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The Importance of the Ordinary Instant in the Recruiting Process
Half a decade ago, Joan Didion wrote a book called The Year of Magical Thinking. In the very first chapter, she offers this extraordinary passage: "Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant." She was talking about momentous changes—life and death events—but I think the wisdom of her words applies to recruiting, as well.
Our recruiting processes are made up of thousands of ordinary instants. They are so … well, so normal and banal, we don't even think about them. They are simply a part of the passage of our day, and we shoulder past them with hardly a by your leave.
And I believe that's wrong. I think Didion is on to something. We know the critical moments in our lives are important and we pay close attention to them. But, it turns out, even the hum-drum instants, those that seem to shrink in the face of our pressures and urgencies—they too—can shape the outcome of our day. Trivial as they may seem, ordinary instants exert an impact far greater than their modest countenance.
How is that so?
First, there are many more ordinary instants than there are momentous ones. Their sheer volume makes it likely that at least some—and often many more than we think—will influence the course of what we do.
Second, ordinary instants can and often do lull us into a kind of carelessness. We are so busy attending to the really BIG stuff in our day that the little moments gets ignored and can fester into their own version of a really BIG problem.
And third, ordinary instants for one person can be earth-shattering moments for another. We each bring our own sensibilities and perspectives to our experience, so what seems like just another point in time to us can be a profound event—a tipping point, to borrow a phrase—for those we are trying to recruit.
What are these ordinary instants?
They are the tiny intersections we have with candidates as they move through our recruiting processes. They include (but are clearly not limited to):
* The very first thing we show a person when the career area on our Web-site opens;
* The process we require candidates to follow when applying for a posted job;
* The way we greet candidates when beginning a telephone interview;
* The communication we use to schedule a candidate for a face-to-face interview;
* The kind of reception we give candidates when they arrive for their interview;
* The follow-up interaction we have with candidates after their interview.
These are ordinary instants to us, but to candidates they are moments of magic, monotony or misery. And two of those outcomes undermine our success.
What should you do to guard against the negative outcomes?
Audit the ordinary instants in your recruiting process. Put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker—or better yet, talk to those who have actually been through the process—and evaluate the caliber of the ordinary instants you're giving them. Are they carefully designed to optimize the candidate's experience or have they been so ignored and taken for granted that they are actually undermining it?
If a common, everyday moment in time has the power to change life, as Didion suggested, then it can certainly influence the opinions of your candidates. So, transform your ordinary instants into extraordinary passages that create powerfully positive impressions on all those who pass through them. Surprise your candidates by installing magic where everyone else offers the mundane or downright miserable.
Thanks for reading,
Visit my blog at Weddles.com/WorkStrong
Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.
© Copyright 2010 WEDDLE's LLC. All Rights Reserved.


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Today's News: Our Take - Cirque Du Soleil Performer Falls and Dies During Performance Accident
A Cirque Du Soleil performer died during a performance on Satuday night, People reports.
Sarah (Sassoon) Guyard fell 50 feet after her wire appeared to snap while performing in the show Ka in Las Vegas.
"The entire Cirque du Soleil family is deeply saddened by the accidental death," a rep for the company said in a statement. "The artist's immediate family has been informed of the accident. Our thoughts are with her family and the entire Cirque du Soleil family."
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Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté also released a statement saying, "I am heartbroken. I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to the family. We are all completely devastated with this news. Sassoon was an artist with the original cast of Ka since 2006 and has been an integral part of our Cirque du Soleil tight family. We are reminded, with great humility and respect, how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family."
All performances of Ka have been canceled until further notice.
View original Cirque Du Soleil Performer Falls and Dies During Performance Accident at TVGuide.com


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Fun Facts About the Beatles' "Love Me Do"
Recorded: September 4th and 11th, 1962 (Studio 2, Abbey Road Studios, London, England)
Length: 2:17
Musicians: Paul McCartney: lead vocal, bass guitar (1961 Hofner 500/1)
John Lennon: harmonica, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (Gibson J160E)
George Harrison: acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr: drums (version 1), tambourine (version 2)
Alan White: drums (version 2)
First released: October 5th, 1962 (UK: Parlophone 45-R 4949) version 1; April 27th, 1964 (US: Tollie 9008) version 2
Available on: Past Masters, Volume 1, (Parlophone CDP 90043-2)version 1 Please Please Me, (UK: Parlophone CDP7 46435-2; US: Capitol CLJ 46435) version 2
Highest chart position: 17 (UK: December 27, 1962), 1 (1 week) (US: May 30, 1964)
Live versions: February 20, 1963, for BBC radio's Parade Of The Pops.
BBC versions: Eight (for the BBC radio programs Here We Go, Talent Spot, Saturday Club, Side By Side, Pop Go The Beatles, and Easy Beat.
- An attempt at a straight blues that dates all the way back to the Quarrymen days of 1958.
- Originally, the song was sung as a Everly Brothers-style duet, with John taking the solo "Love Me Do" at the end of each verse. However, John decided to add harmonica to the song at some point, having been directly inspired by Bruce Channel's recent hit "Hey Baby." Since he couldn't play the harmonica riff and sing the last line of verse at the time, producer George Martin ordered Paul to do it instead, on the spot. You can hear the nervousness in his shaky spotlight.
- There are two versions of this song. Version 1 features Ringo on drums and was recorded first. When the Beatles reconvened to cut the song again on September 11, 1962, however, producer George Martin, still unsure of the new kid Ringo's ability, substituted session drummer Alan White. This "version 2," on which Ringo merely plays a tambourine, remains the best-known (and, frankly, better quality) version: it was released as a single in the US, as opposed to the original single in the UK, which was taken from version 1 (although subsequent UK pressings used version 2). Version 2 was also kept off the Please Please Me album in favor of 1, although Martin claims this was probably not done on purpose.
- Although this was never a favorite among most Beatles fans, John and Paul have both stood by the song in interviews.
- This song was actually recorded first on June 6, 1962 during the group's first audition with EMI. At that time, Pete Best was still the drummer. This version, thought lost for years, turned up in George Martin's home and can no be found on the CDAnthology 1 (Apple 34445).
- George Martin originally wanted the band's first single to be an outside composition called "How Do You Do It," but although the band recorded it, they eventually won the right to release this instead. Gerry and the Pacemakers later had a hit with a cover of "How Do You Do It" modeled very closely after the Beatles' version.
- Rumor has been spread for years that this, the Beatles' first UK single, only made it onto the charts because manager Brian Epstein personally purchased 10,000 copies of it. No evidence of this has ever been found, however, and John Lennon, for one, has publicly branded the rumor as false.
- This song was reissued as a single in the UK in 1984, and this time climbed to #4.


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The Board strives to provide the right leadership, strategic oversight and control environment to produce and sustain the delivery of value to all of the Company's shareholders. The Board applies integrity, principles of good governance and accountability throughout its activities and each director brings independence of character and judgement to the role. All of the members of the Board are individually and collectively aware of their responsibilities to the Company's stakeholders and the Board keeps its performance and core governance principles under regular review.
The Corporate Governance section of our Annual Report explains our application of the UK Corporate Governance Code (the "Code").


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MPR poll shows swing to Obama last week
The latest poll is really two polls in one. The first of about 350 likely voters was taken between last Monday and last Wednesday -- before Thursday's vice presidential debate between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin.
But the numbers changed among more than 400 likely voters who were interviewed after the debate through the weekend.
"After the congressional enactment of the financial rescue plan and vice-presidential debate, Barack Obama shot out to a 14-point lead," said Larry Jacobs, from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute.
Jacobs said the main reason for the dramatic shift in the race last week is the economy. Voter confidence in how Obama would handle the financial crisis went from a three-point margin over McCain to a 14-point margin.
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And, while a bulk of the attention was on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's performance in the vice-presidential debate, Jacobs said the poll found that more people were impressed with Delaware Senator Joe Biden's performance.
"We see that Biden boosted the Obama ticket by about 18 points," Jacobs said. "He also improved his image and evaluation among voters for caring, for having centrist political attitudes, for honesty and for experience. All of those factors seemed to play into the fact that Biden was seen as more appropriate for president and helped his ticket more than Palin did for the McCain ticket."
The Obama campaign's Minnesota director, Jeff Blodgett, said the campaign isn't putting much stock in any one poll. But, he said the findings aren't a big surprise since the economy has been on the top of voter's minds throughout the year.
"As they tune in and as they are concerned about the economy, they're asking the question 'Which candidate is better able to handle the economy going forward and to get us out of this economic mess?'" Blodgett said. "And overwhelmingly, we are finding that voters are coming toward Barack Obama."
McCain's Regional Campaign manager Ben Golnik questioned the poll's findings, suggesting that too many Democrats were interviewed after the debate. But, he agreed with the findings that one in five voters could change their mind before election day. He said McCain will make his case directly to those voters when he visits Lakeville later this week.
"I think the race is extremely fluid at this point We feel good about where we are," Golnik said. "We have John McCain coming into town this Friday and that's going to be to target those undecided voters, those voters who have not made up their minds yet."
Golnik also argued that it's clear that the race is competitive since some polls show the race as a dead heat in Minnesota.
Mark Blumenthal, editor and pollster at Pollster.com, said those confused by the varying poll results shouldn't focus on just one poll but on what a variety of polls show.
"It you step back and kind of squint at the data, you're in a better position to try to ignore the noise and variation and focus on the underlying consistency in the polls to the extent that it exists," Blumenthal said.
It's clear that both campaigns consider Minnesota vital to winning the White House. The McCain campaign recently opened six more offices and will add up to ten staff members to help turnout the vote. The efforts come after McCain's campaign announced that they will pull money and manpower out of Michigan and will reportedly direct those resources toward Minnesota and other battleground states.
Another signal that the race is competitive is television ad spending. McCain and the Republican National Committee have spent at least $2 million in television advertising in the Twin Cities since June.
Obama also started running ads in the Twin Cities last week, the first time since he won February's precinct caucuses. He also told reporters last Wednesday that he intends to make a campaign stop in Minnesota between now and election day.
Editor's note: Information about how the joint Minnesota Public Radio/University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey Institute poll was conducted is available here.


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One Gay at a Time
Posts Tagged adapt
We Kiss, We Make Up
Posted by One Gay at a Time in Gay Dating on January 14, 2013
When last I wrote about my budding relationship with Clark Kent and myself, we had gotten well past the honeymoon stage. We were trying to maintain a relationship across state lines, and it wasn't easy. That being said, we were still seeing a lot of each other, and I started to wonder if maybe it was too much. I often wondered, maybe there is such a thing as too much of a good thing…
We needed to find balance, and that wasn't going to be easy. We'd been dating four short months, but, in reality, it felt like we'd been dating for close to a year, even though we were still figuring things out.
That Thursday night, my old roommate was gathering with friends at the new waterfront biergarten in Hoboken for drinks to celebrate his birthday (which I was unaware of until deep into the night). I mentioned it to CK and asked him to join me when he finished work. He agreed, but he had to work later.
When I arrived, I didn't know too many of my old roommate's friends in attendance. I began texting and calling other friends to join us. P and S both responded, "On my way."
As you can imagine, it takes a lot of time to write a blog, so I was utilizing my free time during the day at work to accomplish this. Apparently, my boss took notice to my poor use of free time since he wasn't seeing any productivity coming from my time between projects. (Perhaps you can understand why I have been neglecting this blog for the past few months).
This is relevant because I was also coming off a really rough day at work. I received my review that morning, and it was not positive. My only saving grace was a preemptive strike made a few weeks earlier.
I noticed an opportunity to take over our social media duties (which were being completely neglected) and asked my boss if I could take them on. During my review, when he pointed out my poor utilization of free time, I countered with the argument, "That's why I approached you about taking on the social media duties." I thought maybe I'd saved my a$$. He countered with, "I only wish you'd come to me about it three years earlier." I was defeated.
As if this wasn't bad enough, I learned later that day we'd be merging with another company. So, on top of a bad review, I was petrified of being labeled a redundancy. Two weeks earlier, my career looked to be shaping up. I was taking on a new role, and finding early success. My experience with this blog and other social media was really paying off. Now, it looked as if my whole world could be crumbling around me.
A majority of it was out of my hands at that point. All I could do was put my nose to the grindstone for the coming weeks. But, on a Thursday night, I needed to forget. That meant I needed more than a few stiff drinks!
I drank beer after beer while mingling with old friends and some new ones. I was having quite a good time, but I was missing CK. I was texting with him back and forth discussing his arrival.
When he finally arrived, I was thrilled to see him. He could be comfort after a rough day, and I was finally properly lubricated enough to have a good time and forget about work, enjoying a night out with my man and friends.
CK grabbed a beer and immediately dove right into the conversation with all of us. I was chatting with S's roommate, and the discussion quickly changed to his tattoos and body piercings. CK was a bit fascinated by tattoos at that time. He detailed for me the elaborate tattoos he was dreaming of getting.
S's roommate was very much Mr. Machismo. I wasn't sure how comfortable he was with the whole "gay thing." There was just something about his attitude and the way he carried himself that I didn't think he'd be too comfortable. I never formally came out to him, as I'd only met him a handful of times, but I assumed S clued him in. I was very pleasantly surprised just how cool he was with the whole "gay thing." He turned out to be quite a laid back guy. It just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover.
The two quickly formed a bond. At some point in the conversation, the roommate started talking about his anxiety over having to fly the next. CK took it upon himself to aid in this situation.
Immediately, I was unhappy. My mood shifted abruptly. I shut down. I'll never quite understand why I react in this way to these types of situations. I think it stems from striving to suppress my feelings at the moment so I don't create a scene in public. The deeper question is why do I become so enraged in the first place?
This time, CK wasn't exactly participating. He wasn't doing anything wrong, however, aiding and abetting someone else's wrongdoing was equally as bad in my mind. He was enabling behavior he knew I was opposed to. I wasn't just feeling anger. I was scared. I was afraid I was going to lose him. We'd had this discussion time and time again. If we continued to have the conversation, eventually, he would be faced with an ultimate decision, and there was a chance I would be a casualty of that decision. All of my emotions tied back to this very thought. I was afraid in the end he wouldn't choose me, and as a result, I would have to choose me. I'd have to say goodbye for my own sanity, facing my greatest fear in life, being alone, on top of losing a man I loved. Obviously, I never wanted it to come to that.
I managed to suppress this anger and feeling of betrayal. My mind was jumping back to all the other times we discussed this very topic. This was only exacerbated because I'd written the blog post about our night at Matinee that afternoon. One of those very conversations was fresh in my mind.
I managed to suppress all this until we walked in the door of my apartment, and then I unleashed. I told him how unacceptable his behavior was, and he was completely dumbfounded. He had no idea why I could be so enraged.
Of course this only fed my fury. Had he forgotten all these other times we'd discussed this? Was I living a broken record? We argued extensively about this, and CK threatened to leave multiple times, making it to the door a handful of times.
We finally had a breakthrough at some point when he either feigned to understand my stance, or what I was so vehemently explaining finally sunk in.
We argued a lot about a lot of small things —Things I felt were very important. He felt I was trying to change him. I wasn't. Honestly! I loved him. I just felt he needed to grow up in some aspects of his life. A person needs to adapt and evolve when entering a relationship, and I still wasn't sure he was putting in the effort. I wasn't trying to mold him into my ideal mate. I didn't have a preconceived notion of who he should be. But, I felt there were some sacrifices he'd need to make to make me happy.
Perhaps I was the one who needed to change. In reality, we both needed to. Only time would tell if we could come to consensus on these types of issues.
Regardless, after fighting, we kissed and made up. Well, we more than made up. This was all followed by a lively romp in the sack. It was so incredible, we both finished at the same time for the first time. As we showered, we discussed our epic make-up sex. "And don't think you can start picking fights with me just so we can have make-up sex buster," I punctuated. We both had a good laugh.
No matter how much we fought, at the end of the day, I loved him. He made me happy. I loved that no matter how many times we fought, we always found a way to make up. I wanted to grow old with him, but the key word in that phrase for us would be grow…
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At the ripe age of 26, I came to a life changing conclusion. I'm GAY!
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The mind, said Raquel Welch, is an erogenous zone. And it is the brain, and how it organises our erogenous zones, that has intrigued scientists for decades. Why is a nuzzled neck sexy when few would be turned on by a nuzzled nose? And why do men seem to have fewer erogenous zones than women? A new study has measured just how erotic our body bits are – and there are a few surprises for neuroscientists.
The research, a joint project between two British universities and one in South Africa, is billed as the first "systematic survey of the magnitude of erotic sensations from various body parts".
Perhaps the biggest surprise was that feet were not considered sexually attractive by the 800 people, mostly from Britain and sub-Saharan Africa, who took part in the study.
Three quarters gave their feet the lowest, zero rating – alongside knee caps – which might disappoint those who have invested time and energy in developing their foot massage or toe-sucking techniques.
The fact that people consistently placed feet so low on their rankings of sensitive areas seems to completely undermine previous explanations for the distribution of our erogenous zones, which have suggested that the sensors in our brain that deal with the feet were right next to the sensors in charge of our genitalia.
Another surprise was the consistency of responses. "A lot of people assume that women's bodies are just full of erogenous zones and that men have only one, the obvious one," said Professor Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University's School of Psychology, who led the study and worked alongside scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
"But this is clearly not the case," said Turnbull. "It's pretty equal, with just perhaps a modest advantage to women – but certainly nothing like the way the sex differences have been so hugely exaggerated."
The scientists were also surprised to see that there were "remarkable levels of correlation" between the ratings for all the people who responded, no matter their age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or race. Men and women listed the 41 body parts they were asked to rate in remarkably similar order. The obvious bits of genitalia were at the top of the rankings, as were lips, ears and inner thighs, followed closely by shoulder blades.
There were a few major differences between the sexes – the back of the leg was barely acknowledged by women, for instance, while men rated it as important as their ears. Hands were also more erotic for men than for women, researchers found.
"We have discovered from this that we all share the same erogenous zones in at least two very different continents, whether we are a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman sitting in a London office or a gay man living in a village in Africa. It suggests it is hardwired, built in, not based on cultural or life experience," said Turnbull.
This is in stark contrast to earlier theories, among them that of the neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran who first suggested that feet are sexy because of the neighbouring sensors in the cortex, though he made a crucial error in mistaking a fetish – "where one enjoys looking at high heels and stockings, etc", said Turnbull – with an erogenous zone. "He may have made a mistake between touch and looking at things."
The central issue is not so much where the erogenous zones are, but why non-genital ones are erogenous.
"The Cosmopolitan magazines of this world have been running half-baked surveys on this for years and years," said Turnbull. "But we wanted to look at the question of why the side of the neck is interesting if nibbled but not the forehead or head, when both have the same sensory receptors."
This study would seem to suggest that there is a completely different part of the brain controlling our saucy spots, he said.
"I think there is a good argument for it being the insula [cortex], although there are a few ethical issues in trying to take the next step and measure that, as it obviously means that someone has to be stroking someone else whilst the brain is monitored.
"It is interesting, though. A lot of people think that science shouldn't be looking at such things, but if it's something that human beings are interested in – and we clearly are around sex and intimacy – then it's something scientists should study," Turnball added. Neuroscientists, he said, had already come up with the optimal speed to stroke human skin (5cm per second if you wish to test it out at home).
So even if many can be accused of having sex on the brain, it's unlikely we have it in our cerebral cortex.
The full report appears in the neuroscientific journal Cortex


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He's like gravity. People are just pulled towards him.
Jordana Brewster as Mia
I live my life a quarter mile at a time, nothing else matters. Not the mortgage, not the store, not the team and their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less… I'm free.
Dom in The Fast & The Furious


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Declared a "must read" YA romance on USATODAY.com!
#1 Best Seller in Teen and YA Greek & Roman Myths.
When Nicole Cassidy moves from sunny Georgia to gloomy New England, the last thing she expects is to learn that her homeroom is a cover for a secret coven of witches. Even more surprisingly... she's apparently a witch herself. Despite doubts about her newfound abilities, Nicole is welcomed into this ancient circle of witches and is bedazzled by their powers -- and, to her dismay, by Blake -- the school's notorious bad-boy.
Girls who get close to Blake wind up hurt. His girlfriend Danielle will do anything to keep them away, even if she must resort to using dark magic. But the chemistry between Blake and Nicole is undeniable, and despite wanting to protect Nicole from Danielle's wrath, he finds it impossible to keep his distance.
When the Olympian Comet shoots through the sky for the first time in three thousand years, Nicole, Blake, Danielle, and two others in their homeroom are gifted with mysterious elemental powers. But the comet has another effect -- it opens the portal to the prison world that has contained the Titans for centuries. After an ancient monster escapes and attacks Nicole and Blake, it's up to them and the others to follow the clues from a cryptic prophecy so that they can save their town... and possibly the world.
"Elementals is full of wonderful magic and myths!"
-5 Girls Book Reviews, ★★★★★
"Harry Potter meets Percy Jackson with an added twist of teenage angst, hormones and uncertainty... I am officially HOOKED!"
-Kim T. Goodreads Reviewer, ★★★★★


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First of all: The Digital Picture.com has an excellent page where you can compare the sharpness of different lenses and different apertures.
But recently I did some quick tests with my 50 mm f1.4 myself. It's a decent lens and regarded excellent for the price range. And it's pretty fast, featuring an aperture of 1.4. But lenses loose sharpness and contrast at low apertures, and I wanted to know exactly how much. In this lens the difference is huge. Here are two 100% crops:
50 mm @ f5.6
50 mm @ f1.4
Yes. That's the same lens, the same camera and the same conditions. Only a different aperture value. But will you see the difference if you snap an image at full resolution and reduce the size down to what you'll need on a web page? Let's have a look. 21 megapixels from my Canon 5D MarkII reduced down to an image that is 500 pixels wide.
50 mm @ f5.6
50 mm @ f1.4
And I guess you'll need a slightly trained eye to see the difference clearly. First of all you see the vignetting: darker corners. Then you see that the DOF is more shallow and that the cars at the bottom of the image in the f1.4-version is not completely focused. This is how it should be. A shallow depth of field is one of the beauties of a low aperture value.
But if you look closely you'll see that the overall sharpness and sense of depth in general in the f5.6-image is better. Even when the image is reduced down to this size.
So, if you want the ultimate in technical quality you should plan your aperture. And buy very nice lenses…


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Brooklyn Ultra-Orthodox Leader Found Guilty On Child Sex Abuse Charges
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox Jewish leader Nechemya Weberman became a convicted pedophile Monday, when a jury found him guilty on five dozen counts of child sex abuse.
Weberman, 54, was convicted on all 60 counts of criminal sexual abuse for allegedly molesting a girl he was counseling over a three-year span beginning when the girl was 12, WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported. The jury deliberated for about one day before issuing a verdict.
The charges include sexual conduct with a child and criminal sexual acts, CBS 2's Tony Aiello reported.
WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reports
Weberman showed no emotion as the verdict was read, Cornell reported. He was handcuffed and taken into police custody after the verdict was read. Weberman faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 9. The defense said it is planning to appeal the conviction.
"I think she was very conflicted about it, and I think that's why it took her so long to come forward. And I think she just finally gathered the strength and I think she said it best in her own words, is that she didn't want to be responsible for this to happen to anybody else. And she felt the need to come forward. And she was just an incredibly strong, incredibly brave person," prosecutor Linda Weinman told Cornell.
The unlicensed counselor did not turn to look back at his family seated just 10 feet away in court.
"I was actually very, very, very nervous because I look at this as a new era for the Jewish religious community," victims' advocate Pearl Reich told CBS 2's Aiello after the verdict was read.
Reich said she knows the victim, who broke with tradition and worked with police.
"She is definitely going to need a lot of help, and this is the core therapy right now, the fact that he came out guilty and he's going with handcuffs into that prison," Reich told Aiello.
"It was based on the testimony of the victim, which was remarkable. She was cross-examined for over three days, which is by far the longest I've ever seen a victim of sexual assault being cross-examined for and she withstood all of the questions that were asked of her for days," prosecutor Kevin O'Donnell told Cornell.
Meanwhile, as CBS 2's Derricke Dennis reported, some celebrated the verdict Monday night, but Weberman also had his defenders on the streets of the fiercely private Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn -- four of whom were arrested for allegedly trying to bribe the victim.
"He would never do such a thing, not near such a thing," said Williamsburg resident Yuchezarun Roth. "And it hurts me very much."
Many donated to the rabbi's defense fund, and never believed he molested the young girl at the center of the case. One woman who knows the accuser said she did not believe the story that led to Weberman's conviction.
"She was a troubled teen, unfortunately," said Rifkey Spitzer. When asked if she believed the story that the girl was molested by Weberman, Spitzer replied, "No, I don't believe it."
But those urging the community to change attitudes about reporting abuse hailed the verdict, Aiello reported.
"There's a complete turnaround in our community. People do come forward, with all the pressures that they have, and this is going to be a very strong message for all the pedophiles," activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg told Aiello.
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes praised the unidentified victim for going against her own family and her own Hasidic values – and betraying her community by some people's accounts – by reporting the rabbi to police.
"I can't understate just how we've come to regard her as a woman of courage to come forward at a very, very difficult time," Hynes said.
Hynes said the case could be a watershed moment for the Satmar community, giving victims of all kinds of crimes the power to break tradition and go straight to the NYPD for help.
"It will give people more courage to come forward," Hynes said.
The verdict is seen as a huge victory for Hynes, who has been criticized by some for mishandling sex abuse cases in the Orthodox community.
"We are very hopeful that this will lead to other young women in this community and other communities understanding that they can come forward and they will be protected," the DA said.
Fordham University Law Professor James Cohen said the verdict was a victory for victims of abuse suffering in religious silence.
"Hopefully, that will have a ripple effect, and this sort of conduct will be clearly not tolerated by this community any longer," Cohen said.
Deliberations began Friday but the jury was convened for just an hour. Monday's verdict came down around 2:30 p.m.
The defense had argued that the girl leveled the charges against Weberman as an act of revenge because she believed he told her father about her boyfriend, which is in violation of Satmar law.
The accuser, now 18 and married, waited three years before telling anyone about the alleged abuse.
Earlier Monday, the jurors reviewed testimony from an expert witness on the question of why children delay disclosing when they've been victims of sexual abuse.
The witness testified that waiting to report sexual abuse is not unusual because the abuser is generally someone the child knows well or is in a powerful position. That gives the child a feeling of helplessness or social rejection, the witness testified.
The girl was ordered to attend counseling sessions several times a week with Weberman or be kicked out of school, Cornell reported.
The girl testified that school officials told her she was a "piece of dirt," Cornell reported.
The jury also heard a read-back of testimony from a licensed social worker who works with Orthodox Jewish children. Sarah Fried testified that the teenage accuser did not open up to her about the alleged sexual abuse right away.
The therapist testified that she knew something had happened to the girl because she was anxious and depressed.
When the accuser did tell Fried about the sexual abuse, Fried testified that the girl could barely get the words out and then fled from her office.
The defense argued that the accuser was so rebellious against the Satmar community that she should have been able to speak up about sex abuse.
The expert witness testified that the comparison was like comparing night and day, Cornell reported.
The accuser and Weberman both testified during the trial.
Another accuser has now come forward, saying Weberman sexually abused her, CBS 2 reported.
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My Top Go-To Rioja Wines Under $20
Finding Rioja wine in your local stores isn't as hard as most people think. Having lived in Rioja for two years and having completed a Masters of Viticulture and Enology (winemaking) there, this place is my second and favorite home. I am often asked what my "Go-to" Rioja wines are, and I have a few recommendations for a few favorites that you are likely to find in your store.
Let me first explain something about the wine regions of La Rioja, Spain.
The Regions of La Rioja
La Rioja has three wine regions where wines of varying styles are made. The Rioja area is subdivided into three different regions – Rioja Alavesa, Rioja Alta and Rioja Baja. While la Rioja Alavesa and la Rioja Alta are located closer to the mountain, they are at slightly higher elevations and have a cooler climate. This results in wines with more acidity and slightly more finesse and elegance.
La Rioja Baja is located to the southeast where it is drier and warmer. The annual rainfall in the region ranges from 12 inches in parts of Baja to more than 20 inches in La Rioja Alta and Alavesa.
Although each winemaker adds their own special touch, terroir is not something that can necessarily changed. If I want a lighter, more distinguished wine, I tend to lean towards wines from Rioja Alta or Rioja Alavesa. These two areas, of higher altitude, are located in the northernmost part of La Rioja near Basque Country (if not in it). If I want a slightly bigger-bodied wine, I lean towards wines from Rioja Baja, where there is a bit more sun and slightly different soil types dominate.
Aging and Oak
I also then consider how much aging or oak I would like on my wine. Rioja has a great classification standard that helps you understand how much long your wine has been aged; based on your tastes, this classification standard can help determine the right wine for you.
I love a Cosecha wine (a wine in its first or second year with little to no oak; it has a green label) for summertime due to how light and refreshing it is. However, my go-to night wine is generally a Crianza (12 months+ in oak plus one year in bottle; it has a red label). I reserve Reserva (aged minimum of three years, tends to be 18-24 months in oak with the rest of the time in bottle) for those nights when I am having a hearty meal with friends. These classifications, while made to be easy to understand, can be at times confusing. Some winemakers who chose to age a wine for 8 months, for example, based on the grape variety, terroir, vintage, etc., still have to use a Cosecha, or green. label.
In general, I stick to Crianza and Reserva unless it is a white wine. For a white wine, I prefer the wine of the year or the Cosecha wine.
Here are a few of the wines that can easily be found in your grocery or liquor stores with a cost likely under $20. If you are lucky, you may even find them for under $15 on sale.
LAN Crianza or Reserva
C.V.N.E. Crianza
Marqués de Cáceres Crianza
Campo Viejo Reserva
Marqués de Riscal Reserva
While I haven't listed vintage, the wines currently released onto the market are ready to drink. Unlike their US counterparts, there are strict rules as indicated by the labels and by the Regulatory Council in Spain that prevent wine from being released before it has been properly aged. You generally can't go wrong with the suggestions listed above. If you are interested in specific vintages, click here for the listing of the vintages.
The majority of the wineries listed above have been making wine since the 1900s and have vines close to 100 years old. Most are still held by the families who started the wineries back in the 1800s, and all have had a very high standard in winemaking for some time.
The wines listed above are also wines made with the traditional grapes grown in the region: Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano, Mazuelo and Maturana Tinta. These wines tend to be elegant and subtle yet powerful in the mouth. To me, they bring me back to my time in La Rioja where I ate and drank with friends on Calle Laurel, the famous tapas street of Logroño.
These Rioja wines have an earthy, dark cherry, tobacco mouth taste that conjures up all the sights, smells, and sounds of this amazing town. To me, they are special, and every sip I take brings me back to those times. While they may not do the same for you, I hope that you will visit La Rioja and have a chance to experience what I have loved so much about this region. It's not just about the food and wine but about the people behind the wine that make it so special.


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Dan + Shay dropped a moving new video for their new single, "I Should Probably Go to Bed."
The stylized clip features plenty of nifty camerawork—including some cool dolly zooms—and special effects.
Penned by Dan Smyers, Shay Mooney, Sean Douglas and Jason Evigan, "I Should Probably Go to Bed" was produced entirely by Dan, who performed and recorded every instrument at his home studio in Nashville.
"We're so excited about our brand-new single," says Dan. "We wrote part of this song in Los Angeles during Grammy week, but finished it at my house, on my piano, kind of by accident. Shay had come over to record vocals on another song that we had written. We took a break, went downstairs, started singing this song, and realized this song needs a big ending. So we really went for it. Shay delivered one of my favorite vocal performances of all time. We're so proud that this is our new single."
The new tune is the duo's first single since "10,000 Hours," which featured Justin Bieber, was released in October 2019. "10,000 Hours" topped the Billboard Country Airplay chart in January 2020.
Watch the video for "I Should Probably Go to Bed" below.
photo by Tammie Arroyo, AFF-USA.com


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Introducing House – Autry Mills Southern Food Products & A Giveaway!
I will be announcing the winner soon.
Hi everyone its so good to be back home in Texas. I was off in Park City, Utah for a couple days attending the Evo 10 Conference. I had so much fun meeting up with lots of bloggers and meeting new friends. It's always so nice to get away for a bit, but there really is no place like home. Today I wanted to start the week off by posting about a wonderful product that I have been introduced to. What is this product you ask? Well it is the House -Autry Mills Products and they are so awesome. I was first introduced to House – Autry Mills a couple weeks back by my friend Christy over at Southerplate.
Breading mixes for meats and seafood and a hushpuppy mix. House – Autry also makes a seasoned chicken fry mix that comes in regular or spicy. They have mixes for biscuits, cornbread, hushpuppies and onion rings. You can purchase regular or spicy mixes so you see they have a variety of different mixes to suit every ones taste. House – Autry has been the choice of southern cooks since 1812.
For many years, their number one product was corn meal. Over the years they have added breading mixes for chicken, pork and seafood. Then they added hushpuppy, biscuit, cornbread and a onion ring mixes and more. All of their coatings are specially milled and mixed to cook up light, crispy, and tasty. I usually have problems with boxed breading mixes not wanting to stick to pork chops or chicken.
All I needed to do was we the pork chops and then dip them in the seasoning mix and pan fry or oven bake them. I chose to pan fry them since that is our favorite way to eat thin pork chops. I was so excited at how well the breading stuck to the chops. It wasn't thick at all, in fact it was just a light coating but the pork chops turned out so crispy and all the breading stayed on.
As I cooked the pork chops I placed them in a warm oven on a baking rack until I was ready to serve them. This way the pork chops stay crispy as I cook the remaining ones. When dinner was ready the pork chops were indeed crispy and everyone in my family loved them. I am happy to say the pork chops were not over seasoned one bit. I am so glad I got to try out a few of the House – Autry Mills products. I have also included a Store Locator so you can find a House – Autry retailer near you.
If you cant wait to try these wonderful meat breader and mixes, Today I am offering an exclusive coupon to anyone who is reading this post. That way you can try out one of these wonderful products for yourself. Click here to print your coupon good towards any one House – Autry Product. You can also sign up for their Southern Cooks Club upcoming monthly newsletter. This newsletter will contain southern recipes, tips and future coupons for House – Autry Products. Now on to the fun stuff!!!!
Would you like to win a basket just like the one I received? Well I'm excited to say that one lucky Mommy's Kitchen reader will win a House-Autry Gift Basket just like the one pictured above. This beautiful gift basket is packed full of the following items:
A Metal Skimmer
Various House of Autry Meat Breaders
One Hushpuppy mix
One Flour Sack Apron
One Red Checkered Pot Holder &
Matching Kitchen Towel
all packed into a a pretty basket.
How to Enter:
Simply leave a comment at the end of this post it's as easy as that. Don't forget to leave a email address in the event that you are a the winner.
1. Post a link to this contest on your Face book and come back and leave me the link in the comments section.
3. Tweet the following giveaway on Twitter for a third entry. Come back and comment with the link for your tweet.
Win a Gift Baskets! From @HouseAutryMills & @Mommyskitchen http://tinyurl.com/2apphfe .
Last day to enter the Giveaway is Monday, July 5th, 2010. I will choose a random winner and announce it here at Mommy's Kitchen as well as on Face book and Twitter. The winner will have 48 hours from the time of email notification to reply or a new winner will be selected. Good Luck to everyone who enters.
Now for some more good news would you like a few more chances to win this beautiful gift basket? Well I know you do so hop on over to some other fabulous blogs that House – Autry has partnered up with. Each one of the blogs below are hosting their very own House – Autry Giveaways. So there you go five more chances to win one of these lovely baskets.
Tina, The Mom in Mommy's Kitchen


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by Rick Bretz
Before the people voted Andrew Jackson President, he was a lawyer, self-made business man and a commanding officer and general of a United States military unit. The book "Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans" with the subtitle, "The Battle That Shaped America's Destiny" by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yeager concentrates on a short time period in Jackson's career but important to his future nonetheless. The subtitle concerns the vital geographic New Orleans port and the Mississippi River in that they were both vital to westward expansion. The outcome went a long way toward the United State's goal of forging a strong voice in international relations.
This is the third book by the co-authors. The others, "Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates", and "George Washington's Secret Six" used the same strategy as this one, zooming in from a satellite's view of America's history and the Jackson legacy to give the reader a pinpoint, telescoped examination of an important battle at the end of the War of 1812 with Britain. These short, 200 or so page books will not give a reader a wide sweeping view of subject but a slice in time or an event important to the United State's history. The authors are putting together the history puzzle one piece at a time.
The General
Jackson's personality and leadership style brought results. The book shows how Jackson, without any formal training, intuitively understood battle tactics and how to use the terrain to his maximum benefit. He could make decisions in the middle of a battle but took advice when it was clear someone else in the command had a better idea, and that included the suggestions of a privateer or pirate, depending on one's assessment, Jean Lafitte. He understood how to motivate his men and how to relate to the people of New Orleans during social functions.
The authors do a good job of outlining the British plan of attack leading up to the Battle of New Orleans. The British commanders made several mistakes at the beginning that helped Jackson's cause. However, Jackson's ability to forecast the British Navy and Army's avenues of attack was as much a factor in the victory as was the British commander overconfidence in taking on solders, Native Americans, Pirates and volunteers from several states in the area. It was a mixed recipe of anyone Jackson could muster but General Jackson made the Army a personality of one, his. That personality was tough, resourceful, with a boiling and deep hatred of the British Army from his childhood years due to events that caused the death of his family members.
The books also gives detailed descriptions of the swampy lands in the bayou that both sides of the war had to maneuver through to build defenses and a launch point for an attack. The challenges presented by the New Orleans terrain was in contrast to the problems the diplomatic team had in Britain when negotiating a truce. The snail's pace communication presented difficulties in know who had the upper hand when ironing out details of a peach agreement. They didn't want to negotiate a peace with New Orleans in British hands. For as the book points out, the New Orleans port and control of the Mississippi River was key to America's Westward expansion and a victory over the British invading force for a second time meant increased prestige to the World's countries looking on a young United States.
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In my last few posts, I've been working my way through the ideas set down by the late great Hubert Dreyfus. While I end up disagreeing with Dreyfus on a number of issues, particularly on the role of conceptuality in practical action, I still see him as largely setting the terms of the debate. As part of my effort to understand Dreyfus, I've been undertaking a parallel study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who had a pronounced influence on Dreyfus. Below is a short summary of how I understand a few of Merleau-Ponty's key insights. (Readers familiar with Merleau-Ponty won't find too much ground-breaking interpretation in this post, but it does serve to ground the larger investigation I've been engaged in.)
His major work, Phenomenology of Perception, was first published in France in 1945. As the title indicates, the work deals with articulating a philosophy of perception. Drawing from his predecessors Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty in this effort gave primacy to the body's practical comportment with the lifeworld (Lebenswelt), the historically situated and intersubjective horizon of experience from which all theoretical and scientific investigation begins, and to which it must always return. In emphasizing the body's dynamic behavior as central to epistemological investigation—a move seen as early as his 1942 work The Structure of Behavior—Merleau-Ponty continued the work of his predecessors in returning to twentieth century philosophy the central role of embodiment in philosophy and psychology alike (the latter effort being greatly informed by gestalt theory and the neurological sciences of Merleau-Ponty's day).
Everything in Phenomenology of Perception starts with our being-in-the-world (être au monde). In the opening pages of the work, Merleau-Ponty writes, "This world is not what I think, but what I live [ce que je vis]; I am open to the world, I unquestionably communicate with it, but I do not possess it, it is inexhaustible."[1] In emphasizing being-in-the-world, Merleau-Ponty places the two poles of this correlation—being, on the one hand, and the world, on the other—as co-constituting, or as mutually co-arising. As Taylor Carman has noted, this being-in-the-world correlation suggests that what we understand the world to be, on the one hand, is rooted in our bodily dispositions and capacities, and, on the other, that our bodily dispositions and capacities in turn are rooted in engagements with world, with how it solicits and demands certain responses from us.[2] Merleau-Ponty's account here holds some relation to his predecessor Husserl's account of intentionality, which suggest that intentional content, or noema, is correlated with a mental act of representation, or noesis, the point being that every act of perception is directed toward an object that furnishes the material for our representation. In short, what we see in perception is limited by what we are capable of representing to ourselves in consciousness.
As a species of phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty shares a certain family resemblance with Husserl's work; however, at the same time, Merleau-Ponty also observed that Husserl's account, at least in its earlier formulations, placed too much emphasis on an abstract and intellectually distanced understanding of perception and representation, one that placed too much weight on the "I think" at the expense of the "I live." Merleau-Ponty finds such representational accounts—which would include not only early Husserlian phenomenology but also Cartesian ideas and Kantian representations (Vorstellungen)—insufficient for accounting for the genesis of ideas and representations in the body's prereflective understanding of the world. In other words, Merleau-Ponty sees in Descartes, Husserl, and Kant an account of perception that is not necessarily incorrect but is rather one that emerges only at a fairly late stage in the phenomenology of perception, the key insight being that what were for earlier philosophers foundations or adequate grounds for building up philosophy are in Merleau-Ponty's estimation merely derivatives of a prior genesis of perception, rooted in the body.
In rejecting the priority of ideas and representations in his account of perception, both hallmarks of rationalist and intellectualist traditions, Merleau-Ponty seems well poised to articulate a new empiricist philosophy in the spirit of a John Locke or a David Hume. But Merleau-Ponty is neither an intellectualist nor an empiricist, in the strict sense, though he recovers important insights from both traditions. For example, on his reformed sense of intentionality, Carman writes, "Intentionality, he insists, is constituted neither by brute sensations, nor by conceptual content, but by noncognitive—indeed often unconscious—bodily skills and dispositions."[3] Thus while Merleau-Ponty rejected the traditional image of the "I" both as a Cartesian cogito and as a Kantian transcendental unity of apperception, he does not put in its place an empirical tabula rasa awaiting inscription by the contingencies of a relative cultural world. Instead, beneath the traditional cogito Merleau-Ponty finds what he a calls a "tacit cogito," a body practically engaged with the world before any "I think" can transpire.
As Donald Landes has noted, Merleau-Ponty's tacit cogito amounts to a rejection of both the empiricist and intellectualist traditions, whilst still recovering elements of both.[4] On Landes's telling, the empiricist explanation fails for Merleau-Ponty because its atomistic account of external causes of perception cannot ever add up to the kind of meanings, senses, and inferences that serve as the basis for encountering things in the first place. With this move, Merleau-Ponty sounds like a good Kantian—intuitions without concepts are blind, concepts without intuitions are empty. As we have already seen, though, Merleau-Ponty is no Kantian in the traditional sense, as he feels it is phenomenologically suspicious to suppose that a transcendental consciousness somehow stands apart from all empirical experience, constituting the unity of the objects of perception from afar. In this rejection, Merleau-Ponty takes the transcendental image of consciousness to task on empirical and phenomenological grounds.
As Landes goes on to describe, Merleau-Ponty offers a new version of the rational–empirical synthesis—an alternative to the older picture expressed in the Kantian synthesis of concept and intuition—by grounding perception in the dynamics of an intelligent body. In this dynamic, the perceived world is still tightly coupled with the perceiving subject, as in the traditional Kantian image, but in place of a universal and transcendental apparatus of cognition, Merleau-Ponty argues for a "transcendental field" rooted in the particular skills of the body's engagement with the world. This is an existential notion of the transcendental, one which rejects the idea that perception is an intellectual determination executed by a detached subject. Instead, the embodied or existential structure is one wherein environmental solicitations draw responses from a subject who must navigate a complex and unfolding landscape of situated activity.
Merleau-Ponty in this sense accepts the rationalist or transcendental position that argues all sensation must be situated within a larger field of sense not provided by immediate empirical experience, but he also accepts with the empiricist that this field of sense must have a genetic basis in the contingent encounters of living beings in the world. However, in also rejecting parts of the empirical account of perception, Merleau-Ponty argues that sensation cannot be merely an aggregate of pure sense impressions. "If we return to phenomena," writes Merleau-Ponty, "they show us that the apprehension of a quality—exactly like the apprehension of size—is tied to an entire perceptual context, and the stimuli no longer give us the indirect means that we sought for delimiting a layer of direct impressions."[5]
In appealing to this "field of sense," Merleau-Ponty suggests that there is no "elementary" event or impression that can be built up into "higher-level" functions.[6] In other words, "punctual sensations" cannot be the basis for building up a phenomenologically robust account of perception or experience, and thus Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is also a rejection of traditional empiricism. He writes that we only mistakenly "place pure sensation at the beginning [of experience] and believe it to be anterior to knowledge."[7]
Stated more forcefully, Merleau-Ponty writes, "The contiguity and the resemblance of stimuli are not prior to the construction of the whole,"[8] rather, the whole of perception, along with its various empirical details, emerges simultaneously, and in fact it is only because of the mutual arising of a whole within which empirical details can be said to a have sense in relation to one another that we achieve something like intelligible experiences at all. In more poetic language, Merleau-Ponty continues to draw out the same point, "By returning to phenomena, we find, as a fundamental layer, a whole already pregnant with an irreducible sense . . . to perceive is not to experience a multitude of impressions that bring along with them some memories capable of completing them, it is to see an immanent sense bursting forth from a constellation of givens without which no call to memory is possible."[9]
Merleau-Ponty here clearly rejects a philosophy of experience built up piece-by-piece through atomistic sense impressions, but as we've also seen, he also overturns the representational account of the rationalist tradition. In rejecting both traditions, Merleau-Ponty writes, "What was lacking for empiricism was an internal connection between the act it triggers. What intellectualism lacks is the contingency of the opportunities for thought. Consciousness is too poor in the first case and too rich in the second for any phenomena to solicit it."[10]
In the place of empiricism and intellectualism, Merleau-Ponty offers his own descriptions of perception as always a kind of active interpretation, drawn forward by the solicitations of the environment. "Vision," Merleau-Ponty writes, "is already inhabited by a sense that gives it a function in the spectacle of the world and in our existence."[11] In other words, vision is from the start a kind of sense-filled understanding, a specific mode of interpretation; even at the level of physiological perception a horizon of sense anchors experience. Merleau-Ponty continues, "Once perception is understood as interpretation, sensation, which served as the point of departure, is definitively left behind—every perceptual consciousness being already beyond sensation."[12]
In other words, the matrix of associations active between sensations requires, alleges Merleau-Ponty, a horizon of sense within which perceptions can be meaningfully apprehended. To be sure, Merleau-Ponty's notions of the horizon does bare a passing resemblance to earlier Kantian notions of a transcendental subject; however, whereas the transcendental subject was conceived as unchanging and transparent to itself, the horizon is partial, lived, and perspectival. As Merleau-Ponty notes of this shift, "The center of philosophy is no longer an autonomous transcendental subjectivity, situated everywhere and nowhere, but is rather found in the perpetual beginning of reflection at that point when an individual life begins to reflect upon itself."[13]
While Merleau-Ponty commits himself here to a coordination between sense and perception, as we have already seen he is no traditional representationalist. And yet, in his notion of vision and perception as always filled with sense, it is hard to ignore the presence of something like an organizing idea within his phenomenology of perception. On this point, as Landes notes, the idea is refigured less as a unit of representation stored in the intellect and more as a specific mode of apprehension in the body. "An idea is not a thing; it is a field that includes a depth of latent intentions and sedimentations that immediately orient me and give me its sense."[14] As a consequence of this view, Merleau-Ponty argues, "Judgment presupposes an already accomplished recognition in the structure of the field of perception itself."[15]
Merleau-Ponty's reflections here move from the explication of an existing transcendental structure (as in Kant), to an account of its genesis and variability, to a recognition of our being-in-the-world prior to any intellectual or scientific reconstruction of our situation, to the historical inheritance of subjectivity and its conditioned and situated character. In this realization, says Merleau-Ponty, "Consciousness must be brought face to face with its unreflective life in things and must awaken to its own, forgotten, history—this is the true role of philosophical reflection"[16] where "the fundamental philosophical act would thus be to return to the lived world beneath the objective world."[17]
[1] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, lxxx–lxxxi.
[2] Carman, "Foreword," x–xi. This tight coupling between being and world seems to commit Merleau-Ponty to an aggressive anti-realism about the more-than-human-world. However, he's clear that "world" does not refer to anything but our understanding of the overall environments we inhabit, not the universe itself. Merleau-Ponty clarifies, "The notion of a universe (a completed and explicit totality where relations would be determined) exceeds the notion of a world (an open and indefinite multiplicity where relations are reciprocally implicated)" (Phenomenology of Perception, 73).
[3] Ibid., x.
[4] Landes, "Translator's Introduction," xxx.
[5] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 9.
[6] Ibid., 10.
[7] Ibid., 39.
[8] Ibid., 17.
[9] Ibid., 23.
[10] Ibid., 30.
[11] Ibid., 52.
[12] Ibid., 39.
[13] Ibid., 63.
[14] Landes, "Translator's Introduction," xlv
[15] Ibid., xxxix.
[16] Ibid., 34.
[17] Ibid., 57.


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MANILA - The Philippines, aiming to boost its ability to defend offshore areas, wants to ensure US warships are closer to the disputed South China Sea by offering the US an underdeveloped naval base on a western island, its military chief has said.
China has stepped up its activities to assert its extensive claim over the energy-rich South China Sea.
Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims over the sea, or parts of it, through which about US$5 trillion (S$6.3 trillion) of ship-borne goods pass every year.
Last month, the Philippines and the US signed an Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) allowing US forces wider access to Philippine bases and building facilities for joint use in maritime security and disaster response.
"Oyster Bay is still underdeveloped but we need to improve it for our armed forces," armed forces chief of staff General Emmanuel Bautista said in a television interview late on Wednesday, referring to a base on Palawan island to the west of main Philippine islands.
"Perhaps with the EDCA that can be facilitated and further improvement in Oyster Bay will be made."
Bautista said he was hoping the US would help pay for the development of the base, where the Philippines has begun work, and help develop it into a major operating base for both navies.
Oyster Bay is only 160km from the disputed Spratly islands, where China has been reclaiming a reef known as Johnson South Reef, and building what appears to be an airstrip on it.
The Philippine foreign ministry released on Thursday aerial surveillance photographs of the reef showing some work had been done.
In October, the Philippine navy commander on Palawan told Reuters the force had a plan to convert Oyster Bay into a "mini-Subic" where the country's two former US Coast Guard cutters would be based.
Subic Bay is a former US naval base which is now a commercial free port, where US warships dock because of its deep harbour. There are plans to convert parts of the free port into an air and naval base.
Bautista said the Philippines was also offering the US the use of a base in the Zambales area and an army jungle training base in Fort Magsaysay in the Nueva Ecija area.


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Webster's dictionary defines a gift as:
noun: something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation
The same dictionary defines a wage as:
noun: a payment usually of money for labor or services usually according to contract and on an hourly, daily, or piecework basis —often used in plural
With these definitions in mind let me ask you a question. Before I ask the question let me set the context of the question for you.
Imagine you and I have a face to face friendship and that one day I told you that I had very special GIFT that I wanted to give you. That the GIFT I wanted to GIVE to you was very precious and would bless your socks off. I assured you that I was giving you the GIFT purely out of the kindness of my heart. BUT that there were some CONDITIONS to your receiving this GIFT. Here are the CONDITIONS.
1. YOU HAVE TO meet with me every day for 20 to 30 minutes.
2. YOU HAVE TO read, study and master the content of all my writings.
3. YOU HAVE TO give me 10% of your gross income for the rest of your life.
4. YOU HAVE TO encourage other people to read my writings.
5. YOU HAVE TO participate in a weekly small group that is dedicated to reading and discussing my writings.
So here is the question, is the GIFT that I am promising to GIVE you really a GIFT or is it a WAGE?
I truly would like your answer to this question. Please take a moment to leave your answer in the comment box below.


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Arkansas desegregation payments stop to Little Rock schools
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A federal judge approved a settlement Monday that will allow the state of Arkansas to stop making payments to three Little Rock-area school districts to aid their desegregation efforts.
U.S. District Judge Price Marshall signed off on the pact after hearing several hours of testimony from opponents of the deal and lawyers for the signees: the state, the districts and black schoolchildren.
Since 1989, the state has given the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts more than $1 billion, total, above their regular state appropriations. The money — about $70 million this fiscal year — goes toward magnet schools and transporting students from districts where they'd be in the majority to those where they'd be in the minority.
The state has wanted to halt the payments for years, and Marshall had scheduled a March trial to hear Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's lawsuit seeking the arrangement's immediate end.
Under the new deal, the state will continue making payments through 2017, with final-year funding earmarked for facilities.
"The incentives are great for all of us," McDaniel told Marshall on Monday. "We know that if litigation results in a harsh outcome (for one party or another), the true victims are the students."
The original lawsuit was filed in 1982 — when the Little Rock district said policies among the state and the North Little Rock and Pulaski County districts left all schools countywide with a racial imbalance. Under the 1989 settlement, the state agreed to give the districts more money but the funding never ended.
The Little Rock and North Little Rock districts have been declared integrated; Pulaski County has been found short in several areas, including facilities.
Objections raised in court Monday included whether students currently in magnet school programs could continue in their current curricula (they can't) and whether students in majority-to-minority transfers can stay where they are until graduation (they can).
Residents in Sherwood, a Little Rock suburb, also want permission to establish their own district without having to wait until Pulaski County's district is declared integrated. A separate city, Jacksonville, is in line to set up its own district.
Beverly Williams, who represents a group of Sherwood-area school patrons, said the community has worked for years to carve out its own district.
"The finish line keeps moving," she told the court.
Marshall could not modify the terms of the agreement; he could only approve or reject it.
A federal judge in 2011 attempted to end the funding, but the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled him, saying no party had asked to end the payments. Then, federal judge Brian Miller said the state had used a carrot-and-stick approach, but that the districts had learned how to "eat the carrot and sit down on the job" by not doing everything possible to integrate schools.
Little Rock was the scene of the nation's first major desegregation battle when President Dwight Eisenhower used federal troops to escort nine black schoolchildren into Central High School, the city system's flagship school.


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Pets are an important part of many families, and a new Red Cross Pet First Aid App puts lifesaving information right in the hands of dog and cat owners so they can provide emergency care until veterinary assistance is available.
The 99 cent Pet First Aid app from the American Red Cross gives iPhone and Android smart phone users instant access to expert information so they learn how to maintain their pet's health and what to do during emergencies. Pet owners learn how to recognize health problems and when to contact their veterinarian.
The Pet First Aid App provides step-by-step instructions, videos and images for more than 25 common first aid and emergency situations including how to treat wounds, control bleeding, and care for breathing and cardiac emergencies. Additional topics include burns, car accidents, falls and what to do for cold- and heat-related emergencies.
Other features in the app allow pet owners to:
- Create a pet profile including tag identification number, photos, list of medications and instructions.
- Use the list of early warning signs to learn when to call their veterinarian.
- Use "click-to-call" to contact their veterinarian.
- Find emergency pet care facilities or alternate veterinarians with the "animal hospital locator."
- Locate pet-friendly hotels.
- Test their knowledge with interactive quizzes and earn badges that they can share on their social networks along with their favorite picture of their pet.
History shows that people have not evacuated during disasters because they did not want to leave their pets behind. The Red Cross app contains resources to help owners include pets in their emergency action plans. Pet owners may also take a Red Cross Pet First Aid course so they can practice the skills and receive feedback. People can go to redcross.org/takeaclass for information and to register.
The Red Cross has made great strides in making emergency information available whenever and wherever people need it. The Pet First Aid App and other Red Cross apps can be found in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for Android by searching for American Red Cross or by going to redcross.org/mobileapps.


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Selamat tahun baru 2016
lagi agak males translate :)
As you know, the main reason for modeling 3D objects in Blender is to render images that exhibit the illusion of depth.
Orthographic views are great for building a house, but seriously flawed when it comes to creating realistic images of the house for use in a sales brochure. While a builder wants blueprints that are clear and accurate, a seller wants imagery that's aesthetically pleasing, with the illusion of depth. Blender makes it easy to use tricks like perspective, surface hiding, shading, and animation to achieve this illusion.
How does perspective work?
The essence of perspective is to represent parallel edges (in a 3D scene) by edges (in the 2D image) that are not parallel. When done correctly, this produces foreshortening (nearby objects depicted at a larger scale than faraway ones) and contributes to the illusion of depth.
Perspective is challenging to draw by hand, but Blender does it for you, provided you give it a 3D model of the scene and tell it where to view the scene from.
One-point Perspective
1-Point Perspective.
Drawing classes teach several different kinds of perspective drawing: one-point perspective, two-point perspective, and three-point perspective. In this context, the word "point" refers to what artists call a vanishing point.
One-point perspective works when you're looking at a 3D object head-on and it's centered in your view.
Imagine looking down a straight and level set of train tracks. The tracks will appear to converge at a point on the horizon. This is the vanishing point.
The image on the right is a 2D image of a cubic lattice or framework. Like any cube, it has six square faces and twelve straight edges. In the 3D world, four of the edges are parallel to our line-of-sight; they connect the four corners of the nearest square to the corresponding corners of the farthest one. Each of these edges is parallel to the other three.
In the 2D image, those same four edges appear to converge toward a vanishing point, contributing to the illusion of a depth. Since this is one-point perspective, there is a single point of convergence at the center of the image.
Two-point Perspective
2-Point Perspective.
Now the cube is at eye level, and you're near one of its edges. Since you're not viewing it face-on, you can't draw it realistically using one-point perspective. The horizontal edges on your left appear to converge at a point on the horizon to the left of the cube, while those on the right converge to the right. To illustrate the cube with a good illusion of depth, you need two vanishing points.
Three-point Perspective
3-Point Perspective.
Now imagine that you're above the cube near one of its corners. To draw this, you'd need three vanishing points, one for each set of parallel edges.
From this perspective, there are no longer any edges which appear parallel. The four vertical edges, the four left-right edges, and the four in-out edges each converge toward a different vanishing point.
Additional Resources


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Santa Monica, CA — Seven weeks ago, I felt Happy. My Life was good, filled with Blessings. The Corona Virus changed all that, slowly stripping away my happiness, my blessings, leaving me with what, I'm not sure: My Health? Tests … Continue reading
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Shop-Eat-Float in an Asian hub
Hey fellow foodies and travellers!
Here's another guide (1st guide on SE Asian Night Markets-> here) compiled by various contributors who have travelled to Southeast Asia. They have visited famous floating markets across cities and have happily shared their experiences on this space. Let's deep dive into the floating culture of these peculiar markets.
Before we begin…
What are floating markets?
Adding a very Southeast Asian touch to the markets serving food and fresh produce are the famous floating markets of Southeast Asia. These comprise of vendors selling food, fruits and vegetables, grocery items and trinkets on boats. While most of them have a dedicated space and time to run their shops, the others believe in floating away for offering tours instead of docking their boats.
Let's dive right in…
Cai Rang Floating Market, Mekong Delta (Vietnam)
The Cai Rang Floating Market is located in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, near the city of Can Tho. It's definitely the biggest draw in the area. People come from far and wide on their boats. Farmers will travel for upwards of 7-8 hours up the river and will stay until they've sold everything. Then they'll head home and repeat the process. Most people are selling fruits and vegetables. On many of the boats, you can see a large stick with something hanging from it. This is basically an advertisement that tells you what is for sale on the boat – the boat with a pineapple hanging from it sells pineapples. There are people on smaller boats whipping up drinks and meals for those who come to shop.
The best way to get there is to join a tour as you need to be on a boat and it's a little far away from the town. You can join a larger, packaged tour or you could book a stay at a small guest house in the city and ask them to take you. We stayed at Hung's Homestay and joined his personal tour which was just the two of us and Mr. Hung. It was a much more personal and intimate experience than joining a group put together by a tour operator.
The Inle Lake Floating Market – Nyaung Shwe (Myanmar)
As floating markets go, this one is in a spectacular location. While sunrise is a superb time to view the lake, it's not necessary to get up at 0 dark thirty to visit the market. This amazing floating market is on Inle Lake, Myanmar. It's easy to visit from the main tourist town of Nyaung Shwe. Most people combine a visit to the Inle Lake floating market with a trip to various sites around the lake and lunch overlooking them, of course.
Visit the market by longtail boat – and it's a hodge-podge of souvenirs, fruit and vegetables (you'll need to be up early for these). The speciality of the area is the Inle Lake Tomato – that's right they're grown right here ON the lake. You'll also want to ensure you see the Inle Lake fishermen rowing with their feet and legs – it's amazing.
Amphawa Floating Market, Bangkok (Thailand)
Southeast Asian markets are always vibrant, colourful and full of surprises especially floating markets. They have a very unique vibe that you don't find in any other part of the world except Asia. Amphawa Floating Market near Bangkok was our first Asian floating market and it's still one of our favourite. As big seafood lovers here, we had a real treat of all sort of local fish and seafood dishes including some we'd never tried before. Amphawa is a weekend market that gets alive on Friday evening with many locals coming here from Bangkok to escape the bustling capital city and to crawl through its narrow streets and canals. Here, everything is happening in boats; cooking, selling and washing, though it gets quite busy and crowded. It's still pleasant and enjoyable.
Except for food tasting, there are other activities you can do in Amphawa e.g. take a boat tour to see fireflies, wake up early morning to see Buddhist monks in small boat going down the river collecting donations from the locals, or visit the unique tree temple that is just 10 km away. Many tourists do a day trip to Amphawa from Bangkok but we'd recommend to stay here for a weekend to experience the real Thai floating market in its full.
Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, Ratchaburi (Thailand)
The Damnoen Saduak Floating Market in Ratchaburi, Thailand is just a 1-2 hour drive from Thailand's main city, Bangkok. As the most popular floating market of Thailand, Damnoen Saduak has grown into a tourist trap over the years. But that doesn't mean you should miss it. The market is always vibrantly bustling with lots of activities – the vegetables and fruit vendors where on their boats, peddling their items from one tourist boat to the next. Here, tourists can also buy Thailand souvenirs, from key chains to fridge magnets, from the popular Thailand clothing staple, the elephant pants to the colorful paintings.
During our visit to Damnoen Saduak, we ordered Pad Thai for our brunch for just 70 baht each plate. The vendor cooked the Pad Thai right in front of us, and after just a few minutes, she handed out our food on our boats. We ate our Pad Thai as we cruised through the cool waters of Damnoen Saduak. It was such a wonderful experience.
Khlong Lat Mayom Floating Market – near Bangkok (Thailand)
Khlong Lat Mayom provides an authentic Thai floating market experience. Those with a passion for food must visit this market that will leave you spoilt for choice. It is only 20 km out of Bangkok, yet you get the feel you are in a rural part of Thailand. It is definitely one of my favorite markets in Bangkok. I came to know of it from a Thai friend who lives in Bangkok, and when I visited, I hardly saw any fellow tourists there. Floating markets have been a part of the daily Thai life for centuries. They offer exotic delicious fruits to tasty Thai desserts and a great selection of meat and seafood dishes. This food lover's dream is really cheap. You can eat on the riverside from the stalls and small restaurants or eat food served from the local boats cooked right in front of you. Additionally, you can wander to the center of the market for long tail boat tours at around £2 for 1.5 hours. The trip offers you a choice to visit a temple and a round of small villages. Don't forget to bring back some tasty treats with you and check out stalls selling handicrafts and locally crafted products.
Some recommended food to try includes Pad Thai Kanom Jeen (cold rice vermicelli), Hoi Tod (oyster omelet), Southern Khao Mok Gai (chicken biryani), Northern Khao Soi (curried noodles peppery), Somtum Papaya Salad etc. Do try the various varieties of crab, prawns, fish, squid, which you can get grilled, steamed or fried, combined with a rice or noodle dish, and a tasty side dish of vegetables. Pla Pao (Thai salt crusted grilled fish), Gai Galae (Thai grilled chicken from the southern Thailand), Palm sugar juice were delicious and a must-try too. Its opening hours are from 9am-4pm on Saturdays & Sundays (usually closed on weekdays) and the best arrival time is between 10-11am.
Tha Kha Market – close to Amphawa (Thailand)
Floating markets in Thailand have always been a popular attraction, and if you are not afraid to travel a little outside of Bangkok then you can find a few that keep a very old "local" flavour. Not too far from the massive floating market of Amphawa you will find Tha Kha. Driving through mud roads and dirt paths, this small floating market seems to only hold a few vendors, most pretty old and pretty used to their job. They exchange commodities with each other, food, fruits, and with a surprising strength, hold the boat straight despite the very heavy weight they have on the front (put 5 coconuts on my boat and I'd flip over in less than a minute).
Maybe a little inconvenient to find, the Tha Kha market is worth staying the night in Amphawa to get a chance to visit both. Added bonus: if your schedule allows it, you could even get a look at the famous market laying on the railway track.
Bakun Floating Market, Sarawak, Borneo (Malaysia)
Almost the same size of Singapore, blue water, and jungle all around, the Bakun Lake looks beautiful when you reach it, but it's not supposed to exist. Situated 60 km from Belaga in Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo), it was created in 1986 as a hydroelectric reservoir, capable of supplying 90% of Sarawak energy demand. The dam that encloses it is the biggest dam in Asia, outside of China. To build this, thousands of natives were evicted from their ancestral lands and resettled near palm oil plantation, doomed to live a lifestyle unknown to them. But some of them simply didn't accept that, they stayed, retiring in the jungles upstream the river, or building floating houses near the jetty. It's those people that, every Wednesday and Saturday, give life to one of the most peculiar floating markets in Southeast Asia.
They bring in fresh products from the jungle with their longboats, vegetables, fruit, game, and medicinal herbs that are impossible to find everywhere else, in the territory of Borneo by now devastated by deforestation, but that are an ancestral part of the local culture. This is their struggle to survive, to still live following the path of their ancestors.
Kelantan Floating Market – Kampung Pulau Suri, Tumpat (Malaysia)
The floating market at the state of Kelantan, Malaysia, has been made much along the lines of the markets of Thailand. Although they cannot exactly be compared, the market could be considered a smaller twin of the Thai markets. The relatively new Pasar Terapung Kelantan or Kelantan Floating Market offers all that a local food enthusiast would like to taste. Besides the usual tender coconut water, fried rice preparations and traditional cakes or kuih, the vendors offer coconut salad or kerabu nipah, soupy noodles or mee celup and kuih sepit or crispy battered wafers.
We were happy to see a new market in the state that attracts locals and tourists alike. It is situated at Kampung Pulau Suri of Tumpat district and is accessed via boats through the Kuala Besar Jetty Point. You can expect to see vendors set stalls in and out of the boats as well. There is a mid-sized sandy area that has tables and benches, as well as hammocks, shops selling clothes and enough space for kids to play.
Thanks to fellow-travellers/contributors for sharing their experiences across various floating markets of Southeast Asia.
Bookmark- share – follow the guide during your trip to Southeast Asia.
** We know there are a lot more floating markets in SE Asia. If you want to contribute to the guide, reach out to us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can roll out phase-2.
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Today, February 1, 2014 is "World Hijab Day"
More than 50 countries of the world celebrated "World Hijab Day" on February 1, 2013.
A New Yorker Nazma Khan born in Bangladesh founded the World Hijab Day. It was organized almost solely over social networking sites. Muslims and non-Muslims in more than 50 countries across the world have been attracted by it.
Nazma Khan came to the United States from Bangladesh at the age of 11. She was the only person in her Bronx school to wear the Hijab, the traditional Islamic veil or scarf that is worn by many post-pubescent Muslim women to cover the head and chest.
Her classmates and schoolmates ridiculed her for wearing the Hijab and called her names. They tormented her throughout her time in the middle school and high school for wearing the Hijab. She suffered many hardships when she entered City College of New York, especially after the four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda in New York City and the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. At that time, some New Yorkers wary of Muslims made her a target for ridicule and suspicion.
Nazma said: "I was made to feel like a criminal, as if I was responsible for 9/11 and owed an apology to everyone."
However, Nazma, true to her religious beliefs, steadfastly wore the Hijab, shrugging off the rancorous comments and venomous stares.
She launched the website worldhijabday.com on January 21, 2013 with the mission to make non-Muslims understand the virtues of wearing the Hijab, the traditional Islamic headscarf.
Through her website, Nazma Khan has gained many Muslim and non-Muslim friends. Many of her Muslim followers are immigrants themselves, and have all experienced similar pains like her. Nazma has inspired many Muslim students to wear the Hijab.
In a message, she appealed to women across the world to wear the Hijab for just one day on February 1, 2013, to support the personal freedom to wear clothing of one's own choice.
I have listed and described the names of some common clothing worn by the Muslim women – from the least to the most conservative such as the Hijab, Khimar, Shayla, Abaya, Chador, Niqab, Yashmak, and Burqa, in my post titled, "A Muslim Woman's Veil."
Even though there is no basis for celebrating World Hijab Day, Muslims in more than 50 countries of the world celebrated the day on February 1, 2013. However, there are detractors too among Muslims who are against celebrating the so-called World Hijab Day. Umm Ibrahim (https://www.facebook.com/umm.ibrahim.56) living in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, vehemently says:
✦ Please know there is no BASIS for Hijab Day, Mother's Day, etc etc. Neither the Prophet (sallallahu 'alayhi wasallam) nor his sahabah and none from the pious predecessors ever celebrated such stuff! Our scholars have warned us clearly against innovated festivals/occasions. Muslims should avoid initiating or encouraging innovated occasions in imitation to those of the kuffar, such as Mothers's Day, the day of the Earth, etc!
✦ DAWAH starts with TAWHEED not HIJAB! Hadith of Mu'adh, when Allah's Messenger (sallallahu 'alayhi wasallam) sent him to Yemen, he said, "O Mu'adh, you aer going to a nation from the People of the Book, so let the first thing to which you will invite them, be the TAWHEED OF ALLAH." (Saheeh Bukhari (book 93, no 469)
✦ This is making fun of Hijab by asking support of non-muslims to wear for a day! Allah alone is sufficient for us. More reward for sisters who are struggling more to continue their hijab in west! IF possible, migrate from their lands which ban/mock Islam. Otherwise, just stay firm and be sincere and ask Allah to help. We know many sisters who wear Niqab in the West, Alhamdulillah! So, in future do we expect World NIQAB DAY, too?
✦ Prophet (sallallahu 'alayhi wasallam), who said: "I urge you to adhere to my way (Sunnah) and the way of the rightly-guided successors (al-khulafa' al-raashidoon) who come after me. Hold fast to it and bite onto it with your eyeteeth [i.e., cling firmly to it], and beware of newly-invented matters."
- How to wear a Headscarf- StyleCovered Hijab Tutorial: Pashmina style (youtube.com)
- Egyptian style hijjab by Naheed (youtube.com)
- Sister to Sister Talk: Wear A Shayla (Rectangular Hijab) Khimar Style!~ (youtube.com)
- How2 wrap khaliji Niqab using only shaylah(way#1) (youtube.com)
- A Muslim Woman's Veil (tvaraj.com)
- THAT'S MY HIJAB (language.chinadaily.com.cn)
- Hijab for a day: Non-Muslim women who try the headscarf (bbc.co.uk)
- Story of a Non-Muslim Hijabi (worldhijabday.com)
"I am Muslim, different, beautiful, Strong" (worldhijabday.com)
- Hijab Project: US teen invites women to join social experiment (alrasub.com)
- Why do you wear hijab? (unveiledthought.wordpress.com)
- world hijab day! (seekersofjannah.wordpress.com)
- Fancy Burqa: Our Versions of Hijab (irenealia.wordpress.com)
- Abaya without Hijaab ? ? ? ? (naush.wordpress.com)
- A non-hijabi more religious…or is she??? (xeniagreekmuslimah.wordpress.com)
- Working My Hijaab 3 – Turkish Inspired (thehijaab.com)
- How Will You Celebrate World Hijab Day? (punditfromanotherplanet.com)