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Last fall, became the first site to host a live, online meeting auction, where a meeting manager acted as the "seller" and hotels were "buyers." The process is "a real-time bidding war driven by dynamic pricing that lets market forces take their course," says Ed Sarraille, the company's president and CEO. EventSource makes its money on the auctions by charging a standard 10 percent commission to the winning hotel. Certain criteria qualify an auction candidate: the meeting ...

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Now you can pay all of your bills online. No more writing checks and no more trips to the post office. Just log in, tell us who you want to pay, how much, and when. It’s that easy. You can pay individual bills, or schedule regular payments. It’s all part of our continuing effort to provide you with the most complete banking services available.

We offer free a demo for you to learn the features and functionality of our bill pay product. To view the demo, click on the demo link below, or copy the link and paste it into your Web browser:

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January 10th, 2013   general, video 4

The website Audible.com has posted video featurettes for their audiobooks ‘A-list collection’. One of videos features Meg Ryan, who narrated the book ‘The Human Comedy’ by William Saroyan for them last year.

  • Paul S
    Posted on January 10, 2013

    Thanks for the link:)
    I know I’m often guilty of repeating myself on here, but Meg really has got the most wonderful voice:)

  • sammy
    Posted on January 10, 2013

    i agee, its very sweet,

  • sammy
    Posted on January 14, 2013

    Darn they took it down

  • Anne
    Posted on January 15, 2013

    TY for reporting this. I managed to ‘fix’ the problem. It’s back up again!

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Grand Canal Hotel (Dublin)

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1 Review

City: Dublin / Address: Grand Canal Street, Ballsbridge / County: IE / Geographic coordinates: latitude: 53.33836, longitude: -6.23792 / Postal code: DUBLIN 4 / Airport Code: DUB

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      20.01.2012 22:55
      Very helpful

      Nice hotel in a good location

      We stayed at the Grand Canal Hotel for 3 nights over the new year weekend 2012.

      Our room was on the 4th floor with a reasonable view over the city. It was a double room with ensuite. The room itself was a good size with a big comfortable double bed and plenty of storage space. I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the room. The ensuite bathroom had a bath with shower. The biggest downside of the hotel was that there wasn't enough hot water so we had a few lukewarm showers.

      I can only comment on what we used. So... Gasworks Bar is joined to the hotel and was decent. We ordered food from there as room service, which was good. Nice chips!

      From the airport a taxi cost around 25 euro. We were able to walk everywhere in the city. It took about 15 minutes to walk to Grafton Street and a little longer to Temple Bar.

      The hotel staff were friendly, helpful and professional - everything you could ask.

      ===Recommendation and rating===
      The room was very good quality for the price (from lastminute.com) and we thought the location was very good. The tepid shower though was a real negative, so would hesitate to recommend it for this reason. I rate Grand Canal Hotel 3 stars.

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  • Product Details

    Location: close to Aviva Stadium and The Convention Centre Dublin / Location: close to Aviva Stadium and The Convention Centre Dublin / Number and type of rooms: 142 guestrooms featuring flat-screen televisions. Windows open for fresh air and city views. Complimentary wireless Internet access keeps you connected, within 2 km / Dining: Enjoy a meal at one of the hotel's dining establishments, which include 2 restaurants and a coffee shop/cafT. From your room, you can also access room service (during limited hours). Quench your thirst with your favorite drink at a bar/lounge. Full breakfasts are served daily in the restaurant for a fee / Business, Other Amenities: complimentary high-speed (wired) Internet access, audiovisual equipment, and currency exchange. Planning an event in Dublin? This hotel has 2200 square feet (198 square meters) of space consisting of conference/meeting rooms, small meeting rooms, and a ballroom. Free self parking is available onsite.


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Cover Dog Field Trial Message Board
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12" Rain Cap (Each)

Model Number: 02412006LQ

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  • Description
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12" Rain Cap 26 Gauge

  • Used to terminate round pipe run
  • 28 gauge cover
  • Galvanized Steel
  • 26 Gauge

Dimensions: 12"

Brand Name: Heating & Cooling Products

Material Type: Galvanized Steel Overall Diameter: 12
Gauge: 26 Gauge Package Quanity: 1
Duct Shape : Round Overall Length: 17
Overall Width: 17 Product Type: metalraincaps

Please Note: Prices, promotions, styles and availability may vary by store and online. While we do our best to provide accurate item availability information, we cannot guarantee in-stock status and availability as inventory is sold and received continuously throughout the day. Inventory last updated 9/1/2015 at 5:00am EST. Online orders and products purchased in-store qualify for rebate redemption. Rebates are provided in the form of a merchandise credit check which can only be used in a Menards® store.
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Medallion® Designer 70-30 Double Bowl, 9"deep, 18ga, Satin

Model Number: MC-3210SR

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Medallion top of the line undermount sink
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Medallion® Designer 70-30 Double Bowl, 9"deep, 18ga, Satin

Model Number: MC-3210SR

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  • Description

Spacious main bowl with convenient prep bowl on the right. A popular design with timeless appeal, featuring deep drawn straight wall that is embellished by highlighted rim. Supplied with strainer.

  • Undermount 70-30 Double Bowl
  • Overall size 32.5" X 20.75"
  • 9", 7" Depth
  • Lustrous Satin Finish with highlighted rim
  • bg-1400, bg-3200, cb-3200, rb-3200
  • T-304 stainless steel, 18 gauge
  • 17.75"x18.5"x9"deep, 11.5"x15"x8" deep
  • StoneGuard undercoat over sound absorbing pad, Lifetime warranty, cUPC/CSA
  • Fits 36" cabinet
  • Colander, Clips and one Strainer included.

Dimensions: 32.5" x 20.75" x 9" deep

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Please Note: Prices, promotions, styles and availability may vary by store and online. While we do our best to provide accurate item availability information, we cannot guarantee in-stock status and availability as inventory is sold and received continuously throughout the day. Inventory last updated 9/1/2015 at 5:00am EST. Online orders and products purchased in-store qualify for rebate redemption. Rebates are provided in the form of a merchandise credit check which can only be used in a Menards® store.
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Mental Floss 2015-09-01T16:32:46+00:00 2013-10-18T12:00:54+00:00 2013-10-18T12:02:01+00:00 Now You Can Rickroll Your Friends (or Enemies) in Klingon Erin

Remember Rickrolling? It was all the rage five years ago, but it eventually went the way of all internet memes, to the vault of staleness. If you’ve been looking for a way to freshen up your Rickrolling, you now have reason to rejoice. A new Klingon translation of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” just came out.

The video was produced by Commedia Beauregard, a theater company with ties to Minneapolis and Chicago. They specialize in plays that have been translated. Most of the time, this means plays translated from other languages into English, but their holiday showpiece has been translated from English—into Klingon. The show, “A Klingon Christmas Carol,” has played to sold-out audiences for a few years now. Christopher Kidder-Mostrom, the creator of the show, recently did a reddit AMA where he explains how he gets the actors to learn their lines (language lessons, CD listening) and how the audience is able to follow along (super-titles).

Putting a Klingon translation together is no easy task. Klingon grammar is tough to master. Take, for example, what’s involved for a sentence as simple as “Never gonna give you up.” You don’t just look up the translation for each word and stick it in the English slots. You have to use the complicated system of prefixes and suffixes. The translation is “jIHyIntaHvIS not qajegh,” which breaks down as:

jIH-yIn-taH-vIS not qa-jegh
I-live-continuous-while never I/you-surrender
“As long as I live, I’ll never surrender you.”

And that’s not the only challenge the translators have to deal with. The Klingon vocabulary is adapted to what you might call the Klingon worldview. So a lot of concepts that show up in love songs just aren’t, y’know, relevant. The translators have to get the gist across with what they’ve got. Here’s how they make the first verse work:

Apparent love is not alien to us.
(We’re no strangers to love)
You know the laws, and I do too.
(You know the rules and so do I.)
I am certainly considering a blood oath with you.
(A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of.)
Many other males wouldn’t give you these things.
(You wouldn’t get this from any other guy.)

The translation really exposes the dark undertones of this Rickroll classic, the upbeat melody contrasting with the basic message “I want to make a blood oath with you, and never surrender you as long as I live.” Yikes. At least through Halloween, this should make for a sufficiently scary and annoying Rickroll, which one might translate into Klingon as “rIQ-roll” from the verb “rIQ”—“to be injured.”

October 18, 2013 - 8:00am


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Tritons repeat as champs

November 21, 2012

LEVELLAND, Texas — The Iowa Central men’s and women’s cross country teams both made it back-to-back national titles this past weekend at the NJCAA Half Marathon Championships....

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History with a face is history you want to know about

April 25, 2010
By SANDY MICKELSON, Messenger staff writer

History has a way of becoming more important the older you get. I'm ashamed to admit I didn't care much about history in high school, but that's not the point.

I am looking for:


text:
What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 150 Stack Exchange communities.

Possible Duplicate:
Encouraging people to explain down-votes

I see lot of people down voting questions without stating reasons or adding comments. For example this post at SO

checking integrity of a file using md5 or Style sheet for XML not rendering in IE9

Shouldn't there be a an input for downvoting a question? For example when a user down votes on SO the should be asked "Why do you think this question should be down voted?"

share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by Sathya, Jeremy Banks, Time Traveling Bobby, Shadow Wizard, balpha Dec 1 '11 at 8:39

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

This is one of the most common requests here on Meta, you could easily find it by searching. –  Shadow Wizard Dec 1 '11 at 8:28
My reason for downvoting this question: It was already asked many times before. –  Goran Jovic Dec 1 '11 at 11:05
What an interesting and unique request! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? –  Won't Dec 1 '11 at 16:29

2 Answers 2

Circled the Downvote-Tooltip

I have no idea what that question is about, so yes, it is unclear.

If the question is about:

  • How to read a file into a string
    • Lack of research
    • Duplicate
    • Not useful
  • How to md5 a file in Java
    • Lack of research
    • Duplicate (I didn't check, but you wanna bet?)
    • Not useful
  • How to use/convert Streams and Readers
    • Lack of research
    • Duplicate (I still didn't check)
    • Not useful
  • How to reticulate splines
    • Lack of research
    • Duplicate (I's lazy)
    • Not useful
    • Lack of research
    • Duplicate (Everybody has too big spoons)
    • Not useful
share|improve this answer
Common... don't belittle the question here. The person who has posted the question knows how to do all the three bulleted point you have posted. Rather his question is why does his MD5 do not match!! And this is exactly the problem I am discussing. There are people who will JUST skim the question and assume that question is produced out of laziness. A lot of time a post gets downvoted because people seem to think that there is not enough info and I have seen same posts getting answered by other users, may be the ones who will actually take time to read the post and understand it. –  Grrrrr Dec 1 '11 at 9:51
@Grrrrr: That's my point. I read that question three times and I did not figure that out. In that case it still shows a lack of research. Otherwise the OP would know that MD5 operates on byte-level and would not bother to create a string (encoding, line-endings and so on). –  Time Traveling Bobby Dec 1 '11 at 10:19
@ಠ_ಠ Won't: Arrr...I get it, thanks. But I still read the question as one of the three...and the first too are widely covered on SO. –  Time Traveling Bobby Dec 1 '11 at 18:58

This is a suggestion that would create an excess amount of irrelevant data. And who should see those inputs? Everyone? The guy who asked the question? The moderators? And where (and how) should these input be displayed, so that they don't bother users who doesn't care because the reasoning for downvoting a question is obvious (not following the guidelines tends to create downvotes).

When creating a question, a big fat box called 'How to ask' should allow a user to get the information needed for asking a question that doesn't need to be downvoted.

And of course - duplicate questions (like this) also gets downvotes; duplicate questions shows lack of effort to research your question/problem.

share|improve this answer
The suggestion should be showed to the guy who asked the question so that he can change it accordingly. –  Grrrrr Dec 1 '11 at 9:52
How should other downvoters know if the OP has been told what the exact problem is? What if others downvote for other reasons? This would also imply that people had to stop downvoting because 'someone already told him why he got downvoted'. There's a lot of issues with this and most of these has already been mentioned in the other questions related to the downvote comments. –  Repox Dec 1 '11 at 10:07

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text:
What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 150 Stack Exchange communities.

According to this article in Wikipedia:

North Korea is almost completely isolated from the rest of the world and, while there is a public telephone network, there is no broadband data network. According to one report released in 2009, many North Koreans had never heard of the Internet.

Is there any data available indicating whether anyone is connecting to one of the Stack Exchange sites with an IP address from North Korea?

(Using this query I could find two users who claim that they are from North Korea, but that's not very conclusive.)

share|improve this question
Nice try, North Korean Government. –  user149432 Mar 15 '12 at 21:16
I certainly hope no mod/dev will make public that info for specific users. –  Mat Mar 15 '12 at 21:17
What @Mat said, but I would be interested in the raw numbers –  Adam Rackis Mar 15 '12 at 21:18
The interwebs in North Korea are weird - you can only connect when there is a double rainbow in the sky. I don't understand why, that's just the way it is. –  slugster Mar 15 '12 at 21:31
This guy looks pretty North Korean to me. –  bkaid Mar 15 '12 at 21:35
Who whoa WHOA!!! This is Wikipedia. Did you read the citation for that line? Apparently "Song-hee had only practiced moving her fingers on the keyboard. She had never heard of the Internet." somehow becomes equivalent to "According to one report released in 2009, many North Koreans had never heard of the Internet"... –  animuson Mar 15 '12 at 21:45
It's pretty easy to answer it: It is one more than you would think, and a thousand less than they should be. :) –  kiamlaluno Mar 15 '12 at 21:52
...and furthermore, what are their questions, compared to others? Any anomalous questions? –  Adel Mar 16 '12 at 5:43
I thought North Korean Government prefer to make connections...with nukes –  prusswan Mar 16 '12 at 8:09

2 Answers 2

up vote 17 down vote accepted

According to Google Analytics we had a couple dozen daily visits between July and October 2011, but then the number dropped to zero and we haven't had a visit from that country since October 25th.

share|improve this answer
I almost feel like they're reaching out with SOS messages with that tongue-in-cheek pigeon IP. Man I hope one day everyone has Internet.... –  Adel Mar 16 '12 at 5:38
did some poor guy get executed for transgressions? –  prusswan Mar 16 '12 at 8:10
Isn't it odd that Quantcast feels different? (And in general, Google tends to show larger figures than Quantcast does?) –  Arjan Mar 16 '12 at 8:42
It's possible that those numbers are just a measurement error. The IP->Country lookup tables aren't perfect. I had a website where most of my "Australian" users were actually (South) Koreans. –  CodesInChaos Mar 16 '12 at 9:32
Or, any chance Google is being blocked in North Korea? (@CodeInChaos) –  Arjan Mar 16 '12 at 9:38
The way the graph zeroes out abruptly has such a dramatic feeling to it. –  Camilo Martin Apr 1 '12 at 14:00
@Camilo, then let's hope it's indeed about blocking Google Analytics instead. I'd even block Analytics if I were a big company with trade secrets. Imagine how a country that thinks the US is an enemy in every possible respect, feels about a US company tracking web visits on many websites? –  Arjan Apr 9 '12 at 7:55
@Arjan Yes, indeed blocking Google Analytics seems likely. Maybe the guy who blocked Google Analytics had to look up how to do it in Stack Overflow? (I really feel sad for smart people on such a country). –  Camilo Martin Apr 9 '12 at 20:04

Quantcast says, for Stack Overflow: about 432 per month (out of 14.9 million in total).

For SE wide details, you'll need to add the country code KP to the URL manually, as it's not listed otherwise.

share|improve this answer
Those will be the scientists and engineers working on the country's nuclear program googling for results and ending up at SO. I hope they're up voting the good answers. –  slugster Mar 15 '12 at 23:40
That may very well be true, but somehow Quantcast thinks a few of them are less than 18 years old. –  Arjan Mar 15 '12 at 23:49
@Arjan - What's hard to believe there? Kids program at 12, 13 , etc –  Adel Mar 16 '12 at 5:50
Sure, @Adel, but even in North Korea, I'd somehow doubt those would be working in a nuclear plant, like slugster suggested? –  Arjan Mar 16 '12 at 8:43
I started programming at 11 :P –  Benny Mar 16 '12 at 10:14
And at what age did you start working in a nuclear plant, @Benny? ;-) –  Arjan Mar 16 '12 at 10:19
@Arjan Ever since I spent all of my pocket money on one –  Benny Mar 16 '12 at 10:20

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text:
What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 150 Stack Exchange communities.

Possible Duplicate:
How to deal with questions from people who don't know enough to ask?

I don't like this question, but I don't know how to deal with it.

From the FAQ, "Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers".

I fall in to the second part of that statement, but I would think even the professionals would know how to deal with a negative number :)

I don't think the question is off-topic, but....

I want to flag it, but what flag is suitable?

share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by waiwai933, Cody Gray, kiamlaluno, Yannis, Pops May 7 '12 at 14:15

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

Generally, not a real question would be used for this. –  animuson May 4 '12 at 23:22
@waiwai933 Yes, it could be a duplicate of that, although I had to read it a couple of times to realise. Although I'd like to think my question was slightly less angry :) –  vascowhite May 4 '12 at 23:33
89.27854% of the time? Note this is a very accurate estimation, based on my keen guesswork based on what I've been going through in the flag queue. –  casperOne May 5 '12 at 19:14
Haha, sounds like a reasonable percentage to me. –  vascowhite May 5 '12 at 20:29

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Flag to close it as "Not a Real Question", because that's what it is.

But "hate" is probably too strong a word for some harmless bytes on the internet... Go grab yourself a beer and relax.

share|improve this answer
OK with the hate comment. I already had the beer :) –  vascowhite May 4 '12 at 23:23
If I could relax I wouldn't be looking at SO at 01:25. But it's good advice. –  vascowhite May 4 '12 at 23:25
and it wasn't "harmless bytes", it was something wrong on the internets!! –  vascowhite May 4 '12 at 23:49

If I were to flag that, I would probably go for "too localized":

This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.

While this isn't exactly one of the scenarios listed, this question asks for a solution of a very narrow (negative number + toast) and trivial problem - this qualifies it as "not helpful for future visitors" IMHO.

Then again, I might consider the downvotes sufficient in this case...

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text:
What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 150 Stack Exchange communities.

There was a tag added to SO, I really think this tag needs to get booted. Why is it even there? As far as I can tell it's being used for "I have a homework problem mapping DNA sequences."

I understand making tags to help organize questions about , or , but the content of a programming problem? What if a user has a homework question about (I don't know) sheep? Do we need a tag to categorize all of those as well?

Can we get rid of the tag?

share|improve this question

closed as off-topic by Undo, ChrisF, ɥʇǝS, Emrakul, mhlester May 9 '14 at 20:49

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

  • "This question pertains only to a specific site in the Stack Exchange Network. Questions on Meta Stack Exchange should pertain to our network or software that drives it as a whole, within the guidelines defined in the help center. You should ask this question on the meta site where your concern originated." – Undo, ɥʇǝS, Emrakul, mhlester
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

wow, clicking that tag makes me feel like I've fallen into a parallel universe. –  Kate Gregory Oct 22 '12 at 19:53
No sheep, but I can offer you a turtle :-). –  ben is uǝq backwards Oct 22 '12 at 19:56
It looks like helix gets abused as well.... –  mikeTheLiar Oct 22 '12 at 20:25
Would it make sense to re-tag some of those questions with the bioinformatics tag? –  hammar Oct 22 '12 at 20:30
Why not make "dna" a tag synonym of "bioinformatics"? –  hippietrail Oct 24 '12 at 18:00

3 Answers 3

up vote 14 down vote accepted

I see three kinds of questions in that tag:

  • Homework-type questions about string processing, where the fact that the strings represent DNA is an irrelevant detail. These should be retagged to . Examples: 1 2
  • Bioinformatics questions. DNA sequences tend to be very long, with some typical search operations. There are libraries dedicated to DNA processing. The tag is meaningful and useful for these questions. Examples: 1 2
    There is a tag that covers this meaning and that is used more often. After casperOne indiscriminately blazed through the tag, I went back and retagged questions to where it seemed appropriate.
  • DNA-based computing. 1 It's off-topic.
share|improve this answer
Nice job checking up on that mass-destruction operation! (Although I can't see the second example, it's been mod-deleted.) –  Pops Oct 22 '12 at 21:43
There is already bioinformatics. Why would dna be more appropriate? –  kiamlaluno Oct 23 '12 at 9:14
@kiamlaluno Why have list when there's already data-structures? Why windows-8 and not just windows? Why have tags at all when it's all about programming anyway? –  Gilles Oct 23 '12 at 10:13
In how many cases is knowing the question is someway about DNA relevant? Does a programming question have a different answer, if it is tagged dna (with the actual meaning given to the tag)? programming is not a used tag; if it were, it would be too generic. –  kiamlaluno Oct 23 '12 at 10:21

It does mean something relevant for computing. From Wikipedia:

Windows DNA is short for Windows Distributed interNet Applications Architecture, a marketing name for a collection of Microsoft technologies that enable the Windows platform and the Internet to work together. Some of the principal technologies comprising DNA include ActiveX, Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and COM. Windows DNA has been largely superseded by the Microsoft .NET Framework, and Microsoft no longer uses the term.

However, it does not seem to be used like that, as the question seem to be just about DNA sequences. I think best burniated and if there was a DNA question tag it windows-dna.

share|improve this answer
OK, I'll give you that. But this clearly isn't how the tag is being used –  Mike Oct 22 '12 at 19:58

is effectively used to mean Deoxyribonucleic acid.
With that meaning, it is not a tag that is needed on Stack Overflow. The fact the question is someway related to the DNA is not so relevant to require a tag, especially because it is used in different contexts (e.g. different programming languages).

The tag can be removed from the post revisions (i.e. burninated), but first somebody should search for questions to close, such as String read and find different sub-sequences (which is already closed).

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Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 150 Stack Exchange communities.

Careers > My Profile > Add Writing > End up with "site within site". This is in IE9 (Google Chrome works fine).

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+1 - Got the same issue. –  Alex Humphrey Jun 17 '11 at 15:37

1 Answer 1

Thanks Jeff, this should be fixed, would you have another look?

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Yes, it is fixed now. Thanks! –  Jeff Widmer Jun 20 '11 at 16:47

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If you ask a question, and get no answers, so you then add a bounty, and still get no answers, what happens? Do you lose your points to the ether? Does the bounty get canceled?

share|improve this question

4 Answers 4

up vote 4 down vote accepted

As I understand it, the bounty status is a permanent one:

  • you have paid for it (up front, no refund)
  • you have not selected an answer
  • no answer has been auto-selected

, then that is called an "unresolved" bounty, and its status is, again, permanent.

The side effect is: if a great answer comes after the expiration of your "unresolved" bounty, you will not able to select it, you will only be able to vote it up.
This is by design.

See also Why an answer can’t be accepted after an unresolved bounty?

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I think an answer should still be allowed to be accepted after bounty expires, even if it won't get any more reputation from it. –  Cawas Mar 11 '10 at 19:51
@Cawas I think so too, and so do many others. See the question meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1413/… . –  Emil May 24 '10 at 13:07
@Emil thanks for the follow up! –  Cawas Sep 21 '10 at 22:56
This is a very strange rule. If you have offered a bounty for a question and there are no answers then the bounty reps should be returned. It goes against the very meaning of the word 'bounty'. –  Gary Jones Dec 8 '11 at 11:38
@Gary Jones I agree with you. I have a bounty that will expire in the next 15 hours and there are no answers, but Actually I had offered a bounty to someone's question as a investor.. I think I will have no refunds also.. so sad! ;( –  B4NZ41 Aug 23 '12 at 1:33

As Ian's comment says, I believe even if no answer ends up accepted after a week, you still lose the reputation associated with the bounty. I believe this is because, as Marc Gravell points out, the bounty system is essentially a way to publicize your question. Therefore, you still have to pay for the advertising, whether it ends up with an accepted answer or not.

share|improve this answer
+1: for "you still have to pay for the advertising" –  A9S6 Dec 8 '09 at 11:56
That clears it up. I'm not sure I agree (I'd rather have 'no cure, no pay', but with this explanation it does make sense. –  GolezTrol Oct 14 '11 at 6:35
I don't pay a bounty for advertising, I pay it for an answer. –  Barry Fruitman Jan 23 '12 at 19:12
A three-year old question, but... I disagree with @Marc Gravell's advertising answer, because you don't 'pay for advertising' when someone answers your question - you pay the poster for her/his answer. No answer, nobody to pay. Calling it advertising is saying "I have to pay $100 for my help wanted ad to run in the newspaper... but if someone responds to the ad, I don't have to pay the newspaper, I can use the $100 to pay the respondent, instead". It makes no sense. –  James King Oct 23 '12 at 5:27

Someone please correct me if I am wrong and I will update my information.

According to Jeff Atwood in this blog entry [Reputation Bounty for Unanswered Questions:]

I agree we shouldn’t auto-accept answers with 0 or negative votes, however, and we’ll make sure we don’t. So in the case where all the answers are at 0 or below, no auto-accept will occur after 7 days.

If there are no answers, then the condition that an answer is greater than 0 has not been met (*see note below). So I believe the logic is already in place not to auto-accept an answer. However, it seems that bounties are paid up front. Even if there is no accepted answer, you do not get the reputation back. "No returns."

*Note: According to this post, it seems that "auto-accept requires 2+ upvotes minimum"

share|improve this answer
If there's no auto accepted answer I believe you would still lose the bounty. Nothing really hints at not losing the rep. –  Ian Elliott Jul 27 '09 at 3:15
Yes. The consensus seems to be that bounties are paid up front, no returns. I will update my answer. –  Robert Cartaino Jul 27 '09 at 14:06

You do not accept an answer. Any answer that was a) provided after the bounty period started and b) has 2 or more upvotes is automatically accepted after 7 days. The bounty is subtracted from your reputation. The answerer is awarded half the bounty amount (unless it’s your own answer, see #3 below).

Also, there are three alerts sent to the bounty question owner:

  • direct email, 2 days before
  • site message, 2 days before
  • direct email, 1 day before

edit: bounties can now be re-opened, and accepted answers are no longer tied to bounty awards in any way. More details at http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/improvements-to-bounty-system/

share|improve this answer
Yes, I saw that in the FAQ. My question involves the case where there are no questions that meet either criteria (a or b), and in this case, no questions at all. –  pkaeding Jul 27 '09 at 6:52
There are some situations where this is "less than fair" - if you offer a bounty, because you want an answer, but there are not enough technology specialists around, should you be penalised for it? For example, I was considering offering a bounty on superuser.com/questions/18446 but I'm not convinced I'll get an answer that works, some I'm loathed to lose the reputation just because the answer isn't going to be the result of a simple google search –  Rowland Shaw Aug 10 '09 at 11:19
This is a problem for the SO sites - bounty questions have a good chance of being difficult and if they are niche questions/topics there is a likelyhood that there will be no real useful answer and I agree that an "auto-acceptance" is a major design flaw. Having two upvotes with perhaps only one or two total answers SHOULD NOT trigger an automatic acceptance. Note that I am not commenting on reduction of the hitpoints - that is not a big issue - rather that the site erroneously chooses a bad answer just because it has 2 votes. –  tim Aug 17 '09 at 15:18
I stumbled upon this because someone successfully answered my question a day after the bounty expired, and now I have no way to accept it, so my accept rate is jacked up, I lost rep, and that person doesn't get the bounty or the chosen answer rep. Is this all intended behavior? If so it seems like a lot of punishment for bad timing. –  NateDSaint Feb 23 '10 at 21:30
huge WTF on this –  mxmissile Oct 22 '10 at 15:37

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Verne Troyer: My parents didn’t know I’d married a Playboy model

Verne Troyer: My parents didn’t know I’d married a Playboy model
Verne Troyer’s parents cut him no slack because of his height (Picture: Getty Images)

He may be one of the world’s shortest men but Verne Troyer’s disciplinarian parents never made allowances for him – and he’s glad.

I grew up in a small town called Centreville, with an older brother and a younger sister. My parents were factory workers, there wasn’t much money in the house and we struggled financially at times but we always made it through.

They were disciplinarians – if we did something wrong, we got the belt. I don’t necessarily agree with it now but that’s how it was back then. It taught me right from wrong. It is understandable it’s a controversial issue now but there’s a difference between discipline and abuse.

My parents were Amish but left the religion when I was a year old. The Amish have a lot of rules and my dad thought many people in the faith were being hypocritical – they’d say not to do something then do it themselves. We still had a religious upbringing, though.

Even though my parents were no longer Amish, it still played a big role in my life – there were Amish kids at my school, some of my best friends were Amish, our neighbours were Amish, my grandparents who lived 100 yards away were Amish and I was always in their house.

The differences were I could do things like watch TV and use a telephone, which they couldn’t – they were old-school, they had horses and buggies, gas lamps, it was a very simple life.

The community is very tight-knit. If something bad happens, your neighbours are there to lend you a hand – that’s a great thing about the Amish people.

My parents brought me up to be self-sufficient. I had to do everything my brother and sister, who are of average size, had to do – I didn’t get any breaks because of my height. I had to feed the cows, the chickens, raise the rabbits.

I rarely had any problems from people about my height. There was one incident when I was nine when another kid called me names and I punched him – my parents always taught me to stick up for myself.

I had a lot of jobs before acting came along and my parents never pushed me down any particular career path. I was a telephone operator, a candy wrapper, I worked in a women’s abuse shelter, customer service – lots of things. I left home at 21 to move in with my brother, who was living in Texas. My parents didn’t show they were concerned but I’m sure they were – it was the first time I had been so far away from them. It was a 17-hour drive.

My parents were proud when I became an actor. It wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t made me independent and encouraged me to do things on my own. They found out I married my girlfriend, who was a Playboy model, when they saw it on TV. I didn’t tell them.

I got it annulled three days later. I knew they didn’t like her that much but, whenever she was around, they made her feel at home. It was an unspoken thing.

The most important things my parents taught me were to stay optimistic, that you can do anything you put your mind to and to do the right thing.

Troyer appears in documentary series Incredibly Small World, which starts tonight at 9pm on National Geographic Channel.

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Murakami: Master or Marketing?
Two contrasting views on the literary giant’s potential Nobel nomination
Oct 10, 2012 | Issue: 968 | 3 Comments | 6,906 views

Robert G, via Flickr Bert Werk

See Metropolis’ review of 1Q84 here

by Miho Matsugu

When I teach Haruki Murakami to undergraduates in Chicago, his work always inspires breakthroughs. Students struggle to see Kawabata Yasunari’s work as anything more than a rare antique; they experience involuntary discomfort with Oe Kenzaburo’s political avant-garde. Upon reading Murakami, they are “sucked in,” as one student put it. They’re not merely engaging in praise or worship; they read his literature analytically. His work broadens their thinking and produces thoughtful conversations about difficult issues: abortion, suicide, cultism. He is a monumental writer for their time, one whose language—through translation—transcends the boundaries of the archipelago.

His nonfiction work is particularly memorable: Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (2001) shows how walking past things we pretend not to see generates “a distorted image of ourselves in a manner none of us could have foreseen.” He lays bare that which produces an “unnamable dread, a disgust beyond” our understanding. His memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2009), demonstrates his own desire to gaze unflinchingly: “Once when I was around sixteen and nobody else was home, I stripped naked, stood in front of a large mirror in our house, and checked out my body from top to bottom. As I did this I made a mental list of all the deficiencies.”

Some prominent Japanese literary critics detect a worrisome ideological apparatus beneath Murakami’s prose—one that relies on, even promotes, the injustices fundamental to a modern, capitalist status quo. University of Tokyo Professor Komori Yoichi’s critical study, On Haruki Murakami: a Close Reading of Kafka on the Shore (2005) accuses Murakami of effacing historical trauma by shrouding it in layers of seductive metonymy. The text conflates warfare with personal violence, argues Komori, and the killing of cats is confused with the killing of people; a reference to Adolf Eichmann’s trial is invoked to draw a metaphorical connection between the Holocaust and the protagonist’s feline bloodletting. Komori argues that Murakami invokes a collective memory of violent crimes committed by youth, of recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then directs readers to a place where they can live in comfortable denial of injustice and violence.

But how can we truly know the ideological effect of a piece of literature on our political consciousness? Writing about the same novel, John Updike described Murakami as “a tender painter of negative spaces,” and said that “Beneath his feverish, symbolically fraught adventures lies a subconscious pull almost equal to the pull of sex and vital growth: that of nothingness, of emptiness, of blissful blankness.”

The very fact that such dissimilar interpretations of the same work exist suggests Murakami is controversial and provocative, two attributes common to great writers. Regarding Murakami’s alleged trivialization of the Holocaust, I would point to his critical interest in the intersection between contemporary Japan and Nazi Germany. In Underground, where he discusses the way the Japanese public averts its eyes from the Aum cult, Murakami writes: “Very likely, German intellectuals during the Weimar period behaved in a similar fashion when they first saw Hitler.” Komori Yoichi also criticizes Murakami’s marketing scheme for Kafka on the Shore, which relied on mass emails and included a 9/11 publication date. These tactics constitute a critical part of Murakami’s literary experiment—the willingness to address himself to the contemporary. Komori notes that Kafka was in many ways a response to 9/11. Similarly, Murakami has said that 1Q84 (2011), which has him poised to receive the Nobel, responds to the collective psychic landscape that has emerged in the last 11 years.

One thing is certain: Murakami’s novels are commodities. They bring profit to the wealthy. They are well-received by educated, urbane young professionals. To reach a global audience, Murakami has worked closely with a select group of translators, editors and publishers. This ruffles critics who see him as a businessman first and author second. But such criticism is misplaced. Kawabata once said that great works amount to nothing if there is no space to publish them. He too was an enthusiastic marketer, not only of his own work, but of Japanese literature in general. Murakami’s is a similar variety of literary entrepreneurship.

Alfred Nobel’s will indicates the Nobel should go to “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” What is an ideal direction? It has been said that Murakami’s literature is a source of soothing in our fevered political and economic times, and in recent years the endings to his novels have grown hopeful and redemptive. Meanwhile, the anxiety and fear that underlie so much of life in the early 21st century have reached a hideous boil. Some of us have recognized this, and cannot accept that Murakami writes—at least in part—for those who have not. Yet in positioning his literature at the abrupt edge of these questions of consciousness, Murakami has crafted a more honest portrayal than his detractors—one that implicates us all.

by Dreux Richard

Two elements of Murakami Haruki’s work make him an attractive Nobel candidate: the translational nature of his prose and the liberalism of his non-fiction projects. Both rely on credulity toward his veneer of multiculturalism and political relevance, and a willingness to refrain from comparing him to the handful of less famous Japanese authors who exceed him in both respects. His success, in fact, does not mark the triumph of transnational aesthetics, but rather the continued hegemony of American publishing interests who understand that English readers have little tolerance for the foreign.

Many of Murakami’s detractors, however, offer only the stodgy nationalism that Murakami isn’t a demonstrably “Japanese” writer. This critique, once directed at Oe Kenzaburo, is wrongheaded. But Oe’s and Murakami’s fiction are not commensurate in ethical density, nor do their novels produce the same effect in readers. Oe’s moralism is empowering and emancipatory. Murakami, rightly dubbed “a pornographer of depression,” produces stylized stultifications of the spirit, as rich in lassitude as they are in quaffable prose. Many of Japan’s foremost literary critics (Karatani Kojin and Komori Yoichi included) have faulted Murakami’s writing for its shallow, self-indulgent gloss on history and trauma.

Murakami’s sanctimony toward the favored writers of American publishing’s pyramid scheme (wherein aspiring authors outnumber casual readers) has endeared him to English professors and other mid-level tastemakers. But he has avoided the difficult, unrewarding work that surmounting cultural barriers demands: writing multilingual texts that defy commercial literary paradigms. This has been left to Tawada Yoko, Levy Hideo, Mizumura Minae, and Lee Yangji, among others, all of whom have labored under the sign of Japan’s last Nobel-caliber author, the late Nakagami Kenji.

Comparison with Levy Hideo offers the starkest illustration. Much of Levy’s work is set in China’s Henan province, where he has pursued what little humanity remains in a nation beaten senseless by a cruel march toward prosperity. Levy’s China writing includes its share of trilingual moments and several critics have suggested that the multilingual wrinkles in his short story, “Ten-an-mon,” (“Tiananmen”) may have cost him the Akutagawa Prize.

When Senkaku tensions overflowed, a much-anticipated public dialogue between Levy and Yan Lianke was cancelled. Levy thereafter gave an expansive, vulnerable interview to the Tokyo Shimbun about the future of Japan-China relations. The interview matters because Levy has dedicated a decade of literary yeoman’s work to examining the fragile pith of Chinese culture.

When Murakami weighed in on the Senkaku dispute via the Asahi Shimbun, it was to warn against imbibing the “cheap liquor of nationalism.” However compelling the sentiment, it amounted to a truism from an author who has sacrificed little for the sake of Japan-China understanding. He has made a habit of such gestures, having ridden to the rescue after the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Aum attacks, thereby claiming—almost exclusively—whatever goodwill such catastrophes generate for savvily-marketed writers.

Murakami’s pronouncements matter because he’s Murakami, “one of the world’s foremost novelists,” as AFP put it. But if this is why the English language press latched onto Murakami’s comments while overlooking Levy’s interview, then we’ve arrived at the sad intersection of literary authorship and Oprah-ism, wherein the media’s limited attention span necessitates the selection of a single, self-perpetuating fame figure for whom publicly-disseminated thoughtfulness is reserved.

Credit The New Yorker and other well-moneyed American publishing interests. Murakami—as English readers (including the Swedish Academy) know him—is their fabrication. Translator Stephen Snyder’s work traces the shaping of Murakami’s brand by Robert Gottlieb and examines how Gottlieb’s successor, Deborah Treisman, has fixated on conjuring “the next Murakami.” To the credulous, this is an effort to keep Japanese literature in The New Yorker’s tent; to the observant, it’s an attempt to construct an exotic, saleable façade for American fiction’s tired idioms (the lack of a viable American Nobel candidate is an exhausted topic). As Snyder has noted, Murakami’s American investors set out to turn him into a “literary version of the Sony Walkman and the Honda Civic.”

This would be fine if it resulted in the publication of more Japanese literature. But Gottlieb and Treisman haven’t given us Japanese literature. They have given us Treisman and Gottlieb. Their fingerprints are omnipresent in the New Yorker versions. Alterations are not necessarily wrongful; both previous Nobel laureates from Japan were rendered by activist translators (Edward Seidensticker and John Nathan). But Nathan translated Oe with autonomy and was published by the insurgent Barney Rosset. Now comes the age of pander, where authors provide the raw cultural and biographical materials necessary to make the publishing industry’s pet aesthetics marketable. Treisman—who “made” Ogawa Yoko—withdrew The New Yorker’s interest in one of Ogawa’s stories after the author declined to rewrite the ending.

Awarding Murakami the Nobel Prize therefore wouldn’t amount to a recognition of Japanese literature’s continued vitality, but to a vindication of American publishing’s marketing apparatus, not only as chief arbiter of which Japanese authors are read outside Japan, but as the world’s dominant literary and cultural tastemaker, capable of dressing its imperialism in increasingly ridiculous costumes—a New Yorker writer translated by a Harvard professor as paragon of contemporary Japanese literature.

See Metropolis’ review of 1Q84 here

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  • an expat

    The idea that awarding Murakami the Nobel Prize “wouldn’t amount to a recognition of Japanese literature” is absurd. It’s awarded to an individual, not a country.
    It reminds me of my younger, backpacker years listening to people say they wished to go find the “real Bali” or “real China,” conveniently ignoring that Denpasar and Shanghai are equally “real” to the millions that live there.

    The influence that Publishers have is enormous, but seems off-based here.

  • Secret Fornow

    an expat makes a good point. Since when did this become a national award? Sure, some countries like to have the bragging rights, but most people view the winner as an individual, not as a representative of his or her country. I think both writers make valid points, but I’m going to go with Ms. Matsugu in that the effect he has on readers, be it in Japanese or English, is unmistakable. He didn’t win the prize, but the debate will likely continue. I read Murakami because I enjoy his stories and as long as I continue to enjoy them, I don’t care about the American publishers.

  • Dave

    Richard’s critique is fun to read, but so cynical one finds it hard to take seriously. He hates on the publishing industry, literary marketing and all external markers of success (since when is the New Yorker the stamp of death for serious literature?), but he says very little about Murakami’s actual literary output, just a few disses, including a weird indictment of the world press for not paying more attention to Levy Hideo after the sarin gas attacks. To take one quick peek outside the narrow lines he has drawn, in Taiwan, sales of Murakami in Chinese translation are huge and his cultural resonance is enormous. Taipei has cafes named Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore. Should we blame the New Yorker and the evil American publishing cabal for that too?

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text:
Hundreds of Somalis flee heavy clashes

Staff Reporter

Heavy fighting erupted on Tuesday in a previously quiet part of the Somali capital sending hundreds of residents fleeing, officials said.

Heavy fighting erupted on Tuesday in a previously quiet part of the Somali capital sending hundreds of residents, some of them already displaced from elsewhere, fleeing, officials and witnesses said.

Clashes broke out in Dharkinley in southwest Mogadishu at about 10am when Somali loyalist forces attacked checkpoints manned by hardline Islamists.

“Fighting is going on in several locations in the capital and the heaviest broke out this morning in Dharkinley district, our forces are gaining ground in the battle,” colonel Mohamed Hashi, one of the Somali police commanders, told Agence France-Presse.

The interim Somali government launched a counter-offensive on May 22 to try to regain control of swathes of the capital captured earlier by the rebels.

Terrified residents on Tuesday started flooding out of Dharkinley, one of the most poverty-stricken districts of the capital.

“Many people are fleeing the battle zones to avoid the crossfire,” added Hashi.

“There has been military movement in our neighbourhood in the past days, but this morning heavy clashes erupted near Abagedo area, everybody is fleeing for their lives because they [the Islamists] are using heavy machine guns and mortar shells,” a resident, Mohamed Ibrahim, said.

Dharkinley has been one of the rare calm districts of Mogadishu in recent years in Somalia’s protracted cycle of violence and has sheltered many displaced from other hotbeds.

“This district has been calm in the past years and hosted many people who also fled other neighborhoods, but now the time has come for us to flee too,” another resident, Abdi Nure, said.

There have been no reports on casualties yet.

Mogadishu has been engulfed since May 7 by fierce fighting between the two sides, killing more than 200 people and forcing more than 62 000 others out of their homes.

The rebel onslaught is led by the al-Shabaab, an extremist faction accused of links to al-Qaeda; and Hezb al-Islam, a more political radical group loyal to opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.

The groups want to topple President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist who came to power in January under a United Nations-backed deal.—Sapa-AFP

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« Teacher union: Crist and legis gave "empty political promises" | Main | Pray for evolution and abortion bill urges group »

Battle of the leader good-byes

What's a devoted lobbyist to do? Wednesday night the good-bye parties of two of the longest serving senators -- both of them party leaders -- will be happening simultaneously.

Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller's is 7:30-10 p.m. in the SunTrust building. Senate Republican Leader Dan Webster's is 6:30-8:00 in 212 Knott Building. Download gellers_goodbye.htm

Maybe this will help torn attendees make the decision which one to get to first. Geller's will feature what is touted as "the One and Only Senator Bullard singing 'Neither One of Us Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye.''


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« A Charlie Crist challenge to Rick Scott in 2014: Democratic nightmare or gift? | Main | Boehner on RNC platform: never mind »

Defeated Miami-Dade commission chairman, property appraiser sue to contest election results

Citing an ongoing absentee-ballot fraud investigation in Hialeah, two Miami-Dade politicians who lost their election contests two weeks ago say they have sued to challenge the results.

County Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, who ran for Miami-Dade mayor, and Property Appraiser Pedro J. Garcia, defeated in his reelection bid, filed parallel lawsuits Friday asking the courts to throw out the absentee votes in their countywide races, according to a lawyer representing both men.

Without the absentees, the results would rely only on ballots cast during early voting and on Election Day. In that case, Martinez would have narrowly made it to a runoff against Mayor Carlos Gimenez. Garcia would have defeated state Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

Prosecutors have charged two suspected Hialeah ballot brokers known as boleteros, Deisy Cabrera and Sergio Robaina, with voter fraud. Cabrera allegedly forged the ballot signature of a terminally ill woman in a nursing home; Robaina allegedly filled out two absentee ballots with his own candidate choices, not those of the voters involved.

As part of the investigation, authorities have identified 195 absentee ballots collected by Cabrera, Robaina or other brokers. Six of those ballots were seized by investigators and not counted in the Aug. 14 election. The county’s three-person canvassing board rejected four other ballots collectedby the brokers because the signatures on the ballot envelopes did not match voter signatures on file. In an interview Monday, Martinez cited the Hialeah arrests as enough evidence to contest the election.

More here.


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The Miami Report

News and Public Information Office
Glos Center
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio 45056
(513) 529-7592
(513) 529-1950 fax

Miami launches newspaper readership program

A yearlong newspaper readership program aimed at improving Miami students’ knowledge of world, national and local events kicks off Sept. 20.

Free copies of The New York Times, USA TODAY and The Cincinnati Enquirer will be distributed in three dining halls and one residence hall. The program, which will run the academic year, will include Alexander, Erickson and Harris dining halls and Bishop Hall.

This year’s effort follows a pilot readership program last spring that earned enthusiastic reviews from students participating in a survey. "My awareness of the news has gone up enormously," said one student.

The project is a partnership between Miami and the newspapers aimed at creating educated citizens as well as developing daily newspaper readership patterns among young people, particularly first-year students.

"The results at Miami and the handful of other universities selected to participate last year show that encouraging newspaper readership contributes significantly to students’ knowledge about world events and their own communities," said Richard Little, senior director of university communications.

Survey results following last spring’s pilot program at Miami show that:

• The number of Miami students reading a newspaper at least three-to-four times a week jumped from 18 percent to 34 percent.

• The percentage of students who reported reading national news in the newspaper went from 67 percent to 78 percent and international news reading rose from 50 to 57 percent.

• The percentage of students who reported using a newspaper to understand debates on critical issues went from 34 percent to 38 percent and to keep up with current events from 84 percent to 88 percent.

Date Published: 09/15/1999
Volume: 19   Number: 8

© 2012 | Miami University | 501 East High Street | Oxford, Ohio 45056 | 513.529.1809 | Equal opportunity in education and employment | Privacy Statement


text:
Stateside: Mitch Albom tackles 'time' in new book

Sep 6, 2012

As you hurry through your day, checking your watch, checking the clock, trying to squeeze more and more into your waking hours, did you ever stop and wonder...

What would it be like to live without an awareness of time?

How does that constant awareness of time passing, time running out, affect our very existence?

Mitch Albom got to wondering about these very questions.

The result is his latest novel, The Time Keeper.

 Cyndy spoke with Mitch and asked him how he would describe his book.

Albom said it's a fable.

"[It's] kind of a magical novel that follows the story of an invented 'Father Time' as he tries to teach the world of what the real value of time is," said Albom.

Albom said the idea was a natural evolution from his other books and pretty much came from his experience of aging. The spark for the book came one day at his house.

"I looked outside the window and I saw a deer run across the backyard... And I said to myself, 'that deer has no idea if today is Tuesday or Thursday. No idea how long it's supposed to live... It's just existing,’” said Albom.

“And that's the big difference between us and every other creature on the planet.

"We count time. And because we count time, we're the only creatures that worry about time running out."

So Albom decided to write a book about the first guy who began counting, and "how we'd all like to kill that guy."

The book has three major characters.

Cyndy told Albom she most identified with the character 'Sarah.’ Cyndy wondered how Albom, a sportswriter, captured the heart of a struggling teenage girl so well.

Albom said it came from observing his 17 nieces and nephews. He watched as they struggled through their teen years in world connected by technology and social media.

"It was a lot of fun writing a teenage girl. I've never done it before. All my books seem to be about old men and middle aged guys," said Albom.

Cyndy asked Albom to compare the difficulty between writing as a sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press, and writing a novel.

Albom said making up a completely new world in a novel is much more difficult for him than reporting.

He says he still feels like a relatively green novelist. In comparison, he’s been a sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press for 30 years.

Albom said some friends who are novelists say the characters they create in their books help guide them through the writing process.

“I don’t understand that. My characters, they look up from the page and they go, ‘what do you mean? You tell us where to go. You don’t know where we’re going?! You expect us to do this?!’

“So they must have a whole different set of characters than me. I have to have an ending. If I don’t have a north star of sorts to sail towards, my boat will crash,” said Albom.

Albom said his books teach him lessons, whether it’s about faith, family relationships, or time.

“You reach a certain age when you realize you aren’t going to live forever,” said Albom.

Both of his parents have had strokes in the last year and are dependent on aides to help them.

And Albom said he’s reaching those years himself, and he’s learned an important lesson about the limits of time in our lives.

"I have learned that I'm not going to be able to do everything in my life. You know? I'm just not. So what am I going to do with the time I have left?"

“And how am I going to spend it? And that’s probably the overall lesson of the The Timekeeper,” said Albom.

“If we could live forever, like everybody wants to, nothing would be important. It’s the fact that time is limited, and you don’t get a million years, and you might not even get tomorrow, that forces you to make choices… and the choices you make become the quality of your life whether it’s 20 years long or 120 years long. And that’s sort of the whole essence of the book, and that’s really what I needed to teach myself.”

Mitch Albom is involved in several charities.

Cyndy asked Albom about which charities are have gotten good support, and which ones “need a little more love.”

Albom said the charity in Haiti has gotten a lot of support, but not as much support has been given to the charities in and around Detroit.

“Sometimes it’s easy to care for somebody a world away than it is in your own backyard. I don’t know why that is… I try not to look at it that way. To me, people in need are people in need.”

Albom said, despite hard economic times, people in Michigan have been continuing to give, which is inspiring to him.

You can find out more about Albom’s charities and his books on his website –

WEB EXTRA: Listen below to the story Albom tells about a plumber from Dearborn, who helped out with the Have Faith Haiti Mission.

There are two ways you can podcast "Stateside with Cynthia Canty"


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jack martin

Detroit Public Schools

Detroit City Council recently voted to strip Kevyn Orr of most of his powers as the city's emergency manager. Now, the Detroit Public School Board is hoping to oust their emergency manager as well.

Under Michigan's current emergency manager law, local officials can vote to strip EMs of their power with a two-thirds vote after 18 months.

The Detroit school board voted Monday evening with the belief that Jack Martin’s tenure as emergency manager would end this week.

This Week in Michigan Politics, Emily Fox and Jack Lessenberry discuss Detroit’s water shutoffs, Detroit Public School’s emergency manager and updates from the campaign trail.

User: Brother O'Mara / flickr

Detroit Public Schools get new emergency manager

Governor Rick Snyder has named Jack Martin as the new emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools. Martin replaces Roy Roberts, who is retiring after two years in the position. Martin is leaving his position as Detroit’s chief financial officer.  Roberts says DPS still has a long way to go, but conditions are noticeably better than when he started; the current budget deficit is more than $70 million.

Retiree health care coverage suspended in Pontiac

Pontiac’s emergency manager Louis Schimmel has proposed the Emergency Loan Board address an expected $6 million general fund shortfall in the current budget year. The board approved a plan to suspend health care coverage for retirees from the city of Pontiac and increase their monthly pension payments. The city's roughly 1,000 pensioners will get an extra $400 a month to buy their own health care, the Associated Press reports.

EPA now accepting Great Lakes grant applications

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has $9.5 million to distribute for Great Lakes projects and is looking for takers. The money comes from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, an Obama administration program to clean up and protect the lakes from a variety of threats. A webinar explaining the application process will be held July 30.

U.S Department of Education

After two years as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools, Roy Roberts has officially left the position. Yesterday, Governor Rick Snyder named current Detroit Chief Financial Officer Jack Martin to replace him.

Martin has also served as emergency manager of Highland Park Schools, and as CFO of the U.S. Department of Education.

Governor Snyder says he expects the transition between Roberts and Martin to be seamless.


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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Thank you, Lloyd Carr

If Lloyd Carr's press conference yesterday was any indication, there might never be another college football coach like him. And the game will be worse because of it.

What Michigan supporters saw during his retirement announcement was a coach who truly embodied Bo Schembechler's mantra of "The Team. The Team. The Team." What jaded sports fans witnessed was a man who still put principle above a paycheck. What the sport lost was a teacher who realized the "big game" was simply a way to instill larger lessons regarding the big picture.

Unfortunately, we live in an era, especially when it comes to athletic competition, where many of us claim to care about the above but deep down - and usually less so - all that really matters is the scoreboard, baby. And to many in the Michigan family, Carr had fallen short in that column of late. So while they profess their admiration for the man, deep down - and usually less so - they were happy to see the coach step aside.

Never mind that Carr never had a losing season in 13 years at the helm. Forget that the school never once had the hint of a scandal during his tenure. Who cares that keeping any team among the nation's elite year in and year out is a much tougher assignment than its ever been (see: Nebraska, Notre Dame and Miami). It simply wasn't enough for some.

And I'm not naive, blind or an apologist. Yes, the recent bowl losses and stumbles against Ohio State stung. But college football, like life, is a game of ups and downs. To wax less poetically than Carr at his press conference yesterday: Shit happens. There is an ebb and flow to everything...except the unwieldy expectations of Michigan fans.

Thus, U-M begins its search for a new coach. Forget interest or availability, I just hope the person we're looking for exists. You know, someone able to contend for a national title every year, win each bowl game and never lose to Ohio State. If not, watch out. We Michigan fans are like some long-married guy going through a perpetual mid-life crisis: the grass is always greener, the coach of "that team" is always sexier.

But to some, the coaching situation is already looking up because whoever it is, it won't be Carr. Which really is a shame. Because a special part of a Michigan just retired yesterday. Yet, sadly, too many peopled failed to realize just how good we had it.

Thank you, Coach Carr, for everything you did. Both on and off the field.

Mark said...

Thanks Lloyd. You will be missed. I am a little scared about the future though. Hoping Michigan doesnt turn into a Notre Dame or Nebraska. The next coach will have huge shoes to fill. Hope the focus continues to be on a Big Ten title and Rose Bowl birth and most importantly "The Team, The Team, The Team"

Steve Traugh said...

I think a lot of Michigan fans are being very naive about the new coaching situation. Odds are, we have a couple miserable seasons ahead of us, at best. Worst case is we end up like ND, Nebraska, or Miami. I really don't want that to happen.

Dezzi said...

Lloyd is a classy gentleman and I hope that with his role in the athletic department, he is able to instill, at least a little, on his successor.

I can't remember exactly which game this year, when Henne was hurt (am too lazy to look up) and at the half, the sideline reporter came over to him and asked, "Lloyd, do you know what the injury to Chad Henne is?"... Lloyd got that sly grin and replied, "Yes." .... that made me laugh.

Every program has their hard times, and for Michigan to not pull a Nebraska or Notre Dame is definitely something Lloyd can look back on and be proud of.

Thanks for the years.... thanks for 1997... thanks for the Big Ten championships... you will be missed.

Maize said...

Excellent post Yost.

There are times you don't realize what you have until you no longer have it. For all that drove us crazy about him, we will end up missing him because he made us passionate for Michigan football.

It will be a miracle if Michigan can find someone that remotely resembles Lloyd to fill that honored post as the head coach of University of Michigan.

Taaha Haq said...

I have not been so depressed since we lost Bo last year. A loss to OSU sucks, but losing our coach, regardless of when whether he wanted to leave or not, really feels terrible. He truly was an exceptional coach. I could never stand the sub par Michigan fan that asked for his head each time we lost. Its hard to win consistently each year and I would much rather be a team that may contend for the championship each year, rather than win it for 1 year and suck for the next 10 years.

What a great coach. I'll miss him lot.

Katie said...

Thank you Lloyd for loving the student athlete, for understanding just what this game is about. There is no replacing you and I do hope that you stay around to help instill and build some of that love for the young men playing this game to the next coach we get.

TitleIX said...

Coaching, while all consuming, is only a FRACTION of what Lloyd Carr does for the community here in Ann Arbor.

The amount of publicized and UNpublicized charity work he does is extraordinary.

The amount of money he has raised to fight cancer, the support he has provided to the construction of the new Children and Women's Hospital is unparalleled.
Truly above and beyond.

He also does the seemingly little, yet amazingly important things, like writing letters of recommendation for the volunteer undergraduates who work for the athletic department....
imagine that in your portfolio!

I just met a 22 year old woman who has such a letter from Lloyd.

Lloyd is old school. Storybook.
The game is not.

This is a watershed moment for the Michigan program folks.
Buckle up.

Mikoyan said...

Speaking as a graduate of a school which takes the $450K to be a patsy (but still a fan of the team that pays that out), it is tough to win all the time. With the reduction of scholarships and money split amongst the conference it's going to get even tougher. Granted, when a team doesn't win the games it should win, it's very frustrating.

I will admit that I wanted to see Lloyd's head on a platter after the first two losses but he managed to right the ship and put together a nice string of wins. That takes something special. Especially since the thing that usually happens after the tailspin is the flat stall and then subsequent crash. (This is evidenced as several years of watching the Lions)

Anyways, it's nice to see a person of his stature and position that didn't lose perspective on things. That's tough in this day and age and the fact that he decided to hang up his spurs attests to that.

I hope that the next coach will be as special but I suspect he's going to be more of a rented goon like Saban. Waiting in the wings for the next big opportunity.

Corey said...

Thanks Lloyd for everything you've done for the student atheletes, the football program, and the University.

Now you'll have time to join Yost and Benny here at this site ... I look forward to reading your posts!

Crock said...

Great Post!

I feel bad for what Coach Carr must've gone through this season. I never bought a "Fire Carr" shirt - but I certainly felt that way in September. Now- I can admit how wrong I was.
Carr is a good, solid man. He should not have been treated like he was by so many.

As for getting a new coach - it's scary as all get out to me. I keep thinking of Notre Dame and Michigan State with all there "rebuilding" seasons and coaches comings and goings.

I don't expect the next few years to be too much fun. What coach would want to come to Michigan knowing that if they lose 2 games a season - they'll be written off?

I'm sure a lot of people will be thinking, you really don't know what you've got till it's gone.

--Chris said...

Lloyd will be missed for sure. A class act through and through, but even he admitted that he no longer had certain attributes that it takes to keep the program to the next level.

That said - Michigan needs to have a big hire, whether it be Les Miles or not - they MUST get a nationally respected coach to sustain the tradition and integrity of Michigan Football. Michigan is not a stepping stone - it is the pinnicle of a coaches career and the position should be filled as such.

On a side note, UM needs a big name coach that can help sell those new luxury boxes. Hell, look at MSU - they hired a coach that they thought was a "big name" and had school ties, but yet did they sell out a single game other than the UM game? I think not. Wins and losses are one thing - but the millions of dollars generated through ticket sales cetainly doesn't hurt.

lane said...

yup - last of his breed, in as much of those whom may be brought in.

mine is an opinion of a buckeye - Lloyd IS one hell of a coach & human being....undeniably!

UM's pastures may be green around the corner, but they won't be greener than they just were.

(JoePa could learn a thing or two from Lloyd)

hitlerwasabuckeye said...

Very well put. 1997 was almost to good to us. We gained 3/4 NC title trophies, only letting one go to Nebraska. We had the coach of the year and the only defensive heisman winner ever. I think that coming all at once made the expectations on Lloyd sky-rocket and when we didnt see it happen again, we as fans began to feel let down but nonetheless, thank you for 1997, it was an incredible season that I hope we can soon relive. GO BLUE!

Yost said...

You are so, so right.

Breaston154LIFE said...

Well to repeat what everyone else has been saying, Lloyd Carr will be missed. I always liked him, I thought he was a great coach.

I remember after the 2005 season all the fire lloyd shirts and websites came firing through. I always defended him through my blog, face to face while talking debating, and I will still defend him. I knew he was going to leave after the OSU game, everyone knew.

To those people who detested
Lloyd Carr, name me ONE coach out there who will be the class act he is.

I am looking forward to the off-season. I'm looking forward to see who the next Michigan coach will be. To the Lloyd haters, if this new coach doesn't repeat success, remember you wanted him gone. Don't complain either if Michigan goes through a couple of rough seasons, you got your wish.

Jessica said...

I'm just glad Lloyd still has a place at Michigan, just like Bo did after he retired. To lose him completely would have been a huge blow.

Thank you for all your class, your integrity, and your sheer love of the game and the university. I only hope your successor will share these qualities.

Korematsu said...

Yost, I agree. Lloyd was a great guy, and the world really needs people like him. But from what I read, this is what you're saying (correct me if I'm wrong): "Lloyd is classy, noble, genuine, respectable. Because he has such qualities, he was a great guy, and a good football coach. Because he was a good football coach, Michigan fans are stupid for calling for his resignation when times were low at U of M football."

Here's my problem with all of this. You're conflating the idea of someone being a classy person as compensating for lack of performance. Let's not forget how much money U of M paid Lloyd. Do businesses keep people around because they are "good people?" No. Can I walk into a job and not meet my job expectations, but keep my job because I'm a nice person? No. Businesses look for someone who is BOTH a good person and who can perform. The fact that someone is an admirable person, in the business world, doesn't make up for their lack of performance in their job expectations.

You want to know why the Big Ten football and it's fans will never be as good as SEC football and their fans? Because Big Ten fans don't understand this. They don't understand the actual money that the school is paying these people. They hang their hat on the idea that someone's character makes up for performance. And when the performance is there, we say "oh, he's a great coach." But when the performance isn't there, we don't say "hey, how much is this guy making again." And don't give me that crap about college coaches getting paid more than him. Every college coach, if they are paid six figures, should be held to the "perform or else standard." Pay a Michigan coach half a million for not beating Ohio State? Man, I need an analagous job like that.

MICHIGAN IS KNOWN FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL! I say, get the best coach we can get, but also try to get someone that's respectable. If that new coach doesn't perform, then he needs to go. If we pay Les $4.5 Million to get him to Ann Arbor, and there's no championship in 3 years, he needs to go. Basically, what I hear you saying is "forget about the money we pay him, he's a nice guy." Michigan stands for employing "nice guys" but U of M also stands for football excellence. To say that U of M fans are fickle in this sense is being way to simplistic and naive. Or maybe you're just caught up in the moment of Lloyd's retirement.

Thanks Lloyd. You've done Michgian well. But it is time to move on. But don't feel too bad for him either, his pockets are well lined.

Korematsu said...

Also, let's not forget that Lloyd didn't really "right the ship' as some say after App State and Oregon. If we had faced another non-Big Ten, spread offense we would've been dominated. Michigan fans need to find a way NOT to lose their memories so damn frequently.

This problem has been going on for a while. Remember the MSU game in '04 (the first half)? Remember Troy Smith? Vince Young? Brad Banks? ALL those September road losses? Comeon Michigan fans! Get off of our soap boxes, and DEMAND excellence from our schools! Or else, be prepared to ride the Michigan name from the 1980s-90s until we get left behind in the dust.

TitleIX said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
TitleIX said...

your two concepts are NOT mutually exclusive.

there are many examples of business leaders who have integrity, while simultaneously exhibiting innovation, and breeding success.
so don't bring that SEC comparison crap around here, please please please. I don't want to be like an SEC school (AMEN)

Taaha Haq said...

Yeah he was a great person but youre getting something wrong. He was ALSO a great coach. He got success real early which was his major 'problem'.

As an alum, i find it offensive taht you think that UM is known only for its football. That on its own would bring us to the level of an SEC team. The university is great way BEYOND the big house. Ask your lawyers, doctors, i bankers, consultants etc... most of them wil l be UM grads.

Like i said before, i would much rather win the Big 10 and contend for the championship each year, than be a Nebraska, ND or even LSU (as it will be in a couple of yrs regardless if LM stays or not).

Yost said...

I simply disagree with you. You seem to think Lloyd was a failure or "lacked success" only when measured against the impossible. He retires as the 7th winningest coach in the COUNTRY. He NEVER had a losing season. He won 5 Big Ten Titles in 13 years. He was 3 points away from playing for his second national title last year, a game that came less than 24 hours after the death of his best friend and mentor.

Lloyd Carr is a success in every *realistic* measurable way, on and off the field. As I said in my post, do the recent losses sting? Sure. But life in all facets is never a straight trajectory.

Oh, and regarding the money...

While Lloyd is paid an incredible amount when compared to the average working stiff out there cheering the team on, when compared to the salaries of the top coaches at the top football programs, he is probably the biggest bargain in the country.

Sabas G. said...

It is unfair to Lloyd to praise him by counterexample, but given Yost's review of Carr's unassailable record (the only thing I can think to add is to mention Carr's reverence and respect for the game itself) perhaps a comparison will help explain what a profound loss his leaving could represent. Carr is not an Urban Meyer, who regards his coaching role as a personal vehicle. Carr is not Jim Tressel, who runs a program full of thugs and miscreants (remember when that buckeye choked the Wisconsin quarterback - Jim Sorgi, maybe?).
People who understand what Michigan represents realize a winning program that doesn't exhibit the integrity and class of Carr's is worthless to this school.

IamCris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tabithasaysgoblue said...

The end of an era...it is always hard to make change and I just hope that the next coach does have the same level of integrity that Lloyd Carr had in every facet of his "job". He will be missed and always respected!

IamCris said...

During the press conference there was something that really stood out to me and brought clarafication to my understanding of the severity of this. There was a question asked of Coach Carr to the effect of "So what do you do now"(where do you go from here)?

Coach Carr replied "hopefully something meaningful". Coach Carr is selfless.

This man is greatness, this man is a champion. Don't forget the conditions in which Lloyd Carr accepted the head coaching job.

His beneficiary should be so lucky to follow a great man.

MGoBlue93 said...

Read the other day regarding some of the circumstances of Carr getting the job involved Joe Paterno calling Michigan's AD and recommending Carr's interim label be removed and offered the head position.

hmmm... I wonder how State Penn feels about that recommendation now.

Korematsu said...

I understand why people feel the way they do about Lloyd. He was a GREAT person. And a GREAT coach. And for the first 5 or 6 years, I would've given him that. But you have to admit that he fell off of the edge the last few years. I'm not saying that this guy sucked. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is that we have to get down to the roots of what U of M football is all about.

I too am a Michigan alum ('05). I agree, that Michigan is famous for many, many other things other than football. But I am originally from the South, and I'm for those that live outside of the midwest, the University of Michigan is PRIMARILY known for football. Let me ask the Midwesterners this--what do you first think of when you hear "University of North Carolina Tarheels?" College basketball or a fine public academic institution? What about the University of Florida? Reputable law school or great football team? What about the University of Texas? Vince Young and co or a school on the same academic level as Michigan?

My point is simply this. We as fans and alumni should give Lloyd the praise he deserves. He should NOT be remembered just for the 2007 season. He did a lot for the University of Michigan, and he advanced our reputation as a program (Rose Bowls in '03, '04, and '06 are not bad at all in my eyes). I'm just frustrated with the mentallity that everyone is taking, that "now that Lloyd is gone, Michigan is at a loss." Screw that. Lloyd was a great guy. But do you want to see a coach that beats Ohio State? Do you want to see a coach that gains the respect of the entire college football community? Let's not forget, we are looking hiring a COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACH. You may think that Michigan has a great reputation around the country, but that is simply a function of the past success that Michigan is riding off of. Go to any other part of the country and ask them about Michigan and Ohio State. And you'll see who garners more college football respect as of now. Before you start dissing Ohio State, remember this. Since 2005, Ohio State has only lost the following games: Texas (eventual national championship winner), Penn State (finished #3 the year that they lost), Florida (eventual national championship winner), and Illinois. Can Michigan reach that level? More importantly, should we expect this from our program? Or should we just be content with the way things are?

We need to bring emotion to the job at U of M. And we need to move beyond Lloyd, who has done good things, and say that we want even better things. I don't see how the Big House can pack so many people week in and week out, but still have fans that are SO emotionless about wanted to see their school reach greatness and command the respect of the rest of the country. I mean, we are MICHIGAN FOOTBALL!!!!!!

whetstonebuck said...

"Carr is not Jim Tressel, who runs a program full of thugs and miscreants (remember when that buckeye choked the Wisconsin quarterback - Jim Sorgi, maybe?)."

Tearing someone else down doesn't raise your stock. Not very Carr-like of you.

Korematsu said...

And I don't want to be an SEC school either. But I sure as hell DO want our football program to be as respectable as an SEC football program. How can you possibly be a Michigan football fan and NOT want this? I want our fans to be as crazy and dedicated as SEC fans? Why isn't it possible to have both? Why can't we have a fine academic institution and still have fans that are passionate and that want to win? Michigan is in dire need of someone who will inject some passion into Michigan fans. Don't get me wrong, a good number of Michigan fans are passionate. But SO many are not. If you don't believe me about the emotion in the Big House, man, take a trip to most other "traditional" college football powerhouse stadiums, and you will see emotion. On several, several occasions, I've brought non-Michigan friends into the Big House. They expect the Michigan name to embody tradition and passion, but they are left with the impression that Michigan fans are way too calm and not emotional and passionate about their team and the game at all.

You don't want to be an SEC school? Neither do I. Because we're Michigan, a fine academic school. But I do want to our football program to command respect in the college football world. We deserve that. We, as Michigan fans and alumni need to get off of this kick, feeling that Michigan is a special place that is the end all be all of respect. If we want respect, we have to earn it. We shouldn't just expect respect just because we're Michigan. Bo earned his respect by beating Ohio State in the big games. Any other measure of success, purely in football (and not in life) that is not measured by performance is simply just excuses. We can still bring in respectable players that can be coached to win big games. I'm not saying that we should be fickle fans. ALWAYS stick by your team. NEVER leave a game early. ALWAYS keep the faith. But simultaneously, ALWAYS expect greatness and ALWAYS be disappointed when we are not the best of the best. That is what Michigan football should be all about.

Breaston154LIFE said...

Kore, i think the worry is, is that Michigan wont find a coach who will be able to beat Ohio State, who will be able to keep Michigan as the winngest program in college football history, and to win national championships.

I worry about this...look at Charlie Weis after he lost all of his playmakers, his ship sunk completely to the bottom of the deepest ocean (right in front of Duke mind you).

When Michigan gets the new coach, he will be without all of his playmakers and probably Manningham too.

But, I think we will be fine.

Ha I kind of got way off topic. O well

CaliGirl said...

I am a little late on this comment, due to travel...however, this was well put and my sentiments exactly.

I have never watched Blue football without Carr...it still feels odd to even think about him not on the sidelines.

Nervously awaiting the new coach and season! In the interim....