Welcome to the McDonald Elementary School Web Site. We hope you will find it helpful.
McDonald Elementary School is one of three elementary schools in the Centennial School District. It is located at the intersection of Street Road and Reeves Lane in Warminster, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Everett. A. McDonald Elementary School is the namesake of Dr. Everett A. McDonald, the first Superintendent of the Centennial School District. Dr. McDonald was a caring and talented educator, a graduate of Yale University and an innovative leader. In 1964 he was the driving force behind the construction of the first building which was comprised of four interconnected circular buildings and two rectangular wings. The original design consisted of a gymnasium/auditorium and cafeteria connected by a stage, classrooms with special features for the physically challenged, a library, a planetarium/special experience room and a swimming pool.
In the spring of 2010, the Centennial Board of School Directors voted to combine Longstreth and McDonald Elementary Schools beginning the 2012-13 school year.
Today, the newly constructed McDonald Elementary School houses a little more than 800 kindergarten through fifth grade students, including students from the district's special education programs. We also offer an array of support services for English Language Learners (ELL), gifted students and students needing remedial reading and math. Homework Clubs and before and after school care enable parents to fulfill their responsibilities, secure in the knowledge that their children are safe. Our Home and School Association is active and generous in supporting us with the resources we need to continue many excellent traditions.
We are proud of our school, students and staff. We invite you to visit us during American Education Week held in November of each year. If you would like to visit our school at another time, please call for an appointment.


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by Squatchy | 10 comments
Playing with Fire: An Intro to the Ideas of Richard Wrangham
Written by: Sarah Strange
An Intro to the Ideas of Richard Wrangham
" Nowadays we need fire wherever we are. Survival manuals tell us that if we are lost in the wild, one of our first actions should be to make a fire. In addition to warmth and light, fire gives us hot food, safe water, dry clothes, protection from dangerous animals, a signal to friends, and even a sense of inner comfort. In modern society, fire might be hidden from our view, tidied away in the basement broiler, trapped in the engine block of a car, or confined in the power station that drives the electrical grid, but we still completely depend on it."
Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and the author of the book and source of this excerpt, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. His theory picks up where Man the Hunter leaves off, explaining the major transition of our species from the apelike ancestors to the manly ones. He explains how mastering the use of fire affected us in every aspect of our lives, from being able to live without the protection of the trees, to the structure of our digestive systems adapting to the inclusion of cooked foods, and with greater digestibility and a less-expensive digestive system, the bonus of increased brain size. As you read his explanation, even within the first few pages, you realize that his theory is genius and you can't help but shake your head at how obvious it seems.
Ditch That Fur Coat and Come out of the Tree House
Most primates sleep in trees. This is a handy insurance policy against being snatched away in the night by a crafty predator. Why would we start sleeping on the ground? This would have illustrated a decrease in brain size, unless there is some factor we weren't thinking of… like fires. Nighttime predators would have cautiously avoided fire and the chances that we would be better able to see them coming or hold watch in the night by firelight, and would have enabled us to live farther from the trees and forest. And how did we lose all of our body hair without a greater source of nighttime heat? At some point, somewhere, somebody must have dropped food into a fire or discovered a cooked something or other… it must have been almost as earth shattering as the invention of ice cream. Barbecued lizards!
Adapted to Cooking
To me, this is where it really gets interesting. So we start scavenging a little, add brains and marrow to the menu, get a little brain boost out of it, start making knives. Cool. We do this for a while, a few million years, no big deal, then suddenly we go from zoo creature to the Geico commercial guy? It's clear that Homo erectus was a much better hunter than the hairy little habiline butchers, but the common sense concepts of evolution go a little wacky when we learn that erectus' jaw and teeth shrank. This is not a structural improvement if you're going to be eating a lot of raw meat or raw plant matter, and successful adaptations rarely suck.
Not only did we show up with smaller jaws and teeth, accompanied by much weaker jaw muscles, we also showed up with shorter digestive tracts, small stomachs and small colons. Our boss should have fired us on the spot for incompetence. These changes to our "outfit" make it impossible for us to extract the same amount of energy from raw plant matter as our ape ancestors, and impossible to tear through and masticate raw meat as well as our carnivore acquaintances. We don't keep food in our stomachs as long as carnivores do, which is what enables them to break down raw meat. We don't keep food in our colons as long as other primates do, which allows the fibers to ferment long enough to derive a lot of calories from them. Apes keep food everywhere longer than we do. In their giant mouths, giant stomachs, not-so-small intestines, and of course, their giant colons. Great apes eat at least twice as much by weight as we do, and fiber composes 30% of their diets as opposed to 5-10% of ours. Humans also have a reduced physiological tolerance for raw vegetation high in toxins and tannins that apes and monkeys can clean through pounds of in a sitting. We can't even hang in long enough to chew some of their favorite foods because the chemicals are either extremely bitter or severely agitating- some can even numb our mouths like novocaine. We are food wusses. If our guts are inflamed, handling fiber at all is a pain.
However, our digestive system is highly proficient at digesting cooked food. Digestion is a costly process in terms of how much energy is needed to carry it out, and just like greater muscle mass being more energetically expensive to maintain, so is a giant digestive tract. The adaptations of the human digestive system are less efficient at digesting raw plant matter and raw meat, but highly efficient when the food has been partially broken down and processed prior to consumption. Interestingly, the adaptation of smaller teeth can be produced independent of genetic evolution, just by weaning an animal on soft, cooked foods.
The Energy Theory of Cooking
Wrangham's energy theory of cooking states that the more digestible a food is made by thermal processing, the more access you would have to it's calories. A food that has been softened by cooking (some of it's starches gelatinized and it's proteins denatured) will be moved along much easier, and your gut will appreciate it's decreased workload. Pre-processing is the same reason we chew our food, so this really isn't an abstract concept. Some types of cooking can make portions of food less digestible, like searing a steak- that outside part of the steak, while delicious, is less-digestible. Some nutrients can be lost in run-off juices not added back to the food before eating, but all in all, cooking greatly helps us out. Typically the minor amount of nutrient loss does not account for the even greater amount of nutrients lost in undigested food that winds up in our septic tanks.
In the 1990's, Belgian gastroenterologists tested the digestibility of raw vs cooked egg by examining the contents of the ileum, the end bit of the small intestine. Ileostomy patients were digesting around 51% of the raw egg as opposed to 91% of the cooked. Healthy subjects digested 65% of the raw egg and 94% of the cooked. Wrangham and two of his colleagues tested the effect of thermal and nonthermal processing of meat and starch in 2011, and demonstrated that the energy gain from the thermally processed food was greater than nonthermally processed food.[1] Observational evidence shows us that most animals will prefer cooked food if it's offered to them, and they will gain more weight on cooked diets over raw diets. This is why the raw diets we put our fat dogs on work so well.
Unfortunately, this has not at all been widely tested, and the National Nutrient database does not factor for digestibility. Not everyone is on the same page yet. The current system used to determine the caloric value of foods is the Atwater system, which determines how much protein, carbohydrate, fat, and alcohol are in a given food, then counts up the values assigned to 1 gram of each of these nutrients. One of Wrangham's research partners, Rachel Carmody, explains the failings of the current system:
"The system is based on principles that don't reflect actual energy availability," Carmody said. "First, the human gastrointestinal tract includes a whole host of bacteria, and those bacteria metabolize some of our food for their own benefit. Atwater doesn't discriminate between food that is digested by the human versus the bacteria. Second, it doesn't account for the energy spent digesting food, which can be substantial. In both cases, processing increases the energy accrued to the human. Such evidence suggests that food labels do not properly account for the effects of food processing." [2]
Yet another reason why OCD attempts at calorie counting fall short of their attempted accuracy.
The cooking theory makes absolute sense, but it still has to tackle the myth that most of us have been operating under, that raw, unadulterated foods are "better" for us. Well, define "better". In a world where calories are scarce, like the one our species grew up in, making energy more available by cooking would have been "better". Could we have survived and would we have evolved to the very expression of the species that created Facebook on a raw diet? We'd have to make that one look pretty good to sufficiently deflate the cooking theory. Let's take a quick look at the raw camp and see if it seems plausible that we evolved to eat raw, that we could really thrive on raw back in the day and not wind up with 4' long torsos and a yap that would put Mick Jagger to shame.
Raw foodist theory points out that our genes are 99% chimp, chimps were pretty much vegetarians, and they were raw foodists, so therefore that's how we should eat. Nevermind the 5 or so million years of evolution between us, and the subtle differences, like they're in zoos and we're in condos.
In 2006, the Brits conducted an experiment on 9 unhealthy individuals over the course of 12 days, known as the Evo Diet. They put them in their own plot in the zoo, and fed them a raw diet, under the supposition that this is the diet we were evolved to eat. Go ahead and chuckle, I just did. What does being in a zoo have to do with a diet supposedly evolved for humans? Anyway, the diet they were fed for 12 days consisted of a variety of raw fruits and vegetables, nuts, and seeds, and in the second week they were fed a little cooked oily fish. The people ate until they were full, taking in up to 10 pounds of food a day with about 2500 calories. The people running the experiment were happy with the improvements in health, but shocked by the weight loss averaging .8 of a pound a day, since they were consuming enough calories to maintain weight, according to their calculations.
There are only three studies conducted on the body weight of raw foodists, according to Wrangham's book. The most comprehensive of them was the Geissen study, which questioned and examined 513 raw foodists. This isn't quite as legit as confining people to a zoo for 30 years, but what was shown was that the higher the percentage of raw food in the diet, irrespective of whether or not they consumed meat, the lower their BMI. One third of those who ate purely raw had body weights that categorized them as being in a state of chronic energy deficiency. The Geissen study also found that 82% of long term raw foodists included some cooked food in their diets. The study also showed that the more raw food women ate, the less likely they were to have regular periods, many of whom had completely ceased to menstruate. This equates to being infertile and losing bone mass. Some raw foodists (and I did hear this one at a raw food guru talk I attended once upon a time in Boulder) claim that menstruation and ejaculation are just a body's way of eliminating toxins and once you become truly clean, ejaculating and menstruating is no longer necessary. Facepalm! Seriously, I remember the promises of menstrual cycles practically becoming "unnecessary", provided you really stuck to it. While this does sound like an upshot, it's kind of like promoting the loss of your legs by saying you'll never have to run 400m repeats. Locomotion: just for the overachievers!
The last sort-of nail in the coffin for the theory that raw foods are our evolved diet, is that they would never work in the wild. Wrangham found no reports of long term survival in the wild on a raw diet. Most commonly, rapid starvation is the biggest threat to survival in the wild on raw foods, even with intimate knowledge of edible forage, just ask Robb and the I Cavemen cast. What makes a modern raw foods diet livable is that we now have unlimited access to food processing, making nutrients a little more available. Blenders, dehydrators, grinders, sprouting, and grocery stores that can provide year-round access to produce and nut butter that clearly would be hard to scrounge up in the wild. Also keep in mind that these domesticates are a wee bit more energy dense than they were in the wild. The German team also found that 30% of the raw foodists' calories came from lipids that would have been inaccessible to any hunter gatherer.
So without these modern conveniences, how well do you think they would do? Anybody really wanna try? And judging by the fact that many of them cease to be reproductively functional, how well do you think we'd do if this was our evolutionary strategy?
I think the cooking theory just won. Maybe for some of you this was like watching a dance battle, and you're not so sure. And so what is he saying? That no one should ever eat raw food? Taking a look at the waistlines in our country, including more raw foods in our diets, provided they aren't teeming with parasites, could be a great way to reduce the energy load of our meals… or, if you're trying to get jacked to holy hell and need as much help as you can get, then cook it up! If your dog's a fat ass, give him some raw kibble. The temperature at which you should cook your food is a whole other exciting discussion, but low and slow seems to be the winner.
It's compelling to think that the use of fire and cooking created the shape of our faces, hairless (more or less) bodies, and short torsos. Our shortened digestive tracts are adapted to including cooked food. Now ponder all the other ways we're all hooked on fire, and Wrangham's theory that cooking made us human seems more than natural.
1. Energetic consequences of thermal and nonthermal foodprocessing
2. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/why-cooking-counts/
Human adaptation to the control of fire
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/evan.20275/abstract
Sarah is a resident of Denver, Colorado and co-owner of a gym where she coaches, heads up the nutrition seminars and counseling, and organizes the local foodshares program. Her athletic background includes 13 years as a ballet dancer, martial arts, yoga, Pilates, triathlon, and currently focuses on Olympic weightlifting.
Squatchy
Christopher Williams (a.k.a. Squatchy) is a paleo aficionado, educator, personal trainer, wellness coach, and hobbyist chef. He also works as part of the Robb Wolf team.
Categories: Anthropology, General
Lactate – Waste Product or Causative for Cancer?
My Training at 48
Patti J says
Wow that's a great deal of food for thought or food for digestion! As someone who is perpetually trying to get back to her 25 year old waistline I have tried Vegan, Partially Raw and every other diet. I have not achieved success yet at Paleo but what I have achieved is a steadier energy and less illness.
Good to hear we don't have to eat our meat and fish raw to get the health benefits. While I do sometimes eat them raw, I certainly like cooking them for more flavor and to kill off the bacteria and virus's from the 1-5 people who have handled my food before I bought it!
Thanks for the summary Sarah!
-PJ
JMH says
Don't worry about your waist. Focus on how good you feel; that's way more important than how you look. Sometimes, we've done enough damage to ourselves that our bodies are justly paranoid. It just takes a while for them to trust us enough to let go of the insurance policy, especially if you're double-x (ie, a girl).
There's some good reason to think adding a bit of raw stuff, both vegetable and animal, to our diets is a good thing. (And fermenting is another way of cooking, I guess, so even though it's raw sauerkraut, it's not raw cabbage anymore.) Variety is usually a good thing to aim for. Play around with it; you'll know when you've hit the right ratio for you, and it'll probably change depending on the season. I can't eat cooked anything in the summer, except very rare beef after dark, and I can't eat anything raw in the winter at all, even fruit. *shrug* Bodies.
What a seriously cool article! I love just looking into the flames of a fire…. so to think there is a whole lot more behind my fascination with it… so cool!
Thanks for the great article! Lots of interesting and useful information and ideas to ponder.
Oh god, Boulder people are so crazy. I should know, I was one for 8 years!
You seem like a cool, smart person. I live in Denver too and I'm trying to meet other paleo people here. Email me if you want to meet up in the "real world". [email protected]
Sarah Strange says
Thanks for the positive feedback, guys 🙂
Jamie Chrzanowski says
Hi Sarah!
So proud of you! This is a fantastic read. Thanks for sharing!
Jamie C.
Thanks, Jaime!!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Injury on another's premises could mean compensation
On Behalf of Godosky & Gentile, P.C. | May 2, 2014 | Premises Liability
People find themselves in circumstances that are beyond their control on a daily basis. For example, you can't control if a bathroom floor is wet, and a slippery floor could cause you to slip and injure yourself in an instance of premises liability. It is the responsibility of an occupant's owner to provide adequate warning of potentially dangerous circumstances. If owners fail to provide adequate warning, the results could be serious for uninformed victims.
An Oregon woman is facing a $275,000 lawsuit following an incident in which her pet duck allegedly assaulted a passerby in the street. The victim suffered a sprained elbow and a broken wrist. Most notable about this incident is that neighbors knew of the duck's danger and that it had a history of violent behavior, including assaulting children at the bus stop.
While New York residents likely don't have to worry about errant duck assaults, there are a number of very real dangers that the big city poses. From being injured on a faulty elevator to falling down a broken staircase, dangerous circumstances on a premises could mean serious injury to unsuspecting victims. Even inadequate lighting can fall under the umbrella of dangerous circumstances. Any instance in which negligence on the part of a property owner results in suffering for another, it could be an issue of premises liability.
New York residents who have been injured on the premises of another could suffer issues such as lost wages or unexpected medical bills, causing serious financial problems on top of the physical problems brought on by the accident. Fortunately for these victims, the law protects victims of a premises liability case, and proving that negligence played a part in your injury could see you compensated for your suffering.
New York Daily News, "Quack attack: woman claims injuries by pet duck, sues owner for $275,000" Joe Kemp, April 24, 2014


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Land Use Matter Taxing for Church
Nearly two millennia ago, Jesus of Nazareth sagely taught his followers to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's". In the 21st century it appears that the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania had similar advice for a Cheltenham congregation of the First Korean Church of New York, Inc. (hereinafter "the Church") in the recent matter of First Korean Church of New York, Inc. v. Montgomery County Board of Assessment Appeals, Cheltenham Township, Cheltenham Township School District, Montgomery County, and Montgomery County Board of Commissioners (1551 CD 2010) (hereinafter "the Case").
Montgomery County Board of Assessment Appeals, Cheltenham Township, Cheltenham Township School District, Montgomery County, and Montgomery County Board of Commissioners (hereinafter "the Government") sought to collect property taxes on the real estate used by the Church. The Church, of course, argued that it was entitled to a tax exemption as a principal place of religious worship. The issue of whether the Church was entitled to an exemption to the taxes the Government sought forms the dispute addressed by the Court in the Case.
The Case's procedural history is rather long and tangled, including stops at the Montgomery County Board of Assessment Appeals, Township of Cheltenham Zoning Hearing Board, the Court of Common Pleas (hereinafter "the Trial Court"), the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and one previous stop at the Commonwealth Court. Ultimately, the Government was granted Summary Judgment by the Trial Court which was appealed to theCommonwealth Court. TheCommonwealth Courtremanded to the Trial Court on the issue of whether the property was entitled to a tax exemption. Upon remand, the Trial Court conducted a two-day non-jury hearing resulting in a decision adverse to the Church, specifically that the Church was not entitled to a tax exemption as an actual place of regularly stated religious worship. The Church appealed to theCommonwealth Courtonce again, and it is the opinion issued from this appeal that is discussed herein. The central issue discussed in the Case was whether the property-at-issue (hereinafter "the Property") the Church claimed it was using, was an actual place of regularly stated religious worship; if it was, the tax exemption applies, if not, the Church would not receive the exemption. In making its analysis, the Court focused squarely on the evidence presented by the parties at the aforesaid trial.
The Church initially alleged that it was a Korean Presbyterian denomination and that its pastor resides at the Property. The Property is large, with multiple buildings surrounded by a chain link fence with a couple of locked gates as the only entrances. Only one of the locked entrance gates was used and could be controlled by remote control from within the buildings at the Property. The Church further alleged that a more senior cleric visits the Property once per month to preside over services and those services occurred each Sunday from4:30pmto6:00pm, which is followed by a congregational dinner. The pastor testified at trial and admitted that the Church's services are frequently attended only by his family and he controls the remote controlled security gate. Additionally, while there is no sign at the Property identifying it as a church, the Church asserted that the lack of a sign was due to a zoning restriction.
The Government countered the Church's allegations by asserting that the Property was in extraordinary disrepair and its grounds were overgrown and unkept. Indeed, the Trial Court found that the Property requires more than $10,000,000 in repairs to make it usable. In addition to "keep out" signs and other forms of security (such as the aforementioned remote controlled security gate restricting access to the Property), the only rooms on the Property which were heated were those used as the pastor's residence. The Government called a local police officer as a witness who conducted surveillance on the Property on seven (7) different occasions. The police officer testified that he never saw anyone enter or exit the Property when services were alleged to have occurred, however he did see the pastor travel from one building to another within the Property to where services occur each Sunday. Indeed, the Government implied that the Property was primarily the pastor's residence as opposed to a church.
The Court determined that much of the Church's evidence was not credible. For example, the photographs presented by the Church were from before 1998, and the Church presented no recent photographs or recent church bulletins to demonstrate current religious use. Ultimately, in view of the above evidence, the Court ruled that the Property was not used primarily as a church and, therefore, was ineligible for a tax exemption.
On appeal to the Commonwealth Court, the Church argued that that was no evidence that the Property was used for any other purpose aside from a church, that it has rooms which are clearly designed for a church to use, and that the Government repeatedly admitted the Church was what it claimed to be through various pieces of correspondence and such. The Church also attacked the surveillance evidence by indicating that the police officer never interviewed anyone at the Church, that half of the surveillance reports were incomplete, and that, per the aforesaid reports, the lights were on in the building when the Church claimed to have services occurring. Significantly, the Church pointed out that despite the claims for tax exemption made by the Church, and the allegedly extensive investigation and surveillance by the Government into the same demonstrating that the Church's claims were allegedly bogus, the Government never pressed any charges when it allegedly discovered that the Church made spurious tax claims. The Church asserted that the Government's failure to act with regard to the crime of tax fraud allegedly committed by the Church was evidence that there was nothing illicit or false in the Church's claim for a tax exemption and that the surveillance conducted on the Church was simply for the purpose of creating trial evidence.
Upon a full review of the evidence below, the Court ruled that the Trial Court did not commit abuse of discretion or an error of law in finding against the Church. The Court found that there was sufficient evidence presented by the Government to prove that the Property was not primarily used as a Church. The Court found that the Trial Court conducted an accurate and rather thorough analysis of the facts and issues presented and did not abuse its discretion or commit an error of law. The Court found that there was simply insufficient evidence to prove that the Property was used by the Church primarily for religious purposes.
In the final analysis, when seeking a tax exemption, a Church must ensure that the Property it uses is primarily used for religious purposes; otherwise Caesar must receive what is his from it.
Originally published on January 10, 2012 in the Pennsylvania Law Weekly section of The Legal Intelligencer and can be found here.
Posted in My Articles: Religion (generally) and the Law and tagged attorney, board, cheltenham, church, code, court, exemption, judge, korean, land, lawyer, ordinance, pennsylvania, phildelphia, presbyterian, property, tax, use, zone, zoning
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T-Shirts & Stuff
ORIGINAL ACRYLIC ARTWORK ON CANVAS
Jim Clark was Scotland's first, and double, Formula One World Champion, Indy 500 winner, and one of the greatest racing drivers of all time.
Clark was born in Kilmany in Fife but grew up in the Scottish Borders.
He was a British sports car champion in 1959, took third place at the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1960, and was British saloon car champion in 64.
Also,  Formula One World Champion in 1963 and 1965 before his death in a crash at Hockenheim, he was 32.  In one fatal moment 50 years ago, on 7 April 1968, a sporting legend was gone.
"The world mourns the loss of a likable man who was also one of the greatest Grand Prix drivers of all time," said the British Pathe news announcer at the time.
Clark Airborn


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Muller's latest BEST stuff is the worst so far
Ex climate sceptic' Muller's latest BEST stuff is the worst so far
Non-partisan' group abandons pretence of neutrality
By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author
Posted in Energy, 31st July 2012 10:14 GMT The Register
Analysis Richard Muller's Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, which began with goodwill from all corners of the climate debate, has made a series of bold announcements (without benefit of peer review) to the effect that global warming is definitely serious and definitely caused by humans. This has aroused derision among formerly supportive climate sceptics, caused an eminent climatologist to abandon the project, and even drawn criticism from generally alarmism-sympathetic media commentators.
Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, is often regarded as a climate sceptic because he has frequently criticised the techniques used by climate scientists in the past and because he accepted funding for BEST from libertarian oil billionaire Charles Koch. When BEST launched in the wake of Climategate, it vowed to be "an independent, non-political, non-partisan group", with Muller promising that "there will be no spin, whatever we find". Critics of the existing temperature establishment, including well known sceptics Anthony Watts and Doug Keenan, welcomed it.
However each announcement has been aggressively trialled in the press not only before the peer review process had judged them ready for publication - which may not be a major issue - but also before anyone outside the BEST project could examine the papers at all. This requires the ordinary reader to take BEST's accompanying press releases on blind faith - which is not a barrier for some journalists, but is far short of acceptable practice. (The publicity is handled by Muller's daughter Elizabeth, who is the actual executive director of BEST. Ms Muller holds degrees in Literature and International Management, and has worked as a consultant in such fields as e-government, "profitable sustainability" and government energy policy. In fact she still does, alongside her work at BEST.)
BEST renewed its science-by-release offensive last week, including an ambitious assertion that Prof Muller could attribute warming to the specific cause of carbon emissions by curve fitting (capturing the trend in the data by assigning a single mathematical function across the entire range).
Now an independent expert who peer-reviewed one of the four new BEST journal submissions has published his comments. The BEST team stated that the paper had not been rejected by peer review and no major flaws had been discovered. This does not appear to be true: the Journal of Geophysical Research ended up rejecting the BEST paper on UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects.
Last September, Ross McKitrick - an associate professor of economics - was asked by the geophysical research journal to review the BEST heat-island paper, which had been submitted to the journal. McKitrick is the economist whose statistical analysis, with Steve McIntyre, of a well-publicised temperature reconstruction led to Congressional hearings in 2006. These hearings endorsed McKitrick and McIntyre's work and raised serious questions about the conduct of the paleoclimate science community.
McKitrick was asked last year to review BEST's approach to grappling with the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect. It's fair to say he wasn't impressed.
McKitrick said he had discovered "serious shortcomings" in BEST's methods and said "their analysis does not establish valid grounds for the conclusions they assert." He continues: "I suggested the authors be asked to undertake a major revision."
McKitrick's reports are here and here, as short PDFs.
The second comment is worth taking the time to read, as new research using a much more comprehensive classification system puts the lack of rigour in dealing with the UHI effect in the spotlight. BEST appears to replicate the lack of rigour, and worse, appears not to care overmuch:
In their Journal of Geophysical Research submission, the BEST team writes:
"We are not asserting that surface temperature data are unaffected by urbanization, but that a global average based on data that includes stations that may have warmed due to urbanization is not significantly different to one based only on stations that are assumed not to contain urban effects."
McKitrick comments, rather acidly:
I suspect that any reasonable reader, upon completing the paper, would be startled to learn that the authors did not intend to assert that surface temperature data are unaffected by urbanization. I think the above sentence was meant to say something like: "We are not claiming there are no contaminating influences in individual locations, only that they are too small and isolated to affect the global average."
Unfortunately the whole issue is whether their methodology reliably supports this conclusion, and in this draft they have done nothing to deal with the evidence that it does not, instead they simply assumed the problems away.
Muller also made the claim that he was a former climate skeptic, which was rapidly disputed.
"If [Al Gore] reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion — which he does, but he's very effective at it — then let him fly any plane he wants," Muller told climate activist website Grist in October 2008, rather undermining his claim to be sceptical or even impartial at that point.
All this leaves much of the press, including the New York Times - which indulged Muller by giving him an op-ed space last week to announce his latest results - with some explaining to do.
This seems to have been acknowledged even by the New York Times Malthusian-in-Residence, Andy Revkin, a very widely read environment columnist who is generally sympathetic to the warmist position. Revkin wasn't impressed with the Mullers' "PT Barnum showmanship".
Meanwhile, the most distinguished co-author of the early BEST papers last year has declined to be involved in the latest. Dr Judith Curry, Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and President of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN), describes the work as "oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion".
There's a critical analysis by two early participants in BEST, writing in a personal capacity, on Curry's blog, here.
The BEST team uses some interesting techniques, such as kriging – estimating values at locations which haven't been sampled by using a weighted average of neighbouring samples to estimate the 'unknown' value at a given location, so named for geostatistics pioneer Danie Krige – to compensate for sampling biases in station coverage.
The team also examines more stations than existing temperature series. However, BEST fails to use the latest, and more comprehensive, WMO standard for station quality, which results in low quality data. And it's limited, by design, to ignore satellite and sea readings – thus ignoring most of the Earth, which is mostly covered by water.
All in all, it would seem that BEST's stated goal - to produce absolutely undisputable climate data and science, for all that this would mean a regrettable absence of simple, clear soundbites - has been abandoned.
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Still in the battle: an interview with Roger Craver
Joe Burnett
Recently, friend of SOFII Craig Linton shared a great article by Nick Burne highlighting the amazing work the American Civil Liberties Union has been doing in response to the election of Donald Trump and his immediate attack on civil liberties for a number of groups, from Muslims to women to the LGBTQ+ community. We decided there could not be a better time to talk to The Agitator's Roger Craver about this time of momentous protest and civic action. Roger is a legend in the American fundraising sector, having been a key figure in the civil rights movement of the sixties and seventies before founding the pioneering advocacy organisation Common Cause. In addition to regularly airing his wisdom and insights on The Agitator, Roger is still actively involved with ACLU, The Southern Poverty Law Center, the women's rights movement as well as dedicating his considerable energies supporting a charity that helps survivors of torture and asylum seekers.
Given that rich, fascinating and unique background, we couldn't wait to get his thoughts on what's currently taking place across the USA and in fundraising in general.
Hi Roger! Could you please tell our readers a bit about your background in protest movements and activism?
I started off in the civil rights movement in the late fifties and early sixties and from there went on to the anti-war movement in the late sixties after Dr King was assassinated. Then I went on to a fledgling organisation called Common Cause, which was the first advocacy organisation that accepted money in small amounts as opposed to being funded by the labour unions or by a small number of very wealthy individual donors. Common Cause was the first modern organisation to prove that you could attract tens of millions of dollars in small – $10, $15 – amounts.
It was out of Common Cause that the example grew for the founding of organisations like the National Organization for Women, the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, all of which I helped to organise in the late sixties and early seventies. Most of my active career was spent building these types of citizen activist organisations and dealing with not only raising money but also the battles that occurred as a result, be it voting rights, fighting for equal pay, protection of the right to have an abortion, or conflicts of interest in government like the Watergate affair. So, yeah, a lot of years spent raising hell and trying to do something for human rights and human dignity. And I'm still doing it after 55 years – the battle keeps going. You don't realise it when you're young or a student, but these battles never stay won. Once you win a right there's always going to be some son of a b**** who wants to take it away! That's the evergreen aspect of this type of work.
How do you see the current upsurge in protests and campaigns? Is this a rebirth, reminiscent of the protest movements of the 1960s?
It's both reminiscent and different. It's reminiscent in that there's a great deal of upset on the side of progressives or mainstream people in reaction not just to Trump's victory but to his behaviour as well. People are pretty spooked. That's reminiscent of the civil rights movement, when television showed African-Americans being beaten and having police dogs set on them, or children being bombed in churches. That was the early-to-mid sixties. It's also reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam War protests of the late sixties and early seventies when people took to the streets, conducted teach-ins at universities. It's finally reminiscent of the women's rights movement, particularly around the issue of abortion and reproductive rights when, again, women took to the streets in defence of the right to choose.
Where it isn't reminiscent is in the speed at which this has occurred, mainly because of social media. There was some concern that, although social media is powerful in terms of forming instant groups and getting people to take instant action at least electronically, the digital aspect might not translate into what is really essential for a lasting protest movement, which is on the ground activity. It seems to have translated quite well because, as you saw, the day after Trump's inauguration we had the largest on the ground protest in the history of the nation, I think. Certainly in the history of Washington DC and it happened in dozens of cities across the United States, and also in Europe and Asia.
So it does seem that the grassroots have been activated by digital and, unlike what used to be called 'slacktivism', people signing a petition or doing something online only, it has a more lasting impact than we would have normally suspected. There are well-organised groups across a range of issues, from women's rights to the Black Lives Matter folks to education reform to childcare to family leave: all of those issues that percolate below the surface have popped out and are gaining considerable constituencies and look like they will last for a longer period than the usual digital movements.
What do you think is so specific to Trump that people have become so galvanised? I acutely dislike the man, as I'm sure do many, but I don't recall seeing such a level of activism when George W Bush, who was also very conservative, was president. Is it just down to Trump's language and use of social media?
It's a combination of things. It's partly his language. Not so much his political incorrectness, because I think he probably wins points from various parts of the political spectrum for that, I think it's his vulgarity and narcissism. It's the belief on the part of those who oppose him that there's no substance there, it's all a charade. He will pick a topic and point of view in the moment for a rally or quick news soundbite, but he doesn't have anything grounded in policy.
People are also fearful that Trump is accompanied by a US congress and a US senate, possibly even a judiciary, which are quite conservative and, therefore, offer foundation for some of the nonsense he spouts. So people are fearful that some of his crazy ideas that appeal to conservatives – and not all of his ideas do – may find a fertile seabed and take growth in the conservative congress. That's the root of the political activism. People understand that healthcare, such as we have it in the United States, can be taken away pretty quickly, that women's rights could be destroyed pretty quickly, that voting rights – which are already under threat – could be further harmed. There's a feeling of urgency and impending doom that acts as the lubricant for this energy and action that we're seeing in the country.
Women's march in Washington DC
Do you think that lessons have been learned from previous protest movements, or even that there are any we need to take?
The lesson to be learned from all protest movements is that persistence and sustainability are required in an age of instant gratification and instant communication. As a general rule, people's attention spans are not that great so the general worry for anyone who understands protest movements is sustainability. Can it last? People are remarkably unaware of history. These protest movements don't produce instant results. For example, it took 144 years for women to win the right to vote in the United States! It took 90 years between the end of the Civil War and the right of African-Americans to vote. These movements have to be long-lived because making social change and political change in any culture is extraordinarily difficult. The big fear is that people will grow weary, or lose interest and move to the next shiny thing.
Now that doesn't appear to be happening now, this latest resistance – as some call it – is getting stronger or at least maintaining strength. There aren't many signs that people are abandoning [the movements], in fact there's pretty good evidence that organisations like the ACLU are taking full advantage of the political climate and organising the people who have surfaced and beginning to train them. For example, the ACLU has mounted a training programme for this new wave of supporters and their existing members on what to do when the immigration authorities come calling, what to do if stopped by a cop or immigration officer, what to do about voting or reproductive rights, and so on. So there's a lot of training happening at the grassroots level.
If nothing else, and I think there will be more to come, there will be hundreds of thousands of people who are more aware of their rights and how to protect them. The benefit has already been felt, and I suspect this is also occurring in Europe. In the UK, for example, people have a much better awareness of how government works. Now, this doesn't mean that people are suddenly going to become students of history or civics, but it does mean – and you can see it in the increasing newspaper circulation figures here in the US and the emergence of new online media sites and podcasts dealing with civic life – that Trump is the spark that has ignited a far greater awareness about civil society and government than existed prior to this.
You sound really positive!
Oh I sound positive in the sense that there's a resistance out there and it's clear that the resistance will pay money to support its growth and cover the legal, technical and organisational expense of sustaining a movement. What isn't clear is whether collectively these movements can make headway in parts of the country that we call the red states, which are fairly stuck in the past and afraid of globalisation. All for legitimate reasons, I don't demean peoples' fear. Just as you have millions of people in your former industrial regions who can't find work, we have millions in the same situation in these red states. Unfortunately, they're listening to politicians who say they can bring the work back, which they can't. The work wasn't lost just because of globalisation, it was lost because of automation, which is increasing with developments in artificial intelligence. The trends are really against the old industrial revolution model that the UK pioneered and the US perfected. Those days are over, but there isn't really an acceptance by people that change has already occurred and we need to find a new model.
Unfortunately, the degree of intensity on both sides of the political spectrum is such that it makes working out a solution very, very difficult. We're in a period of political name-calling and mean-spirited behaviour on both sides. Until we can somehow get to the middle, where these things are always resolved, it's extraordinarily difficult. And that will take a long, long time, so we're in for an extended period of turmoil. That's why I raise the issue of whether these protest movements can sustain themselves for a long enough to become part of the political fabric. For example, can Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign supporters be woven into office seekers and office holders at local, state and then even federal government level? Where do the politicians of the future come from? It's a generation-long transition that we're going through.
Tune in next week for the second part of our interview with Roger. To whet your appetite, here's a selection of the questions we asked him:
Do you think it's harder to make that transition when you come from the left and are potentially challenging the status quo?
How did the ACLU campaign start?
Do you think the internet facilitates or hinders transparency?
Do you think there are lessons in responsiveness to a crisis that could be learned from the current climate in the US? For example, the UK fundraising sector has yet to respond uniformly to its own crisis of nearly two years ago.
Is this a good time to be a campaigning fundraiser in the USA?
About the author: Joe Burnett
Joe Burnett is Contributing Editor for SOFII.
Creating gender equality in the charity sector
A rallying cry for gender parity from fundraiser and founder of Charity Women Lizzi Hollis.
Moving from fairness to openness
Exploring the issue of fairness Jen and Beth Ann demonstrate how progress can only come about through inclusive and insightful dialogue within our organisations.
It's just not fair!
What are you doing to combat gender inequality in your organisation? Join SOFII's campaign.
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Gender imbalance


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Say No to Colour Discrimination
PUBLISHED ON: March 13, 2015 | Duration: 0 min, 30 sec
Every society, every country all over the world, has its share of social evils – racism, class discrimination, religious bigotry to list just a few and India is no exception. But perhaps there is one social evil that is widespread and deep routed in India, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is being done to change it – it's the widespread discrimination based on the colour of your skin. White is beautiful, dark is ugly. Colour prejudice in India is not only widespread, it's getting worse every decade. What would you do if you come face to face with it?
What's Your Choice - Special Edition
What's Your Choice: Special Edition
Sexual Harassment, a Blot on Our Society
Why Girls Should Raise Their Voice Against Harassment
A What's Your Choice Special: How India Reacts to Social Injustice?
What's Your Choice Special Edition: How India Reacts to Social Injustice
Why Younger Generation Fails to Show Patience Towards People With Disabilities
Why People With Disabilities are Denied Their Basic Rights
What's Your Choice - Special Edition 51:09
What's Your Choice: Special Edition 0:33
Sexual Harassment, a Blot on Our Society 0:30
Why Girls Should Raise Their Voice Against Harassment 5:01
A What's Your Choice Special: How India Reacts to Social Injustice? 47:11
What's Your Choice Special Edition: How India Reacts to Social Injustice 0:30
Why Younger Generation Fails to Show Patience Towards People With Disabilities 7:00
Why People With Disabilities are Denied Their Basic Rights 9:50


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8 Famous Japanese Athletes
Japan boasts a great number of world-famous athletes who fascinate and captivate sports fans around the globe with their outstanding skills and talent. Some rank among the best players in the world and have consecutively won international competitions and championships, and some have been chosen for Japan's national team and competed with top athletes from other countries at the Olympics. Who are the most well known Japanese athletes and what sports do they play? Read on for a list of some of Japan's most famous athletes!
1. Ohtani Shohei (大谷翔平)
2. Hachimura Rui (八村塁)
3. Osaka Naomi (大阪なおみ)
4. Nishikori Kei (錦織圭)
5. Hanyu Yuzuru (羽生結弦)
6. Matsuyama Hideki (松山英樹)
7. Matsuzaka Daisuke (松坂大輔)
8. Suzuki Ichiro (鈴木 一朗)
Jeffrey Hayes, (CC BY 2.0), via flickr
Whether you like baseball or not, you have probably heard his name before if you are in any way interested in sports or watch the news at all. Ohtani Shohei, aka 'Shotime' is a world-famous Japanese baseball player who is currently playing in the MLB (Major League Baseball) in the United States. Originally from Japan's Iwate Prefecture, he started to play baseball when he was in 3rd grade of elementary school. Unlike other top baseball players, Ohtani is a two-way player who has exceptional skills both as a pitcher and a batter. Since 2018, he has been playing for the Los Angeles Angels in the American League. He was also officially selected as the rookie of the year in 2018 and the most valuable player (MVP) in 2021.
All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hachimura Rui is a professional basketball player. He has a Japanese mother and a Beninese father and was born and raised in Toyama Prefecture of Japan. Before he started playing basketball, he spent his childhood trying out a wide range of different sports, including baseball and short-distance sprinting in track and field. In junior high school he joined the basketball team and helped them win the All Japan High School Tournament two years in a row in 2013 and 2014. He was selected first in the NBA (National Basketball Association) draft by the Washington Wizards in 2019, which was the first time a Japanese basketball player had been chosen as the first pick in NBA draft history.
Carine06, (CC BY-SA 2.0), via flickr
Osaka Naomi is a professional tennis player from Osaka. In 2019, she was officially ranked as the #1 female tennis single's player in the world and was also the first Asian tennis player in history to achieve this. Although she used to hold dual citizenship in the U.S. and Japan, she officially chose Japanese citizenship on her 22nd birthday in 2019. She grew up in an international household with a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, and usually does interviews in English rather than in Japanese. In her career as a professional tennis player she has won a number of international tournaments and titles, including Grand Slam titles for four consecutive years from 2018 to 2021. This includes the U.S. Open in 2018 and 2020 and the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021, and Osaka is the first Japanese tennis player ever to win the Grand Slam title.
Carine06, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Another world-famous Japanese tennis player is Nishikori Kei. He was born in Matsue, the prefectural capital of Shimane Prefecture. His outstanding talent as a tennis player started to show when he was in elementary school. In 2001, he won the "All Japan Tennis Championships for Kids" at the age of 12. He became a professional tennis player in 2007 and won his first ATP tour title the following year, being only the second Japanese tennis player in history to accomplish this. He was only 18 years old at the time, and his world rank was 244. He is also known as one of the world's highest-paid tennis players with earnings of more $23 million in prize money. He currently lives in Florida in the U.S., and participates in international tournaments around the world every year.
David W. Carmichael, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hanyu Yuzuru is one of the most famous Japanese athletes and has an enthusiastic fan group across the globe. He is a professional figure skater and is originally from Miyagi Prefecture. His beautiful skating techniques and exceptional performances are consistently acclaimed at international championships. He won a gold medal in men's single figure skating at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, and again at the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018. During speeches and interviews in recent years he has often mentioned a quadruple axel jump (which requires four and a half rotations within one jump) as his ultimate goal as a skater. At the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, he challenged himself to try this jump in his free skating program. Although he wasn't successful, many people were impressed by his courage to attempt it and it will always be remembered in the history of figure skating.
Srixon/Cleveland Golf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Matsuyama Hideki is a professional golfer who was born and raised in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, and is recognized worldwide. As his father used to be an amateur golfer, Matsuyama started to play golf at the age of four. In 2010, while he was at university student, he won the Asian Amateur Championship as the first Japanese golfer in history to ever do so. He became a pro golfer in 2013 and won multiple domestic tournaments and titles in Japan. After graduating from university in 2014, Matsuyama officially started to participate in international golf tournaments. His first PGA Tour win was at the 2014 Memorial Tournament which was held in the United States. Since then, he has been successful as a professional golfer with remarkable performances at some of the worlds biggest international tournaments. In 2021, he became the first Japanese golfer to win the Masters Tournament. Although he finished the Tokyo 2021 Olympics in 4th place, expectations are high for his future as one of the top golfers in the world.
Paul Gorbould, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), via flickr
Matsuzaka Daisuke is a retired professional baseball player from Japan's Aomori Prefecture. Matsuzaka has played not only for professional baseball teams in Japan, but also in the MLB from 2007 to 2014. After spending his early childhood in Aomori, his family moved to Tokyo where he practiced kendo (剣道), a traditional Japanese martial arts form, from age five to nine. He started to play baseball when he was in the 3rd grade of elementary school. In his final year of high school, his baseball team won The National High School Baseball Tournament (koshien in Japanese) which is Japan's most famous high school baseball tournament and held in spring and summer every year. During his years in the MLB, he played for the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets. In 2021, he made an official announcement about his retirement after finishing the season.
Malingering, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), via flickr
Suzuki Ichiro is known as one of the best baseball players of all time in both Japan and America playing professionally for 28 seasons total in both countries. He grew up in a small town in Nagoya of Aichi prefecture. He played for the Orix Blue Wave in Japan for 9 years before be decided to take his talents overseas to the MLB in America. There, he instantly became a star for the Seattle Mariners and ended up winning Rookie Of The Year as well as making the All Star Team. He has endless achievements that include his record breaking 262 hit season, AL MVP, 10 time gold glover, and 10 time All Star. He hung up his cleats in 2019 with the Seattle Mariners but is still loved by people all over the world and is known as a legend in the sport of baseball.
Playing sports enriches one's life, and professional athletes remind us of the importance of making a continuous effort and never giving up. Sports also have a special power to unite people regardless of nationality or the language they speak. If you ever have the chance to watch a game or match of any of the famous Japanese athletes on our list, please cheer for them and their future success!
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From private walking tours to delicious Food and Drink tours, we can help you organize the best tours just for you! If you want to explore Japan and learn more about the history and backstories of each area you are visiting, our knowledgeable and friendly English speaking guides will happily take you to the best spots!
In addition, we can provide you with any assistance you may need for your upcoming trip to Japan, so please feel free to contact us if yu have any questions or need some help!
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Sumo: A Complete Overview and How to Get Tickets
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Sports Events in Tokyo - Getting Tickets to Sumo, Baseball, and More!
In this article we will highlights the most important sport events and competitions in Tokyo and explain how to get tickets to visit!
10 Most Popular Sports in Japan and Where and When to Enjoy
Sports have always been a big part of the Japanese culture with traditional sports like judo and sumo still being immensely popular. In this article we'll discuss some of the most popular sports in Japan and how you can enjoy them!
CultureSports
Why You Should Learn Japanese
Ever wondered if learning Japanese would be something for you? Read on to learn about the many benefits of knowing the Japanese language!
Japanese Family Crests
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How to Become "Maiko", Apprentice Geisha, in Japan
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Ultimate Classic Halloween Playlist!
We thought it would be fun to share a piece of nostalgia for Halloween music lovers. Back in 2017 HorrorHound Magazine featured an extensive article detailing the history of classic Halloween Rock & Roll! We scoured through over 150 holiday tracks during the creation of this article, and decided to
HHW After-hours and Horrors of Cosplay Event
By Jessica_Hanneman | 0 Comments | In News
HorrorHound Weekend: Indianapolis is almost here, we wanted to take a moment to post a rundown of the exciting events happening on Friday and Saturday nights – which includes an Evening with Henry Rollins, performances by John 5 and the Creatures (with special appearances on stage by Scott Ian and
Bobcat Goldthwait Misfits & Monsters at SDCC
truTV is headed to San Diego! The network today announced that it will be bringing comedic anthology series Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters to San Diego Comic-Con for its first-ever official panel on Thursday, July 19 at 2:15pm in Ballroom 20.Crawl inside the twisted mind of writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait in
HorrorHound Film Fest - The Flatwoods Monster
By jasonhignite | 0 Comments | In News
The HorrorHound Film Fest is very pleased to include the new installment of cryptozoolgical/paranormal investigation from Seth Breedlove. His previous documentaries on The Boggy Creek Monster and The Mothman grabbed the attention of HorrorHound fans. His new film will definitely not let you down! The HorrorHound Film Fest is part
HorrorHound Film Fest: Funny Night
The HorrorHound Film Fest (#h2f2) loves to make you scream ... but, sometimes, we like to make you laugh! We are excited to announce a night of comedy. The Friday Night Funny Fright will be four solid hours of horror comedy, dark comedy, and gore comedy. The HorrorHound Film Fest is part
Primal Rage Returns to Theaters
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Marvel's Monsters Unleashed
It's hard to find more exciting and colorful characters than those of the Marvel Universe. Marvel has long been home to mirth, mayhem, and monsters – and they continue this tradition with Monsters Unleashed, a new ongoing series which is a spin-off of the popular mini series. Cullen Bunn, known for his
Tom Cruise's The Mummy Comes Home!
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has announced that The Mummy will be unleashed onto digital video formats this August 22, 2017 – and later, on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand this September 12, 2017. The Tom Cruise-starrer will come packed with over an hour of special bonus content – including:Deleted and Extended ScenesCruise & Kurtzman: A Conversation Rooted
Funko Unveils New Monsters!
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Audacious Mamas - Inspiration and Strategies for Mompreneurs
Feeling your way to success with Amy Wong of Alwaysonpurpose.com
Are you an Audacious Mama? A mom in business for herself who's raising, kids and building a profitable business? Audacious Mamas show a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks, and they do! Join Steph as she interviews victorious moms juggling it all and sharing how their home life ties into their business. Learn tips and strategies on running your business and being as efficient as possible to free up your time while you grow your income. We'll also explore products and systems that make life and business easier for female entrepreneurs. Subscribe and join the Audacious Mamas Community - we'd love to have your input!
It's International Women's Day 2022, as I post this. I'm thrilled to feature Amy Wong, an incredible Mama who's an executive leadership coach advising leaders, executives, and teams on all things related to growth, transformation, and flow.
Here Amy shares the lightbulb moment after she had her first child and how she's shifted out of the traditional "shoulds" that are the formula for success and learned to tune in and feel her way to what truly lights her up, helps her live on purpose, be happy and truly thrive.
Consider how anxiety, stress, living in survival mode, and being resilient often takes us OUT of our bodies and our natural intuition. We have the best of intentions but it skews and amplifies some of the most negative unhealthy emotions that make us feel stuck.
So many thoughts here about shifting out of that and learning to BE and listening to our natural urge for something more.
And, how that shift can be the biggest gift to regaining our sanity as moms and thriving and finding abundance and joy!
Check out Amy's NEW Book! Coming May 4th.
Living on Purpose
Amy's website: https://www.alwaysonpurpose.com/
Follow Amy on social media
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/amyelizawong
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyelizawong/
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Guides and Resources to thrive and live on purpose.
https://www.alwaysonpurpose.com/resources/
Thanks for tuning in and subscribing. Please share with friends who need to hear this.
Lots of Love to you! xoxo!!
Audacious Mamas show features moms in business who've demonstrated tremendous grit, clarity, motivation, and an ability to tap into their intuition to create something amazing all the while juggling children, a home, and a partner. Audacious Mamas are take surprisingly bold risks! But how do they make it all work behind the scenes? Learn tips and strategies for getting is all done while staying sane. We'll also explore products, strategies, and systems that make life and business easier for work-at-home entrepreneurs. Subscribe and join the Audacious Mamas Community - we'd love to have your input!
© 2016 Stephani Roberts and AudaciousMamas.com


These Fryoles are terrific ! I love these seasoned pinto beans with my rice or pasta dishes. Do try them out with your favorite main courses and let me know what you liked these Fryoles with ! Your suggestions for these Fryoles are welcome .
Wash and clean beans, cook over low heat in warm water for 2 hours.
Add onion, garlic and seasonings, bacon and drippings.
Cook 2 hours longer adding water as needed.


"There isn't additional money to borrow, there isn't additional money to give." In a meeting with the Tribune Editorial Board, Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool warned that classroom budget cuts would be necessary if teachers don't agree to concessions in a new contract and if state lawmakers don't come through with $215 million for the district's budget. Aug. 9, 2016.
"The alternative is cuts to the classroom," Claypool said during a meeting with the Tribune Editorial Board. "We don't believe it's the right thing to do, and we're hopeful that upon reflection the teachers union will understand that's not the right thing to do either."
Claypool also said classroom budgets would be cut if state lawmakers don't come through with $215 million to prop up the district's budget. That money hinges on agreement on pension reforms in Springfield.
Claypool continued to make the case that the union is the only entity that has yet to make the sacrifices necessary to put the district in a financially tenable position this year. The state approved education funding measures in June, the district has trimmed expenses and the city has enacted additional taxes to help schools, Claypool said. "That leaves only the teachers' union as the obstacle to, you know, protecting our classrooms."
The CTU responded by saying Claypool would have only himself to blame for any classroom cuts.
"I think if he wants to take a look at who's been doing the cutting and who's responsible for the cutting, he should look in the mirror," CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said. "To turn around and blame that on us is really hypocritical and not acceptable."
Chicago Public Schools on Monday unveiled a $5.4 billion operating budget proposal that assumes the Chicago Teachers Union will accept a contract similar to one a CTU bargaining team soundly rejected earlier this year.
CPS' $5.4 billion operating budget proposal has not only renewed tension between the district and the union, it has prompted questions about what the district will do if the full amount of state assistance fails to materialize.
Last year, CPS borrowed money to help cover a $480 million budget shortfall, Claypool said. That's not an option this year, he said.
"There isn't additional money to borrow, there isn't additional money to give. We have been as generous as we can possibly be with the teachers," Claypool said. "We have a very fair proposal on the table, and it can be altered in different ways; we can provide other incentives. There's a lot of things we can do as part of a global negotiation. But there is no pot of gold."
The district said its proposed operating budget is $232 million smaller than last year's and covers a $300 million shortfall that still existed after the state passed education funding measures in June.
Claypool expressed confidence the state will follow through on the pension reforms that will provide $215 million to help pay the enormous tab CPS owes to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund in June.
"The alternative would be to cut classrooms by $215 million, which would hardly be responsible when the leaders of the state of Illinois are saying 'we promise you that we will get this done,'" Claypool said.
While Claypool said he doesn't believe the district "is in a position to continue borrowing for operational purposes," the district will need a short-term line of credit to stay afloat this year. CPS will also continue to rely on borrowing to fund construction projects and other expenses.
"It's disappointing that the CEO of the schools sees teachers as the obstacle. I thought we were the solution," Sharkey said. "I thought we were the people holding together the schools despite the cuts he's been implementing for the last year."


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prandisound » Electronic » Caught In The Act - Take Me To The Limit
Caught In The Act - Take Me To The Limit mp3 download
Caught_In_The_Act Europop Euro_House 2000 Germany
Performer: Caught In The Act
Title: Take Me To The Limit
Style: Europop, Euro House
Format: MP3 FLAC AAC MP1 AU AUD ADX DXD XM
Genre: Electronic / Pop
Caught in the Act (shortly called . is a half English, half Dutch boy band. Caught in the Act was established by Dutch record producer Cees van Leeuwen in 1992 with the four original members of the group, called Lee Baxter and Benjamin Boyce from England along with Eloy de Jong and Bastiaan Ragas from the Netherlands. The band released the non-album singles "Hey you", "Gonna make U mine" and "Take me to the limit".
caught in the act take me to the limit. play) (pause) (download) (fb) (vk) (tw). Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit (1994). Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit.
Take Me To The Limit. Caught In The Act. Caught In The Act - We Belong Together/Six Years O (MP3 Album). 13. We Belong Together (Farewell Song).
Watch the video for Take Me To The Limit from James Carr's 24 Karat Soul for free, and see the artwork, lyrics and similar artists. 2 more albums featuring this track.
Caught in the Act is a live album by Styx, released in 1984. It contains one new song, "Music Time", which was released as a single, reaching on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Caught in the Act is also the name of a VHS video recording that featured the band acting out the concept established in their Kilroy was Here album. A DVD version was released on December 11, 2007. I can see no other way Than to give you all my love So I'll take it slow But before you know it You've tied up my heart I'm in chains I've been caught In the act of love I feel so crazy What can I do I've been caught In the act of love And it's
Dies ist NICHT die offizielle Seite der Band Caught in the Act. Unsere Seite wird vo. .
1 Take Me To The Limit (Radio-Edit) 3:59
2 Take Me To The Limit (Club-Edit By Orbiter)
Mixed By – Andy Velte*, Christian WalterRemix – Orbiter
3 Take Me To The Limit (Club-Mix, Original) 6:01
4 Take Me To The Limit (Accapella-Piano Version) 3:30
Engineer [Mix] – Peter Bulkens
Producer, Written-By – Peter Bauwens, Phil Wilde
(C) & (P) 2000 Zyx Music
UCO 0006-8 Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit (CD, Maxi) Undercover Records UCO 0006-8 Germany 1994
FCDS 002 Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit (CD, Single) Front Page Records FCDS 002 Europe 1994
WAY 1011 Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit (12") One Way Records WAY 1011 Italy 1994
002 FMS Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit (12") FMS 002 FMS Belgium Unknown
FMS 002 Caught In The Act Take Me To The Limit (12", Whi) FMS FMS 002 Netherlands Unknown
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弾丸 NO LIMIT - ソノ嘘ホント download mp3


Songwriter and Composer Studio owner in Chicago with a twist. We are pioneering new VR and AR film making as we continue to make music and work on our record. Blues and storytelling fan and once upon a time was a crazy glam rock lead vocalist in Hollywood. Worked for A&M Studios back in the day.


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Q: CoreNFC not reading UID in iOS I have tried a sample with CoreNFC in iOS, but it fails to read the manufacturer's UID of the NFC Tag, instead it expects message content from the Tag and reads only that, Is there any way to make CoreNFC read the NFC Tag's UID?

A: Edit: Updates to CoreNFC on iOS 13 mean you can now read most UIDs with compatible iPhones. To do so: see https://stackoverflow.com/a/57993069/3959708
It is possible to read the UID of a tag, but it will not be able to be submitted to the App Store because the API is private.
 - (void) readerSession:(nonnull NFCNDEFReaderSession *)session didDetectNDEFs:(nonnull NSArray<NFCNDEFMessage *> *)messages {

  NSArray *foundTags = [session valueForKey:@"_foundTags"];
  NSObject *tag = foundTags[0];
  NSData *uid = [tag valueForKey:@"_tagID"];
}

This thread has more info:
https://github.com/hansemannn/iOS11-NFC-Example/issues/16

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange