text:
One day last year when her daughter, Ainsley, was 9, Tracee Sioux pulled her out of her elementary school in Fort Collins, Colo., and drove her an hour south, to Longmont, in hopes of finding a satisfying reason that Ainsley began growing pubic hair at age 6. Ainsley was the tallest child in her third-grade class. She had a thick, enviable blond-streaked ponytail and big feet, like a puppy's. The curves of her Levi's matched her mother's.
"Pretty good."
"What did you do at a recess?"
"I played on the slide with my friends."
In the back seat, Ainsley wiggled out of her pink parka and looked in her backpack for her Harry Potter book. Over the past three years, Tracee — pretty and well-put-together, wearing a burnt orange blouse that matched her necklace and her bag — had taken Ainsley to see several doctors. They ordered blood tests and bone-age X-rays and turned up nothing unusual. "The doctors always come back with these blank looks on their faces, and then they start redefining what normal is," Tracee said as we drove down Interstate 25, a ribbon of asphalt that runs close to where the Great Plains bump up against the Rockies. "And I always just sit there thinking, What are you talking about, normal? Who gets pubic hair in first grade?"
Fed up with mainstream physicians, Tracee began pursuing less conventional options. She tried giving Ainsley diindolylmethane, or DIM, a supplement that may or may not help a body balance its hormones. She also started a blog, the Girl Revolution, with a mission to "revolutionize the way we think about, treat and raise girls," and the accompanying T.G.R. Body line of sunscreens and lotions marketed to tweens and described by Tracee as "natural, organic, craptastic-free products" containing "no estrogens, phytoestrogens, endocrine disrupters."
None of this stopped Ainsley's body from maturing ahead of its time. That afternoon, Tracee and Ainsley visited the office of Jared Allomong, an applied kinesiologist. Applied kinesiology is a "healing art" sort of like chiropractic. Practitioners test muscle strength in order to diagnose health problems; it's a refuge for those skeptical and weary of mainstream medicine.
"So, what brings you here today?" Allomong asked mother and daughter. Tracee stroked Ainsley's arm and said, wistfully, "Precocious puberty."
Allomong nodded. "What are the symptoms?"
"Pubic hair, armpit hair, a few pimples around the nose. Some budding." Tracee gestured with her hands, implying breasts. "The emotional stuff is getting worse, too. Ainsley's been getting super upset about little things, crying, and she doesn't know why. I think she's cycling with me."
Ainsley closed her eyes, as if to shut out the embarrassment. The ongoing quest to understand why her young body was turning into a woman's was not one of Ainsley's favorite pastimes. She preferred torturing her 6-year-old brother and playing school with the neighborhood kids. (Ainsley was always the teacher, and she was very strict.)
"Have you seen Western doctors for this?" Allomong asked.
Tracee laughed. "Yes, many," she said. "None suggested any course of action. They left us hanging." She repeated for Allomong what she told me in the car: "They seem to have changed the definition of 'normal.' "
For many parents of early-developing girls, "normal" is a crazy-making word, especially when uttered by a doctor; it implies that the patient, or patient's mother, should quit being neurotic and accept that not much can be done. Allomong listened intently. He nodded and took notes, asking Tracee detailed questions about her birth-control history and validating her worst fears by mentioning the "extremely high levels" of estrogen-mimicking chemicals in the food and water supply. After about 20 minutes he asked Ainsley to lie on a table. There he performed a lengthy physical exam that involved testing the strength in Ainsley's arms and legs while she held small glass vials filled with compounds like cortisol, estrogen and sugar. (Kinesiologists believe that weak muscles indicate illness, and that a patient's muscles will test as weaker when he or she is holding a substance that contributes to health problems.)
Finally, he asked Ainsley to sit up. "It doesn't test like it's her own estrogens," Allomong reported to Tracee, meaning he didn't think Ainsley's ovaries were producing too many hormones on their own. "I think it's xeno-estrogens, from the environment," he explained. "And I think it's stress and insulin and sugar."
"You can't be more specific?" Tracee asked, pleading. "Like tell me what crap in my house I can get rid of?" Allomong shook his head.
On the ride back to Fort Collins, Tracee tried to cheer herself up thinking about the teenage suffering that Ainsley would avoid. "You know, I was one of those flat-chested girls at age 14, reading, 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret,' just praying to get my period. Ainsley won't have to go through that! When she gets her period, we're going to have a big old party. And then I'm going to go in the bathroom and cry."
In the late 1980s, Marcia Herman-Giddens, then a physician's associate in the pediatric department of the Duke University Medical Center, started noticing that an awful lot of 8- and 9-year-olds in her clinic had sprouted pubic hair and breasts. The medical wisdom, at that time, based on a landmark 1960 study of institutionalized British children, was that puberty began, on average, for girls at age 11. But that was not what Herman-Giddens was seeing. So she started collecting data, eventually leading a study with the American Academy of Pediatrics that sampled 17,000 girls, finding that among white girls, the average age of breast budding was 9.96. Among black girls, it was 8.87.
When Herman-Giddens published these numbers, in 1997 in Pediatrics, she set off a social and endocrinological firestorm. "I had no idea it would be so huge," Herman-Giddens told me recently. "The Lolita syndrome" — the prurient fascination with the sexuality of young girls — "created a lot of emotional interest. As a feminist, I wish it didn't." Along with medical professionals, mothers, worried about their daughters, flocked to Herman-Giddens's slide shows, gasping as she flashed images of possible culprits: obesity, processed foods, plastics.
Meanwhile, doctors wrote letters to journals criticizing the sample in Herman-Giddens's study. (She collected data from girls at physicians' offices, leaving her open to the accusation that it wasn't random.) Was the age of puberty really dropping? Parents said yes. Leading pediatric endocrinologists said no. The stalemate lasted a dozen years. Then in August 2010, the conflict seemed to resolve. Well-respected researchers at three big institutions — Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York — published another study in Pediatrics, finding that by age 7, 10 percent of white girls, 23 percent of black girls, 15 percent of Hispanic girls and 2 percent of Asian girls had started developing breasts.
Now most researchers seem to agree on one thing: Breast budding in girls is starting earlier. The debate has shifted to what this means. Puberty, in girls, involves three events: the growth of breasts, the growth of pubic hair and a first period. Typically the changes unfold in that order, and the process takes about two years. But the data show a confounding pattern. While studies have shown that the average age of breast budding has fallen significantly since the 1970s, the average age of first period, or menarche, has remained fairly constant, dropping to only 12.5 from 12.8 years. Why would puberty be starting earlier yet ending more or less at the same time?
To endocrinologists, girls who go through puberty early fall into two camps: girls with diagnosable disorders like central precocious puberty, and girls who simply develop on the early side of the normal curve. But the line between the groups is blurring. "There used to be a discrete gap between normal and abnormal, and there isn't anymore," Louise Greenspan, a pediatric endocrinologist and co-author of the August 2010 Pediatrics paper, told me one morning in her office at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. Among the few tools available to help distinguish between so-called "normal" and "precocious" puberty are bone-age X-rays. To illustrate how they work, Greenspan pulled out a beautiful old book, Greulich and Pyle's "Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist," a standard text for pediatric endocrinologists. Each page showed an X-ray of a hand illustrating "bone age." The smallest hand was from a newborn baby, the oldest from an adult female. "When a baby is born, there's all this cartilage," Greenspan said, pointing to large black gaps surrounding an array of delicate white bones. As the body grows, the pattern of black and white changes. The white bones lengthen, and the black interstices between them, some of which is cartilage, shrink. This process stops at the end of puberty, when the growth plates fuse.
One main risk for girls with true precocious puberty is advanced bone age. Puberty includes a final growth spurt, after which girls mostly stop growing. If that growth spurt starts too early in life, it ends at an early age too, meaning a child will have fewer growing years total. A girl who has her first period at age 10 will stop growing younger and end up shorter than a genetically identical girl who gets her first period at age 13.
That morning one of Greenspan's patients was a 6½-year-old girl with a bone age of 9. She was the tallest girl in her class at school. She started growing pubic hair at age 4. No one thought her growth curve was normal, not even her doctors. (Eight used to be the age cutoff for normal pubic-hair growth in girls; now it's as early as 7.) For this girl, Greenspan prescribed a once-a-month shot of the hormone Leuprolide, to halt puberty's progress. The girl hated the shot. Yet nobody second-guessed the treatment plan. The mismatch between her sexual maturation and her age — and the discomfort that created, for everybody — was just too great.
By contrast, Ainsley was older, and her puberty was progressing more slowly, meaning she wasn't at much of an increased risk for short stature or breast cancer. (Early periods are associated with breast cancer, though researchers don't know if the risk stems from greater lifetime exposure to estrogen or a higher lifetime number of menstrual cycles, or perhaps something else, like the age at which a girl has her growth spurt.) In cases of girls Ainsley's age, Greenspan has been asked by parents to prescribe Leuprolide. But Greenspan says this is a bad idea, because Leuprolide's possible side effects — including an increased risk of osteoporosis — outweigh the benefits for girls that age. "If you have a normal girl, a girl who's 8 or 9, there's a big ethical issue of giving them medicine. Giving them medicine says, 'Something is wrong with your body,' as opposed to, 'This is your body, and let's all find a way to accept it.' "
"I would have a long conversation with her family, show them all the data," Greenspan continues. Once she has gone through what she calls "the process of normalizing" — a process intended to replace anxiety with statistics — she has rarely had a family continue to insist on puberty-arresting drugs. Indeed, most parents learn to cope with the changes and help their daughters adjust too. One mother described for me buying a drawer full of football shirts, at her third-grade daughter's request, to hide her maturing body. Another reminded her daughter that it's O.K. to act her age. "It's like when you have a really big toddler and people expect the kid to talk in full sentences. People look at my daughter and say, 'Look at those cheekbones!' We have to remind her: 'You may look 12, but you're 9. It's O.K. to lose your cool and stomp your feet.' "
"We still have a lot to learn about how early puberty affects girls psychologically," says Paul Kaplowitz, chief of endocrinology at Children's National Medical Center. "We do know that some girls who start maturing by age 8 progress rapidly and have their first period before age 10, and many parents prefer that we use medications to slow things down. However, many girls do fine if they are simply monitored and their parents are reassured that they will get through it without major problems."
In some ways early puberty is most straightforward for families like those of the kindergartner on Leuprolide. She has a diagnosis, a treatment plan. In Greenspan's office, I asked the girl's father at what age he might choose to take his child off the drugs and let her puberty proceed. He laughed. Then he spoke for most parents when he said, "Would it be bad to say 22?"
So why are so many girls with no medical disorder growing breasts early? Doctors don't know exactly why, but they have identified several contributing factors.
Girls who are overweight are more likely to enter puberty early than thinner girls, and the ties between obesity and puberty start at a very young age. As Emily Walvoord of the Indiana University School of Medicine points out in her paper "The Timing of Puberty: Is It Changing? Does It Matter?" body-mass index and pubertal timing are associated at age 5, age 3, even age 9 months. This fact has shifted pediatric endocrinologists away from what used to be known as the critical-weight theory of puberty — the idea that once a girl's body reaches a certain mass, puberty inevitably starts — to a critical-fat theory of puberty. Researchers now believe that fat tissue, not poundage, sets off a feedback loop that can cause a body to mature. As Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco's Benioff Children's Hospital, explains, fatter girls have higher levels of the hormone leptin, which can lead to early puberty, which leads to higher estrogen levels, which leads to greater insulin resistance, causing girls to have yet more fat tissue, more leptin and more estrogen, the cycle feeding on itself, until their bodies physically mature.
In addition, animal studies show that the exposure to some environmental chemicals can cause bodies to mature early. Of particular concern are endocrine-disrupters, like "xeno-estrogens" or estrogen mimics. These compounds behave like steroid hormones and can alter puberty timing. For obvious ethical reasons, scientists cannot perform controlled studies proving the direct impact of these chemicals on children, so researchers instead look for so-called "natural experiments," one of which occurred in 1973 in Michigan, when cattle were accidentally fed grain contaminated with an estrogen-mimicking chemical, the flame retardant PBB. The daughters born to the pregnant women who ate the PBB-laced meat and drank the PBB-laced milk started menstruating significantly earlier than their peers.
One concern, among parents and researchers, is the effect of simultaneous exposures to many estrogen-mimics, including the compound BPA, which is ubiquitous. Ninety-three percent of Americans have traces of BPA in their bodies. BPA was first made in 1891 and used as a synthetic estrogen in the 1930s. In the 1950s commercial manufacturers started putting BPA in hard plastics. Since then BPA has been found in many common products, including dental sealants and cash-register receipts. More than a million pounds of the substance are released into the environment each year.
Family stress can disrupt puberty timing as well. Girls who from an early age grow up in homes without their biological fathers are twice as likely to go into puberty younger as girls who grow up with both parents. Some studies show that the presence of a stepfather in the house also correlates with early puberty. Evidence links maternal depression with developing early. Children adopted from poorer countries who have experienced significant early-childhood stress are also at greater risk for early puberty once they're ensconced in Western families.
Bruce Ellis, a professor of Family Studies and Human Development at the University of Arizona, discovered along with his colleagues a pattern of early puberty in girls whose parents divorced when those girls were between 3 and 8 years old and whose fathers were considered socially deviant (meaning they abused drugs or alcohol, were violent, attempted suicide or did prison time). In another study, published in 2011, Ellis and his colleagues showed that first graders who are most reactive to stress — kids whose pulse, respiratory rate and cortisol levels fluctuate most in response to environmental challenges — entered puberty earliest when raised in difficult homes. Evolutionary psychology offers a theory: A stressful childhood inclines a body toward early reproduction; if life is hard, best to mature young. But such theories are tough to prove.
Social problems don't just increase the risk for early puberty; early puberty increases the risk for social problems as well. We know that girls who develop ahead of their peers tend to have lower self-esteem, more depression and more eating disorders. They start drinking and lose their virginity sooner. They have more sexual partners and more sexually transmitted diseases. "You can almost predict it" — that early maturing teenagers will take part in more high-risk behaviors, says Tonya Chaffee, associate clinical professor of pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco, who oversees the Teen and Young Adult Health Center at San Francisco General Hospital. Half of the patients in her clinic are or have been in the foster system. She sees in the outlines of their early-developing bodies the stresses of their lives — single parent or no parent, little or no money, too much exposure to violence.
Some of this may stem from the same social stresses that contribute to early puberty in the first place, and some of it may stem from other factors, including the common nightmare of adolescence: being different. As Julia Graber, associate chairwoman of psychology at the University of Florida, has shown, all "off-time" developers — early as well as late — have more depression during puberty than typically-developing girls. But for the late bloomers, the negative effect wears off once puberty ends. For early bloomers, the effect persists, causing higher levels of depression and anxiety through at least age 30, perhaps all through life. "Some early-maturing girls have very serious problems," Graber told me. "More than I expected when I started looking for clinical significance. I was surprised that it was so severe."
Researchers know there's a relationship between pubertal timing and depression, but they don't know exactly how that relationship works. One theory is that going through puberty early, relative to other kinds of cognitive development, causes changes in the brain that make it more susceptible to depression. As Elizabeth Sowell, director of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, points out, girls in general tend to go through puberty earlier than boys, and starting around puberty, girls, as a group, also experience more anxiety and depression than boys do. Graber offers a broader hypothesis, perhaps the best understanding of the puberty-depression connection we have for now. "It may be that early maturers do not have as much time as other girls to accomplish the developmental tasks of childhood. They face new challenges while everybody else is still dealing with the usual development of childhood. This might be causing them to make less successful transitions into adolescence and beyond."
Over the past year, I talked to mothers who tried to forestall their daughters' puberty in many different ways. Some trained with them for 5K runs (exercise is one of the few interventions known to help prevent early puberty); others trimmed milk and meat containing hormones from their daughters' diets; some purged from their homes plastics, pesticides and soy. Yet sooner rather than later, most threw up their hands. "I'm empathetic with parents in despair and wanting a sense of agency," says Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist and the author of "Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis." "But this idea that we, as parents, should be scrutinizing labels and vetting birthday party goody bags — the idea that all of us in our homes should be acting as our own Environmental Protection Agencies and Departments of Interior — is just nuts. Even if we could read every label and scrutinize every product, our kids are in schools and running in and out of other people's homes where there are brominated flame retardants on the furniture and pesticides used in the backyard."
Adding to the anxiety is the fact that we know so little about how early puberty works. A few researchers, including Robert Lustig, of Benioff Children's Hospital, are beginning to wonder if many of those girls with early breast growth are in puberty at all. Lustig is a man prone to big, inflammatory ideas. (He believes that sugar is a poison, as he has argued in this magazine.) To make the case that some girls with early breast growth may not be in puberty, he starts with basic science. True puberty starts in the brain, he explains, with the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, or GnRH. "There is no puberty without GnRH," Lustig told me. GnRH is like the ball that rolls down the ramp that knocks over the book that flips the stereo switch. Specifically, GnRH trips the pituitary, which signals the ovaries. The ovaries then produce estrogen, and the estrogen causes the breasts to grow. But as Lustig points out, the estrogen that is causing that growth in young girls may have a different origin. It may come from the girls' fat tissue (postmenopausal women produce estrogen in their fat tissue) or from an environmental source. "And if that estrogen didn't start with GnRH, it's not puberty, end of story," Lustig says. "Breast development doesn't automatically mean early puberty. It might, but it doesn't have to." Don't even get him started on the relationship between pubic-hair growth and puberty. "Any paper linking pubic hair with early puberty is garbage. Gar-bage. Pubic hair just means androgens, or male hormones. The first sign of puberty in girls is estrogen. Androgen is not even on the menu."
Frank Biro, lead author of the August 2010 Pediatrics paper and director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, began having similar suspicions last spring after he flew to Denmark to give a lecture. Following his talk, Biro looked over the published data on puberty of his colleague Anders Juul. In Juul's study, some of the girls with early breast development had unexpectedly low levels of estradiol, the predominant form of estrogen in women's bodies from the onset of puberty through menopause. Biro had seen a pattern like this in his data, suggesting to him that the early breast growth might be coming from nonovarian estrogens. That is to say, the headwaters for the pubertal changes might not be in the girls' brains. He is now running models on his own data to see if he can determine where the nonovarian estrogens are coming from.
The possibility that these early "normal" girls are reacting to estrogens that are not coming from their ovaries is compelling. Part of the comfort is that a girl who is not yet in puberty may not have developed an adolescent brain. This means she would not yet feel the acute tug of her own sexual urges. She would not seek thrills and risk. Still, the idea that there are enough toxins or fat cells in a child's body to cause breast development is hardly consoling. Besides, some of the psychosocial problems of early puberty derive from what's happening inside a girl's body; others, from how people react to her. "If a girl is 10 and she looks 15, it doesn't make any difference if her pituitary is turned on or if something else caused her breast growth," Biro says. "She looks like a middle adolescent. People are going to treat her that way. Maybe she's not interested in reciprocal sex, but she might be pressured into sex nonetheless, and her social skills will be those of a 10-year-old."
So what are families of early bloomers to do? Doctors urge parents to focus on their daughters' emotional and physical health rather than on stopping or slowing development. In this way, the concept of a new normal is not just a brushoff but an encouragement to support a girl who is vulnerable.
"I know they can't change the fact that their daughter started developing early, but they can change what happens downstream," Louise Greenspan, the pediatric endocrinologist at Kaiser Permanente, told me. Parents can keep their daughters active and at healthy body weights. They can treat them the age they are, not the age they look. They can defend against a culture that sells push-up bikinis for 7-year-olds and otherwise sexualizes young girls. "Most of the psychological issues associated with early puberty are related to risk-taking behaviors," Greenspan continued, and parents can mitigate those. "I know it sounds corny and old-fashioned, but if you're in a supportive family environment, where you are eating family meals and reading books together, you actually do have control." Early breast growth may be just that — early breast growth: disconcerting, poorly understood, but not a guarantee of our worst fears. "You don't go directly from the first signs of early puberty to anorexia, depression, drinking and early sexual debut."
In Fort Collins, Tracee, Ainsley's mother, tried to stay focused on the positive. At one point during my visit, she disappeared into her basement, the headquarters for her company, T.G.R. Body, and returned with a pink hat box filled with chemical-free samples of Peppermint Pimple Popper and Bad Hair Day Miracle Powder. "I just want to be part of the solution," Tracee said, rubbing a sample of silver hair-streaking gel on my wrist. "I'm so tired of running away. I need to have something Ainsley is moving toward."
Mothers who have been through it urge candor. "Be honest with her, and by honest I mean brutally honest" — about what's going to happen to her body — "while still being kind ," says the mother of a girl who recently turned 10 but who first showed signs of developing what she calls "a shape" at age 3. "You don't want your daughter experiencing something for which she's unprepared."
Patience and perspective may be the greatest palliatives. "The thing with puberty is that everybody is going to go through it at some point," another mother told me. Three years ago this woman was installing small trash cans in her third-grade girl's school bathroom stalls so that her daughter could discreetly throw away menstrual pads. But now that daughter is 12, in the sixth grade; her body seems less strange. "I feel so much better, and so does she. By another two or three years down the road, all the other girls will have caught up."
Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of a new memoir about marriage, "No Cheating, No Dying."


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Grade: Elementary
Subject: other
The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle/ Telling time by the hour
Grade: First grade
Time: 30-45 minuets
Materials needed:
The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle
Response clocks (see attached instructions) for each student
Large poster board clock for the teacher
Paper and pencils
Various coloring utensils
Follow the story, connecting print to pictures.
Show understanding of time to the hour, using response clocks.
Create a sentence modeled by the book.
Write using correct spelling of known words, have words spaced correctly, use capitals, and punctuations appropriately.
Use invented spelling for words they don't know but wish to express.
Follow directions.
Idaho State Standards met:
1.M.2.1.3 Tell time to the hour.
1.LA.2.1.2 Participate in connecting the information and events in texts to self and to the world.
1.LA.2.1.3 Participate in drawing conclusions based on information gathered from pictures and print.
1.LA.4.4.2 Participate in writing or drawing a response to a literature selection that identifies the main characters.
1.LA.5.1.1 Print legibly.
1.LA.5.2.2 Use invented spelling to spell independently.
1.LA.5.2.1 Spell correctly Grade 1 high-frequency words.
1.LA.5.3.1 Write a complete sentence with words spaced appropriately.
1.LA.5.4.1 Capitalize the first word in a sentence, names of people, and the pronoun.
1.LA.5.4.2 Use periods at the end of sentences, and identify question marks and exclamation points.
1.LA.6.1.1 Demonstrate effective and appropriate listening skills using eye contact and maintaining attention to speaker.
1.LA.6.1.3 Listen and follow one and two-step oral directions.
Anticipatory set:
The teacher will introduce The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle and conduct a picture walk to familiarize the students with this book. Next, the teacher shall discuss how Eric Carle shows the literary passing of time through the movement of the sun and the growth of the print and pages.
The teacher will demonstrate to the students how to use the response clocks and conduct a short review of the previous day's lesson on how to read an analog clock. The teacher will explain that the students are to show on their response clocks what time the ladybug encounters each animal as she completes each page. She will also show the time on a large clock that she will have up front. The teacher will read the book, pausing for response from students and to set the large clock. After the students set their clocks, they will hold the clocks up for the teacher to see. The teacher then checks all the clocks for accuracy.
After the book is finished, the teacher will introduce the next part of the lesson. In this second part, tell the students to imagine their favorite animal and write a sentence in which the ladybug meets it. Have them choose a time that this is to occur. The students will be provided with a piece of paper and coloring supplies. The students will draw a clock in the upper right hand corner of the page to represent the time, as modeled in the book. They will then create an illustration to accompany their sentence and clock. The papers can either be posted in the classroom or made in to a big book for the class.
The teacher will have a large poster board clock at the front of the class which she will demonstrate the correct time for each page of the story. For the second half of the lesson, the teacher will conduct a review of writing a complete sentence and showing how one is constructed. The teacher will demonstrate how to set up the page with a clock in the upper right hand corner, sentence in the bottom half, and room left for a picture.
Check for understanding:
During the reading of the book the teacher will check for understanding about time, by viewing the clocks that the students hold up. The teacher will be able to quickly see which students understand the concept and who needs to make corrections. For the first three pages the teacher shall make corrections prior to displaying the correct time on the large clock so that all understand.
To ensure understanding during the writing and illustrating portion of the lesson, the teacher will walk the classroom and observe the students. If it is apparent that there is confusion concerning a portion of the lesson, that part shall be re-taught.
Guided practice:
In the second part of the lesson the students are to imagine their favorite animal and write a sentence in which the ladybug meets it. Have them choose a time that this is to occur. The students will be provided with a piece of paper and coloring supplies. The students will draw a clock in the upper right hand corner of the page to represent the time, as modeled in the book. They will then create an illustration to accompany their sentence and clock. The papers can either be posted in the classroom or made in to a big book for the class.
The students will share their sentence and illustration with the class. The students will be able to show what they have learned to the whole class and discuss their choice of time and animal.
The teacher will be able to assess the students on how they participated in both parts of the lesson. Assessment can be made in how well they understand the telling of analog time, their grasp of proper sentence structure and ability to follow direction.
All students should be able to participate in this lesson. Those with parapros should be assessed on what they are capable of doing.
Carle, Eric. The Grouchy Ladybug. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1977.
State standards:

subset: commoncrawl


text:
[UPDATE: This story was originally published on October 16.]
Although we know some of you are TCFS (read: too cool for school), many of us are still uncovering the many nooks and crannies of L.A. — especially in a town full of implants (you know which kind we're talking about). And that's the true beauty of Tinseltown — no matter how long you've lived here, you can still discover something new. Your curiosity will never be satiated.
And, since R29 is all about pioneering new ground, we've put on our camo and tried to unearth some of the coolest tucked-away spots that even natives might not know about. From waterfall hikes and Ryan Gosling's eatery (yep, he owns a resto) to the bridge referenced in that famous Chili Peppers ode to our hometown, these 32 places will make you say "no" to The Grove and "yes" to exploring uncharted territory. Just step right up, and choose your own adventure!


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[Tomáš], a.k.a. [Frooxius] is playing around with computational theory and processor architectures – a strange hobby in itself, we know – and has created the strangest CPU we've ever seen described.
The Weird Processing Unit, or WPU, isn't designed like the Intel or ARM CPU in your laptop or phone. No, the WPU is a thought experiment in computer design that's something between being weird for the sake of being weird and throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
The WPU only has four instructions, or attoinstructions, to change the state of one of the 64 pins on the computer – set to logical 1, set to logical 0, invert current state, and halt. These instructions are coded with two bits, and the operand (i.e. the wire connected to the computer) is encoded in another six bits.
These 64 wires are divided up into several busses – eight bit address and control busses make up the lowest 16 bits, a 32-bit data bus has a function akin to a register, and a 16-bit 'Quick aJump bus' provides the program counter and attocode memory. The highest bit on the WPU is a 'jump bit', implemented for unconditional jumps in code.
We're not even sure the WPU can even be considered a computer. We realize, though, that's probably not the point; [Tomáš] simply created the WPU to do something out of the ordinary. It's not meant to be a real, or even useful, CPU; it's simply a thought experiment to see what is possible by twiddling bits around.
Tip 'o the hat to [Adam] for sending this one in.


text:
NJ Gov. Chris Christie is asking for nearly $37 billion in federal aid to recover and rebuild after Superstorm Sandy.
Christie announced the revised total Wednesday to include $7.4 billion to cover mitigation and prevention of future disasters. A preliminary total of $29.4 billion announced last week is for repairs and response.
Christie is requesting that amount, which is greater than his state's entire yearly budget, from the federal government.
Christie says more than 30,000 homes or businesses were destroyed or sustained substantial damage from last month's storm; 230,000 New Jerseyans have registered for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has asked for about $42 billion in federal aid – $32 billion for repairs and restoration and more than $9 billion to head off future disasters.


text:
The eclipse in history
Myths and legends
Eclipses have always been associated with legends, myths and symbols which constitute a rich source of inspiration in different cultures and epochs. Most of the ancient legends evoke a celestial creature devouring the Sun - a dragon for Indian, Indonesian and Chinese, a giant frog for Vietnamese, a jaguar in Argentina, or a vampire in Siberia, these celestial monsters are responsible for the disappearance of the Moon or the Sun.
One Chinese legend reports that the total solar eclipse in China on 22 October 2134 BC took everybody by surprise. Therefore there was no time to prepare the archers and the drummers in order to fight and frighten the dragons which devour the Sun during the eclipse. In fact, the official imperial astronomers His and Ho, missed the prediction of the eclipse. Not only did they lose their work and the respect of their colleagues - they also lost their heads.
Historical milestones
In any civilisation, a total eclipse occurring without being announced would certainly bring chaos for a few minutes, and would remain a defining moment used later as an historical milestone.
The Odyssey refers to a solar eclipse near Ithaca, which would correspond to 1178 BC. There is a reference to an eclipse in the Bible which could correspond to 15 June 736 BC. Babylonian astronomers have systematically noted solar and lunar eclipses from 700 BC to 50 years BC.
Thales of Milet reports that a total solar eclipse (now dated in May 585 BC) crossed the battlefield during a war between the Lydians and the Medes. The fighting stopped, and peace was declared.
Herodote, Cicero, and Pline also refer to eclipses as time milestones. Plutarch gives very accurate observations of an eclipse on 20 March 71 AD.
There are a number of famous historical events associated with lunar eclipses.
On 29 May 1453, a rising Full Moon was eclipsed over Constantinople, then under siege by the Turk army. It is reported that this created such a dip in morale that in a few days Constantinople was defeated, leading to the end of the Roman Empire of Orient after 1130 years.
Columbus in his fifth expedition in Jamaica, inspired fear and respect in superstitious Indians, by asking his Christian god to send a celestial warning (a lunar eclipse of 29 February 1504). This enabled him to negotiate good provision of food and protection for his troops, allowing them to survive until arrival of the next vessel.
Understanding eclipses
Facts and fallacies
Scientists can now predict eclipses with very high precision (to less than a second). Therefore eclipses can be perceived as a celebration of rationalism. Wonder can replace the fear of our ancestors. What makes the partial eclipse more interesting to the public now, is that one can understand what is happening. It seems normal that at the time of an eclipse one reflects further about the relation of man to the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the cosmos. Scientific knowledge can inspire and guide us further in this process. However, for such spectacular and symbolic events, there are always those keen to exploit superstition and play on human fear or ignorance. Eclipses too come with their cortege of doom and gloom merchants.
The 1999 eclipse and fear of the new millennium
One key ingredient for the 11 August 1999 eclipse story was related to the new millennium, and the associated predictions of catastrophes.
Logically the third millennium starts on 1 January 2001, as the ancients did not use the year zero. So, technically speaking, 1999 was not the last special year of the millennium at all.
In addition, the work of historians seems to indicate that the Christ would in fact have been born in 2 or 3 BC according to the calendar, in which case we passed the 2000 anniversary of His birth a few years ago, without noticing it!
The eclipse of 11 August 1999 was the last total solar eclipse of the millennium. Indeed, there were four solar eclipses in 2000 but they were only partial. The next total solar eclipses take place on 21 June 2001, 4 December 2002 (over the south of Africa), 23 November 2003 (over Antarctica). We shall have to wait a very long time to see a total solar eclipse over Europe after 11 August 1999. The next 8 total solar eclipses until 2010 will miss Europe.


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The design of Radio Valerie concept was aimed to make a very effortless and logical product that can ensure effective operation as well as unique décor. It's really hard to realize that this product is a radio by seeing it since there are no switches or buttons on the surface. All you will get is an antenna stick and a rotating speaker which actually works as a volume controller. The antenna is being used to tune the frequency by moving it left to right and vice versa. The speaker placed on the top and also serves the purpose of increasing or decreasing the volume by rotating.
Designer : Valentin Vodev


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dale has not received any gifts yet
Hey. Saw you play on Richardson Rd. I play there from time to time also. I live very close. I'm looking to find experienced players to hit with. Let me know if you're interested.
What time of the day can you play?
Yes, I play about twice a week. Every other Monday, there is a group who plays on Bellevue's courts at 6. Only 2 expressed interest for tonight 6/30, so I don't know if tonight is a go. You are more than welcome to join us. Or, I would be glad to hit with you. I am about a 2.5 or 3.0 player, just to let you know.
To be honest, I haven't been on a court in like 8 years. I just got a good deal on a raquet so decided to start playing again. I think I'm closest to SK, I didn't know they had courts, I'll have to check them out soon.
Great! Thanks for the info, Dale. I will definitely check it out. What is the best time to go, do you know?
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In response to:
Is God in the Lab? from the May 28, 1998 issue
To the Editors:
It is symptomatic of the unlevel playing field on which science and religion contend today that a scientist with no theological credentials (Freeman Dyson, in The New York Review, May 28) feels comfortable in concluding that the theology of a fellow scientist (John Polkinghorne) is, like all theology, about words and not, as is the case in science, about things. This is in the face of the fact that virtually all theology takes God to be the only completely real "thing" there is, all else being like shadows in Plato's cave. Muslims in their testament of faith sometimes transpose "There is no God but the God" to read "There is no Reality but the Reality," the two assertions being identical.
As for Dyson's claim that "there is nothing analogous to theology in Judaism or in Islam," it fits poorly in both cases. In Judaism, I pass over Philo of Alexandria to mention that while I was a student at the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler were putting together their list of the hundred great books that was to evolve into the Great Books Program. An early entry on their list (which they were team teaching in Great Books discussion format when I got wind of the project) was The Guide to the Perplexed by the world-class Jewish philosopher-theologian Moses Maimonides. In Islam's case, it appears to have slipped Dyson's mind that it was the Muslims who kept Greek philosophy alive during Christendom's dark ages, and that when Thomas Aquinas (through their legacy) came upon Aristotle's Metaphysics, he found its challenge to Christian theology sufficient to cause him to write his Summa Theologica to baptize Aristotle and effect the medieval synthesis. When he went on to write his companion summa, the Summa contra Gentiles, Muslims were the gentiles it was aimed at. He found their philosophical theology so formidable that he felt it imperative that Christendom face up to it, and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Roshd) continue to figure in standard histories of Western philosophy. As for "Hinduism and Buddhism…hav[ing] no theology," as Dyson's Cook's tour continues, one can only marvel that his informants seem to have overlooked Shankara, Nagarjuna, and the Abhidharma. No one who has ever cracked the last of these—dauntingly scholastic, and one of the three "baskets" of original Buddhist texts—would dream of characterizing it as "poetic rather than analytical."
The wrong foot that the above misunderstandings cause Dyson to step forth on leads him to conclude that "conflicts between science and Christianity…do not exist between science and other religions." Again the truth of the matter comes to me in an autobiographical recollection, this one from the years I taught at MIT. A visitor from abroad had written ahead to ask the Institute's visitors' bureau to schedule an appointment with me. He turned out to be the vice-chancellor of the leading technological institute in Egypt, and the title of one of my courses was the only place in the MIT catalog where he found that "religion" appeared. This lead him to seek my counsel on what he considered to be a serious problem in his country. "All of our students come to us as believing Muslims," he reported, "and most of them graduate as atheists or agnostics." Much of Islamic fundamentalism today derives from the fact that in Middle Eastern Islamic countries 80 percent of the population continues to adhere to the traditional world view of the Koran while being ruled by the elite 20 percent who have been educated in Europe and America and have largely adopted their outlooks, including the scientific world view.
When Freeman Dyson engages in haute vulgarisation—the art of translating difficult (in his case scientific) ideas into layman's vernacular with style—he turns into a hero of mine whose writings I try never to miss.
Huston Smith
Berkeley, California
Freeman Dyson replies:
I am grateful to Huston Smith for correcting my mistakes. I have, as he says, no theological credentials. I have learned a lot from his letter. My statement that Judaism and Islam have nothing analogous to theology was based on casual conversations with Orthodox Jews and Muslims among my acquaintances. In particular, the great physicist Abdus Salam, who was a devout Muslim with a strong interest in the history of Islam, said that Islam has no theology. Rabbi Bloom, a British rabbi who writes popular books about Judaism and appears frequently on BBC television, said that Judaism has no theology. These statements were made about Judaism and Islam as experienced by ordinary believers in modern Western communities. Huston Smith is speaking about Judaism and Islam as seen by a scholar with expert knowledge of their ancient literatures. Therefore I venture to claim that Huston Smith and my informants are both speaking the truth. A deep truth, as defined by the physicist Niels Bohr, is a true statement whose opposite is also true.
This Issue
July 16, 1998


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SS Mallikarjuna Rao, MD and CEO, Punjab National Bank, said: "The announcement of on tap-liquidity facility of Rs 15,000 crore will ensure credit flow to the contact-intensive sectors and MSMEs, including hotels, tourism, aviation, etc. which have been adversely impacted."
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday announced a special liquidity window of Rs 15,000 crore for lenders to incentivise them to create a 'Covid loan book' by lending to contact-intensive sectors hit by the pandemic.
Further, banks will be eligible to park their surplus liquidity up to the size of the Covid loan book at 40 basis points (bps) higher than the reverse repo rate. Currently, the repo rate stands at 4% and the reverse repo rate at 3.35% after the regulator kept rates unchanged on Friday. The window encourages banks to provide fresh lending support to hotels, restaurants, tourism, aviation ancillary services, private bus operators and car repair services, among others.
"In order to mitigate the adverse impact of the second wave of the pandemic on certain contact-intensive sectors, a separate liquidity window of Rs 15,000 crore is being opened till March 31, 2022, with tenors of up to three years at the repo rate," said governor Shaktikanta Das.
The regulator has also specified that banks which do not wish to avail funds from the regulator will also be eligible for the incentives announced by the RBI. This scheme is over and above the liquidity window of Rs 50,000 crore for ramping up Covid-related healthcare infrastructure and services announced in May 2021. Banks need to create a separate Covid loan book for lending to the pandemic-hit sectors specified by the RBI. Bankers believe on-tap liquidity facility will ensure credit flow to the contact-intensive sectors.
SS Mallikarjuna Rao, MD and CEO, Punjab National Bank, said: "The announcement of on tap-liquidity facility of Rs 15,000 crore will ensure credit flow to the contact-intensive sectors and MSMEs, including hotels, tourism, aviation, etc. which have been adversely impacted."
Experts believe many banks may not avail the liquidity facility provided by the central bank. Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice president and group head, ICRA, said given the surplus liquidity in the banking system, banks are unlikely to directly borrow under the liquidity window from RBI. However, an additional incentive of 40 basis points over the reverse repo rate could provide some incentive to lenders to provide credit to these sectors, he said. The lenders, however, could remain watchful of the underlying stress in these sectors, as the credit risk will continue to be with them, Srinivasan said.
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1) Use a Notification Bar
I'm sure you've noticed the red bar floating at the top of this blog. I created it using the Foobar plugin (affiliate).
If you're not a fan of pop-ups or floating advertisements, a notification bar is a more subtle/less intrusive way of highlighting something you want to call attention to.
With the Holidays approaching, many sites are running special offers, discounts, etc. This is a fabulous way to promote them.
Do you have your own product? This time of year can be slow for many niches. Boost sales by discounting your products and utilize plugins like this to promote them.
What I like about Foobar is you can rotate multiple advertisements and it's highly customizable. In fact, I was a tad bit overwhelmed by all the settings at first.
The plugin also creates an option on the Edit Post/Page screen that allows you to show different links on different pages.
I just started using this last week, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with different ways to use it.
The Hello Bar (no affiliation) seems to be the preferred plugin for bloggers, and there's even a free version (unlike Foobar). However, Hello Bar's free version has a 25-click maximum.
The paid version for Hello Bar starts at $5/month — which is quite economical for established sites, but maybe not so much for newer/less-trafficked sites.
I chose Foobar because it has everything I needed and I prefer a one-time charge ($14) over a monthly fee.
2) Promote The Theme You're Using
This tactic probably works best on blogs about blogging/design/Internet marketing, but nevertheless, it's never a bad strategy to tell your readers what theme you're using — even if it's a subtle mention in your footer.
Satisfy the curiosity of those readers who may admire your theme design. You'll be surprised how these links can convert — especially if you have an awesome design.
Recently I added an ad for The Genesis Lifestyle theme (affiliate) at the bottom of this blog inside my footer widget. That link is now one of my highest converting links for the Genesis theme.
Not to mention, Genesis has a pretty generous affiliate program and their products convert incredibly well due to their sleek-looking sales pages.
If someone purchases their entire suite of themes, you'll earn a whopping $122 just like that as shown below from a recent sale on 12/1/2012.
What's interesting is I don't even promote the bundled theme package — I only promote The Genesis Lifestyle Theme or the main Genesis homepage.
So you have to give credit to a merchant who does a great job of upselling their other products. Gotta love that!
Plus, it definitely helps when you use the product you're promoting. I don't think I'd sell as many of their themes if I didn't.
For the first time ever this product is now my #1 earner for this blog. The banner helps call more attention to the link, and no doubt the video link aids with conversions too.
3) Refresh Your Older Posts and Pages
Now more than ever, Google is all about fresh content. I did a complete re-write of an old post because it was outdated. The older version of the page was ranking #7 on the first page of Google for the targeted keyword.
After the content update, the page jumped to position #3. Coincidence? Maybe. Who really knows exactly what Google's algorithm is up to these days? But it never hurts to refresh your content.
Yes, you may earn a boost with regards to SEO, but it's always beneficial to update older pages. You may find ways to work in new or better-performing affiliate links.
I know I keep going back to Genesis, but this old post on WooThemes and Thesis is actually converting for the Genesis theme just because of the text update at the top.
It pays (literally) to go back and make those updates!
4) Display Your Toolbox
If done right, a tools/resources page can really rev up your earnings.
Why? Because it's easier to convert with affiliate marketing when you actually use the products.
Also, many of your readers are naturally curious about what tools/services you use for your site or niche anyway.
Tip 1: Mix up your links and recommend both free and paid resources. It's tempting to load up the page with nothing but affiliate links, but we all know there are some fabulous free resources out there as well.
Plus, it looks suspicious when every single recommendation is tied to an affiliate link.
Tip 2: Organize your resources into categories to make the page easier to scan/browse.
Tip 3: Show demonstrations of the products you recommend via video. As you can see, I reference several of my videos on my resource page.
We all know that videos convert, and if you're a YouTube partner, those added views can pad your earnings as well.
Here are some blogs with well-done resource pages:
FreelanceSwitch.com – (I love how this page is setup.)
John Paul Aguiar's The Money Dummy Blog (I like how JP divided the page up.)
Corbet Barr's ThinkTraffic.net (Notice the cleanliness of his landing page.)
Ana Hoffman of Traffic Generation Cafe (The equally-sized graphics add a nice touch.)
And if you want to drum up some extra attention to your page, create an eye-catching image like I did with the following graphic located in my footer…
5) Use an Affiliate Plugin
This is one of the easiest ways to monetize your WordPress content in seconds — especially if you use a plugin that automatically converts keywords to links in your posts and pages.
Now, I splurged on the Max Blog Press Ninja plugin (affiliate), but you don't have to. There are more economical and free varieties like Thirsty Affiliates (starts at $39), Pretty Link (free and paid versions), etc.
However, many of the free plugins don't automatically convert the keywords in your content, so be sure to check on that.
While redirect plugins are amazingly convenient, just remember that if you have a technical issue and/or have to uninstall them, you'll lose all your links. This is one of the reasons I try to use these kinds of plugins very sparingly.
I hope this post offered up some tips and strategies you can use and implement for your own site!


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NEW YORK – Sean Kilpatrick scored 17 points to lead Cincinnati past Providence 61-44 on Wednesday in a Big East tournament game between teams desperate to improve their postseason credentials.
JaQuon Parker added 15 points and 10 rebounds for the Bearcats (22-10), who might have solidified an NCAA tournament berth with the win. No. 9 seed Cincinnati advanced to a quarterfinal matchup Thursday with No. 5 Georgetown, the top seed, at Madison Square Garden.
Kadeem Batts led the eighth-seeded Friars (17-14) with 14 points and eight rebounds, but Bryce Cotton — the conference's leading scorer at 19.6 points per game — was held to 12 on 5-for-15 shooting. He missed all seven 3-point attempts, and Providence went 1 for 16 from beyond the arc.


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Monday, June 30, 2008
New York Tour
I'm traveling to NY in August, and my schedule is open on Tuesday August 5th and Wednesday the 6th. If anyone knows of a camp that would be interested in Zoo Torah multimedia presentations, or a shul that would be interested in an evening lecture, please put us in touch! I am also open to doing a Torah Tour of the Bronx Zoo on the 5th, if a sufficient number of people request it (weekdays tend to be difficult).
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Wonders of the Animal Kingdom #1: The Long-Eared Jerboa
Very little is known about this rodent from Mongolia. Like all jerboas, it has huge hindlegs for jumping, but it is distinguished from other jerboa species by its enormous ears. Check out the video to see it in action.
Perek Shirah - Rediscovered!
The book Nature's Song on Perek Shirah has been out of print for some time. Funds are currently being raised for its republication, but in the meanwhile it is unavailable in stores. However a recent warehouse clean-out unexpectedly turned up a small quantity of books. You can order it online at the ZooTorah website here.
About Perek Shirah:
Perek Shirah, literally "A Chapter Of Song," is an ancient text that is at least a thousand years old; some ancient commentaries even attribute its authorship to King David! It takes the form of a list of eighty-four elements of the natural world, including elements of the sky and of the earth, plants, birds, animals, and insects, attaching a verse from the Bible to each. The concept behind Perek Shirah is that everything in the natural world teaches us a lesson in philosophy or ethics, and the verse gives a clue as to what that lesson is. The result is the "song" of the natural world, the tapestry of lessons for life that the natural world is telling us. Perek Shirah, a work of tremendous historic value, is itself extremely mysterious and cryptic. However, various commentaries have been written on it over the last five hundred years, which give an insight into what the verse is telling us to learn from the creature.
Thus, for example, Perek Shirah states that "The lion is saying, 'God shall go out as a mighty man, he shall arouse zeal, he shall cry, even roar; he shall prevail over his enemies (Isaiah 42:13)." The lion teaches us of the importance of might and power. This does not mean physical strength; true power is power over oneself. All big cats are aggressive predators and therefore cannot get along even with each other; it is only the lion that is able to somehow control its aggression and live in groups. The lion teaches us of the greatest power, that of self-control.
Nature's Song is the first English explanation of Perek Shirah. It makes use of rare ancient commentaries on Perek Shirah , as well as contemporary insights from the fields of meteorology, zoology and so on. The result is a Biblical encyclopedia of the natural world, synthesizing the ancient with the modern, that enables one to perceive new depths of insight into the natural world that surrounds us.
Guess the Animal #1
Can you guess the identity of this animal, which I photographed at the Sacramento Zoo? Clue: It is famously mentioned in one of the commentaries on the Mishnah. (Note: It is not a sheitel.)
Friday, June 27, 2008
Comments in the spirit of the Zoo Torah enterprise are welcome! (Sorry for the comment moderation policy, but due to the controversy over my work there are all kinds of people out there who, given a chance, would take over and spoil this blog. Fortunately for the cause of free speech, there are plenty of other forums on the Internet for them.)


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This article is more than 1 year old
Google redraws world according to George Bush
Sinister goings-on at UK map operation
Here's something quite sinister for armchair conspiracy theorists: it appears that US prez George Bush has final approval on the the UK version of Google Maps and has decided to redesign the world in a way that more adequately reflects his own particular vision.
As reader Mike Clark explains:
If you visit http://maps.google.co.uk you'll start off with a map showing the southern part of the UK. Zoom out to maximum distance using the slider on the left, and then pan around to see a unique world view that would warm Dubya's cockles...
That's right. In Google's Brave New World, potential threats to US national security have been neutralised by airbrushing them from the surface of the globe. Naturally, the UK survives the apocalypse by virtue of its "special relationship" with the US:
We were initially baffled as to why Central America and several Caribbean islands - including Cuba - have been spared. Then it dawned on us: the former is vital to the US economy as the supplier of orange-picking, dish-washing immigrants; the latter an essential justification for the continued existence of the US weapons development programme. After all, if you haven't got at least one cigar-puffing Commie building an enormous underground chemical weapons plant, then what's the point of spending $8m on research into ground-penetrating nukes?
Canada has also escaped the cull. Why? What are they not telling us?
Related stories
MS moves Switzerland to Russia
Is Microsoft preparing a flying car?
Microsoft flying car spotted over Fishguard
Rumsfeld demands cash for 'bunker-busting' nuke
All at sea, Microsoft axes flying car project
Google in St George snub outrage
Warning! Black Helicopters


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Yemen: A very British war
Britain is at the heart of a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions unfolding in the Yemen.
At least 10,000 people have been killed since the Saudi bombing campaign against Yemen began in March 2015, including over 630 children. There has been a massive escalation in human rights violations to a level of around 43 per day and up to ten children per day are being killed, according to UNICEF. Seventy-three percent of child casualties are the direct result of airstrikes, say the UN.
Civilian targets have been hit again and again. Within days of the commencement of airstrikes, a refugee camp was bombed, killing 40 and maiming over 200, and in October a Medicins San Frontier [Doctors Without Borders] hospital was hit. Schools, markets, grain warehouses, ports and a ceramics factory have all been hit. Needless to say, all of these are war crimes under international law – as is the entire bombing campaign, lacking, as it does, any UN mandate.
Beyond their immediate victims, the airstrikes and accompanying blockade – a horrendous crime against a population which imports 90 percent of its basic needs – are creating a tragedy of epic proportions. In August 2015, Oxfam warned that around 13 million people were struggling to find enough to eat, the highest number of people living in hunger it had ever recorded. "Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years," the head of the International Red Cross commented in October. The following month, the UN reported that 14 million now lacked access to healthcare and 80 percent of the country's 21 million population are dependent on humanitarian aid. "We estimate that over 19 million people lack access to safe water and sanitation; over 14 million people are food insecure, including 7.6 million who are severely food insecure; and nearly 320,000 children are acutely malnourished," the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator told reporters in November. He estimated that around 2.5 million have been made refugees by the war. In December, the UN warned that the country was on the brink of famine, with millions at risk of starvation.
Statements from British government ministers are crafted to give the impression of sympathy for the victims of this war, and opprobrium for those responsible. "We should be clear" said Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in September 2014, "the use of violence to make political gains, and the pointless loss of life it entails, are completely unacceptable. Not only does the recent violence damage Yemen's political transition process, it could fuel new tensions and strengthen the hand of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – threatening the security of all of us…Those who threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, or violate human rights, need to pay the price for their actions."
Indeed. So presumably, one might have thought, when the Saudis began their massive escalation of the war six months after Hammond made this statement, the British government must have been outraged?
Not quite. The day after the Saudis began 'Operation Decisive Storm', David Cameron phoned the Saudi king personally to emphasize "the UK's firm political support for the Saudi action in Yemen."
Over the months that followed, Britain, a long-term arms dealer to the Saudi monarchy, stepped up its delivery of war materiel to achieve the dubious honor of beating the US to become its number one weapons supplier. Over a hundred new arms export licenses have been granted by the British government since the bombing began, and over the first six months of 2015 alone, Britain sold more than £1.75billion worth of weapons to the Saudis – more than triple Cameron's usual, already obscene, bi-annual average. The vast majority of this equipment seems to be for combat aircraft and air-delivered missiles, including more than 1000 bombs, and British-made jets now make up over half the Saudi air force. As the Independent has noted, "British supplied planes and British made missiles have been part of near-daily raids in Yemen carried out by [the] nine-country, Saudi Arabian led coalition."
Charities and campaign groups are unanimous in their view that, without a shadow of a doubt, British patronage has greatly facilitated the carnage in the Yemen. "The [British] government is fuelling the conflict that is causing unbearable human suffering. It is time the government stopped supporting this war," said chief executive of Oxfam GB, Mark Goldring. The director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, said: "The UK has fuelled this appalling conflict through reckless arms sales which break its own laws and the global arms trade treaty it once championed….legal opinion confirms our long-held view that the continued sale of arms from the UK to Saudi Arabia is illegal, immoral and indefensible."
For Edward Santiago, Save the Children's country director in Yemen, the UK's "reluctance to publicly condemn the human cost of conflict in Yemen gives the impression that diplomatic relations and arms sales trump the lives of Yemen's children," whilst Andrew Smith from Campaign Against the Arms Trade, has written that "UK fighter jets and UK bombs have been central to the humanitarian catastrophe that is being unleashed on the people of Yemen." Leading lawyers including Philippe Sands have argued that Britain is in clear breach of international law for selling weapons which it knows are being used to commit war crimes.
British experts allegedly aiding Saudi military campaign in Yemen https://t.co/7B4qdx3NhBpic.twitter.com/NnhU0eGnKL
— RT UK (@RTUKnews) January 8, 2016
Now it has emerged that it is not only British weapons being used in this war, but British personnel as well. According to Sky News, six British military advisors are embedded with the Saudi air force to help with targeting. In addition, there are 94 members of the UK armed forces serving abroad "carrying out duties for unknown forces, believed to be the Saudi led coalition," according to The Week – although the government refuses to state exactly where they are.
Indeed, even British airstrikes in Syria may have been motivated in part by a desire to prop up the flagging war effort in Yemen. Questioning of Philip Hammond in parliament recently led him to admit that there had been a "decrease in air sorties by Arab allies" in Syria since Britain's entry into the air campaign there due to the "challenges" of the Yemen conflict.
For Scottish Nationalist MP Stephen Gethins this suggests that, by stepping up bombing in Syria, Western countries were effectively "cutting them [Arab states] a bit of slack to allow them to focus on the Yemen conflict," especially needed given that support for the Yemen campaign has been flagging from states such as Jordan, Morocco and Egypt. It is particularly ironic that British MPs' supposed commitment to destroying ISIS in Syria is actually facilitating a war in Yemen in which ISIS is the direct beneficiary.
Finally, it is worth considering British support for the Saudi bid for membership of the UN Human Rights Council. The Council's reports can be highly influential; indeed, it was this Council's damning (and, we now know, fraudulent) condemnation of Gaddafi that provided the 'humanitarian' pretext for the 2011 NATO war against the Libyan Jamahiriya. And the Yemeni government's recent expulsion of the UN Human Rights envoy shows just how sensitive the prosecutors of the Yemeni war are to criticism. It would, therefore, be particularly useful for those unleashing hell on Yemen to have the UN Council stacked with supporters in order to dampen any criticism from this quarter.
Britain, then, is the major external force facilitating the Saudi-fronted war against the people of Yemen. Britain, like the Saudis, is keen to isolate Iran and sees destroying the Houthis as a key means of achieving this. At the same time, Britain seems perfectly happy to see Al-Qaeda and ISIS take over from the Houthi rebels they are bombing – presumably regarding a new base for terrorist destabilization operations across the region as an outcome serving British interests.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.


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Age 22 from Barksdale Afb, LA
Age 22 from Barksdale Afb , LA
About CLEMENCIA :
"I am laid back and like to kick back. I am looking for a female to have a discrete sexual encounter with. Because I am trying to be discrete I will send pics if your interested. Only serious replys please."
You've just gotten out of a serious relationship and now you've decided to try a casual adult dating. Where do you start? Are you rusty? There are a few things that you can keep in mind that will help to ensure that your casual relationship remains safe, fun, and most of all, casual.
1. Always make sure to be honest about wanting to keep the relationship casual. After all, you do not want to mislead your partner into thinking you want more when you're really just looking for casual sex.
2. Remember to never spend the night, because this gives your partner the impression that you want to move beyond a casual relationship into a more serious one.
3. Remember that you are not the only one in a casual relationship. You're looking for a local girl that will have sex with you, and chances are that she is just looking for sex too. You're going to talk to hot, sexy women and she will probably end up talking to sexy men or woman as well. This is a casual sex date.
4. Always take care of yourself. Make sure that, when you meet up, you are clean and ready for sex. With casual adult dating, she will be more likely to refuse sex if you do not look clean and ready to go.
5. Remember that she is a fuck buddy, and that you are looking for hot sex and nothing more. Always, ALWAYS, wear protection.
6. Casual dating lets you try new things. Maybe you've always wanted a threesome, or maybe you have never had sex with a blonde. Maybe, you want to be tied up by a hot MILF. Remember to have fun and be adventurous.


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Happy Halloween weekend! Let's skip the tricks and get right to the treats — beer, food, wine, candy, and appetizers are all in the news this week.
And don't forget to stop by the Main Street Bakery to get your homemade ice cream cookie sandwich on their specialty Halloween cookies! 🙂 Here we go…
Latest Disney Food News
Read on for this week's Disney Food news highlights!
- The Raglan Road Irish Pub at Downtown Disney offers a menu of craft beers!
- La Cava del Tequila in Disney World has renovated its menu yet again. Check out the brand new appetizer list!
- Tables in Wonderland announces an event for November 2011 at The Wave in the Contemporary Resort!
- Review of the new Dulce Aventura candy store in Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure!
- Food photos and reviews from the Argentina and Morocco booths at the 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival!
- Review of the new Tequila tasting and lunch held at La Hacienda de San Angel during the 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival.
- Disney World Free Dining has been extended through September 2012 for Canadian and Latin American visitors!
Find more Disney news on our Disney News Pin Board, updated regularly with Disney Food News both big and small!
Epcot Food and Wine Festival Updates
We've passed the midway point of the festival, but there's still a LOT of eating to do! Here are a few ways to stay up to date:
- We're marking the occasion with a sale on our Festival e-book! Use code MIDPOINT to get 20% off the price of the DFB Mini-Guide to the 2011 Epcot Food and Wine Festival e-Book.
- Check out all of the great reviews coming in from the Festival! We have reviews of the World Showcase booths as well as the special events and deminars. To go directly to Epcot Food and Wine Festival reviews, click here.
- Check out food photos from all of the World Showcase booths here!
Stay tuned to our continuing coverage of the Epcot Food & Wine Festival over on our Epcot Food & Wine Festival Pages!
Review of The DFB Guide to Walt Disney World Dining e-Book
The Disney Food Blog's Guide to Dining in Walt Disney World features 250 full-color pages of information, planning suggestions, tips, and details about eating in Disney World.
According to The Clothspring, "The money saving advice in this book pays for itself! You get insider tips and expert advice on food in Disney. Author AJ Wolfe, also author of the Disney Food Blog, has compiled the best, easiest to follow guide on Disney food you will find on the market."
Read the rest of the review here!
Before planning YOUR Disney World trip, order your copy here!
On to the Round-Up!
features an awesome Halloween sale at the Swan and Dolphin Resort in Walt Disney World! Book now for several months out and get an added "treat!"
WESH.com features some delicious pumpkin-y goodness in an article about Disney World Halloween Treats and Tips (by yours truly!!)
Eating (and Drinking) Around the World takes us on a fun tour of the Epcot Food and Wine Festival.
The Dallas Arboretum highlights their 2011 fairytale theme in the pumpkin patch. Check out the amazing Cinderella's Pumpkin Village.
Main Street Gazette samples an old-fashioned candy apple at Candy Cauldron in Downtown Disney!
AllEars.Net shares Deb's bits and bites from her last WDW trip! Find out Deb's faves and not so favorite eats! Don't forget to take the AllEars 2011 Food and Wine Festival survey here.
WDWRadio has us craving fried chicken with this recipe for Buttermilk Fried Chicken from the Pop Century Resort!
Disney by Mark reviews the September 30 Xante Mixology seminar at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival.
Disney Parks Blog has a great video about a new dish at Remy on the Disney Dream:


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The Vampire Diaries Season 3 Episode 21 recap
Some shows have a philosophy about second-last episodes. That they are for fire and brimstone and the next week, the finale, is for tears and emotions. Others don't go in for that level of sentiment. It's the last of the year? Blow everything up - physical and metaphorical.
Let's see here. Well, we're beginning with a snarky Katherine V.O. about Elena, so there's that, but then we get straight into how many times Tyler has turned and the deals with Alaric turning vs. not turning into a vampire. In case you were asleep for the last week, he turned. Via Bonnie. AND NOW HE'S IN CLASS. Well, this is gonna be creepy. Carline would know that, except she's busy hearing from Tyler about how he's not sired by Klaus anymore.
Anyway, Caroline and Rebekah (maybe?) bitch at one another over who's there from the cleanup crew. The way Rebekah talks, it treacly does seem to be her in there. And then as she heads off to the gym, Alaric grabs her, and then, Caroline and Rebekah stake him together with the ring-covered stake. Oh, okay then. So it's going to be this kind of episode. Caroline runs to her car. Alaric is behind her. Snaps her neck. In the teaser. Oh, but it's daylight, so his skin is boiling and festering. Rebekah just watches him.
And that's your teaser.
Gilberts. Elena and Jeremy paint Alaric's room, and Stefan comes to wonder if they're going a bit fast. Elena, thankfully feeling dark, points out they gotta move or they'll think, which is not desired. Jeremy, the master of subtlety, wants to know if they're back together, and then when they say no, says the least Stefan could do is give them a single day without vampires. Then he leaves, and I'm forced to wonder how Elena's painting in a cropped jean jacket. You can't get any arm extension in that! Anyway, doorbell. It's Damon, plus bleeding-neck Bonnie.
Then cut to Klaus', where Rebekah points out Alaric just tried to kill her. A bit of back and forth about how he's supposed to be dead, and begs "Nic" to understand, and once again I love that he has about six names. Anyway, he's ready to grab Elena and book, and she tells him he doesn't need her for any more stupid hybrids. She's leaving now, and if he doesn't come, he's on his own. Guess what? He's on his own. Except, of course, for Tyler.
"Don't blame me, blame Bonnie the blood bank!" Hee, Damon time. Stefan and Damon find out what's up with Bonnie, who explains it's all the witches' fault. Anyway, he's mad at her but not so mad he didn't feed her his blood to save her. Aww. Anyway, Bonnie points out that witches have loopholes, and she doesn't know what this one is.
Elena gets a call from Alaric. Her jean jacket is a cardigan, my apologies. Anyway, he has Caroline pinned to a desk in the school. Literally pinned, via pencils through her hands. Elena needs to show up solo, or else.
Ding dong - Klaus at the door. Jeremy gets off one snarky comment and then Stefan sends him to his room. Damon joins. Klaus spends a lot of time muttering before he gets to the point - he's there for Elena. They slam the door in his face, but not hard enough I guess. He muses outside, looking at the paper. Stefan runs around looking for Elena, and Bonnie and Damon catch up that she's gone. And then he hurls a newspaper through a window. Neat!
Alaric clutches his bloody stake. Elena wanders through the school, following the sounds of Caroline's sobs. Classroom. Elena demands he let her go, then gets permission to do it herself. And we're treated to the gruesomeness of Elena pulling a pencil out of her hand as gently as possible - and then Alaric rips it out, with a delightful "How many times do I have to tell you, Elena? Stop trusting vampires!"
Klaus is outside the Gilbert house, wondering how a newspaper turned to concrete. Then, when there's no response, he muses around the neighbourhood. Knocks the door in via a soccer ball, then throws white picket fence-parts at them through the now open doorway. Hee hee. Never say Klaus doesn't get originality points. Stefan thinks it's prudent to answer a call from Alaric - which means he doesn't notice Klaus light a paper on fire with propane. But soon enough he's outside to rationalize with him, explaining that Alaric has Elena, and will kill everyone. MORE conversations about odds of who sired who and who would be killed by whose death. We get it, it's a crapshoot. Anyway, Stefan more or less promises Klaus his life.
As they strategize, Damon hints at Klaus' thing for Alaric and then Bonnie emerges - and she apparently took this time to straighten her hair and clean off her makeup, so I'm glad her priorities are shipshape - saying she can use an immobilization spell her mother used on Michael. She'll need "a lot of vampire muscle" including Klaus. He says they have to do this all before sundown.
Which would be good, because at school, Alaric's dipping a gag in vervain, I guess? Elena tries to stop him, but she is tiny and ineffectual, as you may know. He clarifies for us that the vervain gag is "like inhaling razor blades with every breath". Then he tells Elena she can kill Caroline and put her out of her misery. This is what all her training was about. He holds the unbreakable stake out, all tempting.
Salvatore's. Damon and Straight-Hair Bonnie. Sorry, that's going to annoy me. Did she borrow Elena's clothes? Anyway, the twee, ridiculous doorbell goes off and it's Bonnie's mom. They have a little awkward mother-abandoned daughter repartee, and they say "Jamie" enough times that I'm pretty sure he's not in this episode. At school, Klaus and Stefan discuss, and then Klaus points out that he'll still take Elena if they take Alaric down. Stefan's all "no prob, I'll come". Klaus tries to twist the knife via "yeah, Damon's a bad guy" but Stefan rises above. Then Klaus says he'll leave it to Elena to decide, Stefan shrugs, and brotherly love really does seem to be lost on him. Obviously.
Abby at the mansion. Damon offers some blood in Waterford crystal to Abby while Bonnie winces. Some shenanigans about how the house was once Elena's, but then she died. So they explain the deal with the whole unkillable vampire, and need Abby's help on the desiccation spell. Abby thinks it's too dangerous, and I think we've covered that most of what's going on these days is not child's play. Anyway, Bonnie discerns that she has to stop a human heart. Fine.
But then, then we cut to Jeremy brooding and Bonnie explaining she has a tracker app on her phone that shows where Caroline and Elena are. Seriously? We really need this, after over 60 episodes? Now we need to know how they find each other? Damon's with me, all "why do we need you then?" Then he wrestles Jeremy's ring away from him, but Jeremy protests, all, "Elena's My Sister". For whatever reason, that goes over. They all drink Bonnie's blood, so that when she stops Jeremy's heart - oooh! - he'll have the power to stop Alaric's. I mean, some things on this show are ridiculous, but the calmness with which they approach each mission is right at the top. Nobody has a nervous stomach? Bonnie explains they need to get at a vein or artery, then Klaus points out that he's responsible for all their bloodlines, and they'll all be dead if he gets killed.
Okay. Inside school, Alaric is doing twisted creepy "older man" logic to tell Elena he needs to help her learn right from wrong, and that Caroline said she liked killing someone, so he's standing up for morals. Reminds Elena her parents were on the council, then wonders sarcastically if her parents would be proud of how she sided with the vampires. Then says Elena has to kill Caroline, or he will. And then! Okay. He drags her in front of Caro, all "kill her". Elena swings back the stake to grab him, he smarms that he taught her better, at which point she swings the beaker of vervain up into his face. Nice work, E. She yanks the pencils out of Caroline's hands, tells her to run, and in a nice move, Caro's face is better by the time she gets into the hallway. Alaric stops Elena, though.
Caroline is grabbed by Klaus who whispers all "it's okay, you're safe" and damned if he doesn't sound sexy and comforting. He unleashes his "you and me save Elena" bit and tells her to stay inside. She, of course, is so grateful to him. He vamooses.
Alaric throws Elena up against lockers and tells her what a bad person she is. He says he should kill her, and truly she has enough f*ck you in her by now to just go "great. Do it". And she has full voice while he strangles her, too. He releases her, because everyone knows Elena is real truth and then Stefan and Damon come to tag team Alaric, both get their necks or backs snapped, and Klaus seems to just...dig his fingers into Ric's chest.
Cut to Bonnie over Jeremy in the forest, doing her spell. The wind is whipping, so it looks like it might work. But then, in dark, dark school, the following: Alaric wrenches Klaus' hand out of his chest, Bonnie says the connection broke, Alaric throws Klaus around and tries to stake him, then Elena says to stop or she'll kill herself. And then our girl does a whole lot of math for us. Esther didn't want him to be truly immortal: she used Elena so that when she dies, Alaric dies. What has she got up by her neck, some vervain shards? I don't know. She's kind of proud for figuring it out and so am I, frankly. And then, when Alaric calls her bluff, she slices a line across her throat. DUDE! Klaus throws Alaric off, jumps up, grabs Elena, and disappears.
Elena, lethargic. She comes to and then yelps, and we've crossed the axis so her arm that we pan down to seemed really, disturbingly male, but it was the wrong angle. Panic stations down. Except that Klaus is draining Elena of all her blood, via a nurse I assume is compelled. Tyler enters - have I mentioned he's a literal box boy this episode? - and is shocked to see her. She asks him to help, and he tries, but Klaus says he has to get blood bags. And this is all about Tyler still being under Klaus' power, or looking to be. He keeps staring at Elena as if hoping to convince her he knows what he's doing. Klaus whispers to Elena that it'll be completely painless, he's just going to drain every solitary drop.
School. Damon's phone wakes him, but before he can answer, Alaric's over his body and Stefan's, demanding they get up. Angrily. He points out that Klaus is going to kill Elena, but when Stefan disagrees, Alaric catches them up on what Elena figured out. So they don't have long to save her.
Elena mutters to Klaus about how he'll need her blood to start his hybrids, but Klaus has changed his mind. He doesn't need hybrids, he has his family. But then Elena mutters that his real family will never trust him again. Then Klaus twists the knife, all "speaking of brother against brother, remember you made them hate each other?" He says she won't choose because she'll destroy their bond forever, and says he's doing her a favour by killing her so she doesn't wreck the brother bond. But because he's a gossip at heart, he still wants to know who she would have picked. I'm sure we do too, but she tells him to rot in hell instead. I would have loved a little more fanfare for when Elena got her backbone - like a metaphorical period - but I'll take what I can get.
She's still in a chair, but now in the "let me buck against my restraints" phase. The blood bag is half full. Tyler runs in, and quickly unties her bonds. She's trying to tell him no - and he tells her to hush, but not hushed enough, because Klaus is behind him. And he knows! Tyler's not under his thrall anymore! He's broken the sire bond! Klaus wants to know how he did it, and Tyler explains the "breaking every bone in my body 100 times" method. Klaus says it's not possible, Tyler says Klaus didn't care about him, and once again we're back to the lengths a megalomaniac will go to if he's very, very lonely. It's sad. Tyler grabs Elena, Klaus throws her and her head smacks a table, he and Klaus fight, and suddenly Damon and Stefan are there and Stefan grabs Klaus' heart. Okay, neat.
Bonnie and Jeremy, chanting. Jeremy's semi-conscious and then goes out. She's doing that thing where she smiles a bit, and then spells or spirits go up her face. All we hear are heartbeats, and the shock of Klaus' face. His heart is slowing. Elena awakes. Tyler's right there in case Stefan's hand gets tired. Now the desiccation marks climb up Klaus' face and back down Bonnie's. And now she needs Jeremy's heart to come back, so she goes "animus", but that's not working, and she's freaking out and screeching for Jeremy - and then he wakes up - and they breathe hard -
- and Klaus is slowly desiccating but still kind of awake, and he lies down, and if he's actually gone I hope that last blink was an editing error. Stefan says they should get rid of him before the sun sets. When Alaric is free.
But apparently it's still daylight. Elena smirks that Stefan and Damon are walking her to her door, and they exposit that A) she lost a lot of blood, but is fine (how?) B) Alaric can't kill her, C) He won't be able to find them when he comes looking for them. Also, the Gilbert house's front door has been neatly reattached. She knows it's selfish to string them both along, but doesn't know what she's supposed to do. If she chooses one, she loses the other. She can't lose one of them. There are looks between the three of them, and if you thought this was going to go "threesome", well, you weren't alone. They say they'll call her from the road, after they dump Klaus' body. She really looks beautiful as she watches them go.
...But inside her kitchen, it's a party! Whaaa...? Seriously, Caroline (fine, btw), Bonnie, Jeremy and oh, hi, Matt, they're all here, it's a victory party since they got rid of Klaus. Oh, Tyler's here too. Caroline's pouring shots. And because I love her and she's the best, she points out that Elena will have to choose between the brothers, but she does it with booze. Tyler salts her hand for her. This is all a bit much, no? Elena hears me, and shot in hand, tells Jeremy she doesn't condone the shot in his. They're all giddy-giddy-giggles over a Klaus-free life, Elena calls them her family, and we cut to a wide wide shot so that the CW doesn't actually show kids how to do tequila shots.
Mayor Lockwood's house. Sheriff Liz wants to know why she called a meeting so late, but of course, Carol says she didn't. "He did." Oh, it's Alaric, telling the whole entire council about how the mayor and the sheriff have vampire and werewolf children. This is kind of fun. Alaric is super, super crazy. She turns to go, but he tells her to sit; they're just getting started.
Stefan and Damon's road trip. Music and leather jackets and good moods and "how many desiccated hybrids does it take to screw in a lightbulb"? This almost feels like Stefan and Damon, the college years, which I would happily endorse. Damon makes Stefan say that they won, and it's happy, and they make a pretty good team. If the pit of your stomach started to hurt right....now, that would be correct. Because Stefan wants to know what happens when Elena chooses. Mr. Pragmatic Salvatore says she'll make a list and dump both of their asses....then turns into Mr. Romantic Salvatore and says she will pick one of them. Stefan says he'll leave town if she chooses Damon, to let her be happy; Damon faux-shrugs that he can come back in 60 years, which is cool, but...
(Sidebar: So either Elena's going to die at 78 - congratulations to whomever had that number in the pool - or that's how long Damon thinks their love will last. But if Elena ages at a normal human rate, I'm sorry to be shallow, but have either of these dudes considered what she's gonna look like at almost-80? I'm not maligning the Gilbert genes or anything but...let's just take a look at that. Katherine might start to look better after all?)
Anyway, if she chooses Stefan, same deal applies. He'll leave. They agree that she's a special girl.
Gilberts. Jeremy has gone back to painting. Don't know why. He says he hates the room and Elena agrees. Then she muses that all the vampires should die. Then lists all the people she would lose. So is she a bad guy? She's sorry. But Jeremy is here to remind her that he will lose her if Alaric dies, and that they're not dealing with the most rational part of Saltzman anyway. She nods. Jeremy heads to bed, and Elena paints the trim instead of the walls. Finish the walls first! But then she winces in pain - I thought it was her head, but she seems to be holding her neck - and then she drops, blood dripping from her nose.
Okay, so they split the difference. Less feeling, more action. But if someone unjustified doesn't die next week - especially since we got cheated out of Alaric's death - how will I cry my pathos tears? Anyone?


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The International Jury for the Competition at the 67th Venice International Film Festival has been selected, with American director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino as president.
The Jury will award the official prizes of the 67th Venice International Film Festival, which will take place on the Lido from September 1 through 11 2010, directed by Marco Mueller and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta.
The personalities selected to compose the Jury are:
The Mexican Guillermo Arriaga, considered one of the most influential Latin-American writers (his most famous novels include , include The Night Buffalo, A Sweet Smell of Death, and Guillotine Squad), scriptwriter for the acclaimed films by Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, he made his debut as a director in The Burning Plain, in Competition at Venice in 2008;
Lithuan actress Ingeborga Dapk?nait?, one of the most talented actresses of the Soviet Union who thanks to her acclaimed work on stage and screen (Burnt by the Sun, Moskva) has often joined Hollywood productions (Mission: Impossible, Seven Years in Tibet);
French director and screenwriter Arnaud Desplechin, considered one of the finest heirs to the Nouvelle Vague, often in competition at Cannes, and in Competition at Venice in 2004 with Kings and Queen (Rois et Reine), a film that won all-round acclaim, returning to the Lido in 2007 with his documentary The Beloved (L'Aimée);
American musician and composer Danny Elfman, famous in the '70s with the Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo music band, and in the '80s became one of the most important composers of film soundtracks (60 scores to his credit) of his generation. In particular he is the author of the scores for Tim Burton's films (he also is the voice of Jack Skellington) and for many other major Hollywood directors;
Italian director and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino, one of the most important in new Italian cinema, associated with Venice since his debut as a director (The Protagonists, 1999), and subsequently returning to the Lido three more times, last year with the extraordinary success of I am Love (Io sono l'amore), presented in the Orizzonti section, which is now winning great international acclaim, screened at many festivals and sold in 23 countries;
And director and screenwriter Gabriele Salvatores, Oscar recipient for Mediterraneo in 1991, among the Italian authors internationally more appreciated, and now enjoying great success once again for Happy Family, a choral comedy that has conquered the acclaim of audience and critics, here and in America.
On the closing night of the Venice Film Festival (September 11 2010), the International Jury of Venezia 67 will award the official prizes to the feature-length films in competition: the Golden Lion for Best Film, the Silver Lion for Best Director, the Special Jury Prize, the Coppa Volpi for Best Male Actor, the Coppa Volpi for Best Female Actress, the Premio Marcello Mastroianni for Best New Young Actor or Actress, the Osella for Best Technical Contribution, and the Osella for Best Screenplay.


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