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11 Apr 2011
The Local Passivhaus: an interview with Justin Bere
We are now in editing mode for 'The Transition Companion' (out in September). The draft is way too long, so some bits are being cut. The following piece has been cut way down, so I wanted to post it in full here, as I rather liked it (!). First there is the piece from the book, and then the interview I did with Justin Bere, in full, a riot of delights for passivhaus/local building materials fans out there….
The 'holy grail' in terms of the construction of new sustainable buildings is homes that reach the highest level of energy efficiency, whilst also using as high a proportion of locally sourced materials as possible, what we might call 'The Local Passivhaus'. Two buildings, recently completed in Ebbw Vale, known as 'The Lime House' and 'The Larch House' have moved this concept forward significantly. As part of an EU-funded project, the Welsh government wanted Wales to take a lead in Passivhaus design, to show what is possible as well as bringing low energy design into the mainstream construction industry. They ran a competition, and Justin Bere Architects won. Their proposal was for more than just a house, they saw it as the possibility of kick-starting a radically new approach to housing in Wales. As Justin Bere told me:
"Instead of a narrow vision to design a house, we want to get people fired up in to doing something much bigger. I'd just love to see a successful example in Wales that would encourage other people and give them ideas of how they could do their own locally made, affordable, truly low energy buildings, and maybe we could get this sort of thing happening all over the country".
The chosen site pushed the Passivhaus idea to its limits. 1,000ft up at the head of the valleys, very cold in the winter and misty for much of the year, a climate twice as hard to design for as Innsbruck in Austria. The project also aimed to build to social housing budgets and to the Passivhaus standard, the first time this has been attempted. As well as the attention paid to the design, a lot of thought was also paid to the materials used, with a focus on using Welsh materials where possible. I asked Justin why:
"Local materials matter because they do two things. They reduce carbon emissions from transportation, and they increase local employment. Local employment, if it really is local, also requires less carbon emissions and travel from the factory or workshop to the site".
The final buildings used Welsh timber (used in an innovative way to make up for its poor quality compared to, say, Scandinavian timber), Welsh-made Rockwool insulation, Welsh-made slates, local stone, and UK-made paint and sprinklers. Things that were harder to source included lime render (a Welsh company but a French lime), and woodfibre insulation, which was imported from Germany but could easily be made in Wales. The last challenge was the windows, which need to be of very high quality.
For the first house they were made in Germany, for the second house, a Welsh joiner produced them to a passivhaus certified design provided by the Scottish window designer Bill Robertson. I asked Justin if he had a sense of the local/imported proportions in the materials used. He said he thought the first house was probably around 80% Welsh, and the second house was closer to 90%. Did he think, I asked, that, as has been discussed with food, an 80/20% local/imported ratio could work for construction in a powered-down UK? "I think", he told me, "that in time people will be forced to do better than 80%!"
I also asked him about what role he saw in the future for more genuinely local materials, such as hemp, straw, cob and so on. He said that in the two houses built in Ebbw Vale, the original idea had been to use hemp/lime, but the data on its insulation properties wasn't sufficiently well done to allow them to meet their efficiency targets, and that more research is needed, but in time, they would have a vital, and increasing, role to play.
One of the things that will be central to this shift to the local Passivhaus, he told me, will be a huge reskilling of young people and the creation of a new infrastructure of manufacturing across the UK. He told me:
"I think we need to start right back at school. Let me give you an example of Austria. We employed an assistant here from the Vorarlberg region. At the age of 14 he moved to a school that did the traditional subjects but alongside timber technology. By the age of 19 he had a diploma in timber construction and was skilled in using timber with his hands, skilled in using timber with machinery, skilled in drafting, skilled in structural calculations and building low energy technologies. In the UK by contrast, at the moment we've spent years dismissing technical skills as being for those who can't do anything else, and if a young person is half able to do anything, they're encouraged to go to university and not waste their life using their hands".
The Ebbw Vale houses offer us a taste of what might be possible with some vision and some applied effort, and the potential benefits that such an approach would bring in terms of jobs, skills, local economic activity and a return to a more vernacular approach to building, where buildings are rooted in place and the local materials.
And now here, in full, is the interview I did with Justin a couple of months ago…
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
I'm Justin Bere, I'm an architect, director of Bere Architects. One of my main interests and specialisms in the practice is low energy building and in particular we've found that the Passivhaus methodology and standard gives us the best way of controlling the quality of what we are providing our clients with.
The two houses in Ebbw Vale, how did they come about and what were you trying to achieve?
They came about as a competition, which was the brainchild of Nick Tune of the Building Research Establishment to use European funding as I understand it. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it's European funding to ensure that Wales gets the very latest Passivhaus, low energy thinking into their buildings and encourages developers to follow suit, having shown the way. There's a number of houses round there, so Ebbw Vale, or the local authority of Blaenau Gwent worked with BRE and set up a competition and found a partner in United Welsh Housing Association who would use their normal procurement route of contractor and so on to build the buildings – they were basically just given the money to do that.
Part of the exercise was to train an existing supply team and get their feedback on the viability of this. The hope, before the funding cuts, was that housing associations would have a lot more money to be able to contribute to the 700 new homes in Ebbw Vale. From our point of view, we entered that competition, and we were told that we had the best grasp of Passivhaus and technically they were confident in us succeeding. They initially also employed another architectural firm to do the other passivhaus but lost confidence in them at the same time as they got interested in our ideas of making further savings in the future on our first house, nearing completion. So we were asked to produce the second passivhaus which was a great opportunity for us to put into practice our ideas of further cost savings that came out of building the first house.
What were you trying to achieve with those buildings, what was your intent?
To show how we can get the very lowest energy consumption and the greatest comfort in building by concentrating on the fabric of the building, and also showing how we use the techniques to invigorate the Welsh construction industry locally at least. I described a vision that they all seemed to like, of starting something in Ebbw Vale and the means to that. They had funding for a skills and training centre in Ebbw Vale which was going to be run by a big commercial outfit with all sorts of funny angles and things, their pictures were about students drinking caffe lattes in foyer areas and I said, "look, this isn't about skills. What you really want is a supershed with rectangular classrooms on one side overlooking the shed." In the classrooms you have new technologies, timber technologies that are to do with the fundamentals of building timber frame buildings and one production line.
There's another one which is to do with laminating timber for window frames, there's a number of technologies there which are tiny production facilities, which the students learn to use – because there aren't many other opportunities to use these techniques in the UK and these are generally used in Germany and Austria and so on, and get them to learn and perhaps sell those products so it's a resource to sell to local industry. Then if production goes up and demand goes up then you perhaps spawn a little kind of science park for timber technology. Someone comes along and says, "Look you've created a business case. I'm going to take students, I'm going to build a shed, I'm going to buy this equipment and we'll build a production line.
So there is now, resulting from that, and quite excitingly, Nick Tune at BRE has got so far £6 million of funding committed to building a low carbon technology training centre. Maybe we will end up getting to be involved in the design of it, but my purpose is really just that it's exciting. Instead of a narrow vision to design a house, we want to get people fired up in to doing something much bigger. I'd just love to see a successful example in Wales that would encourage other people and give them ideas of how they could do their own locally made, affordable, truly low energy buildings, and maybe we could get this sort of thing happening all over the country".
The houses that were built – why were they significant and how do they move the idea of the passive house forward?
They're significant because they are designed to be passive even in this extremely inhospitable environment at the head of the valleys. People tend to think of a building regulations house being a building regulations house – same design – whether it's in Swansea, Manchester or London. What we found, or what BRE found for us, was that the weather conditions – because of the real misty conditions of Ebbw Vale, a thousand feet up and cold in the winter, are twice as difficult as Manchester and twice as difficult as Innsbruk in Austria. That is using what they call the 'extreme worst case', they were being quite cautious because they want to make sure that they do work. We have to make the building passive in that location.
In addition, we were designing for social housing, so they're the first social housing, passive house prototype in the UK. One of the primary requirements of the brief was to build them as closely as possible to the housing association average house price for a one off detached house for £1200 per square metre. We came pretty close to that. The first one, because it was a very rushed project, before we could really fully understand the cost we had to get on and build the first one, because of the opening date for the Eisteddfod.
The first house was coming out at something like £1700 per square metre. At that point we realised there were ways of saving money. We came up with the idea of doing an alternative technical approach, both Passivhaus: one is working on total annual energy consumption and the other is looking at total peak monthly energy consumption. Normally those end up looking like quite similar buildings but in extreme conditions we end up with one house, the more expensive house, more traditionally passive house design with relatively big windows – because of the low amount of sun they get very big in order to grab every bit of sun that's available and hold on to it.
The co-heating tests at the moment show that they get a little bit of sun and they hold on to that heat for 5 hours. That means that in the summer, in order to avoid overheating, you need retractable blinds, another cost. Our alternative design can be rationalised by saying well, there's not very much sun so we've got super insulated walls, 400mm of insulation, there's 600mm of insulation in the roof. These super insulated buildings can make a lot of use of the internal heat gains so we're not getting much from outside, so let's not bother much about the outside. The windows are a bit smaller – they're still bright interiors with plenty of daylight, but make them smaller than the traditional passive house and because a 400mm thick wall is going to lose less heat than a triple glazed window even. So we concentrate on holding on to the internal gains from people, their pets, their oven, their TV and so on, to supply a great deal of the warmth in the house.
The significance of the project is that we've got one down to about £1300 per square metre on the second option, and I think we can do better still. We've achieved low costs. Basically it would be about £8000 more for a two bedroom house than a standard building regulations house built over the last ten years. It's not bad considering the reduction in energy and the pay back period of about 14 years.
What about the role of local materials in the building – what have you done that's innovative in that regard? Why do local materials matter?
Local materials matter because they do two things. They reduce carbon emissions from transportation, and they increase local employment. Local employment, if it really is local, also requires less carbon emissions and travel from the factory or workshop to the site. The factory, the timber workshop that we were employing to build the timber frame, have built the factory on supplying Premier Inns around the country with horrible, cheap 140 mm thick stud walls so because Wales has plenty of these 140 mm sized timber sections. I should explain that mountain timber in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia can come in larger sections than our fast growing timbers in the UK, because our moist and relatively warm climate means that we end up with less good quality, less dense timber and it tends to twist a bit more and be a bit more sappy and is generally not regarded as being suitable over about 140 mm, that's the ideal.
At 140mm we have thin, poorly insulated walls zooming off all over the country to Premier Inns. What we needed was about 400mm of insulation and we wanted to use local materials. Now the biggest, most reasonably accessible timber grown in Wales is about 215mm as a sawn timber stud. So 215mm, as your central core of insulation, still requires another 200mm of insulation so we've found a reasonably economical way of achieving this. 215mm is in the centre – that gets built up on site – then we put 100 mm stud on the inside of that, the services zone, build that with fibre insulation, get our extra 100 and then 100 mm wood fibre insulation on the outside.
The heart of what we were trying to do was also stimulate and show markets for local timber so we weren't absolutely having to use local all the time, we didn't think that was always the best thing to do. We could, on the inner and outer surfaces, have had that 100mm zone of insulation on the inside and 100mm of insulation on the outside as Welsh Rockwool, or we could have used some horrible oil based foam insulation, or we could have used Warmcell recycled paper but the problem with that is that it's not energy efficient and we couldn't get that in 100mm studs so the logical thing to us is to use wood fibre insulation. It's really healthy, it's truly a renewable material and it's more efficient than Warmcell, so it worked in 100mm zones.
There is no wood fibre insulation made in the UK so we bought it from a UK distributor and it's made, some in Switzerland, some in Germany. As part of the exhibition, to say this is what we think a Welsh manufacturer could and perhaps should be making, does anyone have an interest out there? We were looking for opportunities of growth of Welsh industry. With the first house, the most reliable Passivhaus windows produced come from Germany and they've being doing this for 15, 20 years. They make windows that last generations that don't twist that have insulation in the frames so they remains warm, as warm as the triple glazing almost, and they're well sealed to avoid cold draught leakages. German houses are quite famous for not having draughts, just as English houses are famous in Europe for having draughts!
We thought we'd play it easy on the first one, we must get a draught free construction – we will be air tested so we don't want to risk it on the first one, get a British one and find our house is not certified. So we got the German windows. But then on the second one we said, "Look, now let's try and push things. We know we've made it work – we've got certification on the first one, it's not so important on the second one so let's get a designer I knew who designs passive house windows, learn his trade." We designed Passivhaus windows and the front door – got them certified in Germany (which was quite a rushed process) and got a partnership of five or six Welsh joiners together to buy in to this process.
One of the joiners went great guns for it and said, "I'm going to build these", and imported the insulation from Germany. Part of our message was that we could be making these in the UK – maybe someone like Kingspan or whoever would be able to do that with relatively small changes to their production lines. But at the moment anyway it needed to be imported from Germany and then laminated to the wood, made up and installed. So in the second house we had Welsh windows – the first UK, passive house certified windows; UK designed and made.
Are you able to put a percentage to the amount of local materials in both houses? Presumably by local, in that context, you mean Welsh?
Yes. Well I can't at the moment…do you mean in quantity, volume, cost? It's a very difficult, if not impossible question to answer. I've got a list on the two houses of the Welsh sources, which I could quickly read through, scan and send to you. Some of it's a bit confusing…
- The timber frame: I've listed the company and it's local
- Roofing: it's a local company and they were using Welsh made tiles
- Local plumber, local electrician, local scaffolder, local carpenters
- External blinds: well it's a British company that distributes them but they import them from Germany. We don't have anyone that does it in the UK – that's on the larch house. We don't have anyone who makes retracting solar blinds in the UK, it's just incredible really.
- Sprinklers: a UK company, parts probably from overseas.
- Plaster: a UK plastering company. The plasterer may be from the UK but half the plaster in the country comes from France
- Flooring: a UK, local company but who knows where the….well linoleum is British, yes. Normally they put horrible vinyl down which makes you sick when you walk in and breathe the fumes, and that's what goes into most social housing Passivhauses. Well I insisted, for a small amount of extra money that we used linoleums which is made from plant resins and smells lovely – except they put the disgusting vinyl in the kitchen and the bathrooms for some unknown reason
- Stonework – a local company and local stone
- Painting: a local company. The paint was an Earthborn, British, organic paint
- Wall tiling: a local company though not sure where the tiles came from because the design build company, United Welsh Housing said, "Normally we get rid of the architects at this point. We don't want to be told where to get our tiles from, we have our own normal suppliers." It was the same with the kitchen which is why they put the vinyl flooring down, "We always use vinyl flooring – we'll use our local people and do that."
I remember when I talked to Rob McLeod, he said that he thought the first house was about 80% and the second was about 90%. But as you say, it's of what – weight? Volume? Price? Was he getting a bit over excited?
Yeah, I wouldn't be being completely honest if I said I thought he was absolutely right, put it that way! Maybe it is 80 and 90, but if you look down the list of names here, they're all Welsh or British, but hidden behind that, for example there's a lovely Welsh company doing the render for the Lime House. Where does the lime come from? Germany. In Wales they're really proud of Tir Mawr lime, but little do they know that a lot of the products come from Germany. It's just so frustrating.
The reason, to be completely fair to Tir Mawr, they use Welsh lime on very traditional lime rendering where there's no external insulation, straight over stonework and it's quite chunky material, thickly daubed-on stuff. However, when you're going to do a low energy building you need wood fibre insulation, or you need an insulation on the outside – it's much better than inside for all sorts of technical reasons. Then if you put a lime on, you need a very thin coat of lime. You can't use the traditional lime, so we have to develop that technology.
It's interesting, because I was talking to a guy called Mike Small who works for the Fife Diet up in Scotland where they're promoting the idea of local food. They started out saying, "You should eat all local food, all seasonal food," but then people come and say, "I like the idea of eating local and seasonal but I couldn't live without chocolate and wine and coffee." If people say, "OK, list the things you really couldn't live without", they don't make up more than 10, 15% of the diet so they now say, "90% local food, 20% imported feels like an achievable context." It sounds like with construction, you might be able to say that 80 – 20 is a rough target in terms of the target between local and imported materials, if and when we get to a stage where we have all the infrastructure in place to make that possible. Would that be reasonable?
Yes, I think that is reasonable. I think that in time people will be forced to do better than 80%. In the food thing, I'm sure you know Professor Tim Lang, and I completely subscribe to his thinking. My parents ran a small organic farm in their retirement and personally I haven't been to a supermarket for 10 years or more. I would only go to the local shop round the corner, the farmers' market or Mother Earth health food shop. Mother Earth produce our lunches here and I was a bit concerned because as they winter was coming on they were producing salads with tomatoes. I went round and had a chat to say, "I'd far rather go to the market – there are some much nicer greens than you're providing. Let's forget about tomatoes." They're nice but they're importing them all from Italy.
She said she goes to the farmers' market and she's been telling her boss she would happily get the greens that come from Cambridge rather than him importing this stuff from the wholesaler. That's what she's now doing and our salads have got much better, they're much more tasty, they're fresh…and I think everyone here feels better about that and partly it's a matter of people understanding what the alternatives are and having some pleasure in doing it without chocolate…..on the other hand one doesn't want to get the message over that to be green one has to live a dull and sad existence!
If the aspiration, similarly, is that we want the buildings of the future being local, seasonal, organic, far more nutritious houses in that kind of a way – what role do you see in the idea of a local Passivhaus for some of the materials that would be more prevalent in the natural building scene in terms of hemp, straw bale, clay plasters and these kind of things….they would ultimately be much more rooted in the local vernacular of the place, so what role do we have in a rediscovery and a re-embracing of those materials in the context of a Passivhaus?
I think there's tremendous scope and opportunity. I know Rob looked at hemp insulation because we were keen to use that instead of the wood fibre, but the U-values claimed by the hemp insulation people Rob discovered were extremely dubious and he was quite shocked at how poor the testing methodology. He said, "No, we cannot achieve anything better than Warmcell – it may be not as good as that; we can't rely on it. We need to be sure our first building are going to work." We don't want to be experimenting so much that all the opportunities to experiment in the future are lost because we blew the first one.
The approach has got to be that we build really successful, true to performance, passive houses, get that recognised as being a really good methodology. Then I'd love to work with rammed earth technologies, cob and so on and work out how we can use those really local materials, get them well insulated and draught free. I know that probably sounds controversial to some people. They'll say people have lived in cob buildings for generations and they didn't worry about the odd draught, but unfortunately we were talking about a different mindset – people that didn't mind putting pullovers on, who got up and went outside and did a lot of manual work. Even if they were Wordsworth writing poetry, he was also walking the hills, getting exercise and coming home to write poetry.
Now we expect to do no manual work, sit in jeans and Tshirt in front of a computer for 8 hours and feel warm. Because most people don't see the energy going into their houses, they're not carrying logs and buckets of coal, they're completely obvious to what's going on. If they were carrying logs in they'd be shocked at how much needs to be carried in just to keep that lifestyle going. In an ideal world, yes people would behave like our grandparents did and we wouldn't need so much insulation, but what we're trying to do with the Passivhaus is to bring people into a low energy way of living without having to compromise anything. In fact, they'll actually have better comfort in the building because they'll get fresh air through the heat recovery ventilation.
In terms of the hemp, you were saying that the testing wasn't good enough. In terms of hemp and straw bale having sufficient data behind them for you to feel confident in using them….where's that testing going to come from? Who should be doing it? Who's going to move it forward?
I think that could be done by us as architects and inventive clients. So a client comes to us and says, "We'd like to use cob because it's a local material and we're passionate about doing that", then we would think through the design in order to come up with a solution that dealt with the really positive attributes of cob and part of that would be thermal mass and it does add to insulation. I don't know how much insulation it provides, I doubt there's any data around so we would do some research and see if there's something in Germany, someone may have done some cob prototypes.
Then we'd look at how to externally insulate the wall appropriately because we'd need more insulation than the cob alone I think, but we'd need to maintain the breathability of it. That's one route, I'm not trying to shirk that responsibility but I think the best place for this work is for universities to have some good tutors – some of them do – inspiring them to think in this way and saying, "Let's build this prototype." This is perhaps the one opportunity in their lives when they're going to be able to dedicate this amount of time to experimenting and research and actually producing something that's useful at the end of it. I'm trying to encourage that.
We've started the UK Passivhaus conference and the same time we've started the UK Passivhaus student conference and that's been largely run…we did the first two years' conferences but it's now been taken over by the Passivhaus Trust, and I'm on the steering committee and we're trying to positively engage the universities, both in presenting papers and encouraging to do the research in the first place; and hopefully giving them feedback of these sorts of ideas. At the moment, no-one has said from our group to the universities, "What about research into cob passive houses?" It's a great idea but they need guidance and help from the cob experts, from people like myself doing Passivhauses and so on. The universities being aware of this as an opportunity as well and asking us and getting involved.
The idea of buildings being built to Passivhaus standard but the design starting with what materials are available, so that they're designed specific to that place, that you could almost have a way of designing Passivhauses rooted in place in terms of the materials and the whole idea scaling up – what do we need to put in place? What infrastructure do we need? You talked about the need for the windows to be made here and that kind of training, but presumably you also need woodland being planted and managed properly, you need retraining, young people – what infrastructure do we need to scale this up meaningfully?
I think we need to start right back at school. Let me give you an example of Austria. We employed an assistant here from the Vorarlberg region. At the age of 14 he moved to a school that did the traditional subjects but alongside timber technology. By the age of 19 he had a diploma in timber construction and was skilled in using timber with his hands, skilled in using timber with machinery, skilled in drafting, skilled in structural calculations and building low energy technologies. In the UK by contrast, at the moment we've spent years dismissing technical skills as being for those who can't do anything else, and if a young person is half able to do anything, they're encouraged to go to university and not waste their life using their hands.
If someone is utterly useless and persuaded by other people that they're utterly useless they'll think, "Oh, there's nothing for it, I'll end up in construction" and it becomes a very negative choice. We need to start by making practical things: if someone enjoys playing with water and things like that then maybe plumbing's for them. If someone enjoys fiddling around with electrics, then maybe an electrician. We should try and get a more positive approach. There seems to be from the intake here, and the applications we get, my impression is – and it may just be that they're finding us more – but my impression is there's a growing appreciation of what humanity and the planet faces, and what local communities and the UK faces. People want to do more and I'm sure that a lot of these young people feeling they'd like to do something…..although they realise construction is part of the problem, very few of them think that going off and being a builder with a load of layabouts isn't really going to get anywhere.
If we can give them a more positive view of the opportunities of working within construction, it could achieve much more. I think also that this can attract those people that don't like wearing pullovers and want to sit in an office, to show them that they can also do the Austrian thing, going off and by the age of 19 having a diploma in timber technology. I'd start right back there and get the really good people coming into the industry.
There are really good people coming in to architecture now but it's a bit more difficult in other fields. As architects, I see the role we're playing as Passivhaus architects, a lot about rebuilding by one, showing appreciation of people's interests and two, encouraging those interests. On the Welsh Passivhauses we ended up having a site manager who is now quite knowledgeable, he succeeded in achieving one of the best, or probably the best air tests in the country, having never done that before because we gave him sympathetic designs and training and so on, which we'd learnt in Germany, and he's really enthusiastic.
Likewise a contractor, a site manager locally here at the Passivhaus community centre, he's had training in air tight construction, avoiding leaks and draughts and so on. He's spent a career in construction, knocking things up any old how and he's really rising to the challenge of doing this and making comments and alerting us to concerns he has and asking our advice and so on. You often hear architects saying, "We don't have the skills, it's hopeless," and so on. We can't take that attitude – we have to learn those skills ourselves and teach those skills.
It'll be a slow process but we can do that. That's why, as I say with the cob building, I relish that challenge and I regard it as an opportunity to do more research and try and pass this learning on and collaborate with people and get them set on a trajectory that they master themselves and we just help to get it going. The other really strong thing about local materials is that we start to build local specialist industries and everything from the Japanese electronics industry that thrived because of the density of companies in a locality, in a relatively small nation, around Tokyo or somewhere, that were supporting each other, where anything you needed you could get – to timber where in Germany, they say, "Look, we've been around since 16th 17th century and we've got everyone from the growers to the mills, with their production line geared specifically for us. They know what we want and they supply us exactly the right materials. It means that we have faultless products that we can supply to the joinery workshops".
It's about building those connections. If you've got an area rich in timber like Wales, relative to the rest of the UK they've got 3 times as much wood per hectare as England and twice as much as Scotland – that's a place to set up that would do well by saying, "Let's use these resources, let's go to furniture shows, let's send people out to find the best furniture designers, bring them back to Wales, to offer them space, to enhance the value of the raw materials that we have, to build an industry to work locally with house builders in timber frame, and gradually you find all the machinery, suppliers, makers, maintenance people move in to the area and you get a whole buzz and the whole thing takes off".
Vorarlberg region in Austria decided that low energy building was central to its success in achieving its ambition of self-sufficiency. If someone is building a house using local timber, and burning local timber to keep warm, if they've got a very insulated house they won't use much timber to keep it warm and that means there will be more land available for growing food. As a result, Vorarlberg has, through this combined vision of wanting to do really high quality, low energy buildings, have got everything – not just timber but they've got a really good low energy heating company, really good low energy heat recovery manufacturers, really good insulation people. All these organisations support each other.
I just think whatever the focus, it's really good to get a focus in a region and get a vision. That's what you're doing with Transition Towns – you're getting this shared vision, bringing communities together and saying, "Let's go in a direction and make a success of this" and then everyone starts supporting this. And I think local materials can fit into that because around a Devon cob industry that used to be dominant in construction in Devon and is now a niche thing, one could potentially rebuild this and we've got all the raw materials, it's really cheap, we could get young people off the streets, somehow…….people with the enthusiasm and vision that this is an exciting force.
Some people may think that's a funny thing for the future, that it's going backwards. But that's where I think potentially allying something like cob with passivhaus could actually make people think this is the future – it's not backward at all. This is a fantastic new technology, or a new way of working with cob.
If you imagine in 20 years time this has been successful and any new house built in the UK is built using 80% local materials and the structure that has sprung up to support that – can you describe that to us? How would that be different from now? What would be our experience of the building industry? Could you paint a picture of what that would be like?
One would be choosing a house from local companies and there'd be perhaps in one's locality 5 or 10 smallish companies, each with a proven track record of building wonderful, low energy houses, using local people one knows in the pub or knew at school who are running or working in these organisations and you choose between the pros and cons of the various techniques. There probably isn't a great deal between them, and some of one's choices may be made as a result of who one knows or who is nearest to one's building plot.
Those organisations or companies are buying raw materials locally that are also employing people in the area, and there's a tremendous pride in the kind of results that are being produced in that area. Traditionally, Herefordshire and East Anglia, on opposite sides of the country, have similar technologies in terms of timber frame buildings. Somewhere else you'd have stone buildings. We'd be going forward to a new regional interest, attention to detail, producing buildings, results and products for local people.
You'd have a pride in doing something well. You don't want it to fall apart and you want to do your best for the people you know and care for. We get a completely good culture, as I see it, and the same with food. It' one of the nice things about going to farmer's markets – you're buying from people who are producing and they know who they are selling to each week and they're going to make sure – they want to produce the best for regular friends that come to the market. One will want to do that for the local community, whether it's food, building, whatever and as a result we'll all have a much more enjoyable, fulfilling lives. Yes there probably will be some things that are transported around, but hopefully we'll need so little power going into our buildings that we'll be able to use some nice big wind generators to generate electricity for vehicles so that when we do have to move things around, it's done by electrically run vehicles. It'll all be low carbon, healthy and rewarding.


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If you've ever wanted to experience an immersive exhibit showcasing the science of Marvel's The Avengers and its respective superheroes, have we got the announcement for you! Marvel Entertainment, in collaboration with Discovery Times Square and NASA, have announced a new exhibit called 'Marvel's Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N.' which brings the Marvel Universe to life. You can read the full press release on the exhibit below.
Discovery Times Square, in association with Victory Hill Exhibitions and Marvel Entertainment and in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Academy of Sciences, announces the world premiere of Marvel's Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. The highly anticipated new exhibition, based on the global box-office smash film franchise: Marvel's The Avengers, will premiere on May 23, 2014 at Discovery Times Square in New York City. Tickets are on sale now.
Marvel's Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. (Scientific Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network) is a completely immersive, interactive exhibit experience that brings visitors into the world of The Avengers. Leading EdTech innovator Gamedesk created S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) based educational pathways for the exhibition, bringing to life the science behind Marvel Super Heroes and allows fans to participate in a simulated recruitment, as if they were being trained as agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Visitors of all ages are exclusively recruited to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and enter the official S.T.A.T.I.O.N. headquarters. Exhibition-goers are then taken deep into the Marvel Cinematic Universe where they will experience first-hand the vast array of intelligence files, classified studies, and experiments that explores the history and scientific origins of Marvel's The Avengers including Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and others. Visitors will also be given unprecedented access to some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most highly guarded artifacts recovered after the Battle of New York such as Captain America's Birth Pod, the Tesseract Portal Device, Loki's Scepter, a hermetically sealed Chitauri and more.
NASA, the Science & Entertainment Exchange program of the National Academy of Sciences, Neuroverse, and Thwacke are all collaborating on Marvel's Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. Exhibition visitors will map out the stars to find Asgard, learn to operate Iron Man's suit, witness the neurological effects of Bruce Banner's transformation into the Hulk, and physically test themselves against Captain America.
Discovery Times Square will be transformed into the Marvel's Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. on May 23, 2014. For tickets to Marvel's Avengers: S.T.A.T.I.O.N. DiscoveryTSX.com/Exhibitions/Avengers. Tickets are also currently available for purchase at the box office. For information on purchasing tickets for groups of more than 10 please call 855.266.5387.

subset: commoncrawl


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I recently read Deepak Malhotra's I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else's Maze (2011), which I found as an ebook via my local public library. I would describe it in brief as Who Moved My Cheese? meets The Matrix.
Some of you may be familiar with Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life (1998), a little book that tells the fable of mice in a maze who have differing approaches to dealing with the problem of their cheese being unceremoniously moved each day. The lesson of that book is that change is inevitable in life and in work situations (your job duties may change, you may be reassigned to a different project, you may end up with a different boss with vastly different expectations, and so on), and the best way to deal with change is not to question why things change or feel bad about change but instead to adapt and, in the words of a popular meme today, keep calm and carry on.
While Who Moved My Cheese? offers an important lesson about working productively with change and especially learning to let go of things that are outside of our control, it has also always struck me as incredibly unnerving that this particular book has been so widely championed in corporate culture. The book itself comes with discussion questions geared towards employees, and I have encountered numerous people, including my brother, who have told me that they were given the books by their workplaces and even had book group discussions about it. While I agree with the lesson of adapting to change and learning to let go of things beyond our control, I have never been able to agree that the title question, "Who Moved My Cheese?," is moot. It is always the question, and I would add related questions about why the cheese was moved, what the rules governing our obsession with cheese are, when the cheese got moved, and where the cheese might be located beyond its new hiding place in the maze. In other words, I have many questions about the whole setup of the maze/workplace and am unwilling to concede that the best approach to life is simply to learn to play the game as expected of me.
Malhotra's book offers a new fable about mice in a maze that teaches us exactly the importance of asking these questions. Instead of merely searching for the moved cheese, the three protagonists Max, Zed, and Big are driven by other desires and questions. In other words, instead of merely reaching for the goals defined for them by others, they follow their own paths. Max seek to redesign the system in which he find himself and to understand who the system really benefits and why. He succeeds in discovering the scientists who designed the maze, for example, and figures out their experimental logs and procedures. In a literal sense, he is the one who ends up moving the cheese in the maze, and he is the figure of the visionary entrepreneur who becomes extraordinarily successful not by playing other businessmen's games but by taking control himself. Zed is the spiritual leader who transcends the desire for cheese and the constrictions of the maze entirely. And Big is the athlete-artist figure whose pursuit of something besides cheese leads him outside the orbit of the maze's economy.
This particular book is resonating with me for a number of different reasons, some of which are directly related to library science education and the impetus for a project like Hack Library School. Here at HLS, we find value in questioning what we are given as library science education, not to demean our programs and professors but rather to engage in productive dialogue about what we are learning. Sometimes, our questions are naive, but it is only in asking them that we gain greater clarity on the reasoning behind particular curricular requirements and class assignments. Furthermore, our curiosity and investment in our own learning helps to make our programs and classes more robust and more accountable to the larger world and work of librarianship. We HLS hackers are not content simply to find our moved cheese anew each day (though we necessarily do that work as well to obtain our degrees and gainful employment as librarians) but also raise questions about how things are done and why. Especially in a field of work changing so rapidly with technological advancements, we must keep abreast of new developments while also questioning whether the next new thing is necessarily a good thing.
More specifically, though, there are two proximate causes for my reflections on this book: news that my MLIS program is moving into the School of Business and Leadership and my recent completion in the spring semester of a required course in management practices for libraries and information centers. About the former, I may have more to say later though my emotions are currently too strong and turbulent to articulate my thoughts rationally and clearly.
About the latter, I'll note that while I agree with my program that a management class should be required—after all, MLIS professionals are increasingly becoming middle management in libraries as more and more technical work gets assigned to paraprofessionals without the MLIS degree—I had hoped that we could have done more work with alternative visions of management beyond the kind proscribed by business culture (with a focus on profit, efficiency, employee compliance, and hierarchical models of governance). For the final project in that class, I worked with my group to envision a mobile library and information service that was founded on the idea of a collective, driven by social justice goals and embedded in new American communities, as a response to the semester-long immersion in readings and discussions where the assumptions of business culture were never questioned.
I'll wrap up this lengthy post with a few questions:
- What kinds of questions do you ask about your MLIS programs or about the world of librarianship?
- Have you encountered situations where what you are told is the way things are done seems problematic?
- How do your MLIS programs approach a library management class?
- How do the values of librarianship, such as intellectual freedom and public access to information, challenge the institutions in which all librarians must work (even libraries themselves!)?
Categories: Reviews


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Getting creative for the holidays: Beyond red and green
The holiday season is synonymous with tradition. But that doesn't mean you have to fill your home with the same holiday decorations in the same color scheme every year. "Until four years ago, I was Scrooge-y...
The holiday season is synonymous with tradition. But that doesn't mean you have to fill your home with the same holiday decorations in the same color scheme every year.
"Until four years ago, I was Scrooge-y when it came to holiday decorating — a result of seeing the same old thing over and over again," says Brian Patrick Flynn, a Los Angeles-based interior designer and executive producer of HGTV.com's "Holiday House."
But after finding ways to "reinvent the look and feel of Christmas for my own home," Flynn says he "rediscovered how much fun seasonal styling can be when you make it your own."
Here he and two other design experts — Jon Call of Mr. Call Designs and Betsy Burnham of Burnham Design — offer suggestions on shaking up holiday decorating.
Call's family takes a creative approach to Christmas stockings: On the night before Christmas Eve, they make new stockings by sewing together large pieces of felt (inexpensive at any craft store) using a simple blanket stitch.
"We let our imaginations fly when it comes to decorating the outsides, and top off each one with our name and the year," he says. "Making these stockings gives us all something to do the night before Christmas (Eve), and we share memories and laughter along the way."
A Christmas tree doesn't have to stay parked in one place. Flynn recommends putting a small tree on wheels (maybe in a vintage metal wagon or an old metal washtub with casters on the bottom) so you can change its location when you're entertaining to create space or to bring extra holiday style to a different room.
Another option is ditching red and green tree decorations for an understated color palette.
"This year I created a tone-on-tone tree using all shades of light gray," Flynn says. "To do this right, it's all about having a balance of texture, finish, shape, scale and proportion."
Try a white tree if you'll be using light colors and neutrals, or a green tree with decorations in earth tones.
To shake up your tree's decorations, Call suggests going with a theme.
"Last year for a client, I indulged in masses of vintage mercury-glass ornaments of all sizes and shapes. Silver was literally dripping off the tree. It was spectacular," he says. "This year we are changing it up a bit and creating a completely edible tree, including childhood favorites such as homemade popcorn balls, small sacks of chocolates tied with a ribbon and hung from the branches, and pungent gingerbread."
If you have minimal space, Call says you can skip the tree altogether without losing any holiday cheer. Instead, cluster together a bunch of white poinsettias. They set a holiday tone in a fresh way, he says, and in a large group look "almost like snowfall."
Or create your own "tree" out of branches: "In my kitchen, I love to fill a large galvanized pot with armfuls of branches full of red berries," Call says. "As the season progresses, I simply clip incoming cards to the arrangement so that everyone can enjoy. It's become a tradition over the years, and everyone loves to come and check out my 'family tree.'"
Christmas doesn't just happen in your living room. Flynn suggests adding a tiny tree to any space, even a breakfast nook.
To spice up a staircase, he created a garland out of "old men's flannel and denim shirts cut and stitched" into pennant squares with tiny pockets. Strung together, they create a colorful advent calendar (mark all 25 days with sew-on varsity letters). Each one can hold a tiny gift and "add life and activity to an otherwise humdrum space."
And for a new twist on outdoor decorating, Burnham suggests investing in a professional decorating service to string your outdoor trees with white lights. "I don't mean drape lights over branches. I mean really wrap the trunk and every branch," she says.
She had this done at her Los Angeles home several years ago and is still impressed with the look. "It is the most spectacular thing when I light the trees up at night, and it's something I would have never been able to do myself," she says. "The lights haven't needed changing or redoing, and it's been a couple of years now."
"One of the most searched-for terms on HGTV.com is 'mantel decorating,'" Flynn says. For homes with a flat-panel TV mounted above the mantel, he has a high-tech idea: Burn images to a DVD that coordinate with the accessories you lay out on your mantel, then let the DVD run during holiday entertaining.
For one project, Flynn displayed colorful pop art images (including a reindeer by artist Jonathan Fenske) on the TV, and then put colorful items like candy in apothecary jars and brightly colored ornaments on the mantel "to make it all pop."
Call agrees there's no need to hold back with color: "The holidays are a time for indulgence, and that always means color to me," he says. "Commit to a color scheme and go for broke!"
Tradition definitely has its place. But it can coexist with bursts of creativity and playfulness.
"It's OK to bust out the old red and green," Flynn says. "Just change it up somehow to make it more exciting."


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I met a woman, a friend of a friend and as nice as can be. We instantly found common ground so the conversation picked up, moving at lightning speed through the usual questions: How do you know so-and-so? How old are your kids? What do you do? Where are you from originally?
And then I asked it. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. I knew she would turn it around on me and then the elephant would walk in the room. But there it came. What does your husband do?
She answered and oh-so-politely volleyed back, but slightly off script. What brought you to Charlottesville?
Eeeeeeeek. What a question from a person I just met. It's not that I'm ashamed at all about why we came to Charlottesville. It's just that the answer always makes the conversation either really awesome or really awkward in a hurry. I just never know which way it's going to go until I put it out there. And as soon as I answer it, her face will tell which way.
We moved here to start a church. My husband is a pastor.
Cue thoughts of bald people drinking kool-aid, wearing funny clothes, protesting at Disney.
Blank stare.
Forced smile as she replays our conversation, trying to remember if she said any cuss words.
Conversation. Over.
This is how it mostly goes. But it's OK. I've gotten used to it. After all, I am the Pastor's Wife, Conversation Killer. The one that causes all conversations that I enter to come to a screeching halt as everyone stares at me with their most angelic smiles. The one that couldn't possibly find a joke funny or know the pop-culture reference because, it's assumed, I read my Bible and pray all day.
I am not just The Conversation Killer Extraordinaire. No sir. I have many more titles in my Pastor's Wife credentials. I am also the:
- Sermon Illustration: I seem to be the Sermon Illustration most often when it's my day to work in the children's ministry. When parents come to pick up their kids and each one offers me a pecan pie recipe or talks to me about bear hunting, it's a little confusing at first. Am I giving off some weird vibe or something? After the tenth person, it hits me. Kyle preached on presenting every man mature in Christ. Naturally, pecan pie ties in with that. Duh. Just doing my part as the Sermon Illustration.
- Goody Two Shoes: I am the person who has no problems, who struggles with nothing, who has an answer for everything, and who should pray at the meal if the Pastor is not available because my prayers are better (although second best to the Pastor).
- Extension Cord: If you need to get a message to the pastor, especially if you want to criticize something but are afraid to go straight to the top, I'm your gal!
- Nameless Person: There have only been a few times that I've been physically shoved aside or ignored by a person wanting to get to my husband. Most of the time, I'm Nameless Person when I am introduced by church members to their friends not by my name but as Pastor's Wife, as in "This is my Pastor's Wife." See Conversation Killer above.
- Church Encyclopedia: What time does this event start? Does Kyle have any time to meet with me this week? How many people were at church on Sunday? Who pays your salary? Could you find me a roommate? When does the worship team practice? Do you know anybody who could babysit for me? Does Kyle wear boxers or briefs? OK, so no one has asked me about worship team practice.
- People Rolodex: See babysitter question above.
- Catch All (a.k.a 2-for-1): Don't worry, the Pastor's Wife can do it!
- Zoo Animal: This is my favorite credential. I am the Zoo Animal to stare at when I'm dragging my kids, along with 17 bags and a 5 lb Bible, through church while the oldest is having a meltdown. Or when my husband and I are out on a date and a person I don't know is staring at us with a knowing look. (Do I have something hanging out of my nose or do they know Kyle from somewhere?)
Maybe Paul was talking about being a pastor's wife when he said, "I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."
So I'll be the Conversation Killer and the People Rolodex and the Nameless Person if it also means I get to be Disciple Maker and Counselor and Lover of People.
Paul said it best: "Now this I do for the gospel's sake."
It's a pretty good gig.
It's a pretty good gig.


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Billionaires looking to get into the supervillain racket take note: An entire 3 million square foot former Chrysler fabrication, assembly plant and distribution center is up for sale. Apparently, that includes machines and equipment.
Staffing it with henchmen would be a daunting task, but using the facility to build an army of mechs would be worth the effort and expense. [Great American Group via Boing Boing]


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I was going to post the "Camera of the Year" post after Peter's essay, but then I got an email from a friend who said, "So now that you've posted the second of the Peter Turnley posts, you plan to follow up with one about the Camera of the Year for 2009? How much more crass can you possibly be?"
Followed by a smiley face. But still.
So I'm going to hold that off a little longer. In the meantime, an ironic counterpoint to Peter's essay: Eolake alerted me to the fact that the BJoP linked to a Wall Street Journal list of the best and worst jobs, and, on the list, "photojournalist" placed 189th out of 200. That's right: only 11 jobs are worse than "photojournalist."
Did Peter's life really sound all that bad to you?
Of course, not every photojournalist is Peter Turnley.
One of the factors they considered was "stress"—I'm sure with low stress being considered desirable. (The top job according to the WSJ is "actuary," and one of Eolake's commenters mentioned the old joke about that: "An actuary is somebody who used to be an accountant but couldn't stand all the excitement.") Imagine somebody popping into your office every few days and firing a few rounds off at random, and you'll get an idea of some of the stresses of being a photojournalist. So, yeah, there's that.
On the other hand, I don't know how the Wall Street Journal came up with some of its numbers. As I said on Eolake's blog, how is $69,000 considered "top level salary" for an actor? What job is that—putting on tights and a jerkin while passing out "ale" at Medieval Village, addressing everybody as "milord" and "milady"? Being the fake interviewer on infomercials about colon purging elixirs? The top actor this year (she's a she, which used to be called an actress, but now that appears to be optional) is a woman called Sandra Bullock. To show you just how up with the times I am, I have not only never seen Sandra Bullock in a single movie, but I have never even heard of any of her movies—I looked them all up on imdb.com. But despite that, I'm going to climb out on a limb and guess that she earned more than $69,000 last year.
And, obviously, in calling something a "good job," the WSJ isn't taking into account how easy or difficult it actually is to find work in those fields. It ranks "historian" as #5—but there's an old joke about that too: "The only jobs out there for old historians is training young ones." Medical Records Technician comes in at #20, but I've known people who worked in medical records, and I'd rather have people shooting at me. (A lot of medical records technicians probably have degrees in history.)
Left fielder Willie Harris at work. Photo by Audrey C. Tiernan.
A different study I read a number of years ago used somewhat different criteria, and came up with a different list of the best and worst jobs. According to that, the best job of all was playing left field for a non-contending (U.S.) baseball team. Their reasoning:
- The skills required for the job are very rare.
- The left fielder doesn't have much to do, because most hitters are righties and it's hard to pull the ball. (I.e., hit it to left field.)
- You only have to work half the year.
- When you do have to work, it only lasts a couple of hours. True, you have to train; into every life a little rain must fall.
- You get to be outside. But you get to come in when it rains for real.
- It's very high status. (This study considered status; "actuary" wouldn't have gotten many points on that scale, and "photojournalist" would probably have moved up quite a few notches.)
- The payscale is through the roof.
- If the team isn't contending, your mistakes won't cost your team much, so presumably your stress level is on the low side.
The people who have the two best jobs in the world in my opinion are Vanna White and Dan Castellaneta. Vanna started out turning over the letters on a word-game show called "Wheel of Fortune." For years on the show, she didn't even talk. She just walked back and forth and flipped letters. And then they made her job easier. They went to electronic screens, so technically she's not needed at all any more, but by that time people liked watching her (she is still easy on the eyes, being one of those humans who apparently do not age; she was born seven days before I was, but unfortunately I do not have a portrait of myself in the attic which shows me growing older) so now she just touches the letters, and they change.
Actually, what Vanna does for a living is clap. She claps after everything that happens. An average of 720 times per show (I looked it up, and no, I do not want the job of whoever had to count). She doesn't reveal her salary, but NEWSWEEK reported that she earns three to five million dollars a year "from all her endeavors." I should endeavor to have such endeavors.
And Dan Castellaneta? He's the voice of Homer Simpson on the animated cartoon show "The Simpsons." He gets paid millions too...for talking. Granted, he's very, very good at doing voices, but still...that is one great job! I'd pay just t0 be able to do the Homer voice.
Sandwich man by Thurston Hopkins
It's really all in the way you look at it, though. The worst job I ever had was when I briefly worked as a check-out clerk in the Express Lane at a grocery store way back in the '70s, in between exhausting stints of college. It was unrelenting, but I was so bored an eighth of my original brain cells died from atrophy. Fortunately, I only had to do the job for three weeks, until the store's regular Express Lane clerk, by the infinite grace of our dear merciful God, returned from vacation. Her name was Jean, and she considered her job ideal. She got a good wage (with time and a half on Sundays), she didn't have to do any thinking (she actually said that to me, in so many words), and she got to visit with customers, many of whom she considered friends. She loved it. She'd been doing it for thirty years. I'd hang myself with a rope.
The worst job I can imagine: sandwich man. I feel a deep pity whenever I see one of those guys. If you think about it, a sandwich man is only slightly more valuable to society than a post. A post is stronger and doesn't ever need a rest; but it cannot move, whereas a sandwich man can amble back and forth—presumably morosely, as he sinks ever deeper into a black swamp of despond. Museum guards are probably just as bored, but at least they get to look at art.
But last summer, I spoke to a kid who was walking up and down in front of our local pizza shop with two big signs hung on his shoulders. I probably said something meant to be comforting, but he ended up telling me that he thought it was just the best job. "I get to be outside all the time," he gushed, "and I don't have to actually do anything, and I get paid, and I get free pizza, too!" This last he said in a tone of voice like it was just too much for him to contain, it made him so happy. He had the world by the tail, that kid.
So it's all in how you look at it. As Paul McCann says, "Find a job you like doing and you'll never have to work."
I'll bet to some people, even being a photojournalist isn't half bad.
Featured Comment by Kirk Tuck: "Hmmm. If I could do any job I would take a time machine back to 1985 and be an advertising photographer. Great pay, technical expertise and experience required, medium to low stress. Regular stream of work. Worst job? Advertising photographer in 2009. Stress from not working. Upside? Lots of free time. And I mean 'free' time. Aspiration? I want to be the guy who sweeps up the small denomination bills that fall on the floor at Goldman Sachs."
Featured Comment by K Brown: "I was a security guard at the art gallery in Victoria, and I can say without question, the sandwich board guy has it much better. In the museum, nothing ever changes...for months at a time. You learn to truly hate those artists you see day after day after day. Ah, the life of the sandwich board guy, how I envy him."
Featured Comment by Marty S: "I had a summer job as an art museum security guard for two consecutive summers during college and I thought it was a great job. Fortunately, it was a small museum, and often wasn't very busy. It was the former home of a wealthy art collecting couple converted into a museum after their death. They had an extensive library of art books (including several photography books) and I spent a fair amount of time just reading. Between reading many of the books and talking to the director and assistant director, I learned a fair amount about art. Definitely more interesting than wearing a sandwich board."
Featured Comment by Fmacgregor: "I feel I should jump to the defence of the actuary—I spent many a (relatively) happy summer working in an actuarial department. As far as I could tell no one, at all, understood what the actuaries did, but their word was law, and even the loudest, brashest city boys listened to them and did what they were told. It may not be glamourous, but people listened to, and respected, you. And if you had a masters degree, then your business card could have "MAFIA" at the end of it, which I think should count for something.
"How do you know you're talking to an extroverted actuary? He stares at your shoes when he talks to you...."
Featured Comment by Jim Hart: "Mike, I've had a job where I was paid to be shot at (flying right seat in OV1 Mohawks with the U.S. Army in Vietnam). It ranks as the best and worst job I've ever had. Trust me, you'd rather work in the medical record field. My most confusing job was when I was self employed; I'd only pay me what I'm worth, and I won't work for that."
Featured Comment by Carl Dahlke: "I had a job that really put me off of commercial meat for years. I was working at a ham factory, where the hams would be dropped on the floor, kicked around, and used as footballs in the continuing ham football game before they were shrink wrapped. Once the boss came around and asked the workers to not use the hams as sports equipment for a couple of days because he had found out that a meat inspector would be coming around.
"I think the worst work is grindingly hard physical labor which I have only done a few times for short stretches (think carrying a 100 pound sack of potatoes about 15 feet from a loading dock to a potato bagging machine every 20 seconds for 8 hours). There is nothing left of you to live life if the work is physically hard enough.
"The best job is being part of an exciting enterprise that is doing something bigger than just making money. I worked as a database designer for a company that was sequencing the human genome and for a few years I was racing to work every day to put in 10 to 12 hours. I was helping to make scientific history happen in the company of many very smart people. Just about any job is just going to be a job after that kind of excitement."


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Germany looks for Berlin truck attack suspect believed to be 'violent and armed'
Suspect has used multiple identities; authorities had been trying to deport him
Suspect has used multiple identities; authorities had been trying to deport him
Suspect has used multiple identities; authorities had been trying to deport him
German authorities have launched a Europe-wide manhunt for a Tunisian man with ties to Islamic extremists who has been identified as a suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, lawmakers said Wednesday.
A wanted notice for the suspect says the man should be considered armed and dangerous. The notice, a European arrest warrant from Germany obtained by The Associated Press, indicates he has at times used six different aliases and three different nationalities.
It names Anis Amri as having Tunisian citizenship, born in the town of Ghaza. But it lists multiple aliases, many of them variants on his name, and Egyptian and Lebanese citizenship as well.
A German security official said authorities had considered him a possible terror threat previously and had been trying to deport him after his asylum application was rejected this summer.
The man is being sought in Germany and across Europe's border-free travel zone, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said after briefing Parliament's domestic affairs committee. He stressed "this is a suspect, not necessarily the perpetrator. We are still investigating in all directions."
Twelve people were killed and 48 others injured when a truck plowed into a popular Berlin market Monday evening. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.
De Maiziere wouldn't give details on the new suspect, but committee members said he's believed to be Tunisian.
The man is in his early 20s and apparently has used various identities, said Stephan Mayer, a senior lawmaker with Germany's governing conservatives. He said the man was considered part of the "Salafist-Islamist scene" by authorities.
Germany's chief federal prosecutor told lawmakers that "this Tunisian is a solid lead, his wallet was found in the cab of the truck, but that it's not clear that he was also the perpetrator," said Burkhard Lischka of the Social Democrats, the junior governing party.
The new suspect apparently arrived in Germany in 2015 and lived in three German regions since February, mostly in Berlin, said Ralf Jaeger, the interior minister of western North Rhine-Westphalia state.
Jaeger said that "security agencies exchanged information about this person in the joint counter-terrorism center, the last time in November."
Jaeger told reporters on Wednesday that state police had launched proceedings against the man on suspicion that he was preparing a serious crime.
Separately, the man's asylum application was rejected in July. German authorities detained him in preparation to deport him but weren't able to do so because he didn't have valid identity papers, Jaeger said, and in August they started trying to get him a replacement passport.
"Tunisia at first denied that this person was its citizen, and the papers weren't issued for a long time," Jaeger said. "They arrived today."
A Tunisian official said German investigators are trying to determine the role of the man, who he said was named Anis Amri. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity before Germans spoke more about the investigation, said Tunisian authorities were requesting more information on the German probe into the suspect.
A Tunisian living in France was shot to death after carrying out a similar attack on July 14 Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice, killing 86 people.
Police in Berlin said they had received over 500 tips on the Monday evening attack.
Shortly after the attack, police arrested a Pakistani man found a kilometer (1/2 mile) from the market who matched witness descriptions of the truck's driver. However, they released him the next day, saying they did not have evidence tying him to the attack.
The claim of responsibility carried on the IS group's Amaq news agency late Tuesday did not identify the man seen fleeing from the truck, but described him as "a soldier of the Islamic State" who "carried out the attack in response to calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition."
Germany's top prosecutor, Peter Frank, told reporters before the IS claim that the attack was reminiscent of the Nice rampage and appeared to follow instructions published by IS. He also said it wasn't clear whether there was one perpetrator or several.
Christmas shoppers were out again in the streets Wednesday in the German capital, and Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller said it was "good to see that Berliners aren't being intimidated."
"I don't think there's any need to be afraid," he told ZDF television. "The police presence has been significantly heightened ... and of course other measures taken to find the perpetrator quickly."
Mueller argued that there are limits to increasing security, given the number of public spaces and events.
"It wouldn't be our free and open life any more if we escalated security measures so much that people worry about going anywhere, that there are strict entry checks," he said. "We don't want that. It must be appropriate and goal-oriented."


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Bishop Daniel Conlon assesses it right:
Our credibility on the subject of child abuse is shredded.
The good news is that the bishops can only move up in estimation.
I found it interesting that Bishop Conlon conceded that his "close friends," upon hearing him opine about "an entirely different spirit of openness and
accountability" greeted the sentiments with a big thumbs down. How did he put it? "(A)lmost hostile." That's at a dinner, mind you. Among friends. You can imagine what victims, parents of victims, and churched people who attend training and awareness sessions might say if a bishop stumbled across our path in, say, an airport. Then think of the non-believers who have damned all of us Catholics because of the actions of some priests and the inaction of our bishops.
Bishop Conlon seems to have had an epiphany.
You may have a better chance. People — in the church, outside the church, and hanging on the edge — need to know that real progress is being made.
It's true. Bishop Finn was supposed to go to trial two weeks from Monday. Then it was moved up to yesterday, with a verdict expected today. I really feel for that guy. That recent kerfuffle over what he said or didn't say to a diocesan employee. Well, it will all get sorted out by a judge. I guess we'll know in a few hours if we'll need new fabric for a bishop's wardrobe or not.


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Nearly every agricultural publication has had stories recently highlighting the Stanford study that looked at more than 237 previous studies and concluded that there are no health benefits to organic products. Of course, this was heralded by mainstream agriculture that saw this as additional validation of traditional agriculture at a time when virtually all forms of modern agriculture are under attack.
Of course, it was validation of what everyone already knew. There is no reason that organic foods should be healthier. In fact, there are good reasons that it might actually be less healthy for consumers.
Still, it is important to remember that the growth of organic foods has had little to do with science or health. Organic chicken and pork appeared to reduce exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the clinical significance of this is also unclear. I had several very good scientists suggest to me that the previous studies were flawed, and pointed out that there is bacterial resistance found in both pork and poultry, regardless of how they are raised.
The reality is that there is a perception that organic production reduces bacterial resistance, and whether or not the science justifies that is largely irrelevant. Whether bacterial resistance in animals is a major contributing factor is also irrelevant.
I cut off the tip of my finger in a trailer door this weekend and the doctor prescribed antibiotics at rates I never would dream of. Humans are not going to reduce their use of antibiotics, so whenever there is a discussion about resistance, animal agriculture will be blamed. Even when we use antibiotics at levels considered to be 100% safe, people believe it is an issue, so it exists.
The terms "factory farming" and "corporate agriculture" may be maddening to anyone who truly understands modern agriculture, but like "pink slime," people are going to consider it to be a bad thing, even if your family-run operation is somehow considered to be a factory farm by the activists.
Growth promotants may make sense economically, scientifically, and from a health perspective, but consumers have concerns about their use. The organic movement capitalizes on both the reality and the misperceptions associated with them. To their credit, consumers seem to have some common sense and these are battles that have largely been fought and lost in the war of consumer perception.
But challenges remain. I will never forget listening to two carnival workers at the state fair. One lady had just returned from her smoke break, the other was consuming a deep-fried corn dog in between handing out her sugar-covered funnel cakes. She was discussing that, while it cost a lot more, she purchased organic orange juice because it was healthier.
We will not be able to feed a growing world population, take care of our environment, and provide consumers with a safe, wholesome, healthy and abundant food supply without modern agriculture, so we must be able to defend it. But we must get much better at defending it.


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These are a lot of fun for kids of all ages and super easy and inexpensive to make.
If you're short on magazines (and time) I've included three printables at the bottom of this page.
You will need…
Rocks – Use what you have around the yard or you can buy smooth rocks at most dollar stores, gardening or craft stores.
Mod Podge -You can buy Mod Podge in the craft aisle, or make your own (check Pinterest)
Magazines – A variety of magazines with lots of pictures of people and animals.
The kids can help look through the magazines, find and cut out what appeals to them. This is a fun activity in itself and it opens the door to lots of great conversation.
Once we've cut out all of our pieces, I glue them on to a sheet of paper and make photo copies – We keep these extra sheets in the craft room and use them for all sorts of different activities.
Now cut neatly around the image and glue it (mod podge) down to the rock. Smooth it out carefully so that there are no lumps or bumps and then add a layer over top. Once that layer is dry, add another. I add about three or four layers to keep the image well protected.
And here are a few printables for you!
Right click, save image and print.


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Obama's debate mission
Let's give Mitt Romney credit. He came to the first debate ready,
prepared and fighting trim. He won the debate. Decisively. Before the
debate, President Obama had achieved a significant advantage. After
the debate, the gap had closed. The fondest wish of most media has come
true. We have a horse race that will be contested to the finish line.
Let's give Obama credit, though: the jobs report last week included significant and politically important good news. The jobless rate fell to 7.8 percent at a time when more workers, not fewer, joined the workforce. The housing industry, essential for the next morning in America to commence, is clearly on the mend. Consumer confidence is strong. The stock market has soared since the president took office. The value of 401(k) plans, which are vital to the security of many millions of Americans, has skyrocketed along with markets.
{mosads}Of course the economy still faces challenges, but major companies are increasing hiring for the holiday season above the levels of last year. Macy's, Target, Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us join a long list of companies whose confidence has inspired them to substantial holiday hiring. They are doing their part for America. The economy is coming back.
The mission for the president and Democrats, as the debates continue and the closing days of the campaign approach, is to offer the voters a narrative that is true, compelling and appealing about the successes of the president in his first term and the achievements the president offers for a second term.
For the president and Democrats, the mission is to understand and build on the reasons for the very real and significant bounce that lifted them after the Democratic convention.
The brilliant and historically important speech of former President Clinton made a powerful and credible case for the successes that Obama has achieved in first avoiding a new global depression after the disaster he inherited from his Republican predecessor, and initiating the economic recovery that has begun to gather steam with strong consumer confidence, improved housing markets, rising 401(k) plans, strengthened financial markets and the latest decline in joblessness.
]Clinton has unparalleled credibility as the only living former president who is fondly remembered for achieving outstanding economic prosperity and success, and unparalleled skills in communicating a powerful and optimistic narrative about the successes Obama has achieved, the continued success he will achieve if reelected and the danger of reliving the disasters of the Bush years if the powers of the presidency are returned to the Republicans who caused the great financial crash.
The Democratic convention also lifted the president and Democrats because of the passionate, humane and uplifting speech by first lady Michelle Obama, and the potent and pointed speech by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), which dramatized how the president has improved American security and drew a contrast with the dangers to our security of the bellicose brand of neoconservative military policies championed by Romney.
The coming debate will have a town-hall meeting format that creates a different communications vehicle than other debate formats. A town-hall meeting debate offers the president a golden moment to offer his narrative about the Bush years, the Obama first term and the future of a second Obama term that will focus on his vision and agenda — and then, and only then, offer the contrast with Romney.
The president could discuss at some length why Clinton was successful and how the economy has indeed improved since he succeeded President George W. Bush. He could discuss how Clinton can help work with Republicans in Congress, who praise him so often it will be hard for them to resist, in taming the deficit and creating more jobs.
Obama can talk about the shared sacrifice and shared prosperity that is the Democratic tradition. He can and should contrast this, in a conversational tone, with the insulting Romney comments about the 47 percent, which Romney repeated and doubled-down on for many days, and which represent the policies that Romney and Republicans stand for.
Obama can discuss the role of commander in chief, and the challenges of a world that can't be solved by the bellicose speeches of those who would start wars recklessly.
Obama should talk about what he has learned in the presidency, the mistakes he has made and the lessons he learned from those mistakes, and the achievements he has had, and the lessons he has learned from those successes.
I would like to see the president dramatically escalate his positive television ads about his own vision, achievements and agenda. He should not be shy about detailing in the debates the economic successes I mention in this column, the optimism he believes in and the pathway to more prosperity that he, Vice President Biden, Clinton and Democrats in Congress will champion in a second term.
Obama does recognize the pain that afflicts too many Americans, but he should also be the champion of an agenda of optimism, aspiration and achievement that will be the hallmark of a second Obama term.
The president should make clear that our exceptionalism is not how wealthy the few become, but how much prosperity is created and shared by the many, and the fairness and justice and decency we stand for.
Obama should state that Republicans bear major responsibility for the problems he inherited, and seem to politically relish the pain that they did so much to create, but even more important, the president has a good narrative to offer, and a good story to tell, and he should tell it with confidence, optimism and vigor.
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. He can be read on The Hill's Pundits Blog and reached at email@example.com.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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As we posted earlier this week, Search Engine College has launched a free search engine marketing training initiative for charities and not-for-profit organizations worldwide.
We're offering 25 charities per year the opportunity to learn search marketing skills at no cost, to help them make the most of their limited marketing budgets.
Thank you to everyone who tweeted and blogged about our offer, word has spread very quickly and we've been inundated with requests from all over the world!
As well as announcing the recipients as they are decided, we're going to publish a small blurb about each recipient charity/NFP and a link to their web sites so you can learn a little more about them, spread the word about their charitable work or maybe even get involved yourself.
Our first recipients of pro-bono search marketing courses are:
1) Sandblast and the Free Western Sahara Network – Sandblast works in support of the forgotten Saharawi refugees. The UK charity evolved out of a 14-year relationship and involvement with the Saharawi refugees in South West Algeria.
2) Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations' Council (EVOC) – is a local organisation, which helps to support, develop and promote the interests and work of voluntary and community organisations in Edinburgh, Scotland.
3) Science Alive – a non profit organisation in Christchurch, New Zealand, focusing on science and technology education.
That's 3 down and 22 to go – congratulations to you all!
If you know of a worthy charity or not-for-profit that might benefit from our courses, please direct them to this post, or tweet it to spread the word.


text: Business Photo Essay Ten Reasons to Avoid Doing Business With Amazon.comTen Reasons to Avoid Doing Business With Amazon.com By The NationTwitter May 31, 2012 fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Bookmark May 31, 2012 Even with Borders gone and independent booksellers struggling to get by, the war for the future of publishing rages on. As Steve Wasserman explains in "The Amazon Effect," which appears in this week's special issue of The Nation, booksellers and publishers have shifted toward digital books, and Amazon.com, which sells more electronic Kindle books than physical hardcovers, is well positioned to overpower its rivals. But what's at stake in the battle over e-commerce and why should you avoid doing business with Amazon.com? Last year, the Greenlining Institute reported that Amazon's tax rate was among the lowest, at just 3.5 percent, of all companies included in the study. Yet despite the massive savings Amazon enjoys from exploiting tax loopholes, the company contributes surprisingly little to charities around its Seattle-area headquarters. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan Amazon is the world's largest bookseller, offering more than 2 million titles. In an effort to lower prices, the company has demanded additional discounts from distributors—which, as Colin Robinson points out, is illegal under anti-trust law that prevents companies from selling a product at different prices to different customers. The company has been accused of having a "monopolistic grip on the publishing industry." AP Photo/Mary Altaffer Amazon offers bestsellers at a loss in order to attract customers, a practice that has upended traditional publishing in the United States. But it doesn't have to be this way, as Germany's bookselling model illustrates. Photograph: Anite Lillie Amazon.com states that it is "not in the business of selling" customers' private information—e.g., what you buy, what you review, how you browse—to other companies, but last year Amazon.com was embroiled in a class-action lawsuit (Del Vecchio et al. v. Amazon.com) for allegedly bypassing customers' privacy settings. Others have raised concerns about Kindle Fire's web browser, fearing it would allow the company "to track customer behavior all over the Web, gathering data and marketing intelligence as it goes," according to the New York Times. Reuters/Brian Snyder Under political pressure, Amazon removed WikiLeaks from its cloud server in 2010, prompting this question from Keir Thomas of PC World: "In an idyllic future where we make heavy use of the cloud, what happens if a cloud service provider removes content it deems inappropriate, or just doesn't like?" AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews Amazon was late to pull out of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, pro-business nonprofit that recently came under fire for helping spread voter-identification and "Stand Your Ground" laws. Amazon, which has fought state-level taxation, focused on tax laws in ALEC. Reuters/Jim Young When the Communications Workers of America launched a campaign to unionize Amazon's customer-service representatives, the company argued that "unions actively foster distrust toward supervisors" and "create an uncooperative attitude among associates by leading them to think they are 'untouchable' with a union," according to the New York Times. To make matters worse, many Amazon employees are temporary workers who do not receive basic benefits like healthcare, and for whom forming a union is "virtually impossible." AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin Working conditions at Amazon.com warehouses can be brutal. Last fall, the Morning Call reported that employees were being "pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain" in warehouses where the temperature exceeded 100 degrees, causing workers to feel light-headed and pass out. AP Photo/Scott Sady Amazon has made searching easier and more efficient, providing free information about books and, in some cases, permitting readers to "look inside" them. However, as Anthony Grafton explains in "Search Gets Lost," the company has gradually cut back on its search capabilities, instead inviting the customer to provide information of every sort for Amazon to digest and profit from. In 2011, Amazon's $48 billion in revenue exceeded that of all six major publishing conglomerates combined. It now resembles an "online Walmart" rather than a bookseller, writes Steve Wasserman, and has begun to colonize movie, baby product and shoe retailer websites, as well as the high-end fashion industry. For more on Amazon's outsized power, be sure to read all of the articles in this week's special issue on the retail giant. The Amazon Effect, Steve Wasserman How Germany Keeps Amazon at Bay and Literary Culture Alive, Michael Naumann Search Gets Lost, Anthony Grafton Reuters/Shannon Stapleton


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March 30, 2009 (Orlando) -- Burning the midnight oil may be hazardous to your health.
Men who go to bed after midnight have significantly more arterial stiffening -- an early stage of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries -- than men who turn in earlier, a new study shows.
Several large studies have linked chronic sleep loss to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other health problems, says Yu Misao, MD, of the Misao Health Clinic in Gifu, Japan.
But whether bedtimes also have an influence on heart health has not been explored, he tells WebMD.
Too Little Sleep Affects Heart Health
So Misao and colleagues put that question to the test in a study of 251 healthy men 60 and younger. They had an annual checkup, during which their blood pressure, body weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and lipid levels were measured.
Brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity was used to examine the men for evidence of arterial stiffening. This measures how fast blood is rushing between the brachial artery in the arm and the tibial artery in the ankle. When blood pressure is high, blood flow accelerates, and the arterial walls stiffen.
All the participants filled out questionnaires that asked how many hours of sleep they got each night (six hours and 20 minutes, on average) and what time they went to bed (11:30 p.m. on average).
The fewer hours a man slept each night, the higher his BMI, blood pressure, and triglyceride levels, the study showed.
"This is consistent with previous reports showing that short sleep duration may negatively affect cardiovascular risk factors, Misao says.
There was no significant relationship between how many hours a man slept and arterial stiffness.
Late Bedtimes Linked to Arterial Stiffness
The men were then divided put into three groups according to the number of hours they reported sleeping at night: less than six hours, six to seven hours, and seven hours or more.
In each of these groups, the men who reported going to bed before midnight had more relaxed arteries, as shown by significantly lower brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity levels, than the men who went to bed after midnight.
The findings were presented at the American College of Cardiology's 58th Annual Scientific Sessions.
"While the study doesn't tells us why, a previous study suggested that people who go to bed late might eat more at night," Misao says. Evening snacking may raise the risk of obesity, a risk factor for heart disease, he says.
Other research suggests that turning in after midnight might activate the sympathetic nervous system, which accelerates body functions, including heart rate, and helps control how the body responds to stress, Misao says.
Daniel Jones, MD, past president of the American Heart Association and dean of the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, says it's possible that "there's some physiological [explanation] for the finding."
For example, turning in after midnight might throw your internal biological clock out of synch, he says.
"But people who go to bed late are different from people who go to bed early. They may be more likely to smoke. They may be more likely to drink, They may be more likely to overeat. These are all heart disease risk factors that [weren't taken into account in the analysis]," Jones tells WebMD.
At this point, "I wouldn't recommend changes in my sleep behavior based on this study," he says.
Misao agrees that further research is needed.
"From the point of view of preventing cardiovascular disease, we have to focus not only on diet and exercise, but also on how we sleep, including when we go to bed," he says.