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"Liberal Media" Hasn't Given Obama A Week Of Positive Press Coverage In Nearly One Year
Written by Eric Boehlert
Findings from a new media study indicating Republican Mitt Romney has received substantially better press coverage this year than President Obama may have surprised some observers. It certainly agitated conservative activists who relentlessly promote the idea of a left-leaning press corps that works in tandem with the Democratic Party, and according to Fox News, is covering for Obama.
Just last week Bill O'Reilly complained that the "liberal media" "wants to re-elect President Obama." That kind of rhetoric has become as natural as breathing for a conservative movement that's built its base since 2008 around the singular claim that the liberal media has rolled over for Obama.
Indeed, the "liberal media" accusation has been a cornerstone to American conservatism for forty years. It's actually grown into a cottage industry that pays the bills for talk radio, fills endless hours of commentary on Fox News, and produces content for right-wing authors.
So naturally, if there's a Democratic president in the White House, openly biased journalists must have their thumbs on the scales, right? Obama must be benefiting from warm praise and soft coverage. Meaning, now is the time for conservatives to prove definitively that their claims about the slanted press are true.
Except that, of course, they are not.
The results of the latest survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism should not come as a shock. If you look back on Pew's ongoing research, it indicates the "liberal media" hasn't given Obama a single week's worth of positive news coverage in the ten months Pew has conducted its study.
It's true that in the past some observers (including Media Matters) have questioned the usefulness of similar press coverage studies. But conservatives themselves have cited Pew reports to bolster their claims about a liberally bias media. Republican press critics are likely regretting that now.
For instance, last October Pew released a media survey that looked at news coverage stretching back to May. Its conclusion was that Obama had been on the receiving end of "unrelentingly negative" coverage:
The assessments of the president in the media were substantially more negative than positive in every one of the 23 weeks studied. In no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the President positive in tone.
In 2011, only candidate Newt Gingrich, whose campaign was floundering at the time, received more negative press than Obama did during the time frame studied by Pew. Indeed, the firm reported that between May and October, "negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-to-1."
As for Pew's latest findings, which covered from January to early April, the trend continued:
Of all the presidential candidates studied in this report, only one figure did not have a single week in 2012 when positive coverage exceeded negative coverage--the incumbent, Democrat Barack Obama.
The Pew findings have been clear: While Republicans have jockeyed for their party's nomination for the last year, the Democratic president has been hammered with negative press coverage. And it's coverage whose harsh tone has been matched only by its week-in and week-out consistency.
Behold the liberal media.


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My husband and I have made several business trips to east TN this past year. We were very excited to hear about Berry Springs Lodge through the "Select Registry 2009-2010" book that has the best B&B's listed across the nation. Berry Springs Lodge is everything they say they are online and more... from the moment you arrive, the customer service is outstanding, the living room/dining area very clean, warm, and charming, and the rooms are cozy, beautiful, very clean, comfortable and warm as well. We loved our fireplace AND jacuzzi on our private deck overlooking 30 beautiful, peaceful acres along with a view of the Smokies! We left everyday and came back to a sparkling, clean, nice smelling room, with a piece of chocolate on our pillows. The breakfasts and nightly baked fresh desserts were some of the best food we have eaten in TN! Thank you Patrick and Sue... we will be making another reservation soon at your lodge for the summer! And Congratulations on 10 Wonderful Years as Berry Springs Lodge!
Mar 25, 2010

subset: commoncrawl


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MapInfo Corporation today announced the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) site has unveiled its unique Web mapping application.
The application displays scientific results on a map and was created with MapInfo® MapXtreme® Java™ Technology Edition. Users can select from $70 million of chemical, biological and physical water quality data collected over the past 10 years in approximately 50 basins under the USGS NAWQA program and map it to show water quality conditions in a given area.
Using MapInfo MapXtreme, the application displays results from its data warehouse (http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/data), which contains the largest consistently designed and collected set of searchable water quality data in the nation. The application communicates directly with the Oracle9i database accessing sampling sites with Oracle Spatial and rendering its associated water quality results in a thematic map. The application will be showcased at Oracle OpenWorld on Dec.5 in a session titled, "Mining USGS Water Quality Data with Oracle Discoverer."
Researchers can now display data on a map through a Web browser in seconds. Previously, this would take hours or even days to complete with complex GIS tools. Additionally, the public can access the data to determine water quality conditions in a specific area and compare it with other regions throughout the country.
"MapInfo MapXtreme strikes a good balance between rapid application development using out-of-the-box functionality and extensibility because of the Java architecture," said Nate Booth, lead USGS developer with the NAWQA Data Warehouse. "In conjunction with MapInfo, we were able to build a unique application to display water quality data that contains the look and feel of other NAWQA applications. In addition, the Java architecture integrates well with Oracle9i, through JDBC connection pooling and leverage of the Oracle Spatial search capabilities."
"The USGS water quality application is another example of how MapInfo works with government agencies, helping researchers and the public to create powerful maps that allow them to easily and efficiently analyze critical information," said Brian Lantz, vice president, global business and sales development, of MapInfo Corp. "By displaying the information on a map, users can more easily pinpoint and isolate pollutants and take necessary safety measures."
Source: Business Wire


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Hello and welcome to the Neal's website. Thank you for taking a visit and we hope we can be of service to you. We hope you find the site light and cheerful and yet we take our quality and service very seriously.
We now also supply local veg boxes. Our vegetables come from a small farm just outside Petrockstow, a small village 5 miles from Dolton. All vegetables grown on the farm are grown using I.C.M (integrated crop management) principles which involve using natural pest predators instead of pesticides.
Neal's is a small independent family butchers run by Patrick Neal who has 26 years of experience working in the shop and Jane Neal who works behind the scenes looking after all the administration.
Because of Patricks many years In Butchering we have been able to continue Butchering in the traditional way using only carefully selected whole carcasses of locally produced meat and never buy in pre-packed boxes of meat. The meat is then hung for the appropriate time, 21 days for all of our beef, before being cut and packed to our customers requirements.
Our shop is located in the small village of Dolton, almost in the centre of Devon. Because of our location we are lucky enough to see visitors from all over the country and our visitors are telling us more frequently that they have lost their local Butchers shop like ours and how much they miss it. Unfortunately when a Butchers has closed, it is usually for good. To resolve this problem we are bringing the traditional Butchers shop to you at home as authentically as possible with the aid of modern technology.
Everything we supply is on display in our Shop Page. Just like your old Butcher used to. Just click on the product, enter the quantity, size of joints or packs, confirm your selection and we will wrap it up and put it in your basket. For more detailed information on where our meat comes from and our principles please see what's in our Cutting Room.
Once again thanks for looking and happy shopping.
Patrick and Jane Neal.


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Kershaw strikes a pose, 12 times, in first playoff win
ATLANTA -- Clayton Kershaw admittedly did not have his best fastball on Thursday night in Game 1 of the National League Division Series -- but that didn't stop the Dodgers' ace from proving why he is the NL Cy Young Award favorite.
Kershaw overcame some brief mid-inning command problems en route to turning in a record-setting performance while the Dodgers cruised to a series-opening 6-1 victory over the Braves at Turner Field. The southpaw credited his catcher, A.J. Ellis, with first picking up on the fastball issues and changing the way he called the rest of the game on the fly.
"He recognized pretty quickly that my fastball wasn't where it needed to be tonight," Kershaw said of Ellis. "And he adjusted the game plan accordingly, and it worked out."
Unable to pound the strike zone effectively with his fastball, Kershaw's pitch count climbed to 77 after just four innings. At that point, the southpaw had just four strikeouts and had already issued two walks and uncorked a wild pitch.
Turning heavily to the breaking ball as the game wore on, Kershaw went on to strike out 12 batters over seven strong innings, limiting the Braves to just one run. In striking out nine of the final 11 hitters he faced -- including striking out the side in the fifth and seven innings -- Kershaw notched the most strikeouts by a Dodgers pitcher in postseason play since Sandy Koufax notched 15 in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series.
"His fastball just didn't have the pinpoint location that it usually has. He made more mistakes over the middle than he normally would," Ellis said. "Fortunately, he didn't pay for them, but they got a lot of foul balls and drove his pitch count up early. But then, Kersh being Kersh, he kind of just put the hammer down, and it was lights-out from there. For him to get through those last few innings, especially with all those strikeouts, was just huge for us."
As for setting the Dodgers' NLDS record for strikeouts in a game, Kershaw again deferred much of the credit to his batterymate.
"Strikeouts just kind of happen, it's not something I'm trying to do," Kershaw said. "I'm just trying to get outs as fast as possible. With A.J. calling some more offspeed pitches, sliders were getting some swings and misses tonight, which was good."
In the other dugout, Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez was confident his club was on the verge of breaking through against Kershaw after watching his club make the lefty work so much in the early innings. Trailing, 5-0, in the bottom of the fourth, Atlanta pushed across its first -- and only -- run of the night on a Chris Johnson two-out, run-scoring single that still left the Braves with runners on the corners.
Unfortunately for the Braves, that would be the last hit allowed by Kershaw.
"When you look up and you see 77 pitches in the fourth inning, you feel like you have a chance," Gonzalez said. "But he is what he is. He turned it up the next three or four innings, and we didn't really get any other good swings at him."
Following Johnson's RBI base knock, Kershaw dialed up a strikeout of Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons, setting off his stretch of retiring 10 of the final 11 hitters he faced. Kershaw's lone misstep during that span was issuing a leadoff walk to catcher Brian McCann to start the seventh inning before striking out each of the next three hitters. Ellis credited that fourth-inning strikeout of Simmons as the turning point for Kershaw.
"Johnson had just gotten that hit to score the first run for them -- that's a lot of momentum," Ellis said. "Then [Kershaw] throws an unhittable 3-2 slider, struck him out. It kind of reminded me that maybe we needed to change our pattern up a little bit. We pitched a little backwards the rest of the game, using more offspeed, and the slider was just dominant the rest of the way."
For Kershaw, Thursday's victory marked the first postseason win in his young career, though he hopes to notch a few more in the 2013 postseason. For now, the 25-year-old will savor the Game 1 victory -- one that he said may just be the highlight of his baseball career up to this point.
"It's up there," Kershaw said. "It's probably it might be the best, just because it's my first postseason win. I hadn't ever won a game. We got to win in one other game that I pitched that I started in, but this one definitely has special meaning to me for sure."


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Martha's Vineyard (including nearby Chappaquiddick Island), is an 89.48 square mile (231.75 km²) island off approx. 7 miles from the southern coast of Cape Cod and is often known simply as "the Vineyard".
Located in the American Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Vineyard makes up most of the County of Dukes County, Massachusetts (the rest of the county consists of Cuttyhunk and the other Elizabeth Islands and the island of Nomans Land).
The island is known as a summer colony and a thriving arts community", though its year-round population has grown quite considerably since the 1960s, despite being accessible only by boat and by air.


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A partnership between computer scientists at the University of California San Diego and Google has allowed the search giant to reduce by 70 percent fraudulent business listings in Google Maps. The researchers worked together to analyze more than 100,000 fraudulent listings to determine how scammers had been able to avoid detection -- albeit for a limited amount of time -- and how they made money.
The team presented their findings at the 26th International Conference on the World Wide Web in Australia earlier this month.
The computer scientists identified what they describe as a "new form of blackhat search engine optimization that targets local listing services" such as Google Maps. They also describe how these scammers were able to make money. "Location-based search is increasingly becoming the way people interact with online content -- even if you're not using a mapping application," said Alex C. Snoeren, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego and a senior author of the study.
For example, when people run a search on their mobile phone, the search engine uses their physical location as one of the inputs to decide which results to display, Snoeren explained.
The scammers take advantage of this by using fake locations to make it look like their business is in close proximity to the user doing the search. This was particularly true of on-call contractors, notably plumbers and locksmiths. Researchers found that 40 percent of all fake listings on Google Maps belong to that category.
"I might find seven listings for locksmiths in my neighborhood," said Danny Huang, the paper's first author and a Ph.D. student in computer science at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. "But in fact, none of those listings are real."
In all, researchers found that 11 percent of overall search results for locksmiths were fraudulent. In New York, that percentage went up to 15.6 percent. And it went up to an astonishing 83.3 percent in West Harrison, New York. Scammers are able to make money when they get called to help a user based on a fake listing. Scammers might quote a low price when called on the phone, only to charge a higher fee when they show up. They might not be licensed but get the business anyway.
In another scheme, scammers set up fake pins for real hotels or restaurants on Google Maps. They set up websites where customers make reservations, which are connected to the business' real website or to a travel agency, which is not part of the scam. This allows scammers to make money either by getting a commission for each reservation or for referring traffic to the businesses' real websites. The researchers found that roughly 13 percent of the fraudulent listings had real hotel and restaurant addresses, but were not created by these businesses.
All these fraud schemes were possible primarily because scammers found a way to get around Google's verification process.
Businesses can register for Google Maps online for free. But before a listing goes live, Google sends a postcard with a verification code to the business' address. The business inputs this verification code and the listing is then approved to go live.
Partly thanks to these measures, Google is able to detect 85 percent of fake listings before they even appear on Google Maps. The fake listings that make it past the verification process are taken down within an average of 8.6 days between creation and suspension.
Scammers got around verification requirements mainly by leasing PO boxes and using those addresses to receive their verification codes. They also added fake suite numbers to a specific address so Google wouldn't get suspicious about a large number of businesses located at the same address. Researchers note that there are legitimate reasons for a large number of businesses to have the same address -- big office buildings in Manhattan come to mind.
Researchers also noted that a large percent of fraudulent listings changed their address or the category they belonged to (from hotel to locksmith, for example) after verification.
To tamp down on abuse, Google has taken a number of measures, which the company details in a post on its research blog. Steps include: prohibiting bulk registration at most addresses; preventing businesses from changing their addresses to a location that is impossibly far from the original without additional verification; and detecting and ignoring intentionally mangled text in address fields designed to confuse Google's algorithms. The company also fine-tuned its anti-spam machine learning systems to detect data discrepancies that are common in fake or deceptive listings.
The research was partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
*D.Y. Huang, D. Grundman, K. Thomas, A. Kumar, E. Bursztein, K. Levchenko and A.C. Snoeren, "Pinning Down Abuse on Google Maps," Proc. of the International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW), April 3-7, 2017, Perth, Australia.
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Two weeks in and the possible run for president hits its first choppy waters.
It is in the form of an article in The Irish Times castigating me as an Irish American for daring to think about running for president of Ireland-- even though I was born and lived 26 years there.
The headline is 'O'Dowd too much of an Irish American for the Aras' (meaning Aras an Uachtarain the president's residence).
It was written by British citizen Walter Ellis, who writes obituaries for The London Times as far as I can judge.
Amazingly, he is presented as some kind of prominent Irish American by the Times.
The Times has been doing a lot of that in recent times, presenting marginal figures as leading Irish Americans.
Clearly the emigrant Irish and Irish Americans are seen by some there as a nuisance at best, as a threat at worst and anyone who will write that way is encouraged.
The key point in the article is to paint me as an outsider, as if Ireland was not tethered in so many ways to the millions who have left the place in the past 160 odd years since the famine.
There is also the attempt to paint Irish Americans as naive and not understanding Ireland, even though we did anticipate and act on the opening for a peace process in Ireland before the majority of the Irish ever did.
We were accused of being naive then too.
Just keep the dollars coming lads and feck off then?
Portraying people as outsiders fits into that genre.
Current president Mary McAleese, because of her Northern Irish roots, suffered savage attacks.
Think Barack Obama and his birth certificate.
Ellis, the British obituary writer, presents the cartoon version of Irish America. He sneers at the fact that my publications celebrate St.Patrick's Day.
I've been accused of many things, but celebrating St. Patrick's Day I plead guilty to.
Then Ellis says I have been nasty to the Royal Family -- again I plead guilty on occasions, such as when Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi and Prince William claimed an Irish title.
But the strangest accusation is that somehow I am not Irish because I am an American and Irish citizen (This is coming from a British citizen).
By his lights, Eamon De Valera, who essentially engineered the modern Irish state, was not Irish either because he was born in New York.
I have spent 32 years writing about Ireland practically every day. To be presented as somehow not of Ireland is passing strange to me, especially by a British writer.
Suffice to say, however, attacks by British obituary writers were hardly part of my fears when I announced I was thinking of running.
But I suppose if an obituary writer is writing about you it is better that you are being attacked than remembered.
___________________ READ MORE: Running for Irish president (maybe) day one and two Learning from the first Irish presidential debate and Newt Gingrich on immigration ____________________


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This article is more than 1 year old
Navisite scrambles to restore web hosting service
Planned server migration knocked thousands of sites offline
Navisite, the US webhosting firm, is scrambling to fix an extended outage that is believed to have rendered tens of thousands of websites inoperable for more than three days. The company hopes to completely resolve the problem by Tuesday morning at the latest.
The interruption started Saturday as part of a planned move to replace a fleet of aging servers operated by Alabanza, which Navisite recently acquired. Navisite warned customers their websites would be down for several hours during the migration, but unexpected issues have caused the process to take much longer than originally anticipated.
"We have a large team and their only focus is to get over this and resolve it," Rathin Sinha, Navisite's chief marketing officer, told The Reg. "We are really hoping this is something we'll be able to address by a very reasonable amount of time, if not by tonight, then by early tomorrow morning."
Sinha promised to provide regularly updated status reports on progress here. A report issued at 11:35 California time said the company had "made good progress on the configuration of the core networking that has stabilized the environment and allowed us bring up a significant number of additional hosts."
There's no fury like the collective scorn of thousands of customers whose websites are knocked offline for days on end. Many expressed their tdispleasure in blogs.
"This is outrageous and reckless behavior by this company," the writer of this entry on Light Reading wrote. "Customers are infuriated as many of them are small hosting providers with hundreds or thousands of their own clients, all of whom are being wiped out simultaneously with no recourse."
Sinha was unable to estimate exactly how many websites were affected. Alabanza serves about 300 customers who then resell service to smaller website operators. Navisite's best estimate is that 5,000 to 7,000 customers buy service through these resellers, he said.
Several Reg readers have written in to challenge that estimate. Christianwebhost.com, a single reseller, claims here to have 20,000 customers. One reader commenting below estimates the number of affected sites is 200,000.
As engineers began transferring data to the new servers, they quickly realized the process was going to take more time than previously thought. The company also ran into problems when they had to locate some machines in Navisite's Andover, Massachusetts, data center, rather than a location in Baltimore, as the plan had previously called for.
The company has set up two numbers customers who still don't have access can call to get their problems addressed. ®


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PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation Thursday to allow gays and lesbians to marry in the only New England state where they cannot.
The House voted 51 to 19 after an often emotional debate that touched on civil rights, religion, and the nature of marriage. The bill now moves to the Senate, where both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage say it is difficult to predict the bill's fate.
''This has been a long journey,'' said House Speaker Gordon Fox, who is gay. ''Today is a great day. Today . . . we stand for equality; we stand for justice.''
Thursday's vote posed the most significant challenge yet for gay marriage in Rhode Island. While the other New England states allow gay couples to marry, attempts have fallen flat in this heavily Catholic state. Nine states and the District of Columbia allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
Gay marriage opponents vow to press their case in the Senate, where Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, Democrat of Newport, remains opposed.
Some foes have suggested placing gay marriage on the ballot as a referendum, but the idea is a nonstarter with Fox and Governor Lincoln Chafee, a gay marriage supporter.


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The Lord Jesus Christ speaks to this church in the midst of crass materialism, degraded animalism, base paganism, and dark heathenism. Note this carefully, because I consider this message to be one of the most important of all.
Unto the angel of the church of Ephesues write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. (Revelation 2:1)
Notice that He holds in His hand the church. It is under His control. He doesn't have that control now, but He did then. "He walketh" literally means that He is walking up and down. I believe that He is still walking up and down in our day and that He is still judging the church. He has seven words of commendation for this church:
I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. (Revelation 2:2,3)
1. "I know thy works." We need to understand that He is speaking to believers. The Lord Jesus does not ask the lost world for good works. For example, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). In Romans 4:5 Paul says, "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Christ is talking to His own. After you are saved, He wants to talk to you about good works. He has a lot to say about this subject. In Ephesians 2:8-10 we read, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." Paul could write to Titus, "They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate" (Titus 1:16). Someone has said, "The Christian ought to be like a good watch-all gold, open-faced, well-regulated, dependable, and filled with good works." The Lord Jesus is saying to the church in Ephesus, as Paul had said, "…be filled with the [Holy] Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). And Paul went on to tell them what they could do as Spirit-filled believers. And now the Lord Jesus commends them for their good works.
2. "I know…thy labour." What is the difference between work and labor? The word labor carries a meaning of weariness. In the gospel record it says that Jesus became wearied with His journey. That was the weariness which Ephesian believers experienced. They suffered weariness in their labor for Him.
3. "I know…thy patience." Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
4. "How thou canst not bear them which are evil." They would not endure evil men.
5. "Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars." They tested everyone who came to Ephesus claiming to be an apostle. They would ask them if they had seen the resurrected Christ, and they soon found out whether or not they were really apostles. If they were not, they asked them to leave town. The Lord Jesus commended them for testing men, and I feel this is more needed today than it was even then.
6. "Hast borne…for my name's sake hast laboured." For His name's sake they were bearing the Cross. They preached Christ. They believed in the virgin birth of Christ; they believed in His deity; they believed in His sacrificial death and resurrection. And they paid a price for their belief.
7. "And hast not fainted." More accurately, it is "hast not grown weary." What does He mean by this? Earlier He said that they had grown weary, and now He says they have not grown weary. Well, this is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith. I can illustrate it by what Dwight L. Moody once said when he came home exhausted after a campaign and his family begged him not to go to the next campaign. He said to them, "I grow weary in the work but not of the work." There is a lot of difference. You can get weary in the work of Christ, but it is tragic if you get weary of the work of Christ.
These seven words of commendation, which the Lord Jesus gave to the local church at Ephesus, also apply to the period of church history between Pentecost and A.D. 100, which the Ephesian church represents. Now He has one word of condemnation:
Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. (Revelation 2:4)
They had lost that intense and enthusiastic devotion to the person of Christ. It is difficult for us to sense the state to which the Holy Spirit had brought this church. He had brought the believers in Ephesus into an intimate and personal relationship to Jesus Christ. He had brought them to the place where they could say to the Lord, "We love you." This may seem like a very unimportant thing to us today, but their love for the Lord was very important to Christ. He was saying to the Ephesians, "You are leaving your best love." They hadn't quite departed from that love, but they were on the way. It is difficult for us in this cold, skeptical, cynical, and indifferent day in which we live to understand this. The world has intruded into the church to such an extent that it is hard for us to conceive of the intense, enthusiastic devotion the early church gave to the person of Christ. The early church first went off the track not in their doctrine but in their personal relationship to Jesus Christ.
Ephesus was a great city, and it had many attractions that were beginning to draw believers away from their first love for Jesus Christ. This was the church that became so potent in its evangelism in that area of about twenty-five million people that even the Roman emperors and the nobility of that day had an opportunity to hear the gospel. In that area there was such a mighty moving of the Spirit of God that it has probably never been duplicated since.
My friend, a personal relationship is all-important. We are so involved in methods — I am rather amused at some of the Band-Aid courses which are being offered-and they are making Band-Aid believers. Generally, the course is some little legal system that gives you certain rules to follow and certain psychological patterns to observe which will enable you to solve all your problems. They try to teach you how to get along with yourself (that's a pretty big order!), with your neighbors, and especially with your wife. All of those relationships are very important, and a great many people think that if they can follow a few rules, they will have the key to a successful Christian life. My friend, let me put it in a nutshell by asking one question: Do you love Jesus Christ? I don't care what your system is, what your denomination is, what your program is, what little set of rules you follow, they will all come to naught if you don't love Him. Although some systems are better than others, almost any system will work if you love Christ. An intimate relationship with Christ will make all of your relationships and all of your Christian service a joy.
—From Dr. J. Vernon McGee's Edited Messages on Revelation ©1994


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About us
The Bielsko Artistic Association Grodzki Theatre was founded in 1999 in the town of Bielsko-Biala (southern part of Poland, 100 km from Cracow, 60 km from Katowice, 30 km from the Czech border). The Association groups artists, pedagogues and culture promoters engaged in artistic work with children, teenagers, adults and the elderly from the socially excluded groups. The latter include physically and mentally disabled persons, people with learning disabilities, children and youths from families at risk, young offenders, victims of alcohol and drug addictions, senior citizens, and all those alienated from the mainstream of social and cultural life.
The Association operates mainly in the Bielsko-Biała region, but also covers the whole area of the southern provinces of Poland. We co-operate with national and international organizations, especially in European projects and publishing initiatives. The Grodzki Theatre is the only non-profit organisation in the region of Silesia with such a complex and wide artistic program to combat social exclusion.
Grodzki Theatre Assocation employs 66 people with disabilities in its two vocational therapy units (sheltered enterprizes): Printing House and Bookbindery in Bielsko-Biała and the Hotel, Conference and Rehabilitation Centre in the beautiful village of Laliki, Beskidy Mountains. It also runs Occupational Therapy Workshops (arts and life-skills day centre) for 30 people with disabilities in Bielsko-Biała.
The Bielsko Artistic Association Grodzki has been able to work with people disconnected from the mainstream of social life thanks to many grants and awards from Polish and international institutions and fundations, including the EU programmes, Soros Foundation, Kultura Foundation, Pro Publico Bono Foundation. It has received, amongst others, the Ministry of Culture Award, Government of the Region of Silesia Award, the Best Social Enterprize Award in a national competition in 2011 and REVES EXCELLENCE AWARD 2013, awarded by the European Commission for a partnership project.


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Being prepared is the best way to ensure smooth travel. Every airport is different, so do a little research if it's your first time flying to or from a city. You'll need a valid photo ID accepted by the TSA (like a driver's license or other government-issued ID) for domestic travel and a valid passport or visa, and any travel documents required by your international destination.
Starting May 7, 2025, you'll need a REAL ID-compliant driver's license or other accepted ID, like a valid passport or U.S. military ID, to fly within the U.S. REAL ID-compliant cards generally have a star at the top. If you're unsure, contact your state driver's license agency on how to get a REAL ID-compliant card.
TSA won't allow you to pass through security checkpoints at the airport if your ID doesn't comply.
The TSA Secure Flight program requires us to collect this information when you book including the:
We may cancel your trip if we don't have this information at least 72 hours before departure.
You can check in on aa.com and in the app beginning 24 hours before departure. All airports have minimum check-in times. If you're not checked in by the minimum check-in time, you may lose your seat.
In most cities, you must be checked in:
Some airports require you to check in earlier.
Know of any changes, weather events and other important updates before you leave home.
Check for travel alerts that impact the cities in your trip.
Sign up for flight status information like gates, delays, departure reminders and more.
Download the American app to get real time updates about your travel. Plus, you can watch free movies and TV shows on board through the app. (Don't forget your earphones.)
In general, you're allowed 1 bag and 1 personal item:
In the event the bins are full and you have to gate-check a bag, put any fragile or valuable items like keys, medication or computers in the personal item you bring on the plane.
There are additional carry-on restrictions for certain aircraft and airports.
If you're a family traveling with children under 15, and do not already have seats assigned, our system will search for seats together automatically before the day of departure. We'll try our best to keep you together, but if seats are limited, we'll assign seats so children under 15 are next to at least 1 adult.
We care about our four-legged customers too. Cats and small dogs can travel in the cabin, but they must stay in an approved carrier that fits under the seat. Larger dogs can travel in the cargo hold of some planes. There is a fee to travel with your pet.
Service animals are welcome at no charge if they meet the requirements. The animal must fit on your lap, at your feet or under your seat, and cannot block the aisle.
Emotional support animals require specific documentation; please review the requirements before travel.
For everyone's safety on board, some common items are restricted by the TSA and FAA. Be sure you know what you can carry on and what you can check in your bags before you go to the airport.
We don't transport hazardous materials, except for small amounts of dry ice.
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On occasion, there are more checked-in customers than seats. When this happens, our team gets involved as early as possible to find volunteers to change flights in exchange for compensation.
When we don't have enough volunteers, we have to choose customers to change flights involuntarily, or deny boarding. If this happens, we'll follow the DOT's compensation rules and get those customers on the next possible flight. We will not involuntarily remove a revenue passenger who has already boarded in order to give a seat to another passenger.
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Be sure to check your boarding pass for boarding times. If you're not at the gate in time, your seat may be given to a standby passenger.
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We board in groups; check your boarding pass for your boarding group. We offer early boarding to customers who need special assistance or more time to board, along with families with children under 2 years who ask to board early.
Strollers should be checked at the gate before boarding and picked up after your flight at the gate, free of charge.
Wheelchairs can be gate-checked and picked up after your flight at the gate, free of charge. We are available to help you to and from your seat once you check your wheelchair.
Welcome aboard! Anything you carried on must fit in the overhead bins or under the seat in front of you. If the bins are full or your bag is too big we'll help gate-check it. Musical instruments count as a carry-on and must fit safely in the bin, under the seat or in a closet (unless you paid for an extra seat).
Have a nut allergy? Though we don't serve peanuts, we do serve food that may contain other types of nuts and customers may carry on peanuts. We're unable to make special accommodations or provide nut-free zones on board, so we strongly encourage you to take all necessary medical precautions before flying.
And finally, our crewmembers are here to ensure a safe and pleasant flying experience for you and everyone onboard your flight. Please let them know if you have any questions and be sure to comply with their instructions, which are designed to keep you and everyone on board safe and comfortable.
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Have a compliment or want to let us know how we can improve? We want to hear from you.
Thank you for choosing American for your travel needs.


text:
Block Creation Basics
Principles of extending block functionality of Simulink® through new block development
Simulink allows you to extend the built-in modeling functionality by integrating existing code and creating your own blocks.
Existing code can be any code that provides the kind of functionality not available through Simulink library blocks. You can integrate MATLAB®, C/C++, and Fortran code. You can also integrate System object™.
Create a new Simulink block for your needs if the built-in library does not provide a suitable block. You can create new functionality using a MATLAB function rather than a Simulink block diagram.
Function Caller | Call Simulink or exported Stateflow function |
Level-2 MATLAB S-Function | Use Level-2 MATLAB S-function in model |
MATLAB Function | Include MATLAB code in models that generate embeddable C code |
MATLAB System | Include System object in model |
S-Function | Include S-function in model |
S-Function Builder | Integrate C or C++ code to create S-functions |
Simulink Function | Graphically define a function with Simulink blocks |
Fcn | Apply specified expression to input |
- Types of Custom Blocks
Learn about the capabilities of custom blocks.
- Design and Create a Custom Block
Build a custom block using a Level-2 MATLAB S-function.
- Comparison of Custom Block Functionality
Compare and contrast the features of different custom blocks types.


text:
Bank of Queensland is one of Australia's leading regional banks. Established in 1874 as the Brisbane Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society, the institution became a trading bank in 1942 and adopted the Bank of Queensland name in 1970.
Bank of Queensland offers a wide range of mortgages for first time home buyers, investors, upgraders and those looking to refinance their home. Bank of Queensland home loans tend to charge rates below the market average.


text:
Sent the first chapter of Wicked Cool Emacs
| emacsOperating on the principle that it's better to have a terrible first
draft than none at all, I've sent 21 pages to my editor at No Starch
Press. =)
The past two weeks were incredibly packed, but I survived them and and
seem to be getting the hang of working on the book. It's incredibly
fun. Emacs is such a crazy subject to write about. I mean, come on…
Mayan date conversions? Emacs geeks! I'm sure that if I dug a little
deeper, I'd figure out how to help W- keep track of his parents'
Chinese birthdays. Now that would be useful! <laugh> Writing
about Emacs gave me an excuse to explore. There's a lot in here that I
haven't tried before, and you know what? It's pretty darn cool.
I was surprised to find that I had lots of material already. It didn't
seem like it when I was writing, but the page count just kept growing
and growing as I assembled the chapter. I'm not too happy with the way
I wrote it, because it felt a little drier than I'm used to. I should
probably browse through No Starch Press books and see which books in
that line have been written really well so that I have role models.
I'll tweak the draft a little bit more and send it out to beta readers
tomorrow. =)
Random Emacs symbol: narrow-to-region – Command: Restrict editing in this buffer to the current region.


text:
Power By People Video Series
Something interesting happens when you sit down and visit with someone from another walk of life. You find out just how much you have in common. Here's a chance to do just that. Get to know some of the men and women who have banded together to build a renewable energy industry from scratch. These are people who have witnessed first hand the good that biofuels have done for their families and communities. They've got some insight that just might surprise you.


text:
Not much sewing to see...
Once again I'm going to have to work some ATWD magic and make it look as though I've been productive this month! I think I'll show you lots of photos to distract you from lack of
Right, that's enough of that, let's see what I've been up to! Well, the first couple of things aren't at all sewing related so feel free to completely skip them and head for the photos with fabric in them.
I've decided that I'm officially over the halfway point when it comes to painting my fence. Before you think 'I thought she said she was jiggered? She can't be if she's painting a fence.', I started this on 4th June! This is what I've done (warning: this is a really exciting mosaic, you may want to sit down before viewing)
and at this point I hit a milestone: I'd painted all the fence that I'd scrubbed and it was then that I made a mistake. A mistake of gigantic proportions. I decided to have a break. That was two weeks ago and I really need to get back to the scrubbing brush and bucket/paint brush and kettle but I just don't have the energy. I've got this much left to do:
The upturned plant pot is there because that berberis is going in it, I just haven't got round to doing it! |
The other thing that's been keeping me occupied (and tired) and that isn't sewing related is this:
Physio exercises - there are eleven of them, two are hiding on the reverse of the sheet! |
For the past few months I've been struggling with my shoulder - it's been gradually getting worse for just over a year (it started as a foundation paper piecing-related injury when I was making these!) and had got to the point where any jolt or sudden movement was, well, agony and reaching above my head was nigh on impossible. I can't really remember what the physio said (I was tired, big surprise!) but 'shoulder impingement' was definitely mentioned. As was a 'very stiff shoulder'! As a result I'm supposed to be doing these stretches three times a day, three to five repeats each time. I'm currently managing three repeats each time and aiming for twice a day. And managing once, most of the time! The checklist is because the physio recommended I split them up through the day to make them less tiring and it was the only way I could think of to keep track of what I'd done and what I hadn't. Oh, and to make me accountable so I had to force myself to do them because they don't half hurt! I think it's going to be a while before it's better but already I can fold my arms and keep them that way for about three minutes and I can almost put my hand on my hip - progress!
After all that I think it's about time I got to the sewing, don't you?! 'Thank heavens for that!', I hear you cry but I did offer you the option of scrolling down!
I've finally started my Christmas quilt. I say finally because I've changed my mind so many times about what I wanted to make that I think I made Nicky dizzy! I think one week I changed my mind at least five times so I imagine she's thrilled that I've finally made a start...and stuck to it, even if it is an idea I've had at least four times! A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Sarah Fielke's new book 'Hand Quilted With Love' (which is a terrific book, I'd really recommend it) and as soon as I saw the 'Made in Cherry' photo I realised that continuing to fight it was useless: this was the quilt I was going to make with my Christmas 'collection'. Oh, that I'd come to that conclusion the first time I thought about it...about eighteen months ago! (I'm planning to add to it so that it becomes a rectangular, rather than square, quilt because I like a quilt that covers me from shoulders to toes and if it's square then it becomes quite unwieldy - I like to aim for somewhere around 60" x 80".) I already had dozens of 3.75" squares cut out because I thought I'd chosen a pattern - I'd made a test block and cut out all the prints and then I changed my mind! Dithering is a terrible curse! I spent a while laying out squares and then labelled them, made a map (naturally!) and started piecing.
Sorry about the night-time photo! |
And this is how far I've got:
One quadrant of the centre pieced and pressed. |
A second quadrant pieced but not pressed. |
A third quadrant in progress. |
At the risk of being a whinger, I find machine piecing really, really tiring. Well, not just machine piecing; using a sewing machine in general. I think it's a combination of things - sitting on an upright chair with no arms (that may sound odd but it's something I find very tiring), the concentration required, the noise of the sewing machine (it's not horrifically noisy but I am sensitive to noise and often find it quite wearing) as well as the 'I'll just stitch one more seam' aspect of it. I know I'm not the only person to find using a sewing machine tiring but I thought I'd explain it for those of you who don't - I sometimes feel as though I say 'I'm tired' a lot but don't really explain how that feels, why I'm tired or how it affects my daily life.
With this project I'm trying to do a little bit at a time - in one day I might just join five lots of two squares or even just pin two strips together but I'm hoping that at least this way I'll feel as though I'm making progress, my aim is to have it layered and ready for hand quilting by November(ish) so that I can watch Christmas films and quilt my Christmas quilt, won't that be lovely?!! I don't want it to be too Christmassy, though, which is why there's plenty of non-Christmas fabric mixed in there - that way I'll be able to use it for more than a few weeks a year, maybe November through to the end of January? Or will it have to go away with the decorations by Twelfth Night?!
Now, it's at this point that I need your help: I need to find a background fabric. I think the choice of background fabric is important in any project but it feels particularly important for this quilt - looking at the quilts in the Made In Cherry Flickr group it feels as though the right background really makes the star shine and I definitely want mine to shine! I've been thinking of using a dotty background - preferably a small coloured dot on a white background. Maybe aqua dots? Thanks to a giveaway link on The Sewing Directory (the giveaway is open until 10th September, get there before it closes!) I found two possibilities - an aqua dot and a green dot. I'd really, really appreciate your opinions on what would work best as a background and if you could point me to a specific fabric then that would be marvellous - another thing I struggle with is online fabric shopping. I get overwhelmed by the choice, I can't hold all the different options in my head, I dither over which is best and, after about five minutes, lose concentration and wander off. It's marvellous for my credit card but not so marvellous for my stash! Thank you, in advance, for your suggestions!
It's been another month of marvellous post. Lots of you will have entered Yvonne and Reene's fabulous giveaway over at Nellie's Niceties and will have kept your fingers, toes and paws firmly crossed that your name was chosen. And then got your pet lip out when it wasn't! Well, Yvonne was kind enough to send me a parcel of loveliness:
I have a plan for those Liberty strips...it was Hadley's idea and I think it's a good 'un! The card was made by Yvonne and is gorgeous, I can see why Reene has a drawer full of cards she can't part with! |
Thank you, Yvonne! I hope you have as much fun with the hexies as I'm going to with this! I sent Yvonne my EPP hexies - I started them when I didn't have any hand piecing prepared (I think I was still piecing hexies for my hexy quilt at that point) and I wasn't well enough to prepare any. I thought it was a good idea at the time and quite enjoyed tacking the fabric to the paper but I'd forgotten that I really, really don't like EPP! I use it when I make the little pin cushions using Japanese import fabrics because it's the best technique for that fabric/size of pieces but that's as far as it's ever going to go. I know lots of you love EPP but I'm afraid I won't be joining you any time soon, other than for tiny pin cushions - hand piecing is my first love and, I hope, always will be! I've still got half of the honey bun left as well as some co-ordinating fat eighths so I'll be able to start a new project, it might even be small hexies again!
This arrived from Nicky:
A giant custard cream - I love it! |
She knew that I'd had eye on one of these for a while and found one somewhere - I love it so much! As if that wasn't enough, it was packed with goodies inside:
There are some of Nicky's custom charm packs and roll-ups as well as some of her goodies from FQR, including a spool of Aurifil floss that's hiding under that zip - she's such a lovely friend!
And it was accompanied by the cutest handmade card:
For more hand stamped goodness visit the Stamp It Up Swap pool - a swap that Nicky is running (I'm helping with the admin, it's a good way for me to be involved without swapping), there are already some wonderful stamps that have been made as well as lots and lots of inspiration mosaics! |
I've saved the best bit for last, though:
An Archie stamp! I have plenty of ideas of how to use this, I just need to find some energy and there'll be no stopping me! |
Thank you, Nicky - I'm truly blessed to call you my friend xx
Nicky also did some shopping for me at the FQR market - I'm about to start a new hand piecing project (I know, I need another new project like I need another hole in the head but it's not my fault - I'm putting the blame fairly and squarely at Lynne's door! She will insist on designing the most wonderful quilt blocks and then sharing them on Twitter and who am I to resist? And I do have a marvellous new hand piecing tin to use...) and I needed a few more FQs of some specific Oakshott Impressions to add to the project pile so Nicky went with a shopping list!
It was hard to narrow down which colours I wanted more of but I managed it in the end! |
I'm just waiting for my chosen background to come back into stock at Simply Solids and then I'll be good to go (after I've washed the additional Oakshott FQs and the background. And ironed it. Sigh!) and you'll be able to see my first block. No promises as to how quickly that's going to happen, though!
Archie has loved the sunny weather we've had this summer (I can't say I've been as much of a fan!) - he's spent every day in either the conservatory or the garden. It's typical - I decide to get rid of the grass in my back garden because I can't keep on top of it and he's decided he likes lying on it! I'll have to make him a 'lying in the back garden' quilt instead! One thing that hasn't changed in all the years I've had him (twelve!) is that he likes to lick out any yoghurt pots, cheese wrappers, tuna tins, etc. Although sometimes he acts as though he's the one doing me a favour, rather than the other way round:
Life's hard when you're nothing but a glorified pot washer. It's a tough job but someone's got to do it. |
Not another pot to wash?! |
Phew, that was a tough one! I need a break - maybe I should join a union and investigate my rights... |
I'll see you next month (or maybe before?) - thanks for popping in! As ever I'm linking up to Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts - why not do the same or hop over and see what everyone else has been up to? You won't regret it!
Please don't forget to let me know your 'Christmas Cherry background fabric' opinions/links in your comment! Thank you!


text:
Best Ever Baked Turkey
Use our BakeBot Ai Chat for instant answers.
Why I Love This Recipe
This is the most fantastic, moist turkey you will ever eat! I usually use about an 18 lb turkey …Just make sure to adjust baking time. (20 minutes per lb)
Ingredients You'll Need
Thawed Turkey
½ cup Sea Salt
Butter (NOT MARGARINE)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
10 or 12 cloves of Garlic
Ground Allspice
Poultry Seasoning
Soak THAWED Turkey in COLD water and ½ cup Sea Salt for 4 hrs. (Every hr or so I add ice to the water).
Then after soaking is finished pat the bird dry inside and out with a lint free cloth.
Place turkey in roasting pan and gently lift the skin and put BUTTER under the skin (I use a lot of butter) Then rub the outside of the skin and the cavity with Olive Oil.
Chop the garlic in a food processor with a bit of water added (about a ¼ of a cup)
Brush the chopped garlic and juice all over the outside and don't forget the cavity.
Sprinkle the allspice and the poultry seasoning on the outside and the cavity of the Turkey. Don't use too much …just a good sprinkling of both.
Now cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 ..20 minutes per lb is about normal.
If you intend to stuff the bird do so about the last hour.
I promise you will never cook turkey any other way! Enjoy!!


text:
Check our new lower rates!
Click here to see the Blue Ridge Mountain Cabins.
Cabins ~ Mountain
View Cabins ~ Trout Stream
~ Cabins with Hot Tubs ~ Pet Friendly Cabins
Pet Policy ~ Area
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Activities ~ Specials ~ Gift
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Policy ~ Important
Info ~ Property
Management ~ Contact
you for inquiring into cabin rental - lodging in the beautiful North
Georgia Mountains in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Come stay with us and experience
the "magic of the mountains"!
Blue Ridge Mountain Cabins manage a wide array of individually owned one, two, three and four
bedroom vacation rental cabins, some with hot tubs and some pet friendly.
Just 90 miles north of Atlanta, GA.
The Blue Ridge Mountains offer many activities. Mountain biking, hiking, fishing, boating, bird watching, antiquing and much more. When you rent one of our cabins you will be in the best place to enjoy all the area has to offer.
Each of our Blue Ridge Mountain rental cabins have a fully equipped kitchen, microwave oven, coffee maker and toaster. Some kitchens also have a dishwasher and washer and dryer. Bed linens, bath towels, paper products and soaps are provided. All vacation cabins have heat, ceiling fans and all are air conditioned. Additional amenities include telephone, TV/VCR, most have DVD, porches and grills. There are Jacuzzis and Hot Tubs in some cabins.
All vacation rental cabins have fireplaces. Some cabins have gas logs but most have wood burning fireplaces for that cozy get together during the fall or winter months. Firewood is provided between October 1 and April 1.
Office 706-632-8999 ~ Fax 706-632-5537
Toll Free ~ 1-877-LOG-BtheRMC (1-877-564-2762)


text:
Jon Lebensold shows you how to use the Zend Tool in useful ways; This screencast should help you setup Zend_Tool in your Zend Framework application. Zend_Tool is a command line entry point into your application. Currently, Zend_Tool is used to scaffold (build generic files) the Zend Framework project structure, modules, controllers, database table classes and other tedious processes. The goal of this video is to start looking at how we can generate our own Manifest and Provider classes so that custom command line tools can be integrated into the Zend Framework application.
The advantage of such integration is far reaching: deployable web applications using the Zend Framework can have "installers" and other frameworks, like Doctrine, can easily become first class citizens within the Zend Framework eco-system.
Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.
via Zendcasts.


text:
Your junior year is an ideal time for you to go abroad. You will have already spent two years at Loyola University Maryland, giving you time to explore your major, grow academically and personally, and prepare for your career after graduation.
We have a special commitment to you and the university to promote international education on campus and abroad. By providing and offering study abroad programs throughout the world we are able to send over 60% of the junior class abroad.
When thinking about where you should go your junior year, you should ask yourself and reflect upon the following questions:
Make sure you make an appointment with your major advisor about studying abroad before applying for a program. You should go over all of your options with your advisor prior to coming to the Office of International Programs. Your advisor will know where you are in your major, how many classes you have left to take, what courses should be taken, and in what sequence.
Consider saving your second core courses and electives (if you have any). By saving these courses, you'll give yourself more options of where you can go abroad. However, keep in mind not all of our study abroad programs serve all the majors.
Another great way to inform yourself on our programs and the courses that are available abroad is to go to our information sessions. We hold many information sessions each semester. You should check back on the our website for times, dates, and possible rescheduled sessions, as we post them regularly.
Also, in our office we have an information carousel where all of our programs are described on detailed information sheets. You're invited to come by and pick up an information sheet on the desired program. You're also welcome to come into the office and ask us questions about study abroad possibilities.
Coronavirus/COVID-19 Updates
A student's study abroad experience in New Zealand proves to be a journey of the mind and the heart.


text: Here's an interesting discussion from two leading minds in education and technology — the MIT media lab's Nicholas Negroponte and Mitch Resnick — discussing Resnick's concept of Lifelong Kindergarten. It actually begins at 1:19. The MIT media lab has long advocated such an approach. More about Lifelong Kindergarten and how the lab develops new technologies "in the spirit of the blocks and fingerpaint of kindergarten" to "expand the range of what people can design, create, and learn" can be found on this very playful site.


text:
by JAY EARLE MILLER
Post and Gatty didn't fly around the world, according to Wilbur Glenn Voliva, they merely flew in a circle around the North Pole. This article presents Voliva's theory of a flat world, and tells you how you can win his offer of $5,000 for proving that he is wrong.
WOULD you like to earn $5,000? If you can prove that the world is a sphere, floating in space, turning on its own axis, revolving around the sun, you can earn a prize of that amount. Such a prize has been posted for years, offered by Wilbur Glenn Voliva, general overseer of Zion, 111., home of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, founded some thirty years ago by the late John Alexander Dowie.
Many have tried to claim the $5,000—and all have failed. The catch is that your proof must not start with the assumption that the world is round, or rather a globe, for Voliva believes the world is round, but a round, flat disc rather than a sphere. Without that basic premise that the earth is spherical no one has found an absolutely convincing proof that Voliva is wrong when he describes his disc-shaped world, firmly planted on its foundations, surrounded by a wall of ice to keep mariners from falling off the edge, and surmounted by a crystal dome in which the stars are hung like chandeliers to light the night. Nor can you submit proof to absolutely disprove the belief of Voliva that the sun, instead of being an 800,000 mile ball of fire more than ninety millions of miles away is really a fairly insignificant affair, only some 27 to 30 miles in diameter and about 3,000 miles above the earth. Or that the sun and moon move in orbits while the earth stands still, that the moon is about the same size as the sun and the same distance from the earth, shines by its own light, and moves in much the same orbit as the sun.
In these days of 100 and 200 inch telescopes, accurate measurement of the speed of light and the diameter of distant stars, any challenge of the correctness of the familiar Pythagorean-Copernican-Newtonian system of astronomy may come as a shock. Actually the belief that the world is flat isn't confined to Zion. China, which had workable systems of astronomy as soon if not sooner than Greece or Egypt, continues to stick to the flat world theory, and thousands of other people scattered over the globe have this, or theories even more unusual.
Ever hear of Orlando Ferguson? Ferguson, a resident of Hot Springs, South Dakota, designed a weird and wonderful map back in 1893 which showed a square world, with an angel seated on each of the four corners. The inhabitable or known world was not, however, flat. The central section, comprising what we know as the northern hemisphere, was convex, curving downward from the central "north pole" to the equator, while the southern hemisphere was concave, curving upward from the equator to the rim. The shape was much like a soup plate with a raised center.
Then there is Gustave F. Ebding, of Cleveland, who recently published a book to prove that the world is a hollow sphere, and that we live inside it instead of on the outside, the so-called Koreshan theory of Koresh and Prof. U. G. Marrow. Then there is the theory of Marshall B. Gardner that the earth is a sphere with the inhabitants living on the outside, but that the sphere is hollow. Variations of the Gardner theory have been used often by fiction writers, who have peopled the inside with strange races and hung up a small sun in the center to illuminate it.
Compared to some of these ideas Zetetic Astronomy, or the flat world theory of Voliva and his followers at Zion, has considerable to commend it.
The three commonest proofs that the earth is a sphere were cited by Aristotle in ancient Greece 1800 years before Columbus "sold" the world on the spherical theory, and they are still in use. The mass of the people did not really begin to believe that their world was a globe until the earth had been circumnavigated. Actually that was not as good a proof as any of the three cited by Aristotle, for it is possible to circumnavigate Voliva's flat world, traveling either east or west, and come back to the starting point,
Aristotle's three proofs were:
First. The disappearance of a ship as it sails over the horizon, the hull vanishing first, and the masts and rigging last, and the reappearance of an approaching ship in reverse order.
Second. The curving shape of the earth's shadow on the moon during an eclipse.
Third. The changing aspect of the heavens in different latitudes, some stars disappearing and others appearing, as the polar star in the northern hemisphere and the southern cross south of the equator.
"There is not a scintilla of truth in any of them," Voliva retorts, "and yet you will find them in every geography, and every primary teacher repeats them like a parrot. I decline to be a parrot. A parrot is a man who never thinks for himself, but repeats what he hears without any questions as to why or wherefore."
Zion maintains that the disappearance of a ship over a horizon hull first is an optical illusion of perspective, no different from the apparent merging of the railroad tracks in the distance. A man at the foot of a tree a couple of miles across a plain may be invisible, while the tree itself stands up against the sky and is visible for miles. Earth curvature of eight inches to the mile is not sufficient to explain the invisibility of the man.
As for Aristotle's second point, Voliva and his followers maintain there is no proof that the curving shadow of an eclipse is the shadow of the earth, and maintain that there have been several eclipses within historical times in which both sun and moon were visible at the same time, so that the eclipse could not have, been due to the earth's shadow.
As for the third proof, the Zionites and other believers in the Zetetic Astronomy of "Parallax" maintain that the stars are set in a hemispherical dome so low and close to the earth that not all stars can be visible from any one point. Dr. Samuel B. Rowbottom, of England, who, under the name of "Parallax" provided the explanations for all natural phenomena to fit the flat world theory, died in 1884, but his followers have kept his work alive.
The flat world theory is not confined to any country, sect or group. Within recent years the Rev. John Dmich, a Catholic priest, has written a book "The Earth Is Not Round" which has had a wide sale. Another pamphlet, "One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe", issued by William Carpenter in 1885, the year after Rowbottom's death, continues to appear in revised editions. A book by Alexander Gleason, issued in 1893, is a standard text book among the Zetetic believers. Gleason also issued the map which is used in the parochial school at Zion, where the flat world theory is taught as fact, and the spherical world belief covered only as an incidental superstition.
The Gleason map, a copy of J. S. Christopher's projection, shows the world as a disc, with the north pole in the center and the south polar regions spread as a wall of ice around the rim. The northern hemisphere is more nearly correct in this form than on the standard Mercator projection generally used in schools, for navigation and for other purposes. The southern hemisphere, however, is enormously distorted.
Australia, for example, is drawn out as an enormously long and narrow island. Chester M. Shippey, director of research in Voliva's church cabinet, admits this is one of the weaknesses of the flat world theory, for the time table of the Australian trans-continental railroad shows a mileage far less than the Christopher map would call for.
Voliva maintains that there is no South Pole, and that it is 60,000 miles around the southern ice wall. Captain Gunnar Isachsen, the Norwegian explorer, last winter circumnavigated the Antarctic continent in a voyage of about 14,000 miles. Zion says Isachsen may have circumnavigated something, possibly an island of that size, but did not go around the antarctic ice rim, and points to the 60,000 mile journey of Ross in 1848 and the following two years, when he circumnavigated the ice rim. Of course Ross was in a sailing ship which tacked back and forth for three years on a journey Isachsen completed in a few weeks, which could explain the discrepancy in the distance traveled.
"They say that Byrd flew over the South Pole," Voliva said recently, "but there is no South Pole. East, west and south are not absolute directions; they are only relative directions with reference to north. East and west are points at right angles to north."
Voliva maintains that the sun is not more than 30 miles in diameter and about 3,000 miles from the earth. As proof he points to the fact that on March 21-22 the sun is directly overhead at the equator and appears 45 degrees above the horizon at 45 degrees north and south latitude. As the angle of sun above the earth at the equator is 90 degrees while it is 45 degrees at 45 degrees north or south latitude, it follows that the angle at the sun between the vertical from the horizon and the line from the observers at 45 degrees north and south must also be 45 degrees. The result is two right angled triangles with legs of equal length. The distance between the equator and the points at 45 degrees north or south is approximately 3,000 miles, so the sun would be an equal distance above the equator, and, from the apparent size of the sun's image, it would follow that it has a diameter of about 30 miles.
Of course, if one starts with the assumption that the world is a sphere instead of a flat surface, the same facts can be used to prove that the sun is nearly 93,000,000 miles away, and has a diameter of more than 800,000 miles.
Voliva argues that if the sun were that big and at that distance there would be no change of seasons because the sun's rays would reach both hemispheres with equal volume regardless of its position north or south in relation to the equator. On the other hand the same argument can be used to prove that on his flat world there could be no seasons, and no period of total darkness at the north pole. Actually, of course, the amount of the sun's rays reaching the earth is radically reduced by the envelope of air and moisture, without which, in fact, life would be impossible, because days would be unbearably hot and nights impossibly cold, just as they are on the moon and some of the planets. Prof. Piccard, the German balloonist, found a temperature of about 72 below zero outside his airtight balloon car at an altitude of ten miles, while inside it the temperature was 104 degrees above zero. If the flat world believers deny the absorption factor of moisture and air in the round world theory they have removed the only argument that could explain seasonal changes and polar nights in their flat world.
Some of the claimants of Voliva's $5,000 prize have argued that, because the moon and the planets appear to be spheres it must follow that the earth is a sphere, an assumption which Voliva and his followers deny. That, says Voliva, is like arguing that because a cow is an animal and has horns, all animals have horns, or that all cows have horns.
Probably the best spherical world proofs ever found were the two discovered by Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, the famous French engineer, when he invented the Foucault pendulum and the gyroscope. The performance of both can only be explained on the assumption that the earth is a sphere, revolving on its axis, but they do not prove the fact within the meaning of Voliva's prize offer. The Foucault pendulum illustrates the diurnal motion of the earth as it revolves on its axis, the plane of the oscillation of the freely suspended pendulum slowly changing until it appears to make one revolution each day.
The gyroscope has the same property. If a gyroscope is set spinning on the equator with its spinning axis horizontal in an east
and west direction it will appear to make one revolution a day about an axis at right angles to the spinning axis. At the end of twelve hours the gyroscope will appear to have reversed ends, though actually it will continue to point just as it did at the start, only the earth will have made a half revolution. Also, if a spinning gyroscope were carried around the earth along a north and south meridian, passing over the two poles, it would constantly change its angle so that the horizontal spinning axis would always be at right angles to a vertical line from the earth's center. In other words, if the gyroscope were at 50 degrees north latitude, the gyro axle would be at an angle to the earth's axis equal to the degree of latitude, or 50 degrees, and also at an equal angle to a line passing through the center of the gyroscope and parallel to the polar axle of the earth.
The performance of the gyroscope and pendulum can only be explained by the assumption that the earth is a revolving sphere.
Much of the Zetetic "proofs" of the world's flatness consist of attacks on the spherical theory. For example Voliva and his followers argue that an airplane pilot traveling 300 miles an hour would have to "fall" 60,000 feet an hour in order to maintain his altitude above a spherical world and keep from shooting out in space. Of course, they deny the existence of gravity, and the fact that an airplane maintaining a constant distance from the earth's center is neither falling nor rising. But also the formula on which they calculate the rate of "fall" is not true.
The formula is based on the well known fact that the earth's curvature is eight inches in one mile. In other words if three stakes of equal length are set up on water, at distances of one mile, and a sight is taken over the tops of the two end stakes, two miles apart, it will pass eight inches below the top of the middle stake, one mile away. But the Volivalites go on to calculate that the "drop" increases as the square of the distance, and therefore that distance squared, multiplied by eight and divided by twelve will give the drop from the horizon in feet for any distance. Actually there is no formula in spherical trigonometry which can be used to calculate such a spherical triangle for any desired distance. That can be proven very easily by any one who knows plane geometry, for it requires no knowledge of trigonometry to show the error in the formula. If you draw a circle, with its equator and the vertical meridian, giving the north and south poles, and then draw a horizon line at the north pole, you can prove the fact. A flyer starting from the north pole and traveling to the equator, would cover 6,000 miles if the globe is 24,000 miles in circumference. The diameter of a 24,000 mile globe is 7,639.69 miles, and the radius is 3,819.845 miles, so the "drop" from the horizon of the north pole would be the same.
But according to the Zion formula, if you square the distance of the flight, 6,000 miles, you get 36,000,000, multiply that by 8 (the curvature per mile) and you have 288 million, divide by 12 to get the feet, gives 24 million, and divide that again by 5280 to get the miles, and the answer is 4545.45 miles, or an error of more than 725 miles. To have the drop which the Zion formula indicates the earth would have to have a diameter of more than 28,588 miles.
The Zion formula also makes no provision for angles in the negative or positive sense, as measured in trigonometry, and if the flyer kept on past the half way mark it would show the drop continuing to increase, instead of decreasing, until, if he returned to his starting point, the formula would show him to be 72,935 miles away in space.
The Voliva prize probably will remain uncollected unless some future space traveler some day anchors his ship a few thousand miles out in space and takes a movie of a globular world turning on its axis. That seems to be the only way the $5,000 can ever be collected.
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Napoli's HR Helps Sox Beat Weaver, Angels 4-2
Center fielder Jackie Bradley had as much to do with saving a victory for the Boston Red Sox on Friday night as closer Koji Uehara did.
Bradley, fighting an 0 for 27 slump, was put in for defense in the eighth inning by manager John Farrell and made two scintillating catches on the dead run to help preserve Allen Webster's 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Angels.
"He's such an impact defender. We've seen it many times, and he had an impact in this game tonight just with two innings of defense," Farrell said.
"The one thing that has never been shaken in his time here has been his defense. He's a confident defender, and he feels like he can roll out of bed and run to a spot where a ball is eventually going to land. Thankfully, he's got that instinct because it showed up twice here tonight."
Bradley raced toward short right-center to prevent a leadoff single by Mike Trout leading off the eighth, then sprinted to the alley in right-center and made a leaping grab of Howie Kendrick's extra-base bid leading off the ninth.
"It all happened so fast. I was just hoping the wall didn't stop me before I was able to get to it," Bradley said. "On the first play, Trout had two strikes on him - but I'm not playing in with that guy. I saw it right off the bat, so I just put my head down. It was much easier than the one to the wall because I could keep my eyes on it."
Mike Napoli homered against former batterymate Jered Weaver and Yoenis Cespedes hit a two-run double for the Red Sox.
Webster (2-1) allowed two runs and four hits over 6 2-3 innings in his third start since getting recalled from Triple-A on July 26, when Jake Peavy was traded to San Francisco. The right-hander struck out three, walked two and hit two batters.
Uehara got three outs during a shaky ninth to get his 24th save.
Weaver (12-7) lost for the first time since June 16, allowing four runs and seven hits through six innings after going 5-0 in his previous nine starts. The Angels' fourth straight loss matched their longest skid of the season and dropped them four games behind AL West-leading Oakland, following the Athletics' 6-5 win over Minnesota.
"Obviously, it could have gone a little better," Weaver said. "I really wanted to come in and throw a good game and it wasn't really the case. I was kind of battling the whole night. I couldn't make pitches. That's all there is to it."
Last Saturday at Fenway Park against the Yankees, Webster was staked to a 3-0 lead in the second inning before walking his first three batters in the third and giving up four runs en route to a 6-4 loss.
"It was an encouraging outing for him," Farrell said. "He was much more under control tonight and showed the ability to make adjustments more readily than the last time out. There's no denying his potential. We see it every time we put the ball in his hand."
But Napoli, who caught Weaver during their first five seasons in the big leagues, helped make sure there wouldn't be a repeat of that scenario for Webster when he hit his 14th homer to left-center with two out in the fifth. It was his third against Weaver.
Red Sox: Outfielder Allen Craig, who has played only one game since he was acquired from St. Louis on July 31, got a second opinion on his sprained left foot from Dr. Robert Anderson in Charlotte, North Carolina. There were no new findings.
Angels: Reliever Mike Morin, who hasn't pitched since July 31 because of a laceration on his left foot, has been doing some long toss and will continue to through the weekend before he gets back on a mound early next week.
Red Sox: Right-hander Clay Buchholz (5-7, 6.20 ERA) has never had a season with 30 or more starts - despite the fact that all but two of his 141 big league appearances have come as a starter. This is the fifth straight season he has spent time on the DL.
Angels: Right-hander Garrett Richards (12-4, 2.58 ERA) is coming off his first big league shutout, a five-hitter at Dodger Stadium in which he threw a career-high 122 pitches.


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This week's Who Do You Think You Are? took Rosie O'Donnell on a journey to find the identity of a mysterious woman who's picture hung in her childhood home, as well as tracing her ancestors back to Ireland.
They started filming during her radio show, where she joked that, what if she wasn't Irish Catholic, but instead found out that she was Jewish. Even though she was joking, this isn't so far from the truth. Some people believe they know their background and may find it's quite different. Throughout history, Jews have been persecuted, forced to convert, and often hid their identities from their descendents.
The Keeper of the Photos
Her brother, Ed O'Donnell was called in to start the show. Rosie described him as "the keeper of family photos and history and whatnot." Ed had a picture that Rosie remembered, someone they still couldn't definitively identify. He also had an interesting copy of Daniel Murtha's WWI draft card, their grandfather.
After reading the draft card, Ed then asked Rosie where she thinks someone would start their search. This is where she said, "It's not gonna be as easy as it looks on TV." At least she realized that right at the beginning of the episode. These shows make a lot of the research look easy when it really takes hours, and sometimes months of research, just to find a single document.
Jersey City, NJ
In the voiceover on the drive to New Jersey, Rosie said she wanted to track down the mysterious woman from the photo and had to track down more about Daniel Murtha. At the Jersey City Free Public Library, she met with genealogist Suzanne Nurnberg. Going to the microfilm reader, they looked for Daniel in the census, based on his address. In the census, they found Daniel, then his parents also on the same page. Printing out a copy, they examined the details from the census.
Born in French Canada, Rosie automatically jumped to saying Montreal, instead of Quebec. Suzanne suggested "somewhere in that area" as a more correct assessment. Rosie was also looking for the town where his parents were born, which was not shown on the census, and usually isn't.
"A lot of times, vital records for Irish immigrants only say 'born in Ireland', they don't give you the exact town. And the hardest thing really is to get the exact place of origin in Ireland; not an easy task." Suzanne was not only correct about Irish immigrants, but for all immigrants. A good deal of the research I do involves making the leap from the US back to their European origins. Depending on when they immigrated, if and when they naturalized, finding that information can be easy or nearly impossible.
Rosie asked about any more information, and Suzanne pointed out more details about Daniel's wife, Ellen. When Rosie asked about an earlier census, Suzanne plugged Ancestry, having found the earlier census for the family on the site. It's curious why they didn't go straight to Ancestry for the first census. Maybe they were using this episode to demonstrate that not everything is online and sometimes you have to search microfilm. The earlier census revealed Michael to have a different wife, and Rosie immediately realized that she could be the mystery woman from the photograph.
Suzanne suggested that Rosie go to New York to try to find more information about Anna, also mentioning that Rosie should check other spellings for the surname. This is also common among immigrants. Many would change their names to Americanize the spelling, or simply changed their names for other reasons. Sometimes name spelling variations happened because our ancestors were illiterate, so the record-taker spelled the name however he wanted.
New York
At the Municipal Archives, Rosie met with chief archivist Ken Cobb who had the death certificate for Anna. Noticing the cause of death, Ken suggested looking at the newspaper for any more details of the incident.
At the Brooklyn Historical Society, Rosie sat at a microfilm reader again, where she found the obituary that explained the event, reading all the details and taking notes. Her notebook had been briefly seen in an earlier scene. She followed up with historian David Rosner, who had another article about the accident.
Heading to the neighborhood mentioned in the article, Rosie met Rev. Robert Czok at the Catholic church to find baptismal records in search of the child that survived the accident. Flipping through the book, he found the listing for Elizabeth, which was not bookmarked as we've seen in other episodes. Of course, it was naturally found ahead of time, but in real research, the pages aren't marked for you before you arrive, and it may take some time to find the listing you are looking for.
In the next voiceover, Rosie said that she got in touch again with Suzanne Nurnberg in New Jersey and asked her to send whatever she could find on Elizabeth. Realistically, we know that the research was already done, so Rosie didn't have to ask Suzanne to do more research, but that is often how the research really goes. As one clue is found, then a new batch of research is begun to find more.
Returning from the commercial, it seemed like an unusually long recap for this season, almost like they tried to show a lot of time had passed while Elizabeth was being researched.
"Somehow, Suzanne went and found Lizzie Murtha…" Rosie said in the voiceover. Somehow… Armed with the census, a marriage certificate, and a family tree (that wasn't shown on screen), the show went back to its family tree chart, where we saw more of Lizzie's family. We also learned in this section that those charts can be kind of random, when Rosie said that Lizzie's son Christopher was the oldest child, but he was shown as the third of four children on the chart.
Meet the Cousins
In Secaucus, New Jersey, Rosie met her cousins descended from Lizzie. Rosie told them what she had learned about Lizzie and showed them the photograph that they recognized. She also read Lizzie's obituary to them, which must have been in the package that Suzanne sent her, though it wasn't mentioned before. It also verified that Daniel and Lizzie must have known each other.
Both of these events are familiar to me and many genealogists: meeting relatives you didn't previously know you had, and having a mystery photo verified by other relatives. The only way to really verify someone's identity in a photo is through other people. No matter how much research was done about Anna and Lizzie, unless they found a photo in a newspaper, they could never know for sure who was in that picture without those cousins knowing.
Shifting Focus
In the next voiceover, Rosie said, "now that I've found all that I can about Lizzie and her mother Anna…", except how much did she know about Anna? Was there nothing before her death? Did they find her birth, marriage, her parents? It makes more sense that either nothing was found, or that wasn't the focus of the research. After all, Anna was not related to Rosie and collateral people are often not researched. She shifted her focus to Anna's husband, Daniel's father. She went to Quebec to find more.
They Really Were in Montreal
Rosie met archivist Guillaume Lesage at the Notre Dame Basilica, hoping to find more information about the family. She looked down the page to find the baptism of Michael Murtha in Montreal, which included his parents' names that she did not previously know, Andrew Murtagh and Ann Doyle. As Guillaume translated the record, Rosie grabbed her notebook to take notes.
He sent her to the National Archive of Quebec to meet archivist Denyse Beaugrand-Champagne, who had a copy of the 1861 census. Going back to the family charts at this point, they seemed to list the kids in birth order this time, showing three born in Ireland and three in Canada.
Back to Ancestry, they searched the Drouin collection, apparently searching by Ann's maiden name, where they found a death record. Rosie stated that she was at a brick wall again, having not found the Irish place of origin. While brick walls are not uncommon in genealogy research, this was not one. Having a brick wall involves searching for records and not finding them. In this case, the only records Rosie had seen were the census and the death records, neither of which mentioned the origin beyond "Ireland". Or was there a lot more going on that didn't make the episode besides the previously completed research? Denyse suggested Rosie look for the obituary.
At the Grande Bibliotheque, Rosie again used the microfilm reader to find the obituary.
"I feel like I'm on a scavenger hunt, in another time, in another country, in another language." That quote was almost perfect. Genealogy research is almost a scavenger hunt, though I usually prefer to compare it to detective work or puzzle solving. She was in another time and another country, but it was clear that the newspaper she was searching was in English.
Finding the obituary, it said that Ann Doyle was a native of Kildare, Ireland. What they didn't explain was why she was listed by her maiden name. Is this usual for Irish immigrants to continue to use their maiden names after marriage? Having done no Irish research myself, and certainly not everyone has, it would have been nice to mention why they didn't find her listed by her husband's name, or why they even thought to search for her by her maiden name.
"I feel like I won the lottery, in a way, because I never thought there would be a mention of Ann Doyle's death in the newspaper, but there it was." Rosie seemed awfully calm in her excitement when she found that obituary. It also seemed unusual that they went straight for Ann's death and obituary and not Andrew's or their other three children who were born in Ireland. Of course, according to one of the genealogists for the show, Kyle Betit, we know that a lot more research was done. As he stated on the ProGenealogists' blog, "We searched many other records, and no other record stating where this family came from in Ireland has been found in North America." So from this, I can probably assume that all the research that is not shown on TV has probably been done; everything I question in these nitpicker's versions, where I say that they should have done something or ask if they bothered to look, they probably did look at.
Finally to Ireland
In Dublin, Rosie met with genealogist Nicola Morris. Why Rosie drove the car is beyond me, but she injected her own humor into the show a few times and maybe it was just another attempt. At Manor Kilbride Church, Nicola showed Rosie the baptismal records from the parish. Rosie shared a copy of the Quebec census, then Nicola showed her three of the baptisms, finding another child who was not listed in the Quebec census. Nicola also mentioned that the fourth child, Thomas, was not found in the register, probably because the register was incomplete. Here again we get some realism. Sometimes the record can't be found because it just doesn't exist anymore. However, sometimes it is also the case that a child is recorded by a different name. They didn't mention in the episode the birth years of Thomas and Patrick to verify that they were different people, but they soon mentioned that there were the four children in the family.
Details about the Potato Famine in Irish history followed; explaining foreign history is always appreciated in the US version.
Nicola suggested that Patrick may not have survived to leave for Canada, but watching the rest of the episode, this is never verified.
Nicola sent Rosie to meet librarian Mario Corrigan at the Kildare Library in Newbridge to look into the Poor Law Union records. He showed her the original books from 1854. She asked a lot of questions about the workhouse before finding the listing in the book showing that they did live there and were recommended to be sent to immigrate to Canada. Both Mario and Rosie were wearing the white gloves while looking at the book. Sometimes we see them and sometimes we don't; there don't seem to be any consistent rules across various historical societies and archives.
Rosie then visited the site of one of the last standing workhouses, in Birr, where she met historian Gerard Moran for a tour. She likened the living conditions to a concentration camp.
Her brother arrived and they went to a pub to share what she had learned. They ended up in a pub called Murtagh's Corner, joking that a relative might have owned it.
Conclusion and Opinions
Although we know that all the research was done prior to filming, this episode tried to make it look like Rosie was really doing the research. Of course she was guided, but maybe she expressed more interest in doing the work "erself, thus looking through the microfilms and the flipping through the books a little more than in some other episodes.
They spent almost half of the episode in Ireland, learning about the history of the Potato Famine and even more on the workhouses. This seemed a little mis-weighted, but it was the more impactful part of the story. As Rosie said, "We all have the choice to focus on the horror or the redemption, and the gift is to focus on the redemption." This is definitely true of Jewish research; no matter where your family was at the time, at some point, you will run into relatives who survived or were victims of the Holocaust.
This is the first episode of WDYTYA where I had a negative opinion of the featured celebrity. During the episode, Rosie seemed genuinely kind to everyone and sincere about the research, but sometimes she just says things that rub people the wrong way, like her recent agreement with Helen Thomas's statement that the Jews should stop "occupying" Israel and go back to Poland and Germany. I can only hope that after her experience in Ireland, Rosie realized what she was saying. Would she want to live next door to the workhouse where her family had lived and the one child apparently died? Still, at least her family was there for survival and not extermination.
This article continues the Nitpicker's Series, Season 2.