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Interventional News
Leading interventional radiology societies call for expanded stroke training
In a joint, global position statement, the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR), Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology Society of Europe (CIRSE) and the Interventional Radiology Society of Australasia (IRSA) have committed to providing necessary stroke training to interventional radiologists in order to alleviate the shortage of physicians trained in endovascular stroke therapies.
The ability for patients to access thrombectomy care remains stymied by geography and a shortage of interventional physicians, despite the American Heart Association's and multiple international stroke organisations' recommendations that endovascular thrombectomy (EVT or clot removal) be the standard of care for patients suffering acute ischaemic stroke caused by blocked arteries.
"The shortage of physicians and comprehensive stroke centres providing EVT has been confirmed by the stroke neurology community, who recommend that patients be treated locally rather than having long transfer delays," the joint statement said.
"Appropriately trained interventional radiologists can evaluate stroke patients and provide emergent EVT with good outcomes; especially where neurointerventional physicians are not available."
Interventional radiologists can also help provide 24/7 care in partnership with neurointerventional physicians where they are available, the statement said.
Endovascular thrombectomy is proven to save lives and improve outcomes for patients suffering acute ischaemic strokes. Patients who undergo these clot-removing treatments not only survive in greater numbers, but also have fewer resulting disabilities and are able to recover functions faster than best medical therapy.
"Reversing symptoms from these strokes requires rapid and safe removal of the occluding thrombus," the societies said in the statement. Allowing interventional radiologists to join their neurology, neurointerventional and neurosurgeon colleagues on care teams and allowing them to be part of certified stroke centres will greatly increase access to this critical treatment, they said.
SIR is already revising its current stroke training guidelines to support expanded patient access to interventional stroke treatment. The training pathway will reinforce Joint Commission and American Heart Association requirements for physicians operating in thrombectomy-capable stroke centres and comprehensive stroke centres. In September, the Joint Commission and American Heart Association announced they would hold a dialogue with provider organisations to discuss requirements as the organisations work to update certification criteria for both thrombectomy-capable and comprehensive stroke centres.
Back in February 2018, the Joint Commission announced revised eligibility requirements for the Thrombectomy-Capable Stroke Centre (TSC) certification program. The revised eligibility included a requirement for all primary neuro-interventionists (i.e., those who routinely take call to perform emergency mechanical thrombectomy) to either be certified by the Committee for Advanced Subspecialty Training (CAST) or to meet similar criteria, including education, training, and experience performing 15 mechanical thrombectomies over the past 12 months or 30 over the past 24 months. In the May 2018 edition of Perspectives, the Joint Commission announced that this same requirement would be applied to Comprehensive Stroke Centres.
Since the publication of these revised eligibility criteria, a number of individuals and organisations have raised concerns about the individual physician training requirement for CAST certification or the equivalent. First, many expressed that the requirement is overly stringent and is not necessary to ensure that patients at TSCs and CSCs receive high quality mechanical thrombectomy because CAST certification requires training and ongoing experience in a number of procedures other than mechanical thrombectomy (e.g., interventions for aneurysms and arteriovenous malformations).
Second, the training requirement excludes many highly qualified individuals, i.e., interventional radiologists who have training and experience in neurovascular interventions and have been performing mechanical thrombectomy successfully for years. The Joint Commission originally thought these individuals could become CAST certified through the Practice Pathway; however, this is not possible for them because they are not doing other neuroendovascular procedures required for individual CAST certification.
SIR president M Victoria Marx, an interventional radiologist at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California, USA, said, "SIR strongly believes that interventional radiologists have a current and growing role in the care of patients with ischaemic strokes. We stand committed to advocate for policy changes and provide the cognitive and technical skills and resources necessary for interventional radiologists to provide high-quality care."
Thirdly, limiting eligibility with these requirements could adversely affect access to mechanical thrombectomy. One health care system said they had no physician in their system that met the training requirement. The system provided data showing that the clinical outcomes for their eight interventional radiologists were similar to those reported in clinical trials.
In addition, the Society of Interventional Radiology sponsored an independent analysis of which specialties were performing mechanical thrombectomies for Medicare patients. Of the 5,914 claims, 37% were performed by physicians who identified themselves as diagnostic radiologists, 27% by neurosurgeons, 20% by neurologists, and 16% by interventional radiologists.
Concerns have also been raised pertaining to the individual physician volume requirement of 15 mechanical thrombectomies over the past 12 months or 30 over the past 24 months, adopted by the Joint Commission based on CAST requirements. Analyses conducted by one healthcare system showed that only three of the eight interventional radiologists in their system were at or near this benchmark.
The CAST volume requirement was adopted by the Technical Advisory Panel of the Joint Commission because it was a concrete benchmark used by a national organisation.
However, the panel acknowledged that there were no adequately powered studies available to determine a distinct threshold for a physician volume-outcome relationship.
In addition, SIR sponsored an independent analysis of the 2016 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician Supplier and Provider Services (PSPS) files and Provider Utilization File (PUF). Of the 995 physicians who billed under code 61645 (percutaneous arterial transluminal mechanical thrombectomy and/or infusion for thrombolysis, intracranial, any method, including diagnostic angiography, fluoroscopic guidance, catheter placement, and intraprocedural pharmacological thrombolytic injections), 842 (85%) billed for 10 or fewer procedures. For the 153 (15%) physicians who performed more than ten procedures, the median number of procedures was still only 15.
This analysis is limited because it does not include procedures billed to private insurers or Medicare advantage plans, the procedures under the target billing code are heterogeneous, and the data are from 2016 when the indications for mechanical thrombectomy were more restrictive than current ones. Despite these limitations, the data raise important questions about whether the current individual physician volume requirements for the TSC and CSC certification programmes would exclude too many qualified individuals.
The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association believe that additional dialogue is needed with national stakeholder organisations to discuss individual physician training and volume requirements.
For these reasons, the Joint Commission suspended the individual physician training and procedure volume requirements for both the TSC and CSC certification programmes, in September 2018. The facility volume requirement of 15 mechanical thrombectomies per year will still be in force for both certification programmes, however. In an Autumn statement, the Joint Commission said: "We hope to establish new, more appropriate individual physician requirements within the next six months."
Stroke affects 16.9 million worldwide each year, with 795,000 new cases in the USA annually. Approximately 100,000 of the US cases are eligible for EVT treatment, yet only a fraction are treated due to the shortage of thrombectomy-capable stroke centres. To meet that volume, the USA would need 500 endovascular stroke centres and 2,000 physicians. It currently has 231 thrombectomy-capable stroke centres.
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In this React Native lesson, we will be creating a reusable Badge component. The component will also make use of propTypes to validate that its required data is being passed in when it is used.
00:00 We're going to make this a component and then reuse that component in the profile component, the repositories component, and the notes component we're going to build. In our components folder, let's go ahead and create a new file called Badge.js. We're going to require React. We're going to disjuncture our object and get some stuff it needs.
00:23 We'll need some text, view, the image, and a StyleSheet, so that equal to React. I'm going to paste it in the styles.
00:33 Now what we're going to do is let's go ahead and make our Badge class which extends React component. As always, module.exports=Badge. This Badge is going to be in React. There are these things called pure components. It's components that don't have a state but they will take in their data from their parent component.
00:57 When we render Badge, we're going to have to make sure that we pass the appropriate data. Some things we can do later on to make sure that we do that. If we don't do that, it will throw a warning.
01:06 What we're going to do here is return our UI. Let's have a view with some styling on it. Then, we're going have an image component with some styling on it as well. The source is going to be, we're going to use URX to URL. It's going to be on the userInfo object that we pass in when we use our Badge component.
01:34 We're also going to have some text here. Let's have the name attribute as a property. The text is going to be userInfo.name. We're going to have some more text whose value is going to be this.props.userInfo.login.
01:49 Now that we have this component, you'll notice here that this component is very much reliant on this userInfo object. If we don't pass this userInfo object in, this entire component is going to break. What React gives us is this thing called propTypes. We can get the name of the class, add propTypes on to it. What this will do is this will verify that certain properties are there, certain properties of certain type. It's super useful.
02:22 If when we invoke our Badge class or when we use our Badge component, if we don't pass in userInfo object, it's going to throw an error in the console. We're going to see our prop types. We need to have some user info and it's going to be an object and it is required. In order for this component to run and not throw an error, we need to have this userInfo object passed in when we use our Badge component.


The brothers, sister, daughters, mother, father, wife and grandchildren of a beloved North Caddo coach and teacher reflect on his life.
VIVIAN — Eighty-year-old Sarah Mason sat at a dining table in the front room of her Vivian home. Several generations of her family — her husband, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, in-laws — sat in couches and chairs nearby.
Tissue boxes got emptier as the family talked Tuesday afternoon, sharing favorite memories of her son, Les.
They had buried Les Mason the day before. Buried their grandfather, their father, their husband, their brother, their son. That's what Les Mason was to them.
To others, he was a teacher, a coach and a father they never had.
Les Mason died Thursday, Oct. 4, from injuries suffered in a two-car wreck involving a Caddo Parish dump truck. He was 56.
"I knew I loved him because he was my son," Sarah Mason said. "I didn't know the whole town loved him until this weekend."
Les Mason was born in Homer, Louisiana, on Jan. 26, 1962, to Roland and Sarah Mason. He was the oldest of four children. He weighed 10 pounds, 6 ounces.
He was the kind of child who never bothered anything, his mom said. She had a collection of cups and saucers that young Les often admired but never touched. He also liked trains. He had an entire room dedicated to trains.
Early in Les's life, the Masons moved to Hosston and, later, to Vivian. His exposure to sports came early. He started playing basketball in the third grade and took up football in middle school.
In the summer, Les and his siblings scouted cotton, soybeans and other crops to recommend insecticides for farmers.
In high school, he played quarterback at North Caddo High School, where he was named "Mr. North Caddo" in 1980.
He walked on to play football at Louisiana Tech but dropped from the team because he couldn't schedule his classes around the sport. He graduated with a degree in agriculture.
Les met his future wife, Carla, while both were taking classes at Shreveport's Baptist Christian College. Les' sister, Rolicea Shaw, introduced the two.
Shaw, 52, said her older brother spoiled her. Before heading off to Louisiana Tech, he let her drive his new Camero. Shaw had just gotten her license.
Carla and Les attended a graduation banquet for the school together in 1988. After that event, Carla knew that Les was the one.
"I called (Rolicea) and said, 'I need a date,'" Carla said. " She was like, 'He's not dating anybody.' 'Well,' I said, 'do you think he'll go?'"
"Once we went to the banquet, that was it," she said.
During dinner, Les asked Carla four times to be his bride. She thought he was joking.
"We had joked around about getting married," she said. "I was drinking my tea, and I sort of spit it out and started laughing at him."
When he asked a fifth time, he pulled out a ring. That's when Carla knew he was serious.
"He told me that if I didn't answer him that fifth time that he wasn't asking me again," Carla said. "It helps when you show the ring."
They were married on St. Patrick's Day 1990. The couple had to work around their school schedule. Les had been teaching at Plain Dealing Academy — his first teaching job — before moving to Vivian Elementary in 1990.
The couple had their first child, a girl they named Leslie, in July 1991. They would have two more daughters, Brittany and Jordan. Les wanted to have his first child before 30 and Carla Mason wanted to be finished having kids by the time she was 30.
This week, Leslie Martin described her dad as a gentle man who was made to be the father of daughters.
"There was one time when I was little and he was working on something. He was getting mad and might have said 'Hell!'," she said. "I was standing there and ... I started crying. And he was like 'What's wrong?' I said, 'I don't like when you say that word. It makes me sad.' And he started crying."
Leslie said she never heard her father say another bad word.
In 1998, Les began teaching at North Caddo High School, where he remained until his death. He taught special education. He also was the offensive line coach for football team and head coach of the fishing team.
During his coaching career, he also coached softball at Plain Dealing and, for a time, North Caddo. He ended up coaching his three daughters.
Much like he was with his daughters, Les was patient with the players he coached.
"You could have heard pins drop. Of course, after we got there, he apologized to everybody."
When he wasn't coaching or teaching, Les was sword fighting with his grandson, Braylen Hindsman. Les treated Braylen like his own son, the family said.
The assistant coach also loved to hunt and fish. The night before his death, he got a new crossbow. Carla, who works at Bass Pro Shop at the Louisiana Boardwalk in Bossier City, got the bow for him.
The day he died, he was supposed to get new arrow tips, Carla said.
"He needed some new tips or something for his arrows because the ones that were on there were going through the target too far," she said. "He told me that morning about it and I said, 'Well, when you head into town, just give me a call.'"
On the morning of Thursday, Oct. 4, Les left North Caddo High School to drive to a special education training session at the Caddo Public Schools offices in Shreveport.
Les called his wife to let her know that he was heading into town and to talk about the arrow tips.
"I told him I would look for them later and 'I love you,'" she said. "That was it."
Around 11: 30 a.m., Les was involved in a two-car accident with a Caddo Parish dump truck at the intersection of Hwys. 1 and 169. The driver of the truck, 62-year-old Willie Jackson, was transported to University Health for his injuries. He was cited for failure to yield.
Jackson knew Les and tried to help him out of the car, the family said.
"They called me like twenty minutes (after our phone call) to tell me he had been in a car wreck," she said.
On the way to the hospital, Carla Mason saw the truck. The driver side was badly damaged.
"I was really worried that he'd hit his head on the windshield," she said. "It was almost like you could see the motor."
Les was transported to North Caddo Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Family members arrived and knew immediately.
"Everybody's there. I was the last one there. Brent (Mason, Les' brother) met me and (said) 'I'm sorry,'" Carla said. "You just knew."
Les's visitation and funeral on Monday were well attended. Lines wrapped around First Baptist Church Vivian — the town's largest church. The family didn't want to use the football field for the service. Les was a Methodist, but the Methodist Church was too small.
Family, friends, former players and others were in attendance, some from as far away as California. The support the family has received from North Caddo High School and the community at large has been overwhelming, the family said.
North Caddo will retire Les's old number — 14 — at the school's senior night Nov. 1. Les' memory will live in the lives that he touched and the lessons that he taught others, the family said.
"I'm a coach now, too, and they call me Coach Mason (too)," Jordan Mason, the head coach of North Webster High School's softball team, said. "I know my daddy taught me well and I'm going to make him proud."


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Business Consumers Economy Government International National Politics
Trump Joins Canada, Mexico Leaders to Sign New Trade Pact
November 30, 2018 ASSOCIATED PRESS
Canada, Donald Trump, Mexico, Trade
President Donald Trump, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Neto, left, participate in the USMCA signing ceremony, Friday, Nov. 30, 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
By ZEKE MILLER and CATHERINE LUCEY
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — President Donald Trump joined the leaders of Canada and Mexico at a global meeting in Argentina on Friday to sign a revised North American trade pact that he called "groundbreaking" and a benefit for "working people."
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is meant to replace the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump has long denigrated as a "disaster."
He appeared with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto at the Group of 20 nations summit in Buenos Aires for the formal signing ceremony. Each country's legislature must also approve the agreement.
"It's been long and hard. We've taken a lot of barbs and a little abuse, but we got there," Trump said of the pact.
Legislative approval is the next step in the process, but could prove to be a difficult task in the United States, especially now that Democrats — instead of Trump's Republicans — will control the House of Representatives come January. Already Democrats and their allies in the labor movement are demanding changes to the agreement.
While Trump hailed the revised trade pact, Trudeau was more measured, saying there was still work to be done and calling on Trump — using his first name — to remove steel and aluminum tariffs the U.S. imposed on Canada and Mexico. Trudeau also referenced recent downsizing by General Motors in North America as a "heavy blow." Trump did not mention the job losses.
The signing came at the front end of two days of tough diplomacy for Trump. On the top of his agenda is a Saturday dinner meeting with Chinese President Xi Jingping. which will determine if the two can ease escalating trade tensions. Before Trump arrived in Argentina he injected additional drama into the proceedings by canceling another high-stakes meeting, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Friday, Trump opened the day with a cordial meeting at the Casa Rosada with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, a longtime business acquaintance. Posing for photos in the gilded Salón Blanco, Trump spoke about their longtime personal relationship and said they would discuss trade, military purchases and other issues.
"We've known each other a long while," Trump said, noting he worked with Macri's father on real estate developments. The businessman-turned-politician joked that when he and Macri first met they'd never have imagined their future roles on the world stage.
Macri is hosting the summit as he struggles with problems at home. He is trying to halt economic turmoil that has caused the steep depreciation of the Argentine peso.
Trump, who arrived in Buenos Aires late Thursday, barreled into the two-day meeting by announcing via Twitter that he was canceling a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia's seizure of Ukrainian vessels. His agenda for the weekend includes meetings with world leaders, as well as a number of heavily choreographed group activities for the gathering of leaders of rich and developing nations.
Trump faces a series of diplomatic challenges over the weekend, most notably whether he can strike an agreement with Xi.
The president canceled on Putin not long after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, revealed he had lied to Congress to cover up that he was negotiating a real estate deal in Moscow on Trump's behalf during the Republican presidential primary in 2016. The news ensured any meeting with Putin would have put a spotlight on the special counsel's investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow during the campaign. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump showed that the Russia investigation was testing his ability to stay focused on summit business after he blasted the investigation in a fresh tweet on Friday, again calling it a "Witch Hunt!"
One looming question is whether Trump will have a run-in with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid global dismay over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the Saudi crown prince must have at least known of the plot to kill Khashoggi, who was critical of the Saudi royal family. Lawmakers in both parties have called on Trump to at least avoid the young heir apparent as punishment.
But Trump publicly announced his decision to effectively give the prince a pass in the name of "America First," making vastly exaggerated claims of Saudi military contracts and investments in the United States. The president also views Saudi Arabia as a vital counterbalance to Iranian influence in the Middle East.
Asked Thursday why the two had no meeting scheduled, Trump said: "I would have met with him but we didn't set that one up."
With his "America First" approach, general distaste for multinational deals and habit of insulting allies, Trump typically gets a mixed reception at global gatherings.
Trump has slapped tariffs on the European Union, pulled the U.S. out of the landmark Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal and suggested he might be willing to pull the U.S. out of NATO if member countries don't significantly boost their defense spending.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Bill McKibben's five favorite environmental books
Activist and writer Bill McKibben is the award-winning author of The End of Nature and The Age of Missing Information. His new book, Eaarth, argues that our planet already has been irrevocably remade by human activity.
For The Daily Beast, he named his five favorite environmental books. One book on the list:
The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson really began the assault on modernity with Silent Spring—suddenly progress didn't seem quite so shiny. But before that she'd written some of the most-loved natural history of all time, introducing millions of Americans to the oceans before Jacques Cousteau even wet a swimfin.
Also see: Bill McKibben's all-time favorite books.
The Page 69 Test: Bill McKibben's Deep Economy.
Learn more about McKibben's new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.
Sophie Thompson's 6 best books
Sophie Thompson (sister of Emma Thompson) appears in the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; she plays Mafalda Hopkirk, a witch who works in the Improper Use of Magic Office at the Ministry of Magic.
For the Scottish Sunday Express, she named her six best books. One title on the list:
by JD Salinger
I was still at school when I read this. I can remember sitting on a wall, in a little puddle of sun, after getting the number 28 bus home, crying as I slowly turned the last few pages. I was completely in love with the central character and genuinely bereft that he was no longer in my life.
Read about the other books on Thompson's list.
The Catcher In The Rye appears on Dan Rhodes' top ten list of short books and Sarah Ebner's top 25 list of boarding school books. Upon rereading, the novel disappointed Khaled Hosseini, Mary Gordon, and Laura Lippman.
Top ten love stories
Esther Freud was named by Granta magazine as one of the 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Her books include Hideous Kinky (1992), Peerless Flats (1993) and Gaglow (1997). Her most recent novel is Love Falls (2007).
She named her top ten love stories for the Guardian. One novel on the list:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre was responsible for a misguided belief in the power of romance that complicated my teenage years. The idea that you could lean out of your window and whisper your lover's name, and that he might actually hear you, appealed to me too much.
Jane Eyre also made the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, and ten of the best smokes in fiction.
The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.
Five best books about soldiers at war
Stephen Hunter retired in 2008 as chief film critic of the Washington Post.
His most recent novel is I, Sniper (Simon & Schuster, 2009).
For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books on soldiers at war.
One book on the list:
The Face of Battle by John Keegan Viking, 1976
John Keegan is by no means the first historian to contemplate combat from eyeball range, but he has been the most eloquent to propose that battle accounts should involve more than describing the movement of military units as viewed from an imaginary satellite far above the smoke and blood. Yes, it's important to know that, say, a unit called Able/3/4 moved up Hill 271 at 0350 and didn't take possession from the 2/2 SS Panzergrenadiers/Totenkopf until 0530, but Keegan thinks that the focus should instead be on the guys of Able Company as they climb the incline against heavy German fire. In "The Face of Battle," written early in his remarkable career, Keegan applies his close-up history writing to three world-changing battles—Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815 and the Somme in 1916. Infusing his narrative with archaeology, anthropology and the utter melancholy of loss and permanent injury, he produced a model for all who followed.
The Face of Battle is one of Thomas C. Schelling's most influential books.
Friend of the Blog Kurt van der Walde once alerted me to the closing lines of the acknowledgments of the book where Keegan reveals why he did not dedicate the book to his "wife Susanne: ...were the title and the subject of this book not so inappropriate, I would have dedicated it to her, for all she has done."
Ten of the best accounts of being marooned in literature
For the Observer, William Skidelsky named a list of ten of the most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature. One book on the list:
Golding's first novel describes the ghastly fate that befalls a group of British schoolboys when they are stranded on a desert island (Golding was a prep-school teacher when he wrote it). At first, the boys set about creating an ordered society, with the good-natured Ralph as chief. But a dissident faction emerges and seizes power. Ralph, together with his myopic sidekick Piggy, wants the group to concentrate on getting rescued; the other lot just want to hunt. The boys' descent into savagery symbolises mankind's innate capacity for evil.
Read about the other castaways on the list.
Lord of the Flies is on AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature and ten of the best horrid children in literature.
Five great fictional Prime Ministers
Michael Dobbs served as Chief of Staff to British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and was Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party in the mid-1990s. His many books include House of Cards, the first in what would become a trilogy of political thrillers based on the character Francis Urquhart.
His latest novel is The Reluctant Hero.
Dobbs named a brief list of great fictional Prime Ministers for the Times (London).
One PM on the list:
Harry Perkins in A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin (1982)
Perkins is the PM who wants to get rid of media monopolies, nuclear weapons and US influence. Nothing new there, then. His idealism runs full pelt into entrenched interests and ends with mysterious forces ousting him.
Read about the other PMs on Dobbs' list.
Read about Michael Dobbs and his books.
The Page 69 Test: The Lords' Day.
Ten of the best visions of hell in literature
For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best visions of hell in literature.
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Tumbled out of Heaven, the rebel angels find themselves in a bad place: "A dungeon horrible, on all sides round / As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames / No light; but rather darkness visible / Served only to discover sights of woe..." Being devils, they decide this is where they want to stay.
Read about the other works on the list.
Satan from Paradise Lost is among the 50 greatest villains in literature according to the (London) Telegraph and appears on John Mullan's list ten of the best devils in literature.
Paradise Lost also appears on Mullan's list of ten of the best pieces of fruit in literature and Diane Purkiss' critic's chart of the best books on the English Civil War.
Shirley Williams's six best books
Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, is a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, she was one of the "Gang of Four" rebels who founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. She later served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, and since 2007 has served as Adviser on Nuclear Proliferation to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Last year she told the Scottish Sunday Express about her six best books. One title on the list:
The Great Transformation
by Karl Polanyi
An absolutely brilliant history book which tells the story of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, covering among other events the Industrial Revolution, the creation of nations and the birth of empires.
Read about the other books on Williams' list.
Six great books where women hit the road
At Flashlight Worthy, Anne Matthews, co-author of Deep Creek, named a list of six great books where women journey away from home.
S. M. Fuller's Summer on the Lakes in 1843
by Sarah Margaret Fuller
Touring the Great Lakes in 1843, a hard-to-please Transcendentalist melds reportage, diary, verse, and rant into travelogue both inner and outer. (Her personal low points: swampy, dull Chicago, pop. 7,000; and Niagara Falls, which looked exactly like the postcards.)
Top 10 absurd classics
Michael Foley was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, but since 1972 he has lived in London, working as a Lecturer in Information Technology. He has published four novels, four collections of poetry and a collection of translations from French poetry, which have earned impressive reviews from the Guardian, New Statesman and New York Times. The Age of Absurdity is his first non-fiction book.
For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of books that best express the absurdity of the human condition. One title on the list:
Bouvard and Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert
Bouvard and Pécuchet are humble copy clerks until Bouvard unexpectedly inherits money and the two friends decide to give up work and devote themselves to acquiring knowledge. They attempt to master in turn farming, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, geology, gymnastics, spiritualism, philosophy, religion and phrenology, in each case following the best contemporary expertise, but always ending in disaster and disillusionment. In their education phase they take in the children of a convict and subject them to the latest pedagogic techniques. Resolutely resisting improvement, the children wreck the garden, smash dishes in the kitchen, steal food and money, attack their philanthropic teachers and finally boil a pet cat alive in a cooking pot.
Bouvard and Pécuchet also appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best unfinished literary works and John Sutherland's list of the best books about listing.
Six best stoner novels
Sam Munson, author of The November Criminals, named the six best stoner novels for The Daily Beast.
by Ralph Ellison
The protagonist of Ellison's masterwork may love sloe gin, but he also has a transformative experience with weed while listening to Louis Armstrong's "What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" at bone-shaking volume in his underground lair. He comes to a Nietzschean conclusion: Great music and chemical intoxicants belong to the same existential class, implements of the Dionysian. (Although he does eventually give up ganja.) A nearly-infinite number of adolescents have repeated this experiment, with continually worsening music and far less impressive philosophical results.
The Invisible Man comes in second on the list of the 100 best last lines from novels; it is one of Joyce Hackett's top ten musical novels.
Ten of the best breakfasts in literature
For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best breakfasts in literature.
One breakfast on the list:
From Russia with Love, by Ian Fleming
James Bond's breakfast, supposed to demonstrate his fine taste, is a memorable exercise in prissiness. Coffee from De Bry in New Oxford Street, toast with Norwegian heather honey from Fortnum's, a single brown egg from a French Marans hen.
Read about the other breakfasts on the list.
From Russia with Love also made Mullan's lists of ten of the best chess games in fiction and ten of the best punch-ups in fiction.
Five best books on blasphemy
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church and Fellow of St. Cross College in the University of Oxford. His latest book is Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.
For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books about blasphemy. One title on the list:
It takes the son of a preacher-man to do blasphemy properly; Nietzsche's father was a German Lutheran pastor. It's not Nietzsche's fault that the Nazis admired him—his anti-Semitic sister should shoulder much of the blame for manipulating his image, but even so ... In the urgent, jagged prose of "The Antichrist"—superbly translated into English by H.L. Mencken in 1920—Nietzsche pitches viciously into Christianity for pushing humankind off course, for exalting pity over strength. (In German, his title could also mean "Anti-Christian.") "Theologians are the enemy," he says, and "faith is a pathetic thing." The book is a howl of rage against the great German Protestant project of wedding Christianity to the Enlightenment. Nietzsche tries to forge a relationship with Jesus beyond the distortions brought by Christian piety and to rediscover true life behind shams.
Bill McKibben's all-time favorite books
He named his six favorite books for The Week magazine. One title on the list:
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Any book by this Kentucky farmer-writer will do, but this novel is a particularly moving part of his ongoing project: showing the meaning of and need for real human community. Once you're finished with this, continue on to his collected essays.
Read about the other books on McKibben's list.
Visit Bill McKibben's official website.
Best books for lovers of Henry Thoreau's "Walden"
At Flashlight Worthy, Will Howarth, co-author of Deep Creek, named a list of books that echo [Henry David Thoreau's] "fierce love for exploring personal freedom" and "emulate the place-centered nonfiction he invented in Walden."
One title on the list:
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
A humorous, self-deprecating story of two urban mid-lifers hiking the Appalachian Trail. Along the way, they shape up, lose their snark, and begin to appreciate the difficulty of preserving wilderness in postmodern times.
Read about the other books on Howarth's list.
A Walk in the Woods is one of Eric Blehm's ten favorite books.
Michael Lewis' 5 favorite books
Michael Lewis is the bestselling author of Liar's Poker, The Blind Side, and a new chronicle of the financial crisis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.
One of his favorite books of all time, as told to The Daily Beast:
A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
It describes the peculiar street life of the place I grew up (New Orleans) with the precision of a Flemish painting. One of the few books I dip into every few years to make sure I'm still sane. (If I laugh, I am.) It's also one of the three funniest books I've ever read, along with...
Read about the other books on Lewis' list.
A Confederacy of Dunces also appears on Cracked magazine's list of classic funny novels.
Read more about Lewis' most important books.
The Page 69 Test: The Blind Side.
Top 10 seafaring tales
Carsten Jensen, renowned Danish author and worldwide cultural critic, has just published his epic novel We, The Drowned, in English. He was awarded the Golden Laurels for I Have Seen the World Begin; the Danske Banks Litteraturpris, Denmark's most prestigious literary award; and, most recently, the Palme prize.
He named his top ten seafaring tales for the Guardian.
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Melville's masterpiece tells the tale of Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest for a whale whose terrifying whiteness comes to embody evil itself. I doubt that any contemporary publisher would take on such a vast, eccentric, anarchic work if it crossed their desk today. Reading it, you realise what a free and wide-ranging genre the novel once was, and how much has been wrecked by a book industry catering to the most conventional taste. Not only does Melville forget all about his main character, Ishmael, for hundreds of pages, but he also allows himself to indulge in endless speculations about the nature of whales, before reaching the conclusion that they're not mammals, but fish. What to do in the presence of such artistic nerve, but salute?
Read about the other entries on Jensen's list.
Moby-Dick also appears among John Mullan's list of ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.
Five best books on guilt
Pascal Bruckner is the award-winning author of eighteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel Bitter Moon, which was made into a film by Roman Polanski. His other books include The Temptation of Innocence and The Tears of the White Man (Free Press) and the novels The Divine Child (Little, Brown) and Evil Angels (Grove). His new book is The Tyranny of Guilt.
For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books about guilt. One title on the list:
by Agatha Christie
Ten people who have nothing in common find themselves on Indian Island. They have been invited there by a mysterious Mr. Owen, who has, unfortunately, not shown up. A couple of servants see to their comfort. On the living-room table the guests find 10 Indian statuettes, and in the bedrooms hangs a nursery rhyme announcing how each guest is to be murdered. The deaths follow one another implacably, hewing to the poem's predictions as though the characters' fates were foreordained. Everyone has sinned enough to deserve death; everyone bears the mark of Cain. Within this Puritan framework Agatha Christie displays her passion for playing with crime. As it turns out, one of the 10 guests is the murderer—and he knocks himself off as well, using a sophisticated technique to make it seem as if he has been killed by someone else. Christie's taste for trickery is stronger than her taste for punishment. Thus there is no tragedy in her work: Evil can always be overcome by a shrewd detective.
Read about the other books on Bruckner's list.
Also see: a top ten list of Agatha Christie mysteries.
Ten of the best lotharios in literature
For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best lotharios in literature.
One lothario on the list:
Foolish Emma Bovary falls for this practised seducer in Flaubert's novel. For the provincial doctor's frustrated wife, wealthy, stylish Rodolphe Boulanger is Prince Charming. For him, pretty Emma is just the latest in a long line of conquests. He gets bored and dumps her.
Read about the other characters on Mullan's list.
Madame Bovary is on Mullan's list of ten of the best bad lawyers in literature, Valerie Martin's list of six novels about doomed marriages, and Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers. It tops Peter Carey's list of the top ten works of literature and was second on a top ten works of literature list selected by leading writers from Britain, America and Australia in 2007. It one of John Bowe's six favorite books on love.
Sheena Iyengar's 6 favorite books
Columbia University business professor Sheena Iyengar is the author of the The Art of Choosing, a new book examining the science of how human beings make choices. For The Week magazine, she named six books that have influenced her work.
The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner
A classic that manages to make economics accessible and interesting to the layperson. Heilbroner delves into the "lives, times, and ideas of the great economic thinkers"—as the book's subtitle promises—to show how men like Adam Smith and Karl Marx were shaped by their choices, and how their theories continue to shape us today.
Douglas Hurd's 6 best books
Douglas Hurd served as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. His new book is Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary: Two Centuries Of Conflict And Personalities.
He named his six best books for the Daily Express. One title on the list:
by Evelyn Waugh
A hilarious book about a young schoolmaster who gets involved with a woman whose fortune is built on brothels. One of the earliest and funniest of Waugh's books this is up there with some of his better-known works such as Brideshead Revisited.
Read about the other works on Hurd's list.
Top 10 Japanese novels
Julith Jedamus is the author of The Book of Loss. In 2005 she named a top ten list of Japanese novels for the Guardian.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (1987)
The novel, Murakami's fifth, whose phenomenal success led to his exile to Europe and the United States. It's all here: the callow narrator, the deja vus and symbols, the peripheral danger - plus slug-eating, damp bras, The Great Gatsby, fires, Miles Davis, and a dead man's pyjamas.
Read about the other novels on the list.
Also see: Fiona Campbell's top ten books set in Japan.
Five books on guitars
One title from the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on "the history, craft and voice of the six-stringed heart of American music:"
Instruments of Desire
by Steve Waksman
This crash course on the historical and cultural significance of the electric version of the instrument puts the essentials -- sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll -- right at its amplified heart. Steve Waksman begins in the thirties, with the evolving guitar's galvanizing effect on blues, and country, going on to chart what would emerge as rock. Along the way he riffs on the lives of some of the most influential electric players, including Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Jimmy Page.
Doug Glanville's best books on baseball
Doug Glanville played center field for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and Texas Rangers from 1996 through 2004. His new book, The Game from Where I Stand, is out in early May.
He named his "favorite books that capture the spirit and essence of baseball" for The Daily Beast. One title on the list:
Three Nights in August
by Buzz Bissinger
Buzz writes like a magician, so that was a given, but what I liked about this book was deeply personal. He walked us through three games in 2003. Cubs v. Cardinals, when I was playing for the Cubs. In effect, he left me a literary description of a snapshot of my life in baseball, during my twilight years. It was like seeing something again from a new angle. In this case, through the mind and savvy of Tony LaRussa.
Also see Richard J. Tofel's list of the five best books on baseball as a business, Tom Werner's six favorite baseball books, Fay Vincent's five best list of baseball books, Tim McCarver's five best list of baseball books, and Nicholas Dawidoff's five best list of baseball novels.
Top 10 travel books of the 20th century
In 1999 at Salon magazine, Don George named a top ten list of travel books of the 20th century.
"The Snow Leopard," by Peter Matthiessen.
This profoundly moving work interweaves unforgettably vivid descriptions of a Himalayan climbing expedition with equally unforgettable passages of searing self-analysis and spiritual quest. In its stark humanity and its unvarnished yearning, its soul-open combination of epiphany and despair, fatigue and terror and triumph, "The Snow Leopard" enlightens and enriches on virtually every page. It can change your life, as it did mine.
Five direly underappreciated post-1960 U.S. novels
In 1999 David Foster Wallace named five direly underappreciated post-1960 U.S. novels.
"Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
Don't even ask.
Blood Meridian is one authority's pick for the Great Texas novel and is among Clive Sinclair's top 10 westerns and Maile Meloy's six best books. It appears on the New York Times list of the best American fiction of the last 25 years and among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.
Ten of the best trips to Canterbury
At the Guardian, John Mullan named a list of ten of the best trips to Canterbury in literature.
Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
The pleasure-seeking life of this 19th-century rogue begins in Canterbury. Expelled from Rugby, he thinks to join the army, while wishing to avoid any risk of combat. He chooses the 11th Light Dragoons, who "were at Canterbury, after long service in India, and were unlikely ... to be posted abroad". He makes the most of Canterbury society before a duel and a quarrel over a woman send him to less comfortable climes.
Read about the other entries on Mullan's list.
Arthur Phillips' favorite books set in places that their authors never visited
Arthur Phillips is the author of The Song Is You, Prague, The Egyptologist, and Angelica.
He told The Week magazine about six of his favorite books set in places that their authors never visited.
Theater impresario Stoker was very well traveled. He didn't make it to Eastern Europe, however, so it became a suitable place to let his imagination wander. He did more damage to a country's reputation than any artist until Borat sank Kazakhstan. Transylvania is beautifully depicted: the mountains, the woods, the succubae.
Also see Phillips' list of "Five Novels That Make You Feel Like You Might Know Something about Life During the Collapse of the Hapsburg Empire."
Mike Figgis' six best books
Mike Figgis was nominated for Oscars for directing and writing the adapted screenplay for Leaving Las Vegas.
He named his six best books for the Daily Express.
Something Happened
by Joseph Heller
I even prefer this 1974 classic to Catch 22. It deals with family and memory and the agony of raising a child or two. Some of the images in it really will stay with me for ever.
Something Happened appears on Luke Leitch's list of ten cursed second novels and is Neil Cross' pick for Most Under-Rated Second Novel.
Top ten books on the sea
Bella Bathurst's first published book was The Lighthouse Stevensons (1999), an account of the construction of the Scottish lighthouses by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson; it was named one of the List Magazine's "100 Best Scottish Books of all time." Her second book was a novel, Special (2002); it was followed by The Wreckers (2005), a history of shipwrecking and maritime mischief around the coast of Britain.
In 2005 she named her top ten books on the sea for the Guardian. One series on the list:
The Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian
You can read this fabulous series of novels for advice on the correct use of spankers and futtocks, you can read them for their exuberance and humanity, or you can just read them because they're compulsive and you fancy Stephen Maturin.
One book in the series made Lewis Smith's critic's chart of books with bears.
Ten of the best accounts of being marooned in lite...
Arthur Phillips' favorite books set in places that...


Best friends veer toward love in sweet, offbeat romance.
Teen helps other teens and herself in sweet road-trip tale.
Harlequin Teen romance with too many fantasy plotlines.
Not literary, but fun teen fantasy (and plenty of romance).


Of course we provide exceptional benefits (you can see some of them below). But people stay at Ultrahaptics for many more reasons than that.
At Ultrahaptics, you'll be working on challenging, ground-breaking projects and with blue-chip companies such as Harman, Bosch, Meta, Dell and Nike. We are committed to creating an open, fair and collaborative working environment where everyone can thrive and develop.
Whether you're joining us in the UK or US, you'll be part of a supportive and dynamic team with the support you need to maximise your true potential.


One recommended and well-known insurance company is Columbus (sorry no USA), but new companies are always coming onto the scene like the excellent Globelink or Atlas.Globelink is great value. Overall the market is competitive with many providers trying to under-cut others, however sadly too few compare policies.
She has no idea about his depression. "The number of men who die from suicide is three times the number who die in car acc.
A man who set fire to a police car outside a Swansea police station was heard laughing and shouting "f***ing pigs" after star.
His car came to rest on. other driving charges including no displaying 'L' plates having no insurance, no MOT , no licence.
A friend: "But your insurance. because no mechanic could fix the car until it stopped for good. When she drove home one we.
I went into school thinking I was going to be a doctor one day, but you're not going to see. I'm sure Los Angeles and its ample car chases would welcome you with open arms." "No thank you. I was bo.
Ryan Straschnitzki held tight to the bar of the lift as he slipped into the therapy pool at Philadelphia's Shriners Hospital.
This small team of analysts has written an algorithm disrupting the $200 billion car insurance industry. It was extremely out of character for him to no call, no show. I could actually do it that d.
Earlier in the day of December 10 last year he'd tried refused to let. Lloyd also admitted nine charges of fraud through d.
As his fast unto death entered the 9th day on Sunday, Patidar leader Hardik Patel said he had made his will, anticipating he.
165 thoughts on " Just waiting to die " Peace October 14, 2005 at 0249 UTC. Nothing excites me. And nothing looks appealing enough to pursue, either. In fact, I feel like an old person just waiting to die, like I've experienced all that life has to offer and that I, at some point, stumbled upon what I was supposed to do in this life, and now there's.
"When I die, only a few people will remember me. When they're all dead, nothing I have ever done will leave a trace." Schmidt is this generation's Willy Loman. Not a salesman, Schmidt is an actuarian.
Summer of that year I was in a bad car. this day. My grandma always tells me "I don't think your sister is ever going to m.
Never leave your dog alone in a car on a warm day. If you see a dog in distress in a hot car, dial 999. Many people still believe that it's ok to leave a dog in a car on a warm day if the windows are left open or they're parked in the shade, but the truth is, it's still a very dangerous situation for the dog.
She left in the darkness and turned her car wheels from our dirt. is missing a page and there's no computer in the house f.
Paul Modrowski is a prisoner in Stateville Prison in Crest Hill, Illinois. Paul was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole at age 18 on an "accountability" theory for supposedly lending his car to a friend who supposedly murdered a man– although the friend was acquitted by a different jury.
This small team of analysts has written an algorithm disrupting the $200 billion car insurance industry. not go on another.
We pile into his tiny, as in small as car, and head off to pick up our tour. Paris, and on Bastille Day eve no less. First.
The No. 1 song was "She Loves You," by The Beatles. I just think he knows when people retire, they die. That's what he's s.
According to research by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, an average of 2,239 people die and more than. to simply tu.


text:
Bennett Students take NABJ Convention by storm!
Posted by Laurie D. Willis
Bennett student Azuree Bateman interviews actor Shemar Moore as producer Aaron Rahsaan Thomas looks on.
Last week while most college students were still enjoying their summer break, five Bennett Belles were networking with talented journalists from across the country – and they managed to snag interviews with some Hollywood heavyweights to boot.
Senior Azuree Bateman and sophomores Ebony Duell, Gloria Horton, DasJa Sanford and Janiyah Shelton were in New Orleans August 9-13 for the National Association of Black Journalists' annual convention. They traveled to New Orleans with Tom Lipscomb, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies. Last year Lipscomb took four students to the convention, which was held in Washington, D.C.
"It's important for Bennett to send students to the convention each year because it gives them a chance to see what it takes to become successful in the media field," Lipscomb said. "I always encourage our Belles to not only attend the NABJ Convention but also to cover the different workshops and events that are held so they can show prospective employers their skills and potential. This year two of our students got a chance to interview a famous actor, and another student interviewed an award-winning producer, so it was a very productive and fun trip for them."
Lipscomb is referring to actor Shemar Moore, famous for his role as agent Derek Morgan on the hit CBS show "Criminal Minds" and a former star on CBS' daytime soap "The Young and the Restless," and producer Jon Landau, famous for "The Titanic," for which he won an Academy Award, and "Avatar."
Students Bateman and Duell interviewed Moore. Sanford interviewed Landau.
After her interview with Moore, Bateman contacted her mother, DaChanta Bateman, a huge "Young and the Restless" fan.
"I told her around 5 o'clock there was a possibility I might get to interview him," Bateman said. "We didn't interview him until around 9 o'clock, so when I called her she figured we had already done the interview."
Turns out Bateman called her mother just seconds after wrapping the interview – which was recorded by Duell – and introduced her to Moore via Facetime. Needless to say the elder Bateman was quite surprised.
"You got a sweetheart of a daughter," Moore said. "She puts on a really good interview. She's prepared, she does her homework. She's a sweetheart. She's on her way."
Also with Moore was Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, executive producer of "S.W.A.T," a new CBS show starring Moore that dramatizes the division between the police and the African-American community. Duell got the chance to ask Thomas how his life experiences influenced the show.
Lipscomb wants to bring a sneak preview of "S.W.A.T." to campus this fall, in advance of its November 2 premier. He also hopes to have a representative from the show available for a Q&A with students.
Bateman and Duell conducted their interview with Moore and Thomas on the final night of the convention. Sanford interviewed Landau during the convention's opening ceremony and began by asking him how he got involved in filmmaking.
"Well you know I went to school and studied film, so as you're a student in school you can appreciate that," Landau said. "So that was really a big part of it. And then it's about asking yourself what are films supposed to do. Give audiences escape, but an escape that's about something. It has a theme and that's what our movies have, and that's what Disney's 'Pandora – The World of Avatar' has."
Lipscomb said the trip was great and he hopes to take students to the convention next year in Detroit.
"You don't want to wait until you've graduated from college to begin competing as a professional," Lipscomb said. "I want our Bennett students to have training that matches or exceeds that of any student in the country. I'm grateful to Dean Keonte Coleman, the College's Senior Leadership Team and, of course, Dr. Dawkins for providing this wonderful opportunity for our students."
Laurie D. Willis
A message from The President
PHOTOS: Welcome Week at Bennett College!
President Suzanne Walsh talks re-imagining and re-inventing Bennett College with FOX8 WGHP
Suzanne Walsh Named New President of Bennett College, Brings Extensive Expertise in Leading Educational Transformations
Bennett College Announces Departure of President


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text:
Jonathan Hernández (born July 6, 1996) is a Dominican-American professional baseball pitcher for the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball (MLB). He made his MLB debut in 2019.

Career
Hernández signed with the Texas Rangers as an international free agent on January 30, 2013 for a $300,000 signing bonus. He spent the 2013 and 2014 seasons playing for the Dominican Summer League Rangers. He spent the 2015 season with the Arizona Rangers of the Rookie-level Arizona League, going 1–1 with a 3.00 ERA in 45 innings. He spent the 2016 season with the Hickory Crawdads of the Class A South Atlantic League, going 10–9 with a 4.56 ERA in  innings.

Hernández started the 2017 season with the Hickory Crawdads of the Class A South Atlantic League and was promoted to the Down East Wood Ducks of the Class A-Advanced Carolina League. He was chosen to represent the Rangers in the All-Star Futures Game. He combined for a 5–11 record with a 4.03 ERA over  innings in 2017. The Rangers added him to their 40-man roster after the 2017 season. He began the 2018 season with the Wood Ducks, and received a midseason promotion to the Frisco RoughRiders of the Class AA Texas League. Hernández posted a 4–2 record with a 2.20 ERA, with 77 strikeouts in  innings in 10 games (10 starts) with the Wood Ducks. In 12 games (12 starts) with Frisco, he posted a 4–4 record with a 4.92 ERA and 57 strikeouts in 64 innings. The Rangers optioned Hernández to Frisco to open the 2019 season,
and he went 5–9 with a 5.16 ERA over 96 innings with them.

The Rangers promoted Hernández to the major leagues on August 20, 2019. He made his major league debut on August 21 versus the Los Angeles Angels; pitching  scoreless innings and earning the win. Hernández finished the season with Texas, going 2–1 with a 4.32 ERA and 19 strikeouts over  innings. In 2020, he went 5–1 with a 2.90 ERA and 31 strikeouts over 31 innings for Texas.

On March 9, 2021, Hernández was shut down for at least four weeks after being diagnosed with a "low-grade" sprain of his ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. On March 30, 2021, Hernández was placed on the 60-day injured list. On April 12, 2021, Hernández underwent Tommy John surgery and missed the 2021 season. Following completion of rehabilitation assignments, Hernández returned to action for Texas in July 2022. He finished that season after posting a 2–3 record with a 2.97 ERA and 27 strikeouts over  innings.

On January 13, 2023, Hernández agreed to a one-year, $995K contract with the Rangers, avoiding salary arbitration.

Personal life
Hernández's father, Fernando Hernández, pitched in Major League Baseball. Jonathan was born in Memphis, Tennessee, when his father played baseball there, but he was raised in the Dominican Republic.

See also
List of second-generation Major League Baseball players

References

External links

1996 births
Living people
American sportspeople of Dominican Republic descent
Baseball players from Memphis, Tennessee
Major League Baseball pitchers
Texas Rangers players
Dominican Summer League Rangers players
Arizona League Rangers players
Hickory Crawdads players
Down East Wood Ducks players
Frisco RoughRiders players
Round Rock Express players
Águilas Cibaeñas players
American expatriate baseball players in the Dominican Republic

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
How to build a technology strategy
By Helen Beckett
CIO	 Jun 10, 2012 5:00 pm PDT
The CIO Panel Prof Simon Orebi Gann, director, Next Generation Data, former CIO of BA and senior IT executive at Marks & Spencer David Jack, David Jack, CIO, The Trainline, former director of engineering at Betfair Dr Peter Chadha, Chief Technology Officer at The Office Group, former director, Technology Consulting at BDO
Technology strategy is tricky territory because it is both intimately tied to the broader aims of business and conversely executed in the nitty gritty of technical detail.
Technologists tied up in day-to-day operations may be lulled into thinking concentrating on point solutions constitutes a strategy.
In contrast to fluffy thinking shaped by acronyms and buzzwords, tech strategy calls for clarity and boldness, recommends Professor Simon Orebi Gann, former CIO of BA and designer of LIFFE Connect, a global automated trading platform.
He cites the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus as an inspiration for chiefs tasked with developing tech strategy.
"No one crossed a chasm in two small leaps".
Seasoned CIOs know that technology and business strategies are intimately linked and this can make unpicking the technology piece more difficult: technology is both a servant of IT enabling efficient delivery of business goals, and an innovative force for business.
To act as if they are divorced would result in tech strategy hitting road blocks and business missing out on commercial opportunities.
Happily, if you go with the assumption that both need to be developed in tandem, our experts believe it is possible to separate out thinking about tech strategy. Our panellists give their expert opinions.
Put it on paper The technology strategy is likely to be the focus for a tech company, or a subset or interchangeable with the IT strategy, in most large organisations.
In SMBs, there's often no strategy beyond a plan that's in someone's head. Formalising it and putting it into a document not only gives it more gravitas but crucially tests the thinking behind it.
Bringing everything together in one place encourages reflection and the necessary challenge to ensure the content is truly In short, this gestation period of documenting a plan can elevate it to a strategy. (PC)
Process, process, process The strategy or plan doesn't have to follow a particular process, but there must be a process.
Otherwise, the danger is that technology will be retrofitted to what you do, and then you end up calling it a strategy.
Think about where you want to go and then select the best technologies to let you get there. (DJ)
Think like a town planner Early on, you'll have to formulate a clear, high level architecture and it's a bit like designing a town.
It's no use worrying about the colour of the bricks or even whether a house should be on a site without first sorting out the big pieces and how they fit together.
With towns, a lot of this concerns scale and capacity: how many schools, medical care, shops and social hubs do we need to support a population?
It translates in the technology world to working out what and where the reference data, major transactions and transactions flows are in the business. (SOG)
Design the architecture Once the high level design is in place, appropriate system elements can be bolted into place.
If it's a manufacturing concern, 90 per cent of activities may be supported by a SAP system in vanilla format, say.
Or if it's an innovative business, the CIO may need to build in a clutch of R&D systems.
For an Internet retailer, a stock management system may be the core component.
Putting these key pieces and their supporting systems onto a blank piece of paper with linkages in between creates your architecture. (SOG)
Make commercial calls Once you have this organised, at a lower level you can start to think about numbers of servers, where they are hosted, who hosts them, and preferences for product.
Choices may include whether to build your own software or buy it in, whether to run your own data centres or to outsource their management.
Many of these decisions are commercial and may be dictated by business priorities.
Increasingly nowadays companies prioritise their capital for their own core business and use third party data centres, where there should also be cost advantages from economies of scale. (SOG)
Not a greenfield site? It's likely that any CIO of a large organisation will have inherited a legacy strategy rather than the luxury of a greenfield site to build a tech strategy from scratch.
However, any CIO with an ambitious transformation remit can reach for that blank piece of paper.
Take the above steps to define where you want to be and to create your ideal high-level scheme and lower level architecture. After that it's a case of working out how to get there. (SOG)
The tagline way It's possible to just come up with a clever tagline. Citrix perfected this approach with its anyplace-anytime-anywhere approach, which everyone in the company got right away.
If some product enhancement was suggested that didn't comply with this motto, they'd demand why we were proposing to spend 20 per cent of our budget on it. The danger is that it can lead to over simplification, and if you're not a product company, it can sound particularly weak. (DJ)
The cheat's strategy This is useful for when you have so much stuff in place already, that strategising is merely a way of articulating what you've got.
Start with what you have and explain why this is supporting the business.
It's an analytical process and the underlying principle is it's the only thing you've got so you might as well stick with it.
There's a health warning though: don't get succoured into thinking this was a reflective strategy. (DJ)
Do a rolling review Whichever above approach suits your business and purse, you need to do a regular review.
Many government departments work in five or even seven-year plans but that's too far out for most commercial concerns.
Who could have predicted the predominance of the tablet PC five years ago and the trend for BYO (bring your own)?
Tech companies will review every few months but for other companies, an annual, rolling review will provide the necessary assessment, and opportunity to tweak or plug tech gaps. (PC)
Pic: janetmckcc2.0


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