Since One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest this gifted bit-part actor has played the psychopath to perfection – but don't expect him to come out into the light in his new vampire movie Priest

Fans of the vampire apocalypse sub-genre will already be en route to the nachos, but no matter what your taste there is at least one reason to recommend the newly released Priest. That reason, buried as he usually is in the depths of the supporting cast, is Brad Dourif. Because I don't think it would be rash to claim Dourif as king of the character actors – champion of that noble tradition of bit-part players and background colour, a self-confessed "whore" who never fails to elevate even the dopiest hokum, psychotic creeps a speciality but capable of much, much more.

Almost everyone reading will, I imagine, have relished a Dourif performance at some point in their lives, in part because the man is as tireless as he is gifted, in part because among his many jobs have been a number of near-inescapable cultural behemoths (leaving aside Star Trek: Voyager, he reportedly dispensed with his eyebrows to appear in two of Peter Jackson's three Lord of the Rings films). But he's due far more reward than a place for life signing headshots at comic conventions. For all his workhorse tendencies, it would be a mistake to laud them over his actual talent – the waxy delicacy of his features the canvas for a rare, skewed intensity, his unnerving presence never once played as smirky camp.

But his gifts were obvious from the start. Because, of course, when we rewind as far back as 1975, we find him as the very newest of Hollywood sensations, and rightly so – the breakthrough Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and his pivotal turn as frail, doomed Billy Bibbit, a role he fitted so perfectly it was if Ken Kesey had foreseen a vision of him writing the source novel 13 years earlier. For a boy of 25 it was a staggering performance, deft and touching and every bit as compelling as those of Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher. His Oscar nomination was inevitable; a stellar career was assured.

Except, as it turned out, it wasn't. Instead of an ascension to the upper slopes of the industry, the decades since have provided a hectic route through strange landscapes and scenic backwaters. There were more great performances – shortly after Cuckoo's Nest came some masterful jitters in the prime slice of New York kink that was The Eyes of Laura Mars, after that John Huston's mordant Wise Blood, most recently a lovely moment as a melancholy alien (surely the role he was born to play) in Werner Herzog's The Wild Blue Yonder. There were also roles in a number of grand cinematic missteps: the daddy of them all, Heaven's Gate; David Lynch's Dune, in which he gamely held forth about "the juice of sapho"; Jean-Pierre Jeunet's rickety Alien Resurrection. But while Lynch would hire him again for Blue Velvet, and Herzog has used him as a one-man rep company, the best part of the last 20 years has been spent paying the bills in all manner of horror projects, from the iconic (in some circles he'll be forever best known as the voice of Chucky in the Child's Play series) to the altogether less celebrated – but always performed with respectful sincerity.

In interviews, Dourif himself talks about the shape of his career as simply a product of a working actor needing work, particularly as a father – in the same year Cuckoo's Nest came out, his first daughter was born. But sometimes when I think about him I also find it hard not to picture that otherworldly bearing and remember the example of another thin young man too wispy and off-kilter to be anyone's male lead: Anthony Perkins. But then, much as I love Anthony Perkins, Dourif is by a long way the better actor, both more intense and more versatile. He could always do repellent (as racist wifebeater Clinton Pell in 1988's Mississippi Burning his presence is skin-crawling) – but his Doc Cochran in TV's old west saga Deadwood was a masterclass in unexpected decency, while what made his work in Herzog's Bad Lieutenant so fine was the way he acted as a steadying hand amid the crazed whirl of breakdancing souls and watchful iguanas.

And it's important, I think, not to embrace him just because he's a favourite of Herzog and Lynch, but because he's been fantastic in their films as he has so many others – and because the risk with anyone so reliable is that they get taken for granted, particularly when the wonders they deliver are small in scale. I'm sure Dourif himself would see his career as anything but thwarted for all that he never did get that Oscar, and we should follow his example. Bills have to be paid, and it would be patronising to assume he would have been happier with his name above the titles of wood-stupid action flicks. In any sane hall of fame, his place is safe already.

This southeast Asian mystery bird species is related to the woodpeckers, the Picidae

Tai­wan barbets, Megalaima nuchalis (formerly; Megalaima oorti), also known as the Formosan barbet, the Malayan barbet, embroidered barbet or as Müller's barbet and formerly as the black-browed barbet, photographed at Taipei City, Taiwan, China.

Image: Marie Louise Ng, 27 April 2011 [velociraptorize].
Nikon D7000

Question: This striking pair of Chinese mystery birds are quite poorly known despite occurring throughout much of southeast Asia. Can you tell me which taxonomic order this bird is placed into and (for extra smug points) can you identify the species?

Response: This is a pair of Tai­wan barbets, Megalaima oorti, which are found throughout much of southeast Asia (as its many common names suggest). This species was formerly considered a subspecies or conspecific with Black-browed barbet, Megalaima oorti, but the Tai­wan barbet has now been elevated to full species status as of 2006 (free PDF).

The shape of the bird's bill and feet are two strong clues visible in this image relating to how they are classified. These birds are placed into the order Piciformes, which includes this bird's taxonomic family, Ramphastidae, the toucans and barbets. All picids are highly arboreal birds that nest in tree cavities. They also are primarily insectivorous -- a trait shared by the barbets, although barbets are much more dependent upon fruits than are their cousins.

You are invited to review all of the daily mystery birds by going to their dedicated graphic index page.

If you have bird images, video or mp3 files that you'd like to share with a large and (mostly) appreciative audience, feel free to email them to me for consideration.

.

email: grrlscientist@gmail.com
twitter: @GrrlScientist

Retirement planning used to seem easy: Put money into an individual retirement account (IRA) or company-sponsored 401(k) plan, then watch it grow and compound through the years. But the past 10 years of a less than average stock market have turned that strategy on its head. Many retirement portfolios have lost ground, and goals created during the optimistic bull market may need to be adjusted.

If your retirement portfolio is in need of a boost, there are steps you can take to help rebuild your retirement nest egg.

First, resist any urge you might have to reduce or stop your 401(k) retirement plan contributions. Continuing to invest in your 401(k) plan is a good idea in any economic environment. Saving and investing regularly through a 401(k) plan allows you to make the best use of dollar cost averaging -- buying fewer shares when prices are higher and more when they are less expensive -- smoothing the effect of market swings.

You should be contributing the legal maximum to your 401(k) plan. For most people, this is $16,500 annually. Thanks to the extension of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act in 2001, if you are over age 50, you can now make catch-up contributions to your retirement plan. This means the maximum amount you will be able to contribute to your plan is $22,000.

Maximizing your contributions will ensure you are taking advantage of any employer match your company provides. If you are not contributing enough to your plan to benefit from an employer match, you are leaving money -- in the form of cash or company stock -- on the table.

If your plan allows you to make additional after-tax contributions, you should consider that as well. The sooner you can get dollars into these tax-advantaged accounts, the sooner they can begin earning returns that can compound over time and bring you closer to your retirement goals.

Once you have contributed to your 401(k) plan, you should make sure you continue to preserve the tax-advantaged status of these savings. If you terminate your employment with your existing employer, you have the option of keeping the funds in your former employer's plan, rolling them over into an IRA or transferring them into your new employer's plan if you are eligible. This ensures your nest egg will keep growing and be shielded from significant taxes and penalties that may be assessed if you are younger than 591/2 and you withdraw the funds. Under certain circumstances, you may have the ability to take so-called hardship distributions for purposes such as buying a primary residence or paying tuition. Some plans also allow you to take a loan. However, removing dollars from the plan will only slow your momentum.

Shaping up your 401(k) account is only the first step. A comprehensive retirement strategy takes into consideration other retirement and tax-deferred savings accounts, as well as taxable portfolios. For example, an executive deferred compensation plan at work may allow you to put additional amounts into a tax-deferred savings account. You may also have access to a stock purchase plan. In addition, there are stock options, annuities, IRAs and Section 529 college savings plans for your children or grandchildren.

These accounts cannot be viewed in isolation. If you hold a large amount of your company's stock in a 401(k) or some other company-sponsored plan, you could be vulnerable to a cyclical or an unexpected downturn in your company's fortunes. Even if your holdings of company stock appear safe on the surface, a deeper examination of your other accounts could reveal the same stock is held by some of your mutual funds, leaving you overexposed. You also might find your company stock holdings, combined with your holdings in other accounts, leave your assets concentrated in one sector of the economy or underexposed to others.

The bottom line is you must view all of your assets as an integrated whole. All of your assets and accounts when taken together should be properly balanced among stocks, bonds and cash, and well-diversified within each of these asset classes. The balance that is right for you will be based on your tolerance for risk, your income goals and the amount of time you have until retirement.

While some economists are anticipating below-average returns in the near term, you don't have to lower your expectations for retirement. Rather, sticking to a strategy for saving at regular intervals, diversifying your portfolio and taking into account the full range of your savings earmarked for retirement can better shield you from short-term market declines and position you for meeting your longer-term goals. Most importantly, get help when you need it. A financial adviser can provide valuable insights on how to weather short-term market fluctuations.

Jason Ikaika Hauanio, CFM, CIMA, is a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch, 322-1577.

By Rebekah Outside my kitchen window are four rosebushes. After a recent trim, I noticed a small round shape on one thorny branch, but it was too small to be a nest, so I thought it must be a cocoon....

I’ll be honest. The thought of sharpening all those little teeth, with their attendant geometries has always intimidated me. But so did tuning my first Stanley Bailey Type 11 smoother. And what I’ve learned from tuning my planes is that I understand my tools and the way they shape the wood on a much more intimate level. And that’s made me a better woodworker.

I wanted to have that same understanding for my handsaws. And I wanted to have the confidence and skill to sharpen my own saws any time they required it. To be and do less, I felt, would be to surrender craftsmanship to my fear of damaging the saw.

In any event, here’s a shot of the teeth before I cleaned up the plate.

Research
If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll spend more time reading up on handsaw sharpening than you’ll spend actually sharpening your first saw. And that’s a good thing. You want to give yourself the best odds of being successful the first time.

These were the sources that I found most useful:

Source Link
Article-”Saw Filing—A Beginner’s Primer,” Pete Taran http://www.vintagesaws.com/cgi-bin/frameset.cgi?left=main&right=/library/library.html

Article-”“Sharpening saws,” Bob Smalser http://www.cianperez.com/Wood/WoodDocs/Wood_How_To/INDEX_How_To_pages/Smalser_on_SharpeningHandsaws.htm

Article-”“Saw Sharpening,” Ken Greenberg www.calast.com/personal/ken/Saw%20Sharpening.pdf

Video-”Episode #7: Sharpening Part 3,” Bob Rozaieski http://www.logancabinetshoppe.com/1/post/2009/09/episode.html

Video-”Saws Part 1: Techniques and Sharpening a Rip Saw,” Thomas Lie- Nielsen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orPgaoF31ZQ

Video-”Saws Part 2: Sharpening a Cross Cut Saw & Setting Saw Teeth,” Thomas Lie- Nielsen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flJMdpkcn5s&feature=related

Gearing Up
You’ll want to collect all the gear necessary to complete your sharpening to avoid the frustration of setting aside the job before it’s finished.

You’ll need the following:

—Files in sizes appropriate to the points per inch (ppi) of your saw (as detailed in the articles above and the diagram below). You can get them at Ace Hardware and toolsforwoodworking.com. Budget about $6.00/file.

—A saw vice to hold your saw steady (I built the shop-made vice detailed in the June 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine). Built from shop scraps, the cost is “free”.

—Some sort of magnification so that you can see what you’re doing. I bought some reading glasses at the grocery store for $20.00, but there are less costly ones out there.

—A saw set (ordered mine from lee valley tools), budget $32.00 which included shipping to the wiles of Colorado.

—Appropriate jigs (A. rake, B. fleam, C. file handle, D. file jointer fence—all “free” using shop scraps.)

If this is your first time sharpening, there are five steps to follow.

Step 1: Let’s get Jiggy
You’ll want to go to the 5-minute trouble of creating jigs and aids. I found them invaluable to keep track of which direction I applied the file. I can tell you after the fact, that filing my rip saws was a breeze. But for the crosscut saw I was rehabbing, I needed help to keep a proper orientation in x, y and z axes.

Jigs A and B will help you track the rake and slope of your sharpening. The diagram to the right will help you understand the direction of movement these terms refer to. (You can download this chart at toolsforworkingwood.com.)

A. Rake jig.
This is placed on the end of your file and will help you apply the proper rake angle to the teeth. For my crosscut saw, I used a standard 15 degree rake angle. (To create the jig, I followed the directions in Taran’s article.)

B. Fleam guide.
The first time I sharpened my rehabbed Disston 12” backsaw, I placed a ruler on the bench at a 25 degree angle. The second go-around, I cut a kerf into a 3” x 1” block at a 20 degree angle (wanted less fleam) and placed it on the saw blade as a guide. This worked MUCH better.

C. File handle.
To avoid blisters and the pain of a file digging into your hand, you’ll want to fashion a handle for your file. I cut a 5” length of oak dowel I had lying around and drilled a hole to fit the shank into. I compared my drill bit to the shank diameter and test drilled in scrap to find the best fit.

D. File jointer fence.
You can use a file barehanded to joint your saw, but I wanted the guidance that a fence provides. So I measured the thickness of my file and routed a channel. It was a bit big so I layered on masking tape onto the file until I got a snug fit.

Step 2: Joint the saw.
The red arrows below show that some teeth are shorter than others. You want all the teeth working for you in the same plane as you push it through the wood. To achieve this, I would joint my Disston backsaw. This is done by placing the file jointer fence flush against the saw blade and applying some pressure as you steadily run it across the full length of the blade. You don’t need a lot of passes. In this case 3 passes were plenty to joint almost every tooth top.

Notice the flats on top of most of the teeth in the picture below. Not to worry, shaping/sharpening would transform these into points.

Step 3: Shape the teeth
Full disclosure: I didn’t really understand this step, so I skipped it in favor of sharpening. As it turns out this worked fine for me.

Step 4: Sharpen the teeth
I’ll be honest. The first sharpening was a bear. In retrospect, I wonder if this saw had been filed rip originally. When I filed it crosscut the fleam did not go on easily. I had to work at it. Maybe I used too high an angle (25 degrees initially) but that first sharpening took a while.

Your first tentative strokes will indeed take time. But you’ll be repeating the same motions, using the same orientations of the rake and fleam on every tooth. My Disston has 11 points per inch, which equates to 10 teeth per inch. So doing the math gives us: 10 teeth per inch x 12 inches = 120 teeth. After the first 40 teeth, I got into a rhythm, and the technique got much easier.

Step 5 (or 3.5 depending upon whether you want to set the teeth before filing or after): Set the teeth
I chose not to set the Disston’s teeth. While I had sharpened the teeth a few times, the set looked good and I felt it didn’t need it.

However, for illustrative purposes, I will use my eBay Spear & Jackson 14” tenon saw, which did need some serious setting. After sharpening the S&J, the tool left me speechless because the cuts were literally as smooth as a hand-planed surface. I was breathless too, because the tool would bind in the cut and require a lot of effort to push. Both symptoms screamed “SET ME!” according to my research.

I keep a log of my saws which notes their ppi, fleam and rake angles. The log guides my choices of files and adjustments to my saw set. My tenon saw’s 12 ppi called for the 12 setting on the saw set. Setting took 5 minutes following the instructions in the sources listed above.

Step Moment of Truth
Then it was time to test whether the time and energy I spent learning to sharpen paid off on my first attempt. In a word—Yes. The Disston cut finely, meaning that it cut slowly but left a very smooth finish.

However, I wanted a bit more aggressive cutting action to work through my sawing faster.

So I decided to sharpen it again.

I pulled out a 10 x loop to inspect the teeth before I started, and discovered that they had not been fully shaped on the first sharpening. The sharpened edges did not fully extend to the bottom of the gullet. So the second time, I applied firmer pressure to the file to more starkly define the gullets. I decreased the fleam angle to 20 degrees and used (jig picture in B above) an on-the-saw guide this time versus a ruler laid on the bench below the vice. This worked much better.

After the second sharpening, there were still some flats where I had jointed the saw. So I sharpened it again, and this time, it took. My error was that instead of the three strokes I gave each tooth, I should have done five to begin with to eliminate the flats.

When I tested the saw, I found that it was a bit harder to start the cut. But once started, it cuts as quickly as I wanted it to. Here’s a shot of the test cut here. It’s not as fine as the first sharpening but I like the results.

And here she is, ready for service in my tool kit.

—70-year old Disston saw—$22.43

—Saw sharpening kit (4-files, reading glasses & saw set)—$75.00

—The confidence and basic skills to sharpen my entire nest of saws—Priceless :)

Sharpening my crosscut saws was challenging but very doable. Filing my rip saws was as easy as it could be. And as I add more experience, I can try different rake and fleam angles to evaluate their performance on the woods I work with.

If I can do it You Can Do It
Believe me when I tell you that learning to sharpen my saws was much easier to do—with the aids of the resources I mentioned before—than I expected.

Now, I’m no master at it, but I do have enough of the basics down to keep my saws in working order. Better still, I have a fuller understanding of how my saws interact with the wood, and what adjustments to make to achieve different effects (rougher/faster cut versus smoother/slower cut, for example).

And when you think about it, isn’t that how the artisans of days past would have demanded that it be? They were paid for their output, so they needed to work quickly. They needed sharp saws to do that and they didn’t have time to piddle away on complex sharpening methods.

So if you’ve ever thought about trying it, add it to your list of projects. You’ll add a layer of skills to take your craftsmanship to the next level.

Wishing you sawing success!

Not much change since last weeks post. Still four eggs in good shape, should be hatching in two to three weeks. I added vertical shot to show...

qiongqiong posted an update: Let go, that is, free -Herve Leger sale

We can not be attached because of persistent things, and experience to all of the pain.

The clouds you observed it? You look at, and sometimes the shape of the cloud like a flower, and then it began to change into a tree, a cow, a fish; If you are attached to the shape of flowers, of course you will be very frustrated, because the flowers will disappear soon but not into other things, this is the nature of the cloud. christian louboutin shoes

The same is true of life, has been in the "change" state, become lovers heart, things will change your mind, health will change, who yesterday was still today may not be in, everything is constantly changing, nothing in life unchanged.buy NFL Jerseys

But the problem lies in that we are in the habit of "habit" to look at people and things around, so that when change occurs, people regarded as a disaster, and it is converted into control joy sticks. Have to laugh, cry out, and that is why our heart is always chaos, because the vagaries of things already, everything is changing, if you are persistent, the heart and how quiet it? NFL Jerseys

The reason why people upset that those who pressed on something unstable and unreal. You put on a house on quicksand, but yearn for a stable nest forever. Is it possible?

One reason for suffering is too inflexible to those who will eventually lose. No matter what you get, the loss is already doomed. Because all things are "too" and "loss" of the process, all are "in" and "to" dimension, the loss is the dimension of the process and the inevitable result. If we can not see through, it can not end suffering.

When you are suffering sad, you noticed it? You must be with the "truth" in the fight, because you do not want to accept that fact, so painful sad, right? Herve Leger sale

People change, things will become, things will become, for all the world like a cloud all the same, is impermanent, so do not go to perseverance, not to create their own problems. When the cloud is a flower, very good; when it becomes a tree, it does not matter, why not go with the flow, when the wind blows to the wind along with the swing; When the rain to dance in the rain! No obsession, can not afford to turbulence, the case of clear sky. mbt shoes sale

People often say: free hard. In fact, liberation is not difficult, as long as you are under the persistent client was incensed, the moment to escape, is not it?

http://www.hervelegerstore-outlet.com

http://www.nfl-jersey-cheap.com

Comments: 0

Lord Coe's hymn to the new Olympic mountain-biking course may have been hyperbolic, but the circuit is complete, and will test riders to the limit
Track cycling events at the 2010 Olympics: a brief guide

"Probably one of the most beautiful venues I've seen anywhere in the world."

No, not Usain Bolt rhapsodising about Beijing's Bird's Nest after shattering the world sprint records. Nor Tiger Woods standing triumphant, again, at the final hole of Augusta. And no, it's not a hyperventilating Alan Partridgeat his local Rover dealership. No this eulogy came from the mouth of Lord Sebastian Coe as he officially marked the completion of the Olympic mountain bike course in Hadleigh, Essex.

Granted, the sun was beaming down unseasonably early, lending proceedings a cheery air; perhaps luckier still was the silvery haze obscuring all but the tallest towers of Canvey Island's refineries a mile across the Thames estuary. But such unsolicited hyperbole left even the local officials slack-jawed.

Coe went on to joke: "In the last seven years there have been two exchanges in my office — and my subsequent reactions — that I'm really grateful have never been recorded: the first was fairly recently when someone came in to tell me that the countdown clock had stopped. The second was almost four years earlier when someone else called to tell me that they'd found a mountain in Essex!" It's the way he tells them.

Readers may recall we visited the site back in the autumn as the trail-building process was well underway. And we had to take our hats off to Martin Seddon and his crew for bringing so much interest to such an unpromising location. Now we could see that development had continued apace, despite horrendous working conditions through a snowy winter: the main obstacles had been constructed and all the sections properly linked up. In only eight short months — and for the minuscule sum (in Olympic terms) of £800k — Hadleigh now joins the velodrome in Stratford as one of the few completed arenas. With the final stone laid, we were among the lucky few invited to take a spin on the virgin track.

Before that it was the turn of the pros from Team GB's mountain bike squad, with the most recognisable face among them 29-year-old Liam Killeen. As current national champion, former Commwealth champion and seventh-placed finisher in Beijing, Killeen represents the best chance for home medals in this event. So, how did he rate the Hadleigh circuit?

"The designers have done really well. For spectators it's great as they've used the natural bowl, and from one particular point you can see maybe 70% of the course. This is very rare for mountain bike events, which are usually enclosed in forest, so that bodes well for good television. But from a rider perspective, you have to say the course is very physically demanding. Average mountain bikers could ride around it fairly easily, but at race pace it's a different matter altogether. There's six or seven short but steep climbs per lap, and we're maybe looking at eight, 13-minute laps, so it will be pretty relentless. And when you factor in these technical sections it really adds to the difficulty, especially when you're fatigued."

Killeen rode his hardtail bike (front suspension only) the previous day, but was trying out a full-suspension model for the grand unveiling. Which did he think was more likely to be favoured by the world's elite?

"At the moment the course is very groomed, so a hardtail is fine. But actually it may become more of a full-sus course — when it gets cut up, and bearing in mind that you may be racing for the best part of two hours, it'll be really important to keep your body in decent shape for a surge in the last two laps when the medals could likely be decided."

With that it was my turn to saddle up. From the start it's a short switchback climb to the first of the rock sections, this one offering three alternative lines (see picture), before cresting on a wide track into a copse. This leads you to the second of the most interesting features, the "dual descender", where the more technical "A" line will save several seconds compared to those opting for line "B". This could be a decisive spot next August.

Very quickly you're on to a wooden boardwalk feature, again with two route choices – left involves a gap jump, while right is an easier roller. A swift double-track descent then takes you into the country park for a sustained climb up to what will be the main spectator viewpoint. After that height gain it's downhill, via another rock garden, over and through a tunnel, before more mixed climbing returns you to the grandstands.

Just out of view lies the last of the tricky drops, followed by another rapid descent and the appropriately-named "cardiac climb". Reward for gaining the top here is perhaps the most fun section – a swooping, high-banked plunge that gives you a glimpse of the finish area. One more switchback ascent, a narrow chute and you're done.

We'd ridden at a sedate pace, stopping to assess each feature in turn and the general consensus was that it would rate as moderate in UK trail centre terms. But as Killeen suggested, you could easily see how it would become a different prospect at professional race pace. It'll certainly be fast and furious, very likely a war of attrition, with refuelling and pacing becoming important strategies.

And readers wondering if they'll be able to ride at the site, watch this space. Essex County Council and The Salvation Army, which owns the site, say: "The intention is for the course to be available for public use from 2013 onwards", although it is not yet clear how the course will be adapted or whether the public will be able to use it.

• The mountain bike events take place on 11-12 August 2012. Tickets will be priced from £20-45 – enter the ballot now.

• John Kitchiner is editor of London Cyclist magazine.

Hamilton, at Prune.

Gabrielle Hamilton, the executive chef and owner of New York's forever-crowded Prune, tells us that hitting the book-tour trail (something most authors dread) for her new memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter was actually a relief: "My benchmark is having worked the brunch shift at 39 weeks pregnant," she says. "And so my joke to myself — for anyone who will listen — is, 'It's not as hard as that!'" Tellingly, the tour must have worked: Just a little over week after the book's March 1 release, it made its New York Times best-seller list debut at No. 2 and is still hanging out in the top ten. Hamilton says that living the life of a best-selling author has been an adventure ("It's vaguely taxing and it's stretching a different set of muscles"), but she says it's also come with another unexpected perk this week: "I've eaten every meal with utensils, sitting down; that's not my normal, so that's civilized." To read all about that civility, read on in this week's New York Diet.

Friday, March 25
Started the day at home. Gorilla coffee, filter drip, with half and half, and leftover cold poached eggs and cold buttered toast crusts left behind by my kids.

Later I had half of a pulled-pork sandwich on a bad, overly sweet roll and some underseasoned, unthoughtful salad put up for family meal at Prune.

There was an impulse buy as I was flying to pick up my kids from school — Chinatown duck, taken off the hook in the window. I went in and got whatever amount of money I had in my wallet at the time. I think I had like five bucks, and said, "Can I please have five bucks' worth of that duck?" And I ate that at dinner.

The rest of dinner was pasta al burro e parmigiano [pasta with butter and parmesan] eaten from the bottom of the pot after feeding it to my kids for dinner. These are the most embarrassing chef's kids you've ever encountered. They're 4 and 6, almost 5 and 7. They eat nothing. The only good thing about it is that the pasta is good, the butter is good, and so is the quality of the Parmesan. But I'm ready to kill myself from eating this meal every night for dinner — I tried to get them to at least try a whole bunch of steamed asparagus with butter and lemon. But they left it there, so I ate it while doing the dishes.

To drink, I had a double negroni — mama's nerve tonic! It's so digestive because of the Campari, the bitter … it's a perfect combination, bitter and sweet. My boys come running into the house, they're naked in the first five minutes. They're rambunctious boys. They're tearing apart the Victoria's Secret catalogue; they are playing computer games. I get them to wash their hands, and then I set the table, if you could even call it that. It's like the kitchen counter. I put the food there, the ice water there, and I'm drinking a negroni through all of that. It makes mama fun and easy to be with. It's not a nightcap; it's a prophylactic.

Saturday, March 26
Had Gimme! coffee, filter drip, with half and half, at home. Is this the time to talk about coffee? No more Stumptown after they charged me $17.50 for thirteen ounces of whole bean. When I asked why it was so much more than equally delicious Gorilla or Gimme! beans, the guy said, "Well, we really pay attention to quality." Ouch. I'm so glad to be in the coffee heaven we are in in NYC right now, where you can now get coffee that tastes of the bean and not just the roast, but on my Gimme! bag it actually says, among other things: "Aroma: hot chocolate cake, Italian leather; Body: buttery with chrome-velvet texture," which just makes me groan and wince.

Breakfast was cold Parmesan omelette and cold toast crusts leftover from the kids' breakfast. I wanted the bacon, but they ate it all. Also had a few bites of cold apple-and-cinnamon-flavor instant oatmeal, and a double Emergen-C. Something was brewing and I cannot get sick. Cannot.

Later I had some French ham, butter, and Dijon on Bread Alone toast.

Dinner at Kin Shop: squid ink broth with hot sesame oil& #8212; so delicious and helped burn out the cold that is trying to nest in my chest — grilled quail with yellow curry, and two Manhattans. We shared a dish of "aquatic vegetables" for the table, which we decided should be a question on the SATs: Name four aquatic vegetables. At one point, Anne Burrell walked in, surveyed the room while chewing gum vigorously, then left.

Sunday, March 27
Gimme! Coffee, filter drip, with half and half.

That day I traveled to Chicago for my book tour. I had a cup of chicken-noodle soup and a slice of pizza at the airport. Have you ever been in the Maritime Terminal at La Guardia? It was my first time. Cool and old, and a little sad and tarnished at the same time.

Had some Emergen-C and mini-bar potato chips before heading out to my book event at Publican.

There, I had bourbon. Bourbon's my, when I feel a cold coming on, burn-it-off drink. Also: radishes with goat butter and extra-virgin olive oil, cured meats and pork pie, a delicious little bruschetta of grilled mackerel with pureed fresh chickpeas and orange, a crunchy and perfectly dressed and seasoned salad of little gem lettuce with shaved radishes and fennel and a salty farmer's cheese they make themselves at the Publican, and gorgeous spit-roasted baby lambs. Also some cold asparagus vinaigrette, ramps with harissa and guanciale, and a bite or two of rhubarb bread pudding.

I cracked up to see Paul Kahan outside with bloodshot eyes, reeking of the firepit smoke, and joking that he'd already singed off his eyebrow and lashes on the left side!

And an after-event drink at their taco place, Big Star — one last bourbon.

Monday, March 28
Room-service coffee with half and half.

After some local TV taping, I went to Argyle Street for Vietnamese: Got a huge bowl of very decent pho with all of the tendon and cartilage and tripe and beef balls. This was the definitive moment when I beat back the cold. At first I was worried that I wouldn't pick the best place around there, or that I would miss the coolest place, but since I didn't have any recommendations I just sussed it out on my own and went into the place that looked most intriguing to me. I like to sometimes eat in a town without any expert's "guidance," to decide and discover for myself.

Dinner at the Bristol with Paul Kahan, Donnie Madia, and some friends. We had their housemade charcuterie, a rib-eye steak with red-wine butter, and shrimp with anchovy butter. Ha! An item from Prune's opening menu! We shared a still-warm excellent Basque cake. Excellent wines throughout dinner. I have to ask Donnie what they were; he ordered.

Tuesday, March 29
Room-service coffee with half and half, then back to NYC.

At the airport it was a breakfast burrito — scrambled egg and chorizo. The griddle gal was perfect — surly but efficient. She sprayed the griddle with some crap out of an aerosol can, ladled out a swath of beaten "egg product," which blistered up on contact, then she spatula'd that crap right up into the tortilla and sent it down the assembly line. The girl in plastic gloves added cheese and salsa, and they charged me $4.95.

Back home, and more pasta al burro e parmigiano. That night it was orecchiete, Marco's favorite shape. We also had swordfish with butter-lemon sauce, which Leone miraculously ate with gusto! I had Marco's uneaten portion. On the side were cooked carrots with butter and salt and lemon, but the kids didn't go for it, so I ate them. A few bites of cambozola blue cheese, too.

And a Negroni cocktail. If there are children, there is nerve tonic.

Wednesday, March 30
Gimme! coffee, filter drip, with half and half.

Then I had cold omelette left over from morning family meal at Prune. And leftover cold toast that I dressed up with a schmear of Valdeon blue cheese.

Later it was half a sweet-Italian-sausage sandwich and some nicely dressed, well-seasoned salad leftover from our midday family meal.

Dinner was a kiddie meal. I made a pork chop and roasted cauliflower. I asked them both to take a bite, and they made a mockery. They ate one bite. So there was buttered pasta with Parmesan: penne. Even though it's not very interesting for me to eat the pasta, if I'm cooking it and they're eating it, that's a happy exchange.

Read more posts by Jillian Goodman

Filed Under: the grub street diet, argyle street, big star, donnie madia, gabrielle hamilton, gimme! coffee, gorilla coffee, kin shop, paul kahan, prune, stumptown, the new york diet, the publican

Lady, oldest osprey in the UK, is preparing to mate in Dunkeld, Scotland, after travelling thousands of miles from the Gambia

One of the world's oldest ospreys, which has already laid 58 eggs and seen 48 chicks leave her nest, has returned to her roost in the Highlands, breaking her own record for longevity.

The osprey known as Lady, pictured on Tuesday, landed back in her eyrie at a wildlife reserve near Dunkeld on Monday after completing her 21st migration, ending a round trip of roughly 6,000 miles to and from her winter home in west Africa. And despite living three times as long as most breeding females, the 26-year-old bird of prey is again by her nest – now grown to the size of a double bed – preparing for her mate.

She is already a global celebrity after a crisis last June when she nearly died from dehydration and starvation after she failed to feed for several days. Tens of thousands of birdwatchers from around the world saw live pictures from the "nest cam" at the Loch of the Lowes reserve which showed Lady weak and listless. She survived and flew off for her 3,000-mile flight to the Gambia; staff at the Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve suspected it would be her last.

Robert Potter, the trust's regional manager, was delighted when her identity was confirmed on Monday by expert ornithologists, thanks to a close-up of one of her eyes, which has a distinctive keyhole shape on its iris. "It's fantastic. It just shows what an amazing bird she is, to make that journey at this age," he said. "She's looking very healthy and is going about her business of tidying up her nest and getting everything ready."

Lady is already confirmed as the oldest wild osprey in Britain and probably the oldest known in the world. The species normally lives to about 10 in the wild, while the oldest recorded osprey in the world reached 32.

But as mother to 48 successful fledglings, Lady's productivity has played a crucial role in the species' survival. Nearly 100 years after it was brought back from near extinction in the UK, there are still only about 200 breeding pairs in Scotland, making the osprey rarer than the golden eagle.

Her arrival home has again provoked worldwide interest. Viewings on Lady's nest cam have been five times higher than usual over the last 24 hours, with fans from as far away as Australia, Canada, Belize and Mauritius logging on.

The key question is whether her mate will return. Several ospreys, including at least one young male, have come close over the last 24 hours but all flew off. If no mate appears in the next week, her breeding chances this year may be over.

MJSA Announces Winners of Vision Awards

 

The investors have landed. Since the end of the housing bubble, house prices have plummeted. Thousands of foreclosures are taking place every day, millions of homeowners are under water, and the supply of homes for sale continues to grow. Real estate, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and with demand from homebuyers still weak across the board, the vacuum has been filled by investors. From Las Vegas to Detroit, from Phoenix to New Haven, thousands of real estate investors are taking advantage of the fire sale, picking up distressed real estate, buying REO (real-estate-owned or lender-owned) properties, bidding at foreclosure sales, or packaging short sales for homeowners facing foreclosure. In some areas, particularly in the Sun Belt, investors may make up as many as half of all the buyers in the market. City officials and CDCs have watched the wave of investor purchases sweep over their communities with dismay. CDCs trying to buy REO properties to fix up and resell under the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) have seen the properties they want picked up instead by faster-moving investors. Neighbors have watched as one-time owner-occupied houses on their blocks become rental properties or just abandoned. Two years ago, few cities or CDCs were much concerned about investors. Today, they have become one of the most urgent issues facing those who care about urban neighborhoods, yet many still do not fully understand what investors want and how their presence affects neighborhoods. Most understand even less how local governments, CDCs, and citizens can encourage responsible investor behavior, making them a positive rather than a negative force in their communities. What Do Investors Want? Investors want to make money. That is neither good nor bad in and of itself, but how they make money will determine whether they have a positive or negative impact on a community. That, in turn, depends far less on the investor’s personality than on the dynamics of the local housing market. Some markets will reward responsible investor activity, while others, unfortunately, reward more predatory behavior. How investors behave is influenced by the market, but is not foreordained; their behavior can be influenced by public sector regulation and incentives. Although it is an oversimplification, distressed property investors can be divided into four broad categories. Rehabbers and holders gravitate toward areas where market prices for distressed properties, while low enough to enable the investment to be profitable, are still high enough to discourage scavengers. For a serious rehabber to make a profit, the market price of an adequately fixed-up house in the area must be greater than the sum of the property’s acquisition and rehab costs. This is true in some markets but not in others. In many parts of Detroit, for example, a house that may cost $10,000 to buy and might need another $40,000 in rehab may not appraise higher than $30,000 after rehab. A responsible rehabber would soon go broke working without public subsidies in that market. The same is true of holders. For an investor to maintain a property on a long-term basis while realizing a decent but unspectacular cash flow, there must be a realistic expectation that the property will at a minimum maintain its value, and be likely to start appreciating in the next few years. The property must also fall within a narrow price range—it must be inexpensive enough so that the investor will see a positive cash flow at market rent, but expensive enough so that the purchase price cannot be quickly amortized through cash flow alone. This is often true in an area like Phoenix, where investors are buying single-family houses for $60,000 or higher, and renting them out at $800 to $900 per month. Since many people believe the Phoenix market is close to bottoming out, they expect their houses will gain value over the next five years. Detroit is very different. There, from a pure investment standpoint, it’s hard to justify a long-term holding strategy. Properties can be bought for less than $10,000, have little upside potential, but can be rented—even in poor condition—for $600 to $700 per month. Such properties attract flippers, who prey on the ignorance of others, including out-of-town investors who think that spending $25,000 on a house worth $10,000 is a good deal. Those properties also attract milkers, who spend little on maintenance, ignore property tax bills, recoup their investment quickly through rents, and walk away from the property after a year or two with a tidy profit. While an investor who keeps properties in good shape and pays property taxes on time might be able to make money, the rents in Detroit are still high relative to the cost of buying distressed properties. Investors who milk their properties can make much more money, with far less hassle and effort. The economic environment motivates them to behave irresponsibly. Investors Woven Into the Community Fabric Investors are a major part of the picture in most neighborhoods affected by foreclosures and their property investments dwarf the amount being spent by cities and CDCs. Investors spent over $2 billion buying single-family houses and condos in the Phoenix area in 2009 alone—more than the entire amount appropriated for NSP2 nationally. While some prospective homebuyers are being outbid by investors, in most cases investors are buying houses that are likely to otherwise be abandoned. Without investors, Phoenix or Las Vegas might have a few more homeowners, but mainly they would have far more empty houses. Investor purchases don’t always reduce abandonment. Some just put off the day when the property is likely to be abandoned. Many property flips result abandonment, while when a milker has got what he needs from a property a year or two down the road, he is likely to walk away from it. Responsible small-scale investors, who are often local real estate agents, contractors, or just people with a small nest egg they are trying to put to work, tend to be selective, choosing properties with care, and buying single properties or at most a handful of separate properties at a time. What they buy they use. Large-scale investors, however, who buy properties in bulk in distressed markets, acquire a mixed bag of properties, often sight unseen. They then often cherry-pick the most appealing ones and walk away from the others. As one investment company advises its investors, “It’s best to purchase REO properties in bulk. The potential profits on the sellable properties should easily cover investor losses on the worthless ones.” These investors leave neighborhoods the worse for their efforts. What Can Towns Do? So, what is to be done? The fire sale is still under way and the wave of foreclosures and REO properties is unlikely to end any time soon. Under any circumstances, cities and CDCs will capture only a small fraction of the inventory; with home buying still anemic, most of the rest will go to investors. It is irresponsible for governments and community leaders to ignore them and hope things will work out. The future of our neighborhoods depends on local officials and others coming up with effective ways of motivating those investors who are willing to be responsible landlords, while discouraging others from setting up shop in their communities. Local governments have strong powers to keep track of property owners and compel them to maintain their properties. While financially strapped cities and towns may find it difficult to stay on top of rapidly changing properties and owners, they can enlist CDCs, neighborhood organizations, and citizens to help them, making them the city’s eyes and ears on the ground. Failure to exercise their powers, including enforcement of housing codes and timely collection of property taxes, makes local governments de facto enablers of abusive investor behavior. One of the first things a city can do is set up a landlord licensing program, which requires owners of rental properties to get a license. This license is only available if a landlord is current on property taxes and her property meets minimum health and safety standards. To cover the costs when a formerly owner-occupied property is bought by an investor, some cities in Minnesota charge a one-time rental conversion fee ($1,000 in Minneapolis, $500 in Brooklyn Center). This covers the cost of registering the property and conducting the initial inspection, and supports the city’s landlord education efforts. Cities often lack the resources to track all the properties being bought by investors, and local officials readily admit that most of the rental properties in their communities are not licensed. While Minneapolis employs a “unlicensed rental property finder” to track unlicensed properties down, CDCs and citizens can play a major role in making sure such programs are effective. Cities can set up web-based systems to make it easy for citizens to report unlicensed properties, while Atlanta has created a program of “neighborhood deputies” to report violations to the city and follow up on whether they are corrected by the owners. Some cities have gone after the “bad apples,” or the minority of investors and landlords who are typically responsible for most of the problems. Landlords who accumulate code and nuisance violations in Brooklyn Center get inspected more often and have to go through an extensive crime prevention program, including taking an eight-hour training course, using a model lease, and completing a security assessment of their properties, to be eligible to renew their rental license. In Raleigh, North Carolina, landlords who have violated property or nuisance ordinances must obtain a two-year Probationary Rental Occupancy Permit (PROP) from the city. Landlords in the PROP program must pay $500 per year for the two-year permit to cover the cost of administering the program, and must attend a city-approved residential property management course. The state of Utah has come up with a way of combining the stick and the carrot in a two-part state law. The first part allows cities to impose a “disproportionate impact fee” on rental properties based on a study that determines how much they impose greater service burdens on the city. In West Jordan, a fast-growing suburb of Salt Lake City, for example, the fee runs from $60 to $200 per unit per year over and above the $75 annual license fee, depending on the type of building. The second part of the Utah law is that if a city enacts a disproportionate impact fee, it must also enact a “good landlord program,” and offer landlords a substantial discount from the fee if they complete an approved landlord training program, implement a series of crime reduction measures, agree to certain tenant selection procedures, and have no outstanding code violations. West Jordan rebates all but $7 per unit of the disproportionate impact fee to landlords who participate in the program. But solid regulations and effective enforcement are only a starting point. Enforcement may be able to drive out some bad actors, but if the community wants to foster more good actors—that is, responsible landlords who maintain their properties well and select their tenants carefully—they should think about incentives. The Utah program is one example, but a program widely used in the United Kingdom, known as a Landlord Accreditation Scheme, is worth emulating in the United States. While its use is actively promoted by the national government, it is locally controlled, and each city can design its own program. Under the program in Oldham, a small city near Manchester, the landlord must adhere to a code of standards that includes both property and management standards. Those landlords who participate in the scheme receive a variety of benefits, including: Free loft and cavity wall insulation; Free energy efficiency check and report; Free gas safety certificate (during the first year of membership); Free carbon monoxide alarms and smoke detectors; Free security lights and secure door and window locks; Free electrical safety check; Free property advertising; and Discount on building and contents insurance. Other British local governments offer a variety of other benefits. Reading, west of London, has arranged for accredited landlords to receive a significant discount from a variety of local businesses, including builders, bed suppliers, and hardware shops. In Rochdale, the city guarantees tenants’ security deposit to participating landlords for otherwise-qualified tenants who don’t have the money. Even more important than the specific benefits, perhaps, participating landlords benefit by having a one-stop point of contact with city government and regular meetings between them and city officials; as such, these incentives can be worth a lot to a landlord. In return, the city can reasonably demand a high standard of landlord behavior, including maintaining the property in sound condition, selecting tenants responsibly, cooperating with anti-crime and drug activities, resolving disputes and making repairs speedily, and paying taxes and other obligations in timely fashion. The NSP Factor Some neighborhood stabilization programs are also working with investors. Milwaukee has established the NSP Rental Rehabilitation Program to make forgivable second mortgage loans up to $17,500 to responsible landlords to rehab properties for affordable rental housing. Elsewhere, CDCs and others are exploring such ideas as capital pools for investors in NSP target areas and partnerships between private investors and neighborhood-based nonprofits, where the nonprofit can provide property management services or help select responsible tenants or qualified buyers as part of the investor’s exit strategy. In the end, investors are an important, and most probably permanent, part of the neighborhood landscape. The houses they buy and rent out will continue to make up a major part of the rental housing stock in our towns and cities. After all, absentee owners have always owned a large part of the one- and two-family houses in American towns and cities; the biggest differences between the past and the present is the volume of investor purchases and the speed with which neighborhoods are changing. The trick is to find the right mixture of carrots and sticks to motivate responsible investor behavior and turn their presence into a community asset. Any community that is serious about trying to deal with problem properties and revitalizing their struggling neighborhoods should make this a major part of their strategy.

When you think of the holidays, brown chickens may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but there really is something winsome about these fluffy avians. Why French hens? Well, linguistic evidence suggests that the Twelve Days song originated in France, where chicken breeds were very different from those in England. So when the song crossed the Channel, translators felt the need to specify. You can get into the fowl-iday spirit in a bunch of ways these days, no coop required:

• Get chick hair: Everyone will love this cute Handmade Chicken Wool Felt Mini Hair Clip ($5), and this Feathered Butterfly Headband ($6) is an inexpensive but elegant piece.
• Cluck yourself clean: This adorable 3D Felted Chicken Soap ($22) and beautifully scented Tokyomilk Nest Egg 02 Bon Bon Bubbling Bath ($24) could relax even the most henpecked giftee.
• She's got eggs: These Laura Mercier Foundation Sponges ($15) are the color and shape of brown organic eggs.
• Watch out for droppings: This Chicken Poop Outdoors Lip Junk by Simone Chickenbone ($3) may have a gross name, but it's good stuff.

When leaf-cutter ants wear out their razor-sharp mandibles, they still can be productive members of their society, a new study shows. They change jobs, carrying the leaves their sharper sisters cut.

"Cutting leaves is hard work. Much of the cutting is done with a V-shaped blade between teeth on their mandibles that they use like a tailor who holds a pair of scissors in a fixed V shape to slice through cloth," says Robert Schofield, a scientist at the University of Oregon. "This blade starts out as sharp as the sharpest razor blade that humans have developed."

When it takes an ant about three times as much time and energy to cut out a leaf disc than it would have taken when her blades were sharp, behavior changes. The cutting ants rest their blades and join the delivery staff, carrying the discs cut from the leaves into their nest.

Full story at Futurity.

More research news from top universities.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Dec. 13, 2010 at 5:33 AM | Grief Factor: 1

Amazon.com is offering Rubbermaid FG7K3900CHILI Easy Find Lid 18-Piece Food-Storage Container Set with Lids for $9.99.

Product Details:
The 18-piece Easy Find Lid set gives consumers a wide variety of sizes to store food. The lids snap together and to the container bases so you can always find the right lid. The graduated sized containers nest for compact storage and one lid fits multiple size bases. The square shape allows for optimal space utilization. Containers are Microwave, Freezer and Dishwasher safe.

Wheatley's poem tells the story of the saint's assimilation into the natural world after she exiled herself on a Scottish island

According to legend, St Ronan of Iona was tormented by devils. This suggests he wrestled with sins of the flesh. Perhaps it was a wise decision on his sister's part, when, after he'd told her she had beautiful legs, she replied, "It's time to leave" and set off promptly for the island of Sula Sgeir.

In this week's poem, "St Brenhilda on Sula Sgeir", from David Wheatley's new collection, A Nest on the Waves, recently published by Gallery Press, Ronan's sister describes her own ascetic life, death and strange resurrection. Unlike St Francis of Assisi, also the subject of a poem in the collection, Brenhilda claims no deep kinship with the birds that keep her company. The voice given her is brisk and cold. Already she seems subsumed into the landscape, summoning her sense of violation through harsh local analogies: "something screamed louder / than a storm beach of seals, / touched closer than the snugness // of a bed among rocks". Although she begins by mentioning Ronan's gift of "the first fulmar of spring", I don't imagine this to have been a fluffy pet chick, but a valued delicacy. Guiltlessly, she devours the young gannets (guga), and uses a cormorant as a lamp.

I was reminded of the Siberian evenki, who depend on their reindeer for food, shelter, transport, clothing, yet revere the creatures they utilise. After a little research, I found a book called Good to Eat, Good to Live With: Nomads and Animals in Northern Eurasia and Africa. Perhaps Brenhilda's attitude to the wild fowl is not dissimilar.

The image of the cormorant with the flame of a "pentecostal tongue" emerging from its beak is disturbing: we remember the cruciform shape of the bird as it spreads its wings to dry, pointed out in another poem, "Flotsam", which begins: "A cormorant drying its wings / steps down refreshed from its cross." But protein and light are necessary, even for an ascetic. There is no apology, and the tone maintains its realism. This saint decides there is no point in preaching to the birds.

Although she believes the myth about the fork-tailed petrels, Brenhilda watches them with a naturalist's eye. They appear to walk on the water, but this doesn't make them Christ-like. As she observes, "the miracle would be to see them // walk on land". Ill-adapted to terra firma, they are "wrecks" when stumbling along the shore.

Somehow, the triplet stanzas also have the rhythm of the waves in them. The sentence often flows on over stanza break, and finds its caesurae in designedly awkward places. There is a stress on the negative: "I would not / have it"; "In its oily glare / nothing is illuminated." A frequent little underswell of dactyls. ("telling my prayers") and anapaests ("they are wrecks") adds to the choppiness.

What are Brenhilda's claims to sainthood? The poem doesn't tell us. She repeats the story that the petrel nests on the waves, keeping an egg under each wing, in a tone that might be envious. Perhaps she is reminded of her sacrifice. There is no suggestion that she has been spiritually recompensed. She might almost be a kind of female Buile Suibhne, the king who was punished by another St Ronan and became half-man, half-bird. In fact, there's a version of Brenhilda's legend in which her exile is a punishment for some sin of her own.

Towards the end of the poem the rhythms become quieter. The tension relaxes with that simple, melodiously positioned phrase "Fall / and ascend." Now Brenhilda seems to feel something like pleasure, and to absorb the rhythms of the sea-birds.

In her final metamorphosis, she merges with the landscape. The poem follows the legend that, after her death, she was found in a bothy, with the nest of a shag tucked in her ribcage. So she, in turn, has entered the food chain to provide nourishment ("my picked-clean ribs") and shelter for the wildlife. Standing on its own, the last line declares the final barrenness, and saint-like perfection, of her extinction. There are no human inhabitants on Sula Sgeir today, and though the annual guga hunt continues, the gannet colonies seem to be flourishing.

St Brenhilda on Sula Sgeir

My brother St Ronan gave me
the first fulmar of spring, but when
he praised my legs as I prayed

something screamed louder
than a storm beach of seals,
touched closer than the snugness

of a bed among rocks. I would not
have it: set sail, becoming
the flat earth's edge, living on guga

and cress, telling my prayers
by the light of a cormorant lamp,
its pentecostal tongue

its own wick. In its oily glare
nothing is illuminated.
Shall I preach to the birds?

I have seen the fork-tailed petrels
walk on water. It is no wonder
the miracle would be to see them

walk on land: a dozen yards
from shore they are wrecks,
lost for want of the ground

giving way. What, if I preach
to the birds, should I promise them
more than they have? The petrels

nest on the waves, an egg
under each wing. Fall
and ascend. I go down

easy into the earth, rise
again to the wispy tuft
of a shag's nest under

my picked-clear ribs.

Obesity push given too much weight

7 Dec 10 @ 03:30pm by Charis Chang

A NATIONAL obsession with obesity has gone too far and tipped some adolescents into developing eating disorders, says a Crows Nest psychologist.

Sarah McMahon, who specialises in eating disorders, said concern about an “obesity epidemic” had backfired.

“Children are being given maths assignments where they have to count calories,” she said.

“Education is helpful for some people but for some with certain personality characteristics, it can tip them over into a disorder.”

Her concerns are backed up by Mission Australia’s latest survey of young people aged 11 to 19 which found the leading personal concern was body image.

Eating disorder support group Butterfly Foundation chief executive officer Christine Morgan said most anti-obesity messages had a high focus on dieting.

This could lead to disordered eating including binge eating and possibly bulimia or anorexia.

She did not blame obesity education for causing eating disorders but said: “If we restrict ourselves from eating something, we can become obsessed with it and eventually will binge on it.

“We need to cut out comfort eating and listen to our body, eat to our natural appetite and then our body will go to its natural size and shape.

“You can’t buy a woman’s magazine at the moment without a diet in it, but the perfect bikini body is not achievable for most people - society needs to accept all shapes and sizes.”

Ms Morgan said some groups considered bulimia normal. “Through our work in schools we have anecdotal evidence that some young girls think bulimia is a good way to fit into a formal dress, or look good for the beach,” she said.

Former Miss Australia Caroline Pemberton, who runs a school program called Real Body Image, said many people did not realise that a model’s neck could be stretched by 15 per cent to make it look longer and more elegant.

Other photographic tricks included getting rid of red veins in the whites of the eyes, matching eye colour to font colour and removing smile wrinkles.

“I don’t think the solution is to ban Photoshop, we should just enjoy the images, much like we enjoy special effects in movies,” she said.

“I don’t think The Matrix is real and I don’t go away worried that I can’t bend like Keanu Reeves. We should enjoy the fantasy.”

MEANWHILE a young women’s program developed by Ku-ring-gai Youth Development Service (KYDS) has been named the best health promotion in NSW at the Mental Health Awards 2010.

KYDS manager David Citer said his group developed the program after noticing an increase in attempted suicide in young women in the past 20 years.

The five-week program, piloted at Chatswood High in June, discussed issues found to be most important to women, including body image, binge drinking, bullying and pressures around sex.

The program has now been taken up at Ku-ring-gai Creative Arts High School and St Ives High School and is available to private schools.

St Ives year 9 students participated in a session on body image on Wednesday.

The girls said they were constantly surrounded by images of the perfect body.

``It’s all around us, we can’t escape it,’’ one student said one. Another said: ``We are immersed in the idea of perfection.’‘

The students said the seminar was a great way to separate the myths from the facts and that they found the counsellors approachable and inclusive.

Source: North Shore Times @ http://north-shore-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/obesity-push-given-too-much-weight/

Please share your comments and insights on our blogs! We value your input.

Our mailman is a giant pain in my ass. For some reason, he can't just place our mail gently in our gigantic, cavernous rural mailbox. He has to wind up like a major league pitcher and throw it in. This means I can't pull up to the mailbox in my car and grab the mail, because I don't have the arms of Mr. Fantastic. All my mail is cowering against the back wall of the box like it's afraid of light. I have to get out of my car, which makes me cranky, especially if it's raining or snowing.

We are all just one event away from the loss of love, of the status quo, of the illusory balance of our lives. And this is terrifying and liberating. – Ruth Dugdall, ‘Why I Write’

There are many people in prison who maintain their innocence: for some that’s just what they’ve been told to say no matter what evidence is put in front of them; others truly believe in their innocence – they may acknowledge that they have committed some offence according to the laws of the land but they believe they are answerable to a higher power, if not God then at least their own conscience and there are those who because of some miscarriage of justice find themselves incarcerated for a crime they did not commit.

But let’s ask you a question: Who of us is truly innocent?

The police have been known in the past to fit somebody up, to plant evidence, to ensure that someone they regard as a criminal is convicted of something; if they can’t pin a specific crime on that person then as long as they get them for something then their consciences will let them sleep at night; as far as they’re concerned, the universal balance will have been restored.

Rose Wilks has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment for the accidental manslaughter of a baby boy, Luke. She has, from the very beginning, maintained her innocence and has continued to do so. She is now almost four years through her sentence and her parole hearing is due. In fact it’s only a mere six weeks away. So what are her chances of being released early? On the surface one would think she has a better-than-average chance: she’s been a model prisoner, is trusted by the prison officers and is generally dubbed up with new inmates to help them acclimatise.

The catch is there is really only one criterion that the parole board is interested in: remorse. Everything else that might concern then is powered by demonstrable proof of that single emotion. But is a woman who has constantly maintained that she was innocent of the crime for which she has been convicted capable of showing genuine remorse? She accepts that she is guilty of some fairly minor offences but nothing that would have involved her being locked up for any length of time.

A number of people’s opinions get considered: Jason Clarke, her partner, who even though he never loved her (something she was aware of when at liberty), has stood by her; Emma and Dominic Hatcher, the parents of the child who died; the staff who have had her in their charge for the past four years and, most importantly, the parole office, Cate Austin, a new ‘Care Bear’ as the staff refer to her position.

Cate and Rose have a number of things in common apart from their gender: for starters both have been mothers (Rose lost her son Joel while he was in Intensive Care, Cate has a young daughter), but neither has had a man for the past four years and both of them have wound up in prison because of things that went on in their pasts.

Six weeks as I’ve said is all Cate has to make her determination. And Rose knows it. The Rose Wilks that Cate meets in prison is not the same Rose Wilks that was convicted though. After four years of having to survive as a nonce, a term used for those convicted of offences against children, and (mis)treated accordingly she’s learned how to play the system and she has her own agenda. Yes, she wants to be free. But that’s not all.

The Woman Before Me begins, as many books of this ilk do, with a flashback to the night of the murder:

Creeping across the threshold, I listen to the silence of the sleeping house. These middle hours between three and four in the morning when the deepest sleep can be reached, make the kitchen seem larger and emptier than in daylight. Different. Although the difference is me. This time I’m saying goodbye.

The fragrance of Emma is everywhere, the delicate tang of her green apple perfume. That small wooden box, holding an assortment of tea bags, on the shelf – I’ll never see her bend over it, her hair falling like a veil, sweeping it away as she dithers over her selection. And Luke. She told me I’ll never see him again.

[…]

Through the kitchen into the large dining room, I move slowly. I don’t want to miss a thing. I want to capture the memory of it. That is where we’ve sat, Emma and I, cradling hot cups of tea. I notice the red paint on the walls, the white pine of the window seat. On the table is a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes, a box of matches. She’s supposed to have given up, but today has been a hard day.

[…]

I climb quietly up the stairs, avoiding the places I know would groan under my weight. Night-lights illuminate the hall, making me blink. Emma’s door is ajar and I can see into the bedroom. Her curtains are open and the moon is full.

Emma sleeps facing the window, the duvet pulled high on her face. Next to her is the bulk of a man, hidden under the bedding, Dominic. Entering their room, I creep up to her foetal shape … and wonder if I could touch her without her waking. Only inches separate me from her sleeping body.

[…]

Leaving Emma I walk further along the hall to the nursery, snaking behind the half-closed door. Inside the small room is the beautiful baby boy, asleep in his cot. … Usually I just watch him sleep, but tonight that isn’t enough.

He’s familiar with my touch and smell. He stirs when I lift him and I think I hear a voice in the next room. I pause but hear nothing. His weight is natural to me, I cradle him expertly, one arm along his body, my hand on his thigh…

I love him, love him fiercely.

I hear something in the next room: I freeze, waiting and the noise becomes louder. Low whispers and then moaning. The repetitive sound of the bed banging against the wall. Careful not to wake Luke, I place him back in his cot and make my way from his room, passing the bedroom where Emma’s moans are getting louder, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

So the scene has been set. This is the night of the fire. This is the night Luke dies. The cause of the fire is ascertained to have been a lit cigarette. But who lit it? Rose is also a smoker and Silk Cut is her brand of choice. In the morning the police arrest her, question her and based on what she admits to they charge her but she refuses to admit to lighting a cigarette in the house:

“Did you light a cigarette?”

“No! I would never smoke around him.”

“Did you drop a cigarette as you left, starting a fire in the house?”

“No!”

“I will ask you again; did you light a cigarette in the Hatcher’s home?”

“No, I did not.”

“A cigarette started that fire and you admit to being there, in the early hours of the morning.”

“But Emma smokes! It would have been hers. She was awake when I left. She was having sex with her husband.”

Sergeant West looks at me with undisguised contempt. “Mrs Hatcher was alone last night. Her husband was sleeping elsewhere.”

Eh? Okay, so who is the man sharing Emma’s bed? I’m not saying but what I will say is that we find out quite early in the book but it doesn’t answer the real burning question here: who is responsible for starting the fire? What is interesting is that Rose doesn’t make more about the presence of this other man when it comes to her trial. Her reason? She has worked out who it is and decided not to involve him. But why? Why be willing to go to prison for a crime she maintains she didn’t commit? Because we’re all guilty of something, that’s why. She’s tried herself and found out that she is wanting.

The Woman Before Me won the Luke Bitmead Novel Award and the CWA Debut Dagger Award and so I can’t sit here and say it’s a bad novel because it clearly isn’t. It is, however, what it is. It just does it quite well. It’s formulaic, yes, but some formulae are more interesting than others: M + S = G is boring (where M = man, S = smoking gun and G = guilty) but that’s where the great crime writers distinguish themselves. The question here is: Does Ruth Dugdall manage that?

The book is 288 pages long divided into 57 chapters averaging 5 pages each. The first four chapters are headed BEFORE; the rest, NOW. The BEFORE section is written in the first person by Rose. The NOW section comprises of ‘Black Book’ entries by Rose in which she tells her life story addressing Jason. Interspersed between these entries, we see Cate’s story unfold, told in the third person. I found Cate the most predictable character here. It’s a common ploy of crime novelists to have a fair degree of overlap between protagonist and antagonist and I never truly engaged with her. She does her job, metaphorically and literally. This is where the editing was a bit sloppy. Not all the ‘Black Book Entry’ chapters are indicated; also the chapter numbers get mixed up 21, 23, 24, 22, 25 – I don’t know if the number are just wrong or if chapter 22 is printed in the wrong place but it doesn’t muck up the overall story since chapters 22 and 25 are both part of Cate’s storyline.

What we do start to realise as we read through Rose’s black book is that a lot has gone on in her life that might explain if not exactly excuse her creeping into a friend’s house in the middle of the night. A few facts:

I was brought up in Suffolk, in a seaside town where my family owned a shop. Lowestoft had seen better days and the once-grand town houses along the front were now split into flats and lived in by single mums and teenagers on benefit. There were four of us: me, my mum and dad, and Peter. He was two years older than me, a beast of a boy with piggy eyes in a pale podgy face and a brain the size of a pea. He had my mother’s pale colouring but none of her delicacy. He used to bully me endlessly, as older brothers do, but Mum said I had to make allowances because Peter was ‘special’, meaning he was stupid.

Her mum suffers from what her father calls ‘loony spells’, bouts of depression that make her take to her bed for days on end; her father looks for comfort in the arms of Mrs Carron, “a flouncy woman with musky perfume and pink lips” according to Rose. On her ‘loony’ days, not wanting to be stuck in the shop getting under her father’s feet, she would sneak into her mother’s room “snuggling under the duvet and play at dens.” Outside in the Elaeagnus tree a blackbird has made its nest. It becomes the focus of both their interests:

“My chick,” she says, stroking my arm, “my Rosie.”

[…]

“I wish,” she said, and I held my breath, not having known her to wish for anything, so knowing it was important. “I wish I could look in that nest.” She surprised me. “Climb up, into the Elaeagnus – no, fly up there like a bird and peer in to see how many chicks, how many preciously thin, hollowed-boned babies are waiting, mouths wide for food.”

So there, there’s the first variable in this complex equation. But it’s only the start. In time her mum dies and Rose gets sent to stay with her Auntie Rita who drags her to her regular séances where Rose starts to gain a broader appreciation of just what exactly death is and isn’t. Then Jason comes on the scene and a warning from her dead mother that things will end badly if she doesn’t give him up. But what do the dead know? Just as Rose comes with baggage so does Jason, an ex he can’t quite get over but Rose is content to work around that until he decides he isn’t being fair to her and wants to leave. Then she plays her ace.

Like all books of this ilk it’s easy to look back and see where all the clues are and think this is bad writing because they’re so obvious but the fact is that when I was reading this I didn’t know what was coming. Who the man in Emma’s bed turns out to be was no big surprise but that’s misdirection on the author’s part – here, here’s a clue to keep you happy. And, yes, it is a clue but it’s not the evidence we need to help us decide if Cate’s assessment of Rose will be fair.

One thing I should make clear: Cate is not reinvestigating the case. Despite Rose’s assertions that she is innocent of the crime for which she has been convicted Cate is proceeding from the premise that the jury got it right, that is was guilty of accidental manslaughter. Her guilt is not an issue. Her suitability for reintegration into society is. Only we, the readers, get to read Rose’s black book until the very last chapter when Rose hands it to Cate. Is this as she’s walking out of the gate? I’m not saying. Does Cate recommend her release? I’m not saying. And I’m not saying what Jason and Emma and Dominic have to say or why Emma comes to the prison and waits for Cate. No, I’m not telling you.

What I will tell you is that Rose is guilty. She is guilty of a long list of things. She is guilty of loving people and believing people and trusting people. She is guilty of trespass and voyeurism. She is guilty of withholding the truth, even out-and-out lying. She is guilty of taking advantage of people, of manipulation too. She is guilty of stalking. But did she deserve to spend four years in prison and does she deserve to be released? You’ll have to read the book yourself to find out but be warned, like all crime novels, don’t be sidetracked by easy answers that come your way throughout the book. The real answer doesn’t come until page 286 so, if you’re in the habit of reading the last chapter to find out whodunit – don’t!

***

From the East Anglian Daily Times:

Ruth was born in 1971 and spent her early life in the Hull area, before moving to Ipswich when she was seven and her dad got a job down here. She went to Chantry High School and read voraciously – invariably darker material. “Books were always a place where you could fit in - create your own little world.”

After A-levels at Westbourne School she read English and theatre studies at Warwick University. A visit to prison – not as an inmate, obviously! – convinced her she wanted to work in jails after graduation, using drama therapy and suchlike to help offenders.

Ruth got a job with an Ipswich-based charity that helped people get their lives running better. Then, aiming to work in prisons and use drama and writing, she did an MA in social work at the University of East Anglia. She qualified in 1996 and worked in Lowestoft:

I loved being a probation officer. They get a really bad press, but I think they do a great job. People generally have the totally wrong idea about what they do. They think they're there to befriend offenders and give them cups of tea and sympathy; actually, it's all about challenging them and getting them to accept what they've done and think about the victim.

When the Carlford Unit opened in 2000 at Hollesley, near Woodbridge, she actively sought to work there. The prison takes some of the most serious young offenders in the country. Not an obvious choice for a place of work, you'd think:

I've always sought out situations that I want to know about, and maybe that frighten me as well. I think that's why I became a probation officer. If somebody says something that is shocking, I want to know more! I think this is important for writers and artists: I will ask that question other people won't ask.

Ruth wrote short stories, often drawing on work-related experiences. At the turn of the millennium –working in Lowestoft and living in Halesworth – she took a writing night-class in Bungay. The first story she wrote was from point of view of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to hang in England.

[…]

[Her first novel] The James Version … won a competition at the Winchester Writers' Festival. Ruth didn't intend to self-publish, but as the prize was 50 bound copies it seemed logical to pay for extra ones and sell them.

Wise move. Outlets such as Waterstones, Ottakers and even WH Smith took it, thanks to its local flavour, and 700-plus books were sold. Ruth returned to social work – not back to a prison environment this time but, instead, training student probation officers.

[…]

Ruth Dugdall is a committed writer - committed with a capital C. She aims to write every day – squeezing in three hours last night, for instance, when the children were in bed. Weekends, birthdays, even Christmas Day . . . none of them an excuse for work not to be done:

I am a writer who writes every day. I always have a notepad with me, whatever bag I've got. If I'm in Caffè Nero, and notice someone, or overhear something, you can pull the pad out. Someone was telling me the other day how her mum was obsessive with the rug, and combed the fringes. I thought, God, that's good! Use that . . .

Ruth – unusually – has two publishers. The Woman Before Me is published by Legend Press. At the same time she also struck a deal with Solidus Press who are bringing out her third book, The Sacrificial Man, this year too; they have also reissued The James Version. She is married to Andrew, a human resources director with the online retailer Play.com, with whom she has a daughter, Amber, and a son, Eden. She is currently working on her fifth book.

Let me leave you with an interview with her:

Since I completed this review Ruth tells me that the book has been nominated for the People's Book Award - the only literary award that is decided solely on public vote. If you'd like to vote for her then here is a link to the appropriate web page.

It’s geometric, it’s retro, it’s cool! Designed by Australian company Little Nest, the Ball Chair by Ero Aarnio is an excellent choice for the contemporary home. It reminds me of a cocoon of sorts with the globe shape. As a child, I would have loved to hide and curl up with a nice book in [...]

@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }@font-face { font-family: "Tahoma"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; }

Preschoolers are like little sponges who soak up knowledge and are ready to be exposed to numerical concepts and early literacy in a variety of fun ways. They earn best through playing and hands on experiences. They have vivid imaginations, are far more independent than toddlers, and have a growing attention span. Here are some of my favorite holiday gifts for the special preschooler in your life.

Look for the items marked as giveaways and leave a comment below to win. Extra entries can be entered through the Google Form but only after your initial comment.

GIVEAWAY: Take the Cake (Gamewright, $12.99)- Decorating cupcakes with shapes that come out of the sprinkle shaker to match them to a cupcake is learning at its most fun and is why the brand new Take the Cake has already won 6 prestigious awards. Shaking the shaker helps preschoolers practice fine motor skills and their shape and color recognition during a 15 minute game that requires no reading. Whether you play 1 game or 10 in a row, Take the Cake is a manageable bit of learning fun that can be completed before kids run off to the next thing. 2-4 players, ages 4+

Dinosaur Train All Aboard! Game (Pressman Toy, $12.99)- This 2-6 player game is fun fans of Dinosaur Train, the show, or any dino lovers. Players choose a character – Buddy, Tiny, Shiny, Don, Cory, Tank or The Conductor – to try to be the fastest to travel along the tracks and through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras. The Special Stopwatch spaces advance players closer to the nest, while the Dinosaur Crossing spaces send them back. The first player to reach the nest area in the center of the board wins. Ages 4+

GIVEAWAY: My Name is Not Isabella by Jennifer Fosberry (Monkey Barrel Press, $16.99)- We like to believe that we are raising Little Miss Techie to believe that she can do anything and love this story of young Isabella who models her imaginative play from the amazing women who changed history like Sally Ride, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, and others. A brief age-appropriate biography of each of the women appears at the end of the book along with readable definition of key words from the bios.

Alphie (Playskool, $39.99)- Remember Alphie from your childhood? This learning robot has been reinvented to be more lifelike thanks to an LCD screen that shows facial expressions, a friendly voice, and a personality that entices preschoolers to practice the alphabet, rhyming, counting, color, shapes, animal names, instrument sounds, and practice matching skills. I’m a fan of the thoughtful features like built in carrying handle and space to store the 30 included cards on the back of the toy when they aren’t being used. Ages 3+

GIVEAWAY: Sesame Street Video Games for PC, Wii, DSi ($29.99-$39.99)- Preschoolers will have fun learning ABCs with Elmo and counting with Cookie Monster in two brand new games from Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment that engage kids through the same Sesame Street approach to learning that we grew up on and now rely on to help our own kids develop a foundation for beginning math and literacy skills. In Sesame Street: Elmo's A-to-Zoo Adventure, kids head to the zoo with Elmo, Zoe and their animal friends, as they explore games based on a variety of literacy skills, including letter identification, letter sounds and word families. In Sesame Street: Cookie's Counting Carnival, kids join Cookie Monster and Big Bird at a fun-filled carnival through gameplay steeped in math skills that include number identification, counting, shapes and pattern recognition. Kids journey through the game in the many areas of the carnival such as The Grandstand, Midway, Petting Zoo, Food Court and the Arcade. Enter to win 1 set of both games for either Wii or DSi. Just indicate which set you want in the comments and the Google Form.

GIVEAWAY: Play-Doh Mega Fun Factory (Hasbro, $29.99)- This year Play-Doh celebrates the 50^th birthday of the original Fun Factory toy with the new Mega Fun Factory set. A battery operated conveyor belt allows kids to crank out toys and stamp candies that can be sold on the toy shop themed playmat or, as our kids like to do, plate them and serve them as tea party fare to their stuffed animals. The set comes with 6 cans of Play-Doh that can be conveniently stored in spaces in the Fun Factory. Ages 3 years & up.

Play-Doh Cake Makin’ Station (Hasbro, $14.99)- Captain Computer never tires of the Play-Doh Burger Builder from last year and his pastry-obsessed sister is a huge fan of the new Cake Makin’ Station that allows her to make incredible cakes thanks to 3 different icing stations, a place to stamp out frosting, pipe Play-Doh frosting, and create toppings. Like a real pastry chef would use, this toy also comes with a rotating cake stand so young bakers can admire their creations from all sides. I smell a future pastry chef who might be able to give the divas from Top Chef Just Desserts a run for their money! Ages 3 years & up.

GIVEAWAY: Hanukkah: A Counting Book by Emily Sper (Scholastic, currently on sale for $4.89)- Young readers will learn about Hanukkah, as well as how to count all 8 nights in Hebrew and Yiddish! Pronunciation guides help kids say the words, and die-cuts reveal the candles as they are lit each night. Simple graphics and design elements enrich this holiday offering. Ages 4-8 One customized selection of books will be provided by Scholastic to a single winner. Entries from all published gift guides will be used to select the lucky reader.

GIVEAWAY: It’s Christmas Time! by Salina Yoon (Scholastic, currently on sale for $6.99)-Christmas is coming and it’s time to celebrate! With six interchangeable, foiled play pieces, children can dress up snowmen, decorate Christmas cookies, and even light up the Christmas tree with sparkling foil colors! Housed in a frontpanel drawer within the cover, these six disks are slid down die cut slots on each spread to introduce bright lights and joyous excitement to iconic holiday scenes. Ages 3-5 One customized selection of books will be provided by Scholastic to a single winner. Entries from all published gift guides will be used to select the lucky reader.

Tomica (By Tomy USA and, $12.99 and up)- Japan’s best selling die-cast car and toy train line is available in the United States for the first time and features seven die-cast car sets, three train sets, six accessory sets, six destination sets and five deluxe play sets. The TOMICA car and train line features a robust combination of auto and locomotive play that teaches kids the rules of the road and helps them expand their imaginations with massive building potential. Start with a set like Hypercity Rescue Police Headquarters ($29.99) and build your child’s collection by adding mini sets to the city ($9.99) along with additional rails, cars, and trains ($12.99). Or go all out with the Super Big Set ($59.99). Exclusively available at Toys R Us.Ages 4+

Pirate Ship or Royal Princess Castle (Velcro Kids, $30 )- It was love at first sight when I spotted the pirate ship and castle 3D worlds at Time to Play’s Holiday Showcase. Very fine Velcro fused to a lightweight but rigid board allows for endless play because kids can easily customize the environment and characters by moving walls, pieces to create different rooms, and decorating their characters with Velcro accessories. The play sets collapse flat and slide into an included bag for easy storage. Brilliant!

GIVEAWAYS: To enter to win any of the above items marked as giveaways, leave a comment about your toddler's favorite toy in the comment field.

For extra entries, first leave a comment answering the above question before doing any of the following:

• Daily Tweet: @TechSavvyMama has published her Preschool Gift Guide w/ more gift ideas & giveaways! Enter here: Leave a link to your Tweet on the Google Form.
  

• Like Tech Savvy Mama on Facebook and let me know through the Google Form.
  

• Subscribe to my blog through Networked Blogs, your reader, or a feed and record your entry on the form.
  

• Subscribe via email and tell me you have done so as an extra entry on the Google Form.
  

• Write a blog post about my gift guides and include the words "Tech Savvy Mama's Holiday Gift Guides" and link to this post: http://bit.ly/dbEEu5 Then provide the permalink through your entry on the form.
  

Loading...

All products were provided for review purposes except where noted that items were personally purchased. Images provided courtesy of the companies. No compensation was received for this post.

Fine print: Eligible entries through the comments must include an email address or Twitter handle. E-mails must be valid and addresses must be within the United States. Companies will not ship outside the U.S. nor will they ship to P.O. boxes.

All information collected is solely for Tech Savvy Mama to ensure efficient delivery of your prize and will not be shared with anyone else but the marketing/PR company who is shipping the prize. Leticia- Tech Savvy Mama is not responsible for lost prizes or shipping delays.

Please note that there will be one customized selection of books provided by Scholastic to a single winner and entries from all published gift guides will be used to select the recipient.

Giveaway closes on Sunday, December 5 and winners will be notified via email.

The Peacock Perch Antiques and Books in Rossville, Indiana has many unusual antiques -- and in great shape, too! Hubs and I both found items of interest. I, of course, was a big fan of the old books. Related posts:

1. Lowell, Indiana: Tish’s Antiques
2. Wabash, Indiana: Reading Room Books Rocks My Book-Loving World
3. Medaryville, Indiana: Empty Nest Antiques and Collectibles is a Houseful of Goodies

The debate about the cost and 'legacy' of construction will outlast the 2012 Olympic Games, but no one can deny the new venues are a bold addition to London's landscape

The seduction of construction is a powerful thing. It is the way that the sheer fact of building, the churning of mud and materials into frames and buildings, and the choreography of workers and machines, convinces us that something is being dealt with or transformed. Before the purposefulness of building, doubts recede about the purpose of what is being built.

There is no better place in Britain to experience this effect than at the east London site of the 2012 Olympics. Here, 10,000 people are working over nearly 250 acres to turn billions of pounds into an array of large, singular buildings. Yet more are working on the adjoining site of the Westfield Stratford City shopping mall. Platoons of cherry pickers extend their long mechanical necks towards the sloping wall of the velodrome, so that its impeccably sourced timber cladding can be installed. Hills of spoil rise and fall, as mud is removed from one place to another. A forest of scaffolding fills the void beneath the aquatics centre's big, wavy roof. The miracle of completion is beginning to occur, in which pristine finishes emerge from the seeming chaos, looking as predicted in architects' drawings made some years ago.

Modern buildings are built in packages – concrete, steelwork, glazing and so on. This is a landscape made in packages, a series of huge dollops of construction, each with its own intentions and aesthetics, and with no great connection with its neighbours. What they do have in common is their Olympic purpose and a project-managed smoothness; most buildings have a certain stylishness, without being provocative or awkward. They will also be held together by the accommodating greenery of the Olympic Park at the centre.

Thus there is the shiny, white, shrink-wrapped basketball arena, a temporary structure that will come down after the Games. There are the two waves of the velodrome and the aquatics centre roofs, one a trough and the other a peak. There are the glitzy wrappings over the brute forms of the shopping mall and its car parks, and the ranks of un-villagey blocks of the "athletes' village", more dominating and assertive than most new housing has, in recent decades, dared to be. There is the black brick box of the critically acclaimed electrical substation by the architects Nord.

Most conspicuous is the stadium, now looking almost as it will be when the Games open. It has a simplicity rarely seen in modern arenas, which are usually engulfed in corporate facilities and conference suites. On the outside, it is a triangulated structure of big, black, steel struts, through which the underside of the concrete terraces can be seen. Inside, it is a simple bowl, albeit jazzed up by patterns of black-and-white seats based on the Olympic logo's "shattered" look. One reason for its directness is that it is designed so that the steel superstructure can be dismantled and put up somewhere else, leaving a smaller stadium just for athletics. This plan is now unlikely to go ahead: the most likely option seems to be to convert it to a football ground, with occasional athletic use.

Most convincing is the 6,000-seat velodrome, whose architects Hopkins and Partners say that they wanted the "tautness and energy" of race cycling to be realised in their building. Its roof, made of a net of cables and plywood panels, is crafted to keep materials and scaffolding to the minimum, allowing more of the budget to be spent on the detail. It also admits copious daylight and connects easily with the surrounding park. At its centre is the timber track, a marvellous sloping and curving thing, which inspired in me a (previously undetected) desire to watch cycle races.

It's plain that the architecture of the London Olympics will be less spectacular than that of Beijing – there will be nothing like the Bird's Nest stadium – but the spaces in between will be less bleak. There will be a park, rather than a vast apron of paving. 2012's values are delivery, efficiency and quality, uplifted by a public art programme and the architects who thrive best are those, like Hopkins, who make something positive out of the constraints. True, Anish Kapoor's big red Orbit sculpture, now under construction, strives to inject a steroidal boost of excitement, but it remains to be seen how successfully.

The Games site is well run – it has a good safety record, in contrast to the Beijing Olympics where the number of deaths were almost certainly more than the official figure of six. Many of its venues are ahead of schedule. It is also on budget, once you accept the audacious hike to £9.3bn from the original £2.4bn. Usually, clouds of bad press swirl around the Olympics, about escalating costs and time overruns. Similarly with British public construction projects like the Scottish Parliament. London 2012 might therefore have been doubly cursed, but it is proceeding with extraordinary serenity, a triumph of both project management and PR.

For the sake of posterity and future bidders for the Olympics, certain things can't be said too often: that it is insanely wasteful to spend this much money on a fortnight's fun, or that the Games usually depress rather than boost tourism in the host city. That supposed regeneration benefits only come about with the help of yet further funding. That things of value, like the gentle wilderness of allotments that once stood on this site, get destroyed.

But, barring unforeseen disasters, there is every reason to suppose London 2012 will be a success. Crowds will come and there will be the usual dramas and hyperbole. Such events generate their own momentum, and even the calamity-hit Delhi Commonwealth Games managed to leave behind a vague feelgood factor. I'll hazard a guess that most people in Britain will feel moderately pleased that the Games happened here. Whether it will be £9.3bn-worth of moderate pleasure is debatable, but by then few will mind any more. It will be a question for another city.

A few weeks ago, I went to a party and there was a professional photographer there. A few days after the party, the organizers started tweeting a few photographs as a teaser. The images were beautiful. People that I had stood around and talked to had been captured perfectly: soft, glowing, and still authentically the people that I remembered meeting.

When the e-mail came that more photos were available to see I was excited to click through to look for photos of myself. That is something you will rarely find me say. Towards the end of the collection I saw the photo. Me. Standing at an island in a kitchen. Obviously a plaid shirt. Obviously my hair was pulled back into a messy nest of a bun. Obviously my face had no make-up on except for the party red lipstick I thought I was going to wear so well. My plaid messenger bag, the only "purse" I have that isn't a diaper bag or a backpack, was flung across my chest. And in my profile I looked hard. Tough. Maybe even mean.

And the part that caused me to literally choke up? I didn't look the least bit feminine. I didn't look like me. Or at least the image of me that I had of me in my head. The one that I thought that the world was seeing. I think I thought the world was seeing some sort of Earth Mother type. Amazon Woman type. Round and red. But seeing the image of me through the lens of a stranger proved otherwise.

This led me to do some serious thinking. Which led me to realize something that is going to be hard to admit but it is the honest truth -- I think I turned in my Woman card the minute I decided to become a single mother. Or maybe I stopped being a woman when I became a full time caregiver. The moments happened almost on top of each other so it is hard to know which is chicken and which is egg. All I know is that 2003 is the year I stopped feeling feminine.

Sure I had a couple moments left in me of party dresses and high-heeled shoes, but the walls of womanhood were swiftly crumbling down. And the tricky part is that I have no idea what it is that was behind the fortress of my femininity. No idea what I am now that that part of me has crumbled away and turned into shiny pebbles scattered about.

What I realize though, as I struggle to comprehend this loss of a part of myself, is that I want it back.

This is where I am totally and absolutely and 100% lost. Because where does feminine come from? Does it come from boobs? Hair? Shoes? Makeup? Having a small butt? I'm at a total loss. Once upon a time my femininity came from other people. I felt like an attractive woman because I dated men that told me I was attractive and being with them allowed me to feel more attractive and I was just all that and a bag of peppermints.

And then I got a career and I stopped really caring about dating because I knew it would be there for me when I was ready -- like a scarf that one is forever knitting. I would reach a landing pad within my career path and then I could relax and I could focus back on dating and marriage and family and apple pie.

Except my life didn't take that path. It did a bit of a zig and then a bit of a zag, and the next thing you know, I'm practically having a virgin birth.

And motherhood didn't make me suddenly feel like more of a woman. If anything it enhanced my inner schlub to a pretty scary degree. I now had a total legit excuse to go an extra day or two between washing my hair or changing out of my yoga pants. Speaking of hair, I can count on one hand the number of times I have worn it down since W was born. And the freakish insanity that happened to my body through fertility treatments to pregnancy to post-pregnancy certainly didn't turn on any Aretha Franklin anthems.

Most of the time, I see my body as part failure and the rest of the time I see it as blah. It's in better shape than it has been in a while so yay me for that, but starting with my feet and working my way up, I think I am clunky.

I'm going around in circles here. Just tell me this -- what makes you feel like a woman? Be brutally honest and vain and tell me everything.

Photo Credit: Calliope.

Calliope tweets @calliopeblogger & blogs about Alzheimer's, infertility, and single motherhood at Creating Motherhood

The Indiana Pacers: Indy scored more points in the second quarter (40) than the entire second have (30, wasting a defensive effort in which they held the Andre Bogut-less Milwaukee Bucks to 38 percent shooting. Of course, the Pacers shot 38 themselves while giving up 28 points off 19 turnovers.

Said Roy Hibbert: "We just didn't get the job done tonight. Coming down the stretch, we were bad. I didn't clog the middle the way I should have, which hurt us. The Bucks are a good team, I'm not taking anything away from them, and I'm going to have to hold myself accountable for this loss."

Huh. Hibbert has now taken personal responsibility for two of Indy's three losses. Great for him, right? But...what about the team's franchise guy?

Danny Granger: He grabbed 9 rebounds -- an above average night for him -- but shot only 6-for-17 (including 0-for-4 from downtown) and committed a game-worst 7 turnovers. Maybe Danny Boy, and not Roy Hibbert, needs to hold himself accountable. That's what team captains are supposed to do.

Brook Lopez: Believe it or not, the Nyets didn't play all that badly against the Magic. Well, except for during the third quarter, when they were outscored 32-16. But who knows how things might have turned out if Brook Lopez hadn't had his lunch money stolen by Dwight Howard. Actually, it wasn't just his lunch money. Howard also gave him a wedgie, then a swirlie, and then taped a "Kick Me" sign to his back.

The details: While Pumaman was having a game of it (30 points, 9-for-13, 12-for-16 at the line, 16 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and a block), Lopez was missing his first 13 shots en route to a 3-for-17 shooting night. He also had as many fouls as rebounds (5). Oh, and he ended up with a black eye, courtesy of...well...just guess.

Said Lopez: "It didn't get there by itself."

Rashard Lewis: A quick update: After Friday night's 5-for-15 shooting performance -- during which he went 2-for-8 from beyond the arc -- Lewis is shooting 31 percent from the field and 20 percent on threes. He has attempted four free throws in four games. Remember: He is in the fourth year of a six-year, $118 million contract. Just had to throw that out there.

The Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavalirs: Check out the ESPN recap video. The announcer actually uses the term "Boobie Time." I love it.

Anyway, this was the night defense died in Philly. Both teams shot 55 percent while combining for 38 fast break points and 110 points in the paint. The Cavs built a 19-point lead (Philly fail), the Sixers made a run and took back the lead (Cleveland fail) and then the Cavaliers -- lead by Boobie Gibson -- used a 19-5 fourth quarter run to pull out a 123-116 victory that dropped the Sixers to 1-5.

Personally, I think both teams deserve the Ol' Yeller treatment.

Doug Collins, coach of the year candidate: "The hardest thing to teach a team is how to win. Not how to get close, but how to win, and that is what we are going to keep striving to do."

Pictured: Doug Collins teaching how to win.
The Memphis Grizzlies: The Care Bear Stare became a glazed look of disbelief on Friday night. After leading by 18 points in the first quarter, Memphis still had a 98-94 lead with 3.7 seconds left in the fourth quarter...

...but eventually lost 123-118 in double-overtime.

Normally, protecting a four-point lead with less than four seconds left is pretty easy. For the Grizzlies, nothing is easy. Jason Richardson -- who had a game-high 38 points -- scored 5 points in the final 1.1 seconds to force OT.

Oh, the fail. The fail.

How'd it happen. Well, Richardson BANKED in a trey to make it 98-97 with 1.1 seconds to go. Something happened -- see Rudy Gay below -- to make it 99-97 Grizzlies. And then, well, check out this clutch defense:


I had to include AnacondaHL's game summary:

I can't believe I missed that game. Let me get this straight:

- Rudy Gay, with the Grizz up by 1 and 0.4 seconds left, makes the free throw instead of intentionally missing it,

- Grant Hill lobs an out of bounds alleyoop to JRich, you know one of those ones Suns fans last year got used to seeing JRich bonk off the back rim but instead he catches it for a reverse layin that swirls around the rim to force overtime,

- A Rudy gay 3 ball gets called back as a 2, followed by O.J. Mayo lodging the ball between the rim and backboard, sealing the Suns's 2OT victory...

- ...and the entire game featured Hedo battling Zach Randolph for boards and defending Marc Gasol.

This is why I love the Suns.

Rudy Gay: Okay. Let me set the stage. His team was up by a point with 1.1 seconds left. He had two free throws that could have almost-iced the game. Rudy bricked the first. No problem, right? He could just intentionally miss the second so time would run out. Only his intentional miss WENT IN.

Said Gay: "I was trying to rim it off the front so I could give my team a chance to tip it out."

Nice try, Ruy.

O.J. Mayo, quote machine: "It was a lot of weird things that happened in that game, some controllable, some uncontrollable. It was a tough loss to take."

The Charlotte Bobcats: Michael Jordan's team fell to 1-4 and managed to give the Pistons Pissed-ons their first win of the season. This despite the fact that the 'Cats shot 55 percent to Detroit's 42. It could have been Charlotte's 23-13 advantage in turnovers, or it might have been their 27-11 disadvantage in free throw attempts. Of course, it also might have been because the Bobcats fell behind by 22 points before making their failed run.

Said Stephen Jackson: "Getting down 20 against any team on the road takes too much to come back. There is no reason for us to come with that kind of effort, ever. We have to be ready to play."

Pretty much.

Tracy McGrady Watch: Wanna know what kind of season it's been for the Pissed-ons? After scoring a total of 11 points in the first five games -- including three scoreless efforts -- Knee-Mac managed to earn a spot in Detroit's starting lineup.

How'd he do?

Let's ask Chucky V.: "T-Mac was unbelievable out there."

His line: 10 points (3-for-6), 3 rebounds, 2 assist, 2 steals and a plus-minus score of -1. McGrady was the only Detroit starter with a negative plus-minus

Huh. Charlie must be pretty easily impressed.

Said McGrady: "I've played my fair share of the point over the years. I'm a playmaker -- that's my game. It's not that hard to get a team into its sets and to distribute the ball."

The Washington Wizards Generals: The screeching thud you just heard -- well, the one you heard on Friday night -- was John Wall plummeting back down to earth. The Wonder Child shot 4-for-11 (0-for-2 from distance) and finished with more turnovers (9) than assists (7). Ah, well. He warned us he wouldn't be great every night, and he was correct.

Said Wall: "I'm the leader, I've got to be a better leader and a better decision maker for my team. To win games, I've got to keep the turnovers down."

Anyway, Gilbert Arenas popped off 14 points in the fourth quarter, but it wasn't enough to help stave off a 112-91 loss to the Knicks...whom some people think are back. Yeah, well, we'll see about that...

Raymond Felton, quote machine: "We come out here to play basketball. I don't look at nobody like, 'Oh my goodness, that's Gilbert Arenas, oh my goodness, that's the first pick, John Wall. I look at it as he's another person just like I am. Puts his pants on just like I do. That don't mean nothing to me."

Actually, John Wall never puts his pants on. Never.

Donnie Walsh, quote machine: "I live in the present, so I'm not looking down the line too much. I have nothing to say about comments that were made today by Isiah. I have nothing to say."

The Minnesota Timberwolves: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that defense isn't going to be Minny's strength this season. As of their 113-103 home loss to the Hawks -- during which the Atlanteans shot 54 percent from the field and tallied 24 fast break points -- the Timberpoops rank 29th in Opponents PPG (113.5) and 28th in Defensive Rating (112.4). Of course, they also rank 29th in Offensive Rating (96.9) and 30th Effective Field Goal Percentage (.427)...so I guess their problem is everything.

Kevin Love, quote machine: "I think we're all frustrated because we know we're better than this. Individually and as a team, we're a lot better than this. Coaching staff, we're a lot better than this."

Oh. I figured you were frustrated becuase you are who we thought you were.

Darko Milicic, self-critique machine: Looking awful on the court on offense. Disgusts myself."

Status check: Current PER is 2.0. Current O-Rating is 50 points per 100 possessions. Yep. That's pretty disgusting alright.

The Utah Jazz: Okay, if you heard the final score of a Jazz-Warriors game was 85-78 -- and that Golden State shot 2-for-14 from downtown -- you'd assume the Jazz won, right? Because the Warriors usually have to score at least 120 points to win a game. But nope. Utah set the pace -- 93.2 -- but Golden Staters crashed the glass for 21 offensive rebounds (including 7 o-boards each for David Lee and Andris Biedrins). Meanwhile, the Jazz struggled to hang on to the rock (21 turnovers for 27 points going the other way) and managed to lose despite holding the Warriors to 37 percent shooting.

Said Jerry Sloan: "We just didn't seem to have the energy to compete with them. When you give up 21 turnovers for 27 points, that's almost a goodbye kiss."

Ronnie Price and C.J. Miles: With 9:08 left and the Jazz down 64-61, Price bonked a breakaway dunk. On the next possession -- after Al Jefferson had blocked David Lee's shot -- C.J. Miles airballed a three from the top of the arc. Double fail.

The Los Angeles Clippers: Why'd the Clippers lose to the Nuggets? Eh, I'll let coach Vinny Del Negro explain: "We can't give up 111 points and think we're going to beat a lot of teams."

And there you have it.

In related news, The Other L.A. Team hasn't won in Denver since January 27, 2006.

By the way, the following picture is, to me, THE quintessential Vinny Del Negro picture. Vinny drawing up a play alone, one player all blurry, another play seemingly in a swoon. This just sums up the VDN experience.


Baron Davis: That's three straight games missed with a sore knee. Things might've been different if he'd shown up to training camp, you know, in shape.'

In case you missed it, here's what B-Dizzle had to say about his big, fat ass: "I usually get in shape in August. I've been doing that for the last six years of my career. This August I started working out and getting ready to go and it got a lot harder. It wasn't like I wasn't doing anything but my body wasn't responding as quickly as it usually does and I think I kind of faced that reality this summer. That was a problem that hit me and kind of caught me off guard because it never really happened to me before in my career. Getting in shape was never really a problem for me before but these nagging injuries have taught me a lesson. This summer was a dose of reality that I need to start training differently and earlier."

VDN's response: "Baron knows he was behind in his conditioning and he's had to work so hard to get in condition that he's had to put some extra strain on his knee. That causes a lot of problems for everybody; for Baron, for the team, for everyone involved. He needs to be a leader and a catalyst for this team and by not preparing the right way he's hurting himself and hurting the group and he knows that. He needs to do a better job in that area. He needs to grow and he needs to get smarter about it. He's not 22 anymore. He's 31. He's got to do a better job in the offseason of keeping himself in condition and understanding his responsibility."

Deep breath...and...

"Baron's focus needs to be on conditioning and playing at a high level and he hasn't done that for a while. I know he's frustrated with that but there's things he has to do to correct that...but talking about it and doing it are two different things and we've talked about that situation plenty. Now it's up to Baron to make that commitment to get back into shape and get back with the team and be a leader and a catalyst for the team in the right way. It's up to him."

Uh huh. Don't forget: L.A. is Baron's home freaking town. Remember how positive he was when he fleeced the Clippers into that five-year, $65 million deal back in the summer of 2008?

The 2008 Davis said: "It's tough, but you have to do what's best. You have to do what's fair. I'm happy with where I'm going. A big reason is because of the impact and the things that I can do going forward. I knew I could have done them here and created all kinds of good things and positive things in the community, and ultimately, me going home helps me make an impact on young kids."

Of course, he followed that up with: "I just took what was best for me."

Next thing you know, B-Diddy is on the trading block. Does anything ever end well with the Clippers?

The Miami Heat: Okay, first of all, you know Miami's gaping hole at center? Have you ever heard the phrase "it's like throwing a hotdog down a hallway?" If not, now you have. And it fits the Heat.

To wit: Emeka Okafor had one of the best games of his pro career, going off for 26 points (on 12-for-13 shooting!!) and 13 rebounds against the cardboard cutouts Pat Riley's team is standing up under his team's basket these days.

Secondly, the Heat went out and got Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh this summer. And who ended up taking -- and missing -- the last-second shot?

Eddie House.

Just like they drew it up, right? Said Pookie: "He got a great look. We'd live with that shot every game if we had to. He's a great shooter. Unfortunately it just didn't go in."

You heard it here, folks. Eddie House gets the clutch shots on this team. I'm glad that's settled.

Last but not least...I admit I might have been wrong about these Hornets. Wow.

LeBron James, quote machine: "One thing we have to continue to learn, that every time we step out on the basketball court, no matter who we're going against, we can't just show up, you know, because we have this uniform on, because we have who we have on the court."

Speaking of King Crab, he's currently averaging 20.7 PPG, 7.9 APG and 4.7 RPG. Not bad, but not quite "he might average a triple-double for he season" territory. Note that ESPN's Heat Index has removed their Triple-Double Tracker.

Toronto Raptors: Soooo close to upsetting the Lakers in L.A. The problem: Giving up 25 points of 21 turnovers. Killer.

Chris's Friday Lacktion Report:

Bucks-Pacers: Solomon Jones sang a 13:24 tune about one brick, one rejection, and three fouls for a +5 suck differential!

Bobcats-Pistons: Sherron Collins sold a copy of Pokemon Blue in just 7 seconds for a Super Mario, while Gerald Henderson tossed one piece of masonry and collected a foul for a +2 in 7:15.

Generals-Knicks: Lester Hudson lost tonight along with the rest of the Generals, but he laid a nest egg worth 1.9 trillion (1:54). Trevor Booker published his name in tonight's edition of the lacktion ledger by fouling twice in the same 1:54 for a +2.

Bulls-Celtics: Omer Asik allocated himself a 5:3 Voskuhl ratio in 11:35 by spoiling a board and made field goal with 3 fouls and two turnovers, while fellow heifer Brian Scalabrine said hello to his old home with a one-foul Madsen-level 1:0 Voskuhl in 3:01. Kurt Thomas raided the Reinsdorf vault with a 1.6 (1:35) trillion!

For Boston, Von Wafer celebrated another C's win with a 3.4 (3:23) trillion.

Grizzlies-Suns: Sam Young stood around for a missed shot in 2:12 and added a rejection and foul for a +3!

Phoenix's Robin Lopez negated four boards in 12:55 with two bricks, one rejection, two giveaways and three fouls for a 5:4 Voskuhl, while fellow big man Garret Siler grabbed his own ratio of 4:1 in a 10:07 stint after countering a rebound and assist with three turnovers, a block against, and a foul.

Clippers-Nuggets: DeAndre Jordan managed a positive contribution in his 7:53 - a board! But with three fouls, one lost rock, and one brick from (downtown Denver), he managed a 4:1 Voskuhl for the Other LA Team.

Jazz-Warriors: Gordon Hayward grabbed a pot of gold for Jerry Sloan, earning a 4.15 (4:10) trillion! For the Bay Area basketball team, Charlie Bell rang up a suck differential of +2 via brick and rejection in 4:39.

The Washington Wizards Generals: GET READY FOR THE PAIN! THE PAIN TRAIN IS COMIN'!! WHOOO WHOOOOO!!!

That pain train, my friends, is a little team known as the Unamazing Cavaliers. A .500 record? Back-to-back wins on the road in a single weekend? Can it be?

It can.

The Generals actually had 95-93 lead with 3:16 to go...but Cleveland went on a 10-0 run on their way to a 107-102 win. What the hell happened?

Flip Saunders: Al Thornton scored a team-high 23 points on 10-for-16 shooting for the Generals. And yet, oddly, his ass was rooted to the bench for the game's final nine minutes as Flip went with a three-guard lineup of John Wall, Kirk Hinrch and Gilbert Arenas.

Fail.

Arenas -- who admitted to being about 10 pounds too fat -- said: "There was a point in the fourth quarter where I should have subbed myself out for Al."

That's nice of him to say...but substitutions are the coach's job last I checked.

Said Saunders: "I made a mistake. We got into a little bit of a rhythm with Gil in there. In hindsight, you wished you had Al back in the game."

Added Thornton: "He apologized for it. He just made a mistake."

Look out, Doug Collins. There's a new CotY candidate in town.

Gilbert Arenas, emo quote machine: I hadn't heard a clap in a long time. It's been a while."

Boobie Gibson, unintentionally dirty quote machine: "He's still Arenas. You feel like at any moment at any time, he can explode on you."

The Charlotte Bobcats: Another double-digit deficit, another comeback, another "coulda-shoulda" loss for the 'Cats...who came all the way back from 18 down to lose 91-88. Make it 1-5 on the season, including 0-2 on the road.

Said Gerald Wallace: "We don't have a sense of urgency until we're down. We should come out and attack teams. We should have teams on their toes, and we don't do that until we're down 20 or we're down 15."

Vince Carter, injury machine: I know, I know. The floor was slippery. And stuff. Still...funny how Vince was the only once who got hurt.


The verdict: Strained right hip flexor.

Said Stan Van Gundy: "It was a needless injury and that's what [ticks] me off. I don't know [Carter's status]. He was pretty hurt and wasn't coming back into that game." Speaking of Stan the Man...

Stan Van Gundy, quote machine: "Everybody on this roster is alive and important." Okay. So...no dead guys on Orlando's roster. Glad we got that cleared up.

LeBron James versus Terrence Williams: Is a new chapter of NBA Rivalries being written even as, uhm, I write this? Yeah, I doubt it, but the Miami Heaat were pulling some serious Harlem Globetrotter shit on the hapless Nyets when Williams decided to hip check His Crabbiness into the stands rather than appear in another of LeBron's posters.

Said Williams: "You've got to put your foot down somehow in a basketball game. When people are going to the hole and throwing behind-the-back and dunking and stuff like that you've got to do something about it. It's nothing against LeBron. I'm a basketball player. I compete just like they do."

Of course, LeBron played the foul up, lingering on the ground longer than was probably necessary. But hey, sorry, 'Bron. I'm probably just trying to make him be who I wanted him to be.

Added Williams: "Falling into the stands was kind of a little much I think."

Countered LeBron: "Exaggerating a fall? Never. I'm not a flop guy, I've never been a flop guy. I love contact. I didn't exaggerate anything."

As for whether Williams' foul sent a message, James said: "It didn't send much of a message because we went on an 8-0 run after it. (Actually, it was 7-2.) We play New Jersey again? Just once? That's awesome, I'll be ready for it."

You here that, people? LEBRON IS READY FOR THE NYETS!! At this point, he's trying to be a douchebag. He has to be.

The Milwaukee Bucks: At 2-5 -- and only 1-2 at home -- nobody is Fearing the Dear much these days. The suddenly unstoppable New Orleans Hornets sure don't. One night after a tough win over the Miami Heat, the Hornets flew to Milwaukee and held the Bucks to 38 percent shooting and beat 'em 87-81.

Said Brandon Jennings: It was just an ugly game for us. It's starting to get a little bit ridiculous now because every day it's like it's something -- shots not falling and we just all break down. Some people are probably not on the same page, or I don't know what it is, but it's getting a little bit annoying now. When things aren't going right, it just seems like the energy level goes all the way down. We have got to find something before it gets too late and it gets a little ugly."

Reality check: The Bucks are seven games into an 82-game season. And he's already talking like somebody who's ready to enter witness relocation. Bad sign. Baaaad sign.

The Houston Rockets: Yao Ming? Rested by the coaching staff. Aaron Brooks and Kevin Martin? Lost to matching left ankle sprains. I'll give the Rockets this much: They didn't pack it in and give up. The pushed the Spurs hard, scored 121 points and barely managed to lose in overtime. But they still lost. And at 0-5, they remained the NBA's only winless team.

Aaron Brooks: I don't usually bust on players for getting injured -- well, unless they're Vince Carter, anyway -- but you know how Brooks hurt his ankle? By landing awkwardly after chucking up a halfcourt heave at the halftime buzzer. Kinda dumb way to get injured.

Rick Adelman, captain obvious: "There's no satisfaction in losing this game."

The Dallas Mavericks: 21 turnovers -- 7 by Herr Nowitzki -- and a mere 13 fourth quarter points doomed the Mavericks to a 103-92 home loss to the Nuggets.

Dallas now 1-2 at home.

Oh, and 8 of those 21 turnovers were committed during the Mavs' fourth quarter collapse.

Said Jason Terry: "It was careless. It's got to stop. You have that many in the fourth quarter, we're taking opportunities away from ourselves. It's not one guy, it's everybody. We gave [a game] back after winning up there."

The Los Angeles Clippers: Oh, man. The Clippers are all about finding new ways to lose. I would say "new and heartbreaking" ways to lose, but everybody knows that the heart of every Clippers fan has already been ripped out of their chest and sacrificed to the Basketball Gods.

The Other L.A. Team lost their 15th straight game in Utah -- they haven't won in Salt Lake City since January 22, 2003 -- despite building an 18-point first half lead. The game went to double-overtime, but the Clips were doomed by a 23-12 disadvantage in turnovers. And, of course, by the fact that they are who we thought they were.

The Toronto Raptors: It's the same old story for the Portland Frail Blazers. In addition to the usual crap -- Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla are still out with knee injuries, the Fabulous Oberto retired due to a heart condition, rookie Elliot Williams is out for the season with a knee injury and Rudy Fernandez missed his second game with a sore back -- LaMarcus Aldridge (sore knee) and Marcus Camby (migraines) are now hurtin'...but still playin'.

Didn't matter. They were playing the Craptors.

Nicolas Batum (20 points), Andre Miller (13 assists) and Camby (16 rebounds) all had season highs for the Blazers as Toronto shot 36 percent -- including 1-for-17 on threes -- and finished a winless West Coast road trip by losing their 5th straight game to the Blazers. The Craptors are now 1-5 on the season.

The Sacramento Kings: One night after a double-over time loss to the Suns lost them their third straight game, the Care Bears traveled to Sacramento and put it to the Purple Paupers. Man, shouldn't the Griz have been, I dunno, tired or something?

Said Sactown coach Paul Westphal: "I've never bought into that stuff, 'Oh they played last night' stuff. They lost in double-overtime. Therefore, they'll be fired up. We won't use that as an excuse."

How about this for an excuse: Despite coming into the game averaging only 11.8 turnovers per game, the Kings coughed up the ball 21 times for 22 points going the other way. Sammy Dalembert and Tyreke Evans had 5 TOs each.

Rudy Gay, unintentionally dirty quote machine: "This is no different from any other night. I try to be as versatile as I possibly can be." That's only dirty if he's using the Urban Dictionary definition of versatile.

Chris's Saturday Lacktion Report:

Magic-Bobcats: Desagana Diop dropped another Voskuhl ratio for the Bobcats, negating three boards in 11:51 with 4 fouls and 2 turnovers for a 6:3.

Cavs-Generals: Hilton Armstrong checked into the Watergate Hotel of Lacktivity with a 5:2 in 15:16 via 3 fouls and two giveaways, against 2 boards.

Nets-Heat: Johan Petro gave Newark's finest a 2:1 Voskuhl in 6:09 via two fouls and two bricks against a board. Quinton Ross tossed a pair of masonry implements at the charity stripe for a +2 suck differential in 6:03.

Mario Chalmers charmed the Thrice bandwagon with a brick from Brickell and a giveaway in 4:18 for a +2.

Hornets-Bucks: Jerryd Bayless lost the rock four times, fouled once and tossed a brick in 11:21 for a +6!!! Marcus Thornton made himself a ledger spot with a miss, a foul, and a giveaway each in 4:36 for a +3.

Nuggets-Mavs: Ever heard of MARIO TRIPLETS? Well, Brian Cardinal, Ian Mahinmi (despite two points for a non-lacktive video gaming session) and DeShawn Stevenson (with a brick from the Bank of America Plaza for a +1) all shared the honor tonight for Dallas in just 46 seconds!

Clippers-Jazz: Jarron Collins earned 1 trillion (in 62 seconds) in a DOUBLE OVERTIME game. Nice.

Raptors-Frail Blazers: Sean Marks notched three fouls for Portland in 8:22 for a +3 that also earned a 3:0 VOskuhl.

Grizzlies-Kings: Greivis Vasquez went 38 seconds through the Mushroom Kingdom for a celebratory Mario for Memphis, while the purple paupers' Demarcus Cousins went wild with five fouls and four giveaways to contribute to a 9:7 Voskuhl ratio (against 4 points and 3 rebounds) in 22:50.

The rare "sad bench in a win" pic.
The New York Knicks: Amar''''''e Stoudemire finally acted like a franchise player -- 21 points, 15 rebounds, 2 steals, an assist and a block -- and the Knicks hd a home game against the woeful and heretofore 1-5 Sixers. Shoulda been a win, right? I mean, the Knicks are back, aren't they?

Bzzzzzt! Wrong answer.

The New Yorkers proved their near-70 percent three-point shooting against the Bulls last week was the flukiest of flukes by bricking 16 of their 19 three-point attempts. They also missed 10 free throws...which just happened to be the same number of points they lost by. Huh. Imagine that.

And, yep, the MSG crowd booed 'em for it. Ah, New York.

Take heart, Knicks fans. I read this in the sidebar on the ESPN recap: "As befits a team so hot and cold, the New York Knicks sit at .500 -- but hey, at least they're not dull, writes ESPN.com's Chris Sheridan."

That's right. At least they're not dull.

The Atlanta Hawks: Well, I guess the Hawks are human after all.

After going 6-0 against such league powerhouses as the Grizzlies, Sixers, Wizards Generals, Cavaliers, Pistons and Timberwolves, the Hawks finally played a legit opponent...and lost.

Of course, the Suns were 3-2 going into this one. But a special note is that, in their first six games, they've gone up against five teams coming off 50-win seasons. Think their record might be a bit different if they'd had Atlanta's schedule? I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, the Hawks must have forgotten about that whole "hand in the face" thing, because the Suns blizted 'em with 55+ percent shooting from the field and nearly 50 percent accuracy from beyond the arc. Phoenix actually built an 18-point lead, which was a wee bit too much for the Dirty Birds to come back from.

Thus the Hawks were denied their first 7-0 start since they started the 1997-98 campaign by winning their first 11 games.

Atlanta's bench: They were outscored 46-19 by the Suns' reserves. Way to contribute, boys.

The Golden State Warriors: See, it's things like Sunday night's loss to the Pissed-ons -- Detroit's second win of the season -- that should keep people from getting too excited about the Warriors 4-2 start. Yes, they've been better than expected. BUT...they're 0-2 on the road and their four home wins are over the Rockets, Clippers, Grizzlies and Jazz. I guess win over Utah seems legit, but that team has opened the city in Bipolar Girlfriend Mode.

So...proceed with cautious expectations. That's all I'm sayin'.

Tracy McGrady Watch: After he was "unbelievable out there" in his first start of the season on Friday night, McGrady returned to the bench for Sunday's game against the Warriors. Knee-Mac's line: 9 minutes 1 point, 0-for-1 from the field, 1-for-2 from the line, 1 rebound, zero assists.

Mike D'Antoni, quote machine: "We had some mental lapses. We came out too not focused like we needed to be."

We came out too not focused like we needed to be? Talk about your mental lapses.

The Minnesota Timberwolves: The Rockets entered their game against the Timberwolves at 0-5 and were the NBA's sole winless team. They exited the game with a 120-94 victory...their first of the season.

In related news: Minnesota sucks.

The T-Wolves shot 37 percent from the field, lost the turnover battle 17-7, bricked 10 free throws and hacked/slashed their way into giving the Rockets 47 foul shots.

Said Minny coach Kurt Rambis: "We were mentally prepared for the game but we couldn't throw a pea into the ocean. Our confidence got sucked out of us and we just couldn't make a shot. Our defense was compromised and it was a tough loss."

Kevin Love, quote machine: After their last loss, Love gave a passionate "We're better than this" speech...and his team went out and lost by 26 the next game. After which love offered: "This was a team we probably could have beaten."

If only the Timberwolves were as good as Love thinks they might be.

The Oklahoma City Thunder: Check out the Thunder's last four games: Blown out by the Jazz, blown out by the Clippers, overtime win over the Frail Blazers after trailing by double-digits, and now a 92-83 home loss to the Celtics in which they trailed by as many as 22 points.

Well...huh.

Remember, Oklahoma City was one of the best defensive teams in the league last season. Currently, they rank 24th in Opponents Effective Field Goal Percentage (.514) and 26th in Defensive Rating (109.5).

Mind you, the "old" Celtics rung up 18 fast break points against the "young" Thunder.

Of course, the Thunder made a run to get back into it, but they were held off by Big Baby Shrek (8 points, 4-for-7, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal) and Nate Robinson Donkey (9 points, 4-for-7, 3 assists).

Speaking of which...

Oklahoma City's bench: Outscored 33-12. Or 17-12 by the Shrek and Donkey combo. Take your pick.

The Boston Celtics: Yes, they are 6-1. Yes, beating the Thunder on the road is kind of impressive (although not as impressive as last season -- see above). But...on Friday night they squandered a 16-point lead against the Bulls and barely escaped in overtime. Then on Sunday night they almost choked away a 22-point lead. And don't forget how they gave up a big lead to the Heat on opening night.

Why can't the Celtics stay focused for 48 minutes?

Said Paul Pierce: "That's something we've got to be more aware of coming into the third quarter, once we push a lead out like that."

For the record, Boston had the same problem last season. I'm just sayin'.

The Portland Trail Blazers: The Frail Ones got a good ol' fashioned smackdown from the Lakers, who shot 55 percent and outrebounded Portland 49-25 (including 14-6 on the offensive glass). Oh, and L.A. outscored the Blazers 56-30 in the paint.

Speaking of which, Pau Gasol had a triple-double (20 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists) and the Candyman had a double-double (21 pionts, 12 rebounds). Those two guys combined to shoot 19-for-28 from the field.

Think the Blazers miss Oden and Przybilla?

Meanwhile, Ron Artest harassed Brandon Roy into an 8-point, 1-for-6 shooting night. Brandon didn't hit that one shot until the third quarter. The Lakers led by as many as 29 before settling for a 121-96 win.

Said Roy: "I wouldn't say it's discouraging, but they're good. You can just look at them on paper and see they've got a lot of players, they've got a lot of depth. They're a team that you can't go out there and play with low energy, or they're going to kill you. It's no secret they're stacked."

Chris's Sunday Lacktion Report:

Sixers-Knicks: Philadelphia's Jason Kapono heaved one brick in 5:18 for a +1 suck differential.

Suns-Hawks: Jason Collins collected 4.3 trillion (4:16) in gold coins, while Zaza Pachulia negated a lone assist in 8:27 with a brick, giveway, and a trio of fouls for a 4:0 Voskuhl.

Wolves-Rockets: Brad Miller scrapped out a board in 6:43, but also fouled twice for a 2:1 Voskuhl.

Celtics-Thunder: Von Wafer continues to bring home the bullion with a 2.75 trillion (2:45) in celebration for Doc Rivers, while Daequan Cook fried up a pair of bricks from...uh...Bricktown for a +2 in 5:17.

Frail Blazers-Lakers: Theo Ratliff did not entirely expire on the court in 4:42, making one rebound in that time period - but earning also a foul and lost rock each for a 2:1 Voskuhl.

This week I did not even look at the point spreads and left them off the write ups. Just trying something different for a week. I feel like at times I have allowed Vegas to get in the way with what I am looking at in terms of stats and such.

Next couple weeks I will be on vacation and away so hopefully I will be back to pick this up week 11 or 12 which is Thanksgiving.



Tampa Bay (5-2) at Atlanta (5-2)

These two teams are squaring off in a battle for 1st place in the NFC South. The Bucs come in with a season ending injury to rookie DT Brian Price. He wasn’t exactly stopping the run anyways and has been in and out for the line up much of his rookie campaign but the Bucs can’t stop anyone rushing the ball anyways so it stand to reason that Turner should have a gigantic day this week. The bucs inability to stop the run will be their major undoing in this football game. The last guy to get excited when they were “5 dash 2” was Sam Wyche and the Bucs went on to finish 7-9. Kareem Morris thinks the Bucs are the best team in the NFL.

LaGarrette Blount – I say it all the time but it is worth repeating…don’t chase points. Atlanta is only giving up 95 yds rushing at home on the season. They have made major strides since their early season lack of run support on defense. Blount was impressive last week in the desert but if you are thinking 120 yds and 2 TDs this week you’re nuts. Blount and the Bucs will be bottled up pretty good this week.

Michael Turner – Bucs are allowing 165 yds rushing the last 5 games, not much else you need to know. The bucs are way ahead of schedule record wise and will probably look bad this weekend. A team that is not as good as their record would indicate(sorry Bucos) and Turner and Atlanta will have their way with them this weekend. Turner should be a top5 contender this week.

Final Score: Atlanta 30…Tampa Bay 16


Miami (4-3) at Baltimore (5-2)

Miami comes in allowing an avg of only 80 yds rushing the last week against GB, Pitt and CInci, not exactly chopped liver. They are 2-1 over those 3 weeks and some would argue they should be 3-0 with a better call form the refs a couple weeks ago. Still the Phins Nation(small country) must be feeling high winning some games that did not look like wins early in the season. They have a shot at 9 or 10 wins now but they are going to be put to the test in Baltimore coming off a bye week this week. The Ravens have allowed 127 and 132 yds the past 2 weeks against NE and Buff…something is not right in B-town right now.

Ronnie Brown/Ricky Williams-Despite a decent match up these guys have a total of 2 TDs on the season. No way I can project them as good starts this week. Brown was quoted as saying the team has made no attempt to try and extend him beyond the season. I think he is keeping a stiff upper lip but his mind is elsewhere right now. These 2 guys will not be in Miami next year.

Ray Rice – Buff was a dud but people shouldn’t put too much stock in that game. Rice was pretty good the previous 2 weeks and Miami has allowed some rushing yards to better backs like Adrian Peterson in Minnesota. Rice might not be a strong start but he should be good for 12-15 in most PPR formats.

Final Score: Baltimore 24…Miami 16 (Look for the Ravens to pick off Henne and take one to the house)



Chicago (4-3) at Buffalo (0-7)

Lot of folks have Forte up sky high this week and understandably so…or maybe not so much. Buffalo is atrocious at rush defense. I told you last week 300 yds rushing was on the table for KC and they racked up about 275 so I wasn’t kidding. Buffalo is allowing 220 yds rushing the last 5 weeks and are dead last in rush defense. The problem is outside of Carolina where the Bears rolled up 200+ rushing, they are not a good running football team…not even close. So you run the risk that Forte has a mediocre day and while I think you have to start him I would not be projecting him top3 this week.

Matt Forte – Again, I understand why folks will start him for the reasons I went into above but I am not sold he is a lock this week. Sometimes teams will rear themselves up and show a little backbone. Chicago has not looked good in several weeks. Even though buffalo is 0-7 they are playing hard.

Fred Jackson – I start him and here is why. The bears are only giving up 3.6 ypc and you start saying “MOP are you crazy?”(We all know the answer to that) Seriously though the Bears are allowing 125+ on the ground the last 4 weeks. Did you know that Buffalo has avg 120 yds rushing their last 6 games? They are 9th in ypc on offense with 4.5 per clip. This is going to be one of the upsets this week.

Final Score: Buffalo 21…Chicago 20



New Orleans (5-3) at Carolina (1-6)

Carolina has avg 50 yds rushing on offense since their bye week…meouch! The saints meanwhile have allowed 41 to AZ, 42 to TB, 125 to Cle and the Browns are a decent rushing team, and then 108 to the Steelers and kept Mendenhall pretty bottled up last week. As long as NO does not turn the ball over I think you have to like them in a rout this week.

Ivory/Betts/Bush/Jones – Looks like Reggie bush is not ready so they wait till after the bye week for both him and Thomas. They won’t need them that much in this game. Ivory and Betts will hold the fort down 1 more week.

Stewart – I don’t like the panthers and I think New Orleans will get out in front of the m early. Maybe Stewart can catch them not looking once the game is out of control. Nothing shows that he will tear it up this week. If you roll the dice understand that you might get results like last week.

Final Score: New Orleans 28…Carolina 7



New England (6-1) at Cleveland (2-5)

Logan Mankins checks back in for the Patriots this week. The Pro Bowl Guard will try and get on the field asap but I would not expect him to play the entire game. The browns are playing hard and actually have done alright in rush defense. Allowing 165 to Atlanta and 140 to KC but outside of that the past 2 weeks they allowed 121 to the Steelers and 58 to New Orleans. The Patriots on rush offense have posted 119 against Miami, 127-Balt, and 122-MN last week so even though they have very subpar backs they keep rolling along. This team is starting to look a lot like the 2000 New England patriots that we kept saying couldn’t win and didn’t have the talent and were actually 2-4 at one point but they play as a team and they keep finding ways to win ball games.

BJGE – When he has over 15 carries he has games of 16-98-TD, 16-76-TD, 17-112-2TDs…and he has 6 TDs in his last 5 games. You own him, you gotta play him right now but understand he might also get 10-25 if things don’t go right. He is not a dual threat either with only 2 receptions on the season.

Danny Woodhead – He is avg about 13-14 PPG in PPR the last 3 weeks. He can be a nice flex option but I am not sold on inserting a guy that will only touch the ball maybe 10-12 times a game.

Peyton Hillis – His rush stats the past 3 weeks are 10/28, 12/41, and 16/69 with just 1 rushing TD over those 3 games. He does chip in as a receiver but he’ll have his work cut out for hi against New England. Certainly he should not be a top10 candidate this week.

Final Score: New England 20…Cleveland 17



New York Jets (5-2) at Detroit (2-5)

If you told me the Jets would outgain the Pack 350 to 237 yds on offense and lose 9-0 I would not have believed you. The Jets have lost to Balt 10-9 and GB 9-0…both of these games their defense played outstanding but they still have some inconsistencies on offense that prevent them from being a truly dominant team. The Lions have been up and down this year at rush defense but they have allowed an avg of 170 yds rushing per game against the NYG, PHI, and MN…I would look at LT and Greene as strong plays this week as the Jets are going to take their frustration out on Detroit this week.

LT – I want to say good start but traditionally he does very mediocre inside domes. I’m not saying bench him as I think the Jets will do well but he doesn’t have a lot of big games on his resume inside domes. Solid but nothing special this week.

Shonn Greene – I think he will have a surprise game this week. Last week I said one of these weeks he is going to win the battle and have better stats. I like him this week on the road and the fact the Jets offense is sputtering a bit. Maybe they get him involved and find a spark they need on the road. It’s a gamble but if you have bye week issues you might find some points in here. We can discuss this more below.

Jahvid Best - His dual threat should keep him in flex status at least.

Final Score: NY Jets 28…Detroit 20



San Diego (3-5) at Houston (4-3)

The problem for owners with San Diego RBs is all 3 of them eat parts of the pie. This is not a 1 back show although that is what many were led to believe before the season started. Houston is avg 150 yds on rush defense as of late, that does not bode well for them to hold serve at home this week. They played terrible coming off a bye week against Indy last week. This is a tough match up for Foster as San Diego has allowed 51 against NE and 65 last week against TN, both good teams.

Ryan Mathews – I would consider him for a flex spot right now.

Darren Sproles – 2 solid games the past 2 weeks posting 16 and 17 in PPR formats. So many injuries to their WR and TEs, maybe Sproles will just be lined up in the slot and turned loose.

Arian Foster – Not loving this match up but Houston needs to lean more on the running game right now.

Final Score: San Diego 28…Houston 27



Arizona (3-4) at Minnesota (2-5)

23 turnovers on the season for Arizona. 9 of them their last 2 games. Things look bleak in the desert and they are turning to Derek Anderson this week, puke! The Vikings are not in much better shape as they have no continuity between the front office, coaching staff, and the players. This is an ugly football game no matter how you slice it. I assume Favre will be starting? What a mess. Jared Allen will have 3 sacks this week, write it down.

Beanie Wells – Liked him last week, not liking him much this week.

Adrian Peterson – I’m sure he’s licking his chops after watching what Blount did a week ago. I am interested to see how the team responds. Wilf spoke to the team this week and they needed some assurance that everything is going to be OK. I would have feared mutiny or a total loss of discipline like what we saw in Dallas a week ago.

Final Score: Minnesota 18…Arizona 12



New York Giants (5-2) at Seattle (4-3)

Normally I heavily slant the Nest as home field advantage for the Seahawks and try not to get too caught up in the numbers however…last week I said I had some doubts about their rush defense and they were ripped apart for 239 yards by Oakland. The Giants in 3 of their last 4 games have racked up 189, 167, and 200 yds rushing. They are 4th in rush yards, 2nd in rush TDs, and 6th in yds per carry. They are a strong offensive team that only stops themselves with turnovers. On the flipside they have allowed a TOTAL of 185 yds rushing over their last 4 games!!! An avg of only 45 yds per game and other than a 1 yd Ward plunge in Houston they have not yielded a rushing TD to a major opposing RB their last 4 weeks. In many ways I doubt Tom Coughlin was looking for a bye week for these guys. They have been playing excellent football except for the turnovers which could play a huge part in Sunday’s game.

Ahmad Bradshaw – I wouldn’t sit him.

Brandon Jacobs – I wouldn’t start him.

Marshawn Lynch – Expect a very mediocre day as new york has been lights out in rush defense the last 4 games.

Final Score: New York 27…Seattle 17



Kansas City (5-2) at Oakland (4-4)

When was the last time these 2 teams played a meaningful football game. These teams are similar. They both have 2 pretty strong RBs, well KC has an edge but Bush is no slouch for Oakland. In fact these 2 teams might not need to attempt a pass all day. KC the last 3 games has allowed Foster to get 70/TDs, MJD 120 total/TD, then buffalo was able to rush for 137 last week but Fitzpatrick got some of those yards. I like the match up both ways. Oakland in 3 of their last 4 games has allowed 91-SD, 75-Den,a dn 47-Sea…but KC is a strong running team and I expect good numbers form them.

Jamaal Charles –Start him with confidence

Thomas Jones – Avg day but with bye weeks most will need to start him.

Darren McFadden – Has 335 yards and 4 TDs the past 2 weeks. Ride the wave.

Bush – 160 total yds and 2 TDs the last 2 games. Like Jones I think he will be avg but I don’t see Oakland blowing out KC so he might be
limited this week.

Final Score: Oakland 24…Kansas City 21 Things tighten up in the NFC West



Indy (5-2) at Philly (4-3)

The Colts could have a shopping cart with a mannequin’s arm attached to it and Manning would turn it into a Pro Bowl WR. They wheeled out Tamme, Garcon, White, and Hart Monday night and still managed to win convincingly. I think this week with Vick back and the Eagles coming off a bye week, add in Indy on a short week and I think you have the makings of a an impressive win for Philly this week. Manning vs Vick, all eyes that can watch this game will on Sunday. Both teams have been good against the run the past 3 weeks. Indy has been at least avg with 113-KC, 113-Was, and 108-Hou while Philly has 74-SF, 65-Atl, and 75-TN before their bye week.

Mike Hart and Joseph Addai – Likely out this week

Donald Brown – Was not great last week but he was feeling his way back on the field. I worry about his pass blocking but Indy doesn’t have much choice so look for brown to get carries and short passes when he is in the game. James is going to be active but as a UM fan for a very long time, I promise you he is nothing like Edge…NOTHING. I saw the thread dedicated to him in the SP, good luck with that folks.

LeSean McCoy – Should be getting over those cracked ribs. I don’t like huge numbers but he should be good for at least 75 total yds and a score.

Final Score: Philly 27…Indy 24



Dallas (1-6) at Green Bay (5-3)

Dallas is yielding an avg of 150 yds rushing the last 4 games. CJ-25 points, ADP-13 points, Bradshaw-13 points, same game Jacobs-13 points, MJD-14 points. Green Bay’s rush defense has not been very good either allowing 155 yds rushing on avg the last 3 weeks, but they did manage to slow down the Jets last week.

Felix and MB III – Match up looks better but they still are shooting holes in owners rosters. Risky is the words I would use to describe most Dallas skill position players at this point. Amazed Wade has a job.

Brandon Jackson – I like him this week. He had 19 @Wash, 11-MIA, 19-MN, and 9 @NYJ last week. He should be involved a lot in the offense.

Final Score: Green Bay 38…Dallas 17



Pittsburgh (5-2) at Cincinnati (2-5)

Here is what you need to know. The Steelers are awesome at shutting down the run even when they lose football games like last week and the week before…oh yeah they won that game. Cinci is allowing 4.5 ypc and their last 4 games they have allowed 116, 125, 153, and 137 yards on rush defense.

Mendenhall – Has been pretty subpar since Ben came back but look for him to have a nice performance on MNF. The Bengals are not very good at stopping the run and have had some injuries along their DL which further weakens them. Secondary is banged up too, they are in Barney this week.

Cedric Benson – He was great on the opening drive last week when Scott was being worked into the lineup too and then he went into the tank rest of the way and Scott never got another carry. I don’t like the offensive scheme right now.

Final Score: Pittsburgh 24…Cincinnati 16



And finally I want to dedicate this thread/write up to my good friend Jeff Tefertiller who most of you know from FBG. Jeff lost his father this past week. Jeff worked tirelessly to ensure his father lived comfortably these past few months as his health was ailing. I speak for many in the Shark Pool, our thoughts and prayers are with you friend.

Ever since I can remember, my mother has always served the most delicious and lovingly-prepared meals on her beautiful Noritake place settings. When I inherited her prized Royal Orchard set as part of our wedding gift a few years ago, I was thrilled. It's such a lovely feeling to serve your husband and family meals {from old family recipes} on place settings with which you grew up ... the tradition and heritage of it all makes me smile.

So when Noritake approached me about sponsoring Classic Bride, I felt like it was such a natural fit.
The brand is an undeniable cornerstone when it comes to quality and design, backed up by the fact that they've been making such fine dinnerware for over a century. It's a no-brainer that formal place settings from Noritake would be an excellent addition to any wedding registry ... so I thought I'd share a few of my favorites below {and yep, we're giving away something really, really good so scroll down for the details and the easy-as-pie directions on how to enter!}
A broad band of platinum bordering each piece features a softly frosted background etched with geometric borders and interwoven flourishes. 

Above: Platinum Wave design | White Porcelain for Elegant Dining
A more relaxed approach to formal dinnerware. Keeping to a simple modern feeling, this pattern interprets a classic scroll motif in an updated and playful manner.

Captures a delicate depiction of budding twigs in platinum.


Above: Colorwave Collection
A contemporary collection on fine stoneware. Available as a coupe {middle row}, rim {top row}, or square shape {bottom row}, with matte color on the outside contrasting with the glossy cream inside glaze {bottom row}.

THE CONTEST
Enough chattering, right? Let's get right to the good part. Noritake has offered to generously give away FOUR place settings of the Birchwood design {shown above} to ONE lucky CB reader!
That means you would win {four} 5-piece place settings of the Birchwood design, each including a Dinner Plate, Salad Plate, B&B Plate, Cup and Saucer. A value of $456.00! Tell me that wouldn't be a perfect start to a newlywed nest!

TO ENTER
So how can you win? Two steps - that's all! Just visit Noritake's website and have a look around. Then leave a comment on this post telling us which Noritake pattern is your favorite. Make sure you include a valid e-mail address in your comment so I have a way of contacting you in case you win! Entries not including an e-mail address will not be considered. :o)

You may enter as many times as you would like. The contest will end on Sunday, November 7 at midnight UTC/GMT. A winner will be announced the following day. Good luck!

p.s. There are always lots of special offers on Noritake's Twitter and Facebook pages! Check them out for yourself.

A couple years ago, I  bought a pair of great "plastic" German-made brotforms. On the base, these are marked "Thermo", "Germany", "1,000 gm" and "K".  They are wonderfully substantial...very solidly built.  A great product. Easy to nest in storage, having "steps" on the exterior that allow air circulation. Easy to clean too.

These are, obviously, designed for 1 Kilo (2.2#) loaves, and are rectangular in shape.   I have been searching, in vain, for a smaller version of these substantial brotforms.  Need a rectangular design, as I always bake two or more loaves on the stone in my home oven.  I can find light, cheap, "slotted" versions of smaller German "poly" brots, and they are often round.  Looking for 1.1 # rectangular brotforms, that don't look like they came from XMart.  Ideas?

(Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from a recently-completed chapter of James Randi's forthcoming book, A Magician In The Laboratory. - BKT)

Magicians are a critical part of my discussion here, so please bear with me while I give you a peek behind the curtain; a cursory glance at who and what we magicians are, and aren’t. First, we’re entertainers, actors, showbiz people who have as our primary objective the delight of our audiences. We’re deceivers, taking on roles and characters to express our art, just as any actor does. With a few rare but important exceptions, we're not scientists – though some us will have enough knowledge of science to recognize flummery, simply by using common sense. Our highly specific expertise comes from knowledge of the ways in which our audiences can be led to quite false conclusions by calculated means – psychological, physical and especially visual. Scientists think and perceive logically by using their training and observational skills, and are thus often insulated from the possibility that there might be chicanery at work. After all, a bacterium or a crystal will not go out of its way to deceive the scientific observer, which an appropriately motivated human being most assuredly will…

In this chapter, allow me to lead you through some of the differences between how magicians and scientists view – and manipulate – the world. The former do so for purposes of entertainment, the latter to further our knowledge of the world around us. But not always.

The scientific establishment within the former Soviet Union spent tremendous sums of money in the pursuit of such questionable projects such as “psitronic machines,” “faster-than-light communication,” ESP, PK, “free energy” and countless other notions that – presently – can only be described as pseudoscientific. Lest the ghosts of formerly doubtful ideas such as radioactivity, x-rays, relativity and even germ theory – all at first condemned and even ridiculed by orthodox science – be flaunted as examples of academic myopia, I ask you to note that those major discoveries were very quickly tested and accepted into the ever-widening spectrum of facts and wonders that serve us in probing our universe; parapsychology and the above mentioned Soviet gizmos have, by comparison, produced not a single positive, definitive, repeatable event or claim, despite the bleatings of their apologists who suggest that perhaps their delusions should not be expected to conform to the standards of real science because this is something “different.” Bullshit. It’s either science or it’s not. Either plant your feet in the soil of terra firma, or establish a base in Elysium…

If the funds spent in Russia alone were spent on ideas that actually produced results, we’d all be better off. My admittedly brief experiences with Soviet scientists – in situ – showed me that they appeared to operate on rank and position; a scientist of a higher rank was always right, regardless of the weakness of his/her case. Now, this is certainly not unheard of in other societies: In France, I found abject and immediate surrender to academic authority, and it happens right here in the USA, too – more frequently than we can afford. I’d very much like to take a team of a few carefully-chosen persons to various countries and give seminars in double-blind experimental design, a provision that is often impatiently bypassed. I believe that a good approach to instruction in this facet could use traditional conjuring techniques to demonstrate firmly that no matter how well educated, or how basically intelligent, trained, or observant a scientist may be, s/he may also be a poor judge of a methodology employed in deception.

To quote Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The techniques of the conjuror – or of the “psychic” performer – are apparently magic to even the best-intentioned scientists. Having rational explanations for these talents is not a matter of I.Q. or of academic preparation. It requires specialized education and bias-free critical thinking. Any scientist can be trained to design methods of testing and solving what might be simple “magic” tricks. Once a certain point is arrived at in that process, a “savvy” appears to kick in that is permanent. It’s a valuable addition to world experience, almost like learning another language.

While on the subject, I’ll mention that I first met Arthur C. Clarke in 1983 at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where I’d gone with an NBC television crew during the taping of my NBC-TV special, Magic or Miracle? The man credited with having originated the idea of the geosynchronous satellite was a trifle embarrassed. The President of Sri Lanka was due at his home to watch a football game via the Arthur's satellite dish, the only extant in all of the tiny island nation, and that device was lying on its side, the victim of a recent storm. Arthur's mobile telephone, too, was “dead” because its charger had become disconnected, and I had the honor of wriggling down underneath his massive desk to plug in the transformer for him. The bits of exotic scurrying Sinhalese fauna I found there I shall leave to your imagination.

I recall that when we’d arrived at the Colombo airport and announced who our host was, we discovered that Arthur had – quite accidentally – eased our visit. We were instantly moved through immigration and customs and escorted outside to our waiting transportation. Arthur was highly respected in his new home, and once commented to me that he found it far more agreeable to be a large fish in a small pond than any other configuration of those elements that he could imagine. Over the years, I ran into Arthur several more times and once had the pleasure of hearing him speak at the United Nations. His thought process was evident from his speaking manner. As in his writing, everything he delivered was clear, concise, and effective. Only once did I see evidence that another artist had interfered with his work…

That was when I was an invited guest in New York City at the Paramount Theater premiere of the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with science fiction luminaries Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Lester Del Rey, George O. Smith, and L. Sprague De Camp, and I saw Arthur in tears when he began to realize just how “creative” Kubrick had gotten, ignoring some of the subtleties of the original story he’d prepared for the big screen. We were both dismayed by the erroneous interpretations that members of the audience offered as explanations of what had become the “psychedelic” sequences in the film. I suggest that readers examine Arthur’s short story The Sentinel – upon which 2001 and the Space Odyssey novel were based – and The Lost Worlds of 2001, and then see the film again for a better understanding of what it should have shown.

Arthur was a perceptive, thorough observer of the real world. He respected reality and science, and he made it clear that his work was fiction, not presumption or prophecy. He also, incidentally, took delight in seeing various basic conjuring tricks that I showed him, and was intrigued on the rare occasions when I revealed to him the modus operandi of a trick, always assuring me that he would very likely incorporate a newly-acquired subtlety or two into one of his stories. The man was a delight. Yes, I grieved at his passing, but – much more importantly – I celebrated his existence. If you want to see him at his very best, by all means look up his short story titled The Nine Billion Names of God. When you get to the last line, if you don’t gasp, Sir Arthur might have bored you…

An experienced magician can come upon a previously-unmet colleague working his trade in a street he’s never been to before, and will immediately see the truth behind the illusions. The mind of the magician works that way. We can’t make magicians out of scientists, and we would not try, but we can try to provide them with new and useful ways of thinking. Don’t think for a moment that this would be a case of simply exposing the secrets of each and every major magic illusion in that vast repertoire. That would take a lifetime or two, and would probably not educate the student in the basic process of “thinking in the groove,” or thinking like a magician. In mathematics, anyone can find the square root of the number 2, either by trying every likely number, refining and narrowing down the estimation until an appropriately-accurate* result is arrived at, or one can design a method of systematically extracting that square root – a method that will work on any number within the range of such an operation; a method that will provide a proper, accurate-enough answer without trial-and-error. The magician favors the latter manner of solving a question involving trickery, by bringing his attention to bear on the psychological, mechanical, optical, sensory, and emotional factors and information.

As an example of this process at work, consider this scenario: a pleasant, perhaps overly-charming, quick-talking performer offers to demonstrate a phenomenon in which a common teaspoon appears to turn flexible in his hands and be distorted out of shape, by a means that he says he himself does not understand, and which he attributes to the hidden psychic powers of the breathless spectator. How’s that trick done? Well, first of all, we’re not as aware of the actual curve of a teaspoon as we think we are. Were a straight, flat, piece of metal to be used, any minor change of shape would be immediately evident. Two identical spoons will usually nest together neatly, but if one of them is surreptitiously bent – slightly – the spectator has a difficult time noticing the difference, between two un-nested spoons, while with a straight piece of metal, he’d see it right away. My point is that a spoon’s profile is somewhat ambiguous, which makes it ideal for use in the repertoire of our scallywag – we’ll call him “Scally” for short – who claims that he has genuinely magical powers. Second, Scally handles the spoon casually, waving it about while chatting up the spectator and specifying just how the spoon should be held and what attitude to adopt – factors of no importance except as his means of misdirection of attention. As for the specific method that Scally uses to bend the utensil, as I’ve often told my students, he bends it when the spectator isn’t looking. No, that’s not avoiding an explanation; it’s an exact description. How Scally arrives at that point, of course, is the big secret. He does it with misdirection – when the spectator is distracted by his idle chatter and apparently random movements.

There have been – literally – thousands of Scally's who came from nowhere to befuddle the public, ever since mass communication became available. For example, some 130 years ago, all of New York was agog over a vaudeville performer, Miss Lulu Hurst [1869-1950] of the state of Georgia, who at the age of 14 was – first – known as “The Electric Girl,” and then as the “Georgia Wonder.” No one seemed to understand exactly how she did her demonstrations of resisting the efforts of the strongest men – chosen from the audience – who appeared with her on stage. Having no better explanations, amateur “experts” attributed her seemingly wondrous powers to electricity and magnetism, those then-mysterious agents that science and the public were increasingly using, but which still seemed rather magical. When three large and determined men from her audience tugged at a broomstick or a billiard-cue, trying to wrest it away from the fragile-looking girl, they failed every time. It appeared that Lulu had signed a pact with you-know-who. Yet such feats, if one only knew how to perform them, are straightforward exploitations of the basic laws of leverage. Have things changed that much today, when so many of us are still charmed by charlatans who invoke basic scientific principles to explain their tricks? Of course, they now have much more powerful and captivating terms such as “quantum physics” and “vibrations” to throw into the mix. Back then, "magnetism" seemed to do the job.

Miss Hurst had discovered, among many other basic facts, that her diminutive figure gave her an unexpected advantage over the huge men she’d invited to join her on stage. As an example of one simple trick she’d do, picture this: Two men would be asked to grasp one end of a broomstick horizontally with both hands, all of their hands held closely together, and both of them at the same end of the stick, which they would hold parallel to the floor. Miss Lulu would place one of her fingers under the extreme tip of the other end, and ask the men to push her finger down with the broomstick. They could not. Try to “do a Lulu” – you’ll find that you apparently have supernatural strength, too! Again, it’s all a matter of leverage… It’s also a matter of how the challenge was issued. Lulu was in charge; she told the volunteers to push her finger down. Had she chosen to use her finger to move the stick, her leverage advantage might have become obvious to her audience…

Lulu was only one of the first of what soon became a whole series of “magnetic ladies” who were quickly created by entrepreneurs. Her great success was such that she soon found her imitators going further than the original. One Anna Abbott, billed as the “Little Georgia Wonder,” had a career that far outlasted Lulu’s, which attracted audiences for only two years. It’s interesting to note that Lulu essentially began her career in her very early childhood, when she produced “spirit raps” in her bedroom – much as the Fox sisters had done back in 1848. And, Lulu fooled both Sir Oliver Lodge [1851-1940] and Sir William Crookes [1832-1919], devoted fans of spiritualism and other sorts of woo-woo who eagerly accepted her tricks as evidence of supernatural forces. These were competent, experienced scientists – physicists – but totally out of their field of expertise.

 

*it’s always approximate, since it’s an “irrational” number…

OK – this is a short one this week. I’ve got about a billion things I need to get done before I leave for Europe (leaving tomorrow!) Work is super busy this week, and since I’m going to be gone for 10 days, I really need to tie up all the loose ends before I head out.

Gamer-wise, the big thing left to do is get all my stuff for organizational purposes. I need to head to the local dollar store and pick up a few boxes of Ziploc bags in snack, sandwich and quart sizes. I will also buy one or two packs of hair ties. I like to use the hair ties to bind up cards as they tend not to damage the cards nor will the rubber stick to the cards if I leave them wrapped up for long periods of time.

Why am I getting all the baggies? Well, in order to pack as many different games into my two suitcases (only 50 pounds each) – I try to jettison as much extra weight as possible. Thus, a lot of my nights in Essen are spent opening up the new games and punching all the bits out of the cardboard frames. I’ll put the game bits into Ziplocs and label the bag with a Sharpie so I know what bit goes where.The frames – and often the box inserts – find the German recycling pile. I think that last year I managed to save 12 or 13 pounds by the end of the week by throwing out these non-functional pieces of cardboard. I’ll often nest smaller games or at least smaller game boxes into the empty large boxes. So – even if I don’t throw out a cardboard box insert, I will usually at least fold it flat so that I can use the empty box to next other things inside…

You can also save space by packing your dirty laundry inside the now-empty game boxes. Just make sure you open all the games when you get back or you might lose your favorite pair of underwear for a year! The biggest downside of emptying out the boxes is that there is an increased chance of the box getting a little dented (or cover crushed in a bit) as there isn’t anything inside to help it keep its shape. But, this is a risk I’m willing to take (or forced to take) in order to bring home as many games as possible.

The other good thing about putting stuff into bags is that it gives me a lot more flexibility trying to more evenly distribute my weight. The other way I’ll try to get a bit more weight onto the plane is to store as many game boards as I can into my backpack/carry-on. Though these items theoretically have weight limits (carry-ons are only supposed to be 5kg!), I’ve never had mine weighed. So, I fit as many heavy boards as I can into my backpack. My carry-on usually ends up filled with bags of heavy wooden bits and as many decks of cards as possible – it’s surprising how heavy those cards can get!

Finally, as I mentioned last week, I usually prepare a personal spreadsheet for me with the games that I know that I’m interested in. Of course, this is still a work in progress –and there are always a lot of changes in the week leading up to Essen – but here is my list thus far.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3509720/Dale%27s%20Essen%202010%20BGN.pdf

With the magic of the Internets (and thanks to BGN, BGG and Spielbox) – I can get a lot more information prior to leaving than I ever could before. However, every year, I’m surprised by how many games I find at the fair that I’m really interested in which I simply didn’t know about until I saw them. Or… how many games end up being more interesting when I see them than my initial impression based on internet surfing and rules reading.

And with that – it’s time to get back to packing.

While I won’t promise anything, I’m working on a plan with the Fearless Leader to get you BGN readers a small glimpse of the fair on a (hopefully) daily basis. Keep your fingers crossed that the iPad turns out to be a suitable gadget for this sort of reporting.

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

Hailed as 'the greatest theatre producer who ever lived' and the champion of all things beautiful, Serge Diaghilev transformed not only ballet but all the arts in the 20th century. Andrew O'Hagan welcomes the V&A;'s lavish celebration of his legacy

In Proust's rather newsy big novel, Mme Verdurin does not simply have her salon, she does not simply throw her party, her "Wednesdays": she puts them together "like a bird building its nest". She may be awful, but she has a captivating love of art, and she takes some trouble to make social life distinct for her small birds of paradise. In Scott Moncrieff's translation, Verdurin is "a sort of accredited representative in Paris of all foreign artists . . . an aged Fairy Godmother, grim but all-powerful, to the Russian dancers". In the last decade of his life, Proust would several times get dressed, apply his cologne, don his white gloves, and escape his clammy rooms on the Rue Hamelin to attend performances by the Ballets Russes. He went as if to greet the dawn. "This charming invasion," he wrote, "infected Paris, as we know, with a fever of curiosity less agonising, more purely aesthetic, but quite as intense perhaps as that aroused by the Dreyfus case."

Picasso was there with Jean Cocteau. Bakst was there with Benois or Stravinsky. Apollinaire was certainly there, making notes, with Satie, making comments. Braque came in. Coco Chanel whispered something to Matisse or Prokoviev or Max Reinhardt, and the person with the programme was Clive Bell, accompanying the "lovely but incredibly silly ladies" lampooned in letters by his sister-in-law Virginia Woolf. And there at the dead centre of this Risko cartoon of Modernity was the man who put it together, Serge Diaghilev, who is celebrated in a beautiful new show which has just opened at the V&A.; Diaghilev was a tastemaker, a despot, a hustler and a genius: he not only "jump-started Western ballet", as the critic Joan Acocella has said, "but he staffed it". He gave Nijinsky and Pavlova to France and the world, but he also gave Marie Rambert to Great Britain, George Balanchine to America, Léonid Massine to Hollywood and Monte Carlo, and Stravinsky to himself. It might be time to say that the great avant-garde artist of the 20th century was not really an artist at all, but a producer.

Who but the world's greatest impresario could attract stage sets by Braque, costumes by Chanel and choreography by Massine, all to guide and enhance the faltering steps of a young Russian composer? Diaghilev was a businessman and a cosmopolitan who floated on ambiguity, a radical who thought only beauty could save the world. The V&A; show demonstrates how the great 20th-century impulse, in the arts, was for international connection, and what was Diaghilev if not a global manager of wonder, a man who, out of his Russian beginnings, sought forms of wordless magic that could leap over borders and time zones and native conventions?

On 18 May 1922 he was looking rough at the edges. His shirts, though clean, were threadbare, and he had only £500 to his name, borrowed from the mother of Hilda Bewicke, one of his British dancers. It was the opening night of Le Renard at the Paris Opera, a ballet composed by Stravinsky and choreographed by the brilliant Nijinska, whose brother had once "paused in mid-air"– poor Nijinsky now insane and kept to an institution. That night, after the premiere, TS Eliot's friends Sydney and Violet Schiff threw a supper party at the Hotel Majestic to celebrate the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev, ever the man in charge of arrangements, took over the guest list. He was determined to get Picasso, Stravinsky, Joyce and Proust round one table, and he did so, in the upper room.

According to a wonderfully ripe account Picasso "exhibited his secret dandy soul by wearing a Catalan faixa above his eyes to upstage those dressed in white tie". (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon might be understood to be a progenitor of the Russian Ballet's cubist sensibility: the curve of those ballets, the colour, the sense of space, the notion of sexual freedom.) Joyce turned up drunk – he was nervous of meeting Proust – and he sat at the table next to Diaghilev, the Irishman nursing a glass of champagne. Proust entered after 2am, dapper and strange, "blinking like a night-bird", as someone once said of him, and he soon got into a markedly unfriendly conversation with Stravinsky about Beethoven's late quartets. Joyce was almost asleep, and Stravinsky, in an uppity way, later claimed he didn't recognise the author of Ulysses. Proust had been an admirer of Picasso's stage sets for Parade – he wrote a letter to Cocteau noting "how handsome Picasso is" – but they didn't have much to say to one another. Joyce was roused to speak with Proust, but the conversation was absurd. It was said (in Ireland at least) that while Proust wished to discuss duchesses, Joyce wished only to talk of chambermaids. In fact, they appear mainly to have discussed their liking of truffles and the persistence of their various ailments.

You often hear it said that someone is like a person in a novel. But Diaghilev was like a person in many novels – Baron de Charlus by way of Prince Myshkin and Count Vronsky. He came to ballet late, after skirmishes with music (his compositions were dismissed by Rimsky-Korsakov), and art – curating, and editing a lavish fortnightly journal, The World of Art. He came to believe that ballet was the most magical of the arts, the place where sculpture and space, music and movement, painting, design, sex and death, came together. But for me the shadow of Proust's great ambition falls over him, the shadow of Joyce's, Henry James's, Nabokov's: to Diaghilev the ballet was like the novel, a place where the human spirit could find itself addressed in pattern, in rhythm and in thought; where delight abounded in a social unravelling and form evolved to become a revealing new dream of vitality. Walking through the V&A;'s show, you hear the wiry, kinetic frenzy of Stravinsky's The Firebird, and you see flash after flash of genius – a shock of Matisse on the costumes for Le Chant du Rossignol; a certain inward turn of limbs in a photo of an acrobat from Parade; Nijinsky taking shape like the essence of a rose; Leon Bakst's costume designs for Scheherazade; Picasso's giant, sublime front-cloth of running women in Le Train Bleu – and you see that, whatever Diaghilev set out to do, he did in large measure, setting off not merely a fin-de-siècle ballet cult but an entire ferment in the culture of Europe. Several of his productions, not least The Rite of Spring, caused riots, but he himself was a riot, and the works he produced are ongoingly interruptive of the little satisfactions and sedations of art. You look at these works and these rooms of objects, and you think: this is the story of a man in pursuit of the story of human invention.

Born on 19 March 1872, Diaghilev grew up in Perm, at the foot of the Urals, and his childhood was one of horses and carriages and imperial winters. His best and latest biographer, Sjeng Scheijen, a Russian speaker with access to previously unpublished family letters and archives, locates an enigma in Diaghilev growing up in such a remote place, a man who was to become "the ruler of European taste during one of its finest periods of cultural blossoming – perhaps the greatest theatre producer who ever lived . . . a champion of beauty", emerging from a world bleaker than any in Chekhov (he would later invite Chekhov to be literary editor of his fortnightly journal). His father's money was made in vodka distilleries and lost when their monopoly ended, leaving the family bankrupt when Diaghilev was 18. The coming impresario showed his skill for organisation early, caring for his half-brothers from money left to him by his mother. He had a distant relation in Tchaikovsky, a muse in his father's new wife, his "second mother", and a lifelong family feeling about all who helped him escape into art. He attended St Petersburg in a vice of death-thoughts, and he visited Tolstoy, coming to the conclusion that "the dream and purpose of my life is to work in the field of art".

In constant contradiction with himself, Diaghilev was, as his biographer says, "trans-national and trans-sexual", a lover of the past – of Russian realism, formalism, nationalism – but with a special dispensation towards making it new. At first he wanted to exhibit the glories of European art in Russia, then he wanted to exhibit the glories of Russian art in Europe, and he did both, though the latter project would be the one that would make him famous. He and his friends, the young painters and dancers, resemble some of those in Nabokov's first novel Mary, teetering on the edges of revolution and self-invention. Even before be brought the Ballets Russes to the west, he was collecting sensibilities that might serve his project. In Paris in May 1898, he went to see Oscar Wilde with the intention of buying some of Aubrey Beardsley's erotic illustrations. "There is a young Russian here" Wilde wrote, "who is a great amateur of Aubrey's art, who would love to have one. He is a great collector, and rich. So you might send him a copy and name a price . . . His name is Serge de Diaghilew." The young Russian said to his friends that people stood on chairs as Wilde and he walked arm and arm down the Boulevard.

The self-myth-making had already begun. In this great anniversary year of the Ballets Russes, what we find when we look at Diaghilev is a great and sometimes monstrous example of the self-inventor as international guru of art. Behind him stood his mentor Tolstoy, his admirer Oscar Wilde; in front of him stood his young friend Picasso, his protégés Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Debussy and Prokoviev. And ahead of them: Balanchine and Nureyev, Nabokov and Andy Warhol, Schoenberg and Louise Bourgeois. Each was head of a school that celebrated its own discrimination. Each chose to represent the universal reach of tradition and the individual talent. Diaghilev was a new kind of artist: he was an operator as much as a beauty-maker, as savage as he was sublime. The Ballets Russes put ambiguity on a reconstituted map, and though there would always be something of the green carnation about these artists, as ballet professionals they trumped feyness with athleticism and married androgyny to paganism, an achievement that we now see lighting the way for every other aspect of popular culture.

High culture isn't what it used to be. Ballet is fighting for its life, poetry is a blood sport, and the avant garde is a joke in the Daily Mail, so what today, other than a debt of gratitude for how it revivified the arts in the 20th century, do we owe to the beautifully crazy world of the Ballets Russes? There are some small answers: the persistence of atonality and robust sexuality in orchestral music; a connection between design and movement that continues to inform innovation in the theatre; the presence of liturgical ritual, gesture and androgyny in rock and roll. But the bigger answer is to do with ballet itself as an art form, an area of endeavour going through a bad patch for my generation, but decidedly sacred, to some of us, as a hall of mirrors to the human imagination. Diaghilev made dance part of the modern mindset, and he continues to make it so, wherever the investment is able to be made. I can't see a ballet, or a fashion show, or an art installation, or a frieze, without thinking of Diaghilev and the connections he made possible. Stravinsky, in old age, credited the Ballets Russes with "the development of choreographic art in the entire world". When Bonnard was asked about the influence of the Ballets Russes, he said, "But they influence everyone."

Diaghilev's world, of course, was full of other changes, and after 1917 he would never be allowed home. His base of operations became Monte Carlo. You sometimes wonder how all these scarf-fluttering, slipperette-wearing individuals avoided the agonies of the first world war and the Russian revolution. The answer might be that they responded to public tumult at the level of style, which is pretty much all you can ask of artists anyhow. They represented their own vanguard and their own campaign against barbarity, doing it by leaps and with dressmakers' scissors, which doesn't make them war heroes but makes them what they are. Diaghilev, in accordance with decadent tradition, drank champagne during the first world war, and made do with his own plots and incendiaries. But while the squeals went up from the orchestra pit and the bourgeoisie chewed their fists, his own brother Valentin was taken to the Solovki prison camp, where eventually he was murdered. Stalin removed Valentin's son in 1937 to the mines of Solinsk as a designated enemy of the people.

Culture was threatening in those days. The more talented took risks, and sometimes others paid the price, but Diaghilev himself never stopped believing the Ballets Russes could fulfil a promise he once made to his mother from Venice. "All that is real," he wrote, "is in constant contact with magic and mystery." He took it for granted that political power alone could not answer life's mysteries, though he himself was mad on power. That was his personal contradiction, but what he made, and what he left, was a charming vision of otherness, a compendium of how to live and dream of perfection.

Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929, Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7 until 9 January 2011. 'Extra' members get a 20% discount on full-price tickets. guardian.co.uk/extra

Reviving public gardens and edible landscapes in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward. Introducing coalfield communities to biofuels. Increasing access for low-income communities to energy efficiency programs. Transforming abandoned lots into vibrant ecosystems. These are just a few ways in which 40 promising conservation leaders will advance their environmental vision and leadership skills as recipients of the 2010 TogetherGreen Fellowships. The TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership Program invests in high-potential individuals from all backgrounds, providing them with the tools, resources, visibility, and a peer network to help them lead conservation actions that will help shape a healthier environmental future. Audubon and Toyota launched the five-year TogetherGreen initiative in 2008 to fund innovative community projects, build a growing cadre of trained conservation leaders, and offer volunteer opportunities across the country to benefit the environment. "We are thrilled to welcome another extremely talented and diverse group of TogetherGreen Fellows who have the passion and skills to inspire and lead others," said Audubon President David Yarnold. "Thanks to the generosity of Toyota, the TogetherGreen fellowship program allows Audubon to find and foster individuals who have innovative ideas and approaches for engaging people and achieving conservation results. They are poised to change the world--one community at a time." Every year, 40 Fellows are chosen for their leadership potential, skills, and commitment to engaging diverse communities in conserving wildlife, land, water and energy. This year's Fellows class includes 15 individuals from within the Audubon network and 25 individuals from other organizations across the country. Fellows receive a $10,000 grant; assistance launching a conservation action project, specialized training, and the opportunity to become part of an exciting alumni network of conservation professionals. TogetherGreen Fellows participate in a weeklong professional development course at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife's National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia focused on enhancing conservation skills and sharing the latest thinking on achieving sustainable conservation success. Near the completion of their 18-month fellowship, Fellows attend a multi-day retreat focused on sharing best practices, fundraising, diversity, evaluation, and strategies to sustain their conservation action projects over the long term. The 2010 class was selected from a competitive pool of highly qualified individuals by a national advisory board of conservation and education leaders. Fellows must have at least six years experience in conservation, a passion for conservation, the desire to learn and grow, and demonstrate a proven ability in reaching new audiences. In all, the 2010 Fellows will help engage thousands of people to protect habitat, wildlife and water and save energy in 34 cities in 22 different states. "TogetherGreen gives me optimism," said Diane Wood, President, National Environmental Education Foundation, and TogetherGreen Advisory Board Member. "TogetherGreen Fellows are smart, passionate, and representative of diverse communities. They bring vital new voices and perspectives into environmental conversations and are clearly ready to take on today's and tomorrow's ever more challenging conservation issues." "The results from the first two years of the Fellows program brought to life everything that TogetherGreen sought to accomplish," added Patricia Salas Pineda, Group Vice President, Toyota Motor North America. "I'm confident that the next group of Fellows will continue that success and make a difference for years to come." Since the TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership program launched in November 2008, Fellows have recruited nearly 24,000 participants and 650 partner organizations for their conservation projects and contributed nearly 98,000 hours of time. If you or someone you know has a creative environmental project and would like to apply for a 2011 TogetherGreen Fellowship, applications will be available online beginning in early 2011 at http://www.togethergreen.org/fellows. A complete list of the 2010 TogetherGreen Fellows and details about their conservation projects can be found at http://www.togethergreen.org/fellows. The 2010 conservation projects that will be funded include (sorted by state):

First Name	Last Name	City	ST	Organization	Fellowship Project
Jesus	Garcia	Tucson	AZ	Arizona Sonora Desert Museum	Teaching about native desert plants in border lands schools for increased appreciation and improved desert habitat
Mary	Adelzadeh	Sacramento	CA	Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council	Developing Native American youth conservation leaders and establishing a network of environmental youth service providers
Rory	Cox	San Francisco	CA	Pacific Environment	Developing local clean energy projects for the San Francisco Bay Area, and publishing a how-to guide that Bay Area counties can use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Mindy	Hiatt	Tiburon	CA	Richardson Bay Audubon Center	Implementing Audubon Youth Corps, an outdoor education and restoration project with Title I partner schools
Shani	Kleinhaus	Palo Alto	CA	Santa Clara Audubon Society	Improving habitat for burrowing owls through engagement of CA immigrant communities
John	Laws	San Francisco	CA	Central Sierra Audubon Society	Creating outreach and naturalist-skills school programs using a field guide for Sierra Nevada that he illustrated and produced
Nina	Suzuki	Davis	CA	Center for Land-Based Learning	Engaging diverse youth and adults in monitoring nest boxes and developing protocols to protect key species at the Farm on Putah Creek
Marcos	Trinidad	Los Angeles	CA	South Bay Audubon Society	Improving Madrona Marsh habitat by working with Korean, Hispanic, and at-risk youth
Stacey	Vigallon	Los Angeles	CA	Los Angeles Audubon Society	Engaging urban youth through scientific illustration and protection of threatened coastal sage scrub
Christina	Nesset	Durango	CO	Southwest Conservation Corps	Piloting a river conservation program for Durango youth
Greg	Butcher	Washington	DC	National Audubon Society	Implementing an education and research project for Wood Thrush conservation
Sara	Espinoza	Washington	DC	National Environmental Education Foundation	Bringing the "Earth Gauge" program (broadcast meteorologists communicating environmental and climate info to viewers) to underserved & Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S. through the Telemundo network
Fernando	Bretos	Miami	FL	Miami Science Museum	Installing mangrove seedling eco-art in Miami schools to increase appreciation for and improve Biscayne Bay mangrove habitat
Lisa	Botero	Miami Beach	FL	City of Miami Beach	Implementing a sustainability plan for the City of Miami Beach, and implementing a public campaign to engage south FL residents in water conservation and habitat restoration activities
Sara	Peel	Warsaw	IN	Wabash River Enhancement Corporation	Developing a web-based tool for residents to calculate storm water impact and their carbon footprint
Daniel	Dermitzel	Kansas City	KS	Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture	Designing and planting demonstration an urban forest garden in Kansas City. Promoting energy and ecological benefits through education and outreach
Kenya	Stump	Lexington	KY	Kentucky Division of Compliance Assistance	Designing a high school education program focused on biofuels and biodiesel, incorporating chemistry and agriculture
Jenga	Mwendo	New Orleans	LA	Backyard Gardeners Network	Engaging Lower 9th Ward residents in a community garden project to reintroduce local agriculture and improve habitat
Hilairie	Schackai	New Orleans	LA	Longue Vue House and Gardens	Improving post-Katrina neighborhood planning & storm water catchment strategies
Will	Bullock	Boston	MA	Trustee of Reservations	Organizing a youth-run community supported agriculture market and designing urban agriculture curriculum to connect youth to land, ecology, and natural resources
Rose	Gonzalez	Lawrence	MA	Groundwork Lawrence	Working with urban youth to transform a vacant lot into green space for an outdoor classroom and for improved wildlife habitat
Justin	Schott	Ann Arbor	MI	Voices for Earth Justice	Implementing a youth engagement project with Detroit Youth Energy Squad that promotes youth leadership and helps households improve energy efficiency
Greg	Swick	Ozark	MO	Greater Ozarks Audubon Society	Designing a handbook for the Green Leadership Academy for Diverse Ecosystems
Heather	Ristow	Billings	MT	Montana Audubon	Implementing a land stewardship and college-elementary mentorship program, working with at-risk youth
Andy	Wood	Hampstead	NC	Audubon North Carolina	Implementing a "Share the Beach" social marketing campaign to protect nesting birds through production of videos that highlight how people can help neo-tropical migratory songbirds
Thomas	Perrigo	Las Vegas	NV	City of Las Vegas	Designing and implementing homeowner workshops and promoting retrofitting for energy efficiency
Sean	Mahar	Troy	NY	Audubon New York	Creating a coalition and steering committee to help secure long-term conservation funding for NY
Jennifer	Prediger	Brooklyn	NY	Grist.org	Producing a new media/feature film to help reduce threats to habitats, improve water quality, reduce greenhouse gases; building on videos produced for Sprig and Grist/Ask Umbra
John	Rowden	New York	NY	New York City Audubon Society	Managing a citizen science shorebird program in Long Island's Great South Bay
Robin	Seeley	Ithaca	NY	Shoals Marine Lab, Cornell University	Designing an education program to protect intertidal habitat
Nicole	Conrad	Huber Heights	OH	Aullwood Audubon Center	Expanding an Avian Art Contest to include habitat restoration and work with economically disadvantaged elementary students
Beth	Krisko	Xenia	OH	Antioch College Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center	Installing solar panels at an education center and designing an energy curriculum for diverse audiences
Mary	Coolidge	Portland	OR	Audubon Society of Portland	Piloting first "lights out" program volunteer protocol & monitoring for the city of Portland
Nuin-Tara	Key	Portland	OR	Metro	Improving access for low-income and minority communities to take part in energy efficiency programs in Portland
Diane	Husic	Kunkletown	PA	Lehigh Gap Nature Center	Designing and implementing a phenology-based school curriculum and citizen science monitoring program
Chris	Sheffield	Austin	TX	American Youth Works Charter School	Engaging youth in leadership and environmental career training and habitat restoration
Samir	Doshi	Burlington	VT	University of Vermont	Working with coalfield communities in Appalachia to improve reclaimed landscapes
Bill	Finnegan	Montpelier	VT	Tamarack Media	Creating an Phone app and Facebook interface that lets users see live, historic, and future weather and climate information
Christi	Norman	Seattle	WA	Audubon Washington	Using the State Birding Trail program to create a partnership with Olympic Tribal Tourism Association and restore habitat with Native Tribes
Janelle	Shafer	Seattle	WA	Seattle Audubon Society	Implementing an elementary school program using schoolyard habitat and scientific inquiry

About TogetherGreen Audubon and Toyota launched the five-year TogetherGreen initiative in 2008 to build the promise of a greener, healthier future through innovation, leadership and volunteerism. To date, 120 environmental leaders--both from within Audubon and from outside organizations--have received TogetherGreen Fellowships to protect land, water, and energy resources nationwide. For more information, visit www.togethergreen.org. About Audubon Now in its second century, Audubon connects people with birds, nature and the environment that supports us all. Our national network of community-based nature centers, chapters, scientific, education, and advocacy programs engages millions of people from all walks of life in conservation action to protect and restore the natural world. Visit Audubon online at www.audubon.org. About Toyota Toyota (NYSE: TM) established operations in the United States in 1957 and currently operates 10 manufacturing plants, including one under construction. Toyota directly employs nearly 30,000 in the U.S. and its investment here is currently valued at more than $18 billion, including sales and manufacturing operations, research and development, financial services and design. Toyota is committed to being a good corporate citizen in the communities where it does business and believes in supporting programs with long-term sustainable results. Toyota supports numerous organizations across the country, focusing on education, the environment and safety. Since 1991, Toyota has contributed more than $500 million to philanthropic programs in the U.S. For more information on Toyota's commitment to improving communities nationwide, visit http://www.toyota.com/community.

For an informed take on Bob Woodward's new book, I thought it would be interesting to hear from my CNAS colleague retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, back when it was thought of as the good war. I think he is right: Woodward has made Gen. David Petraeus the unlikely villain of the book, and Vice President Joe Biden the equally unlikely hero.  

By Lt. Gen. David Barno (U.S. Army, ret.)
Best Defense book reviewer

After powering through Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars on my Kindle this past week, I came away profoundly uneasy. It was a compelling and immensely readable account, but much of its message was troubling.

Not because of the book's unbroken account of fractious infighting, over-sized battling personalities or the lengthy debate among Obama's national security team. I actually see this high level blood-letting generally as a pretty good sign. Vociferous arguments among smart, tough players at this level are required to shine light back into every corner of the competing arguments. And there are few issues more worthy of fulsome discussion than an ongoing war, especially one going badly.

My unease came from the gathering realization as the pages turned that the president was heading toward making his final decision -- one upon which untold lives and tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars would rest -- without getting his chance to dispassionately and fully evaluate the fullest range of possible choices.

[[BREAK]]

According to Woodward, Obama's guidance to his team was clear: "I want an exit strategy" and "I'm not doing a long-term nation-building effort" and "I'm not spending a trillion dollars." Despite this, it appears from the very detailed narrative that all the options he receives are simply variants of The One Big Option: a large-scale counterinsurgency strategy focused on securing the Afghan population.

"The One Big Option" thematic repeats itself throughout the book. But the book's real argument is more subtle. Woodward's unstated thesis seems to be that the (young, inexperienced) [resident was locked in a battle of wills with a (powerful, politically savvy) military leadership who were consumed by their own singular idea of how to fight this war. And that at the end of this painfully long policy review, Obama just gets outflanked by generals who are hell-bent on having it their way. While this notion may be an attractive to those who are inherently suspicious of the role of the military in the United States' political life and foreign-policy, I found it unpersuasive.

The president is the commander-in-chief -- and as such, he is ultimately responsible for U.S. military actions overseas. He not only issues the orders that commit troops, but also frames the national policy that those deployments will support. He owns the policy decision "ends" at the strategic level, but must also understand and approve the broad "ways" by which his strategy will be carried out in the field. Further, he must balance the resources required to carry out these decisions -- the "means" of people, time and dollars that will always remain precious commodities. The military influences that process, often in outsize ways -- but the President owns it.

But Woodward's description of the narrow set of options presented to the president by his military commanders rings true. In NSC discussions, the "zero" option of "get out of Afghanistan now" is always the throwaway. Unsurprisingly, no one supports it. But all the other options are simply some variant of The One Big Option: a population-centered counterinsurgency strategy. The variants only tinker with numbers of troops -- will this COIN strategy be implemented with 20,000, 40,000 or 80,000 soldiers? Or as the military might put it: will you accept high risk, moderate risk, or low risk? And the more boots on the ground, the less risk of The One Big Option failing. Was that truly the "Full Monty" of options that were capable of meeting the president's guidance after nine years of war?

One facet of this intimate narrative is seeing the remarkably small circle of key players who shape the President's final decisions. Unlike his predecessor in the Oval Office, Obama did not bring in regular tranches of outside experts on warfare from whom he could extract new ideas. Instead Obama relies almost entirely on the formal national security staff process, in which a fairly small set of well-known actors clashed or connected, but who ultimately represented generally predictable institutional positions. The wisdom of the nation is coalesced into discomfortingly small pools in the situation room.

The only notable outliers nudging the president toward any "outside the box" choices seem to have been led by the vice president. Biden comes out of this account surprisingly well. He actively marshals a clutch of inside dissenters who improbably come closest to giving the president the one serious option outside the received wisdom of a large-scale COIN investment. The Biden team's option is called "CT Plus" -- a very different kind of 20,000-man "surge" that would focus on rapidly building Afghan security forces while shifting the war to a decisive thrust against both Al Qaeda terrorists and their intractable allies in the hardcore Taliban. At the end of the process, they never really get their day in court. As Peter Schwartz might say the "official future" had been set: The One Big Option of population-centric COIN.

Woodward's account is not a verbatim transcript of history -- but it is clearly a rather well-informed description of the 18-month Washington process leading up to a significant presidential decision on strategy for Afghanistan. Without question, his depiction is missing key parts, cruelly unfair to some players, and exceedingly generous toward others. But it remains the best account we have of an extraordinarily important decision by a wartime president on a strategy whose costs in either blood or treasure will impact every American for years to come.

What's missing in this prolonged strategy debate stand out? What was the end game the United States was trying to achieve? What would the enduring commitment -- if there were to be one -- look like? How did this decision nest inside broader strategic calculus and national priorities -- for dollars, troops, global security and international influence? How would the cost versus benefit of these choices fit within broader risks and opportunities, including domestic ones? And how was this going to be viewed around the region and around the world?

Woodward's account in some ways describes a detailed and through decision-making process -- led by a very engaged president -- focused on what seems to be the "Island of AfPak." There is little broader context for a decision that will have global implications, seriously impact domestic resource allocations, and help shape the United States' future role as an enduring (or declining) superpower.

How this future unfolds should keep all of us on the edge of our seats. Nine years on, time is not on our side. And in a sense, we have leapt half way across the chasm. As the president states (battalion commanders in Kunar and Wardak, take note), this approach is "not fully resourced counterinsurgency or nation building… but a narrower approach (focused on Al Qaeda)." Both the July 2011 timeline and the middle-ground choice of 30.000 troops argue that we have effectively settled on splitting the difference.

Most disturbing to me is that even after 18 months of serious effort, we have yet to define our enduring end game -- much less how we get to it.

We arrived in Kumai, Kalimantan after a slow three day trip across the Java Sea with little or no wind to speak about, so the motor got a solid workout. Kumai is situated 10nm up a wide river (Kumai River)and is a working port. So we are anchored close by to some large ships. The current here is particularly strong over 2 knots due to the amount of water running downriver and the tidal effect. Being two degrees south of the equator it is very humid and hot, so most afternoons we get a downpour of rain, which is a good opportunity for many boats to fill their water tanks. On Thursday we took a day trip up a tributary of the main river to visit the Tanjung Puting National Park where Orangatans literally hang out! We travelled by speed boat with another rally couple and had a very informative guide on board who spoke good English and was an expert at spotting various wildlife in the jungle growth which lined the river. During the day, we were taken to two feeding stations (morning and afternoon) where the rangers bring out bagfuls of bananas and place them on a raised platform to encourage the oranagatans out to eat. These animals are very strong and show incredible dexterity as they swing through the tree tops. It was amazing to see them scaling up a tree with a large handful of bananas in one hand,extra ones in their mouth and the other hand tethering them to the trunk. Many of the orangatans in the National Park have been rescued from captivity and released back into the park. They are often captured as babies by the locals and kept as pets, but become a problem to handle as they grow larger. In between watching the orangatans feed, we wandered through the forest for over an hour with our guide Andy providing explanations of the various plants - we saw many pitcher plants which are carnivorous and watched as a preying mantis almost became dinner for one of them. We were thrilled when we realised a mother orangatan carrying a small baby and a toddler in tow, were following behind us, as we walked. We then spent quite some time interacting with them and feeding them a few bananas. They are very observant and knowing animals and carefully watch your hands and backpacks to see if there is to be any food forthcoming! As we travelled back home to our boat, we spotted many Probiscus monkeys which are only found in the jungles of Kalimanatan plus some more orangatans and the Hornbill bird which is referred to by the locals as the hippo bird due to the shape of its beak which is similar to a hippos large mouth! Kumai town is quite basic but has a traditional market, many little stores all selling the same products and some very decorative mosques. We bought half a kilo of fresh prawns this morning for the equivalent of $2 Australian!! The town has many tall apartment-style buildings which from afar look like office buildings with very small windows. As you arrived in the town the sounds of twittering birds was very pronounced. The reason for this being that these buildings are for swallows to fly in and build their nests. The swallows use only their own saliva to construct the nests- nothing else. These nests often containing small eggs which are then more valuable, are retrieved and exported to China for their famous (very authentic) Birds Nest soup!! It is a thriving industry here and worth a lot of money to the local economy. Apparently it is much more lucrative than a hotel of the same size. From Kumai we will head about 250nm west to Belitung, which is the last rally stopover and where we exit Indonesia around the 15th October.

Part A.

1. Before we start to power carve, I must remind you to wear a dust mask and glasses or safety goggles.

Also, at 35,000 rpm, a rough burr caught in your sweater for even a second will snap your flex shaft cable immediately! I have been unsuccessful in replacing just the cable because once snapped, they are hard to remove, so I’ve made many an unexpected trip to the store to buy a whole new shaft.

Your rotary bits spin away from you so if it gets too close to a far edge, it can run right over your fingers so just be careful and pay attention to what you’re doing while the machine is running.

For you new flex shaft users, if your shaft seems to feel like it vibrates unevenly, simply loosen your bit and rotate it a bit or push it in further. Sometimes the bit itself is imbalanced.

2. Okay, let’s deal with that bend in the sole. Use your handy measuring paper to mark the points where the bend is the highest and lowest from the table to the shoe. (Remember to fold your paper in half for an accurate 50%).

Draw a line from the toe inwards to the lowest point.

3. I will mention that sometimes the bend is higher on one side than the other so measure on both sides. Then draw a line on the bottom connecting both sides.

4. Using a belt sander, band saw, bench grinder or your Dremel sanding mandrels, get rid of the excess. If you use a belt sander, hold the shoe backwards and start your sand at the toe.

5. In my case, I had to sand a bit off the back as well.It doesn’t have to be perfect as your sole details are yet to come.

6. Scissor cut the outline to the dashes area from your paper template and redraw your sole on the bottom. This will be the outline you will carve to. If the new bend creates a slight length difference, don’t worry, just adjust the template back and forth so the arch area is in tact and there is a slight bit of boo-boo wood around the rest of your outline.

Part B.

7. You will see now that I have placed dashes around my shoe that indicate the top of my sole sides. I then connected the dots. The most strategic dashes should be at the toe, the arches and the heel but the more areas you measure, the easier it is to connect the dashes with a solid line.

8.It’s now time to start your engines and trim your soles. This will give you some light experience with your power tools as there is not a lot to grind off. I’m sorry I cannot be with each of you to hold your hand as you start to see your wood fly off, but it’s time to throw you from the nest and leave you to make mistakes or create successes as they come.

9. Start at the arch. If your arch is straight up and down, you have it good. Just use your rough flat cylinder bit to remove the excess.
If your sole angles, tilt wider at the bottom, then tilt your bit. remember, the sole template you drew was from the bottom end, it may change in width as it meets the shoe body.

10. Use your powers of observation to see how the rest of your sole meets your shoe. Does it contour in and then back again? Does it go straight up and down with little jut? Does it wave higher at the heel? – most joggers have a chunky ribbed sole that angles out slightly at the bottom but has a v shape as it meet the shoe. -most canvas runners have a straight up and down sole with a tiny bit of rubber between it and the shoe – most boots and hard shoe soles jut out further from the shoe.

As you can see, mine has a V contour to the shoe so I am not afraid to angle my rough bit in to make a V cut around everywhere but the little black tab on the toe. My shoe body is thinner than my sole and will have to be trimmed so I’m not worried if I cut in a little with my V.

11. Once you have cut into the arch area, you may round the shoe arch area to make your sole a little more accessible.

Work this way around the entire sole to the outline, leaving just a smidgen of wood for final sanding and detailing.

12. When you feel comfortable, you may like to draw and shape some of the details and ribs on the side of the sole with some of your smoother bits.
I am only carving mine tonight so I will post a picture of what I’ve done when it’s finished.

I can only remind you to keep turning your shoe around and around until the sole and your original shoe look the same in your eyes.

Remember that you do not have to take all of the wood off in one pass. Grind lightly until you get the feel of the depth you are making – you can always take off more bit by bit but if you take too much at once…well, you know what will happen.
You may also use the less aggressive sanders if you are afraid to gouge too deep. You will know when you get fed up with them.

This will be the last blog until mid week so I can get some feedback as to how you all are doing.

Chengdu can hardly contain itself. In under five years, Line 1 of the Chengdu Metro has gone from large pits in the dirt to reality. Late last year, the countdown began. From the total overhaul of Renmin Bei and Nan Lu corridor to the excitement of watching the glass plates go onto the station entrance/exits, every new piece of tangible subway evidence made the people's anticipation grow. The media announced the arrival of the trains, and then the testing of the cars. Several months ago, photos were released of the interiors. And then the escalators were suddenly running in some of the stations. Before we know it, going underground will be an unremarkable feature of everyday life in Chengdu.

Line 1, of course, is just the beginning of the projected seven-line system, the planning of which spans three decades into the future. The entire system covers a great swath of Chengdu—extending, in fact, beyond its current urban edges—and will undoubtedly make an indelible mark on the culture and geography of the city.

Spaced out with around a kilometer between, most Line 1 stops are within rather comfortable walking distance of the next. The line bisects the city straight down the center, starting in the Jinniu District and making its way through the Jinjiang, Qingyang, Wuhou, and finally Gaoxin Districts, traveling at speeds of up to 80 kmph.

So that you can be in the know and on the go as soon as the first car rolls in, we've compiled this run-down of the stations and surrounding places of interest along the primary phase of the Line 1 route.

Shengxian Lake | 升仙湖
Shengxian Hu will initially be the northernmost station on Line 1's route, though that will change once the projected Line 1 extensions to the north and south are completed. Currently, there aren't tons of places of interest near this station; mostly it will be residential areas, with access to the Metro Red Flower Mall (地铁红花堰大型商业), and the Chengdu Zoo and the Wukuaishi Market—selling new and used home appliances and wholesale tea and tea-drinking accessories—a short cab ride away.

North Train Station | 火车北站

Most passenger trains departing from and arriving in Chengdu, including the new high-speed trains to Dujiangyan/Qingcheng Shan and Chongqing, stop here. And, of course, for now, this is the point of access to the northern edge of the massive Lotus Wholesale Market—until it's revamped, as developers have been promising, into the "Chunxi Lu of the North."

Renmin Bei Lu | 人民北路

Apart from the southern edge of the Lotus Wholesale Market, there's not a whole lot up here: the Beimen Bus Station, the Tibet Hotel, Sim's Cozy Guesthouse, and Mix Hostel. There's also the big shoe shop, for those who need their footwear supersized.

Wenshu Yuan | 文殊院

The Wenshu Temple Area makes for a colorful place to visit. Apart from the temple itself, the grounds hold a number of vegetarian (and non-vegetarian) restaurants, shops, etc. Nearby is also the Jinsha Nunnery. Good to know: Take the subway to the Wenshu Yuan stop when you need to visit the PSB for your visa renewal.

Luomashi | 骡马市

A good place to get off the subway for some sightseeing and shopping, and particularly convenient if you happen to be staying at the Sheraton Hotel. To the north, there's the Platinum Age City shopping center at Babao Jie/Qinglong Jie, home to shopping and dining venues such as Carrefour, Vegetarian Lifestyle, Häagen-Dazs, Starbucks, and Watsons. But the real shopping will start once the Panda Mall, slated to become southwest China's megamall, opens. One of the city's most renowned restaurants, Chen Mapo Tofu, is also located within walking distance of the stop, as is the ever-popular singles bar One-Way Entertainment. The Chengdu Stadium, hosting many of the city's major sporting events, is here, as well as all the sports and fitness-equipment shops you might want. So are administrative centers—the Singaporean Consulate, the Real-Estate Management Bureau (房管局), and the People's No. 3 Hospital. Just west of the Sheraton pass the Lazy Bones Hostel lies the one of several churches in the city, the Ping'an Bridge Catholic Church. Finally, if you're on the market for a bicycle, the bicycle street along Xi Yulong Jie is one of your better options in the city.

Tianfu Guangchang | 天府广场

Poised to become the main interchange for the city's entire transit system, which will eventually encompass seven subway lines and dozens of bus lines, the Tianfu Guangchang stop is located smack dab in the center of the city, overlooked by the most famous of all landmarks in Chengdu, the statue of Chairman Mao. The station itself, which submerges seven floors below the ground, will reportedly be the largest subway station in China and home to the subway-shopping extravaganza Underground City. To the north of the plaza is the Sichuan Science Museum, and to the east is the Jincheng Art Palace, which hosts weekly musicals and plays. Just west of the square is the site for the future Sichuan Art Museum complex, and beyond that, People's Park (Renmin Gongyuan), the city's most central park and home to some of Chengdu's oldest teahouses. The Chengdu City Library is also near here.

Within a long walk or a short cab ride are the shopping areas of Hongxing Lu, Chunxi Lu, and Yanshikou, in all its department-store and shopping-mall glory (Isetan, Ito Yokado, Top City, Kowloon Mall, Ladies' Street) and some of the city's bookstores with foreign-language departments, the Times Xinhua Bookstore on Zongfu Lu and the Southwest Book City on Dong Da Jie.

Slightly farther away but still accessible via a short-ish cab ride are the Taisheng Mobile Phone Market, the Daci Temple, and Qintai Lu Ancient Street and the nearby Kuan/Zhai Lanes.

Jinjiang Hotel | 锦江宾馆

Right where the Funan River meets Renmin Nan Lu, this is one of the posh areas of town: Next to the ritzy Maison Mode and Meimeilicheng Mall, the Yanlord luxury mall is under construction. Five-star shopping plazas are usually adjacent to five-star hotels, and this area is no exception: Not only is the city's first five-star hotel, the Jinjiang Hotel, after which the stop is named, located here, so are the Sofitel Wanda, the new Celebrity Hotel, and, to the south, the Somerset RiverviewMinshan Hotelhttp://gochengdoo.com/en/listings/item/min_27038/Shuangliu Airport shuttle bus#http://gochengdoo.com/en/listings/item/air_32091/#.

From the Jinjiang Hotel station it's not a long walk to the Korean Consulate, Fortune City, the Xinnanmen Bus Station, the bars at Laonanmen Da Qiao, the big boat, or the Qingshi Qiao Fish Market.

Finally, several places of interest are a short cab ride away from this stop: the Sichuan Museum as well as the Shu Brocade Museum, the Green Ram (Qingyang) Temple, Dufu's Thatched Cottage, and the Songxian Qiao Antique and Curios Market.

Huaxiba | 华西坝

The only noteworthy place at this stop is its namesake, the West China Hospital campus of Sichuan University, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary. The two sections of the hospital itself—the general hospital and the women's and children's hospital—are also within walking distance.

Sichuan Provincial Stadium | 省体育馆

In addition to its frequent pop-concert fare, the Sichuan Gymnasium has been seeing an increasing number of international sporting events over the past few years, and that trend will likely continue with the opening of the subway. This station is located just near the intersection of Renmin Nan Lu and the First Ring Road, also known as the cheap-DVD heaven that are the buildings that comprise Computer Street—Digital Plaza, Computer City, and, farther down the ring road, @World and Buy Now. Heading in the other direction along the ring road takes pedestrians to a plethora of outdoors-equipment and sporting-goods stores. This is also a drop-off point for those wishing to access the north gate of Sichuan University.

Nijiaqiao | 倪家桥

The city's expat haunts are here, starting with the U.S. Consulate as well as the German and Pakistani Consulates (in the Western Tower), and winding down to the restaurants and nightlife spots such as the Herijun Hot Springs Hotel, the Bookworm, Namaste, Grandma's Kitchen/ Sunflower Café, Shamrock, Tandoor, Gingko, Three Ears Hotpot, and the upscale shopping experience of the Renhe Spring Mall, home to Prada, Gucci, and all those other brands most of us will never purchase. And, of course, we can't not mention that the stop is right outside the CHENGDOO studio. Wave hello as you pass by!

Along the Consulate Road (Lingshiguan Lu) is also the path to take to Kehua Bei Lu, where you can visit the west gate of Sichuan University, the Sultan, not one but two Peter's Tex-Mex restaurants, the Blue Caribbean Plaza (Café Paname, Panda Club, Jellyfish), the Lippo Tower (Hooters), and the Soho Building (Cacaja). Two residential neighborhoods span out from this stop, as well: Yulin to the west, and Zongbei to the east.

Tongzilin | 桐梓琳

Apart from the misleadingly named "Europe Street," a number of important business towers and hotels reside in this area, including the Master Plaza, the Regal Master Hotel, the Sun Dynasty Building, the Air China Tower, the Kempinski Hotel, and the Thai Consulate; Western amenities such as Del Mar, Peter's Tex-Mex, Vera Napoli, the Great World Mall Carrefour; and the well-known residential buildings Orchard Villas and Gloria Regent.

South Train Station |火车南站
From here those big foreign box stores Ikea, Auchan, and Decathlon are accessible, via the giant cable-stayed bridge connecting Tianfu Dadao to Renmin Nan Lu, which, with its Chengdu city seal, serves as something of a welcoming point for those entering the city from the south. The junction for the Airport Expressway is also here.

Gaoxin | 高新

Not much to see here—yet. Unless you're working in the Hi-Tech Plaza, getting healthcare at the Chengdu City People's No. 1 Hospital or Parkway Health, or gawking at the colorful China Mobile Building, that is.

Administration Center | 行政中心

The new center for the city government. Yes, that odd-looking gray building that resembles a bird's nest. Viewed from above, it's in the shape of a flower. We don't know why you would need to go here.

Fuhuayuan | 孵化园

More no-man's land, for the moment. The only notable landmark is the La Defangsi (拉.德方斯), Chengdu's homage to a certain building in a district of Paris with a similar name.

Century City | 世纪城

Final stop! Passengers for The New International Exhibition and Convention Center, the Intercontinental Hotel and the Holiday Inn and the mammoth MGS luxury-brands outlet mall should disembark here. Additionally, the Swan Lake residential area (yes, there are actually swans in the lake), and the Tianfu Software Park can be accessed from here. And, for now, this is as close as you can get on the subway to Huayang, home to Luxe Hills, the Ocean Polar Park, and Dreamland Amusement Park. But that will presumably change once the Line 1 extensions have been completed.

This article was originally published in CHENGDOO citylife Magazine, issue 35 ("Transportation"). Research assistance by Dongni Hu. Photos by Dan Sandoval.
With

Derek Rand in: On Her Majesty’s Supportive Foam

Derek Rand awoke with the startling sensation that he was falling. The windows rushing past him told him he was.

One moment he’d been in a conference room on Storey 87, briefing the Branch higher-ups on his progress in apprehending the outlaw arms dealer Euripides López. Rand remembered that he’d just turned toward the corkboard to illustrate López’s latest disguise by drawing a pair of buck teeth on the last known photo of the scoundrel. Then a blow to the head, and presumably he’d been tossed out the window. Rand knew the fake suicide note would have already been forged.

Ambushed inside Branch HQ? He would have staggered under the implications, had he been standing on firm ground. Clearly López’s tentacles reached even further than Rand had ever dreamed. Not that it’ll be my bother much longer, Rand thought. That pavement down there will sort out all of my problems, and sharpish. Rand was determined to keep a stiff upper lip to the very end. Been a wheeze, hasn’t it? There’ll always be an England.

But visions of jam butties and Denis Law vanished when he saw it. His only hope: a Cool Sensation Queen-Size Memory Foam Mattress someone had discarded in the alleyway below. Rand would have known it anywhere, as he’d tumbled with the alluring Nilla Wayfair on the full-size version in her Leningrad love nest. It would take some doing, but if Rand could direct his fall toward it, and land with just the right roll, he might – might – have a chance. 2.5 inches of Memory Foam, a 3-inch foam support structure, and a 4.5-inch high-density foam base were all that stood between him and the grave. Lord, let it be enough.

Rand wriggled out of his bespoke jacket from Booth & Sons. Tearing out the liner everywhere except around the shoulders, Rand almost doubled it in size. But it still wasn’t catching enough air to act as a decent parachute.

Then Rand remembered he was wearing a parachute, as he always did. Damn that blow to the head. Ruined a lovely jacket for nothing. He pulled the cord and sailed gently down onto the mattress. A great weariness overcame him. How I’d love to just lie down and feel this foam mold to my body. Feel the cool breeze through the breathable, air-flow cell structure. But there’s no time. There’s never time.

Rand knew the turncoats who’d tried to kill him wouldn’t wait around to read his obituary in the Daily Mail. He had to be off and away before they came down to collect the body. His sole advantage was that they didn’t know he was alive – he had to make the most of it. Casting off the chute, he raced down the alleyway toward the street, tossing his official ID into a dustbin. If López was pulling the Branch’s strings, it was as much a liability as an asset.

A bit of luck at last as a hack pulled up almost before Rand had raised his arm to hail it. “Gatwick,” he panted at the squat, balding cabbie from the back seat. Rand flung a fistful of notes at the driver. “Ignore all the red lights and there’s more where this came from.” The driver turned. He smiled. A smile of white, straight teeth. Rand suddenly felt this was no typical cab driver, a suspicion confirmed when the man drew a knife and swiped at Rand’s face. Looks like the Branch isn’t going to let this little piggie leave the pen so easily.

Warranty: 90 Day Woot Limited Warranty for Shipping Defects Only; Due to the personal nature of this product, we do not accept returns

Condition: New

Features:

• Patented ventilation system with unparalleled breathability
• Queen-size mattress has open memory foam cell structure that allows cool air to displace warm air
• Memory Foam has 2.5-inch 4-pound top layer with air flow ducts that allow cool air to displace warm air
• Foam support structure features 3-inch core with air flow channels directing cool air throughout the mattress
• High-density supportive base foam is 4.5 inches thick
• Molds to your body and eliminates the uncomfortable pressure points and motion transfer common in most innerspring mattresses
• 10-inch mattress can be used with existing box springs or platform bed
• Meets all flammability standards
• Memory Foam is resistant to dust mites and is naturally antimicrobial
• Queen-size mattress measures 80 inches long x 60 inches wide x 10 inches high

Additional Photos:

• Removable Cover
• Diagram of Ventilation System
• Cut-away Diagram of Mattress Layers

Care Instructions:

• To maximize memory foam expansion; remove from packaging within 72 hours of receipt
• Shipped vacuum sealed and compacted; once received, allow for expansion in a well ventilated area to remove chemical smell associated with compression
• Allow mattress to expand in an open space for full recovery
• Expands to original shape in up to 72 hours
• Due to the nature of Memory Foam, the firmness level of every item is unique. Please be advised that even similar products may produce different firmness results
• Mattress is spot clean only
  

In the box:

• Queen Size Memory Foam Mattress

Activists told to hold their nerve as leader says party would have lost credibility if it had spurned coalition agreement

Nick Clegg today urged Liberal Democrats to hold their nerve and embrace coalition government as he declared that a five-year partnership with the Tories will change Britain for good.

In a 37-minute conference speech, the Lib Dem leader said his party should be proud of its courage in challenging political tradition to ensure Britain has a stable government. "Hold our nerve and we will have changed British politics for good," Clegg told the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool. "Hold our nerve and we will have changed Britain for good."

Forming the coalition

The Lib Dems now have the chance to become "agents of change", Clegg said as he warned that the party would have struggled to be taken seriously if it had spurned the coalition.

"The election result didn't give a single party the mandate to govern," he said. "It gave all parties the mandate to govern differently. We answered that call."

Clegg dismissed critics who said the Lib Dems should have stepped aside and let the Tories take the blame for introducing spending cuts. "Imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever again have asked the voters to take us seriously? Labour left the country's coffers empty. So the years ahead will not be easy. But you do not get to choose the moment when the opportunity to shape your country comes your way. All you get to choose is what you do when it does. We chose a partnership government."

However, Clegg quashed speculation of a merger between the two parties: "The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are and always will be separate parties, with distinct histories and different futures."

Addressing Lib Dem concerns

Speaking a few hours after the leadership was defeated when the conference voted against free schools, Clegg reached out to sceptics by praising the Lib Dem tradition of debating issues that provoke passion.

But he defended the government's academies programme. It was designed, he said, to end Labour's practice of creating a "cuckoo in the nest" – a few schools that eat up resources.

Clegg offered assurances that one line would not be crossed. "My vision is that every school, in time, will be equal, every school equally free. But there's one freedom new schools shouldn't have. Freedom to select.

"The whole concept of our reforms falls apart if you use it to expand selection – because instead of children and parents choosing schools, you get schools choosing children. So we have made it absolutely clear: we will allow people to set up new schools but we will not allow them to pick and choose the brightest. No to more selection."

New powers for local authorities

Clegg announced a major policy "sweetie" which was set aside for the Lib Dems to highlight their influence in the coalition. In a devolution of power, local authorities will be given new powers to borrow. "In our first budget we unlocked more than £1bn of ring-fenced grants.

"We will end central capping of council tax. We will allow councils to keep some of the extra business rates and council tax they raise when they enable new developments to go ahead."

In language normally heard at Labour and Tory conferences in recent history, Clegg added: "I can announce today that we will be giving local authorities the freedom to borrow against those extra business rates to help pay for additional new developments. This may not make the pulses race – it does here, of course. But I assure you it is the first step to breathing life back into our greatest cities."

Tackling the fiscal deficit

Tough action must be taken to tackle Britain's "debt crisis", Clegg warned. But he dismissed suggestions by some Labour figures that the coalition's plans to eliminate the deficit by 2015 marked a return to the 1980s or 1930s. "The spending review is about balance and responsibility, not slash and burn. Of course, I wish there was a pain-free alternative. Who wouldn't? But whatever Labour say now, there isn't one. Not even in Alistair Darling's old plans – they too would have meant massive cuts. Delay won't solve the problems – in fact, it would make them worse. We could have decided to go more slowly but it would have worsened, not eased the pain. Because every day you ignore a deficit, it gets harder to fix."

Attack on Labour

Labour, which brought Britain to the edge of bankruptcy, had failed to acknowledge the depth of the crisis as the contenders for the party leadership fought "backstabbing battles", Clegg said. "I want to say something to whoever is elected as the next Labour leader. You cannot duck difficult choices for ever … Your party let people down in government. Until you face up to your responsibility for the state we're in you'll let people down in opposition too."

Full text of the Lib Dem leader's speech to delegates in Liverpool

Two and a half years ago, I stood in this very hall to make my first speech as Leader of our party. I said that the chance for change was within our reach, and we had to seize it. That chance came. Perhaps not quite in the way many of us could have expected.

But the chance came and you – we – responded with real courage and conviction.

Cynics expected us to back away. Instead, we confounded those who said that coalition Government was impossible. We created a Government which will govern and govern well for the next five years.

Of course there are those who will condemn us. We are challenging years of political convention and tradition and our opponents will yell and scream about it. But I am so, so proud of the quiet courage and determination which you have shown through this momentous period in British political history.

Hold our nerve and we will have changed British politics for good. Hold our nerve and we will have changed Britain for good.

Just think what we've done already. We've ended the injustice of the richest paying less tax on investments than the poorest do on their wages. We've guaranteed older people a decent increase in their pension. In November, we will publish a Freedom Bill to roll back a generation of illiberal and intrusive legislation. By Christmas, Identity Card laws will be consigned to the history books. From New Year's Day, the banks will pay a new levy that will help fill the black hole they helped create. On 1 April, 900,000 low earners will stop paying income tax altogether. In May, the people of Britain will get to choose their own voting system. And this time next year, there will be a pupil premium so the children who need the most help, get the most help.

We've always been the face of change. We are now the agents of change. And every single person in this room is part of that change. Actually there's one contribution you all made to the success of the coalition negotiations that you probably aren't aware of. Our formidable negotiating team got all the training they needed battling out policy right here on the conference floor.

Some things are different in government. Some are the same. I still think the war in Iraq was illegal. The difference is lawyers now get anxious when I mention it. I still believe in our commitments to the developing world. The difference is I get to make those commitments at a UN summit and make them happen. I still campaign for political reform. The difference is I'm now legislating for it as well. The only real problem is I'm still trying to explain to my children that going from leader to Deputy PM isn't a demotion.

We will take risks in government. But we will never lose our soul. We haven't changed our liberal values. Our status is different but our ambition is the same.

Remember the four big promises we made in the election campaign? For the first time in my lifetime, Liberal Democrats are able to deliver on those promises.

We promised no tax on the first £10,000 you earn. We've already raised the personal allowance by £1000. And in the coming years we will go further to put money back in the pockets of millions of low earners.

We promised more investment in the children who need the most help at school. It will happen at the start of the next school year.

We promised a rebalanced, green economy, a new kind of growth. Already we're taking action on the banks. We've set up a regional growth fund. There will be a green investment bank to channel money into renewable energy. These are the first steps to rewire our economy. New jobs, new investment, new hope.

And we promised clean politics. We're giving people the chance to change our voting system, cleaning up party funding and finally, a century after it should have happened, we are going to establish an elected House of Lords.

Those pledges we made, together, in the election of 2010, will be promises kept in the election of 2015. The Coalition Programme, which commits the government to making all these changes, is not the Liberal Democrat manifesto. But it is not the Conservative manifesto either. It is our shared agenda. And I stand by it. I believe in it. I believe it will change Britain for good.

Now, some say we shouldn't have gone into government at a time when spending had to be cut. We should have let the Conservatives take the blame. Waited on the sidelines, ready to reap the political rewards. Maybe that's what people expected from a party that has been in opposition for 65 years. People have got used to us being outsiders, against every government that's come along. Maybe we got used to it ourselves. But the door to the change we want was opened, for the first time in generations.

Imagine if we had turned away. How could we ever again have asked the voters to take us seriously? Labour left the country's coffers empty. So the years ahead will not be easy. But you do not get to choose the moment when the opportunity to shape your country comes your way. All you get to choose is what you do when it does. We chose a partnership government.

The truth is I never expected the Conservatives to embrace negotiation and compromise. But they did and it does them credit. David Cameron showed he could think beyond his party and help build a new kind of politics. The election result didn't give a single party the mandate to govern. It gave all parties the mandate to govern differently. We answered that call. And one of the most remarkable surprises of this Coalition Government is that our parties are not, despite so many cynical predictions, simply settling for the lowest common denominator between us.

Instead, we have become more than the sum of our parts. For those of us who believe in plural politics, that's not a surprise. In life, two heads are usually better than one. And in politics, too, when the country faces grave challenges – the deficit, the threat of climate change, a war in Afghanistan, millions of children trapped in disadvantage – two parties acting together can be braver, fairer and bolder than one party acting alone.

The new politics – plural politics, partnership politics, coalition politics – is the politics our nation needs today. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are and always will be separate parties, with distinct histories and different futures. But for this Parliament we work together: To fix the problems we face and put the country on a better path. This is the right Government for right now.

Our first job, however, is a difficult one. Balancing the budget. I did not come into politics to make spending cuts. But it is the only choice if we want to steer Britain out of the economic mess Labour made. The only choice if we want to bring back hope and optimism to our nation. We are gripped by a crisis, and it's the worst kind: it's invisible.

You can't see the debts mounting up.

Walk the high street, go to work, talk to your friends, you won't see the signs of our debts or our deficit. The numbers sound alarming, but in the end they're just numbers. It doesn't feel like we can't afford things.

So how did this debt crisis happen? Put simply, over the course of the recession, 6% of our economy disappeared. The shock was so profound that even now the economy is growing, we are poorer today than we thought we would be. All the old predictions about our future economy – predictions on which spending plans had been based – have turned out to be wrong. We can't keep spending money as if nothing had changed.

The problems are there. They are real. And we have to solve them. It's the same as a family with earnings of £26,000 a year who are spending £32,000 a year. Even though they're already £40,000 in debt. Imagine if that was you. You'd be crippled by the interest payments. You'd set yourself a budget. And you'd try to spend less. That is what this government is doing.

This isn't new for Liberal Democrats. Speak to councillors who've led councils across the country; they know what it's like to pick up the pieces after Labour spent a community dry. Newcastle, Sheffield, Lambeth, Southwark, and right here in Liverpool. Our Council leaders know the poorest are the ones that suffer when the finances get out of control and money has to be spent on debts. They know there is nothing fair about denying you have a problem and leaving it for the next generation to clear it up. Would you ask your children to pay your credit card bill?

I've heard some people say that the cuts we are making are somehow taking Britain back to the 1980s, or the 1930s. Dismantling the state. It isn't true. Even when all the cuts have happened, we will still be spending 41% of our national income – the same amount we were spending in 2006.

The Spending Review is about balance and responsibility not slash and burn. Of course, I wish there was a pain-free alternative. Who wouldn't? But whatever Labour say now, there isn't one. Not even in Alistair Darling's old plans – they too would have meant massive cuts. Delay won't solve the problems – in fact, it would make them worse.

We could have decided to go more slowly but it would have worsened not eased the pain. Because every day you ignore a deficit, it gets harder to fix. The debts mount up and you have to pay interest on them. Already we are spending £44bn a year on interest alone. Under Labour's plans, that would have risen to nearly £70bn. A criminal waste of money that shouldn't be lining the pockets of bond traders. It should be paying for police, care workers, hospitals and schools.

That's why this government's aim is that by the time of the next election, our debt problems will be solved; our debts falling as a proportion of national income. We will have wiped the slate clean for a new generation.

In making these changes we will learn from the mistakes of previous recessions.

We will not repeat the mistakes of the 1980s in which whole communities were hollowed out. I know from my constituents in Sheffield how worried people are that cuts will hurt the North in the way the industrial changes of the 1980s did. So let me say to everybody in those communities, in Scotland and in Wales, many of whose lives were torn apart. Yes, it will be difficult, but it will not be like the 80s. We will not let that happen. We will make these cuts as fairly as possible.

Finding money for the pupil premium to help children get the best start in life. Reforming welfare to help people get back to work.

We will not let capital spending – investment in new buildings, infrastructure and repairs – be swept away as it has in the past. We have a billion pound Regional Growth Fund targeted specifically at creating growth in those areas of the country that have been dependent on public sector jobs. We've offered a National Insurance tax break to employers who set up new companies outside London and the wider South East. And we are determined to wean the economy off Labour's lop sided obsession with financial services in the City of London. Rebalancing our economy — so opportunity is never again concentrated only in the south east corner of our island. So no matter what your background or where you live, you have the opportunities you crave.

The destination is the right one but getting there is going to be hard. To those thousands of people who work in the public sector, who do such an outstanding job in our schools, hospitals, police forces and local councils, I say this: I know these are very unsettling times for you. I will not disguise the fact that we need to take difficult decisions today to ensure there are good, affordable public services tomorrow. We have protected the funding for the NHS, the biggest public service of all.

We will provide more, not less, money for the children in our schools who need the most help. But I know you will be thinking: why should you have to make any sacrifices to deal with a recession you didn't cause?

Why are the bankers who helped create the mess not taking more of the blame? Why should you have to accept a pay freeze, or changes to your pension, when the richest still get away with paying little or no tax at all? I agree.

That's why we imposed a levy on the banks in our first budget. It's why we're working hard with our friends in Europe and beyond on the idea of a financial activities tax on profits, pay and bonuses. It's why we're going to be forcing the banks to own up about the ludicrous pay and bonuses they give out. It's why our Banking Commission is looking at whether to split the banks up completely to keep our economy safe. And it's why we're working flat out to get the banks lending again to small businesses, the lifeblood of our economy.

We have done more in five months than Labour ever did to sort out the greed and the recklessness of the banks. Our approach is simple: they helped bring down our economy. It must never happen again.

People who avoid and evade paying their taxes will no longer get away with it either. We all read the headlines about benefit fraud. We all agree it's wrong when people help themselves to benefits they shouldn't get. But when the richest people in the country dodge their tax bills that is just as bad. Both come down to stealing money from your neighbours.

We will be tough on welfare cheats. But unlike Labour, we'll be tough on tax cheats too. We will crack down on the super rich who hide away money overseas. We will take on organised crime gangs set up to avoid tax. And we will prosecute five times as many tax cases as Labour ever did.

So the message is loud and clear: Just as the public sector must be made affordable, the banks must be held to account. And tax avoiders and evaders must have nowhere to hide.

I want to make something crystal clear about the coming Spending Review. It is not an ideological attack on the size of the state. There is one reason and one reason only for these cuts: As Liam Byrne said in that infamous letter: there isn't any money left.

It's not smaller government I believe in. It's a different kind of government: a liberating government. This government will transform the state. Reversing generations of centralisation. Putting power into people's hands. Because the job of government is not to run people's lives. It is to help people to run their own.

I want Britain to have the best schools and hospitals in the world. But that doesn't mean we should be controlling them all from Whitehall. Governments that have the arrogance to imagine that 100 ministers and 1,000 civil servants can fix the country all by themselves. Governments like that fail.

So we will restore power to people, families, communities, neighbourhoods and councils. Turning the tide of centralisation and for the first time giving power away. Councils, like all parts of government, are going to have to make do with less money in the years ahead. But they will have more freedom than ever before.

Labour rattled on about decentralisation, but they held the purse strings tight. We are different; we are liberal. Because we will put local government back in charge of the money it raises and spends. That's why in our first budget we unlocked more than a billion pounds of ring-fenced grants. That's why we will end central capping of Council Tax. That's why we will allow councils to keep some of the extra business rates and council tax they raise when they enable new developments to go ahead.

And I can announce today that we will be giving local authorities the freedom to borrow against those extra business rates to help pay for additional new developments. This may not make the pulses race, even at a Liberal Democrat conference. But I assure you it is the first step to breathing life back into our greatest cities.

Our leaders in Sheffield say it could allow the redevelopment of derelict mines in the Don Valley; our leaders in Newcastle believe this could help them create a new science park; in Leeds they argue the Aire Valley could be transformed. But whether in Newcastle, in Sheffield, in Leeds or indeed in every city in the UK. What matters most is that finally, they will be in the driving seat, instead of waiting for a handout from Whitehall. Local people, local power, local change.

The same approach – financial freedom – is governing our relationship with Scotland and Wales, too. That's why we are taking forward the Calman Commission to give Scotland real freedom and responsibility over its own money. And why, if the referendum for more devolution in Wales is successful, we will take forward a similar process for the Senedd. Giving the nations of the UK the freedom they deserve.

Putting power in local hands is one of the many things Labour never really understood. The Labour leadership candidates are trying to rewrite history. But we remember. Civil liberties destroyed on an industrial scale. A widening gap between rich and poor. Failure to act on the environment. Locking up more children than anywhere else in western Europe. Kowtowing to the banks. A foreign policy forged in George Bush's White House. The invasion of Iraq.

And then, on top of all that they brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Writing cheques, even in the final days of their government that they knew would bounce. This country could not have borne five more years of Labour.

Has anyone else lost track of the books Labour people keep publishing? Never in the field of political memoirs, has so much been written by so few about so little. They went from nationalisation to serialisation. From The Third Way to a third off at the book shop.

And the next generation is still fighting the same backstabbing battles instead of talking about the future for Britain. We held a public consultation about the Spending Review.

We had 100,000 ideas from members of the public about how to cut waste and do things more effectively. And not a single idea from the Labour Party.

I want to say something to whoever is elected as the next Labour leader. You cannot duck difficult choices forever. All you have done in the last four months is carp and complain. But a decent opposition has to provide a decent alternative. Your party let people down in government. Until you face up to your responsibility for the state we're in you'll let people down in opposition too.

Labour did some good things, of course they did. But just think what they could have done. With enormous majorities, 13 years and money to spare. The best opportunity for real fairness there has been in my lifetime. But imprisoned by timidity they squandered a golden age.

We must now take up the challenge that Labour ducked. We must do more, even though they left us with less. When faced with the daunting task of reducing our deficit, the temptation might have been to go slow elsewhere. One difficult task at a time – that would have been the cautious response. But it wasn't our response.

Because I believe at times of great difficulty, great things can still be done. At times of great difficulty, great things must be done. Some say we've bitten off more than we can chew. I say there's no time to wait. We could wait to solve the welfare crisis, but every day people struggle to get back into work. We could wait to give our children a better start at school, but they only get the chance to grow up once. We could wait to reform our prisons, but every day offenders leave prison and go straight back to crime. We could wait to cut the deficit, but every day, we spend £120m servicing our debts, and that's £120m we can't spend on our children.

We have four years and seven months before the next election. 1690 days. We're not going to waste a single second. There is no time for the old go-slow, timid governments of the past. We're keeping our eyes on the horizon, not on the headlines. Building, brick by brick, day by day, the changes Britain needs.

Of course the ambition of these reforms will provoke controversy. I know some people, for instance, are worried about our plans for expanding Academies, as we heard this morning.

It wouldn't be Liberal Democrat conference if we didn't have a motion that provoked strong passions on both sides. The great thing is that all Liberal Democrats share a passion for education. When it comes to lasting fairness education is everything.

So I want to be really clear about what the government is proposing. It's not Labour's academies programme: a few schools singled out for preferential treatment — a cuckoo in the nest that eats up attention and resources. We're opening up the option of Academy freedom to all schools. Because if one head teacher is free to run their classes in the way they know is best, why shouldn't all head teachers be free?

My vision is that every school, in time, will be equal, every school equally free. But there's one freedom new schools shouldn't have. Freedom to select. The whole concept of our reforms falls apart if you use it to expand selection – because instead of children and parents choosing schools, you get schools choosing children. So we have made it absolutely clear: we will allow people to set up new schools but we will not allow them to pick and choose the brightest. No to more selection.

Welfare reform will be controversial too. Benefit reform is difficult in times of plenty, but essential when money is tight. Labour's welfare system simply isn't fair. It pays people to live without hope of a better life instead of paying to help them build a better life. A liberal welfare system is different. It's built around work. I believe in work. Work is essential to a person's sense of self worth, their identity.

We will only build the fair, mobile society we want. If we make it easy for everyone to get out to work and get on in life. And that's what this government will do.

So the immediate future will not be easy, but the long term prize is great. I want you to imagine what you will say to people when you knock on their door at the next General Election.

Imagine how it will feel to say that in Government, Liberal Democrats have restored civil liberties, scrapped ID cards, and got innocent people's DNA off the police database.

Imagine how it will feel to say that our Government has taken action to cut reoffending, and cut crime, while stopping Labour's mass incarceration of children.

We will have withdrawn our combat troops from Afghanistan, our brave servicemen and women having completed the difficult job we asked them to do.

You will be able to explain that finally, we have a fair tax system where the rich pay their share, and the lowest earners pay no income tax at all.

Our banking levy will have raised £10bn, reckless bonuses for short term gain will have ended, and banks will be lending responsibly again.

Imagine how it will feel to visit home after home that our Green Deal has made warm and affordable to heat.

You'll be able to tell people they have a new right to sack MPs who do wrong, and that the party funding scandals of the past are history.

You'll be campaigning alongside Liberal Democrat candidates for the House of Lords.

And if the British people say yes to the Alternative Vote in the referendum next May – forcing MPs to work harder for your vote – then you will also be able to say that the clapped out politics of First Past the Post is gone for good.

To those who are angry now about the difficult decisions needed to balance the budget you'll be able to show that those decisions have set us on a better course with new growth and jobs that last.

And, finally, you'll be able to say that all this has been delivered by a totally new way of doing politics. Never again will anyone be able to frighten the voters by claiming that coalition Government doesn't work. Liberal, plural politics will feel natural; the sane response to a complex and fast-changing world. Just imagine how different our country will be.

Britain in 2010 is anxious, unsure about the future, but Britain in 2015 will be a different country. Strong, fair, free and full of hope again. A country we can be proud to hand on to our children. That is the goal we must keep firmly fixed in our minds. That is the prize.

The years ahead will not be easy but they will make the difference our country needs. Stick with us while we rebuild the economy. Stick with us while we restore our civil liberties, protect our environment, nurture our children and repair our broken politics. Stick with us and together we will change Britain for good.

We are all just one event away from the loss of love, of the status quo, of the illusory balance of our lives. And this is terrifying and liberating. – Ruth Dugdall, ‘Why I Write’

There are many people in prison who maintain their innocence: for some that’s just what they’ve been told to say no matter what evidence is put in front of them; others truly believe in their innocence – they may acknowledge that they have committed some offence according to the laws of the land but they believe they are answerable to a higher power, if not God then at least their own conscience and there are those who because of some miscarriage of justice find themselves incarcerated for a crime they did not commit.

But let’s ask you a question: Who of us is truly innocent?

The police have been known in the past to fit somebody up, to plant evidence, to ensure that someone they regard as a criminal is convicted of something; if they can’t pin a specific crime on that person then as long as they get them for something then their consciences will let them sleep at night; as far as they’re concerned, the universal balance will have been restored.

Rose Wilks has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment for the accidental manslaughter of a baby boy, Luke. She has, from the very beginning, maintained her innocence and has continued to do so. She is now almost four years through her sentence and her parole hearing is due. In fact it’s only a mere six weeks away. So what are her chances of being released early? On the surface one would think she has a better-than-average chance: she’s been a model prisoner, is trusted by the prison officers and is generally dubbed up with new inmates to help them acclimatise.

The catch is there is really only one criterion that the parole board is interested in: remorse. Everything else that might concern then is powered by demonstrable proof of that single emotion. But is a woman who has constantly maintained that she was innocent of the crime for which she has been convicted capable of showing genuine remorse? She accepts that she is guilty of some fairly minor offences but nothing that would have involved her being locked up for any length of time.

A number of people’s opinions get considered: Jason Clarke, her partner, who even though he never loved her (something she was aware of when at liberty), has stood by her; Emma and Dominic Hatcher, the parents of the child who died; the staff who have had her in their charge for the past four years and, most importantly, the parole office, Cate Austin, a new ‘Care Bear’ as the staff refer to her position.

Cate and Rose have a number of things in common apart from their gender: for starters both have been mothers (Rose lost her son Joel while he was in Intensive Care, Cate has a young daughter), but neither has had a man for the past four years and both of them have wound up in prison because of things that went on in their pasts.

Six weeks as I’ve said is all Cate has to make her determination. And Rose knows it. The Rose Wilks that Cate meets in prison is not the same Rose Wilks that was convicted though. After four years of having to survive as a nonce, a term used for those convicted of offences against children, and (mis)treated accordingly she’s learned how to play the system and she has her own agenda. Yes, she wants to be free. But that’s not all.

The Woman Before Me begins, as many books of this ilk do, with a flashback to the night of the murder:

Creeping across the threshold, I listen to the silence of the sleeping house. These middle hours between three and four in the morning when the deepest sleep can be reached, make the kitchen seem larger and emptier than in daylight. Different. Although the difference is me. This time I’m saying goodbye.

The fragrance of Emma is everywhere, the delicate tang of her green apple perfume. That small wooden box, holding an assortment of tea bags, on the shelf – I’ll never see her bend over it, her hair falling like a veil, sweeping it away as she dithers over her selection. And Luke. She told me I’ll never see him again.

[…]

Through the kitchen into the large dining room, I move slowly. I don’t want to miss a thing. I want to capture the memory of it. That is where we’ve sat, Emma and I, cradling hot cups of tea. I notice the red paint on the walls, the white pine of the window seat. On the table is a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes, a box of matches. She’s supposed to have given up, but today has been a hard day.

[…]

I climb quietly up the stairs, avoiding the places I know would groan under my weight. Night-lights illuminate the hall, making me blink. Emma’s door is ajar and I can see into the bedroom. Her curtains are open and the moon is full.

Emma sleeps facing the window, the duvet pulled high on her face. Next to her is the bulk of a man, hidden under the bedding, Dominic. Entering their room, I creep up to her foetal shape … and wonder if I could touch her without her waking. Only inches separate me from her sleeping body.

[…]

Leaving Emma I walk further along the hall to the nursery, snaking behind the half-closed door. Inside the small room is the beautiful baby boy, asleep in his cot. … Usually I just watch him sleep, but tonight that isn’t enough.

He’s familiar with my touch and smell. He stirs when I lift him and I think I hear a voice in the next room. I pause but hear nothing. His weight is natural to me, I cradle him expertly, one arm along his body, my hand on his thigh…

I love him, love him fiercely.

I hear something in the next room: I freeze, waiting and the noise becomes louder. Low whispers and then moaning. The repetitive sound of the bed banging against the wall. Careful not to wake Luke, I place him back in his cot and make my way from his room, passing the bedroom where Emma’s moans are getting louder, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

So the scene has been set. This is the night of the fire. This is the night Luke dies. The cause of the fire is ascertained to have been a lit cigarette. But who lit it? Rose is also a smoker and Silk Cut is her brand of choice. In the morning the police arrest her, question her and based on what she admits to they charge her but she refuses to admit to lighting a cigarette in the house:

“Did you light a cigarette?”

“No! I would never smoke around him.”

“Did you drop a cigarette as you left, starting a fire in the house?”

“No!”

“I will ask you again; did you light a cigarette in the Hatcher’s home?”

“No, I did not.”

“A cigarette started that fire and you admit to being there, in the early hours of the morning.”

“But Emma smokes! It would have been hers. She was awake when I left. She was having sex with her husband.”

Sergeant West looks at me with undisguised contempt. “Mrs Hatcher was alone last night. Her husband was sleeping elsewhere.”

Eh? Okay, so who is the man sharing Emma’s bed? I’m not saying but what I will say is that we find out quite early in the book but it doesn’t answer the real burning question here: who is responsible for starting the fire? What is interesting is that Rose doesn’t make more about the presence of this other man when it comes to her trial. Her reason? She has worked out who it is and decided not to involve him. But why? Why be willing to go to prison for a crime she maintains she didn’t commit? Because we’re all guilty of something, that’s why. She’s tried herself and found out that she is wanting.

The Woman Before Me won the Luke Bitmead Novel Award and the CWA Debut Dagger Award and so I can’t sit here and say it’s a bad novel because it clearly isn’t. It is, however, what it is. It just does it quite well. It’s formulaic, yes, but some formulae are more interesting than others: M + S = G is boring (where M = man, S = smoking gun and G = guilty) but that’s where the great crime writers distinguish themselves. The question here is: Does Ruth Dugdall manage that?

The book is 288 pages long divided into 57 chapters averaging 5 pages each. The first four chapters are headed BEFORE; the rest, NOW. The BEFORE section is written in the first person by Rose. The NOW section comprises of ‘Black Book’ entries by Rose in which she tells her life story addressing Jason. Interspersed between these entries, we see Cate’s story unfold, told in the third person. I found Cate the most predictable character here. It’s a common ploy of crime novelists to have a fair degree of overlap between protagonist and antagonist and I never truly engaged with her. She does her job, metaphorically and literally. This is where the editing was a bit sloppy. Not all the ‘Black Book Entry’ chapters are indicated; also the chapter numbers get mixed up 21, 23, 24, 22, 25 – I don’t know if the number are just wrong or if chapter 22 is printed in the wrong place but it doesn’t muck up the overall story since chapters 22 and 25 are both part of Cate’s storyline.

What we do start to realise as we read through Rose’s black book is that a lot has gone on in her life that might explain if not exactly excuse her creeping into a friend’s house in the middle of the night. A few facts:

I was brought up in Suffolk, in a seaside town where my family owned a shop. Lowestoft had seen better days and the once-grand town houses along the front were now split into flats and lived in by single mums and teenagers on benefit. There were four of us: me, my mum and dad, and Peter. He was two years older than me, a beast of a boy with piggy eyes in a pale podgy face and a brain the size of a pea. He had my mother’s pale colouring but none of her delicacy. He used to bully me endlessly, as older brothers do, but Mum said I had to make allowances because Peter was ‘special’, meaning he was stupid.

Her mum suffers from what her father calls ‘loony spells’, bouts of depression that make her take to her bed for days on end; her father looks for comfort in the arms of Mrs Carron, “a flouncy woman with musky perfume and pink lips” according to Rose. On her ‘loony’ days, not wanting to be stuck in the shop getting under her father’s feet, she would sneak into her mother’s room “snuggling under the duvet and play at dens.” Outside in the Elaeagnus tree a blackbird has made its nest. It becomes the focus of both their interests:

“My chick,” she says, stroking my arm, “my Rosie.”

[…]

“I wish,” she said, and I held my breath, not having known her to wish for anything, so knowing it was important. “I wish I could look in that nest.” She surprised me. “Climb up, into the Elaeagnus – no, fly up there like a bird and peer in to see how many chicks, how many preciously thin, hollowed-boned babies are waiting, mouths wide for food.”

So there, there’s the first variable in this complex equation. But it’s only the start. In time her mum dies and Rose gets sent to stay with her Auntie Rita who drags her to her regular séances where Rose starts to gain a broader appreciation of just what exactly death is and isn’t. Then Jason comes on the scene and a warning from her dead mother that things will end badly if she doesn’t give him up. But what do the dead know? Just as Rose comes with baggage so does Jason, an ex he can’t quite get over but Rose is content to work around that until he decides he isn’t being fair to her and wants to leave. Then she plays her ace.

Like all books of this ilk it’s easy to look back and see where all the clues are and think this is bad writing because they’re so obvious but the fact is that when I was reading this I didn’t know what was coming. Who the man in Emma’s bed turns out to be was no big surprise but that’s misdirection on the author’s part – here, here’s a clue to keep you happy. And, yes, it is a clue but it’s not the evidence we need to help us decide if Cate’s assessment of Rose will be fair.

One thing I should make clear: Cate is not reinvestigating the case. Despite Rose’s assertions that she is innocent of the crime for which she has been convicted Cate is proceeding from the premise that the jury got it right, that is was guilty of accidental manslaughter. Her guilt is not an issue. Her suitability for reintegration into society is. Only we, the readers, get to read Rose’s black book until the very last chapter when Rose hands it to Cate. Is this as she’s walking out of the gate? I’m not saying. Does Cate recommend her release? I’m not saying. And I’m not saying what Jason and Emma and Dominic have to say or why Emma comes to the prison and waits for Cate. No, I’m not telling you.

What I will tell you is that Rose is guilty. She is guilty of a long list of things. She is guilty of loving people and believing people and trusting people. She is guilty of trespass and voyeurism. She is guilty of withholding the truth, even out-and-out lying. She is guilty of taking advantage of people, of manipulation too. She is guilty of stalking. But did she deserve to spend four years in prison and does she deserve to be released? You’ll have to read the book yourself to find out but be warned, like all crime novels, don’t be sidetracked by easy answers that come your way throughout the book. The real answer doesn’t come until page 286 so, if you’re in the habit of reading the last chapter to find out whodunit – don’t!

***

From the East Anglian Daily Times:

Ruth was born in 1971 and spent her early life in the Hull area, before moving to Ipswich when she was seven and her dad got a job down here. She went to Chantry High School and read voraciously – invariably darker material. “Books were always a place where you could fit in - create your own little world.”

After A-levels at Westbourne School she read English and theatre studies at Warwick University. A visit to prison – not as an inmate, obviously! – convinced her she wanted to work in jails after graduation, using drama therapy and suchlike to help offenders.

Ruth got a job with an Ipswich-based charity that helped people get their lives running better. Then, aiming to work in prisons and use drama and writing, she did an MA in social work at the University of East Anglia. She qualified in 1996 and worked in Lowestoft:

I loved being a probation officer. They get a really bad press, but I think they do a great job. People generally have the totally wrong idea about what they do. They think they're there to befriend offenders and give them cups of tea and sympathy; actually, it's all about challenging them and getting them to accept what they've done and think about the victim.

When the Carlford Unit opened in 2000 at Hollesley, near Woodbridge, she actively sought to work there. The prison takes some of the most serious young offenders in the country. Not an obvious choice for a place of work, you'd think:

I've always sought out situations that I want to know about, and maybe that frighten me as well. I think that's why I became a probation officer. If somebody says something that is shocking, I want to know more! I think this is important for writers and artists: I will ask that question other people won't ask.

Ruth wrote short stories, often drawing on work-related experiences. At the turn of the millennium –working in Lowestoft and living in Halesworth – she took a writing night-class in Bungay. The first story she wrote was from point of view of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to hang in England.

[…]

[Her first novel] The James Version … won a competition at the Winchester Writers' Festival. Ruth didn't intend to self-publish, but as the prize was 50 bound copies it seemed logical to pay for extra ones and sell them.

Wise move. Outlets such as Waterstones, Ottakers and even WH Smith took it, thanks to its local flavour, and 700-plus books were sold. Ruth returned to social work – not back to a prison environment this time but, instead, training student probation officers.

[…]

Ruth Dugdall is a committed writer - committed with a capital C. She aims to write every day – squeezing in three hours last night, for instance, when the children were in bed. Weekends, birthdays, even Christmas Day . . . none of them an excuse for work not to be done:

I am a writer who writes every day. I always have a notepad with me, whatever bag I've got. If I'm in Caffè Nero, and notice someone, or overhear something, you can pull the pad out. Someone was telling me the other day how her mum was obsessive with the rug, and combed the fringes. I thought, God, that's good! Use that . . .

Ruth – unusually – has two publishers. The Woman Before Me is published by Legend Press. At the same time she also struck a deal with Solidus Press who are bringing out her third book, The Sacrificial Man, this year too; they have also reissued The James Version. She is married to Andrew, a human resources director with the online retailer Play.com, with whom she has a daughter, Amber, and a son, Eden. She is currently working on her fifth book.

Let me leave you with an interview with her:

 Guest Written by: Hamdi Al-Haddad 

 Wednesday, 15th of September 2010, 20:45 GMT, Santiago Bernabue- Madrid, Spain is the time and place where the knights of Real Madrid will embark on a journey to reclaim their long lost European glory. Their first skirmish is against the forces of Amsterdam; AFC Ajax.

It has been an astonishing 6 years since Real Madrid have won their beloved competition, which they helped shape into being the most prestigious competition in European football and in the world almost 55 years ago. With their last competition win being in the campaign of 2001/2002, the Spanish giants being coached by the savvy Jose Mourinho are hoping for a change of heart.

With two matches played in the season, Real Madrid's form is hardly clear, with a win and a draw and just one goal to speak of. Yet, there is a new found confidence in the performance in the last two matches, the defense have not conceded and are looking miles better than the god-awful defense that the club had last year under the rein of Manu Pellegrini, with the introduction of veteran Ricardo Carvalho who seems to be the leader that we need in defense since the departure of Cannavaro. But, there is still a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done here. Jose Mourinho needs to instill the defense players the confidence and martyrdom to defend the Casillas's goal at all cost, in all 90 minutes of the match. He needs to make them fear no one. The late versions of Real Madrid's defense lacked consistency and organization but with time, I don't think this would be a problem with the perfectionist, Jose Mourinho.

Perhaps the most promising aspect of Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid is the midfield. New players like Ozil, Canales, Pedro Leon and Di Maria have sent fresh new blood into the heart of the club. These players are adding the much needed depth and talent to a squad which high expectation is the norm. Mesut Ozil might be the gem here, with the awesome glimpses of brilliance that he has shown in the World Cup and the performance that he had brought against Osasuna in Real Madrid's second La liga match. He might be the next Zizou, if you may( Although he still light years away from Zidane's exceptional talent) in Real Madrid series of play makers, and he might just make us forget about the injured Kaka.

The strikers of Madrid, the Spec Ops and the Target Men are just a few fancy words to describe Gonzalo Higuain Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema. The three Amigos have yet to find the nest this season, with Cristiano Ronaldo looking selfish and not so confident in his performances and Gonzalo Higuain looking shaky in front of goal and Karim being unsettled in the Spanish club, and that all adds to the problems that Jose Mourinho needs to address if he wants to surpass the last 16 stage of the UEFA Champions League. Today's match is important to see how the players are responding to the Mou treatment. How they respond to the pressure of European football is key to this year campaign.

 A win today will fuel the players to improve and be the club the fans expect of the best club in the world. But don't expect them to play beautiful football just yet, or win by many of goals because after all what is important is a win in this stage of the season.

 Every single player have been called to the match squad, save for Kaka, Raul Albiol and Kaka who are injured.

Update: Marca is reporting that Sergio Ramos might be doubtful for tonight's match. 

  MARCA's Predicted lineup is as follows: 4-3-2-1 Iker Casillas, S.Ramos, R.Carvalho, Pepe, Marcelo, X.Alonso, S.Khedira, P.Leon, M.Ozil, C.Ronaldo and Higuain

 Now, enough about Real Madrid already, although there is no such thing as enough of Real Madrid, at least to me.

AFC Ajax, the Dutch club is one of the most famous football clubs in the world, with 4 UEFA Champions League title, 29 Eredivisie titles and 18 KNVB Cup titles. The club where Johan Cruyff played and brought 3 European Cup titles, are not the club that used to be a 15 years ago. They have returned this season to the Champions League after 5 long years of absence.The players of Martin Jol will certainly strive to take this opportunity to please their fans, especially after this long absence and winning against Real Madrid would add a whole new flavor to the win.

Ajax's performance in the local league are a bit more solid than that of Real Madrid with winning 4 out of their last 5 matches and one draw, and taking the second place after PSV only on goal difference. T

he Dutch club is going under a financial crisis and are looking to benefit from the sale of stadium tickets in the Champions League to try and relief the crisis.

 Ajax are missing their savior and their number one star, Luis Alberto Suárez who are the reason for their win in the last few matches. Jol is going to try and use Al Hamadaoui in Suárez's place. I assume that Ajax will try to play on the break with Urby Emanuelson and De Jong are looked to step up and play well.

 AJAX SQUAD LIST: Stekelenburg, Jeroen Verhoeven, Van der Wiel, Alderweireld, Ooijer, Daley Blind, Oleguer, Anita, Eyong Enoh, Christian Eriksen, Siem de Jong, Emanuelson, Rasmus Lindgren, Teemu Tainio, Demy de Zeeuw Sulejmani, El Hamdaoui, Marvin Zeegelaar, Florian Jozefzoon.

My prediction is a 2-0 win for Real Madrid with Higuain and Ozil scoring. 

The first book on the shortlist for our readers' award presents a daring thesis about nature's cruelty. But does it get away with uneven characters and clunky prose? Your thoughts, please

Grant Gillespie's debut novel isn't just called The Cuckoo Boy because it's about an awkward adopted child who wears down his parents and is implicated in the death of a sibling. Gillespie is attempting to re-energise the cliché by using it to ask questions about chance and intention, and good and evil.

Late on in the book, when most of the world has already made him a pariah, James, the strange hero, says: "Cuckoos lay their eggs in other bird's nests. The chicks look really silly. I've seen them in books … a big baby bird and a really small one trying to feed it. They have to catch even more worms than ever. The mother bird's babies die. They get pushed from the nest … Is that murder or is it an accident?"

The answer he is pushing for is that it's "just nature". What happens to the chicks is unpleasant, but it would be wrong to heap opprobrium on the cuckoo. Nature isn't always pleasant, after all – certainly not if you believe Gillespie, who fills much of this book with graphic examples of nature's incidental cruelty (as well as frequently repeating the old saw about it being "red in tooth and claw" for good measure). Lambs have their eyes pecked out by crows. Babies are killed by cats. Cats are gassed by distraught mothers. Children have letters cut into their arms and form gangs and factions and force each other to do foolish and terrible things. One little girl jumps onto a fork concealed in a hay bale. James himself is thrown into a pit full of dead pigs in a nasty bit of woodland. Then he does something terrible himself and we are forced to consider whether he should really be held accountable, or whether he himself is a victim of the way of the world.

It's a brave attempt to address a discomforting question – made yet more unsettling by clear reminders of the way the press at once branded James Bulger's killers feral animals while demanding they be tried as reasonable adults. This is a novel that pushes its readers to places they might not want to go, and for that it deserves admiration.

Even so – and even though all that red-in-tooth-and-claw stuff crackles with dark energy – there are real problems with The Cuckoo Boy. Gillespie's thesis about nature is undercut by the fact that most of the world he describes and the characters in it are unreal. It isn't just the fact that the protagonist's development is highly improbable (not smiling until – as achingly dramatic luck has it – his first birthday; not moving until he is two-and-a-half when all at once he learns how to walk). It's also that so many of his interactions are unconvincing.

I didn't ever believe in James's relationship with his adoptive mother, Sandra, for instance. They communicate at a pitch that always seems too high. They're always either raging, hopeless with love or "heavy with defeat" and it becomes monotonous. Not that Sandra is a consistent character: she shifts in and out of focus and is forever changing shape, hateful one minute, loving the next. On one page she is suffering from paranoid delusions, on the next she is normal, the whole thing apparently forgotten. She's a chimera, but for her name and the fact that she maintains an obsessive-compulsive insistence on tidiness throughout. She's impossible to cling onto or to believe in, and tedious to have around.

Other characters present similar challenges. James has a pretend friend called David who we are told has disappeared on one page, only to find him back in full effect in the next. He also has a real friend called David who changes his behaviour in ways that are quite baffling, even though central to the plot. Much of the landscape of the book seems arbitrary, too. Why is there a big pig graveyard in a wood? I couldn't work it out beyond the fact that James had to be pushed into it and Gillespie wanted to draw an allusion to Lord of the Flies.

The net result is a book that is unconvincing and lacking in emotional weight – and that's before we get to the mechanics of the writing. Although Gillespie can write vividly and with bracing unpleasantness, too much of the book is undermined by howling mistakes and hackneyed, clunky prose. How to suspend disbelief when we are told a room is "a veritable assault of buttercup yellow"? When we learn that someone was wearing "a purple ubiquitously seventies polo-neck"? When a chair is described as "exfoliating"? When the phrase "like a cartoon character" is used twice within a dozen or so pages? When seemingly every 10th page there is a "cut-with-a-knife atmosphere" and/or time is "sliced in two"? When in the crucial final paragraph the all important press reacts as if it is "feeding time at the zoo"?

And yet, tempting as it is, I can't end on feeding time at the zoo. Before handing this over for comment I feel compelled to say again that The Cuckoo Boy has a lot going for it. It's just a shame that so many of its good foundations are wrecked by sloppy writing, inconsistency and half-baked ideas. The imprint To Hell with Publishing deserve respect for putting out such a risky book by a young writer – but they'd deserve even more if they had let the thing mature properly. That's my take on it, anyway. What do you think?

Next up: Deloume Road by Matthew Hooton

Our front sidewalk garden has always been a tricky thing. I plant the plants I like there but I've rarely given consideration to other people who walk down the sidewalk which is becoming problematic. It's a problem because of two things: many of the plants I plant attract pollinators (which doesn't bother me a bit but does bother those who are afraid of bees and wasps) and several of the plants are becoming to big for their britches so to speak. My wife doesn't like to walk down the sidewalk and chooses to walk into the grass. When people decide that walking through the grass is easier (or safer) than the sidewalk I think there's a problem!



The solution may sound simple - plant the right plants in the right space but it is really much more complicated when you sit down to choose the plants. For this area I'll adopt new planting strategy - plant for foliage. It's not really a new strategy as I've done it in other gardens but it will be new for this garden.


Let's take a look a what is in the garden:

Butterfly Bush - It's staying both my wife and I like it where it is and since I cut it back severely each spring it does get out of hand.
Nandina (2) - I'm not a fan of nandinas and would love to remove them both but my wife likes the one in the center so it wills stay (for now...)
Bird's Nest Spruce - I'm a big fan of this plant but it's planted too closet to the butterfly bush, it needs a new home.
Yew - the Densiformis yew I discovered on the discount rack three years ago are doing great. Foundation plantings for $10 - you can't beat that!
Euonymous fortunei - This variegated evergreen is getting leggy and I wouldn't mind removing them but I'm deferring to the wife again ;).
Catmint - This one attracts many of the pollinators especially the big bumble bees. I'm keeping one in the garden for sure but may move the second one.
Irises - These aren't a problem but need moved to allow them room to grow.
Echinacea - When in bloom the coneflowers attract plenty of butterflies and the stingy pollinators too.
Spirea - It was here when we moved in and grew back from its roots. It's now too big for its spot and will need moved.
Gaillardia - An offspring of an 'Oranges and Lemons' that reverted back to one of it's parents.
Phlox - This looks great every spring! It does need a hair cut though - did I hear anyone say cuttings?
Heath - It was looking sad this spring but seems to have rebounded.
Mums - Some giant red mums are in need of a new home. The flowers aren't giant, just the plant. It's spilling over onto the sidewalk in a large bush - and I never pinched it back. Of course it didn't pinch me first! ;)
'Silver Mound' artemisia - I like this plant but it looks in really sad shape right now. A mid-summer pruning was probably needed to keep it bushy. 'Silver Mound' is also spilling over the sidewalk. It's a look I like but maybe not here.
Salvia 'East Friesland' - EF looks awesome every spring and after a hard pruning it comes back great. I really don't think I can move these - I just don't want to! They attract pollinators in droves though.
Daylilies - Most likely these are 'Stella's and they look nice but are another pollinator attractor!

I've also planted a few annuals in the mix but they really don't factor in on the decision much. I could go after more sun tolerate coleus plants next year for their foliage color.
What to move? Echinacea, 1 catmint, 'Silver Mound', Gaillardia, Irises, Spirea, Bird's Nest Spruce, and a nandina.

What to replace the plantings with? That's the question isn't it? With so many options out there to choose from it becomes very difficult. I once saw a beautiful chamaecyparis that would have been great along the sidewalk but it's hard to find and can be expensive. Another idea would be to use a combination of shorter ornamental grasses with some sun tolerant heuchera.  I'm looking for interesting foliage plants that don't get extremely tall.

Filed under: Cuts & Style, Makeup, Fashion Week

Backstage at Suno, everybody was abuzz over the eclectic prints, adorable hats, and ultra modern hair, nails, and makeup -- all sure to be huge trends for Spring 2011.

MAKEUP: Carole Colombani for MAC Cosmetics
HAIR: Odile Gilbert for Aveda
NAILS: Jackie Saulbery for Zoya Nail Polish
SNAPSHOT: Taupe Time

THE SCOOP: Airy and loose pieces in creatively paired print combinations was what marched out for Suno's Spring 2011 collection, with the beauty centering on 'unusual girls, with a focus on taupe lips but a look of pure, baby skin and a light texture," said Carole Colombani for Mac Cosmetics. The hats in the collection were the pinnacle of her inspiration to create the makeup look, while the hair focused on creating a beautiful nest and woven-like texture, with a wet-effect in the front. Both Gilbert and Colombani provided the looks for Suno last season, with a quite different aesthetic executed this season.

GET THE LOOK- MAKEUP: Use some concealer, but skip the mascara with this look. Do use the Hush Cream Colour Base in Hush on the cheeks, and keep the brows relatively natural with some clear gel. With the eyes add the pigment Mauvement on the inner corners and a tiny bit underneath the bottom lashes, topping off with the lipstick shade To Pamper, which gives a very matte result.

GET THE LOOK-HAIR: The hair is swept back, twisted up, and pinned into place, with the ideal products being Aveda Control Force Hair Spray or Air Control Hair Spray, depending on the hair type, followed with Aveda Brilliant Spray-on Shine for the wetness effect. The actual runway look takes about thirty minutes to complete, but a quicker, easier version would be to focus on curling the hair all over, alternating between large barrel curls and smaller, regular ones, then hair spray and pin to the head as it were being set. Next, let down the back section and loosely grab and pin it making an "S" shape pattern, going back and forth. Pull the sides into the pinned hair, spray all over, and use the fingers to "rough it up" a little.

GET THE LOOK-NAILS: The nail color was an end result of mixing four colors together - Kelly, Angela, Purity, and Snow White for a look resulting in "ethereal putty." Depending on the model's skin tone resulted in the overall mixture combo. Try the same thing at home, seeing what looks best with your skin tone and mix colors by dumping some out of one bottle, pouring more of another in, and rolling, not shaking the bottle to blend it.

StyleList is your source for New York Fashion Week. Read our runway reviews and backstage beauty reports. Gawk at fashionable celebrities. Watch our video interviews with style personalities. Ruminate on it all with our roundups of Spring 2011 trends.

Suno Spring 2011 - Backstage Beauty originally appeared on StyleList on Sun, 12 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sometimes, as writer Meg Federico discovered, all it can take to get in shape is a little push from a personal trainer Photograph by: Chris Schwarz / Postmedia News Service, National Post The kids were gone, the nest was all mine - and, as many end-game parents will tell you, it was time to renovate at last! Fresh paint, gleaming hardwood, ...

Sometimes, as writer Meg Federico discovered, all it can take to get in shape is a little push from a personal trainer Meg Federico, Weekend Post The kids were gone, the nest was all mine - and, as many end-game parents will tell you, it was time to renovate at last! Fresh paint, gleaming hardwood, unblemished new leather couch - the old one beyond ...

 UPDATE: Ferarri has moved barns 5mi away from my home and is in work 5-6 days a week now. He has come so far. With the help of myself and 2 other trainers he is now jumping much safer. He never refuses. He is not afraid of ANYTHING we put infront of him. He acts so pro even when he hasnt done something before he goes right ahead and does it best he can with no fuss at all. He has a lot of heart and really wants to please. He has jumped about 3'3 now and is picking up his knees and square-ing up much better. Because of all of this we are no longer sure how soon or if we need to sell him, only time will tell. His manners are generally better now and he has put on much more weight and is looking very good. I still would not suggest him for a beginner or small child because he is still young and a big big boy, but with our near daily work he may be fine someday soon. The picture is several months old, and does not do him justice. This was in his old bit, reason for the draw reins (even though I rarely used them that day.) This was one of his first days going for long canters to get in shape. He looks MUCH better now. Please contact me for reecent pictures, etc! Was imported from Canada as a weanling. He stayed at the same farm from then until a little over a month ago, when he moved with me. They didn't ride him a lot, but he did work cows when he was young and has gone on several fox hunts and done very well. Ferarri is a great guy! Loads like a charm and trailers well. When I got him he would not stand and did not tie and would walk around in crossties. He now stands very nicely in crossties and ties up very well. He would not pick up his feet when I first got him either. He now picks up his feet well, sometimes he puts his weight on the foot you are trying to pick up and all you have to do is tap his side and tell him to square up and he will adjust himself and then pick the foot up. Leads well. Was nervous about baths when I got him, but is great now. He is a fairly easy ride under-saddle, but I would suggest an intermediate or experienced rider or someone with a trainter. Sometimes when we go for long gallops or when we are doing a cross country course he can get a little strong, but I just started riding him in a D-ring last week and he responds MUCH better to that. No bucking, No rearing, no spooking, etc. The very first day he was introduced to water he slowed down a little and over jumped it. However, he has not refused ditches, water, etc since I have had him. I have jumped him 3'9 however the old owner said the week before I got him he jumped over 5' standards. Good lead changes. They are kind of new to him, but he gets them almost all the time, and when he gets half if you ask again he will usually get it, if not, give him a trot stride and he will pick it up. He has a FANTASTIC trot. I have worked with him on lengthening and extending, he is doing very well. This is a ribbon winning trot for dressage or hunters! Good comfortable canter, will lengthen and shorten. GREAT over-track at the walk. Hand-gallops and full gallops very well and loves to go out and canter or gallop in the field! (He didn't do any of the following when I got him.)He knows how to bend, inside and out. Knows how to half pass and does it VERY well now. Does some lateral movements. Backs up FANTASTICALLY! etc... I have not taken him away from home a lot, but plan to this summer. He stands GREAT for mounting. Collects wonderfully! Currently barefoot and doing very well. When I got him his feet were pretty bad and still haven't grown out to where they are perfect yet, but are much better. He has built up muscle and will build up much more if his work is kept up. Very fun horse to ride. Rides bareback great too! Gets along well with everyone. Rarely ever kicks other horses (there is one horse that is CONSTANTLY picking on him and sometimes he will nip her or give her a little kick, but VERY rarely) and NEVER kicks under-saddle. We just got a barn dog, and she barks and even sometimes bites the horses. Ferarri is very kind to her always. I have ridden with her to see how he deals with her, he does not cause problems even when she is nipping his hocks. He would be a great fox hunter. He also found a bird the other day that fell out of the nest and sniffed it and watched it (despite the bird yelling at him and biting his nose) for a few minutes until I brought him in. He is very gentile with other animals and, from what I have seen, kids also. Would make someone a great fox hunter, dressage horse, XC horse, 3 day eventer, hunter/jumper, and so much more! He is an all around good horse. Please e-mail or call me for more info, pictures, videos, or with any offers! May consider trade. Thanks so much!

Here's a recent post from my blog, Non-Toxic Nest, over at MightyNest.  Please share with me your tips for safer kitchens and food.  Kristen just shared a tip about disinfecting cutting boards weekly with vinegar, instead of a bleach solution, like the article I cited suggests.  That way, you are using a harmless, non-toxic cleaning product to remove bacteria.  I really need to improve in this area-- my cutting boards are NOT in good shape.

What's your dirty little kitchen secret?  Or green and safe cleaning secret? Do tell.