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Coconut Diet 101
This popular diet has a die-hard following. We'll tell you if coconut oil is the ultimate superfood that'll help you shed pounds or just another fad diet making waves.
The theory behind this diet is that when coconut oil is combined with a low-carb diet, it'll help melt the pounds away. This is due to the fact that coconut oil is made from medium-chained triglycerides which are more easily absorbed by the body (as opposed to long chained triglycerides found in most other oils).
The alleged secret ingredient to this weight loss plan is eating 2 to 3 tablespoons of coconut oil every day. The diet discourages high-carb foods like refined grains, potatoes, sugars, desserts and alcohol while encouraging antioxidant-rich veggies and lean protein. After following this plan, it promises that you'll lose weight -- a staggering 10 pounds or more in the first 3 weeks, which then slows to 1-2 pounds a week -- and your food cravings.
Phase 1: The 21-Day Weight Loss Kick-Off- During this strictest phase, your food choices are limited to lean protein (i.e. fish, chicken, lamb, turkey, eggs, beef, nuts and cheese), brightly-colored veggies, 8 to 10 glasses of water every day and herbal tea. The diet claims you'll lose 10 or more pounds during this phase.
Phase 2: Cleansing- This is an optional phase where you cleanse for 4 weeks in order to help you revitalize and lose weight. One recommendation in this phase is to drink a glass of water mixed with lemon juice and cayenne pepper.
Phase 3: Introducing Healthy Carbs- In this phase you slowly add carbohydrates like potatoes, whole grains, fruit and squash back into your diet. These foods are eaten sparingly until you meet your weight loss goal. Typical weight loss is about 1 to 2 pounds per week during this phase.
Phase 4: Maintaining Your Healthy Weight:- This is a lifelong maintenance phase where you'll eat healthier carbs in moderation. The diet advises you to go back to earlier phases or do a 1-day vegetable cleanse if you end up falling off the wagon.
Good luck with phases 1 and 2—you'll need to eliminate so many foods that it'll make your head spin and stomach growl. There's also a lot of cooking—so you'll need to put in the time to cook many of your meals. In addition, virgin coconut oil (which is less refined) isn't cheap and you'll need to stock up on it (a 32-ounce jar runs about $25.00).
If you opt to do the cleansing phase, you'll be spending money getting your colon cleansed (1 to 2 times per week is what the diet recommends). You'll also be spending money on several recommended supplements.
Another costs is the book, which sells for about $11.00. You can find additional information on the Coconut Diet website.
- Protein selection is from lean protein sources like fish, poultry, and eggs.
- Nice recipe selection in the book.
- A lot of scientific jargon plus the benefits of coconut oil are very controversial. There is a lot of research that shows that saturated fats aren't as healthy as the author claims—especially in the amounts recommended on this diet.
- The rate of weight loss in phase 1 is much too rapid. A safe rate of weight loss per the National Institute of Health is 1 to 2 pounds per week.
- There is no need for colonics or detoxing your organs; that is why you have a liver.
- The first few phases are very restrictive, eliminating several food groups.
- It'll be nearly impossible to follow the plan (especially the first few phases) while traveling or dining out.
The Bottom Line: This plan is potentially dangerous and has a lot more cons than pros. If you want to add coconut oil to your diet—go for it—but do so in moderation.


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NEW YORK (AP) — Cardinal Timothy Dolan will give the benediction at the Republican National Convention the night Mitt Romney accepts the presidential nomination.
Romney announced the news in an interview with "The World Over Live" show on the EWTN Catholic network.
Dolan leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. He's also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The archdiocese is one of more than 40 Catholic groups around the country suing President Barack Obama over his mandate that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control. The Obama administration says the coverage is an important preventive health service for women.
The EWTN interview with Romney will air at 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday. The GOP convention is scheduled to start Monday in Tampa, Fla.

subset: commoncrawl


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09 di Batu Ferringhi - Google Blog Search
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Bayview Beach Resort The complete variety of pursuits and amenities is offered by the self-included Bayview Seaside Location at its quiet escape spot ignoring the peaceful and scenic these types of of Batu Ferringhi. ...
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Venezuelan Police Free Major Leaguer Wilson Ramos
CARACAS, Venezuela – CARACAS, Venezuela-- The kidnapping ordeal of Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos ended after two days when Venezuelan police commandos swooped in to rescue him in a flurry of gunfire and arrested five alleged abductors.
Ramos said he was happy and thankful to be alive, and that the final moments had been hair-raising as police and the kidnappers exchanged heavy fire in the remote mountainous area where he was being held.
"The truth is I'm still very nervous, but thanks to God everything turned out well," Ramos told Venezuelan state television, speaking by telephone after arriving at a police station in his hometown of Valencia early Saturday.
He thanked the police and National Guard commandos who rescued him, saying "the boys did a great job."
Ramos, 24, had not been seen or heard from since he was seized at gunpoint outside his home Wednesday night and whisked away in an SUV. It was the first known kidnapping of a Major League Baseball player in Venezuela, and the abduction set off an outpouring of candlelight vigils and public prayers at stadiums as well as outside Ramos' home.
Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami announced on Friday night that Ramos was "safe and sound" after the rescue. He didn't say whether anyone had been wounded in the gunfire.
Five men were arrested in the kidnapping, including a Colombian "linked to paramilitary groups and to kidnapping groups," El Aissami said.
"I don't know who those people were. I know they're Colombians by their accent," Ramos said.
"Three guys grabbed me there in front of my house, they took me to another SUV and from there they took me into the mountains," in central Carabobo state.
He said his abductors spoke little to him. "They simply told me to cooperate, that they were going to ask for a ton of cash for me."
"They put me in a room with a bed. I was lying there," he said. "It was hard for me to think about, if I was going to get out alive first of all ... about how my family, my mother were."
Ramos was to first undergo medical checks at the police station and then be reunited with his family, El Aissami said.
Ramos' mother Maria Campos de Ramos celebrated, exclaiming on television: "Thanks to God!"
"Thanks to my country, to my neighbors and to my family, who were supporting us," she said. Shortly afterward, she spoke with her son by phone and said jubilantly: "He's fine."
Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo hailed the news.
"I am happy to announce that I have spoken directly with Wilson and he assures me he is unharmed but eager to be reunited with his family," Rizzo said in a statement. "He asked me to thank all who played a role in his rescue, and all those who kept him and his family in their thoughts and prayers. I join Wilson in thanking the many law enforcement officials in Venezuela and investigators with Major League Baseball who worked tirelessly to ensure a positive ending to what has been a frightening ordeal."
Ramos had recently returned to his homeland after his rookie year with the Nationals to play during the offseason in the Venezuelan league.
"As soon as I feel all right, I'm going to start playing," Ramos said.
"They didn't physically harm me, but psychologically I underwent very great harm," he said.
Ramos had been just outside his house's front door with relatives on Wednesday when he was abducted in his working-class neighborhood in Valencia, about 90 miles west of Caracas. Authorities tracked down the abductors after initially locating their stolen SUV abandoned in a nearby town on Thursday.
"I was always praying to God, and thanks to God he gave me the miracle of sending me these wonderful people," Ramos said. "I'm alive thanks to them."
President Hugo Chavez had authorized the "rescue operation by air" that freed Ramos,Information Minister Andres Izarra said on his Twitter account.
Security has increasingly become a concern for Venezuelan players and their families as a wave of kidnappings has hit the wealthy as well as the middle class.
The country has one of the highest murder rates in Latin America, and the vast majority of crimes go unsolved. The number of kidnappings has soared in recent years.
Major League Baseball officials said it was the first kidnapping of a major leaguer that they could recall. But relatives of several players have previously been kidnapped for ransom in Venezuela, and in two cases have been killed.
Some kidnappings in Venezuela have previously been carried out by highly organized criminal groups that demand ransom.
Bodyguards typically shadow major leaguers when they return to their homeland to play in Venezuela's baseball league.
Izarra praised the authorities' handling of the rescue, saying that the police "hit a tremendous home run."


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Welcome To AlbumLinerNotes.com
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Home Page
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The Byrds
The Byrds - Untitled
The Byrds Greatest Hits
Original Singles
Never Before
Mr Tambourine Man (65)
Byrds - The Collection
Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
Younger Than Yesterday
Turn! Turn! Turn!
In The Beginning
The Byrds
Biography by Richie Unterberger
Although they only attained the huge success of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys for a short time in the mid-'60s, time has judged the Byrds to be nearly as influential as those groups in the long run. They were not solely responsible for devising folk-rock, but they were certainly more responsible than any other single act (Dylan included) for melding the innovations and energy of the British Invasion with the best lyrical and musical elements of contemporary folk music. The jangling, 12-string guitar sound of leader Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker was permanently absorbed into the vocabulary of rock. They also played a vital role in pioneering psychedelic rock and country-rock, the unifying element being their angelic harmonies and restless eclecticism.
Often described in their early days as a hybrid of Dylan and the Beatles, the Byrds in turn influenced Dylan and the Beatles almost as much as Bob and the Fab Four had influenced the Byrds. The Byrds' innovations have echoed nearly as strongly through subsequent generations, in the work of Tom Petty, R.E.M., and innumerable alternative bands of the post-punk era that feature those jangling guitars and dense harmonies.
Although the Byrds had perfected their blend of folk and rock when their debut single, "Mr. Tambourine Man," topped the charts in mid-1965, it was something of a miracle that the group had managed to coalesce in the first place. Not a single member of the original quintet had extensive experience on electric instruments. Jim McGuinn (he'd change his first name to Roger a few years later), David Crosby, and Gene Clark were all young veterans of both commercial folk-pop troupes and the acoustic coffeehouse scene. They were inspired by the success of the Beatles to mix folk and rock; McGuinn had already been playing Beatles songs acoustically in Los Angeles folk clubs when Clark approached him to form an act, according to subsequent recollections, in the Peter & Gordon style. David Crosby soon joined to make them a trio, and they made a primitive demo as the Jet Set that was nonetheless bursting with promise. With the help of session musicians, they released a single on Elektra as the Beefeaters that, while a flop, showed them getting quite close to the folk-rock sound that would electrify the pop scene in a few months.
The Beefeaters, soon renamed the Byrds, were fleshed out to a quintet with the addition of drummer Michael Clarke and bluegrass mandolinist Chris Hillman, who was enlisted to play electric bass, although he had never played the instrument before. The band was so lacking in equipment in their early stages that Clarke played on cardboard boxes during their first rehearsals, but they determined to master their instruments and become a full-fledged rock band (many demos from this period would later surface for official release). They managed to procure a demo of a new Dylan song, "Mr. Tambourine Man"; by eliminating some verses and adding instantly memorable 12-string guitar leads and Beatlesque harmonies, they came up with the first big folk-rock smash (though the Beau Brummels and others had begun exploring similar territory as well). For the "Mr. Tambourine Man" single, the band's vocals and McGuinn's inimitable Rickenbacker were backed by session musicians, although the band themselves (contrary to some widely circulated rumors) performed on their subsequent recordings.
The first long-haired American group to compete with the British Invasion bands visually as well as musically, the Byrds were soon anointed as the American counterpart to the Beatles by the press, legions of fans, and George Harrison himself. Their 1965 debut LP, Mr. Tambourine Man, was a fabulous album that mixed stellar interpretations of Dylan and Pete Seeger tunes with strong, more romantic and pop-based originals, usually written by Gene Clark in the band's early days. A few months later, their version of Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!" became another number-one hit and instant classic, featuring more great chiming guitar lines and ethereal, interweaving harmonies. While their second LP (Turn! Turn! Turn!) wasn't as strong as their debut full-length, the band continued to move forward at a dizzying pace. In early 1966, the "Eight Miles High" single heralded the birth of psychedelia, with its drug-like (intentionally or otherwise) lyrical imagery, rumbling bass line, and a frenzied McGuinn guitar solo that took its inspiration from John Coltrane and Indian music.
The Byrds suffered a major loss right after "Eight Miles High" with the departure of Gene Clark, their primary songwriter and, along with McGuinn, chief lead vocalist. The reason for his resignation, ironically, was fear of flying, although other pressures were at work as well. "Eight Miles High," amazingly, would be their last Top 20 single; many radio stations banned the record for its alleged drug references, halting its progress at number 14. This ended the Byrds' brief period as commercial challengers to the Beatles, but they regrouped impressively in the face of the setbacks. Continuing as a quartet, McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman would assume a much larger (actually, the entire) chunk of the songwriting responsibilities. The third album, Fifth Dimension, contained more groundbreaking folk-rock and psychedelia on tracks like "Fifth Dimension," "I See You," and "John Riley," although it (like several of their classic early albums) mixed sheer brilliance with tracks that were oddly half-baked or carelessly executed.
Younger Than Yesterday, (1967) which included the small hits "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" and "My Back Pages" (another Dylan cover), was another high point, Hillman and Crosby in particular taking their writing to a new level. In 1967, Crosby would assert a much more prominent role in the band, singing and writing some of his best material. He wasn't getting along so well with McGuinn and Hillman, though, and was jettisoned from the Byrds partway into the recording of The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Gene Clark, drafted back into the band as a replacement, left after only a few weeks, and by the end of 1967, Michael Clarke was also gone. Remarkably, in the midst of this chaos (not to mention diminishing record sales), they continued to sound as good as ever on Notorious. This was another effort that mixed electronic experimentation and folk-rock mastery with aplomb, with hints of a growing interest in country music.
As McGuinn and Hillman rebuilt the group one more time in early 1968, McGuinn mused upon the exciting possibility of a double album that would play as nothing less than a history of contemporary music, evolving from traditional folk and country to jazz and electronic music. Toward this end, he hired Gram Parsons, he has since said, to play keyboards. Under Parsons' influence, however, the Byrds were soon going full blast into country music, with Parsons taking a large share of the guitar and vocal chores. In 1968, McGuinn, Hillman, Parsons, and drummer Kevin Kelly recorded Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which was probably the first album to be widely labeled as country-rock.
Opinions as to the merits of Rodeo remain sharply divided among Byrds fans. Some see it as a natural continuation of the group's innovations; other bewail the loss of the band's trademark crystalline guitar jangle, and the short-circuited potential of McGuinn's most ambitious experiments. However one feels, there's no doubt that it marked the end, or at least a drastic revamping, of the "classic" Byrds sound of the 1965-1968 period (bookended by the Tambourine Man and Notorious albums). Parsons, the main catalyst for the metamorphosis, left the band after about six months, partially in objection to a 1968 Byrds tour of South Africa. It couldn't have helped, though, that McGuinn replaced several of Parsons' lead vocals on Rodeo with his own at the last minute, ostensibly due to contractual obstacles that prevented Parsons from singing on Columbia releases. (Some tracks with Parsons' lead vocals snuck on anyway, and a few others surfaced in the 1990s on the Byrds box set).
Chris Hillman left the Byrds by the end of 1968 to form the Flying Burrito Brothers with Parsons. Although McGuinn kept the Byrds going for about another five years with other musicians (most notably former country picker Clarence White), essentially the Byrds name was a front for Roger McGuinn and backing band. Opinions, again, remain sharply divided about the merits of latter-day Byrds albums. McGuinn was (and is) such an idiosyncratic and pleasurable talent that fans and critics are inclined to give him some slack; no one else plays the 12-string as well, he's a fine arranger, and his Lennon-meets-Dylan vocals are immediately distinctive. Yet aside from some good echoes of vintage Byrds like "Chestnut Mare," "Jesus Is Just Alright," and "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man," nothing from the post-1968 Byrds albums resonates with nearly the same effervescent quality and authority of their classic 1965-1968 period. This is partly because McGuinn is an erratic (though occasionally fine) songwriter; it's also because the Byrds at their peak were very much a unit of diverse and considerable talents, not just a front for their leader's ideas.
The Byrds' diminishing importance must have stung McGuinn doubly in light of the rising profiles of several Byrds alumni as the '60s turned into the '70s. David Crosby was a superstar with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Hillman, Parsons, and (for a while) Michael Clarke were taking country-rock further with the Flying Burrito Brothers; even Gene Clark, though he'd dropped out of sight commercially, was recording some respected country-rock albums on his own. The original quintet actually got back together for a one-off reunion album in 1973; though it made the Top 20, it was the first, and one of the most flagrant, examples of the futility of a great band reuniting in an attempt to recapture the lightning one last time.
The original Byrds continued to pursue solo careers and outside projects throughout the 1970s and 1980s. McGuinn, Clark, and Hillman had some success at the end of the 1970s with an adult contemporary variation on the Byrds' sound; in the 1980s, Crosby battled drug problems while Hillman enjoyed mainstream country success with the Desert Rose Band. The Byrds' legend was tarnished by squabbles over which members of the original lineup had the rights to use the Byrds name; for quite a while, drummer Michael Clarke even toured with a "Byrds" that featured no other original members. The Byrds were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991; Gene Clark died several months later, and Michael Clarke died in 1993, permanently scotching prospects of a reunion involving the original quintet.
Content provided by All Music Guide. Copyright 2008 All Music Guide, LLC.


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Obama: It's time to give America a raise
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he's hearing from business owners across the country who are voluntarily paying their workers more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says those actions show that change comes to Washington, not from it.
Congressional Republicans are resisting Obama's pleas to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Obama recorded the address in Washington before leaving Friday for a weekend in Florida.
In the Republican address, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman says Obama's proposed 2015 budget taxes too much and spends too much.
Portman says Senate Republicans have a plan to spark economic recovery by getting government out of the way.
Obama address: http://whitehouse.gov
Republican address: www.youtube.com/user/gopweeklyaddress


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NHC Graphical Outlook Archive
« Earliest Available ‹ Earlier Later › Latest Available »
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(mouse over shaded areas for details; click on shaded areas or disturbance numbers to switch views)
Tropical Weather Outlook Text
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 200 AM EDT FRI JUL 4 2014 For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico: The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on Hurricane Arthur, located near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 5 days. $$ Forecaster Avila NNNN
List of Atlantic Outlooks (July 2014 - present)
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Twice victimized by their use, Japan is uniquely positioned to know how engaging in nuclear war inevitably results in attacks like the ones it experienced in World War II. It's also able to empathize with the prospect of another state struck by nuclear weapons and envision the negative karma (or gou in Japanese) their use generates.
Alas, many Japanese have focused on their victimization and, especially with North Korea nearby, bow down to the gods of deterrence in hopes of preventing another nuclear attack on Japan. In fact, as Yuri Kageyama reports for the Associated Press, arming Japan with nuclear weapons has long been part of the national and internal debate.
Historical documents released in the past two years show that the idea of a nuclear-armed Japan was long talked about behind-the-scenes, despite repeated denials by the government. …
In a once-classified 1966 document, the government outlined how the threat of China going nuclear made it necessary for Japan to consider it too, though it concluded that the U.S. nuclear umbrella made doing so unnecessary at the time.
In meeting minutes from 1964, 1966 and 1967, Japanese officials weigh the pros and cons of signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which would mean foregoing the nuclear option. Japan signed the treaty in 1970.
The government denials continued, even after former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone wrote in his 2004 memoirs that, as defense chief, he had ordered a secret study of Japan's nuclear arms capability in 1970. The study concluded it would take five years to develop nuclear weapons, but Nakasone said he decided they weren't needed, again because of U.S. protection.
Lately confusion arose when
… parliament amended the 1955 Atomic Energy Basic Law in June, adding "national security" to people's health and wealth as reasons for Japan's use of [nuclear-energy] technology. Given the secretive past, former diplomat Tetsuya Endo and others are suspicious about the June amendment adding "national security" to the atomic energy law. Backers of the amendment say it refers to protecting nuclear plants from terrorists. Opponents ask why the words aren't then "nuclear security," instead of "national security."
As you can see, much more than semantics, the term "nuclear security" may be obfuscation intended to throw up a smokescreen behind which to advance the development of nuclear weapons. In any event, the phrase is a riddle. But, unlike a koan,* which can lead to enlightenment, this phrase has the potential to help usher Japan into a post-apocalyptic world of darkness.
*koan A paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.


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FREMONT — Physician assistants, nurses and medical directors were among the 200 jobs recently eliminated by the Washington Township Health Care District to cut costs, according to new information released by the district.
In response to a request under the California Public Records Act, the district provided a list this week of the 75 job titles included in the approximately 132 vacant and 68 filled positions eliminated in recent months as part of a 13 percent workforce reduction.
The district initially declined a request for the positions eliminated, citing employee sensitivity and competitive reasons, as reported by this newspaper Jan. 17. The reduction was undertaken by district administrators and was discussed by the board of directors behind closed doors without public notice.
The Washington Township Health Care District is a public agency in southern Alameda County and receives tax money from 320,000 district residents under voter-approved bond measures. The district is required to comply with the same open meetings and public records laws as city councils and other governments.
According to the district, positions eliminated include those providing direct medical care to patients, such as emergency medical technicians, speech therapists, registered nurses and physical therapy aids and assistants. Those working behind the scenes and at varying levels of management were not spared from the cuts, either. Nurse manager, nursing supervisor, department director, executive director, lab technician, and case and office manager also appear on the list. In total, the cuts are projected to save the district $16.1 million.
The district also previously declined to specify the date layoff notices were first issued, but according to a memo from CEO Nancy Farber to employees provided this week under a public records request, layoffs began Nov. 16.
"Senior Executive Staff will be contacting individual employees affected by the reduction in workforce beginning Friday, November 16th. Because of our history of financial strength, we are among the last of the Bay Area hospitals to take this step. This was not a decision that was entered into lightly," Farber wrote. Farber has served as district CEO for 18 years and was paid in recent years more than $900,000 annually, though the board of directors last month postponed awarding her 2012 incentive compensation,
Board members have said previously that the reductions were an administrative function delegated to Farber and the result of correlating staffing with patient need. Involvement in the decision, they said, would be micromanagement.
Ashly McGlone covers San Leandro, San Lorenzo and the Washington Township Health Care District. Contact her at 510-293-2463. Follow her at Twitter.com/AshlyReports.


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It absolutely was in Wonderful Britain how the first societal group on earth was born. The very first of this kind of organization started off merely being a casual accumulating of good friends, acquaintances, or people who have similar likes and dislikes in the selected area, usually a tavern or perhaps a caffeine residence. English language scribe John Aubrey phone calls it a "sociality inside a tavern".
During these English nightclubs, the members talked, mingled, ate, and, obviously, drank for hours on finish. Generally, the objective of a sociable group would be to give its associates a calming location where they could be interested, connect, ingest and speak. It was to become a position where they may escape to get rid of the monotony in the everyday grind and escape through the challenges in their work and home-based daily life.
As the years wore on and also the concept for social nightclubs distributed to other pieces of the world, the thought of such a societal group begins to experience alterations.
Because of the increasing variety, their people started occupying bigger parts of the bars and coffeehouses where they satisfy. When people began to fill up-up virtually every offered area in their meeting location, the tavern/ coffeehouse eventually had become the recognized "clubhouse". This advancement aided establish sociable nightclubs as legitimate and long-lasting.
In France, Germany as well as other European countries, interpersonal groups were actually no more just an area for relaxation and enjoyment. Numerous became hotbeds for chats and controversy on nationwide politics. Some, like France's Le Group Politique, became significant agencies to contend within the political market.
Interpersonal organizations became far more special and particular of their people as well. Individuals who wish to become associates needed to satisfy tough requirements and qualifications before they could be confessed to the club.
Women's liberation really helped paved just how for the opening of interpersonal clubs' doors to them. What was once an exclusive guy enclave is now a company both for males, along their wives.
How the group people devote their get-togethers has changed also. Individuals the very first sociable night clubs basically just fulfilled to enjoy, ingest and discuss. Today's sociable groups nevertheless, have a schedule loaded with assorted actions group parties, account elevating, in-season soiree-with regard to their participants as well as their visitors.
A lot of today's sociable nightclubs have much less strict requirements for admittance too, an optimistic advancement as this resulted in a larger quantity, as well as a broader number of everyone, being acknowledged in the clubs.
In spite of the many changes, something continues to be continual about social organizations: they are still one of the most effective and satisfying approaches to foster a feeling of the local community and fulfill new and intriguing men and women.
Inspired by: ezinearticles


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There are quilters, and then there are QUILTERS. I belong to the first group. I'm self taught and lack even one artistic bone in my body.
So, when I had a chance to attend a class, View Through the Window, taught by an amazing teacher, Judy Lily, I was signed up. The day was a fun learning experience because a very talented quilter and friend decided to attend as well. There was a lot of laughing going on as we worked on our landscape projects.
The following week, we attended the local quilt guild and were amazed by the various quilts on display. We even won the 50/50 raffle, but then spent almost twice as much as we won at a local quilt store because they were having a sale. 🙂
Class and guild were followed by the annual quilt show where we were all in shock and awe at the amazing skills on display.
This week, I'll be back to small projects interspersed with outdoor adventures like a walk at Brookgreen this morning with good friends to see what's blooming.
You see, it's a beautiful day in our neighborhood today, and I wish you the same.


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How exactly do I even begin? My language choices throughout this piece are applied conscientiously. Selection of terminology used here is neither made carelessly nor in jest. I am struggling daily with a profound and genuinely increasing sense of dread, and this particular piece of writing is an attempt to account for this as concisely as possible.
We've got indigenous peoples in both Brazil and Canada essentially declaring war against their respective colonial governments and other occupiers with corporate interests (Brazil, Canada). While indigenous peoples in Canada are being neglected (see this… oh, and this… and this, too) and starved (see here), indigenous peoples in Brazil and neighbouring countries are being fire-bombed and gunned down — though media reports on indigenous peoples in South America are apparently often misleading (as in the title of the article about a Brazilian indigenous tribe declaring a fight to the death … Continue Reading


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The Apollo Theater honored Baldwin on his 90th birthday with a message on its marquee.
The Harlem high school James Baldwin attended now sits at 22 East James Baldwin Place after a section of 128th Street in New York City was renamed in honor of the literary icon.
The renaming ceremony took place outside of Harlem Renaissance High School, between 5th and Madison avenues on East 128 St., on Aug. 2—what would have been Baldwin's 90th birthday. Baldwin died in December 1987 at the age of 63.
In attendance were members of Baldwin's extended family, including his four surviving sisters, and the day's events began at the historic Apollo Theater, which lit up its marquee in Baldwin's honor.
Trevor Baldwin, a nephew of James and himself a writer, initiated the effort to have a street named after his uncle in 2012.
" was actually inspired by someone else who reminded me there's no landmarks in Harlem with his name on it," Trevor Baldwin told the AFRO. "So it was long overdue. I think his life work is more relevant today than ever before so it's good because we get to revitalize his name and his message in terms of relating to contemporary, current events."
Baldwin's sister, Paula Whaley, a Baltimore-based sculptor and artist, said seeing her brother honored in this way was surreal.
"He would totally be in awe of all of this," said Whaley.
In addition to family, the event was attended by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer; CEO of the National Black Theatre Sade Lythcott; and poet, activist, and scholar Sonia Sanchez, among others.
Sanchez told the story of finding out Baldwin had died while she was in Trinidad. She said that when she heard, she proceeded to go outside, but was warned it was too dangerous at night.
"I said I have to go outside because I have to talk to brother Jimmy," said Sanchez. "I have to tell him because of him, I am. Because of his work, he made me become the person that I am today."
The only blemish on the event was the fact that the city failed to have the official street sign prepared and installed in time, forcing event organizers to show the crowd a large replica of the monument that will soon read "James Baldwin Place."


text: Quick update on the championship swimming season. The demand for full body racing suits has started to exceed the supply and many swim shops are quickly running out of racing suits. There is now more pressure than ever before for age group swimmers, high school swimmers, and collegiate swimmers to wear the full body racing suits. These new swimskins have quickly become a necessity for any fast swimmer. The top suits in 2009 are by far the Speedo LZR Racer and the Blueseventy Nero Comp swimskin. Due to the overwhelming demand Speedo is running low on the supply of LZR suits and many swimmers are switching to the Blueseventy suit. Both of these suits are hard to find and only a select few swim shops are able to meet the demand. D&J Sports has been able to get it's hands on a large supply of Speedo LZR and Blueseventy Nero Swimskins but they are going quickly and will not last much longer. Be sure to order your racing suit now before they are all gone.


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CNN) -- Chicago-area Democrats will hold an open primary to select their candidate for the special election to fill the seat left vacant by former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., as officials failed to coalesce around a candidate.
After over an hour of deliberations following 16 candidates making their cases for the party's endorsement, Democratic leaders of the six Chicago wards and five suburban Cook County townships in the 2nd Congressional District voted for an open primary, according to CNN affiliate WGN in Chicago.
The primary will be held on February 26, with the general election on April 6.
Jackson's resignation last month has triggered the state to hold a special election in his district. A heavily Democratic area, Chicago's 2nd District is on the south end of the city.
Veteran State Sen. Donne Trotter - considered the frontrunner for the pick and who was favored by Thornton Township chairman Frank Zuccarelli - was recently charged with trying to bring a gun on a plane, tainting his chances of winning the endorsement.
Jackson, 47, was re-elected for a tenth two-year term in November, only to resign shortly thereafter during on-going investigations and recent treatment at the Mayo Clinic for what was described as "several serious health issues."
Jackson, the son of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, is the subject of investigations by the FBI and the House Ethics Committee involving possible financial improprieties.


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Video Game Improves Multitasking Skills
Does multitasking seem to be getting tougher for you as the years pass? In fact, that's quite normal. By the time you are 40, multitasking is nearly twice as challenging as when you were 20. The good news is that playing a video game has just been shown to improve cognitive function and, in particular, multitasking ability in healthy older adults. Adults subjects from 60 to 85 years old became as effective at multitasking as 20 year-olds after just a month of training, according to a new UCSF study.


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Looks great. Here's hoping that it'll feature bots with more than 2 poses.
Maybe this should be gen-gaming, but the devs claim it's Stalker-ish so I'll post here. There's not much to see yet but maybe some people will enjoy following this. I think it looks great, though obviously in a very different style to actual Stalker.
Looks great. Here's hoping that it'll feature bots with more than 2 poses.
Colonial british robots
i know, right? creativity, the worst possible thing you could do in the quest to not have fun
Just a heads up on the fact that there's a kickstarter for this now http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...e-being-hunted
They already seem quite far ahead, so it's probably not so much of a gamble as some other kickstarters.
Yeah looking forward to this one, reminds me of Thief/Stalker
i do believe that may possibly be the point???
where does thief come in
Open ended gameplay, sneaking & Thief style visibility meter, Steampunk(ish).
also, wtf happened to koki?
He disappeared a few months back.
He came back as a three-letter acronym, though. bcm or bcp or something.
Oh la la this looks cool. In that OP link I really digged the music. Can dudes/dudettes with such great taste really make a bad game? I think not.


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The Baltimore Sun's owner said Wednesday that it plans to spin off its newspapers as a separate company, the latest move in the Tribune Co.'s effort to focus on the more profitable broadcasting industry.
Chicago-based Tribune said its publishing assets, which include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and six other daily newspapers, would be split off with its own board and senior management while the rest of Tribune's holdings — including its television stations and real estate — would stay with the original company.
The plan comes about a week after Tribune announced a deal to purchase 19 television stations, bulking up its broadcasting holdings.
The separation announcement likely delays any potential sale of the publishing assets until next year. But a spinoff would bring a tangible benefit, analysts say: It would allow the company to offload its newspapers while avoiding the large capital gains tax it would incur from an outright sale.
"It's an astute move," said Robert Willens, a New York-based tax analyst. "After the spinoff occurs, the sale can take place, at which point the corporation is off the hook for any taxes."
Multiple media reports have named a number of possible buyers for Tribune's newspapers, including Koch Industries, a closely held company controlled by the billionaire Republican donors Charles and David Koch, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Others named include Berkshire Hathaway and Freedom Communications.
Locally, a loosely organized group including Ted Venetoulis, a former Baltimore County executive, and developer David S. Cordish said Wednesday they would like to collaborate on a potential purchase if The Baltimore Sun is made available for sale. Cordish is chairman of the Baltimore-based Cordish Cos., which owns properties such as Power Plant Live and the Maryland Live Casino.
Venetoulis said Tribune has yet to share any financial data with the group.
The steps that Tribune CEO Peter Liguori is taking to shape the company's future around broadcasting are a departure from Tribune's long-held belief in the power of media cross-ownership.
"Moving to separate our publishing and broadcasting assets into two distinct companies will bring single-minded attention to the journalistic standards, advertising partnerships and digital prospects of our iconic newspapers, while also enabling us to take advantage of the operational and strategic opportunities created by the significant scale we are building in broadcasting," Liguori said in a statement.
Tribune's financial results show why company officials would rather focus on television.
The company's publishing revenue declined less than 1 percent last year to $2 billion, accounting for nearly two-thirds of operating revenue but only 20 percent of operating profit, according to financial statements released last month. Broadcasting revenue — by contrast — grew 4 percent to $1.14 billion and produced 80 percent of the company's profit.
A detailed spinoff plan is expected to be developed in the next nine to 12 months. Pending board approval, the move would create Tribune Publishing Co.
Tribune shareholders would receive a tax-free distribution of shares in the new company.
Only the newspapers and associated publishing assets would move to the new entity. Tribune Co. would retain all other holdings, including 42 local television stations upon the closing of last week's announced $2.73 billion acquisition of Cincinnati-based Local TV LLC.
National cable channel WGN America, WGN Radio, Tribune Studios, Tribune Digital Ventures, Tribune Media Services, all real estate and the equity interests in Classified Ventures, CareerBuilder and Food Network would also remain with Tribune Co.
The company is faced with the possibility of owing more than $500 million in capital gains taxes to the Internal Revenue Service from the divestments of Newsday, the New York newspaper, in 2008, and the Chicago Cubs in 2009, which were structured as leveraged partnerships rather than outright sales. That complex strategy has been challenged by the IRS, and any tax liability will likely remain with Tribune Co. after the spinoff, according to sources.


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Hackensaw Boys
Charismo is the Hackensaw Boys record you've been waiting to hear. The 11-track album feels like the zenith release of the band's 17 years, gathering their diverse life experiences and myriad of roots influences, and crystallizing them into a magnum opus on the Hackensaw way of being. Traditional Appalachian and Delta music lay the groundwork, but it's injected with a heavy dose of the contemporary, good-times-roll kind of spit and vinegar the band has become known for over the years.
Produced by Larry Campbell – who has lent his talents to Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, and countless others – Charismosees the band reeled in and slightly refined, though still as spirited as ever. The songs (all written by longtime Hackensaws David Sickmen and Ferd Moyse) are tinged with an attitude of scrappy resilience, spinning tales and metaphors of everyday, working class struggles and triumphs. With Campbell's production, the Hackensaw's somewhat casual, porch-front aesthetic is sharpened around the edges, focusing in on the simple beauty of their melodies and the earnestness in their delivery.
Transcendent of the parts that make up its whole, the record has a collective feel that reflects the band's rambling history; the Hackensaws have been a home for dozens of musicians over the years, but have steadfastly endured through life's many changes. With Charismo, the Boys don't let down on providing their signature ever-present, feel-good energy. It's the kind of intangible presence that reminds us of our connection to other people and to our history, to the idea that we are a part of something much larger than ourselves.
The name of the album is the same as the percussive instrument invented by Justin Neuhardt (who played with the band in its early days) that has been employed nightly since the band's maiden tour 16 years ago. The charismo is made of recycled wood and scrap – tin cans, hubcaps, and so on – and is constantly broken down and re-assembled as the parts wear out and new ones are found. Much like the fluid, ever-changing nature of the instrument, Charismo shows us that The Hackensaw Boys are always moving forward like a mighty wheel turning, continuing to spread the (not quite) bygone spirit of down-home music to old and new audiences alike.


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This story was reported and written by Maria Cramer and Maria Sacchetti of the Globe staff and correspondent Connie Paige.
Standing on stage at a Republican debate on the Gulf Coast of Florida last week, Mitt Romney repeatedly lashed out at rival Rudy Giuliani for providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants in New York City.
Yet, the next morning, on Thursday, at least two illegal immigrants stepped out of a hulking maroon pickup truck in the driveway of Romney's Belmont house, then proceeded to spend several hours raking leaves, clearing debris from Romney's tennis court, and loading the refuse onto the truck.
In fact, their work was part of a regular pattern. Even after a Globe story in December 2006 highlighted Romney's use of a landscaping company that employs illegal immigrants to tend to his grounds, Romney continued to employ Community Lawn Service With a Heart - until yesterday. The company continued to employ illegal immigrants.
The two workers confirmed in separate interviews with Globe reporters last week that they were in the country without documents. One said he had paid $7,000 to a smuggler to escort him across the desert into Arizona; the other said he had come into the country with a student visa that has expired. Both were seen working on the lawn by either Globe reporters or photographers over the last two months.
Questioned yesterday afternoon during a campaign swing through New Hampshire about the use of illegal immigrants on his lawn, Romney declined to answer. An aide said he would issue a statement, and Romney, emerging from a Concord restaurant, said, "Did you hear him? We'll give you a statement."
Last night, the campaign issued a statement saying Romney had just learned - apparently from Globe reporters - of the company's continued practice of employing illegal immigrants, and immediately fired it.
"After this same issue arose last year, I gave the company a second chance with very specific conditions," Romney said in the statement. "They were instructed to make sure people working for the company were of legal status. We personally met with the company in order to inform them about the importance of this matter. The owner of the company guaranteed us, in very certain terms, that the company would be in total compliance with the law going forward.
"The company's failure to comply with the law is disappointing and inexcusable, and I believe it is important I take this action," Romney said.
Romney's account differs from that of landscape company owner Ricardo Saenz, who said that Romney didn't press the issue of whether his workers were in the country illegally. Asked if the Romney household expressed reservations about rehiring him after last year's story, he said, "Why would they have any problem?"
For Romney, who has made curtailing illegal immigration a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, the revelation that he continued to employ the same landscaping company quickly fueled criticism from his rivals, at least one of whom - Giuliani - has already mocked Romney's commitment to the issue on the trail. As recently as last week's Florida debate, Giuliani chided Romney for operating a "sanctuary mansion" - a reference to last year's Globe story that first highlighted the illegal immigrants working on Romney's lawn.
Throughout the campaign, Romney has spoken on the issue of illegal immigration with increasing fervor. He opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, along with driver's licenses and breaks on college tuition. He has pushed for fences along US borders and a stronger system to let employers verify that workers are here illegally. Before his term as governor ended, he authorized Massachusetts state troopers to arrest illegal immigrants, but Governor Deval Patrick overturned it in January.
But at his home, he paid less attention to the issue. The Globe observed Saenz, the owner of the landscaping company, lead a crew of two, three, and sometimes four workers at Romney's house once a week for the past two months, the only exception being Thanksgiving week. The crew typically arrived around noon, and worked for an hour-and-a-half mowing, raking, pruning, and bagging.
Afterward, the crew retreated to the same
In an interview in the doorway of his Chelsea two-family house yesterday afternoon, Saenz, 54, said the workers he hired were here legally. "They have papers," he said. "I copied them."
Asked to show the papers to reporters to prove the workers are here legally, Saenz declined, adding that he was not obligated to verify the employees' documents with the government. "It's not my responsibility," said Saenz, who has said he met Romney through the Mormon church. "I ask them to show me papers. And if they show me papers, what can I do? I'm not an investigator who can tell if they're good or bad."
Federal law requires that employers examine a set of documents - such as a green card or passport - to verify that employees are authorized to work in this country.
Saenz's company once had contracts with the city of Chelsea and the Massachusetts Port Authority, but no longer works for them. He did not bid on the MassPort contract, and Chelsea chose a lower bidder.
Saenz said Romney took no action against his company after the Globe reported last December that he had employed three illegal immigrants to work on Romney's lawn. Saenz repeatedly denied having illegal workers at Romney's property at the time.
Saenz said he contacted the Romney family in the early spring and offered them his services, and they accepted. In May, he began the landscaping work.
He said he usually spoke about the work with Romney's wife, Ann, or one of his children, and that no one asked for papers for his workers. "What papers, if I'm a company?" Saenz asked. "I don't understand why they have to verify anything. Their job is not to check up on my company."
He said he pays his workers $10 an hour and would hire them periodically for one or two days. He said he paid them by check using a computer system to ensure that he deducted taxes.
"I do everything legal," he said.
After the crews' last visit to Romney's house last Thursday, Globe reporters followed the pickup truck through the day and back to Saenz's house in Chelsea. A Globe reporter then followed one of the workers to a nearby bodega, identified herself, and asked him about his work and legal status.
Speaking in Spanish, the worker identified himself as Justo Sanan, a 35-year-old father of three from Guatemala, and said he told Saenz as early as March that he did not have legal papers. Saenz then told him to "go get something," Sanan said.
Sanan then bought a false green card and Social Security number for $80 from a man on the street he never saw again. He showed the papers to Saenz, who he said photocopied and returned them.
"Since I started I told him I don't have papers," said Sanan, who added that he has since gotten rid of the fake papers.
Sanan, slight and wiry and a resident of a Chelsea tenement, said he sends his pay home to his family in Guatemala. He began working on Romney's house in May, even though being on Romney's 2.5-acre property made him nervous because of the former governor's position on immigration and last year's Globe story.
"The truth is that every time I arrive at that place, it pains me," he said.
The second worker was approached at a bus stop in Chelsea, after Saenz dropped him off after a day of work on Friday. Also speaking in Spanish, he identified himself as Hamilton Gracias, a 24-year-old from Guatemala who has been in the United States for three years. As a reporter rode the MBTA bus with him, Gracias said he knew nothing about working on Romney's lawn. But the prior day, he was seen by the Globe on the Romney property hoisting a plastic bin full of leaves from Romney's tennis courts.
"Of course," he said, when asked if he is here illegally. "That's why I don't work for companies."
He said he entered the country with a student visa that has expired.
The identities of the two workers could not be verified in public documents.
In a telephone interview last night, Tagg Romney confirmed that he met with Saenz on a warm March day on his front yard, with his brother, Craig, a fluent Spanish speaker, translating over a cellphone. The Romney brothers said they told Saenz they would no longer use his service because of the prior Globe story, but Saenz urged them to reconsider. He vowed there would be no undocumented workers on the property.
"He came over and he was very apologetic for what had happened and asked if he could continue with us," he said. "He asked for a second chance."
Asked if he was reluctant to rehire Saenz's company, Tagg Romney said he was not.
"He was so adamant because he would personally make sure that he would only have documented workers working with him," he said. "We trusted him. I don't know what more we can do."
Just before Romney fired him, Saenz, the Colombian-born owner of the landscape company, who is a US citizen, spoke fondly of Romney yesterday. He went so far as to endorse him for president.
"He's a man of integrity," Saenz said. "He's a whole man. Morally and spiritually, I find him to be the one who can lead this country."
Correspondent James Pindell contributed to this report from Concord, N.H. Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@ globe.com, and Cramer at email@example.com.


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After you move your WordPress site to a new domain name, you will notice that all internal links to pages and references to images are not updated, images are not showing up because your images and other links and references are pointing towards your old domain name. This tutorial is about a plugin that fixes this thing up in just a click. It automatically updates old URLs and links in your website.
Continue reading How To Update All WordPress Image & Content URLs In One Click ?


text: This is a one-of-a-kind CheatSheet for the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT/350D 8.3 megapixel Digital SLR camera. This inexpensive accessory will provide you with a wealth of information that you can take with you!This CheatSheet is like having the manual on a card - but better! There are simply too many functions to list here but most everything in the manual is on this one card.Size:This CheatSheet is a double-sided full sheet of a 8 1/2" x 11" brochure paper that is folded in thirds. It is laminated with a light ultra-clear 3-mil laminate making it very durable. It fits easily in most camera bags.


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Chemical Peels 101: A lesson in skin anatomy, chemical peel levels, and peeling agents
Kim Cattrall's character Samantha, has a chemical peel in a memorable episode of Sex in The City. Unfortunate timing left her with a dark and peeling face the day of Carries Launch Party. It looks as if she had a medium – deep peel. If she were better informed she could have timed her peel so that she looked as gorgeous as usual for her event or just opted for a more superficial peel. Now in her mid-fifty's, Kim Cattrall looks amazing, I would not be surprised if she has chemical peels to maintain her skin.
Action and Benefits of Chemical Peels
Chemical peeling is used to improve the skin's appearance by applying a chemical solution to the skin, causing the top layers of skin to separate and peel off. The new skin is smoother, less wrinkled, more even in color, peels can also be used to improve acne. Chemical peels can be performed at different depths, depending on the layer of correction desired. Deeper peels will cause the skin to peel for a longer period of time and provide more improvements in the skin. There are also a variety of acids and peeling agents that can be used alone or together, depending on skin conditions to be treated.
Chemical exfoliation and peels involve using destructive chemical agents to create a controlled wound.
All peels (whether they are chemical or laser) create a mild burn. They improve skin by the wound healing process, new tissue is created and damaged tissue is quickly replaced. Chemical peels stimulate the fibroblasts wound healing activity, the proliferation of fibroblast activity increases collagen and elastin. The depth of the wound determines the amount and intensity of healing. The body's response to the burn is what yields the results, a deeper peel will result in more correction.
The terms exfoliation and chemical peel are often used interchangeably, however superficial peels are technically exfoliation not a true peel. True chemical peels are generally performed under medical supervision, and penetrate into the papillary dermis.
Chemical exfoliation and peels are a way to speed up the natural migration process of skin cells. When the bonds between cells are dissolved and epidermal cells begin to shed more rapidly. The shedding skin cells send signals for more cell division, which in turn forces keratinocytes to the top of the stratum corneum. This process helps treat acne, fade skin discoloration and leave the skin with a fresh new layer of skin on the surface.
*Dark skin types are more prone to complications such as hyperpigmentation and should go to a professional that is experienced in treating dark skin.
[ Read: Chemical Peel Do's and Don'ts ]
Skin Layers
Epidermis (Epidermal layers)
Stratum corneum horny layer
Stratum lucidum horny layer – only present on palms of hands, soles of feet
Stratum granulosum horny layer
Stratum spinosum basal layer
Stratum mucosum basal layer
Stratum germinativum / basal layer
Dermis ( Dermal layers)
Papillary dermis
Immediate reticular dermis
upper reticular dermis
mid dermis
lower reticular dermis
Hypodermis/Subcutaneous Tissue
Adipose Tissue ( fatty tissue)
The epidermis is completely cellular, meaning it is in a constant cycle of producing new cells while older dead skin cells are pushed to the surface to exfoliate or slough off. The epidermis is made up of keratinocytes, lymphocytes, melanocytes, Langerhans cells and Merkel cells. Approximately 80% -90% of the cells in the epidermis are keratinocytes, with all others interspersed among them.
The dermis is a layer of connective tissue, composed mainly of collagen fibers as well as about 5% elastin. The Dermis is subdivided into the superficial papillary dermis and the reticular dermis. The papillary dermis is a thin layer of connective tissue fibers, the reticular dermis is thicker and contains collagen and elastin fibers.
Collagen constitutes 75% of dry skin weight, giving the skin volume. Fibroblast cells lie among collagen fibers and are known to synthesize (produce) collagen. Fully mature collagen fibers have a low turnover rate. Elastin fibers maintain tension in the skin and provide elasticity ( snap back after being stretched). Metabolic turnover for elastin fibers are very slow and only make up about 2% – 4% of dermal volume. Damage or alterations to the elastin fibers network cause skin to become loose, saggy and wrinkled. Fibroblasts are responsible for producing collagen, elastic fibers, and the ground substance of the dermis. Fibroblasts also control the turnover of connective tissue, unfortunately with age they become smaller and less active.
Understanding the depth of a chemical peel
With chemical peels, the depth is determined by the agent used, concentration of agent, and time applied. {click to view photo's of peeling}
Very Superficial
Penetrates to Stratum Corneum, Peeling is complete in 0-3 days. Very superficial peels can usually be done as often as once a week. This type of "peel", generally produces little to no peeling and is ideal for anyone that can't afford any downtime.
[ Chemical Peels: Superficial Peels Create Little To No Peeling ]
Penetrates between the stratum granulsome and stratum germinativum basal layer of epidermis. Peeling is complete in 3-7 days, superficial peels can usually be repeated in 4 weeks. Ideal for most skin types including acne prone skin. This is the most common form of chemical peel performed by estheticians. There isn't any true "down time" with superficial peels, only what is referred to as "social down time". You can generally continue normal activities including work, however superficial peels should be done a week before any special events. You can expect to be slightly red or bronzed and have a few days of superficial peeling. On day 1 and 2 skin is slightly red or bronzed, skin starts to peel around day 3 and continues to peel for 2-3 days, may have minimal areas of superficial peeling on day 7. You may be red or pink first few days after peel.
Penetrates papillary dermis, performed under medical supervision. Peeling is completed in 7-8 days, medium depth peels can be repeated as soon as 6-8 weeks, however it isn't usually necessary. Peeling skin will be darker and thicker with medium peels vs. superficial peels. Skin will start to darken on day 2 or 3, slight peeling around mouth on day 3, skin will continue to peel until day 7 or 8, starting around mucus membrane ( eyes, nose , mouth) and the forehead usually peels last. Toward end of peel you may just have slight peeling in the hairline. Often times you look okay the first 2 days and last 2 days, it is day 3- 6 that look bad. Exfoliating products and treatment need to be avoided for at least six weeks after a medium depth peel. You can start to see complications at this level, skin should be precondition before peel, especially for darker skin types. Should not be performed on skin with active acne. Follow post treatment instructions to avoid complications. Treats: skin discolorations, epidermal melasma, skin roughness, large pores, fine lines. If peel is medium – deep you may see improvement in stretchable scars and wrinkles. The "Standard Obgai Blue Peel" is a medium depth peel.
Penatrates to Intermediate Reticular Dermis (IRD). Peeling is completed in 8-10 days. Must be performed under medical supervision. Skin should be preconditioned in advance, and skin should not have any active acne. Following proper post treatment care is important, to prevent complications. This level of peel can be done with phenol, however TCA and lasers have largely replaced phenol peels. This treats: lines, wrinkles, deep melasma, and some scars, The" Designed Blue Peel" is a deep peel. With deep peels the skin will start to darken very quickly and may not start peeling until day 4 or 5, peeling skin will look very dark and thick almost like a thin scab. It is important that you do not assist the peel by picking or pulling skin off, loose peeling skin should be cut of with small sterile scissors to prevent inadvertently removing skin prematurely.
Very Deep
Penetrates upper to mid reticular dermis. Peeling takes up to 3 weeks.
Special training is required, done by a physician. Lasers have largely replaced very deep peels.
Acids and Chemical Peeling Agents
Chemical peels use several types of acid solutions to improve and smooth the texture of skin. Acids come in different strengths and can be used individually, combined or layered. A variety of acid compounds can be used. There are many branded peels, however an experienced esthetician can also create custom peels.
CO2 (cryogen therapy)
Cryotherapy, also called Co2 slush or acne slush, has been used in dermatology for over a quarter of a century. Co2 slush is created at the time of treatment, liquid Co2 is made into a "snow" ball and wrapped in gauze or cheese cloth and then dipped into acetone. The "slush" is the lightly swiped over the treated areas. Cryogenic "slush" can cause mild exfoliation and has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory abilities. Cryogen therapy is added to some superficial peels at the end of treatment
Also known as: Dry ice treatment, acetone slush and slush peel
Glycolic acid
AHA (alpha hydroxy acid), AHA's are water soluable. Glycolic acid is formulated from sugar cane, and has the smallest AHA molecule, giving it great penetration ability and softening ability. Glycolic acid works by loosening up the horny layer and exfoliating the superficial top layer, also stimulates collagen growth. Needs to be neutralized to stop action, and can cause irritation.
Lactic Acid
AHA, derived from sour milk and bilberries, mild action, often used in conjunction with other acids.
Malic Acid
AHA, derived from apples, mildly invasive peel It can open up the pores, allow the pores to expel their sebum and reduce acne.
Tartaric Acid
AHA, derived from grapes, mildly invasive, similar benefits to other AHA's
Salicylic acid
BHA (beta hydroxy acid), derived from wintergreen and birch bark. Differs from AHA's, because it is oil soluble and penetrates the lipid plug in a congested follicle. Salicylic acid is also less irritating than glycolic acid and doesn't alter skin barrier properties. Has antimicrobial properties.
Retinoic Acid
derived from retinoids; which is denatured vitamin A. It is chemically similar to Retin-A. It is a deeper peel than the Beta Acid peel and is used to remove scars as well as wrinkles and pigmentation problems. It is usually performed in conjunction with other acids to a cause peeling at a deeper level.
A dihydroxy phenol produced from resins. Used externally resorcinol is an antiseptic and disinfectant, and is used in ointments in the treatment of chronic skin diseases such as psoriasis, and eczema. Resorcinol has been used as a peeling agent as far back as 1800 in strengths up to 30%, the problem with high concentrations of resorcinol is it's corrosive ability and tenancy to depigment. Currently it is used at low concentrations in chemical peel compounds such as Jessner's Peels.
TCA (Trichloroacetic acid)
TCA is a chemical cauterant, an agent that coagulates skin proteins. TCA can be used in different strengths and has the ability to penetrate past the papillary dermis and should be used with caution. TCA in concentrations less than 25% can be used in superficial peels. Medium depth peels are achieved with 30-40% TCA, and 50% TCA should only be used by a physician to achieve a deep peel and has greater chance for complication. TCA is used in the Obagi Blu Peels.
Phenol is a very strong and toxic chemical, phenol peels require general anesthetic and heart monitoring. Lasers and TCA have largely replaced deep phenol peels, however low concentrations are often added to superficial and medium depth peels.
The Medical Estheticians at Shapiro Plastic Surgery, Paradise Valley Skin Klinic are experienced with chemical peels at all levels.
Call to schedule a treatment or consultation.
480 421-1701
You can follow Paradise Valley Skin Klinic on facebook
Thank you for visiting Best of Both Worlds Az.
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India Currents gave me a voice in days I was very lost. Having my articles selected for publishing was very validating – Shailaja Dixit, Executive Director, Narika, Fremont
When you meet an adult woman, who is perhaps your mother's age, what do you call her? Mrs.? Ms.? If she is between 10 and 20 years older than you, do you address her by her first name or last name? Or, do you pause to ask how she would like to be addressed?
If you're an Indian American, you'll probably just call her "aunty." "Aunty" and "Uncle" have become easy fallbacks when addressing people including distant associates, neighbors, acquaintances, and even total strangers who are older than oneself. I've watched the attractive shopkeeper in our neighborhood Indian store cringe and straighten her kurti when a jean-clad matron has the gall to address her as "aunty." And I identify with her indignant irritation completely. As an adult woman who has also been called "aunty" one too many times by too many adults who I barely know, I have a bone to pick with what I believe has become a hapless naming practice.
According to Probal Dasgupta's study The Otherness of English: India's Auntie Tongue Syndrome, the term aunty "functions these days as a marker of Western sophistication among the upwardly mobile middle classes in urban and semi-urban India." Many of the Indians who reside in the Bay Area are products of this urban, elite heritage, and they seem determined to use "aunty" liberally and pass on the custom to their unsuspecting offspring.
Today, the title "aunty" is so overused and misused that it has lost its position and meaning. Indian-American children are taught that every adult female is a potential aunty; many carry this presumption to the conclusion that any adult female older than them can be an aunty. I'm not referring to school children here, but to those I see as adults, the lipsticked and bearded variety, who ought to know better. Don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with terms like ammayi, or cheriamma, or edathi, all specific Malayalam words that acknowledge individuals who are close family members and deserve rightful respect in the family's pecking order. There are equivalent terms in every Indian language: terms like maami, mausi, and didi that all validate close family connections. But amongst English-speaking Indian Americans, the frequent use of "aunty" or "uncle" is more often an example of lazy speech, or a desire to bump the individual in question into the category of dodderingolder-other, than it is a thoughtful moniker of respect. Therein lies the problem.
I attended an art exhibition in the home of an Indian-American couple a few months back. The woman who answered the door to show me and my companion around said she was the homeowner. She was of an indeterminable age, but definitely an adult—and I don't mean only in a legal sense! The gathering was of mixed age, ethnicity, and gender. Wine flowed and hors d'oeuvres were nibbled. It was a cosmopolitan scene. We were all adults in a neutral setting, and yet when it was time to leave, the hostess said to me, "Thanks for coming, aunty!" I bristled. How dare this woman call me aunty? Was this the result of her vanity? Was my anger an indication of mine? Her use of the term "aunty" with a perfect stranger was both deliberate and careless. This was not about respect. There was no regard for long-term association or affection. This was clearly an example of "you're from an older, other world, and I'm still young, and I want to put some distance between us."
Here are some guidelines for the use of the term "aunty" and to prevent against the kind of encounter I've just described.
If I have not known you when you were a child, and been a part of your life as you learnt and grew—I am not your aunty.
If you are an adult with or without furrows on your temples, and our paths have never crossed before—I am not your aunty.
If your children are younger than mine, or you are the same age as my grown children, but I am meeting you for the first time—I am not your aunty.
And if you're just not sure what to call someone? Ask; don't assume.
I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've seen what happens when friends' parents visit from India, all articulate, successful, professional individuals in their own right, most still working adults, some retired perhaps, who nevertheless are made to feel like tag-alongs in the United States. Many of these parents insist that they prefer to be "left at home" when asked to accompany their offspring to local dinner functions and are pushed to the "aunty/uncle" section of the room. What happened to Indian grace, hospitality, and our cultural reverence for the wisdom and experience of age?
In the India of my childhood, aunties were privileged and exceptional members of the family. If they were not the sisters of your father or mother, or the wives of your uncles, they were close family friends who had known you since infancy and had a stake or significant interest in your well being. In a culture in which godmothers were unfamiliar, the aunty, like the "aunt" elephant in a matriarchal herd of elephants, took on that distinctive, responsible role and helped our mother defend and protect her calf.
Children have always needed aunties: women who were caring and courageous enough to share in the act of mothering. And aunties have always been part of every child's "village," whether in India or the United States. In fact a bestselling tribute to the institution of aunty-dom, The Complete Book of Aunts by Rupert Christiansen, was published in the U.K. in 2006 and states that of all our blood relations, an aunt offers the most potential for an uncomplicated friendship. As the author writes, there's no reason to "let the aunt slide unremembered into the dust box of history." Acknowledging significant family members is important, and I agree that we should celebrate those figures who mean something to us. But "mean something" is the operative phrase.
Think of all the older desi ladies you call "aunty." Do you reserve use of the term for those with whom you have a significant relationship?
Let us not diminish the value of extended family, or reduce the importance of commitment and involvement, by loose interpretations and titles drawn by vanity. It's time to redefine words like "aunty" and "uncle" in our vocabularies and restore their use to a rightful position. It's time to honor those friends and family who truly have a hand in shaping our lives.
This article was published in the February 2009 issue of the magazine.
|Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan is Director of Development at SVILC, Santa Clara County's Independent Living Center, a full time mother, and a voice-over artist in her spare time.


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by Carl Wilson
An email group that I'm on – let's call it the Nerd Mafia – got into exchanging favourite song titles this week. Someone offered up Don Caballero's "A Lot Of People Tell Me I Have A Fake British Accent" and "Why Is the Couch Always Wet?" and then came Half Man Half Biscuit's "Architecture, Morality, Ted And Alice." Inevitably, someone raised with Guided By Voices ("A Contest Featuring Human Beings," "14 Cheerleader Cold Front") and doubled down with Jim O'Rourke's "Halfway to a Three Way."
The Minutemen ("Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing"), Smog ("Dress Sexy at My Funeral"), the Fugs ("I'm Gonna Kill Myself Over Your Dead Body," "I Command the House of the Devil"), Love ("Maybe the People Would Be The Times or Between Clark and Hilldale"), Curtis Mayfield ("We the People Who Are Darker than Blue"), Captain Beefheart ("Neon Meate Dreams of an Octafish"), and even calypso godfather Lord Executioner ("Seven Skeletons Found in the Yard," "How I Spent My Time at the Hospital," "We Mourn the Loss of Sir Murchison Fletcher") all got their due respect. I felt I crowned the lot with Charles Mingus – pretty hard to outdo "The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive-Ass Slippers" or "All the Things You Could Be Right Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Were Your Mother."
With a few exceptions, those are jokey titles, but most of them do stand up, even without hearing the songs they name. The conversation got me thinking about this relationship between artwork and title. I adore titles, and pride myself on having a good ear for them, but the hours of intense conversations I've had with friends when they're in the titling stage of a project strikes me in retrospect; likewise the number of friends who seem to have many more titles than they do projects, or who need to begin with a title.
It speaks to a conceptualist orientation, but it's also to be a child of the marketing age. I sometimes wonder if it betrays a preference for the idea of a thing over the thing itself, a self-accusation that quickly widens its net over the rest of my life and hauls it in for questioning. I'm prone to idealize the mind of the artist who rejects titling as too restrictive, and goes with "Untitled #2" or "Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major." But such an artist offers a certain impersonality to the audience, too. Especially in abstract forms, the title is an opportunity to offer the audience a starting point, a weather-vane to swing round in the imagination and point in a rough direction. A sonata or a jazz instrumental or minimalist sculpture on first encounter can be, to swipe my favourite Modest Mouse album title, "a long drive for someone with nothing to think about." A title can supplant that nothing with something that then evolves of its own accord in the listener's mind. Or it can simply help you focus on the more helpful detail among all the elements of a work. There's a generosity in that. It doesn't presume that the audience has nothing better to do with its time than search your work for a clue to what you're on about.
When I was a child, I had a guitar-strumming, open-concept-school teacher who played us songs like "One Tin Soldier," the cheesy anti-war anthem first recorded by the Canadian pop group Original Caste in 1969, remade first by Skeeter Davis (whose "The End of the World" from 1963 – a good title, though not quite as good as Willie Nelson's "I've Just Destroyed the World" – was named the 177th greatest country single in my friends David Cantwell and Bill Frikiscs-Warren's book of the best 500 country singles) and then more successfully by Coven for one of the Billy Jack movies. I vividly remember getting laughed at by my classmates for requesting it by the name "Listen Children," based on the first line, "Listen, children, to a story that was written long ago…" Somehow I missed the resonance of the key chorus line, "On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away." No doubt I was narcissistically overrating the importance of the invocation of children. In any case it left me careful to get titles right.
One of the practical purposes of a title is for a fan to call it in to a radio show or shout it out at a concert, but often you might know a song without knowing its title. Especially when the relationship between the two gets looser. This is a point against the title that stands independent of the work. My mind's never really been able to maintain the link between the words "Lady Marmalade" and the Labelle hit that seems to want to be called, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"
But several of my favourite songwriters use titles as almost a cryptogrammic guide to underlying themes in their work. I love the "hymn" series by Hefner: "The Hymn for the Cigarettes," "The Hymn for the Alcohol," "The Hymn for the Postal Service," "The Hymn for the Coffee" – in one fell gesture it indicates the whole approach to beauty that the band takes: elevating the abject, losing to win, mocking to worship and worshiping to mock. It may be that titles now are what we have instead of manifestos, to state our aesthetics without going to the obnoxious lengths of making an "artist's statement" out of it.
One of the more outré approaches to titling of late (well, outside metal, Anthony Braxton, the likes of Autechre and the highly ambivalent case of Fall Out Boy) has come from The Mountain Goats, a.k.a. John Darnielle, who for years not only worked in series (the "Alpha" series, in which all the songs using that word in their titles depicted the same imaginary doomed couple; the "Going to _____" series, which featured characters who mix up geographic plans with life plans; more), but titled most of the rest of his songs with various historical, mythological and geographical references, so that if I want to hear one of my most-loved songs about burning jealousy, infidelity and loss, for example, I need to call to mind what I think is a grammatical mode in Sanskrit ("Raja Vocative"), or if you want to hear the one about robbing the candy store, you'll have to recall the classical-dramaturgy/psychoanalytic term "The Recognition Scene." Is this a less generous, more self-indulgent approach to titling? Here's what Darnielle said in a Believer interview in 2004:
"I always preferred album titles that weren't named after a song on the album. … Why is the album called Get Lost? That's a great example, because it's The Magnetic Fields Get Lost – it's a sentence. But divorce it from the band name, and it's an imperative: Get lost. When I was a kid, when I was developing my record-collector disease, those are the types of records I liked best because when I exhausted the songs and the lyrics I could still think about that aspect and I wanted albums to have as many possible points of scrutiny as they could. From the time I started writing songs, I thought it'd be better if the song title had to be in some way connected to the song. Then I got perverse about it and thought if I titled them in ways that no one could possibly make the connection I've made, they'd be even more interesting because anybody who's like me and wants to make the connection would have to fabricate their own or conclude that it can't be done. If you're a record collector, you won't conclude that it can't be done. You'll just go ahead and do it."
So there's another, more playful kind of generosity there, a game being played with the listener, based on the kinds of games the artist himself likes, which again is a hint of what kind of artist this is: "Here is everything I know, and here is how I put it together, but I'd be delighted if you would pull it all apart and put it back together differently. Also, I think meaning is contingent, how about you?" (Perhaps with the settling calm of maturity, perhaps because "record collector" is a pretty imperilled category, more recent Mountain Goats albums have used song titles closer to the content of the lyrics – even the latest, on which all the songs are titled with chapters and verses from scripture, is a relatively low-difficulty-level challenge.)
It's refreshingly bracing sometimes when a song's just called "Love Song" or "Divorce Song," but all the additional pointers and tags make for a richer experience. Indeed, perhaps the question should be why we use the same general names for so many different things in life, like loves and divorces, rather than inventing unique titles for them. Or perhaps we already spend too much of our precious time in those deepest realms of our lives searching for the caption instead of listening to the music.
P.S. Here are some of the rejected potential titles for this website:
Triple Nerd Score
Ergo the Living Planet
The Potato Barn
Big Head
Blind Chess
Zionist Time Conspiracy
The DeLorean of All One's Born Days
Viva la Quinta Brigada


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This September marks the start of BEEF magazine's 50th year of publication. Over the past 50 years, BEEF has grown to play a major role in technology transfer for the U.S. beef industry and beyond. I'm proud to have been a part of that effort for the last 12 years.
In 1963, I was working on my master's degree in farm management at the University of Nebraska. My research involved a large regional project requiring me to build a computerized farm-level model designed to calculate the "most profitable farm organization" for nine different types of farms in eastern Nebraska.
I spent a lot of evenings in the university's computer center that year, learning how to run my first computer. Computers have been an integral part of my ranch management educational programs ever since.
In 1963, the U.S. corn price averaged $1.11/bu., hay price averaged $25/ton, and slaughter steers averaged $23.60/cwt. I calculate that the steer-corn price ratio was 21 at that time, which means 100 lbs. (cwt.) of steer was equal in value to 21 bu. of corn. I also calculate that retail beef was 90¢/lb. in 1963, and the farm value of retail beef was 68¢/lb.
Let's review the last 50 years by examining a few economic indicators in five representative years of roughly 10-year increments: 1963, 1974, 1983, 1993 and 2012. A review of this data shows an interesting economic pattern.
Figure 1 summarizes 50 years of corn prices. In 1963, corn price averaged $1.11/bu., but it almost tripled to $3.02/bu. by 1974, and government programs kept corn prices in the $2 to $3 range until 2006, when the ethanol era began. In 2012, corn averaged $6.22/bu., driven up by ethanol subsidies and the 2012 drought. That's a 560% increase in corn price in 50 years; however, most of the increase occurred in the last six years.
Figure 2 summarizes historical hay prices. The average hay price in 1963 was $25/ton. That increased to $80 by 1983, hovering in that range through 2003. The ethanol era, which began in 2006, prompted a lot of hay land to be planted in corn. Then, the added pressure exerted by the 2012 drought drove the hay price to a $191/ton average in 2012. This is an 876% increase in 50 years; again, most of the increase was in the last few years.
Figure 3 depicts historical steer prices. In 1963, it averaged $23.60/cwt., generally trending upward each representative year, except in 1993. This is a 521% increase in steer prices over a 50-year period, or a calculated average trend line increase of $1.78/year.
Meanwhile, the steer-corn price ratio in Figure 4 compares corn prices to steer prices. The historical steer-corn ratio increased for 40 years, which indicates that the price of a cwt. of steer was equal in value to more and more bushels of corn. However, in the last six years, it's dropped substantially. In 2012, it was down to 20.
Figure 5 summarizes historical retail beef price. I estimate the 1963 average retail beef price was 97¢/lb., which grew steadily to $5.01 in 2012. This is a 516% increase over the 50-year period, with a calculated trend value increase of 8.8¢/lb./year.
I estimate the net farm value of retail beef was 68¢/lb. in 1963. This value increased to $2.43 in 2012 — a 412% increase over 50 years (Figure 6). My calculated trend value for the net farm value of retail beef is a positive 3.2¢/lb./year.
Meanwhile, the farm share of the beef retail dollar (Figure 7) has trended down a total of 21% in the last 50 years. This suggests that beyond the farm gate, processing costs, marketing costs, and wholesale and retail profits associated with retail beef steadily increased through time. (Non-farm labor costs and transportation costs are examples of these ever increasing non-farm costs.) I fully expect these non-farm costs to keep increasing with time, suggesting continued decreasing farm share.
Now, let's look at North Dakota Farm Business Management's annual record summaries to examine beef cow profits over the last 50 years. I had to extrapolate the numbers for 1963 as I could only obtain data back to 1974.
Figure 8 summarizes the annual total feed costs for these herds for the representative years. Feed costs were fairly stable the first 30 years, but accelerated upward in the last 20. Clearly, 2012 was a year of record feed costs.
Total beef cow production costs (minus replacement costs) are presented in Figure 9. Generally, production cost trended up through time. The one exception was in 1993, when costs leveled off. Total costs reached a 50-year high in 2012. The 50-year trend in per-cow costs was $7.70/year.
Figure 10 presents the earned net income summary for these Northern Plains herds. I could not generate a figure for 1963, but earned net income for the mid-1970s was generally negative. This was a time of record cattle numbers in the U.S.: 132 million head. Earned net income for these representative years was the highest in 1993, and again in 2012.
The earned net income data indicate that times were tough in the mid-1970s for these Northern Plains herds, so-so in the 1980s, and good in the mid '90s and 2011-2012 eras. In fact, the average annual earned net income the last 20 years is $86/cow.
Figure 11 summarizes the change in selected economic indicators over this 50-year period. Corn and hay increased the highest percentage, while retail beef price is third, followed by the farm value of retail beef.
The bottom line is that economics have begun to shift beef cow production from areas of high cattle feed costs to regions of lower feed costs (grazing). This suggests to me that beef cow production will continue to shift out of the Corn Belt into other grazing regions of the nation. These data also suggest that producers in the Northern Plains face a challenging cost structure, given the current trend for the farm value of retail beef price.
Harlan Hughes is a North Dakota State University professor emeritus. He lives in Kuna, ID. Reach him at 701-238-9607 or [email protected]
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