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Wired has an interview with author Maggie Jackson who's recently written a book called 'Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age' in which she argues modern life and digital technology constantly demand our attention and are consequently damaging our ability to concentrate and be creative. The trouble is, I just don't buy it and it's easy to see why.
The 'modern technology is hurting our brain' argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It's based on the idea that before digital communication technology came along, people spent their time focusing on single tasks for hours on end and were rarely distracted.
The trouble is, it's plainly rubbish, and you just have to spend time with some low tech communities to see this is the case.
In some of the poorer neighbourhoods Medellín, my current city of residence, there is no electricity. In these barrios, computers, the internet, and even washing machines and telephones don't exist in the average home.
Pretty much everything is done manually. By the lights of the 'driven to digital distraction' argument, the residents should be able to live blissfully focused distraction-free lives, but they don't.
If you think twitter is an attention magnet, try living with an infant. Kids are the most distracting thing there is and when you have three of even four in the house it is both impossible to focus on one thing, and stressful, because the consequences of not keeping an eye on your kids can be frightening even to think about.
The manual nature of all the tasks means you have to watch everything. There is no timer on the cooker, so you need to watch the food. The washing has to be done, by hand, while keeping an eye on everything else.
People call all the time, because, well, there is no other way of communication. Street vendors pass by the house and shout what they're selling. If you miss out on something, it might mean your days food planning has gone down the drain.
On top of this, people may be working to make a living in the same building. Running a shop, mending stuff, selling food, or whatever their business might be.
The difference between this, and the "oh isn't email stressful" situation, is that you can take a break from email and phone calls. You can switch everything off for an hour so you can concentrate. You can tell people you won't be available.
For people trying to work and run a family at the same time, not only are the consequences of missing something more important and potentially more dangerous, but it's impossible to take a break. A break means your kids are in danger, your family doesn't get fed and you're losing money that buys the food.
Now, think about the fact that the majority of the world live just like this, and not in not in the world of email, tweets and instant messaging. Until about 100 years ago everyone lived like this.
In other words, the ability to focus on a single task, relatively uninterrupted, is the strange anomaly in the history of our psychological development.
New technology has not created some sort of unnatural cyber-world, but is just moving us away from a relatively short blip of focus that pervaded parts of the Western world for probably about 50 years at most.
And when we compare the level of stress and distraction it causes in comparison to the life of the average low-tech family, it's nothing. It actually allows us to focus, because it makes things less urgent, it controls the consequences and allows us to suffer no more than social indignation if we don't respond immediately.
The past, and for most people on the planet, the present, have never been an oasis of mental calm and creativity. And anyone who thinks they have it hard because people keep emailing them should trying bringing up a room of kids with nothing but two pairs of hands and a cooking pot.
Link to Wired interview with short-sighted digital doomsayer.


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When sleep just isn't an option
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you just could not stay awake? Let's face it, we've all been there! Not every second of our lives can be action-packed, and, occasionally, we've got to endure some less-than-thrilling moments.
However, you can't afford to fall asleep in a business meeting or doze off when essay writing. We have compiled a short list of reasonable ways to stay awake during life's less-than-exciting moments.
Seven tricks that will help you stay awake
It is possible to stay awake during the most excruciating essay writing exercises or the most boring of business pitches. Here's what our editors recommend:
1. Caffeine
Ah yes, caffeine, the old standby. Whether it's an energy drink, a spot of tea, or a good old-fashioned cup of coffee, this stuff is sure to help you stay awake. Caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant that increases wakefulness, attentiveness, the ability to focus, and overall energy levels.
One important caveat though: this is a short-term solution to your problem. The effects of caffeine last for only two or three hours, and then you're susceptible to what is known as a "crash," which causes you lose all energy completely. Caffeine isn't the healthiest choice on this list, but it works in a pinch.
2. Chewing gum
If you're looking for a healthier solution to office- or school-related tiredness, gum can provide you with what you're looking for. Chewing a piece of gum has been proved to help people stay awake and attentive in situations of boredom. This is due to the stimulation of facial muscles causing an increase in blood flow to the head.
In addition, because chewing is not an involuntary muscle movement like breathing or blinking, it slightly stimulates the brain, even though you may not realize it, which helps you stay awake.
3. Exercise
An increase in blood flow is an excellent way to wake up in a hurry. If you find yourself nodding off, a quick set of jumping jacks or a few push-ups will increase your heart rate and get more blood pumping to your brain.
Such exercises may not be appropriate in a business meeting, so find creative and discreet ways to get moving. Swivel in your chair, cross your legs, wiggle your feet, or scrunch up your toes. The use of muscles releases epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, which is one of the most potent stimulants known to exist.
4. Stretching
Stretching is another great way that you can re-invigorate yourself during, say, a particularly long PowerPoint presentation. There are three great benefits to stretching: First off, stretching causes you to breathe more deeply than you normally would; this provides your body with an adequate supply of oxygen, which is essential for helping you stay awake. Second, stretching releases stress that is stored in your muscles. Third, studies have shown that stretching activates your body's lymphatic system, which is responsible for cleansing your body of pollutants.
So during your next business meeting, touch the sky, roll your shoulders, or rotate your wrists and ankles. Remember to focus on your breathing and hold each stretch for 20–30 seconds.
5. Music
Sound can also serve as a way for you to stay awake. Playing loud, energetic music can effectively wake you up through auditory stimulation of the brain. If you need to stay awake, pause the "whale songs" and play something fast paced and with a lot of bass, as it is more likely to stimulate your mind. In most situations, be sure to put on headphones so as not to bother everyone around you by blaring "Ride of the Valkyries" over and over.
6. Lifestyle changes
If you're looking for a healthier, more long-term method of maintaining attentiveness during life's less exciting moments, a lifestyle change may be in order. Regular exercise has been found to provide the body with more disposable energy, meaning you'll be able to stay awake without having to drink cup after cup of coffee and listen to "Flight of the Bumblebee" continually.
Eating properly will also provide you with the energy your body needs to make it through a day without dozing off. Making sure that you get the right amount of sleep every night is also an important factor in being able to stay awake during the day. Too little or too much sleep causes lethargy and sluggishness in your daily life.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle isn't the easiest solution to tiredness, but changing your lifestyle is definitely the healthiest and most effective choice that you can make.
7. Take a nap
Since we began this list with a classic, it only seems fitting to end it with one…the power nap. A power nap is defined as a quick nap of no more than 20 minutes, aimed at achieving the revered "second wind." A quick foray into dreamland can be an effective, albeit often impractical, solution to a tired mind.
Naps can often increase alertness and productivity if done correctly. However, there is an important warning that accompanies this method: if you sleep for more than 20 minutes, you'll most likely wake up more tired than ever. Also, if your boss catches you curled up under your desk, you'll likely have a lot more time to sleep, if you catch our drift.
Hopefully, you were able to stay awake until the end of this article. We hope these tips will come in handy the next time you find yourself nodding off in the middle of an important presentation, or while writing a research proposal.
Just try not to take things to extremes; our editors don't recommend drinking multiple cups of coffee, doing 50 push-ups, and then listening to Metallica while you take a nap. While a healthy lifestyle and a good night's sleep are the best ways to maintain peak intellectual performance, using one of the additional suggestions above should be enough to help you stay awake until your work day is over or your first draft is complete.
And of course, don't worry about staying awake during the editing process. Instead, send your documents to our essay editors and wake up to an error-free document.
Image source: Erik-Jan Leusink/Unsplash.com
Make Every Word Count. Hire a Professional Editor.
Get a Free Sample, or Get an Instant Quote and Place Your Order Below

subset: commoncrawl


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Why Is Fox News' Megyn Kelly Obsessed With the New Black Panthers?
Have you heard about the New Black Panther Party? No? Well, you must not be watching Fox News, which has spent the last week treating the fringe group as the greatest threat to democracy since... well, since health care reform.
So: Idiots. I trust you're familiar with them? Recently, motivated entirely by their selfless concern for others, they have been very worried about an incident in Philadelphia in 2008, when two members of the laughable fringe radical outfit the New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place in fatigues and sort of vaguely brandished a nightstick and looked intimidating.
Here are some facts about that incident: The polling place was in a heavily black, heavily Democratic district. Police were called, and the two men were ushered away. No one has come forward to say they were intimidated. The Justice Department—at the time still controlled by the Bush administration—decided not to file criminal charges.
But some people, no doubt deeply concerned that this pair of preposterous fools might have intimidated some voters, has been wondering if, perhaps, the Justice Department—again, the Bush Justice Department—chose to downgrade the charges not for the obvious reason that it would be a total waste of time, but because the Justice Department is operating under some kind of edict to not charge black folks with crimes.
No, actually, this is what they think. In the clip above, a California woman says the following thing at a town hall meeting with her congressman: "It's the Department of Justice's new policy that they are not going to prosecute cases with black defendants, where the complainants are white." Black people: Now is your chance to commit federal crimes.
You see, a gentleman named J. Christian Adams—a former Justice Department lawyer—has been telling people that he thinks this case wasn't brought to criminal trial because the Department of Justice is no longer interested in protecting the voting rights of white people. And J. Christian Adams, whose name could not possibly be more appropriate, and his band of merry concerned citizens, have a champion in the media: Fox News' Megyn Kelly, who has been pumping this story for weeks.
In a great post on The Daily Dish, where he's subbing in for Andrew Sullivan, Matt Drudge arsonist Dave Wiegel takes Kelly to task for her embarrassing race-baiting (lest we forget, Kelly's show is on from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET, during the daytime "real news" component of Fox):
One of the more jarring passages in Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" is his recounting of a popular myth that went around Iowa in 1966, the year of the conservative backlash against the Great Society. The myth was that black gang members on motorcycles were going to head from Chicago to ransack Des Moines. Reading this in 2008, it sounded preposterous, the kind of thing that no one could believe in the country that was about to elect Barack Obama. But Kelly, under the guise of journalism, is working to create a rumor like this in 2010. Watch her broadcasts and you become convinced that the New Black Panthers are a powerful group that hate white people and operate under the protection of Eric Holder's DOJ.


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BOSTON — The president of the United States came here on Monday night at the beginning of what should be a most interesting week. His opponent was still hopelessly floundering on the issue of immigration. (On the afternoon of the president's visit, a Romney aide gave an impromptu press briefing in which he attempted to describe his candidate's stand on that issue and came off sounding like one of those farmers who see a UFO late one night in Oklahoma.) The Supreme Court had handed him something more than a partial victory in his administration's fight against a draconian anti-immigrant statute in Arizona. Yet, at the same time, that same court seemed poised to hand his administration its head later in the week on its signature policy achievement, the embattled Affordable Care Act, while, elsewhere, a renegade oversight committee was still seeking his Attorney General's head on a plate. He stepped onto the stage at Symphony Hall, amid the gilt and fine wood and all the marble naked people in the niches in the wall, during a time of extraordinary dissonance in the country that, four years ago, he had so hoped to bring into harmony.
"In 2008, we came together, not just to support a candidate — it wasn't just about me; when you support a guy named Barack Obama, you're not just doing it because you thought it was a sure thing," he said. "The reason we came together in 2008 was that we had a shared vision of what's best in this country. We wanted to reclaim the basic heart of what was best in America, that built the laregst middle-class in history, that compact that binds us together as a people, that binds us together as citizens. We believe that, in America, your success shouldn't be determined by the circumstances of your birth."
The speech was of a piece with a lot of those he's given in recent weeks. It was overlong to no good purpose. It was themeless in that it had too many themes — the old Hope-and-Change rouser, the long description of How We Got Here, the even longer description of what his administration had accomplished, a still longer section of How Far We Still Have To Go, some solid whacks at Willard Romney for wanting to backslide all the way to How We Got Here again, and all of it threaded on what he says is his continued firm belief that Americans are a good people who are up to the challenge of protecting the common good. He got his biggest ovations when he spoke out strongly and unequivocally in defense of Planned Parenthood and a woman's right to make her own health-care decisions, and in defense of his executive order of two weeks ago that essentially decriminalized Being Here for nearly a million undocumented immigrants who'd been brought here as children, and a strong pre-emptive defense of the health-care reform act — "because it was the right thing to do" — in advance of the adverse ruling everyone expects on Thursday from the nine wise souls in Washington.
(He also was badly briefed. He made a joke about the trade of Red Sox infielder Kevin Youkilis to his hometown Chicago White Sox and, when the crowd responded with the traditional Fenway "Yoooooouk!," the president clearly thought the crowd was booing. Bad staff work all around.)
But still, there was something at once pale and unfocused about what he was saying. He seems to have settled on something he calls The Basic Bargain between Americans, which he says is threatened by a return to the failed policies of the previous administration. But his denunciation of them remains academic and removed. The fire in his rhetoric remains banked carefully into his ongoing appeals to the better angels of our nature, who, it seems to me, have been largely AWOL since the day he was inaugurated. Instead, he settles for some finely honed mockery, as when he chaffs Romney for a spokesman's attempt to explain the difference between "outsourcing" and "offshoring" when it comes to Bain Capital's pioneering role in shipping American jobs out of the country. This may well turn out to be the most effective play, since Romney has the sense of humor of a handball, but a dollop of authentic outrage wouldn't have been totally out of place.
"Just last week it was reported that Mr. Romney and his company were 'pioneers' — that's not my phrase; that's what the report said — in business of outsourcing jobs to places like China and India," the president said. "Yesterday, his advisers tried to clear this up by telling us there was a difference between 'outsourcing' and 'offshoring.' You can't make that up. If you're a worker whose job went overseas, you really don't need somebody explaining the difference between outsourcing and offshoring."
But, then again, he went on, "We all believe in the free market. We all believe in rewarding the risk takers." And the guy whose job got shipped to Bangalore, does he really believe that, anymore than he believes that his plight can be explained by business-school semantics?
(By contrast, Elizabeth Warren, the senatorial candidate who introduced the president on Tuesday night — and who, it should be recalled, he declined to appoint to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a job she practically invented — has developed a killer riff in her own stump speech centered on Romney's famous "Corporations Are People, Too, my friend" moment back in Iowa. "Mitt Romney tells us, in his own words, he believes corporations are people," she says. "No, Mitt. Corporations are not people. People have hearts. They have kids. They have jobs. They get sick. They dance. They work and they live and they die. Learn the difference.")
And why, in front of this audience, in this state, the president still felt compelled to reassure us all that he wasn't a wild-eyed liberal — most of the people here had figured that one out on their own, thanks — is beyond me. "We don't expect government to solve all our problems," he said. "This notion that, somehow, there's been some heavy tilt to the left in the Democratic party, well, in the past three years, I've cut taxes for the typical working family by $3800, cut taxes for small business 18 times, eliminate billions of dollars in regulation that didn't make sense. I don't believe we should be in the business of helping people who refuse to help themselves. I don't think government can solve all our problems. But I do share a belief held by our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who said, through government, we can do that which we cannot do as well for ourselves, that there's a common good we can invest in."
Then he went on to describe a whole list of big things that "we" did as Americans — interstate highways, the G.I. Bill, the Hoover Dam — that would not have been possible without the progressive impulse he had just reassured us he has carefully banked within himself. It's a strange, narrow road he's set himself on.
"Money we're no longer spending on war, use it to put people back to work," he said. "Rebuilding our roads. Rebuilding our ports. Building high-speed rail. All those ingredients that made us an economic superpower." And then, when he had them all ginned up, in the space of a paragraph, he pivoted to The Deficit: "I'm running for president because we need to reduce our deficit. We need to manage our debt." And, the air went out of the room as he called upon the patriotism of the wealthiest of our citizens, something that has not been in evidence in our politics for a very long time.
"There are plenty of patriotic, successful Americans out there who would be willing to make this contribution again because they understand there is such a thing as the common good," he said. "Mr. Romney disagrees with this vision. His allies in Congress disagree with this vision. That's the biggest source of gridlock in Washington these past three years. Which brings me back to where I started. The only way to break that gridlock is through you."
To listen to the president these days is to hear an unmistakably rueful sub-theme about the difference between the promise of 2008 and the hard realities of 2012. The country has gotten better, but it hasn't gotten better enough, and the reason for that is that the political opposition looked at his election and determined that it was in many ways illegitimate. (They had a dry run on this during the eight years Bill Clinton was president.) It was enough to make you wonder whether or not, somewhere deep within him, he realizes how very much he had overrated us as a political commonwealth, and whether or not he has the gift for navigating dissonance as the order of things in an age stubbornly resistant to the kind of harmony he still groping towards in the way he talks to the country, and that he still insists exists somewhere out there in the din.
(UPDATE: Also, too, in breaking news, some members of the White House press corpsare idiots.)
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.


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Department of Biological Sciences
Prospective Undergraduate Students
Apply to WIU
Biology Day / 2015 Zoology FYE Kibbe Trip pics
Why a biology degree?
- Biology Overview --This overview will answer the questions below, and more!
- Why a biology degree? What can you do with it? What kinds of jobs are there?
General Degree Information
Incoming first-year students (30 credit hours or less) are required to enroll in the Freshman Year Experience (FYE) Program. Please go to WIU's First Year Experience (FYE) page for more information.
Foreign Language update: All students seeking a Bachelors of Science degree in Biology are required to have two semesters or one full year of a single Foreign Language. Two years of the same language in high school, or two semesters of the same language in college or university will complete this requirement, as long as transcripts are presented to the registrar.
This requirement can be met while attending WIU with two semesters of the same foreign language, which can count towards two classes of General Education Humanities Credit.
The School of Arts and Sciences requires more General Education courses in the Humanities and Social sciences (12 hours each) than other schools within the University. Also required are three hours of Human Well Being, two courses with a writing emphasis, three hours of Multicultural Studies, 16 hours of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and 9 hours of directed Communication Skills.
WIU Has An Established Commitment to a High-Quality Professional Preparation
Few biology departments offer research and field experiences to undergraduates - a strength of our department is our commitment to undergraduate research.
Our majors prepare our graduates to pursue careers in health care, biotechnology, conservation, government agencies, education, and a wide range of other fields.
Undergraduate Programs and Options and Advising
Career opportunities:
- Medicine
- Veterinarian
- Dentistry
- Optometry
- Physical Therapy
- Occupational Therapy
- Physician's Assistant
- Biotechnology industry
- Government conservation agencies such as:
- The Department of Natural Resources, Fish, and Wildlife
- The Environmental Protection Agency
- National Park Service
- Private conservation organizations such as:
- The Audubon Society
- The Nature Conservancy
- World Wildlife Federation
- Museum curation
- Zoos and aquaria
Features of Undergraduate Courses
- Courses taught by faculty members, not graduate students
- An active faculty advisor program and an active career advising/career development program
- A wide variety of courses providing a strong background in the natural and social sciences, humanities, and writing
- A curriculum which supports students pursuing their individual academic interests
- Libraries with Internet access to biology and research journals
- Easily accessible computer labs for student use
Transferring Courses?
Visit Transferology to learn more about whether your classes will transfer to WIU.


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When you're battling the bulge, your bathroom scale can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. So instead of displaying your actual weight, which can be discouraging, this scale only tells you how much you've lost or gained.
The first time you step on the $78 Quantum scale it registers your weight, but still keeps it a secret from you. And after that it simply gives you a plus or minus reading depending on if you've gained weight since your last reading, or lost some.
Admittedly it's not the easiest way to tell if you're making weight loss progress unless you're keeping tabs on your up and down measurements on a daily basis. But if you're dedicated to the cause, it should make the morning routine of weighing yourself a bit less dreadful. [Firebox]


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Inspired by a vision of safer, more sustainable, and exciting mobility.
Concept Cars
A Look Into the Future
Together We Ride
This innovative crossover, unveiled at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show, provides a glimpse into the future of Nissan Intelligent Mobility. Promoting a stronger link between you and your car, the Nissan IMx gives you more control and makes mobility more enjoyable.
Vmotion 2.0
Vmotion 2.0 signals the company's future sedan design direction and the future of Nissan Intelligent Mobility technology. It combines a high sense of style, emotional design, roominess, comfort and technology to make personal transportation seamless for busy professionals constantly on the go.
Nissan Gripz Concept
Inspired by classic desert rally cars and racing bikes, and equipped with an advanced hybrid EV powertrain, the Nissan Gripz Concept is the next game changer from the pioneer of the compact crossover segment.
Nissan IDS Concept
Nissan IDS Concept promises an exciting future of autonomous driving and zero emissions. In this visionary concept, the driver is still very connected to the experience. Even when Piloted Drive is selected, and driving is turned over to the vehicle, the car's performance – from accelerating to braking to cornering - imitates the driver's own style and preferences.
Nissan Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo
From virtual to reality and back again. Answering a call from the makers of Gran Turismo 6, Nissan's young designers created a dream car to celebrate the game's 15th anniversary. The virtual supercar made its debut as a physical concept at the Goodwood Festival of Speed last summer. But the first lucky ones to actually "drive" it? GT6 gamers, of course. So will a production version actually drive up the Goodwood hill in 2020? That remains to be seen...
The Sway is a glimpse at how a future generation of compact Nissan models might look. Designed especially to appeal to European tastes, it is seen as emotional, edgy, and exciting.
Lannia Concept joins our growing family of China-focused models. It was designed by Chinese, built by Chinese for the Chinese people, and ultimately, for the world.
The IDx Freeflow combines fashion and function in a design brimming with originality. The 4-passenger cabin is meant to feel like a living room designed around sharing with others.
The IDx NISMO's co-creation dialogue took the distilled heritage of Nissan's basic box-shaped racing vehicles of the past and married it with various intriguing new details. This resulted in a car that appears to be timeless while moored in a place all of its own.


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WebMD to cut 62 jobs in metro Atlanta
Associated Press
ATLANTA - Executives with the health website WebMD say the company will cut dozens of jobs in the Atlanta area as part of a broader plan to trim about 14 percent of its workforce to reduce costs.
WebMD Health Corp. officials say 62 of the 250 jobs being cut are in metro Atlanta.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (http://bit.ly/STQb42) that the cuts are aimed at reducing costs after a drop in advertising and sponsorship revenue.
The New York-based company said it expects to reduce annual operating expenses by about $45 million. Most of the job cuts will take place by the end of the year, while some of the other cost-cutting measures will extend into the first three months of 2013.


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Campus Children's Center
We are committed to creating an environment of joy where the talents of children and adults are recognized, nurtured, and celebrated.
Facility Description
- State of the art, 7,000 square foot red building with five classrooms designed to facilitate safety, well-being, active engagement, and energy efficiency
- Natural outdoor play space, maximizing the use of natural light and air flow
Program Features
- Philosophy of care and respect for self and others
- Celebration of creativity
- Early child care and education for infants through pre-K
- State licensed
- Sliding fee rates for students
- USDA approved meals
- Social and academic skill building through fun activities
Waiting List
For our waiting list, we use the following order:
- Student families with one child already enrolled
- Faculty and staff families with one child already enrolled
- Community families with one child already enrolled
- Student families
- Faculty and staff families
- Community families
- Enrollment Form: You do not have to have the status of student, faculty or staff in order to check the box on the Enrollment Request Form, but you do have to have that status by the time your child enrolls. Check whichever one best applies.
- If you are expecting to have a child (through birth or adoption), you are welcome to join the waiting list now in anticipation.
- There is no enrollment request deposit required.
- Sometimes we are able to offer a family a spot as soon as they apply and sometimes a family is on the waiting list.
- We update the waiting lists every quarter.
- If a child is old enough to move from one list to the next, we will move them up—you do not need to reapply after your child's birthday.
Please contact us if you have any other questions or if you would like a tour.
Funding Sources
The Children's Center is funded through parent tuition, student activities fees subsidies, in-kind donations from the college and grants from agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture.
- Parent Tuition
Student parents pay based on an income-based sliding scale and faculty/staff parents pay a flat rate.
- Student Activities fee subsidies
Student Activities fees subsidies comprise about half of the Center's operating budget. People sometimes ask why, in terms of our waiting list, we prioritize student families over staff and faculty, since the staff and faculty families pay a higher rate. It is because of the Student Activities subsidy. A student is defined as someone taking 4 undergraduate or 2 graduate credits and paying the related (i.e., Student Activities) fees. Faculty and staff pay the base rate for service; current enrolled Evergreen students receive a lower rate, subsidized by S&A fees.
- In-Kind donations from the college
The college provides support through services such as human resources, facilities repairs and custodial, etc…
- Grants from agencies such as the United States' Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Because a high percentage of the children enrolled come from families considered low income, the USDA food program partially subsidizes the cost of the meals we provide.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA's TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD).
To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272 or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.


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This Week at 148Apps: August 11-15, 2014
How do you know what apps are worth your time and money? Just look to the review team at 148Apps. We sort through the chaos and find the apps you're looking for. The ones we love become Editor's Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Take a look at what we've been up to this week, and find even more in our Reviews Archive.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney-Dual Destinies
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies is a direct port of the latest title in the fantastically popular Ace Attorney series. For those unfamiliar with it, the these games are courtroom dramas with a twist of absurdist humor, mostly centered around Phoenix Wright and his rise to become a star defense attorney. By Dual Destinies, the seventh title in the series, Wright and his two protégés are taking on their most exciting and intense cases yet. Each lawyer has their own "special power" that gives them the edge in court and also serves to add unique gameplay mechanics. Since Dual Destinies is a port, given the difference in screen sizes, I was worried that there would be significant loss of video quality when it was scaled up to the iPad. To my surprise, all of the animation is HD. Each cutscene is like watching an anime, and in case you can't get enough you can always replay them from the main menu. The voice acting and music is really well done and, as with the rest of the Phoenix Wright series, the localization is top-notch. --Jessica Fisher
Vinted is the app for vinted.com – a site that lets women post their old clothes for sale, trade, or giveaways and lets them get clothes from others at great, thrift store-ranged prices. I found it by accident, and now it's turned into an incredible obsession. As someone who spends a lot of time browsing around thrift stores, Vinted is great for being able to do that even from bed. When I first signed up for my account, the service gave me a coupon for $10 toward anything I wanted (this coupon is given to all new users). This did NOT last long. I found dozens of tops, skirts, shoes, and all other things that were just perfect for me. In the time I've had it I've purchased 11 things, traded with one girl, and sold a few of my older/poorer fitting clothes. --Jade Walker
I'm an old hand at the Peter Molyneux hype train. I've seen the stories of how if you plant a seed in the Fable games, you can return later on to see a tree in its place. I remember when Black & White came out and it was meant to be the ultimate God game. It wasn't. I'm forgiving, though. I buy every title and appreciate that, while all the promised goods won't be there, hopefully there'll be enough to entice me in. Godus is probably one of the most hyped iOS releases in recent times. Does it succeed at making you feel like a God? Not really. It's quite attractive to look at and offers some much better touch-based controls than the average city/village building game, but it's still exactly that – a typical civilization/city building simulation. --Jennifer Allen
NPR One
It's a little too simply done, but in terms of varied radio-based content NPR One does a good job of making it easy to listen to new stories that should hopefully prove to be interesting to you. After a brief sign up process (best circumvented by connecting your Facebook details), there's nothing particularly awkward about NPR One. You can dive straight into listening to various news clips about all sorts of subjects from politics to entertainment news, with plenty of human interest stories that teach a lot. NPR One learns as you go along in terms of what interests you via you tapping on a button to say it was your sort of thing. That makes the suggestion side of the app increasingly useful and I found it easily recommending me stories that would appeal. --Jennifer Allen
Dragon Quest IV Chapters of the Chosen
Dragon Quest IV Chapters of the Chosen is a highly revered entry in the classic Dragon Quest series. Originally released in 1990 on the Nintendo Entertainment System (and then subsequently remade for the Playstation and Nintendo DS), this update for iOS features great localization, much of the previous remakes' bonus content, and a control scheme that is well-suited to the platform. All of these features help make Dragon Quest IV still look and play great, even for being a 24 year old game. For those that are unfamiliar, Dragon Quest is one of the most popular RPG franchises in Japan. It is developed by Square Enix, who is also responsible for the Final Fantasy series, though there are quite a few differences between the two. The most distinct difference between them is that Dragon Quest tends to be more iterative on a single, specific vision from a dedicated team of designers whereas Final Fantasy is generally a completely new game and vision centering around a few loose concepts and systems. --Campbell Bird
Combining the need for speed with accuracy and good memory skills comes Rules!, a simple puzzle game that's sure to test your intellectual abilities. Think Simon Says and you're on the right track. Each level of Rules! requires you to follow a rule. Each rule is simple enough, such as tap on all the green tiles or select all of the animals. The tricky part comes in how these rules pile up. Each level adds a new rule, and you have to remember the earlier ones – up to 10 in all before the game resets. --Jennifer Allen
Other 148Apps Network Sites
If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:
The Room
Mobile gamers rarely get to experience truly innovating games. Most of the high-quality titles are simply good at copying others. The Room is an incredible exception to that fact, as it's the most fun and unusual quest I've played in several years. The subject of The Room is a series of intricate and impossibly complex locked cabinets, containing clues about a mysterious discovery the player character needs to uncover. The game quite literally revolves around these lockers. The player needs to move the camera around the locker and try to unlock all of its locks, clasps and seals by a series of actions that might just make a person go crazy. The player needs to find keys, pick combinations, scout the locker for clues – and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that it's damn easy to get lost around the cabinet. Screenshots don't do justice to the crazy amount of elements each locker contains, and although there are hints, I got mildly frustrated several times, trying to solve the puzzles, or trying to find what the hell I was supposed to do next. It's not that frustrating to complete, but it's quite a challenge. --Tony Kuzmin
Bug Heroes 2
Bug Heroes 2 is a cool mix of tactical base building tactical shooter and cockroaches. What could go wrong? Bug Heroes 2 is about bugs at war. Every slug and ant must do their part. The player moves their two bug team around in real time using an invisible virtual stick and attacking is handled automatically. Depending on which bug is picked the player might blast away at distance or close in for some melee action. During combat grunt bugs like ants with rifles and siege engine grubs are constantly produced on both sides and go about attacking enemies automatically so the battlefield is always full of some matter of six legged carnage or another. The auto produced bugs really give the game a great feel as there is always fighting going on and watching armies of bugs clash is great fun. --Allan Curtis
GemHero makes a terrible first impression since it forces the player to create a "Winnerconnect" account. Facebook login is also available but forcing the player into creating an account before they even get to see the game is a bit much. Then a very silly story appears featuring a knight being turned into a duck and the king assuming that killing the warlock that did it might free him. This is where the player comes in. After this an ad dialogue appears. This is before gameplay even starts. After a short tutorial, the player is given a deck that is mostly comprised of angry sheep and sheep riders, which is kind of a letdown. --Allan Curtis
And finally, this week Pocket Gamer played a new Call of Duty, ran around as a goat in Germany, told you how to survive the horrors of the Construct Quarter in Hearthstone, and decided to buy a shiny Super Smash Bros. special edition 3DS. And it's all right here.


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Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
So, the Mitchell Report came out today, and has a lot of incriminating evidence. Much has been discovered and revealed.
Yes, I'm talking about the most damning fact of them all — the realization that, according to pages D-5 through D-8 in the report, Jason Grimsley has an Anne Geddes-themed checkbook.
Shame on your, Mr. Grimsley.


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China's Baidu has long dominated the country's search market. But a local rival to the company is bolstering its own search services with the help of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.
On Wednesday, Qihoo 360 appeared to debut a new shopping search service in partnership with Alibaba's advertising platform. The service is listed as a tab on Qihoo 360's search engine, now China's second largest behind Baidu.
Qihoo 360's newest product was built from the infrastructure of Alibaba's own shopping search engine called eTao, said Alibaba Group spokeswoman Dora Chai. eTao works by helping users compare products for the best price.
Qihoo 360 said in an email it launched the new shopping service to address the growing number of Internet users buying products online. "A shopping search is a major demand Internet users want when they use a search engine. So 360 search will not ignore this need," the company added.
Launched last August, the company's search engine has been slowly taking user market share away from Baidu. In April, Qihoo 360 had a 14 percent share of the market, while Baidu had a 70 percent share, according to Internet analytics site CNZZ.com.
Qihoo 360 is best known as a security software vendor in China, but its also gained notoriety for its disputes with Baidu and other Internet firms in the country. In November, both Qihoo 360 and Baidu signed a pact to compete fairly in China's search sector after the two companies feuded over search indexing.
Since then, Qihoo 360 has been steadily adding new products to its search engine, including a medical service to help users find treatments for various illnesses. But in terms of advertising revenue, the company's search engine generates little in sales, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.
Qihoo 360's new shopping service, however, could help the company monetize some of its Web traffic. The service is meant to direct Qihoo 360's users to advertisers on Alibaba's e-commerce sites via eTao. Both Qihoo 360 and Alibaba will share revenues from the partnership, according to company spokeswoman Dora Chai.
Baidu also has its own shopping search engine as well. But the company has struggled to break into e-commerce. Last year, its online shopping joint venture with Japanese Internet giant Rakuten closed its Chinese site after failing to meet expectations.


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Mohsen Mostafavi – Dean, Faculty of Design at Harvard University GSD announced
It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of Anita Berrizbeitia as tenured Professor of Landscape Architecture, starting in July 2009.
Berrizbeitia is a landscape architect whose research focuses on design theories of modern and contemporary landscape architecture, the productive aspects of landscapes, and Latin American cities and landscapes. She was awarded the 2005–2006 Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she studied architecture at the Universidad Simón Bolívar before receiving a BA from Wellesley College and an MLA from the GSD.
Berrizbeitia has taught design theory and studio, most recently at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where she was Associate Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. Her studios investigate innovative approaches to the conceptualization of public space, especially on sites where urbanism, globalization, and local cultural conditions intersect. She also leads seminars that focus on significant transformations in landscape discourse over the last three decades. From 1987 to 1993, she practiced with Child Associates, Inc., in Boston, where she collaborated on many award-winning projects.
SOURCE: News at GSD
Technorati Tags: harvard, gsd, mostafavi, berrizbeitia, penn, professor,


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Mr. Chatterbox
More than 140 pugs from all over the country showed up to compete in this year's eighth annual Pug Parade, joined by hundreds more egging them on from the sidelines. ABC7 anchorman Ken Jefferson served as grand marshal, and Jimmy Dean emceed the judging. Winning prizes this year were: Paco (Most Physically Fit), Miranda (Best Costume), Honeydew (Best Curled Tail), Mo (Mr. Congeniality) and Olive (Best of Show).
Co-sponsored by SARASOSTA Magazine, Lakewood Ranch and Abode Real Estate, the parade got curly tails wagging as the canines socialized, played games and begged for hot dogs and pizza. This was the biggest and best Pug Parade ever, with proceeds beneftting the Sarasota County Humane Society. Can't wait until next year!
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A Valiant's Field TrainingSir Marcus Barlowe at the Argent Tournament Grounds wants you to kill 10 Converted Heroes.
|Converted Hero slain (10)
DescriptionThe tournament is a time for testing your skills against your peers, but we must not forget that the real enemy, the Scourge, will not wait. As you hone your skills against others, so should you maintain your edge in combat against the enemy.
Travel to the area southwest of the Valley of Fallen Heroes and north of Corp'rethar. There, the Scourge raises dead heroes and turns them against us. Defeat these minions of the Scourge, do honor to our allies, and keep yourself prepared for combat.
Have you tested yourself in combat against the Scourge?
Welcome back from your exercises, <name>. Even while we practice for the competition, it's good to remind ourselves that the Scourge is still out there.
RewardsYou will receive: 7 40 (or 20 63 if completed at level 80)
|Valiant's Seal
GainsUpon completion of this quest you will gain:
- 22,050 experience
- 250 reputation with Stormwind
- 250 reputation with The Silver Covenant


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2014 Winter Olympics Preview: U.S. Hockey Goes for the Gold
Like any professional hockey player, Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller is used to hearing the Canadian national anthem played before most NHL games. But, like every member of the United States men's hockey team who played at the last Olympics, Miller hasn't entirely gotten over hearing "O Canada" after the gold-medal game.
That was in Vancouver in 2010, when Miller - the undisputed star of the tournament - helped lead Team USA to the brink of victory but saw Team Canada star Sidney Crosby's shot go between his legs in sudden-death overtime, giving the home country the gold medal.
"It definitely stings," recalls the East Lansing, Michigan, native, who won MVP honors in the Olympic tournament to go along with his silver medal. "I feel it was a mistake on my part at the end of the game, so you have to pick up and move forward and hope the next time to have a chance to right that wrong."
That chance has finally come as the U.S. joins 11 other countries competing in Sochi, Russia, and hoping to skate off with the 2014 Winter Olympics men's hockey gold. Miller returns, along with fellow NHL stars Zach Parise, Patrick Kane and Phil Kessel, on a solid 25-man roster. They'll compete against the world's best, including defending champ Canada, home team Russia, 2013 world champions Sweden, and stalwarts Finland and Slovakia. And, unlike in Vancouver, where the U.S. team was regarded as the surprising upstart, the 2014 team heads to Sochi considered among the frontrunners.
"I don't think it's fair calling the U.S. underdogs anymore - we raised the standards a little bit, and the expectations, and I think it's good for us," says Parise, whose goal with
25 seconds left in the Vancouver gold-medal game forced overtime. "It's a compliment: It means we've got a good team, and there are a lot of good teams capable of winning."
When asked to pick a favorite, NBC play-by-play announcer Mike Emrick admits his crystal ball is foggy. "You have to be a magician to have everything go just the right way for you. That's what makes it very difficult to handicap," he says. He likes Team USA's chances but believes the great distance to Sochi won't help, especially considering that the two U.S. golds - in Squaw Valley, California (1960), and the famed "Miracle on Ice" in Lake Placid, New York (1980) - came on U.S. soil.
The Americans will fly to Sochi and have just one practice before beginning their schedule of play against Slovakia on Feb. 13. Miller understands the necessary mental commitment and knows what to expect. "The excitement of competing and representing your country evolves into a confidence [once] you're winning some hockey games, and you feel if you can keep it rolling, you have a chance for something pretty amazing to happen," he says. "They selected all of us for a reason."
The U.S. roster is indeed formidable. "Patrick Kane has had the hottest scoring hand this year," Emrick says of the Chicago Blackhawks' Stanley Cup MVP. "He and Phil Kessel [of the Toronto Maple Leafs] are probably the two greatest magicians in terms of raw skill and stick handling on the team. Dustin Brown [of the Los Angeles Kings] is a hammer guy, a big hitter; David Backes [of the St. Louis Blues] is just a big, bull-in-a-china-shop center."
On the defensive side, Emrick points toward Brooks Orpik: "I would make sure to have my head up so I could see him. He always leads the [Pittsburgh] Penguins in hits and always plays very aggressively, like he did in Vancouver." And, of course, there's 2010 hero Miller, who currently ranks fifth in the NHL in both saves and saves percentage. "Miller has played remarkably this year and earned the spot, despite playing for the team with the poorest record in the whole league," Emrick says.
Miller will have to wait until the knockout round for a potential rematch with the offense-minded Canadians. "They have tremendous riches up front, unlike the United States," Emrick says, "but I think the U.S. goaltending is stronger." Still, he adds, "Canada up the middle may look deep until you start looking at the names for Russia. You have Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Pavel Datsyuk, and Vladimir Tarasenko is a tremendous young guy. They've got pretty good riches."
Home ice might not be much of an advantage for the Russians: The U.S. and Canada are the only home teams to have previously won gold. And while Team USA has never won at a foreign Olympics, it does have an impressive history at the Games. Since hockey was added to the Olympic program in 1920, the U.S. has scored eight silvers to go along with its two golds. Says Parise: "Every U.S. kid has seen the [1980] Miracle, I would assume, but it's more than 30 years later, and I think we'd love to have another moment like that for the United States."
It may not even take a miracle.
By Robert Edelstein
For more on the 2014 Winter Olympics, pick up this week's issue of TV Guide Magazine, on newsstands Thursday, Jan. 30!
Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!
View original 2014 Winter Olympics Preview: U.S. Hockey Goes for the Gold at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


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good work xx the season is short … but SOOOO much fun x and when you get it out next year it will bring back memories and you will love it all over again xx
Those colours work well, right into Spring! :-)
Keep it out the whole year… It is gorgeous!
Love it….subtle enough to keep out year round!
My goodness how she has grown! She looks just like you. Wow time flies..Love the quilt of course. You are my quilt idol!
She is beautiful and I love the quilt. Did you prewash the flannel?
I love it! And yes it can totally work for Valentine's Day. And it has green in it so I vote that you leave it out at least until St. Patrick's Day! When you back a quilt in flannel do you wash the flannel first? I'm thinking of backing one in flannel-Jo-Ann has a good deal on it right now! But I've heard that flannel shrinks at a different rate than plain ole cotton.
Hi Allison! Did you finally move to Cleveland, I was looking a a Totally Tutorial post of mine 3 years ago, and you hinted you are in my area, I'm a west sider, hope you are enjoying he snow! feel free to stop by the4rsramblings.blogspot.com
also, are you doing any demos or teaching in our area? Just curious! Love your style an use of color, have a Merry Christmas!
Hi! I love your NEW quilt and the pattern! Buzzy Kid has been long time in my list and once I even started but somehow mixed my measurements and I didn't continue it much. I have to make this pattern! x Teje
That is as pretty as your little girl!! I received my pattern of the same and I thank you very much. I agree you should leave it out till Valentines Day!!
love this!
Love seeing this finished. I made this immediately after I saw your first pic. It's pieced waiting for backing and quilting. Love this. I would let my little girl use this year round.
Sweet quilt, Allison! Sweeter wee redhead. ;) She grew wayyyy too fast. Oh my…it seems like yesterday when she was posed as a teeny tiny thing on one of your quilts.
I see no reason to banish that quilt when Christmas is over. I say keep it out until the last snow melts. Well, if you get snow that is. lol
Sweet quilt, Allison! Sweeter wee redhead. ;) She grew wayyyy too fast. Oh my…it seems like yesterday when she was posed as a teeny tiny thing on one of your quilts.
I see no reason to banish that quilt when Christmas is over. I say keep it out until the last snow melts. Well, if you get snow that is. lol
I think this is a year round quilt! It is a beautiful finish. Your little candy cane is so precious.
You know that quilt deserves to see a bit more winter! How snuggly it looks! Here at my home, we spread the happy season of Christmas out past the holiday too. I love working on Christmas felt ornaments and sitting around (when I'm not at work) just spending time with my kids. As my kids are getting older (Beckett is 11 now) I have to try to find (sneaky) ways to spend time with each of them. ha! Still just lovin your blog, and your quilts. And your family…you are so blessed!
The quilt is lovely and all the perfect colors – yep, I'd keep it out until March 1, personally. And this little munchkin – well, she is growing into the most beautiful child. It has been a privilege to watch her come along – know she is "mama's girl" and so happy with quilts!
I love how the quilt and your little girl match. It made for the perfect little picture opportunity. Sure keep it out a did bit longer. No one will notice :) Happy Holidays!
Beautiful! I love this quilt!!!!!
That girl steals my heart every single time! She is so very lovely. I can't believe how fast she is growing up.
Bizzy Kid has always been my favorite of your patterns and seeing it in holiday fabrics is such a treat! I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas.
YES you can use this longer than the Christmas season…it's a winter quilt! Sweet fabric and cute pattern. I'm not usually a 'comment person' but wanted to say I enjoy your blog, your patterns and the inspiration you provide. Thank you and Merry Christmas!


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by Stonyfield Liza July 17, 2013
When you think about GMOs, your first thought might be about soy and corn and not about how GMOs and your favorite dairy products are connected.
We've noticed lots of conversation around yogurt and GMOs lately, so we thought we'd highlight why we think it's important to look for yogurt made without the use of GMOs.
We eat what they eat, that's why organic dairy farmers don't use GMO feed When you spot the USDA Organic label, you can be sure that the food it's attached to is made without the use of GMOs (not to mention toxic persistent pesticides, artificial hormones and antibiotics). That means not only are organic farmers not planting GMO crops, they also don't give their animals – like the dairy cows that make our milk – GMO feed.
To earn the organic label, farmers have to undergo regular inspections of their farms, their supplies, even their receipts so that we can feel confident that forbidden substances like GMO feed aren't being used.
Certified and Verified Even though we believe that organic certification is assurance enough that foods are produced without the use of GMOs, we're also in the process of getting verified by the Non-GMO Project.
That means that in addition to organic inspections, the feed will be directly tested for GMO contamination. So you can be absolutely sure not only that our farmers aren't using GMOs, but that GMOs aren't in our yogurts at all. Fight GMOs with your wallet and your voice.
There's still a lot of work to be done to learn about the possible negative effects of GMOs on animal and human health. That's why so many of us are concerned about eating foods produced with GMOs, especially when we don't know if we are or not.
The two best ways to protect you and your family from GMOs in your food are to purchase organic today, and fight for GMO labeling for the future.
Ready to act? Add your name to the Just Label Petition demanding foods produced with GMOs are labeled. Share this post to show others why you care about GMOs.
See more at: http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/organic-and-gmos-dont-mix/#sthash.rU7kn8aR.dpuf
And: http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/organic-and-gmos-dont-mix/
We ALL are ONE!! We ALL fight the fight!!


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"This little black lacquered box of a guest bath is everyone's favorite room," Mark D. Sikes says of this bathroom in his Los Angeles house. "Very dramatic and sexy." A Regency ebony-and-bone mirror is propped above a Gramercy Single Metal sink from Restoration Hardware. Bead board and trim are painted Benjamin Moore's high-gloss Black.
See more rooms in orange and black.


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Offered daily through the holiday season. $129 for the duration of your stay. Please call (262) 248-8811 ext 3782 to reserve your Christmas tree. 72 hour advance notice is required.
View More Holiday Activities
Media Contact: Laura firstname.lastname@example.com 7036 Grand Geneva Way, Lake Geneva, WI 53147
Grand Geneva Marketing:firstname.lastname@example.com
Owned and managed by Marcus Hotels & Resorts, Grand Geneva Resort & Spa is an award-wining, AAA Four-Diamond all-seasons resort set on 1,300 acres in the legendary southeastern Wisconsin community of Lake Geneva. Located 90 minutes from Chicago and 50 minutes from Milwaukee, Grand Geneva Resort & Spa features 356 guest accommodations, including deluxe rooms and suites, along with 29 new villas. On site, guests can enjoy the WELL Spa + Salon; two championship 18-hole golf courses; The Mountain Top, a ski and snowboard facility; 62,000-square-feet of meeting and convention space and three restaurants. Also on the resort's grounds is the Timber Ridge Lodge & Waterpark, featuring 225 guest suites and 50,000 square feet of year-round, indoor/outdoor waterpark excitement, bringing the total number of rooms on the Grand Geneva campus to 609.
Whatever the time of year, visitors are always discovering something new – from a hillside turning crimson in autumn to the joys of Christmas in the Country, and annual winter celebration from November through the holidays. For more information, please visit www.grandgeneva.com and follow us on:


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Robin Williams, the Academy Award winner and comic supernova whose explosions of pop culture riffs and impressions dazzled audiences for decades and made him a gleamy-eyed laureate for the Information Age, died Monday in an apparent suicide. He was 63.
Williams was pronounced dead at his home in California on Monday, according to the sheriff's office in Marin County, north of San Francisco. The sheriff's office said a preliminary investigation shows the cause of death to be a suicide due to asphyxia.
"This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken," said Williams' wife, Susan Schneider. "On behalf of Robin's family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin's death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions,"
Williams had been battling severe depression recently, said Mara Buxbaum, his press representative.
From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show "Mork and Mindy," through his standup act and such films as "Good Morning, Vietnam," the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud, fast, manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.
He was a riot in drag in "Mrs. Doubtfire," or as a cartoon genie in "Aladdin." He won his Academy Award in a rare, but equally intense dramatic role, as a teacher in the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting."
He was no less on fire in interviews. During a 1989 chat with The Associated Press, he could barely stay seated in his hotel room, or even mention the film he was supposed to promote, as he free-associated about comedy and the cosmos.
"There's an Ice Age coming," he said. "But the good news is there'll be daiquiris for everyone and the Ice Capades will be everywhere. The lobster will keep for at least 100 years, that's the good news. The Swanson dinners will last a whole millennium. The bad news is the house will basically be in Arkansas."
Following Williams on stage, Billy Crystal once observed, was like trying to top the Civil War. In a 1993 interview with the AP, Williams recalled an appearance early in his career on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." Bob Hope was also there.
"It was interesting," Williams said. "He was supposed to go on before me and I was supposed to follow him, and I had to go on before him because he was late. I don't think that made him happy. I don't think he was angry, but I don't think he was pleased.
"I had been on the road and I came out, you know, gassed, and I killed and had a great time. Hope comes out and Johnny leans over and says, 'Robin Williams, isn't he funny?' Hope says, 'Yeah, he's wild. But you know, Johnny, it's great to be back here with you."'
In 1992, Carson chose Williams and Bette Midler as his final guests.
Like so many funnymen, he had serious ambitions, winning his Oscar for his portrayal of an empathetic therapist in "Good Will Hunting." He also played for tears in "Awakenings," "Dead Poets Society" and "What Dreams May Come," something that led New York Times critic Stephen Holden to once say he dreaded seeing the actor's "Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes."
Williams also won three Golden Globes, for "Good Morning, Vietnam," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Fisher King."
His other film credits included Robert Altman's "Popeye" (a box office bomb), Paul Mazursky's "Moscow on the Hudson," Steven Spielberg's "Hook" and Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry." On stage, Williams joined fellow comedian Steve Martin in a 1988 Broadway revival of "Waiting for Godot."
"I dread the word 'art,"' Williams told the AP in 1989. "That's what we used to do every night before we'd go on with 'Waiting for Godot.' We'd go, 'No art. Art dies tonight.' We'd try to give it a life, instead of making "Godot" so serious. It's cosmic vaudeville staged by the Marquis de Sade."
His personal life was often short on laughter. He had acknowledged drug and alcohol problems in the 1970s and '80s and was among the last to see John Belushi before the "Saturday Night Live" star died of a drug overdose in 1982.
Williams announced in recent years that he was again drinking but rebounded well enough to joke about it during his recent tour. "I went to rehab in wine country," he said, "to keep my options open."
Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams would remember himself as a shy kid who got some early laughs from his mother — by mimicking his grandmother. He opened up more in high school when he joined the drama club and he was accepted into the Juilliard Academy, where he had several classes in which he and Christopher Reeve were the only students and John Houseman was the teacher.
Encouraged by Houseman to pursue comedy, Williams identified with the wildest and angriest of performers: Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin. Their acts were not warm and lovable. They were just being themselves.
"You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear," he told the AP in 1989. "Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it's going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you've laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That's what I do when I do my act."
He unveiled Mork, the alien from the planet Ork, in an appearance on "Happy Days," and was granted his own series, which ran from 1978-82.
In subsequent years, Williams often returned to television — for appearances on "Saturday Night Live," for "Friends," for comedy specials, for "American Idol," where in 2008 he pretended to be a "Russian idol" who belts out a tuneless, indecipherable "My Way."
Williams also could handle a script, when he felt like it, and also think on his feet. He ad-libbed in many of his films and was just as quick in person. During a media tour for "Awakenings," when director Penny Marshall mistakenly described the film as being set in a "menstrual hospital," instead of "mental hospital," Williams quickly stepped in and joked, "It's a period piece."
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So sometime ago in my math education I discovered that many mathematicians were interested in moduli problems. Not long after I got the sense that when mathematicians ran across a non compact moduli they would really like to compactify it.
My question is, why are people so eager to compactify things? I know compactness is a great property of a space to have because it often makes other results much easier to prove. So I think my question is better stated as: what are some examples of nice/good/cool results related to a moduli spaces that were (only) able to be proved once there was a compactification of the space?


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PHOENIX – When Leslie Noyes stopped by her son's Glendale elementary school last year, she said she found him lying face-down on the floor of an enclosed, 5-by-5-foot structure in the back of the special education classroom.
Noyes said she had no idea the school had been regularly putting the 7-year-old in what's commonly referred to as an isolation or seclusion room in response to his behavior issues.
"Finally I was able to carry him out of the room and it was like, 'What is this? Why don't I know about this?'" she said.
A state lawmaker said she wants to spare other parents from being surprised to learn that a school is using isolation rooms to address student behavior.
HB 2476, authored by Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, would require schools to obtain parental consent before using isolation or seclusion rooms.
"I think it's quite reasonable," Townsend said. "I can't imagine anyone saying that we need to keep it secret."
The Senate Education Committee endorsed the bill on Monday, Feb. 11, after hearing testimony from Noyes, who along with her husband has a lawsuit pending against the Deer Valley Unified School District.
A district spokeswoman didn't return phone messages left Friday.
The committee amended Townsend's bill to add an exemption for instances in which principals or teachers determine that students pose an imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or others.
A 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Education listed Arizona as one of 19 states without laws regulating the use of restraints and seclusion in schools.
A task force created by a 2009 state law provided Arizona schools with a list of recommendations on the use of seclusion and restraint of special education students. Schools weren't required to follow the recommendations or keep records of how and when isolation rooms are used.
Those recommendations didn't address seclusion or isolation as punishment for the general student population.
Staci Burk, president of Gilbert Public Schools Governing Board, said HB 2476 wouldn't burden schools.
"It will help us identify parents that may oppose the use of seclusion rooms and therefore maybe help with legally protecting the district by engaging the parents in dialogue," Burke told the Senate committee.
She said the Gilbert district would prefer to have uniform regulation across the state, calling isolation rooms and seclusion of students too complex to be handled locally.
Janice Palmer, director of government relations for the Arizona School Boards Association, said it's important to separate isolation used to punish students from isolation and seclusion used in behavior programs for students with special needs.
"This is such a complex issue, we don't want to have any confusion between seclusion, restraint and the special ed world and isolation as it relates to the general population," she said.
Hope Kirsh, the special education attorney who filed the Noyes' lawsuit, said though she doesn't condone the use of the rooms, she supports the bill as a "legislative pronouncement on parental consent."
"There is nothing positive to be gained from this punitive measure," she said.
Melissa Van Hook, representing the East Valley Autism Network, called the existing recommendations "a failure of local control." Van Hook, a mother of two autistic sons, said though the bill might help she'd prefer to see isolation rooms banned.
"This is a step in the right direction; however, it is inadequate," she said.


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Paul H made the following statement in the context of the Swindle discussion:
If a practising scientist selected a 1987 data set over more recent versions, failed to cite it correctly, altered the appearance of the data without a clear explanation and didn't include the data from the last 20 years then I think we'd all be asking serious questions about their professionalism.
One would think that that would be the case in most scientific fields, but in paleoclimate when the Team is involved, the option is to make the scientist a lead author in IPCC AR4. I've shown the truncation of the Briffa MXD reconstruction in IPCC TAR previously. I'm in the process of doing an updated post showing this even more vividly. In the process of doing so, I wanted to show the exact effect of the truncation by reproducing the IPCC TAR spaghetti graph with the untruncated Briffa MXD reconstruction.
This is not all that easy to do, since the archived version of the MXD reconstruction in Briffa et al is truncated in 1960 as well. However, there's just enough information available that I was able to able to emulate the Briffa et al MXD calculation for use in this diagram. This post gives some working notes on that emulation.
In the Appendix to Briffa et al 2001 which I've posted online (3.5 MB here), the methodology is described more or less as follows. First 9 regional composites are calculated. These regional composites are archived here. A PC calculation requires all elements to be present. I've not heard of "stepwise" principal components calculations outside dendro recipes. Unlike Mann, Briffa reported that he did "stepwise" calculations, even listing the steps. He then reports that he did stepwise regression on up to 6 PCs, doing one calculation to estimate GLB temperature and one to estimate NH temperature (just in case anyone wondereded whether this rose above overfitting, the same procedure is done for both.) Unlike Mann, Briffa recorded the number of PCs used in each step. For the NH reconstruction, only the first PC was retained in all but ne step. I didn't bother doing the stepwise regression and did a reconstruction using the first PC (PCs calculated using the correlation matrix here). In each step, the PC1 was fitted against the NH temperature in the period 1880-1960 (the Divergence Problem being used as an excuse to use this period). Briffa described a calibration-verification exercise, which I haven't tried to replicate yet. All 9 networks were present from 1683-1981; this was calculated first. Then the reconstructions for lesser networks were spliced on. This was then compared with the archived version (going only to 1960). The first pass reconstruction was pretty good as shown below:
Figure 1. First replication attempt. Black – emulation; green – archived in Briffa 2001.
The problem in the early portion arose because, in my calculation, the PC1 was actually a contrast between the two series, while the PC2 was the average (there are only two series in the network). So simply as an ad hoc device, I specified that the PC2 be used in the first step. I noticed this by comparing the reconstruction to a comparable reconstruction by simply using the average of available regions, rather than PCs (also shown in red in the Figure below.) The reconstruction using the average has a little less low frequency variability than the reconstruction using PCs. One interesting effect that I noticed when I was working on red nosie simulations in connection with MBH is that even conventional PC methods (both covariance and correlation) yield artificial low frequency variability when applied to red noise – not as much as the Mannian method, but a discernable bias nevertheless. Huybers and I corresponded about this a little bit. It would make an interesting article. This effect may be at work here.
Figure 2: Black – emulation; green- archived; red- reconstruction using average and otherwise following Brifa recipe.
In the main step from 1683-1981, none of the networks are hugely overweighted or underweighted. Here are the weights (the first eigenvector). The horizontal line shows the equal weighting line.
Figure 3. Weights in First Eigenvector in 1683-1981 Step
A CA reader has kindly sent me a very useful digitization of Figure2-21 from which I extracted the information used in the figure below. This figure shows the native scales. The Briffa reconstruction was said to be zeroed on 1881-1960, while IPCC is zeroed on 1961-1990. The fitted difference between the digitized IPCC version and the Briffa version (either archived or emulated) was 0.149 deg C, while the difference between the CRU NH mean for 1961-1990 and 1881-1960 is 0.24. The selected adjustment "works" better, but so far I haven't figured out what rationale for the actual adjustment other than expediency. The unadjusted versions are shown below.
Figure 4. Briffa Unadjusted Versions: Red – digitized from IPCC; green – smoothed from Briffa 2001 archive; black- emulation from regional chronologies.
For the purpose of showing differences in shape (Without worrying for now about how the up-down adjustment was actually derived), I've plotted the figure below using a forced fit of the archived version. On the right hand side, the closing shape is fairly conclusive evidence that, instead of using actual data for the smooth, Mann truncated first and then extrapolated using end-period padding. The effect is not a huge effect, but it's an all too characteristic form of double-dipping. At the start of the record, the Mannian smooth has a ski jump – what causes this? Who knows? It's Mann at work. The point at which Briffa and Mann started the deletion is quite clear here.
As above, with forced adjustment to digitized values.
This deletion is also done in AR4. Tomorrow I'll show the exact impact on the IPCC TAR spaghetti graph, showing that this rises to being an "alteration of the appearance of the data without a clear explanation".


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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man was arrested and nine guns, including rifles, were seized after Los Angeles elementary schools were threatened in one of several disturbing social media posts made around the country after the killings in Connecticut, police said Monday.
In Los Angeles, Kyle Bangayan, 24, of Pomona was booked into the downtown jail Sunday for investigation of making criminal threats, police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. He remained in jail with bail set at $500,000.
Police and FBI agents went to the east Hollywood home of Bangayan's father after a resident notified authorities about the threatening postings that referred to the deadly school shootings in Connecticut, Smith said.
"When we get information like this, we take it very seriously, even more so now in light of the Connecticut school shootings," Smith said.
On Friday, Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed 20 children and six adults before killing himself at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
Several social media threats led to arrests nationwide since the shootings.
Investigators in Springfield, Ohio, said an 18-year-old man was arrested on Sunday after writing on a Facebook post that he was sick of Connecticut shooting comments and they made him want to shoot kids himself.
A teenager in Columbia, Tenn., was arrested during the weekend after someone posted a message on Facebook saying the person felt like going on a rampage after the Connecticut killings. The 19-year-old suspect remains in jail.
In Los Angeles, the names of the elementary schools and details about the threats were not immediately released.
Detectives and the FBI were still investigating.
The joint investigation has been turned over to Los Angeles police, and there won't be any federal charges, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.
When police and FBI agents arrived at the east Hollywood home, the suspect's father gave permission for a search, authorities said.
Nine weapons and ammunition were confiscated, including rifles, a shotgun and handguns, authorities said.
It's not yet known if the weapons belonged to the father or the suspect. No weapons were found at Bangayan's residence in Pomona.
The father's telephone number is unlisted. There is no listing for Kyle Bangayan in Pomona.
The home is in a working-class neighborhood about eight miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Pomona is about 30 miles to the east.


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Northern England's Lake District overflows with visitors during high summer. But once the tour buses disappear and the leaves begin to turn, cyclists can reclaim the narrow country lanes. From the town of Keswick, follow the shores of the Derwentwater (pictured), one of nearly 100 lakes in the region. Pedal through verdant moors dotted with grazing sheep and lit up with fiery yellow oaks. You'll welcome the chance to dismount and unlatch a farm gate as you grind up mountain passes—called fells here—where grades can hit 20 percent.
For something closer to home, try these three stateside climbs with colorful rewards:
Autumn in this part of the Rockies means sweeping vistas of golden aspens. Pedal through luminous corridors of yellow along this 17-mile monster, which looms above the city of Aspen. The 12,095-foot elevation—and the view at the top— will leave you gasping.
SIX GAPS, VERMONT Riding and leaf-ogling opportunities abound in and around the Green Mountains. But an assault on any one of the vaunted Six Gap climbs will yield expansive views of red-orange sugar maples in all their deserved glory.
MOUNT MITCHELL, NORTH CAROLINA The tallest peak in the Appalachians showcases some of the most vibrant fall foliage in the lower half of the United States. From Asheville, follow the Blue Ridge Parkway 35 miles until you reach the summit at 6,684 feet. The payoff: a blazing panorama of maple, oak, and birch.


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David Bowie said it best "You must understand that it's not a woman's. It is a man's dress." If a dress is made for a man, or bought by a man, it becomes his. He owns it. The dress has no gender; the person wearing it does.
There was a cold snap and I broke out my favorite flannel shirt. It is a classic L.L. Bean, a Black Watch Plaid, in a women's large. It used to look really good on me, before I lost weight. Now it is super baggy. I can still wear it, but I'm hesitant. It buttons to the left (the girl's side).
I'm struggling with this. My weight is down from 175 lbs. to 140 lbs., but my height is still five foot four. My eyes have not adjusted. I can only see how much weight I've lost when I try to wear my old clothes. I've downsized my jeans several times and replaced a few worn out T-shirts. My button-down shirts are between two and five years old. They are between big and too big.
I stopped buying dress shirts because I knew I was going to stop working. Then I went on a self-imposed flannel hiatus because I have slew of old flannel shirts. It didn't last. Then I decided to completely stop shopping for shirts because I want to wait until after I have top surgery. If I need to shop, I will stick to sneakers and hiking shoes.
It is almost impossible for me to buy a women's shirt off the rack. I'm petite (I hate that word) and I won't touch anything that has darts, princess seams, funny collars, or odd plackets. I'll wear clothing made for women that looks like it is made for men. There isn't much out there. It is also almost impossible for me to buy a men's shirt off the rack. I like the styles, but the sleeves end below my fingertips, the body is too long, and if the chest fits it doesn't close over the hips (and if the hips fit it is too big everywhere else).
I have a half-dozen fabulous custom-made dress shirts from CEGO shirtmakers. They were perfect when I weighed 165 lbs. The neck fits, the sleeves are the right length, the body is the right length, they fit over my hips, and they button to the right. They are too big, and I don't wear them anymore.
I think of them as men's shirts, but since they were custom-made for me, maybe I should think of them as butch/transgender shirts. I may be an idiot, but I can't stand to think of them as women's shirts.
I also have a half-dozen custom (women's) classic Oxford cloth shirts that I bought at Brooks Brothers when I was 155 lbs. They still look good, even though they are a little baggy. Except that they button the wrong way.
It is my quandary, to wear them or to give them away. Donna claims no one else notices which side my shirts button on. And, she reminds me, no matter which shirt I am wearing, I read as masculine, not male.
Some guys are oblivious to fashion and some pay attention to what other guys are wearing. They'll snicker if they see a guy wearing a brown belt with black shoes, or wearing blue socks with a black suit. I don't want to be one of those guys. GSElevator writes about this in How To Dress The Part On Wall Street. He'd notice the buttons. Do I care about him? Am I so shallow that seven buttons have me in a swivet?
Women may wear men's clothes, but men do not wear women's. There are boyfriend cardigans and boyfriend jeans for women, but no girlfriend jeans for men.
It turns out that this is not entirely true. Levi's marketed an "ex-girlfriend jean" for men. A tight punk rocker cut. Most guys don't borrow their ex-girlfriend's clothes (and why the ex, instead of just girlfriend?). For the record, over the years, Donna has purloined several of my T's and flannel shirts. I have never, ever, ever, worn a piece of her clothing.
I have a fantasy that men's shirts will fit better after I have top surgery. Logically, I know that the discrepancy between my chest and my hips will still make it difficult for me to buy a shirt. If I want a shirt that buttons to the right and fits, I will have to go back to CEGO.
A survey of my closet turned up over twenty flannel shirts. Only two (both L.L. Bean mediums purchased last year during the hiatus) fit properly, and they both button on the left. I will need to look back at David Bowie and think of them as butch/transgender shirts. Because that is who I am.
Note: After an extensive investigation it was discovered that GSELEVATOR never worked at Goldman Sachs. The New York Times expose of the Tweeter is here. Some people take Twitter way too seriously.


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Narrative is a powerful concept with enormous potential. But it's also fraught with misunderstanding because of the many different meanings attached to the term. By unpacking those different meanings, leaders of institutions and movements can begin to better understand the power of narratives.
Recently, I've tried to establish a distinction between story and narrative here and here. For most people, story and narrative are used interchangeably. But others, particularly in the academic world, have a very specific meaning they attach to narrative, although they usually refer to it as "Grand Narrative" or "meta-narrative." It may help to explore why I don't regard these as narratives.
The concept of "Grand Narrative"
First, let's explore what this version of narrative is meant to describe. The term "Grand Narrative" was coined by Jean Francois Lyotard in his 1979 book The Postmodern Condition but it has subsequently been embraced by many in the post-modernist movement. Lyotard was referring to the efforts by ruling elites to explain how the status quo had evolved and, in the process, to rationalize why the status quo was destined to emerge and needed to be embraced.
An example of this kind of Grand Narrative would be the view widely held in the 18th and 19th centuries, and even well into the 20th century, that Western society was driven by a civilizing mission as it expanded into other parts of the world – "primitive" societies needed the West to occupy and transform them so that they too could savor the benefits of Western culture.
Russia's leaders, following the Bolshevik revolution, developed a very different kind of Grand Narrative. It explained that Russia had emerged as a staging ground for a global communist revolution and that its draconian domestic policies were needed to mobilize the resources required to spread the revolution far and wide.
"Grand Narratives" are really stories
These Grand Narratives are much more like stories than like narratives as I have described them. They are descriptive and explanatory – they establish causal connections across a series of events to show how certain outcomes came to be and, indeed, were inevitable. They often contain quite a bit of drama in the sense of people encountering and overcoming challenges to get to where they are today but the resolution is pre-determined.
These Grand Narratives are about the people who got us to where we are today – they're not about you, the audience. If you have any role to play, it's simply to fit into the pre-ordained order of things and play the assigned role that has already been scripted. More often than not, your role is simply to accept the inevitability of the status quo. These Grand Narratives become a powerful way to indoctrinate and suppress independent thinking in favor of conformity and passivity.
These Grand Narratives thus have the attributes of stories as I've defined them: they have a resolution that is pre-ordained (even if it hasn't fully played out yet) and they're about others, they're not about you. They're stories masquerading as narratives.
OK, is this just a semantic distinction that doesn't really matter? Let me make the case that it makes a big difference that matters alot.
The power of opportunity based narratives
Narratives as I've defined them are quite different. They're open-ended – the resolution is yet to be determined and the resolution hinges on choices and actions that you make. It's ultimately about you. It highlights possibility rather than certainty. It's future oriented rather than looking backward and trying to explain what has already happened.
Narratives are designed to intrigue, excite and motivate people to act, especially if they're opportunity based narratives.
These narratives intrigue and excite by only partially revealing an opportunity ahead. They don't pretend to have a comprehensive view of the opportunity – instead, it's very clear that the full dimensions of the opportunity are yet to be determined. But the opportunity as partially revealed is an awesome one with great potential to make us better human beings and give us a much more satisfying life. It invites participants to use their imagination to explore what that opportunity might look like. A recent article on brain science suggests that this appeal to the imagination can be a powerful vehicle to motivate us to delay gratification, take more risks and go on a quest that will take time and effort to pursue.
But narratives do more than excite the imagination. It's not just about imagining an opportunity – it's about making choices and taking action to achieve that opportunity. Opportunity based narratives move us from passive acceptance to action. They help us to re-discover our agency - our capacity to act and make a difference in the world.
The search for stability
In a time of accelerating change and growing uncertainty, we all have a natural human desire to seek stability. "Grand Narratives" can be very reassuring because they help us to make sense of an increasingly confusing and complex world. But at the same time, they cultivate complacency, making us think that we have things figured out, when in fact we are increasingly likely to be blindsided by some black swan coming at us out of nowhere.
Opportunity based narratives take a different approach to stability. Rather than providing the stability of an answer, they provide the stability of an exciting question for us to pursue. They help us to focus in a time of great distraction. They reassure us that, if we stay focused on the core question posed by the narrative, we'll acquire new insight and tap into potential that we didn't even know existed. They in fact help us to resist the urge to explain with the knowledge we have today and instead highlight the opportunity and need to develop new knowledge.
In fact, at some basic level, opportunity based narratives are profoundly hostile to "Grand Narratives." "Grand Narratives" seek to reassure us that we have all the relevant answers and that the only challenge is to understand and accept the explanations embedded in the narrative. They carve out a comfort zone and invite us to relax in it. Opportunity based narratives disrupt the status quo with questions that have not yet been answered and emerging opportunities that have not yet been achieved. They call us to leave our comfort zone and embark on a quest that will surely be challenging but also very rewarding.
Bottom line
So, why does this distinction matter to people in business? It can all sound pretty abstract and theoretical, far removed from the day to day practicality of running a business.
In fact, this distinction is central to how we run our business. In a world of scalable efficiency, we feel an urgency for answers, for ways to understand the world around us so that we can more effectively predict what will happen next. That's why, when executives begin to pursue the power of narratives, they have a tendency to embrace "Grand Narratives." You know the kind – "let me explain who we are, how we came to be and why we are an inevitable product of the world around us."
As the Big Shift drives us into a world of scalable learning, opportunity based narratives can help us mobilize a much broader group of participants on a set of questions and opportunities so that we can all learn faster by working together. This kind of narrative is rarely used in business today. Those who master this form of narrative have the potential to create significant advantage by accelerating learning while at the same time differentiating themselves from companies still mired in self-important "Grand Narratives."
This is just the beginning. In a forthcoming post, I'll pursue the question of why opportunity based narratives are becoming central to business success. In the meantime, let me know what you think. Does this distinction make sense? Does it matter?