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Duluth looks to pump new life into downtown
With the pandemic permanently altering the workforce, city and community leaders pitched a series of ideas Monday to improve the future of the central business district.
DULUTH — A neighborhood watch program, better prosecution of petty crimes and a fund to inspire public art projects are a few of the immediate proposals to revitalize downtown Duluth and promote public safety.
Further down the road, the city needs to look at repurposing vacant downtown office space for housing and conduct a study of how the central business district may look in five years, according to recommendations from the Downtown Task Force, a 14-member panel announced by Mayor Emily Larson in March.
The task force has held four meetings over the past three months, and their work is expected to continue into September. But officials said they wanted to unveil a list of seven preliminary measures Monday, amid the busy summer season and recent concerns about crime.
"Our goal here is to really fill spaces with people," Larson said in a news conference at the recently renovated Lake Superior Plaza. "We have a gorgeous, incredible downtown that was set up for thousands of more people a day than we see currently. Some of that is here to stay, because we know the pandemic has changed how many people are working."
The mayor said the city plans to work with the Duluth Area Family YMCA and employment partners to staff walking groups, which will serve as an extra set of eyes and ears and along sidewalks and skywalks in peak times, including the lunch hour. Volunteers will also be encouraged to sign up for the patrols.
The city will additionally work toward hiring another prosecutor — news that was welcomed by City Attorney Rebecca St. George, who said the current staff of four is overwhelmed, especially with the pandemic leaving courts significantly backlogged.
"They're amazing," she said of the criminal division, which hands cases ranging from gross misdemeanors to city ordinance violations. "Right now, it's a grind. Adding just one more person is going to really give them the opportunity to be a little more thoughtful about each case that comes through."
Officials said they'd also like to encourage public art and entertainment projects. Task force co-chair Shaun Floerke, president and CEO of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation, said cities like Miami and Denver have been "transformed" by street art.
Just last week, the Duluth Street Art Initiative spent several days painting a wall and setting up a "learning lab" space for youth who visit the Life House drop-in center.
"It's changing the feel of where we are right now," Floerke said. "It's easy to kind of dismiss: 'That's paint on the wall.' It's not paint on the wall. It's paint gathering people. It's people being proud of where they are and wanting to lift that up. We live in a time where everybody wants to push stuff down, shoot it down, 'That won't work.' We call the community to pitch in and try to lift up."
Another idea in the works, Floerke said, is an "activation fund" that would provide grants to artists and other creators who come forward with unique ideas.
Fellow co-chair Kristi Stokes, president of Downtown Duluth's Greater Downtown Council, said her organization is looking to organize more entertainment opportunities. That includes Lake Superior Plaza, where the council is launching a "Power Up the Plaza" initiative that includes free coffee and music from 10-11 a.m. every Thursday through August.
Stokes said the Downtown Council also will work with businesses to determine if there are opportunities to expand space for opportunities such as outdoor dining and busking, and work with city officials to ease any permitting challenges.
"Last week we had Sidewalk Days, and I think there was a much different feel in our downtown because of that," Stokes said. "You had people out on the street, you had interactions with the businesses, there were vendors, it was lively, there was music. And that's what it's all about. It's about bringing back the downtown, and bringing activity back to the downtown."
Larson noted that downtown will likely never see a pre-pandemic level of office workers again, as work-from-home policies become the norm, but there is always a need for more affordable housing.
"This is an incredible place to live," the mayor said, "and we are seeing more and more interest — tremendous interest — from outside developers, and, actually, a lot of developers in town, as well, who are looking at how do we not just transform specific buildings currently underway, but how can we expand housing throughout our downtown?"


Flow measurement applications can be difficult because of physical properties, operating conditions, operating constraints or some combination of all three. For example, the fluid may be corrosive, abrasive and/or lethal. It may be operating near its vapor pressure or at an extremely high or low temperature or extremely high or low pressure. Selecting a flowmeter to measure even common fluids operating at nonextreme conditions can be challenging when operated under these conditions. That said, the operating constraints are often overlooked (at least initially).
Consider the measurement of combustion air to an incinerator. The ambient air was not corrosive, abrasive or lethal and operated at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature. In other words, the air was benign and not operating at extreme conditions. Finding a flowmeter to measure the air flow should be easy, right?
Not so fast! The flowmeter must measure the combustion air flow over the entire firing rate of the incinerator — typically over a 10-to-1 turndown. However, this incinerator is different because one of the plant fumes is mixed with combustion air to provide better destruction, increase incinerator capacity and reduce energy consumption. Therefore, the flowmeter must control the air flow from about 30 to more than 500 flow units, so it would be appropriate for the flowmeter to measure from approximately 15 to 700 flow units, effectively resulting in a 45-to-1 turndown.
And by the way, it is possible for the fumes to flow backward through the combustion air fan to the atmosphere under certain conditions. This is not good, so the flowmeter must measure zero flow under reverse flow conditions (or utilize a separate flow switch that forces the flowmeter output to zero when reverse flow occurs).
We will select a flowmeter for this application next month.
David W. Spitzer is a regular contributor to Flow Control magazine and a principal in Spitzer and Boyes LLC, which offers engineering, seminars, strategic, marketing consulting, distribution consulting and expert witness services for manufacturing and automation companies. Spitzer and Boyes is also the publisher of the Industrial Automation INSIDER. He has more than 40 years of experience and has written more than 10 books and 350 articles about flow measurement, instrumentation and process control.
Spitzer may be reached at 845-623-1830 or via spitzerandboyes.com. Click on the “Products” tab to find his Consumer Guides to various flow and level measurement technologies.


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Essay macbeth: ambition is root of all evil it is said that ambition is the key to success in the case of shakespeare's macbeth, it is the key to his downfall. Free essay: in macbeth ambition plays a huge role in character devolvement ambition affects four of the major characters the characters are macbeth, lady.
If you need help with writing an essay about macbeth ambition, we are here to give you some useful tips in order to get the best grade possible. Macbeth essay ambition ambition is described as eager for success, power or fame for macbeth ambition was what drove him to become. This is an assessment lesson for a middle-ability year 9 class the lesson looks at the theme of ambition in the play pupils will initially revise.
Macbeth ambition essay macbeth: macbeth and macbeth questions macbeth who or what is responsible for the downfall of macbeth the meaning of tragic. In many of shakespeare's plays there exists relationships between characters these relationships in many cases influence the direction in which the play goes.
Free macbeth ambition papers, essays, and research papers.
In 'macbeth', ambition is presented as a dangerous quality ambition is the driving force of the play as this analysis reveals sample and analysis for common application essay option #5 gun barrel pointing at the viewer.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the quotes talking about ambition in macbeth, written by experts just for you. Characterize the relationship between macbeth and lady macbeth if the main theme of macbeth is ambition, whose ambition is the driving force of the. Essay on ambition and the tragic demise of macbeth ambition is a disease of the soul and to realise this you need to look no further than macbeth by william.

domain: literature


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Recently I stopped by the library in Blair, Wisconsin, and I made the happy discovery of a plat book from 1901 that included the Borreson and Estensen farms in Fitch Coulee. The very large book had a very long title too: Standard Atlas of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, including a Plat Book of Villages, Cities, and Townships of the County (compiled and published by Geo. A. Ogle and Co., 134 Van Buren Street, Chicago, 1901). The book was published the year Emil and Gina’s second child, Mabel, was born.
If you look at a point about center, you’ll find the name of Emil Borreson, and to the right of that, B(ertinus) Estensen. According to Clara’s Homestead (p. 36), Emil purchased this land from his father Elias in 1898. If I read Clara’s history correctly, Bertinus and Maria sold their farm to Ole Foss and his wife in 1904, and “bought a smaller farm in Pigeon Falls where they lived a comfortable life for 17 years” (15). [Did you notice that preposition: a farm in Pigeon Falls?! This was a different era.] Here’s a look at the plat book page.
Isn’t it interesting to walk your eye around the Borreson and Estensen farms, and then realize you are getting acquainted with their neighbors from about 110 years ago? Hallingstad, Viverstad, Simonson, Stendahl, Kjos, Nelson, Bensrud – all those names remind us what a Norwegian-American community this was. Enjoy the tour!

domain: history


Today, we are excited to bring you a live video of The Aquabats playing "Shark Fighter!"
This is a raw and raucous version of the track as the band bends a new wave sheen over a pop-punk kick. The video was recorded at the Musack 2018 Carnival
Every year, Musack throws the Rock 'n' Roll Carnival in order to fund a program that has a mission of giving kids and teens a voice through music. All proceeds from the event go to providing guitar, drums, and other instruments to Musack programs in Compton, LA, Nantucket, Haiti, Appalachia, Cuba, Chattanooga, Australia, and Alaska. It'll be back again in 2019, so stay on the lookout. You can learn more about Musack here.
The vid was shot by Mitch Cleaver and Matt Rowbottom. Josh Roush (who's in production on a feature length documentary about actor Michael Parks) directed it. You can see the video below, right now!


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The Time is Now!!!
Every K-Pop fan has heard about KCON and many look forward to it all year long. Some even follow it from city to city. Soon the doors will open for the one that started them all, KCON LA! With concerts and events designed to stop the hearts of fans from all over America.With artists like Cosmic Girls and Seventeen to VIXX and Girl’s Day and many more this line-up is sure to have something for every fan!
This three day event will be packed full of dance workshops, fan-greets, KCON Club night, norebang, screenings and more. We will be bringing you a recap of each day’s highlights but there is nothing like seeing it live. Our only regret is that we can’t attend ourselves. #BUCKETLIST! With only a limited number of tickets left, you really should hurry and get yours today! For more information and where to get tickets, visit the KCON website. Hope you can make it, we would love to hear about your personal experiences and see those selfies with your bias!

domain: artistic


About this Project
- Bloomington, Ind.
Wells Library elevators were approaching 40 years of age and were becoming unreliable. These elevators were from the era of AC to DC motor generators and were very energy inefficient. Serving 12 stories, these elevators are critical for building use. The new elevator finishes had to match the existing building stone finishes and noise had to be kept to a minimum so as to not disturb students in the library.
Murphy utilized the existing Otis gearless motors and retrofitted them to modern AC VVVF drives and modern microprocessor controller systems. These systems will not only be much more energy efficient when running, but will also dispatch traffic more efficiently in the 4 car elevator group. Noisy work was completed around the school’s schedule to limit disturbances. Some hall fixtures and lobby panel required hand cutting the stone to ensure no damage was done to the building and to create a perfect fit with the existing panels and light fixtures.


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Latest Activity: Played AdVenture Capitalist (Jan 22, 2015 11:10am)
Points needed for next level: 180 Level
Well, hello there. Obviously, curiosity must have taken over your brain as you wouldn’t be reading this if it hadn’t. I suppose I had better welcome you to my profile since you took the time to read this. Welcome. You see this cute little cat at the door? Well, thats my cat. She is coincidentally called Kimmie, same as my name. Curious. I hope you find me interesting. Warning: I have a very blunt sense of honesty so I will tell you my real thoughts nothing more. I have a strange sense of humor, meaning I like to use sarcasm rather a touch too much.

domain: hobby


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Clipper, a new decentralized exchange (DEX) that caters to retail traders, closed a $21 million funding round on Tuesday.
Olaf Carlson-Wee’s Polychain Capital led the $4 million equity round and participated in the $17 million liquidity round. Other investors included 0x Labs, DeFi Alliance and MetaCartel DAO.
Clipper, which launched on June 30, uses a novel automated market maker (AMM) that promises to offer guaranteed best prices for retail-sized trades, which are typically under $10,000.
As more centralized crypto exchanges compete for market share, trading fees are facing downward pressure. Top exchanges like Coinbase, which is notorious for its high trading fees and derives most of its revenue from those fees, are competing with no-fee and low-fee crypto trading platforms, like Robinhood.
According to Mark Lurie, the CEO of Shipyard Software (the company behind Clipper), most of the other low-fee and no-fee crypto exchanges have hidden costs baked into trades or other “catches” like the time limit on free trading at Crypto.com or KuCoin, and the need for a native token from decentralized exchange Digix.
Clipper’s relatively small $20 million liquidity pool means that it can’t effectively serve whales (those with large crypto holdings) or institutional traders, but that is what allows the DEX to keep fees low.
“We believe that Shipyard is beginning with a genuinely innovative approach by targeting small to medium-sized traders, not whales,” Carlson-Wee said in a statement. “Shipyard’s tech will fill a desperately needed void of DEXs that cater to retail traders.”

domain: news


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Love and loss, rage and sorrow fill East 3rd Street with Love, Medea, a contemporary adaptation of Euripides’ classic drama now at Off-Off-Broadway's Bullet Space Theatre. Certainly the themes could not be more timely, and as such, the show will extend its run to Oct. 13. Performances began Aug. 29 for a run that was to end Sept. 29.
Director Charles Schick, who also appears in the production, told Playbill On-Line Sept. 26 that the show is "going well. We missed four performances but were back up the following week. We're a small space, but the play is strangely relevant to what's going on, and some scenes are eerie. I've noticed in the paper that some theatre companies go the other way. If [a show] has anything to do with tragic events, they want to run away from it towards escapism. But by coincidence, themes in this play parallel what's going on in the world: revenge, two forms of civilization, a primal reaction against civilization, the destruction of innocence, someone overreacting with the instinct for revenge, and the psychological reasons for that."
"The play is about a woman who feels betrayed by her husband (though he presented her with a reward worthy of his betrayal because he's brought her to civilization). It's about someone who has too much passion versus someone who has too much control, and all hell breaks loose. It's interesting, it's cathartic and worth seeing to explore these things."
Love, Medea is culled from various translations. It also features additional text by Schick and excerpts from the journal of Regina Bartkoff, the actress playing Medea, the Greek mythological sorceress notorious for killing her sons.
Schick and Bartkoff have lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side for 20 years and wanted to incorporate into the production the rhythms of the neighborhood, where hippies, yuppies, junkies and artists have roamed. The cast includes their daughter, Hannah Bartkoff-Schick, as a member of the chorus, which represents Medea’s hallucinatory mind. Also in the cast are Melonie Diaz, Suzanne Present, Doree Lanouette, Michelle Mazzarino, Rick Luanda, Jasmine Marte, Gillian Roberts and Chris D. Cruz.
The Bullet Space Theatre is at 292 E. 3rd St., NYC. Tickets are $10. For more information, call (212) 505-8312 or check www.artpig.com.
— by David Lefkowitz

domain: entertainment


Pick it up, push it back, turn the wheels 45 degrees, then roll it 250-300 feet to the back door of the Transitional Cathedral. Made with funding from NZ On Air. Video / Frank movie
Pick it up, push it back, turn the wheels 45 degrees, then roll it 250-300 feet to the back door of the Transitional Cathedral.
“That’s the intention,” Lewis Bradford engineer Ashley Wilson told Frank Film last week. “Sounds really easy. All we need to do is make sure it’s well connected and has a good foundation.”
“Easy” may be tough, but a last-ditch attempt to save the 1905 NG building in Madras St from demolition to make way for a new $ 473 million multi-purpose arena is a viable option.
The historic warehouse, in which NG Boutique has been home since 2005, is on top of a planned demolition since 2012.
Then, during a televised announcement, co-owners Roland Logan and Sharon Ng learned that their building was in the wake of the planned stadium in the new Christchurch Central Recovery Plan.
At the time, Logan spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to strengthen the building – by attaching cowrie floors to brick walls, interior pillars on exterior counterparts, new corner girders on the facade, and an added steel exoskeleton for added strength.
With approximately 70 percent of Christchurch’s city buildings missing or marked for demolition, the building became a post-earthquake hub for designers, architects and artists, as well as NG Boutique as a symbol of resilience and heritage continuity.
“We worked so hard to save the building,” says Ng. “We’re fully leased – it just doesn’t make sense.”
It is difficult to track numerous swings and oscillations. Following the announcement of the new City Recovery Plan, or Draft, CERA’s senior director told Logan that the building could be built into the stadium’s design.
“Then,” Logan says, “in 2017, they suddenly changed their minds and wanted to buy the building.” After Logan’s lawyer got involved, Crown revised his plans again – a model of the stadium in 2020 shows the building in situ.
“It was sitting pretty comfortably there,” says Dame heritage advocate Anna Crighton, “and then they moved the stadium a little bit and it stopped him in the way. It’s just not right. Why should it be torn down? It shouldn’t, so it doesn’t have to be.” it should not be “.
In February this year, LINZ Crown asset manager Lydia Bloy told Stuff that the stadium project management company, CMUA Project Delivery, had confirmed that the building needed to be procured urgently for successful stadium delivery.
Since then, the Land Data for New Zealand has issued a notice of intent to take the land in the first step in mandatory acquisition, made possible by the CERA Act and the Christchurch Major Reconstruction Act.
“I find those Acts incredibly draconian,” Logan says. “Where you can take someone’s private property, then you have to fight it in the courts to get compensation – which belongs to totalitarian states.”
The offer to move the building a few hundred meters north is not without precedent
In 2010, Auckland’s historic Birdcage pub, the former Rob Roy Hotel, was moved 40 meters to open the way for the Victoria Park Tunnel – and back again.
For Logan and Ng it’s a win-win solution. “We always told the Crown, we were willing to sell the building until it was demolished,” Logan says. “It doesn’t have to be a battle, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. The last thing we want to do is hold on
“Any business would fit well into this building,” Ng agrees. “We could have a rugby museum here if we wanted to.”
Logan and Ng consult LINZ again. The Crown said it preferred to acquire the property “by agreement”.


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The New Relationship Reality Show – Love Is NOT a Verb
Although I love the idea that “Love is the Answer”… I have found that way too many unhealthy things are done in the name of love.
You may also have heard that “Love is a Verb”… That concept is flawed as well, in my opinion. We can act from “love” in ways that are foolish and destructive for ourselves and others.
Sometimes – in order to understand something – we need to throw out ALL our preconceived ideas. On today’s show, we are going to do just that.
My guest, Catherine Craven – the author of “222 Questions We Should All Ask Ourselves… At Least Once” – answers some of the most important questions on this topic.
We talk about the kind of love that is like having someone on a dog leash, the importance of setting and maintaining healthy boundaries, why we have so many warped ideas about love and… why love is NOT a verb.
Listen, learn and have some fun.

domain: psychology


A healthy slice of classic jazz from Dexter Gordon, recorded on this day back in 1962. DEXTER GORDON “Cheese Cake” Taken from the album ‘Go’, released on Blue Note Records in 1962.
Awake from your slumber with this delicious gem, recorded this day back in 1975… BOBBY HUTCHERSON “Montara” Taken from the album ‘Montara’ released on Blue Note Records in 1975. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s02qPFXyDE
As we’re now nearly 30 days into the start of 2013, we thought there would be no better time to launch a new feature on the website where we dig a little deeper into the new jazz releases making the rounds each month. As we put together our annual 2012 Jazz Retrospective mixtapes, we realised just how much great new music is still being released across the jazz spectrum but often, except for the odd review here or there, we tend to only mention it in passing over on our Facebook page. Below is our initial attempt at rectifying this situation, as we present the first in what we’ve affectionately dubbed ‘The Record Pool’. This month, we pick three releases – two previously unreleased reissues and a Blue Note Records début – that are more than worthy of a portion of your January pay packet! Let us know what you think… ———-
Just over a month to go… Stick Feb 28th in your diary. ‘Black Radio’ is coming!


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domain: medical


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I have to start this piece with a sort of humbling retraction. A few months ago, I wrote an essay for this blog about the recall of three Iowa Supreme Court justices due to their having ruled in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in that state. I also remarked on the fact that, despite a red tide giving Republicans majorities in state legislatures across the country, Democrats in my adoptive home state of Illinois kept their grip on power in Springfield:
“How’d they do that, in a year when 19 state legislatures flipped from blue to red? Some of it was old-fashioned machine politics, but a lot of it was done by strategically deferring any potentially unpopular vote on anything that really mattered until after the election. … One controversial vote that isn’t likely to make it through is on SB 1716, the bill that would allow gay couples the same rights as straight ones.”
It is with pleasure that I dig into a steaming plate of crow on this one: in January, Governor Quinn signed a law legalizing civil unions in Illinois, which passed both houses during that very lame-duck period. I read the tea leaves pretty wrong on that one — although given my confident proclamation that Harriet Miers would be confirmed to the Supreme Court, I’m starting to think I should get out of the business of political predictions altogether.
In fact, it was another red-letter date in the struggle for marriage equality last week, when the Justice Department announced it would no longer stand up for the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts. After two years of gay-rights groups wondering where the president’s leadership on their cause was, the decision was widely hailed among equality advocates; Marriage Equality USA called it a “watershed moment,” Freedom to Marry thanked Obama for the “excellent news.”
These victories, coming in a relatively short span of time, were of course exciting. But they also reminded me of a nagging qualm I’ve had with the way the marriage equality battle has been fought, the danger of which I’m not sure is monumental but I think at least bears remark.
The success of the movement for wider acceptance of homosexual relationships has been thanks to a gradual, at times painfully slow process of reassuring the general public that gay people are no different from you or me. Gay characters and couples appeared more and more frequently on TV and in movies. More and more cultural icons came out of the closet and didn’t suddenly turn into hyper-promiscuous sex-dungeon-keepers. And the institutions that fought for gay rights, and the court cases that lobbied for them, foregrounded ordinary American families, working hard, raising kids — families that happened to have a same-sex couple at either end of the table. Here’s the gay couple at the PTA meeting, there’s the lesbians at the grocery store, and slowly the needle of public opinion starts to move.
This strategy is neither misleading nor, it seems to me, lacking in effectiveness. I think my generation’s perspective on homosexual couples is as completely shifted from my parents’ as theirs was from their own parents about interracial ones — we’ve moved from at best an uneasy, halting acceptance to, by and large, an everyday unthinking acceptance.
But the voices of academia that still bounce around in my head, though fainter with every passing day since graduation, still cry foul when they witness this kind of normalizing process. By insisting that gay couples are also “normal,” doesn’t that rely on a category of “abnormal” against which to define itself?
In some ways, gay-rights groups can sound almost as conservative as the religious right when they talk about marriage: the argument that gay couples are as capable as straight ones of upholding the venerable traditions of the institution of marriage continues to venerate that exclusive institution. These groups are explicitly not trying to radically transform marriage — but without doing that, won’t it continue to be an exclusive club, allowing some entry and denying it to others? Leaning on an idea of the “normal” married couple or family is precisely a process of exclusion, and herein lies the danger.
What might seem like sort of abstract intellectualizing is made very real by an essay called “Sexual Reorientation” by Liz Glazer, a Hofstra Law professor and a dear if distant friend. (Liz, if you read this, I miss you, babe. Are you in town? Let’s talk.)
Glazer talks about the phenomenon, identified by scholar Kenji Yoshino, called “bisexual erasure.” Bisexuals are a precise example of one of the groups left in the cold of the non-normal by the fight for same-sex marriage, a group strategically overlooked and, intentionally or otherwise, excluded from the discussion.
To illustrate this point, Glazer looks at the testimony of Sandy Stier, the partner of Kris Perry, in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case challenging California’s Proposition 8. Stier had been married to a man who died. As a widow, she met Kris Perry, a woman, and fell in love. She testified that she had loved her husband when she married him, so Ted Olson, an attorney for the plaintiff, asked her how she could be so sure she was actually gay. “Well, I’m convinced, because at 47 years old I have fallen in love one time and it’s with Kris,” she replied.
Both Olson’s question and Stier’s response are emblematic of the problem of bisexual erasure, and the problem with the strategy of the pro-equality movement. Olson is insisting, and Stier is confirming, that she has picked a side, that her relationship with a woman is the product of a fundamental fact of her identity — homosexuality — and not just a passing fancy, a love truer than the one she was capable of sharing with her husband. This completely precludes the possibility of bisexuality, the possibility that she might be attracted to both sexes and simply have found a second partner she’d be willing to spend the rest of her life with.
That’s not to insist (Glazer points out) that Stier is actually bi and just doesn’t know it; it’s only to say that such a possibility is completely ignored in the discussions around gay marriage. Lifelong attraction to the same sex is as acceptable as attraction to the opposite sex — homosexual couples and heterosexual couples should be equal — but anything in the middle, anything that threatens to erode those two pillars of conformity, is off-limits. Bisexuality is seen in this debate as at worst a myth, and at best a passing phase that ultimately leads to one pole or the other. Those identifying as bisexual (to say nothing of transgendered or intersex people) are left with no ground to stand on.
So, now’s the point in the essay where I bring it home with an emotional connection to my personal life. There’s the rub: I’m not gay, or bisexual. In fact, I’m not a member of any group that’s historically been denied its civil rights in this country (except for non-land-owners). So it’s easy for me to armchair-philosophize on pushing for more inclusiveness, or a more radical re-imagining of traditions like marriage. I don’t have much skin in the game. Meanwhile, with shades of Martin-versus-Malcolm, pro-equality groups point to the successes of the go-slow, pragmatic approach, and they’re very tangible and real and meaningful: my friends, my brother, my neighbors, my boss, all can now partake in the same privileges as I can here in Illinois when we find a partner we want to spend our lives with. These are achievements I would be a callous bastard to scoff at.
But, grains of salt taken, I think it’s important to be sure that as we fight to alter an institution like marriage, that we’re actually tearing the walls down, and not building them again just farther out, encompassing more territory but still equally as high.

domain: sociology


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My friend who received the gift said the cookies were yummy and said she would consider using Wisconsinmade.com; guess that means I will probably use them again for gifts or even myself.
The Cat Lovers Sugar Cookie Gift Box is the perfect gift for any cat lover. These Cookies From Scratch homemade cookies include six different cat and kitten shapes decorated in bright colors. Each gift box contains one dozen delicious sugar cookie crisps. The Cat Lovers Sugar Cookie Gift Box is a perfect gift for a child or any pet lover.

domain: food


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Do you ever feel different from everyone else? Have times when you just don’t fit in? It could be the expression of a different culture, race, mannerisms, style of dress, accent, belief systems, ideology – actually almost anything can contribute to feeling or being treated as separate or different. Perhaps you want to break away from the sameness and be your individual self and follow your own path. Often judgement of self and by others ensues. Indeed, we are often touched by both of these situations.
We can choose to take pride in or feel isolated by seemingly apparent differences, and at the same time, we can embrace the sameness. We all share in the ups and downs and the joys and awkwardness of this adventure of being human. If we can be aware that it is a shared human experience, we may start to see more of the sameness while we travel our individual path. Let us each do our own part to improve this shared human experience, to bring forward the best that we can be, individually and collectively.
Downloadable Podcast: Which one is not like the others?


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Mendoza, a lawyer for the Connecticut Business and Industry Association who has never held elective office, burst onto the statewide stage Thursday with a blistering attack on one of the state's best-known and popular politicians.
As she announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination for attorney general, Mendoza boldy predicted she would unseat the two- term incumbent Democrat and attacked him as a publicity hound more intent on grabbing headlines than on doing his job.
In a span of a few minutes, Mendoza said Blumenthal had:
* "Abandoned the mission of his job in order to relentlessly seek publicity for himself."
* "Sorely let down women and children in this state" by slacking off on child-support enforcement.
* "Failed his responsibility to avoid litigation" in the Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation case.
* Misused staff and hired "high- priced help to file essentially redundant lawsuits against Microsoft and Philip Morris."
As a crowd of about 200 enthusiastic supporters, including Gov. John G. Rowland and state GOP Chairman Chris DePino, cheered her on, Mendoza, 41, vowed to be "a different kind of public servant" who would "fulfill the true mission of this important office and help those who are suffering."
Acknowledging that Blumenthal has a huge advantage in name recognition and fund-raising, Mendoza asked voters to "look beyond the press releases written by a costly, taxpayer-funded press battalion. Look beyond lights, camera, Dick Blumenthal."
Blumenthal wasted little time firing back. He called reporters at the Capitol to refute Mendoza's charges and declared he would not be baited into a negative campaign.
"Regardless of the unfounded personal and negative attacks on me, I will conduct a positive campaign based on my continuing hands-on work to fight consumer fraud, environmental pollution, child abuse and neglect, and Big Tobacco's unconscionable conduct and other issues in the public interest," he said.
Blumenthal, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy for a third term next week, said Mendoza's claim that he had allowed child-support collections to decline was false. Collections increased by more than 10 percent from 1996 to 1997, to a record $155.9 million, he said.
On Mendoza's contention that he should have headed off the costly Sheff vs. O'Neill case, Blumenthal noted that the case was filed in 1989 -- two years before he became attorney general.
Blumenthal also challenged Mendoza's statement that his high-profile lawsuit against tobacco companies was unnecessary because of private claims already filed by victims of smoking-related diseases.
"My opponent either misunderstands our lawsuit . . . or she intends to serve as Big Tobacco's mouthpiece in this campaign," Blumenthal said, calling the suit vital to recover millions of dollars in state costs for smoking-related health problems.
Mendoza, who served on the volunteer panel that recommended solutions in the Sheff case in 1996, has never run for office but has been involved in politics for many years. She managed two unsuccessful campaigns for state representative in her hometown, before running three successful campaigns for West Hartford town council last year.
Before joining CBIA seven months ago, Mendoza was a lawyer in private practice for 10 years. She was born in Bethlehem, Pa., and came to Connecticut as a 1-year-old. She graduated from Norwalk High School, Fairfield University and the University of Connecticut Law School.
She and her husband, Michael Shelburne, have two children.


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Fantastic! Share your favorites and earn zulily credit. see detailsconnect
Cool temps mean toasty trends are back in style and this knit knockout is a definite fashion win. The open-weave style keeps the feel lightweight, while eyelet side panels provide contrasting texture.

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Hey everybody my name is Bubs and I am officially available for adoption! Woof Woof! I am a young shepherd and I am an intelligent boy! I know some basic commands like sit and wait. I am crate trained and almost house broken. I am good with other dogs and cats. My biggest issue is I need a yard with a tall fence so I don't go visiting the neighbors. I am neutered, current on vaccines, HW negative and chipped! I can't wait to find my furever family! Hoping that is you! - Love Bubs If you would be interested in meeting this sweet boy, please contact NMK911rescue@yahoo.com.
Hello Everyone! It's me Sabrina and I am now available for adoption!!! I am doing terrific in foster care! I am so happy I was rescued from euthanasia in Roswell! They said my time was up... but a very nice lady offered to foster me and she saved my life! She helped to rescue me and even drove down to get me!!! I am so grateful she did!!! I show her everyday how lovable and wonderful I am. You see I am still just a puppy of 8 months old. I recently went to my new veterinarian and I am healthy, current on all vaccines now, HW neg, spayed and chipped! I am so excited that I was saved and I have my entire life ahead of me! I can't wait to meet my FUREVER family and go on new exciting adventures! I like the companionship of other dogs and enjoy playing with them. I am learning basic manners and commands like sit and lay down. I am housebroken already and even know the word potty. I am super duper smart. I am still learning my crate training and getting better at it every day! If you would like to meet me I promise I will put a big smile on your face! I would love to meet you! Please contact my rescuers at NMK911rescue@yahoo.com! - Love Sabrina!

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The Arizona Cardinals reportedly will hire Kirby Wilson to be the team’s new running backs coach. He most recently coached running backs for the Cleveland Browns. In the NFL, coaching running backs is all he has done, dating back to 1997, and he his track record is impressive.
He will get to work with David Johnson, arguably the best running back in the league, and perhaps Adrian Peterson, who is under contract for 2018. They can know that Wilson knows what he is doing.
Here is a look back at Wilson’s record with running backs.
He began with three years with the New England Patriots from 1997-1999.
In 1997, running back Curtis Martin rushed for 1,160 yards. In 1998, after Martin was sent to the New York Jets, Wilson coached Robert Edwards to a 1,115-yard, nine-touchdown season. In 1999, it was a 31-year-old Terry Allen who led the team in rushing, gaining 896 yards.
In 2000, with the Washington Redskins, Wilson coached Stephen Davis, who rushed for more than 1,300 yards that year.
In 2002 and 2003, he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Michael Pittman and Mike Alstott combined for 1,266 rushing yards in their championship season. In 2003, Pittman and Thomas Jones combined for 1,378 yards on the ground.
Wilson coached for the Cardinals under Dennis Green the next three seasons. In 2004, a 35-year-old Emmitt Smith rushed for 937 yards in his final NFL season. In 2006, when Edgerrin James joined the team, he rushed for 1,159 yards, which was the seventh-best season for a Cardinals running back in franchise history at the time.
Wilson was with the Pittsburgh Steelers from 2007-2013. He oversaw Willie Parker have a 1,300-yard season his first season there. Parker and Mewelde Moore combined for more than 1,300 yards the next season. Then it was Rashard Mendenhall in 2009. He gained more than 1,100 yards then, and followed it up in 2010 with more than 1,200. Mendenhall and Isaac Redman combined for more than 1,400 yards on the ground in 2011. In 2012, four back combined for more than 1,300, and the Le’Veon Bell era began in 2013.
Wilson moved on to the Minnesota Vikings in 2014. In 2015, Adrian Peterson, now on the Cardinals roster, came back from his ACL tear and rushed for 1,485 yards and 11 touchdowns.
And with the Browns the last two seasons, Isaiah Crowell has rushed for more than 900 yards each season.
This track record should bode well for David Johnson as the Cardinals transition to a new offensive system under new coach Steve Wilks.
Listen to the latest from Cards Wire’s Jess Root on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Apple podcasts or Stitcher Radio.


“This American Life” host Ira Glass and celebrated Israeli author Etgar Keret met on Wednesday night for “Stories, Podcasts & Other Animals,” an hour-and-a-half conversation that delved into their work as consummate storytellers, Glass’s Hebrew skills and what makes a story.
The two men, one Israeli, the other American, and nine years apart in age, are deeply comfortable with one another, close enough to tease one another onstage as they drew closer to their topic of storytelling and how they each accomplish that task.
They laugh a lot, and the audience is often laughing along with them.
“We recognized that we both need the stories,” said Keret. “And we both tell stories differently. It’s a good starting point for a friendship.”
That was their premise on Wednesday night, and they were off, for the next hour-plus, using different stories, some told on “This American Life” or in Keret’s books, to illustrate how differently they define storytelling.
The sold-out auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art was filled with local celebrities and podcasters, including Channel 12 anchor and Unholy podcast co-host Yonit Levi and vocalist Shai Tsabari.
“Half of the audience are people who work in news and TV and radio,” said Keret at one point.
But everyone’s attention was focused on stage, where Keret was comfortably slouched in his gray chair, while Glass, elegantly attired in suit and oxfords, was busy throughout, shuffling notes, using his laptop and tablet to show photos and playing clips from “This American Life,” a weekly podcast on US National Public Radio.
“It took 2,000 years for Ira to get here,” quipped Keret, ordering Glass to say something in Hebrew:
“Ani rotze le’echol…,” said Glass, slowly releasing the words for “I want to eat.”
Hebrew, and Glass’s efforts to improve upon the language he learned during ten days of afternoon Hebrew school in 1960s Baltimore was just one of the topics discussed by the two friends, who met 16 years ago when Glass first interviewed Keret.
The two have conducted many of these public conversations, although this was their first in Israel, where Glass is currently visiting with his partner and her son.
They showcased the investigative reporter — Glass — versus the fantastical fiction writer — Keret.
There were stories, and more stories, including an episode they experienced together at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a comical tale about Keret meeting the person he thought was his German publisher in a cafe, but who turned out to be a diamond trader.
They could have gone on telling stories, but the two gifted storytellers were weaving their own story arc, leading to the crux of the conversation in which Glass described how he builds his show, and tells the myriad stories created for each episode.
“What I find beautiful about your show are the episodes about the smallest things,” said Keret. “It could be a teen getting dumped by his girlfriend, or a dog running away.”
Each story resonates, said Keret, offering something human to cling on to, making a teenage saga “feel like World War III.”
Glass expounded on that concept, describing the process of sorting stories, finding a plot and a character that listeners can connect with, and the overriding need to “drive toward some thought about that world,” he said.
Every part of the story has to seem new, added Glass, and while there are “weird X-Factor” elements in some stories, other stories don’t work out, particularly if the main character can’t tell his or her own story.
“I don’t care how crazy the story is,” said Glass, “you need to be on some kind of mission. You need a through line, a reason to care about all those incidents.”
From there, the two moved to a “This American Life” episode about a New Zealander who was bitten by a shark as a young teenager, nearly dying in the aftermath.
The emotional part of the story wasn’t actually the shark attack, but was about the parents, who were skeptical, at first, of their daughter’s pain and discomfort during the night following the attack. That conundrum formed the basis of the story, said Glass.
The two discussed how they create their stories, with Keret not always knowing where a story arc is going, while Glass shapes his.
“When things happen, you take it to [how it would affect you],” said Keret. “It’s a metaphor for how I write. I bite the story, and it’s never right, and I think if I write a few paragraphs, it will fall into place.”
“When I interview, I’m editing it in my head,” said Glass. “I divide the story into chapters in my head.”
“Do you feel manipulative when you do that?” asked Keret.
“Sure, but not in a negative way,” said Glass. “That’s show business, baby!”
“Are you manipulating the audience?” asked Keret.
“Yes, that’s my job,” said Glass.
A good story, said Keret, has to be smarter than the person who wrote it.
“For a story to be like life, it should be something you don’t understand,” he said.
His best stories have that, said Glass. But even then, he still has to write the script, and then perform it into the microphone, a “boring, technical task.”
“If you do it wrong, you can oversell it or undersell it,” he said, “If you do it perfectly, you have to be just visible.”


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Explore bridging programs to gain a Bachelor of Science in Nursing
Nurses are in high
If you’re interested in furthering your nursing education, here’s what you need to know.
Nursing Bridging Courses
Nursing courses in bridging programs provide in-depth knowledge and an enhanced learning experience for RPNs and RNs - those who already have a certain level of education and experience in the nursing field.
Program lengths will vary, but all programs will consist of different types of nursing courses that allow students to bridge into Bachelor of Science Nursing programs if a certain academic level is achieved. Course subjects in lectures and lab practice may include (but aren’t limited to):
- Technology in
- Health assessment
Some nursing bridging programs offer clinical placements, where students will gain real-life experience applying the skills they’ve learned in the program.
General Nursing Bridging Program Requirements
For Registered Practical Nurses, nursing bridging programs at Ontario colleges require proof of certification in Ontario, as well as transcripts from your college program.
Some bridging programs are used by RNs, including those wanting to brush up on their medical knowledge and those who are internationally educated. Requirements for these cases vary, so check program details carefully.
Nursing Bridging Jobs and Salaries
Nursing jobs can be found in a variety of medical settings, such as clinics, hospitals, nursing homes and other health
- Intensive care
- Long-term care
Graduates may choose to further their nursing education in a program that has an area of specialization, like critical care or operating room perioperative.
The average starting salary for graduates of Ontario college nursing bridging programs is $46,000 per year. RN salaries are much higher with experience, averaging around $70,000 per year and even higher for those with a specialty.
Ontario Colleges Offering Nursing Bridging Programs
Use the left-column navigation to refine your search by College, Program Availability, Program Start Date and more, or see the table below for a complete list of nursing bridging programs at Ontario colleges.


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The Charlotte Sports Foundation (CSF) today announced that the 2018 Belk College Kickoff has been selected to air nationally on CBS. The game, featuring the first ever matchup of West Virginia University against the University of Tennessee, will kick off at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, September 1st at Bank of America Stadium.
“We are extremely excited to announce that CBS will broadcast the 2018 Belk College Kickoff at 3:30 p.m. nationally,” said Will Webb, Executive Director of the Charlotte Sports Foundation. “This will be a tremendous honor as West Virginia and Tennessee face off for the first time ever. We are proud to be bringing this marquee matchup to the Queen City while also having it spotlighted nationally on CBS. We look forward to hosting the Volunteer and Mountaineer teams and fans in Charlotte.”
“The Charlotte Sports Foundation continues its mission of attracting major sporting events that enhance the quality of life in Charlotte,” stated Johnny Harris, Board Chairman of the Charlotte Sports Foundation. “We are proud to host thousands of Mountaineer and Volunteer fans in Charlotte while also showcasing the event on a national stage.”
Individual tickets for the 2018 Belk College Kickoff will go on sale on June 5 at 2:00 p.m. ET on Ticketmaster and through www.BelkTickets.com.


Have I mentioned that Joe Biden is two years older than Donald Trump? Two years! Can we maybe get some coverage of this?
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
Wait, can we hear that again?
…naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
A presumptive candidate for president drawing up plans to go fash on day 1 seems important to me. Perhaps not “compliance with email server management best practices” important, but pretty important. The end of American democracy and all.
In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymityto describe private conversations.Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.
To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.
“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”
And to facilitate this, Stephen Miller will ensure that mere Federalist Society reactionaries are replaced by lawyers who KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS (zwinkern, zwinkern, stupsen, stupsen.)
In conclusion, more investigations into Joe Biden’s age must be the most urgent priority for the political press.


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May 4, 2015
It’s official: The World Between Two Covers is published in the US. Huzzah!
To celebrate the occasion, Steve and I returned to Coney Island’s Steeplechase Pier in New York this morning to restage the photo at the top of this blog. That original snap was taken in January 2012, a few days after I’d embarked on my quest to read a book from every country in a year.
Today, the weather is rather nicer, the boardwalk has been refurbished and my hair is longer. Oh, and the books I’m reading have changed too…
April 22, 2015
Excitement is building in my little south London flat. It’s now less than two weeks until the publication of The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe, the US edition of my book inspired by my year-long journey through a book from every country.
In nine days’ time, Steve and I will be getting on a plane bound for New York, ready for publication day on May 4. It’ll be the first time I’ve been back to the city since January 2012, when the photo at the top of this blog was taken on Steeplechase pier, Coney Island (I wish I could remember which book I was reading then).
While we’re in New York, I’ll be meeting many of the team at Liveright/Norton who’ve been working so hard to bring my writing to the US. I’ll also be doing a couple of events: one at WORD in Brooklyn on Saturday May 2 at 1.30pm (the store will be celebrating Independent Bookstore Day, so there’ll be lots of things going on) and one at Book Culture in Manhattan on Tuesday May 5 (time TBC).
If you’re in New York that week, it’d be lovely to see you there. In the meantime, you can find the US version of my author film, explaining some of the ideas behind the book, above. Not long to go now…
Film by vloop.
April 15, 2015
London Book Fair has a special place in my heart. Three years ago, when I was in the thick of my year of reading the world, I took a day off from work and ventured there clutching a long list of countries that I had yet to find books from.
I had no idea what to expect and I’m sure I must have seemed like a crank to many of those I spoke to that day (the people at the Sultanate of Oman’s stand certainly weren’t impressed). Nevertheless, bumbling from stall to stall on the trail of national literary associations, publishers and agencies who might be able to help, I did make some useful connections. These included a fascinating discussion with Justin Cox from the African Books Collective, who ended up pointing me in the direction of several of my reads for the project. I came away from that day tired but happy, and clutching an armful of books.
The great thing about the Book Fair, as I discovered that day, is that it is vast and diverse enough to have something to offer all comers (well, certainly all those who like books). If you want to spend the day finding out about threats to writers in authoritarian regimes, you can do that. Interested in the latest gizmos and reading accessories? Look no further. Passionate about Mexico? You’ve come to the right place (particularly as that’s the focus country for this year). Keen to find out how you can best self-publish and market your novel? Check.
As a result, everyone does come, from the most tentative of aspiring newbies to great literary stars, and from one-woman back-room publishing outfits to the biggest names in the game. You’ll see them all: agents, authors, bloggers, editors, publicists, readers, translators and even a few lost tourists milling around under the great arched roofs of Kensington Olympia, holding meetings, sealing deals, helping themselves to sweets from little bowls on the end of counters, trying to work out where they are on the floor plan (see below), and generally talking, reading and thinking about books.
This year, as I wasn’t on the trail of titles from particular nations, I decided to focus my attention on the packed programme of talks and events. So I spent yesterday flitting between small areas of seating with names like the English PEN Literary Salon, Author HQ and the Literary Translation Centre to catch as many things as I could.
I covered a lot of ground. I watched interviews with leading Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska (who told me afterwards as she was signing my copy of her novel Leonora that she had been very nervous about speaking in English – it didn’t show) and bestselling British debut novelist Emma Healey. And I listened to a fascinating talk on whether television drama is the new literature – apparently not, I was relieved to hear, although the more fluid way that people consume stories these days (from short-form snippets to binges on box sets) has opened up the possibility for metanarratives that dwarf even the chunkiest Victorian novels. In extreme cases, these pose the risk that writers committing years of their lives to creating the screenplays for certain shows might burn out, a scenario that sounds almost Kafkaesque.
I also caught a discussion on crime and thriller novels. According to critic Jake Kerridge ‘discussability’ is key to many such books’ success. And, by the way, if you have a crime novel or thriller on your computer that you think should be published, Harper Collins’ Killer Reads imprint is accepting unsolicited manuscripts until this Friday.
However, as I’ve found in previous years, the most interesting Book Fair events had to do with translation and the way books travel across borders (or don’t). I was intrigued by a discussion about ‘What Not To Translate’. The participants seemed to agree that while translators should not censor or control which works travel according to their personal political views, time pressures inevitably mean that they are more likely to accept commissions for books with which they feel a degree of sympathy.
A talk on the role of literary agents in connecting continents was similarly fascinating, particularly as agents are still a relatively new concept outside the English-speaking world.
The final event of the day was among my favourites. Bringing together translators Daniel Hahn, Deborah Smith and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, and Syrian author and illustrator Nadine Kaadan, it picked out the titles they had worked on for Reading the Way, a project by Outside In World to find, translate and try out children’s books from around the world with UK audiences.
I was particularly taken with the sound of El cuento fantasma, a Costa Rican story that Hahn translated about a book in a library that is afraid of being read. They also passed round a French/Arabic version of Elle et les autres by Nahla Ghandour, which, as you can see from the picture of the title page below, is read from right to left – an added challenge when you’re translating illustrated books from languages like Arabic and Hebrew into English because it means the illustrations may have to be altered too.
But perhaps the best thing about the day was the number of friends and acquaintances I bumped into. From fellow writers and bloggers to people I’ve met through events and those who helped me read my way around the world, it seemed I could barely turn a corner without seeing someone I knew.
It was a far cry from the experience of three years ago, when I wandered nervously around the stands, plucking up the courage to introduce myself. As I stood on the gallery of the main hall, looking down at the Bloomsbury stand and imagining what it will be like to see my novel Beside Myself there next year, it struck me once more how far this journey has taken me.
March 31, 2015
It’s been a month of great reading. Funnily enough, through no deliberate intention, many of my favourite reads of the past few weeks have been novels about women in different parts of the planet. From Chantel Acevedo’s scintillating evocation of Cuba’s past in The Distant Marvels to Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman – an engrossing exploration of the consequences of a lifetime’s bibliophilia in contemporary Beirut – I have found myself wowed by stories revealing the world through women’s eyes. I also took a detour into 20th-century writing to spend a few hours pinioned to my sofa by Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House – a chilling masterclass in how to construct a gripping plot.
Those in the UK keen to get their hands on a good read might find it easier to choose one of the titles mentioned above as, although March’s book of the month is published in the US, it isn’t out in the UK – yet – (although you can get it online). In fact, my copy of A Season for Martyrs was sent to me from Karachi by the author herself.
As you can see from the photo above, it came in an envelope covered in stamps. Inside was the beautifully colourful book, signed with a personal message from Bina Shah, who was one of the Pakistani writers readers recommended to me back in 2012. The novel’s vibrant jacket wasn’t the only striking thing about it: the edges of the pages were rough from where the paper had been cut to make the copy (see below).
The pages of my edition may be rough, but the same is certainly not true of the novel. At the heart of the book is ambitious student-cum-TV-news-researcher Ali, who is caught up in covering the controversial return to Pakistan of exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007. As he struggles to reconcile his liberal political beliefs and secret relationship with his Hindu girlfriend with his feudal Sindhi family’s views and fraught history, we see something of the national tussle for control and identity played out on the personal level. With myths and episodes from Sindh province’s long, rich and turbulent past interspersing the narrative, what emerges is a powerful and complex picture of contemporary Pakistan.
Shah’s tone is one of the first things that draw you in. Whether she is portraying the health gripes of a British Empire functionary, capturing the patter of a bus conductor in Islamabad, or describing the travails of tenth century Sufi saints – ‘even if you were regarded as the guardian of all waterways […] you could tire of riding a palla fish’ – her prose is engaging, funny, direct and refreshing. It makes her well-equipped to unmask and send up the ‘etiquette of hypocrisy’ that influences much of what goes on in the novel.
Yet satire is just one element in this novel. There are flashes of beauty in Shah’s writing and succinct insights that leave you marvelling at her skill for wrapping human emotions in words. When Ali contemplates his dysfunctional home life, for example, Shah finds a powerful simile in the buildings where he grew up:
How many other houses in their sedate neighborhood, with its old houses built in the seventies, its overgrown trees lining the zigzag streets that flooded during every monsoon season, were like theirs: genteel on the outside, wasting away from neglect on the inside? How many other families lived like fractured glass, cracked but still holding up within the constraints of their frames?
In addition, the novel contains some extraordinarily gripping episodes. From the account of Jeandal Shah’s fight to the death with a cheetah in 1827 and the night-long chess tournament between the young jailer Ahmed and a condemned Pir hours before the overlord’s execution in 1943, to the violent protest that leads to Ali to witness the injustice of the police firsthand, the book brims with urgent and troubling events.
Very occasionally there is a slight self-consciousness to the telling as Shah seems to try to explain historical context or 21st-century Pakistani politics – perhaps to English-language readers in other parts of the world. Now and then, as a character steps forward with a suspiciously slick explanation of events or a chunk of exposition bobs to the surface of the narrative, it is as though the author and her protagonist glance towards the camera, briefly breaking the spell.
(That said, the issue of how much cultural knowledge to assume in readers who may be far removed from the events described is a fine balancing act. Had Shah, who is well-versed in writing about Pakistan for readers elsewhere through her journalism for publications such as The New York Times and The Guardian, included less overt explanation she may well have run the risk of leaving people behind.)
Quibbles aside, though, this is a powerful and engrossing book. It has drama, beauty, wit, characters to care about and important things to say. It is, as Ali puts it himself, a story about what it’s like ‘to be lost and adrift and struggling at sea, and then, finally, to see the shore and begin swimming toward it with all one’s might’.
Now that it’s reached the US, I very much hope a British publisher picks it up so that A Season for Martyrs makes it to the shores of the UK soon too.
A Season for Martyrs by Bina Shah (Delphinium Books, 2014)
March 16, 2015
As those of you who have followed this project for a while know, I was a writer long before I was a blogger. For the last seven years I have paid my bills by writing and subediting on a freelance basis for a variety of publications and organisations. In fact, for the first seven months or so of my Year of Reading the World, I was working five days a week at the Guardian newspaper in London and juggling shifts and commissions for several other clients. It made fitting in roughly six to eight hours of reading, blogging and researching a day quite a challenge!
What you may not know is that I was also a writer long before anyone paid me to do it. I made my first attempt at a novel when I was seven (a fantasy story set in an old castle with a bookcase that revealed a hidden world – it owed a lot to The Chronicles of Narnia) and throughout my childhood and teenage years I filled notebooks with scraps of stories and splinters of poems and half-formed things.
When I graduated from my creative writing master’s course and had to face the reality of earning my keep, I made a deal with myself: wherever I was working and whatever I was doing, I would always get up early and spend an hour or so on my own writing before I left to go and work for someone else.
For the next few years, through a series of varied and sometimes rather strange jobs (administrator, campaigns officer for a charity, invigilator for school exams, assessor of doctors’ surgeries, freelance choral singer, professional mourner – don’t ask), I stuck to my bargain. Give or take the odd duvet day, I got up at around 6am, sat at my desk and wrote.
I produced a lot of nonsense. Still, when I became a professional writer, I carried on with my regime. Before commuting into London to edit articles on planning applications for Building Design or write about the latest opportunities for international students for the British Council, I would spend an hour or so on my own (usually not very promising) projects.
Then, about four or five years ago, a glimmer of an idea came to me. I found myself gripped by the thought of a pair of identical twins swapping places in a childhood game and then one of them refusing to swap back.
It was the merest flicker of a concept, but it wouldn’t let me go. Over the months and years that followed, my mind returned to it again and again, full of questions. What would cause one child to refuse to swap back? What might it do to someone to grow up with the wrong life? What kind of family wouldn’t notice the change?
A few times, I was on the point of sitting down to start writing the story, but something always held me back. Somehow, it wasn’t ready for me (or perhaps I wasn’t ready for it).
Then A Year of Reading the World came along and for the first time in my adult life, I gave my precious early-morning writing slots over to something else, and filled them with reading and blogging.
What with everything that happened with the project and the book deal, it wasn’t until March 2013 that I got back into the swing of the old writing pattern. Having submitted my first draft of Reading the World to Harvill Secker, I found I had brainspace to focus on other things.
That was when the twins came and tugged at my sleeve once more. And this time I felt ready to take them on.
Over the 18 months that followed, in between long stints re-writing and editing Reading the World, I wrote my twins manuscript. Perhaps it was because I was in the rhythm of writing from the blogging and non-fiction book, but I found the story came to me easily and I wrote with excitement to find out what would happen next.
In autumn 2014, after several drafts, I gave the manuscript to my other half, Steve, and to my novelist friend, Emily Bullock, to read. I worked their feedback into my draft and shared it with a few more people. And then, when my lovely agent Caroline returned from maternity leave towards the end of the year, I sent it to her.
I envisaged that there would be a long process of re-writing and polishing, but when Caroline had finished reading the manuscript she told me she was very excited and that – with a little bit of tweaking – she thought it was ready to sell.
I spent about a week working on Caroline’s edits. Then, on the day that Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer was published in the UK, Caroline sent my novel, Beside Myself, out to editors.
We soon heard that several publishers were interested. I met with them and, after a few weeks of negotiation, I’m delighted to announce that Beside Myself has been bought by Bloomsbury and will be published worldwide in English by them next year. It means my book will be produced by the same team looking after the works of writers such as Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, Donna Tartt, William Boyd and JK Rowling.
My seven-year-old self wouldn’t have known about Harry Potter when she was scribbling my first novel back in the late 1980s, but I think she would have approved.
February 4, 2015
My dress is pressed. The wine is on its way. In a few hours’ time, I’ll be taking those shrink-wrapped copies of Reading the World in the picture above to central London to join a mountain of others at the launch before my book goes on sale tomorrow and I become a published author.
I’m excited to see my friends, family and many of the people who helped make the book happen. I’m eager to hear my editor speak about the project. And I’m looking forward to getting up on stage to read an extract out loud.
But for now, sitting in the peace and quiet of the living room where this journey started just over three years ago, I’m taking a moment to reflect on this project and where it has led. I’m thinking of the people around the planet who shared their knowledge and experience with me, the supporters who cheered me on, and the amazing stories we found together.
Human beings and books are capable of extraordinary things.
January 10, 2015
A package came last night. This was inside. It’s the UK edition of the finished book, the book that so many of you helped make happen.
If you look closely, you can just spot me peeking up from the author photo on the inside back cover. You can’t see it from here, but I am grinning in that photo almost as much as I am now.
Roll on the UK publication date of February 5, 2015!
December 30, 2014
Since finishing my year of reading the world, I’ve been delighted to find that booklovers around the planet have kept in contact and still send me recommendations of good reads. It’s always a pleasure to hear of tempting books, but I’m particularly delighted when I come across a new translation from a country that I know to have very little literature available in English. Consequently, when I heard that innovative independent publisher And Other Stories was bringing out By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel from Equatorial Guinea, I was thrilled.
As far as I have been able to discover, this book is the second commercially available translation of literature from the country (the first being Donato Ndongo’s Shadows of Your Black Memory, which I read for my project). The reasons for this lack are various (and in some ways the situation is quite typical of French-, Portuguese- and, in this case, Spanish-speaking African nations, most of which have very little literature in translation), however the fraught political situation in Equatorial Guinea made bringing this book to the Anglophone market particularly difficult, as translator Jethro Soutar explained in an article for the Guardian earlier this year. So when my copy arrived, looking striking with its elegant cover design, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Set on the remote island of Annobón off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, the novel explores the childhood memories of its nameless narrator. It charts his recollections of growing up in his eccentric grandfather’s house and in a society fuelled by the competing imperatives of superstition and the need to secure goods and favours from passing ships. Punctuated by a series of catastrophic events that shape the community and the narrator’s own way of thinking, the narrative examines storytelling, memory and the way we reconcile ourselves with the events, beliefs and customs that made us who we are.
In many ways, this book is an ideal candidate for translation. Because its narrator grew up in a bilingual society, moving between the vernacular and the formal Spanish-language world of school, and because he now lives away from the island, he is a natural-born go-between. Whether he is unpicking the practicalities of cutting the dates from palm trees, explaining the relative significance of Christian terminology in his mother tongue and learned language, or unravelling the beliefs behind the ostracization of she-devils (known by their penchant for nighttime sea bathing), Ávila Laurel gives him a knack for making the unfamiliar plain.
Constantly questioning, evaluating, musing and challenging, the narrator draws the reader in with a compelling hybrid style that (as he reveals towards the end of the book) blends his own recollections with the island’s oral tradition. At times, he asks our opinion on the events of the story; at others he deflates those he portrays with dry wit. When the narrative takes a turn for the shocking, his tone is disconcertingly direct, with some passages recalling the monologues of an analysand on the therapist’s couch as he returns again and again to past traumas, searching for the key to unlock their meaning.
There are fantastical descriptions that might tempt the reader to reach for the term ‘magical realism’. And there are even occasions when the narrator assumes a schoolmasterly tone: ‘Does anyone know how you get the half-formed canoe to the shore from the bush it lies in?’ he asks at one point, so that for an instant we seem to be children sitting in a circle round him, agog as he spins his tale.
In the same way, the narrative plays with print conventions, eschewing chapter markers for occasional breaks in the storytelling and, at one point, even recording the number of victims to die in the island’s cholera epidemic with a series of crosses printed in the middle of a paragraph.
As a result, the book makes for a challenging read in the best sense of the word. Leaping between registers, tenses and episodes, with long digressions and whimsical catastrophisations and speculations interrupting proceedings, this novel (if that is the right term for it) divests readers of their preconceptions. Those looking for a conventional, three-act plot with a protagonist, an inciting incident and everything tied up neatly at the end will not find it here.
Instead, what you get is a lyrical evocation of quite another world, with plenty to chuckle at and be troubled by along the way. Thronged with suspected sorceresses and a sense of the supernatural, this book weaves a kind of magic. Abandon any assumptions you might have about what a story is at the title page and dive right in.
By Night the Mountain Burns (Arde el monte de noche) by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar (And Other Stories, 2014).
October 15, 2014
Yesterday, I got an email from my UK editor, Michal Shavit at Harvill Secker/Random House. She said the uncorrected proofs of Reading the World had arrived.
Unable to be in the same city as my book without holding a copy in my hands, I made a detour on my way to visit a friend and stopped off at Random House in Pimlico. This little pile of beauties was waiting for me – six of only 80 produced to be sent out to journalists and reviewers in advance of publication next year. They’re not finished – there are still some proofreading things to catch and one or two loose ends to tie up – but they are pretty close, a sort of dress rehearsal for how the book will be.
I stuffed them into my trusty Daunt Books bag and scurried off, eager to have a good look. Over the next few days I’ll be combing through the pages and going over the queries from the proofreader to try to catch any last slips and typos before it all goes to press for the final time.
There’s a lot to do before it’s finally put to bed, but this is definitely a proud moment. Hard to believe it all started with a 300-word blog post asking for help from the world’s readers almost exactly three years ago today…
October 8, 2014
As promised, here’s the cover for the US edition of my book, which will come out next summer, published by Liveright/Norton. As you’ll see, it’s very different from the UK jacket – not least because it has a different title. The reason for this is that Norton publishes an anthology called Reading the World, so we needed to come up with something new. We batted various ideas around for a few days before my editor Elisabeth Kerr and her colleagues came up with this ingenious solution.
However, though it’s very different, the jacket designers have once again captured something of the spirit of the original quest. This time, it’s the shelf, which formed the backdrop for all the books I read in 2012 (and which you can see filling up over the course of that year in the little film below).
I love how clean and smart this cover feels, while still managing to have a touch or warmth and quirkiness about it. Roll on 2015…


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ISBN-13: 9780813528601 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 256 str.
Cosmetic surgery is big business. With demand rising, this commercial medical practice has become a modern body custom. To explain the emergence and growth of this demand, Deborah A. Sullivan looks beyond the cultural imperatives of appearance and examines the market dynamics inherent in the business and politics of cosmetic surgery. In so doing, she also considers the effect of commercialization on the medical profession.After reviewing prevailing beauty ideals, Sullivan looks at the social, psychological, and economic rewards and penalties resulting from the way we look. Following a historical overview of the technological advances that made cosmetic surgery possible, she explores the relationship between improved surgical techniques and the resulting increased demand; she also examines the ensuing conflict within the profession over recognition of commercial cosmetic surgery as a specialty. Among the topics covered are sensitive areas such as physician advertising, unregulated practice, and ambulatory surgery, and the consequences of commercialism on medical judgment. Finally, she reveals how physicians and their professional organizations have shaped the ways in which cosmetic surgery is presented in advertisements and women's magazines that would promote patient demand.

domain: library


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A Couple More CookbooksPosted: October 26, 2016
Adding to the 52 cookbooks list. First up, cornbread from Peter Berley’s The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. I posted my adapted version of his recipe already and often make this when we have chili for dinner.
Next up, Energy Bites from Robin Robertson’s Quick Fix Vegan. This is the very last recipe in this book and it’s a good one. They’ve got cashews, sunflower seeds, dates, cranberries and peanut butter (which I substituted for the tahini). The kids ate them at first and then lost interest but I thought they were great right through to the last one!


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‘Tumhari Pakhi’ fame Iqbal Khan is not gay2 years ago
Mumbai: Small screen’s debonair actor Mohammad Iqbal Khan, who has donned the character of Anshuman in the daily soap ‘Tumhari Pakhi’ that has started recently, said that he was shocked when he heard that he is a gay.
The actor who catapulted his career with the popular show ‘Kaisa Yeh Pyaar Hai’ and become household face as Angad rubbished the rumors and said, ‘The craziest rumor I have heard about myself is that I am gay.’
Iqbal has also won the heart of viewers as Rudra of ‘Sanjog Se Bani Sangini’ and Dr Viren Roy in ‘Yahaan mein Ghar Ghar Kheli’ and now creating magic on Life OK as Anshuman and Shraddha Arya is playing the lead, Pakhi Shekhawat.
The show is based on the novel Naba Bidhan by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay.


text: They’re still making “Scream” sequels? The first “Scream” movie was fun, because it played around with some of the conventions of the horror genre. But now that the franchise is back for a fourth installment, the whole enterprise seems a little tired since the film series has become so familiar. Anyway, we still hold out hope that the movie might turn out to be entertaining. Then again, we felt that way about the fourth “Alien” flick.


Woody Allen is up to his old tricks. Real ones, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. In previous films he's played the magician role himself, but in Magic in the Moonlight he allows the dreamy Colin Firth to handle the willing suspension of disbelief.
It feels at times like two separate movies awkwardly scotch-taped together, which has me a bit worried about Sony's big mega-franchise plans. But as far as this entry goes, despite its flaws, I left the theater feeling satisfied. Not amazed, but satisfied.
Yes, yes, I know -- spidermanspidermanspidermanspiderman. I'll get to it. But my favorite movies of the week, as usual, are the small ones. Let's start with Amma Asante's Belle, a Jane Austen-ish film based on a true story.
The Gotham Independent Film Awards are nothing if not quirky and unpredictable. In this 23rd iteration -- which took place Monday at Cipriani Wall Street -- 12 Years a Slave went into the show with more noms than any other film -- and got zip.


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We chose Long Eaton Appliances for our new kitchen because there was no competition after our initial meeting with Ian. Nothing was too much trouble for Ian as he spent time with us showing the quality of the products and different designs in the showroom. With myself having a disability and using a wheelchair Ian gave helpful advice which enabled ourselves to make the right decisions. We haven’t looked back since it’s installation and would have no hesitation in recommending Long Eaton Appliances when looking for your new kitchen.
Beeston, Nottingham | Mr Chambers


text: 141.369 beautiful acres which has sewer and county water. Perfect for a subdivision or a 55 and older retirement village. Land lays great for a golf course. Ems 911 is just around the corner. Oglethorpe count is branding itself a hospitality and retirement community and is very willing to work with investors or builders.

domain: geography


Los Angeles CNN Joanna Schroeder has a warning for parents of teen and tween white boys: If you don't pay attention to their online lives, the white supremacists will. Snowflake: used to mock people deemed too sensitive, especially about issues impacting minorities. Do you have white teenage sons? Listen up. Here's how:.
The supposedly progressive piece, intended for teenage girls, refers to women as 'non-prostate owners', ignores the organ for female pleasure and fails to mention any potential dangers. Defining women by the men around them is an issue feminists have sought to address, and correct, for years. She is not a Miss nor Mrs; she is neither waiting for a man nor owned by one. It would stand to reason that we could assume that in any work aimed at women would be sure to avoid such regressive patterns. Describing the way anal sex can feel pleasurable to men and women in different ways, she starts by describing the pleasure felt during anal sex when the prostate is stimulated in a male body. Engle goes on to discuss how anal sex can feel pleasurable for women and uses this diagram of the female anatomy:. What is this teaching the audience of a magazine aimed at teenage girls? What it fails to tell them is the potential dangers of anal sex. The possibilities of fissures and tears which can become infected very easily due to contamination by faeces, severe enough to need surgery, or lead to anal abscesses which increase the chances of catching HIV. The current surge in queer politics would seem to explain this decision.
My husband had quite a late start in his career; he will be almost 40 by the time he starts residency so I feel we are already way behind in that sense, but also he has had a very hard time getting into residency as he went to med school outside the US. If she doesn't care that you aren't a member now, if your relationship goes on long enough, she is going to care eventually. As time has gone by I realized that the opinons of others is not important to me and oddly enough those who did not originally approve have had their hearts and minds changed by the love my husband shows me, our daughter, and the members of my family. Propagandists in the media throw around the word patriarchy as if it is synonymous with anything male. I'm a Mormon girl in love with an amazing non-Mormon man. I mostly attribute this to lack of sleep, but I also think he is treated better as a fellow -- by everyone.
We were "forced" to discuss things such as our deepest goals, desires, priorities, and for us, possibly most importantly, how we show love and also perceive that we are being loved. You will be kept abreast of political changes within the church that regulate your wife's behavior -- you are probably already aware of several rules she follows. Doctors aren't always the greatest finds. Be a good influence. I was recently married to my husband in the Twin Falls, Idaho temple for time and all eternity. You are atheist and that's not changing.


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As you may have heard, mega pop star Taylor Swift has been on a record-breaking tour of stadiums and other very large venues. As it turns out, some of her fans attending these concerts, mostly young women, are reporting what is called “post-concert amnesia.” It’s no joke. They know they were at the concerts, but can’t remember Ms. Swift’s performance.
According to Professor Robert Shulman, Acting Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, post-concert amnesia is “a normal phenomenon that when one is excited, and has a lot of sensations coming in and they’re sort of hyper-focused on one thing, you know, that they may not be able to process in memory.” For some people, the hours-long excitement and stimuli of Taylor’s concerts actually interfere, physiologically, with how the experience is processed in the short-term and then eventually stored, or not, in long-term memory. You’ve had, in other words, an irretrievable memory storage error – and you can kiss the price of your concert ticket goodbye.
Long story short, in layman’s terms, these concertgoers are suffering from “sensory overload,” broadly defined to include sights and sounds as well as all manner of things we’ve come to worry about. Even something as common as rush hour traffic can create stress that affects the clarity of our thinking. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how stressing out about this and that can affect your memory the way the excitement of an electrifying concert can disturb brain function.
Now I can understand how staring at Ms. Swift for a couple of hours could be distracting. But then I think it’s only one example of a much, much more significant problem. Consider the following…
Does anyone out there really believe that the conscious and subconscious storage capacity of your brain is unlimited? Of course not. But then if it’s limited, at what point does it max out? And what happens to you when it does?
Our brains – the current model that we’re now using – were developed over millions of years by our species and its predecessors through the painstakingly slow process of evolution. Unfortunately, our lives are becoming increasingly information and stimulation intensive – at a pace that far exceeds the ability of our brains to adapt. Think about that for a moment. Our current brains were perfected ions ago when levels of stimuli and incoming information were orders of magnitude less – and had been relatively constant over millions of years until recently. And by “recently,” I mean literally within my own lifetime.
I was born, in a much smaller, simpler country, before the Internet, before computers, and the modern age of electronics. Well before large flatscreen TVs. Before smartphones, the powerful mini-computer communication devices we carry with us everywhere, even on our wrists. And before twenty-four-hour cable news with crawlers and inserts giving us even more news other than what we’re watching. Before new car dashboards with live 360-degree video of the surrounding roadway and full-size screens with navigation maps and other apps that work while you’re driving.
The brains we have now, while very impressive technologically speaking, are the models our species has had for millennia. Structurally, my personal brain is the same one I was born with and hasn’t changed since then, despite a quantum-fold increase in the spectrum and amount of information I need to process just driving to work. Friends, we’re seriously in need of an upgrade.
How does my brain feel about all this noise against the background of our current culture? Like an old flip phone when 5G was introduced and 3G service discontinued, with memory that was measured in terms of mega — instead of gigabytes. In a world with new apps that my brain’s operating system struggles to run.
What have we done about it? Unable to keep up biologically, we’ve created artificial intelligence that is “Taylor-made,” to coin a term, for our time and the overwhelming onslaught of information and stimuli our organic bio-electronic brains can’t process.
So, you think it’s not affecting you, this problem of sensory overload? Maybe not, but then it could be that you’re ignoring or at least mischaracterizing the symptoms you’re experiencing. Whatever your age and vocation, do you, for example, have the increasingly persistent feeling that you have too many things to do? Is that really what’s happening or is it just that our culture is insisting that your brain take on more than it can handle? Multi-tasking is a real thing if you’re a computer, but not so much if you’re a human.
Are you finding it hard to concentrate while writing your weekly op/ed with CNN running on the flatscreen in the corner of your office? (Uh oh. That’s me I’m talking about.) Distracting, isn’t it? It’s a cruel joke that the same minds that created the technology for all this media coming at us probably didn’t watch it themselves while they were busy creating AI.
Ever drive somewhere and not remember the trip? Obviously, your brain was on some sort of autopilot, distracted by who knows what array of crises, radio blaring the latest Taylor Swift hit while you talk on your cell phone or to other people in your car. There’s a reason people like the idea of auto-driving technology. It makes driving one less thing to worry about.
Do you find yourselves increasingly dependent upon making lists or notes because you can’t rely on your short-term memory? Or do you sometimes find yourself thinking about something, but then forgetting it before you can write it down? Is it that your brain cells and synapses are aging? Sure. Or that most of us are not getting enough sleep? No doubt about it. Or could some of these short-term memory issues be a symptom of our outdating biological brains maxing out?
Why do so many political groupies believe Donald Trump’s lies? Because he’s a one-trick pony who, regardless of his limited intellectual capabilities, narcissism, and other psychological issues, is a gifted liar. Simply put, Trump’s technique consists of little more than profuse, high-profile lying, often in the face of obvious contradictions. But then, enabled as it has been by the media and the Internet, his misinformation overwhelms the routine process by which the brain differentiates between truth and fiction. Our old-school brains struggle to understand what’s real and what’s not, lacking the time and speed to properly process the unprecedented volume of information hurdling at us.
Are we aging or just finding ourselves increasingly in a world alien to the one in which the current model of our brains evolved?
There are many articles out there that compare the brain to computers in terms of speed, storage, creativity, and other attributes. They talk about the biological structure of the intelligence we have versus the design and power of what we have created. It’s all interesting, but is it relevant to the practical considerations of our lives? All I know is that, as a matter of fact, our brains seem to be having difficulty “dealing.”
The artificial intelligence that we’re creating is our competitor and not necessarily our friend. What we really need is artificial enhancements that are complementary to our natural brains and don’t threaten our existence.
Pretty far out stuff, isn’t it?
Les Cohen is a long-term Marylander, having grown up in Annapolis. Professionally, he writes and edits materials for business and political clients from his base of operations in Columbia, Maryland. He has a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Economics. Leave a comment or feel free to send him an email to Les@Writeaway.us.


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The transit agency calls the program “industry-leading,” and says it will significantly improve the transit experience for blind and partially-sighted passengers.
Tactile and braille signage will be added to an estimated 8,500 bus stops in the system starting in 2020, while tactile walking surface indicators will be installed at stations and bus exchanges.
TransLink says the braille signage will include the five-digit bus stop ID number, the words The words “STOP” or “BAY #” to identify the bus stop, route numbers and the customer service telephone number.
The agency says it is also working on developing a wayfinding technology pilot that would work with visually impaired passengers’ tablets or smartphones.
TransLink says it has been doing testing on accessible bus stops since 2012, when it piloted the braille and tactile walking surface indicators at the Joyce-Collingwood bus exchange.

domain: travel


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Besides the sex, today's eppy was pretty dull.
yay! JKJ's haircut makes its debut. Phil holds Parker.
Kate visits Melanie at Daniel's.
Chloe talks to Daniel at the hospital. "It's fate."
Nicole stops the EJ make out session. Nicole thought they had a "no sex" rule. EJ disagrees.
Stefano says he's keeping Rafe alive because he needs him. #twuwuv
Sami wants to have sex with 3 kids in the apartment, Rafe2D2 slows up.
Jenn asks Maxine to get Daniel for her. Chloe tells Daniel she went to a therapist. Dan tries to leave. Chloe wants to talk. He doesn't.
EJ reassures Nic that he's not pressuring her into sex. How is she resisting him? #hotdamn
R2D2 blames his lack of interest on the beer. Sami said he's lying.
Phil promises to Maggie he'll be a father to Parker and Mel's baby.
Mel doesn't believe Kate.
Chloe keeps playing the Parker card. Chloe wants Daniel to look at her like he used to. Dan agrees.
Lexie talks to Taylor at the nice pier. Lexie wants to talk about Nicole.
Nicole says Brady is not the reason she's not putting out. Nicole turns EJ down for sex. #wtf?
Rafe thinks Stefano did something to Sami. Stefano says Sami doesn't miss Rafe.
Sami thinks Rafe is withholding sex because of his accident. She wants to take it slow. R2D2 stops her from checking on the kids.
Phil shows up at Daniel's with Kate and Melanie.
Chloe goes back to Maggie's. Chloe didn't fill her prescription. She starts crying. She tells Maggie her sob story.
Chloe admits that she doesn't know if she can love Parker anymore.
Nicole asks EJ if he still hates her for the Sydnapping.
Kate leaves Phil and Mel alone.
Jenn talks to Alice's photo. Daniel walks in.
EJ moves in for another kiss. #hotdamnagain
R2D2 kisses Sami's neck.
EJ teases her, then they kiss. Safe2D2 is kissing.
Mel tells Phil all of Kate's schemes. Mel tells Phil they won't reunite. Mel brings up Nathan.
Jenn tells Daniel "thank you." Dan starts talking about Mel.
Chloe is still trying to get Maggie to leave. Chloe leaves instead.
Lexie wants Taylor to talk to Nicole again about staying. Taylor turns to leave again.
EJole still kissing. R2D2 wants to do it now.
Jenn takes the blame for trusting Dr. Frankenstein. Daniel is already fantasizing about feeling her up.
Mel bashes Phil for seeing Parker for 2 or 3 minutes. She tells Phil that he doesn't matter. #harsh
Chloe is at the pier. Rafe comes up with the "body burned recognition" theory. That's so 1993. That's how Stefano fakes his own death, duh
EJole and Safe2D2 finally do it.
Safe2D2 is ready to do his victory lap. Sami's not impressed. EJ'slaughing. Nicole's not impressed. Nic goes to make martinis.
R2D2 calls EJ to brag about scoring. Phil tells Kate to back off. Mel asks why Chloe isn't with the baby.
Nicole's glowing. She's wondering if EJ wants round 2 or to kick her out. Doorbell. She's not happy to see Taylor.
Thanks for reading along!