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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

a total disgrace

so it was brought to my attention that michael ball apparently thinks it is cool to make rock & republic maternity jeans-- but not rock & republic keirin cut jeans?!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

studley, it's ON.

wednesday nights are back, baby!  god, am i SO happy track racing is starting.  road is so...... i dunno..... boring.

at my first road race this year everyone is all like: "oh wow, you are going to do a *road* race-- well, good luck" -- as if i was incapable of riding 50 miles.  no, i'm not incapable. road races are just *boring*.  thank god all that road mumbo jumbo is over, now, and the real racing season begins!

so because i placed 5th in the scratch race, that meant i got to do the combined A/B points race for 40 laps (instead of the combined B/C race for 20 laps).

so i informed studley of this and told him: "nole! we are racing together again!  remember that time i beat you in an omnium?"  this was when we had both first started racing.  it was my 3rd track race ever, and his 1st.  i like to remind nole of this every now and again, to keep it real.
let's review that night: july 18, 2007

i beat nole in the omnium... two scratch races and the combined B/C points race.  he beat me in the miss n out.
but this time, i got some more details from nole on how he remembers the evening.

"beth, you know what i remember the most about that race?  it was the last sprint and someone comes around me in the last straight away and i think: 'daaaaamn, that's a big ass' as i was getting passed... and then i realized it was a chick."

i gave myself a side stitch from laughing so hard on this one.  studley thinks i have a big ass.

so we line up for the 40 laps points race and in the roll out i am up front and nole starts heckling me... "beth enjoy it up there in front, cause this will be the last time you see it."  and then after about 5 laps he starts heckling me again about my big ass.  man, it's so on.

i am sad to report that studley beat me in that points race.  (but i did beat kieran.)

next time, gadget. next time.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

sometimes execution is a bit off--

yeah, it was an april fool's joke.

about 10 of you thought you were so clever that you cared to post a comment saying so, which i had to promptly delete so i didn't ruin the fun for everyone. geez, be a team player.

so, speaking of practical jokes, i've learned a lot about april fool's day over the years...

rule number 1, don't play a joke on your mom. (hi mom!)

so i first moved to california to do an americorps program, and because we made peanuts, i moved into some berkeley, hippy, lesbian co-op (not necessarily in that order). i have many stories which i can tell about this year, which i will at a later date, but for now, i am focusing on april fool's day.

i called my mom that year and left her the most amazing message. i was really going to get her this year. (of note: this was about the time political turmoil in colombia was a bit more high profile on the news)
"hi mom! how are you? call me back as soon as you can! we had this health worker from a refugee camp in colombia come speak to our americorps group this past week. they are looking for some short-term lay health workers to man the refugee camp in a rural area...doing some pretty basic medical assistant stuff. they are doing presentations to all of the health care divisions of americorps, as we are trained in that area, seeing if people can take 2 months stints. our service hours will transfer over. i volunteered to do it, because they *really* need people and i will be leaving for colombia in 4 days. they said that i will be in a safe refugee area and there isn't any guerrilla activity and the warzone area close by hasn't been very active. anyway, just wanted to share my news. i figured i should go cause a lot of people in my americorps program are married or have kids and can't go, and they need people, so i volunteered. year of service, right? love you and hopefully i can get in touch with you before i head out. bye!"
so i hung up the phone and had a little laugh to myself and went along my day as normal...doing things berkeley hippy lesbians apparently do, like crack coconuts naked on the living room floor with sledge hammers (...not me, them...) rent was $250 a month, how could i resist?

around dinner time i thought: wow! mom hasn't called me back. so i gave a ring, but her answering machine picked up again. i thought she might be at my aunt and uncle's house, so i gave them a call and my uncle picked up. "you better talk to your mother" was the first thing he said after i said: "hi uncle paul!"

i got on the phone and my mother was hysterical:

"youcantgowhatareyouthinkingohnoohnoyoudontevenspeakspanish youcantgoohnoohnoohnoyoucantgowhatweyouthinkingohnoohno ofcourseyouwoulddosomethinglikethis" was blurted out amongst sobs, snotty sniffling, and those other unpleasant sounds that are made when someone is trying talk whilst consumed in a crying fit.

at that point the punch line wasn't so funny:

"so, uh......april fools...?" i said with my teeth kinda clinched together and then sat on the phone in silence for a little bit.

she didn't believe me at first and i had to convince her that: no, mom, i was not going to a colombian refugee camp in a warzone in 4 days as a lay health worker. (sounds so ridiculous, don't you think?)

apparently she had been at my aunt and uncle's house crying for the last 3 hours.

when my uncle got back on the phone all he said to me was: "good one, beth. what are you going to do next year, tell us that you are getting married?"

and, snap.

keirin cut sketches, page 1

thanks modern love.

p.s. i'm SO over life savers.

michael ball responds!

after months and months of harassment, i finally got a response from the ballster!
Dear Beth,

Sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your inquiry regarding Keirin Cut jeans. I tried to ignore it, but between the dozens of hysterical emails you sent, my PR manager Sean Weide's convincing, seeing that "Keirin Cut" spray paint on the ToC route, and all of the other people who keep bugging me about it, I decided to look into your idea.

As you know, the economic crisis has hit the designer jean market, and R&R is starting a less expensive line ($80-100/pair) and I am considering including your Keirin Cut in this. I realize your market research with "athletic girls" has been highly atecodotal. My team is following up on this.

I would like to talk to you further about this idea. A phone conversation would be in order first, and depending on what me and my team decide, it would be best to meet at my office in LA to do some brainstorming with my creative team, although I think you have all the creativity you need on this one.

Thanks for your persistence and we'll see what happens with this.

With regards and 57cm,

there we have it! i'll keep you posted!!!!


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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Now scheduling a three week tour for Burn For Me By Ilona Andrews

Now scheduling a three week tour for Burn For Me By Ilona Andrews

This tour will run Oct 20- November 7 (weekdays only)

I am scheduling reviews and spotlight stops

review copy will be available on Edelweiss

To participate in this tour please send:

Your blog name and url

A couple suggested dates during the tour

Please let me know if you wish to review

Burn For Me
A Hidden Legacy Novel
By Ilona Andrews

On-Sale 10/28/2014
ISBN: 9780062289230

Book Description:

Nevada Baylor is faced with the most challenging case of her detective career-a suicide mission to bring in a suspect in a volatile case. Nevada isn’t sure she has the chops. Her quarry is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, who can set anyone and anything on fire.

Then she’s kidnapped by Connor “Mad” Rogan-a darkly tempting billionaire with equally devastating powers. Torn between wanting to run or surrender to their overwhelming attraction, Nevada must join forces with Rogan to stay alive.

Rogan’s after the same target, so he needs Nevada. But she’s getting under his skin, making him care about someone other than himself for a change. And, as Rogan has learned, love can be as perilous as death, especially in the magic world.

About the Author:

“Ilona Andrews” is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team. Ilona is a native-born Russian and Gordon is a former communications sergeant in the U.S. Army.

Contrary to popular belief, Gordon was never an intelligence officer with a license to kill, and Ilona was never the mysterious Russian spy who seduced him.

They met in college, in English Composition 101, where Ilona got a better grade. (Gordon is still sore about that.) They have co-authored two New York Times and USA Today bestselling series, the urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and the romantic urban fantasy of The Edge and are working on the next volumes for both.

They live in Texas with their two children and many dogs and cats.

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Contemporary Dance Workshop

Dance Seminar with Elena Prapidi When: 8 Mar 2014 - 05:30
Where: Bhavana Yoga Center, Athens

ContemporaryDanceworkshop at Bhavana Yoga A special workshop with Elena Prapidi The workshop consists of 8 classes/ work in progress sessions, each one with duration 2, 5 hours. The workshop dates are as follows: 09/11, 14/12, 11/01, 8/02, 08/03, 12/04, 10/05 @ 17.30-20.00 , final presentation of our work with a choreography 7/06/2014. Participation: 130€ for early registration,and attendance in all classes. Drop in class : 20€ / time Maximum number of participants 20 people. Contemporary Dance Workshop “work in Progress” with Elena Prapidi @ Bhavana Yoga Center This workshop will be taught in Greek. More info: T: 210 3238133 more info and registration : T: 210 3238133 Registration Form

In order to Register, please fill in all the fields in this application. Once the application is received we will contact you in return to inform you about the payment procedure that needs to be followed. Note that Registration is valid and complete οnly after the down payment is received.
  • Personal Information

    All information is strictly confidential and will be used only by Bhavana Yoga Center.
  • Requests, Health Concerns, etc
  • Almost done!

    Please note that sending E-mail is our way of contacting you for issues that concern changes in our weekly class program, new classes openings, workshops, seminars and upcoming retreats. Your address neither will be sold nor used for any other reason.


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Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

Often times we pray, and then we wait, and pray some more and wait some more. The Bible tells us to let patience have its perfect work, knowing that it is a fruit of the Spirit, and having the hope that God will use our waiting to build us up into the person He wants us to be. But is it true that good things come to those who wait?

“Good Things Come to Those Who Wait” – English Proverb

While patience is indeed a virtue, let us not confuse waiting on God with inaction. If good things truly do come to those who wait, then why do anything at all? Just wait, and it will come, whatever “it” is. I think the foolishness in this idea is obvious to us all, but how do we balance patience with action?

In the Book of Hebrews we read, “And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:11-12 NKJV).  Here the writer clearly distinguishes between being sluggish and being patient. We also see that patience does not stand alone, but it is coupled with faith. And so, waiting on God for the good things He has promised us through faith, is much different than just waiting.

And so we see, that patience has her place right beside faith. Let’s be careful to not allow laziness or procrastination to impersonate patience. Good things come to those who wait, but not to those who wait too late. Let’s do as Paul wrote to Timothy, “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness”. It is when we are pursuing the things of God that we find the proper balance between waiting and doing.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait — 2 Comments

  1. Faith, Waiting, and doing — Prayer should be key at all times and in all circumstances where possible.
    Pursuing the things of God is paramount as specified by Paul to Timothy. I do agree with the writer that planning is necessary as the Bible teaches us that we plan and God directs. Prophet Habakkuk waited on God but l am sure he was doing some activity to keep his family going. Somehow we need to get moving in some direction in accordance to the plan, vision as far as we able to after prayers because God shows the way forward. There is a thin line between Miracle which results from faith and struggling with an insurmountable problem, when the way forward is too misty, rather than crash the next vehicle ahead, slow down and if possible wait a little, while the weather clears. I believe that our living God the Holy Spirit is aware and present at most difficult times to give us a revelation if we trust in Him.

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English Standard Version

Judges 16:27

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27 Now the house was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and qon the roof there were about 3,000 men and women, who looked on while Samson entertained.

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Brett Favre

Brett Favre's NFL games started streak ended last night (in Detroit) at 297 games. It will be the best thing for everyone involved.

Thank God. Games-played streaks, in sports, are cancer. They do absolutely nothing to enhance the structure or work ethic of a team. All they do is put unneeded pressure and stress on players, head coaches, general managers and just about everyone else involved with a team. And, if the number-lovin’ media didn’t keep hammering streak stats into our heads, we’d all be better off for it. In the history of any game, there’s never been a games played streak that did anyone any good.

Consecutive games streaks mean only one thing – that a player isn’t prone to injury. That’s it. They don’t mean he or she’s a great player. They don’t mean a player is highly skilled. All they mean is that the injury bug doesn’t bite very often. Other than that…meaningless.

Garry Unger

Garry Unger played 914 consecutive NHL games in a streak that, by its end, was a problem for his team.

Calgary native Garry Unger once held the NHL’s ironman streak at 914 games. He played in every game for which he was eligible between February 24, 1968 (with the Detroit Red Wings) and December 21, 1979 (with the Atlanta Flames). That includes 11 consecutive seasons of never missing a single game. In fact, during the 1970-71 season, Unger was traded from Detroit to St. Louis and played in 79 games. In those days, an NHL season was 78 games long. But here’s where the problem comes in.

In Atlanta, the NHL furor surrounding Unger’s streak became insane. Unger was 32 years old in December 1979. And he was not the point-per-game player he used to be earlier in his career. But the streak continued. It had a life of its own. It HAD to continue, right? Even though Unger wasn’t playing well enough to warrant a roster spot, it HAD to continue. Then, on December 22nd, in St. Louis, Flames’ head coach Al MacNeil had endured enough. Unger dressed for the game, but simply sat on the bench. Late in the third period, with his teammates realizing that Unger had not taken a shift, the players waved him on as they came off, yelling, “Ungie, Ungie!” Legend has it that MacNeil grabbed the back of Unger’s jersey to prevent him from jumping the boards and getting a shift. The streak ended that night – because it had clearly become a distraction to the team. MacNeil did the right thing, but was vilified for it by some.

Brett Favre

In New York and Minnesota, Brett Favre tried to re-capture his Green Bay glory. He was not successful.

Same goes for Favre’s streak. In fact, everything Brett Favre has done since he ended his first of seventeen retirements to join the New York Jets has been a distraction. If you look at the list of NFL quarterbacks with the most consecutive starts, after Favre come Peyton Manning, Ron Jaworski, Tom Brady, Joe Ferguson, Eli Manning, Dan Marino, Johnny Unitas, Roman Gabriel, Jim “Don’t-call-me-Chris” Everett and Richard Todd. Some big names in there…and a bunch of guys you possibly haven’t heard of.

It proves that games played/started streaks are absolutely useless in determining a player’s value to his club. Especially because, once the streak becomes larger than life (as Favre’s and Unger’s did), it distracts everyone from the true goal – winning.

Favre’s Vikings aren’t winners. Clearly, it appears his last retirement should have been final retirement. And anything that distracts a team from winning is, in sports, cancer.

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2013 Honda Motorcycle Models

Gold Wing The world’s first motorcycle airbag “Gold Wing” has been the ultimate motorcycle for two-up long-distance travel. New Light Silver Metallic and Gray Metallic join Ultra Blue Metallic and Candy Red colors for 2013. MSRP: $23,990-$29,550. In this post, we revealed the list of 2013 Honda models for bike lovers. Each bike with their […]

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Alan Ayckbourn: Frequently Asked Questions

Alan Ayckbourn's Official Website welcomes any enquiries about Alan Ayckbourn and his career in theatre. As a result of more than a decade's worth of questions to the website, the most frequently asked questions have been compiled here

Each page (accessible via the buttons below) deals with a different aspect of Alan Ayckbourn's life or career and contains questions related to that topic about Alan Ayckbourn.

If you have any enquiries regarding Alan Ayckbourn which are not covered in the FAQs or any other part of the website (search enquiries can be made by visiting the website's
Search Engine), please Contact Us.


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Tax Expert Explains President Obama’s Proposed 2017 Budget

An article recently published on, by tax preparation expert Frank Ellis, provides a look into the 2017 budget that President Obama has proposed. Numerous tax changes are included in this budget. Impacting taxpayers on individual and corporate levels, according to Ellis, the changes will impact business taxes the most, but include many that taxpayers across the nation may be affected by.

The author reveals proposed changes related to the Earned Income Tax Credit Table , such as increases for people without a qualifying child, and non-custodial parents. Proposed rules for secondary earners and married couples are noted as well. For example, couples with a gross adjusted income of more than $120,000 would not be eligible.

In addition, the President proposes to increase child and dependent care credits, and an expansion to the American opportunity tax credit. Pell Grants would become tax exempt, and the Community College Partnership Tax Credit would be open to local business supporting community colleges, and hiring local graduates. High income taxpayer reductions were also proposed, as were changes to capital gains

For corporations, a reduction of the corporate tax rate was proposed. President Obama proposed flat and minimum rates on foreign earnings. Also, estate tax changes, from an inheritance, were included in the proposals. The Cadillac Tax, affecting high cost employer-sponsored health coverage was also targeted, in efforts to protect employers living in states where medical coverage costs are higher.

Changes to taxes related to oil, tobacco, and clean energy were proposed too. These have yet to pass Congress and be approved, which can still be changed by the next president, prior to finalization.

The author finishes out by noting how TurboTax and H&R block offer tools for finding the right deductions and getting a large refund. Other online filing tools and benefits are noted, so useful details on these and the proposed tax changes for 2017 can be seen at

About Frank Ellis

Frank Ellis is a Traverse City Tax Preparation Planner and published author. He has written tax and finance related articles for eight years and has published over 900 articles on leading financial websites.

Frank Ellis
Maximum Money Zone
Address: 945 East 8th Street Suite A, Traverse City, Michigan 49686


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The Sentry by Wilfred Owen Essay Sample

The Sentry by Wilfred Owen Pages
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The Sentry is a very vivid poem by Wilfred Owen who fought during world war one. It describes the harsh and horrendous conditions the soldiers endured during the trenches. The poem focuses on a particular memory of a sentry who endured severe injuries during a blast whilst on duty. The fact that this poem is a real life experience makes it even more poignant. The very first line of the poem brings into realisation the abysmal conditions of the trenches the soldiers encountered. It starts off as almost conversationally with a slight understated menace in ‘’and he knew’’. The poem starts off with the use of iambic pentameter but when the regular rhythm descends into chaos other examples of pentameters such as trochaic are used like in line 4. The use of more than one form of pentameter reflects the turmoil and action on the battlefield. In line 2 the pentameter is interrupted with a caesura creating a disjointed effect. The opening lines use a combination of repetition and rhyme ‘…hell, for shell on frantic shell’ and ‘hour by hour…sour’ this establishes a cadence. Owen personifies the weaponry when he mentions ‘frantic shell’.

This shows how soldiers where devalued and could suggest that they were considered nothing more than entities to the government just like the weapons. The word ‘Frantic’ creates a chaotic image in the readers mind blurring the distinction between objects and humans. ‘Hammered on top’ describes the relentless shelling and attacks by the enemies also later depicted later with ‘the shrieking air’, a kind of personification which detonates the screaming of the air which is banshee like. The word ‘guttering’ is a use of an onomatopoeia which gives the metaphor more of an effect and also puts more emphasis on the quantity and noise of the water. ‘Waterfalls’ is plural which suggests the abundant quantity of the water which must’ve turned the mud into slime, painting an image of how dirty the trenches where. ‘waterfalls of slime’ can be seen as an oxymoron as the usual notion of water is of pure and clean cascade. ‘waist high’ could suggest that the soldiers not only endured the Germans as their enemies but also the harsh conditions. Both lines 4 and 5 show how nature has become an enemy of the soldiers. ‘Hour by hour’ describes the length of their endurance.

There is a use of alliteration in the 6th line with the repetition of harsh c/k sound with words like choked’ and ‘thick’ imitating the squelching sound of the soldier’s boots in the mud. This sentence is not easy to say when mirrored with the movement of the soldiers in your mind. Owen’s use of imagery continues within this stanza when the sounds and smells of the trenches are depicted. Words like ‘murk’ could suggest the thick and dense fog like air. ‘Stank, old and sour’ describes the intolerable smells of the trenches. ‘Corpses are an insinuation of death and its inevitability. The use of punctuations such as commas, dashes, semicolons and full stop break up the sentences mirroring the movement of the soldiers. The break at this final line of the stanza ‘If not their corpses….’ suggests that Owen could be looking for the reader to pause and maybe gasp. The second stanza shows how the soldiers are dehumanised with the use of the word ‘herded’. It shows how the soldiers had no importance as proven by the words ‘…next for duty’ few lines down the stanza. This shows how they were seen as nothing more than cattle herded away once they were killed.

There is more use of onomatopoeia with the succession of identical vowel sounds of ‘u’ with words like ‘buffeting’, ‘snuffing’, ‘thud’, ‘flump’, ‘thumping’, ‘pummelled’ and ‘crumps which could be a suggestion of the hard hitting assaults on the soldiers and the describes the result of the bombs. The use of sibilance with ‘the steep steps’ shows how slippery the trenches were. The words ‘mud’ and ‘ruck’ repeatedly denotes the sound of bombs and that the terror that goes with it.The sentry is introduced in this stanza as being nothing more than being an object and distinct. It is as if he is possessed by life rather than being a living human being I think there is a combination of direct and indirect speech as well as plain description. The direct speech is witnesses when the sentry speaks and says ‘O sir, my eyes-I’m blind, I’m blind’ which is rather childlike as if he needs to be coaxed by another which is one feature of war , the paternal role of a junior officer.

The fact that the blinded sentry is addressing the officer with ‘O sir’ stands ironically because he has lost his sight therefore inspiring more sympathy towards him. The use of similes like ‘Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids’ paints a grotesque yet vivid imagination in the readers mind. The ‘j’ sound in the word ‘bulged’ adds to the revolting image of the sea creature. I think ‘Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there’ is a connotation of being haunted because a sense of selflessness gave way there. The final stanza is a continuation of the fact that war has a dehumanising effect as the soldiers are described as ‘wretches’ The third line of the final stanza where it says ‘I try not to remember these things now’ is the only one in the poem which switches to the present tense bringing the reader back up to speed.

The ‘wild chattering of his broken teeth’ is horrifying and unforgettable. The words ‘dense din’ gives an impression of the heavy strain the soldiers must have been feeling mentally and physically. The job of the sentry was to make sure that no light was visible to attract enemy fire. He shouts ‘I see your lights!’ which is a pointless and spasmodic shout from a man who soon shall taste the bitter sweet taste. ‘But ours had long died out’ could be referring to the light of hope and that it has already disappeared .It is also a exposure of the sentry’s noble pretence that he can see.

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Bengals vs. Chargers: Sordid Sequel in San Diego Should Seal AJ Smith's Fate

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Bengals vs. Chargers: Sordid Sequel in San Diego Should Seal AJ Smith's Fate

The criticism of head coach Norv Turner was that he was never able to maximize all the talent that general manager A.J. Smith gave to him, but those days are long gone. Smith is the architect of a San Diego Chargers team that has more holes than a fine piece of Swiss cheese.

Turner’s fate was likely sealed weeks ago, but yet another fourth-quarter collapse at home against the Cincinnati Bengals may have determined Smith’s fate as well. It’s become clear that the team’s losses have a lot more to do with the construct of the team than the construct of the plays.

The Chargers failed to score an offensive touchdown against the Bengals, and Smith’s midseason addition of Danario Alexander nearly doubled the yardage production of players he recently gave long-term deals—Antonio Gates and Malcom Floyd. That’s not to mention Smith’s two free-agent signings at wide receiver who caught a grand total of zero passes on Sunday.

Smith foolishly believed that Philip Rivers was a franchise quarterback, or he foolishly believed that a franchise quarterback could produce even with egregious pass protection. If there’s one thing a franchise can’t afford to be wrong about, it’s the quarterback.

Game highlights.

Over the years, Smith has replaced weapons like LaDainian Tomlinson with Ryan Mathews, who had 26 yards on nine carries against the Bengals on Sunday. Smith let Michael Turner, Darren Sproles and Vincent Jackson leave in free agency without finding suitable replacements.

Smith gave a left tackle with a long history of injury guaranteed money after he played five good games. He made the same mistake in 2012 as he did in 2011 when he failed to find a suitable backup.

Smith has spent years trying to fix a defense perceived to be a problem. For every Donald Butler, there is a Larry English (7.5 sacks in 39 career games). Smith spent his first-round draft pick in 2012 on Melvin Ingram to hopefully solve some of San Diego’s issues with pass rush. To date, Ingram has more penalties (four) than sacks (0.5).

The defense has carried the team the last few weeks, but it was castoff linebacker Demorrio Williams who returned an interception for a touchdown, not one of Smith’s draft picks. It was journeyman safety Corey Lynch who had another interception of Andy Dalton on Sunday, not a player Smith drafted.

Demorrio Williams INT for a TD.

Of Smith’s last 17 draft picks in Rounds 1-3, 12 have been on defense. The offensive players drafted include Craig Davis (no longer on the roster), Jacob Hester (no longer on the roster), Louis Vasquez, Ryan Mathews and Vincent Brown (on injured reserve).

The Chargers inevitably choked away another fourth-quarter lead on Sunday, and it would be easy to blame it all on Rivers or Turner. Rivers turned the ball over twice in the final four minutes, and the lack of scoring directly reflects on the offensive architect—Turner.

However, Rivers and Turner are nothing more than products of their environment which is one that was created, shaped and neglected by Smith. With the Chargers now 4-7 and clearly out of the playoff hunt, it is Smith’s job that should be most in jeopardy.

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WWE Survivor Series 2013 Results: 10 Fun Facts from the Event

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WWE Survivor Series 2013 Results: 10 Fun Facts from the Event
(Courtesy of WWE.com)
WWE Survivor Series 2013 set.

This past Sunday night, WWE presented its 27th annual Survivor Series pay-per-view live from the TD Garden in Boston, Mass. The show unfortunately continued WWE's sad streak of poor pay-per-views that has been occurring since September's Night of Champions event.

Needless to say, Randy Orton vs. Big Show should not be headlining a major pay-per-view in the year 2013. Regardless of whether it was for the WWE Championship or not, the match was not well wrestled at all, and the lame finish was just the icing on the cake.

John Cena and Alberto Del Rio, a feud that has been done to death in recent years, worked a solid matchup that severely lacked in good storytelling. The live crowd was well aware that Del Rio had zero chance of walking out as world champion, which is why they were as uninterested as they were during the bout.

At a time when WWE desperately needed a strong show to rejuvenate the stagnant product, they ultimately dropped the ball yet again. With it being one of the "Big Four" pay-per-views, the general consensus among fans has been that Survivor Series failed miserably in doing anything to get viewers looking forward to what comes next.

While watching the show, I noticed a handful of highlights that could be seen as interesting or intriguing to any ordinary WWE viewer. For those of you who know me well, you're aware I have an obsessive knack for fun facts regarding past WWE events.

I'll attempt to entertain and enlighten you with knowledge as I present my observed monumental, record-breaking, history-making moments from this year's Survivor Series event.

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Georgia Bulldogs Aren't Only SEC Team with QB Depth Issues

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Georgia Bulldogs Aren't Only SEC Team with QB Depth Issues
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Everyone seems to be concerned about what Georgia will do if Aaron Murray gets hurt. Well, not for nothing, but isn’t just about everyone in the SEC in the same boat? Last I checked, there wasn’t an SEC team that was not one injury away from complete and utter disaster under center:

1) Alabama

Greg McElroy is going to be the man for Alabama next season. He helped carry his team to an SEC and BCS National Championship, and he is sure to be the favored son to command a repeat performance, but what if he goes down? Who would step up?

A.J. McCarron would seem to be the heir apparent as he has been the most impressive this spring but I'm not altogether certain that he's ready to be both a game-manager and a game-changer. Phillip Sims is the stud five-star product, but he’s still learning.

Either guy might be a capable option behind McElroy, but neither has been through the fire yet.

2) Auburn

The Tigers are searching for a capable replacement for the departed Chris Todd. Cam Newton appears to have beaten out Neil Caudle, Clint Moseley, and Barrett Trotter for Todd’s spot. He is athletic and possesses loads of upside, and he has some SEC game experience.

That said, he’s still going to be a bit rusty at the start, and if he goes down or struggles early in the season, will any of the aforementioned be able to comfortably take the reins?

3) Arkansas

The Hogs might very well be in the best shape right now because Tyler Wilson, the backup to Ryan Mallett, actually has a great deal of talent and fought hard for the starting spot before losing out to Mallett last season. Mallett has the stronger arm and makes for a better pro prospect, but Wilson isn’t chopped liver either.

Even so, no one in Razorback country hopes to see Wilson standing under center anytime soon, as many feel this could be Arkansas’ year to make some noise in the west, and that will be a lot less likely to happen without Mallett at the top.

4) Florida

John Brantley may be a “real quarterback,” but he has yet to be tested as a starter. His numerous appearances, mostly in mop-up duty, aren’t likely to have prepared him for the SEC—particularly on the road

He will take his lumps as he grows into his new role, but he’s also the only guy capable of stepping into that spot for the Gators, as the others will be true freshmen.

5) Kentucky

The Wildcats have warm bodies on the depth chart, but truly, it’s Mike Hartline or Morgan Newton—with Newton being the most likely candidate.

Even still, neither guy was lights out last season, and the play of either/or will not inspire fear in the hearts of many.

6) Ole Miss

Jevan Snead is gone, and his replacement will likely be Nathan Stanley now that Raymond Cotton’s shoulder has decided to go south on him. Stanley has imposing size which will help him in seeing the field, but he’s got issues with his accuracy and may need to quicken his delivery if he doesn’t want to get pummeled by the SEC's big time defensive linemen.

7) Mississippi State

Okay, seriously? I doubt they know who can play quarterback. At this point, they are just hoping to find a competent arm to complement the talent at wide receiver. In any case, they aren't very deep.

8) South Carolina

Stephen Garcia was supposed to be the guy, but somewhere between the Gamecocks' loss to Connecticut and the start of the Augusta National's Golf Tournament, Steve Spurrier changed his mind about Garcia. Now, it’s anybody’s guess who will be taking the snaps.

What that means is either Garcia has regressed back to being awful, or whoever is chosen to take his spot will be on trial by fire. In either case, the Gamecocks don’t look any better at QB than Georgia right now.

9) Tennessee

Tyler Bray is going to be the next signal-caller to wear a Vols uniform. He’s the only guy with any experience—none of which was in a starter's capacity. His possible replacements are two incoming freshmen.

10) LSU

Who’s afraid of Jordan Jefferson? Raise your hand...okay, well, who’s afraid of Jarrett Lee?...uh huh—next. Okay, I'll expound a little bit.

Jefferson can't figure out if he's ready to be the man in Baton Rouge. On the one hand, he's got talent and he continues to show a little of what he can do, here and there, but for the most part he has been a disappointment.

As for Lee, well, despite the relative mediocrity of Jefferson, Lee can't do enough to take the job away. He's no better equipped to be the man than Jefferson is and that is a problem.

11) Vanderbilt

They could be good if they weren’t so bad. It doesn’t matter who their quarterback will be in 2010; they aren’t going to win many games. Sorry. They always field a solid defense with a lot of under-spoken talent, but they don't have enough to compete with the SEC East right now.

Which leads us back to Georgia. The fact that Aaron Murray could find himself backed up by a true frosh is concerning, and it should be. However, Georgia isn’t in this situation alone, and the fact that it’s being made into such a big deal would be comical if it were only a touch funnier.

Look, if Zach Mettenberger had not been dismissed from the team, he would be the backup and NOT Logan Gray. That point being made, if Mettenberger were still at UGA and Gray were making his bid to leave, is would you be more or less concerned than you may or may not be now?

Logan Gray’s future status as a Georgia Bulldog is an inconvenience to those of us who want to know what the heck he’s thinking, but there aren’t many among the Bulldog contingent who ever thought he’d be starting. So, again I say, if Murray stays healthy and performs well, will his backup matter?

This article and more can be found at The Lady Sportswriter—Talkin' Bulldogs and Football 24/7.

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Click here for the original article appearing in The Times.

July 13, 2009
The Times

Pope Benedict is the man on the money

The best analysis yet of the global economic crisis tells how people, not just rules, must change.

By Brian Griffiths

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope, his strengths and weaknesses seemed clear. Here was an eminent theologian, philosopher and guardian of Christian truth, but a man unlikely to make the Church’s message relevant to the world today. How simplistic this now looks in the light of his third encyclical, in which Pope Benedict XVI confronts head-on the financial crisis that has rocked the world.

The language may be dense, but the message is sufficiently rewarding. The encyclical analyses modern capitalism from an ethical and spiritual perspective as well as a technical one. As a result it makes the Government’s White Paper on financial reforms published two days later look embarrassingly one-dimensional and colourless.

It is highly critical of today’s global economy but always positive. Its major concern is how to promote human development in the context of justice and the common good. Despite heavy competition from some of the world’s finest minds, it is without doubt the most articulate, comprehensive and thoughtful response to the financial crisis that has yet appeared. It should strike a chord with all who wish to see modern capitalism serving broader human ends.

The Pope makes it clear that the encyclical takes its inspiration from Populorum Progressio, the encyclical published by Paul VI in 1967, at the height of anti-capitalism in Europe. It attacked liberal capitalism, was ambivalent about economic growth, recommended expropriation of landed estates if poorly used and enthused about economic planning.

It was in stark contrast to Centesimus Annus (1991), the most recent encyclical dealing with economic matters, published after the fall of communism by a Polish Pope. John Paul II affirmed the market economy as a way of producing wealth by allowing human creativity and enterprise to flourish.

Pope Benedict is highly critical of modern capitalism. He believes that the international economy is marked by “grave deviations and failures”. Economic growth is weighed down by “malfunctions and dramatic problems”. Businesses that are answerable almost exclusively to their investors have limited social value. The financial system has been abused by speculative financial dealing and has wreaked havoc on the real economy. Globalisation has undermined the rights of workers, downsized social security systems and exploited the environment. As global prosperity has grown, so has “the scandal of glaring inequalities”.

Despite these criticisms, the encyclical has a positive view of profit, providing it is not an exclusive goal. It recognises that more labour mobility resulting from deregulation can increase wealth. It accepts that economic growth has lifted billions out of poverty and enabled some developing countries to become effective players in international politics. Globalisation offers an unprecedented chance of large-scale redistribution of wealth worldwide.

The kind of market economy Pope Benedict defends is much closer to the European social model than the “spontaneous order” of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. For him, market capitalism can never be conceived of in purely technical terms. Development is not just about freeing up markets, removing tariffs, increasing investment and reforming institutions. It is not even about social policies to accompany economic reforms. At the heart of the market is the human person, possessing dignity, deserving of justice and bearing the divine image. The market needs to be infused with a morality emanating from Christian humanism, which respects truth and encourages charity.

The encyclical suggests six major ways to make global capitalism more human. First, it calls for “the management of globalisation” and a reform of international economic institutions. They are needed “to manage the global economy, to revive economies hit by the crisis, to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis . . . to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration”. Not surprisingly, for this huge task we need “a true world political authority” through reform of the United Nations.

Next, there needs to be greater diversity among the enterprises that create wealth: mutual societies, credit unions and hybrid forms of commercial organisation. Third, globalisation has weakened the ability of trade unions to represent the interests of workers, something that needs to be reversed. Fourth, the scandal of inequality requires countries to increase the proportion of GDP given as foreign aid.

Fifth, because the environment is the gift of the Creator we have an intergenerational responsibility to tackle climate change.

Finally, everyone involved in the market, traders, producers, bankers — even consumers — must be alert to the moral consequences of their actions. “Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the common good.”

Pope Benedict’s words are not just platitudes. They affect every person at work every day. In the City they are a challenge to management to create a culture of prudence, responsibility and integrity.

There has to be zero tolerance for misleading clients, fudging conflicts of interest and inflating valuations. However great the revenue they produce, those who deviate must be disciplined. This kind of ethos cannot be imposed by regulation alone

  • mark

    I was thrilled the day Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope. But based on this column, Pope Benedict’s latest encyclical sounds like it has some disappointing aspects.

    For example, I’m afraid the UN is beyond reform.

    Foreign aid can be as much hindrance as help to a country’s advancement.

    Climate change occurs and has been occurring but the case for further disabling our already battered economies in order to “save the planet” has not been made. Too many scientists disagree on what is happening and what approach to take, if action is even necessary.

    Trade unions are great but they can also become a contributor to companies leaving states and countries, as well as helping to drive one of the nails into a company’s bankruptcy coffin.

    What is and always has been imperative is, as the Pope says, upright people. As Lord Acton and AI have pointed out, the markets are not some abstract system managed “out there.” The markets are us and the morality of markets is dependent on our actions.

  • Charles

    Mark, I suggest you read the encyclical for yourself. It is a well-thought out reflection on social justice and related issues.

    The UN being a body run by humans is not beyond reform.

    While foreign aid can hinder a country’s development, it is often necessary in the here and now as part of human solidarity to ease difficult human conditions of the underprivileged e.g. hunger, disease, aftermath of natural catastrophes, etc.

    The Pope clearly condemns anti-development philosophies, and this is a counter-weight to his support for concerted action to enhance the environment for the sake of future generations (inter-generational concerns).

    Trade unions may have problems, but they definitely are one way of workers associating to improve their working conditions, and hence enhance their human dignity.

  • Roger McKinney

    “it is without doubt the most articulate, comprehensive and thoughtful response to the financial crisis that has yet appeared.”

    I don’t understand that attitude at all. Does he really mean to say that the Pope understands economics better than any economist? I have read quite a few papers that explained the crisis better than does the encyclical. Thomas Woods’ “Meltdown” is an excellent example. The encyclical had almost no economics in it at all. It’s all about morality, love and justice, although the definition of justice is vague and can mean greater socialism or less.

    I agree with your remarks that mainly the Pope treated the moralist aspects, which is ovvious since economically we have many scholars in the world, but since the conscience is no longer considered as a capital principal we arrived where maybe we could not arrive. Why especially when the globalisation principal express the greedy and egoism, in the sense that with that notion the right of the strongest is the better. The strongest, the powerful can go everywhere, any how, any moment, collect what he wants and others not allowed to do the same. Now that is the man problem. For essence during the coldwar, many undercountries like my country Congo Democratic Republic was placed at the front. when Westernians won, they no longer considered that country as an allied, al contrary they considered as enemy because of his row material they don’t want to buy to take them untill they have killed more than 6 million of it people using the neighbouring countries. which they no longer try with Asia country.
    Since the strongest countries will continue to not consider the right to elementary life of other weak people, poor though they have everything it will not be easy to get forward. Since the force and will always triumph and aheaded the future will be compromised.
    It needs integration, effective participation of all in justice, peace and transparency.
    Otherwise, l’équation will be complicated.
    Thank you!


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Antidiets of the Avant-Garde

AntiDiets of the Avant-Garde cover art, 2010. University of Minnesota Press.

"Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art" cover art. University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Some 30 years after the Italian poet and founder of the Futurist movement Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote The Futurist Cookbook (1932) and proposed a revolution in food, the European avant-garde artist Daniel Spoerri, who is closely associated with the Fluxus art movement, opened Restaurant de la Galerie J in Paris, a fully functional business with waiters from the art world. Four years later, in 1967, he opened Restaurant Spoerri in Dusseldorf, featuring guest chefs such as artist Joseph Beuys; and in 1970, established his now famous Eat Art Gallery upstairs.

Two recent events have brought attention to these landmark moments in food-art history: the Futurist theme of the 18-day performance biennial Performa 09, which, among other events, kicked off with a gala dinner based on Marinetti’s writings; and Eating the Universe, the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf’s latest exhibition, which traces the character of Spoerri’s Eat Art projects from its origins through to today. It seems the perfect moment, then, for Cecilia Novero’s new book, Antidiets of the Avant-garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art, due out in January.

Novero, a professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has written extensively on the cultural history of food, German and European film, Dada, Viennese Actionism, and most recently contemporary “animal art.” Below, she gives a glimpse into her forthcoming book, in which she focuses on the connections between avant-garde studies and the culinary field in 20th- and 21st-century artistic production.

The following excerpts are taken from an interview conducted via email.

Marinetti eating pasta at Milan's Biffi restaurant, 1930. Courtesy Estorick Collection. via Cabinet Magazine.

Marinetti eating pasta at Milan's Biffi restaurant, 1930. Courtesy Estorick Collection, via Cabinet Magazine.

Nicole J. Caruth: How do you define “antidiet”? Is it synonymous with the rejection of “taste” in art (i.e. anti-taste) or related to the French idea of dégoût/disgust?

Cecilia Novero: Antidiet is not always dégoût–that would work with Dada but not with Futurism. Antidiet is meant in the sense of anti-art, without being a synonym of it. If diet is a set of regulations that orders ways of eating, table manners, etc., the anti-diet counters these “bourgeois” and “Western” rules. For example, the ways in which we take pleasure, appreciate what is considered/constructed as the beautiful, and especially the ways we “taste” art and thus stop thinking about inherited concepts of beauty. In the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde, anti-diet also refers to acquired notions of “progress,” hence traditional historicist approaches to art and civilization.

NJC: What are some of the topics and sub-topics covered in your book?

CN: Antidiets deals with Futurist cooking, Dada poetry and manifestos, the culture critic Walter Benjamin’s writing on food, travel and art, and the European artist Daniel Spoerri and his Eat Art Project, which involved many others (mostly those artists known as Nouveaux Realists in France, but also others such as Robert Filliou, Dieter Roth, Andre Thomkins and, marginally, Piero Manzoni). The epilogue briefly traces the differences in aesthetics between this anti-art of food and more contemporary examples of food in/through art, including Janine Antoni, Ben Kinmont, Rikrit Tiravanija, and Jana Sterbak.

The first chapter, like the last, is devoted to the more direct employment of food in art, namely to the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking (1930), The Futurist Cookbook, and the Futurist restaurant, The Holy Palate (both 1931). In contrast, in Chapter Two on Dada (particularly the Dadaist artists in Zurich), and Three on Benjamin’s short texts on eating, the reader finds a rhetorical and performative use of incorporation [a term used by the author interchangeably with “devouring”]. One of the major suggestions of this study is that the antidiets, not just Spoerri’s, but also those of Futurism, Dada, and Benjamin, transformed some of the gastronomic principles of pleasure, taste, assimilation, and digestibility, as well as history, and mobilized those principles for a redefinition of art and the subject.

Daniel Spoerri, "Eaten partly by: Visitors of the Biennale of Sydney 1979", 1978-79. Dinner debris: knives, forks, plates, bread, bottle, glasses, glued to a screenprinted tablecloth mounted on wood overall 100.0 (h) x 220.0 (w) cm cloth 125.5 (h) x 248.5 (w) cm board 76.0 (h) x 192.7 (w) cm signed and dated l.r., red fibre-tipped pen, "Daniel Spoerri / Vreitag 13. Okt. 78", dated l.r., black fibre-tipped pen, "+ Thursday 12. April 79", inscribed l.r., red fibre-tipped pen, "38/50" Gift of the artist 1979 NGA 1979.2341.A-B ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â© Daniel Spoerri. Licensed by Pro Litteris, Zurich & VISCOPY, Australia

Daniel Spoerri, "Eaten partly by: Visitors of the Biennale of Sydney 1979," 1978-79. Dinner debris: knives, forks, plates, bread, bottle, glasses, glued to a screenprinted tablecloth mounted on wood, overall 100 x 220 cm. Gift of the artist, 1979 NGA 1979.2341.A-B © Daniel Spoerri. Licensed by Pro Litteris, Zurich & VISCOPY, Australia

Rirkrit Tiravanija, "Untitled (the raw and the cooked)", 2002. Photo (c) KIOKU Keizo.
Rirkrit Tiravanija, “Untitled (the raw and the cooked),” 2002. Photo © Kioku Keizo, via

NJC: How do you distinguish the historical avant-garde from the neo-avant-garde? Is it with attention to particular dates or events?

CN: Let me start by saying that what initially interested me were the connections or, as I would like to call them, the “interferences” between two main fields that came to constitute the bulk of my book: avant-garde studies and the culinary. I call the interactions between the fields “interferences,” because the avant-garde texts studied here enact practices of estrangement and deconstruction of the culinary. I like to stress that my explorations do not underscore any continuity between the art and texts considered and gastronomic discourse; I don’t write a history of these connections. Rather, in general, my book suggests a number of constellated ideas that may offer less common perspectives on the European avant-garde. I inquire into antidiets and their “incorporation” to uncover a network of complex temporalities informing both the historical avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde…Through this analysis, in fact, the divisions and distinctions between the two are questioned.

NJC: What led you to write Antidiets?

CN: The initial impetus for Antidiets came from three short stories by Franz Kafka: A Report to An Academy (1917), A Hunger Artist (1922), and Investigations of a Dog (1931). My book, however, leaves these stories behind; they functioned rather as suggestion. In each, drinking, eating, and especially thinking about eating (even as abstaining from taking food), unfold as engines of writing, before moving on to engage more specifically the relations between art and knowledge and between producers and consumers of art.

In Investigations of a Dog, for example, the thinking process manifests itself as a constant noise, the rumbling of knowledge that music instigates, which then also accompanies it in the text. The text itself spins and whirls with no simple beginning or end, without any apparent direction. The dog’s nutritional, or essential questions remain unanswered and the “good food” is not found. Kafka’s story is not about food. It takes instead “thinking food” as the inescapable desiring energy that propels writing and artistic production. This textual, non-representational relation between “thinking food” and “writing” or, more broadly, artistic production, led me to identify a performative quality in food and eating as they manifest themselves in avant-garde manifestos, magazines, declarations, instructions, etc., as well as, surprisingly, in their actual cookbooks (e.g., The Futurist Cookbook). This is a crucial point I make, especially in the analyses of Swiss Dada. Performative here means an active rhetorical strategy that displaces food from its regular uses and turns it into words (names, insults etc.), thereby destabilizing both the usual practical grammars of food and the grammars of language.

Kafka’s A Report to An Academy raises the problem of costs of edibility: What is the boundary between the human and the animal, between he or she who eats and that which is eaten? The most important story by Kafka, however, was/is perhaps A Hunger Artist. Here, Kafka presents an artist whose very art—profession—is self-starvation. The artist’s art is to stage his own disappearance. In other words, the spectacle lies in this art’s and the artist’s self-erasure; its duration coincides with the process of vanishing of both art and artist from the public’s sight. This art thereby negates entertainment.

Ben Vautier, Image from Fluxshoe catalog shows the artist "eating mystery food from unmarked can. His street piece." via

Ben Vautier. This image from Fluxshoe catalog shows the artist "eating mystery food from unmarked can" in a street performance, circa 1963. Via

Not unlike A Hunger Artist, Fluxus artist Ben Vautier shut himself in a box and refused to eat for twenty-four hours. At the same time, this box was for all to see as a sign of absence, more specifically of art as absence (of the artist, of food, etc.). Note the role of writing here as well: a sign is over the box and states that Ben is in the box abstaining from food. Vautier staged this happening as the dialectical other of the Eat Art [projects] taking place in Daniel Spoerri’s gallery. Spoerri and his Eat Art—which was officially born when he started his restaurant in Dusseldorf in 1968 and opened the Eat Art Gallery in the same building in 1970—are at the center of the neo-avant-garde discussed in my book. A Hunger Artist demonstrates how important the dialectics between visibility and invisibility are in the neo-avant-garde of the sixties and seventies, in particular Eat Art’s insistence on food or eating performances, which offered to the viewer/consumer the opportunity to engage an art of time that in time would leave behind only a trace of itself.

NJC: You’ve written that the avant-garde eating was not pleasurable or beautiful, but rather represented the sublime as associated with fear. Have you found that the historical avant-garde disliked specific foods or ways of eating? If so, did that carry forth into the neo-avant-garde?

CN: The question of the antidiet, or counter-gastronomy in the avant-garde, is less about specific food, as it may be for some art today. [Rather], it is about the meaning and function of aesthetic systems, which in our modern tradition have been grounded in notions of “taste,” which in the realm of knowledge translates into the digestible.

In the first years of the twentieth century, avant-garde artists and critics from Picasso and Apollinaire through to the avant-garde of the sixties and seventies resort to the culinary to think about acts of production and consumption in the modern world. These actions (eating, cooking, and their metaphorical counterparts) bear more or less directly, and more or less politically, on the avant-garde’s immersion in and decomposition of this world that they ingest, bite into, and thereby construct anew in their works. The effect is a kind of active mimesis that varies depending on the artist. For example, in Dada, one encounters a parodic mockery of functionalized capitalist production and consumption, which introduces an element of dysfunction. Poverty and roughness, precisely the “rawness” smoothed out in the gastronomic discourse, render the avant-garde works/diets indigestible. In this context, the demand to eat well means to shatter the habits of the senses, of taste as much as of seeing, and to solicit attention to the world, an attention that goes beyond its representability to the eye. To incorporate the modern world is to ingest it and be absorbed in it, losing one’s own stable orientation or point of view, as well as sense of taste.

Taste demands a judgment that confirms the subject’s harmonious use of the faculties, thereby rooting the subject in a stable identity. But early twentieth-century onlookers of, for example, a Cubist painting are compelled to react physically, bodily, from the inside out, as it were. Georges Braque reacted to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, saying, according to Fernande Olivier, “You paint as if you wanted to force us to eat rope and drink paraffin.” Viewers are compelled to learn to taste differently, to break out of the given and known experience of taste and of recognizable “flavors.” … These avant-garde works elicit disgust, a fear of disintegration, and loss of center that is not purely a negation of taste, but rather generative of a new diet, a sort of diet “after taste,” parallel to the idea of post-aesthetic art.

NJC: What’s your main objective with this book?

CN: My overall aim with the book it to rewrite the relations between the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde. Mostly, the latter has been dismissed as an inane and useless reproposition of the former acts of provocation … In contrast, my book argues that if one analyzes the recurrent trope and also material of food in both the avant-garde and neo-vant-garde, the temporal relations between these artistic movements are more complex.

Antidiets of the Avant-garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art is available for pre-order through Amazon and University of Minnesota Press. The book is available both in hardcover and paperback. Eating the Universe is on view at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf through February 28, 2010.

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Scary Nature, Airport Insecurity and More – Weekly Security News Roundup

Blog_round-up-image-9-16In a week of security news marred by the tragic shootings in Washington, DC, we try and change the subject, presenting you with stories on terrifying acts of nature, the future of passwords, and much more.

Google Security Executive: “Passwords Are Dead”

Password and security breaches have hit major providers and sites across tech sectors in the second half of 2013, Google not least among them. Now Heather Adkins, Google’s manager of information security, says “passwords are dead.” In a TechCrunch Disrupt panel called “Spies Like Us,” Adkins said that new startups that rely on simple passwords as the primary way to secure user data are bound to fail. Google is already in the process of doing away with the antiquated – and easily cracked – security tool, she elaborated, and that even two-factor security built around passwords isn’t enough to protect unwary users from theft. Apple appears to be in agreement, announcing that their newest iPhone model will unlock using biometrics instead of simple passwords.

Read more at CNET

Tennessee Security Camera Captures Lightning Strike

With the recent tragic flooding in Colorado, there doesn’t need to be much more reminder of the awesome power of Mother Nature. But in case you needed some extra convincing, this security camera footage out of Jackson, Tennessee shows a lighting strike, which seems more like a mortar explosion. Watch the video below and pray to Thor that it never happens to you even once:

Read more at Treehugger

Airports Are Tracking Your Smartphones Too

More bad news if you like to use your smartphone to access data through WiFi networks; just like the department stores that got heat in the media this summer for following smartphones’ WiFi port signal in an effort at better marketing, airports are turning to elicit monitoring of travelers’ smart phones. However, their goal is to get better at managing passenger and traveler flow in their airports, and tracking Bluetooth and WiFi signals is just part of their strategy, according to providers. Will passengers appreciate shorter wait times or balk at another seeming intrusion into their privacy in public?

Read more at Skift

Security Cameras Catch Negligent LAPD

The Los Angeles Police Department has a reputation for mistreatment. This time there’s footage, captured by cameras outside the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown; it shows 27-year-old Kim Nguyen, who claims she was handcuffed for public intoxication while awaiting the arrival of her designated driver. She appears in 3 a.m.-footage, falling out of a moving patrol car and then lying on the ground. She spent six days in a coma as a result, and is now suing the department for negligence.

Read more at CBS Local News

Biologists Turn to Facial Recognition Software to Combat Coral Problem

Yes they are using technology developed to fight terrorism, but no, it’s not being used on humans. Ecologists in California are adapting facial recognition software to automatically extract information from underwater images of coral ecosystems in order to speed up the process of data collection. Producing this information in a span of hours instead of weeks or months of manual work by technicians gives preservation program managers far more data to adjust plans more effectively and frequently, increasing their ability to protect this vital ocean system.

Read more at E&E

About the author  ⁄ BrickHouse Security

BrickHouse Security is the industry's premier supplier of security and surveillance solutions. As a recognized authority in GPS tracking, hidden cameras, employee monitoring and compliance, video surveillance and counter surveillance, we help our customers use technology to get the clarity they need. We proudly serve consumers, businesses of all sizes and the law enforcement community. When you need to know, BrickHouse has the answers.


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Thank You Food Gift

deco from Hackensack, NJ reviewed the Thank You Sprite & Morsel Combo.
About Me: Personal Gift Giver,Repeat Buyer

BOTTOM LINE: Yes, would recommend to a friend.

Rating: 5 Stars

Comments about Fairytale Brownies Thank You Sprite & Morsel Combo: These brownies are a great thank you food gift. I always have trouble deciding what gift to send to the person who has everything. But I found the answer with Fairytale Brownies. These brownie gifts are a unique idea . . and who doesn't love chocolate? I ordered these brownies and they were delivered on time and to recipient's delight! Made me look really good!

Pros: Individually Wrapped,Freshness,Nice Presentation,Delicious,Gourmet Taste,Good Value,Memorable Gift
Best Uses: Personal Gift

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AT&T launches stealthy $10 DSL

As part of its deal with the FCC as it negotiated to merge with Bell South, AT&T agreed to sell $10 DSL in its 22-state area. That service is finally available, but good luck finding it on the telecom giant’s Web site.

From the Associated Press:

The $10 offer is available to customers in the 22-state AT&T service region, which includes former BellSouth areas, who have never had AT&T or BellSouth broadband, spokesman Michael Coe confirmed Monday. Local phone service and a one-year contract are required. The modem is free.

The plan was not mentioned in a Friday news release about AT&T’s DSL plans, and is slightly hidden on the AT&T Web site. A page describing DSL options doesn’t mention it, but clicking a link for “Term contract plans” reveals it. It’s also presented to customers who go into the application process, Coe said.

The service provides download speeds of up to 768 kilobits per second and upload speeds of up to 128 kbps, matching the speeds of the cheapest advertised AT&T plan, which costs $19.95 per month in the nine-state former BellSouth area and $14.99 in the 13 states covered by AT&T before the acquisition.

AT&T’s site requires that you enter part of your phone number — the area code and prefix — before you can see its promotional DSL deals. Once you get to that page, you can click on a link under a “Get DSL for a Dialup Price” headline, down in the lower right-hand corner. You’re prompted to enter your full phone number, and you can then see the $10 offer.

 This is an excellent deal for those still clinging to bargain-basement dialup services, provided that DSL is available to those laggards. But it’s a shame that AT&T makes potential customers dig for it.

Coming next as a concession for the merger: Naked DSL, in which you can get DSL without having landline phone service. The phone company has been fighting that for a long time, so expect that offering to be even harder to find!

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Dwight Silverman | Techblogger, social media manager


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What You Missed: Kanye’s Cringe-Worthy ‘Grammys’ Night Antics

“What You Missed”: Just when we thought Kanye was joking about crashing Beck’s Best Album moment on stage at the Grammys–which was a big relief to Jay Z–Kanye completely blasted Beck on the “E!
jim parsons snl

‘Saturday Night Live’: Bazingroan.

Houston native Jim Parsons hosted SNL last night, but it’s not his fault it was so terrible.

Tune In

Brian Williams is your new Wonder Mike.


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Nick Lampson’s comeback trail: Ex-congressman seeks to replace Ron Paul

Nick Lampson embraces supporter Mandy Albritton of Houston after announcing his candidacy for the newly redrawn 14th congressional district seat, which has been represented for the last 16 years by Rep. Ron Paul. (Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle)

Nearly a decade after a redistricting scheme crafted by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay ended the congressional careers of a number of Texas Democrats, the beleaguered party is hoping that a congressional veteran who briefly held DeLay’s old seat can turn a red district blue.

On Monday, former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson told a crowd of about 40 supporters gathered at Texas City’s city hall that he was running in the newly drawn 14th District “because Congress is too polarized to find solutions to our serious problems, and I was there when we could.”

The district has been represented for the past 16 years by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Lake Jackson. Paul is retiring from Congress.

Lampson, 66, a former tax assessor for Jefferson County, served in the House for four terms before being defeated in 2005 in a redrawn House district that favored the GOP. He ran for office again and won a fifth term in 2006 before being defeated two years later by Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land.

Under the redrawn congressional maps, the 14th District will shift eastward into Jefferson County and has a minority population of about 35 percent.

Although the state’s new congressional redistricting plan still is being contested in the courts, the proposed lines for the 14th District are not expected to change. As drawn, it begins at the Louisiana border and follows the coastline past Freeport. It takes in Jefferson and Galveston counties, both areas Lampson has represented in the past, and part of Brazoria County.

Working together

Emphasizing his ability to work with colleagues across the aisle, Lampson noted that he founded the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children in 1997, “the largest bipartisan, issue-based caucus in the House of Representatives.”

He also co-founded the Center Aisle Caucus, a group of members from both parties who occasionally drank coffee together and discussed policy issues.

“Again, it proved that we can be better when we work together,” Lampson said.

Lampson told his Texas City supporters he would focus on vital coastal issues, including helping to upgrade port facilities to take advantage of Panama Canal expansion, encouraging job growth in the ports and the petro-chemical industry and making sure that the Johnson Space Center remains vital.

For the past few years, Lampson has consulted with the city of Houston on efforts to protect jobs around JSC. He also has worked for a mental health organization called the Association for Ambulatory Behavioral Health Care and with the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Has campaign support

He decided to run again, he said, because of encouragement from Democratic Party officials, favorable redistricting boundaries and positive polling results.

He has the support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has designated his race so competitive that House Democrats will funnel campaign support to Lampson to help defeat any Republican who emerges from the crowded GOP primary.

“It’s going to be really tough,” said former Texas City Mayor Chuck Doyle, a Lampson supporter. “The way the district has been redrawn makes it extremely difficult, although if people vote for the most qualified, he should win.”

In the 12-person Republican primary, state Rep. Randy Weber, R-Pearland, is considered the frontrunner in a race that includes Felicia Harris, a Pearland city council member, and Texas State University Regent Michael Truncale.

Richard Dunham


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Comerica Bank’s Arizona Index Drops in August

Comerica Bank’s Arizona Economic Activity Index fell in August, decreasing 1.9 percentage points to a level of 95.3. August’s index reading is 24 points, or 34 percent, above the index cyclical low of 71.3. The index averaged 87.2 points for all of 2012, 8.7 points above the average for full-year 2011. July’s index reading was revised up from 96.9 to 97.2.

“Our Arizona Index dipped in August, reflecting the first decrease in the index since March. Exports and building permits recorded significant decreases and pushed the August reading,” said Robert Dye, Chief Economist at Comerica Bank. “Increasing residential mortgage rates are a headwind for home sales, particularly for new home sales, and builders are being cautious as a result. Fortunately, home prices continue to increase, helping homeowners repair the depleted equity in their homes and that is a positive for the regional economy. I expect our Arizona Index to continue to trend upward as the state and national economies expand in 2014.”

AZ Index 1013

For a PDF version of the Arizona Economic Activity Index click here: ArizonaIndex_1013.

This entry was posted in Arizona, Economic Activity, Indices and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.


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The CPTC Game & Watch Club accepts the Outstanding Student Organization award at Clover Park Technical College's 2014 Student Awards Ceremony.

Academic and Community Leadership Recognized at Annual Awards Ceremony

June 13, 2014

Thirteen awards were presented at Clover Park Technical College’s 2nd Annual Student Awards Ceremony at the Lakewood campus June 4.

Hosted by the Office of Student Programs in partnership with the Associated Student Government, the awards night celebrates those exemplifying academic and community leadership at CPTC. Awardees were nominated in 13 categories by students, staff and faculty.

The 2014 winners include:

2014 Cabinet Award Winners

Presidential Award
Alan Briola

Vice President of Student Services Award
Lisa Plair

Vice President of Instruction Award
Bridgit Hartman

2014 Leadership Award Winners

Outstanding Student Leader
Emily Lanum

Outstanding Student Organization
Game & Watch Club

Transformation Award
Mauricio Garrido Garcia

June Stacey-Clemons Advocate of the Year
Erina McGann

Faculty of the Year
Jim Johnson

2014 Academic Award Winners

Division 1 Award
Rachel Finn

Division 2 Award
Nicole Kaley

Division 3 Award
Robert Koontz

Division 4 Award
Katie Schott

Check for updates about the 2015 Student Awards Ceremony.

Share This Story

Lisa Plair, ASG president, presents at the 2014 Student Awards Ceremony. Plair received the Vice President for Student Services Award.
Erina McGann accepts the June Stacey-Clemons Advocate of the Year award.


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Tips for Protecting Your Home While Selling It

open-house-safety1Selling a home can be a nerve wracking time in a person’s life. The last thing any seller would want is a burglary of personal items or of a home stager’s furnishings.

To keep your home safe while selling it — whether you are doing open houses and whether you are living in the home for sale or not — here are some tips to ward off predators.

13 Tips for Protecting Your Home While Selling It

  1. Good four–corner exterior lighting is important, particularly when the yard is obscured by shrubbery or dark areas. A home owner can install flood lights to illuminate the walls and to expose anyone next to the home.
  2. Solidly built gates and properly built fences are the first line of defense against illegal or unwanted entry. Equip all gates with good locks and use them.
  3. Shrubbery can be an asset and hindrance. Be sure to prune large trees so their limbs don’t provide roof access or second–story window access. Keep shrubs trimmed below window sills and low around entrances.
  4. Use shrubs or plants with prickly leaves or thorns to act as a natural barrier but also look nice.
  5. All exterior wooden doors should be of solid core or panel construction with a thickness of at least one and 3/4 inches. For added security, metal doors are advisable.
  6. Doorknob locks offer no security. Defeating the doorknob lock is one of the most common means of forced entry. All exterior doors should have a deadbolt lock mounted in a solid core door.
  7. Do not leave curtains open in the home so your furnishings are on display to passing strangers.
  8. Engrave belongings with your driver’s license number whenever practical.
  9. Burglars often try to find out if anyone is home by phoning. If you get several suspicious “wrong number” calls or “nobody–at–the–other–end” calls, alert the police.
  10. Do not keep large sums of cash around the house.
  11. Request that your local Police Department perform a security inspection of your home.
  12. Have a neighbor take in your newspapers and mail, and even park a car in your driveway.
  13. Keep lights on timers.

These tips are provided to HomeGain Realtor members as part of its fourth annual real estate Agent Appreciation Campaign 2009.

Thank to the Oakland Police Department for their safety tips. Source:

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How to Save Evergreens from Death by Snow

Now that the title has your attention, could someone please tell us how?

Blizzard-Damaged 'Little Gem' Magnolia, left, and Foster Holly

To appreciate the damage in context, check out the “before” photo below showing the magnolia on the left, then some aucubas, and the poor holly on the right.

Happier days for the magnolia and holly.

Snow damage to evergreens is the BIG topic on my local gardening Yahoo group, starting with the message about a 40-foot-tall Leyland Cypress being downed in our last blizzard.  She got lots of recommendations (after the fact – thanks!) about tougher plants she could have used – especially the ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae.  (I confess having spoken up to recommend it myself).  Seems they’re THE recommended replacement these days for the troublesome Leylands.

Popular screening evergreen Arborvitae 'Green Giant'

The other after-the-fact advice mentioned judicious pruning, and of course the ever-popular “gentle” removal of snow as it’s falling.

What the Experts Recommend
But moving beyond neighborhood “wisdom”, what Extension Service experts recommend is indeed judicious pruning – of wayward branches that could easily break off.  Or for serious snow areas, the elaborate tying up of the prized evergreens.  Here’s what the Washington State website advises:

Upright conifers such as yews, cypress, and arborvitae may be pruned lightly to reduce any sprawling branches. Then wrap the plants lightly with twine, winding it up the tree. Tie it loosely. This wrapping process keeps vertical evergreens such as those in hedges from collecting a lot of snow in the centers of the plants and falling open. Often that damage spoils the look of a neat hedge. Remove the wrapping when mild weather arrives.

Or we could consult some experts in big snow- in Minnesota, but their advice is basically the same.

So we all know what we’re supposed to do.  And tonight you’re all out doing the wrap or the gentle snow-lift to protect your prize evergreens, right?  Me, I’ll be downloading movies from Netflix and hoping for the best.

Text and photos by Susan Harris.

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Best of the Best Shuttle Footage

Posted by Scott

I’ve seen some of this footage before but never heard the commentary. The narrators go into some really interesting detail on the tech involved in capturing the film footage of Shuttle launches. Most of the footage is for review purposes but some is purely documentary. All of the footage is beautiful though. It amazed me that they still used film all the way up until the end of the Shuttle program. They’re also shooting at higher frame rates so you get some great slow motion in there.

The lenses used range all the way up to a 4000mm, 250lb., catadioptric for the medium range tracking system. The Shuttle program was undoubtedly one of the greatest technical achievements humankind will ever produce (and I’m guessing the last of it’s scale), so I suppose it’s fitting that it was documented with a 100+ camera array of some of the most sophisticated optics available.

This was part of a DVD put together detailing some of the best footage from the later Shuttle launches.

Full video is here (be sure to switch to the 720p version!)

4 Comments Leave A Comment

Alexis says:

May 10, 2012 at 5:07 pm

A great tribute to a great aisrtt! James Brown was appearing in San Antonio, Texas in 1965 when I was there. A group of us guys decided to go to see him but we had no idea of the location of arena inwhich he was performing. We spotted a car full of black people just driving down the street and decided they looked like they were the kind of folks going to see J B. We decided to just follow them. They led us right to the arena. I saw one of the best shows I have ever seen. Of course he sang Please, Please, Please. THANK YOU MY PEOPLE!Joe


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Archive for March, 2010

So What Do You Do?

March 29th, 2010 1 comment

Last night I was talking with Tom, friend and former business partner in Playground Creative.  We got to talking about a question that I usually have a hard time answering, the all-to-common-when-meeting-someone, “so what do you do?”

“I’m a programmer.”  “I’m a web developer.”  “I make really kick-butt web applications.”

Most of these kinda fall flat to most people: either it’s too vague, or means very little to those who don’t talk tech geek speak, or even evokes the stereotype image of an antisocial recluse hunched over his keyboard all day.  It doesn’t lend itself well to any follow up conversation about the real juicy parts of the work that I love to share about.

Just as it’s much easier for someone else to tickle you than to tickle yourself, another person who isn’t enmeshed in the world of what you do can observe and describe it much more cleanly.  I think Tom nailed it when he gave me his words of how he’d answer the question if he were me:

“I listen to the vision of what a project is trying to accomplish, come up with a solution that is 100% true to its essence, and get it built fast.  If it’s something that you know is possible, but it hasn’t been done before and you just don’t know how to accomplish it, I’m the guy to work that out and reliably deliver on it.”

Nice one, Tom.  I think I’m gonna rehearse that one a few times for the next time I go out to a networking happy hour.

Categories: About Me Tags:

Creator/User Gap

March 27th, 2010 No comments

A lot of people have use for specialized, custom built software, but far fewer are able to create it themselves.  So it is common in my industry that software is created to be used by someone else.  This gives rise to a gap in the perspectives of the creator and user: the creator is often only a user to the extent that they ensure that every piece works as it should, whereas the user needs to use it in a real working environment every day.

What this means is that even a well meaning and highly talented developer can produce something that end users hate, simply for lack of the day-to-day user perspective.  Consider:

Creator: This feature works like a charm.
User: I use this feature 100 times a day but takes 4 clicks to get to when just 1 could do.

Creator: The login system works really nicely and is secure.
User: I get booted out of the system after 20 minutes of idle time, and my usual task away from the computer takes half an hour.

Creator: This downloadable spreadsheet report has all the info about orders placed.
User: I still take 4 hours a week to manually reconcile this report with our CRM system.

Creator: This date picker widget lets you quickly choose your date range for exporting orders.
User: I never need anything but the orders from the last 7 days, but I still have to always pick those dates using this stupid date picker.

This gap is only a problem when there is no communication between developers and users. And it’s not surprising that communication is generally sparse between the two.  Less-than-awesome software is more than common, and so among users there’s a common mindset that that’s just the way it is.  Either it can’t be any better, or perhaps the developer hates them.  (Though the latter is irrational, even I fall for it when I think of the development team behind IE6–I know they were doing their best.)  Both views give rise to a “I’ll deal with it” mentality, perhaps with a “well at least it’s better than the old system” thrown in.  Even if an end user can make requests directly of the developer (seldom allowed to avoid willy nilly wasting of expensive developer resources), the idea seldom occurs as a real possibility.

But what if that communication is strong and the custom development arrangement does allow for tweaking based on such real world feedback?  The above four hypothetical issues are ripe to be fixed with a little bit of tweaking, if only the developer knew about them.

A great solution to this gap is to have the developer become a user in the real working environment after the project has been presented as complete.  That time lays bare a great number of shortcomings that a system might have in actual practice.  It’s fun for everyone involved: the developer gets to be a hero and enjoy the satisfaction of making big win tweaks.  Users have their issues addressed and their needs met: their cool new system just keeps getting better, often within minutes of making a request.  And key stakeholders in the project are delighted by both the improvements and the happiness of the people using it.

A day on site spent beside end users  is something I’ve done now and again, but I haven’t thought to make that a more standard part of my service until now.  It’s that extra mile that provides so much with many kinds of projects.

Categories: Essays Tags:

A Team of One

March 23rd, 2010 3 comments

During the course of my programming career, I have found, without exception, the greatest success (be it measured in efficiency, the end result, or even my personal joy in the process) comes with solo projects.

After such a years-long track record it begs a question: am I just another example of the lone wolf coder who either cannot or will not play nicely with the other kids, or is there really something defensible in the idea of a programming team of one?  Central to The Mythical Man Month is the notion that adding people to the programming team of a late project will only make it later, but what about the other extreme?  Can minimizing the headcount to 1 make a better project, and if so, under what conditions?

Certainly there are some immediate gains that arise.  There’s no redundancy in learning the initial requirements of the project: one point of contact constitutes a massive streamlining of communications, and there is no opportunity for a game of telephone to distort the message as it disperses from client to team.  The same can be said of the nuances that arise during a project’s lifetime: tweaks can be made to a system’s architecture without the penalty of coordinating with other parties impacted by the change.

On a team of one, everyone is always on the same page when it comes to the state of progress and what’s currently on the client’s mind.  An entire class of meetings, the inter-developmental team meeting, can be nixed entirely.

Division of Labor

While out with a few of the guys of the Denver JQuery meetup group last week I heard a lot of people describe themselves as either “front end” or “back end” developers.  This is a useful separation of labor, for the skills of each are reasonably disconnected (front enders are charged mostly with the user interface and making the system look pretty, while back enders are more concerned with the business logic and data shuffling about).  But for most projects the roles are heavily intertwined.  Changes on one side will often necessitate changes for the other, which will take a cycle of communication/waiting/updating/integrating/testing among 2 or more people each time.   For a team of one who is master of both sides of the system, this communication is instantaneous and it’s just a matter of revising the work.

Come to think of it, it’s not just a matter of saving time.  If the logic and flow of a system are handed down from on high as immutable gospel, both parties can work on their parts separately and bring their work to make a near if not perfect fit.  But this is seldom the case.

What really happens is that original designs are either sketches or best guesses: either benefit by evolving from prototypes and earlier drafts.  Lowering the activation energy for tweaks allows it to evolve better simply because it’s less headache to explore new ideas.  When an idea implicates changes that create more work for others, given the choice you’ll more likely stick to the original spec.  If it’s just you and the code, you’ll be far more inclined to take risks.  When you hit a dead end, there’s no one you need to apologize to.

Worthy Collaboration

One piece of teamwork I’ve consistently found to be a great boon to a project is a clear cut relationship between aesthetic design and coding.  A great design for a project makes working on it a joy (bad design kills morale (or at least drains it) and no one is immune), and when I’m given a rich vocabulary of aesthetic elements I can remix and re-purpose them for whatever needs come about.  Thus design in projects is more of a one-time input rather than a you-work-on-your-part-and-I’ll-work-on-mine-and-we’ll-make-sure-they-fit-together-all-along-the-way.

Clearly a team of one needs to be able to many disparate competencies in order to pull off an entire project.  That might suggest that their talent might necessarily be spread thin, but I’m not so sure.  When I am ultimately accountable for a project, there’s much more a sense of pride and ownership for the end result.  You can’t hide behind a story that someone else dropped the ball if the project is less than great.  For those two reasons the entire process becomes the opportunity to really bring your art and have it shine.  Learning an extra trick and going the extra mile is much more enticing because it is much more noticeable and attributable.  Contrast this against the temptation to phone it in and just meet the spec requirements on a project where your part can’t override the overall momentum of the team.

Certainly the team of one is not much of a duplicate-able model for relying on all projects: the larger a project gets, the harder it is to find someone who can be the sole master of it all (let alone be interested in doing so).  But it may be a worthwhile direction in which to grow talent: rather than gauge merit and encourage development along the lines of having increasing years and experience within narrow X, be interested in growing an expanding base of proficiency in X, Y, Z and so on such that the size of a project that could be taken on by one person increases.  The power of a given group of programmers may be best measured as the size of the biggest project that one member of the group could handle alone.

Categories: Essays Tags:

Years of thoughts and observations, now in well organized slow drip

March 23rd, 2010 No comments

My name is John Larson, and I’m a web developer.

And I really love doing it.  I love the cool widgets, I love the new tricks and tools, I love the brainy challenges, I love the elegant solutions.

I love building stuff that others are just plain happy about.

This business heartily feeds my nerdy appetite for mental stimulation.  And my mind has had plenty of time to think about–and become fascinated by–the whole process of software development.  The tack that I took was to expand my own kung fu (literally: “human achievement”) on the matter and be the best, most well rounded and proficient web application guy that my brains and determination would allow.

I cut my teeth doing customizations on the MonsterCommerce e-Commerce platform and building my own web-based system for managing that custom programming department.  Fielding no fewer than 800 leads during my tenure and overseeing (and eventually joining) my programmer crew during over 100 projects gave me all kinds of ideas and perspectives on both what worked great and what was an absolute mess.  Years of freelancing and other projects have further honed my views.

Contained in this blog you’ll find a series of essays and explorations reaching into the world of custom software development, direct from my brain to your eyeballs, thanks to the miracle of the internet.  Partake and enjoy.

Categories: About Me Tags: