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HD - High-Resolution repaints 4 of world-known airlines for the FeelThere Wilco Airbus A330 / A340 model on completely new Paint Kit.
Airbus A330-300 RR
1. Egyptair
2. Oman Air
Airbus A330-300 GE
3. Malaysia Airlines
4. KLM - Royal Dutch Airlines
A completely new paint kit was created in the highest resolution. I completely painted the textures of the fuselage, engines, wings and other external parts of the aircraft. Textures of the fuselage, wings and engines are now at a high resolution. Added new night textures of the fuselage and tail lighting.
Also, the textures of the stabilizer, chassis and many other details were completely repainted. In the new paint kit, realistic portholes, reflections and volumetric rivet textures were added. The position of the portholes in the fuselage plane of the aircraft became more realistic than before. I also paid attention to many other details of the aircraft.
All my changes are presented in the screenshots. Now you can enjoy flying, making flights on high-quality livery.
FeelThere Wilco / Airbus Series Evolution Vol.2


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NAME: B.J. Keeton (@professorbeej)
OCCUPATION: College English Instructor and Sci-Fi/Fantasy Author
More From Runner's World
HOMETOWN: Lawrenceburg, Tennessee
FAMILY: Wife, Jennifer; Mom, Judy
What prompted you to start working out?
My wife and I went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter during the summer of 2010, and the attendant could barely click the safety harness of the roller coaster over my gut—and I was in the plus-sized seat. My seat only clicked once; everyone else's clicked three times. I thought I was going to fall out of the seat and die. At that moment in the amusement park, I knew my life had to change. I couldn't let my weight—which I had never cared about that much before—hold me back from living my life. I was 27 years old and a newlywed. I had my whole life in front of me. I needed to be able to enjoy it.
How did you start?
By walking. I downloaded the Couch-to-5K app and tried that. But it wanted me to run for 60 seconds at a time, and I just couldn't do it. So I walked until my lungs were able to handle the strain, and then started the Couch-to-5K program. It also helped that my wife was a runner in college, and when she started exercising more regularly again, I saw what she could do, and something in my head said, "If she can do that, so can I." So I went out on the hottest day of the summer at 3 in the afternoon, set my C25K app for week one day one, and figured that if I could do it on the hottest day of a Tennessee summer (a record high temp, too, if I recall), I could do just about anything.
What's your regular workout routine?
I'm following a training plan for a half-marathon. I try to get about 15 miles in a week, running three to four days a week. On off days, I do calisthenics, dumbbell weight training, or yoga. I make sure I get on the treadmill and walk a few miles on off-days, if nothing else, and it's really easy for me to toss my laptop on there and edit a manuscript, blog, or work on a freelance project and still be moving.
What was the biggest hurdle to working out and how did you get over it?
I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma about seven years ago, and that combined with my inherent laziness was almost a death sentence for me. After reading online about runners overcoming EIA, I talked to my doctor, and he didn't think there'd be anything wrong with me puffing on Albuterol before a run. Since then, I take a hit after I lace up, and I'm good to go. When running in moderate weather, I don't use the inhaler anymore. But in extreme heat, cold, or humidity, I need to either keep it handy or preemptively use it. I hope to be able to strengthen my lungs enough by my half-marathon that I won't need to use it anymore at all. I always tell people that you can't necessarily beat having asthma, but you sure can outrun it.
Did you have a weight-loss goal?
At my heaviest, I weighed 310 pounds, and right now, I'm 164 pounds. I've lost 146 pounds, and that's more than I ever thought possible.
What's the secret to your weight-loss success?
I kept things realistic, and I was happy for every single pound. I saw each pound as another few months alive, as another few months with my wife and my family, doing the stuff I love to do. I never thought it was possible for my body to be this size or this shape. But as I lost, I noticed all of these small details about life that I'd taken for granted. I mean, I love having people (even family members!) not recognize me in public, or being able to walk into a store and buy clothes I like without having to special order them. It's the little things, and when I focused on them, the weight came off. I could push myself, and nothing seemed unreachable because I did my best to keep things in perspective.
What kinds of changes did you make to what and how you ate?
I changed everything. I wasn't going on a diet; I was making a lifestyle change. Initially, I followed the low-glycemic index because in-laws had success with it, and the pounds melted away without much effort. I never felt deprived or hungry, so it was fantastic. I gave up sugar pretty early on, and now I splurge once in a while on sweets, but I don't really miss them. If I want a cookie, I'll have a cookie. But one cookie. Not four or five. When I started running more and more, I realized that I needed more carbohydrates, so my wife and I both started eating more whole and organic foods and fewer processed products, and we started cooking more and more at home. More than anything, my diet is about moderation and healthy choices.
What advice would you give to a beginner?
It gets better. Really. I promise. The hurting stops. The exhaustion goes away. The fatigue and cramps and blisters and all of that is temporary. I know it doesn't seem that way, and I know that you feel like you want to die after 30 seconds, but it eventually becomes one of the best things in the world. But you have to stick with it. Oh, and those first two miles? They always suck. Always. For everyone.
What's your favorite piece of gear? I kind of have a thing for running shoes. I love the way they look and how excited getting a new pair makes me. I guess it's the knowledge that I beat the living crap out of the old pair, so I earned the new ones. So now, I get to beat the living crap out of them, too. I just love it.
What is your long term-goal?
With my weak knees and asthma, I just want to keep running. I want to be healthy. My dad died of heart problems at 60, so as morbid as it may sound, my long-term goal is to not do that.
Last week Ruffin Rhodes lost weight through running and built a new future.
We want to hear how running changed you. Send your story and submit your photos to us at email@example.com. We'll pick one each week to highlight on.

subset: commoncrawl


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If you are at risk of lung cancer, you may want to have low-dose CT scan that can help detect lung cancer at its earliest and most curable stage. The best hope for curing lung cancer is finding it as early as possible. The Early Lung Cancer Action Program (ELCAP research showed that annual CT screening can find 85% of lung cancers in their earliest, most curable stage (Lancet 1999; 354:99-105). A CT scan can detect tiny spots on your lungs (called 'nodules') that may indicate lung cancer in this early stage (New England Journal of Medicine 2006; 355: 1763-1771). The ELCAP research results together with the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) (New England Journal of Medicine 2011; 365:395-409) results led to the current recommended program of clinical screening.
CT Scan FAQs
Advances in CT scanning now allow individuals to undergo a painless, non-invasive scan that takes less than 20 seconds. In most cases, you do not even have to change your clothes.
Prior to scanning, you should fill out our simple questionnaire that can be completed in less than half an hour. A trained healthcare navigator will assist you throughout the process.
A radiologist who has had special training and is experienced in interpreting these types of tests analyzes each CT scan.
The radiologists will discuss any findings and necessary follow-up with the participant's physician.
CT screening uses a lower dose compared to standard CT scans. We strive to keep the dose between 1-2 mSv (millisieverts) or lower, although for individual patients it may be slightly higher than this value. As a comparison, average background radiation in the US is approximately 3 mSv/ year and in Denver, Colorado, due to the higher altitude it is 11.8. Another comparison is that the exposure of a low-dose CT scan is less than a mammogram which is below 0.6 mSv.
Yes. Old or new pneumonia, tuberculosis, or emphysema may be detected.
A limited evaluation will be done. The radiologists are able to see heart size and can detect calcifications in the coronary arteries when present. It also can detect abnormal enlargements of the main blood vessels leading out of the heart. These results will be reported to your doctor.
The benefits of lung cancer screening CT scans are highest for those with significant lung cancer risk.
ELCAP and its expanded research collaboration, the International ()I-ELCAP has focused on patients at a high risk for lung cancer. Several factors contribute to lung cancer risk. They are age; smoking history; environmental exposure to carcinogens like asbestos, beryllium, uranium, or radon; and exposure to second hand smoke. The older you are and the more you've smoked or been exposed to smoke and other carcinogens, the higher your risk.
Additionally, I-ELCAP research has shown that women were twice as likely as men to develop lung cancer when both had similar smoking histories. Click here for more information about how lung cancer affects women.
We encourage you to contact one of our member sites to make an appointment and learn more about how you personally may benefit from a lung cancer screening CT.
The CT (Computed Tomography) scan or the CAT (Computer-Aided Tomography) scan is a diagnostic procedure that takes a detailed cross-sectional x-ray picture of a "slice" of the body.
To get a CT scan, the patient lies very still on a table, which is slowly moved horizontally while the x-ray machine rotates around the patient and takes pictures from many angles. A computer then combines the pictures into a very detailed cross-sectional image. The length of the procedure depends on the areas to be x-rayed. For the chest area, the procedure takes about 20 seconds.
CT scans can show the shape, size and the exact location of organs and tissues in any "slice" of the body more clearly than other diagnostic tools. This technique can help find enlarged lymph nodes, which might contain cancer that has spread from the lung. CT scans are more sensitive than routine chest x-rays in finding early lung cancers. CT scans are also used in detecting masses in the liver, adrenal glands, brain and other internal organs that may be affected by the spread of lung cancer.
Recent articles published in Archives of Internal Medicine, "Projected Cancer Risks From Computed Tomographic Scans Performed in the United States in 2007" and "Radiation Dose Associated With Common Computed Tomography Examinations and the Associated Lifetime Attributable Risk of Cancer" raise concerns about the potential risks associated with radiation. The radiation doses considered in those articles was based on standard dose scans rather than the low dose we currently employ in our research and therefore are substantially higher doses than participants in screening studies are likely to receive.
Nevertheless, they remind us of the need to continually examine our protocols so that we continue to lower the dose we use while still maintaining appropriate image quality. The doses considered in those articles were as high as 90 mSv (millisieverts) for abdominal CT scans and for standard chest CTs as high as 24 mSv with a median of 8 mSv. They did not evaluate scans using the lower doses that we recommend in our research where we strive for the lowest dose possible, typically 1 or 2 mSv or lower, although for individual patients it may be slightly higher than this value.
As a comparison, average background radiation in the US is approximately 3 mSv/ year and in Denver, Colorado, due to the higher altitude it is 11.8 mSv/year, and the dose allowed to people who work in the radiation field is 50 mSv/ year.
It should also be recognized that the conclusions of these articles are not universally accepted. For example, the American College of Radiology said in a press release that,
"No published studies show that radiation from imaging exams causes cancer. The conclusions of the authors of the Archives' studies rely largely on data which equates radiation exposure and effects experienced by atomic bomb survivors in Japan to present day patients who receive computed tomography (CT) scans. Most CT is performed in controlled settings and results in limited radiation exposure to a small portion of the body. Atomic bomb survivors experienced instantaneous exposure to the whole body. CT exams expose patients solely to X-rays. Atomic blast survivors were exposed to X-rays, particulate radiations, neutrons, and other radioactive materials. The known biological effects are very different for these two scenarios. Cancer assumptions based on this paradigm should be considered, but not accepted as medical fact.
Also, the articles - after excluding patients with cancer or within five years of the end of life - assumed that those undergoing CT scanning have the same life expectancy as the general population. This is not accurate, so the estimates are undoubtedly high. Moreover, 25 percent of people in the United States die of cancer with a life time incidence of 40 percent, about 1.5 million new cancers per year. The 29,000 [only 4,100 from standard Chest CT] figure, if even close to accurate, is overall a very small risk versus the immediate, proven life saving benefits of CT."
Below are 2 videos that fully describe the CT experience, including an actual CT scan. Click on either to download keeping in mind that the movies are large files (approximately 9-16 MB), and are in the Quicktime format (plugin available free from www.apple.com)
- Watch a CT Scan (9 MB Quicktime format)
- ELCAP Informative video (16 MB Quicktime format)
- Click here to read the full text from videos
More information about the screening process can be found here.


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Pro Carton Design Award 2012 – Chairman's comments
It is always interesting and thought provoking when looking at carton designs that are not constrained by restrictive or sector specific thinking because of production parameters, manufacturing constraints or retailer requirements.
A mind that thinks freely can really come up with some clever thinking. Ideas that no one had thought of before or different ways of doing something that had not utilised carton board before.
That's exactly how it was with the 2012 design awards that we had the pleasure and challenge of judging in The Hague.
The judges and I walk into the judging room never knowing what to expect and yet we were pleasantly surprised at the creativity and innovation that lay before us. The lateral thinking was very evident but what was even more interesting was the attention to detail and of not forgetting the requirement of the consumer.
You know when the entries are of a high standard when the judges cannot fully agree and then a healthy debate ensues. This was not only the case within the category of best cartonboard packaging but also the category of new use for cartonboard.
Well done to all those that entered and I would encourage you to continue thinking with an open mind. Don't be constrained by current views and beliefs and look at other, non carton packaging and see what can be learnt there and brought into cartonboard.
Satkar Gidda, Chairman of the Jury
April 2012
Satkar Gidda studied Business Studies and Marketing and has worked 6 years in Sales, Trade Marketing and Brand Marketing for RHM Foods and Nestle followed by 30 years as Sales & Marketing Director of SiebertHead, the longest established brand and packaging design consultancy in the UK. Since March 2020, Satkar operates as an independent consultant.
Wilfried Duivenvoorden graduated from the Erasmus University Rotterdam as a master in Business Economics and General Management. After finishing his study he immediately joined the packaging industry. In 1999 he joined Unilever as a European Procurement manager for packaging materials for the ice cream and frozen food business. In 2006 he became a Global Procurement manager for wood-fiber based packaging materials for Foods and Home & Personal Care. Since 2014 he is responsible for Unilever's procurement of finished goods for Home & Personal Care in Europe.
John de Somer started in 1989 working for Sirius Graphics as price analyst, sales manager and finally sales director. In 1993 he became Director of Van Genechten and marketing manager of Van Genechten Packaging. Since 2002 he has been President of Pro Carton Belgium and a member of the Executive of Pro Carton International. VGP is a private industrial group of 10 folding cartons plants in 7 countries, servicing the European FMCG industry with printed board and micro flute packaging and packaging systems from high volumes cartons for the mass market to highly sophisticated boxes for the premium markets in luxury drinks, confectionery and cosmetics.


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Question Is nut consumption associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) in women?
Cohort study of women in the Nurses' Health Study with follow up of 14 years.
86 016 women aged 34–59 years who were registered nurses. Exclusion criteria were previously diagnosed cancer, angina, myocardial infarction, stroke, or other cardiovascular diseases; or implausibly high or low scores for total energy intake. Follow up was 98%.
Assessment of risk factors
Frequency of nut consumption and total energy intake (self reported using dietary questionnaires); smoking; age; body mass index; alcohol; use of menopausal hormones, multivitamins, vitamin E, and aspirin; and exercise.
Main outcome measures
Fatal or non-fatal myocardial infarction, or other fatal CHD verified by electrocardiogram or cardiac enzymes.
Main results
1255 major CHD events occurred during 14 years of follow up: 861 were cases of non-fatal myocardial infarction and 394 were cases of fatal CHD. Multivariate analysis showed that women who ate ≥140 g (≥5 oz) of nuts each week compared with women who ate <28 g (<1 oz) each week had a lower risk for total CHD (relative risk 0.65, 95% CI 0.47 to 0.89). These women did not have a lower risk of fatal CHD or non-fatal myocardial infarction. Tests of linear trend across increasing categories of nut consumption showed lower risks for total CHD (p for trend <0.001), fatal CHD (p for trend = 0.007), and non-fatal myocardial infarction (p for trend = 0.04) as nut consumption increased from 28 g (1 oz) each week to ≥140 g (≥5 oz) each week. These results remained the same after further adjustment for potential dietary confounding variables (eg, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, trans-fat, fibre, vegetables, and fruits) and within subgroups of potential confounding variables.
Frequent nut consumption was associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease in women who were registered nurses.
This study by Hu et al examined the relation between increased nut consumption and decreased risk of CHD in women who were nurses in the US. The results of this study suggest that women who frequently consumed nuts had an approximately 35% lower risk of coronary disease than women who rarely ate nuts. This information is consistent with several other previously published studies.1, 2 Hu et al also addressed the question of whether people who consumed nuts maintained a relatively healthier lifestyle and found that even when taking these factors into account, a definite risk reduction persisted in this population of women who were nurses.
The weaknesses of this study are those inherent in self reported dietary intake: underestimation and imprecision.3 An observational study lacks the methodological rigour of a randomised controlled trial. Also, nurses represent a biased sample because of their education and occupation, which limits the generalisability of the findings.
The exact mechanism by which nuts protect against coronary heart disease is not yet known. The authors suggest various mechanisms including the beneficial effect of unsaturated fats on serum lipids4; the role of nitric oxide in inhibiting platelet adhesion; the antithrombotic and antiarrhythmic effects of linolenic acid; and the high content of magnesium, copper, folic acid, protein, potassium, fibre, and vitamin E in nuts.
These research findings need to be applied in combination with other healthy lifestyle patient education. The inclusion of nuts in a healthy diet should be discussed as an alternative protein. Moderate consumption of nuts can be incorporated into a healthy and balanced diet, although more research is required to explain the exact mechanism of risk reduction for coronary disease.
Source of funding: US National Institute of Health.
For correspondence: Dr F Hu, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Fax +1 617 432 2435.


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7' Non-Slate Champagne Outdoor Pool Table (NEW) by Imperial
5 review
This Kettler Eden outdoor table tennis will become the center of your family or friend gatherings as it has all the features for providing a fun evening with warm memories. Just place the table outside and enjoy the dynamic game together!
Due to the quality weatherproof materials used to manufacture, this product will serve you for a long time without breaking. So you won't worry about purchasing a new table after playing it just a few times.
Do you want to have all the benefits of an immovable table with a bounce? Then, you definitely need the Eden outdoor table tennis!
|Package (L*W*H)
|5.25' 4.66' 0.75'
|280 lbs.
|Package Weight
|432 lbs.
We are dedicated to providing all our customers with great support, which is possible through our 24/7 customer support line. This feature is especially valued and important during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
However, before picking up the phone to call or write us, here is some information you can get on our order processes.
Our highest priority will always stay YOU, our team, and our partners.
We process all the orders on the same day we get them. In case, we have the product in stock, we will normally ship it within 1-7 business days. Custom orders and made-to-order products might take a bit longer to ship - 2-4 weeks, depending on the manufacturer. Lead and Delivery timeframe also differ by manufacturer. Any listed delivery timeframes are merely estimates, which we cannot guarantee.
Most of the game room tables and similar large items, which include, but are not limited to table tennis tables, foosball tables, air hockey tables, poker tables, and pool tables are considered to be freight shipments. Thus you are expected to be at the delivery address during the delivery arrival, in order to inspect the package for damages and accept the order.
When you order from Game Please and choose any of the delivery methods stated below, you agree that the product will fit through your doorway. In the unfortunate case of the product being too large to put into your room of choice, any changes that are associated with dismantling/reassembly of the product or returning it will be solely on you.
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As of now, we offer free curbside delivery on most of our freight orders. Just like the name suggests, the delivery driver will park on the curb outside of y our place. You are responsible for removing the item from the truck, as the driver is not obliged to help you remove the product from the truck, only if he chooses to do so at his/her own discretion. We highly advise you to go with the Liftgate Service and have someone helping you. The liftgate service is available at checkout.
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Curbside Liftgate Delivery: $70
In case you wish to order the Liftagete service delivery, you can easily do it either during the checkout or after. In this case, the driver will take out the product from the truck himself, and put it on the curb. Moving the product inside though will be your responsibility. We suggest you have a friend to help you, along with a dolly.
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This is the easiest delivery method for the buyer as the driver is responsible for everything - removing the product from the truck and delivering it to the room of your choice, inside your house. Additional charges may apply, in case your house is difficult to access, there is more than one flight of stairs, or in case of any other obstacles along the way.
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In case the box/package looks OK/undamaged but you think the item inside may be damaged, follow the exact instructions below:
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3) Carefully inspect the item during/after unpackaging.
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We strive for 100% customer satisfaction. That's the reason we only partner with reputable manufacturers that offer only the highest quality products. Thus, we rarely have any issues. However, in the unlikely event of your product arriving to you damaged or faulty, we are here to make sure you are taken care of.
The majority of our items have a manufacturer's warranty. In case your product has a defect, make sure to contact the manufacturer as indicated in the paperwork, included in the package. In case you need assistance contacting the manufacturer, please do contact us.
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We have the largest collection of board and arcade games in the United States. From classics to the modern ones, we have it all! Just browse through our excessive selection and choose your favorite pastime!
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We strive to provide a top-notch service to all our clients, and make sure their expectations are met and acceded. That's why all our products feature a manufacturer's warranty for your peace of mind.
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We keep a close eye on our competitors, making sure we keep the lowest possible prices on the market. In case you find your desired board game on another site cheaper, contact us, and we will match the price.
With us, you get 30 days of a trial period, and if you don't like your purchase, send it back under our 30-day money-back guarantee policy.
We periodically compare the prices of our products with those of our competitors, to make sure we offer the lowest prices on the market.
In case you can find a better price on an identical product within 90 days of buying from us, we will provide a 110% refund of the price difference. Certain conditions and rules apply.
In order to get a price-match refund, we need to receive the following details:
Lowest Price Guarantee Terms Conditions
After the purchase has been made with us, you have up to 90 days to submit a price-match request.
We price-match exclusively to identical models from authorized U.S. eCommerce dealers who follow dealer minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policies. After we get your price-match request, we might need to verify the availability of the product and the indicated price of the competitor, before we make a decision to refund or match.
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We do not offer a price-match guarantee to products on brick-and-mortar stores, liquidation sites (such as Wayfair/eBay/Overstock) or auction, member-only websites (including but not limited to: Sam's Club, Costco, BJs, etc.), or private sellers.
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Our lowest-price guarantee is not applicable for products sold for $250 and less.
Our lowest-price guarantee refers to the full cost of your order (purchase and delivery), which includes the processing, handling, shipping, taxes, and any other fees that may apply.
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Take comfort in knowing that you are purchasing your products at the best price from Game Please.
WARNING: Reproductive Harm and Cancer – www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
California Proposition 65 Warning
The California Safe Drinking Water Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (Prop 65) Explained:
In 1986, an initiative was approved by California voters that addresses concerns about exposure to toxic chemicals. That initiative became commonly known as Proposition 65 or the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986.
Proposition 65 requires the State of California to publish a list of chemicals known to cause birth defects, cancer, or other reproductive harm. Since it was first published in 1987, the list has grown to include more than 900 chemicals and is updated yearly.
According to Proposition 65 all businesses need to provide the people of California with a reasonable and clear warning regarding the chemicals in the products they purchase for home, office, or that can be released in the environment. Armed with information, people living in California can make informed decisions on their purchases and exposure to the chemicals. Moreover, Proposition 65 also prohibits businesses in California from knowingly releasing considerable amounts of listed chemicals into sources of drinking water.
The Proposition 65 program is administered by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). OEHHA, which is part of the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA), is also in charge of evaluating all scientific information that is currently available on substances considered for placement on the Proposition 65 list.
What this means to you:
Despite the fact that the proposition initially just protected drinking water, nowadays, the scope has been significantly broadened. It now includes over 900 chemicals and also pertains to (but is not limited to) exposure through touch, inhalation, ingestion, or skin contact.
You can now research products that may contain even small amounts of the over 900 listed chemicals or ingredients in the Proposition 65 warning, which are considered carcinogenic or reproductive toxicants by the EHHA. This includes coatings, vinyl, plastics, and much more. Many common additives in everyday items are listed under Proposition 65.
We are obliged to include Proposition 65 warnings in our communications with you because of the wide range of products that might contain one of the chemicals or ingredients on the list. We have to use exact wording as indicated by the state of California. However, don't be alarmed. The warning sounds a bit scary, but it is merely there to notify you of potential risks, so you can make an informed decision.
Why are all products labeled instead of only those that are sold in California?
We distribute our products nationwide. Thus, it is very difficult to determine which product will be purchased or delivered to someone living in California. Therefore, we include the warning in all of our products to comply with the Proposition 65 requirements.
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The 8 Habits of Highly Successful Young-Adult Fiction Authors
Best-selling writers including John Green and Veronica Roth share their strategies for crafting authentic, relatable teen characters—even in fantasy worlds.
Young-adult fiction, commonly called "YA fiction," has exploded over the past decade or so: The number of YA titles published grew more than 120 percent between 2002 and 2012, and other estimates say that between 1997 and 2009, that figure was closer to 900 percent. Ask a handful of young-adult fiction writers what exactly makes a YA novel, though, and you'll get a handful of conflicting answers.
At their core, YA books are for and about teenagers and pre-teens, usually between 12 and 18 years old, but sometimes as young as 10. Yet more than half of all YA novels sold are bought by older adults 18 or older, and certain titles published in the U.S. as YA are considered mainstream fiction for adults in other countries. Some authors believe the intent to write for young readers is a prerequisite of YA fiction; others don't even realize their books will be labeled as YA until after they finish writing.
Many successful authors say there's no secret to writing for teenagers. Good writing is good writing; believable characters and compelling plots are crucial regardless of who's picking up the book. But many YA authors will also tell you there's something particularly fulfilling and rewarding about writing for teenagers, who often respond to stories they identify with more intensely and gratefully than adult readers do. I asked eight writers and editors how they create characters and stories that feel real to teenagers, even when their world—and the world of the YA books they read—can feel like another planet. Below are eight of their most successful strategies.
Think Like a Teen
Rainbow Rowell never set out to be a YA author. Her first book, Attachments, was for and about adults, and though Eleanor & Park is a teenage love story set in 1986, her approach to writing younger characters was the same. It was only after the novel was finished that she learned it would be YA, and even then, the decision was debated. Because Rowell got her start writing for adults—and because the story's relatability defied many adults' expectations of what a "book for teens" was—some readers and reviewers questioned whether the YA label was applicable.
But what clearly makes Eleanor & Park a YA book, a fellow author told Rowell, wasn't just that the main characters were teens. It was that the novel actually saw the world through their eyes. "The perspective was so firmly rooted inside of these teenagers," Rowell says. "You're not looking back or looking down. The narrator is not observing things the people themselves are not." It's the same quality—a lack of narrative distance—that's led many writers to call J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye the seminal YA text: Readers experience Holden Caulfield's version of events solely through his jaded, smart-alecky point of view.
"I think everyone's got a little teenager inside of them still, and you just have to work to help yourself access that teenager," says Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent trilogy, whose final installment, Allegiant, is out now. "Every now and then I find myself having a character make a decision that feels very adult without having them earn it, and I have to go back and make sure I'm letting the characters make mistakes they would in real life at that age, like a parent."
When the adult perspective creeps its way into a YA book, readers notice, too. "It's a huge red flag," says Rachel Cohn, the author of the acclaimed Gingerbread series, who says she's vigilant about editing out the grown-up voice in early drafts of her writing. Cohn, who is often asked to review other YA books, calls this distance one of her biggest pet peeves.
"The books I turn away are when the dialogue reads false to me," Cohn says. "It's not that the words are wrong, because that's subjective, but the feelings are wrong to me. It's like an adult observing something."
Find the "Emotional Truth" of the Teenage Experience
John Green's hilarious and heartbreaking The Fault in Our Stars is not a post-apocalyptic, dystopian novel like Divergent or The Hunger Games. But the lives of its protagonists, Hazel and Gus, hardly mirror the lives of their readers, who probably don't have cancer and generally don't fly to Amsterdam to track down reclusive, alcoholic authors. And yet, the book has been a New York Times bestseller for 46 weeks. "I get emails every day from people who are like, 'I'm just like Hazel, except I don't have cancer, I'm not 16, I'm not white, and I'm not female,'" Green says. "I'm like, 'Well, you're not just like Hazel.'"
Readers also probably don't directly identify with A, the main character of David Levithan's Every Day, who wakes up each morning in someone else's body and is defined only by the thoughts in his head.
But they don't need to. "The defining characteristic of YA literature is emotional truth," Levithan writes in an email. "Even if we're not the same as the characters we read, they are all dealing with things—issues of who they are, who they should be, what they should and shouldn't do—that we all deal with, in their own ways. With The Hunger Games, even if we will never be in Katniss's shoes, the decisions she makes make emotional sense to us—even when she makes the wrong ones."
That might be why readers find themselves so drawn to Hazel and Gus, whose relationship and health struggles offer avenues for teenagers to examine the bigger ideas they're grappling with in their own lives. "Maybe some of what's universal is the intensity of the experience, the intensity of falling in love for the first time, the intensity of asking questions about mortality and meaning for the first time," Green says.
But even if YA books aren't tackling issues of life and death, the best among them still capture the gravity of the teenage and pre-teen experience, whether it's the sparks of a first crush or lunchroom gossip and bullying. "When you're in that time in your life, the trials and tribulations of friendships, romantic relationships, it's all very crucial and vital," says Kristen Pettit, an executive editor at HarperCollins. "That is one way the author presents themselves as authentic to the YA community, by nailing that keenness of feeling and emotion and high-stakes nature of the interactions they have with people every day."
A Good Pop-Culture Reference Goes a Long Way
One reason The Fault in Our Stars' Hazel feels so familiar to YA readers is the fact that she, like so many of her peers, is a sucker for America's Next Top Model marathons. But Green didn't include multiple mentions of Tyra Bank's long-running reality show just for fun—the references teach us a lot about Hazel as a character and as a teenager. In the book, she's obsessed with An Imperial Affliction, a made-up, highbrow novel very loosely based on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, yet her taste in TV shows is anything but sophisticated.
"One of the things I love about teenagers is they don't make those distinctions between high culture and low culture like we do as adults," Green says. "It's not uncommon for teenagers to list their two favorite books as Gossip Girl and The Great Gatsby. They don't think its weird to say, 'I love Toni Morrison, and I also love Justin Bieber.'"
Rowell uses pop culture to ground her stories in reality, too, but she also knows the references don't always age gracefully, or in ways that can be predicted. Attachments came out in 2011, but it takes place in the 1990s, where a Tom Cruise reference means Tom Cruise the movie star, not Tom Cruise the Scientologist divorcé of tabloids. Rowell's latest book, Fangirl, about a prolific fanfiction writer who goes off to college, includes references to Taylor Swift, the Twilight series, and Kanye West, whose public perception, though she only wrote the book in 2012, has already changed significantly: He's engaged to Kim Kardashian, his music took a dark turn, and his select interviews are more colorful than ever.
"I try to pick things people will recognize four to five years from now," Rowell says. "I don't think it hurts to add those. It adds to our cultural literacy. It adds to what we know about ourselves." Technology and Internet culture, however, change even quicker than our pop-culture lexicons, so Rowell says she avoided references to Tumblr, Fanfiction.net, and some of the fanfiction community's terminology—like shipping and slash fiction—out of concern that too many brand names or esoteric details would trip up unfamiliar readers.
Green, on the other hand, is confident America's Next Top Model will be a timeless reference: "Even if you haven't heard of the show in some beautiful utopia 30 years from now, the entire show is encapsulated in its title," he says. "You know everything you need to know from the four words used to describe the show."
Get Input From Real Teenagers
New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult has written close to two dozen novels, many of which—like My Sister's Keeper and Nineteen Minutes—focus on memorable teenage characters. But it wasn't until last year that she wrote a book specifically for young-adult readers, Between the Lines, which she co-wrote with her teenage daughter, Samantha van Leer.
"Having a co-writer who was a teenager was like having a built-in B.S. meter sitting next to me," Picoult says. "Every now and then, Sammy would say something out loud that was such an apt metaphor. It wasn't something I would have thought of, but it was something she was living every day because she was in high school when she was writing this book. The example I always think about is a group of popular girls in the book who are described as being like a bunch of grapes because, honestly, do you ever see just one of them alone? I thought it was hilarious because it was so true."
It's not the first time Picoult used a real-life teenager to make her writing more accurate. When she was writing The Pact, a 1998 novel about a teenage suicide pact, she picked up some pizza and soda, called up her babysitter, and interviewed her and her friends. "I just listened to them talk to each other and tried to hone in on where their minds were about that topic," Picoult says. "I think if you're a writer, you do your research and do your due diligence. It sounds funny to listen to teenagers as research."
Not every writer takes this approach—Rowell didn't need to investigate online fan communities when crafting the characters of Fangirl. "I'm addicted to Tumblr, so when I was writing, I had read so much fan fiction and spend so much time in fandom places on the Internet, a lot of it I had internalized," says Rowell, a former newspaper columnist. (Fangirl, unsurprisingly, was the first pick for Tumblr's official book club).
But Rowell did draw on those communities when she needed feedback. "I had friends in fandom who I would say to, every once in awhile, 'Tell me how you feel about this, does this ring true to you, talk to me,'" she says. "I write from what I know, and if I write something I don't know, I'll go out and talk to them. It doesn't feel like an expedition to find out what the teens are doing. Because I was a reporter for so long, it makes sense to me."
Use Slang Words at Your Own Risk
The more authors try to capture the exact idiosyncrasies of how teenagers talk, the more they risk alienating or distracting readers.
"The problem with that is your book has a shelf life of two to three years," says Kathryn Reiss, a veteran YA author who also teaches young-adult fiction-writing classes at Mills College in Oakland, California. "It won't be a classic because the coded language of teens changes every four years with every high school generation." Unless they're aiming for historical fiction—in which case, bring on the groovy! and the radical!—authors who pepper their YA writing with "modern" vocab can easily seem like they're out of touch, or, worse, trying too hard.
Some writers can pull off slang successfully: Rachel Cohn's debut novel, 2002's Gingerbread, introduced readers to punk-rock protagonist Cyd Charisse, whose youthful vocab brought her to life on the very first page and made her one of the most memorable YA voices in recent years:
My so-called parents hate my boyfriend, Shrimp. I'm not sure they even believe he is my boyfriend. They take one look at his five-foot-five, surfer-shirt-wearin', baggy-jeans-slouchin', Pop Tart-eatin', spiked-hair-head self and you can just see confusion firebombs exploding in their heads, like they are thinking, Oh no, Cyd Charisse, that young man is not your homes.
Dig this: He is.
Though the book earned plenty of praise, not every critic was charmed. "I remember at the time being really offended, reading that it had an overuse of slang and made-up words and was just ridiculous, over the top," Cohn says. "I remember being so offended on behalf of my character. 'Screw you! You don't know what you're talking about! That's the way I talk!'"
But when she reread the book five years later, Cohn had a slight change of heart. "It was kind over the top! I like it, but I think as I've evolved, I wouldn't write it that way now, for better or for worse. And probably for worse."
Keep It Moving
When Goosebumps author R.L. Stine went to a recent YA reading, he noticed far more 20- and 30-something women in attendance than teenagers. He was puzzled, so he asked Pettit why this might be. "I said it's because of the way [these books] read, because of plot," Pettit says. "So much of adult literature has become so precious that sometimes what you just want is the ride. I think YA authors are freer to take you on a ride instead of constructing overwrought sentences and impressing you with their skill."
One of the enduring misconceptions about YA fiction is that it's dumbed down, that writing for young readers means writing in a way that's easy for them to comprehend. Cohn estimates that about 60 to 65 percent of YA fiction is written in the first person and present tense, but not because YA readers can't handle complexity—take a look at the average high school or AP English reading lists for evidence to the contrary—but because the simplicity and immediacy of that particular style helps writers develop the voices of their characters.
"You settle down in a character's head and just go," Cohn says. "I do some teaching, and I always recommend changing the tense, changing the perspective, see what happens. If I'm stuck, and I'm not writing in first person present, I'll start writing in that because it's easy to tap into."
Similarly, Roth describes the process of finding the voice of Divergent's heroine, Tris, as a writing exercise. "I had been trying to write in this more poetic, flowy sort of way, and I was noticing I wasn't doing as well as I wanted to in terms of controlling my language," says Roth, who was inspired to write Tris after reading a line ("My will is mine, I will not make it soft for you") from the Greek play Agamemnon. "Tris came [to me] at a really big point in which I needed to work on being more concise, and her voice was concise—a little repetitive, but definitely stark and straight-forward."
It's Okay for YA To Get Dark
There's nothing off-limits when it comes to YA fiction, which frequently dives into unsettling territory like death, drugs, and rape across all of its genres and styles. Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why is about a high school girl who commits suicide and mails cassette tapes to classmates explaining her motives and who drove her to it; Francesca Lia Block's 2003 novel, Wasteland, features an incestuous relationship, and it's one of a handful of young-adult books that do so.
For Picoult, who has written about murder, abuse, and school shootings in her books for adults, this was news. "I went into the domain of YA fiction completely unschooled," she says. "I assumed that if we were going to be gearing it to a younger reader, it should have a feeling almost like a Shrek fairytale. Sammy was the one who said no, it should really be dark so Happily Ever After has much more at stake."
How authors present that subject matter depends somewhat on which ages they're aiming for. A number of YA books take place during the Holocaust, for example, and they all take different approaches to the subject matter: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak—marketed for ages 12 and up, but published as an adult book in Zusak's Australia—is narrated by Death; The Devil's Arithmetic, marketed for ages 10 and up, takes a modern-day teen back to Auschwitz through time-travel as a way of somewhat removing the reader from the horrors of that time period. Depending on the author's audience, putting some distance between the characters and the issues they examine can be an effective way to address difficult topics.
"Go Ask Alice [a fictional diary of a drug-addicted teen girl], a book like that, it's a safe way to have the experiences that are in that book, a way of exploring the darkness out there without being in danger or acting irresponsibly," Pettit says.
Find the "Kernel of Hope."
Not every book has a Happily Ever After. For example, S.E. Hinton's YA classics, The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now, which deal with drugs, drinking, and gang violence, don't offer easy answers to the questions they raise in the end. Today, decades after they were first published, they're still taught in schools. But there's almost always an underlying optimism in YA, an identifiable maturation or development that Reiss calls "the kernel of hope."
"There's a sense that it's worth waking up tomorrow," Reiss explains. "Things are dark, things are terrible, but tomorrow's another day. Ninety-nine percent of books for teens have that at least at the end." This change doesn't always unfold in ways that are explicit or conventionally heroic. In The Hunger Games, Katniss ends up winning the deadly, titular tournament she enters, but it's not the victory itself that's important—it's more about how she wins on her own terms of integrity and empathy. In realistic YA fiction, a friendless, social outcast may not become the most popular kid in class, but it's unlikely he or she will stay a total loser for a whole novel.
Including this perspective isn't sermonizing or making an after-school special of what young readers experience as they grow up, as these authors see it. Rather, it's just part of presenting an authentic story.
"That's life, isn't it?" Levithan says. "Shit hits the fan. The abyss opens up. But then you get through it. You wrestle it down. You find a way to survive. YA only reflects that. It's not about being preachy or pragmatic to say that most people find a way out of the maze of adolescence. It's only being accurate."


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Editor's Note: Iwan Morgan is Professor of U.S. Studies and Commonwealth Fund Professor of American History at University College London. He has written extensively on the presidency and on economic policy, including The Age of Deficits: Presidents and Unbalanced Budgets from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, winner of the Richard E. Neustadt book prize.
Story highlights
The U.S. is facing up to yet another battle over its public funding and debt
Iwan Morgan says this is nothing new -- but its impact on international markets is a worry
Money markets will get nervous at the continued dysfunction in U.S. politics
The eurozone is only just emerging from recession and certainty is needed
In 2011 UK Business Secretary Vince Cable lamented that a bunch of "right-wing nutters" was holding the American government and the world economy to ransom by refusing to agree the usually routine increase in America's legal debt limit.
World leaders might avoid the blunt description used by Cable but their thoughts are probably very similar. The U.S. is, once again, having another political gunfight over public funding and debt issues.
Internationally, America's fiscal shenanigans could be particularly harmful for eurozone countries trying to get their own public debt problems under control and strengthen their economic recovery.
Instability in the world money markets is the last thing that the likes of Greece, Ireland, Spain and even France need. And with the UK economy excessively dependent on its financial sector, the storms in Washington could turn into a tempest for the City of London.
If the U.S. imbroglio results in a debt default next month, it will serve as a very bad example to eurozone countries undergoing austerity to remedy their indebtedness.
READ MORE: How austerity kills
One political consequence of this may be the growth of nationalist/populist parties in Europe who seize on America's conduct to legitimize calls for default on their own countries' public debts.
Nothing new
There is nothing new in the standoff between the Republican House and the Democratic Senate over agreeing a budget to fund government operations for the 2014 fiscal year, beginning October 1.
Whether single party controlled or not, Congress has failed to pass a budget by the start of the new fiscal year annually since 1994. However, it has always approved a Continuing Resolution to fund government operations until a budget is agreed.
If this is not settled by midnight today, the U.S. government will experience a partial shutdown that will hit "non-essential services" (including federal payment of government contracts, social security benefits and the like).
There have been ten such shutdowns since 1981. All but one of these only lasted a weekend when most government offices were closed anyway. The exception, in late 1995-early 1996, went on for 26 days.
READ MORE: 10 ways a shutdown will affect you
We may be re-entering the same territory because Republican insistence on defunding Obamacare as part of any budget deal is staunchly opposed by the Democrats, reinforced by the threat of a presidential veto if any such measure were enacted.
All this may look like a local infighting but the possible consequences could be global in scope if the stand-off continues until mid-October, when the U.S. is scheduled to raise its debt limit.
The ceiling for borrowing was actually reached last May. The U.S. Treasury has been shuffling money from government accounts to pay America's creditors ever since, but the pot is now close to empty.
The U.S. is looking down the barrel at the first default in its history. If this happens, the very least of the consequences will be a reduction of its credit rating by Standard & Poor's ratings agency, along with others.
The fact that U.S. government creditors are mainly foreign governments and central banks may prevent panic on the money markets, but there will still be serious repercussions and dislocations stretching throughout Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
Global money flows
Even with a brief default, the U.S. government will probably find it more difficult thereafter to sell short-term Treasury notes at low interest to fund its operations.
The likely consequence of this would be greater reliance on medium- term and long-term borrowing that could require higher interest rates to be attractive.
READ MORE: What happens at the White House?
At a time when the Fed is still operating an easy money policy to boost recovery from the Great Recession, it may have to raise interest rates contrary to its expansionary preferences, with harmful consequences for the American and global economies.
If U.S. interests rate interest rates go up, America could become a magnet for global capital, leaving the European countries, in particular, short of credit needed to sustain their own economic recovery.
The more likely scenario is that a default will be avoided, but the fear that one was imminent and the worry that it could easily happen again this time next year is bound to make the money markets nervous.
Foreign creditors willingly lend to the U.S. because it is a safe bet in an uncertain world. But if its dysfunctional politics makes it look unsafe, they may look elsewhere.
The U.S. is fortunate that the euro is not a reserve currency in waiting, as it looked a decade ago, and the Chinese renminbi is nowhere near ready to challenge the dollar.
But what the world needs now is more certainty from its largest borrower and owner of its reserve currency.
Without this, there could be very damaging repercussions for global economic growth.


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At last night's meeting of St. George's Buildings & Grounds Committee, the members were discussing and making plans for the upcoming renovation of the sacristy. The sacristy is pretty much a large storage area and closet and vesting room, used in preparation for worship. Most of the conversation, then, focused on counter-tops and cabinets and solutions to storage issues. "When we do this, I'd like to add a piscina," one member of the Committee – herself a member of the altar guild – spoke up.
"What's a piscina?" others asked.
A piscina, they were told, is a drain used to return water and any other liquids that might be consecrated and/or involved in cleaning consecrated items directly to the ground. Once consecrated, or once mixing with consecrated substances, that item is not longer just a thing; it's substance is also changed, made different, made into Christ's real and living presence. And thus, last night, our church's Buildings & Grounds Committee learned a little bit about our church's understanding of what's going on on the altar: what we mean when we talk about real presence.
Today in the life of the church is the Feast of Corpus Christi. The Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the eighth Thursday following Easter is technically known in the Latin church as Corpus et Sanguis Christi – the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Not just a town in Texas, Corpus Christi is a venerable and relatively old Christian celebration, and a kind of counterpart to Maundy Thursday, now nine weeks ago. Maundy Thurdsay, that is, Thursday during Holy Week, that is, the Thursday before Easter, however, is a complicated and busy liturgical day. The liturgies for Maundy Thursday remember Jesus washing his disciples feet (found in John's gospel, which, interestingly, doesn't have a last supper) as well as the institution of the Holy Eucharist on that night. Congregations such as St. George's, Valley Lee have some form of a community meal that night, as well, followed often by a night-long vigil at the altar of repose. In all, Maundy Thursday is about a lot of things, and one consequence is that the Holy Eucharist tends to recede into the background. What Jesus actually did on that last night in that upper room was a really fascinating thing, we believe. Not just the Last Supper, the Holy Eucharist is a profound gift wherein Jesus promised to always be among them "in scripture and in the breaking of the bread," as we pray in a Collect, and he promises, literally, to show up in the present tense every time we, ourselves, break bread. The word remember in the statement "…do this in remembrance of me" is actually the Greek term anamnesis which is far more than a memorial or history lesson but, in fact, means something like 'to make actually present again.' That is, when God's people in prayer remember (anamnesis) Jesus, Christ literally shows up again, and changes our substance and the substance of our assembly, including what was, previously, just bread, just wine.
Didn't get that lesson at Maundy Thursday or during Holy Week? Obviously. You're not alone if this never really occurred to you, and you are joined in this by a thirteenth century Augustinian religious woman named Juliana of Liege. Born in the 1190s in Liege, Belgium, Juliana de Cornillon developed a fascination with the Holy Eucharist. It was bound to happen, anyway, because Liege and much of northern Europe in the thirteenth century had a number of confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament, groups of persons who devoted themselves to adoration and benediction of the Holy Eucharist and, in many cases, had organized continuous prayers and vigils for its efficacy and power. Juliana was orphaned at the age of five and together with her sister, Agnes, they lived in the convent of Mont-Cornillon.
Visions came to her, she reported; the first in 1208 instructed her "to plead for the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi." One particularly powerful vision was, for her, "the appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a solemnity." Juliana kept the visions secret but eventually confided in her spiritual director who, breaking all modern understandings of confidentiality (!), told the bishop. In 1246, Robert de Thorete, Bishop of Liege, ordered the celebration of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and declared that it should continue on that day and in that fashion ever since. This was only in south of Belgium, in the region of Liege, however. By 1251, Hugh of St.-Cher, a Cardinal, brought the celebration to his judicatory in Germany. And in 1264, Pope Urban IV – who as a young archdeacon named Jacques Pantaleon of Troyes served in Liege and experienced this growing feast – composed the papal bull, Transiturus de hoc mundo, and thus instituted the Solemnity of Corpus Christi to be celebrated the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Apparently, Urban IV's successors didn't much care for this feast, and so it fell into obsolescence until it was re-introduced in 1311 by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne.
Corpus Christi is a day set apart to honor and celebrate nothing more, nothing less than the mystery that is the Holy Eucharist. Many churches and, even today, many communities feature outdoor processions in which the Blessed Sacrament is placed in a monstrance and carried under a tent throughout the neighborhood. These are honorable celebrations, and yet it would make just as much sense, for me, to actually go out there and celebrate the Holy Eucharist in a public place. Perhaps Corpus Christi could become the lively (and theologically better!) counterpart to Ashes to Go – going out into our communities and neighborhoods, shopping centers and street corners and doing nothing more, nothing less than celebrating Holy Eucharist, making Christ really and truly present.
And yet it should be noted that there is unsteady Anglican precedent for the observance of this celebration, perhaps the very reason it is not found in our Book of Common Prayer. The Church of England does list it as an optional celebration, and Anglo-Catholics in our tradition carry on this feast with special solemnity and, to me, a genuine and exciting missional attitude to their neighborhoods.
As wonderful as this celebration is, however, it also makes sense to me why our tradition, as such, has (at best) a tenuous stance toward Corpus Christi. The late-medieval nature of the origin of the celebration and the fact that in many cases these local communities of eucharistic adoration carried about them some measure of local pseudo-magical understandings of the Holy Eucharist render this a Feast day that is rich in theology but rather poor in practice. Sacraments have about them a real power, literally, to change the substance of things so that this creation becomes ordered, once again, to the precepts of the Kingdom of God and no longer the base concepts we often settle for, flesh and blood, bread and wine, scarcity and anxiety. Sacraments are not museum pieces or precious tokens of a bygone era. Sacraments are powerful. Sacraments are a kind of power unto themselves, thus they need to be used, lived in, radiated out: not 'gazed upon.' For those Anglo-Catholic congregations, say, that process through their neighborhood on Sunday (or today) and then invite that entire congregation into the eucharistic worship which immediatley follows – and especially for those congregations who are always, already engaged in the transformation of their communities through works of justice – a Corpus Christi procession not only makes sense but is a great outreach. Otherwise, however, it borders on magic-making and the theological evil that is 'preciousness.'
For this reason, Article XXV (Of the Sacraments) of the sixteenth century Articles of Religion, central to our tradition, say as much: "Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God's good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him. …The Sacraments are not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them. And in such only as worthily receive the same, they have a wholesome effect or operation: but they that receive them unworthily, purchase to themselves damnation, as Saint Paul saith." (Emphasis mine.)
The theological, missional thrust underlying Corpus Christi is perhaps best expressed in the poetry and musical compositions of Thomas Aquinas. Personally, I love the fact that St. Thomas – who comes down to us in the academic tradition as the author, literally, of theological tomes and treatises and is regarded as one of the brightest lights of the scholastic period – was also, himself, a poet and a musician. Pope Urban IV, in fact, commissioned St. Thomas to compose the pieces for a mass setting as well as vespers for Corpus Christi. Thomas apparently did so during his residency at Orvieto from 1259 to 1265. One such poem/hymn is Pange lingua (literally: "Sing my tongue…"), and it's hymn number 165 in The Episcopal Church's Hymnal 1982. We sing it every Maundy Thursday at St. George's, Valley Lee, during the time in which the altar is being stripped and the people are invited to remain for vigil all night. This congregation jokes with me, calling it "the dirge," and the tune certainly sounds that way, although the text is rich, lasting, wonderful.
Make these words, then, your prayer on this Feast of Corpus Christi. And grant that, in so doing, you will not just receive, and certainly not 'gaze upon,' the bread and wine, the Body and Blood, but rather become what you receive: the Body of Christ.
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle; of the mighty conflict sing; tell the triumph of the victim, to his cross thy tribute bring. Jesus Christ, the world's Redeemer from that cross now reigns as King.
Thirty years among us dwelling, his appointed time fulfilled, born for this, he meets his passion, this the Savior freely willed: on the cross the Lamb is lifted, where his precious blood is spilled.
He endures the nails, the spitting, vinegar, and spear, and reed; from that holy body broken blood and water forth proceed: earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean, by that flood from stain are freed.
Faithful cross! above all other, one and only noble tree! None in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit thy peer may be: sweetest wood and sweetest iron! sweetest weight is hung on thee.
Bend thy boughs, O tree of glory! Thy relaxing sinews bend; for awhile the ancient rigor that thy birth bestowed, suspend; and the King of heavenly beauty gently on thine arms extend.
Praise and honor to the Father, praise and honor to the Son praise and honor to the Spirit, ever Three and ever One: one in might and one in glory while eternal ages run.


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Corina Mackay
Corina is studying Media Communications in rain-drenched Melbourne, and working towards the coveted title of Australia's "it girl" in Social Corina is studying Media Communications in rain-drenched Melbourne, and working towards the coveted title of Australia's "it girl" in Social Media. She is full of passion for technology, performing arts, and sport. Her pipe dream is to be a hippie. Contact her on Twitter.
Google announced yesterday the release of Hotpot – a local recommendation engine that works with Google Places. In yesterday's blog post, Google product manager Lior Ron explained the purpose of Hotpot:
With Hotpot, we're making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy.
Here's how it works: when exploring Google search results or Google maps, you can rate places you've been to. Rating places will create recommendations of other places for you to visit, and you can invite friends to join you on Hotpot and explore the places they have rated.
When viewing Hotpot in the browser, rating consists of one click to choose 1-5 stars or a 'best ever' medal. After you have rated a particular place, you can also leave a tip (sounding familiar, yet?). These ratings and tips will show up when you or your friends view this place from an Android phone, giving them an idea of which places you would recommend they visit (or not).
The Google Maps app for Android includes the ability to rate places and leave tips on the go, so you don't need to use a browser. Those who want to try this new feature on an iPhone can use the phone's browser (if you're in the US), but you can also look forward to a soon-to-be-released iPhone version of Hotpot.
Now, before I recommend you go check out Hotpot for yourself, I best acknowledge the elephant in the room – how is this any better (or even different) from what Foursquare, Gowalla, or Yelp do? I have to admit – there's not much difference. The idea of leaving tips and ratings for places is essentially what Yelp is built on. The leaderboard included in the browser view encourages you to compete with your friends in rating the most places, with reminds me of the game elements of Foursquare, Gowalla, and even SCVNGR to some degree, except that it's not a main element here. Saving places into a favourites list and viewing your friends' ratings are not ground-breaking features either, so why would Google bother with Hotpot?
Could it be that with 50 million places listed in Google Places, and over 3 million active Latitude users at last count, Google thinks just having the options of rating and recommending places will be enough to get users on board? The 5-star rating system is not as in-depth as Yelp, and seems to work more like Foursquare or Gowalla, only without a badge system or a great-looking UI. Google Maps has to be the key here – if you're looking for a place on your phone with the Google Maps app and have the option of rating and reviewing the place without launching a separate application, why wouldn't you? Sure, Foursquare badges are fun to collect, but what real benefit do they give you? Besides actual promotions using Foursquare or Gowalla check-ins, and the option to send your check-ins to Twitter and Facebook, why not check-in while you look at the map? And if Google adds Twitter and Facebook integration in the future, or starts partnering with businesses to create promotions? With such an extensive user-base for Latitude and Google Maps, perhaps it's about time they took advantage of those numbers.
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Torah Covers - Mantles
All our Sefer Torah Mantle creations can be customized with Hebrew and English embroidered inscriptions honoring or commemorating individuals, for a place of honor in your synagogue. Our Collection of Sefer Torah Mantles are fashioned by the most gifted and talented craftsmen on select velvets and velours. Only the finest silk and metallic lurex threads are used for our exclusive Synagogue Embroidery. Our Torah Mantels are always custom made to fit your needs. Sefer Torah Mantles are fashioned with open or closed backs, with or without fringes. Most of our Torah Covers are finished with wood reinforcement rings to guarantee many years of long lasting use.


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(Financial Conduct Authority)
When Insight published an article about measuring corporate culture it certainly prompted debate and became the best-read Insight of 2019. Naturally, not everyone agreed with the argument and in our latest article experts from the University of Amsterdam warn against a strong focus on measurement.
The importance of corporate culture is by now widely recognized, considered and used in explaining organizational success and failure. We need only think of major recent scandals such as the emissions cheating at Volkswagen, misconduct and violence at United States Police Departments such as those in Oakland and Chicago, account fraud at Wells Fargo or revelations about unsafe processes at Boeing.
All these cases reveal how culture matters as structural rule breaking and wrongdoing was rooted in culture. It is no surprise that culture has become a hot topic in corporate boards, compliance departments and for regulatory authorities.
With this focus on corporate culture we are also witnessing the rise of methods aimed at measuring culture such as the MIT SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500 tool and as, for example, discussed in the article by Chesterfield, Gillespie and Reader published earlier in Insight.
What measures is what counts, or so it seems
The quest for measurement of corporate culture exists in a natural science tradition that focuses on data and statistics and that has now also become increasingly dominant in the social and behavioral sciences. However, the measurement focus is highly challenging when it comes to culture.
It is very hard to capture a corporate culture in simple observable or quantifiable metrics. Traditionally culture has been the domain of anthropologists and qualitative sociologists who have over a century of experience in defining what culture is and the methods to capture such culture.
The core understanding of culture in anthropology sees it as a web of shared meanings in a particular community, most clearly developed by Clifford Geertz. The leading scholar of organizational culture, Edgar Schein sees culture beyond the observable artifacts or even the values people may share on surveys to also include the hidden assumptions people have that we can only know and understand through deep ethnographic work.
Meanwhile, an interest in culture has developed in the last decade among scholars in organizational psychology and management science, who are looking for metrics that capture culture in quantifiable terms that allow for statistical analysis and clear conclusions on influences on culture.
So we have a clash between this new approach to quantifiable measurement and that of the older specialized body of work in anthropology that sees culture as something that cannot be measured, but only captured through painstaking ethnographic work.
Towards an unobtrusive understanding of culture?
The growing trend to focus on measurement is understandable. Corporate management, shareholders, regulators, all demand a clear and measurable concept of corporate culture. They are looking for easy to understand metrics to capture and predict problems and to help guide the desired change in culture and with it tools to understand where it stands in a desire to control it.
In the Insight article Chesterfield, Gillespie and Reader present such "tools for the job" to measure culture. Most interestingly they introduce tools aimed at measuring culture "unobtrusively, without ever entering a company" and considering a number of cultural dimensions.
The use of "unobtrusive data to study culture" sounds very appealing. Wouldn't it be great if we can capture the culture of an organization we never need to enter? There are many advantages here. First is one of costs. Doing an ethnography is highly time consuming not just for the researchers, also for the companies under study who must allow strangers in their midst for prolonged periods of time.
Also, the promised external measure of culture would have the advantage that it can capture large organizations as a whole or all of their parts. Ethnography instead covers only as much as the number of ethnographers who can directly come to observe or interview. And, of course, the measurement of culture in numbers allows for calculation and statistical analysis of factors of influence.
The cost of simple metrics
With the current rush to measure culture and to do so in the least intrusive and most cost-efficient way allowing for data analytics, we may forget what gets lost. A corporate culture in its truest sense exists at different levels. At the shallow level we may find what Schein calls the artifacts. These are the observable elements of a culture such as the architecture, the logos, the rules of the organization, the hierarchies and the incentives. These artifacts operate and shape organizational behavior through deeper layers of a corporate culture.
First are the organizational values. These do not just comprise of leadership statements or organizational reports. They exist and are exchanged between organizational members at all levels of the organization. We cannot come to understand these values from the outside. To come to understand them at least requires a survey, but more likely necessitates long-term interaction with different members in the organization to understand how they communicate and frame issues. And these are but the expressed values that people are aware of and that we may question them about.
As Schein has argued the deepest level of values in an organization are the hidden assumptions. The values people have they are no longer aware of. It is at this level that we find the deepest roots of a culture. It is here where the culture is stickiest and where it shapes behavior at the deepest level, but also where it is hardest to change.
And then we have not even talked about the other side of culture. This is not so much what people value, but what they do. Here again there may be actions people are aware of and may be questioned about on surveys, but equally, if not more important, are the things they do and see people do while that they no longer notice. Much of what people do becomes automatic and it is here where we find the deepest level of culture.
In light of all this, we can seriously wonder what the measurement of culture using publicly available data, ranging from Glassdoor reviews to annual reports, actually measures. It may capture elements of the cultural artifacts and maybe some values. But it will largely fail to measure the deeper and stronger aspects of a corporate culture's hidden assumptions and automatic and accepted behaviors.
As such it is highly questionable that "unobtrusive data" can measure cultural health. A perspective focused on data would stand the risk of losing understanding the underlying values and assumptions of culture as it draws our attention to the visible aspects of culture.
Culture is not a statistical statement that can be discovered as an emerging pattern and that can be generated from a data set.
Diagnosing culture
The other problem with simple measurement of culture is its evaluative quality. The reasons companies and regulatory authorities want to measure culture is not neutral. They want to evaluate whether there are problems in the culture that need to be addressed.
The big question is how can we be sure what a healthy, ethical, safe culture is or when a corporate culture is toxic, unethical and unsafe. The idea of unobtrusive measurement implies that through measurement we automatically evaluate and diagnose culture. The problem is that in the current body of scientifically validated knowledge there is no clear consensus of what in an organizational culture predicts wrongdoing and rule breaking.
There is a large body of knowledge about leadership, showing what kind of leaders are ethical and promote ethical behavior, and also about what kind of leaders are abusive supervisors who spur deviancy.
But leadership is not the same as an organization or its culture. Studies that look at the overall culture and its effect on misconduct are much rarer and have so far remained an isolated body of work with different concepts and findings that defy easy generalization. This means that measurement, even when it is done, does not automatically lead to diagnosis let alone to ideas on how to treat toxic culture.
Forensic Ethnography and Toxic Risk Assessment
In a data-driven era, the appeal of inexpensive and scalable solutions to the puzzle of culture is understandable. The use of data is, however, meaningless when it does not truly capture culture and also when there is no validated way to diagnose negative elements in a culture that require addressing.
Rather than an unobtrusive measure, we propose to take culture and in particular toxic culture, seriously. Corporations with toxic cultures can have devastating impacts within our society. To truly address these corporations requires two different approaches.
The first one is ex-post, after the toxicity has become public and the damage has been done. In most of such cases there will be a scandal and an aftermath where regulators and prosecutors come to take investigative and punitive action. Such action will often focus on punishing the corporation and maybe individuals, but most often do not address the culture that sustained and promoted the damaging behavior.
So here we propose that authorities force corporations to undergo what we call a forensic ethnography, a 'who-done-it' in the culture. Such ethnography requires a large investment and hiring professionally trained ethnographers who also understand the criminological, psychological and sociological processes that can give rise to structural misbehavior in organizations. They should carry out extended participant observation and interviews in different parts of the company to find out what cultural elements at the levels of artifacts, values and practices gave rise to the scandal and that need to be changed.
The second approach is ex-ante and tries to stop toxic cultures to develop long before they result in damages and scandals. This requires a validated risk assessment tool. The first step to develop such a risk assessment tool is through the synthesis of existing toxic culture research that has thus far remained fragmented. This knowledge should then be tested in an analysis of real scandals involving structural misconduct in organizations to see which of the toxic elements found in scientific studies played a role in different types of real cases.
On the basis of that we can validate for each element how certain we are that it plays a role and in what situations it does so mostly. This can then be transformed into a toxic culture risk assessment tool.
Toxic corporate culture defies easy measurement and diagnosis. Of course, we all want to eat our cake and have it. We all want a low cost, unobtrusive way to measure and diagnose organizations we never need to enter. But any measure we develop that way will not measure culture, let alone allow us to evaluate whether the culture is problematic.
To truly address corporate cultures means going much more deeply into corporations and analyze the values and practices as they have become embedded in everyday work. This will require first and foremost up-close methods of investigation. Data and measurement can be used in support or to challenge such methods and its outcomes, but are too thin to base our assessment of culture on.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this post are those of the authors alone and do not represent those of their organizations.


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In the run up to 2015, the British Government and the US are working with developing countries, the business world and public organisations to inspire action as we strive to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
To this end, we kicked off in New York this week with the first ever MDG Countdown event, highlighting game-changing programmes, policies and partnerships from around the world that could be replicated by others. We were thrilled with this first event that took place on 21 September during the UN General Assembly, with stories of transformational change from Brazil, Gambia, Zambia, Peru, Ethiopia, Nepal, Vietnam and the GAVI Alliance.
Many of these stories of change, innovation and success involve empowering girls and women. We know that investing in them reaps huge rewards. We want to see a generation of educated girls with greater economic opportunities and reduced risks of death and illness in pregnancy and childbirth. Educated women marry later, have fewer and healthier children and send those children to school. They are able to work and become the doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs who will propel their countries towards sustainable economic growth.
There is also much USAID and DFID are learning from each other to transform the impact of our own efforts to reduce poverty and make the world a more secure place. I am excited by Raj Shah's USAID Forward agenda and the pioneering work USAID is doing on innovation for development. I'm delighted to be your guest at the USAID Development Forum townhall discussion today and welcome the chance to hear from USAID staff.
In May this year, Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama signed the US-UK Partnership for Global Development, marking a new era in our relationship. It sets out the areas where we will focus our collective efforts – combating poverty through economic growth, preventing conflict and improving global health, particularly for women.
With only four years to go until the deadline for meeting the MDGs, the time for warm words is over. We must take action to deliver real results for the world's poor. We hope that the international development community is inspired by MDG Countdown and will make ambitious commitments to achieve better results at the upcoming High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in South Korea.


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There's actually a video (sort of) with BTS moments from Season 1. Someone uploaded this video in the early 2010's, but it was eventually made private/removed. Someone else uploaded the same video a few years back. The video shows various short clips from Season 1 rounds like the Snake Bracelet moat, Fountain of Youth temple run, and the temple win. It also shows various cast members and contestants in the hallways and other rooms outside of the set. The most interesting part is seeing the audit members doing the "Egyptian Walk" while during the storytelling portion of the show (4:05 of the video).I'm glad that David Greenfield decided to re-uploaded his video. I was wondering what happened to the original video. I didn't realize some lame-ass stole his videos and tried to upload them as his own. Nice to see an extended version of the original video. I did ask him in the last video he uploaded what was the correct spelling for Benzibab. He did confirm that Benzibab is indeed the correct spelling. He took that video down before I had to chance to reply and save his comment.
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Even people who think they don't like beets go gaga over thee Beet stacks with herbed goat cheese. Photo courtesy of OrganicAuthority.com
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December 2006
Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Vegetables
One of our favorite first courses: It's not only delicious, but it looks like a festive party dish whether it's July or December. Everything can be done a day ahead, leaving only assembly prior to serving. This recipe was developed by Laura Klein. Laura, founder of OrganicAuthority.com, is an organic chef who encourages everyone to eat as many organic products as possible—they're healthier and generally better-tasting. But you can use conventional products if you don't have access to organic ones.
Serves 8.
Roast The Beets
Make Balsamic Glaze
NOTE: Use a heat diffuser when reducing balsamic vinegar. If you boil it too hard the acid will remain and make the glaze too sharp.
Make The Herbed Goat Cheese
Assemble The Beet Stacks
To Serve
Chef's Tip
This is truly an impressive dish and fairly easy to do if prepared ahead. I have served this dish to people who do not like beets and they love it. My advice, don't tell your friends what they are eating until they have taken a bite. As always, use as many organic ingredients you can find for optimum flavor and health.
Recipe © Laura Klein. All other material
Lifestyle Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Images are the copyright of their respective owners.
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