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In 2010 Apple released its first iPad. It was far from the industry's first tablet computer, but it was the one that defined the category. Its successor, 2011's iPad 2, was so thin and light that it reset people's expectations about tablet form factors once again, and probably contributed to the premature death of the chunkier HP TouchPad.
Now the new iPad is out, and among the interesting questions it raises is, What does this mean for the rest of the industry?
It's going to be a while before we can fully assess its impact. But we can consider what's new and what the chances are that it'll change the game yet again.
The retina display
Plenty of tablets have 1280-by-800 resolution, enough to trump the iPad 2's 1024-by-768. But no tablet has anything close to the new iPad's retina display, with 2048-by-1536 resolution and 264 dots per inch. There's nothing the tech industry likes better than a game of one-upmanship based on increasingly large numbers, so you'd think that every other company that makes tablets is now working to meet or beat the new iPad's sky-high resolution.
Except it might not turn out that way. When the iPhone 4 showed up in 2010 with the original retina display, it didn't prompt everybody else to meet or beat Apple's spec. Instead, makers of Android phones concentrated on the physical size of their phones' screen and generally offered ones with much bigger displays than the iPhone's 3.5-incher. But they usually had lower resolutions than that of the iPhone, and always had lower dots per inch.
For all the iPad's influence on other tablets, its 9.7-in. screen remains unusual — most competitors are either larger or smaller. Unlike the iPad, they're virtually all widescreens. So it's unlikely that the new iPad's precise resolution will be a new standard. And even if other tablet companies want to match it, they might find it a struggle: to date, most of them have had trouble matching the iPad in pure bang for buck.
My guess: We'll see a gradual uptick in typical tablet resolution, but not a rush to retina. (If we do, though, Windows 8 is ready: Microsoft designed it to support iPad-class resolution as well as more conventional screens.)
LTE 4G wireless broadband
The new iPad is hardly the first tablet to have it. But it might be the first 4G tablet with excellent battery life — Apple says it gets up to nine hours on a charge when using LTE. Unlike many official battery ratings for mobile gadgets, that doesn't seem to be a gross exaggeration. The company accomplished the feat, at least in part, by giving the new tablet a huge honkin' battery.
All iPads have had better battery life than most competitors — sometimes vastly better. The notoriusly battery-draining LTE technology isn't going to help reduce the disparity: USA Today's Ed Baig got only about 4½ hours out of the 4G version of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1.
I'm not sure whether the battery life of other tablets suffers because their makers don't control nearly every aspect of their devices the way Apple does — it's easier to be efficient when you design your own processors — or whether outstanding battery performance just isn't that high a priority for other companies. It might be a bit of both. As 4G chipsets mature, battery life should improve across the industry, but I'll be surprised (and pleased!) if garden-variety 4G tablets match the new iPad's performance anytime soon.
Apple's A5X processor
Like nearly every other tablet, the new iPad uses a system-on-a-chip processor based on ARM technology — in this case, one designed by Apple itself. The central processing unit uses dual-core technology, but the graphics processor, which has to pump four times as many pixels to the display as with the iPad 2, has four cores.
Apple usually tries to avoid the specsmanship game, but at the launch event for the new iPad, marketing honcho Phil Schiller said the A5X delivers graphics that are four times as zippy as those provided by Nvidia's Tegra 3, used in Android tablets like this upcoming Acer model. As my colleague Jared Newman reported, some independent tests disagree with Schiller's claim. But regardless of how the A5X and Tegra 3 stack up, the Tegra 3 already has four processor cores vs. the A5X's two cores, so it's not a fundamentally inferior chip.
Apple's approach to processors is already at odds with the rest of the industry. It designs its own chips and optimizes them for its own gadgets but doesn't obsess — usually — over raw speeds and feeds. Everybody else uses off-the-shelf chips, which often beat Apple's products when it comes to technological bragging rights on matters such as clockspeed and quantity of cores. I see no reason why the new iPad will change matters here.
An improved rear-facing camera
The iPad 2 had a rear camera that did respectable 720p video and murky still images; its replacement on the new iPad is a 5-megapixel model with some of the same optical features found in the iPhone 4S's camera. It shoots nice stabilized 1080p video and decent (though not spectacular) snapshots.
Until there's evidence to the contrary, I'm going to continue to assume that rear-facing cameras don't have much impact on anyone's decision to buy (or avoid) a tablet. Even if Apple had put an extraordinary camera in the new iPad, it wouldn't have been big news.
Speech-to-text input is already a standard feature on Android tablets, so Apple's addition of it is pure catchup. Now, when Apple brings full-on Siri to the iPad — which has got to be a matter of time, right? — that will be something that demands a response from other tablet makers.
(More on Siri and the iPad: My colleague Matt Peckham mused on Siri's absence and wondered whether Apple is working on something even better.)
Hmm. I seem to be saying that none of the iPad's major new features are bound to have a profound impact on the rest of the market. You might interpret that as meaning I think Apple's latest tablet doesn't matter much. But that's not what I mean. The retina display is likely to remain a unique selling point for months, if not years, and LTE gives shoppers one less reason to choose a tablet that isn't an iPad. Both features should help Apple solidify the daunting lead it already has on the competition.
Still, when I think back on Apple's launch event and the news that came with it, I'm convinced that the most significant tidbit may not have related to the new iPad's hardware improvements at all. With iPhoto for the iPad, also unveiled at the launch, Apple introduced one of the meatiest, cleverest, most ambitious tablet apps to date. It couldn't be done in quite the same way on anything but a tablet, and nobody's done it for anything but the iPad.
Other tablets may add retina screens and battery-sipping LTE. They might have better cameras than the new iPad, and could even get Siri-like features before Siri shows up on the iPad. But we'll know that the dynamics of the tablet market have fundamentally changed when there's another platform — Android, Windows 8, anything — that's a worthy iPad competitor when it comes to quality and quantity of built-for-tablet apps. Getting there will be way, way harder than bumping up screen resolution or ratcheting down power consumption. In fact, if anybody does it by the time the
iPad 5 new-new-new iPad comes out, it'll be quite an accomplishment.
More on the new iPad and its rivals: My colleague Jared Newman thinks it should be a wake-up call for Google. And I pondered what the arrival of Windows 8 will mean for the market.


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LASD hosts kindergarten information nights
The Los Altos School District has scheduled kindergarten information nights at each of its seven elementary schools 7 p.m. Dec. 6.
Interested families are invited to attend at their home schools. Presentations are slated at Almond, Covington, Gardner Bullis, Loyola, Oak, Santa Rita and Springer schools.
Principals will explain how the district is revolutionizing learning for all students, provide information on the schools' respective programs and highlights and explain registration procedures.
For more information, contact the district office at 947-1150 or visit www.lasdschools.org/District/4309-Kindergarten-Registration.html.
K-Kids collect toiletries for CSA
The Loyola School K-Kids Club is collecting toiletries to donate to the Community Services Agency. Volunteers are accepting contributions of new toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, hand sanitizers and shampoos.
Place donations in the box at the Loyola School office at 770 Berry Ave. The drive will run through Dec. 14.
For more information, call 224-8472.

subset: commoncrawl


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"The president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1." — House Speaker John Boehner, after President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders refused to budge in their budget standoff.
"We don't want food and drink, and we don't want bandages. When we're wounded, we want to die. The only thing we want is weapons." — Gen. Salim Idris, chief of staff of the opposition's Supreme Military Council, saying the supplies the U.S. plans to give his fighters won't bring them any closer to defeating President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria's civil war.
"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother." — Jeremy Bush, after the earth opened under Jeff Bush's Florida bedroom and swallowed him up like something out of a horror movie.


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Barbells are a great tool for exercising. You can use them for squatting, dead lifting and pressing. Did you know that you can also use them as a mobility tool?
Barbells are a great tool for exercising. You can use them for squatting, dead lifting and pressing. Did you know that you can also use them as a mobility tool?
Yup, it's true. You can use it in a similar way as the foam roller to perform self-myofascial release, or SMR. Foam rolling is an inexpensive way to help release myofascial adhesions, or knots, in various muscles. Using a cylinder of dense foam, you can find these trigger points and give them some manual therapy. In past columns I have covered how to roll most every major muscle group. Check them out online at www.lvrj.com/trainer.
Using a barbell is also an effective method to perform SMR. The weight of the bar is all the pressure you will need. There is no need to dig in with extreme pressure. Harder is not always better. The objective is to release tension and break up adhesions. Pressure that is too intense may have the opposite effect and cause the muscle to tighten up further.
When rolling with a foam roller or barbell it is important to never roll any joint. Rolling is for muscles, not bone and connective tissue. Rolling connective tissue could cause a callus that would reduce the feeling of pain. There is the possibility of desensitizing a tight area that you cannot feel is tight. This situation could lead to injury when doing lifts or sports.
Pain is a useful tool. It is your body's way of letting your brain know when something is not right. Muscles that are tight cannot move correctly. This can lead to postural imbalances and injury. Instead of numbing the pain with pills, let's release the muscle and get performance back.
When rolling, you are actively looking for "tender" areas. These tender spots are sites of adhesions. Research shows that pressure on these areas for 20 to 30 seconds can help break up adhesions. I like to use a pain scale from one to 10 when rolling. One is little to no pain and 10 is extreme. Areas that are an eight or nine can be reduced to a five or six after a few weeks. Performance in that muscle is sure to improve, including mobility and strength.
Be careful of areas that are too tender to touch. If you feel like tearing up then that spot is a little too tender. Don't spend too much time there. Try rolling above and below that especially tender spot to reduce tightness around it and then revisit it. In my experience, quads and triceps can be some of the most tender areas when rolled.
To understand where to roll it is good to know a little anatomy. Here come some big words, but you don't necessarily need to know the names, just the location so you can know where to roll. Your quadriceps complex is made up of four muscles. Looking down at your leg your rectus femoris is right in the middle. The "teardrop" to the inside of the leg is the vastus medialis. The one on the opposite side on the outside of the leg is the vastus lateralis. A little more to the outside of it is vastus intermedius.
In short, there is one muscle in the middle, one toward the inside of the leg and two on the outside.
Triceps are a bit easier. They insert at the same area in the forearm but have three origins at the upper arms and the scapula. To make it simple, there is one muscle in the middle of the back side of the arm and a muscle on ether side.
Be sure to give attention to each of the muscles in the quads and the triceps, because sports and other activities can make different muscles tighten up to varying degrees.
Rolling could potentially take some time. You need to stop on each trigger point for half a minute. Let's hypothesize that you have three to four trigger points per muscle. Then it is recommended to make two passes on each of the seven muscles that make up the triceps and quads. Already, you have exhausted a good half-hour on a barbell without even lifting it. Roll the tightest muscles first on workout days. If you have a rest day, it is a good idea to roll everything that hurts on that day.
Instructions for Quadriceps Mash
Sit on the floor with the legs extended. Position an empty barbell on the floor next to one leg.
Place the barbell on the thigh above the knee joint. Letting the weight of the barbell do the work, gently roll the barbell up the thigh. Pause on tender areas for 20 to 30 seconds. When the barbell reaches the top of the thigh, reset it at the starting position and make one more pass.
Slightly rotate the leg to the outside or the inside and mash the other areas of the quads (vastus lateralis and vastus medialis). When rolling the vastus medialis, place the foot under the knee joint to support it during mashing.
The major form flaw is to press too hard on the barbell to "really dig in." Let the weight of the barbell do the work. Pressing too hard can have the opposite effect and make the muscle tighten up.
Instructions for Triceps Mash
Set up a barbell in a squat rack or on a bench press rack. Rest the arm so the back of it is resting on the middle of the barbell just above the elbow joint.
Gently turn the barbell with the free hand so the arm rolls slowly over the barbell. Pause on tender areas for 20 to 30 seconds before moving on. When the barbell reaches the armpit, rest the arm on the barbell just over the elbow joint and make one more pass.
After two passes, rotate the arm to roll the other two triceps muscles. Form flaws include pressing down on the barbell with that arm. The weight of the arm is all the pressure you need.
• • •
Chris Huth is a Las Vegas trainer. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. Consult your physician before beginning any exercise program.


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Owner of The Language House
Garry Littman is the owner and director of The Language House in Geneva which organises English language training for professional people, companies and students. He was a radio and newspaper journalist in his native Australia and ran a restaurant in Kathmandu in his younger days. He is an English language trainer and an aficionado of pétanque.


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USC Innovation Center
1000 Catawba Street, Columbia, SC
Designed to accommodate business offices and clean, next generation manufacturing operations. USC's McNair Center and EngenuitySC are co-located in this facility
The base building is 66,000 sq. ft. with 58,000 sq. ft. of open space that can be configured to suit tenants' needs. Amenities include on-site parking, a common break room, state-of-the-art meeting rooms, card-reader access and 24/7 security monitoring.
The location, with easy access to the Columbia Statehouse, the airport and the University of South Carolina, is ideally located for technology businesses. The building is adjacent to the USC Engineering School and is also within walking distance of Innovista, USC's designated campus for research and entrepreneurship.
Building Specifications
- Base building – 66,000 sq. ft.
- 39,000 sq. ft. of open space
- 8,000 sq. ft. of SCRA office space
Tenant Amenities
- Parking provided
- Common break room provided
- Common meeting room provided
- Internet access
- Proxy Badge Access
- 24 X 7 security monitoring
- Walking distance to USC


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Yowch. The machete-wielding rats on GM's listing ship have committed to cut a billion dollars from the company's global midsize car development programs by opening up the global parts bin to all, which means in a few years, nobody will be buying a hodgepodge of BLS93G6Malibu. This sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen, tossing what GM really needs — a decent, yet distinctly American Camry/Accord competitor — back into a born-from-badge-engineering blender.
They should just throw everything onto an extensible-and-shrinkable Holden Commodore platform and be done with it, much like Nissan did with its FM cars, and then replace the Cobalt and
GM Cruiser HHR with a Kappa-based compact sedan/coupe/wagon. Because let's face it, as good as the GMT900s are purported to be (we think the new Sierra Denali may be the best-looking truck on the market), they're not gonna be the bacon-savers that light trucks proved to be for GM in the last decade.
GM plans to slash spending on midsize cars by $1 billion [Orlando Sentinel]
Lutz on the Holden VE Commodore SS-V: It's Magical! [Internal]


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Jaime Hernandez: The 1986-S Statue of Liberty SilverDollar was produced in order to commemorate the Statue of Liberty, which is located in New York.
Obverse: The obverse features the Statue of Liberty, behind her the Ellis Island building is also visible in the background. The obverse has the inscriptions, "Liberty Ellis Island, Gateway to America, In God We Trust, and finally it also has the D mint mark indicating it was struck at the Denver Mint.
Reverse: The reverse of the coin features a hand holding a lit torch along with rectangular rays shining from the flame. The reverse has the inscriptions, "United States of America, Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free, E Pluribus Unum and One Dollar."
History: The Statue of Liberty sits on a 12 acre island in New York. It stands over 300 ft. tall from the ground up. Most significantly, for many years it has been the first glimpse of the United States for many immigrants have arrived to the U.S. by ship.
Furthermore, the Statue of Liberty Silver Dollar is a significant coin as it reminds us of the relationship between both France and the United States. On October 28, of 1886, France presented the Statue of Liberty to the U.S. in order to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and to commemorate the bond and friendship between both countries.
© 1999-2018 Collectors Universe NASDAQ: CLCT


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NetWellness is a global, community service providing quality, unbiased health information from our partners. NetWellness is commercial-free and does not accept advertising.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Selman, MD
Professor and Chair of Neurological Surgery
Department of Neurological Surgery
School of Medicine
Case Western Reserve University
Dr. Warren R. Selman is a professor and Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is also the Co-Director of the University Hospitals Neurological Institute.
Dr. Selman specializes in the surgical management of cerebrovascular and neuroendocrine disorders. His research focuses on the metabolic alterations that underlie acute cerebral ischemia. He is responsible for co-chairing the SMART Program for Cerebrovascular Disease, a national stroke education program jointly sponsored through the AANS and CNS.
Dr. Selman is a society member of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery, the American Association of Neurologial Surgeons (AANS), the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Neurologic Investigation, the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS), the AANS/CNS Section on Cerebrovascular Surgery, the AANS/CNS Section on Neurotrauma and Critical Care, the Ohio State Medical Association, the Neurological Research Society, the Neurosurgical Society of America, and the Society of Neurological Surgeons.
Dr. Selman served as the Vice President of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons from 1997 to 1998. He has served as a member of the executive council of the AANS/CNS Section on Cerebrovascular Surgery since 1994, and is currently serving as the secretary. He is a member of the National Metro Stroke Task Force of the American Heart Association, and also serves as an at-large member of the Executive Committee of the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association. Dr. Selman served as editor of Clinical Neurosurgery from 1990-1993 and currently holds editorial responsibilities with Neurosurgery, Perspective in Neurological Surgery, and Techniques in Neurosurgery.
Dr. Selman received his BS from the University of Toledo in 1973 and his MD from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1977. After his neurological residency occurred at University Hospitals of Cleveland, he completed a neurological surgery fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in 1984. In 1992, Dr. Selman was given the title of Director of the Cerebrovascular Center at University Hospitals. In 1994, he became a Professor and was appointed to the position of Vice-Chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery. He has 86 journal and book publications and 36 published abstracts.


text: Blue Vinyl Disposable Powder Free Gloves popularly used in industries as well as for general purpose. It is made up of Vinyl Resin material. The provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They are Powder Free, Industrial Grade, Regular, Non-Medical and Non-Latex products. They are available in different sizes.


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Serve this fabulous Italian-style dish with a tossed green salad made with crisp romaine lettuce, halved cherry tomatoes and sliced cucumbers. Top with KRAFT Lite Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing.
Substitute 1 lb. Italian sausage or lean ground beef, crumbled, for the chicken.
Substitute 2 pkg. (6 oz. each) OSCAR MAYER Deli Fresh Grilled Chicken Breast Strips for the cooked fresh chicken pieces. Add with pasta sauce; continue as directed.
Omit water. Substitute 2 cups sauce for the 24-oz. jar. Cook pasta; drain. Cook chicken with vegetables as directed. Add pasta, sauce and 1 cup cheese; cook until heated through, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with remaining cheese; cover. Let stand 1 to 2 min. or until melted.
Help your family eat right! Here, four different food groups are combined to make one delicious low-calorie, low-fat meal.
* Nutrition information is estimated based on the ingredients and cooking instructions as described in each recipe and is intended to be used for informational purposes only. Please note that nutrition details may vary based on methods of preparation, origin and freshness of ingredients used.


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This take on Minted was made by
undefined from , a member of Minted's
community of independent artists.
Tis the season to send business holiday cards. Choose Minted to send beautiful business or corporate holiday cards that show your customers and clients how much you appreciate them. Whether your company culture calls for a traditional, modern, or funny business holiday card, we have fresh and unique designs that will stand out with your clients and customers in 2018. Our business holiday cards are all created exclusively for Minted by our talented community of independent artists, and are completely customizable to compliment your holiday greetings. Include your own photos, or choose a design that is flawless without, add your company or business logo, and consider adding your own personalized holiday wishes. Not sure where to start? The Minted Holiday Card Guide is a great place to learn more about our assortment, and view our holiday card selections. Once you have chosen the design to match your business, decide the texture and weight of your card with our premium paper options.
Our Signature Paper is a 130lb thick and luxurious stock complimented by an off-white hue that Minted is known for, and our customers love. Select our Premium 100% Recycled Paper for the perfect eco-friendly option. This paper is a very thick 160lb stock with a smooth, matte finish and is created by family-owned Mohawk Fine Papers with 100% post-consumer waste and the manufacturing power of wind. If you are looking for the best photo print quality available, look no further than our Smooth Signature Paper. This new double-sided stock features a luxuriously smooth front surface, optimized for the highest photo print quality available. Looking to add some holiday shine? Our Pearlescent Paper adds a gorgeous subtle shimmer finish for a rich paper look, and soft glow for photographs, creating ultimate elegance. For the perfect holiday card impression we have our DoubleThick Paper. This is a luxurious paper with a rich cotton texture and 240lb., 35pt thickness and is guaranteed to make your business holiday card a show stopper. On select styles, you may even experience our thickest stock yet. The TripleThick Paper option is of unmatched quality and weight, complimented by a creamy cotton texture. This luxurious stock is so thick it is unbendable and guaranteed to leave a great impression.
We uncover design genius through ongoing design competitions. At Minted, all that matters is good design. Designers submit, and the Minted community votes to tell us what to sell.


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Manchester United are lining up a summer bid for Mexican midfielder Hector Herrera, according to reports in South America.
TalkSPORT recalls how the 22-year-old Pachuca star - who is rated at around £9million - is attracting attention from a host of European clubs with FC Porto and an unnamed Ligue 1 side courting the player's signature.
Red Devils boss Sir Alex Ferguson was linked with a move for Herrera last summer, after his fine performances for Mexico in their victorious London 2012 Olympic campaign.
Pachuca president Jesus Martinez has admitted that the club will struggle to keep hold of their star player beyond the end of 2012/13, with a switch to Old Trafford still potentially in the offing.
"There is nothing concrete on the table but there are some attractive offers," he told Esto newspaper. "It's not just Porto either, there is also an English and a French club who are interested.
"We only want him to leave in June if it is a good deal."
A move to Manchester United would of course see Herrera reunited with international team-mate Javier Hernandez, who has established himself as a true fans' favourite during his time with the Premier League giants.
Do YOU want to write for GiveMeSport? Get started today by signing-up and submitting an article HERE: https://www.givemesport.com/writeforgms


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Suspected of murdering that blond girl in Aruba? Having some problems with your appointment as homeland-security chief? Made the mistake of having sex with Christie Brinkley's husband? Call Joe Tacopina, the best-dressed, smoothest-talking, hardest-working criminal-defense attorney going, and for a mere $750 an hour, everything will be okay
Tonight, Joe Tacopina—or as the TV makeup artists call him, "Joe-too-bad-he's-married-Tacopina"—is wandering the beaches of Aruba in his favorite Italian soccer shirt, his $6,500 Panerai watch (official timekeeping instrument of the Italian navy), and the leather sandals he bought in Milan, searching for Booty. It doesn't look good. He's here as part of his ongoing quest to clear "the good name" of Joran van der Sloot, one of his numerous infamous clients, the one who had the misfortune of being the last person to see (and sort of have sex with) Natalee Holloway.
But, ah, Joe is convinced—still!—that his client was not the last person to see Natalee alive. "Booty was," he says. "And who knows who else?" Booty is an alleged drug dealer who operates out of a hut on the beach, just feet from the ground-floor room at the Holiday Inn where Natalee was staying...until she vanished. Gotta find Booty.
Joran has not been charged with anything (despite spending ninety days in an Aruban jail), but more than a year after Natalee disappeared, Joe isn't taking any chances. He continues to investigate the crime as though the cable networks were still running nightly dispatches.
"Check this out," says Joe. We are standing toe-deep in sand on a pitch-black night, peering into Natalee's hotel room. The sliding doors lead directly to the beach—and to Booty's drug hut. Booty, Joe explains, told Joe's private investigator that he saw Natalee return to her room that night at three ten in the morning, fifteen minutes after Joran left her on the beach. "Booty knew it was Natalee, because he knew her," Joe says. "Because he sold her drugs earlier that day."
Wow. Now, that would be a news flash. Is he sure about this?
"Well, it would be kinda nice if I can get Booty to tell me the same thing," Joe says.
"Hey! You're that guy!"
Someone has recognized Joe on the beach. This happens all the time in Aruba. Actually, it doesn't matter where you go: These days, everyone seems to know Joe. They know him from his daily appearances in the tabloids, for representing&well, just about everyone. Joran van der Sloot; Bernie Kerik; Michael Jackson's manager; Foxy Brown (until they parted ways—"She's either gonna end up in jail or an insane asylum"); the "Page Six" guy accused of trying to shake down Ron Burkle; the Sopranos actor caught up in a cop killing; the woman who was hurt when Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into her apartment; the nurse from New Jersey whose husband washed up in three suitcases in the Chesapeake Bay; and on and on. They've seen his constant appearances on the Greta-Larry-Abrams-Crier dead-girl-of-the-week cable-TV circuit. (But not Nancy Grace. He refuses to do Nancy Grace.) They've heard him on_ Imus in the Morning_ (he also occasionally "counsels Imus on legal matters"). Even his appearances as a legal expert for ABC News—a gig he discontinued because it precluded him from being on every channel. "It would have been to the detriment of my clients if I could only go on ABC," he says. But he still owes the network big-time. It was an ABC producer, after all, who told Joran van der Sloot to "call Joe Tacopina" after his previous lawyers pissed him off.
So part of the agenda in Aruba this week is to toss a bone to ABC's Chris Cuomo in the form of an "exclusive" sit-down with Joran. ABC did the first half of the interview yesterday, on the beach where Joran did not do it. "They wanted to do the interview near the fishermen's huts," Joe explains, "but we eschewed that. We don't want to make it any more sensational than it already is." (Joe thinks of everything.) Instead, they had Joran walk the beach where _he did not do it _at sunset, when the lighting would be nice. Other than that, "no ground rules," Joe says. Well, except that Cuomo wasn't allowed to ask about what happened that night! "We did that already," says Joe—in Cuomo's last exclusive with Joran and Greta's last exclusive with Joran&
That morning, over breakfast at the Hyatt, young Joran van der Sloot—who is so tall (six feet four) his head keeps hitting the lid over the omelet bar while the waitresses gawk and the other breakfast diners point—tells me that he hasn't had to worry about much since Joe Tac has been in charge. "I love the guy," he says. So much that "if I do get any money from any of these civil suits, I plan to give it all to Joe."
You mean more than his 30 percent?
"Every dime."
("He said that?" says Joe. "That's really touching." Ka-ching!)
Shortly after breakfast, Chris Cuomo—soon to be knighted as the news anchor of Good Morning America—is cooling his heels in the Hyatt lobby. His camera crew has to catch the next flight out of Aruba, and Cuomo is none too pleased that Tacopina is holding up the big interview because he's upstairs changing into a new soccer shirt.
"Relax," Joe tells Cuomo from his cell phone.
"He's on Tacopina time," Joran explains to Cuomo, referring to the phrase often used for Joe's chronic lateness.
Of course, it will all work out in the end. Joran will do the final interview poolside at his parents' house. Cuomo will get his "exclusive"—and his GMA gig. And Joe Tacopina will have another notch in his belt as the hottest lawyer in the country.
Every few years, we get one of these guys. You know, the lawyer who lands all the juicy cases, who wears bespoke suits and drives fancy cars, who seems to have a television earpiece permanently implanted on the left side of his head, who makes more appearances in the New York Post than in court, and who eventually&crashes and burns.
But Joe is different. For one thing, he wins. This isn't another Mark Geragos, the last lawyer-of-the-minute, who took his arrogance show on the road while his client Scott Peterson went to San Quentin. (Guess who got a call midway through the trial, asking if he was interested in taking over the case? Joe wasn't.) The TV anchors who book Joe will tell you that he is the It Guy because he's perfect for our made-for-cable world. MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams: "Joe oozes charm. When a lot of people picture what they want in a lawyer, they picture a guy who looks and acts like Joe. They want a big, tough, good-looking attorney who's gonna be fearless in advocating their cause. And Joe is just that." Court TV's Catherine Crier: "Look, he's charming and personable and has a good reputation and all that. But he's hot because he produces. He actually does excellent work in the courtroom, too. And Joe's very cute.&" Fox's Greta Van Susteren: "Lawyering has changed a lot. It used to just be what you did in the courtroom. In the new age, which began really with William Kennedy Smith, you have to worry about the court of public opinion as well. Especially when you have a high-profile client. Joe is what I'd want from my lawyer if I were in trouble."
Not surprisingly, even Hollywood is taking notice. Joe has several studios courting him to do a reality show on daytime TV. "Sort of a Judge Judy meets Perry Mason"—yes, he has the lingo down—"but all cross-examinations," his specialty. He wasn't all that interested until he heard Judge Judy made $32 million last year. "Can you fucking believe that? Judge Judy!" He shot a pilot in December.
But here's the thing about Joe—and it's what separates him from the other hot dogs. You can't help rooting for the guy. He somehow manages to be slick without being slippery, the first "TV lawyer" who can slice and dice and pontificate on the biggest cases in the headlines—many of them his—and still come off like a regular Joe. ("The faint New York accent helps," says Abrams.)
It's something that drives his competitors crazy. Talk to other criminal-defense attorneys and they'll tell you two things: On the record, Great guy, works his ass off. Off the record, How did this sonofabitch get to be the Guy?
Does Tac ever wonder: Why me?
"Yeah!" A pause. "I mean, yes and no. I know a large part is due to luck. I caught some good breaks. I mean, look, I know tomorrow it could all be over. Believe me, I wake up and go, 'Today's the day they're gonna catch on.' But on the other hand, I worked my fingers to the bone. I work around the clock, and I care. I know I have the skills; I'm not bashful about that. But I don't believe in my own bullshit, either. I don't drink my own Kool-Aid. I don't think because I'm on TV or have these cases that I'm some self-important individual. As a matter of fact, I hate&like, this stuff?"—he points to the tape recorder—"I get embarrassed by this stuff." Well, not too much. But still.
Back on the beach in Aruba, the Booty call is not going as planned. Joe can't find the guy. And neither can his two sidekicks, with whom he spends most of his professional time: his young associate (soon to be made partner) Chad Seigel, whom he once tried to strangle in a cab in Houston (long story), and Rosemarie Arnold, his Guccied-out partner in his new civil practice, which is different from his criminal practice (and different from his practice in Milan—yes, he has a law firm there, too).
"I don't think we're gonna find Booty," says Rosemarie.
"Have some faith!" says Joe.
We've been walking the beach for over an hour now, skirting between tiki torches, hotel beach bars, and clusters of slurring tourists. It's amazing that Natalee and Joran ever found a private place to have sex out here. "Well, they didn't actually do it," Joe explains, "because Joran didn't have a condom. But they did everything but."
Joe's very fancy cell phone is ringing.
"Cuomo," he reports. "His flight was delayed for four hours, and he's stuck at the frickin' Aruba airport." He smiles. "Guess we had plenty of time for the interview."
Nice cell phone.
"Bernie Kerik gave me this. It costs, like, 5,000 bucks."
As we walk, more calls come in. Clients who need to talk to Joe, would-be clients who want to hire Joe. In the weeks to come, there will be plenty more boldfaced names in Joe's roster. Rick Hilton—Paris's father—needs help with one of his other kids, who was involved in a scuffle in Central Park. Rachael Ray's husband wants to hire Joe to do "media relations," because the National Enquirer is reporting that he had an affair and wanted the woman to spit on him. ("People do that?" says Joe.) Even John Mark Karr, the creepy suspect in the JonBenet case, reaches out via his dad. ("You gotta be kidding," says Joe.)
But, oh, dear God. Here, on the beaches of Aruba, a true tragedy has occurred.
While Joe is searching for Booty, he somehow loses his Bernie Kerik cell phone. But he does not realize this until we are ensconced, an hour later, in his favorite Italian restaurant in Aruba.
He dispatches Chad to go scour the beach, dig in the sand, whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes? If they couldn't find Natalee Holloway, how will they ever find the Bernie Kerik cell phone?
"Just bring me the cell phone," says Joe. "We'll keep your ravioli warm."
Chad returns an hour later with the cell phone. "The fuck, man," says Joe. "There's sand in it!"
He grew up in a row house in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His mother, Josephine, worked for the New York City Fire Department, in accounting. His father, Cosmo, sold cardboard bos. They still live in the house he grew up in, with the clothesline out back and the washer-dryer in the kitchen (with pictures of Joe taped all over it) and Joe's bronzed baby shoes in the china cabinet. Joe tried to buy them a McMansion near his place in Connecticut, but they weren't interested. "What's wrong with our house?" his father asks.
Joe's parents are in their eighties. They hold hands on the pleather couch and put out salami and cheese. They don't think they did "anything special" for their only son. But it was Josephine who dragged him to the rink out at Coney Island when she thought he needed a hobby. (He ended up being scouted by the New York Islanders but went to law school instead.) And it was Josephine who once, during a game, walked on the ice in her heels and pulled a kid off Joe, by his hair. "It was a little traumatic," says Joe. "I was hoping the kid killed me and this wasn't happening."
"Joseph, he was hurting you," says his mother. To me: "He cried all the way home."
"Ma!" says Joe.
They worked extra jobs to send him to Poly Prep so that he didn't have to go to public school. They helped him pay for college at Skidmore, where he landed a partial hockey scholarship. "I remember driving up there in an old Cutlass Supreme, an ugly big-ass car, and parking next to all the BMWs. I called my dad the first night and said, 'I don't know if this is the place for me. I'm a little different than everyone else here.' He said, 'Do us a favor, just stick it out.' "
Joe knows cops, likes cops. He's defended a lot of them. He made his name by defending one of the cops in the notorious Abner Louima case. But he's not afraid of breaking their balls, if necessary.
In college he chased tail, was captain of the hockey and baseball teams, and read Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss. The book so affected him, he decided to be a criminal-defense attorney.
His first big break came courtesy of his mother. One of her friends at work said a relative of hers had a great job transcribing tapes for some lawyer. Josephine intervened so her son would have a summer job, and Joe ended up transcribing tapes for the Paul Castellano trial. He met all the tough guys. One thing led to another, and by the time Joe was actually in law school, he was working on the first big Gotti trial. "I realized I instigated this," says his mother, "but I had to keep telling him, 'These are not good people.' " His father was both proud and mortified. Today, as he sits on the couch, he looks away when Josephine whispers the word Mafia. "He hates them," Joe says later. His father, an immigrant, can still remember how his family's deli would be shaken down by the Mob. "Otherwise the windows would get broken," says Joe. "It was brutal."
Today he refuses to take Mob clients. Of course, he has the luxury of not needing the money. "I probably gave up a couple million in fees just last year, turning this stuff down. But I just won't do it anymore. They made it hard for everyone, for people like my father, who is the purest soul on earth. Whenever I start thinking I'm, like, flying a little too high, I think back to him and say, You know what? That's a good person. If you complete your life like that, you've accomplished a lot."
Josephine and Cosmo watched their son make it to the Brooklyn D.A.'s office fresh out of law school. (They proudly show off his A.D.A. evaluation from 1994. Sample quote: "He leaps from his chair, resembling a bull in a china cabinet.") Even then, they helped out in their own way. At the time, Joe was already married, with his first kid, and money was tight. So Josephine went to the local deli and made a deal with the owners: If they would give Joe lunch every day, she would come in at the end of the week and pay the bill. "I had no idea," says Joe. "I thought they were giving me free sandwiches because they liked me."
"Everyone liked you," says his mother. "Even the priest." She turns to me. "Joseph was even the best altar boy."
"Grain of salt on that," says Joe. "I was not the best altar boy."
"I think the priest favored you, Joseph," says Josephine.
"Stop it, Ma!"
A decade ago, Joe Tacopina was so not-hot that he spent every Friday and Saturday night as the coat-check guy at the Longshore Club in Westport, Connecticut (where he now owns a six-bedroom lakefront home with an ice rink in the basement), working for tips. "I needed the money for diapers and shit," he explains. (He has a wife and five kids at home—and he's only 40.) He had just left the Brooklyn D.A.'s office and was trying to build his own practice, so he'd lug his law files to the coatroom and try to do work, between customers. "They'd take their jackets off and throw them at me," he says. "The furs, stuff like that. 'Son, don't put that on a wire hanger!' It was so condescending, so demeaning. I was a lawyer, I was a former prosecutor, I'd prosecuted some of the most vicious murders in New York City, and they'd be like, 'Here's $2 for you, sonny.' I wanted to say, 'Fuck you!' "
He couldn't afford an office, so he improvised. "I got one of those packages, you know? Where you get your mail, you get an address, you get someone to try and answer your phones, although it became pretty obvious that it wasn't my office, because they could never pronounce my name: 'No, Mr. Tropotina is not here right now.' " The package also came with a conference room for ten hours a month at 575 Madison Avenue. "It was a Madison Avenue address! I had business cards made and shit, and I'd get my mail there."
At the same time, he set up a "virtual office," operating out of diners on Madison Avenue, making calls, meeting clients. The waitresses took pity on him—to a point. "Basically, the gig was I'd try and find a corner where I'd stay out of everyone's way, and order a coffee and a bagel, and try and milk two hours. But eventually they'd be like, 'Sir, do you need anything else?' And then they'd put the check on the table. So I'd move to the next diner."
Three days before jetting off to Aruba, Joe is headed to a much bleaker place: Queens. More specifically, to the Queens criminal courthouse—"You're about to see the belly of the beast," he says—a place he doesn't get to very often nowadays, being the lawyer to the stars and all.
"What, no E-ZPass?" he says as he heads through the Midtown Tunnel, driving a sleek new black Lexus and fumbling around to find the E-ZPass thingie.
He doesn't know if he has an E-ZPass?
"Oh, this isn't my car." It's his intern's. (You know things are good when your intern drives a Lexus.) Joe wanted to take the Maserati or the Audi A8 but had to borrow the intern's car because he slept on "the boat" last night. (That would be the forty-nine-foot Meridian yacht on which he occasionally cruises into Chelsea Piers from his home dock in Westport.)
"I got the greatest case last night," says Joe, handing money to the toll clerk at the tunnel. "Did you read about that woman who was in the papers yesterday? She hired me last night." Pause for effect. "A 34-year-old woman taking the PATH train home from the city. Office party. She takes the train home, gets off, is drunk. Goes to her car. Two Jersey transit cops basically convince her to follow them. She says, No, I'm just gonna sleep it off in the car.' They go, No, no, we'll escort you home, don't worry about it, follow me.' She follows the cop car. They make her get into a car drunk, first of all.&" He is building the case in his head. "Then they say, Follow us.' And they make a left, and they turn into a lot, and they rape her. Two cops. This is a great case."
He just missed an exit. It's been a while since he was in Queens.
"So she called me. And she's scared. She's got a husband and three kids. This is the kind of case, I just want to get in front of a jury and slaughter these fucking guys."
Joe knows cops, likes cops. He's defended a lot of them. The case that put him on the map, in the late '90s, was when he was a defense lawyer in the notorious Abner Louima case. He eventually got his guy—Tom Wiese, a cop who actually admitted being in the men's room at the time—acquitted on all counts. No one expected it, least of all Joe. And so the cops love him. But he's not afraid of breaking their balls, if necessary.
"In this case, I could see them start attacking her. They're gonna say it was consensual and whatnot," he says. (They have pleaded not guilty.) "But first of all, even if it was consensual, it was a crime.& Did I just miss another exit?&The first thing I need to do is make sure these guys, because they're cops, don't get a break. Believe me, if they try to shitcan this case, I will make some noise."
His Bernie Kerik cell phone rings. It's Bernie Kerik, calling from Amman. That would be the Bernie Kerik, the former N.Y.C. police commissioner who was almost the secretary of homeland security until his nomination imploded over& oh, gosh, where do we begin? Was it the nanny thing, the taking-free-shit thing, the Ground Zero fuck-pad thing, the affair-with—Judith Regan thing? In any event, even before Kerik had "a few problems," as Joe puts it, Joe was his lawyer. Joe was the guy who talked to the White House to "vet" Bernie's appointment. Joe was the guy Kerik planned to take with him to Washington to be his personal counsel. And Joe was the guy who got Bernie a sweet deal when the shit hit the fan: Kerik faced up to sixty years in bribery charges but ended up with two "unclassiffied misdemeanors"—a slap on the wrist. Bernie loves Joe so much that he gave him his Medal of Valor from his years as police commissioner. It's on Joe's shelf in his office, next to a silver-framed picture of the pope and a signed come-hither photo from Victoria Gotti, another esteemed client. Bernie loves Joe so much that he goes crazy finding gifts to send him. The Vuitton briefcase? "Bernie gave me that." The Italian-navy watch? Bernie. "No one has ever appreciated me as much as Bernie has," says Joe.
So anyway, he tells me, while he was landing this new client last night, he was also having cocktails with an editor from the New York Post. Client relations, you know.
"We had a little bump last week with Bianchi," he says. That would be Diana Bianchi, the 19-year-old who slept with Christie Brinkley's husband, Peter Cook. The girl's stepfather, a cop, called Joe when a couple of dozen paparazzi showed up on their lawn and Diana was on the cover of every tabloid. Joe's first job was to try to restore her reputation. Then he took the gloves off: "Peter Cook first approached her when she was 17, okay? She's ringing up toys at a toy store. For his kids. And he makes it as if he saw a star there. You know, bringing out the toys. 'Wow, you bring out those Legos quite well.' " He snorts. "Then he hires her to come work for him, and within a month of her being there, he starts making advances.&She's 18, he's 47. And she's his employee. What's she supposed to say, Get away from me, you old man'?"
The phone is ringing again. Now it's Jared Paul Stern, the ex-"Page Six" scribe who got caught allegedly extorting the billionaire Ron Burkle on tape. When Stern got busted, he called Joe, even though the last time they dealt with each other, Joe had called him "to have a yelling match" about a snarky item he'd written about yet another of Joe's clients. "I found him to be, uh, slightly arrogant. I wasn't a huge fan." But you took the case? "He called me and said, 'More than one person'—he plays this mystery thing—'told me you're the guy I have to see, that you're the fir.' It was intriguing. It was Page Six.' " Plus, says Joe, "Burkle is perhaps the worst victim in the world! As a defense lawyer, you couldn't ask for a better guy to cross-examine. I mean, I'm sorry, I just don't see a jury having much sympathy for a schizophrenic paranoid billionaire who's so concerned about his coverage in the gossip pages that he has to go out of his way to do a $200,000 sting operation to set up some schmuck from Page Six'!" (The feds have since decided that there is no case against Stern and never filed charges.)
Joe pulls up to the dreary Queens courthouse and finds a parking spot on the street.
By the way, what exactly are we doing here today?
"Oh," says Joe, "this is just client relations, really. It's just a regular case. It's gonna be adjourned. Nothing's gonna happen today."
But what's the case?
"My guy was a Mitsubishi Businessman of the Year, got some diploma and the whole write-up. But then he got busted in his house with cocaine and marijuana." (Even Joe's alleged drug dealers have credentials.) Anyway, Joe's here to get the case "knocked over for a month."
He waltzes into the courthouse. The guys at the metal detectors give him high fives. A few lawyers in the hallway congratulate him on his new cases. He asks for some private time to go talk to the family of his client; five of them are here to show their support.
Where's his client?
"Oh," says Joe, "he's a guest of the governor today." He smiles. "He's a guest of the state correctional system."
Joe will spend the next few hours in a shithole of a courtroom, waiting for his client to arrive by bus from Riker's as a parade of D-list drug dealers get their moment before the weary judge. He sits there, BlackBerrying his children, nodding to his colleagues. "Look at that," he says, pointing to a lawyer who is dressed without a tie for court. "That is a disgrace."
Even here?
"It's a matter of respect," says Joe.
A few words about the Italian thing.
Tacopina is so proud to be Italian—and by that we mean Real Italian; he has no use for the sauseege/ball-scratching Sopranos stuff ("it's embarrassing, it's like Ebonics for Italians; I hate The Sopranos")—that he has the Roman eagle tattooed on his right hip. "You want to see it?" he asks, the first time I show up to interview him in his office. (It's awesome.) His underwear is also Italian. (He buys the Dolce Gabbana Italian-flag waistband motif: "How could I not have that?") He buys all his shoes in Italy, where he also has an office and a practice with seven lawyers. (His clients range from one of the Parmalat guys—"It's like Enron times twenty over there"—to Gina Lollobrigida—"She's still a babe.") He gets all his suits there, too, unless he finds a fabric he loves, in which case he brings it back to his guy at Loro Piana on Madison Avenue and has him handcraft one.
His office is decorated with Julius Caesar crapola, some of which he displays more prominently when he is on trial. "Caesar was the greatest strategist of all time," says Joe. One of his most prized possessions is a framed photograph of himself in Rome with Antonin Scalia. They were both honored by the Italian-American Bar Association.
What were you doing in Rome with him?
"Getting drunk. This is me and him, hanging out at the Pantheon together."
He even has his bottled water shipped over from Italy. "You need it to make real espresso," he says.
Here's how he met his wife: He was in the law-school cafeteria when he saw her stacking trays (she worked for Marriott). He was 22, she was 23. "See that girl?" he told a friend. "I'm gonna marry her."
He made his move. Would she go on a date with him? No. Could they talk? No. Would she marry him? Um, no. She told him she was engaged. He persisted. "Just give me one hour," he begged. "One hour."
"I was actually thinking of calling security," says Tish.
Finally, she broke down and gave him his hour. He took her to a bar in Westport, and they had nachos. "When the hour was up," says Tish, "he said, 'Well, I'm completely in love with you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. How do you feel?' " Silence. " 'Well, let me know,' he said. 'Because if you love me, you can call off the other thing and we can get married, like, soon.' "
He negotiated another date. They went to a diner. He walked her to her car and gave her a peck on the cheek.
"That's all I get?" she asked. He was in.
The next day, he almost blew it, however, when he broke into her car with a wire hanger to leave a rose and a letter (in Italian) on her seat. She wasn't amused. Her large Irish family was even less amused. "They were like, 'Wait a minute, an Italian from Brooklyn who's breaking into your car?' " But Joe won them over.
A few days after meeting Ma and Pa Tacopina, I drive out to Westport to meet Tish and the kids. The house is grand but not fancy. They still haven't gotten around to putting furniture in the dining room, because they don't do dinner parties. The art consists of photos of the Italian soccer team and drawings by the kids. The most obnoxious part is Joe's shoe closet, which is larger than Tish's entire clothes closet.
Tish is, as Joe billed her, beautiful and real. The only flash is the huge diamond on her left hand—a surprise from her husband on their fifteenth wedding anniversary (Bernie sent him to "his guy" in the diamond district). He looks at her like she's an ice cream cone. We sit at the kitchen table and talk about what it's like to be Mrs. Joe-too-bad-he's-married-Tacopina.
Her husband is the kind of guy, she says, who calls her fifteen times a day and tells her every day how lucky he is. She tells me the only thing she worries about with Joe is his schedule: She worries that he will get sick; she worries when he's driving home at two in the morning ("I stay up and talk to him on the phone until he gets home").
But it can't be easy. Women throw themselves at "celebrity lawyers" far less handsome than Joe. Earlier, I had asked Joe about this. "Yeah, plenty of times it's hard for her. But you know what? The more in the news I am, the more—I don't want to say reclusive—the more removed I am from these situations. My friend manages a restaurant on the Upper East Side, Campagnola. I used to go there all the time. I haven't been there in two years. Because it's just trouble. The women there, they line up at the bar. And I don't need that shit, you know?
"Never ever will anybody be able to tell you that they see me out and about with women. I just don't do it. You know what's the saddest thing for me in the world? When I go to Nello or one of those restaurants with Bernie for lunch. And you see, like, guys who are old and decrepit come in with a stunner who's 25, and they're smiling, holding hands. I just say to myself, 'I would rather be hit by a fucking bus than be, at that age in life, having that.'
"So I wear my ring all the time. I make it very clear that I'm married, and happily married. Cindy Crawford could come and beg me, but I have more important things to do." Like coach three soccer teams.
Joe and Tish have a rule: No matter what new desperate client he gets, the weekends are family time. "If someone from the White House called me on a Saturday and said, 'President Bush just got arrested in Times Square and wants you to represent him,' I'd send it to Chad," Joe says.
Well, maybe not. But still.
At the end of the afternoon, Tish and Joe invite me to join them for dinner at Tarantino, an Italian joint in Westport. The five kids all pile into the Denali. The Maserati is not in the program. "Get in the car, honey," says his wife. Tish drives.
The morning Joe leaves Aruba, he is terribly hungover. He still hasn't found Booty, but he has a flight to catch and more hysterical clients to tend to. His cohorts, Chad and Rosemarie, stumble down to the lobby. "No more piña coladas for you," says Joe.
At the airport, the customs guy swoons over Joe's cell phone. In the business-class lounge, he sits and fields a zillion calls, and he keeps talking on his way to the plane. CBS and MSNBC want him on the air. A client who's suing her ex for giving her herpes wants to talk. Bernie just wants to say hi and how was Aruba? Tish wants to know if he will get home in time for dinner.
Joe turns the phone off and reclines in his seat, snoring loudly until he gets back to New York.
Where there are sixty-three new messages waiting for him.
lisa depaulo is a GQ correspondent.


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The new EP "Search Party" from Counterfeit i,
featuring five songs about different things
we seek to fill voids and feel complete.
The Special Edition version includes an acoustic song and bonus features
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Giant clam (Tridacna sp.) embedded in Faviidae coral.
Image ID: reef2358, NOAA's Coral Kingdom Collection
Location: Chuuk Lagoon
Photo Date: 2011 June
Photographer: Heather Coll NOAA/NMFS/OPR/ESAICD
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After documenting the scene, the investigator or other evidence collectors must collect, preserve and store evidence from
the scene. He or she should follow these steps:
Note: This section of the guide is intended for the individual responsible for the investigation of a fire incident. At the time
the scene is determined to involve an arson or other crime, the investigator must address legal requirements for scene access,
search and evidence seizure.
Identify, collect and preserve evidence. The investigator should ensure that evidence collectors identify, document, collect and preserve evidence for laboratory
analyses, further investigations and court proceedings.
Evidence collectors should:
Prevent evidence contamination. The investigator should control access to the fire scene after fire suppression and see that evidence is collected, stored
and transported so that it will not be contaminated.
Note: In cases of accidental fire, evidence should not be needlessly disturbed, but the property owner or insurer should be notified
to avoid issues of spoliation.
Package and transport evidence. The investigator should ensure that packaging, transportation and storage procedures are followed to prevent any destructive
changes in the condition of samples.
The personnel responsible for packaging and transport should:
Establish and maintain the chain of custody. The investigator should ensure that the chain of custody is maintained.
Personnel responsible for the chain of custody should:
Next section: Completing the Investigation.
National Institute of Justice, 810 Seventh Street, NW, Washington, DC 20531


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With delays already having been heavily discussed, it's looking as though things might be getting a little bit brighter for the Samsung ATIV S in Canada. A snapshot of some internal documents has now turned up and reveal Bell Mobility has apparently set a release date of December 14th.
This follows the recent confrmation coming out of Austria where the device has been spotted on store shelves and ready for sale. Needless to say, we'll be following up with Bell retailers come December 14th to see if we can get our hands on one.
Source: MobileSyrup


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On Monday, August 19, VanderCook College of Music faculty and staff will have a one-day in-service to prepare for the 2013-2014 academic year. The day will begin with meetings at 9:00 am to discuss the new EdTPA (Professional Teaching Portfolio) that the college will be instituting. At 10:30 am, faculty and staff will begin their work for the October 2014 Higher Learning Commission Accreditation visit. On-line education and class development will be the topic at 11:30 am, and at noon, the faculty and staff will enjoy lunch. During lunch, techniques class instructors will meet to discuss specific teaching strategies to maximize student learning.
All faculty and staff will meet for th Presidential Convocation at 1:00 pm. Applied Faculty will meet with Director of Applied Studies, Kevin Lepper at 2:00 pm. This will be followed by an All School Orientation for Faculty, Staff, and Students at 3:00 pm. New students will have a special orientation at 4:00 pm and the day ends with an All School Welcome Bar-B-Q at 5:00 pm.


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Thursday, 26 May 2011
Butternut Squash and Chorizo Linguine
Pasta recipes whether in magazines or cookbooks always seem to catch my eye and this Butternut Squash and Chorizo Linguine certainly done just that. The bonus being it is a low fat recipe, even with the Chorizo, and easy to work out the ProPoints value. The sweet nutty taste of the roasted butternut squash and spicy chorizo combined wonderfully with my home-grown sage. This was a satisfying weeknight meal that didn't take much effort and one I will make again.
Butternut Squash and Chorizo Linguine
Serves 4
half a large butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into small cubes
100g piece chorizo, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
400g cherry tomatoes
large handful sage leaves, shredded
400g linguine or spaghetti
grated Parmesan, to serve
Heat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7. Tip the squash and chorizo onto a roasting tray, season, then toss in the oil. Roast for 20 mins, adding the tomatoes and two-thirds of the sage for the final 5 mins.
Cook the linguine/spaghetti. Drain, then toss with roasted ingredients and juices from the tray. Serve sprinkled with remaining sage and grated Parmesan.
15 comments:
- Gloria said...
I love butternut squash María look delicious! gloria
- 26 May 2011 at 20:08
- Seren said...
This sounds like a lovely midweek supper dish - what would Weight Watchers the world over do without butternut squash? Will definitely be giving this a go.
- 26 May 2011 at 20:19
- At Anna's kitchen table said...
Maria, I'm the same! Just can't stick to a low-carb diet!
How many ww points in this dish per serving? It looks really good!
- 26 May 2011 at 20:39
- Maria♥ said...
Anna, it's 14 propoints, seems a lot with the new plan but definitely worth it!
- 26 May 2011 at 20:46
- Reeni said...
I love this combo with the sweet squash and spicy sausage! So good Maria!
- 27 May 2011 at 02:39
- Les rêves d'une boulangère (Brittany) said...
I am making this as soon as possible!! It looks incredible! Not only do the colours look good, I just know that the ingredients would taste really fantastic too. Thanks so much!
- 27 May 2011 at 11:52
- Happy Cook / Finla said...
yumm with chorizo i can imagine how delicous the pasta would have tasted.
- 27 May 2011 at 16:54
- Kim said...
Oooh yum! Looks lovely, I'm always looking for quick and easy midweek meals as I get bored of making the same thing all the time. Definitely going to try this one!
- 27 May 2011 at 20:15
- LF said...
I know where you are coming from. I'm very likely one of the biggest carb monsters around and low carb is just not doing anything for me. Everything in moderation is best. I cut my portions down to 1/3 of what I used to eat in late November, and by late January I had lost 7 kg! But then I got pregnant and well.. put it all back on and more.
Looks delish!
- 27 May 2011 at 20:16
- GreedyRosie said...
I've tried low carb diets before with some success, but really, I'm too much of a carb monster to make them stick. Pasta is my biggest weakness, and this looks beautiful!
- 27 May 2011 at 22:20
- Lauraelizabeth said...
Mmm I love Chorizo and butternut squash. Perfect combo! x
- 28 May 2011 at 09:09
- Foodycat said...
Pumpkin, chorizo and pasta - 3 of my favourite things! Yum!
- 1 June 2011 at 09:26
- Please Do Not Feed The Animals. said...
Oh this looks wonderful. This is going on our menu for next week - thanks.
- 1 June 2011 at 23:06
- The Curious Cat said...
yumscrum - this is a great idea! xxx
- 13 June 2011 at 20:46
I've tried this recipe and the combination of ingredients made it really delicious.Thanks Maria! Claire
- 17 September 2011 at 06:46


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Legend: (cur) = difference with current version, (last) = difference with preceding version, M = minor edit.


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Answering your questions: Sedating and anesthetizing patients that have organ system dysfunction
Q: Based on the results of physical examination and routine screening tests, what constitutes dysfunction of such severity to warrant a change in routine sedation or anesthetic protocols?
Preanesthetic evaluations can reduce morbidity by alerting a clinician to take action to optimize a patient's preoperative status and perioperative management. In my opinion, preanesthetic evaluations should initially include only a thorough history and physical examination. When abnormalities are found in the history and during the physical examination, additional diagnostic tests should be performed to confirm and measure these findings. When no abnormalities are identified in the history or during physical examination and a complete blood count, serum chemistry profile, and urinalysis are nevertheless performed, the likelihood of obtaining an abnormal test result is high, but I think the clinical relevance of an abnormal result under these circumstances is questionable.1 We get into trouble if we make erroneous laboratory results the problem.
For example, a threefold increase in liver enzyme activity on a serum chemistry profile may suggest that something (e.g. trauma, inflammation) has caused enzymes to leak out of liver cells; however, this does not tell us much about liver function or the liver's ability to metabolize anesthetic agents. Without supporting evidence, I probably wouldn't change my anesthetic protocol.However, the decision to alter my protocol is obvious if I am already looking for changes in liver function based on the patient's history and physical examination findings, and the tests reveal decreased albumin and blood urea nitrogen concentrations. Such abnormalities suggest decreased liver function.
Another situation that requires a change in anesthetic management would be any elevation in the serum creatinine concentration. If it is determined that renal azotemia is present, we know that well over half of kidney function is gone. Measures I would take in response include
With regard to changes in the use of specific anesthetic agents, ketamine is generally avoided in cats with renal disease since recovery may be unnecessarily prolonged because of decreased renal elimination. I also avoid alpha2 agonists, such as xylazine and medetomidine, in any patient with systemic disease, as cautioned by their labels. Dramatic changes in oxygen delivery to the tissues can occur in healthy patients after administering alpha2 agonists,2-5 and compromised patients should not be challenged when alternatives are available. Instead, I premedicate with opioids intravenously so I can avoid tranquilizers, decrease my induction agent dosages, and decrease vaporizer settings intraoperatively.
Any hepatic, renal, cardiovascular, pulmonary, or central nervous system dysfunction in a patient should elicit a proportional response when making decisions about the patient's anesthetic management. If I can reasonably use a measure that may improve preoperative patient status and perioperative management, I should take that measure.
Q: Is intravenous induction safer than mask induction in dogs or cats with cardiac or respiratory disease?
The concentrations of inhalant anesthetics required for mask induction cause cardiorespiratory depression (i.e. peripheral vasodilation, hypercapnia) similar to or greater than that associated with most intravenous induction agents. Moreover, mask inductions are usually more expensive than injectable inductions, and environmental pollution is unavoidable.
Perceived advantages of mask inductions include the following:
I have switched from intravenous to mask induction when the premedication effect was much greater than I expected. In this situation, mask induction is possible by using vaporizer settings no higher than 1% isoflurane or 2.5% sevoflurane.


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Pretty, gentle, and quietly confident might describe this easygoing guitar centered tune. A great track for any positive or reassuring message that needs to be communicated. Elements include acoustic guitars, pizzicato strings, glockenspiel (orchestra bells), warm bass, light strings, & acoustic piano.
Form: A A B A B A C A Extended Tag Ending
Includes WAV & MP3


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- Horse Racing
Silviniaco sparkles in Denman Chase win
Silviniaco Conti reinforced his Gold Cup claims with an impressive success in the Betfair Denman Chase.
With Kauto Star now retired, Paul Nicholls needs a leading chasing light and Silviniaco Conti is the new kid on the Ditcheat block and he made it three wins on the spin this season.
The seven-year-old sat off a strong gallop before being delivered with his challenge up the long Newbury straight. Silviniaco Conti's fencing was brilliant throughout and he powered away from last year's Gold Cup second The Giant Bolster after the last to justify favouritism.
Former top-class French chaser Mail De Bievre, on his first outing in the best part of two years, was fresh on his return to action and carted rider Paddy Brennan to the front. Mail De Bievre jumped brilliantly and the fierce gallop had most of his rivals in trouble.
Only Silviniaco Conti and The Giant Bolster were in contention turning for home and they moved up either side of the leader four from home. They quickened away as Mail De Bievre began to tire.
At the second last, a slick leap took Silviniaco Conti to the front and although The Giant Bolster gave chase all the way to the line, the favourite was always in command.
Tony McCoy, Nicky Henderson and JP McManus, who lost Darlan earlier in the week, were back on the up as My Tent Or Yours routed his rivals in the Betfair Hurdle.
The novice looked well handicapped on the book and that proved to be correct, as McCoy was motionless for much of the race aboard the 5/1 favourite. His mount sauntered to the front at the second from home and he careered away in the manner of a high-class prospect.
Barry Geraghty and Nicky Henderson opened up the Newbury card with a win, as Chatterbox successfully conceded 14lb to Lac Fontanta in the Visit betfair.com/racingoffers Novices' Hurdle. Chatterbox took the scalp of My Tent Or Yours last time out and proved the win was no fluke with a taking success.
Wishfull Thinking came with a wet sail after the last to cut down French Opera close home to land the Game Spirit Chase for jockey Richard Johnson and trainer Phillip Hobbs.


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Eight weeks after beaning, Chapman set to return
BOSTON -- Perhaps as soon as Friday, the Reds' bullpen door could open and closer Aroldis Chapman will cross its threshold for the first time in this regular season.
On a baseball level, it will be very big for the club.
BOSTON -- Perhaps as soon as Friday, the Reds' bullpen door could open and closer Aroldis Chapman will cross its threshold for the first time in this regular season.
On a baseball level, it will be very big for the club.
"Any time you can add an All-Star at midseason without having to give up one of your premier players, it's obviously going to be a boost," Cincinnati reliever Sam LeCure said.
On a purely human level, it will mean even more.
It would signify that -- in just about eight weeks -- Chapman overcame a truly horrifying incident that could have affected both life and career.
On March 19 in a Spring Training game against the Royals in Arizona, the left-hander's 99-mph fastball to Salvador Perez was rocketed up the middle. The line drive hit Chapman in the front of his head and put him on the ground for 12 minutes before a stretcher carried him off the field before a shocked crowd. The game, still in the sixth inning, was immediately called off.
Reds shortstop Zack Cozart was playing behind Chapman and was one of the first to reach the mound after he went down.
"When it comes to playing baseball, that was the scariest thing I've ever been a part of on the field -- and somewhat off the field, too," Cozart said Wednesday. "You never know when that happens if it's life-threatening. You just don't know. I was right there on the mound. Blood was everywhere. It was a sick feeling in our stomachs."
Chapman suffered fractures above his left eye and nose, and he also suffered a mild concussion. He underwent surgery the following day, when a three-inch plate and 12 screws stabilized the bones and several staples were put into his head to close the incision.
Remarkably, the physical recovery was quick, and without the hurdles of long-term damage. Chapman visited the team's clubhouse a couple of days later after being released from the hospital. He was back to throwing again in early April and worked from a bullpen mound April 14. Last week, Chapman began a Minor League rehab assignment.
"You're aware that it could have been worse," LeCure said. "We're thankful that while it was still a very serious thing, it could have gone a different way. I've been with Chappy since he first got here, really. I feel like he and I are pretty good buddies. So as a friend, to see your friend come back from adversity like that, it's going to be nice."
Chapman has made four rehab appearances, and while he looked good physically and had his velocity, two performances were good and two were bad.
In two outings for Class A Dayton, Chapman pitched two scoreless and hitless innings. When he moved up to Triple-A Louisville this week, he was roughed up. On Tuesday night while throwing 33 pitches, Chapman lasted only two-thirds of an inning and gave up five runs and four hits with one walk, one hit batter, one wild pitch and one strikeout.
Back quickly Wednesday afternoon, Chapman made 21 pitches and allowed three runs and three hits over one-third of an inning with one walk and one strikeout.
Entering this week, Cincinnati manager Bryan Price had targeted Friday as Chapman's return date. After Wednesday's results, Price was more noncommittal.
"I'd like to get some feedback from those that saw him pitch," Price said. "I think sometimes for these guys, they go down and see it as a rehab and don't see it as competition. We have to look at every opportunity to pitch as competition."
Catcher Corky Miller, who was behind the plate when Chapman pitched at Louisville, appeared to not be concerned about Chapman's readiness should he be activated Friday.
"He gets that extra gear when the game is on the line, the lights are on and the stadium is full. He always has, ever since he got to the big leagues," Miller told the FOX Sports Ohio website. "He thrives on that and sometimes you need that. You come out here, a 6:30 game in Louisville, it's a little different."
Throughout the express process of his comeback, Chapman has maintained he is not mentally affected by his ordeal -- nor afraid of another comebacker hitting and hurting him.
"I know me and I know that I don't think I'm going to have any issue with that," Chapman said April 11. "I've thought about the way that I feel and the way that I am. I don't think this is going to affect me."
Jonathan Broxton has gone 5-for-5 in save opportunities while filling for Chapman, but the Reds have had trouble getting and holding leads on their way to the ninth. The rest of the bullpen is a combined 1-for-6 in save chances.
Cincinnati relievers are 2-9 with a 4.52 ERA that is the second worst among National League clubs. Getting Chapman back would enable Broxton to return to a setup role and help Price not overwork LeCure and Manny Parra, who have been the team's other two most reliable relievers.
"Jonathan has been doing a great job. But we feel Chappy will be that guy in the ninth, sooner than later," LeCure said. "It will be nice to have him back. It's nice to see him recover from it. I think, as a mental thing for the guys who pitch and are in the position to get balls hit back off of their heads, it's nice to see he can come back, be OK and be that same guy. I think he will be very good for us."
A two-time NL All-Star, Chapman has saved 38 games in 43 chances in each of the last two seasons while making 68 appearances both years. His electric 100-plus mph fastball remains a showstopper for fans and a challenge for opposing hitters in the ninth.
"I've had the privilege, ever since I've been in the big leagues, of having him saving games for us," Cozart said. "To have him back, not just because I think he's the best closer in the game, but also healthy and feeling good is very important."
Mark Sheldon is a reporter for MLB.com. Read his blog, Mark My Word, and follow him on Twitter @m_sheldon.


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Scout's honor: It's tough to rate QBs
History says there will be an elite quarterback available to the Buffalo Bills today when they make their first pick in the NFL draft.
The challenge: Which one or two quarterbacks in the 2013 class are going to become outstanding pros?
NFL scouts and analysts say the challenge – which has been daunting ever since the forward pass was invented – has become even greater in recent years.
The spread offense that dominates college football puts a priority on quick throws out of the shotgun formation. Those don't provide a clue about whether a quarterback has the full skill set to make the tough, downfield throws required to be a great pro.
"Years ago it was a heck of a lot easier when everybody was in the I-formation, and five-step drop and play-action," said NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock. "A lot easier to evaluate. Now it's much more projection based. Can this kid, once we get him in the classroom and on the field, become what we need him to become?"
The Bills are expected to make their decision on who is the class of the 2013 class over the next two days. If they don't take a QB with the eighth overall pick today, they are likely to take one either later in the first round or early in the second round Friday.
Conventional wisdom says Syracuse quarterback Ryan Nassib will wind up with the Bills. He played for Bills coach Doug Marrone the past four years and worked under Bills offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett the past two. Hackett's father, Paul, is a long-time coach who tutored Nassib this winter.
Most of the spring, draft analysts have rated Nassib outside the top 50 prospects. Most analysts also say this year's QB class pales in comparison to last year's, which saw instant starters Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Ryan Tannehill taken in the first eight picks and Seattle's phenominal Russell Wilson taken in the third round.
However, it's rare that somebody in a QB class doesn't turn out to be a high-quality NFL starter. Only five times in the last 23 years has a draft not produced a big NFL winner. Those down years were in 1990, '96, '97, 2002 and '07. The 1996 draft was the only one in the last 24 years in which a QB was not selected in the first round.
Since 1990, 56 quarterbacks have been drafted in the first round. Of that group, only 25 could be classified as a big success in the NFL, and that's counting five players taken in the last three drafts (Sam Bradford, Cam Newton, Luck, Griffin and Tannehill), for whom the jury arguably still is out.
Historically, the bust rate on first-round quarterbacks is about 50 percent. Why so high?
"The speed of the game, No. 1," said former NFL coach Jon Gruden, the ESPN analyst. "You never know how a player is going to adapt to the speed of the game. The windows are so much tighter. Third down and red-zone passing – those are very difficult to evaluate."
"How much can they handle right away?" Gruden said. "Some of these quarterbacks struggle with adapting to a new system, from the snap count to the terminology to the audible system. They struggle significantly when they don't get the reps that they're accustomed to getting in college. I think those are the big things that are the hardest things for a young quarterback."
Most top college quarterbacks have known nothing but success their entire athletic lives. The ability to adapt and learn, while at the same time projecting an image as the leader of the organization and handling the pressure of being an NFL quarterback, are elements that are hard to predict.
Top-three overall picks Jeff George, Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith and JaMarcus Russell fell short largely because they didn't have the intangible, off-the-field characteristics required to succeed in the NFL.
"It's the toughest position to evaluate," said Chuck Cook, Bills director of college scouting. "Just look at the Seattle quarterback, Russell Wilson. It's the intangibles that you can't see. It's the 'it' factor. It's the hardest thing to get. Joe Montana was a third-round pick. You don't ever know completely what you're getting."
The task for Cook and his NFL counterparts has gotten more difficult because of the kind of offenses many college teams are running.
Mayock offers a detailed explanation:
"I chart every quarterback. I start with throws between 0 and 10 yards off the line of scrimmage, 11 to 20 yards and 21-plus. I'll chart every throw. For a high-level quarterback, it'll be a minimum of five games and sometimes beyond that. The biggest difference between now and even five years ago is a lot of times in these spread offenses, 90 percent of the throws are between 0 and 10 yards."
"When you talk about the screen game, you're mostly talking about bubble screens and tunnel screens and stuff that happens right away off the throw," Mayock said. "So if 90 percent of the throws are within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, you're only seeing 10 percent that might be typical NFL stick-type throws. An 18-yard in? An 18-yard comeback? What kind of deep-ball accuracy does the quarterback have? So that becomes a challenge."
West Virginia University's Geno Smith, who many rate as the top quarterback in this year's draft, is the perfect example of the newer evaluation challenge for NFL scouts.
Running the "Air-Raid" offense of coach Dana Holgorsen, Smith racked up huge numbers. He had 98 touchdown passes and 26 interceptions for his career. At one point in 2012, he had 24 TD passes and zero interceptions.
But, he threw 177 of 518 passes at or behind the line of scrimmage, including 112 screens, according to ESPN.
"The second thing that becomes a challenge is a lot of it is what coaches call 'Catch, Rock and Throw,' " Mayock said. "You're in the shotgun, you catch it, you take a rocker step – no footwork, just a rocker step – and the ball's out. So you're seeing a lot of quarterbacks that have never been under center in their lives and they'll catch it and get rid of it."
"Geno catches it and gets rid of the football," Mayock said. "His footwork and posture and movement in the pocket is poor. Now you can't ding the kid on that, because that's what he's been taught. His job is to win college games, not anything else. You can't ding the kid for it. You just have to be able to try to evaluate beyond that."
When it's a third-and-long situation in the NFL, elite quarterbacks are able to stand in the pocket in the face of blitzes and deliver the ball downfield accurately against tight coverage.
The ability of New England's Tom Brady to make the right decision on where to go with the ball in 2.8 seconds under pressure is one of the big things that makes him one of the great quarterbacks ever. It was very hard to decipher that ability when he came out of the University of Michigan, which is why he was a sixth-round draft pick.
"The ability to make a play under pressure in a clutch situation is a key identifier for a quarterback," Cook said. "Poise. The ability to handle pressure. Those DBs in this league can close so much faster than they do in college. The windows close so much faster."
"So how many throws really – under pressure – apply to the NFL?" Cook said.
Pro teams break down those throws to a greater degree than ever before.
"Third down with people in your face against the blitz? It is a reduced number," Cook said. "But that body of tape of those snaps, you condense it down to those situations and you see how successful a guy was. We have rankings on all that. Under pressure on third down? Third and long? We break down all those situations and put a value on that."
The top quarterbacks in this year's draft – Smith, Nassib, Southern California's Matt Barkley and Florida State's E.J. Manuel – all appear to have good intangibles. Some analysts think Barkley and Smith are not well suited to playing in the elements in Buffalo.
"I don't think Geno Smith makes sense in Buffalo," Mayock said. "I saw him play in cold weather in the bowl game. I saw him play in cold weather at Iowa State, and I don't see him fitting in an outdoor arena in Buffalo."
ESPN's Mel Kiper on Barkley: "He doesn't have a great arm. But he's got good enough arm strength in the right situation, which wouldn't be Buffalo. It certainly wouldn't be a cold-weather environment."
How well do they respond in the face of pressure in the pocket? It's probably a bit more of a concern for Smith and Manuel than for Nassib and Barkley. But Smith and Manuel both have more athletic ability than Nassib and Barkley.
Some view special athleticism as a requirement in a QB taken high in the first round, as former NFL star Kurt Warner said in assessing Nassib.
"I didn't see on film this guy having the ability to do everything. He didn't wow me when I saw him on film," Warner told the NFL Network. "I want to see that wow factor from a guy I'm drafting in the first round, and I just didn't see it from Ryan."
The reality is none of the top QB prospects in this draft has seen the kind of pressure in the pocket, the exotic blitz packages or the tight windows in the scoring area that they will face in the NFL. The draft is about forecasting who will do it best.
"It is really, truly in the scouting world the hardest thing to evaluate – the quarterback position," Cook said.
Continue to follow our intensive NFL draft coverage tonight, beginning with a live video show co-hosted by Tim Graham and Jay Skurski at 7:30 on BuffaloNews.com. We will have reports from Mark Gaughan and Jerry Sullivan at One Bills Drive, as well as an ongoing live chat.
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