New Zealand's Dan Carter will leave French Top14 outfit Racing 92 and sign a two-year contract with Japanese club Kobelco Steelers at the end of the season, French media reported on Saturday.
The 35-year-old two-time World Cup winner told French sports daily L'Equipe he wanted to be closer to his native New Zealand.
"It's been a very tough decision, to leave my new friends and all my teammates and go play for Kobe Steel," said Carter, the highest points scorer in Test match history, in an interview aired on Canal Plus on Saturday.
"But Japan is a very exciting place to be right now, and an exciting place to play."
"It's also only one flight away from New Zealand and the way the Japanese season is structured means I and my family will be able to spend much more time in New Zealand," said Carter who played 112 times for his nation.
"Rugby is going crazy in Japan and this is a very exciting challenge."
Carter also confirmed the move on his Instagram account, posting this picture with the caption: "Excited to announce I'll be joining Kobe Steel Kobelco Steelers rugby team in Japan for next season. These decisions are never easy but I must thank @racing92 for their support."
Excited to announce I'll be joining Kobe Steel Kobelco Steelers rugby team in Japan for next season. These decisions are never easy but I must thank @racing92 for their support.
Kobelco Steelers are based in Kobe, and Carter's move will help raise the profile of the sport in Japan before the country host the 2019 World Cup.
Suffering from various niggling injuries Carter has only played four times so far this season.
"Now that my mind is made up, I'm determined to get over this knee injury because we want to win the Top14 and we want to win in Europe too," he said.
"I hope to be playing again soon."
Now 35 the three-time winner of Rugby's world player of the year Carter joined Racing in 2015, winning the prestigious Top 14 in his first season.
But the global icon was also caught up in a drawn-out cortisone use scandal dating from tests taken at the 2016 Top14 final. He was eventually exonerated.
In February, his image was further tarnished when he tested two-times over the legal alcohol limit and was dropped by his sponsor Land Rover.


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League of Legends: Why I don't care if Europe never wins worlds
Hannah Worthy
Image description: a League of Legends character statue carrying a sword, surrounded by ice
Since the first world championships in 2011, the question of which server is the most competitive has been hotly debated amongst fans and professionals alike. Generally, there is a division between the largest eastern leagues (China's LPL and South Korea's LCK) and the two largest western leagues (Europe's LEC and North America's LCS), but EU Vs NA banter can be seen in all corners of the internet. Historically, the west has won only the very first world championship in 2011, and with all LEC and LCS teams eliminated this year, the supremacy of the eastern leagues is uncontested. The question that I often get asked is "if the teams you follow never win, why do you always have hope that this year is the year?"
It's true, international success has been limited for the west. The closest taste we got to victory was in 2019 when Europe's G2 won the Mid-Season Invitational (the second biggest event in the League of Legends calendar) and came second in the World Championships, losing to China's FunPlus Pheonix in quite a brutal fashion. Despite this, every year European and North American fans turn up to tournaments in droves, bursting with 'copium' and 'hopium', and leading the charge on twitter with unrelenting boldness in their predictions and claims.
The closest taste we got to victory was in 2019 when Europe's G2 won the Mid-Season Invitational.
One such reason for this level of enthusiasm comes from the players themselves. European and North American GOAT (greatest of all time) players like Luka "Perkz" Perković, Matyáš "Carzzy" Orság, and, Nicolaj "Jensen" Jensen, tend to fan the flames on social media with grandiose claims and international banter that fans adore. When our players are happily tweeting about "gigastomping" on reigning world champions at 3am on a Tuesday morning, the fan base can't help but get excited.
Another reason western fans adore the game is the high quality of the production and broadcast crews who present the local and international events to us. Be it the monologues, caster curses and parody songs of the LEC, or the big personalities that co-stream over in NA – the analysts, casters, and hosts make the game what it is. They aren't shy to give their opinions, they scream and cry with the fans, and they meme about the rumours. Without them the chaos and precision we see at the highest level of the game makes no sense to the layman and the inevitable technical difficulties would be one long music or ad break.
One of the biggest names in esports hosting is Eefje "Sjokz" Depoortere, for over a decade she has led the way as a premier esports journalist, and she has hosted LEC since its inception. She is known for her compassionate interview style, her spectacular (although jinxing) monologues, and her general shenanigans on set (she's on TikTok now). She is the first face that many think of when you mention the LEC and she does a fantastic job of easing in newbies, be them fans or players. The other side of esports journalism comes in the form of investigative journalists like Jacob Wolf (plus his evil variant who leaks team drama) and Travis Gafford. Many publications have grown from the contributions of freelance journalists who publish content which varies from internal team comms to heartfelt interviews. They often become friends with the players themselves and offer a unique perspective into the lives of the players or amplify their thoughts on the state of the game and the professional culture.
The joys of a game such as League really comes from how interactive the talent we see on our screens and the fanbase can be with each other.
The joys of a game such as League really comes from how interactive the talent we see on our screens and the fanbase can be with each other. Through streaming on twitch, hosting podcasts, and vlogging behind-the-scenes content, fans really get to know the people they tune in for. Through skilful interviewing, in-depth analysis, and masterful storytelling, the dedication and the struggle of the players shine through the screen, and you feel like you know them just a little bit better.
One such example of this was the tragedy that came over Fnatic, one of the European juggernauts, during this world's season. After losing their franchise player to their biggest opponent at the start of the season many people wrote off the roster that was built by the organisation in the wake of this loss. After suffering through covid issues, technical difficulties, and growing pains it was a shock to many that they came through a lower bracket gauntlet run, playing more games in 2 weeks than they had in the whole split prior, and qualified for worlds as Europe's second seed. Fans and players alike were confident that the team could make a mark at the tournament after being bolstered by a few weeks of success, but all that changed when disaster struck. One of their biggest talents and personalities, Elias "Upset" Lipp, had to return home to Germany on the first day of the tournament. The substitute player Louis "Bean" Schmitz was brought in only a few hours before the first match and fans rallied behind the team.
Unfortunately, the team failed to qualify beyond the group stage losing 5 of their 6 matches. After such a performance, and little explanation from the organisation as to why the team fell apart, twitter analysts, reddit speculators, and concerned fans were left feeling confused and in the dark. But in times like this, esports really come into their own – the team's video editor, Pete, pulled together a masterpiece of a documentary in no time at all. He managed to capture the raw emotion that the team felt behind the scenes while respecting the privacy of those involved. He showed fans the team-building and support for Bean as the players and coaching staff navigated the evolving personal situations which manifested themselves so direly on the rift. The videos featured candid footage of hiking trips, interviews before and after the games, and tender moments between teammates which revitalised the fan base. Although the future of the team is uncertain, the fans are more vocal and positive than ever.
The electricity of watching with other fans is contagious and the camaraderie that comes from supporting a team that goes through chaos every offseason is something I wouldn't change for anything.
Many teams run similar content programs to this. For years, Max Olivio has produced TSM legends, which follows the players in their weekly lives with behind-the-scenes footage of their training and reactions to current events in the esports world. The leagues themselves produce content with the players – notably the EUphoria podcast from the LEC brings on a different pro-player or commentator each week to discuss professional leagues, changes to the game, and current drama. Finally, due to the massive commercialisation of the teams we now see lots of sponsored content. Fans tend to react poorly to traditional adverts so teams produce YouTube series such as the BMW driving school (where pro-players are put into cars they can't drive and given lessons by members of the BMW racing team), which allow the personalities of the players to be the selling point of the content.
Some of the bigger personalities stream on twitch, one notorious example is G2's Marcin "Jankos" Jankowski. He is quite comfortably the loudest man in League of Legends, but it is his sweet humour and interaction with the fans means he is beloved amongst the whole fanbase, no matter what team they support.
The final word to all this is the simple fact that I don't care if my team wins worlds or not, I love the players, the community, and the culture of the game. The electricity of watching with other fans is contagious and the camaraderie that comes from supporting a team that goes through chaos every offseason is something I wouldn't change for anything. It may not be a "real" sport, but it feels as real as any traditional sport does when you are in an arena screaming with hundreds of other people for a man named Bean.
Image credit: "League of Legends Season 3 Finals" by artubr is licensed under CC BY 2.0

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


In New York, you can provide some counseling-related services without a master's; you can even get certified in areas like substance abuse or problem gambling.
For the highest level of credentialing and the most employment options, though, you will need a master's degree and a state license. Early planning will give you the most opportunity.
Experience, either paid or volunteer, can strengthen your graduate school application. There are many options. New York City Health and Hospitals employs volunteers in a variety of capacities: art therapy, tutoring children, helping patients with reading or writing tasks. You will be required to make a time commitment and, in some instances, have special training. On the plus side, you may get high school or college credit, depending on your program.
You can also determine what area of therapy most interests you. New York licenses therapists in several related disciplines, not just in traditional counseling.
You can look for other volunteer opportunities on the site of NYC Service.
You have a lot of choices when it comes to your undergraduate major, but do look ahead to see graduate school requirements. Some schools require you to have a certain number of semester hours in fields that are related to counseling (for example, psychology, education, or human services). Learn about the undergraduate preparation here.
Request application information well in advance. Expect to submit writing samples and letters of recommendation.
Interested in school counseling? Enroll in a program approved by the New York State Education Department. The requirements for a permanent certificate are greater than those for a provisional certificate, but you can opt for a master's program that will give you all the coursework you need for the higher license.
Fingerprint clearance will be required at some point in the process. School counseling is considered a pupil personnel services field; you will find details on the certification page of the Office of Teaching Initiatives site. Interested in mental health counseling? Enroll in a program that is New York qualifying or, if located in another state, holds CACREP accreditation. New York maintains an online Inventory of Registered Programs.
Licensure as a professional counselor requires a period of supervised practice under conditions set by the Board. Before you can begin your supervised practice, you will need to obtain a limited permit. This allows you to practice in a particular setting under a specified supervisor. Any time you change or add a work setting or supervisor, you will need to have new information added to your permit.
You should apply for your permit only when you are ready to make a serious time commitment. You will be expected to complete 3,000 hours of supervised work experience. Your permit is good for a 24 month period, but you can get an extension for an additional 12 months.
Two years' of full-time work experience is also required to go from provisional school counseling certification to permanent certification. Learn more about licensed professional counselor requirements in NY.
Before you can be licensed as a mental health counselor, you must pass the National Clinical Mental Health Counseling Examination, which is administered by the National Board for Certified Counselors.


Dr Andrew Leigh MP won the 2018 Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing with 'From bloodletting to placebo surgery', an excerpt from his book Randomistas. The piece looks at the fascinating effects of sham surgeries and the history of randomised trials.
The Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund has sponsored the Bragg Prize for the next three years, which includes the major prize, the student prize and the publication, The Best Australian Science Writing 2018.
The $7000 winner's prize was presented by Professor Emma Johnston AO, Dean, UNSW Science, at a ceremony hosted by UNSW Press and UNSW Science on 6 November 2018. Runners-up prizes of $1500 each were awarded to Jo Chandler for 'Amid fear and guns, polio finds a refuge' and Margaret Wertheim for 'Radical Dimensions'. Preethika Mathan from Santa Sabina College, NSW, won this year's Bragg Student Prize for her essay 'i-Care'. Read it here.
Dr Andrew Leigh's award-winning piece is reprinted, with permission, below.
Standing in a sparkling white operating theatre, I'm watching my first surgery. On the bed is a 71-year-old patient having her hip replaced. Around the room are nurses, an anaesthetist, a representative of the company that makes the artificial hip, and an observing doctor. In the centre, gently slicing open the woman's hip with a scalpel is Melbourne surgeon Peter Choong. Easylistening music plays from the stereo. The atmosphere in the room couldn't be calmer. It's a familiar operation, and the team know each other well.
First incision made, Peter puts down his scalpel, and picks up a bipolar diathermy machine. Now he's burning the flesh instead of slicing it, a technique that reduces bleeding and speeds recovery. The room smells like a barbecue. Back to the scalpel, and a few minutes later Peter is in to the hip joint. To clean it out, he uses a device like a power drill. On the end is a metal sphere the size of a ping-pong ball, its rough surface designed to shave the hip socket until it's perfectly smooth. When he pulls it out, the ball is covered in bone and blood. Not for the first time, I'm glad I ate a light breakfast.
Modern surgery is a curious combination of brawn, technology and teamwork. One moment, Peter is swinging a hammer or lifting a knee joint. Next, he is fitting a prosthesis, watching a computer screen as crosshairs indicate precisely the angle of fit. The tension rises when the bone cement is mixed. As soon as the two compounds are combined, a nurse begins calling time: 'Thirty seconds … one minute … one minute 30.' At four minutes, it's inserted into the patient. At five minutes, the artificial joint is attached. Everyone in the room knows the cement will be hard at 10 minutes. After that, the only way to change the angle of the prosthesis is to chip the hardened cement out from inside the bone.
In an operating theatre, the surgeon is in command. And yet for all his expertise, Peter is surprisingly willing to admit what he doesn't know. Is it better to perform hip surgery from the front (anterolateral) or the back (posterolateral)? Should we encourage obese patients to get a lap-banding operation before knee surgery? How early should we get patients out of bed after a joint replacement? For antiseptic, is it best to use iodine, or does the cheaper chlorhexidine perform equally well?
Over the coming years, Peter hopes to answer each of these questions. His main tool: the randomised trial. A few years ago he led a team that conducted a randomised trial to test whether total knee replacement was better done the conventional way, or with computer guidance to help line up the implant. Across 115 patients, the study showed that computer assistance led to a more accurate placement of the artificial knee, and higher quality of life for patients. In other studies, he has randomised particular surgical techniques and strategies for pain management post-surgery.
Most controversially, Peter Choong is a strong supporter of evaluating surgical operations against a control group who receive 'placebo surgery'. For control group patients, this typically means that the surgeon makes an incision and then sews them up again.
Placebo surgery – also known as 'sham surgery' – is used when researchers are uncertain whether or not an operation helps patients. In one famous study, surgeons tested whether keyhole knee surgery helped patients with osteoarthritis. At the time, the operation was performed more than a million times a year around the world. But some surgeons had doubts about its effectiveness. So in the late 1990s a group of surgeons in Houston conducted an experiment in which some patients received keyhole surgery, while others simply received an incision on their knee. Only when the surgeon entered the operating suite did an assistant hand them an envelope saying whether the surgery would be real or sham. Because the patients were under a local anaesthetic, the surgeons made sure patients were kept in the operating theatre for the same length of time as in the real operation, and manipulated the knee as they would for a surgery. Two years later, patients who received sham surgery experienced the same levels of pain and knee function as patients who had real surgery.
Sham surgery dates back to 1959, when a group of Seattle doctors became sceptical of a technique used to treat chest pain by tying tiny knots in chest arteries. They randomly performed the experiment on eight patients, and simply made incisions in the chests of another nine. The study found that the technique had no impact, and the surgery was phased out within a few years.
In recent years, sham surgery has shown no difference between a control group and osteoporosis patients who have bone cement injected into cracked vertebrae (a procedure known as vertebroplasty). Sham surgery has even been performed by neurosurgeons, who found that injecting foetal cells into the brains of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease had no more effect than the placebo treatment, in which patients had a small hole, known as a burr hole, drilled into the side of their skulls.
The most stunning sham surgery result came in 2013. After the finding that knee surgery didn't help older patients with osteoarthritis, a team in Finland began to wonder about the knee surgery performed for a torn meniscus, the piece of cartilage that provides a cushion between the thighbone and shinbone. Their randomised experiment showed that among middle-aged patients, surgery for a torn meniscus was no more effective than sham surgery. This operation, known as a meniscectomy, is performed millions of times a year, making it the most common orthopaedic procedure in countries such as Australia and the United States. While some surgeons acknowledged the enormous significance of the finding, others were not so receptive. An editorial in the journal Arthroscopy thundered that sham surgery randomised trials were 'ludicrous'. The editors went so far as to argue that because no 'right-minded patients' would participate in sham surgeries, the results would 'not be generalizable to mentally healthy patients'.
Yet sham surgeries are growing in importance, as people realise that the placebo effect in surgery is probably bigger than in any other area of medicine. A recent survey of 53 sham surgery trials found that the treatment only outperformed the placebo 49 per cent of the time. But in 74 per cent of cases, patients appeared to respond to the placebo. In other words, three out of four patients feel that a surgery has made them better, even though half of the evaluated surgeries don't work as intended. The results suggest that millions of people every year are undergoing surgeries that make them feel a bit better; yet they would feel just as good if they had undergone placebo surgery instead.
Ethical questions will continue to be one of the main issues confronting sham surgery. In the 1990s one surgical text stated baldly that 'sham operations are ethically unjustifiable'. To confront this, researchers have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure patients understand what is going on. In the Houston knee surgery trial, patients were required to write on their charts: 'On entering this study, I realize that I may receive only placebo surgery. I further realize that this means that I will not have surgery on my knee joint. This placebo surgery will not benefit my knee arthritis.' Surgeons explain to each patient that the reason for the randomised trial is that the world's leading experts truly do not know whether the surgery works, a situation known as 'clinical equipoise'. Because we are uncertain about the results of the treatment, it is possible that those who get the sham surgery may in fact be better off than those who get the real surgery.
Despite the advocacy of surgeons such as Peter Choong, sham surgery remains in its infancy. A study of orthopaedic surgeries in Sydney hospitals found that only about one-third of procedures were supported by a randomised trial. Sydney surgeon Ian Harris points out that patients sometimes regard aggressive surgeons as heroic and conservative surgeons as cowardly. Yet 'if you look beyond the superficial you often find that the heroic surgeon will have bad results … it is harder, and possibly more courageous, to treat patients without surgery'. Harris notes that more aggressive surgeons are less likely to be criticised and less likely to be sued, and get paid a lot more.
Pittsburgh orthopaedic surgeon John Christoforetti tells of how the randomised evidence led him to advise a patient not to seek knee surgery for a meniscal tear. The man responded by going online and giving the surgeon a one-star rating and a rude comment. The patient firmly believed he needed the operation. 'Most of my colleagues,' Christoforetti says, 'will say: "Look, save yourself the headache, just do the surgery. None of us are going to be upset with you for doing the surgery. Your bank account's not going to be upset with you for doing the surgery. Just do the surgery." ' Sometimes it can be easier to ignore the evidence than to follow it.
In the Bible, the book of Daniel tells the story of an early medical experiment. King Nebuchadnezzar is trying to persuade Daniel and three other young men from Judah to eat the royal delicacies. When Daniel replies that they would prefer a vegetarian diet, he is told that they may end up malnourished. To settle the matter, the king agrees that for 10 days the four young men will eat only vegetables, and will then be compared with youths who have eaten the royal delicacies. At the end of the experiment, Daniel and the other three are in healthier condition, so are allowed to remain vegetarian.
Daniel's experiment wasn't a random one, since he and his colleagues chose to be in the treatment group. But the Bible's 2200-year-old experiment was more rigorous than the kind of 'pilot study' sometimes we still see, which has no comparison group at all.
In the ensuing centuries, randomised medical trials steadily advanced. In the 1540s French surgeon Ambroise Paré was a battlefield surgeon charged with tending to soldiers who had been burned by gunpowder. For these men, the chances of survival were grim. A few years earlier, in the Battle of Milan, Paré had found three French soldiers in a stable with severe burns. As he recounted in his autobiography, a passing French soldier asked if there was any way of curing them. When Paré said there was nothing that could be done, the soldier calmly pulled out his dagger and slit their throats. Paré told him he was a 'wicked man'. The soldier replied that if it had been him in such pain, he hoped someone would cut his neck rather than let him 'miserably languish'.
By the standards of today, Paré's experiment has its flaws. Suppose he had begun treating the most badly burned soldiers first, and then moved on to those with lighter injuries. In that case, we might expect those treated with oil to be in a worse condition, regardless of the effect of the remedy. Yet while Paré's study was imperfect, medicine continued to inch towards more careful analysis. Two centuries after Paré, Lind would conduct his scurvy experiment on a dozen patients who were 'as similar as I could have them'.
An important step on the road towards today's medical randomised trials was the notion that patients might be more inclined to recover – or at least to report that they were feeling better – after seeing a doctor. In 1799 British doctor John Haygarth became frustrated at the popularity of a quack treatment known as 'Perkins tractors'. The tractors were simply two metal rods, which were to be held against the body of the patient to 'draw off the noxious electric fluid' that was hurting the patient. In an experiment on five rheumatic patients, Haygarth showed that wooden rods performed just as well as Perkins tractors, giving rise to the idea of the placebo.
The placebo, Haygarth pointed out, was one reason why famous doctors might produce better results than unknown ones. If authoritative doctors evoked a larger placebo effect, he reasoned, then their patients might be more likely to recover, even if their remedies were useless. And indeed, the air of authority was highly prized by doctors of the time, despite the poor quality of their remedies. One of the main treatments used by doctors was bloodletting, which involved opening a vein in the arm with a special knife, and served only to weaken patients. It wasn't until the early 1800s that a randomised trial of bloodletting was conducted on sick soldiers. The result was a 29 per cent death rate among men in the treatment group and a 2 per cent death rate in the control group. Medicine's bloody history is memorialised in the name of one of the discipline's top journals: The Lancet. Before there was evidence-based medicine, there was eminence-based medicine.
In 19th-century Vienna, high-status doctors were literally costing lives. At a time when many affluent women still gave birth at home, Vienna General Hospital largely served underprivileged women. The hospital had two maternity clinics: one in which babies were delivered by female midwives, and the other where babies were delivered by male doctors. Patients were admitted to the clinics on alternate days. And yet the clinics had very different health outcomes. In the clinic run by midwives, a mother's chance of death was less than 1 in 20. In the clinic run by doctors, maternal mortality was 1 in 10: more than twice as high. Patients knew this and would beg not to be admitted into the doctor-run clinic. Some would give birth on the street instead of in the doctors' clinic, because their chance of survival was higher.
To Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor in charge of records, the results were puzzling. Because the two clinics admitted patients on alternate days, the health of the patients should have been similar. Indeed, it was almost as though the Vienna Hospital had set up a randomised trial to test the impact of the two clinics, and discovered the doctors were doing more harm than good. In trying to uncover reasons for this, Semmelweis first observed that midwives delivered babies while women lay on their sides, while doctors delivered babies while women lay on their backs. But when the doctors tried adopting side delivery, it didn't help. Then he noted that when a baby died, the priest walked through the ward with a bell; he theorised that this might be terrifying the other mothers. But removing the priest's bell also had no impact.
Then a friend of Semmelweis was poked by a student's scalpel while doing an autopsy, and died. Noticing that his friend's symptoms were similar to those of many of the mothers who died, Semmelweis theorised that doctors might be infecting mothers with 'cadaverous particles', causing death by puerperal fever. He insisted that doctors wash their hands with chlorine from then on, and the death rate plummeted. Only thanks to Semmelweis and an accidental randomised trial did it become safer to give birth attended by a Viennese doctor than on the streets.
And yet, like Lind's findings, Semmelweis's insistence on handwashing was rejected by many medical experts of the time. The germ theory of disease was yet to be developed. Many doctors were insulted by the suggestion that the hands of gentlemen like themselves were unclean, and by the implication that they were responsible for infecting their patients. After Semmelweis left the Vienna General Hospital, chlorine handwashing was discontinued.
Slowly medical researchers came to rely less on theory and more on empirical tests. At the end of the 19th century, diphtheria was the most dangerous infectious disease in the developed world, killing hundreds of thousands of people annually. To test the impact of serum treatment, Danish doctor Johannes Fibiger devised a randomised trial. Like the Vienna maternity hospitals, Fibiger assigned people to alternate treatments on alternate days. He found that patients given the serum were nearly four times less likely to die. The demand for Fibiger's treatment was so great that in 1902 the Danish government founded the State Serum Institute to produce and supply the vaccine to its citizens.
In the coming decades, randomised medical trials became more common. In the 1930s researchers suggested that the risk of investigators biasing their results could be significantly reduced if the person administering the drugs did not know which was the control and which was the treatment. Trials in which the identity of the treatments was hidden from both the patient and the administering doctor became known as 'double-blind' studies. In one telling, the term came from blindfold tests that the Old Gold cigarette company carried out to promote its products.
In the 1940s a randomised trial showed that antibiotics did not cure the common cold. A trial in 1954 randomly injected 600 000 US children with either polio vaccine or salt water. The vaccine proved effective, and immunisation of all American children began the following year. The 1960s saw randomised trials used to test drugs for diabetes and blood pressure, and the contraceptive pill. Strong advocates of evidence-based medicine, such as Alvan Feinstein and David Sackett, argued that the public should pay less attention to the prestige of an expert and more to the quality of their evidence.
One of the best-known advocates of evidence-based medicine was Scottish doctor Archie Cochrane, whose early training was as a medical officer in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II. In one camp, Cochrane was the only doctor to 20 000 men. They were fed about 600 calories a day (one-third of what is generally considered a minimum daily intake). All had diarrhoea. Epidemics of typhoid and jaundice often swept the camp. When Cochrane asked the Nazi camp commanders for more doctors, he was told: 'Nein! Aerzte sind überflüssig.' ('No! Doctors are superfluous.') Cochrane was furious.
But over time, Cochrane's anger softened. When he considered which British men lived and died, Cochrane came to understand that his medical expertise had little impact. He did his best, but was up against the limits of 1940s therapies. As Cochrane later acknowledged, what little aid doctors could provide was largely ineffective 'in comparison with the recuperative power of the human body'. This was particularly true when he cared for tuberculosis patients, tending to them in the clinic before officiating at their funerals ('I got quite expert in the Hindu, Moslem, and Greek Orthodox rites').
After the war, Cochrane wrote, 'I had never heard then of "randomised controlled trials", but I knew there was no real evidence that anything we had to offer had any effect on tuberculosis, and I was afraid that I shortened the lives of some of my friends by unnecessary intervention.' Cochrane realised then that the Nazi officer who had denied him more doctors might have been 'wise or cruel', but 'was certainly right'.
In the final decades of his life, Cochrane challenged the medical profession to regularly compile all the relevant randomised controlled trials, organised by speciality. In 1993, four years after Cochrane's death, British researcher Iain Chalmers did just that. Known at the outset as the Cochrane Collaboration – and today simply as Cochrane – the organisation systematically reviews randomised trials to make them accessible for doctors, patients and policymakers. Today, Cochrane reviews are one of the first places that doctors will go when they encounter an unfamiliar medical problem. Chalmers also created the James Lind Alliance, an initiative that identifies the top 10 unanswered questions for dozens of medical conditions: its aim is to guide future researchers towards filling in the gaps.
Thanks to the work of past medical randomistas, new drugs must now follow an established path from laboratory to market. Since the late 1930s, when an experimental drug killed more than a hundred Americans, most countries require initial safety testing to be done on animals. Typically, this involves two species, such as mice and dogs. If a drug passes these tests, then it moves into the clinical trial phase. Phase I trials test safety in humans, based on less than a hundred people. Phase II trials test the drug's efficacy on a few hundred people. Phase III trials test effectiveness in a large group – from several hundred to several thousand – and compares it with other drugs. If a drug passes all these stages and hits the market, post-marketing trials monitor its impact in the general population and test for rare adverse effects.
What are the odds of success? A recent US study found that if you started with 10 drugs, four would be knocked out by Phase I trials. Four more would flunk Phase II trials. Of the remaining two drugs, one would either fail Phase III trials or get rejected by the Food and Drug Administration. In other words, only one in 10 drugs that look promising in laboratory and animal tests ends up finding its way onto the market. For drugs used to treat cancer and heart disease, the odds of a drug making its way from lab to market are lower still.
In each case, those taking the new drug are compared against people taking a fake drug. The word 'placebo' comes from the Latin placere, meaning 'to please'. It reflects the fact that people can respond differently when they receive what they believe is an effective treatment. When medical researchers see a change in outcomes among people who have only taken sugar pills, they call it 'the placebo effect'.
Early research on the placebo effect turns out to have overstated the power of placebos, wrongly conflating the natural tendency of patients to recover with the impact of placebos. Modern researchers now doubt that the placebo effect actually helps our bodies heal faster. But it does seem to affect self-reported impacts, such as pain. For alleviating discomfort, the placebo effect works in surprising ways. For example, placebo injections produce a larger effect than placebo pills. Even the colour of a tablet changes the way in which patients perceive its effect. Thanks to randomised trials, we know that if you want to reduce depression, you should give the patient a yellow tablet. For reducing pain, use a white pill. For lowering anxiety, offer a green one. Sedatives work best when delivered in blue pills, while stimulants are most effective as red pills. The makers of the movie The Matrix clearly knew this when they devised a moment for the hero to choose between a blue pill and a red pill. Blue would wipe his mind and make him happy; red would show him how truly terrifying the world is.
If we simply compare patients who take a pill with those who do not, then we might wrongly attribute the impact entirely to the active ingredients in the tablet. By contrast, a well-designed randomised trial strips out the placebo effect, for example, by comparing pain levels among patients who are given white sugar pills with pain levels among patients who are given identical-looking white aspirin tablets.
Patients with severe emphysema used to be treated with lung volume reduction surgery, until a randomised trial showed that it significantly increased the risk of death. After minor strokes, neurosurgeons would once routinely perform an extracranial to intracranial bypass (connecting an artery outside the skull with one inside the skull). The surgery was supported by case studies, but a randomised trial showed that it produced worse outcomes. For a patient whose bowel is caught up in scar tissue, experts used to favour laparoscopic surgery to 'unpick' the adhesions, until a randomised trial showed that this kind of surgery did not reduce pain or improve quality of life. Beta-blockers, which had previously been thought to endanger patients with heart disease, have now been shown in randomised trials to lower the chance of death.
Medical ethics dictate that researchers should stop a trial if there is evidence of harm. Until the early 2000s, it was normal to treat severe head injuries with steroid injections. Then a 49-country trial began randomising patients to receive either a steroid injection or a placebo injection. Halfway through, researchers saw that the death rate among those who received the steroid was 21 per cent: considerably higher than the 18 per cent death rate among those who received a placebo. The results were conclusive enough to stop the study and publish the results. Head injury patients no longer get steroid injections as a routine matter.
Randomised trials have also helped doctors do a better job of screening. For years, doctors have responded to patients with non-specific back pain by ordering CT scans, MRIs or even X-rays. In recent years, randomised trials have shown that the results of such tests don't help medical professionals treat pain. In fact, patients with back pain who were randomly assigned to get an X-ray ended up with a higher level of self-reported pain and more frequent follow-up visits to the doctor.
The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer, covering men in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, is now able to compare mortality rates 13 years after blood-test screening. With more than 160 000 men in the trial, the death rate is slightly lower for men who have been screened for prostate cancer (commonly known as 'PSA screening'). But the difference is small – one death averted for every 781 men who are screened – and the researchers are not yet confident that they have enough evidence to justify prostate cancer screening for every man aged over 50.
For my own part, randomised trials have helped shape how I look after my health. I used to take a daily multivitamin tablet, until I read a study that drew together all the available randomised trials of vitamins A, C and E, beta carotene and selenium. The study found that for otherwise healthy people, there is no evidence that extra vitamins make you live longer. If anything, those who took vitamin supplements seemed to live shorter lives. Not wanting to send myself to an early grave, I stopped taking multivitamin tablets.
The same goes for fish oil. Based on a 2002 study, millions of people in advanced countries began popping pills made from mushed-up sardines and anchovies. Yet a decade later, a much larger, systematic review of randomised studies found no evidence that omega-3 supplements prevented heart attacks. So I dropped the fish oil tablet too.
that's been proved to work? "Medicine".
I love running, so I'm always on the lookout for randomised trials on exercise science. After reading randomised trials, I've opted to choose my running shoes based on comfort, moving away from the 'stability' models that I'd been wearing for many years. After a marathon, I'll wear compression socks, since an Australian trial showed that they significantly boost recovery. When training, I'll try to include some high-intensity bursts, based on a randomised trial that found that the cardiovascular benefits of sprint training are five times greater than for moderate exercise.
Around home, when I have to remove a band-aid from one of my sons, I'll remind them that a randomised trial by James Cook University researchers found that the fast approach was less painful than the slow approach. When I sip my morning brew, I take pleasure in the randomised evidence showing that coffee protects against DNA breaks. And after reading the evidence on annual medical check-ups, I'm persuaded that they do not reduce my chance of falling ill, but do add to the cost of the health care system. For example, in the United States, annual physicals account for one-tenth of doctor visits, despite expert bodies recommending against them for people who aren't showing any symptoms of illness.
Medical researchers were among the earliest pioneers of randomised trials. Indeed, I chose to start my book Randomistas with health care precisely because it's so far ahead of many other fields. One of the reasons that modern medicine is saving more lives than ever before in human history is its willingness to test cures against placebos or the best available alternative. If it works, we use it; if not, it's back to the lab. In just one field – strokes and neurological disorders – there are around 50 000 Americans alive today thanks to recent randomised trials. For every new treatment (AIDS drugs, the human papillomavirus vaccine, magnetic resonance imaging, genetic testing), medicine has discarded old ones (bloodletting, gastric freezing, routine circumcision and tonsillectomy).
But there is still more that medicine can do to benefit from randomised trials. As we have seen, surgical randomised trials remain comparatively rare, with hospitals conducting tens of thousands of medical procedures every year that are not supported by good evidence. Surgeon Ian Harris gives the example of spine fusion surgery for back pain, an operation now performed on 1 in 1000 Americans each year, even though randomised trials show no better results than for intensive rehabilitation. Harris notes that 'the more you know, the harder it gets … a conflict develops between what you understand to be true, based on scientific research … and what everyone else is doing'. Surgeon and author Atul Gawande argues that 'pointless medical care' costs hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Each year, one in four Americans receives a medical test or treatment that has been proven through a randomised trial to be useless or harmful. An Australian study identified over 150 medical practices that are commonly used despite being unsafe or ineffective. The randomistas not only need to produce more evidence, they also need to do a better job at publicising what they know already.
For full details of the works cited, see the endnotes in Randomistas.


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Life occurs - unexpected things happen close to and also to individuals that may well leave us all basically vulnerable if we don't have some form of insurance plan to help you and me. One particular factor is for sure - we simply can't eliminate unforeseen incidents regardless of hard we try or how attentive we try to be. What person is able to influence weather - or the conduct of another person? This is the reason Insurance Regional Coverage Company in Bryan Texas are usually there to guard you and me from unforeseen, unplanned, and quite possibly catastrophic situations. In a few words, how can it let me find Insurance Regional Coverage Company in Bryan Texas?
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The Rice Village shop specializes in grown-up treats made for your sweet tooth.
How sweet it is to be located in West University and Rice Village these days. The area once lacking for sweetness now boasts multiple outlets for those craving cake, chocolate, and frozen confections (SusieCakes, Steel City Pops). Sugarfina, the most recent addition to the sweet shop lineup (with one location open in The Galleria), satisfies grown-up candy temptations—mature versions of classic treats.
During my inaugural visit, I marveled over the glistening displays of posh packages—gummy bears in flavors such as pineapple, grapefruit, bourbon, and "rosé all day"; 24K gold swizzle sticks; and rosette hard candies made with (natch) real rosewater.
However, as a consummate choco-phile, I was most smitten with Sugarfina's dazzling array of bonbons. "Ask for a taste!" demanded their labels. So I did and soon fell in love with creative varieties like the rich, refreshing Mint Chocolate Chip Milkshake, heady bourbon chocolate caramels, and Princess Pearls (crispy rice balls dipped in milk chocolate and coated in a light pink shell).
Sugarfina offers patrons the opportunity to create their own candy bento box and vends specially curated themed and custom-designed treats for occasions like birthdays, bridal and baby showers, and weddings. Die-hard sugar addicts should also sign up for a free store account, which offers subscribers gratis monthly candy, as well as a birthday gift.
These aforementioned stellar sweets come at a price, and given Sugarina's description as a "luxury candy shop," don't expect it to be just a penny. However, the elevated quality of the ingredients (real fruit juice/flavoring whenever possible and high-grade cacao) and aesthetically-pleasing presentation, they're worth the cash as well as caloric indulgence.
$ Dessert 2563 Amherst St.


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Wedding 'Traditions' That Are Actually Rooted in Superstition
Almie Rose
Some things about weddings change — like their rapidly rising cost — but some things stay the same — like time-honored wedding traditions.
Continuing a multi-year, intercontinental tradition: the drunk wedding bathroom selfie pic.twitter.com/RNQkT053Mf
— DanJo.txt (@Daniel_Joseph) May 1, 2016
What you may not know is that a lot of these wedding traditions, from the silly to the sweet, are actually rooted in superstition.
They're perpetuated by pop culture depictions of weddings in TV, film, songs. And you see them in the real-life weddings of celebrity couples. Let's take a closer look at seven of the most popular ones.
1. The bridesmaid superstition.
Folklore says that we have bridesmaids because they protect the bride from being snatched away, according to Snopes. And if you're a bridesmaid, you have your own set of wedding superstitions to deal with. For example, if you trip while walking down the aisle, you are "fated to be a spinster," Snopes said. And if you're a bridesmaid three times, you're never going to marry. Gee, thanks folklore!
Ever wonder where the tired phrase "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" comes from? How about an ad for mouthwash? Seriously.
Listerine/AdvertisingAge - adage.com
Where you've seen it in pop culture:
Pretty much in any film or TV show that depicts a wedding, and obviously in "Bridesmaids." The movie "27 Dresses" was based on the idea of a woman who was often a bridesmaid but never a bride.
2. The "don't see the bride in her dress before the wedding" superstition.
We've all heard that it's bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding. But why? It comes from the fear that the groom will think the bride is too ugly to marry and run away. When arranged marriages used to be more common, a couple was forbidden to even meet before the big day, according to Bridal Guide. To keep the bride from shaming her family by offending her groom, the bride and groom were kept apart. A veil was added for good measure.
Romance! The good news is that you no longer have to worry about bad luck if you see each other before the ceremony.
Every couple that married in "How I Met Your Mother" had the moment where the groom saw the bride in her dress before the wedding — with poor results.
3. The month of May superstition.
Tradition says that May is the unluckiest month for weddings, Snopes said. This dates back to Roman times: Apparently, the Romans made offerings to the dead in May. (For some Catholics, it's also considered back luck to get married during Lent.)
And that's not all! It's also bad luck to wed on certain days, like Dec. 28. If you really feel like having a chuckle, here's an old poem on when and when not to get married, lest your husband die (via Snopes):
"Married in January's hoar and rime,
Widowed you'll be before your prime.
Married in February's sleepy weather,
Life you'll tread in time together.
Married when March winds shrill and roar,
Your home will be on a distant shore.
Married beneath April's changing skies,
A checkered path before you lies.
Married when bees over May blossoms flit,
Strangers around your board will sit.
Married in the month of roses — June,
Life will be one long honeymoon.
Married in July with flowers ablaze,
Bittersweet memories on after days.
Married in August's heat and drowse,
Lover and friend in your chosen spouse.
Married in September's golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.
Married when leaves in October thin,
Toil and hardship for you gain.
Married in veils of November mist,
Fortune your wedding ring has kissed.
Married in days of December cheer,
Love's star shines brighter from year to year."
Pop culture's royal couple, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, paid no heed to the "don't marry in May" superstition when they wed in May 2014.
4. The little black dress superstition.
The tradition is that a female wedding guest shouldn't wear a black dress to a wedding because it's considered bad luck. In many cultures, black is a color typically reserved for mourning.
As with many wedding superstitions, the tide has turned on this one. StyleCaster is one of several authorities suggesting that a black dress is perfectly acceptable wedding attire. "The goal [of a wedding guest] is to look sleek and appropriate, not over the top or high drama," Molly Guy, founder and creative director behind bridal boutique Stone Fox Bride, told SyleCaster. "Black is always a safe option. It's good for cocktail attire, black tie, or even a mid-afternoon garden soiree."
There's even a growing trend of brides choosing to wear black wedding dresses.
Actress/singer Lucy Hale released the song "My Little Black Wedding Dress" in 2014. And Kim Kardashian again ignored a wedding superstition when she wore a black dress to a friend's wedding in 2016.
5. The groom carrying the bride over the threshold superstition.
This tradition may stem from the belief that evil spirits are out to ruin your wedding day. Nonspecific "ancient cultures" supposedly believed that brides were most excellent at attracting evil spirits, who would enter through the soles of their feet, necessitating the groom to carry her, according to Bridal Guide.
Another theory is that the tradition comes from the ancient Romans, who believed that brides needed to be carried because if they tripped, it was bad luck, according to How Stuff Works.
In "Just Married," new groom Ashton Kutcher attempted to hoist his bride, Brittany Murphy, over the threshold but managed instead to slam her head against the door frame.
6. The "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" superstition.
You've likely heard the saying advising brides on their wedding day accessories, which are meant to bring good luck. "Something old" represents "the bride's past"; "something new" represents the "couple's happy future"; "something borrowed" should come from "someone who is happily married in the hope that some of that person's good fortune rubs off on her," according to Martha Stewart Weddings.
And the "something blue"? It represents "fidelity and love," according to Martha Stewart Weddings.
The source of the tradition may be an Old English rhyme, which describes "something blue" (usually a garter) as a "device to baffle the evil eye," according to historians Joseph Jacobs, Alfred Trübner, and Arthur Robinson Wright, writing in "Folklore," which was published way back in the 1890s. Yup, we're back to dealing with evil spirits.
The old poem also advises that a bride carry "a silver sixpence in her shoe" in hopes of good fortune.
Many TV shows, including "Friends," "How I Met Your Mother," and "Grey's Anatomy," use this trope. It is also shown in "The Simpsons," where Lisa's "something blue" is a lock of Marge's hair.
7. Rain on your wedding day superstition.
In many cultures, rain on your wedding day means a marriage full of good luck. A Hindu belief is that rain on your wedding day is a sign of unity, according to The Pink Bride. In other cultures, rain is a sign of fertility. For others, it's a symbol of cleansing.
Alanis Morissette's 1996 smash hit song, "Ironic," featured the lyric "It's like rain on your wedding day," which, as many have pointed out, is really in no way an example of irony.
Are you a superstitious person?
Yes 33%No 67%


Chocolate saucers for desserts. All ingenious is simple!
Each hostess wants to show her skills to everyone and surprise her family. To throw loved ones into ecstasy is possible with the help of a simple method. Just cook edible chocolate Plates for desserts. You will not believe it, but it's very simple!
To implement this idea, you need several Balloons And high-quality chocolate. Puff on small balls, then melt the chocolate in a water bath. Makni balls in chocolate and leave to freeze. Then try the balls. The result is impressive!
In such Chocolate saucers You can pour ice cream, berries and fruits, as well as other delicacies.
Share this video with your friends, which teaches you how to make chocolate saucers!


San Francisco-based producer Justice Skolnik/strong>'s recent remix of "False Alarm" by Matoma is pretty neat, having amassed over 750,000 plays on Spotify. Besides making remixes, however, Skolnik also makes original tunes and this week he has brought listeners, "You Could Be Down".
Fusing tropical and future bass elements, Justice Skolnik's "You Could Be Down" is a light, hopeful sounding track to get the weekend started right.


Tammy Nichols has owned and operated the Kitty Hawk restaurant since 2008, but customers don't have to look very hard to see the essence of the burger joint Art Glidden built 30 years ago.
The spirit of Art Glidden hovers in every nook of his old cafe, as friendly as the celebrity photos that grin from the walls, as eternal as the sand that clings to the corners. For new owner Tammy Nichols, Glidden is a welcome ghost, guiding her as she leads Art's Place, the restaurant he opened in 1978, through its fourth decade.
The squat building is scarcely as big as a pair of double-wide trailers squished together. It sits on the beach road, its worn porch facing the sea, with only N.C. Highway 12's narrow band of asphalt and a row of oceanfront houses holding back the wilds of the Atlantic.
Folks who haven't stopped by since Glidden handed the keys to Nichols a few years ago will find the exterior of the old place transformed. A coat of paint, blue as the deep sea, refreshed the brick-and-shingle exterior and serves as the backdrop for local artist David Wise's mural of fantastical, aquatic scenes. But the most important element — the familiar, comfortable atmosphere — remains the same.
Much as it was when Glidden was alive and in charge, the menu offers grub to satisfy hungry beachcombers and surfers, not nouveau cuisine for travelers with lots of spending green. And it's the burgers that keep locals and tourists coming back.
As with any great hamburger, it all starts with the beef. It's ground fresh, and the staff makes the patties by hand, Nichols says. The first bite provides proof: The grind is fine but not mealy, and the meat is moist but not greasy with an honest, hearty flavor.
It takes more than meat to create a great hamburger, though, and Art's Place offers lots more. Everything that goes into this elemental meal drips with the sincerity of the place itself: the crisp-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, hand-cut fries; the slippery, sweet fried onions; the homemade chili. On top, the fluffy kaiser-roll pinwheels are soft, but the toasted undersides give them the heft to handle the juicy meat and gooey cheeses and chili, keeping everything together until the moment the burger meets your mouth.
Nichols can count 17 different toppings in her head. But in actuality, the possibilities are exponentially vast because Art's Place will make burgers any way its customers want them.
An Outer Banks resident for 20 years or so, Nichols came to Art's Place on occasion but didn't become a regular until a few years before Glidden died in 2010. By that time, she had raised four children. Glidden's heart was failing and his business was faltering when Nichols got to know him. Gradually, as Nichols realized the severity of Glidden's situation, she transitioned from frequent customer to friend and successor.
It didn't matter that she had no restaurant experience; she learned from a master of hospitality. When Glidden was well enough to be at the restaurant, he guided her transition, and he prepared his regulars for a new face behind the bar.
Spend an evening at Art's Place, and you'll see a cross section of the Kitty Hawk community bound up the short staircase and through the screen door. Two elementary-school age children sit at the bar, watching the action at the grill. A singer-songwriter with a scruffy, salt-and-pepper beard strums his guitar and croons a Gordon Lightfoot song up front. A gray-haired couple in their 60s orders the nightly special while a quartet of 30-somethings cheer on the action on the big screen on the wall.
She recalls the regulars whose 3-year-old girl used to paint pictures for Art and deliver them to the nursing home where he spent his waning years. Nichols and her partner spent a fair share of time visiting Art there as well.
Thirty-five-year-old Byron Shaw started working summers for Nichols at the restaurant last year. His mother's family lives in Kitty Hawk, and Shaw says he can't remember the town without Art's Place.
The walls offer a short course in Kitty Hawk history, from long before Glidden opened the place. A black-and-white photo of flood waters covering 1950s-era cars up to their wheel wells. A water spout menaces in a 1978 photo. Proud fishermen wield their trophies after a drum tournament. And Sammy Davis Jr., Liberace, Nat King Cole, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme smile in autographed pictures, wishing Glidden well.
Glidden offered Kitty Hawk more than a public living room. He and his place served as an emotional anchor in the seasonal, seaside community, where the whims of tourism and the capriciousness of the ocean pose a constant threat to stability.
His work as a philanthropist set the standard, as he helped to establish and run the Joy Fund, which raised thousands of dollars to help make Christmas dreams come true for hundreds of underprivileged families in the Outer Banks. His sister-in-law says his yen to help others was born of a difficult childhood spent in foster homes.
Glidden's charitable efforts earned him the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the highest honors the governor can bestow upon a North Carolina citizen.
Glidden died at age 73 in August 2010. The family waited until the Saturday after Thanksgiving to hold the memorial service, when the tourist season was done and the summer residents cleared out for the winter. A group of friends scattered Glidden's ashes on the beach across from his restaurant.
Nichols spends four or five days a week walking the floors that Glidden smoothed over the course of three decades. Among the few changes she made was extending the hours. Now Art's Place serves dinner, where it was formerly just a breakfast and lunch spot.
"I'm there all the time," she says.
When her children are home from college on breaks, they lend their hands, manning the grill or running food to the tables. And when her children are at school, Nichols can lean on her other loved ones, the regulars who show up at Art's Place, day-in, day-out.
Hours: March-November, 7 a.m.-midnight or later, daily; December-February, 7 a.m.-9:30 p.m., daily.
Amber Nimocks, a freelance writer and editor in Raleigh, has written for The Washington Post, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Fodor's travel guides.


But I now need to find all shapes within a certain radius of a specific position, not just the closest one. It seems like the best approach is NearestPointQuery but I can't understand how I'm supposed to hook this up using Unity Script. I keep getting overlord errors regardless of what I pass into NearestPointQuery.
I can't find an example of how I would implement this in Unity Script. Any tips?


Soon the mornings will no longer allow us to swim before work. We're going to try for one last early morning swim, into daybreak. We'll avoid saying a "sunrise" swim – it's Ireland, it could be cloudy!
So here is your one week warning to arrange whatever you need to do at home/school/work! Next Wednesday (18th Sept), we will meet at 06.20am to swim at 06.30am in Myrtleville. The route will be determined on the day – towards Fountainstown and back if calm enough, or a leisurely Triangle to the Rock and Bunny's if a bit rougher. Either way, we should be able to enjoy the day breaking from behind Roches Point.
This invitation is open to ALL OW swimmers, wherever they are from! Pass the word on, this will probably be our last big 'group' OW morning swim for a while….
Myrtleville at dawn – September 2, 2013.
This entry was posted in Events and tagged Myrtleville swimming, Open water swimming - Cork, Open water swimming - Cork - Ireland, Sea swimming - Cork, Sea Swimming - Cork - Ireland by myrtlevilleswimmers. Bookmark the permalink.


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FinanceMalta raises its international profile and joins the World Alliance of…
Home Manufacturing Aviation 571 Air Malta workers take up voluntary transfer scheme
571 Air Malta workers take up voluntary transfer scheme
Tuesday, 15 February, 2022 at 9:45 am
Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 February, 2022 at 9:45 am by Andre Camilleri
571 Air Malta employees have taken up the government's offer of a voluntary transfer as part of a last-ditch government attempt to save the national airline.
In a statement on Monday, the airline said that the total number of applications received for the Voluntary Employees Transfer Scheme which closed on 11 February 2022 for the rightsizing of the Company, amounted to 571 out of a total of 824 eligible employees excluding pilots.
The Scheme was open to all employees of the company.
The rightsizing of the airline was one of eight cost improvement opportunities identified by the airline and the external strategic consultants appointed by the shareholder – the shareholder being the government.
The rightsizing of the airline was assessed on a function by-function basis and aligned to the extent and scale of its planned operations and to other comparable airlines.
Air Malta said that it would like to thank the respective Unions, their representatives and its employees "for the understanding shown throughout the negotiations leading to the successful launch of the Voluntary Employee Transfer Scheme which is an important element of its latest major restructuring plan to build on its trusted brand to make the airline financially viable and sustainable in the long-term."
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Embezzler is freed pending an appeal
By Gary V. Murray TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
A 59-year-old Grafton Street woman has been released from custody pending an appeal of her Oct. 26 conviction for bank embezzlement.
Susan Carcieri, of 521 Grafton St., was sentenced to 4 to 7 years in state prison Nov. 1 after a Worcester Superior Court jury found her and her husband, George Labadie, guilty of staging an Aug. 27, 2002, robbery at the Wyman-Gordon Federal Credit Union on Grafton Street, where Ms. Carcieri worked, and making off with $210,000 in stolen money.
Judge Peter W. Agnes Jr., who presided over the couple�s trial, allowed a motion Thursday asking that Ms. Carcieri�s sentence, which she began serving Nov. 1, be stayed pending an appeal of her conviction to the state Appeals Court.
Her lawyer, Leonard J. Staples, argued in a brief in support of his request for a stay that the court�s denial of his motion for a mistrial during jury deliberations constituted a �meritorious� issue on appeal.
The request for a mistrial was made after the foreman of the deliberating jury reported to the judge Oct. 25 that she had been approached over the previous weekend by someone on Mr. Labadie�s behalf at the diner where she worked. Judge Agnes excused the juror and replaced her with an alternate juror. He also revoked Mr. Labadie�s bail.
The jury was instructed to begin its deliberations anew and rendered its unanimous verdicts the next day.
Mr. Labadie, who was sentenced to 10 to 12 years� imprisonment, remains in custody. He is also appealing his conviction.
Mr. Staples argued that Ms. Carcieri met the criteria for a stay of her sentence pending appeal in that she did not pose a risk of flight or further criminal conduct and had raised an issue worthy of presentation to an appellate court.
Prosecutors opposed the request.


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Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran re-nominated as RBI director
Jamshedpur: Tata Sons' Chairman N Chandrasekaran has been again nominated as a part-time non-official director of RBI central board. His re-nomination is for two years from March 3, 2020.
An announcement to this effect was made by the RBI.
Mr Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons Board, was nominated as a Director on the RBI Board of directors first time on March 4, 2016 for four years. His tenure ended on March 3, 2020. Now the central government has again nominated him for further two years.
ALSO READ: Admn toughens stance against corona rule violators in Jamshedpur


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AntiWar.com, February 23, 2007
In Afghanistan, Death Comes Cheap
Across the country people say the government is powerless and corrupt, the parliament ruled by warlords
by Chris Sands
A crazy woman stalks the streets near Afghanistan's parliament. When a warlord's rocket killed her family during the early 1990s she lost her mind. Now she moves between the cars and people looking for it, another of the living dead trapped in her own private hell.
She's always around there somewhere: in front of the homes still wrecked after they were destroyed more than a decade ago, next to the police station that was torched by a mob last year, in the gutter as an MP cruises by in his SUV.
That's how life is here. Every corner has its own pitiful story and the old sorrow mixes with the new until it all becomes part of the same incessant sadness.
RAWA Photo: One of thousands children of poor families in Kabul who live in tents in the cold weather of -20Cº . The hands of this child have become paralyzed due to sever cold.
In December a man was shot in the center of Kabul, not far from the presidential palace. His attackers stole the $25,000 they knew he would be carrying and left his corpse to freeze in the evening air. A week earlier an infant spilt boiling water over himself at home. He was buried in a simple ceremony soon afterwards.
Peace is only relative in a country where if the bombs and bullets don't get you, something else will. The winter brings death from poverty and desperation, spring adds intense violence to the mix.
Last week George W. Bush stood before an audience of neocons at the luxurious Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C., and said Afghans can now "begin to realize [their] dreams."
He praised the NATO-led forces, local soldiers and police for capturing and killing terrorists. "Times have changed," he added. "Our work is bringing freedom."
Speaking in London the day before, Tony Blair claimed "the most remarkable progress" had been made. By his side was Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who used the opportunity to thank the British prime minister for giving him a cuddly toy to take to his newborn son in Kabul.
Back here, the public clings to hope like a drowning person might hold onto some driftwood during a hurricane. Almost everyone realizes the odds are stacked against a happy ending.
Talk of gangs dressed in police uniforms smashing into houses and killing the residents is surfacing in Kabul.
Threats against the occupation are spouted in the open now, not whispered behind closed doors. Devout young men complain about alcohol and prostitution being easily available, calling them a direct attack on Islam and a reason to join the insurgency.
RAWA Photo: Childern are the prime victims.
Across the country people say the government is powerless and corrupt, the parliament ruled by warlords. They wonder when the development they were promised will actually start.
Last autumn an official at a large Western NGO told me he would not be surprised if the situation gets so bad all foreigners have to leave within a year or two. His colleague, who was tasked with helping plan the group's potential evacuation, feared the airport in Kabul would be inaccessible when the time came to flee.
Even press statements sent out by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) during recent weeks occasionally hint at reality.
One said troops mistakenly shot an Afghan who worked at their base in Paktika, on the country's eastern border.
Another acknowledged a local policeman had been killed in Kabul as a result of action involving an ISAF patrol. It promised a thorough investigation.
A third described a vehicle approaching a roadblock at high speed in the southern province of Helmand. Warning shots were fired at the ground only for them to ricochet and fatally hit a passer-by.
Just last Saturday a suspected suicide bomber was gunned down in Kandahar. When he was then checked for explosives it became clear he was unarmed. He later died of his wounds.
At the time of writing, three more innocent people have been killed in two separate incidents so far this week.
But these are still only a few examples of the civilian casualties caused by ISAF since the year started. Each tragedy will be bitterly remembered by a population still waiting for the peace, prosperity and freedom it is meant to have.
To growing numbers of Afghans, the NATO-led forces are an enemy similar to the Russians who tore this country apart in the 1980s. People even blame suicide attacks directly or indirectly on the soldiers.
Death comes cheap here. To go with the sadness, there is now fear and anger. Spring lies around the corner and time is almost up.
Chris Sands is a British freelance journalist who has been working independently in Afghanistan since August 2005.
Afghanistan itself has become a consumption country and has one of the highest levels of addiction, globally speaking.
VOA, June 30, 2013


Marles-sur-Canche is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France.
Marles-sur-Canche is situated in the valley of the Canche river, 2.3 miles (4 km) southeast of Montreuil-sur-Mer, on the D113 road.
The seventeenth century church of St.Firmin.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marles-sur-Canche.


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Presocratics is an American experimental music duo of Need Thomas Windham and Jon Philpot.

Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and electronic music composer Need Windham met producer Jon Philpot in Atlanta, Georgia in the middle 1990s. They recorded one full-length album, Works and Days, in the Atlanta studios of Whoa! Films, and a follow-up EP Presocratics Serve Imperialism in Philpot's Brooklyn studio in 2000. Both were released on the record label Table of the Elements.

Presocratics toured Europe in March 2001 for a Table of the Elements month-long showcase tour, sharing the stage with San Agustin. Subsequent live performances by Presocratics have been rare.

Windham currently resides in Seattle, Washington. Philpot is currently active leading the band Bear in Heaven and resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Discography
"If They Come In The Morning" on The Allegorical Power Series Volume VI - Antiopic MP3 compilation, 2003
Presocratics Serve Imperialism - Table of the Elements CDEP, 2001
Works And Days - Table of the Elements CD, 2000
Pure Capitalism - Table of the Elements 7", 1998

External links

American electronic musicians
Electronic music duos
American experimental musical groups
Noise musical groups

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Breakfast at Tiffanys
BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S - "GEORGE PEPPARD" AND "AUDREY HEPBURN
* Now, first of all guys, don't even think of why I did this sense from the well-known film "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Okay! As I probably did it for two reasons... The first was that while my Neighbour had helped me put on these drawings of mine that I did in the past, well after noticing that I had drawn some pictures that involved kissing they told me that and I quote, "why don't YOU, meaning myself of course, draw some more like that again? Which, as you can see I've done, but also, like it to!!! The other reason was that I dared myself to do it, which really sounds stupid to you, but there you all have it! I dared myself to re-do another ROMANTIC sense from a film, any film but turned out to be this well-known film!
* Which, just before I had started to draw this, didn't know who I was going to draw a involving a KISSING sense like I had drawn some in my past... Until, that is I thought of this old film that I so loved in my past and maybe still do, being a true hopelessly ROMANTIC as I am, but who unfortunately, for me only loves to really DAY-DREAM!
* Yes guys! Just a Day-Dreamer about - what if I was PRETTY as well as, what would it be like if I meet someone who's really so nice and DECENT, decent as in NOT someone that only thinks of just one thing and that as any baggage's from their past... As I had always dreamt in my past of just meeting someone that's single like myself, without having any kids what so ever!
* Because guys, that's just not me! Or should I say I think I don't really wanna know them if they had been married! But, what I like is to really day-dream of meeting someone that's SHY like myself - yet, maybe at the same time guys, could only just try to come up to me and speak. * Course, at times I do day-dream of that to!!! That's what I mean how romantic I am!
* Anyway, getting back to this picture that I've drawn of these two late but who was also, very well-known Actors, "George Peppard" and "Audrey Hepburn" that starred in this of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" again, that if anyone didn't know was actually based on a Trumam Capote's Novel. * Which, this story is all about a young woman in New York City who meets a young man who moves into her department building.
* Who at first always sees him with an older woman who is very wealthy, while at the same time, wants to be a writer. As for this young woman well she is working as a expensive essocrt and search for a rich older man.
* Now, even though what I just told you, this young woman is a woman that's in a World War II era of New York who hobslob with famous people but who gets in trouble by breaking their hearts!
* Which, brings me to say that another reason of why I had so loved this oh-so ROMANTIC film was that how Paul Varjak who was played by "George Peppard" had really ended up telling Holly Golightly "Audrey Hepurn" first "You know what's wrong with you Miss Whoever-you are? You're chicken, you're got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say 'Okay, life's a fact people do fall in love people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybodys got for real happiness.
* Then telling Holly - You call yourself a free spirit, a 'wild thing' and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you'll already in a cage. You built it yourself... And it's not bounded in the west by Tulips, Texas or in the east by Somali land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you end up running into yourself!!!
* Then and only then which was before you see this sense, you see Paul says 'Here I've been carry this thing around for months I don't want it anymore!
* Which, then you see Holly telling Paul I'm like a cat here, a no-name slobs. Who we belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us... Then adding, we don't even belong to each other! Where then you see Paul suddenly tells Holly 'I love you! But all Holly could answer back was so what? So what? So plenty! Paul says, I love you, you belong to me!
* Which once again before saying anything though, all you could see is Holly is looking-like she's in a tearful way - No People don' belong to people. Where then Paul answers of course they do! Only all Holly would say then was - I'll never let anybody put me in a CAGE!
* Which again, all Paul could tell her is that and I quote, but, I don't want to put you in a cage I want to love YOU. Which guys, when I first saw this film as well as heard Paul "George Peppard" telling Holly that all he wants is to love her is just thinking Aww!!! That;s so nice.
* But, once again, getting back to what happened after Paul tells Holly but, I don't want to put you in a cage I want to love you is that shortly after you see Doc Golightly who was played by "Buddy Elsen" which if none of you had heard of before, was a very old Actor, that had starred in the old comedy series called "The Beverley Hill-billies! Heatd of it? Well, that was where you would most likely to see him in!
* Anyway, guys! If I can remember from that film, Buddy Elsen character Doc Golightly had really believed that he was still married to her, which could have been all in his mind that he had, confesses to Holly, his love but instead saying Holly's name, he says Lula Mad! Which, then you see Holly telling to Paul this time, a girl can't read that sort of thing without lipstick... And then adding - You know those days when you get the mean red?
* The mean red, you mean like blues as Paul answered her. Where then Holly answers back with the reply, blues are because you're fat and maybe it's been raining too long. Which Paul then says, you're just sad that's all... Which all Holly then said was, the mean reds are horrible. But all Paul then said to her suddenly was, you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of! Which, I do believe Holly then said to Paul, do you ever get that feeling? Which then, Paul tells her sure.
* But then, it wasn't until later that Holly says and I quote, "I'll tell you one thing Fred darling... I'll marry you for your money in a minute. Would you marry for money in minute? Which, Paul answers her, "In a minute! Which you see Holly telling Paul "I guess it's pretty lucky neither of us is rich huh?
* Where after that, Paul then says "yeah! Making out I think that he was trying to tell Holly that I'm with you Holly! Which all Holly then said was, "so what?
"So what? So plenty I love you, you belong to me! Which even though after hearing Holly saying to Paul, People don't belong to people, had felt for him even after he replied to Holly, "of course they do! Because all that was going through my mind back then, was that how it was so lovely to hear him say to Holly "how I love you!
* But it was also, how I was probably thinking to myself, being a day-dreamer if only I could meet someone like Paul "George Peppard" that declares they love me...
* As, then and only then, all that I could think of saying was a big Aww! Because of just dreaming about it through all my entire life-time!
* Which, I like to add, probably just PREFER of Dreaming - what would it really be like if I meet Someone so nicejust de that would just sweep me off my feet by not declaring their love for me again, but to take me in their arms like you see Paul Varjak "George Peppard" in this so very Romantic film, which I really so loved of seeing how it had ended more...
* As that's ME through and through, "an hopelessly ROMANTIC who just loves to DAY-DREAM about what would truly happen if and only if, yours truly could end up like a any girl in a romantic film BY FINDING SOMEONE SO NICE! So, again. here am I dreaming or thinking to myself - Aww!
Dazzlepops Self Portrait
Gimme Gimme Gimme:
Allo Allo "you stupid woman"