to allow the possibility of using different glyphs and talents for each rotation. Luckily, I should be able to finish it this week and have it ready for a blog post next week. Also luckily, the rest of the automation sims should be far easier to code than this one was.
- Once those are done, I have the fun job of deciding how to make them translatable to other classes (if at all). I have to see if any of this code runs in Octave or FreeMat (unlikely, I use a lot of fancy structure and cell stuff), and if not, decide whether to translate all of this to another language so that other theorycrafters/players can contribute and use the code. I could also entertain the possibility of integrating some of these features into SimC itself in the long run (ex: a talent simulation would be pretty simple, I think), but that's something I've yet to discuss with the other SimC devs.
That's it for today.


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MONTEBELLO >> Proponents of reforming the pay-day loan industry had high hopes of making changes to legislation last year but they were again unsuccessful, in part due to opposition from state Sen. Ron Calderon.
But even with the Senate Rules Committee's removal of Calderon, D-Montebello, from a Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee that killed the reform legislation, proponents say it may not make that much difference. The removal was done at the request of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg.
"The fact of the matter is that Ron was just one member of the committee," said state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D- Santa Barbara. "I couldn't get the votes of five Republicans and moderate Democrats."
She was referring to S.B. 515 that would limit the number of loans a lender could make to a borrowers to four per year, increase the amount of time to pay back a loan to 30 days per $100, instead of the typical time of two weeks and allow the person, who is unable to repay a payday loan in full on the due date to enter into an installment repayment plan.
Existing law, which was authored by Calderon's brother, Charles, who was in the Senate at the time, allows loans to be granted in exchange for a postdated check, which the borrower agrees to pay off in two weeks or a month.
In California, lenders routinely charge a 15 percent fee, equal to $45 on a maximum $300 loan. Customers receive $255 at the time the loan is made.
Ron Calderon didn't return a phone call seeking comment for this story.
The bill was killed on a 3-5 vote. In addition to Calderon's no vote, also opposed were Democrats Lou Correa of Santa Ana, and Richard Roth of Riverside and Republicans Tom Berryhill of Fresno and Mimi Walters of Irvine.
State Sen. Ben Heuso, D-Chula Vista, didn't vote, which had the same effect as a no vote.
The bill needed five votes for passage but only Democrats Jim Beall of San Jose, Ellen Corbett of Fremont and Jerry Hill of San Mateo voted for the bill.
Jackson said she doesn't know whether she will try again next year — either to resurrect S.B. 515 or introduce another bill.
However, to move the bill will take more than the removal of Calderon from the Banking Committee, she said.
"What it will take is pressure from people who live in the community," she said.
Greg Larsen, spokesman for California Financial Service Providers Association that represents regulated check cashers and pay-day lenders, said he's not worried about Calderon's removal from the committee.
"We will continue to work in the legislative process and discuss the issues with members working toward prospective solutions for Californians to have the best choices available to them for regulated legitimate credit in the workplace," Larsen said.
While no one source of credit is perfect, pay-day loans are a good source for consumers, he said.
"When you compare to other short-term credit, such as paying a bill late and having a late charge or a credit card late fee, a pay-day loan is often the least expensive and most effective," Larsen said.
"The vast majority of pay-day loan customers come in, take a loan, come back and pay off the transaction in one time and are done with the product," he said.
Paul Leonard, California director for Center for Responsible Living, disagrees.
"While it's advertised as a two-week loan, most borrowers take six, eight or 10 loans," Leonard said. "Most who borrow are in a financial vulnerable situation and will not have the financial means to pay off the loans and afford all of their living expenses."
Like Jackson, Leonard said it remains to be seen what effect Calderon's removal from his committees will have. He also noted that until this year, all of the reform bills that began in the Assembly, never made it to the Senate.
"One of the things that is true about Sen. Calderon is that he's an influential vote," Leonard said.
For example, Calderon was on the conference committee that put together the final version of the homeowner's bill of rights that seeks to ensure fair lending and borrowing practices for California homeowners by placing restrictions on mortgage services and expands tenant rights.


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"Somehow we have developed this large contingent of know-it-all baseball fans who bay like wounded coyotes at any mention of wins, losses, RBI or batting average. I never know whether I should blame myself for this or not.." (Bill James)
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Clearing The Decks
To clear space on the 40-man roster for Kratz, the most probable move would be to put Chris Jakubauskas on the 60-day DL. He's now on the 15-day DL. They do have other options available; guess we'll find out Friday.
-- Tim Williams of Bucco Fans tweeted that Jeff Locke has been promoted to Altoona. The 22 year-old lefty was 9-3 with a 3.54 ERA at High A Bradenton, and had 83 strikeouts in 86-1/3 innings, and issued just 14 walks.
2 comments:
- WilliamJPellas said...
And the death spiral continues.
This team is incredibly, shockingly, pathetically bad. I guess the only hope is improvement from within; unless the kids get better, it's hard to envision anything good for the Pirates. Ever.
I do think the current crop of position players is somewhat more talented than the players they're replacing, but I don't think it's a night and day difference. Also, the crying need is, plainly, starting pitching. Until and unless we get a bunch of rookie pitchers who can step up to Pittsburgh next season and beyond, the carnage will continue.
This is Neal Huntington's team, no more blaming of Dave Littlefield. And Huntington's vision ain't pretty.
- July 12, 2010 at 10:34 AM
- Ron Ieraci said...
Next season's pitching doesn't promise to be much different, either, Will.
- July 12, 2010 at 7:11 PM


text: Gotzis, AustriaJessica Ennis and Hans van Alphen lived up to their overnight leading position by taking victories at the Hypo Meeting in Gotzis, the the Austrian leg of the IAAF Combined Events Challenge.Competing in perfect summer-like conditions, Ennis broke the 12-year-old British record held by Denise Lewis with a fabulous 6906 points. After setting a meeting record in the 100m Hurdles with 12.81 and a new 200m PB of 22.88 and ending day one with 4113 points, 33 better than her overnight score at the European Championships in Barcelona, Ennis leapt to 6.51m in the Long Jump and set a new Javelin PB with 47.11m and capped her greatest Heptathlon competition with a solid 2:09.00 in the 800m to score her third win in a row in Gotzis. Her 6906 tally ranks No. 8 on the world all-time list. In the ranking of the best performances ever achieved at the Mosle Stadium Ennis ranks third behind meeting record holder Sabine Braun (6985, 1992) and Ghada Shouaa (6942, 1996). Tatyana Chernova also produced a stand-out performance scoring 6774 points, 132 behind than Ennis. On the second day Chernova leapt to 6.44m in the Long Jump, speared the javelin to 53.21m and clocked 2:08.94 in the 800m. Lyudmila Yosipenko, fourth after six events, managed to take third place with a new PB of 6604 points thanks to her 2:15.28 in the two-lap event. Austra Skujte had to settle with fourth place with a new PB of 6493, 32 points ahead of Germany's Lilli Schwarzkopf (6461). The heptathlon produced incredible depth with 22 athletes able to score more than 6000 points! Van Alphen set a new Belgian record with 8519 points at the end of a highly entertaining Decathlon competition with eight men over the 8000 points barrier. Eelco Sintnicolaas, European Championships silver medallist in Barcelona, improved his PB of 8436 points and the Dutch record to 8506 points. Third was German Pascal Behrenbruch with 8433 points ahead of countryman Rico Freimuth (8322) and Leonel Suarez from Cuba (8289). Heptathlon – event-by-event breakdownEnnis picked up where she left off with an outstanding win in the Long Jump where she leapt to 6.51m (1010 points) on her third attempt after 6.23m in the opening round and a foul. The Sheffield star, who was the cover-girl on the official meeting poster, totalled 5123 points after five events and carved out a gap of 251 over Chernova who jumped 6.44m and took second place with 4872. Dafne Schippers also produced a remarkable performance with 6.49m which propelled her into third place overall with 4843 points with a slight margin of five points ahead of overnight second placer Skujte (6.31m).Ennis continued on a high note with a splendid PB Javelin Throw of 47.11m and was on course to smash the British record of 6831 set by Denise Lewis in Talence in 2000. She needed to run the 800m in 2:14 to break the record, quite an easy task for Ennis who holds a PB of 2:07:81. Before the 800m Ennis had a margin of 133 points over Chernova who speared the javelin to 53.71m, an outstanding result but not enough to win the event as Ghana's Margaret Simpson produced a massive 55.90m with her third attempt. The mission to break the British record was accomplished by Ennis who crowned a fantastic week-end with a second place finish in 2:09:00 behind Chernova who edged Ennis across the finish-line by 0.06.Ennis celebrated her triumph waving the Union Jack in front of the very supportive Gotzis crowd in what could be a preview of this summer's Olympic Games in London. After the competition she hugged her rival Chernova who was one of the first to congratulate the Briton. "It was good to show that I am capable of a big score," she said. "The British record was in the back of my mind but I was not too focused on it. This weekend it was just about me preparing for the summer and making sure I am confident and I build on what I have done during the indoor season.""The highlights of the weekend were the javelin PB and the Long Jump and of course the 200 metres which was brilliant. I have been trying to run under 23 seconds for so long. I have shown that the work I have done is paying off. I think it will take a big score to win the gold in London."Chernova was delighted with her performance. "I am happy to have shown good results in the single event. I made a little mistake in the High Jump but I know what I have to do before the Olympics."Decathlon -Overnight leader Hans Van Alphen set his fourth PB of this weekend in the 110m Hurdles with 14.55 in the first heat but he was overhauled in the overall ranking by German Rico Freimuth who also set a new lifetime best with a remarkable 13.79 (1002 points) to finish second in his heat behind Canadian Damien Warner (13.78). In the overall ranking Freimuth led with 5665 points over Van Alphen (5239 points). Eelco Sintnicolaas from the Netherlands took third place with 5204 thanks to his 14.10. Pacal Behrenbruch from Germany (14.19) followed in fourth place with 5197 points. Eduard Mikhan from Belarus, who clocked 14.20, rounded out the top-five with 5144 points.Germany took the top-two spots in the overall standings after the Discus Throw. Freimuth threw 47.26m to keep his leading position overall with 6068 points with a gap of 42 points over countryman Behrenbruch who finished second in the discus behind Mikhan. The athlete from Belarus set his PB with 48.81m (841 points) to take fourth overall with 5985 points. Van Alphen defended his third place following his 45.55m throw but his gap over Mikhan was just 30 points. Sintnicolaas (42.81m) was in fifth place with 5926 points ahead of the Pole Vault, his strongest event.The Dutchman predictably produced the best score in the Pole Vault thanks to a 5.36m clearance for 1023 points and climbed into the lead with 6949 overtaking Freimuth who cleared a PB of 4.86m (868 points) by just 13 points before the javelin. Van Alphen also improved his PB by six centimetres to 4.96m to remain in third with 6913 points. Behrenbruch vaulted 4.86m and remained in contention for the podium, as he was just 55 points behind Sintnicolaas with 6884 points. Sintnicolaas set a javelin PB with 63.59m (792 points) to keep his leading position with 7741 points and a gap of just eight points over Behrenbruch who finished third with 66.72m throw (839 points). Van Alphen continued his outstanding weekend with a 64.15m (800 points) and maintained his third place with 7713 points. It came down to the wire in the final event with the top three separated by just 28 points. Fourth after nine events was Freimuth with 7645 points. The winner in the javelin was Cuban Leonel Suarez who bounced back from a below-par first day with 71.99m in his favourite event and moved up from sixth place.The battle for the win was far from over and van Alphen, who was in third coming into the final event, ran 4:20.87 to finish second behind Frenchman Gael Querin (4:18.76) to seal the victory and add his name to the prestigious list of Gotzis winners with a score of 8519 points, a new Belgian record. Sintnicolaas clocked 4:26.98 and finished runner-up just 13 points back in a dramatic competition. "I did not believe this result it's incredible," van Alphen said. "For me the highlight was the PB in the high jump where I improved from 2.00m to 2.06m. I saw that 2.09m was possible. I expected 8300 points but 8500 points is a dream come true." "I started with the Decathlon at university but at the beginning my technique was bad. Now the pieces of the puzzle are coming together," said a delighted van Alphen, who won silver medal at the 2007 World University Games, finished fifth at the 2010 European Championships and 11th at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka. Last year he finished runner-up in Kladno behind Leonel Suarez and set his previous PB of 8200 points in Talence. Diego Sampaolo for the IAAFClick here for RESULTS


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Alison.lewis necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 121 diseños de 43 diseñadores freelance.
KNOW (Knowledge Network, Opportunity for Women) is an organization that empowers young women to pursue their dreams through a one to one mentorship program.
We do this by providing the right environment, role-models and supporting
resources to promising young women.
We are creating an online platform for communication with women internationally, a supportive mentor locally.
We will have video chat, direct messaging, chartrooms, and cell phone technology as well as projects that will inspire the girls to work together from every part of the globe on a project that helps their local community and the the world be a brighter place.
We will use technology to interact with the girls, set them up with a mentor that is always accessible within 12 hours through any form of communication and who hopefully will become their mentor for life.
The mentors are high profile women in the technological, science, and mathematics communities who are donating their time to help inspire and support a girl as best as she can.
It is like a PinPal + Big Sister + Vision
Values: Education, independence, advancement, and employment
Girls aged 12- 16, international teachers and mentors from Africa, Italy, Brazil, America, Sudan, France, Germany, Turkey, and more... the desire is to become completely international.
I have attached a mood board of colors and an image of an old website which also has some great inspiration for the design as well.
Words to inspire the design:
A Safe Place
Close Community of Women
Girls in Technology
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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Last Updated on
O Level & A Level Requirement – Subject Combination for Secretarial Administration including the List of Nigeria Universities Offering the Course, WAEC, NECO, GCE, JAMB UTME, Direct Entry, IJBM, JUPEB, CAMBRIDGE, NABTEB, Course Description and Career Opportunities
- JAMB officially classified this course under Faculty of Education.
- Probable Degree type – [B. ED/B.A.(Educ.)/B.Sc. (Educ.)/B.Ed. (Tech)]
The admission requirement to study Secretarial Administration in Nigeria Universities includes one or a combination of 'O' level results or A-level result if you're going through Direct Entry. This page will literally answer questions such as WAEC subject combination, JAMB UTME subject combination, s, Special consideration (waivers), where you can work with the degree and the required documents for admission into Nigeria universities. If you're still having difficulties with getting admission in Nigeria Universities, we have some post that may be of benefit to you.
- How to study online course and earn a degree
- Study abroad for free through scholarships
- How to gain admission easily into Nigeria Universities
WAEC subject combination (requirements) for Secretarial Administration
The subjects needed to study Secretarial Administration in WAEC must contain five (5) credit. This subject combination is also applicable to NECO AND GCE… The O level requirement, that is, the required WAEC subject combination for Secretarial Administration must include
- English Language
- Economics
- Any two of Government, Geography/Physics, Accounting, Business Methods, History, Shorthand, Mathematics, Commerce, Principles of Accounts, Office Practice & Secretarial Duties
- A Trade Subject
Five TC II merit passes to include English and at least a pass in Mathematics.
JAMB UTME subject combination (requirements) for Secretarial Administration
You should aim for a score of 180 – 200 and above in JAMB UTME to be on a safe side (Just a piece of advice) because anything short of that may deny you of Admission/Post UTME. Of course, if you have a score below 180, you can consider College of Education or Polytechnic… Please note – JAMB is not the only option for admission. If you're having troubles JAMB UTME maybe it's time you pass through IJBM, JUBEB, ND or Predegree. JAMB UTME subject combinations (subjects to write in jamb) to study Secretarial Administration are
- Economics
- Any two other Social Science subjects
Direct Entry requirement (required A-level result) to study Secretarial Administration
(i) NCE Business Education (Social Studies Sect Edu. Major).
(ii) Two 'A' level passes in Business Method and any other Social Science subject and at least a pass in Mathematics
Just a reminder: Everything you have read so far is a general requirement, it is expedient that you also check the special consideration for this course below. If for some reasons you are not satisfied or cannot meet up with the subject combination above, perhaps you should consider taking a look at Polytechnic or College of Education related course subject requirements. You can also study online with a foreign university right from your bedroom or apply for a scholarship to study abroad. Education is now a choice.
So now that you know the compulsory WAEC, JAMB subject combination for Secretarial Administration, (which is also applicable to NECO and GCE) as well as A-level result/certificate.
Before you make a decision on which University to choose, please consider
- The Fees
- The Distance
- The Environment
- The Degree Certificate
- Vulnerability to Strike
- Acceptable O level and A-level Result
- Academic Calendar
See useful guides on how to choose a course and university
According to 2020/2021 JAMB Brochure, only Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye offers Secretarial Administration
Where can I work with a Degree in Secretarial Administration
I believe you now know the subjects required to study Secretarial Administration. I urge you to also find out where you can work with the degree. Please take your time to read The Act of Getting a Job – so you would know what you're up against after graduating. Career opportunities will be added soon.
The SSCE O level and A-level subject needed to study Secretarial Administration have been listed above. Some Universities may accept D7 or E8 in some a compulsory subject instead of Credit. And some may accept or reject two sittings. That is combinations of WAEC, NECO, or GCE results. You will know more when you take a look at the special consideration (waiver) for this course if available. Please take note that when you see Check, it simply means the special consideration for this course had been merge with a related course to save space. So it is advisable to click the link or search with the search bar..
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See also:
- Study Secretarial Administration and Education
- WAEC and JAMB UTME Subject Secretarial Education
- Educational Foundations and Administration
- Requirement to Study Education and Business Administration
- Adult Education/Political Science and Public Administration
- WAEC and JAMB UTME Subject for Marketing Education
- Study Educational Administration and Supervision
- Study Educational Administration and Planning
- WAEC and JAMB UTME Subject Educational Administration
- WAEC and JAMB UTME Subject for Education Accounting


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It's a Saturday night. You get the kids to bed, wash the dishes and plop down on the couch for a marathon of reality TV. Across the room, your partner is engrossed in his or her iPad.
Later, you give each other a chaste kiss good night, roll over and go to sleep.
On one hand, you wish the magic of your heady early days would return. On the other, you're not sure if you really care that much anymore.
It's a scene so typical in many marriages and long-term relationships that it's no wonder only an estimated 37% of couples say they're still very happy together.
But what are your options? Divorce? Therapy? How about a "love drug" guaranteed to keep you both content?
That's the premise of a recent report in Current Opinion in Psychiatry that examined the implications of a potential pharmaceutical drug aimed at keeping couples happy and in love.
Surveys suggest that humans may not be meant to stay in lifelong, monogamous relationships: Roughly half of all marriages end in divorce, while up to 72% of husbands and 52% of wives cop to cheating on their spouses.
Yet many couples want to remain married, despite the potential problems. Based on this concept, researchers at the University of Oxford considered what might happen if couples had access to an intranasal spray containing oxytocin.
Oxytocin is the "cuddle hormone" that's released during childbirth, nursing and orgasm, resulting in feelings of closeness, bonding and connection. Could a spritz of liquid oxytocin have the same effects on your romantic relationship? Some research suggests that it might.
For example, one study published last year in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience found that, of 47 couples, those who sniffed oxytocin before discussing a disagreement were more likely to react positively toward each other than those who used a placebo spray. Such a product, say the authors of the more recent report, could be used under the direction of therapists and other clinicians to "enhance marital well-being."
Yet other evidence suggests that the effects of this hormone may not always be so beneficial: In some research, oxytocin was found to amplify negative memories, while studies of the prairie vole -- one of few animals that remain in lifelong relationships, presumably because of its high levels of oxytocin -- show that this critter is also prone to infidelity. When it comes to supplemental oxytocin, there are ethical issues to consider, too.
"Pharmaceutical companies are pushing the medical approach because it's profitable, while doctors and patients are increasingly demanding medications because taking a pill or using a spray is cheaper and 'easier' than therapy," said social psychologist Justin Lehmiller. "I'm uncomfortable with the notion that the key to solving relationship problems is taking a drug."
Of course, that hasn't stopped manufacturers from jumping on the bandwagon: Safe or not, a slew of oxytocin-based products are for sale, no prescription necessary. Aimed at improving relationships between partners and supposedly increasing attraction among strangers, these products are pricey -- and unproven.
Instead, I recommend boosting oxytocin naturally. It could be as easy as simply giving each other a nice long squeeze. In her book "The Female Brain," Dr. Louann Brizendine says that hugging your partner for 20 seconds or more has been shown to trigger the release of oxytocin.
Added Lehmiller, "If couples make an active effort to be more intimate and touch each other more often, they can likely boost their oxytocin levels without the aid of a drug. It's also likely that enhancing intimacy in this way will do more good for your relationship in the long run than any pill ever could."
You'll save your money -- and maybe your relationship, too.


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- Is Fro-Yo a No-No?
- Want to Dance Like the Stars . . . and Lose Weight at the Same Time?
- Meditate for Your Heart
- Test Your Water-Rich Foods IQ!
"Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal."
Is Fro-Yo a No-No?By Joe Wilkes
If you live in Los Angeles, you can't fail to notice that a new frozen yogurt shop is popping up on almost every corner. The wave has been led by the lightning-fast expansion of the Pinkberry chain. Various competitors like Red Mango, Kiwiberry, and Cefiore have also been multiplying like rabbits across strip malls, shopping centers, office complexes, and even casinos and hotels across the country. If they haven't hit your town yet, don't worry, they likely will. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz recently invested in Pinkberry and plans to make it as omnipresent as the coffee chain. Low in calories, with lots of healthy flora for your intestinal health, this new yogurt trend seems too good to be true—but is it?
The history of frozen yogurt
Dannon made the first frozen yogurt in the 1970s. It was sold in supermarket freezer sections in popsicle form—usually a frozen version of Dannon's tart berry yogurt but coated with chocolate or carob. Later companies like TCBY (The Country's Best Yogurt) began processing yogurt in soft-serve ice cream machines, adding more sugar or artificial sweeteners and artificial flavors to duplicate popular ice cream flavors and adding toppings, like chocolate chips, M&Ms, and crushed candy bars. Supermarket brands like Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's also began adding frozen yogurt flavors to their ice cream lines in the 1980s.
In 2005, Pinkberry opened up its first store in Los Angeles, and the chain quickly grew to over 50 stores and spawned hosts of imitators. Many say Pinkberry is a knockoff of the Korean chain Red Mango; but whoever imitated whom, Red Mango has benefited from Pinkberry opening up the American market to this new/retro style of yogurt. Pinkberry's yogurt is a back-to-basics formulation, similar to what Dannon peddled in the 1970s. Pinkberry's yogurt is more tart than the TCBY-style yogurts and is usually offered in only two or three flavors (the chain offers plain and green tea, and more recently, added coffee). These new gourmet yogurt shops offer mainly fresh fruit toppings along with a couple of less-nutritious offerings, and they all tout the health benefits of the high levels of favorable bacteria in their yogurts, like Lactobacillus and L.acidophilus.
Is it healthy?
Yogurt is generally healthy. It contains cultures that are helpful to maintain intestinal health, has calcium, and is low in calories and fat. An 8-ounce serving of Pinkberry contains about 200 calories, 8 grams of protein, no fat, and about 32 percent of your daily value of calcium. The fresh fruit toppings are unsweetened and have negligible calories; so generally, Pinkberry yogurt makes for a healthy snack. Old-school TCBY has a few more calories but is similar to Pinkberry in its nutritional makeup. However, keep in mind that most of these calories come from added sugar, so they are more likely to turn into stored fat in your body if you don't burn them off. While its calcium content is also fairly decent, you'll get nearly twice as much calcium from regular non-frozen yogurt than you will get from the frozen kind. Non-frozen yogurt also contains more protein.
Things really go off track when it comes to toppings. Fresh fruit is a great option, but if you're just crumbling one candy bar or two and a dollop of syrup on top of your yogurt, it's pretty hard to claim that you're eating light. Also, if you're getting a pint of Ben & Jerry's with chunks of cookie dough and brownies swirled in, you're not really being as virtuous as you think. You would think that common sense would let you know this, but I think most of us have somehow fooled ourselves into thinking that toppings don't count when, in fact, they add up to more empty calories than the entire dish of yogurt. And when you put your yogurt into an edible cone instead of an inedible cup, you're adding even more empty calories to your dessert or snack—120 calories for a typical waffle cone.
In short, frozen yogurt isn't terrible for your diet, but it isn't a miracle food, either. It's a much better option than ice cream and its high levels of saturated fat, but yogurt doesn't necessarily have less sugar. It's better than cookies, cake, or candy, too, but it can't hold a candle to fresh fruit for something that satisfies your sweet tooth and makes you healthy at the same time. It'll be better for your figure and your pocketbook to simply have a bowl of fruit mixed with your favorite yogurt. Or, if you're after a frosty delight, try one of these chilly treats . . .
5 Healthy Frozen Treats
- Frozen fruit. Even the worst cook can manage this one. Just pop some fresh grapes, strawberries, bananas, etc., into the freezer for a bit and pop them in your mouth. This is a recipe we offer in a lot of articles geared toward parents, as kids who turn up their noses at fruit offered in a bowl will suddenly appreciate this new frozen delight.
- Fancy ice cubes. Try pouring your favorite fruit juice into an ice cube tray and inserting toothpicks when the cubes start to get slushy enough to allow the toothpicks to stand up. You've made your own healthy mini-popsicles. For bartenders, this is also a great addition to beverages. Try a glass of seltzer water with some frozen lemon juice cubes on a hot summer day. It'll make you forget about lemonade.
- Speaking of bartending . . . This tip's for adults only. Here's a professional bartender secret—they usually add extra sugar in frozen drinks. Why? It tastes better and it makes you thirstier! More thirst=more drinks=more sugar. You get the idea. When making your own margaritas or daiquiris on a hot summer day, skip the store-bought mixers and make your own from fresh juice and use as little sugar as you can live with. Also, add extra ice to the blender. You'll be able to make your drink last a lot longer and do a lot less damage to your diet.
- Make your own sorbet. This is a little more on the gourmet side. But if you're willing to invest a little money in an ice cream/sorbet maker and a little time in making ice cream/sorbet, you can make delicious ice creams and sorbets out of fresh fruit and keep out a lot of the artificial colors and flavors and obscene amounts of sugar that many store brands contain.
- Make your own frozen yogurt. If fruit and non-frozen yogurt is better for you than the soft-serve kind sold in yogurt stands, why not switch it up? Blend frozen fruit—berries, peaches, whatever your favorite is—with some plain yogurt. If you must, you can add a little sugar to make it a treat, but think about reducing the amount a little every time you make this snack—you'll begin weaning yourself off the sweet stuff. Before you know it, fruit and yogurt will be enough of a treat, and you won't even miss the crushed Oreos!
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Meditate for Your HeartBy Tony Horton, creator of P90X®
A recent study of adolescents with high blood pressure found that those teens who practiced transcendental meditation for 8 months improved the ability of their blood vessels to relax and dilate by 21 percent. That's about the same improvement expected from taking antihypertensive drugs.
Dr. Vernon A. Barnes is a physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia's Georgia Prevention Institute and the lead investigator on the study. Researchers concluded that 15 minutes of transcendental meditation twice a day steadily lowered the blood pressures of 156 inner-city adolescents, with levels tending to stay that way.
"Our blood vessels are not rigid pipes," says Dr. Barnes. "They need to dilate and constrict, according to the needs of the body. If this improvement in the ability to dilate can be replicated in other at-risk groups and cardiovascular disease patients, this could have important implications for [the] inclusion of meditation programs to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease and its clinical consequences."
"Change can't be expected overnight," Dr. Barnes says. "Meditation and other positive lifestyle habits such as exercising and eating right have to become part of your life, like brushing your teeth."
Since heart and cardiovascular disease are such a serious problem in the U.S., the encouraging results of this study and others like it have prompted researchers to begin long-term studies to determine the long-term impact of meditation on heart disease risk.
The obesity epidemic in the United States is probably the main contributor to increasing blood pressure rates in children. But obesity appears to be part of an unhealthy cycle wherein the stresses of everyday life, such as poverty and feeling unsafe at home, contribute to bad habits like overeating and/or eating high-fat comfort foods and not exercising. Stress can also lead to sleep problems, preventing the body—and blood pressure—from resting and recovering. Meditation is one of the best tools against stress we can use. (In fact, my P90X® program dedicates an entire workout to yoga—Yoga X.)
As with all lifestyle changes, the full benefits of meditating can take a while to really show up. Likewise, along with other healthy choices like a good diet and an exercise program, like Power 90® and 10-Minute Trainer®, an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure every time.
Meditation is free, chills out your stress, and has no negative side effects. So get quiet, shut out the world, and give a nice, soothing "Ohmmmmmm." Your heart (and your nerves) will thank you.
Related Articles
"Can You Get Fit in 10 Minutes a Day?"
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If you'd like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, just email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Test Your Water-Rich Foods IQ!By Monica Gomez
Those eight 8-ounce glasses of water that you may or may not be drinking are not the only way to satisfy your body's need for water. In fact, there are several water-rich foods that you're likely already consuming now that can help you meet some of that highly touted eight 8-ounce glass recommendation. And the great news is that satisfying some of your H20 needs will not be the only benefit you gain after consuming these water-rich and nutritious foods. Match the water-rich food with its nutritional benefits.
- Cucumber – soothes skin irritations and reduces skin swelling and helps lower blood pressure. A cucumber is approximately 95 percent water—making it a naturally hydrating food. This 95-percent water composition is part of the reason that its benefits include soothing skin irritations and reducing skin swelling. Cucumber juice is recommended for its silica content to improve the skin's complexion and health. Not only can you eat cucumbers, but you can also use cucumber slices topically for treating swollen eyes, sunburn, and dermatitis. Participants of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Study experienced healthier blood pressure levels when they added foods high in potassium, magnesium, and fiber to their diets—cucumbers are sources of all three. A one-cup serving has approximately 150 milligrams of potassium, 11 milligrams of magnesium, and about 1 gram of dietary fiber. "Slicing cucumbers," or cucumbers that are grown to be eaten fresh, are available year round but are at their best from May through July. Need another great benefit? A one-cup serving of sliced cucumbers, with peel, only contains 13 calories, so you can use it generously in your salads!
- Watermelon – reduces the risk of heart disease and helps alleviate the symptoms of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Watermelon is about 92 percent water—a great thirst-quenching food to enjoy in the coming summer months, when watermelon tends to be at its sweetest. Watermelon is a highly concentrated source of the carotenoid antioxidant lycopene. And lycopene has been extensively researched and studied in humans for its antioxidant and cancer-preventing properties. This powerful antioxidant cannot only travel through the body neutralizing free radicals, harmful substances in the body that can do damage; it can oxidize cholesterol that sticks to blood vessel walls, where it can potentially lead to heart attack or stroke. One cup of diced watermelon contains almost 15 milligrams of vitamin C—that's 24.3 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA).* That one-cup also contains 11.1 percent of the RDA for vitamin A. And a high intake of vitamin C and beta-carotene has been shown in numerous scientific studies to alleviate some of the symptoms of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. A one-cup serving of diced watermelon will also yield you about 176 milligrams of potassium (5 percent of the RDA), almost 17 milligrams of magnesium (4.2 percent of the RDA), and only about 49 calories.
- Tomato – helps prevent prostate cancer and promotes bone health. This option wasn't really meant to trick you—helping prevent prostate cancer could very well have been attributed to the watermelon, too. Tomatoes are approximately 93 percent water—making them another perfect summer season food (at their best from July through September). Like the watermelon, the tomato is also a rich source of lycopene—the powerful antioxidant that has been extensively studied in humans for its cancer-preventing properties. A meta-analysis of 21 studies published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention underscored the point that eating tomatoes, especially cooked ones, offers protection against prostate cancer. Men who ate the highest amounts of raw tomatoes were found to have an 11-percent reduced risk for developing prostate cancer. Men who ate the most cooked tomato products experienced a 19-percent reduced risk. Tomatoes are also good sources of vitamin K—a one-cup serving of raw tomato contains 17.8 percent of the RDA. And that vitamin K helps promote bone health. Vitamin K1 activates osteocalcin, which is the major non-collagen protein in bone, and osteocalcin anchors calcium molecules inside the bone.
- Grapefruit – boosts liver enzymes and helps repair DNA. At 88 percent water, grapefruits are refreshing (best from winter through early spring). One cup of grapefruit contains 18.6 grams of carbs, including 2.5 grams of dietary fiber and 16.1 grams of sugars; 27.6 milligrams of calcium; and 319.7 milligrams of potassium. You can't beat that potassium content! All those nutrients and only 74 calories per one cup. Grapefruit juice greatly increases the production and activity of liver detoxification enzymes that are responsible for preparing toxic compounds for elimination from the body. A lab study published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry reported that naringenin, a flavonoid concentrated in grapefruit, helps repair damaged DNA in human prostrate cancer cells. Grapefruit also shares its rich lycopene content with watermelons and tomatoes. For the most antioxidants, it is recommended that you choose fully ripened grapefruit.
- Broccoli – helps prevent cataracts and assists in fighting birth defects. Broccoli is 92 percent water. Broccoli, along with other leafy green vegetables, contains powerful phytonutrient antioxidants, called lutein and zeaxanthin, which belong to the carotenoid family. Both lutein and zeaxanthin are concentrated in high amounts in the lens of the eye. In a study, Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, 36,000 men were monitored. Study participants who ate broccoli more than two times per week experienced a 23-percent reduced risk of developing cataracts compared to participants who ate broccoli less than once a month. One cup of broccoli contains 94 micrograms of folic acid, which is a B-vitamin essential for proper cellular division because it is necessary in DNA synthesis. And without folic acid, a fetus' nervous system cells do not divide properly. Folic acid deficiency during pregnancy has been linked to neural tube defects like spina bifida. Due to its highly perishable nature, broccoli should be stored in an open plastic bag in your refrigerator crisper, where it should keep for a week.
*Percent Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
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Paul McCartney's 9/11 Concert in a Showtime Film
He was on his way back to England after a visit to America, he recalled for reporters on Thursday.
"But out of the window on the right side of the airplane you could see the twin towers," he said. "You could see one plume of smoke. Then you could see two, shortly thereafter. And I said, 'That's just an optical illusion.'"
It wasn't, of course. The plane McCartney was on, like every other, was grounded. And before long, he was trying to think of how to respond to the attacks, and what he could do to help.
The result was a "Concert for New York," which McCartney helped organize. He was joined onstage a few weeks later by David Bowie, Elton John, Billy Joel and many others for the event at Madison Square Garden, which served as a benefit for the city while celebrating its resiliency in a time of crisis.
That concert now serves as the framework for a new film, "The Love We Make." Directed by legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, it captures McCartney's firsthand observations of 9/11 as well as concert performances and backstage preparations.
It premieres on Showtime on Sept. 10.
The film wasn't finished until recently, said McCartney, though he could offer no good reason why it took a decade to complete.
Speaking by video feed from Cincinnati to reporters at the Television Critics Association gathering in Beverly Hills, he speculated that "the fact of the 10th anniversary spurred me into thinking, 'Wait a minute! Albert took some great footage back then that we never did anything with.'
"So I got in touch with Albert, and asked him, 'Is it still all round? Would it make a good film?' And I said, 'Come on, let's do it, then.' We were reawakened by the 10th anniversary."
McCartney had worked with Albert Maysles and his brother and longtime partner David (who died in 1987) nearly four decades earlier. The brothers, who were pioneers in the cinema verite style of filmmaking all the Beatles admired, had proposed making a documentary about the Fab Four when they first arrived in America in 1964.
McCartney said he and his band mates asked the brothers, "What do you want us to do?"
The Maysles' reply: "We want you to just ignore us."
"We thought that was the best piece of direction we'd ever received," McCartney recalled, and when he hit on the idea of a film centered on the 9/11 concert, he said he asked Albert Maysles, then 74, "Will you just do it all again? I'll ignore you again."
"The Love We Make" reflects Maysles' signature black-and-white style and fly-on-the-wall unobtrusiveness.
"Albert has this great way of hiding," said McCartney, who spoke with satisfaction of his own lack of guardedness in the presence of Maysles' camera.
"There are backstage moments that are very intimate," he said. "I'm talking to Bill (Clinton) as if he's an old friend, forgetting that he was the president of America. And the guys in the Who — again, it's very intimate."
McCartney recalled that, just after 9/11, "there was fear in the air. I had never experienced that, particularly in New York, and this was where the idea of doing a show came about."
By Oct. 20, when the concert took place, "we were emerging from the fearfulness of the immediate impact," and in the audience "you were seeing the emotion releasing through music. ... We actually felt like we were doing a bit of good."
McCartney said the concert exemplifies his theory that "music can really be healing."
"I've lucked out to be in a profession where I can actually help heal, let people get in touch with their emotions," while, at the same time, he gets in touch with his.
"It's a magical thing. And I do mean that. People say, 'You believe in magic?' I really do. I have to."
McCartney said he thinks back to the early days of the Beatles, and those memories "are etched in my mind."
But he finds life, and music-making, better than ever at age 69.
"Whereas I would expect to have been jaded by now, it actually seems new every time I do it," he said, just hours before his Cincinnati performance, part of his On the Run tour. "It has become probably more exciting that ever for me."