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LifeAfterDx--Diabetes Uncensored

A internet journal from one of the first T1 Diabetics to use continuous glucose monitoring. Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

My Photo
Location: New Mexico, United States

Hi! I’m William “Lee” Dubois (called either Wil or Lee, depending what part of the internet you’re on). I’m a diabetes columnist and the author of four books about diabetes that have collectively won 16 national and international book awards. (Hey, if you can’t brag about yourself on your own blog, where can you??) I have the great good fortune to pen the edgy Dear Abby-style advice column every Saturday at Diabetes Mine; write the Diabetes Simplified column for dLife; and am one of the ShareCare diabetes experts. My work also appears in Diabetic Living and Diabetes Self-Management magazines. In addition to writing, I’ve spent the last half-dozen years running the diabetes education program for a rural non-profit clinic in the mountains of New Mexico. Don’t worry, I’ll get some rest after the cure. LifeAfterDx is my personal home base, where I get to say what and how I feel about diabetes and… you know… life, free from the red pens of editors (all of whom I adore, of course!).

Friday, October 03, 2014

The other shoe

I was finally beginning to feel my old self again. Instead of making energy to do things, I had energy to do things. I could read books without falling asleep after two paragraphs. My attitude was improving. I actually cut the weeds for the first time this year, and put up that picture in my mom’s office that I promised to do back in December. I looked forward to weekends and workdays. Life began to be worth living again.

More than that. I came home one night about a week ago and I was thinking that really, I was about as happy as I’d ever been in my life.

So naturally the other shoe dropped.

I still haven’t come to grips with what has happened, but maybe the telling the story will be therapeutic. For background you should know that over the last nine months my blood sugar control has been crap. Partly lack of energy to do it right. Partly lack of energy to eat what I should; or to resist the temptation to not eat what I shouldn’t. Partly too busy taking care of everyone else to take care of myself. Partly lack of access to the best tools available.

All excuses, really.

Over the last nine months my blood sugars have been running in the 250s. Some days bolus after bolus after bolus did no good in bringing them back down, but most days I didn’t even bother to try. Then one night as I slid into bed, the fire started. In my feet, a tingly, electrical burning feeling.

I had developed neuropathy. After a decade of preaching diabetes won’t hurt you if you just keep your sugar down, I found that ignoring my own sermon lead me to hell. Two days later, it started in my hands.

But the neuropathy isn’t the other shoe.

I live in a crowed household, and with early fall came early flu. Rio got hit first. Then Debs. Then her mother, and finally my mother. Oddly, I didn’t get sick. Usually I’m the first to fall, the hardest hit, and the one who stays sick the longest. I chocked up my escape to the fact that nature always leaves one member of a tribe uninflicted by plague to nurse the others. I fully expected to get double-sick as they rebounded, but it didn’t happen.

I guess the cells left alive in my body after the last nine months are such tough sons-of-bitches that no common flu virus stands a chance against them.

Rio missed the first two weeks of school. The virus impacted my mother-in-law so severely her mental state was reduced to the point she became completely helpless. She couldn’t talk. She lost the use of her hands. She couldn’t feed herself, dress herself, or even go to the bathroom on her own. She still hasn’t recovered, and now either Debs or I must be with her 24-7.

But the super-flu isn’t the other shoe.

It only led the way.

The flu worked its way into Rio’s lungs. After years of not having to use an inhaler, his asthma returned. The nebulizer had to be dusted off again and fired up again. His cough was nasty and deep. We took him to his doc, who Dx’d him with pneumonia. The only question was whether it was getting worse or getting better. The doc couldn’t hear anything in Rio’s lungs and, concerned they might be nearly full of fluid, ordered a chest x-ray.

But the pneumonia isn’t the other shoe, either.

In fact, the chest x-ray showed Rio’s lungs were clear. He was on the mend. But there was an incidental finding on the x-ray. Rio’s spine had a little twist. At about the level of his sternum, his spine detoured to the right side of his body, then returned to vertical, much like the body of a boa constrictor might look like where it detoured around large knot while slithering up a tree.

Rio’s doc wrote a referral to the peds orthos at University Hospital. I called for an appointment and found that the only pediatric bone guys in the state are out-of-network for my son’s insurance. The largest insurance plan in the state refuses to contract with the largest health provider in the state.

Welcome to the world I live in every day.

A couple of weeks later, we pushed through an authorization. In the meantime, the radiologist’s report came back with the official word on Rio: Moderate thoracic scoliosis. Rio’s doctor was almost apologetic; it didn’t appear to be anything worth addressing, after all. But I decided, what the hell, we’ve got the appointment with the specialist, let’s go ahead and keep it.

I fully expected it to be a typical initial consultation. I expected them, like running a credit card, to see if Rio’s insurance was “good,” shake hands, look at the x-ray and say, let’s meet again in six months.

I was wrong. The other shoe was about to drop.

The University’s Carrie Tingley Hospital takes care of sick kids with “complex musculoskeletal and orthopedic conditions.” It’s a depressing place. The outpatient clinic has a 1950 institutional look to it, a down-on-it’s luck 1950 institutional look. It’s old and worn out. The staff were friendly, but it was a depressing place, not only because the building looked old and worn out, but so too did all the patients. Children with adult souls trapped in twisted malformed bodies. It was tragic beyond words.

First we met with a nurse who took Rio’s vitals. Then we met with a resident who gave Rio a physical exam and ordered another x-ray. She shook him up by asking about clotting factors or any other issues that would prevent surgery.

Then we ambled down the hall to x-ray, Rio freezing in a lightweight hospital gown and disposable Tyvek shorts. Three x-rays later and we were back to killing time the treatment room, looking at the archaic light box mounted on the wall for viewing x-ray films back in the days before digital. Next to the light box was a psychedelic smiley face poster. We were in the land that time forgot.

Rio was very solemn. What are you thinking about? I asked him.

He hesitated, wringing his hands, then said, “I’m worried about surgery.”

I told him with great confidence that no such thing was likely to happen and I had my money on a just-come-back-in-six-months approach.

I was about to lose my money.

Finally, the doctor came in. He briskly introduced himself, pulled a chair up right in front of Rio, looked him squarely in the eye and without preamble said, “Would you hate me if I asked you to wear a brace?”

Rio and I were thunderstruck, too surprised to reply at all. Finally I managed to wise-crack that Rio would only hate him if he ordered surgery.

“It could come to that,” said the doctor, “but I’m hoping to avoid it.”

That’s the last point I remember clearly. I’ve been in a fog ever since. I’m like the man who staggers from the car crash and can remember everything up to the point of impact, but is missing all recall of the accident itself.

I’d been rudely and abruptly transported into a parallel universe of medicine.

The twist in Rio’s spine that looked like the boa constrictor passing a knot on a tree was really the head of the cobra. The little detour was a “compensating” bend. The rest of the snake was curled up in its basket in Rio’s lower back, where his spine is bent and twisted to an angle of 38 degrees. The chest x-ray missed the main event, but the specialists had known what to look for.

It wasn’t moderate scoliosis. It much more serious, almost to the point where surgery is required. The snake had been lurking deep in the body of my perfect-looking child for several years, and time was short to change to course of the disease. He has only 2 or three years of bone growth left.

He will need to wear body armor like Star Wars storm troopers from neck to tail bone. He’ll need to wear it at least 18 hours a day. Or 21. Or 23. It depends on which of the experts we spent the day with that you listen to. The word “compliance” hung heavily on the air in every conversation. How important compliance was. How compliance would reduce the risk of surgery. How compliance would make the difference between a normal adulthood and one made up of chronic back pain and mobility issues.

All the concerns over compliance told me that the brace, called a Boston Brace, must not be very comfortable.

Then we were packed off with Google directions to drive to a place across town where Rio would be measured for his new armor. One look at the directions and I knew we’d been given a route that involved a closed off-ramp. I’d have to do some dead reckoning to get there.

We drove off in silence. I asked Rio what he was feeling, and he did not answer me. He sat, gazing out the window, forlorn. A beaten dog, all the life gone out of him. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to take this away from him.

But I was powerless.

I placed a hand on his knee and we drove on through the city in silence.

At the prosthetics place, a number of gruesome trophies hung on the wall. Tiny infant-sized helmets to overcome distorted skulls. Tennis shoes for people missing one foot. Spare breasts for women who’d lost one of the ones God gave her to the pink ribbon battle.

Modern medicine. The reaper of the flesh.

I was in a complete daze. My wonderful, kind, sensitive child was suffering. I felt helpless and riddled with guilt. Should I have spotted this earlier? Was I a bad parent for not noticing the slight rise of one shoulder, the slight gap between arm and torso, the bulge on his back from his twisted rib cage? And then there was the real guilt. The guilt over the complication that I, of all people, should have been able to prevent. The doctor told me he preferred to treat skinny children. Rio’s substantial belly, a battle I’ve been losing for a decade, would make the brace harder to manufacture and less likely to work.

I had doubly failed in my sacred duty as a parent.

Then we met the tech, who to my mind was the orthopedic equivalent, of, well, me. She is to scoliosis what Wil is to diabetes. I recognized a kindred spirit at once. She put Rio at ease. She put me at ease. She patiently explained to us all the things the doctor didn’t bother to. I suddenly felt myself in the shoes of my patients—brutalized by doctors, rescued by educators.

She was bubbly and upbeat. She assured us we could do this. She plugged us into the social media world of bent spines. Blogs, support groups, online stores, Facebook. There’s a whole sister world to ours out there beyond our horizons. I guess I knew that, but I never thought much about it.

And I wanted no part of it. Isn’t diabetes enough?

She put Rio in a super tight-fitting muscle shirt that showed every lump and fold of fat on his body. She taped a sensor on his back and then began scanning him, sweeping a beam of light up and down his body, and on the screen of her computer, a 3-D image of Rio’s torso was formed in minute and exact detail. Rio’s armor would be more pear-shaped than the wedge of white plastic the storm troopers wear. Rio would need to sleep in this medieval armor. Walk in it. Eat in it. Play in it. Go to school in it. Rio was in for some rough years. Filled in off-and-on by phone, his mother cried all day at the thought of her baby locked into a turtle shell for the waning years of his childhood.

I know in my head that we are lucky. This thing has a beginning and an end. It’s not forever, nor is it fatal. It will be hard on him, on me, on his mother, and on the grandmothers. But this is not more than we can handle. But in my heart… Well, that’s breaking.

We parents would take any burden upon our bodies to spare ourselves the burden placed on our souls that watching our children struggle or suffer causes.

If I could lift this burden from him I would do it in a millisecond. But those types of cosmic choices are the stuff of fairy tales. In the real world we do not get to choose our burdens. Of course, we will make it through this. Of course, in the end, it will somehow make sense.

But right here, right now, the world is a cruel place.

OpenID dmeanderings said...

It just hurts so very much when your child is suffering. Rio is a strong young man. And he has you both to support him.
It still sucks, though.

6:41 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Will such a support you've been to me over the years.
You can't even imagine what you've pulled me through at the most critical times. I will pray for your son, every day. And all of you.

6:56 PM
Anonymous kelly said...

You now know the anguish and empathy of us d-moms for our kids. You have been through a rough patch. My thoughts and prayers are with you all.

9:07 PM
Blogger Laddie said...

Prayers for you and your family and especially for Rio. He'll be fine, but this is definitely something that none of you signed up for. Sorry that this has been added to your list of worries and that Rio has to deal with this.

3:01 PM
Blogger Scott K. Johnson said...

Hey Wil,

Wow. That's a big shoe.

I'm so sorry to hear about this (and the plague of sickness that ran through the house - which as bad as that sounds, seems so ... little now).

Rio is a special person, in so many ways. And I've come to know you as a gifted person in many ways as well.

While it hurts me to see people I love go through hard things, you two will create something magical from this madness and pain.

I love you guys.

7:02 PM
Anonymous AmyT said...

Oh Wil -- as a parent, this post killed me! No, as a person...

Life is so stupidly unfair! Haven't we already checked our box for "medical conditions you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy"?

Please let me know if there's anything our team can do to help.

3:15 PM
Blogger Bernard said...

I am sorry to hear this has happened to Rio. Jackie has lived with scoliosis and wore a Boston brace for years. She was one of the first to wear this brace and it kept her curve stable.

If either of us can do anything please let me know.

9:45 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am sorry to read about Rio's situation. However, I am thrilled to find YOU. I love your writing style and will look for your books about diabetes. Thanks for being you!

11:48 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't beat yourself up over it. Rio knows its not your fault.

What bothered me most when being diagnosed as a diabetic, wasn't the injections, the routine, whatever, it was my parents doing the parent thing as you. My mother in particular wondering what she may have done to have caused this. It wasn't anything you/she did, so don't dwell on it.

Hope Rio has as smooth a journey through this as possible.

2:38 PM
Anonymous StephenS said...

Wil, I just saw this today. Obviously, I don't have anything spectacular to offer to make this better. But I will be thinking of you and Rio and always hoping for the greatest outcome. I hope the next shoe that drops is a nice comfy slipper.

2:44 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My duaghter's pediatrician recently revealed her concern for my daughter's weight. She's 12 and built like a brick house. Makes you feel like the worse parent in the world and wishing for that time machine so you could undo every mistake and feed them nothing but broccoli after the first year. I'm still looking for that bubble we could all crawl into. The days were long and the years were short and before I new it, well, excuses sure but parenting isn't easy. Good luck.

10:44 AM

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Reader Tim writes in with this tip for creating a simple file shredder to permanently and securely delete files from your hard drive:

I add an instant file shredder to my Windows desktop using the SDelete utility, available freely from Sysinternals. Save the SDelete.exe in your C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory. Add the following text to a new text document:

@echo off

echo .* * *W A R N I N G * * *

echo .

echo .The File(s)/Folders(s) Will Be Permanently Deleted!

echo .

echo .Press CTRL-C to Abort and Terminate Batch Job Or...

echo .

sdelete -p 4 -s %1

Save the file as "shred.bat" on your desktop right next to your Recycling Bin. Now just drag and drop those sensitive files onto the icon to make them disappear forever!

I gave Tim's batch script a try and it seems to work perfectly. I love the idea of keeping your permanent file shredder right next to the Recycle Bin, giving you the choice to send files to the recoverable Recycle Bin or shredding them to hell so they can never be recovered. To make things easier on you, I've put together shred.bat as described above for download, Windows only.

Shred.bat isn't your best bet if you're looking to permanently delete data from an entire drive, but it's great for any regular old file deletion. If you've got your own method for simple but secure file deletion, share it with the rest of us in the comments.

Shred.bat secure delete [Right-click to download]

SDelete [Sysinternals]

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description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
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text:
Linux only: Convert audio files from inside your favorite music/playlist manager with transKode, a free plug-in for Amarok. If you've never installed an Amarok script, it's simple—grab the package ending in .tar.bz from the link below, head to the Tools->Script Manager menu, then hit the "Install" button and point to where you put that package. The plug-in is highly configurable, being based on the Mplayer multimedia tool, and accessible by right-clicking a file from the playlist. transKode is a free plug-in for Linux systems running Amarok only.

transKode [via Linux.com]


text:
For the next week and a half, readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life.

Reader Beth writes in with her favorite trick for keeping track of info on the road and at the gym—using the previously mentioned PocketMod print-yourself notebook. Beth says:

Before a trip (especially handy on business trips!), I build a PocketMod that has all the most important travel information in it. First page is my flight and hotel information, including confirmation numbers and contact phone numbers. Other pages are stocked with schedules, other contact information for the trip, whatever will come in handy.

It has saved my sanity many times to have those handy in my pocket or laptop bag at any moment to check on a flight, make calls if travel snafus occur, or to check on where I'm supposed to be at any given moment. Checking the PocketMod works even faster (and is more technologically reliable) than my smartphone.

Here's a screenshot of Beth's travel PocketMod PDF:

Beth also uses a PocketMod at the gym. She says:

I'm also including pictures of my exercise PocketMod—my gym hack. It has my workouts, target heart rates, and space at the end for logging my results. Fits easily in my gym shorts.

Here's what that looks like:

All folded up:

Finally, Beth describes how she prints out her PocketMods:

I use a program called PDF reDirect to print my PocketMod pages to PDFs. The font that I've found that works best is Verdana, at least 20pt. PDF reDirect lets me print 8 pages, different docs if needed, to one PDF. I drop that PDF into PDFtoPocketMod, and bingo, I have my custom-made PocketMod of whatever info I want.

If you're new to the PocketMod, check out this short video on how to fold the template into a little notebook.

Congrats, Beth! You just won an autographed copy of Upgrade Your Life!

You too can get your own copy shipped personally from me to you—submit your favorite life hack for our consideration. Remember, we love photos, screenshots, templates, screencasts, and video clips—even if it's a hack we've covered before—so impress us with your best stuff.


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When was the last time you looked at your Facebook feed and actually liked everything you saw? For all of Facebook's fancy algorithms, it can never create the perfect feed for you. Here's how to declutter that feed once and for all and only see the stuff you care about.

Note that most of these tricks apply to your Facebook friends, but the same rules can often be applied to pages you've liked as well, so don't forget to give those a thorough cleaning using the same tips once you're done culling your friends lists.

Unfriend (or Unsubscribe) from People You Aren't Interested In Seeing

Most of you have probably gone on one or two unfriending binges in the past, and it's the most obvious first step in any Facebook cleansing. But unfriending doesn't solve everything. Maybe you have a friend you want to keep in contact with, but don't want to see every update they post. Maybe you have a friend that's excessively political or obsessed with cat pictures that don't interest you. In those cases, unfriending isn't the solution. Luckily, Facebook has another option: Unsubscribing. You can unsubscribe completely from a friend's posts without defriending them completely, meaning you get the best of both worlds.

How to Do It: The easiest place to unfriend and unsubscribe from people en masse is your Friends page. Head to your Timeline, click the "Friends" tab under your cover photo, and start looking for people you'd rather not see. Click on the "Friends" box and select either "Unfriend" or de-select "Show In News Feed." It's that simple.

Move Friends to the "Close Friends" or "Acquaintances" Lists

Now that you've got all the unfriending out of the way, you can further refine your feed by telling Facebook who you'd like to see more or fewer updates from. The easiest way to do this is with Facebook's smart lists, particularly its "Close Friends" and "Acquaintances" lists. They do exactly what they sound like: Friends on your "Close Friends" list will be shown more often, while friends on your "Acquaintances" list will rarely be shown except in important updates, like an engagement.

How to Do It: Head back to your friends list and scan through your list. If you want to see more or less of a person's updates, click the Friends box and select "Close Friends" or "Acquaintances" to move them to that list.

If you don't want to waste a bunch of time, Facebook has a slightly hidden tool that'll recommend friends for your Acquaintances list that you don't interact with often. Head to http://facebook.com/friends/organi… and check the friends you want to see less of. It isn't as good as manually adding all your friends to Acquaintances and Close Friends, but it'll jump start the process and only takes a minute.

Subscribe (or Unsubscribe) to Specific Post Types

Lastly, you really want to fine-tune certain friends, you can do so from the same dropdown menus we've been using thus far. Say you have a friend that posts good updates, but keeps posting pictures of their baby/cat/baked goods and you want to ignore their photos. Or, say you have a friend that is fine except for all the damn Facebook games they play. You can unsubscribe from specific types of posts and fix these problems.

How to Do It: You can do this from your friends list, but generally, I think it's a waste of time to do this for every single friend—instead, do this as you browse your feed day-to-day and see stuff you don't like. The menu, however, is the exact same: just hover over your friend's name in the news feed and click the "Friends" box. This time, head to "Settings." From here, you can unsubscribe from any kind of update: Photos, Games, Life Events, and more.

Note that you'll see one other option in this list, that lets you choose whether you see "All Updates," "Most Updates," or "Important Updates." We recommend ignoring this. Adding friends to your Close Friends or Acquaintances lists achieves the same purpose from what we can tell, only it's easier to edit and view those lists. The only exception is with Facebook pages—for those, the "All Updates," "Most Updates," and "Important Updates" boxes are the only way to change how often you see their posts.

Filter Specific Posts with Social Fixer

The above tricks all use Facebook's built-in options to cultivate your feed, but there is another option for more advanced filtering: Social Fixer, the one extension that infinitely improves Facebook. Not only can you clean up your News Feed and generally improve your Facebook Experience, but you can also filter posts with certain words or from certain friends. It's great for blocking annoying political posts, TV and movie spoilers, and more.

How to Do It: Install the Social Fixer extension and head to its settings and edit your filters. You have a lot of options here, and we won't go into details, but check out our guide to hiding political posts on Facebook. It'll tell you everything you need to know, and you can easily adapt it for any subject or words you don't want to see.

Block Ads and Sponsored Posts with Adblock Plus

So you've filtered all the clutter from your friends, but what about the obnoxious ads and sponsored posts Facebook has been bombarding you with lately? Luckily, Adblock Plus hides these very easily, along with a bunch of other Facebook annoyances.

How to Do It: Just install the Adblock Plus extension (or any other Adblock extension of choice. By default, it'll block ads and sponsored stories on Facebook. (We recommend whitelisting sites you want to support, however...like, I don't know, your favorite tech blog). You can head to this page and hide other, non-ad annoyances on Facebook as well.

Going Forward: How to Keep Your Feed Clean

From here on out, the rest is on you: when you add new friends to Facebook, consider whether you want to see updates from them or not and tweak the above settings accordingly. If you aren't sure, you can decide after you've seen a few posts in your news feed.

Generally, that's the best way to keep up the cleanliness: when you see a post or person in your feed that you'd like to hide, you can change their settings right then and there by hovering over their name and clicking the "Friends" box, just like you did earlier. Weblog Dot Complicated recommends checking that "Birthdays" box every day, too, and unfriending or unsubscribing to people you don't want to see. It may seem harsh to do that on people's birthdays, but it's a good way to keep your subscriptions clean throughout the year.

Title image remixed from John Sargent, Oli Dunkley, and Elnur (Shutterstock).


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Tuesday, 3 November 2009

to buy or not to buy......

Inspiron 15
Dual core technology with 4GB memory
Inspiron 15
Shipping in 48 hours. More Memory, Larger Hard Drive !
Dell Studio 15
Dual core processor, large hard drive and 512MB dedicated graphics card! With McAfee!
Dell Studio 15
Core 2 Duo processor, 512MB ATI graphics card, free colour upgrade! With McAfee!

Price £464
Total savings* £115

Total £349

Includes VAT & Shipping

1 comment:

Sage said...

check out the dell outlet for a scratch n dent option you might get a little more for your money... I know I did


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Wednesday, 4 July 2012

MAC Eyeshadows I've Hit Pan On

Predictable Ronseal title there. Without further ado:

Top row: Dazzlelight, Vex, Blanc Type, Phloof!
Bottom row: Coquette, Patina, Copperplate
The first two pans on the top left are nearly new, since I totally finished up my first Dazzlelight and Vex.

Top row: Dazzlelight, Vex, Blanc Type, Phloof!
Bottom row: Coquette, Patina, Copperplate
L-R: Dazzlelight, Vex, Blanc Type, Phloof!
These four are my favourite highlight/lid colours. Dazzlelight is my staple neutral for all over the lid - really brightening without being overly frosty. Vex is a gorgeous unique shade, a silver/beige with green/pink duochrome. Blanc Type looks incredibly dull swatched, but is an almost perfect match for my skintone (tiny bit yellow) and very useful for blending out edges, or evening out the lid. Phloof! is a verrrry frosty pink-white, best suited for an inner corner highlight, but I have been known to wear it over the lid with matte purples in the crease. I do love a bit of shimmer, me.

L-R: Coquette, Patina, Copperplate
Coquette is my eyebrow colour, an excellent cool-toned mid-brown shade which is also useful for defining the crease. Really glad I found this, as it doesn't get many mentions on blogs. Patina is the one I'm surprised I've hit pan on, since I don't use it very often - this is about as warm a brown as I can comfortably wear. My rubbish swatch doesn't show the antiqued gold shimmer on this, which is very pretty. Finally, Copperplate is a brilliant buttery matte grey-brown, super pigmented and blendable, which can be worn as a light wash or a dark smoky crease. This is a touch too dark for my brows in the daytime, but I do use it in the evenings for a more dramatic look, as it's nice and cool.

These are definitely among the MAC shadows I would repurchase (or already have done), and use on a regular basis. My next foray into my MAC palettes will be following up the purple theme!

Till next time,

Josephine x

All Things Purple - Lipstick Edition

So I finished my exams, and went to the ball, and turned 23. I'm now at home for a week or so, packing for a month in Nepal, and rediscovering my love for purple makeup products.

Kicking off with lipsticks, naturally!

L-R: MAC Violetta, Snob, Up the Amp, Topshop On the Town
Top to bottom: MAC Violetta, Snob, Up the Amp, Topshop On the Town
MAC Violetta is the queen of purple lipsticks. This is a Pro shade, which I bought at the (admittedly sometimes quite scary and unwelcoming) MAC Pro store in London. It's pretty damn purple - no lilac or mauve nonsense here, just straight up bright purple. Can be a teeny bit unflattering against the teeth, but a stunning lipstick nevertheless. Just to round things off, it's in my favourite Amplified formula, which is super-opaque and long-wearing.

Taking it down a notch to MAC Snob, which is a very blue-toned lilac pink (Satin finish). I got this (and the Topshop lipstick here) a month or so ago from Alice's blog sale, which is awesome. Very pretty girly daytime shade - barely purple against the others here, but a more wearable variation on the theme.

And of course the classic MAC Up the Amp. I highly recommend trying this out if you don't already own it - great Amplified formula, really unusual darkened lavender colour which is wearable day to night (I'd say). Love this one!

Finally, a non-MAC contender, Topshop On the Town. Sadly I think this is discontinued, so I snapped it up from Alice's blog sale! I think MAC have released limited edition versions of this shade in the past (Lavender Whip?). It's a pale mauve colour, not the most flattering but unusual and fun, particularly for spring pastel makeup which I love wearing. I haven't come across a dud Topshop lipstick yet in terms of formula - this is similar to MAC's Amplified finish.

If you have any other purple lipstick recommendations (especially non-MAC), do drop me a comment!

Lots more purple where that came from, in the shape of blushes (MAC, NARS, Illamasqua), eyeshadows (MAC and Chanel spring to mind), and the odd nail varnish/lipgloss/miscellaneous item.

Till next time,

Josephine x

Sunday, 20 May 2012

Revision Ate My Life

To the extent that I've only acquired three new things recently. I bought two, and one was a lovely present from my mother, hurray!

Here we have Chanel No. 19 Eau de Parfum, Illamasqua Skin Base foundation in 02, and Illamasqua lipstick in Eurydice (from the new Human Fundamentalism collection).

The perfume was the gift, earlier this month, after I went through a phase of loving No. 5 again. It is a bit of a shock when you first smell it if you're used to standard popular fruity/sweet scents, and I wasn't sure I liked it when I first wore it. I'm happy to say it's grown on me, and I now love it. It's a very green floral, heavy on the iris, and almost woody - perfect for this wet spring we're having! Victoria has a lovely review, as does Angela on Now Smell This. It's completely different from any other scent I own, and I can see myself getting through this bottle pretty quickly! I must say it doesn't last as long on the skin as you might expect from an EDP, but then again I do like my perfume obnoxiously strong, so maybe it's just me.

I reached the halfway point in my exams on Friday (I now have a week "off" to revise for the next set), and wandered over to Selfridges in the afternoon to peruse the Illamasqua counter. I did nip into the Beak St store first, but got fairly terrible service (for the first time ever, I may add) so left, shame! Anyway, I was keen to test the Skin Base foundation in 02, the next shade down from white, since I'd seen swatches of its pinky-pale brilliance - and I was not disappointed. I've only worn it twice, but the match is perfect and if I moisturise well in the potentially flaky (delightful) areas around my nose the finish is also lovely. Very pleased with this so far!

And of course I bought this lipstick. It's bright blue-pink AND matte, two of my favourite qualities in a lipstick. Need I say more? Well, it's incredibly long-wearing, without being too heavy-feeling or cakey on the lips. This is my first lipstick from Illamasqua, and I'm impressed.

My tea break is now over, and I shall slink back to my land law revision. Woe is me. Hope everyone is well and looking forward to summer! (Eternal optimist alert.)

Till next time,

Josephine x

PS. I am so impressed with myself for only having bought TWO things on Oxford St. I nearly bought four more (two blushers from Dainty Doll, and a blusher and lipstick from Topshop) but just wasn't enthused enough to get to the till. A sea change in my spending habits, perhaps...I can only hope!

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

MAC Lipsticks: Lustre Edition

I only have three lustres - I know, only! They're all more recent purchases, after I figured out that the more eye-catching shades I bought initially don't cut it for everyday wear in some circumstances! These three are all very wearable for daytime in any environment, particularly since the lustre formula is relatively sheer and glossy - you can slick it on lightly, or build up the colour for more intensity.

The wear time isn't great, but this is in the nature of the formula; these wear off nicely and are so easy to reapply, so it isn't really a problem. Lustres are the perfect choice if you don't fancy the done-up look of a opaque, highly pigmented lipstick (such as the mattes or amplified cremes, both of which are coming up!).

L-R: See Sheer, Syrup, Plumful
Top to bottom: See Sheer, Syrup, Plumful
Top to bottom: See Sheer, Syrup, Plumful
See Sheer is a muted coral, particularly lovely for spring/summer. MAC describes it as a "grapefruit pink", which is admittedly cute, and grapefruit is spot on, but if you want a pink lipstick, go for one of the other two!

The easiest way to describe Syrup is as one of those "my lips but better" shades. This is probably the most natural-looking, easy to wear MAC lipstick I own! (See also Cosmo, which is a shade darker and more pigmented, but also made of awesome.) Syrup is what I would class as a neutral or "nude" lipstick, since it is a close match to the colour of my lips (rather than the colour of my skin, as with other so-called nudes!). This is easy to touch up without a mirror, to give a dash of colour and make your face look brighter and more groomed - I usually apply it on the train in the mornings! Highly recommended. (MAC have this down as a "cloudy pink", whatever that means.)

Plumful is a deeper, plummier (surprise!) version of Syrup. Given my penchant for berry colours and purples, I love this as a wearable member of that colour family. Great for a slightly more dramatic lip which is still very wearable. MAC call it a "blossoming rose-plum" - I guess rosy plum is quite accurate, though how helpful "blossoming" is is up for debate.

The first MAC lipstick I was ever recommended was Patisserie, a lustre which looks like another MLBB colour, but it was out of stock at the time (excellent sales tactic, Oxford MAC girl!), and now I have Syrup I don't feel the need to buy it. Honest...

Till next time,

Josephine x

Monday, 30 April 2012

MAC Lipsticks: Cremesheen Edition

Just putting it out there: I have a lot of MAC lipsticks. What can I say, addictive personality and all that jazz. There's something about them that got me seriously hooked a while back - Ruby Woo was my first (which I think I've talked about in my post on MAC red lipsticks), and I soon accumulated a lot more. My last purchases were some of the matte brights from the Iris Apfel collection, and I think my obsession has eased off a bit now - you never know, though...

I love seeing which shades people have chosen, so I thought I'd swatch my collection for you. I've split them up by formula, as categorising by colour would be too messy and random when you have as many pinky and/or bright shades I do!

Kicking off with the cremesheens, for no reason at all. It turns out I own seven. Which is bizarre, since I don't think of this as my favourite formula - I prefer mattes and amplified cremes (I have nearly all of the amplifieds!), or lustres for less pigmented colour. I can't say I wear any of these on a truly regular basis except Speed Dial, though part of my motivation for swatching them all is to encourage myself to use more of my collection!

L-R: Creme Cup, Speed Dial, Speak Louder
Top to bottom: Creme Cup, Speed Dial, Speak Louder
I can never figure out why I don't like Creme Cup more! It's a cool-toned light pink, which everyone loves, but I just don't warm to it (ha) very much. Maybe I'll try wearing this one more, as it seems undeservedly neglected! However, I much prefer the other two colours here...

Speak Louder and Speed Dial are both blue-toned pinks, though Speak Louder is darker and redder. These don't get mentioned all that often on blogs/YT - people seem to favour nudes or super-brights! Speed Dial is a very wearable, pretty everyday pink, while Speak Louder is pretty bright on the lips (which I love for daytime, but it may be more of an evening shade for other more tasteful people!). Both great for summer.

L-R: Shy Girl, Ever Hip, Jazzed, Crosswires
Top to bottom: Shy Girl, Ever Hip, Jazzed, Crosswires
Ever Hip and Jazzed are limited edition shades I got in a blog sale last summer, when I was going through a coral phase. I'm usually not that keen on coral shades on me, as I find them tricky with my colouring for some reason, despite wanting to like them! Ever Hip is a lovely pinky coral which does work fairly well on me (also, I adore the Liberty of London packaging!), while Jazzed is more true coral.

Crosswires is a shade you rarely hear mentioned on blogs/Youtube - it's a pinky coral red (helpful), like a more pigmented version of the lustre See Sheer. Gorgeous for easy-to-wear summer lips. (This is basically a coral version of Speak Louder, if that makes sense!)

Shy Girl is one of those incredibly popular shades, but I find I have to be careful what makeup I wear with this. For a warm-toned summery look - bronzer, peachy blush, golds on the eyes - this peachy nude is lovely, and the formula is miles better than Hue, a glaze finish which is basically a pink version of this. So if that's your style I definitely recommend Shy Girl (though you probably already own it!). On me, however, this look is not the most flattering - I wear it occasionally when I'm feeling summery, and I do enjoy it, but it's slightly jarring against my complexion.

Having swatched all these, I'll definitely be wearing them more in future - especially Speak Louder and Crosswires, which have been unfairly relegated to obscurity in the bottom of my makeup drawers!

Till next time,

Josephine x

PS. I think I heard some of the lesser-known colours, like Crosswires and Speed Dial, mentioned in Miss Princess Pancake's excellent video on her favourite MAC lipsticks, which features some really wearable shades. Thought I must have got the idea from somewhere when putting in that particular online order!

Saturday, 28 April 2012

More New Things, feat. MUFE and Stila

Subtitle: "Natural Light, What Natural Light?"

Let me introduce you to Make Up For Ever Mat Velvet + foundation in shade 15 Alabaster, and Stila Convertible Colour in Lillium, my latest purchases.

I acquired the foundation from Precious About Makeup. Miscellaneous influences: rave reviews on Youtube, such as Tiffany's; noticing it on Cami's wish list; promisingly pale swatches on Glossed in Translation. It wasn't cheap, but I kind of impulse bought one evening. Very pale, pink undertones, matte - this had potential. And I'm pleased to say I am in love with it.

This is only the second foundation I've ever had that I can apply straight from the bottle AND IT MATCHES (the other being the Illamasqua Light Liquid Foundation in LF115). Immediate plus. I applied it on top of the Murad mattifying primer (double whammy) in a morning rush as I was leaving for a weekend in Oxford - I know, sensible timing. But this stuff went on like a dream (I used my fingers to apply it), looked great - and more importantly still looked great by the evening. No powder required at all, and it didn't look cakey. My friend couldn't tell I was wearing foundation at all - which isn't to say this doesn't even out the skin and look pretty flawless (hideous cliche but it's true). Genius. So far, worth the price tag. Now if only MUFE was a bit easier to come by, I think we'd be entering Holy Grail territory here.

And in Oxford, I bought more makeup. Obvs. Specifically, this Stila cream blush. Well, the Boots on Cornmarket had a new Stila stand, next to the Orly stand (I bought Rage, though I haven't applied it yet!), and I gravitated towards these. I do love me a good cream blush, and Anna had mentioned this one a few times on her blog, so I had a swatch and went for Lillium, a warm pink.

The packaging is a winner - fairly small and light, but substantial-feeling and cute (with a mirror, always a plus since I use cream blush to touch up during the day). The formula is very different to my favourite cream blushes by Topshop, which are cream-to-powder and set matte - this is almost sticky, and never dries completely matte. "Dewy", I believe, is the relevant makeup cliche buzzword here! When I first applied this I didn't realise how pigmented it was and had to rectify the situation with foundation and powder, so beware. I found this a tad tacky to blend with fingers; it works better with a brush, like the MAC 188. So I don't think I'll be trading in my Topshop blushes anytime soon, but this is a delightful addition to my horde of blushes!

If you have any recommendations for cream blushes do drop me a comment, as I'd love to try some other brands (any excuse!). I have my eye on Illamasqua, but am open to suggestions!

Till next time,

Josephine x

PS. Speaking of Topshop cream blushes, there's a new one in town: a pink called Prime Time. I need.

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

Nostalgia in All the Colours of the UV Rainbow

Unusually, I tidied my room today. (This may have something to do with tort law revision.) These were among the most bizarre things I found lurking in drawers, relics of my undergrad days:

The second photo aptly represents the contrast between my previous student days, when I used to go out most nights of the week, and my current revision-bound, hermit-like state. (Why I ever needed six whole tubes of UV paint is of course a mystery.) This may have more to do with the fact I've been living back at home this year after four years away, which has been interesting. I live in a very small town outside London, so let's just say the UV paint and the last train home are not particularly compatible. Frankly, I think I've left behind my glowing-warpaint days, but you never know, I may bust this stuff out after exams are over!

Anyway, enough of the random post - there's a tort textbook with my name on it!

Till next time,

Josephine x

PS. My latest foundation craving, courtesy of Cami, is the Make Up For Ever Mat Velvet + in Alabaster, available from here. My current combo of Revlon ColorStay + Illamasqua Light Liquid is a bit of a pain to mix up, what with the glass bottle of ColorStay inevitably glopping a metric ton of product onto the back of your hand, and can look a tad cakey if you're not careful. So the search for a pink-toned, pale, matte foundation continues...


WARC-Truncated: length

text:
Rifle discharges at Montana gun show, injuring 2

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Authorities say a bolt-action rifle was fired during a gun show in Billings, Montana, injuring a man and a young girl.

Capt. Bill Michaelis of the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office told the Billings Gazette (http://bit.ly/2g0W2XB) that a vendor was showing the gun to somebody when it discharged Friday.

Michaelis says the gun was pointed at the ground and left a divot in the concrete floor of Montana Pavilion.

Authorities say a man was treated for a hand injury at the scene by emergency personnel and was not taken to a hospital.

A girl was injured by shrapnel in her arm and was taken to a hospital.

Her age and the extent of her injuries were not immediately clear.

Michaelis says no charges are pending.

Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com

9:00 am
Updated: 9:00 am. |
Legal-Ease: What is in a name?
2:20 am
Updated: 2:22 am. |
Bath halts losing streak
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Friday, October 12, 2007

"Family violence risk for those on benefits"

The Nelson Mail has covered the high incidence of violence disclosures in their region. My view wasn't included but, as they say, 'thems the breaks'. At least the link between welfare and domestic violence gets more exposure.

Are disclosures of violence genuine?

Having reflected on yesterday's release about the high number of family violence disclosures in Nelson I have another thought.

Briefly, in 1996 the Court of Appeal ruled that women in a relationship where violence was present were not in a relationship that met the criteria of being "in the nature of a marriage" and could therefore continue to receive a benefit as a sole parent.

It is possible that women may disclose violence to avoid losing her benefit or being prosecuted for fraud.

After the court made this ruling 2,865 women had their debts disestablished and thousands of dollars were refunded.

I believed that the judge who made the ruling was opening a can of worms. Essentially we went from paying women to escape violence to paying them to live with it, or say they are living with it.

So we might be looking at a two-pronged problem. Yes there is rising violence but there may also be women who are falsely disclosing violence. (With our very broad definition of domestic violence it would be difficult to establish any disclosure was 'false' however.) Nelson may have a particularly active benefit control unit. It is a well known destination for welfare/alternative life-stylers.

If this effect from the ruling is happening I would expect it to show in an area where there is strong advocacy for beneficiaries. I don't know about Nelson but the Bay of Plenty, second highest for violence disclosures, has one such Rotorua-based group which forced Work and Income to recognise split-custody DPB through court action.

In my experience there are genuine cases and there are people who routinely 'lie' to Work and Income. That's just the way it is.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Nelson top region for violence disclosure

Media Release
Thursday, October 11, 2007

In the financial year to June 2007 3,817 Work and Income clients disclosed family violence to their case managers.

"The average number of family violence disclosures was 1.5 per 100 beneficiaries," according to welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell.

"Surprisingly this number almost triples to 4.4 in the Nelson region. The number is also significantly larger than the next highest region, Bay of Plenty, at 2.9 disclosures."

"Put another way while the Nelson region is home to less than 4 percent of working age beneficiaries it accounts for over 11 percent of family violence disclosures. "

"Earlier this week the Christchurch Press reported that the Nelson Women's Refuge was turning people away. Their manager, Cindy Kawana claimed the violence is getting worse and said, 'There would currently be six women who we wonder if they will die next time.' "

"There is every likelihood these women are also known to Work and Income who have admitted that there is a significant overlap between their clientèle and that of CYFs. "

"The DPB was historically about enabling women to escape violence yet we appear to have more family violence then ever before. The reality is a steady and secure benefit often makes a single mother attractive to potentially dangerous males; those who would rather spend their own income on drugs and alcohol."

ACC to benefit

A reader expressed an interest in how many people moved from ACC to a benefit. Here is a breakdown. In the year to August 2005 956 people moved from ACC to a benefit. Although the figures below only go to 2005 I have seen figures for the invalid's benefit up to 2007 which confirm the overall downward trend.

National MP - a foolish woman

Jacqui Dean's bid to have party pills banned looks more and more ridiculous. You know something has to be off the scale when Sue Kedgeley can recognise 'inconsistency'.

Now we have the danger of toddlers taking party pills introduced into the argument. Anybody with an ounce of nous knows some toddlers will put anything resembling a sweet or a sweet drink in their mouths. And they do. What is particularly unique about party pills?

There have been no deaths of children (or adults for that matter) due to ingestion of BZP.

There have been deaths of children who have taken their parent's take-home methadone - not here but in Scotland. Ban methadone. That's the answer.

Oh look. Better ban vitamin tablets while we are at it; The amount of iron contained in children's and adult vitamins can be enough to kill a child when taken in excessive amounts. In 1997, the FDA implemented rules that require unit-dose packaging for iron-containing products with 30 milligrams or more of iron per dosage unit. For a small child, as little as 600 milligrams of iron can be fatal.

Then we should move on to anti-depressants and anti-hypertensive medications; Tofranil [imipramine], an antidepressant drug also used for childhood bedwetting, and Catapres [clonidine], a high blood pressure medicine, can be very hazardous because it takes very little to produce life-threatening problems in children. One tablet may do it.

Next ban turps, lighter fluid, bleach....Children have died after swallowing such everyday substances as charcoal, lighter fluid, paint thinner and remover, antifreeze, turpentine and pesticides.

I need not go on.

The only ban that would really make a difference is a ban on stupidity.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Sticking it to the poor

Classically Liberal blogs on which party is sticking it to the poor.

The surplus

...released today $8,663,000,000

or $3,079 per working-age New Zealander.

(Left click on image to enlarge)

Out of interest does anybody know exactly what Core Government Services covers? Huge increase there.

Welfare spending - up again

The cost of transfer payments according to the just released Government Financial Statements. The first column is 2007 actual and the second column is 2006. The numbers speak for themselves. All up another 8.6 percent increase in spending.

New Milestone Reached

Media Release

Wednesday, 10 October, 2007

According to figures released by National MP, Judith Collins, August 2007 has seen the number of people on Invalid and Sickness benefits reach a new milestone.

Welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell says that the total number of Invalid and Sickness beneficiaries has grown 56 percent in the last ten years. "To put this into perspective the working-age population (15-64) has grown by only 14 percent over the same period."

"Despite programmes to address the problems that are preventing beneficiaries from returning to work the government seems incapable of curbing the growth, much of which is coming from increases in psychological and psychiatric conditions, migration from other benefits, longer stays and easy eligibility."

"While the public is happy to support genuine cases it is far less clear whether they are happy to support people whose incapacity to work is self-induced or who are simply refusing to face up to their problems due to the availability of welfare."

"Instead of applying some rigorous gate-keeping the government has now changed the rules to allow family GPs to certify or re-certify people eligible for these benefits. Nothing they are currently doing would indicate we can expect a drop in the numbers. In fact Treasury predicts a 21 percent increase in expenditure on these benefits over the next 4 years. "

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Larry Williams is talking to me about the press release below at 4.10 pm at NewstalkZB.

Dubious claims do cause no favours

A woman has established an outfit she calls Candor Trust and is running a campaign against drugged driving and in particular, driving by methadone patients. Obviously I have no problem with this. But I wish she would substantiate her claims. A press release from yesterday is quite typical;

A woman has appeared in Court on drug driving charges today in relation to incidents of dangerous driving in the Bay of Plenty. The methadone patient drove dangerously after sleeping in the car at a service station, with children aboard and other motorists had to evade.

Candor Trust says this scenario is quite common as shown by the ESR drug driving study results which show about a dozen dead methadone drivers over the last 2 years.

Using the formula applied to alcohol harm it can be safely assumed methadone drivers were also implicated in a similar number of innocents deaths (on the road).

This is a grossly disproportionate level of road trauma in relation to the actual numbers of methadone patients. It constitutes involvement in 10% of the road toll by under 1% of the population, and double the involvement of untreated heroin addicts.

OK. That's 6 dead methadone drivers a year and an assumption of 6 associated deaths of 'innocent' people. The yearly road toll to October 9, 2007 is 399. How do 12 deaths become 10 percent?

Go the website and read such claims as;

About 1 in 50 Kiwis now die due to a crash - and over 1/2 the deaths are due to intoxicated drivers.

According to the LTSA, in 2005 29 percent of fatal crashes had driver alcohol as a factor. Again a significant difference between 29 percent and over 50 percent.

I reiterate I have no problem with people campaigning against problems but this sort of dubious information does her cause, and in a broader sense the internet, no favours.

Mike Moore's prediction

Undeterred, and why should he be, Mike Moore is off again making predictions and handing out advice. In the Features page of today's Dominion Post he calls next year's election result. It will be a, "red, green, brown and grey coalition, grey being UnitedFuture's decisive colour. Labour's secret weapon as always is the National Party's arrogance and sense of entitlement."

(Which prompted me to speculate that National want to give close consideration to what happened to the All Blacks on Sunday.)

Then he goes off on a tangent about last week's Te Puni Kokiri report, Maori in Australia, (over 100,000 of them) which I briefly blogged about. After a tirade against Willie Jackson, that Marxist media magnate from Mangere he concludes;

"A serious opposition party preparing for government would get this report to a select committee and do the hard policy yards."

Actually a serious incumbent government would be having a decent look at the report's findings and asking themselves what they are doing wrong. Most of the 'desertion' has happened under Labour. When asked, which year did you arrive in Australia to live, 2000 was the highest year ever, followed by 2004 and then 1999.

If Moore is right about his fourth Labour government we can expect to continue to lose what he calls the ambitious people.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Thousands exempted from penalties for not naming fathers

Media Release

Monday, October 8, 2007

The government has been claiming a substantial drop in the number of single parents incurring a section 70A deduction from their benefit for refusing to name the father of their child and/or failing to apply for child support.

"In fact, over 3,000 single parents have now been exempted from any penalty but have still failed to name the father or other parent," Lindsay Mitchell, welfare commentator, said today.

"In 2005 I argued at select committee that raising the section 70A penalty from $22 to $28 per week was a waste of time. In truth, having any penalty is a mere token gesture to satisfy the moral sensitivities of taxpayers."

"That over 3,000 beneficiaries have been excused from penalty demonstrates the Ministry's lack of commitment to its own policy."

"Think about," says Mitchell. "You can be sure that if the DPB wasn't available many more women would be naming the fathers of their children as they sought his financial support through the courts. Then again, if the DPB wasn't available, far fewer women would choose to have a child unsupported by a partner."

"As it stands we have a system that acts to both replace fathers and pursue them. That results in many mothers being quite happy to survive on just the DPB. And tens of thousands of fathers paying the bare minimum of $14 per week in child support."

"The system is a travesty. It produces thousands more fatherless children, on paper or otherwise, than would have been the case without well-meaning interference."

A few words before moving on

Worse than losing the World Cup is reading and listening to all the drivel about it.

For instance, if you are utterly wrapped up in sport it's pretty dumb to go using rock lyrics to make a point;

This was the year, the optimists decreed, that New Zealand would win four major titles - the cricket World Cup, America's Cup, Rugby World Cup and netball world championship.

Well the first three went west, with only the yachties making the final.

The pressure is now on the Silver Ferns' shoulders.

To paraphrase the hamburger-hoovering Meatloaf: "one out o' four, ain't bad".

And psychologists?? Like where is the psychologist who will save me from psychologists;

Psychologist Marc Wilson said shattered fans could ease their anguish by sticking to the World Cup till the bitter end. (I thought we'd already reached that?)

"If I was giving a prescription I would say, convince yourself we would have won if it wasn't for the referee cheating, and at least a southern hemisphere team is going to win," the Victoria University school deputy head said.

An academic. No wonder. Irrational advice.

We should want the French to win as they are the team that beat us. At least then we will be second best...

But this is not a time for rationality it would seem.

In, thanks for reminding us, Mental Health Week this twit from Victoria is telling people to do what is the very thing that gets us deep in the shite every time - blame someone or something else. Disgusting

And on a serious note. If you thought you had a bad day yesterday spare a thought for Trevor Mallard whose father passed away. I never say anything good about Trevor but that's politics. It saddens me deeply when I read about the loss of a parent. My sincere sympathies to Trevor and his family.

The rest of you. Get over it.


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Saturday, May 29, 2010

"Requiem for an Armchair"

Another highly readable post from Winston Smith about the inutterably inane cossetted environment of supported housing for Britains problem youth;

Requiem for an Armchair

I have just returned to work in the Supported Housing project I currently work for after a few days away and have been informed that we need to do more work as a team to ensure that we can evidence that we are complying with the government’s Quality Assessment Framework. This explains the new posters around the building. One of which is trying to promote resident involvement in the running of the project. The poster tries to encourage the young people to become involved by offering such glib pronouncements as ‘No idea is a bad idea’. What about those residents whose ideas lead to ingesting large quantities of drugs and/or shoplifting or disturbing other residents and neighbours? Do I have to appreciate their ideas as well?

Budget blustering and desperate-for-attention MP

Did you suffer from a lack of information about the budget? Apparently Palmerstonians did and Labour expects government MPs to go up there and explain it to them. At least Palmerston North Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway does. He is 'OUTRAGED' that National held a $30-a-head breakfast meeting for its supporters where expenditure committee chairman Craig Foss spoke about the budget.

"Information about the Budget and the opportunity to ask questions of a government MP should be accessible to everyone by right," Mr Lees-Galloway said.

So the next few months should see a Budget tour of the provinces?

"It is absolutely deplorable that taxpayers who are funding the Budget ... are being asked to pay for this presentation.

But they aren't! National Party supporters are. Unless of course Lee-Galloway is factoring in the speaker's salary.

Mr Lees-Galloway said the Labour Party would host a no-charge public meeting in Palmerston North about the Budget and its finance spokesman, David Cunliffe, would speak.

So who will pay for that? Don't taxpayers stump up for Cunliffe's salary as well?

Then an apt comment from Craig Foss on hearing that Mr Cunliffe's meeting would be 'free'.

Mr Foss wasn't surprised – he thought people wouldn't want to pay to hear Mr Cunliffe.

Ouch. I imagine the vainglorious Mr Cunliffe will be wishing his colleague had kept his trap shut.

Friday, May 28, 2010

UK bad, but NZ worse

The Brits have just issued a gloomy report called the State of the Nation report: Poverty, Worklessness and Welfare Dependence in the UK. It is spilling over with sombre stats.

I have scanned two of the graphs from their section on family breakdown. They should have included NZ. It might have made them feel a tad better.

The first claims the highest European teenage birthrate;

The second claims one of the highest proportions of single parent families in the OECD:

The last is very interesting. It depicts the proportion of children with behavioural difficulties according to their family background. LP = Lone Parent.

It should be also recognised that those with behavioural difficulties also cause and experience a compounding effect because they tend to be clustered together in the poorest deciles. Now someone will tell me that their difficulties are to do with material deprivation. Somewhat. But studies have controlled for this and the poorer outcomes for children with single parents hold when considering families with equivalent incomes.

(Hat tip to Anne Else for bringing the report to my attention.)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

WINZ moving more people from invalid's to sickness benefit

Remember this story from last month?

Work and Income has quietly started bumping dozens of people off the invalids benefit, months before tough new work tests officially come into force, say beneficiary advocates...

... Beneficiary Advocacy Federation spokeswoman Kay Brereton said there had been a dramatic shift in the past few months in the way the regional health advisers worked.

"Initially [in 2007] we saw people who were on the sickness benefit being picked up and put on an invalids benefit because their conditions were long-term and severe. Now we are seeing a dramatic shift the other way...

...North Shore advocate Pam Apera said she had seen a huge increase in people being bumped off the invalids benefit in the past four months, with an average of 10 cases a week this year."

I asked for the relevant data under the OIA and here it is graphed;

There's a trend but it is hardly "dramatic" and an average of "ten cases a week" in one area is highly unlikely.

However, there were 767 people transferred from an invalid's benefit onto a sickness benefit in 2009. This is considerably higher than the average annual total for the period 1998 to 2005 of 262. (I don't have data for the interim period.) So it would appear that the instruction to apply eligibility criteria more rigorously has been followed. The Auditor General should be pleased. From last year's report;

As part of the Working New Zealand: Work-Focused Support Programme, the Ministry put into practice a number of changes in September 2007 to improve how it determined eligibility for sickness and invalids' benefits, and to actively manage cases through regular and effective contact with people receiving those benefits...

We recommend that the Ministry of Social Development:

7. Broaden the criteria used to refer benefit applications to regional health advisors and regional disability advisors so that, as resources allow, more cases can be reviewed for ongoing entitlement to the sickness benefit or invalid's benefit

9. Review the circumstances of longer-term sickness and invalids' beneficiaries to better identify those for whom work is an option, and provide them with appropriate case management and employment-focused services;

The changes happened under Labour. Not National. And the advocates that want to take a class action against WINZ for anticipating the Future Focus legislation wouldn't, in my opinion, have a leg to stand on.

Cheaper to leave them on the DPB

More groups have trooped before the social services select committee lambasting the government's Future Focus Bill. Again most of the focus is on the expectation that a single parent should work part-time to help support their children after the youngest turns 6.

Child Action Poverty Group researcher Donna Wynd further questioned the targeting of those who have spent many years on the benefit, saying it would be cheaper to leave them where they were.

Cheaper still not to have let them onto a benefit, and to stay there for many years.

She later clarified that she was referring to long-term beneficiaries who probably suffered from substance addiction and mental health problems, and who needed intensive - and expensive - wrap-around support.

"If you're not prepared to do that, you might as well leave them where they are because no one is going to give them a job, and if they do, they're not going to be able to keep it."

Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations...

Ms Wynd had earlier told the social services select committee that the reforms "coerced" solo parents into work and had no regard for the 220,000 children living in beneficiary households.

Of all the motivations for reforming the DPB, improving the lot of children is the most important. Again this is CPAG at their most arrogant. Only they know how to improve children's lives and that is through bigger welfare incomes. Never mind that the DPB has deprived many of a resident father or exposed them to a string of poorly motivated substitutes. Never mind that the DPB has caused more poverty than it has cured.

She did not think work was a way out of poverty for those on welfare unless they could get stable well-paid jobs, but most could only find low-paid, often temporary jobs.

So if work isn't the answer then it must be more welfare. But if more welfare is given, more children will grow up on welfare and their expectations will be based on their environment and in 20 years time the advocates will still be calling for more welfare. More welfare is an ever-expanding downward spiral.

These statements remind me of the resistance and admonitions prior to the US reforms. Poverty would grow, crime would escalate, child abuse and neglect would worsen and homelessness would snowball.

Didn't happen. And in general single mothers are better off . Yes, some are struggling but the hard cases are not simply abandoned. Most importantly children are now learning that getting a job is what you do in life. End of story.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Two silly girls

In need of some light relief from the gloomy weather, here are my two silly girls having fun. Coming from a working career as a sheep dog the hairy one has fit in very well. Ordinarily I wouldn't hold with dressing up a dog but this one just loves the play and attention. She is still an overgrown pup.

Hone Harawira on Three Strikes

Hone Harawira speaking against the Three Strikes Bill makes a couple of interesting points;

Mr Speaker, prison statistics tell us that even though Maori are only 14% of the population we are 50% of the prison muster, and have been so for more than 20 years, but if you think that's bad, believe me, this 3 strikes bill is going to make it much, much worse because without decent rehabilitation programs, first strikers and second strikers will carry on getting it wrong because they're not learning anything, they're simply reacting to problems in the only way they know, and they're gonna get hammered.

And because I suspect a lot of people in this house don't believe me, I recommend that they read the countless reports which vividly detail the historical tragedy of systemic bias and outright bloody racism against Maori in respect of arrests, charges, convictions and jail sentences - reports which tell us that given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori being arrested for similar incidents, the ones who are more likely to get charged are the Maori ones, reports which tell us that given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori going to court on similar charges, the ones who are more likely to get convicted are the Maori ones, reports which tell us that given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori being convicted on similar charges, the ones who are more likely to get sentenced to jail are the Maori ones. and reports which tell us that given equal numbers of Pakeha and Maori getting sent to jail on similar charges, the ones who are more likely to get the longer sentences are the Maori ones.

I accept there is a degree of racism inherent amongst the police and in the courts. However the overriding reason Maori make up 50 percent of the prison population is that they are, to use Hone's term, committing crimes and appearing in court in equal numbers. If they were committing crime and appearing in court at the same rate as non-Maori they would be appearing in unequal numbers.

Mr Speaker - it's a short-sighted man who thinks that legislation sending people to jail for a long time reduces crime rates; it's a blind man who sees justice in sentencing people to life for responding to circumstances they have little control over; and it's a bloody fool who thinks that this bill will do anything else but create frustration, anger and violence within our prison population, an anger that will explode at any reason and at any time, because when you're in jail for life, the only question you consider when faced with conflict is not "what can happen to me if I do this" no it's "what else can they do to me?"

And when politicians talk about a safe society, let me ask this question - what about the next generation who have to grow up with the children of those who have been jailed for life, children who grow up with a deep-seated and very real hatred of society for a life below the margins that they have been forced to lead, a hatred that will be visited back upon society through ever-increasing rates of mayhem and murder.

Here I believe Hone is on quite firm ground. If you attend a court and listen to Maori speaking bitterly amongst themselves about the Pakeha system you will quickly realise why their young are likely to follow suit. I even heard one angry man urging another to bring his kids to court to see what they could expect when it was their turn. The chance that a Maori child will follow a parent or other relative to prison is higher as shown by the following table (respondent = prisoner);

I full well know what Three Strikes is supposed to achieve but my instincts about what the unintended consequences will be would have made me vote against the bill.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Report highlights value of work

Media Release

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

A paper will be launched in Auckland today by The Royal Australasian College of Physicians entitled, 'Realising the Health Benefits of Work'. According to welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell the report claims that two thirds of sickness absence and long-term incapacity is due to mild and treatable conditions.

"This claim would help to explain why the number of people who rely on a sickness or invalid's benefit has increased dramatically over recent years. Conditions that might not have kept people from work 20 or 30 years ago are now considered grounds for claiming some form of incapacity benefit."

"Post-war the number of people claiming a sickness or invalid benefit remained steady but fell as a percentage of the population (see below). However, since 1980 the numbers have risen steeply. At March 2010 there were over 140,000 people relying on a sickness or invalid benefit accounting for over 5 percent of the working-age population."

Mitchell observed that, "The government's Future Focus reforms, currently before select committee, will legislate changes to eligibility for sickness and invalid benefits but their proposals have already been tried in Australia and have failed to stem the growth. In the US some progress has been made with their Supplemental Security Income disability recipients now tracking in line with population growth. The US has introduced the most stringent reforms of NZ, Australia and the UK. It would pay the Welfare Working Group to investigate how this has been achieved."

"Work incapacity is amongst the toughest problems developed countries face and the report released today will highlight why it is vital that dependent individuals receive the assistance they need to return to or take up work."

Own goal?

Who generated this story?

A high profile public servant who was found not guilty of assaulting a teenager is furious his name has been released on the internet.

The man was granted permanent name and occupation suppression when the verdict was returned yesterday in the Wellington District Court however his name has already appeared on a website. Details about the case are also suppressed.

The man's lawyer, Mike Antunovic, says procedures are in place to protect the rule of law and orders of the court and he would be surprised if they were not put into effect immediately.

Did it originate with the lawyer, in which case it is surely an own goal. Anybody with rudimentary knowledge of the "internet" knows exactly where to go to find the name.

Or was it a response to a reporter informing the lawyer? In which case what responsibility does the media bear or share in publicising the name? And for that matter, myself I guess, for commenting on it.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Understanding inequality

After yesterday's post about the increasing agitation over growing income gaps, right on queue, here's Tapu Misa with another inequality invocation.

Maybe it doesn't matter that the two-thirds of taxpayers who earn under $40,000 (quite a bit less than the oft-quoted average wage of $50,000) will get between 9 cents and just under $10 a week after GST, while the hard-pressed top 2 per cent who've been struggling to make ends meet on $150,000-plus a year will pocket nearly half a billion in tax cuts.

Auckland University economist Dr Susan St John calls the tax package "a very significant shift from progressive taxation". More of the tax burden will now fall on the lower-paid middle and bottom ranks of taxpayers.

This means we're not likely to lose our ranking as one of the most unequal countries in the OECD any time soon.

It isn't at all clear what is intended by these numbers. One interpretation is that two thirds of tax-payers earn under $40,000.

Roughly two thirds of all the people that receive an income receive under $40,000. That is true. But all those people do not "earn" an income. It is paid to them as Super or a benefit. And yes, technically they pay tax but that only amounts to shifting some numbers on the government's ledger.

The average wage from paid employment was $48,360 in June 2009. People in paid employment pay tax on their earnings. They pay tax on their recompense for contributing directly to the economy. That thing we all rely on to keep us afloat.

Inequality, as epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue in their 2009 book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, hurts us all. As well as links to higher crime, ill-health, shorter life expectancy and a range of social pathologies, inequality drives a wedge between people, corroding trust and raising levels of anxiety. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised then that an annual Massey University survey has found we've become more tolerant of income inequality, even as we've become more unequal.

Perhaps the reason New Zealanders have become more tolerant of inequality is because the last 30 to 40 years has shown that even as equality of opportunity has increased many have failed to take advantage. Perhaps they are more tolerant of inequality because they perceive growing numbers of people who appear to be the cause of their own misfortune.

If we lived in a country where the vast majority of people worked, and they were getting pitiful wages I too would be jumping up and down about inequality. Had I been alive in the 1930s I would have been a socialist. But we have been down that track of government intervention to give everyone a fair shake of the stick and it hasn't worked. The result has been the bedding in of a large group of permanently poor people.

325,000 working age people are on a benefit and if their children are counted the number rises to over half a million. And even during the economic boom, when NZ briefly boasted the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD, the number was only 20 percent lower. That's a major cause of New Zealand's inequality.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Some Sunday morning 'big picture' thoughts

How often are you reading about the growing inequality in NZ? The phenomenon is blamed for social ills, crime and poor health. Labour wanted NZ to become a version of a Scandinavian country where people pay high taxes and receive many benefits and that would tend towards equalising incomes. Working for Families was part of the plan to become the natural party of government by locking in the franchise. And it looked like their plan had almost succeeded with National morphing into Labour anyway. However....

The budget did reinforce that National, to a point, are prepared to accept that inequality goes hand in hand with economic growth (as Matt McCarten points out today).

So why can't NZ be like those countries where there is a greater degree of economic equality?

Because it is peopled by very diverse individuals and groups, with diverse values (which ironically Labour encouraged). And rapid social change like the sexual revolution hit NZ when it was still very young. So NZ does not have a long history of shared values, or even common religion, and there is certainly a 'them and us' class mentality afoot fostered by the left and very pervasive. This results in people treating the redistributive social policies with disdain instead of appreciation. Instead of understanding that social insurance can only operate successfully when it isn't gamed, too many see it as a right or a way of getting back what the nasty capitalists took or kept from them. Or even what the government took from them.

It is fruitless to hanker after the European style social security philosophies and systems, which are coming undone anyway with immigration and changing demographics.

Inequality is NZ's future. The trick is to lift everyone up a few notches rather than force everyone down. And as the country gets older, values will probably become more homogeneous which should act as a counter-balance to extremes of wealth and poverty.

Political realities of welfare reform

This article appeared in the UK Telegraph. It outlines what the UK needs to do about welfare according to Richard Wellings of the Institute of Economic Affairs. His proposals are of the Ruth Richardson variety. James Bartholomew points out the obvious reality that the proposals are politically difficult. And that's the crunch. Unless there is a political consensus, or a government prepared to be very radical within one term (which risks policy reversal by the next government) little can be achieved. Which is incidentally why I abandoned any political ambitions in favour of trying to influence a consensus of opinion (which is how the US achieved abiding change and they have a way to go yet).

Even Margaret Thatcher didn’t manage to dismantle Britain’s disastrous welfare system.

Judging by the policy plans of the Lib-Con coalition, there is little reason to be optimistic that today’s leaders will be any more successful. The timid proposals on welfare are little more than an expansion of existing failed programmes.

It is unsurprising that welfare reform has presented such a problem for successive governments. The six million working-age adults who now receive out-of-work benefits – plus millions more over-60s receiving generous pension credits – comprise a large voting bloc. Labour would have risked losing its core support had it attacked benefit dependency.


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Matt Tyler and Rikker Dockum present at BLS 43

February 3, 2017

This weekend, PhD student Matt Tyler and PhD candidate Rikker Dockum are giving talks at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Matt’s talk is titled “In Choctaw, everyone’s a clitic.” Here is the abstract:

Choctaw has verbal morphology that could plausibly be analyzed as agreement or clitic doubling. I argue that all the morphemes in question are clitics, on the basis of two syntactic tests rooted in the notion that clitics should behave like pronominal arguments in A-positions. Firstly, each of the putative clitics participates in an alternation that resembles Romance clitic climbing. Secondly, the presence vs. absence, and the location, of the clitic affects the availability of the preverb ‘oklah’, which associates with plural arguments. Specifically, I argue that ‘oklah’ must be c-commanded by a plural argument, which may be a clitic.

Rikker’s talk is titled “Prosodic context in computational modeling of tone: citation tones vs. running speech.” Here is the abstract:

This paper examines how contextual variables can explain the significant gap in performance for unsupervised modeling of tones in Tai Khamti [ISO 639-3: kht] spoken in Myanmar. Two corpora were extracted from citation tones and tones in running speech in order to assess the utility and limitations of these methods. Taking native judgments as ground truth, current results show high precision on citation tones, between 0.93 and 1.0, in three of the four expected tonal categories, as well as recall 0.79-0.86 in all four. Tones in sentential contexts showed precision just 0.28-0.62, with recall between 0.21 and 0.63.

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Publishing Partner: Cambridge University Press CUP Extra Publisher Login
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Style, Mediation, and Change

Edited by Janus Mortensen, Nikolas Coupland, and Jacob Thogersen

Style, Mediation, and Change "Offers a coherent view of style as a unifying concept for the sociolinguistics of talking media."

New from Cambridge University Press!

Intonation and Prosodic Structure

By Caroline Féry

Intonation and Prosodic Structure "provides a state-of-the-art survey of intonation and prosodic structure."

Book Information

Sun Image

Title: Ket
Written By: Edward J. Vajda
Series Title: Languages of the World/Materials 204

Ket is the only surviving member of the formerly widespread Yeniseic family and one of the world's more intriguing language isolates. Its phonology, vocabulary, and grammar differ strikingly from the surrounding families. A system of five phonemic tones, apparently derived from simplified consonant articulations, mark the beginning of each phonological word. Agreement?related inflections reflect a tripartite noun?class division based on animacy and gender. The polysynthetic verb contains ten position classes and involves a variety of distinct agreement patterns: active/inactive, ergative/absolutive, nominative/accusative, and two that employ redundant subject markers. Each stem selects one of these strategies as part of its lexical makeup. The co?indexed subject and object NPs are zero?marked regardless of the verb's agreement type. Incorporation affects certain intransitive subjects, as well as objects, instruments, and directional adverbs. Important derivational categories include event number (punctual vs. iterative) and transitivity, with transitive and intransitive stems normally differing in some formal way. Causatives, inceptives, and even infinitives are distinct lexemes rather than grammatical forms of another stem. The only verbal inflectional categories are tense (past/non?past), mood (indicative/imperative), and agreement in person, class, and number with at most two grammatical terms. Particles convey other temporal and modal nuances. Most morphemes are roots or grammatical inflections. With so few derivational affixes, compounding is the most prevalent technique of lexeme creation. Redundant inflections also play a role in stem formation. This is manifested most obviously in the verb, but occurs in the noun too.

Despite its isolate status, Ket shares certain areal features with its Uralic, Turkic, and Tungusic neighbors. These include a nominal paradigm containing a dozen cases and a propensity to use postpositions or case suffixes as clausal subordinators.

Ket is spoken today by a few hundred of the 1,200 Ket people, mainly in remote areas near the Yenisei River in the Turukhansk District of Russia's Krasnoyarsk Province. Most speakers are adults who know Russian fluently too.
This book contains the first full?length description of Ket to appear in English. It covers all aspects of the phonology, morphology and syntax of Southern Ket (the dialect with the most speakers), and briefly discusses the traditional culture and its characteristic vocabulary. Also included is a previously unpublished folktale with interlinear morpheme glosses and an English translation.

Publication Year: 2004
Publisher: Lincom GmbH
Review: Read the review
BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Language Documentation
Subject Language(s): Ket
Issue: All announcements sent out by The LINGUIST List are emailed to our subscribers and archived with the Library of Congress.
Click here to see the original emailed issue.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 3895862215
ISBN-13: N/A
Pages: 109
Prices: Europe EURO 38


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New from Oxford University Press!

Style, Mediation, and Change

Edited by Janus Mortensen, Nikolas Coupland, and Jacob Thogersen

Style, Mediation, and Change "Offers a coherent view of style as a unifying concept for the sociolinguistics of talking media."

New from Cambridge University Press!

Intonation and Prosodic Structure

By Caroline Féry

Intonation and Prosodic Structure "provides a state-of-the-art survey of intonation and prosodic structure."

Academic Paper

Title: Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia
Author: Šárka Šimáčková
Institution: Palacký University Olomouc
Author: Václav Jonáš Podlipský
Institution: Palacký University Olomouc
Author: Kateřina Chládková
Institution: University of Amsterdam
Linguistic Field: Sociolinguistics
Subject Language: Czech
Abstract: As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, and the UK, claim Czech heritage (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 2009). However, it is not known how many of them are native speakers of Czech.

This article appears IN Journal of the International Phonetic Association Vol. 42, Issue 2.

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Journal of Family and Economic Issues

, Volume 32, Issue 4, pp 699–714

Financial Behaviors and Financial Well-Being of College Students: Evidence from a National Survey

Original Paper

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-011-9255-2

Cite this article as:
Gutter, M. & Copur, Z. J Fam Econ Iss (2011) 32: 699. doi:10.1007/s10834-011-9255-2

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between financial behaviors and financial well-being of college students when controlling demographic and financial characteristics, financial education and financial dispositions. Data (N = 15,797) was collected from college students age 18 and over via an online survey from 15 college campuses throughout the United States during spring and fall of 2008. Results of means comparisons showed significant differences on the financial well-being level by various socioeconomic factors and financial behaviors. In addition, regression analysis showed that budgeting, saving, risky credit card behaviors, and compulsive buying were significantly related to financial well-being when controlling for demographic information, financial characteristics, financial education, and financial dispositions.

College studentsFinancial behaviorFinancial dispositionsFinancial educationFinancial well-being

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC (outside the USA)  2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Family, Youth and Community SciencesUniversity of Florida/IFASGainesvilleUSA
  2. 2.Department of Family and Consumer ScienceHacettepe UniversityAnkaraTurkey


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User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction

, Volume 22, Issue 1, pp 101–123

Recommender systems: from algorithms to user experience

Original Paper

DOI: 10.1007/s11257-011-9112-x

Cite this article as:
Konstan, J.A. & Riedl, J. User Model User-Adap Inter (2012) 22: 101. doi:10.1007/s11257-011-9112-x

Since their introduction in the early 1990’s, automated recommender systems have revolutionized the marketing and delivery of commerce and content by providing personalized recommendations and predictions over a variety of large and complex product offerings. In this article, we review the key advances in collaborative filtering recommender systems, focusing on the evolution from research concentrated purely on algorithms to research concentrated on the rich set of questions around the user experience with the recommender. We show through examples that the embedding of the algorithm in the user experience dramatically affects the value to the user of the recommender. We argue that evaluating the user experience of a recommender requires a broader set of measures than have been commonly used, and suggest additional measures that have proven effective. Based on our analysis of the state of the field, we identify the most important open research problems, and outline key challenges slowing the advance of the state of the art, and in some cases limiting the relevance of research to real-world applications.

Recommender systemsUser experienceCollaborative filteringEvaluationMetrics
Download to read the full article text

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.GroupLens Research, Department of Computer Science and EngineeringUniversity of MinnesotaMinneapolisUSA


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Leadership, Gender, and Organization

Volume 27 of the series Issues in Business Ethics pp 139-165

Systemic Leadership, Gender, Organization

  • Mollie Painter-MorlandAffiliated withDepartment of Philosophy, DePaul UniversityDepartment of Philosophy, University of Pretoria Email author

* Final gross prices may vary according to local VAT.

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Editors’ Introduction

Painter-Morland’s earlier research into the emergence of leadership within complex adaptive systems drew heavily on the research of Collier and Esteban and Mary Uhl-Bien et al. In this paper, she takes this work one step further by rethinking gender dynamics from this systemic perspective within the context of organizational leadership. Painter-Morland reminds us that both gender, and notions of “leadership” are socially constructed, and thus subject to revision and change. Systems thinking allows us to acknowledge the multidirectional, tacit influences that play a role in the ways people “lead” in organizations. Under certain organizational conditions a relational, systemic model of leadership emerges, which allows individuals who don’t necessarily occupy positions of authority to lead in their own unique ways when the circumstances call for it.


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