tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54572350993250136722024-03-13T06:43:14.218-07:00Fine LifestylesJasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.comBlogger2186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-65745329817633080382011-08-18T22:47:00.000-07:002011-08-18T22:49:13.912-07:00Russia's $165,000 per night space hotel<div class=" articleBox"> <div class="articleImage"> <a href="http://theweek.com/article/slideshow/218377/russias-165000-per-night-space-hotel"><img src="http://4.images.theweek.com/img/dir_0064/32464_article_main.jpg?48" alt="Russia's planned Commercial Space Station hotel may be a steal at $165,000 per night, but you may want to consider the $410,000 travel costs." /></a> </div> <div class="imageCaption"> <p>Russia's planned Commercial Space Station hotel may be a steal at $165,000 per night, but you may want to consider the $410,000 travel costs. <span class="photoCredit">Photo: Orbital Technologies</span> <a href="http://theweek.com/article/slideshow/218377/russias-165000-per-night-space-hotel" class="caption">SEE ALL 78 PHOTOS</a> </p> </div> </div> <p class="bestOpinion"><strong>Best Opinion:</strong> Nation, Business Insider</p> <p><strong>The image: </strong>Russian company Orbital Technologies wants to <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2026534/Commercial-Space-Station-Russian-firm-Orbital-Technologies-reveals-hotel-plans.html">take luxury hotels to new hights</a> — orbiting 217 miles above the Earth — by 2016. The proposed Commercial Space Station (CSS) would house seven guests in four cabins, including such space luxuries as precooked gourmet meals, sealed showers, and spectacular views of the home planet (see images below). Though the accommodations are more likely to evoke a high-tech dentist's office more than a chic Miami getaway, the space hotel will be "far more comfortable" than the even more spartan International Space Station, says Orbital chief executive Sergei Kostenko.</p> <p><strong>The reaction:</strong> "Russia may have lost the first space race to America," but it's dead set on winning the space-hotel race, <a href="http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Entertainment/17-Aug-2011/Plans-for-space-hotel">says M.O. in Pakistan's <em>The Nation</em></a>. If you're lucky enough to make the trip, though, be aware that "aside from the spectacular view, there’s not much else to do, so you'd be wise to take a good book." Lucky, indeed, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-russian-company-unveils-plans-for-first-space-hotel-2011-8">say Linette Lopez and Dina Spector in <em>Business Insider</em></a>. At about $165,000 per person for a five-night stay, and $410,000 for the trip up there on a Russian Soyuz rocket, "experiencing the final frontier from your bedroom window... won't be cheap."</p> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td style="padding-left: 10px;"><img style="width: 401px; height: 315px;" src="http://4.images.theweek.com/img/generic/space_creepy.jpg" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <p> </p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="padding-left: 10px;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.images.theweek.com/img/generic/space_interior_creeoy.jpg" /></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/218377/russias-165000-per-night-space-hotel"> Original here</a>
<br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-10906915045541312442011-08-18T22:41:00.000-07:002011-08-18T22:45:55.399-07:00Eat Like a Foodie at Home, Without Breaking Your Budget<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ezP-3Xto6zY/Tk34Ys9w4hI/AAAAAAAADOc/um9LCh1ntR0/s1600/cooking-at-home.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ezP-3Xto6zY/Tk34Ys9w4hI/AAAAAAAADOc/um9LCh1ntR0/s400/cooking-at-home.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642439011435864594" border="0" /></a>Just because you enjoy great food doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money dining out or buying upscale foods for delicious meals at home. With the advice of some noted chefs and food writers, you can elevate the level of your home-cooked meals even while working with a tight grocery budget, producing feasts that wow for just a few dollars per serving. <p>We'll show you where to shop and what to stock in your pantry to maximize your dollars-to-enjoyment ratio. We'll also show you how to save more on buying meat (often the most expensive part of the meal) and techniques and recipes for cooking up some exquisite dishes. Note: you don't have to consider yourself a "foodie" to use these suggestions—all you need to bring is a desire for great food.</p> <h3>Learn Techniques to Make the Most Out of Your Meals</h3> <p>Some cooking techniques like braising and slow cooking are very cost-effective and simple, producing flavorful meals; you can tenderize extremely tough—and inexpensive—cuts of meat with these techniques.</p> <h4>Make the Most Out of Cheap Proteins</h4> <p>The biggest cost savings you find may be on proteins, especially with today's rising meat prices. If you're not a vegetarian, the meat portion of the meal could very well make up the majority of your grocery budget (thus, it also follows that you can make the most out of your food budget by switching to a <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5146432/losing-weight-the-flexitarian-way-no-wheatgrass-required">flexitarian diet</a> or just eating a meat-less meal every once in a while).</p> <p>Learning a few cooking techniques to enhance even cheap cuts of meat can help you turn a $5 steak into a $50 steak, so to speak:</p> <p><strong>Slow cooking</strong>: Even if you don't decide to <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5475550/make-perfectly-cooked-sous-vide-steaks-on-the-cheap">hack your slow cooker</a> into an off-the-charts sous vide cooker, a slow cooker can make even the toughest of meats tender and tastier. (Apparently you can also <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5521947/use-a-cooler-to-cook-your-meat-sous+vide-on-the-cheap">hack a beer cooler</a> into a sous vide cooker.) Plus, the hands-off approach of using a slow cooker also means you can get flavor-packed meals without a lot of effort. You don't want just an everyday slow cooker meal though: foodie recipe search engine <a href="http://punchfork.com/search/slow-cooker">Punchfork</a> can help you find more advanced slow cooker meals to make at home, like this <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/slowcooking-in-the-summer-heat-121376">carnitas recipe from TheKitchn</a> that uses an inexpensive cut of pork: place a 6-8 pound pork butt (a.k.a., pork shoulder) in the slow cooker with some spices and tomato and orange juice and 8 hours later, you've got tender meat that falls off the bone.</p> <p><strong>Braising</strong>: Deb Perelman of the beautiful <a href="http://www.smittenkitchen.com/">Smitten Kitchen</a> food blog suggests we embrace braising. Cooked low and slow, ribs, briskets, pork shoulders, and so on "make incredible flavor-packed, stewy meals that can easily be spooned into tacos/served over rice or egg noodles and stretched to feed you for a week." Want recipes? Try Deb's <a href="http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/12/braised-beef-short-ribs/">knee-weakening braised beef short ribs</a> or <a href="http://smittenkitchen.com/search-results/?cx=009671904594399389362%3Aoll_ocju5k8&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=braised">other braised recipes</a>. Don't know what braising is? <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5817051/cookblast-is-a-one+stop+shop-for-recipes-and-cooking-videos-online">Previously mentioned</a> cooking video library <a href="http://cookblast.com/cooking/braise">Cookblast</a> has some videos and recipes for this slow cooking technique.</p> <p><strong>Salting</strong>: That $5 steak that tastes like it came from the very expensive steakhouse? <a href="http://lifehacker.com/299951/turn-a-5-steak-into-a-50-steak">It's all about salt</a>. Basically, salt your steak like crazy at least 40 minutes before cooking (wash the salt off before) for the juiciest steak you've every made. You can intensify the flavor of all of your meats with <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5796570/how-to-season-and-salt-your-food-like-a-master-chef">wet and dry brining techniques</a>—basically using salt to enhance the flavor of your meats by immersing them in a salty solution or just applying a dry salt rub directly.</p> <h4>How to Save on Proteins</h4> <p>With the techniques above you can make cheaper cuts of meat, like pork shoulder, taste extraordinary, but here's how to save even more:</p> <p><strong>Process your meat yourself</strong>: For the most savings, buy your meat (and other foods) minimally processed. <a href="http://seriouseats.com/">Serious Eats</a>' James Kenji Lopez-Alt (who forever transformed my <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5783563/cook-the-perfect-steak-salting-searing-and-poking-myths-debunked">steak-cooking technique</a> and subsequent lifelong enjoyment) says that his biggest tip is:</p> <blockquote> <p>Buy your meat in the least processed form possible and learn how to do some very minimal butchering yourself. So don't buy boneless skinless chicken breasts. If you want them, buy a whole chicken, which ends up costing about the same price as you'd pay for its breasts alone, but then you end up with chicken leg meat for a whole extra meal, as well as a carcass with which you can make stock. Three meals for the price of one, and all you've got to do is learn how to break down a chicken.</p> <p>Buying and learning how to cook cheaper cuts of meat is very useful as well. Pork shoulder, for example, to me tastes a hundred times better than a pork chop. You just have to be willing to cook it a little longer. It takes well to methods like braising, slow roasting, or grinding into mince.</p> </blockquote> <p>He also recommends buying a meat grinder, because not only will it give you the freshest tasting burgers, it lets you use up leftover scraps of meat you'd normally throw out. (Ready to take the plunge? Serious Eats shows you <a href="http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/how-to-buy-use-clean-and-maintain-a-meat-grinder-attachment-recommendations.html">how to buy, use, and care for a meat grinder</a> and <a href="http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2010/01/i-got-a-meat-grinder-now-what.html">what to do once you've got one</a>.)</p> <p><strong>Cheaper cuts</strong>: Katerina, who writes the <a href="http://www.dailyunadventuresincooking.com/">Daily Unadventures in Cooking</a> blog says that:</p> <blockquote> <p>One of the well kept secrets of foodies is that the cheaper the cut of meat, the harder to cook but the more the flavour. Lamb shanks and neck? Pork belly? Octopus? Short ribs? As proteins, they all represent a cheap way to impress guests at home if you are willing to take the time to properly cook them.</p> </blockquote> <p>For example, if you have some cheap pork shoulder, <a href="http://thekitchn.com/">TheKitchn</a> managing editor Faith Durand says you can really <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/tip-for-maximum-flavor-grill-meat-before-braising-142217">maximize the flavor</a> of it by grilling before braising.</p> <p>Clay Dunn, who writes the popular and informative <a href="http://thebittenword.typepad.com/">Bitten Word</a> blog with partner Zach Patton, generously offered these two preparation techniques:</p> <blockquote> <p>One of the best, most versatile and most affordable cuts of meat you can find is a skirt steak. You can often grab it for about $2 per serving. Another plus: It's also one of the easiest cuts of meat to cook. Amp up the flavor by rubbing the steak with instant espresso powder and some cayenne pepper. Then just sear it in a stovetop pan over high heat for a couple minutes per side, let it rest for several minutes, and slice it against the grain. You can stretch your protein dollar even further by incorporating the skirt steak into a steak salad: It's fantastic tossed with fresh dark lettuces, green beans and a sweet vinaigrette.</p> <p>Another favorite inexpensive protein of ours is chicken thighs. They're tasty and succulent — way more flavorful than white-meat breasts. And you can frequently find chicken thighs for about a dollar per serving. We always by these instead of chicken breasts. Sear them on all sides in hot oil, toss some chopped onions and fresh tomato into the pan, and throw the whole thing in a 375-degree oven for 16-18 minutes to roast. Delicious! Maximize the flavor — and your budget — even more by stirring in a few fresh basil leaves, chopped, right before you serve.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Buy from a farm directly</strong>: Brian Lee, who runs the <a href="http://www.eatdrinkmadison.com/">EatDrinkMadison</a> dining guide says you can save a lot of money by purchasing a side or ¼ beef (100 lbs.) from a farm. You'll need a separate freezer, most likely, or someone to share with you, but you can get quality, ethically-raised beef for between $3.50-$5.50 per pound from the farm versus three times that much or more from Whole Foods.</p> <h4>How to Save on Fresh Produce</h4> <p>Speaking of Whole Foods, you don't really need to shop there for any or all of your choice foods. Farmer's markets, or greenmarkets, offer fresh-from-the-farm foods, and as mentioned here at Lifehacker previously, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5286111/save-money-at-the-farmers-market-by-shopping-late">shopping later in the day at a farmer's market</a> can save you some extra cash. (Dunn said you can find some really great deals at farmer's markets if you buy the fruits and vegetables at the peak of the season—you could get a pint of berries for a third of what it would cost you at the grocery store.)</p> <p>Joining a <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5819320/community-supported-agriculture-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-join">CSA</a> (community supported agriculture) group may likewise be a worthwhile investment where you get a load of in-season veggies and/or fruits (or even eggs and flowers) for about $20-$50 a month.</p> <p><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5271862/getting-started-with-canning-aka-home-food-preservation">Canning</a>, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/318867/a-complete-guide-to-freezing-food">freezing</a>, and even <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5831741/layer-herbs-in-sea-salt-to-preserve-their-taste-and-appearance">layering in salt</a> can extend your food's life as well.</p> <p>Perelman also reminds us that good looks don't always matter when it comes to your fruits and veggies:</p> <blockquote> <p>Don't be afraid of ugly produce (in fact, be more suspicious of the overly pretty stuff and what has to be added to the soil to get blemish free beauties); ugly tomatoes make great sauce</p> </blockquote> <div class="lyteboxContainer left editorial" style="width: 300px; height: 217px;"><div class="lyteboxLink"><a href="http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2011/08/500x_4541373052_c525ac5d67.jpg" class="noHrefOverride" rel="lytebox">Full size</a></div><img src="http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2011/08/medium_500x_4541373052_c525ac5d67.jpg" height="217" width="300" /></div>To get the most bang for your organic buck, you can also focus your spending on just those organic foods most prone to pesticide (e.g., with this <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5528836/organic-food-buying-cheat-sheet">organic food buying cheat sheet</a>). If your main reason for buying organic is to avoid pesticides, foods like avocado and bananas, which have thick peels that aren't eaten, can be bought safely non-organic. Peppers, celery, peaches, apples, strawberries and other fruits and vegetables with thin or edible skins are better organic options. <p>Of course, you can also save a lot of money by starting your own vegetable garden, if you have the space. Cheap Vegetable Gardener has a <a href="http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/2009/01/most-profitable-plants-in-your.html">chart of the most profitable vegetables/herbs</a> to grow yourself. (<a href="http://lifehacker.com/5821235/smart-gardener-creates-customized-garden-plans-for-you-and-sends-gardening-to-dos">Previously mentioned</a> tools like <a href="http://www.smartgardener.com/">Smart Gardener</a> can help you set this up and grow your own food successfully even if you don't have a green thumb.)</p> <h4>Where to Buy Other Quality Food for Cheap</h4> <p>Beyond fresh produce and meats, you can save a whole lot more by shopping in unconventional places.</p> <p>Look to ethnic grocery stores for better deals on spices, for example, or just the international aisle of your main grocery store, Dunn advises.</p> <p>Online shops let you find specialty foods that you couldn't find in brick-and-mortar stores. International food market places like <a href="http://foodzie.com/">Foodzie</a>, <a href="http://www.zingermans.com/">Zingerman's</a> and <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5832166/ImportFood.com">Import Food</a> offer specialty ingredients that can elevate your dish. As <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/homestyle/01/29/o.foodie.not.leave.home/index.html">CNN reports</a>, most foodmakers will also ship direct to you, for even more savings:</p> <blockquote> <p>A pound of Humboldt Fog goat's-milk cheese, ordered off Zingerman's, will run you $35; the same amount from the cheesemaker, Cypress Grove, is $20.</p> </blockquote> <h3>How to Stock Your Gourmet Pantry/What to Buy</h3> <p>Sometimes, all it takes is that one key ingredient—a unique sauce or a condiment—to make your meal extraordinary. Investing your food money wisely lets you scrimp on some expensive items (like meats) while still getting a lot of flavor from your meal.</p> <p>Stephanie Trahd at artisan foods marketpace <a href="http://fooducopia.com/">Fooducopia</a> says "It's much more affordable to take a cheaper cut of meat and dress it with a gourmet steak wash, than it is to buy a filet and only be able to afford a parsley garnish!"</p> <p>Likewise, Chef Mark Estee, owner of Moddy's Bistro and Lounge and Burger Me in Truckee, CA, reminds us that having great staples in your pantry is important because "bad quality in, bad quality out." The staples he suggest you invest in: extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salts, chutneys, and mustards.</p> <p>Durand adds to the list nut oils like hazelnut and roasted walnut oil for delicious salads, and really likes this <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/ingredients-pantry/new-pantry-favorite-smoked-olive-oil-144130">smoked olive oil</a> featured on TheKitchn. (When cooking, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5433014/save-cash-stick-to-cheap-olive-oil-when-cooking">stick to cheap olive oil to save cash</a>, but for salads or drizzling over food, you may actually taste the difference in a higher-quality oil.)</p> <p>Keeping basics in stock will also help you avoid the dine-out/take-out bug. Lopez-Alt says he always has on hand a collection of Chinese, Japanese, and South East Asian condiments and sauces ready to go, so all he has to do for a quick and savory meal is pick up a protein and boil some rice.</p> <p>I'm with Perelman on splurging on milk, eggs, produce and meat; it's worth the extra cost to us to buy ethically raised and cleanly produced foods. But even then, you can still save even on organic produce, grass-fed beef, free-range eggs and the like using some of the shopping tips above.</p> <h3>Favorite Versatile, Inexpensive Meals</h3> <p>When asked what their most delicious yet cheap meals were, our food sources had so many great suggestions:</p> <ul><li>Durand reminded me of the addictiveness of chickpeas when <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/rice-grains/party-recipe-spicy-ovenroasted-chickpeas-043595">toasted as a snack</a>, turned into <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/home-hacks/how-to-make-hummus-home-hacks-107560">fresh hummus</a> or a <a href="http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/main-dish/recipe-spicy-chickpeas-with-cumin-garlic-150758">spicy chickpea salad for lunch</a>.</li><li>You'll find great pizza cooking at Smitten Kitchen; Deb says you can "buy the softest, fanciest mozzarella" and toss in some proscuitto plus imported tomato puree to make a $5 meal for many.</li><li>This recipe for <a href="http://www.thebittenword.com/thebittenword/2011/05/grilled-mussels-with-herb-butter.html">Grilled Mussels with Herb Butter</a> at Bitten Word is one of the least expensive dinners Clay and Zach say they've ever made, and it has a huge "wow" factor. Total cost of the meal for three people: under $15. (Besides being flavorful and inexpensive, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5786092/for-a-great-sustainable-seafood-choice-choose-mussels">mussels are also one of the most sustainable seafood choices</a>, so this may be a great go-to recipe.)</li></ul> <h3>How to Get More Value Out of Your Wines</h3> <p>If you agree with the old Andre Simon quote that "Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost," you'll probably want some good vino with your home-cooked meal. For many people, a wine store filled with bottles upon bottles of wines of varying prices can be overwhelming.</p> <p>Jsaon Mancebo, who writes the <a href="http://www.20dollarwineblog.com/">20 Dollar Wine Blog</a>, said the best strategy is to develop a relationship with a wine monger at a smaller wine shop, so he/she can get to know your style, palate, and price ranges. Regionally speaking:</p> <blockquote> <p>The usual suspects for bargains in the past 10 years or so are Australia, Chile and Argentina, but recent economics make Spain, Portugal and even Italy VERY attractive now. Great Rioja, Alentejo and Barolo are certainly within reach! If you're normally only a red wine fan, try some rose' from Provence or white from the Langhe. There's lots to explore and great stuff to pair with the dishes you create!</p> </blockquote> <p>Though you can find good wines at $10 or below, they're not as easy (i.e., super-easy) to find at $20. The sweet spot, Mancebo says, may be about $15-17.</p> <p>I also like Lopez-Alt's answer: "It's the summer. I like having inexpensive, easy-to-drink wines, like a nice cold vinho verde."</p> <h3>"Foodie" Meals at Home: In a Nutshell</h3> <p>To sum up, you can save more but still get a lot of value and tastiness out of the foods you buy and make at home. The basic guidelines:</p> <ul><li>Buy from less conventional/mass marketplaces. Explore ethnic markets, farmer's markets, and grow your own if you can</li><li>Buy as much as you can whole and unprocessed</li><li>Learn how to preserve your foods (e.g., how to <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5814958/how-to-store-food-properly-in-the-freezer-and-fridge">store food properly in the freezer and fridge</a> or food preservation techniques)</li><li>Use all parts of the food if possible. Use chicken bones to make stock, toast pumpkin seeds, etc.</li><li>Splurge on items that will enhance the rest of the meal and where a little will go a long way. Or focus on one quality ingredient in each dish.</li></ul> <p>Doing this may increase the quality of your meals at home to the point where you might even prefer dining in rather than out. Bon appetit!</p> <p>Got your own tips for increasing the foodieness of your homecooked meals (on a budget)? We're all ears in the comments.
<br /><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=cooking%2C+above&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=&searchtermx=chef&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1#id=26720689&src=2711be87565320e1b737f5ce1406819d-1-58">benicce</a> / Shutterstock</em>.</p><p><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5832166/eat-like-a-foodie-at-home-without-breaking-your-budget">Original here</a>
<br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-85251772693616616812011-08-18T22:26:00.000-07:002011-08-18T22:29:29.197-07:00Over career, most doctors in US will face lawsuit<span id="byline">By <a href="http://search.boston.com/local/Search.do?s.sm.query=Chelsea+Conaboy&camp=localsearch:on:byline:art">Chelsea Conaboy</a>
<br />
<br /></span>Most doctors in America will be sued at some point during their career, a Harvard study released yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine has found. Physicians who perform high-risk procedures, including neurosurgeons and obstetricians, face a near certainty of being named in a malpractice case before they reach age 65.
<br /><p>Yet a relatively small number of claims, about 22 percent, result in payments to patients or their families.</p><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Authors of the study, which examined 15 years of data, said it highlights the need for changes in malpractice law so that doctors and patients can resolve disputes before they resort to litigation, which often costs both parties money and heartache.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>“Doctors get sued far more frequently than anyone would have thought, and in some specialties, it’s extremely high,’’ said Amitabh Chandra, an economist and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and an author of the study. “In some sense, the payment is the least important part, because you can insure against it, but you can’t insure against the hassle cost.’’</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>The study looked at claims data for nearly 41,000 physicians from 1991 to 2005. The researchers found that 7.4 percent of physicians had a malpractice claim against them each year and that 1.6 percent had a claim that led to a payment each year.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>The likelihood and outcome of lawsuits varied considerably across specialties. But the fact that even doctors in low-risk areas of practice, such as family medicine, had a 75 percent chance of being sued during their career is cause for concern, Chandra said.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Every time doctors are sued they face lost income from the time they spend out of the office fighting the case, said Dr. Alan Woodward, a retired emergency physician who is chairman of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s committee on professional liability. The threat to their reputation is a cause of major stress, and the anxiety can compromise the care they provide to other patients, he said.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Fear of lawsuits drives many physicians to practice defensive medicine - ordering more diagnostic tests than necessary, for example - or to retire early, Woodward said. And when doctors fear legal retribution, they are less likely to share information, with patients or internally.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>“It creates a culture of secrecy and fear,’’ he said.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>The small number of successful malpractice cases does not mean most are frivolous, said Chandra. It can be difficult to prove that an injury resulted from an avoidable error in patient care, he said.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>“Many of us are coming to the conclusion that litigation is not the answer,’’ Chandra said.</p></div>Woodward met with Chandra yesterday and discussed the study, which included researchers from Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, the Rand Institute, and the University of Southern California. Woodward said it provides more evidence that government regulations should encourage doctors to talk openly with patients, apologize when warranted, and offer compensation when appropriate.<span class="continued">
<br /></span><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Some advocates, including the consumer group Health Care for All, have been trying for at least four years to get a law passed in Massachusetts making such apologies inadmissible in court; such laws exist in many other states. The hope is that doctors will feel more secure in talking about a patient’s care and even admitting an error. The patient could still pursue a case based on the medical evidence.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Previous studies have shown that patients are less likely to sue when they receive an apology and explanation from their doctor.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Brian Rosman, research director of Health Care for All, said everyone will benefit if patient-doctor communication is divorced from legal proceedings. That would allow doctors and hospitals to deal more directly with the root cause of an error.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>“Fixing this problem can also improve the quality of care,’’ he said.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>The medical society has been working with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, using a $273,782 federal grant, to design a plan for a system that would encourage apologies and compensation, when justified, in Massachusetts. The plan is set to be released this fall.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>The group has interviewed dozens of people representing patients, hospitals, the legal community, and doctors.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Woodward said that nearly universal support exists for a system that encourages doctors to apologize.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Woodward said the medical society, along with the hospital and other partners, have applied for a three-year grant of about $3 million to create pilot projects at Baystate Health in Western Massachusetts and Beth Israel Deaconess and to launch a statewide campaign educating patients and doctors.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>He is also working with lawmakers to draft legislation requiring malpractice cases to go through a six-month vetting period in which the physicians would share all pertinent medical records with the patient and analyze whether an avoidable error occurred.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Litigation plays an important role in exposing errors and getting patients the help they need, said medical malpractice lawyer Jeffrey Catalano, vice president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. But, he said, it is often inefficient.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>He supports what is referred to as the apology law.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>“The devil’s in the details, but it has a lot of promise,’’ said Catalano, who represents patients.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Catalano said out-of-court reviews should be overseen by a third-party attorney and that patients’ lawyers should be allowed to participate to ensure their clients’ rights are protected.</p></div><div class="articlePluckHidden"><p>Chandra and his coauthor, Dr. Anupam B. Jena of Mass. General, said they hope their study will dispel the fear that many doctors have of big payouts. Their study found just 66 claims that resulted in payments exceeding $1 million. Average claims by specialty ranged from $117,832 in dermatology to $520,923 in pediatrics.</p><p><a href="http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2011/08/18/most_us_doctors_will_face_suit_study_says/?page=1">Original here</a>
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<br />Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-34851611457197113342011-07-11T00:32:00.000-07:002011-07-11T00:34:58.156-07:00Food Surprise! Subsidizing Healthy Food Helps Kids Lose Weight<ul class="details" id="post_59706_details"><li class="facebook-like"><span></span><br /></li></ul><div class="body"><p> <img style="width: 394px; height: 272px;" alt="overweight" id="asset_365629" src="http://pre.cloudfront.goodinc.com/posts/full_1309997708overweightkids.jpg" /><br /> It seems obvious to anyone who's ever paid money for something: Make things cheaper, especially things people absolutely need, and you'll sell more of them. And yet it seems the U.S. government has yet to grasp that lesson. For decades now, America has been struggling with rising obesity, but rather than invest in subsidizing healthy foods for citizens, the government has instead dumped tens of billions of dollars into corn subsidies. What that's done is give rise to vast stockpiles of corn syrup, corn chips and soda, all on the taxpayer's dime. <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-09-21-op-ed-corn-subsidies-make-unhealthy-food-choices">Whereas more than $15 billion in subsidies</a> went to corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans in 2009, only $825 million went to fruits and vegetables. We're not just getting fat, we're paying to do so out of both hands (once with our taxes and once at the store).</p><p> A <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR118/ERR118_ReportSummary.pdf">new report</a> (PDF) from the U.S.D.A.'s Economic Research Service outlines exactly how damaging these subsidies are on America's children. Working on behalf of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign against youth obesity, a team was able to ascertain that just a 10-percent decrease in the price of lowfat milk for one quarter was associated with a .35-percent drop in children's BMIs. Similarly, lowering the cost of dark green vegetables by 10 percent saw a .28-percent BMI drop. And the effect worked both ways: When the price of sweets fell, BMIs increased.<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span></p><p> It's important to note that <a href="http://jezebel.com/5626769/doctor-calls-bullshit-on-the-bmi">BMI is often attacked</a> as a bad way to measure a person's health, but until there's a better metric that can be applied generally in these types of studies, BMI will have to do. Also, if you're thinking that a .35-percent drop doesn't seem like a lot of weight, you're right. But it's an important start, and one whose impact could be larger if we enacted subsidies cutting health-food prices by more than just 10 percent.</p><p> Let this be a reminder that poor people, who are <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/12/29/obesity_battle_starts_young_for_urban_poor/">more overweight than the wealthy</a>, shouldn't be written off as pigs who stuff their kids full of empty calories every night. The simple fact is that unhealthy food costs less, and cost is of primary importance when you're on a very limited budget.</p><p><a href="http://www.good.is/post/surprise-subsidizing-healthy-food-helps-kids-lose-weight/">Original here</a><br /></p></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-87909835275600486592011-07-11T00:28:00.000-07:002011-07-11T00:32:34.137-07:00Opposites attract? Apparently not, according to study<ul><li><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:1.4em;">Partners are drawn to individuals in a similar 'league' and of the same desirability</span></span></span></li></ul> <p> By <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Daily+Mail+Reporter" class="author" rel="nofollow">Daily Mail Reporter</a></p><br /><p><span style="font-size:100%;">When it comes to love, there are no hard and fast rules though many people follow the age-old theory that opposites attract.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">But now a study has found that more often that not, similarity rules the day.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Researchers at Berkeley found that people are drawn to potential romantic partners if they are of their own or similar league and desirability, which they called the 'matching hypothesis'.</span></p><div class="clear"> </div><div class="thinCenter"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 244px;" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/10/article-0-0CF43EAE00000578-957_468x286.jpg" alt="Hot: The Berkeley study found that the more popular the individual the more a similarly popular individual would be attracted to them" class="blkBorder" /></span> <p class="imageCaption"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hot: The Berkeley study found that the more popular the individual the more a similarly popular individual would be attracted to them</span></p></div> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">Of course personality traits and common interests play a factor but for that instant attraction, like is drawn towards like, putting paid to the phrase, 'You're out of my league'.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">For their research, the authors of the study turned - as most singletons do today - to online dating sites.</span></p><p> </p><div class="relatedItemsTopBorder"> </div> <div class="relatedItems"> <h4><span style="font-size:100%;">More...</span></h4> <ul><li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013015/One-couple-thought-knew-secret-wedded-bliss--live-separate-homes-forced-cohabit.html">The couple who found the secret to wedded bliss... live in separate homes </a></span></li></ul> </div><p><span style="font-size:100%;">They measured the popularity of more than 3,000 heterosexual users of a site and looked at the popularity of each.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Popularity was defined by the number of opposite-sex individuals who had sent unsolicited messages to a user.<br /></span></p><div class="clear"> </div><div class="thinCenter"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 245px;" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/10/article-0-0CF43B5E00000578-536_468x286.jpg" alt="Findings: The authors of the study said individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability equals their own" class="blkBorder" /></span> <p class="imageCaption"><span style="font-size:100%;">Findings: The authors of the study said individuals on the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability equals their own</span></p></div> <p><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Analyses indicated that high-popularity users contacted other popular users at a rate greater than would be expected by chance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">Similarly, the less popular users of the site also contacted other low-popularity users.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">The researchers then conducted a follow-up study of more than a million users and found a similar result - when it comes to dating, potential mates stick to someone in their own league.</span></p><div class="clear"> </div><div class="thinCenter"> <span style="font-size:100%;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 412px;" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/07/10/article-0-0CF3F9BD00000578-906_468x482.jpg" alt="Like attracts like: Couples are said to be attracted to each other due to their level of desirability" class="blkBorder" /></span> <p class="imageCaption"><span style="font-size:100%;">Like attracts like: Couples are said to be attracted to each other due to their level of desirability</span></p></div> <p> </p><div class="clear"> </div><p><span style="font-size:100%;">The authors found that: 'Individuals on</span><span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> the dating market will assess their own self-worth and select partners whose social desirability approximately equals their own. </span><span style="display: block;font-size:100%;" id="formatbar_Buttons" ><span onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" class=" down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span><span style="display: block;font-size:100%;" id="formatbar_Buttons" ><span onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">'Using data collected in the laboratory and from users of a popular online dating site, the authors found evidence for matching based on self-worth, physical attractiveness, and popularity, but to different degrees and not always at the same stage of the dating process.</span></p><p><span style="font-size:100%;">'The most striking prediction is that undesirable individuals will choose undesirable partners.'</span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013208/Opposites-attract-Apparently-according-study.html">Original here</a></span>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-49872533706189364632011-07-11T00:24:00.000-07:002011-07-11T00:27:48.894-07:00News of the World's best ever front pages Read more: http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/07/08/news-of-the-world-best-front-pages/#ixzz1Rm8UZqBO<div class="articleDetails"><p class="dateAuthor"> By <a href="http://www.asylum.co.uk/bloggers/sam-parker/">Sam Parker</a></p><p class="dateAuthor"><a href="http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/07/08/news-of-the-world-best-front-pages/#showComments" name="comments"></a><img alt="News of the World front pages" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.asylum.co.uk/media/2011/07/notw2.jpg" style="margin: 4px; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; width: 377px; height: 313px;" /><br /><br />Last week, James Bond baddie Rupert Murdoch and his evil henchman James Murdoch surprised us all by announcing that today will be the last time ever that the News of the World goes to print.<br /><br />In the wake of still-growing phone-hacking scandal, the News International overlords decided the popular rag's time was up, while c<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>uriously standing by Rebekah Brooks, the woman who presided over the whole messy business in the first place.<br /><br />And so, as 200 largely blameless journalists, sales people, designers and finance staff walk the plank to save their superiors, we take a moment to celebrate the News of the World's most memorable front page splashes.<br /><br />From celebrity sex scandals to sporting corruption via loads of stuff that made the royal family whince, we might not have always liked what it had to say but nothing raised our eyebrows quite like the News of the World. Click below for our highlights.</p><div style="overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;"><a href="http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/07/08/news-of-the-world-best-front-pages/">Original here</a><br /></div> </div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-60352978951369923302011-07-11T00:20:00.000-07:002011-07-11T00:24:26.612-07:00In Defense of Antidepressants<div class="inlineImage module"> <div class="image"> <div class="icon enlargeThis"><a>Enlarge This Image</a></div> <a> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/10/sunday-review/ANTIDEPRESSANTS/ANTIDEPRESSANTS-articleInline-v2.jpg" alt="" height="328" width="190" /> </a> </div> <h6 class="credit">Leo Jung</h6> <p> </p> </div> <div class="image"> <div class="icon enlargeThis"><a>Enlarge This Image</a></div> <a> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/10/sunday-review/JP-ANTIDEPRESSANTS/JP-ANTIDEPRESSANTS-articleInline.jpg" alt="" height="165" width="190" /> </a> </div> <h6 class="credit">Leo Jung</h6><br /><p> IN terms of perception, these are hard times for <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/antidepressants/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about antidepressants." class="meta-classifier">antidepressants</a>. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos. </p><p> Last month brought an especially high-profile debunking. In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, favorably entertained the premise that “psychoactive drugs are useless.” Earlier, a USA Today piece about a study done by the psychologist Robert DeRubeis had the headline, “Antidepressant lift may be all in your head,” and shortly after, a Newsweek cover piece discussed research by the psychologist Irving Kirsch arguing that the drugs were no more effective than a placebo. </p><p> Could this be true? Could drugs that are ingested by one in 10 Americans each year, drugs that have changed the way that mental illness is treated, really be a hoax, a mistake or a concept gone wrong? </p><p> This supposition is worrisome. Antidepressants work — ordinarily well, on a par with other medications doctors prescribe. Yes, certain researchers have questioned their efficacy in particular areas — sometimes, I believe, on the basis of shaky data. And yet, the notion that they aren’t effective in general is influencing treatment. </p><p> For instance, not long ago, I received disturbing news: a friend had had a <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/stroke/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about strokes." class="meta-classifier">stroke</a> that paralyzed the right side of his body. Hoping to be of use, I searched the Web for a study I vaguely remembered. There it was: a group in France had worked with more than 100 people with the kind of stroke that affected my friend. Along with physiotherapy, half received <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/prozac_drug/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about Prozac." class="meta-classifier">Prozac</a>, and half a placebo. Members of the Prozac group recovered more of their mobility. Antidepressants are good at treating post-stroke <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/depression/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Depression (Mental)." class="meta-classifier">depression</a> and good at preventing it. They also help protect <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/test/mental-status-tests/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Mental status tests." class="meta-classifier">memory</a>. In stroke patients, antidepressants look like a tonic for brain health. </p><p> When I learned that my friend was not on antidepressants, I suggested he raise the issue with his neurologists. I e-mailed them the relevant articles. After further consideration, the doctors added the medicines to his regimen of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/physicaltherapy/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about physical therapy." class="meta-classifier">physical therapy</a>. </p><p> Surprised that my friend had not been offered a highly effective treatment, I phoned Robert G. Robinson at the University of Iowa’s department of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/psychiatry_and_psychiatrists/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about psychiatry." class="meta-classifier">psychiatry</a>, a leading researcher in this field. He said, “Neurologists tell me they don’t use an antidepressant unless a patient is suffering very serious depression. They’re influenced by reports that say that’s all antidepressants are good for.” </p><p> Critics raise various concerns, but in my view the serious dispute about antidepressant efficacy has a limited focus. Do they work for the core symptoms (such as despair, low energy and feelings of worthlessness) of isolated episodes of mild or moderate depression? The claim that antidepressants do nothing for this common condition — that they are merely placebos with side effects — is based on studies that have probably received more ink than they deserve. </p><p> The most widely publicized debunking research — the basis for the Newsweek and New York Review pieces — is drawn from data submitted to the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/food_and_drug_administration/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the U.S. Food And Drug Administration." class="meta-org">Food and Drug Administration</a> in the late 1980s and the 1990s by companies seeking approval for new drugs. This research led to its share of scandal when a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the trials had been published selectively. Papers showing that antidepressants work had found their way into print; unfavorable findings had not. </p><p> In his book “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” Dr. Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Hull in England, analyzed all the data. He found that while the drugs outperformed the placebos for mild and moderate depression, the benefits were small. The problem with the Kirsch analysis — and none of the major press reports considered this shortcoming — is that the F.D.A. material is ill suited to answer questions about mild depression. </p><p> As a condition for drug approval, the F.D.A. requires drug companies to demonstrate a medicine’s efficacy in at least two trials. Trials in which neither the new drug nor an older, established drug is distinguishable from a placebo are deemed “failed” and are disregarded or weighed lightly in the evaluation. Consequently, companies rushing to get medications to market have had an incentive to run quick, sloppy trials. </p><p> Often subjects who don’t really have depression are included — and (no surprise) weeks down the road they are not depressed. People may exaggerate their symptoms to get free care or incentive payments offered in trials. Other, perfectly honest subjects participate when they are at their worst and then spontaneously return to their usual, lower, level of depression. </p><p> THIS improvement may have nothing to do with faith in dummy pills; it is an artifact of the recruitment process. Still, the recoveries are called “placebo responses,” and in the F.D.A. data they have been steadily on the rise. In some studies, 40 percent of subjects not receiving medication get better. </p><p> The problem is so big that entrepreneurs have founded businesses promising to identify genuinely ill research subjects. The companies use video links to screen patients at central locations where (contrary to the practice at centers where trials are run) reviewers have no incentives for enrolling subjects. In early comparisons, off-site raters rejected about 40 percent of subjects who had been accepted locally — on the ground that those subjects did not have severe enough symptoms to qualify for treatment. If this result is typical, many subjects labeled mildly depressed in the F.D.A. data don’t have depression and might well respond to placebos as readily as to antidepressants. </p><p> Nonetheless, the F.D.A. mostly gets it right. To simplify a complex matter: there are two sorts of studies that are done on drugs: broad trials and narrow trials. Broad trials, like those done to evaluate new drugs, can be difficult these days, because many antidepressants are available as generics. Who volunteers to take an untested remedy? Research subjects are likely to be an odd bunch. </p><p> Narrow studies, done on those with specific disorders, tend to be more reliable. Recruitment of subjects is straightforward; no one’s walking off the street to enter a trial for stroke patients. Narrow studies have identified many specific indications for antidepressants, such as depression in neurological disorders, including <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/multiple-sclerosis/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Multiple sclerosis." class="meta-classifier">multiple sclerosis</a> and <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/epilepsy/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Epilepsy." class="meta-classifier">epilepsy</a>; depression caused by interferon, a medication used to treat <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/hepatitis/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Hepatitis." class="meta-classifier">hepatitis</a> and <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/melanoma/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Melanoma." class="meta-classifier">melanoma</a>; and anxiety disorders in children. </p><p> New ones regularly emerge. The June issue of Surgery Today features a study in which elderly female cardiac patients who had had emergency operations and were given antidepressants experienced less depression, shorter hospital stays and fewer deaths in the hospital. </p><p> Broad studies tend to be most trustworthy when they look at patients with sustained illness. A reliable finding is that antidepressants work for chronic and recurrent mild depression, the condition called <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/dysthymia/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Dysthymia." class="meta-classifier">dysthymia</a>. More than half of patients on medicine get better, compared to less than a third taking a placebo. (This level of efficacy — far from ideal — is typical across a range of conditions in which antidepressants outperform placebos.) Similarly, even the analyses that doubt the usefulness of antidepressants find that they help with severe depression. </p><p> In fact, antidepressants appear to have effects across the depressive spectrum. Scattered studies suggest that antidepressants bolster confidence or diminish emotional vulnerability — for people with depression but also for healthy people. In the depressed, the decrease in what is called neuroticism seems to protect against further episodes. Because neuroticism is not a core symptom of depression, most outcome trials don’t measure this change, but we can see why patients and doctors might consider it beneficial. </p><p> Similarly, in rodent and primate trials, antidepressants have broad effects on both healthy animals and animals with conditions that resemble mood disruptions in humans. </p><p> One reason the F.D.A. manages to identify useful medicines is that it looks at a range of evidence. It encourages companies to submit “maintenance studies.” In these trials, researchers take patients who are doing well on medication and switch some to dummy pills. If the drugs are acting as placebos, switching should do nothing. In an analysis that looked at maintenance studies for 4,410 patients with a range of severity levels, antidepressants cut the odds of relapse by 70 percent. These results, rarely referenced in the antidepressant-as-placebo literature, hardly suggest that the usefulness of the drugs is all in patients’ heads. </p><p> The other round of media articles questioning antidepressants came in response to a seemingly minor study engineered to highlight placebo responses. One effort to mute the placebo effect in drug trials involves using a “washout period” during which all subjects get a dummy pill for up to two weeks. Those who report prompt relief are dropped; the study proceeds with those who remain symptomatic, with half getting the active medication. In light of subject recruitment problems, this approach has obvious appeal. </p><p> Dr. DeRubeis, an authority on cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, has argued that the washout method plays down the placebo effect. Last year, Dr. DeRubeis and his colleagues published a highly specific statistical analysis. From a large body of research, they discarded trials that used washouts, as well as those that focused on dysthymia or subtypes of depression. The team deemed only six studies, from over 2,000, suitable for review. An odd collection they were. Only studies using <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/paxil_drug/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival health news about Paxil." class="meta-classifier">Paxil</a> and imipramine, a medicine introduced in the 1950s, made the cut — and other research had found Paxil to be among the least effective of the new antidepressants. One of the imipramine studies used a very low dose of the drug. The largest study Dr. DeRubeis identified was his own. In 2005, he conducted a trial in which Paxil did slightly better than psychotherapy and significantly better than a placebo — but apparently much of the drug response occurred in sicker patients. </p><p> Building an overview around your own research is problematic. Generally, you use your study to build a hypothesis; you then test the theory on fresh data. Critics questioned other aspects of Dr. DeRubeis’s math. In a re-analysis using fewer assumptions, Dr. DeRubeis found that his core result (less effect for healthier patients) now fell just shy of statistical significance. Overall, the medications looked best for very severe depression and had only slight benefits for mild depression — but this study, looking at weak treatments and intentionally maximized placebo effects, could not quite meet the scientific standard for a firm conclusion. And yet, the publication of the no-washout paper produced a new round of news reports that antidepressants were placebos. </p><p> In the end, the much heralded overview analyses look to be editorials with numbers attached. The intent, presumably to right the balance between psychotherapy and medication in the treatment of mild depression, may be admirable, but the data bearing on the question is messy. </p><p> As for the news media’s uncritical embrace of debunking studies, my guess, based on regular contact with reporters, is that a number of forces are at work. Misdeeds — from hiding study results to paying off doctors — have made Big Pharma an inviting and, frankly, an appropriate target. (It’s a favorite of Dr. Angell’s.) Antidepressants have something like celebrity status; exposing them makes headlines. </p><p> It is hard to locate the judicious stance with regard to antidepressants and moderate mood disorder. In my 1993 book, “Listening to Prozac,” I wrote, “To my mind, psychotherapy remains the single most helpful technology for the treatment of minor depression and anxiety.” In 2003, in “Against Depression,” I highlighted research that suggested antidepressants influence mood only indirectly. It may be that the drugs are “permissive,” removing roadblocks to self-healing. </p><p> That model might predict that in truth the drugs would be more effective in severe disorders. If antidepressants act by usefully perturbing a brain that’s “stuck,” then people who retain some natural resilience would see a lesser benefit. That said, the result that the debunking analyses propose remains implausible: antidepressants help in severe depression, depressive subtypes, chronic minor depression, social unease and a range of conditions modeled in mice and monkeys — but uniquely not in isolated episodes of mild depression in humans. </p><p> BETTER-DESIGNED research may tell us whether there is a point on the continuum of mood disorder where antidepressants cease to work. If I had to put down my marker now — and effectively, as a practitioner, I do — I’d bet that “stuckness” applies all along the line, that when mildly depressed patients respond to medication, more often than not we’re seeing true drug effects. Still, my approach with mild depression is to begin treatments with psychotherapy. I aim to use drugs sparingly. They have side effects, some of them serious. Antidepressants help with strokes, but surveys also show them to predispose to stroke. But if psychotherapy leads to only slow progress, I will recommend adding medicines. With a higher frequency and stronger potency than what we see in the literature, they seem to help. </p><p> My own beliefs aside, it is dangerou<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);" class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>s for the press to hammer away at th<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>e theme that antidepressants are placebos. They’re not. To give the impression that they are is to cause needless suffering. </p><p> As for my friend, he had made no progress before his neurologists prescribed antidepressants. Since, he has shown a slow return of motor function. As is true with much that we see in clinical medicine, the cause of this change is unknowable. But antidepressants are a reasonable element in the treatment — because they do seem to make the brain more flexible, and they’ve earned their place in the doctor’s satchel. </p><p> </p><div class="authorIdentification"> <p>Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University.<br /></p><p>Original here<br /></p> </div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-53937023608333919852010-02-11T22:18:00.000-08:002010-02-11T22:21:44.357-08:00Strangest McFoods from Around the World<p>McDonald’s is, at this point in American history, ubiquitous. You can’t swing a dead Fry Guy in the U.S. without hitting a McDonaldland. This isn’t only well-known; it’s part of their corporate identity right on their signage: billions and billions served (they’ve stopped counting, by the way—which sort of sucks, really).</p> <p>What’s perhaps less known is that McDonald’s is ubiquitous worldwide. It’s not just Americans who are lovin’ it. But since tastes in fast food differ from place to place? So does the McFood being offered. And sometimes—at least to American eyes? The menu gets pretty odd.</p> <p><strong>10. McHomard (Canada)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/McHomard.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/McHomard.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt;" title="McHomard" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1035" height="230" width="307" /></a><br />Canadians are generally seen as a fairly even-tempered lot. But just try to take away this lobster-roll Mickey-D’s style (homard is French for lobster), and watch them Canadians kick some McAss. They say you can get this in Maine, too—but really, is Maine all that different from Canada? Let’s not split hairs, people.</p> <p><strong>9. Maharaja Mac (India)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Maharaja-Mac.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Maharaja-Mac.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt;" title="Maharaja-Mac" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1033" height="230" width="206" /></a><br />Cows are sacred to the Hindi in India—and not in the same way that beef is sacred to the American dinner plate. So to avoid rioting in the Bangladesh streets, McDonald’s there came up with a new versions of the Big Mac: the McMutton. When that didn’t take, they tried chicken, and called in the Maharajah Mac (and no actual Maharajahs were harmed in the making of this Mac). So: Big Mac, hold the sacrilege.</p> <p><strong>8. Pasta Zoo Happy Meal (Australia)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Pasta-Zoo.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Pasta-Zoo.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt; width: 399px; height: 231px;" title="Pasta-Zoo" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1032" /></a><br />The weird thing about this Australian kids’ meal wasn’t that it included animal-shaped pasta, or even that there were specifically ten pieces of pasta in each pack. (Okay, that’s a little anal, but whatever.) The really disturbing thing was the sauce, which they called Zoo Goo. I’m sorry, but…what? I’ve been to many zoos, and there’s no goo that I’ve seen there that I’d want anywhere near my pasta.</p> <p><strong>7. Greek Mac (Greece)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Greek-Mac.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Greek-Mac.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt; width: 400px; height: 233px;" title="Greek-Mac" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1036" /></a><br />File this one under “barely even trying”. If you stick the innards of a Big Mac into a pita, does that mean that it’s Greek? I guess the special sauce is made from yogurt, but no feta? And the burgers are still crappy Mcpatties? I guess some disappointment is universal.</p> <p><strong>6. Bacon Potato Pie (Asia)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Bacon-Potato-Pie.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Bacon-Potato-Pie.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt; width: 395px; height: 200px;" title="Bacon-Potato-Pie" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1037" /></a><br />Pies at McDonald’s are normally limited to dessert items: their traditional apple, if you’re lucky, a specialty pie like cherry or blueberry, or pumpkin for the holidays. But ask for a pie in parts of Asia, and you’ll get something that tastes like either a deep fried pirogue, or an incomplete shepherd’s pie. </p> <p><strong>5. McMollettes (Mexico)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/McMollettes.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/McMollettes.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt; width: 398px; height: 194px;" title="McMollettes" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1038" /></a><br />An English Muffin topped with refried beans, cheese, and salsa. I’m sorry, is this a Mexican dish, or something from a trailer park?</p> <p><strong>4. KiwiBurger (New Zealand)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Kiwiburger.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Kiwiburger.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt;" title="Kiwiburger" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1039" height="230" width="307" /></a><br />This burger doesn’t sound so strange—beef patty, tomato, fried egg—until you get down to the last ingredient: beetroot. If someone asked me “hey, is there any veggie you don’t want to try on your burger?” “Beetroot” would be right up there. Just in case, I’d also not like the following on my burger: grass, corn husks, or orange rind.</p> <p><strong>3. My Poutine (Canada)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/MyPoutine.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/MyPoutine.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt;" title="MyPoutine" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1040" height="230" width="218" /></a><br />Everyone has their own idea of what’s good on French fries: ketchup, mayonnaise, ranch dressing, chili and cheese, even mustard. But in Quebec, they add cheese curds, and top it off with brown gravy. What’s more annoying than all that is the fact that they refer to it with the added possessive “My”. And honestly, I want no part of curds and gravy, thanks. Don’t try to drag me into that mess. </p> <p><strong>2. Koroke Burger (Japan)</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Koroke-Burger.gif" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.voicemediaads.com');"><img src="http://www.voicemediaads.com/lm/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Koroke-Burger.gif" alt="" style="margin: 0pt;" title="Koroke-Burger" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1041" height="230" width="230" /></a><br />This Japanese entry sort of defies the idea of “burger”. If it’s on a bun, and that’s all the sandwich shares with a hamburger, is it still a burger? If I put tuna salad on a bun, does that make it a burger? I don’t think so. Likewise, this concoction of mashed potato, shredded cabbage, and katsu sauce just doesn’t seem like a burger to me. It seems like a “here’s some crap I found in my fridge” sandwich (which is pretty much what I lived on in college). </p> <p><strong>1. Mega Mac (China, Ireland, Serbia, Japan, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand)</strong></p> <p><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uQp3zM35k80&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uQp3zM35k80&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object></p> <p>Okay, suddenly the Koroke Burger seems more logical. At least it’s probably semi-healthy. This monster is just a super-sized double-meat Big Mac, which means that the weirdest thing about it is that it’s not widely available in the States. And seriously, no more talk about how being stupid-obese is a peculiarly American deal, okay?</p><p><a href="http://daily.likeme.net/2010/02/11/strangest-mcfoods-from-around-the-world/">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-23342251524149952742010-02-11T22:15:00.000-08:002010-02-11T22:17:14.848-08:00Porsche 911 GT3 R hybridBy Stephen Dobie<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="'javascript:openWindow(" id="355282" target="_top"><img style="width: 386px; height: 264px;" src="http://photos.evo.co.uk/images/front_picture_library_UK/dir_710/car_photo_355282_7.jpg" alt="Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid" class="coverpicmainarticle" /></a> <a name="review"></a> </div><span name="intelliTxt" id="intelliTXT"><p>Porsche is taking a hybrid version of its 911 supercar to the 2010 Geneva motor show. It’s no ordinary 911, either – it’s the GT3 R racing car, perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a green-pleasing powertrain.<br /><br />Not that this one’s particularly green, of course. A 473bhp 4-litre flat-six engine powers the rear wheels, while two electric motors (each developing around 80bhp) power the front axle, effectively making this a four-wheel-drive GT3.<br /><br />Those motors are powered by an electric flywheel generator, which is charged up by regenerative braking each time the driver slows. And rather than cutting in automatically during the drive (or indeed race) cycle, the electric power is made available KERS-style, as the racing driver requires it for a six to eight second boost.<br /><br />The 911’s hybrid system is also intended to increase fuel efficiency. Ideal, really, as the car’s first big race with be May’s <a target="_self" mce_href="http://www.evo.co.uk/features/features/236713/nurburgring_24_hours.html" href="http://www.evo.co.uk/features/features/236713/nurburgring_24_hours.html">Nurburgring 24-hour race</a>. And for Porsche, it really is about the taking part rather than the winning: racing the hybrid GT3 R will be ‘a ‘racing laboratory’ that will provide invaluable knowledge and insight on the subsequent use of hybrid technology in road-going Porsche sports car’.<br /><br />A road-going hybrid version of the next 911, then? Certainly sounds like it…</p><p><a href="http://www.evo.co.uk/news/evonews/248170/porsche_911_gt3_r_hybrid.html">Original here</a><br /></p></span>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-72661283194613813252010-02-11T22:11:00.000-08:002010-02-11T22:15:03.328-08:00Tesla CEO Takes Private Jet as Company Takes Public LoanBy <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/author/wiredchuck/" title="Posts by Chuck Squatriglia">Chuck Squatriglia</a><br /><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2010/02/musk_f.jpg"><img style="width: 398px; height: 266px;" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-19491" title="musk_f" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2010/02/musk_f.jpg" alt="musk_f" /></a></p> <p>The CEO of Tesla Motors, which has received a fat federal loan, flew to Washington, D.C., aboard a private jet at least 12 times in the past 14 months. Although it isn’t unusual for CEOs to jet around on corporate planes, Elon Musk did so not long after lawmakers berated the heads of the Big Three automakers for doing the same thing while seeking a government bailout.</p> <p>PeHub.com, citing FAA records, says <a href="http://www.pehub.com/63397/tesla-ceo-took-private-jet-to-washington-dc/">Musk flew to Washington</a> aboard his Dassault Falcon 900 on June 15, 2009 — one week before the Department of Energy agreed to <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/06/tesla-loan/">lend the company $465 million</a> to help build the <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/03/first-look-of-t/">Model S sedan</a>, and two weeks after Tesla took over paying the plane’s operating costs. Those costs came to $175,000 in the second half of last year, according to the paperwork Tesla filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of an <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/teslas-going-public/">impending IPO</a>.</p> <p>The Silicon Valley automaker lost $31.5 million in the first nine months of 2009. Although the company has been steadily cutting its losses, it has lost $236.4 million since its founding in 2003. Tesla turned its <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/tesla-profit/">first and only profit</a> in July, 2009 but said in the Form S-1 filed with the SEC: “We expect the rate at which we will incur losses to increase significantly in future periods from current levels.” The same document notes Musk is taking $1 a year in salary.</p> <p>Since Tesla started footing the bill, Musk’s plane has flown to Washington five other times, including one flight this year. Four of those flights were made after the feds approved the loan but before they <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/doe-closes-tesla-loan/">finalized it</a>. PeHub did not list the remaining six flights it claims Musk made since the beginning of 2009.</p> <p>As PeHub notes, there’s nothing odd about the CEOs of tech firms billing their companies when flying in their jets. But PeHub quotes one venture capitalist who says it is highly unusual for the CEO of a startup to do so.</p> <p>“It’s really not normal. and I don’t think it’s actually right,” said Ho Nam of Altos Ventures, which does not have a stake in Tesla. “It’s okay to expense what it would have cost to fly commercial, but the difference should be covered by the person using it. It’s really about the culture and the message it sends to the rest of the company.”</p> <p>Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes said the company does not own a jet but pays for expenses incurred when Musk and other employees fly.</p> <p>“Tesla has no corporate jet,” he said in an email. “When traveling on business, Elon and other Tesla employees have used his private airplane, especially for urgent or unscheduled travel, other times they fly coach. Tesla has paid for expenses such fuel charges and landing fees on some of the trips.”</p> <p>Musk may have done nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong with someone as <a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/tesla-elon-mus/">busy as Musk</a> — who runs three companies — flying around on a private jet. And some of those flights may have involved business related to Musk’s other ventures, Space-X and Solar City. But to have Tesla Motors foot the bill for any flights pertaining to its business while taxpayers underwrite the Model S is a colossal PR blunder.</p> <p>Just ask Rick Wagoner, Alan Mulally and Robert Nardelli.</p><div id="TixyyLink" style="border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/elon-musk-private-jet/">Original here</a><br /></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-89909004576435754262010-02-11T22:09:00.000-08:002010-02-11T22:11:44.804-08:00Faulkner Link to Plantation Diary DiscoveredBy <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/patricia_cohen/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Patricia Cohen">PATRICIA COHEN</a><br /><br /><p>The climactic moment in <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/william_faulkner/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about William Faulkner.">William Faulkner</a>’s 1942 novel “Go Down, Moses” comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their “scarred and cracked backs” and “yellowed pages scrawled in fading ink” — proof of his family’s slave-owning past. Now, what appears to be the document on which Faulkner modeled that ledger as well as the source for myriad names, incidents and details that populate his fictionalized Yoknapatawpha County has been discovered. </p> <div id="articleInline" class="inlineLeft"> <div id="inlineBox"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/books/11faulkner.html#secondParagraph" class="jumpLink">Skip to next paragraph</a> <div class="image"> <div class="enlargeThis"><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA0.html',%20'11faulkner_CA0',%20'width=601,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')">Enlarge This Image</a></div> <a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA0.html',%20'11faulkner_CA0',%20'width=601,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA0/11faulkner_CA0-articleInline.jpg" alt="" border="0" height="179" width="190" /> </a> <div class="credit">Southern Historical Collection/Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</div> <p class="caption"> Francis Terry Leak’s diary was read by Faulkner. A page from 1856 records a slave sale. </p> </div> <div id="sidebarArticles"> <h4>Related</h4> <h2>Times Topics: <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/william_faulkner/index.html">William Faulkner</a></h2> </div> <div class="image"> <div class="enlargeThis"><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA3.html',%20'11faulkner_CA3',%20'width=468,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')">Enlarge This Image</a></div> <a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA3.html',%20'11faulkner_CA3',%20'width=468,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA3/11faulkner_CA3-articleInline.jpg" alt="" border="0" height="239" width="190" /> </a> <div class="credit">Associated Press</div> <p class="caption"> William Faulkner at his home near Oxford, Miss., in 1950. </p> </div> </div> </div><a name="secondParagraph"></a> <p>The original manuscript, a diary from the mid-1800s, was written by Francis Terry Leak, a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi whose great-grandson Edgar Wiggin Francisco Jr. was a friend of Faulkner’s since childhood. Mr. Francisco’s son, Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, now 79, recalls the writer’s frequent visits to the family homestead in Holly Springs, Miss., throughout the 1930s, saying Faulkner was fascinated with the diary’s several volumes. Mr. Francisco said he saw them in Faulker’s hands and remembers that he “was always taking copious notes.” </p><p>Specialists have been stunned and intrigued not only by this peephole into Faulkner’s working process, but also by material that may have inspired this Nobel-prize-winning author, considered by many to be one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century. </p><p>“I think it’s one of the most sensational literary discoveries of recent decades,” said John Lowe, an English professor at Louisiana State University who is writing a book on Faulkner. He was one of a handful of experts who met Dr. Francisco at the hand-hewn log house in Holly Springs last month. There they saw the windowpane where a cousin, Ludie Baugh, etched the letters L-U-D-I-E into the glass while watching Confederate soldiers march by — a scene that appears in several Faulkner works. </p><p>During the gathering Dr. Francisco, known in childhood as Little Eddie, described how Faulkner stood in front of that window and said, “ ‘She’s still here,’ like she was a ghost,” Professor Lowe recalled.</p><p>Dr. Francisco, speaking by telephone from his home in Atlanta, remembered hearing Faulkner rant as he read Leak’s pro-slavery and pro-Confederacy views: “Faulkner became very angry. He would curse the man and take notes and curse the man and take more notes.”</p><p> Sally Wolff-King, a scholar of Southern literature at <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/emory_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Emory University">Emory University</a> who uncovered the connection between the author and the journal, called it “a once-in-a-lifetime literary find.” </p><p>“The diary and a number of family stories seem to have provided the philosophical and thematic power for some of his major works,” she added.</p><p>Names of slaves owned by Leak — Caruthers, Moses, Isaac, Sam, Toney, Mollie, Edmund and Worsham — all appear in some form in “Go Down, Moses.” Other recorded names, like Candis (Candace in the book) and Ben, show up in “The Sound and The Fury” (1929) while Old Rose, Henry, Ellen and Milly are characters in “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936). Charles Bonner, a well-known <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/info/american-civil-war/?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about American Civil War.">Civil War</a> physician mentioned in the diary, would also seem to be the namesake of Charles Bon in “Absalom.”</p><p>Scholars found Faulkner’s decision to give his white characters the names of slaves particularly arresting. Professor Wolff-King said she believes he was “trying to recreate the slaves lives and give them a voice.”</p><p>Dr. Francisco says he is still very uncomfortable that his family’s connection to Faulkner has come to light. “I wouldn’t have done it at all,” he said about publicizing the diary. “My wife urged me until I finally did it,” he said of Anne Salyerds Francisco, his wife of 50 years. “She pushed and Sally pulled.”</p><p>“There were long-repressed things that Faulkner uncovered that I didn’t know were in the family,” Dr. Francisco explained, adding that his father never talked about Leak and his slave-owning past. “I just bottled all that up and forgot about it.”</p><p>Dr. Francisco said that neither he nor his father ever read much of Faulkner’s work, including “Go Down, Moses.” </p><p>“I tried to read that book years ago,” he said, “but I got so angry I threw it across the room, and it stayed there for months.” He said he now might give it another go.</p><p>The mothers of Faulkner and of Dr. Francisco’s father were close. The boys went to each other’s childhood birthday parties. Later they double dated and became hunting and drinking buddies, remaining friends until their 40s, when they drifted apart, a situation probably encouraged by Mr. Francisco’s wife, who did not approve of Faulkner’s drinking, smoking and cursing. </p> <div id="articleInline" class="inlineLeft"> <div id="inlineBox"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/books/11faulkner.html?pagewanted=2#secondParagraph" class="jumpLink">Skip to next paragraph</a> <div class="image"> <div class="enlargeThis"><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA1.html',%20'11faulkner_CA1',%20'width=403,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')">Enlarge This Image</a></div> <a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA1.html',%20'11faulkner_CA1',%20'width=403,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA1/11faulkner_CA1-articleInline.jpg" alt="" border="0" height="285" width="190" /> </a> <div class="credit">Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times</div> <p class="caption"> Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, above, with a typescript of an old family diary. As a boy, he used to see William Faulkner reading the original. </p> </div> <div id="sidebarArticles"> <h4>Related</h4> <h2>Times Topics: <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/william_faulkner/index.html">William Faulkner</a></h2> </div> <div class="image"> <div class="enlargeThis"><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA2.html',%20'11faulkner_CA2',%20'width=720,height=563,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')">Enlarge This Image</a></div> <a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA2.html',%20'11faulkner_CA2',%20'width=720,height=563,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> <img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/11/arts/11faulkner_CA2/11faulkner_CA2-articleInline.jpg" alt="" border="0" height="230" width="190" /> </a> <div class="credit">Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times</div> <p class="caption"> Sally Wolff-King, a Faulkner scholar who bases some of her new research on the diary. </p> </div> </div> </div><a name="secondParagraph"></a> <p>Professor Wolff-King had been working on a book about people who knew Faulkner and ended up connecting with Dr. Francisco because he was an alumnus of Emory. When she visited his home in Atlanta, his wife suggested he show the professor a typescript copy of the ledger. Included was a facsimile of a page that listed dollar amounts paid for individual slaves. </p><p>“At that moment I realized this diary may not only have influenced the ledger and slave sale record in ‘Go Down, Moses’ but also likely served an important source for much of William Faulkner’s work,” said Professor Wolff-King, who has spent 30 years studying the writer. </p><p>A short preview of her findings is in the fall 2009 issue of The Southern Literary Journal; her book “Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Diary,” is due out in June from Louisiana State University Press.</p><p>Professor Lowe reviewed the manuscript before publication. To protect against leaks the editor arranged a meeting in a coffee shop. “He gave me the manuscript in a plain brown wrapper, and I was sworn to secrecy,” he said. </p><p>“I was electrified when I was reading it,” he said. “Faulkner had a very intense and intellectual relationship with Dr. Francisco’s father,” which seems to have formed “the basis of some of the conversations you find in ‘Absalom, Absalom!’ and ‘Go Down, Moses.’ ” </p><p>The Leak papers are not unfamiliar to scholars. The family donated the journal, which includes the plantation accounts as well as descriptive sections, to the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_north_carolina/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about University of North Carolina">University of North Carolina</a> in 1946 and received a typescript copy of the material that runs 1,800 pages. The original documents have been used by Southern economists and social historians for their insights into Mississippi’s plantation life, but no one has previously been aware that Faulkner, who died in 1962, had any connection to them.</p><p>Professor Wolff-King argues that elements and terms from the diary repeatedly surface in Faulkner’s work, including the ticking sound of a watch that Quentin Compson is obsessed with in “The Sound and the Fury”; descriptions of building a plantation match Thomas Sutpen’s in “Absalom, Absalom!” </p><p>Noel Polk, the editor of The Mississippi Quarterly and among the deans of Faulkner scholars, said, “I was surprised at the discovery of what is so clearly a major piece of information about his life, and maybe his work.”</p><p>He and others said it was still too early for them to gauge just how significant the diary is without reading Professor Wolff-King’s book and examining the ledgers themselves, especially when it comes to the more common details about the antebellum and Civil War eras. </p><p>“Almost every document that you can come up with that Faulkner used is interesting, but the question is what do you do with it,” Judith L. Sensibar, whose biography “Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art” was published last year. What does it tell us, for instance, about his “obsession with the ways in which slavery has disfigured the lives of both the slaves and their masters?” she asked. </p><p>Although literary experts have been taken aback by this unexpected find, Faulkner more than anyone would have understood how the past can unpredictably poke its nose into the present.</p><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/books/11faulkner.html">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-85282097440158670952009-12-20T03:10:00.000-08:002009-12-20T03:12:24.731-08:00“Do I have the right to refuse this search?”<p><em>Today’s guest author is Deirdre Walker. She retired recently as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police. She spent 24 years as a police officer.</em></p> <p>“Do I have the right to refuse this search?”</p> <p>This is a question I heard many times during my law enforcement career. Often my answer was no. But occasionally it would be “yes,” followed by an admonition to have a good day.</p> <p>For the last half of my career, I would have documented each interaction, whether or not it involved an arrest. I would have written down the nature and length of the interaction, the gender, race, and age of the person, and the outcome of the contact (arrest, citation, etc.).</p> <p>I carry the baggage of this history with me as I’ve traveled over the last eight years, mindlessly placing my luggage on the conveyer belt and removing my shoes for TSA inspection.</p> <p>Recently, something changed.</p> <p>Within the last few months, I have been singled out for “additional screening” roughly half the time I step into an airport security line. On Friday, October 9, as I stepped out of the full-body scanning device at BWI, I decided I needed more information to identify why it is that I have become such an appealing candidate for secondary screening.</p> <p>Little did I know this would be only the first of many questions I now have regarding my airport experiences.</p> <p>Over these last few months, I have grown increasingly frustrated with what I view as an unjustifiable intrusion on my privacy. It was not so much the search (then) as it was the embarrassment of being singled out, effectively being told “You are different,” but getting no explanation as to why.</p> <p>That frustration has been tempered by a combination of my desire to be a good citizen, and my empathy for the TSA screeners. These folks, after all, are merely doing what we, the American traveling public, have permitted and now expect them to do.</p> <p>I am left to wonder whether my own passive acceptance of these evolving search procedures has contributed to a potentially fatal dichotomy: what we <strong>allow</strong> TSA screeners to do in order to maximize efficiency and enhance our perception of safety, or what we really <strong>need</strong> them to do in order to preserve our rights and dignity and enhance our actual safety.</p> <p>We have asked TSA to find the tools terrorists use and prevent both from boarding a passenger plane. We have unintentionally created an agency that now seeks efficiency and compliance more than any weapon or explosive.</p> <p>While returning my computer and shoes to their proper places, I watched the screening line at BWI. I thought about the haphazard events surrounding the security screening process. As I watched the screening officers, I wondered what information drives their decisions. Left only to my observations, I concluded that their decisions were entirely random, and likely based upon three criteria: passenger load, staffing, and whim.</p> <p>I was left to conclude that I am not screened because I look like a terrorist. I am routinely screened because I look like someone who will readily comply. I decided then that my next invitation to enjoy additional screening would be met with more inquiry.</p> <p>I did not have wait very long. On my return through Albany to BWI — Surprise! – I got “randomly selected” for additional screening.</p> <p>This time, I was “invited” to step into one of the explosive detection machines, commonly referred to as a “puffer machine.” The traveller is exposed to short, intense bursts of air, which are then, supposedly, analyzed for trace residue.</p> <p>I <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2009-05-20-puffers_N.htm" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.usatoday.com');" target="_blank">read an article</a> awhile ago that suggested these machines are entirely ineffective. I have subsequently observed that they now sit idle at many airports where they were originally installed (Tampa International, for example). In recently renovated airports (San Jose) they have not been installed. At some other airports (like BWI), they have been replaced by the body-scanning technology.</p> <p>When notified by the cheerful screener that I had been selected for additional screening (the screener’s tone reminded my of the announcer who tells the contestant that she has just won a TV on the Price is Right), I stepped reluctantly toward the machine and asked her quietly whether I had the right to refuse the search. I did not want to become a spectacle, or have to rent a car and drive back to Maryland.</p> <p>The screeners face dropped and she appeared stunned, as if my question had been received like a body-blow. She asked me to repeat what I said, and I repeated my inquiry regarding whether or not I had the right to refuse this search, especially since it was my understanding that the equipment did not work. She responded defensively, “It sounds an alarm!”</p> <p>What followed is what I can only describe as a process that left me with more questions and a hunger for something we need and something that has apparently been missing from TSA procedures since September 12, 2001: Data.</p> <p>It is, again, important to note my general respect for the front line TSA screeners — with the exception of those screeners who feel that it is necessary to yell at people. In my experience as a cop, as a supervisor and as a manager, I know that yelling at people is the one method guaranteed to ensure sub-par performance and a collapse of any semblance of cooperation.</p> <p>My motivation to write this piece is first, to vent, but then to take a stab at the windmill that has grown from flawed processes to become a barrier to achieving the real mission and ultimate goal: Passenger safety.</p> <p>I believe, fundamentally, that our collective compliance with the current screening procedures has served only to undermine TSA, and has denied our screeners the tools they need to correct their course.</p> <p>After realizing I was serious about refusing to step into the puffer machine, I was told that I would be subjected to a “full-body pat-down” and that all of my “stuff would be fully searched.”</p> <p>I shrugged and waited while the screeners figured out what to do next. One of the screeners said “Who is the supervisor? Notify a supervisor.” I waited two to three minutes with two female screeners. I was then approached by a uniformed screener and the following exchange took place.</p> <p>“She refused the puffer. We are supposed to notify a supervisor. You’re a supervisor, right?”</p> <p>Apparently reminded of his role, the subordinate screener then said “We’re notifying you.” She said nothing further. The supervisor then informed me that if I did not step into the “puffer” I would be subjected to a full body-pat-down, that I would be “wanded” and that all of my belongings would be fully searched by hand.</p> <p>By this time, my belongings had already passed through the x-ray and sat oddly unattended on the belt. They had aroused no suspicion, either as they passed through the x-ray or as they sat completely unattended. I thought it odd that my initial refusal to be subjected to the ‘puffer’ now rendered the x-ray examination effectively flawed. I was being cajoled and was then offered the opportunity to change my mind, which, again, I thought rather odd. If I posed such a risk by refusing the secondary screening, why would that risk be now mitigated, if only I were to change my mind?</p> <p>I did not change my mind. So, I stepped between two glass walls and was subjected to what my police training would allow me to conclude was a procedural vacuum.</p> <p>I had been told repeatedly I would be subjected to a “pat-down.” I correctly suspected otherwise. During the course of my police career, I have conducted many pat-downs on the street. The Supreme Court has described pat downs as a cursory check of the outer clothing of a person by a police officer, upon articulable suspicion that the officer’s safety is at risk of being compromised. My department’s procedure indicated that this pat-down was to be conducted with an open hand, gently patting the outer clothing of an individual, for purposes of officer safety only, with the goal of detecting weapons. In other words, it is not a search.</p> <p>What happened to me in Albany was not the promised “pat-down.” It was a full search conducted in full public view. It was also one of the most flawed searches I have ever witnessed.</p> <p>From the outset, it was very clear that the screener would have preferred to be anywhere else. She acted as if she was afraid of me, though given that I had set myself apart as apparently crazy, perhaps I cannot blame her. With rubber-gloved hands she checked my head, my arms, my legs, my buttocks (and discovered a pen that had fallen into one of my pockets) and even the bottom of my feet. Perhaps in a nod to decorum, she did not check my crotch, my armpits or either breast area.</p> <p>Here was a big problem: an effective search cannot nod to decorum.</p> <p>These three areas on a woman, and the crotch area of men, offer the greatest opportunity to seclude weapons and contraband. Bad guys and girls rely on the type of reluctance displayed by this screener to get weapons and drugs past the authorities. We train cops to realize that their life depends upon the ability to compartmentalize any apprehension about the need to lift and separate. Fatal consequences can and do result when officers fail to detect a secreted weapon which is later used against them.</p> <p>At the Albany airport, I was left to wonder what kind of training the screener received. I was forced to conclude the answer might be “none.” At a minimum, she needs re-training, assuming there is any policy or training that governs searches. Further, after being repeatedly informed that I would be “wanded” by the metal detector in addition to the ‘pat-down,’ I was not.</p> <p>Had I actually intended to move contraband past the screening point, my best strategy would have been to refuse secondary screening.</p> <p>I am also forced to conclude that the purpose of the “pat-down” was not to actually interdict contraband. In my case, I believe I was subjected to a haphazard response in order to effectively punish me for refusing secondary screening and to encourage a different decision in the future.</p> <p>All of this is admittedly subjective, based on my perceptions at the time. What is also entirely subjective is identifying which travelers are selected for secondary screening.</p> <p>This is where I find myself now obsessing over TSA policy, or its apparent lack. Every one of us goes to work each day harboring prejudice. This is simply human nature. What I have witnessed in law enforcement over the course of the last two decades serves to remind me how active and passive prejudice can undermine public trust in important institutions, like police agencies. And TSA.</p> <p>Over the last fifteen years or so, many police agencies started capturing data on police interactions. The primary purpose was to document what had historically been undocumented: informal street contacts. By capturing specific data, we were able to ask ourselves tough questions about potentially biased-policing. Many agencies are still struggling with the answers to those questions.</p> <p>Regardless, the data permitted us to detect problematic patterns, commonly referred to as passive discrimination. This is a type of discrimination that occurs when we are not aware of how our own biases affect our decisions. This kind of bias must be called to our attention, and there must be accountability to correct it.</p> <p>One of the most troubling observations I made, at both Albany and BWI, was that — aside from the likely notation in a log (that no one will ever look at) — there was no information captured and I was asked no questions, aside from whether or not I wanted to change my mind.</p> <p>Given that TSA interacts with tens if not hundreds of millions of travelers each year, it is incredible to me that we, the stewards of homeland security, have failed to insist that data capturing and analysis should occur in a manner similar to what local police agencies have been doing for many years.</p> <p>Some might argue that the potential for intrusion is not the same between police and TSA. I believe my experience this past weekend demonstrates otherwise. Currently, there is no way to know whether a certain male screener routinely identifies predominantly women for additional screening. There is no way to identify whether a Latino screener routinely isolates African-Americans, or vice versa. To assert that the screeners are highly trained and do not engaged in this type of discrimination, whether passive or active, is unsupportable because there is no data. You simply cannot solve problems that you do not want to identify.</p> <p>Finally, I am most concerned about the “random” nature of my repeated selection for secondary screening. If there is no discrimination at work, and my selection is entirely random, then we have yet another, and probably more significant problem.</p> <p>For years in policing, we relied on random patrols to curb crime. We relied upon this “strategy” until someone went out and captured some data, and did a study that demonstrated conclusively that random patrols do not work (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_preventive_patrol_experiment" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/en.wikipedia.org');" target="_blank">Kansas City Study</a>).</p> <p>As police have employed other types of “random” interventions, as in DWI checkpoints, they have had to develop policies, procedures and training to ensure that the “random” nature of these intrusions is truly random. Whether every car gets checked, or every tenth car, police must demonstrate that they have attempted to eliminate the effects of active and passive discrimination when using “random” strategies. No such accountability currently exists at TSA.</p> <p>As I left the screening check point in Albany, I looked over a few feet and observed an elderly Asian couple talking to “my” supervisor. I unashamedly eavesdropped.</p> <p>I heard the man say that his wife had not been told that the machine would blow air and that she had been quite startled. The woman said she should have been informed and the supervisor agreed. He said he would speak to the screener (but again, who knows whether he actually did).</p> <p>Then the man said “And she should have been told she can refuse.” The bells in my head were deafening.</p> <p>I believe what we have here is the beginning of the end of complacency. It is now apparent to me that in the haste to ensure compliance with procedures that are inconsistent if not inarticulable, TSA has hastened the likelihood of failure. If we do not insist that TSA work to create articulable policies that make sense, procedures that are explicit and consistent and training that supports both, then we are complicit in what will inevitably be an ultimate compromise of TSA.</p> <p>That compromise may come in the form of terrorist attack, or it may come in the form of a collapse of public support. Either or both are inevitable. Either or both are preventable.</p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-48784991902958266612009-12-20T03:06:00.000-08:002009-12-20T03:10:02.296-08:00"I'll have a bowl now - and a bowl to go please." (Pic)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Sy4F7Kisn9I/AAAAAAAADOA/HxVkcuqZRDI/s1600-h/r8Tqw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Sy4F7Kisn9I/AAAAAAAADOA/HxVkcuqZRDI/s400/r8Tqw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417273915773591506" border="0" /></a>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-56949906375507831082009-12-20T01:21:00.000-08:002009-12-20T01:37:44.600-08:00Seven Things You Didn't Know About the 2010 Tesla RoadsterBy <a href="http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/author/10001529_john-voelcker" rel="nofollow" title="show bio page"><img src="http://static.thecarconnection.com/avatars/avatar_10001529_john_voelcker_t.jpg" alt="John Voelcker's avatar" height="20" width="20" /> John Voelcker</a><span class="author nodisplay"><a class="url" href="http://thecarconnection.com/author/10001529_john-voelcker"><span class="fn">John Voelcker</span></a><br /><br /></span> <!-- post-toolbar --> <div class="content"> <div class="image_wrapper" style="width: 320px;"><img name="tccimg_100233392_s" float="none" src="http://images.thecarconnection.com/sml/tesla-roadster-as-used-by-videogame-designers_100233392_s.jpg" title="Tesla Roadster as used by videogame designers" alt="Tesla Roadster as used by videogame designers" height="180" width="320" /><p>Tesla Roadster as used by videogame designers</p><a name="tccwrp_100233392" class="enlarge" href="http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/image/100233392_tesla-roadster-as-used-by-videogame-designers" target="_blank">Enlarge Photo</a></div><p><em>High Gear Media has partnered with <a name="keylnk_v" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_visible">Tesla</a> Motors on a new writing contest where <strong>YOU</strong> can <a href="http://www.highgearmedia.com/iwanttowrite/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">win a tour and road test of the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport</a>. You can submit as many articles as you like and enter multiple times. Enter now!</em></p> <p>Well, maybe you actually knew some of these seven if you're a true <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> enthusiast. But we bet you didn't know every single one ...</p> <p><strong># 7: ORB SEALS</strong></p> <p>What are OrbSeals, you ask? Why, they're special pellets pumped into the side rail of the <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> chassis. When they're heat-treated, they expand in volume 50 times, to absorb noise and vibration.</p> <div class="image_wrapper" style="width: 320px;"><img name="tccimg_100300354_s" src="http://images.thecarconnection.com/sml/tesla_100300354_s.jpg" title="2010 Tesla Roadster Sport" alt="2010 Tesla Roadster Sport" height="213" width="320" /><p>2010 Tesla Roadster Sport</p><a name="tccwrp_100300354" class="enlarge" href="http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/image/100300354_2010-tesla-roadster-sport" target="_blank">Enlarge Photo</a></div> <div class="image_wrapper" style="width: 320px;"><img name="tccimg_100300366_s" src="http://images.thecarconnection.com/sml/tesla_100300366_s.jpg" title="2010 Tesla Roadster Sport" alt="2010 Tesla Roadster Sport" height="213" width="320" /><p>2010 Tesla Roadster Sport</p><a name="tccwrp_100300366" class="enlarge" href="http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/image/100300366_2010-tesla-roadster-sport" target="_blank">Enlarge Photo</a></div> <div class="image_wrapper" style="width: 320px;"><img name="tccimg_100300359_s" src="http://images.thecarconnection.com/sml/tesla_100300359_s.jpg" title="2010 Tesla Roadster Sport" alt="2010 Tesla Roadster Sport" height="479" width="320" /><p>2010 Tesla Roadster Sport</p><a name="tccwrp_100300359" class="enlarge" href="http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/image/100300359_2010-tesla-roadster-sport" target="_blank">Enlarge Photo</a></div> <p><strong># 6: LITHIUM-ION CELLS</strong></p> <p>It was the very first production car to use lithium-ion cells*, which pack roughly twice the energy into a given mass as do the nickel-metal-hydride batteries used in almost every <a name="keylnk_v" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/style/hybrid" class="keylinks_visible">hybrid</a> car for the last dozen years. More energy = more power = more driving fun. Case closed.</p> <p><strong># 5: TAKE 6,831 CELLPHONES AND ...</strong></p> <p>Those lithium-ion cells? The <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> Roadster uses exactly 6,831 of 'em inside a big black battery pack that weighs 900 pounds. Unlike other electric cars that use larger lithium cells specially designed for auto use, <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> bases its battery on "commodity cells" that are made by the millions and power such mundane items as mobile phones and laptop computers.</p> <p>The plus: They're cheap, they're readily available, and they're a very well-known quantity.</p> <p>The minus: It takes a hellacious amount of of wiring, cooling, instrumentation, control software, and safety features to ensure that even if one of them short-circuits, the others don't.</p> <p><strong># 4: SOFTWARE THAT TEACHES ITSELF</strong></p> <p>The algorithm that calculates the state of charge of the battery pack--a very important number, since that's what gives you the "range remaining" number--in each individual <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> keeps learning and gets more accurate over time, by comparing its calculations to the actual behavior of the pack as it discharges.</p> <p><strong># 3: CARBON FIBER</strong></p> <p>A lot of enthusiasts don't realize that the <a name="keylnk_v" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_visible">Tesla's</a> body panels are made of carbon fiber. You know, the lightweight, ultra-strong material used in fighter jets and other very fast moving objects.</p> <p><strong># 2: ON-THE-FLY PERFORMANCE MODE</strong></p> <p>Sure, you can use the <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> touchscreen to select the software mode for "Performance". But there's also a cool trick that only the <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla</a> cognoscenti know: Turn the key one extra click, any time, at rest or on the move, and it's on. Instantly. Which is very handy for those last-minute stop-light drag races with annoying <a name="keylnk_v" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/porsche" class="keylinks_visible">Porsche</a> owners who think electric power is for wussies.</p> <p><strong># 1: NO MORE GOLF CARTS!</strong></p> <p>Even if the company were to vanish in a puff of dust tomorrow, <a name="keylnk_s" href="http://www.thecarconnection.com/make/tesla" class="keylinks_silent">Tesla's</a> place in history would be secure.</p> <p>Why? Because it accomplished something that a century of hapless green-car enthusiasts never quite managed: It got rid of the tiny, geeky, golf-cart image that came to mind every time someone said the words "electric vehicle".</p></div><a href="http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1040177_seven-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-2010-tesla-roadster">Original here</a>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-74332807043306993112009-12-20T01:09:00.000-08:002009-12-20T01:16:59.663-08:00How To D*Face A Skate Pool With A Thousand Skulls<p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 306px;" src="http://inlinethumb51.webshots.com/28338/2093093430105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="view_if_pool_skaters_on_coping" /></p> <p>In counter-cultural urban expression, there’s nothing more sublime than the sight of a skater achieving near weightlessness as they rip into a vertical transition before flying off the coping into thin air, clutching their board, while the concrete space from which they soared awaits their return. Ever since the early ’70s, when a legacy of past masters carved an ineffaceable groove in the concrete landscape with nothing but a plank and four wheels beneath their feet, the drained swimming pool has held a special place inside the ribcage of the street skater.</p> <p>Environmental Graffiti talked to London-based street artist <a href="http://www.dface.co.uk/">D*Face</a> fresh from his return from painting an abandoned swimming pool for skateboarders in California.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 383px; height: 461px;" class="noscale" src="http://inlinethumb57.webshots.com/32888/2306959750105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="aerial_view_of_Ridiculous_skate_pool" /></p> <p>Ramp skating may win more prizes, it may even hit greater heights, but riding the beautifully curved 1950s pools of San Bernadino – aka the ‘Badlands’ – is skating to the core, harking back to the early days when air was first caught and bones first broken. D*Face recently took a trip to the skate community where it all started to paint the perfect pool.</p> <p>Inspired by skate graphics and the street art scene that spawned him, D*Face helped create a skater’s dream spot with his design for a pool dubbed ‘Ridiculous’ by the guys who discovered it, MTV host Peter King and legendary skateboarder Steve Alba. The slightly cryptic name is a marker of its ridiculously perfect shape and curvature, from a skater’s point of view. </p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="noscale" src="http://inlinethumb42.webshots.com/44969/2068996440105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="skater_catching_air_off_lip" /></p> <p>San Bernadino was hit hard by the economic slump and subprime mortgage fiasco, so many of its properties have been left vacant. This gave the skating community the chance to mark their turf on an abundance of abandoned swimming pools – echoing the era when Alba and others took their hardcore style to the pools following the 1970s drought in Southern California.</p> <p>The invitation to paint ‘Ridiculous’ was put out by MTV, but if that makes this sound more commercial than it perhaps should, remember that the guys who found it could, in theory, have been arrested for this stunt. And look no further than D*Face’s skull designs, hundreds of which litter the pool basin, to see that this is a graphic artist doing what comes naturally to him – and an artist who loves skating.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 340px; height: 497px;" class="noscale" src="http://inlinethumb53.webshots.com/628/2968724680105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="D*Face_sitting_on_edge_of_pool" /></p> <p>D*Face was, in the vernacular, stoked to paint the pool and realise a dream of visiting the traditional Mecca of all skate scenes, where his early interest in the relationship between art and skateboarding first came alive – even if he was just a little too young to know it at the time. Nourished by a passion for hip-hop and punk music, cartoon animation and of course street art, his style fitted the bill well. </p> <p>Asked how his art interacts with skating and the skate aesthetic in his painting for ‘Ridiculous’, D*Face told EG:</p> <p><em>“I guess because my work can be seen in the public domain, for free, by any passers-by, and uses elements of repetition to build awareness and subversion and shock to provoke reaction. Skateboarders I believe are a different breed. They pay attention to the environment that surrounds them, they are often chased off spots they’re illegally skating, so there’s a synergy between my work, skateboarders and skateboarding.” </em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="noscale" src="http://inlinethumb31.webshots.com/44126/2869910300105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="Steve_Alba_turning_back_into_the_pool" /></p> <p><em>“The Ridiculous pool was slightly different in as much as I hadn’t seen the actual pool before, so only had a very vague idea of the size. Also it was going to be ridden by skaters who hadn’t seen or weren’t necessary familiar with my work, so I wanted to produce a piece that had instant appeal and impact and would tessellate, enabling me to cover as much or as little of the pool as time allowed and to allow me to work with the natural flow and line of the pool that the skaters ride.” </em></p> <p><em>“Skulls or more importantly death plays a significant part in my work. It’s also something synonymous with skateboarding and skateboard art, so the idea was to cover the pool with over a 1000 life size skulls in various shades, as a tribute to the fallen skaters and past masters.” </em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 399px; height: 247px;" src="http://inlinethumb42.webshots.com/45609/2388978940105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="looking_into_ridiculous" /></p> <p><em>“My work in the public domain is also ephemeral, subject to ever changing elements, both natural and human. Much like the graphics on a skateboard they’re only temporary. As soon as the boards are ridden they start to decay and take on their own life. The same can be said for my work in the street. It’s this natural element of weathering and ageing that is beautiful and brings a new life to the piece. The exact same effect applies to the Ridiculous pool. It wasn’t complete until it had been skated hard. The lines, scrapes and scuffs that run through the painting bring a whole new life and texture to the pool that would be impossible to replicate.”</em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 382px; height: 568px;" class="noscale" src="http://inlinethumb29.webshots.com/43612/2021686080105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="D*Face_lying_down_on_the_job" /></p> <p>And what about the history of his love for skating? D*Face told us:</p> <p><em>“Skateboarding changed my life. I was never the academic kid and didn’t take particularly well to the education system, so I looked to other means of ‘education’ and found what I can only describe as the manuals to my life; Subway Art, Spraycan Art and Thrasher Magazine.” </em></p> <p><em>“I used to get Thrasher from the older kids at school, around ‘82 – ‘89. Those magazines and books were like eye candy to a visually starving child, particularly the adverts in Thrasher for various skate brands’ boards. Those struck me hard. I didn’t know who or how you’d get to create such amazing artworks to grace the bottom of a skateboard, that was essentially then going to get ruined, but they had a profound influence on my work. I later came to find out the skate artwork that I was particularly inspired by was by Jim Philips and Vernon Johnson.”</em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 391px; height: 275px;" src="http://inlinethumb38.webshots.com/33253/2549912420105101600S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="feet_looking_on_the_edge_of_the_pool" /></p> <p><em>“I skated my teenage years away and at a time where skateboarding was seen as an outcasts’ thing to do. We had to be resourceful in finding spots to skate, particularly as England was decades behind the USA in building actual skate parks, so skateboarding taught me to look at the city differently – you know, what had been designed as an architectural feature became a skate-able object. This looking differently at our public domain is a key factor in my work now as an artist. A blank wall with high visibility becomes a prime canvas to display artwork on.”</em></p> <p><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" style="width: 448px; height: 386px;" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/BbMBQvBUstA&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><param name="quality" value="best"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BbMBQvBUstA&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="pluginspage" value="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get <a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" target="_blank">Flash Player</a> from Adobe.</object><br /> <!-- Valid XHTML flash object delivered by XHTML Video Embed. Get it at: http://saltwaterc.net/xhtml-video-embed --> </p> <p>And finally, were there any other incentives for this gig? D*Face: </p> <p><em>“Meeting Steve ‘Salba’ Alba who is a pool skating legend and a skater I’ve admired since a child. He’s a regular at the Ridiculous Pool, in fact the area San Bernardino where the pool is located is nicknamed Salba Land as he’s skated so many pools in that area. Also getting to fulfill a childhood dream of hopping backyards to skate pools with Salba and Peter King and watching amazing skaters session the pool was incentive enough.”</em></p> <p>D*Face finally completed his creation after four, marathon 17-hour days of painting. As the sun set on the fourth day, over 100 skaters led by Steve Alba dropped in on the vertical backyard slopes, grinding the proverbial icing into D*Face’s creative cake: interactive street-art done good. Would other legends from back in the day have enjoyed the show? Only if they’d have been the ones to break in first.</p> <p>With special thanks to <a href="http://www.dface.co.uk/">D*Face</a> for taking the time to answer our questions.</p><p><a href="http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/dface-skate-pool-thousand-skulls/18383">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-71664746010709349612009-11-27T00:04:00.000-08:002009-11-27T00:09:42.072-08:00Google to immortalize Iraqi museumby <strong><a href="http://www.gadling.com/bloggers/tom-johansmeyer/">Tom Johansmeyer</a></strong> <span class="author-feed">(<a href="http://www.gadling.com/bloggers/tom-johansmeyer/rss.xml">RSS feed</a>)<br /><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Sw-I45u3lxI/AAAAAAAADN4/_dWlwo-pgdk/s1600/brianiraq9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 315px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Sw-I45u3lxI/AAAAAAAADN4/_dWlwo-pgdk/s400/brianiraq9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408692188646709010" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/" target="_blank">Google</a> is taking <a href="http://www.gadling.com/tag/Iraq/">Iraq</a>'s national <a href="http://www.gadling.com/tag/museum/">museum</a> global. Company CEO, <a href="http://www.gadling.com/tag/EricSchmidt/">Eric Schmidt</a>, said Tuesday that <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-11-24-google-iraq-museum_N.htm" target="_blank">Google is going to document what's in the museum</a> and will share photographs of the war-torn countries museum holdings with the world. The museum, <a href="http://www.gadling.com/2009/02/24/iraqs-national-museum-reopens-in-baghdad/" target="_blank">which reopened this year</a>, was torn apart after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003.<br />At a ceremony with Iraqi officials, Schmidt said, "The history of the beginning of - literally - civilization is made right here and is preserved here in this museum." He continued, "I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from your civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide." Already, Google has shot around 14,000 photos of the museum and its contents. They'll be up on the web for all to see early next year. As artifacts from the museum's vaults and from others across Iraq become available, they will be brought into the program. Some of these items date back to the Stone Age, as well as the Babylonian, Assyrian and Islamic periods.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.gadling.com/2009/11/25/google-to-immortalize-iraqi-museum/">Original here</a><br /></div><span class="author-feed"><br /><br /><br /></span>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-60808980577945323402009-11-27T00:01:00.000-08:002009-11-27T00:04:32.047-08:00Prediction: In 2015, fuel cell vehicles "will be cheaper than a Rolls-Royce"<span style="font-size:85%;">by <strong><a href="http://green.autoblog.com/bloggers/sebastian-blanco/">Sebastian Blanco</a></strong> <span class="author-feed">(<a href="http://green.autoblog.com/bloggers/sebastian-blanco/rss.xml">RSS feed</a>)</span></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://green.autoblog.com/gallery/2009-honda-fcx-clarity-first-drive-1/"><img style="width: 400px; height: 267px;" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/media/2009/10/fcx-clarity-ride-38.jpg" align="top" vspace="4" /></a><br /></div><div align="center"><em><strong><sub>2009 Honda FCX Clarity - Click above for high-res image gallery</sub></strong></em></div><br />A lot of automakers are targeting 2015 as <em>the</em> year to introduce fuel cell vehicles to the market, <a href="http://green.autoblog.com/2009/09/24/gm-shows-off-fifth-generation-fuel-cell-stack-hopes-to-commerci/">GM</a>, <a href="http://green.autoblog.com/2009/06/23/toyota-reaffirms-2015-release-of-new-hydrogen-car/">Toyota</a> and <a href="http://green.autoblog.com/2009/09/09/honda-still-plans-200-fcx-clarity-leases-showroom-sales-by-2015/">Honda</a> foremost among them. This is fine and all, but there are still some serious questions about the cost of hydrogen fuel cell systems to figure out between now and then. A quote buried deep in a new <a href="http://www.upiasia.com/Economics/2009/11/20/japan_takes_the_lead_in_hydrogen-fueled_cars/5065/">UPI Asia</a> article on Japanese leadership in FCVs gives us one researcher's prediction: "By the time FCVs are commercially available in 2015 they will be cheaper than a Rolls-Royce [$550,000], but it will be difficult to price them down to the level of a Corolla [$22,000]."<br /><br />That's the view of Kenichiro Ota, a professor at Yokohama National University, and it flies in the face of what automakers <a href="http://green.autoblog.com/2009/11/02/editorial-hendersons-fuel-cell-10x-cost-comments-are-out-of-co/">like GM are claiming</a>. Everyone seems to be coming into agreement that the cars are technologically solid – the distance they can go on a kg of H<sub>2</sub> is increasing, for example – but that cost issue isn't going away.<br /><br /><a href="http://green.autoblog.com/2009/11/23/prediction-in-2015-fuel-cell-vehicles-will-be-cheaper-than-a/">Original here</a>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-17403354916111306792009-11-26T23:55:00.000-08:002009-11-27T00:00:47.896-08:00The best books of the ’00s<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Sw-GhpD-xkI/AAAAAAAADNo/iDfyEsaISFs/s1600/best-books-decade_lead_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Sw-GhpD-xkI/AAAAAAAADNo/iDfyEsaISFs/s400/best-books-decade_lead_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408689590011610690" border="0" /></a>by <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/ellen-wernecke,8182/" class="author">Ellen Wernecke</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/vadim-rizov,908/" class="author">Vadim Rizov</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/donna-bowman,15/" class="author">Donna Bowman</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/zack-handlen,4331/" class="author">Zack Handlen</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/genevieve-koski,4300/" class="author">Genevieve Koski</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/michaelangelo-matos,4871/" class="author">Michaelangelo Matos</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/samantha-nelson,16575/" class="author">Samantha Nelson</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/keith-phipps,5/" class="author">Keith Phipps</a>, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/tasha-robinson,6/" class="author">Tasha Robinson</a>, and <a href="http://www.avclub.com/users/todd-vanderwerff,53767/" class="author">Todd VanDerWerff</a><br /><br /><p>Anyone looking for trends in our selection of the best books of the ’00s might have a hard time finding them amid the wizards, 19th-century serial killers, dysfunctional families and such. Narrowing down our decisions was pretty tough, and the process required a number of back-and-forths about what was significant as well as beautifully executed, which book from a given author represented his or her best of the decade, and so on. So consider these alphabetically listed selections 30 of the many, many memorable books published this decade, and as always, let us know what we missed.</p> <p><b>Non-fiction:</b></p> <p><b><i>Devil In The White City </i>(2003), Erik Larson<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/01-Devil-In-The-White-City_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Devil In The White City (2003), Erik Larson" title="Devil In The White City (2003), Erik Larson" /></span>It’s easy to imagine <i>Devil In The White City</i> as a historic true-crime novel, devoted to telling the chilling story of the serial killer H.H. Holmes, with the Chicago World’s Fair simply serving as a backdrop. But what makes the book so remarkable is the level of detail provided by Larson’s research into the setting and the protagonists. Architect Daniel H. Burnham wanted to parlay the fair into a forum that would make Chicago a global city; his quest gets as much page time as the grim details about how Holmes murdered more than 27 young women, and it’s just as compelling. The result is a non-fiction thriller, a tale of creation and destruction filled with bizarre facts and stories that expose the best and worst of human ingenuity.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Fargo Rock City</i> (2001), Chuck Klosterman<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/02-fargorockcity_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Fargo Rock City (2001), Chuck Klosterman " title="Fargo Rock City (2001), Chuck Klosterman " /></span>The trouble with <i>High Fidelity</i> is that it’s a great book about relationships and a miserably anachronistic one about music: Nick Hornby’s steadfast, monolithic devotion to the super soul hits of the ’70s fails to get anything right about the intersection of ’90s music and love. Enter Chuck Klosterman’s <i>Fargo Rock City</i>, the most trenchant book ever written about that ’80s punchline, “hair metal.” Over the course of his engaging, infinitely quotable discursus, Klosterman unpretentiously maps what music can mean, both within its own imposed narrative, and once it reaches the outside world. He veers all over the place: one moment he’s giving readers a detailed analysis of Guns ’N Roses’ <i>Use Your Illusion</i> video trilogy, and the next, he’s talking about why metal turned him into an alcoholic, and why it’s weird that Pavement never talked about the beer they were drinking. His passion is contagious: You don’t have to like (or even be familiar with) the music to be sucked into a world of beautifully argued, casually hilarious passion. In terms of books about what listening to music can mean when you love it to the point of idiocy, few are better.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Freakonomics</i> (2005), Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/03-freakonomics_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Freakonomics (2005), Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner" title="Freakonomics (2005), Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner" /></span>There’s often profit and acclaim in writing books that make abstruse fields of study accessible to the layman: Stephen Hawking’s <i>A Brief History Of Time</i>, for instance. But there’s even more glory in writing books that make those fields <i>fun</i>. The bestseller <i>Freakonomics</i>, co-authored by journalist Steven J. Dubner and “rogue economist” Steven D. Levitt, is an excellent example. By defining economics as “the study of incentives” rather than anything specifically tied to money or commercial interests, Levitt freed himself up for economics-style analysis of everything from dropping crime rates to the outcomes of sumo-wrestling matches. Like any mass-appeal, pop reevaluation of a scientific field, <i>Freakonomics</i> was controversial, with detractors questioning Levitt’s premises, processes, and conclusions. But just opening up the field to a wider consideration and discussion was a victory, and Levitt and Dubner’s lively prose and intriguing conclusions were icing on the cake. </p> <p><b><i><br /> Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America</i> (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/04-nickel-and-dimed_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich" title="Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America (2001), Barbara Ehrenreich" /></span>Barbara Ehrenreich’s exploratory journey through the struggling underbelly of American society, undertaken when she realized how many women were being forced into minimum-wage jobs, and decided to try some herself, is emotionally draining but intellectually illuminating. Now, after the great financial collapse of 2008, the work reads more and more like prophecy, as untold millions struggle to scrape up enough change to just make rent, to say nothing of trying to buy food, or care for their kids. Ehrenreich’s travels take her from waitressing to Wal-Mart, and at all turns, she feels desperate and belittled, a feeling many people rudely tossed atop the unemployment line now share. It’s rare that a social-issues book becomes more prescient as time goes by, but <i>Nickel And Dimed</i> is an urgent exception.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Nixonland</i> (2008), Rick Perlstein<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/05-nixonland_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Nixonland (2008), Rick Perlstein" title="Nixonland (2008), Rick Perlstein" /></span>The long 5 o’clock shadow over American politics gets his due in Perlstein’s exhaustively detailed tome on how the 37th president shaped his country. Richard Nixon’s long-building resentment toward the privileged, plus his conviction that disadvantaged men like himself deserved to be in charge, allowed him to exploit a widening gap between the counterculture and the counter-counterculture, invoking the cues that built a majority to carry him to the White House. Rejecting facile explanations of the aftermath of the 1960s, Perlstein redraws the map of two turbulent decades and picks apart the faux-populism that still inflects political discourse today, drawing those parallels without emphasizing them.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood</i> (2008), Mark Harris<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/06-pictures-at-a-revolution_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood (2008), Mark Harris" title="Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood (2008), Mark Harris" /></span>This account of the making of the five movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar of 1967—<i>Bonnie And Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?</i>, and the winner, <i>In The Heat Of The Night</i>—is one of the great Hollywood books: deeply reported, sharply nuanced, and hugely entertaining even when diving into production minutiae. Harris doesn’t caricature subjects even when the temptation must have been overwhelming, such as drunken, racist <i>Dolittle </i>star Rex Harrison, soft-liberal <i>Dinner </i>producer-director Stanley Kramer, and haughty <i>New York Times </i>film critic Bosley Crowther, whose one-man crusade against <i>Bonnie And Clyde </i>cost him his job. And the great stories are innumerable, as when <i>The Graduate</i> director Mike Nichols breaks down the skepticism of producer Joseph Levine over Nichols’ multiple uses of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds Of Silence” in its first 40 minutes: “I ran it, and he said, ‘I smell money!’” says Nichols, “thereby endearing himself to Paul Simon for all time.”</p> <p><b><i><br /> Them: A Memoir Of Parents</i> (2005)<i>, </i>Francine Du Plessix Gray<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/07-them-a-memoir-of-parents_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Them: A Memoir Of Parents (2005), Francine Du Plessix Gray" title="Them: A Memoir Of Parents (2005), Francine Du Plessix Gray" /></span>In a decade marked by the memoirs of angry children determined to mine some authorial gold from their unhappy early lives, Du Plessix Gray’s chronicle of growing up as an immigrant in mid-century New York relates history rather than agony, building subtly toward judgment while still acknowledging a debt of gratitude. Francine’s mother and stepfather, Russian émigrés who fell in love in Paris while they were both married to other people, were artistic geniuses and unrepentant social climbers, too exhausted or indifferent to be proper parents. With her eye to the keyhole, Du Plessix Gray weaves her early recollections into a riveting biography of two strangers she happened to live with, balancing memories of their often-irrational behavior with a sparkling account of their talents as celebrated by the world.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Tipping Point</i> (2000), Malcolm Gladwell<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/08-thetippingpoint_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Tipping Point (2000), Malcolm Gladwell" title="The Tipping Point (2000), Malcolm Gladwell" /></span>Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller looked to epidemiology to explain how ideas and phenomena blew up, and ended up becoming its own proof for the theory. Who doesn’t know what a tipping point is now? Who could have said that a decade ago, before Gladwell started playing with the idea, then saw others popularize and spread it? While some of Gladwell’s example have been challenged—<i>The Tipping Point</i>’s view of declining crime rates contrasts sharply with the one found in <i>Freakonomics</i>—the concept seems not only solid, but downright prescient, arriving as it did before talk of Internet memes became a part of casual conversation.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Wisdom Of Crowds </i>(2004), James Surowiecki<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/09-wisdom-of-crowds_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Wisdom Of Crowds (2004), James Surowiecki " title="The Wisdom Of Crowds (2004), James Surowiecki " /></span>Crowdsourcing would have remained an empty dot-com buzzword if James Surowiecki, the perceptive <i>New Yorker </i>business writer, hadn’t put real-life example and surprising science behind it. His persuasive book shows how properly constituted groups outperform individual experts, even on tasks where no member of the group seems to contain the relevant expertise. From the very first example—a county-fair guess-the-number-of-gumballs-in-the-jar contest—through the much-maligned terrorism-predicting “markets” set up by U.S. intelligence in the wake of 9/11, Surowiecki cuts through common-sense solutions to show that our reliance on pundits and geniuses is misplaced. Together, we know more than Alan Greenspan knows separately, which reveals our culture of overpaid technocrats to be thoroughly backasswards. Pair this book with Malcolm Gladwell’s <i>Outliers</i>, and you have a blueprint for a truly enlightened democratic capitalism.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The World Without Us </i>(2007), Alan Weisman<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/10-world-without-us_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The World Without Us (2007), Alan Weisman" title="The World Without Us (2007), Alan Weisman" /></span>The environmental-writing market boomed in the ’00s, as more and more people became convinced that climate change would doom us all within the century. But few environmental books have the terrific gimmick or evocative writing of Weisman’s <i>The World Without Us</i>. Weisman starts from an irresistible premise—how long would it take the planet to erase all traces of human society if we all disappeared tomorrow?—but bolsters it with a tremendous feel for place, sticking readers in the middle of the quiet solitude of the last old-growth forest in Europe, or the controlled chaos of an oil refinery, with equal ease. Weisman managed the rare feat of getting readers to consider their impermanence while also thinking about how it might be a good thing.</p> <p><b><br /> Fiction:</b></p> <p><b><i>The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay </i>(2000), Michael Chabon<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Amazing-adventures-of-kavalier_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay (2000), Michael Chabon" title="The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay (2000), Michael Chabon" /></span>By the end of the decade, it had almost become a cliché for authors to wed pulp influences to the sorts of epic family sagas that defined American fiction. But when Michael Chabon tried it with <i>Kavalier & Clay</i>, it felt fresh and new. Though he wasn’t the first to dabble in blending these influences, his was the breakthrough novel that made the technique safe for others to try. And even now, after all the imitators, his book still feels alive in a way that few pulp novels or epic family sagas do, as it follows two boys in Great Depression New York City who invent a comic-book superhero. While the book’s occasional trips off into pulp adventure can seem a little goofy, its wistful, romantic heart and longing for Golden Age archetypes to chart a course for truth and justice remain potent.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Atonement</i> (2001), Ian McEwan<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Atonement_novel_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Atonement (2001), Ian McEwan" title="Atonement (2001), Ian McEwan" /></span>On paper, it sounds like the most boring novel ever: yet another examination of repressed Britons on the eve of World War II. Instead, Ian McEwan turned the story of a forbidden love affair and a young girl on the edge of comprehending adult interaction, but not quite there yet, into a moving examination of guilt, forgiveness, and the power of fiction. The novel’s opening passages—where said young girl makes a terrible mistake and accuses her sister’s lover of a crime he didn’t commit—are written with keen psychological insight and leisurely pacing that nonetheless remains tense. But in the book’s following sections, McEwan’s games with narrative structure and unreliable narrators become something else altogether, an increasingly sad look at how little power stories have over real life.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Bel Canto</i> (2001), Ann Patchett<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Bel_canto_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Bel Canto (2001), Ann Patchett" title="Bel Canto (2001), Ann Patchett" /></span>In December 1996, a group of Peruvian revolutionaries began a hostage crisis in the official residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima that ended violently more than four months later. Ann Patchett was paying attention, and her novel finds a bittersweet lyricism in a fictionalized take on the same event. Stuck together, hostages and hostage-takers find the factors dividing them—politics, language, and in one of the central relationships, the distance between a famous opera singer and a devoted fan—matter less than the needs that unite them. The grace they find can’t last, however, and like the music that helped inspire the novel, Patchett earns her novel’s heartache by suggesting the possibility of a sweeter, more beautiful world.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Blind Assassin </i>(2000), Margaret Atwood<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/the_blind_assassin_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Blind Assassin (2000), Margaret Atwood" title="The Blind Assassin (2000), Margaret Atwood" /></span>Canadian author Margaret Atwood has shown a career-long interest in gender relations and generational changes, particularly how the past gives way to a present that only dimly and incorrectly remembers what came before. That obsession gets worked out in a number of absorbing ways in one of her most ambitious, artful novels to date: <i>The Blind Assassin</i> follows several interlocked threads, as Atwood plays games with identities, connections, parallels, and altered histories. In one thread, she explores the childhood of two sisters, Iris and Laura; in another, Iris is a cantankerous, elderly widow, and Laura is an apparent suicide whose posthumously published novel became an enduring classic. Atwood only gradually reveals what happened between these bookends, and she keeps readers guessing, as it becomes clear that what the world remembers about Laura has very little bearing on what actually happened. Like many Atwood novels, <i>Assassin</i> is a puzzle box, but luminous writing, well-drawn characters, and the keenly melancholy theme of generational amnesia have more to do with the novel’s success than the series of reveals Atwood puts her readers through.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao </i>(2007), Junot Díaz<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007), Junot Díaz" title="Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (2007), Junot Díaz" /></span>It’s lonely on the corner between Hispanic slang and geek culture, but this 2008 Pulitzer-winner’s “lovesick nerd” Oscar de Leon can only dream about hanging out somewhere else. The frenetic multi-generational saga of family curses and the legacy of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is a hero’s tale and a fantasy homage rising out of a thicket of bilingual wordplay and a glorious stew of cultural references. Oscar’s determination to overcome his fate, set into motion when his grandfather runs afoul of Trujillo’s wishes, captivates even the jaded sometime narrator Yunior, faithful to his memory even though he was unable to be to his sister.</p><p><b><i>Carter Beats The Devil</i> (2001), Glen David Gold<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/CarterBeatsTheDevilHB1stEd_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Carter Beats The Devil (2001), Glen David Gold" title="Carter Beats The Devil (2001), Glen David Gold" /></span>Popcorn fiction and historical fiction were both sneered at more often than not in the ’00s, as poorly written tales of the secret history of everything overwhelmed the bestseller charts. Enter Gold’s debut novel, a romp through early 20th-century San Francisco and the world of vaudevillian magic that makes few claims to historical veracity, and rockets along like the best page-turners. But Gold’s novel is about more than how a sad magician finds love and constructs the ultimate illusion while avoiding assassins and those who suspect him of killing the president. It’s also about moving on past crippling loss, overcoming depression, and learning how to feel again. Gold’s pacing makes <i>Carter </i>easy to read, but his sense of emotion makes it take up space in the heart. </p><p><b><i><br /> The Corrections</i> (2002), Jonathan Franzen<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/The-corrections_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Corrections (2002), Jonathan Franzen" title="The Corrections (2002), Jonathan Franzen" /></span>The Tolstoy-esque family novel got its 21st-century upgrade early, and has withstood all comers since. The Lamberts’ disintegration under the pressures of work, illness, and love unfolds with a cynical humor that strips the family’s pretensions away until only their most craven selves survive as they struggle to break free. As these unsympathetic characters go through the wringer, Jonathan Franzen outlines the symptoms of modern malaise, whose only cure is being able to see through the layers of protective self-delusion. The modern dysfunctional family wriggles under Franzen’s microscope, but its features are all too familiar. Oprah, take note: His next book, <i>Freedom</i>, is due to arrive next fall, just in time to inform the next decade.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time</i> (2003), Mark Haddon<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Curious_Incident_of_the_Dog_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time (2003), Mark Haddon" title="The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time (2003), Mark Haddon" /></span>Written from the perspective of an autistic boy obsessed with detective work, Mark Haddon’s astounding tightrope act portrays his protagonist’s richly odd inner life and places it in the context of a suspenseful journey outside his comfort zone of numbers, routines, and maps. Plunged into an unfamiliar world of train travel and self-reliance, Christopher tries to find out who killed his neighbor’s dog, emulating his hero Sherlock Holmes, and trying not to be fooled by fake phantasms like Holmes’ creator. Not merely the finest fictional depiction of the autistic brain yet produced, <i>Curious Incident</i> is also among the best page-turning thrillers of the decade.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Empire Falls</i> (2001), Richard Russo<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/empire-falls_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Empire Falls (2001), Richard Russo" title="Empire Falls (2001), Richard Russo" /></span>Much of America made it out of the 20th century badly equipped to deal with the 21st. Richard Russo’s <i>Empire Falls</i> is set in just such a place, a rust-belt Maine town that’s kept going even though the industry that led to its creation can no longer sustain it. Russo brought his by-then-familiar command of memorable characters and comic moments to a novel more ambitious than any he’d attempted before. The book captures a time and place unnerved by a future that offers no reassuring promises of a better tomorrow beyond the comfort its inhabitants can give each other.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Fortress Of Solitude</i> (2003), Jonathan Lethem<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Fortress-of-solitude_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Fortress Of Solitude (2003), Jonathan Lethem" title="Fortress Of Solitude (2003), Jonathan Lethem" /></span>Maybe Jonathan Lethem didn’t set out to create a magnum opus with <i>Fortress Of Solitude</i>, but that’s what he ended up with. The novel ties together a lifetime of obsessions—with music, art, fathers and sons, comics, and more—and grounds them in the 1970s Brooklyn of Lethem’s childhood. It’s a place of sadness, peril, and racial unease, but it’s also overflowing with the imaginative possibilities of childhood, at least until crises and looming adulthood start to shut them down. It’s a novel immersed in the past, but deeply distrustful of nostalgia and fully aware that the pain of youth has a habit of lingering, and even the presence of magic does little to secure happiness.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Gilead</i> (2004), Marilynne Robinson<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Gileadcover_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Gilead (2004), Marilynne Robinson" title="Gilead (2004), Marilynne Robinson" /></span>Twenty-three years after the luminous <i>Housekeeping</i>, Robinson proved herself one of the greatest American writers of her generation, winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for literature for her equally heartbreaking <i>Gilead</i>. Few could have predicted that the same pen that channeled orphans Ruth and Lucille coming of age in rural Idaho could so masterfully evoke an aging Congregationalist minister, looking back over his life with wonder for the grace given him but regret for his namesake, the son of a good friend who never took the path his elders would have chosen for him. Replete with references to Calvin, Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, and other thinkers with whom Reverend Ames takes respectful issue, Robinson’s novel serves as a gentle theological treatise, but it never loses the glow of human relationships.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince</i> (2005), J.K. Rowling<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Harry_Potter_and_the_Half_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (2005), J.K. Rowling" title="Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (2005), J.K. Rowling" /></span>Arguments for and against its place in the Great Western Canon aside, the <i>Harry Potter</i> series was undeniably the biggest literary phenomenon of the ’00s. Though the first installments from the ’90s were inarguably children’s books, beginning with 2000’s <i>Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire,</i> the series began to morph into something decidedly more complex, reaching its apex in 2005 with <i>Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. </i>The penultimate entry in the seven-part series is most notable for the shocking death at its climax, probably the series’ most unexpected, harrowing moment. But even more remarkable is the fact that it spends 650-plus pages basically filling in backstory and moving pieces into place for the series’ conclusion without sacrificing momentum or character development. (Though it perhaps attempts to cover <i>too</i> much ground at times, giving some elements short shrift.) In spite of whatever other limitations she has as a writer, J.K. Rowling is at her best in <i>Half-Blood Prince</i>, capably unspooling her epic yarn in the straightforward yet enthralling manner that accounts for the series’ unprecedented success. </p> <p><b><i><br /> Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell </i>(2004), Susanna Clarke<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Jonathan_strange_and_mr_norrell_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), Susanna Clarke " title="Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), Susanna Clarke " /></span>It's the kind of literary mash-up that’s simultaneously strikingly original and comfortingly familiar: Take a sort of idealized version of the Victorian-era novel, with all its drawing-room manners and morally repressed emotions, and insert some magic. And not the symbolic kind, either—actual magic, with rules, mysteries, and all kinds of difficult-to-fathom but impossible-to-ignore dangers. Susanna Clarke’s first novel is the warmly readable study of a frequently chilly world, a story to get lost in about the seduction of being lost, and an exhaustively researched tome on a subject whose research is entirely fictional. Ten years in the writing, <i>Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell </i>still feels as light as a feather, and its tale of the friendship and rivalry of the two greatest magicians of their age has the ageless quality of all truly great fantastical fiction, reassuring without being entirely trustworthy, and utterly intoxicating.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Middlesex</i> (2002), Jeffrey Eugenides<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/middlesex_sm_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Middlesex (2002), Jeffrey Eugenides" title="Middlesex (2002), Jeffrey Eugenides" /></span>Jeffrey Eugenides’ long-in-the-making follow-up to <i>The Virgin Suicides</i> adds layer after layer around a kicky, potentially sensationalistic premise. Cal is born Calliope to a family of Greek descent, and spends years living as a girl, unaware of the intersexed condition that makes him genetically male. Jeffrey Eugenides follows the path of the gene that leads to that surprising revelation, tracing it back to Old World conflicts between Greece and Turkey while considering its place in the novel’s sharply realized 20th-century New World of 1970s Michigan. The past doesn’t die, it just mutates, and maybe, hopefully improves, on its way from one generation to the next.</p> <p><b><i><br /> Never Let Me Go</i> (2005), Kazuo Ishiguro<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Never_Let_Me_Go_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="Never Let Me Go (2005), Kazuo Ishiguro" title="Never Let Me Go (2005), Kazuo Ishiguro" /></span>Mainstream authors of literary fiction self-consciously slumming it in genres of ill repute ended up being one of the surprising movements of the ’00s. While most of these novels and stories were too aware of their genre roots, Kazuo Ishiguro’s tale of two girls who slowly realize the true nature of their existence keeps what’s best about his writing—his sense of the world as an ephemeral place that could pop out of being at any moment—and weds it to the best dystopic science fiction’s sense of raw humanity breaking through in a sterile world. Like the similar literary science-fiction experiment <i>The Road</i>, <i>Never Let Me Go</i> ends up becoming a testament to the many ways love finds to stay alive.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Road</i> (2006)<i>,</i> Cormac McCarthy<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/The-road_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy" title="The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy" /></span>A father and son travel through a post-apocalyptic America, half-starved, choking on a never-ending stream of ash sifting down from the sky, and with no hope for an end to their suffering beyond dissolution and death. Much has been made of the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel, but given its subject matter, the bleakness isn’t all that surprising. What <i>is</i> surprising is the way McCarthy manages to find a modicum of purpose in all that despair, creating a world in which all normal reasons for living—accomplishment, social structure, the possibilities of the future—have been ruthlessly stripped away, then showing how existence still struggles onward, in spite of all barriers against it. It’d be a stretch to call <i>The Road</i> uplifting, and the book has more than its share of horrors, but what makes it such a powerful, wrenching experience isn’t the aftermath of society’s collapse, but the suggestion that, even removed from sentimentality, the basic forward momentum of a dependent and his protector remains. Things don’t have to be good to continue, but they <i>will</i> continue, and sometimes that’s all that’s left.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle</i> (2008), David Wroblewski<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Edgar_sawtelle-cvr_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle (2008), David Wroblewski" title="The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle (2008), David Wroblewski" /></span>Wroblewski’s first novel retells the story of <i>Hamlet</i> on a farm in northern Wisconsin, and with some of the characters replaced by dogs bred by the Sawtelle family for extraordinary intelligence. And not a word of this lengthy, immersive journey into the struggle of young Edgar to break through the dangerous relationship between his uncle and his mother feels like a gimmick. Full of detail about the training methods that make the Sawtelle dogs special, and anchored by a fugitive quest for justice with only adolescent and canine wits to sustain them, Edgar’s story has the mesmerizing quality of great literature. It’s a world that feels found by accident, unknown to outsiders, and so beautifully tragic that readers will beg the pages to turn more slowly.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Terror </i>(2007)<i>, </i>Dan Simmons<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/Terror_simmons_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Terror (2007), Dan Simmons" title="The Terror (2007), Dan Simmons" /></span>In 1845, Captain John Franklin led two ships on a hunt through the Arctic for the fabled Northwest Passage. Both ships became icebound in the Victoria Strait, and all 128 men were lost. It’s hard to imagine a more horrible way to die, starving slowly as the temperatures plunge and scurvy drives shipmates to contemplate murder and cannibalism, but Dan Simmons decided to make things worse in his 2007 novel, throwing a monster out on the ice and letting the blood flow freely. Telling the story through the perspectives of various real-life crew members, Simmons creates a tense, unrelenting narrative about survival pushed to its extremity, where an inexplicable dark god lurking at the edges isn’t nearly as upsetting as the dwindling food supplies and an actively hostile environment. As grippingly detailed as a true-life adventure narrative, with all the symbolism and tragedy that fiction can provide, <i>The Terror</i> is a rewarding, haunting read. Just make sure to check the thermostat before opening the cover, whatever the season.</p> <p><b><i><br /> The Time Traveler’s Wife</i> (2003), Audrey Niffenegger<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/TimeTravellersWife_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), Audrey Niffenegger" title="The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), Audrey Niffenegger" /></span>The decade was kind to debut novels of powerful imagination, and none were better poised to seize the American reading public than Audrey Niffenegger’s artfully constructed romance. Only in novelistic form could the emotions of her time-crossed lovers be fully appreciated. As readers proceed linearly through the book, Claire travels from birth to death in the normal way, while her husband Henry is yanked unpredictably through time. Told from their alternating perspectives, the story builds on the yearning and regret that comes from knowing the end before the beginning, and from being given glimpses of the future that others cannot know until it arrives. <i>The Time Traveler’s Wife </i>earns the tears it so copiously extracts, and creates an epic love affair perfect for the turn of the millennium.</p> <p><b><i><br /> White Teeth</i> (2000), Zadie Smith<br /></b><span class="decider_image image align_right"><img src="http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/35774/WhiteTeeth_jpg_150x1000_q85.jpg" alt="White Teeth (2000), Zadie Smith" title="White Teeth (2000), Zadie Smith" /></span>From one of the most original talents this decade produced, <i>White Teeth</i> follows an unconventional friendship that becomes a portal into a world where every character’s story sounds truer than the last. The chance meeting of Archibald Jones and Samed Iqbal, fellow World War II veterans who reunite in 1970s London, are just the first brushstrokes in a richly detailed portrait of a neighborhood changing faster than its inhabitants can understand as they struggle to find meaning in a world radically altered from their forefathers’. In spite of its Dickensian spread, Zadie Smith’s debut novel never feels overstuffed or self-consciously stylish. Instead, its assured tone guides readers through genetic controversy, radical Muslim groups, and past-as-prologue, toward a profound commentary on assimilation and culture in the lives of her diverse subjects.</p><p><a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-books-of-the-00s,35774/">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-40095615557201066382009-11-26T23:51:00.000-08:002009-11-26T23:54:46.834-08:00Year after fatal Wal-Mart stampede, Black Friday gets makeover<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-photo" style="display: inline;"><span class="photo-breakout photo-center large"><img style="width: 398px; height: 264px;" src="http://media.nola.com/business_impact/photo/walmartjpg-90e51860f6d19772_large.jpg" alt="walmart.jpg" /><span class="byline"><br />Associated Press archive</span><span class="caption">In November 2008, Nassau County police examine the front of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., where a temporary store worker died after a throng of shoppers broke down the doors on Black Friday. </span></span></span></div><p><br />Victoria Rogers had originally planned to make an early stop the day after Thanksgiving last year at the Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream on Long Island. Her last-minute decision against it might have saved her life.</p> <p>"We saw the mob, and we said no," she said. "Wal-Mart's not the store."</p> <p>What she saw that day was no ordinary crowd of shoppers, but a throng police say jammed through the doors upon the store's opening in a mad dash for holiday savings, trampling a guard to death.</p> <p>"No price can be worth someone's life," said Rogers, of the New York City borough of Queens, on a recent visit to the same store.</p> <p>One year later, <a href="http://walmartstores.com/">Wal-Mart Stores Inc</a>. is embroiled in lawsuits, appealing citations and instituting companywide changes, including staying open 24 hours on Thanksgiving, and has inspired voluntary federal guidelines outlining what other retailers should do to avoid the same result.</p> <p>"What happened is tragic, and we're still saddened by it," said Daphne Moore, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores, based in Bentonville, Ark. "We are committed to looking for ways to make stores even safer for our customers and associates."</p> <p>Joe LaRocca, senior asset protection adviser for the <a href="http://www.nrf.com/">National Retail Federation,</a> said the trade group worked with retailers to come up with its own guidelines for managing crowds during special events, including the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday because it is traditionally considered the day stores break into profitability for the full year.</p> <p>"Following the incident last year, retailers took another look at their crowd control and major event guidelines," he said. "Many retailers already had these guidelines; some enhanced what they had."</p> <p>Best Buy ran rehearsals for Black Friday weekend, practicing lining customers up, placing products in the store, checking out overall flow and how the event may flow within the store.</p> <p>Other companies have worked closely with mall operators on where to form lines and how they might better communicate with customers. They have been examining staffing plans and hiring extra security.</p> <p>Wal-Mart signed off in May on an agreement with local prosecutors that required it to overhaul security for Black Friday sales in its 92 New York locations, but it recently said it is employing its new strategy nationwide.</p> <p>The settlement also required Wal-Mart to consult with experts to develop safety plans for each store. Crowd-management staff will be deployed, and maps will show customers where the hot sale items are.</p> <p>Stores will also place the hottest items -- marked-down TVs, toys and laptop computers, for example -- far apart to prevent big crowds from gathering.</p> <p>Wal-Mart will also erect barriers to manage traffic flow and distribute wristbands to customers on items with limited inventory. Security monitors will help ensure procedures are being followed, officials said -- not just guards, like Jdimytai Damour.</p> <p>At 6-5, 270 pounds, Damour was built like NFL linebacker, but he was no match for an estimated 2,000 people who broke down the doors when the Valley Stream Walmart opened at 5 a.m. on Black Friday last year.</p> <p>Damour, who was 34 and described by friends as a "gentle giant," had been hired only days before. He was trapped inside the vestibule and died of asphyxiation. Several other people, including a pregnant woman, were injured.</p> <p>A criminal investigation forced Wal-Mart Stores to revamp security planning for the holiday season and led federal regulators to issue safety recommendations for all merchants conducting special events like Black Friday sales.</p> <p>Damour's family is suing the retailer and Nassau County officials, claiming police could have controlled the crowd better, although police contend that was Wal-Mart's responsibility.</p> <p>Edward Gersowitz, an attorney for the Damour family, says "positive discussions" continue with Wal-Mart about a possible settlement.</p> <p>The federal <a href="http://www.osha.gov/">Occupational Safety and Health Administration</a> cited Wal-Mart for inadequate crowd management, but the retailer is appealing.</p> <p>The National Retail Federation, the industry's largest group, said Damour's death is believed to be the only instance of a store worker dying in the post-Thanksgiving rush.</p> <p>Police said customers stepped over or on Damour's body as they forced their way through sliding glass doors.</p> <p>"I think the people themselves were at fault because they were like animals, wild people," Joe Staskowski, of Valley Stream, said on a recent trip to the store. "And for a couple of dollars for people to get hurt or killed? It's a tragedy."</p> <p>Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice contended that had Wal-Mart been found guilty of a crime, the maximum penalty it could have faced was a $10,000 fine. Instead, the store agreed to a $400,000 compensation fund for victims and donated $1.5 million to county social services programs and nonprofit groups.</p> <p>So far, only three people have qualified for payments from the victims' fund, a Rice spokesman said. They had to prove they were at the store that morning and provide documentation of any physical injury or damage to possessions.</p> <p>Among the survivors last year was Leana Lockley. The 29-year-old Queens woman was five months pregnant when she was caught up in the stampede and found herself being trampled. Her attorney says she credits Damour with helping save not only her life, but also that of her daughter, Alicia Skye Lockley, who was born in April.</p> <p>She, too, has sued Wal-Mart but is negotiating a possible settlement, said attorney David Sloan.</p> <p>Lockley declined to be interviewed but issued a statement: "I believe that there are many lessons to be learned from this tragic incident and I do hope and pray that this year will bring a happy, festive and orderly time for all."</p><p><a href="http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/year_after_walmart_stampede_bl.html">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-13913901024386880322009-10-04T07:01:00.001-07:002009-10-04T08:06:41.979-07:0021 Secrets to Save on TravelBy <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/about/staff/">Stacy Rapacon</a>, Reporter, <i>Kiplinger's Personal Finance<br /><br /></i><p>The travel industry continues to smart from the recession, so deals abound. You just need to know where to look. Search no further than our 21 tips to save on lodging, airfare, vacation packages and cruises: </p><p><b>Book a bargain stay</b> </p> <p>1) Check <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/www.TripAdvisor.com" target="_blank">TripAdvisor.com </a> for 25 million property reviews from real travelers and professional critics. For details on cozy and often less-costly venues, go to BedandBreakfast.com.</p> <p>2) Visit <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/www.Hotels.com" target="_blank">Hotels.com</a> every Thursday for its new last-minute deals. While you’re there, watch for other rate sales and package specials.</p> <p>3) Book directly through the hotel's Web site. Many places offer special online-booking and prepaid deals. You can also opt in to hotels’ free rewards programs and receive e-mails about special promotions and discounts.</p> <p>4) Book blindly for rock-bottom rates. The auction-style booking pushed by William Shatner’s “Priceline Negotiator” in the popular commercials really can cut up to 50% off regular hotel rates (and 40% off airfare and car-rental rates). And <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/www.Hotwire.com" target="_blank">Hotwire.com’s </a> “Hot Rates” can knock up to 60% off retail room prices. With either, you specify your length of stay, preferred neighborhood and a guaranteed minimum star class. But you won’t know the exact hotel or location until after you pay – an especially big risk when visiting unfamiliar areas, particularly overseas. (Blind booking is a safer bet for car rentals; a sedan is a sedan is a sedan. But it’s a big gamble for flights because you won’t know exact flight times or airlines.)</p> <p>5) Call your hotel to confirm an online reservation, especially if you made one at the last minute, and ask about any additional fees you should watch out for. Most hotels are especially willing to waive fees for frequent visitors or rewards-program members. Also, request a copy of your bill the night before you check out so you have time to dispute any extra charges. </p> <p>6) Consider specialty lodging, such as condos, villas and vacation home rentals, especially when traveling with a big group. These options often offer more space and amenities for prices similar to or less than hotel rates. HomeAway.com offers the biggest selection of rentals, with more than 176,000 listings worldwide. </p> <p><b>Fly for less</b></p> <p>7) Use <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/www.Kayak.com" target="_blank">Kayak.com</a> to quickly scan hundreds of travel Web sites for the best airfares. And don't forget to check Southwest.com; Kayak does not include the discount airline’s fares.</p> <p>8) Sign up with airlines’ free loyalty programs to get the best bargains delivered straight to your in-box. Or visit <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/www.Airfarewatchdog.com" target="_blank">Airfarewatchdog.com</a>, where the site’s employees join airlines’ rewards programs to snag those promotional codes and special offers to share with you. </p> <p>9) Plan your purchase at <a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/www.Bing.com/travel" target="_blank">Bing.com/travel</a>, formerly Farecast.com. The site’s “price predictor” forecasts whether fares on major domestic routes will go up or down. Enter your itinerary and it will return a list of airfares with a recommendation to either buy now or wait for a fare drop.</p> <p>10) Try flying at less-traveled times; flights on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons typically see the least demand and therefore offer the best rates. </p> <p>11) Choose your destination based on the cheapest flight. For example, if you’re interested in a Caribbean vacation but don’t have a specific location in mind, you can use Kayak’s Buzz tool to search for flights to anywhere in the Caribbean and then pick the place with the lowest fare. </p> <p>12) Dodge flying fees. To avoid charges levied for buying tickets in person or by phone, book directly with the airline's Web site or with one of the big three online travel agencies – Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz- which recently dropped their flight-booking fees. . And pack lightly to dodge baggage costs. At FlyingFees.com, you can compare the baggage fees carried by 30 major airlines, and other types of fees charged by 20 major airlines.</p> <p><b>Save a bundle on vacation packages</b></p> <p>13) Online travel agencies Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz are well known for their bundled bargains. But don’t forget to check packages offered by airlines such as United Vacations and smaller operators such as Apple Vacations for some of the sweetest deals.</p> <p>14) Check the cost of add-ons, such as rental cars, show tickets, tours and museum passes, when booking packages with online travel agencies. Sometimes the agencies offer those extras at a discount.</p> <p>15) Get one price on your trips with all-inclusive deals from resorts such as Club Med and Sandals. </p> <p>16) Add travel insurance to your bundle. With Expedia's Package Protection Plan, for example, you're ensured a refund if you need to cancel or change plans. You'll also be reimbursed for trip delays, baggage losses and medical expenses. The package costs $40 to $89, depending on your destination. If you're not offered this protection when you book, or if you need more insurance than what you are offered, go to TravelGuard.com.</p> <p><b>Cruise to savings</b></p> <p>17) The best deals are close to the departure date -- just don't expect the really cheap tickets to get you a stateroom with a view.</p> <p>18) Understand the different elements of a cruise, including theme, cabin types and ports of call. CruiseMates.com provides useful reviews and advice columns to get you started. But if you're a first-timer feeling overwhelmed, consider using a travel agent.</p> <p>19) Visit CruiseCompete.com, where you submit your cruise preferences and more than 300 travel agents compete for your business.</p> <p>20) Book your flight separately. Using Kayak or Bing.com/travel, you can often find fares that are lower than what a cruise line will package in for you. Make sure you allow enough time to reach the departure port; the ship won’t wait for you if your flight is delayed. </p> <p>21) Sail into big savings with a repositioning cruise. Ships need to take these one-way voyages in order to relocate for the season. For example, ships that cruise near Alaska in the summer head south once fall arrives, and cruise lines invite passengers aboard for the ride at deeply discounted rates.<br /></p><p><a href="http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2009/09/21-travel-secrets.html">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-83053177788544395112009-10-04T06:59:00.000-07:002009-10-04T07:01:17.562-07:00Save Money on Organic Food: Join a Natural Foods Co-op<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><dl id="titles" class="clear clearfix"><dd class="headers"><br /></dd><dd class="entitlement"><div id="ad-entitlement"><div id="page-ad-container-Top3"> <!-- sx call src = omnikool/sx/planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/save-money-food-coop.html/141801063@x24,Top3,TopLeft,x25,x12!Top3?rsi=J08778_10013&rsi=J08778_10030&None --> <a href="http://omnikool.discovery.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/save-money-food-coop.html/1630245021/Top3/default/empty.gif/58345152636b7178794577414341526a?x" target="_top"><img src="http://imagec12.247realmedia.com/RealMedia/ads/Creatives/default/empty.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="1" /></a> </div></div></dd></dl> <dl id="author" class="clear clearfix"><dd class="avatar"><p><a href="http://planetgreen.discovery.com/accounts/persona.html?member=118616472"><img src="http://planetgreen.discovery.com/accounts/avatars/derekmarkham.jpg" alt="Derek Markham" /></a></p></dd><dd class="information"><p>By <a href="http://planetgreen.discovery.com/accounts/persona.html?member=118616472">Derek Markham</a></p></dd></dl><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Ssiqb6vN58I/AAAAAAAADNg/bHNrowq0a7g/s1600-h/natural-foods.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 156px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Ssiqb6vN58I/AAAAAAAADNg/bHNrowq0a7g/s400/natural-foods.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388744350749288386" border="0" /></a><p><strong>One common reason you might shy away from purchasing only organically grown food is the relatively higher price when compared to conventionally grown and sourced foods. </strong></p> <p>If your budget doesn't seem to cover it, then even if you know the importance of eating organic foods for your own health (and the health of the soil and water), you'll choose the foods you feel like you can afford.</p> <p><strong><br />Luckily for us, the tradition of natural food cooperatives still survives</strong>. Many food cooperatives (co-ops) were formed out of necessity - natural foods and health food items were not readily available at the corner grocery store - but have survived because of the community-powered principles behind them.</p> <p><strong>The definition of a co-op</strong>, from the International Cooperative Alliance:</p> <p>"A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise. Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others."</p> <p><strong>Co-ops are guided by the cooperative principles:</strong><br /></p><ol><li>Voluntary and Open Membership</li><li>Democratic Member Control</li><li>Member Economic Participation</li><li>Autonomy and Independence</li><li>Education, Training and Information</li><li>Cooperation among Cooperatives</li><li>Concern for Community</li></ol> <p><br /><strong>In essence, <a href="http://ncba.coop/abcoop.cfm">co-ops</a> serve their member's needs</strong>. They aren't out to make huge profits for absentee stockholders, they're out to provide maximum value for their shareholders (the members). And one of the things they can do is <a href="http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/tighten-your-belt-in-the-kitchen.html">save you money on food</a> - sometimes on regular prices, but most often in the form of bulk purchasing.</p> <p><strong>Many co-ops have discounted pricing</strong> for bulk orders, for example, on bags of grains, beans, oats, even produce, personal care, and prepared foods. This means that by purchasing the foods you eat regularly in large quantities, you'll not only be assured of having your staples on hand, you'll also pay less per serving. You do have to come up with the cash up front, plus a place to store the food, but it's definitely worth it.<br /><strong><br />Other advantages of buying in bulk:</strong><br /></p><ul><li>You may have access to other food choices that aren't carried on the shelf at the store.</li><li>It uses much less packaging than buying packaged goods.</li><li>The foods you usually eat will be on hand, making it less likely to eat junk food or go out to eat.</li><li>The less times you have to enter the grocery store, the better, as you're likely to purchase extras each time you go.</li><li>Whole natural foods purchased in bulk generally means fresher food.</li><li>By ordering ahead and keeping staples on hand, you will be better able to plan your food budget and stick with it.</li></ul><a href="http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/save-money-food-coop.html">Original here</a><br /><dl id="author" class="clear clearfix"><dt><br /></dt></dl>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-50801559909669785892009-10-04T06:57:00.000-07:002009-10-04T06:59:03.831-07:00What Went Wrong With Saturn?: Analysis<span id="intelliTXT">By John Pearley Huffman<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Ssip7Guz5wI/AAAAAAAADNY/YUIsP0Vnl8M/s1600-h/saturn-sinking-470b-0909.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Ssip7Guz5wI/AAAAAAAADNY/YUIsP0Vnl8M/s400/saturn-sinking-470b-0909.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388743787033126658" border="0" /></a><span name="intelliTxt" id="intelliTXT"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><strong>With the announcement</strong></span> that General Motors and the Penske Automotive Group have broken off negotiations to transfer ownership of the <a itxtdid="6650240" target="_blank" href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4332298.html#" style="border-bottom: 1px solid blue ! important; font-weight: normal ! important; font-size: 100% ! important; text-decoration: none ! important; padding-bottom: 0px ! important; color: blue ! important; background-color: transparent ! important; background-image: none; padding-top: 0pt; padding-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt;" classname="iAs" class="iAs"><nobr style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: blue;" id="itxt_nobr_0_0">Saturn<img style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt; display: inline ! important; height: 10px; width: 10px; position: relative; top: 1px; left: 1px; float: none;" name="itxt-icon-0" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/mag-glass_10x10.gif" /></nobr></a> brand between them, the Saturn saga sadly ends. Over the next few months, GM will implement the "wind-down" agreements it has with Saturn dealers and start closing up the division. As you read this, the last bundles of Saturn sales brochures are likely being heaved into dumpsters around the country.<br /><br />It's an almost tragic end to one of GM's boldest experiments. Devised back in the early '80s, the Saturn concept was for GM to set up an entirely new company that would be owned by GM but operate outside its entrenched culture. It would build small cars to compete with Toyota and Honda that many analysts believed couldn't be manufactured profitably in North America. Saturn was a startlingly creative burst from then GM Chairman Roger Smith—not a man known for indulging much creativity.<br /><br />After years of development, Saturn was created. Dealers were recruited. A new assembly plant was built in Spring Hill, Tennessee and a new, innovative labor contract was negotiated with the United Auto Workers. Saturn developed its own S-Series small sedan, coupe and <a itxtdid="6604550" target="_blank" href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4332298.html#" style="border-bottom: 1px solid blue ! important; font-weight: normal ! important; font-size: 100% ! important; text-decoration: none ! important; padding-bottom: 0px ! important; color: blue ! important; background-color: transparent ! important; background-image: none; padding-top: 0pt; padding-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt;" classname="iAs" class="iAs">station <nobr style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; color: blue;" id="itxt_nobr_2_0">wagon<img style="border: 0pt none ; margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt; display: inline ! important; height: 10px; width: 10px; position: relative; top: 1px; left: 1px; float: none;" name="itxt-icon-0" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/mag-glass_10x10.gif" /></nobr></a> that shared little with any other GM product. When the first Saturn rolled off the line in July 1990, Roger Smith and UAW President Owen Bieber were both in it.<br /><br />Saturn dealerships operated under a no-haggle pricing mandate and early buyers of Saturn cars were thrilled with the service and attention they received from the dealers. It was a premium buying experience for small cars. Yet Saturns were anything but premium priced. The S-Series sold well, but cracks were already appearing in the Saturn architecture.<br /><br />The front-drive S-Series wasn't a bad car, but it wasn't a particularly good one either. About the only innovative aspect of their engineering was space-frame construction covered in plastic panels impervious to most parking lot damage. The S-Series engines ran roughly, the handling was mediocre, the interiors were chintzy and those plastic panels needed big gaps at the seams to deal with their expansion and contraction in heat. Some S-Series buyers loved (and still love) their Saturns, but they weren't cars that had every owner turning into a repeat buyer.<br /><br />Roger Smith left GM shortly after Saturn opened and his pet project quickly became an orphan. Rumors abounded that within GM other division heads saw Saturn sucking up resources they thought were needed by GM's established brands. The internal politics soon had Saturn starving; when satisfied S-Series buyers returned to their dealers to trade up to a new car, there was nothing to trade up to. Saturn didn't get a larger car to sell until the 1999 model and the car it got, the L-Series, was pure mediocrity. By then, the S-Series was getting more and more tired.<br /><br />In short, Saturn was a great buying experience that didn't have the right products to sell.<br /><br />But with the turn of the century, GM re-committed itself to Saturn. The Vue small crossover joined the line in 2002 and the S-Series was redesigned as the Ion in 2003. By 2007 Saturn dealers had a thick portfolio of significantly improved vehicles to sell including the mid-size Aura sedan, versatile Outlook crossover and the two-seat Sky roadster. But buyers had lost the habit of shopping at Saturn and sales for all of them were lackluster.<br /><br />Ironically, while Saturn started going downhill because of a lack of attractive products, its fate was sealed when it couldn't sell a full range of solid products.<br /><br />Penske broke off negotiations, it says, because of the inability to secure future vehicles to be sold at Saturn dealers once the current GM-produced products had run through their life cycles. It's a pity. Because for a few moments in the Nineties it looked like Saturn had the potential to be something special.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4332298.html">Original here</a><br /></span>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-30241228976798143352009-10-04T06:55:00.000-07:002009-10-04T06:57:00.407-07:00The new rules of news<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/dangillmor" name="&lid={contentTypeByline}{Dan Gillmor}&lpos={contentTypeByline}{1}">Dan Gillmor</a><br /><br /><p>You may have <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1211791/Lehman-Brothers-year-The-day-banking-world-stood-still.html">noticed</a> – you could hardly <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8256070.stm">miss it</a> – the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/crash-and-recovery/lehman-brothers-one-year-later/article1287129/">blizzard</a> of anniversary stories last month about the fall of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/lehmanbrothers">Lehman Brothers</a>, an event that helped spark last year's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/credit-crunch">financial meltdown</a>. The coverage reminded me that journalists failed to do their jobs before last year's crisis emerged, and have continued to fail since then.</p><p>It also reminds me of a few pet peeves about the way traditional journalists operate. So here's a list of 22 things, not in any particular order, that I'd insist upon if I ran a news organization.</p><p><strong>1.</strong> We would not run anniversary stories and commentary, except in the rarest of circumstances. They are a refuge for lazy and unimaginative journalists.</p><p><strong>2.</strong> We would invite our audience to participate in the journalism process, in a variety of ways that included crowdsourcing, audience <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blogging">blogging</a>, wikis and many other techniques. We'd make it clear that we're not looking for free labour – and will work to create a system that rewards contributors beyond a pat on the back – but want above all to promote a multi-directional flow of news and information in which the audience plays a vital role.</p><p><strong>3.</strong> Transparency would be a core element of our journalism. One example of many: every print article would have an accompanying box called "Things We Don't Know," a list of questions our journalists couldn't answer in their reporting. TV and radio stories would mention the key unknowns. Whatever the medium, the organisation's website would include an invitation to the audience to help fill in the holes, which exist in every story.</p><p><strong>4.</strong> We would create a service to notify online readers, should they choose to sign up for it, of errors we've learned about in our journalism. Users of this service could choose to be notified of major errors only (in our judgment) or all errors, however insignificant we may believe them to be.</p><p><strong>5.</strong> We'd make conversation an essential element of our mission. Among other things:</p><p>- If we were a local newspaper, the editorial pages would publish the best of, and be a guide to, conversation the community was having with itself online and in other public forums, whether hosted by the news organization or someone else.</p><p>- Editorials would appear in blog format, as would letters to the editor.</p><p>- We would encourage comments and forums, but in moderated spaces that encouraged the use of real names and insisted on (and enforced) civility.</p><p>- Comments from people using verified real names would be listed first.</p><p><strong>6.</strong> We would refuse to do <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand">stenography</a> and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.</p><p><strong>7.</strong> We would replace PR-speak and certain Orwellian words and expressions with more neutral, precise language. If someone we interview misused language, we would paraphrase instead of using direct quotations. (Examples, among many others: The activity that takes place in casinos is gambling, not gaming. There is no death tax, there can be inheritance or estate tax. Piracy does not describe what people do when they post digital music on file-sharing networks.)</p><p><strong>8.</strong> We would embrace the <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp">hyperlink</a> in every possible way. Our website would include the most comprehensive possible listing of other media in our community, whether we were a community of geography or interest. We'd link to all relevant blogs, photo-streams, video channels, database services and other material we could find, and use our editorial judgement to highlight the ones we consider best for the members of the community. And we'd liberally link from our journalism to other work and source material relevant to what we're discussing, recognising that we are not oracles but guides.</p><p><strong>9.</strong> Our archives would be freely available, with links on every single thing we've published as far back as possible, with application interfaces (<a href="http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=application+programming+interface&i=37856,00.asp">APIs</a>) to help other people use our journalism <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform/dataviz-swear-word-tracker">in ways we haven't considered</a> ourselves.</p><p><strong>10.</strong> We would help people in the community become informed users of media, not passive consumers – to understand why and how they can do this. We would work with schools and other institutions that recognise the necessity of critical thinking.</p><p><strong>11.</strong> We would <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/">never publish lists of ten</a>. They're a prop for lazy and unimaginative people.</p><p><strong>12.</strong> Except in the most dire of circumstances – such as a threat to a whistleblower's life, liberty or livelihood – we would not quote or paraphrase <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8417075/">unnamed sources</a> in any of our journalism. If we did, we would need persuasive evidence from the source as to why we should break this rule, and we'd explain why in our coverage. Moreover, when we did grant anonymity, we'd offer our audience the following guidance: We believe this is one of the rare times when anonymity is justified, but we urge you to exercise appropriate skepticism.</p><p><strong>13.</strong> If we granted anonymity and learned that the unnamed source had lied to us, we would consider the confidentially agreement to have been breached by that person, and would expose his or her duplicity, and identity. Sources would know of this policy before we published. We'd further look for examples where our competitors have been tricked by sources they didn't name, and then do our best to expose them, too.</p><p><strong>14.</strong> The word "must" – as in "The president must do this or that" – would be banned from editorials or other commentary from our own journalists, and we'd strongly discourage it from contributors. It is a hollow verb and only emphasizes powerlessness. If we wanted someone to do something, we'd try persuasion instead, explaining why it's a good idea and what the consequences will be if the advice is ignored.</p><p><strong>15.</strong> We'd routinely point to our <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/opinion/">competitors' work</a>, including (and maybe especially) the best of the new entrants, such as bloggers who cover <a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/">specific niche subjects</a>. When we'd covered the same topic, we'd link to them so our audience can gain wider perspectives. We'd also talk about, and point to, competitors when they covered things we missed or ignored.</p><p><strong>16.</strong> Beyond routinely <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/">pointing to competitors</a>, we would make a special effort to cover and follow up on their most important work, instead of the common practice today of pretending it didn't exist. Basic rule: the more we wish we'd done the journalism ourselves, the more prominent the exposure we'd give the other folks' work. This would have at least two beneficial effects. First, we'd help persuade our community of an issue's importance. Second, we'd help people understand the value of solid journalism, no matter who did it.</p><p><strong>17.</strong> The more we believed an issue was of importance to our community, the more relentlessly we'd stay on top of it ourselves. If we concluded that continuing down a current policy path was a danger, we'd actively campaign to persuade people to change course. This would have meant, for example, loud and persistent warnings about the danger of the blatantly obvious housing/financial bubble that inflated during this decade.</p><p><strong>18.</strong> For any person or topic we covered regularly, we would provide a "baseline": an article or video where people could start if they were new to the topic, and point prominently to that "start here" piece from any new coverage. We might use a modified Wikipedia approach to keep the article current with the most important updates. The point would be context, giving some people a way to get quickly up to speed and others a way to recall the context of the issue.</p><p><strong>19.</strong> For any coverage where it made sense, we'd tell our audience members how they could act on the information we'd just given them. This would typically take the form of a "What You Can Do" box or pointer.</p><p><strong>20.</strong> We'd work in every possible way to help our audience know who's behind the words and actions. People and institutions frequently try to influence the rest of us in ways that hide their participation in the debate, and we'd do our best to reveal who's spending money and pulling strings. When our competitors declined to reveal such things, or failed to ask obvious questions of their sources, we'd talk about their journalistic failures in our own coverage of the issues.</p><p><strong>21.</strong> Assess risks honestly. Journalists constantly use anecdotal evidence in ways that frighten the public into believing this or that problem is larger than it actually is. As a result, people have almost no idea what are statistically more risky behaviours or situations. And lawmakers, responding to media-fed public fears, often pass laws that do much more aggregate harm than good. We would make it a habit not to extrapolate a wider threat from weird or tragic anecdotes; frequently discuss the major risks we face and compare them statistically to the minor ones; and debunk the most egregious examples of horror stories that spark unnecessary fear or even panic.</p><p><strong>22.</strong> No opinion pieces or commentary from major politicians or company executives. OK, this is a minor item. But these folks almost never actually write what appears under their bylines. We're being just as dishonest as they are by using this stuff. If they want to pitch a policy, they should post it on their own web pages, and we'll be happy to point to it.</p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/02/dan-gillmor-22-rules-news">Original here</a><br /></p>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-46217610432150248182009-10-04T06:52:00.000-07:002009-10-04T06:55:01.661-07:00George Romero to Write His Definitive Guide to ZombiesBy <cite><a href="http://io9.com/people/Lauren_Davis/posts/" title="Click here to read posts written by LAUREN DAVIS">Lauren Davis</a><br /><br /></cite><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Ssio-yF869I/AAAAAAAADNQ/laWgml4gCes/s1600-h/living-dead.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 315px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/Ssio-yF869I/AAAAAAAADNQ/laWgml4gCes/s400/living-dead.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388742750700891090" border="0" /></a>Filmmaker <a class="autolink" title="Click here to read more posts tagged GEORGE ROMERO" href="http://io9.com/tag/george-romero/">George Romero</a> birthed the modern zombie, and now he's finally ready to reveal all the secrets of the walking dead. In his first novel, Romero will explain the full capabilities of the undead and how the zombie plague began. <p>UK publisher Headline has signed Romero for a book delving into the mythology he helped create, simply titled <em><a class="autolink" title="Click here to read more posts tagged THE LIVING DEAD" href="http://io9.com/tag/the-living-dead/">The Living Dead</a></em>. The book will explain what zombies can and cannot do, and will finally give us Romero's take on the origin of zombies and how the world at large reacts:</p> <blockquote> <p>It starts in San Diego, where a corpse sits up and begins to walk during an autopsy, while a reporter from Atlanta shows viewers "glimpses of increasing chaos from around the globe."</p><p><a href="http://io9.com/5372121/george-romero-to-write-his-definitive-guide-to-zombies">Original here</a><br /></p> </blockquote>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5457235099325013672.post-15059581913637007992009-09-16T23:13:00.000-07:002009-09-16T23:17:47.119-07:00Budget and Avis ban smoking in rental cars<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/SrHUR50hTJI/AAAAAAAADNI/nYNLvxvGIw0/s1600-h/smoking.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 202px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dJZdWJmZcd8/SrHUR50hTJI/AAAAAAAADNI/nYNLvxvGIw0/s400/smoking.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382316433728425106" border="0" /></a><br />First you couldn't smoke on planes. Then trains banned smoking. Now, you can't smoke in <a href="http://www.gadling.com/tag/rentalcar">rental cars</a>, at least, not if you rent from <a href="http://www.avis.com/">Avis</a> or <a href="http://www.budget.com/">Budget</a>. As of October 1, all cars in both rental companies' fleets will be non-smoking.<br /><br />Avis and Budget say the policy came about in response to the needs of renters, citing a non-smoking car as the most-popular rental request. Cars that have been smoked in also require additional cleaning and are out of service longer, costing the companies more money. A spokesman for the Avis Budget Group says they expect some smokers to be upset with the new rules and to take their business elsewhere, but that they think overall the new plan will attract more customers than it will lose.<br />Avis and Budget will be the first major rental car companies to ban smoking entirely (others offer "non-smoking" cars but many don't guarantee them), though they are only instituting the ban among their North American fleet, not worldwide. Each car will undergo an inspection upon return and renters who have smoked in the vehicle will be charged a cleaning fee of up to $250.<br /><a href="http://www.gadling.com/2009/09/15/budget-and-avis-ban-smoking-in-rental-cars/"><br />Original here</a>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10575418540440163175noreply@blogger.com0