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In case I have to say this — REMINDER: Never assume anyone wants to do anything in bed. The best thing you can do is be open-minded, be honest about what you want, and always ask before you try something new.
1. Literally anything to do with your butt. This might be an obvious one, but some guys are just way too gentlemanly to ask for this kind of stuff. He might be really into all sorts of butt play but doesn't think you'd like one of his fingers anywhere near your butt during sex.
2. Literally anything to do with his butt. He might really want some prostate stimulation, but the stigmas associated with it could have him downplaying the whole thing. It's not for everyone, so don't just start poking the butthole of every guy you meet, but (as long as you're OK with it) offer it up. You'd be surprised at how often a guy is into it.
3. You dressing up like a nurse for some role-play. He might feel silly asking for this one. Hell, on some level, it is silly. But role-play can be really hot if it's done right. He's just afraid you're going to laugh at him.
4. His foot fetish … or any other body part fetish. He could be real shy about any of his left-field fetishes, even if they're not really not out there. If he had an embarrassing experience with an ex when he tried to suck on her toes, he might bottle up all his foot feelings.
5. To just watch you do you. Watching you masturbate is incredibly hot, but sometimes, you just can't find the right way to whisper, "I want to watch you fingerbang yourself," into someone's ear. Next time you're going at it, push him back and tell him to wait. Then give him a show.
6. Having sex in public. This is risky and honestly not a great idea because it's also super illegal and if you landed in jail because he was super horny for you in a GAP dressing room ... well, your relationship might not survive that. But he's thought about it.
7. Making your own sex video. Listen, for lots of people, the immediate answer is "Ew, no!" So he might not want to go down that rabbit hole just to have it blow up in his face. But if you're a couple who loves sexting, you might want to float the idea of a homemade XXX video his way. Just don't name the file something innocuous like "movie.avi" and then forget about it until you bring your laptop into the Apple store to get worked on.
8. Some light BDSM. Sure, Fifty Shades of Grey has made some spanking and bondage seem much more appealing, but he might be afraid to show you his kinkier side ... especially if it involves a gimp mask.
9. Watching some porn together. This could make for some really hot foreplay or it could wind up with you exclaiming "You're into that??!" and sleeping on the couch after he selects a video. It's a dangerous game.
10. A threesome. "Haha ... wouldn't it be so funny and crazy if we, like ... fucked another person together or like ... whatever? JUST KIDDING!" This is how most threesome proposals go, because opening up your bedroom to other people is a complicated proposition. And he needs to be able to backpeddle the second he realizes those two glasses of wine you had weren't enough to make you not claw his eyes out for bringing this up.
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HOUSTON – Treatment for depression can take several forms, including prescription medication, electroconvulsive therapy and for those who don't respond to traditional treatments, there's a promising, but controversial option.
Brian Ehlers and Nicole Winkler don't know each other, but they share a parallel experience: deep depression that started in childhood.
"It sucks all the good things away from you in your life it takes away," Ehlers said. "It takes away tomorrow and without tomorrow, life isn't really worth living, is it?"
"Depression, everything is dim," Winkler said. "Things that you love hold no value anymore and you physically manifest the stress you feel."
Ehlers and Winkler are among the 30 percent of Americans who don't respond to conventional treatment therapies for depression.
"I had a horrible experience," Winkler said.
"It gets to the point inside of you where you know there's just nowhere to go," Ehlers said.
Ehlers was on the verge of getting electroshock therapy when he learned about ketamine, what some know best as a psychedelic club drug called "Special K."
"Some drugs can be abused that are medically useful, and there's nothing we can do about that," Dr. Raul Cruz said.
"We're using extremely low doses, subanesthetic doses," Dr. Marc Ettensohn said.
Even so, some patients do experience a "ketamine high" from the treatment.
"But that passes after 30 to 40 minutes, and you feel completely normal," Ehlers said.
Toxicologist Alberto Augsten said in the wrong patient, ketamine could cause serious side effects.
"For instance, someone that's predisposed to psychosis or schizophrenia, ketamine will make them even more psychotic," Augsten said.
Ketamine is not approved for the treatment of depression, so patients have to pay out of pocket for a series of infusions that can cost several thousand dollars. That expense adds up because the treatment needs to be repeated.
"Some patients will come back as frequent as once every month. Others will come back less than once every year," Ettehsohn said.
"We don't want people to keep coming back forever, but if they need to come back for a year, that's totally fine," Cruz said.
While the long-term effects of the drug are unknown, Ehlers and Winkler credit ketamine injections with finally lifting them out of the darkness of depression.
"I felt it was worth the risk and I'm glad I did it because it changed everything from day one of the treatment," Winkler said.
"I was without any further recourse, wouldn't be here. I would have committed suicide," Ehlers said.
Two major pharmaceutical companies are now fast-tracking new medicines inspired by ketamine. A nasal-spray version of the drug could be on the market by this time next year.

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How Nikki Harman went on a journey from being homeless to practicing mindfulness. Plus the best food for mental clarity.
In addition to this story, at the end of this episode I'll share with you the best food for mental clarity and focus. This food literally raises our brain function to its maximum and it's really easy to find.
OK enough hints from me, let's get on with the story.
Our guest, Nikki Harman
I am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Nikki Harman, who has an amazing story to tell. Not only has she been through quite a lot in her life, but what she does now is super exciting as well. So I really can't wait to dive into it, and so let's do it!
Nikki welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast!
Nikki: Hello! Thank you for having me.
Me: You're very welcome!
Nikki's story
So you've got quite an incredible story and I'm actually quite honored that you're happy to share it with us and everything. I know that your story, I believe your story begins when your parents split up, is that right? And you were about eleven, is that right?
Nikki: Yes, so when I was eleven my parents split up. And at the time just before they split up I was living in a really lovely six-bedroom Victorian house in a nice seaside town. My parents had good jobs and all was going fairly well, but they split up. And because the house we were living in came with the job that my dad had, we lost the house.
Me: Oh!
Losing everything
Nikki: So we lost everything basically. My dad moved to London to go and find work, and my brother, myself and my mom moved into this temporary accommodation, a bed and breakfast.
Me: How old was your brother?
Nikki: My brother was eight.
Me: Sorry?
Nikki: I was eleven and he was seven. So it was from the age of eleven to twelve that we were in this temporary accommodation. For a year before we were rehomed into a council flat, so my brother was seven and eight.
Me: Wow yeah. What did your father do during this time? Did he just like go to London and not look back, or…?
Nikki: He came down when he could. Although he was working most of that time. And I remember only really seeing him every few weeks. Probably every four to six weeks, an occasional day trip down, a Saturday. Most of the time it was just me and my mom and my brother.
Me: And so your mom, she wasn't at the time of the split…She was looking after you? Did she have any other work or a job?
Nikki: No, she didn't work. It kind of broke her, this whole situation. She wound up having quite a significant mental breakdown over it. She became quite distant and disengaged with us. It was just really quite difficult because I remember what it was like just before we moved out saying goodbye.
Packing your life away
We had two beautiful cats and a couple of cockatiels and we had to rehome them. Just packing all of our belongings, packing everything away. Everything in my room, all my toys, my books, my stereo, my tapes, cassette tapes. All my music, all that kind of stuff, it all had to be put away. And I felt like I was packing away a part of me, really.
That was my room, that was just me. So what it must have been like for my mom to pack everything in the house away and not know when next we might see it all.
We were told initially that the law is that temporary accommodation means four to six weeks before you are rehomed. Clearly that doesn't happen now and it didn't happen then. And so we didn't really know how long it would be. It was kind of assumed at the time that it would be a short-term thing. But it became clear very quickly that that wasn't going to be the case. So by the time we moved into this room that had just a bed and two bunk beds in…
Me: That was the B&B?
Nikki: Yes that was in the B&B where we were living, that was where we lived, that was our home. And we were able to use the dining room for breakfast with the other guests, we'd get an evening meal.
Life in a B&B
But the B&B itself was quite run down and the people there I think had sort of a prejudiced attitude towards us, because we were council tenants. We weren't normal paying B&B guests, so they treated us quite differently.
When there were other guests staying, we got better quality food. But if it was just us, it was very much sugar puffs in the morning, a piece of toast. And then in the evening it was often like a tinned stew or tinned something. It wasn't proper cooked, home-cooked food. Tinned potatoes…They would be as cheap as much as they could. We didn't really have much in the way of quality food.
But I was grateful really for having had anything to eat at all, because it was quite the case that we didn't get lunch during the weekends and school holidays because the B&B didn't provide that for us. And my mom didn't have a job, she didn't have money, she didn't have the inclination really to be wanting to do very much in the way of supporting me and my brother. So we'd go quite hungry throughout the days when we were not at school.
Me: So how could…I mean, what I don't understand is how could the owner of a B&B have, you know, children in their home who don't have food. You know? Like when you're on school holidays, you're still in the B&B. They still see you every day, they know you haven't eaten anything. And yet they just don't feed you. I don't understand that.
Nikki: No, I mean occasionally we'd get a jam sandwich.
Me: Yeah. Oh boy.
Being kept out of the way
Nikki: Something like that. But they weren't like that, they weren't those kind of people. They had their own children anyway. So they were sort of preoccupied with them. They didn't really pay too much attention to us. And actually they didn't want us there. During the day we were kind of kept out of the way. Sometimes we'd be allowed to go and play in the garden with their children.
Me: That's what I was going to ask, yeah, if you ever played with their children.
Nikki: Yeah, we did, but not very much.
Me: Did you have to like stay in the room or something?
Nikki: Yeah, we stayed in the room a lot.
Me: Wow.
Nikki: So it just wasn't a very pleasant experience. And given that we were living in a seaside town….My mom, because of the way she was, didn't want us to go onto the beach. To get to this bed and breakfast we had to walk past the beach. And we were never allowed to go and play on the beach in the summer holidays.
Me: Oh that's awful!
So close yet so far from the beach
Nikki: We saw people playing with their sand castles and eating ice cream, and the smell of fish and chips everywhere you went. All these lovely things, and on a hot day just not being able to go on the beach because my mom didn't want us to do that. We would invariably be…we didn't go into town very much because mom didn't want to. But it would be to go into the lauderette to wash our clothes. So we'd sit there and then head back home.
I'll never forget that, just not being able to play on the beach. And then having to go and sit in this room on lovely sunny days, and hear about all the real guests in the B&B going off and doing fun stuff. Where they'd been and what they'd been doing. It was all quite difficult.
Me: I'll bet. And your mom, I think you said, was she like smoking? What did she do? You said she was like smoking all day or something?
Nikki: Yeah, she was a smoker.
Me: So you were in one room with a mom smoking all day. Ewww.
Nikki: Yeah, not nice.
Me: Oh my goodness. And so that lasted a year, yeah?
Nikki: Yeah, so what happened…It was a year long in temporary accommodation.
A cottage for the winter
The council put us in a what was called a winter let from about November to February time. February March time. So we were moved out of the bed and breakfast and into this tiny, tiny dilapidated, rundown cottage which… It just had frost on the inside of the windows. The only sort of heating was a tiny little fire in the lounge.
My brother shared a bed with my mom and then I was in another room. So I was grateful to have my own space. But the sheets were wet from the cold in the house and the condensation.
Me: So did you have to like sleep in your coats or something?
Nikki: Yeah, it was along those lines. Clothes to put on. But my brother got whooping cough that winter as well, which just made it awful for him.
Me: I'll bet.
Nikki: The freezing cold and coughing. We could hear him coughing all night and wheezing, it was terrible.
Life at school
Me: And what about…Did you have…I mean, you were presumably going to school, right? How was it with the other kids at school? Did you make friends with anybody?
Nikki: No, I became quite withdrawn at school because I didn't know how to begin to explain what was happening. A lot of what was going on at the time my mom didn't want us to talk about because she was ashamed. She'd lost everything. As I say, a single mom in a room, we were in this horrible winter let, no money, no home, her mental health was declining. She just didn't want to engage with anyone. And she's always been like that anyway but that compounded it, that exacerbated it at the time.
One of the things she would always tell us was to not talk to other people about what was going on at home. So it was very difficult for me to express how I was feeling. I became very anxious, I was incredibly anxious. Because I just didn't know what to do for the best, and how to make the situation better. I wanted to make things better.
Me: And you said you took on a parental role with your younger brother, is that right?
Nikki: Yeah, very much so. It was all kind of, yeah, just wanting to make sure he was OK and that mom was alright. I'd be kind of quite hyper vigilant about my mom because I'd be worried that she was OK. So at school I'd just have this worry, and because of that, because of my behavior, my friends became quite distant. They didn't understand and I'd try and explain what was going on and how difficult things were.
Homeless even with a roof over your head
And there was that song, you know, The Streets of London? The song about homelessness. One of my friends at the time, who I'm sure didn't really understand how terrible things were for me at home. But she made a very snide remark about that song that we sang one day in our music class. She said, "Well you think you've got it hard. You should see what it's really like for the proper homeless people on the streets. You're not on the streets so you're not homeless". It was that kind of attitude that they had.
And it made me then think 'well no-one believes me. Maybe I am just making all this up. Maybe it isn't as bad as I think it is'. But actually I knew that things were terrible.
I was declining at school, my grades were dropping, my concentration was terrible. As I said, I was always very anxious and worried that something terrible was going to happen.
No dad and no money
Me: And where was your dad during all this time. Because presumably he was working in London so he must have had some money, right?
Nikki: Yeah, he had some money, some of it was going to Mum. But obviously he was paying rent on wherever he was living at the time and doing whatever. And my mom, I think because she smoked and she drank…
The thing is that she would deny this vehemently now if she were sat here next to me. And I've confronted her about it in the past but she seems to remember that she didn't drink because we had no money. But I can remember her, I can specifically remember her drinking a lot and smoking a lot. So where that money was going I don't know.
I had no contact with him really because, you know, mobile phones hadn't been invented, we didn't have a phone. We had the phone at the B&B when we were staying there. And in the winter let there was a phone box down the road that we went to on a Wednesday evening. He would phone us at seven o'clock, phone this phone box number and we would speak to him. But mostly it was my mom wanting to speak to him. So we got a little bit of time to chat then, but he didn't really know the main things that were going on at the time because I didn't want to worry him. I kind of just held it all in, really.
Things start to get better at first
Me: And then how did it start to get better? Because I mean eventually I know that you got out of…you got into the council flat. And then after the winter let was that much better? Or how was that different?
Nikki: Well after the winter let we moved back into the bed and breakfast again for about another four months.
Me: A different one, yeah?
Nikki: Back into the same one.
Me: The same one? Oh!
Nikki: The same place. Bar one week where they'd been booked so we stayed in the bed and breakfast next door which was lovely. The loveliest people there who cared for us and they were genuinely interested in what we were doing. And it was so sad to then have to go back next door after that. But yeah we were there until June eighty-seven.
And then we moved to this beautiful, lovely, I say council flat. But it was like a Victorian building with beautiful views over the sea and large rooms everywhere. A very spacious flat. It was like the best sort of place you can imagine after being stuck in a B&B and a winter let to be able to have our own bedroom and our own space and all that kind of stuff.
Me: Did the food situation get better at that point?
Nikki: Not initially because Mum still didn't work. She was pleased that we were out of the bed and breakfast, but at that point the divorce started to come through. And so she was still going through her issues and she took quite a decline in her depression and her depressed state. I became increasingly worried about her.
A harrowing trip home from school
Me: Were you afraid that she might, you know, take her own life or something?
Nikki: Well she did try once when she picked us up from school in her car.
Me: With you in the car?
Nikki: With us in the car, yeah. She would often be smelling of alcohol when she picked us up and sometimes she would be taking temazepan. So sometimes she would be quite drowsy at the wheel. I can remember having to kind of steer the car back on the road because she was kind of swerving a bit in and out.
Me; That must have been scary.
Nikki: It was very scary. But one particular day she was very agitated and upset about something. And when we drove back she took us on a different route to the way back home. We were going up some country roads and there was a coach in front of us. And she started putting her foot down and speeding up trying to get closer to this coach. She then just announced, "How would you like to go to heaven, kids?"
Me: Oh wow.
Nikki: And we both started screaming. I sat in the front and my brother was in the back.
Me: How old were you then?
Nikki: I was twelve at that point and my brother was eight. And I was turning to face my mom and holding my brother's hand in the back seat to try and reassure him. Putting my hand on my mom's arm to try and stop her, and shouting at her to stop and slow down. Just asking her to kind of know that we loved her, we didn't want to die, we wanted to help her and other people wanted to help her.
Trying to think like an adult
I can distinctly remember trying to think, 'What would an adult say if they were in this car now? What would an adult do to fix this problem?' That's what I remember thinking at the time, what would they do. So I was trying to knock the car out of gear to see if I couldn't do that… I was just pulling at her frantically, and something made her slow down.
Me: Wow.
Nikki: We headed back home, back into town. But she blamed us, that at that point it was all our fault that she was still alive because she wanted to die. Saying she'd never forgive us and all this kind of stuff that was just pointless.
Me: Well and it made it doubly hard for you, right?
Nikki: It did, but I just felt so worried for my mom. And when we got back, she then said, "Don't tell anybody that this happened. If you tell anybody, then you'll get taken away from me".
Me: Well you would, yeah.
Nikki: I didn't, I didn't say anything.
Back on solid ground
But I do remember getting out of the car and touching the ground with my hands. I had to have the front and the back of my hands on the ground because I felt like I'd gone to jelly at that point. The adrenalin had worn off and I was in shock. I just needed contact with the ground to know that I was safe. And then we went off into the garden and she went upstairs and it was never mentioned again. And, you know, again, trying to get my head round all of that with her…
Me: Wow.
Nikki: She denies that it ever happened, she doesn't remember it. Well she does, I'm sure she must have some recollection of that time in her life. But so she was very depressed.
And then going into that flat, although it was great because we had our own space, it just increased our isolation. Because what happened was that she just locked herself away. And because it was coming up to the summer holidays again in eighty-seven, she just hid herself away and me and my brother were in the same situation. Looking after ourselves, and no food in the cupboards. Only what was packed from when we were living in our house, so we were basically helping ourselves.
Foraging for food
This might sound really disgusting, but we'd be really, really hungry and be raiding the cupboards and finding chocolate powder. We'd just eat spoonfuls of dried cocoa powder, chocolate powder. And golden syrup, mixing it with golden syrup to make like a yucky paste just to get something into us. We'd have cereal in the mornings and in the evenings a very basic meal that Mum might come out and make. But she often kind of forgot about us because she was in her own world of depression.
Things were very difficult for a long, long time and slowly things improved. Slowly things got better for her and subsequently got better for us. She got herself a job…
Me: And how do you think things got better? Like was there any specific thing that started to happen? Or was it just like time healing things?
Nikki: I think possibly the fact that there were people…she was on someone's radar. I think one of the local church groups had found her and were trying to connect with her and make contact with her and just try to help her through her darkest days. And I do remember them coming round to see her and she wasn't that bothered by them particularly. But there was somebody there for her to talk to and that was the most important thing that she needed at that time, was an adult.
Me: An adult, yeah.
Nikki: And it was the most important thing for me and my brother because that meant that someone else was there to share our burden.
Me: Oh yeah definitely, you didn't have to be the adult anymore, yeah. Wow.
A slow recovery with people to talk to
Nikki: So it was just a very slow, gradual process. And then she met somebody and things got better from that perspective. You know, her self-esteem improved and she came out of her depression and got on an even footing. But it was over a very long period of time, it took a good…I'd say it took a good twelve to eighteen months for her to get herself on an even keel.
Me: Well still though compared to some people that…I mean I know it wouldn't…it didn't feel quick to you, but if I hear twelve to eighteen months, like there are a lot of people that stay in the situation she was in for years and years. So it's a blessing that at least, you know, as horrible as it was, at least she did get out of it eventually, right?
Nikki: She did. My mom's a very complex character and I'm not in contact with her anymore because of just the way she's behaved and treated me. And it's a very complex relationship that I have with her, but she never really wanted me. That was the basic…I kind of grew up with that knowledge that she wished I'd never been born. She would often say that to me. And she would often say, "I can't wait till you're eighteen so you can leave home" or "I wish you'd never been born". You know, those kind of things would come up quite a lot.
Trying to do the right thing
But I've always tried to do the right thing. I've always tried to be there and to be the model child that she wanted me to be. I was never good enough for her in her eyes, things like that. It was never going to work.
My mom has taught me to be a good parent but by knowing the right way to do stuff rather than the wrong way to care for your children.
Me: Yeah. For sure.
Starting a business
What prompted you to start your business? Was it one incident in particular?
Nikki: Well I'd started meditating twenty years ago after I qualified as a nurse. And I found that meditation worked really well for stress and for coping with everything that was going on. As a nurse in a busy hospital you see all sorts of things that affected me. I was quite affected by some of the things and I found that meditation was a really good tool. And when I was going through the difficult period with my husband before the divorce, before I made the decision to end the marriage I was trying to save it. Using meditation as a method of trying to keep my sanity and work through things.
And I decided one of the outlets of doing that was writing a course to teach adults how to meditate. That's when I began. I started having groups of people round to teach my four-week course as an introduction into mindfulness and meditation and then it developed from there.
My motivator for me when the marriage ended in 2014 was to put my energies into the business and into helping others go through difficult periods in their life by using meditation and mindfulness as a tool.
Getting out of your comfort zone
So I wrote a book called The Gem In The Dust which is about just sort of finding your light within you through whatever difficult period you're having to be able to… Imagine you're sitting in a ragged old sofa and you've got comfortable. You've found your groove in the sofa. And you have to make that choice one day. Whether or not to stay in that groove or to stand up and be uncomfortable for a while and push yourself out of your comfort zone to find out what's really going to work for you. Because you can sit and pretend all you like that your life is good, that your life is happy. But you know that somewhere inside you there's something not quite right. Or eating away at you slowly. Or making you depressed, or anxious or worried or fearful of change. Ultimately you can't ignore that.
So The Gem In The Dust is about just being able to find that within you. That power within you to make changes in your life for the positive, for the good. And so I wrote the book and wrote a six-week course to go with it and now teach people that as well.
Me: So is the book and the course…those are available from your website, right?
Nikki: The book hasn't been published yet, I'm still looking for an author. I can teach the course and I've got my manuscript and I've kind of put it on a back burner for a little while. But I do need to get going with pushing it again and either self publishing or go down a publisher route. Because I want it to work, I want to get it published and I want to reach out to these people.
Giving herself therapy by helping others
So that was enabling me and kind of giving myself therapy throughout the whole sorry tale really of going through that period in my life. That's how the business started.
Me: And then now you said that you're doing really amazing things with children, can you say a little bit about that?
Nikki: Yeah, I love working with children. I became a Connected Kids tutor and trainer. Connected Kids is founded by this amazing woman called Lorraine Murray who started teaching the courses about twelve years ago. There are three levels and I did the first level which was just a one-day introduction into teaching kids meditation and loved it.
I realized that my true passion was working with kids to teach them how to connect with themselves, how to regulate their emotions, how to understand their own world within them and make sense of the world around them and make empathic connections with others. And Lorraine Murray calls us the Peace Pioneers, you know, the people trying to generate peace and harmony and balance into our own world with kids as well. I then went off and became a tutor and then did the trainer module so I now teach adults how to teach children meditation through the Connected Kids courses.
Nursing and mindfulness
And through my work as a nurse I'm incredibly passionate again about making mindfulness part of the clinical toolkit that we as healthcare professionals can use with children in hospitals and hospices and wherever. I did the introduction course, the Connected Kids introductory course specifically for healthcare workers who work with children in the clinical setting. So I'm hoping to get that running, get that off the ground quite soon. I'm just waiting for someone to take me up on it so that I can start teaching it. Because it does work, I've seen amazing results from teaching kids how to meditate and how to use mindfulness in their lives.
Me: Yeah, I mean I think…one of the things that…another thing that really struck me with your story was some of the reasons why you wanted to share this story. And I would love if you would share those because I think it's really important.
Nikki: My passion is about helping kids to develop resilience. To learn to be more emotionally connected to themselves and those around them. And to teach adults how to make that connection with their kids or the children that they work with.
Being open about mental health issues
Me: But I mean you've also got reasons for sharing your personal story, right? I think you said something about breaking down barriers and addressing the sense of shame that comes… Do you want to say anything around that?
Nikki: Yeah, I'm quite open about discussing these things. Because the more it's buried, the more mental ill health is hidden away, the more difficult it becomes to deal with it. And the more difficult it becomes to address it. I want to break down those barriers to reduce that stigma of mental illness. And to accept that it's OK to have a mental health problem. It's not something to be ashamed of. And the more you reach out and access help, the better your chances of recovering and getting treatment are for the problems that you've got. So the worst thing that anybody can do is to pull the shutters down and hide away and pretend that there's nothing wrong.
Me: For sure.
Where to find Nikki
And so where can people go to find out more about you and what you're doing? I mean I'll put the links below obviously but it would be good if you could mention where they can find you.
Nikki: Sure, well my website is inner space project dot com. And I'm also on Facebook, so it's Facebook dot com forward slash inner space project. I'm on Twitter as at the mindful nurse. So they've got those places they can find me and my website will have all the information about the courses I'm doing. I've got my blog as well which I write on which is inner orange dot blogspot dot com. That has a lot of my personal story on there and how it relates to meditation and mindfulness and wellbeing. But there's also a lot of information about meditation and mindfulness as well. And videos that I put up on there from time to time that you can watch too. So yeah, those are places you can find me.
Me: Super! OK.
Nikki's Food For Thought campaign
Oh and there's one last thing that we didn't actually mention, which was you're involved with something called food for thought?
Nikki: Yes, Food For Thought is a campaign that I've started in the run up to the summer holidays. Based on again my own personal experience of homelessness where we just sort of… Just seeing the rise in the number of families that are accessing food banks and the 3-day emergency food parcels. They're really in food crisis… This goes up over the summer holidays because kids aren't getting their free school meals. And they're often missing meals as a result. Or families are working extra hard because they've got to pay childcare costs. So things like that. They're turning more to food banks than ever before.
So the Food For Thought campaign is about raising that awareness and asking people just to donate something to put into their local food bank the next time they go shopping. Or to find their local churches who will be… most around the country do some sort of food collection for food banks.
Finding a Food Bank near you
Me: And so what's the best link? I'll link to Food Bank in the notes, but what would the url be for that?
Nikki: Well there's the Trussell Trust which is a charity that do food banks. They've got four hundred and twenty food banks around the country. So that's one of them.
Me: OK so people could just Google 'food banks', right? With their locality and then they would find the nearest food bank.
Nikki: Food banks. That's right.
Me: OK so that's probably the easiest way.
Super! Well thank you so much for being here to share your story Nikki, I really appreciate it.
Nikki: Thank you for listening.
Me: You're very welcome. I mean I think what you're doing now is very amazing. I think it's so important to help kids be more resilient and self-confident and, you know, it's good for everybody really. But it's particularly nice for children.
Thank you thank you! Bye for now!
Nikki: You're welcome.
The best food for mental clarity
So, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you the best food for mental clarity. And that food is dark, leafy greens!
The reason I mention dark, leafy greens is because they contain a lot of a particular element that is really important in many a food for mental clarity. That element is chlorophyll.
Chlorophyll is said by some to be the 'blood' of plants. Because it's the green power that plants get by basically absorbing sunlight. So by taking in chlorophyll, you're literally taking in the energy of the sun.
You can find chlorophyll not only in dark leafy greens, but also in superfoods like blue-green algae, spirulina, chlorella and wheatgrass, all of which have a very concentrated level of nutrients that really ramp up the oxygen levels in the body. They therefore are excellent foods to keep our minds sharp, focused and clear, so if you're faced with difficult decisions for example, these foods can literally help you focus.
Many other benefits of chlorophyll
Now I think you won't be surprised when I tell you that chlorophyll is good for so many things, it's ridiculous. I mean, if you've ever Googled 'help with' followed by any kind of health ailment or condition, chances are you've seen dark leafy greens listed as one of the foods to eat, because of their levels of chlorophyll. They're good for just about everything from arthritis, toxicity, cancer, digestive issues, oral health and more. I'll link to an article in the show notes that goes into more detail if you'd like to read more.
How you eat leafy greens for more chlorophyll
As to how you eat these lovely green leaves, well salad is the obvious answer…but of course you can also blend a handful of spinach, kale, chard or other mild greens with some fruit to make a green smoothie. It doesn't have to taste green, and this is a great way to get greens into people who otherwise wouldn't eat them.
I've got lots of recipes that use greens in my 5-Minute recipe ebooks, which I'll link to in the show notes as well.
Have YOU got a story to share?
Which brings us to the end of this week's story – and if you've got a true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day or enhanced your particular situation), I'd love to hear from you!
Got a question, or a comment?
Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn.
I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!
5-Minute Mains and other recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/
More about chlorophyll here.
Find your local Food Bank (in the UK) here
Nikki's website: www.innerspaceproject.com
Nikki's blog www.innerorange.blogspot.com
Find Nikki on Twitter or Facebook
Nikki Harman is a mindfulness coach, Connected Kids™ children's mindfulness tutor and trainer, and registered general nurse (RGN) working part time in the NHS. Nikki also teaches adults to explore how to move out of their comfort zone to achieve a goal or dream. Her blog is based on professional information, mixed with personal experience. Nikki has written a course for healthcare professionals who work with children in the clinical environment to teach mindfulness techniques as part of their toolkit.


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Protesters Block Stairs, Halls In NY Capitol
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- More than 100 protesters chanting opposition to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to cut program funding for the poor while giving tax breaks to the rich blocked central stairs and hallways in the Capitol for an hour Wednesday afternoon.
State police said they arrested 17 people who would be charged with disorderly conduct, arraigned before a judge and released later Wednesday. Handfuls of demonstrators held long banners across the stairways and escalator leading to Empire State Plaza and to three Capitol corridors.
That forced state workers and visitors to struggle past or step over, sometimes with troopers' help, or seek another route.
Dozens of other protesters streamed around the Capitol lobby carrying signs calling for jobs, housing and higher taxes on the rich. One carried an American flag. They chanted, changing phrases every few minutes.
"Show me what democracy looks like; this is what democracy looks like."
"Hey you millionaire; pay your fair share."
"You say Cuomo; we say hell no."
Protest organizer Wanda Hernandez, a board member from the activist group VOCAL New York, said the group opposes cutting social programs and closing hospitals and schools while letting an income tax surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers expire after this year.
Gloria Wilson, a demonstrator from Community Voices Heard, said protesters want Cuomo to stand strong and resist special interests.
In Albany, grassroots protest is big business.
The groups flood Albany on legislative session days, boxed lunches in hand, after fully alerting the media. They can operate on tax-deductible donations, government or pork-barrel grants, some gifts from like-minded unions and charitable or political action groups.
On Wednesday, the effort came in three chartered buses, with those who face the real cuts in services and aid led by full-time staffers who know how to play to the TV cameras to maximize the impact of a couple dozen or 100 protesters and steering reporters to heart-wrenching personal profiles for which they prep their clients.
Wednesday's organizers, for example, alerted all reporters of the planned arrests, giving a 15-minute time frame for the spontaneous events.
Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto declined to comment on the protest.
"Today we are taking over the Capitol," Hernandez told the cheering crowd. She said if they couldn't succeed Wednesday they would return.
Jennifer Flynn, an AIDS activist from Brooklyn, held one end of the banner blocking the stairs. She kept talking even as a trooper took her out in handcuffs. "It's unfair for Gov. Cuomo to target the most vulnerable New Yorkers," she said.
Organizer Sean Barry said a half-dozen community groups were involved. He said they and others will be back.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
for more features.


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Neighbours in peace: Or pieces?
If we listen to this babble of voices whose sole aim seems to be to present their own country's case as better than the other's, we'll never get anywhere. There is an old saying in our part of the world, 'Taali dono haatho se bajti hai' — it takes two hands to clap


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NNZ uses functional cookies to improve your experience on our site and provide the basic functionality of the page such as navigation and access to secure components. The website can not function without these cookies. Statistical cookies help us understand how our site is being used (anonymous data). Marketing cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality and to tailor messages and display ads to your interest. By continuing to use our site you must consent to either 'all cookies allowed' or 'only functional and statistical cookies'. More information on our privacy policy and cookie policy.
Home » Press » Press release: NNZ Inc acquires J&J supplies
Date: 3 April 2015
Atlanta, Georgia (April 3, 2015) – NNZ, a leading supplier of packaging solutions for agricultural markets, announces that they entered into a binding agreement to acquire J&J Supply, a company specialized in agricultural packaging needs to enhance its product portfolio through established relationships with manufacturers worldwide, as well as 93 years of experience in the agricultural packaging industry.
The acquisition, based in Las Cruces, NM, further increases NNZ's share in the produce packaging market. "The combination of J & J Supply with NNZ's broad portfolio of products in the agricultural packaging market will provide to our clients a variety of packaging options along with market expertise, "said Marco Boot, President of NNZ Inc. "The acquisition is also expected to result in greater efficiencies and significantly increase our market share," added Jim Mattocks and Marco Boot.
For more information please contact
Marco Boot (President)
NNZ Inc.
805 Marathon Parkway, Suite 170
30046, Lawrenceville, Georgia
telephone +1 770 921 9210
NNZ is an international company specialising in packaging for customers in the fruit and vegetable sector and industry. Since its foundation in 1922, the family business has steadily developed into an organisation with around 250 employees and an extensive global network of its own branches and partners.
The strength of this network lies in its ability to increase its competitive strength. Like NNZ, the partners in our network can be characterised as sustainable and social, product leaders, customer-oriented, innovative, trendsetters, flexible and transparent, reliable and ethical.
We at NNZ regard our employees as our best assets. We are convinced that this leads to more creativity and productivity, and that is of the utmost importance for our customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. We aim to work on a highly personal basis, passionately and enjoyable according to the plan we have made together. Our motto is: 'Together is better'. Together we deliver our customers sustainable customization, logistics solutions and innovation through co-creation.
We are able to meet this need with our subsidiaries at strategic locations in the various countries. We work with our clients and a diverse team of professionals; specialists in the fields of materials, food technology, graphic design and market research. Together we work on tailor-made products, from concept to market launch. For each link in the chain, we offer customer-specific, smart solutions!
Our standard range consists of: net bags, jute bags, paper packaging, woven PP bags, films, cardboard, trays, PP/PET cups, fresh produce buckets, Big Bags and pallet stabilization materials. NNZ also supplies customised packaging. We apply the highest standards of sustainability, efficiency and food safety to all packaging. Our customers thus benefit from our excellent purchasing conditions and high-quality products.


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A business card can represent trustworthiness, honesty, and reliability that a company or business person would attach his name and number to a physical card. Not only is a company's reputation or credibility at stake if no business cards are used, but the company stands the chance of being forgotten about when a prospective customer departs from the company's or representative's presence.
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CARTEL is a nude pink shade, which is surprisingly complex in formulation, and strikingly arresting to view. Slightly dusty a pink and sweetly feminine, there is very little competition when it comes to this blushing nude.
Introducing our beautiful line of matte liquid lipsticks.
These apply liquid and dry down to a matte finish. They are water resistant, long wearing and non drying to the lips. Fortified with jojoba oil and vitamin E, these double as conditioning lip treatments. These are not transfer resistant. They are similar to standard matte bullet lipsticks except they are conveniently packaged in a sleek, black gradient tube with a doe foot applicator. Avoid eating foods with oils otherwise re-application is necessary. Remove with makeup remover, or oil based removers.
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Thank you! We love the finish, too! Xo


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THE MOVE – SHAZAM: When Flower Punks Become Cinemascope Rockers
The Move was a success at home, with a string of hit singles from their inception and a top-20 album in 1968, a year where competition on the U.K. charts was downright furious. However, a mixture of management and band lineup issues, topped off with a heavy workload as a live act, kept them from capitalizing on their early success. Their second album, Shazam, didn't emerge until February of 1970 and failed to chart, a trend that would sadly be true for their subsequent albums.
However, the pop chart's loss is the rock cultist's gain as Shazam is an entrancing blend of late-period psych and proto-progressive rock, showing the Move mutating from a singles group with a wild live act into an early '70s rock act that could channel its songwriting smarts into heavier, more progressive material that fit the "underground FM" ethos of the day. Unlike a lot of its contemporaries, it also shows a sense of humor about undertaking this explorations, with some between-takes chatter and vocal recording goofs kept in for amusement as well as some funny "man on the street" interviews conducted by Wayne used as interstitial bits between songs.
Shazam is divided into two neat halves. The first is devoted to two Roy Wood originals and a remake of a Wood tune from the prior album. "Hello Susie" kicks off the album in grand fashion: it's as cleverly structured as anything from the first album, with a hooky chorus that instantly insinuates itself into your mind, but the arrangement makes it a guitar-heavy basher with the kind of lumbering tempo favored by hard-rock acts. It essentially feels like a prototype of Cheap Trick's early years.
Elsewhere, the first side features "Beautiful Daughter," a string-quartet ballad in the "Eleanor Rigby" vein suited to the pop-friendly pipes of vocalist Carl Wayne, and the aforementioned remake "Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited." The latter is no mere retread: it strips away the string and horns from the first version, goes for a heavier sound and boasts an elaborate, extended instrumental second half that goes full "prog rock" on the listener with cleverly arranged quotes from classical pieces like "Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring."
The second side is devoted to a trio of covers. "Fields Of People," a song from early progressive act Ars Nova, is an epic that allows the group to show off their acoustic skills and their heavy side as well as their formidable vocal harmonies. It even boasts a fake fade-out that leads to a surprise raga-inspired coda. A cover of Frankie Laine's "Don't Make My Baby Blue" sounds like Black Sabbath playing a soul song and doubles as an excellent, high-drama vocal showcase for Wayne. A lengthy take on Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing On My Mind" is a perfect closer, offering a mixture of dreamy vocal harmonies and driving guitar breaks from Wood.
These diverse elements add up to an album that is radically different from Move in style, arrangement and song lengths but satisfies in its own way, acting as the testament of a band of opening its collective mind to the possiblities offered by mixing pop, rock and classical influence to fill both sides of an L.P. Shazam captures the magic of a time when all things were possible in popular music and the skill and talent invested in its grooves reward multiple listens.
CD Notes: like the other Move albums, this has been a reissue staple in the CD era. A recent 2-CD set from Esoteric Recordings is the best version to date, offering the album as well as singles from the same era, some edits and alternate mixes and a string of BBC recordings from the Move's "cabaret act" era. The latter make for a stunning listen, with the group covering everything from "Higher And Higher" to "The Christian Life." Buy this version with confidence.


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At the May [2015] meeting, the trustees of the Board for Certification of Genealogists honored two former associates who had long and distinguished careers with Emeritus status. "The Board is building on the foundations and on the contributions of our former associates," said BCG president Jeanne Larzalere Bloom. "We are pleased to grant Emeritus status to Gale Williams Bamman and Marie Varrelman Melchiori. We are grateful for their years of service, their contributions to the genealogical community, and their deep experience and expertise."
With 42 years of dedication to BCG's goals and standards Bamman was the longest actively-credentialed associate. Over this time, she has held the credentials CGRS, CALS, CG, and CGL, and published in major journals. She served as BCG president and labored mightily in founding, chairing, and setting the tone for the Critique Review Committee beginning in 2005. She published articles in major journals and is now devoting her time to finishing a long-term book project.
Melchiori was first certified as CGRS in 1980. In the thirty-five years since, she
worked as a full-time researcher and lecturer, dutifully recertifying
every five years and earning her CGL certification in 1995. Over that
time she also served BCG in many roles, most notably acting as an
unofficial bridge between BCG and the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) from the 1980s to the present, promoting BCG to
NARA, and serving as "the voice of federal records" to the genealogical
community. She has taught at the National Institute for Genealogical
Research since 1987, and taught military research at the Institute for
Genealogical and Historical Research and the Salt Lake Institute of
Genealogy. She served as BCG trustee 2000-2006 and as a director of the
Association of Professional Genealogists 1991-1999. APG conferred on her
the Graham
Thomas Smallwood Jr. Award of Merit in 1999. She was also active as a
volunteer with NARA and the National Genealogical Society. Her articles
for the NGS Magazine included coverage of Confederate, FBI, and War of 1812 records.
CG, Certified Genealogist, CGL, and Certified Genealogical Lecturer are service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists®, used under license by board certificants after periodic evaluation.


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The Sweetness of Spiritual Things. Ps. 104. 34
A. M. Toplady C.M.
When languor and disease invade
This trembling house of clay,
'Tis sweet to look beyond our cage,
And long to fly away.
[Sweet to look inward, and attend
The whispers of his love;
Sweet to look upward to the place
Where Jesus pleads above.]
Sweet to look back, and see my name
In life's fair book set down;
Sweet to look forward, and behold
Eternal joys my own.
Sweet to reflect how grace divine
My sins on Jesus laid;
Sweet to remember that his blood
My debt of suffering paid.
Sweet in his righteousness to stand,
Which saves from second death;
Sweet to experience, day by day,
His Spirit's quickening breath.
[Sweet in his faithfulness to rest,
Whose love can never end;
Sweet on his covenant of grace
For all things to depend.]
Sweet in the confidence of faith
To trust his firm decrees;
Sweet to lie passive in his hands,
And know no will but his.
If such the sweetness of the streams,
What must the fountain be?
Where saints and angels draw their bliss
Immediately from thee!


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Kirsten Dunst's first advertisement for Bulgari's Mon Jasmir Noir fragrance has surfaced and the actress is featured nude, with random fabric covering up her lady parts, holding an oversized perfume bottle and right next to a gigantic lion. It really makes us...want to smell good, or something.
Last year, Bulgari got into some trouble after the city of Venice banned an ad by the brand featuring Julianne Moore in the buff, surrounded by purses and lion cubs.
Take a look at Kirsten's debut and tell us what you think. And for some behind-the-scenes action, head over to Sassy Bella.


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Although well off the pace, Ritz's effort to break Lindgren's record caught the crowd's attention almost as much as the winning effort by Bob Kennedy. With 2 laps to go he needed to finish in 2:08 and he just missed; Ritz still got a "victory" lap to a big ovation. Colorado coach Mark Wetmore, who will become Ritz's coach this fall, told RunnersWorld Online: "He ran a great race. Tonight I saw a kid who's been training and racing for 9 months, and has run probably more than 100 races, and he has this kind of race while running most of it in the second lane. He's a hell of a talent."
A report from Eugene by Dan Cruz, a California HS coach:
Sorry to post so late but I needed to get something to eat after such a long day. A wonderful race by the young man, who I must add was so charming and affable when I did get a chance to interview with him. I will be sending photo's and a write-up tomorrow.
The youngster got out with a good start from the #2 alley, settling in with what I found out later to be many Colorado guys. He said, "I felt very comfortable in the race because I was running with many guys I am familiar with, I plan to head to Colorado on July 1st and continue my training with them this summer after I take some time off".
He opened in 66.9 and continued to run pretty even splits throughout the race. He was running wide through the first 800 and even making passes later in the race on the turn. When asked about runnning wide he stated, "I knew I was running wide and needed to get inside, it was tough trying to pass those guys." "It was great to be in there".
Ritz passed the 800 in 2:13.6, 3/4 in 3:19.5, the mile in 4:25.1, 1 1/4 in 5:32.0, 1 1/2 in 6:38.5, 1 3/4 in 7:44.1, Two miles in 8:50.8. From this point he started to actually look charged up and he awaken with a very solid last mile. "I heard the section on the of backstretch really making noise and it woke me up", referring to the Aggie Running Club section Q on the backstretch. "Oh yeah, those guys on the backstretch really helped me".
He ran a 66.5 for 9:57.3, 66.2 for 11:03.5, 65.1 for 12:08.6, and then a 64.1 passing 12 laps in 13:12.7, closing in approximately 32.0 (adjust for fully automatic), to run 13:44.70, just missing Gerry Lindgren's national HS mark. "With a lap to go I saw I needed a 63 or 64 so I went for it" (Ritz).
When asked how he felt about missing the record Ritz responded, "I did awesome, yeah you can't be disappointed I'm just happy with it". "There's everything, your best friends, you just have to be satisfied with yourself".
Spoken like a real champion! I must say he is so warm and personable, an incredible young man.
Results from USATF
Event 7 Men's 5,000 Meter Run W World: 12:39.36 Haile Gebrselassie, ETH 1998 A American: 12:58.21 Bob Kennedy 1996 M USA Outdoor: 13:16.42 Doug Padilla, Ath. West 1985 H Hayward Field: 13:07.83 Luke Kipkosgei, Kenya 1998 - HS Record: 13:44.0h Gerry Lindgren, Rogers, Spokane, WA 1964 Results - Finals - Friday 06/22/01 Compiled By Time RANK COMP# ATHLETE NAME TEAM TIME PTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 485 Bob Kennedy Nike - 13:28.72 2 247 Alan Culpepper adidas - 13:29.66 3 348 Adam Goucher Team Fila - 13:30.36 4 504 Matthew Lane Unattached - 13:32.91 5 671 Nick Rogers Nike - 13:35.68 6 660 Jonathon Riley Stanford - 13:40.13 7 713 Peter Sherry New York AC - 13:40.78 8 808 Andre Williams Unattached - 13:41.17 9 129 Brian Baker Team New Balance - 13:41.69 10 457 Chad Johnson Hansons RS - 13:41.98 11 662 Dathan Ritzenhein Unattached 13:44.70 12 760 Matt Tegenkamp Unattached 13:49.64 13 667 Grant Robison Stanford 13:52.24 14 750 Nolan Swanson Nike 13:53.34 15 399 Brent Hauser Nike 13:53.95 16 773 Jorge Torres Colorado 13:58.24 17 644 Phil Price Nike 13:58.57 18 404 Seth Hejny Stanford 14:03.59 19 787 Clint Verran Hansons RS 14:24.06 20 430 Jason Hubbard Adams State 14:31.97 21 141 David Bazzi Washington 14:33.83 - 130 Kyle Baker Indiana Invaders DNF - 246 David Cullum Nike Farm Team DNF - 123 Bolota Asmerom Nike DNF - 398 Brad Hauser Nike DNF - 286 Matthew Downin Nike DNS - 102 Abdi Abdirahman Nike DNS - 349 Chris Graff New York AC DNS - 481 Mebrahtom Keflezighi Nike DNS


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A Public Discussion
Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 6-8pm SHARP
Venue: LGBT Center,
208 West 13th St (between 7th and Greenwich Avenue), Manhattan
Rm 212 West Wing
Leading up to the International Day Against Fascism, March 22nd, we would like to invite you to a public discussion. Speakers will share information and open the discussion about the rise of xenophobia and racism in Europe, the militarization of the state and the rise of fascism.
1) "The Politics of Hatred: Homophobia and the rise of fascism in Russia and Beyond" - Benedetta Argentieri
2) "1980 to Gezi Resistance / Military Dictatorship, Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism" - Eylem Delikanli
3) "Between East and West: Ukraine and the return of the national question" - James Robertson
4) "Europe, Greece and the Return of Fascism: Some Implications of the Current Crisis" - Costas Panayotakis
5) "The European Radical Right Between Mobilization and Electoral Populism - Jonah Birch
Watch the event live here: http://www.ustream.tv/stopmotionsolo
The event is sponsored by:
- AKNY – Greece Solidarity Movement www.akny.org
- ANT.AR.SY.A US www.antarsyaus.blogspot.com
- Campaign for Peace and Democracy www.cpdweb.org
- Syriza-U.S.F. www.syriza-ny.org
- GEZIniyoruz NYC www.geziniyoruz.org


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The NIL era is here, and it should help level the playing field in college football
Starting Thursday, college athletes will gain a measure of economic freedom by being allowed to profit off their name, image and likeness. Essentially, they can work for, promote or endorse specific businesses while playing sports.
It might be signing autographs at a local car dealership. It might be promoting a local (or national) business on social media. It might be appearing on a billboard for a booster's company even if it makes little financial sense for the booster other than as a way to support his or her favorite team.
This has petrified the NCAA and its supposed free-market, pro-competition old-school coaches for decades as they've fought in courts and legislative bodies. Supposedly this will cause top talent to congregate at a few wealthy schools that are willing to spend the most.
Nothing turns a capitalist into a regulatory-mad socialist quicker than college football recruiting.
In reality, the impact on talent dispersion will be fairly minimal and it will help rather than hurt the competitive balance of college sports — especially football, which is the operation that essentially funds everything.
The addition of above-the-table payments to the list of considerations of what school a top player will sign with — or continue playing for — should help spread talent out to more schools and more conferences.
Start with this: It can't get much worse.
Over the past 10 years, Alabama has signed the Rivals.com No. 1 recruiting class seven times. Georgia got the other three. Ohio State has gone top five eight times. The Buckeyes, Clemson and Oklahoma have dominated their respective conferences. Those three, plus Alabama, have combined for 20 of the 28 slots ever handed out in the College Football Playoff.
The gap between the elite teams and everyone else is enormous. When Alabama played Notre Dame in the national semifinals last season, the Tide roster featured 22 Rivals.com 5-star recruits. The Irish had two. Not surprisingly, Alabama cruised to a 31-14 victory.
"It's impossible for the competitive balance to get worse," said Andy Schwarz, a leading sports economist and chief innovation officer for the Professional Collegiate League. "The current amateurism model is in no way inducing competitive balance and it certainly isn't encouraging it."
Each recruit has a unique set of priorities when choosing where to play: proximity to home, quality of coaching, chance for team success, level of competition, preparation for the professional ranks, academic reputation of the school, religious affiliation, campus life and so on.
It can go down to the ridiculous — say, school colors, helmet logos or who knows what else.
It's why schools have spent frivolously on things like decorative waterfalls and mini golf courses in the football facility, unnecessarily opulent weight rooms or even bacchanal campus visits to lure players. They've also, over the century plus of major college athletics, so routinely offered under-the-table inducements that an entire industry of compliance and defense against the rule book was created.
Essentially, money talks. It cannot just be an addition to the considerations on where to play, it'll leap toward the top of many recruits' lists.
It's why cries of how this will create a Wild West of recruiting should be mocked. How much wilder can it get than escort scandals, relentless remodeling of facilities and the FBI wiretapping the phones of assistant basketball coaches?
Having the potential earnings derived from name, image and likeness become a factor in recruiting brings new elements to the decision equation — namely playing time, the chance at stardom and the fervency and size of a school's market.
Schwarz argues that amateurism undervalues talent. A player won't necessarily lose much by sitting on the bench for a few years, or by being the final member of Alabama's recruiting class rather than the star of, say, Mississippi State's.
"If you undervalue something, it is easy to hoard it because it's cheaper," Schwarz said.
Star players will now find their value. Being a benchwarmer decreases earning potential. While many players will still gladly wait their turn, some won't. NIL will change recruiting at the margins.
Right now, a power program such as Ohio State will almost always defeat a mid-level Big Ten program such as Michigan State in recruiting. For the sake of argument, let's say the Buckeyes would get nine of the 10 top-choice recruits they want against the Spartans and even seven of 10 of the second-tier recruits that fill out a recruiting class and add valuable depth.
Michigan State isn't Ohio State, but it isn't without extensive value. It has a huge alumni network, operates in a big state with lots of media markets and has numerous billionaire boosters with plenty of cash to burn.
The chance to be the crown jewel of the Michigan State recruiting class (rather than another top recruit at OSU) and/or get on the field sooner and cash in on some of that money might drop the Buckeyes' recruiting victory percentage over the Spartans to eight out of 10 of the first-choice recruits and six out of 10 depth guys. Maybe more. We'll see.
"NIL makes it harder for Ohio State to win all those battles," Schwarz said.
Does that immediately flip the pecking order of the Big Ten? Or course not. Again, this is just one factor, not the only one. Ohio State still has lots to offer. But extrapolate one or two or three more recruiting victories at MSU against Ohio State to the same thing happening at Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin and the gap between the Buckeyes and the rest of the league is diminished.
The game is more competitive. Upsets become more frequent.
It's better.
Schools such as Nebraska, which has a huge and passionate fan base built for NIL, will have another tool to overcome some unavoidable challenges — little local talent, weather, etc. The starting quarterback for the Cornhuskers is the biggest athletic star in the entire state, after all. Will he suddenly have a car deal? Maybe. But so what? So do the coaches.
Even so-called mid-major programs can follow that plan. Places such as Boise State or Fresno State are big deals in smaller (but not tiny) communities, allowing them to offer something to recruits that might supersede conference affiliation. The lines will blur.
"It will almost certainly be more profitable for some players to be the big fish in a smaller pond," Schwarz said. "It's weighing a risky move [will I become a starter?] at a high-value market [power team] against a certain move [I'm expected to start] at a lower-value market [a less traditionally successful team or smaller conference]."
As we've seen with free agency at the professional level, the chance to win is a big draw, but the chance to maximize earnings often trumps it.
"Do I want to take my chances at playing at Clemson or become the star at South Carolina?" Schwarz continued.
Essentially, every school has money. Every school has boosters and businesses seeking to access star players. While critics want to worry fans that Alabama has unlimited resources, it doesn't.
In fact, even a place such as, say, Illinois (bigger school, wealthier state, a huge city nearby) could actually have more. Who knows?
Either way, football is going to get played. Someone will win and someone will lose. NIL is just one factor in each player's decision. Here in an era when Alabama has won six of the past dozen national titles, how can it get more lopsided?
There is little college coaches and administrators like more than arguing against change — both by trying to regulate and legislate every last detail and warning that everything is an existential threat to the sport.
Those dire predictions rarely, if ever, pan out.
This one won't either. Welcome to the NIL era. R-E-L-A-X. It's going to be a good thing.
More from Yahoo Sports:


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IoT, i.e. Internet of Things is going to bang the world with a great hit, say the experts. The IoT Reports Company opines that this method would affect the world in an ironic manner and all concerned would be benefited with its impacts.
Those intending to reap best out of IoT are advised to follow the following tips –
- Thinking big with smaller initiatives – Those intending to get the best results must rely upon this noble idea. They may start their ventures with small initiatives that can be converted into bigger ones by thinking great. Candidly, IoT is a great idea that can be incorporated into as many enterprise areas as possible, say the wise guys.
- Proper knowledge – Possession of sufficient knowledge is a must for operating the devices that go a long way in processing of data. IoT involves a great data that need to be processed with apt knowledge.
- Consider with a broad view – Long-term thoughts need to be borne in mind. People must know that IoT stands for the basic changes in the business world. Now in its infancy, IoT is undergoing sea changes in the shape of technological developments. End-point devices, data integration and analytics platforms are becoming more and more involved in this trend. Great improvements are expected in the near future as regards Internet of Things, say the learned guys. No short-cut developments should be expected from this noble method that is going to bring a great change.
- All about data – Lots of data is involved in IoT process. True values would be gained only by processing the data in apt manners. Those intending to get the maximum out of IoT will have to capture, sort, process and piece together tons of data. Varieties of devices need to be involved in this process that is meant for overall development of all.
- Integration and not isolation – Unwanted isolation IoT data in a silo is a must as per the IoT Reports Company. IoT data may be brought directly in the business applications for getting maximum benefits. It is helpful for overall improvement and removal of harmful features. Efficiency of ERP, CRM and supply chain can be enhanced in big manners with the data generated with IoT devices.
- Avoid hesitation – All human beings and organizations want progress, prosperity and gain the benefits. But many of them often lag behind in making the true efforts. They usually hesitate in implementing the required steps that are always fruitful in reaping the benefits by hitting the targets. IoT Reports Company is of the opinion that such hesitations must be quit as early as possible. Growing fast and in apt manners; IoT adoption is a must for all that intend to embrace success, progress and touch the heights.
The above simple points if considered in serious manners can be of great assistance in reaping the fruits of the IoT trend. Candidly, this noble idea is going to put an everlasting impact on all concerned that can touch the heights of success.


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This information was updated 6/5/2020.
Paper ballot (hand marked paper ballots, ballot marking devices for accessibility)
For more details, visit Verified Voting.
Required hand count of a sample of ballots in addition to other counting methods
Mix of hand count and retabulation
According to the North Dakota Recount Guidelines, recounts may involve hand-counting or machine retabulation. If the ballots are to be retabulated, a sample hand count must be conducted to verify the accuracy of the voting machines. During a retabulation, ballots containing undervotes for the office recounted and ballots rejected as uncountable by the voting machine will be manually checked for voter intent. Recount Guidelines, p. 14.
Close vote margin
Less than or equal to 1%
Less than or equal to 0.5%
Less than or equal to 0.25%
Varies by election contest
Inititated automatically
Recount are automatic for primaries, general & special elections, and ballot measures when:
"a. Any individual failed to be nominated in a primary election by one percent or less of the highest vote cast for a candidate for the office sought.
b. Any individual failed to be elected in a general or special election by one-half of one percent or less of the highest vote cast for a candidate for that office.
c. A question, measure, or bond issue submitted to the qualified electors has been decided by a margin not exceeding one-fourth of one percent of the total vote cast for and against the question at any election."
North Dakota Century Code (NDCC) § 16.1-16-01(1).
Timing: NDCC § 16.1-16-01(4).
Close vote margin required
For primary elections, candidates may petition for a recount if they are defeated by a margin that is greater than 1% but less than 2% of the vote cast for the candidate receiving the most votes for the office. For general and special elections, the margin of defeat must be more than 0.5% and less than 2% of the highest vote cast for a candidate for that office. NDCC § 16.1-16-01(2). Voters may not initiate recounts for ballot measures in North Dakota.
Timing: NDCC § 16.1-16-01(3) & (4).
Paid entirely by initiator
Initiator pays deposit or bond before recount
When filing an application for a recount, candidates must pay a bond in an amount determined by the county auditor and sufficient to pay the actual cost of the recount. There is no provision for this bond to be returned if the recount alters the outcome of the election. NDCC § 16.1-16-01(3).
Party/candidate or initiator has statutory authority to appoint challengers
No statutory guidance for recount observers
"The individuals entitled to participate at the recount are: (1) Each candidate involved in the recount, either personally or by a representative. (2) A qualified elector favoring each side of a question if the recount involves a question or proposition submitted to a vote of the electorate." These participants "may challenge the acceptance or exclusion of any ballot." NDCC § 16.1-16-01(6).
Secretary of State or Election Board responsible for defining intent
The Secretary of State may adopt rules for determining voter intent. NDCC §16.1-06-26(3).
"A voting mark that touches the oval on an optical scan ballot used as a part of an electronic voting system shall be counted as if it were in the oval. Except as provided in North Dakota Century Code section 16.1-13-25, if the voting mark does not touch the oval and is not in the oval, the vote may not be counted." North Dakota Administrative Code 72-06-01-05.
See NDCC § 16.1-15-19 for determining voter intent on write-in votes.
The recount board decides by majority vote how to count the challenged ballots. NDCC § 16.1-16-01(7).
This information was updated 6/5/2020 using the North Dakota Century Code (NDCC) current through the changes approved by the 66th Legislative Assembly (2019).


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Makersite Sustainability
Make more sustainable products, faster
Find drivers of environmental impact
Enable DfE and circular design
Create standards-conformant reports
Find drivers of environmental impact
Use the integrated full-scale Life Cycle Analysis functionality to understand drivers of your product's environmental footprint.
Model anything
Intelligent and fast BOM imports
Import your models and data
Interactive, regionalized visuals
World class data
Design for Environment & Circularity
Rapidly assess the effects of material or technology changes in the supply chain on environmental performance and drive decisions.
Material lookups
Improvement suggestions
Intuitive, powerful scenario analyses
Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
Native collaboration
Create standard-conformant reports
Export anything
Smart grids for data analyses
Custom reports
BI Integration
Respond to data requests
What impact categories are included?
We offer over 250 different impact categories coverings all key methodologies in use by the LCA community. We have a specific focus on the categories prescribed by the emerging PEF standard coming out of the European Union.
Can I generate PEF and ISO compliance reports?
These are standards that provide guidance on how to model your products and their supply chains. Makersite is completely flexible in how you create your models and uses industry accepted background databases for calculations. You can therefore create PEF and ISO compliant reports from the results generated by Makersite.
Do you have a dataset for …
We are the largest cloud-based LCA database in the world and constantly look to create partnerships with data providers. Makersite is also a fully transparent database, which enables you to quickly and effortlessly reconfigure our datasets to suit your needs. In addition to that, if you're ever missing any data, we or any of our partners can help you fill those gaps quickly and cost effectively.
What happens to my data in the cloud?
What data is included?
We include most of the major LCA databases including Ecoinvent, IDEA and more. In addition, we also develop data ourselves. For a complete list of the public and proprietary databases that are integrated, see Data integrations.
Can I have multiple versions of my results?
Makersite as full version control for both your data as well as our background databases. That means that you can always compare updated results to the original to understand the cause of the differences.
Can I use data provided to me by my suppliers?
Makersite can help you collect raw data from your suppliers efficiently. This data gets connected automatically to your models and will be used to general integrated LCA impacts. Since your data and that of your suppliers use the same background databases for calculations, your results are consistent and transparent. For those that already have pre-calculated numbers from your suppliers, these can also easily be added to your models.
How often is your data updated?
LCA data updates follow the update cycles of the database providers. There is typically a delay between when database providers release new versions of their databases and when they become available on Makersite. This is due to the extensive integration activities we perform on the data.
How safe is my data?
Can I run Makersite locally?
Talk to an expert
Tell us what you want to do so we can tailor your trial
Run a pilot
See how it could work for you
Calculate ROI
Evaluate the potential impact of using Makersite for you
Make better products, faster.


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Accessibility statement for Find postgraduate teacher training
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We've also made the text on the service as simple as possible to understand.
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
Technical information about this service's accessibility
The Becoming a Teacher team is committed to making this service accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
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How we tested this service
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This statement was prepared on 19 September 2019. It was last updated on 16 March 2020.


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In this series, we ask comedians to name the comedians they enjoy. Then we ask those people, too.
Last week, Chris Garcia choseSheng Wang, a California comic whose work takes a closer look at mundane objects. Below, Wang talks about Yannis Pappas, known for his work on VH1'sBest Week Ever. Check back next week to read about Pappas's pick.
I tend to focus on minutiae, the microcosm. I tend to do more about mundane things. But Yannis just dives into big things and he's not afraid to say what he thinks about behind-the-scenes stuff with these big happenings: race relations, relationships, men and women, celebrities and celebrity worship. He thinks everyone should just give up and mix it together. He's Greek and he talks about when you get a bunch of people fking on one island — he talks about all these things. Biology, society, and more.
He is a monster on the stage. He's a beast. He just goes off. Not like a simple joke — he'll go deep and delve into it. I wasn't sure why I felt like this at first, but then I realized. This is a guy who has lived a lot of life. He has so many life experiences. So he's not afraid to talk about people. He's had a lot of contact with all kinds of humanity.
He does a couple different characters that have gained more popularity than actually him, I think, in his stand-up. Mr. Panos, that's a super nationalistic old Greek guy. And Mauricia [above] — she's a pre-opp tranny, a guy that's trying to find a white husband to give her an operation. At some comedy shows, he will open for himself. Like Mauricia will open for him, and she's such a popular and interesting character. And then she'll introduce Yannis.
Last summer, I saw him at his show at Bar 4 [in Brooklyn, New York]. He was talking about Tiger Woods, how he got so emasculated from that ordeal when he got caught. How it ruined his game and he couldn't get back on track. It's so long and epic — but he ends up going off about how women treat men in society. It's heavy stuff. It's not going to feel politically correct. He says it in a way that makes you go, "Yeah. Yeah."
—As told to Julia Carpenter
PLUS: Meet the Other Comic's Comics
Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture.


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Banking & finance
We count ourselves among the best practitioners for derivatives, structured finance, debt and equity capital markets.
Our key strength is the ability to put at our clients' disposal our unrivalled:
• technical product expertise;
• state-of-the-art knowledge of domestic, US and European laws and regulations;
• ongoing contact with the market and regulators;
• experience across the European, U.S. and all the major Latin American markets,
to ensure that our clients will always be one step ahead and receive outstanding value every time.
We thrive on complex and innovative transactions and structures at the leading edge of the international capital markets. Our practice covers:
• the full range of derivative products;
• structured finance;
• securitisation transactions; and
• equity, debt and equity-linked (convertible and exchangeable) bond issues
Financial regulation
Since the 2008 global crisis, financial regulation, especially in the US and Europe, has gone from a rather lax system to an arguably overregulated minefield. Not only that, but financial regulators are increasingly keen on enforcing their domestic rules on an extraterritorial basis.
Given the current regulatory mood, and the heavy handed sanctions that some noncompliant entities have had to face, avoiding pitfalls is now more important than ever.
Fortunately for our clients, international financial regulation is one of our specialties. We are fully conversant with all there is to know about financial regulation, and its impact on our clients' business across jurisdictions.
From Dodd-Frank with its Title VII and Volcker Rule to FATCA, EMIR, MiFID, MiFIR, the CRR/CRD IV, Basel III and others, our clients, whether dealers or end users, need to know what the impact for them will be and how they need to react.
New regulation has brought into play a number of game changers such as:
• mandatory clearing and mandatory trading of OTC derivatives;
• derivatives reporting;
• position limits;
• prohibitions on proprietary trading;
• swap dealer registration;
• new rules on capital charges,
and several more that any business needs to know if it is to successfully engage in financial transactions.
As the regulatory landscape evolves, our clients know they can rely on blx's experts for all aspects of financial regulation.
Our experience includes extensive, across-the-business advice as to the impact of US regulation on a European banking group, including:
• the registration of its holding entity as a swap dealer in the US;
• the adaptation of its business, policies and procedures, internal control and compliance mechanisms;
• the interplay of US and European regulation, finding the most efficient way to streamline the business avoiding overregulation where possible;
• bringing its business across the group into compliance with the US prop trading prohibition; and
• engineering a groundbreaking solution that allowed its subsidiaries and affiliates to refer business to the main entity without having to register them as introducing brokers in the US.
One of the solutions that we have developed from the ground-up to cut through the enormous complexity of increasing, overlapping and ever-changing regulation, is RegBot. RegBot is blx's virtual lawyer that provides real-time regulatory advice at our clients' fingertips.
Our compliance practice helps our clients to:
• identify and manage conflicts of interest;
• identify and manage global marketing and selling restrictions;
• deal with local regulatory bodies and equivalent foreign bodies;
• respond to local or cross-border investigations and enforcement actions by one or more regulatory bodies, covering wide ranging issues such as governance, remuneration, complaints handling, insider dealing, or market abuse;
• establish new mechanisms necessary to comply with the law or regulation, such as access to trading and clearing platforms for financial transactions, pre-trade obligations, transaction reporting, etc.
• establish documentation, reporting structures and decision-making processes in connection with regulatory matters, including formalities and contents in each case.
Our first-class regulatory expertise, matched with our unparalleled business understanding and experience ensures a solid compliance service at our client's disposal.
We have acted as compliance specialists for financial entities, ensuring that their policies, procedures, controls and practices would remain compliant with current regulation.
Also, at the cutting edge of regulatory compliance technology, we have developed RegBot, a virtual co-pilot to enable our client's compliance in real time.
Private equity
Our capabilities allow us to provide the most effective advise to private equity houses, investors, funds, banks and financial institutions at all stages, from establishing the fund and making investments, to ongoing portfolio assistance including restructuring advice, to exiting from those investments.
Our acumen and experience in respect of all matters financial, as well as investment management, securitisations and regulatory provide our clients the best support to structure the best investment methods for their purposes.
Technology & outsourcing
We have negotiated countless technology and outsourcing agreements, including pricing platforms, trading platforms, email, storage and other IT services, both on behalf of end users and providers and want to put our extensive market knowledge and top practice at our clients' disposal.
This specialist consulting practice also offers custom development services based on our flexible and modular RegBot platform. Our teams can assist clients leverage the power of our RegBot platform to build exclusive, highly customised solutions that are tailored for specific needs within client organisation.
Capital markets
We advise banks, financial entities, companies and any other kinds of client on domestic and international bank financing transactions in a number of industry, commercial and financial sectors.
Our experience as advisers for arranging banks, lenders, credit enhancers and borrowers in a variety of scenarios is the best tool for us to anticipate and address the requirements of all parties to a transaction.
Clients benefit from our first-class expertise in banking and finance, including:
• Financial structuring
• Asset finance
• Acquisition finance
• Leveraged finance
• Syndicated finance
• Trade and emerging markets finance
• Restructuring
Through our participation in trade associations and industry discussions, we offer our clients a view of the inner workings of the sophisticated financial markets, enabling them to anticipate issues, manage risks and succeed in their goals.
Fintech law
We offer cutting edge fintech and regtech expertise. Our expertise in no small part comes from our own first-hand involvement in regtech projects, such as RegBot, blx's virtual regulatory compliance advisor.
The world is changing and technology will play an ever increasingly important role in a vast number of areas that, up until recently were dealt with exclusively by humans.
That change is already taking place, and blx is already at the top of that game to help your business benefit from it.
Project finance
We are ideally suited to advise on complex projects of any kind and size.
Be it oil and gas, petrochemicals, LNG, thermal power, renewable energy, nuclear energy, telecoms, water and waste, mining, airports, roads and bridges, ports, stadia or rail infrastructure projects, we can advise.
Our expertise places us in the best position to advise governments, sponsors, lenders, contractors and suppliers. We have the necessary know-how, pragmatism and commercial understanding of our client's goals to anticipate, understand and find the right solutions to issues and problems that may arise during the course of a project.
We offer our clients the possibility to combine different forms of structured finance techniques to suit their needs, including:
• monetisations;
• asset acquisitions;
• securitizations;
• portfolio financings;
• restructurings;
• leveraged finance; and
• hedging
Distressed debt & restructuring
Our distressed debt & restructuring practice has received special praise from our clients.
Our skills in the negotiation of distressed debt and restructuring transactions, built upon our banking and finance, structured finance, private equity and risk knowledge and experience, offer a rock-solid, commercially savvy legal service.
Emerging markets
We are proud of our long standing tradition working in emerging markets. We know the people, the cultures and the language of high growth markets better than most.
We have delivered top-notch advice in complex matters to clients in several Latin American geographies for many years and we are committed to keep going strong, consistently delivering results at the highest standard.
Risk management
Today's global markets pose an increasingly demanding landscape where regulation is ever-changing, burdensome and poses cross-border challenges to be overcome.
Having built our experience upon years working side by side with our clients across a range of practice areas, disciplines, sectors and geographies, we can help find effective solutions to the issues your company faces, whether related to governance, regulation, operational matters or culture: we are committed to securing the long-term commercial success of our clients.
Crisis management
It pays to be prepared for the unexpected. Any entity may, at one time or another face:
• Regulatory sanctions and fines
• Investigation due to actions of an employee
• Bankruptcy of a counterparty
• Fraud
• Product recall
Having the right legal adviser by your side can make all the difference in preventing crises before they hit, as well as managing and containing them once they have occurred.
We can:
• at a preventative stage, help identify and correct risk factors;
• assist with any internal investigations;
• help put together and implement an action plan;
• act as information repository for the facts (under legal privilege);
• make the right information available to decision makers;
• help construct an accurate and consistent communication strategy;
• provide legal advice to the board and management to eliminate or limit collateral impact; and
• liaise with regulators on our clients' behalf.
Our experience include advising entities impacted by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the Madoff fraud, regulatory sanctions in the US and regulatory investigations in the US in respect of actions of rogue employees.