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SHF#47: Vanilla Date Cupcakes with Buttermilk Fudge FrostingSeptember 26, 2008 at 4:50 pm | Posted in cupcakes, events, sweet things | 7 Comments
Not sure why, but I haven't participated in Sugar High Friday in awhile. This month, though, I found myself seduced by a cupcake-loving pink flamingo into sending super-sweet Fanny a super-sweet cupcake for her round-up.
I've been on a tear lately trying to use up things in my pantry. One of those things was a bag of dates that had been lingering around for longer than I would like to admit. It was time for them to move out, and I found them a new home thanks to one of my favorite baking books, Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen. She has a recipe for moist date cupcakes, flecked with vanilla bean and frosted with buttermilk fudge. It sounded so interesting, I had to give it a go!
With the combination of dates, brown sugar and buttermilk, the cakes are golden-hued, really moist and delicious, and keep nicely for a few days. There isn't a picture in the book, but the author's instructions led me to believe that the frosting would be quite stiff. Mine actually had a consistency in between a glaze and a normal icing. I could definitely spread it on, but I couldn't heap it on. It is definitely sweet, though, and a little goes a long way, so maybe that was a good thing. I thought about chilling the icing, then whipping it further, but I liked the smooth tops and gentle drips that formed as it set.
Vanilla Date Cupcakes with Buttermilk Fudge Frosting– makes 8 regular-size cupcakes
adapted from Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen
Note: If some of these measurements seem a little screwy, that's because I downsized it from the original, which was much larger and meant to produce jumbo cupcakes.
For the cupcakes:
2 1/2 oz plump, pitted dates, coarsely chopped
5 T unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 c light brown sugar, packed
seeds of 1/3 vanilla bean
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/4 t pure vanilla extract (or dark rum)
1 c cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
1/3 t baking powder
1/3 t baking soda
1/8 t kosher salt
pinch of grated nutmeg
1/3 c + 1 T buttermilk
-Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pan with 8 paper liners.
-Put the chopped dates in a small bowl and pour 3 T boiling water over them. Let sit for a few minutes, and mash with a fork to a rough paste. Set aside while you prepare the batter.
-By hand, or using a hand-held mixer, cream the butter, two sugars and vanilla seeds until light and fluffy, approximately 5 minutes. Add the egg, then add the vanilla extract (or rum) and mix well.
-In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg.
-Add the buttermilk and the flour mixture alternately in thirds to the butter/sugar/egg mixture, beginning with the buttermilk and ending with the flour mixture. Mix only until blended. Fold the date paste into the batter with a rubber spatula.
-Divide the batter among the cupcake cups, filling each one 2/3 to 3/4 full. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
-Cool for 10 minutes, remove from the pans, and allow to cool completely on a rack before frosting.
For the frosting:
1/2 c granulated sugar
1 1/2 t light corn syrup
1 1/3 T unsalted butter, in small pieces
1/3 c buttermilk, plus an additional 1 T, for thinning the cooked frosting
1/3 t baking soda, sifted
1/4 t pure vanilla extract or paste
-Combine the sugar, corn syrup, butter, buttermilk and baking soda in a heavy-bottomed pot (use a larger pot than you think you will need…this mixture bubbles up to about four times its original volume as it comes to the boil!). Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat slightly and bring the mixture to a boil. Stir one last time as it comes to the boil, then don't stir again.
-Boil the syrup until it reaches 236°F on a candy thermometer (soft ball stage). You will see that the frosting caramelizes as it cooks. Immediately pour it into a mixing bowl (or bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whip). Let it cool for about five minutes.
-Stir in the vanilla extract or paste, then beat on medium speed until thick enough to spread, about five minutes. If the frosting is too thick, add the additional buttermilk, one teaspoon at a time.
-Slather the tops of the cupcakes with the frosting and cool before serving. You can place the cupcakes in the refrigerator to set the icing if it seems loose, or add additional teaspoons of buttermilk if it seems too thick. (If it is too loose to work with, you can try chilling it for 10 minutes or so, then re-whipping.)
-Iced cupcakes can be stores for 2-3 days in an airtight container at room temperature or in the refrigerator (bring to room temperature before serving). If you have more frosting than you need, transfer extras to a small, flat container…it will set up as fudge in the refrigerator.
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Sooo glad that you participated in this month's SHF event – those cupcakes look and sound so enticing!!
Comment by VeggieGirl— September 26, 2008 #
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Azure Real World: Migrating Drupal from LAMP to Windows Azure
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Last month, the Interoperability team at Microsoft highlighted work done to move the Screen Actors Guild Awards Drupal website from a Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) environment to the Windows Azure platform: SAG Awards Drupal Website Moves to Windows Azure. The move was the result of collaboration between SAG Awards engineers and engineers from Microsoft's Interoperability Team and Customer Advisory Team (CAT). The move allowed the SAG Awards website to handle a sustained traffic spike during the SAG Awards show in January. Since then, I've had the opportunity to talk with some of the engineers who helped with the move. In this post I'll describe the challenges and steps taken in moving the SAG Awards website from a LAMP environment to the Windows Azure platform.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is the United States' largest union representing working actors. In January of every year since 1995, SAG has hosted the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards) to honor performers in motion pictures and TV series. In 2011, the SAG Awards Drupal website, deployed on a LAMP stack, was impacted by site outages and slow performance during peak-usage days, with SAG having to consistently upgrade their hardware to meet demand for those days. That upgraded hardware was then not optimally used during the rest of the year. In late 2011, SAG Awards engineers began working with Microsoft engineers to migrate its website to Windows Azure in anticipation of its 2012 show. In January of 2012, the SAG Website had over 350K unique visitors and 1.1M page views, with traffic spiking to over 160K visitors during the show.
Overview and Challenges
In many ways, the SAG Awards website was a perfect candidate for Windows Azure. The website has moderate traffic throughout most of the year, but has a sustained traffic spike shortly before, during, and after the awards show in January. The elastic scalability and fast storage services offered by the Azure platform were designed to handle this type of usage.
The main challenge that SAG Awards and Microsoft engineers faced in moving the SAG Awards website to Windows Azure was in architecting for a very high, sustained traffic spike while accommodating the need of SAG Awards administrators to frequently update media files during the awards show. Both intelligent use of Windows Azure Blob Storage and a custom module for invalidating cached pages when content was updated were key to delivering a positive user experience.
Note: In this post I will focus on how the Drupal website was moved to Windows Azure, as well as how content and data were moved to Windows Azure Blob Storage and SQL Azure. I won't cover the details of the caching strategy.
The process for moving the SAG-Awards website from a LAMP environment to the Windows Azure platform can be broken down into five high-level steps:
- Export data. A custom Drush command (portabledb-export) was used to create a database dump of MySQL data. A .zip archive of media files was created for later use.
- Install Drupal on Windows. The Drupal files that comprised the installation in the LAMP environment were copied to Windows Server/IIS as an initial step in discovering compatibility issues.
- Import data to SQL Azure. A custom Drush command (portabledb-import) was used together with the database dump created in step 1 to import data to SQL Azure.
- Copy media files to Azure Blob Storage. After unpacking the .zip archive in step 1, CloudXplorer was used to copy these files to Windows Azure Blob Storage.
- Package and deploy Drupal. The Azure packaging tool cspack was used to package Drupal for deployment. Deployment was done through the Windows Azure Portal.
Note: The portabledb commands mentioned above are authored and maintained by Damien Tournoud.
Details for each of these high-level steps are in the sections below.
Export Data
Microsoft and SAG engineers began investigating the best way to export MySQL data by looking at Damien Tournoud's portabledb Drush commands. They found that this tool worked perfectly when moving Drupal to Windows and SQL Server, but they needed to make some modifications to the tool for exporting data to SQL Azure. (These modifications have since been incorporated into the portabledb commands, which are now available as part of the Windows Azure Integration Module.)
The names of media files stored in the file_managed table were of the form public://field/image/file_name.avi. In order for these files to be streamed from Windows Azure Blob Storage (as they would be by the Windows Azure Integration module when deployed in Azure), the file names needed to be modified to this form: azurepublic://field/image/file_name.avi. This was an easy change to make.
Because the SAG Awards website would be retrieving all data from the cloud, Windows Azure Storage connection information needed to be stored in the database. The portabledb tool was modified to create a new table, azure_storage, for containing this information.
Finally, to allow all media files to be retrieved from Blob Storage, the file_default_scheme table needed to be updated with the stream wrapper name: azurepublic.
Using the modified portabledb tool, the following command produced the database dump:
drush portabledb-export --use-windows-azure-storage=true --windows-azure-stream-wrapper-name=azurepublic --windows-azure-storage-account-name=azure_storage_account_name --windows-azure-storage-account-key=azure_storage_account_key --windows-azure-blob-container-name=azure_blob_container_name --windows-azure-module-path=sites/all/modules --ctools-module-path=sites/all/modules > drupal.dump
Note that the portabledb-export command does not copy media files themselves. Instead, the local media files were compressed in a .zip archive for use in a later step.
Install Drupal on Windows
In order to use the portabledb-import command (the counter part to the portabledb-export command above), a Drupal installation needed to be set up on Windows (with Drush for Windows installed). This was necessary, in part, because connectivity to SQL Azure was to be managed by the Commerce Guys' SQL Server/SQL Azure module for Drupal, which relies on the SQL Server Drivers for PHP, a Windows-only PHP extension. Having a Windows installation of Drupal would also make it possible to package the application for deployment to Windows Azure. For this reason, Microsoft and SAG Awards engineers copied the Drupal files from the LAMP environment to a Windows Server machine. The team incrementally moved the rest of the application to an IIS/SQL Server Express stack before moving the backend to SQL Azure.
Note: The Windows Server machine was actually a virtual machine running in a Windows Azure Web Role in the same data center as SQL Azure. The Web Role was configured to allow RDP connections, which the team used to install and configure the SAG website installation. This was done to avoid timeouts that occurred when attempting to upload data from an on-premises machine to SQL Azure.
There were, however, some customizations made to the Drupal installation before running the portabledb-import command. Specifically,
- The SQL Server/SQL Azure module for Drupal was installed and enabled.
- The memcache module for Drupal was installed and enabled.
- The Windows Azure Integration module for Drupal was installed and enabled. Note that this module has a dependency on the CTools module. It also requires Damien Tournoud's branch of the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, which must be unpacked and put into a folder called phpazure in the module's main directory. (As of this writing, Damien Tournoud's changes have not been merged with the Windows Azure SDK for PHP. However, they may be merged in the future.)
- Database connection information in the settings.php file was modified to connect to SQL Azure.
- A custom caching module was installed and enabled.
Some customizations to PHP were also necessary since this PHP installation would be packaged with the application itself:
- The php_pdo_sqlsrv.dll extension was installed and enabled. This extension provided connectivity to SQL Azure.
- The php_memcache.dll extension was installed an enabled. This would be used for caching purposes.
- The php_azure.dll extension was installed and enabled. This extension allowed configuration information to be retrieved from the Windows Azure service configuration file after the application was deployed. This allowed changes to be made without having to re-package and re-deploy the entire application. For example, database connection information could be retrieved in the settings.php file like this:
$databases['default']['default']['driver'] = 'sqlsrv';$databases['default']['default']['username'] = azure_getconfig('sql_azure_username');$databases['default']['default']['password'] = azure_getconfig('sql_azure_password');$databases['default']['default']['host'] = azure_getconfig('sql_azure_host');$databases['default']['default']['database'] = azure_getconfig('sql_azure_database');
With Drupal running on Windows, and with the customizations to Drupal and PHP outlined above, the importing of data could begin.
Import Data to SQL Azure
There were two phases to importing the SAG Awards website data: importing database data to SQL Azure and copying media files to Windows Azure Blob Storage. As alluded to above, importing data to SQL Azure was done with the portabledb-import Drush command. With SQL Azure connection information specified in Drupal's settings.php file, the following command copied data from the drupal.dump file (which was copied to Drupal's root directory on the Windows installation) to SQL Azure:
drush portabledb-import --delete-local-files=false --copy-files-blob-storage=false --use-production-storage=true mysite.dump
Note: The copy-files-blob-storage flag was set to false in the command above. While the portabledb-import command can copy media files to Blob Storage, Microsoft and SAG engineers had some work to do in modifying media file names (discussed in the next section). For this reason, they chose not to use this tool for uploading files to Blob Storage.
The next step was to create stored procedures on SQL Azure that are designed to handle some SQL that is specific to MySQL. The SQL Server/SQL Azure module for Drupal normally creates these stored procedures when the module is enabled, but since Drupal would be deployed with the module already enabled, these stored procedures needed to be created manually. Engineers executed the stored procedure creation DDL that is defined in the module by accessing SQL Azure through the management portal.
After the import was complete, the Windows installation of the SAG Awards website was now retrieving all database data from SQL Azure. However, recall that the portabledb-export command modified the names of media files in the file_managed table so that the Drupal Azure module would retrieve media files from Blob Storage. The final phase in importing data was to copy media files to Blob Storage.
Note: After this phase was complete, engineers cleared the cache through the Drupal admin panel.
Copy Media Files to Blob Storage
The main challenge in copying media files to Windows Azure Blob Storage was in handling Linux file name conventions that are not supported on Windows. While Linux supports a colon (:) as part of a file name, Windows does not. Consequently, when the .zip archive of media files was unpacked on Windows, file names were automatically changed: all colons were converted to underscores (_). However, colons are supported in Blob Storage as part of blob names. This meant that files could be uploaded to Blob Storage from Windows with underscores in the blob names, but the blob names would have to be modified manually to match the names stored in SQL Azure.
Engineers used WinRAR to unpack the .zip archive of media files. WinRAR provided a record of all file names that were changed in the unpacking process. Engineers then used CloudXplorer to upload the media files to Blob Storage and to change the modified files names, replacing underscores with colons.
At this point in the migration process, the SAG Awards website was fully functional on Windows and was retrieving all data (database data and media files) from the cloud.
Package and Deploy Drupal
There were two main challenges in packaging the SAG Awards website for deployment to Drupal: packaging a custom installation of PHP and creating the necessary startup tasks.
Because customizations were made to the PHP installation powering Drupal, engineers needed to package their custom PHP installation for deployment to Windows Azure. The other option was to rely on Microsoft's Web Platform Installer to install a "vanilla" installation of PHP and then write scripts to modify it on start up. Since it is relatively easy to package a custom PHP installation for deployment to Azure, engineers chose to go that route. (For more information, see Packaging a Custom PHP Installation for Windows Azure.)
The startup tasks that needed to be performed were the following:
- Configure IIS to use the custom PHP installation.
- Register the Service Runtime COM Wrapper (which played a role in the caching strategy).
- Put Drush (which was packaged with the deployment) in the PATH environment variable.
The final project structure, prior to packaging, was the following:
(Drupal files and folders)
Finally, the Windows Azure Memcached Plugin was added to the Windows Azure SDK prior to packaging so that memcache would run on startup and restart if killed.
The SAG Awards website was then packaged using cspack and deployed to Windows Azure through the developer portal.
The work in moving the SAG Awards Drupal website to the Windows Azure platform was an excellent example of Microsoft's commitment to supporting popular OSS applications on the Windows Azure platform. The collaboration between engineers from SAG and from Microsoft's Interoperability and Customer Advisory Teams resulted in a win for SAG (the SAG Awards website was able to handle sustained spikes in traffic that it could not handle previously) and in valuable lessons learned for the Windows Azure team about supporting migration and scalability of OSS applications on the Azure Platform.
Published at DZone with permission of Brian Swan, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

subset: commoncrawl


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Black Tundra/5th Gen 4Runner/FJ Cruiser Shift Knob - Automatic Transmission Only
CNC machined for a precise fit, with a unique installation method that allows for a solid mechanical attachment to your Tundra, 5th Gen 4Runner or FJ Cruiser. Simply unthread your plastic OEM knobs, and thread this solid aluminum knob on in its place using the included instructions. No adhesives, no fuss, no mess.
CUSTOM ETCHING: Please reply to the order confirmation email with an image or description (text with font) of what you would like. Ideal images are black and white and of high resolution. If no etching is specified via email or a checkout note, a blank shift knob (with no etching) will be shipped.
Popular etching choices include FJ, TRD, TEQ, PRO, 4R, TRAIL, and Distressed American Flag.
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Rating: Rated 12+
Platform: Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Date Published: Feb 21, 2017
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February 5th, 2013
The Bible Belt brouhaha over beer
By Tommy Andres, CNN
Montgomery, Alabama (CNN) – Despite the fact that it has been federally legal since 1979, there are still two U.S. states that don't allow residents to make beer in their own homes: Alabama and Mississippi.
The issue is expected to be one of the first to surface in Alabama's state legislature as lawmakers there head back to session this week, and a colorful standoff is likely.
Homebrew laws have failed to materialize for the past five years, with religion and morality arguments narrowly beating out the estimated 5,000 underground homebrewers in the state who say their civil liberties are on the line.
Listen to the full story in our player above or on CNN Radio Soundwaves
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About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.


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California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way, an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), pulled together pieces of great design which included Charles & Ray Eames's living room from their 1949 Case Study house. The museum moved all of the objects from the living room to the exhibit where they were set up.
If you haven't seen the documentary "Eames: The Architect and The Painter" you definitely should. There are more views of the house and insights into the lives of Charles and Ray. Also, catch more images of the original house and exhibit after the break.


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There's nothing better than a good Stephen King miniseries. "The Reaper" introduction from The Stand and the evil clown from It are illustrious beacons of classic King TV. Sadly, Pierce Brosnan's epic showdown with a tree in Bag Of Bones, airing this Sunday and Monday, is not quite in the same league.
All headline zingers aside, Bag Of Bones could have been a pretty fun piece of horror entertainment — but instead it's weighted down by its own cast of characters who have absolutely nothing to do with anything at all. Spoilers ahead...
Speckled Fox Pierce Brosnan plays the role of devoted husband and literary superstar Mike Noonan. We first meet Noonan finishing his next blockbuster novel. Like a hungry swallow, Noonan stands over his beloved wife (Annabeth Gish) fluffing his feathers and pecking at her cheek. She's been summoned to his side to type out the very last sentence of his novel. She asks Noonan why he always wants her to write the last line of his books? "Because these books, all of these books, he couldn't write them without her." So yeah, it's that kind of movie.
Fast forward many moons, and poor Jo is run down by a bus right outside Noonan's bestseller book signing. And if that wasn't convenient enough for you she's clutching a pregnancy test. Yada yada yada Pierce Brosnan makes a lot of crazy "Oh Noooooo" faces.
With his wife dead, Noonan is alone and miserable. His only comfort: an ipad which he mashes against his high cheekbones, while images of his beloved scroll across. Brosnan does a pretty good job being a miserable so-and-so... until he starts suspecting that his wife was cheating on him (because they couldn't get pregnant.) And that's a plot line which goes absolutely nowhere.
But for the most part (or at least the first half of the series) the misery is there and it's a strong narrative thread. Soon enough, his wife starts communicating with Noonan via phone rings and bell tings, "Once for Yes twice for no." After some back-and-forth ghostly banter and a few creepy nightmares Noonan heads to their cabin on Dark Score Lake. Thinking this is where his dead wife wants him to go, and that the cabin might help rid him of his intense writer's block. Sadly the writer's block misery portal in the original book is particularly difficult to depict on screen (which is understandable, since it's a highly internalized feeling). However we are a bit sad that most of this shame spiral and self-loathing brain battering was cut from the miniseries. Ah well — more time for ghosts.
While living at Dark Score, Lake Noonan immediately picks up with a single Mom and starts badgering the townsfolk to find out if his wife was cheating on him. Meanwhile the ghost of his wife keeps reaching out to Noonan about the devious deeds that happened on Dark Score Lake a long time ago. Noonan is hot on the trail of an old timey murder, which reveals the secret behind Dark Score Lake — and which has absolutely nothing to do with his wife at all (besides the fact that she knew about it). Enter the rest of the random townsfolk, including the evilest man ever to evil a wheelchair. And his ridiculous counterpart, Natasha from Bullwinkle. Character after character is paraded and executed across the screen, in attempt to build drama around the secret of Dark Score Lake and its problem with drowning little girls. Alas there are too many people, and not enough emotional attachment to heighten the final reveal. And it just spirals completely out of control from there.
The Good
First Contact: The first couple times Noonan's wife Jo reaches out from the great beyond gave us goosebumps. What could have been an exceptionally cheesy moment (Jo contacts him via fridge magnets) is actually pretty spooky when paired with the scratch, scratch, scratching noises each movement made. The first 30 minutes of ghostly activity are all pretty chilling.
Anika Noni Rose: She's a ghost with a dark past. Anika Noni Rose plays Sara Tidwell a singer from years gone by, her face and music haunt Noonan's dreams every night. Thankfully she's an amazing singer. Casting this songstress was a great win for Bag of Bones. If we're going to have to listen to the warbles of an old ghost, we're glad they sound this good.
Pierce Brosnan beats someone to death with a kitchen mallet. No, seriously — he chases this guy out of the kitchen and just beats the shit out of him with the meat-tenderizing mallet. It was awesome.
The Bad
Too many people, too little chemistry: Women are being flung at women at Noonan left and right. The character Mattie and Noonan start a relationship almost directly after meeting one another. It's too soon, why does he even like this woman, his wife just died? Random old white men gobble up screen time with little to no explanation as to who they are or why they are important. Then these old white men are even granted copious flashback time, but we haven't a bloody clue as to who these people are? Everyone looked the same and no one particularly stood out besides the head honcho villain. So when Noonan starts getting attacked by said old white men it's absolutely maddening to try and remember who these people are and why they're all so pissed.
Too Many Questions: The miniseries tries to juggle entirely too many questions. Here are just a few: Why was his wife pregnant? Was she cheating on him? Why is the "Green Lady" tree outside of the lake shaped so much like a woman? What is the curse of Dark Score Lake? Why is Pierce's brother American? Why is the "trunk book" so important to Noonan? If he has a book already done, why is he writing another and freaking out about the deadline? Who are all the dead kids? Why did the head villain exit the way he did? What sort of power is controlling the townsfolk of Dark Score Lake? What happened to Sara Tidwell?
Repetition: Repeating "with custody comes responsibility" may have worked in writing, but when characters just start prattling off nonsensical loaded sentences, the impact is pretty much null. This happens quite a bit throughout most of the miniseries.
Cartoony Villains: Oh boy. Look, King is a master at creating amazing villains. There is no soul too rotten, or action too terrible for a King creation. Sadly, Max Devore is less of an evil human being and more of a smiling long-toothed raptor, menacingly rubbing its tiny claws together. There's one scene where his sidekick, the evil white lady, actually starts throwing rocks at Noonan's head. Rocks. They belonged in the boardroom of the Muppet Movie, not a movie about drowned children.
Pierce Brosnan fights a tree.
Summing Up
If you enjoyed, the book you may be able to get by on the references alone — but if you're looking for a frightening look inside the horrifying world of writer's block, you should pass. The clunky ending and random bag of characters weigh down this miniseries (which may not be entirely the fault of the TV movie creators, since they didn't write the ending). If you enjoy King translations with a healthy helping of nacho cheese, this is the series for you.


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Important Things to Decide Before the Baby Is Born
- :familyeducation.com
- 831
Get extra help; decide who's in the delivery room
Physical Limitations
Make some advance preparations for the fact that you are going to have some physical limitations before and after the birth of your new baby.
Before the baby's birth, you will be extremely fatigued, due to hormonal changes and breaks in your sleep pattern, not to mention the fact that the size of your belly gets in the way of sleeping in a comfortable position. This would be a good time to get some extra help from family and friends if you want to clean the house or complete any projects.
Avoid any activities that could jeopardize your health or the health of your baby, meaning that you don't want to fall, be injured, or traumatize your body in any fashion. Use common sense in your activities because you will be less able to get around. Let family members know that they may have to pick up some of the slack here, say helping with the gardening, housework, shopping, or other chores.
Be sure to line up help for yourself after the baby is born; for example, it's a great time for grandparents to be useful and welcome. Work out a schedule so that you're covered for at least the first few weeks after delivery – the longer, the better. Believe me, you won't want to tackle those weeks alone.
Here are some areas of your life that will change after the baby is born:
- You'll be very, very tired and need more sleep than usual. Plan on having someone in to help watch the baby so that you can get caught up on sleep. The baby could be up every couple of hours to eat, making a good night's sleep downright impossible.(Get used to it – it's going to last 20 years, give or take....)
- You won't be able to do your normal workload and activities for a couple of weeks. For example, you shouldn't carry or lift more than the baby's weight (or less). Light housework and exercise are OK, as long as you have the time and energy to do them. Slowly and gradually, you can return to a normal lifestyle after about a month to six weeks, but in the first few weeks, you simply shouldn't be doing much of anything. You'll still be bleeding from the birth, and your stitches need time to heal.
- Obviously, you can cook, but picking up the phone and ordering out might have even more appeal. If you're lucky, friends and relatives will keep you supplied with food. The only problem with cooking (other than cleanup) is that standing in one place for any length of time isn't always comfortable after having a baby. (Sometimes, you feel as if your guts are still spilling out.)
- If you had a vaginal delivery, you probably shouldn't drive for a few weeks or so. Plan on having someone else drive you around. It's too easy to tear your stitches if you get into a tight situation and need to brake suddenly. If you had a c-section, you won't be allowed to drive for a month to six weeks. You'll need help grocery shopping too, in this case.
Who's In, Who's Out
Here is the most important question, and also the most avoided question of any pregnancy: Who will accompany you into the labor and delivery room?
OK, there are really two questions here: Who do you want to be there during labor and who do you want to be there during the delivery? The labor and delivery rooms are often two separate places, although in many hospitals, the labor and delivery rooms are one and the same spot now.
Determine in advance which people are invited to experience which areas. For example, you might have frequent visitors coming and going during your labor, but you don't want them around during the delivery. Having people around to watch the labor is one thing; having them there to experience the birth might be too personal for you. Or you might not want anyone to see you in the throes of labor and delivery. That's alright, too.
If you want to confine your birth experience to you and your spouse (plus a few doctors and nurses), that's perfectly normal. As you near the actual delivery time, you just need to send all unnecessary people into the waiting room, so that you can experience the birth alone. Just let your nurse know your plans in advance, and she'll be the bad guy for you.
In general, you will have to follow the guidelines of the labor and delivery department of the hospital that you choose, so the number of people in attendance is really up to them (and their policies). Because of this, it's wise to visit the hospital early, look around, and check out how everything functions, so you don't have any surprises when you arrive. If you have questions, ask them in advance. Usually, labor and delivery rooms are among the friendliest places in the hospital.
In this hierarchy, the nurses manage everything in terms of your care (not the doctors). You will end up loving these nurses (male or female) who track their patients' needs at all times and establish who belongs in the L&D room and who doesn't. If you tell a nurse that you don't want an estranged boyfriend or ex-husband to be present, the nurse will keep them out.
Generally, when it comes time for delivery, the optimum number of extra people in the room is about two, in addition to the patient. The reason being that the space is small, and there has to be enough room for the doctors and nurses to perform their functions. Although medical personnel are sensitive to the patient's need for a support person, keep in mind that their first priority is to their two patients – mother and child. Everyone else is incidental.
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Cats Have Been Walking All Over Us for Centuries
Medievalist Emir O. Filipovic was flipping through fifteenth century manuscripts at the State Archives in Dubrovnik, Croatia — your average light reading — when he came across something rather remarkable on one of the pages: Feline paw prints.
Filipovic's discovery lay dormant until it was picked up by book historian Erik Kwakkel, who was in turn brought to the attention of the public by "America's Veterinarian" Dr. Marty Becker.
"Has your cat ever walked across your keyboard?" asks Dr. Becker on his Facebook page, where the image has been shared thousands of times. "Well, it's not a new problem. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel recently Tweeted this photo of a 15th century book with... you guessed it... cat paw prints in ink on the pages! We're part of a long and glorious historical movement, friends."
As if you needed any additional proof that cats have always been assholes.


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28 September 1936 – 7 February 2011
I held her hand for hours,
Until I couldn't anymore,
I kissed her goodbye,
And covered her face.
She taught me to love,
I didn't believe I could,
A gentle touch, a soft tear,
A quiet cry in the night.
She taught me about courage,
Followed me to foreign lands,
Our infant child in her arms,
She couldn't speak the language.
She taught me diligence,
She learned the language,
In the streets and markets,
Without aid of a teacher.
She taught me compassion,
Servants cleaned and ironed,
She taught them how to sew,
Gifted each a sewing machine.
She taught me about beauty,
Children, animals, flowers,
And she gave me a glimpse,
Deep into her eternal soul.
She gave me a daughter,
Oh, what a glorious gift,
Together they taught me,
I too, am worthy of love.
And now, I have learned to cry.
Submitted by Robert Drynan
For more information about Lake Chapala visit: www.chapala.com
- March 2023 Issue - February 28, 2023
- March 2023 – Articles - February 28, 2023
- March 2023 - February 28, 2023


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This book was hard to tear myself away from. Its sincere tone and frightening story struck me so deeply that I had to put it down midway and go speak to my daughter about cyberbullying. Natalie's plight was hair-raising, and the fact that no one took her seriously until it was too late disturbed me greatly. There's something heartrending about reading a book in which the main character is being bullied unceasingly with nowhere to turn. I was so angry at Natalie's parents for forcing her to fend for herself at such a tender age. This left Natalie in the wind, fighting for her pride and reputation, alone.
When Natalie unearths a strange diary in the basement of her home, she decides that she'll uncover its secrets as her independent project for English class. But before she even opens the diary, she meets the lonely and very perceptive Kathleen Lynch. In revealing even the smallest part of her soul to Kathleen, Natalie and her diary become a subject of intense interest to the archivist. Kathleen is longing for the daughter that left her many years ago, and when she discovers the truth behind Natalie's reticence and fear, she resolves to save the child at all costs. There's an instant bond between the two, but Natalie is skittish and won't reveal everything to the woman who longs to be the hero to one lost girl.
Though Natalie is initially confused by the bullying, things get way out of hand in a very short time. There's nowhere to hide, and Natalie is powerless against the two girls who have targeted her. Again and again she tells her story, but the people who should save the day are hearing but not listening. This was maddening to me. The suffering of a young girl with nowhere to turn immediately made me think of all the children out there being bullied, secretly carrying this great weight of shame and abuse. The major crux of this story lies in the themes of trust. It's because Natalie can't fully trust Kathleen that things go horribly wrong for her. There is a great amount of gravity and tension in this story, and most of it centers around a victim's sense of shame and humiliation.
The final element to this story is the inclusion of the secret diary, written by an Irish maid in the 1900s. This is the life story of Bridget O'Connell, and the tragic and scandalous events that changed her life. Moore entwines this story with precision, making it not only a source of mystery and suspense in the narrative, but also the figurative glue that bonds Kathleen and Natalie together. Like the main narrative, it's also a cautionary tale, and left me greedily gulping the pages to find out what eventually happened to Bridget. It's a story within a story, and gifts the reader with a lot to think about and discuss.
This is a book that every parent needs to read. Not only is the narrative thoroughly addictive, the messages within are hugely important and relevant. Once I picked this book up, there was no stopping me until I had turned the final page and discovered the fate of the characters who were not only lifelike, but tenderly endearing. An important book that will hold you in its spell until you turn the final page. Highly recommended.
This book was provided as a complimentary review copy.


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You are currently browsing the daily archive for June 17, 2008.
I don't know. I have no one in mind to write about today. I have done some research, but am still drained from writing and learning so much about Anne Sullivan last week that I think I am scared to start another heroine entry. lol.
OK, I could not find one woman that motivated me to write, but I did find a group of awesome women to talk about, SWOOP (Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects).
SWOOP, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which began in September 1996 in the aftermath of Hurricane Fran in Raleigh, North Carolina.
According to their web site,
"Several friends emerged from their debris-strewn houses and yards and banded together to help each other clean up the mess. This group of women quickly discovered that, though the work was tough, they were totally invigorated by the power that they all felt from totally cleaning up a place that, when they arrived, had looked devastated.
After a couple of very full weekends of hurricane work, they decided that they enjoyed working together so much that they started "swooping in" to do outrageous one-day clean-up projects about once a month, and formally named themselves "SWOOP." Quickly becoming specialists in awesome hurricane clean-ups, their numbers grew as friends told friends, who told friends. From the original 16 women, SWOOP membership has grown to over 500 women from the Greater Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) and beyond. Since 1996, SWOOPers have branched out from hurricane clean-ups to major yard clean-ups, fence-building, painting, refurbishing, construction, deconstruction, and renovation for those individuals or agencies that SWOOP serves. "
These ladies are super fresh. They have done great things.
Here are two projects they have worked on,
"The Heads Up! Therapeutic Riding Program in Pittsboro, North Carolina, provides therapy to children and adults with special needs, using horses as dynamic interactive tools, to address impairments, functional limitations, and disabilities in people with neuromusculoskeletal dysfunction. The program had been given permission to ride on two adjoining tracts of land, but had no way to clear the trails that would make this possible. In February 2005, over 90 SWOOPers arrived at Heads Up! to clear the trails, and while there, also built a fence, made a playground, and refurbished the barn. This one-day project now allows Heads Up! riders and horses to get out of the riding ring and into terrain that provides greater stimulation, an important goal of the Heads Up! program.
Facing bankruptcy, Mary (not her real name) lacked the resources for necessary upkeep and repairs on her home. In April 2005, despite cold and rainy weather, nearly 70 SWOOPers descended on Mary's home to make extensive carpentry repairs, completely repaint the interior of her six-room home, clean up the yard, haul off junk, and remove yard waste. Mary was not in a position to accomplish any of these tasks, and no other organization would or could devote the sheer numbers of workers and time necessary to do the job. SWOOP paid over $600 for all of the necessary construction materials."
My mom and dad just moved to North Carolina. When I go see her next week I am going to tell her about it. She is about an hour from Raleigh I think…you never know!
Strong women rock!


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Lately, I've been wanting to go back to the tabletop roleplaying. I have a few restraints though:
- I know nobody who could play with me in my actual area.
- With a quite active social life, I don't have much time, and foremost, I don't have a (EDIT: fixed) time in the week where I can free myself.
- Budgetwise, I am quite limited, not that I have a friendly game shop in proximity.
I plan to bring the concept to my girlfriend, see if she is interested, but first I would like to get back into the swing of thing.
So what I'm searching is a tabletop experience where I could come and go when I can. I've heard of mail campaign, but I've also heard that they don't have much success.
As for the genre, it doesn't matter much, but if it helps reduce the scope of the question, I used to play DnD3.5 the most, but I've got also experience with other genres, so don't shy away of something on this account.
ADDENDUM: I can see that what I am trying to achieve is frowned upon here. So now a bit more of context: what I want to achieve is regaining my knowledge and mindstate I had when I used to play in school, so I could present roleplaying the best way possible to my girlfriend, and if she is not interested in playing with me (at which point I'm sure we would be able to find time during the week-end), at least have understanding and don't see it in a bad way. Because I made the big mistake to try to force another of my hobby (TCG) on her, and although she let me do it, she is barely tolerating it. But how to deal with that would be another question (that I plan to ask, if it hasn't been asked before), so I will stop with the exposition here. To summarize, my goal is to ease me back into my roleplayer mindset, so I would be able to anticipate all question I would get.
ADDENDUM 2: A few more information: I live in Germany, and I'm pretty sure that organized play is not well developed in my corner of Germany. (I don't ask for you to find me something, I know it is off-topic)


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The first time I saw Dragon's Dogma, I thought that the creators of the recent Devil May Cry sequels were making a mash-up of God of War and The Elder Scrolls. And I thought that that was a bad idea, a bad use of the labor of the largest development team to ever create a game for Capcom.
The first time I played Dragon's Dogma, about four or five hours after I first saw it, weathering the dreary slowdown of a brief, rough demo, I discovered a game that feels fresh, that feels like a wonderful risk.
The game's top creators call it, "the greatest action game we've ever made" and "the type of game I've been wanting to make since I was in junior high."
It felt to me like the game that could make me feel like a great warrior-boss, the leader of a sword-and-sorcery fellowship, the captain of a crew of Dungeons and Dragons heroes, a man whose minions can help him topple great mythological beasts.
Dragon's Dogma is an early 2012 epic from director Hideaki Itsuno and producer Jiroyuki Kobayashi, who both led development on Devil May Cry 3 and 4. They've been planning the game for three years, making it for the last two, trying to create an open-world action game that Kobayashi believes is the best action game Capcom has ever created.
Capcom set up a countdown clock for the game last week, a clock that counts down to today. But last week in Miami Kobayashi and Itsuno were already showing the game in advance to reporters like me, who had to hold our impressions until now.
Their new game puts players in control of a male or female medieval hero who can be a strider, mage or fighter. The strider, who we were shown and who I later played, uses daggers for close combat and arrows at range. The hero gets four party members, all computer-controlled, who go to battle with him. Their adventure occurs in the rolling hills and amid the grand castles of a fantasy world full of ogres, dragons and cities full of merchants. At the beginning of the game, a dragon is reborn and forms some sort of bond with the lead character. That dragon is "whispering to his heart," Itsuno said through a translator, "'I need you to come to me. I need your services.'"
"[This is] the type of game I've been wanting to make since I was in junior high."
We didn't see the dragon in the interactive part of Dragon's Dogma on display in Miami. We got to see a fight against a griffin, a massive lion with the head and wings of an eagle. First, I saw the developers fight it. They started out in the countryside, briskly using their hero to kill a bunch of human-sized ogre enemies before the griffin swooped in for an attack.
Kobayashi is right to call this an action game and downplay any visual similarity it may have to fantasy role-playing games such as Oblivion. There is no evident math to the combat; it's all real-time swinging of sword, aiming of bow and casting of spells. You have heavy and light attacks and a grab move good for restraining an enemy or climbing onto a giant beast in order to crawl over it stab its weakest spots. The longer you prepare your attacks and spells, the more potent they are, he explained. Each character has special moves, such as the archer's charged arrow shot and his or her ability to rain arrows on one spot a few yards ahead. So in this one Dragon's Dogma fight shown in Miami, the strider hero, aided by a trio of computer-controlled minions, or "pawns," fought as a crew. The mage set up a healing spell limited to those standing inside a ring of magic encircling him. One of the other minions lifted an ogre enemy's carcass to use it as bait for the griffin.
The player can give some directions to the pawns, but they mostly do stuff for themselves — and they like to shout suggestions. Those suggestions are shouted through the TV's speakers and filled the left-hand side of the TV during the demo. As the developers played and the griffin battle intensified, I transcribed each shouted pawn comment, which you'd best read vigorously aloud without pausing, to get the full effect:
"Fall still!"'
"Take the offensive!"
"Don't let them surround you."
"Fall still!
"I'll draw it near."
"Aim for their backs."
"Take the offensive."
"Slay them one by one!"
"Be healed."
"Take the offensive."
"I'll draw it near."
"Fall still."
"I'll aim for its wings."
"I'll aid you at once."
It was at the moment when I completed those notes that my optimism for this game reached its nadir.
I would have to play that griffin battle to understand its potential. When you're in control, the pawns' words are annoying — due to be dialed back, a Capcom rep said — but they are also helpful. The fight against the ogres, which turns into the fight against the griffin is hectic. There are ogres everywhere and your allies, as best they can, are trying to help set up the best strategies to win the fight. The shouting mage is alerting you that he just cast a healing spell and that you can rush to him for a recharge. The pawn yelling that you should "aim for their backs" is wrestling with an ogre and ready for you to rush up behind and level a killing blow. The sense I got was that this was my team, that these people worked for me and were doing their best to support me to victory. They identified the griffin's weakness — its wings — and then started trying to toss fire at it. They held up an ogre body to draw the griffin to them. One of the pawns crouched down and exhorted me to run to her so she could launch me in the air, and, at the height of my jump, I just barely missed grabbing the griffin's foot. It would have been great if I did.
I envy the millions of people in Japan who enjoy Monster Hunter. These people know the pleasure of teaming up with just a few friends to slay a big monster. It struck me that the griffin battle in Dragon's Dogma was a single-player simulation of that. It's faster paced than a Monster Hunter, but it is designed to evoke the same thrill of a band of heroes slaying a larger foe.
The game isn't all monster-fighting. We're not always tackling the biggest beasts. Itsuno told me that the pawn system is the biggest new thing in Dragon's Dogma. It's a more complex element than simply having a trio of partner characters. You can recruit the best ones from town and send them on missions to gather intelligence, affecting what you'll know. They're also the feature I'm most optimistic about. They declined to say how, if at all, the pawn system will support multiplayer, but it doesn't appear that players can band together in Dragon's Dogma for co-op. Itsuno promised some other "spin" on multiplayer.
Dragon's Dogma includes more conventional elements. It has a town full of up to 200 non-player characters, some of whom will improve your weapons or revive your health. Beyond the town the game is supposed to be open-world, which means that just as you run your way to one mission you may be distracted by an enemy attack on some other town and run to it to be the savior there instead. The game's got a day-night cycle, with new enemies showing up when it gets dark. I'm not sure how grand the game will actually be. The developers boasted that any place you see on the game world's horizon is a place you can visit, but when they zoomed out above the game's castle town, for example, it appeared to be maybe twice as big as Ezio's villa in Assassin's Creed II, the full game world we were shown grander than that but not, say, as vast as the terrain of Red Dead Redemption.
While many action games are about being a hero or anti-hero, Dragon's Dogma appears to be a stab at creating a game that lets the player feel like a leader. It doesn't seem like it's intended to make us feel like a king but rather like the best knight in a band of chatty monster-slayers. That's an experience worth watching develop, especially if it's the biggest game Capcom's ever made.


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Crown Royal De Luxe
Review: Crown Royal De Luxe Canadian Whisky 83.5/100
a review by Chip Dykstra (Aka Arctic Wolf)
February 04, 2016
Crown Royal®Canadian Whisky is currently produced in Gimli, Manitoba, at the Crown Royal Distillery. The distillery and the brand are owned by the global spirits conglomerate Diageo, and I think it is fair to say that Crown Royal is Diageo's flagship Canadian whisky. The brand was introduced in 1939 (by Samuel Bronfman of Seagrams) as a special whisky bottling to commemorate the Royal Tour of Canada by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth who traveled across the Country by train that year. (Apparently, the train carrying the Royal Couple was stocked with 10 cases of the new Crown Royal Blend.) Until 1964, the whisky was only available in Canada; however, today it is available world-wide, and is in fact the number one Canadian whisky brand sold in Canada and the USA by value. (I believe Canadian Club is still the number one brand in Canada by volume.)
Crown Royal De Luxe is the company's flagship brand said to be blended from 50 selected whiskies. These selected whiskies are made from milled corn, rye and malted barley, and aged in a mixture of seasoned and new white oak barrels. The final blended whisky is bottled at 40 % alcohol by volume.
In the Bottle 4.5/5
Crown Royal De Luxe Whisky has a rather unique crown shaped bottle which makes it immediately noticeable on my liquor shelf. The bottles are sometimes sold in a nice royal blue box with a royal blue/purple cloth bag with golden drawstrings that the bottle can be placed inside. The presentation is topped with a gold coloured cap which also is shaped like a crown.
In the Glass 8.5/10
The whisky is a vibrant amber colour in my glass. When I tilt and twirl my glencairn I see only a light sheen of whisky on the inside of the glass with small droplets forming at the crest. It takes only a little while for slender legs to fall.
In the past this blend was very corn forward, it seems that this year (2016) more rye is apparent as breezes above the glass reveal a mixture of both corn and obvious rye grain. There is a nice mixture of lightly sweet caramel and oak sap melding into those corn and rye scents with some dusty dry wood and grain spices following.
In the Mouth 50/60
The whisky is a little soft and buttery in the mouth. I taste a light butterscotch sweetness complimented by an accompanying rye-like bitterness. The two opposing facets of flavour work very well together. There is an underlying dankness of corn, and we also taste accents of oak spices, vanilla, a touch of cinnamon, and a light marzipan. Adding a bit of ice to the glass reveals some nice underlying chocolate flavours.
In previous visits to the flagship Crown Royal whisky, I would have begun with cola rather than with ginger ale as my initial mixing soda. This is because corn works well with cola, and rye works well with ginger-ale (at least for me). This time however, my inclination is to go with the ginger-ale. The result is a nice bar drink, I could happily sip on my back deck this summer (see down below). Of course, Crown and Coke is delicious as well.
In the Throat 12/15
The finish is short and brings a light burn to the back of the palate and throat. The exit flavours are lightly sweet toffee followed by white pepper. With ice added, I begin to taste more chocolate.
The Afterburn 8.5/10
Crown Royal Seems to have improved over the last six years. I found that over ice I could happily sip the spirit, although it is true that I will be adding ginger ale or cola more often than not.
You may read some of my other Whisky Reviews (click the link) if you wish to have some comparative reviews.
Suggested Serving:
Crown Royal Whisky Splash
2 oz Crown Royal De Luxe
2 or 3 Large Ice-cubes
Splash of Ginger-ale
Slice of Lime
Add the Ice-cubes to a rocks glass
Pour the Whisky over the ice
Add a splash of Ginger Ale
Garnish with a lime slice
Note: If you are interested in more of my original cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!
As always you may interpret the scores I provide as follows.
0-25 A spirit with a rating this low would actually kill you.
26-49 Depending upon your fortitude you might actually survive this.
50 -59 You are safe to drink this…but you shouldn't.
60-69 Substandard swill which you may offer to people you do not want to see again.
70-74 Now we have a fair mixing rum or whisky. Accept this but make sure it is mixed into a cocktail.
75-79 You may begin to serve this to friends, again probably still cocktail territory.
80-84 We begin to enjoy this spirit neat or on the rocks. (I will still primarily mix cocktails)
85-89 Excellent for sipping or for mixing!
90-94 Definitely a primary sipping spirit, in fact you may want to hoard this for yourself.
95-97.5 The Cream of the Crop
98+ I haven't met this bottle yet…but I want to.
Very loosely we may put my scores into terms that you may be more familiar with on a Gold, Silver, and Bronze medal scale as follows:
70 – 79.5 Bronze Medal (Recommended only as a mixer)
80 – 89.5 Silver Medal (Recommended for sipping and or a high quality mixer)
90 – 95 Gold Medal (Highly recommended for sipping and for sublime cocktails.)
95.5+ Platinum Award (Highest Recommendation)
8 Responses to "Crown Royal De Luxe"
December 9, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Have you tried/reviewed Crown Royal Black yet? I have had it several times and would like to know what you thought of it.
July 19, 2010 at 11:25 am
Actually CR makes a Limited Edition, the bottle is engraved instead of a sticker slapped onto the bottle, I ended up with a couple bottles of the Limited Edition, and I have to say it was very good. For some reason its not sold in the U.S…
August 27, 2010 at 10:31 am
From time to time you can find it on ebay…..just go to ebay and search crown royal limited edition whisky.
December 12, 2011 at 7:48 am
You can find Crown Royal Limted Edition in stores. At least in Alberta.
- December 12, 2011 at 7:48 am
- August 27, 2010 at 10:31 am
March 11, 2010 at 10:05 am
Has anyone tried the Crown Royal Limited edition? I see one bottle on ebay!


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Mimicking nuclear reactor damage is goal of $5 M grant
A new $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will enable University of Michigan engineering researchers to advance the understanding of how radiation damages nuclear reactor components.
The work could enable engineers to predict when and how components in nuclear power reactors will wear out, which would help them to keep reactors running safely and efficiently. It could also speed up the testing of tougher new materials for advanced reactor.
The researchers will determine how well damage from ion beams in the laboratory mirrors the actual damage that reactor components sustain during decades of service. An ion beam is a beam of electrically charged atoms, accelerated with electric fields.
"If we're going to build advanced reactors or operate today's reactors beyond their license lifetimes, we need to solve some materials problems," said Gary Was, the Walter J. Weber Jr. Professor of Sustainable Energy, Environmental and Earth Systems Engineering, who heads the project. "France, Britain, Russia, Japan, they all have the same concern—how do materials behave at these very high radiation doses?"
The collaboration comprises national laboratories, industrial partners and universities in the U.S. and overseas, with about $9 million in funding from all sources.
Today, researchers don't have an efficient way to mimic the radiation damage that current reactor components have sustained or the high damage expected in advanced reactor designs. It would take current test reactors 10 to 20 years to simulate those effects. But ion beams can reach a similar radiation dose in just a few days.
"The benefit is a huge reduction in time and cost that will enable much faster development of materials for nuclear reactors," Was said.
But is that damage the same?
"That is the million-dollar question," he said.
The collaboration is counting on a new 'triple beam' facility at U-M to provide answers. The sample is held in a chamber that can recreate the temperature and pressure conditions inside a reactor and hit with three ion beams.
One beam will bombard the test material with atoms that match its composition, for instance, iron atoms on a steel alloy. This produces most of the structural changes. At the same time, the two other accelerators hit the material with hydrogen and helium, small atoms that are produced inside reactor components. As they accumulate, these atoms can cause bubbles to form inside the material and make it more susceptible to cracking.
Meanwhile, matching samples will be exposed to radiation in an advanced fast reactor in Dimitrovgrad, Russia. By comparing the microscopic structural changes in the beam-damaged and reactor-damaged materials, the collaboration will attempt to identify a method for faithfully reproducing reactor damage with ion beams.
Provided by University of Michigan


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MONTREAL—It was a moment of triumph for a group of McGill University students, who won a $1 million prize for social entrepreneurship handed out by Bill Clinton.
But the moment was more bitter than sweet for one student.
He was forced to watch from a distance, via Internet webcast, as his former allies rubbed shoulders with the former U.S. president.
Jakub Dzamba claims he was intellectually robbed.
Dzamba, a McGill University student, who is still involved in a dispute with the five-member MBA winning team, says it was sad to watch from afar as the group won the 2013 Hult competition grand prize for a nutrition project.
"It would have been really nice to get to meet Bill Clinton," Dzamba said Tuesday in an interview. "That was kind of a dream."
The Hult competition is described on its website as the world's largest student competition to solve social challenges, like helping to feed the urban poor. Winners use the prize money as seed capital, and get mentorship and advice from the international business community.
More than 10,000 students, representing more than 150 countries around the world, usually take part.
This year's challenge was to create a social enterprise that can secure food for undernourished communities, particularly for the 200 million people who live in urban slums.
The winning project by the team from McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management involves the production, processing and promotion of insects for human consumption.
According to a recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, insects are eaten by more than 2 billion people worldwide.
Team members received the award from Clinton in New York City on Monday night.
Dzamba, who was watching a webcast on his computer, says he worked with the team — and it was his slides and his presentation that were initially used when it won the semi-finals.
But then, he says, the team severed ties with him, took credit for his work, and hasn't offered compensation.
"They ended up taking credit for my work and didn't compensate me in any way for my work," Dzamba said, pointing out that he helped get the team to the finals.
"The team removed the technology that I created for them, removed all the graphics I did and they hired new people to do new technology and new things for them, which is OK, I guess, but I was the guy they relied on to get them through the semi-finals."
He says a group of McGill associate deans and a commercialization officer got involved and decided that the team should pay him $5,300 for the work he had done.
But there was a dispute over a release statement, which he called a "gag order," and it was never signed.
Dzamba, 31, says he first started working on the idea of using insects for food at the University of Toronto in 2009 and got into a PhD program at McGill to work specifically on developing insect farming.
The university says it's "enormously proud" of the winning team, and of the other students hoping to change the world for the better.
In a statement, McGill vice-principal Olivier Marcil said the university has investigated the matter, proposed a resolution, and still hopes for a settlement.
Marcil said that in a university environment many ideas bubble up at the same time and, while there are occasional conflicts, much of the time those ideas reinforce each other and wind up helping people.
He said McGill has verified that the Hult presentation does not include any reference to the portable cricket farm designed by Dzamba.
The winning team also issued a statement on the dispute.
"As of mid-March 2013 we ceased using any of Jakub's contributions," it said. "We provided the university with the slide-deck of the final presentation for the Hult Prize and they have confirmed it does not include any reference to the portable cricket farm design described in the provisional patent application filed by the university (with Mr. Jakub Dzamba as sole inventor).
"It is our intention to compensate Jakub for his work as a past consultant and we are happy to give him credit for this contribution (though these contributions were not a factor in our regional win and were not included in our final presentation)."


text: [Lauren] has created a facial conditioning device dubbed the Happiness Hat. The hat measures a sensor at the wearer's cheek to determine if the wearer is smiling. When the hat does detects the wearer is not smiling, it activates a servo that prods the wearer. This project is fairly unique in that it provides haptic bio-feedback of what the body is doing, a similar project to the Happillow. While the Happiness Hat seems to work for treating the outward symptoms of unhappiness, this is but an early step towards the droud.


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Tetons from Signal Mountain Campground
The massif of Mount Moran rises above Jackson Lake. This was the view we got from the end of our campsite near Signal Mountain in Grand Teton NP.
Mount MoranGrand Teton National ParkJackson Lake
Old Moulton Barn
The old Moulton Barn in Mormon Row is about as iconic a subject as you can get in the Tetons. I wanted to give it a bit of something else, so this one is done in an oil painting style and during the day with stormy clouds, rather than at sunrise and in HDR.
Moulton BarnMormon RowGrand Teton National Parkhistoric
Teton Sunset
Beautiful alpenglow over the Teton Range. I waited many more nights to get another scene with the alpenglow like this, but this was the one and only time I saw it over the Tetons.
alpenglowTetonsGrand Teton National Parkmountainsevening
Hanging Lake 4
Hanging Lake 3
Hanging Lake 2
Hanging Lake 1
Waterfall in Glenwood canyon
Hummingbird at feeder
Edited in water colour style
Maroon Bells 3
Maroon Bells 2
Maroon Bells 1
Aspens 2
Aspens 1
Lumpy Ridge Storm
Tetons 15
A car drives along the Teton park road with the Teton range towering in the distance.
Gem lake, Estes Park
Fern Lake Fisherman 2
Fern Lake Fisherman 1
Tetons 14
Cool old guy with a great beard and dreadlocks.
Tetons 13
Bannack State Park with full moon rising
Bannack State Park building detail
Bannack State Park jail
Bannack State Park jail detail
Woman in jail
Bannack State Park building and tree
Amphitheater Lake
Surprise Lake
Bannack State Park
Avalanche Creek 2
Avalanche Creek 1
Lake MacDonald
Dead trees and live trees make a stark contrast in Glacier National Park. The trees here died in the huge "Robert Fire" in 2003.


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Ever since MLB.com debuted the fantasy baseball style game 'Beat the Streak' back in 2001, fans all around the country have been doing their very best to pick up some cash, while at the same time "beating" Joe DiMaggio's hit streak of 56 games. With a 57-game hit streak of sorts needed to beat the streak and claim the money ($10,000 being the top prize back in 2001), fans have developed all kinds of strategies that they felt certain would help them win the game.
But no one has done it yet — in fourteen years.
Truly incredible when you think about it, that not one person has even come close to winning 'Beat the Streak', with a fan back in 2007 coming the closest of anyone, amassing a hit streak of 49 games. And therefore, since 2001, MLB.com has upped the prize money. For the past several years, the top prize for breaking the hit streak has been 5.6 million dollars (yes, MILLION). That's a pretty good prize for a free online baseball game.
The rules of the game are fairly straight forward: Pick up to two players a day that you think are the most likely to get a hit. If the player(s) you selected get a hit, your streak climbs. If, however, your player — or either player, if you pick two in a day — doesn't get a hit, your streak falls all the way back down to zero. That can be discouraging, especially if you were in a groove and had a good streak going; making this a fun, but somewhat stressful, and seemingly impossible, game to play.
Nonetheless, MLB.com is doing its very best to help someone win the game. Debuting last season was a Dunkin Donuts mulligan, which you could use only once throughout the entire season, but that saved any streak lower than 10, should your chosen player not get a hit. This season, they increased it to a 15-game hit streak, and that could possibly make the mulligan an even bigger help.
But you don't necessarily have to come close to beating the streak to win some sort of prize. For the first time, the game is offering scratch off cards (electronic ones) that give you the chance of winning MLB game tickets, Dunkin' Donuts gift cards, MLB.TV subscriptions, merchandise and much more. With all the possible prizes and neat stuff you can get, this year's 'Beat the Streak' could turn out to be the best one yet.
While the odds may seem slim, they're actually your best odds to win this amount of money. It's not easy to win 'Beat the Streak' by any means, but with your odds of winning 5.6 million dollars being less than one in a million, by many accounts, you stand a better chance of winning this game than you do your local lottery. (Unlike the lottery, where you get one shot, you get multiple chances in a game for your player to get a hit. )
So give it a shot. It doesn't cost anything, so you have nothing to lose. And who knows, maybe, with a little luck, you'll be the first person ever to beat the streak and take home the money. That's definitely worth playing for.


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Judge backs funeral protest law in Missouri county
Law prohibits protest within 300 feet of funeral
The Associated Press
ST. LOUIS, MO. — A federal judge has ruled in favor of St. Charles County's limits on protests outside funerals.
The law is aimed at keeping away protesters such as those from Westboro Baptist Church, the Topeka-based church that often protests at funerals for members of the military.
U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig on Tuesday sided with St. Charles County, near St. Louis. The law prohibits protests within an hour and within 300 feet of a funeral or burial service.
Plaintiffs from Westboro Baptist had claimed that enforcement of the ordinance violated their First Amendment rights and Missouri's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They filed the suit soon after the law was passed in December 2010.


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Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Thursday. Here are a few of our favourite things from the Internet this week:
Margaux: I went to an event recently, an informal award ceremony at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. The K.M. Hunter Artist Awards were recognizing my friend Jean Marshall's work along with 7 other recipients. The people who received the grants were awarded out of the blue – nothing fancy, no applications, no parades, no advertisements. The night was structured around pretty great and simple short videos of each of the recipients talking about their work and somehow, as my mother would say, there was no B.S. – everyone seemed to know what they were doing. The video of my friend featured her first Skype conversation since she's from way up north. All in all, a real classy way of going about an art award.
I love this art book by Richard William Hill, The World Upside Down, lent to me by the curator Michelle Jacques. As Hill explains inside: "The term 'world upside down' has its origins in Europe's Middle Ages, and I have taken the liberty, as an enthusiastic amateur, of attempting an account of inversion in the visual arts of the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods." There are many confident and recklessly perfect things inside, one of which is a discussion on tricksters that involves Chery L'Hirondelle. As L'Hirondell says there, "that spirit (the trickster) is there to remind us that many social parameters are just man-made, are not of the natural order."
This is a pretty interesting audio interview about hearing voices in the evangelical community – "'When God Talks Back' To The Evangelical Community"
Good art shows ended and in process in Toronto: I loved some of the new work from Derek Mainella at Neubacher Shor Contemporary. Jenn Murphy has an art show on now at Clint Roenisch gallery, Monkey's Recovery, that I have no doubt will be pretty great to be in the middle of.
Chris: Here's the pointillist form letter that rejected would-be contributors to Raw magazine received. "Impossible to reproduce / should not be allowed to reproduce."
As someone who hates the word "foodie" even more than the bovine fetishism it denotes, I appreciate the fake menus a mystery comedian handed out at Brooklyn's "Great GoogaMooga" festival (this orthography!) last weekend.
Carl: I have been distressed about our country this week. For just one example of why, listen to what a former government scientist has to say. On the other hand, I have been inspired by what our young, red-squared, francophone compatriots in Quebec have achieved, bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to protest their province's drift away from its social-democratic traditions and, subsequently, its attempt to curtail their rights to protest. If you've gotten a less positive impression, here are 10 points you should know.
On a lighter (but raspier) note, I had an animated conversation at a dinner party last night about the apparent speech trend called "vocal fry," aka "creaky voice," especially among young women, about which there was much pop-science chatter early this year. Today I stumbled on a terrific blog about speech that has a more in-depth examination of the phenomenon's precedents, prevalence and implications, from Britney to Gene Pitney. I did like the theory that we came up with last night, though – that, among people with parents and elder siblings likely afflicted with at least traces of Uptalk, it's probably a typical generational reaction-for-distinction.


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At 3:15 am, I hear the annoying harp song on my phone, which might as well be screaming, "Get up! Get up! Get up!" I tap the snooze button. Seven minutes later, the song chimes again. I swipe the cover to quiet the annoying ding ding ding and stumble into my bathroom.
An hour later, I'm driving South on the Dallas North Tollway listening to a fascinating discussion about paranormal activity.
I arrive at the airport, pass through the very slow moving security line, and head straight for the Starbucks line which closely resembles the line I waited in for New Kids on the Block tickets when I was twelve…but coffee and NKOTB are totally worth my time. The rich familiar scent keeps me focused on my goal, and though the line is long, I will persevere.
As I wait, I scan the room, observing the other travelers. I watch the business men and women in their pressed suits, hurriedly strolling through their smart phones. I recognize the families with young children obviously on vacation. When I see a dad and his two daughters, both with ratty uncombed hair and mismatched clothes, I wonder if it's a long distance joint custody situation and if he has to say goodbye to them. My heart tugs a little when I imagine that goodbye and then replace those little girls' faces with my own children's. I offer him a small smile and a cock of the head. I wordlessly say, "I understand. Today will suck." I could be wrong. They could be going to Disney World, but my melancholy mood says otherwise.
I think about last month when my dear friend lost her son in a car accident. His father flew out on the red eye, just as I'm doing, and I wonder how horribly long that morning was for him. I wonder what the other passengers must have felt as they sat near a man who had just received the worst news of his life.
I see the dad and his daughters again and share another smile. "Cherish them," my smile says.
I check my watch every so often shocked at how quickly the time passes, and internally growl that I still am not enjoying my delicious Grande Cinnamon Dulce Latte. I'm at the airport, so calories don't count. (My trip. My rules.) I watch as they start boarding my flight. What once was a very crowded terminal now resembles more of a ghost town. I'm next in line. I look at my watch one more time, fifteen minutes to takeoff. There is no way that I can order, sign my credit card slip, get my coffee, and still make my flight, and I must make this flight. I sigh with defeat, duck out of the line, and run to catch my plane. Last one on, but I make it…sans coffee.
I settle into my window seat, and right on schedule, at 6:00 am, the wheels pull up, and the plane begins its ascension into the sky. I watch the pillow soft clouds build below me and take out my book to distract me for the next hour of my flight. The flight attendant brings me a coffee. I sip it, and before long, I hardly notice its bitterness.
An hour later, the flight lands. I have a front row seat, so I'm first off the plane. I dash through the airport in search of a Starbucks or anything at this point that serves caffeine. I find a little cafe and stand behind a man who immediately annoys me. I can blame my irritation on my caffeine withdrawal, but no. This guy. He wears his sunglasses inside, walks with a hipster stagger, and looks me up and down. He might be attractive if he would take off his sunglasses and stop trying so hard. I just glare at him. He nods, give me a crooked grin and turns around to order his somethingstupidandannoying iced coffee. Then he says to the barista as he signs his credit card slip, (and I swear to God this is true) "I wrote a little somethin-somethin in there for you, girl." I'm pretty sure he hears my eyes roll because he turns around and looks at me again. I watch him for a minute trying to make eye contact from behind his shades. My mind goes somewhere between a good toe-punch and a hot coffee bath, which makes me smile. I curse my tell all face because when I smile, he takes it as an invitation for conversation. "You flyin' in or out?" He asks.
"In," I say expressionless.
I order my coffee which forces me to stand next to him.
"You don't have any luggage. Day trip?"
"Yes," I say expressionless. Of course the coffee pot decides now to be empty.
We stand there for a minute. Apparently he dares to disturb the sound of silence.
"Whatchoo in town for, girl?"
I shake my head. I'll be damned if I tell this asshat why I'm travelling.
"Your coffee, ma'am." The sweet timid barista saves the day.
I grab my coffee and practically sprint away from the cafe toward the exit.
But why am I travelling?
Because The Cycle has begun again, and this time it's worse than ever. My mother sits in a psychiatric hospital where she isn't getting better, and her doctors have called a family meeting to discuss her case and told my dad that they need as many of her children there as possible.


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- – 40 pages (20 sheets) lined or blank
- – Click Bind TM binding allowing to remove the pages quickly and easily
- – Entirely manufactured in Switzerland
- – Eco-Friendly FSC certified paper
- – Soft Touch cover
A5 (148 mm x 210 mm)
- – WhyNote A5 notebook
- – Dry erase correctable pen
- – Pen holder sticker
CLEANING KIT (available separately)
- – Spray bottle
- – Sponge
- – Microfibre cloth
The WhyNote Book is both environmentally friendly and practical. Real pocket whiteboard, this reusable notebook allows you to erase at will. Stop to the waste of paper!
Its Swiss Made manufacturing ensures a local production with quality and respect for the environment.
This way, the WhyNote Book considerably reduces its ecological footprint, whether for transport or for the control of selected materials for its production.


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Thanksgiving is a few days away. Can I help you up from the floor? There is a reason why it has crept up so fast. November 22nd is the earliest date possible. The holiday is always celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month. Every once in a while, another Thursday sneaks in. The good news (and you can usually count on me for that), is there are also five weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Yay!
That means we will have several extra days to prepare for the holidays.
There will be…
…time for shopping.
…time for family traditions.
…time for baking.
…time to take a break from our regular activities.
…time for making new friends.
…time for outdoor fun.
…time for decorating.
…time for… Hey, wait! I still need to make this year's family Christmas card. I'll take some photos at Thanksgiving, work up an idea and then maybe I won't struggle to get the cards out before the holidays.
Will I create another extremely time-consuming pop-up card? We'll see. All I know is this year at Thanksgiving, I will be especially grateful for the extra weekend since we have five of them until Christmas!
How I created last year's card
We are still in the midst of birthday week!
Illustrations and photos by Susie Lindau
What will you do with the extra time?


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Here it is — the first beautiful glimpse of the space utopia from Neill Blomkamp's next movie, Elysium. Over at the Elysium Comic-Con booth, a plastic space real estate agent is selling off plots of land in the future space station of the same name. A Sunrise Terrace on Elysium starts in the "low" $250,000,000s. Behind a creepy Johnny Cab-like creation is a collection of beautiful pictures, showing off the circular station. Take a look at the floating haven for the future super-rich in Blomkamp's new movie below.
For those of you unaware, here's a short run-down of the movie:
Set in the year 2159, where the very wealthy lives on a man-made space station while the rest of population reside on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.
The booth also directs folks to www.itsbetteruphere.com, which leads to this old Armadyne ad, showing off mad scientists running wacky experiments inside sterile labs. More to come when we see the panel this Friday!