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ask polly Dec. 4, 2019
'I'm Defective as a Human Being!'
By Heather Havrilesky
The Cut's advice columnist Heather Havrilesky answers readers' questions about how to be in the world. Got a question for Polly? Email askpolly@nymag.com.
Photo: NIMIT VIRDI/Getty Images/500px
Dearest Polly,
Even after all your advice on "embracing your flaws" and "letting your freak flag fly," I still feel like I'm defective as a human being and because of that, I'm uptight about everything I do and say. This all started a year ago when I had a falling out with two of my friends. The whole thing can be summarized in two parts:
1. I had just gone through a breakup after a yearlong relationship, so it was a vulnerable period for me. At that time, I was a turbulent person who acted on my emotions, so you can imagine how irrational and difficult I was to the people around me. I lashed out, I made spiteful and hurtful remarks when my friends offered me advice I didn't like hearing, and I often asked the same repeated questions for reassurance. I'm not sure why I wanted to hurt the people who were trying their best to help me; maybe it's because I wanted them to be able to understand how overwhelming my emotions felt, and I got defensive when they didn't understand. This is a problem of mine I still struggle with, and I fear I'll never really be able to control my emotions before they get the better of me — hence leading me to lose more people I love.
2. I went on a holiday with aforementioned friends not too long after the breakup. During the holiday, I did quite a few things which annoyed them both and now we're no longer friends. Back then, I considered them my closest friends — though looking back now I see that our friendship lacked deeper levels of honesty and maybe even genuine love (though I can only say this mostly on my part, as I can't be sure if that's how they felt).
Anyway, back to the holiday which soured our relationship. I'll use the names Allison and Becca for anonymity. Allison said I had been irrational and impractical and too emotional, and she just couldn't deal with it because she's the opposite of all that. I know I was selfish. I wanted some things to go my way, made some impractical decisions that indirectly inconvenienced them, and sometimes behaved like the world centered around me. Towards the end of the trip, in the midst of having a conversation about my breakup with Becca, I insulted her unintentionally when I compared her situation with mine (something along the lines of, "That's easy for you to say, you have a boyfriend"). And that pretty much concluded the entire episode, and also our friendship.
Since then, I've grown a great deal by trying to be more independent. I try my best not to make waves, and I keep my wants and desires to myself as much as I can so that I won't inconvenience others or go against their own wants and desires. I try to be more selfless and thoughtful, and in general I'm happier with the person I am now. I no longer have to pretend or act like a good person. I genuinely feel more at peace with who I am: someone who tries to place others above herself.
But I still feel scarred by what happened with Allison and Becca. I overanalyze everything I do in fear of people leaving me because of how I function as a person. It feels like I'm constantly walking on thin ice: I worry when I catch myself saying something that can be misinterpreted badly, when I'm clumsy and mistreat someone's belongings, when I'm short-tempered, when I'm honest about what I want but I'm afraid that it would go against what others want … It's just constant worrying for me. I know I can't expect myself to be perfect, and I shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes. I think I'm also extra hard on myself so I won't repeat any mistakes I catch myself making, hence preparing myself so that I won't turn my future friends against me.
I know you'd probably tell me that the trauma of losing two friends has led me to believe I'm somewhat inadequate as a human being, and it's probably just paranoia that's leading me to believe I have a huge problem within myself. I would agree with that, but I can't shake the idea that my idiosyncrasies and flaws are not the type that the majority of people can accept.
Throughout my life, I've angered and unknowingly hurt many friends because of the things I've done or said — most of which were unintentional. Some of them have told me that they found it hard to believe when I stated that I genuinely meant no harm, as "it was very obvious those actions would lead to such consequences." Everything has lead me to feel like my thought processes are vastly different from everyone else's, and I'm afraid I'll continue making mistakes that will cost me all my friends and loved ones.
Apart from all that, I also struggle with competitiveness and comparing myself to my friends, which makes me feel like I'm not a good friend either, because what friend doesn't want to see someone they love succeed? Or rather, I'd love to see my friends succeed, but it makes me stressed out and worried when they succeed more than me. I get this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I wonder if I'm not good enough or too slow in my career, but then I stop and remind myself that everyone has their own path and their opportunities aren't going to take away mine.
I even get competitive about physical possessions (I know, how silly, right?), and I always want to have the nicest stuff or acquire the clothes my friends own that I like. When I see them with stuff I don't have, I get really uneasy and feel less than. Thus I end up shopping and spending a lot of money on things I don't need and probably won't have time to wear in an effort to make myself feel more worthy, and it's a whole perpetual cycle of feeling lousier when I see how much I've wasted.
I respect your opinion and would love your insight on all of this. Part of me is tired of being so hard on myself all the time. I'd love to scream at myself to just chill the fuck out, but part of me feels that letting my guard down opens up the possibility of making more mistakes and pushing people away.
Uptight But Trying
Dear Uptight But Trying,
The only way to let your guard down without pushing people away is by honoring who you are. That's what's missing from the dramatic transformation you describe. You have a clear sense of what might've been driving your insensitive behavior in the past — you became emotional and reactive whenever you felt misunderstood. But you don't talk about how you got that way, or how it felt for you to be in those situations. You don't talk about who you are and what you want. You're more concerned with what other people want from you.
Because I often suggest ways to "fix" bad behavior and address the layers of emotion and experience underneath that behavior, it's sometimes easy to read this column and think "I just need to try very hard to fix myself, so I stop messing everything up!" But the truth is, it's impossible to "fix" anything when you don't have enough compassion for yourself. Right now, all you can see is a field of land mines. Why ask for anything from anyone, when it always backfires? Why show up when you'll only get told that you're a selfish mess? Better to disappear.
Yet all of the failings you describe in yourself are utterly human. Being competitive is natural, particularly at this shallow, internet-driven, comparison-fixated point in human history. It's almost impossible not to sweat these things when you're young and you're trying to make a place for yourself in the world. This might not be the most delightful trait when it comes to sustaining friendships. But it's still common, not to mention useful. Some days nothing else will motivate you to get out the door and make shit happen.
It's also understandable for you to be competitive when so much of your life story is about what other people think of you. Even when you screwed up and pushed people away, you were trying to get them to understand you and feeling frustrated when they didn't. Now you're just trying very hard not to screw up — that's your central motivation — but you're living in a new kind of hell where you can't be yourself without worrying about someone misunderstanding you. That transit from insensitive, stompy, needy, selfish friend to more considerate but paranoid friend is familiar to me. Strangely, both states are driven by a focus on other people's perceptions. First, you work very hard to avoid being misunderstood or to answer misperceptions with your insistent, repeated explanation of who you are and what you need. Then, once friends react badly or dump you, you become ruled by these perceptions. And when other people and their ideas about you are that important, why wouldn't you also be a little bit resentful of them and prone to comparing what you have to what they have?
I'm guessing you were raised by extremely competitive, image-focused people who never admitted how competitive and image-focused they were. My parents were always extremely skeptical of status, but even that can be just another way of placing yourself above other people's values. It took me years of scrutinizing my parents' photographs to see it: They cared a lot about how they appeared, particularly when they were young, even though they never wanted us to think so. They were self-conscious, neurotic, superior, and judgmental. Obviously that's not that rare or exotic or awful. I still fall into each of those categories regularly. But it was confusing because they claimed to be completely unconcerned about other people's perceptions of them. Even though they pretended to be above silly things like status (and also silly things like human emotions!), that superiority was just one of their ways of remaining safe from other people's judgments, which they actually experienced as so threatening and invasive that they built their lives around escaping them.
In other words, my parents were ruled by shame, which often manifests itself in either diving into or completely avoiding social measures of worth. I love my parents so much; they were both very interesting, entertaining, lovable humans. I just want you to understand that it's not a small thing to be raised by people who won't admit who they are, who don't have the emotional energy to deeply understand who you are. If feeling misunderstood is at the center of everything for you, that tells you a lot: You didn't feel seen and you felt very insecure because your needs weren't addressed most of the time. This is why you grew into a person who felt like she had to grab anything she could, because no one was going to give you what you needed. You were preemptively angry at others because you always perceived them as having more than you, thus perpetuating the shame and injuries that your parents inflicted on you without knowing it. And now you feel like you don't deserve things, which is also an outcropping of believing that no one can or SHOULD EVEN TRY to address your needs. In trying to correct for past grabby actions, you've become an overapologizing ghost.
I did that, too, and people liked me even less than they did when I was pushy and selfish. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. But sometimes the problem lies in the fact that you're neurotically TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING WRONG all of the time instead of just calming down and honoring your heart and feeling your way forward.
Someone wrote me a letter the other day asking how I reached this point where I feel balanced and at peace. Obviously, I don't feel balanced and peaceful all of the time, but I do think I've exited the ego prison that I lived in for a lot of my life. I don't overexplain myself or analyze other people's reactions to my way of living nearly as much. I don't constantly second-guess myself. I'm okay with seeming like a freak to other people, as long as I can connect and breathe and feel happy inside. It's not like nothing bothers me, but I have guiding principles and a life philosophy that feel good and make sense to me, and when someone decides there's something "wrong" with how I present myself, it doesn't get under my skin in the same way it used to. I know my own heart and I trust myself. I have compassion for my screwups, so I can pass that compassion on to the people who can't see me that clearly, or who see me clearly and dislike what they see.
I had to break out of my own ego prison to get here. An ego prison is a place where your needs don't matter to anyone else, so you either have to grab what you need or pretend you don't have needs. An ego prison is a place where your brain is obsessed with SEEMING BETTER (more serene, hotter, more stylish than ever!) instead of actually FEELING BETTER. An ego prison is a place where a voice in your head takes every experience and image and conversation and translates it into the same message: You will never be as amazing as her. You will never be as smart or as respected as him. You are broken and strange and no one really likes you. You will never be enough.
Try to notice when you hear those voices. Notice how irrational and absurdly negative and paranoid they are.
Yes, you realize that your past behavior was inconsiderate and sloppy. You understand, intellectually at least, that you lash out when you feel invisible or misunderstood, but you often end up feeling even more misunderstood after you lash out. You want to seem better now. You want to have friends and be loved. So every day you strategize on how to act. You think about what people must be saying about you and you adjust your behaviors and movements accordingly. You imagine the person you could be, if you worked harder and dressed better and were more loved, and you pursue goals that will make you into that person. And you worry about fucking it all up again.
You're on the right path intellectually. You're trying to solve this puzzle. But you aren't using your heart to find a peaceful place to just exist. You aren't treating yourself as a person who has her own idiosyncratic needs, who has a right to say "I just want my friends to understand me at a deeper level, even if that sounds incredibly unrealistic." Didn't your friend have a right to say that she was the opposite of "irrational and impractical and too emotional" and that's why she didn't want anything to do with you? If she has the right to be her way, don't you have a right to be the way you are? And by the way, no human under the sun is THE OPPOSITE of irrational, impractical, and too emotional. These are the distinguishing characteristics of humankind.
See how I arrogantly proclaim that some people have it wrong? That's me being a tiny bit like the pushy show-off I was back when I was younger. I'm drawing on something that's directly linked to WHAT MADE ME AN ASSHOLE and using it for a new, positive purpose. Because these puzzles are not black and white. We can't just select all of the good shit in our personalities and kick out the bad shit. The very best things about you live right next door to the worst things. When you try to KILL OFF your "bad" self, you kill off your good self, too.
And I know there are good things about being impractical and too emotional. I use those things in my life all the time, to be a better mother, to be more compassionate, to write music, to create a strange interior world for myself that makes me feel more alive and electric.
You don't have to feel twitchy and apologetic just because there are a lot of sanctimonious motherfuckers out there who want you to think that you're an irredeemable piece of shit just because you were once confused and disordered and wanted more from your friendships than you were getting. People used to distrust my good intentions, too, saying things like, "How could you not know that you'd fuck things up by acting this way?" Some people truly don't understand what it means to be so disordered that you can't connect actions and consequences within high-pressure relationships. For me, the more sure I was that other people saw me as inferior, the more confused I got about what impact my behavior would have on them. Sometimes I lashed out, and sometimes I just tried too hard. I was confused enough that it all looked messy and aggressive, but that's not where my heart was, even then.
That said, I was at my worst when I found myself among the kinds of people who said stuff like, "I'm the opposite of too emotional." That kind of statement goes hand in hand with saying that you always, always support other women, no matter what, or that you think having a nemesis is for weak losers and you never, ever compare yourself to others because you're above that. I'll bet that this friend of yours steadfastly refuses to admit that she's remotely competitive with her friends (while, oddly enough, undermining those friends with surgical precision with her above-it-all pronouncements).
It's a type. And it's a type that people like you and me, who are competitive and self-conscious and insecure and disordered, tend to find irresistible. Because we're in awe of anyone who presents the illusion that they can bestride the mortal world like a colossus. Our competitive self naturally aims way too high. We don't want to be better, we want to be the BEST. Our ego prison mind-set tells us that THIS IS WHO WE WANT TO BE. And by the way, all we're doing is chasing and imitating our parents' way of moving through the world, which didn't work for them and isn't working for us, either.
Be yourself instead. Sure, you're wound up about clothes and you want to do as well as your friends. That makes you exactly like about a third of the human population, as far as I can tell. You are not the Dalai Lama. It's okay to want to fix a lot of your problems and also want to be understood more deeply by others. It's okay to admire truly healthy, incredible people (LIKE THE DALAI LAMA, not your friend, who sounds frustrating and not that honest) but also live inside your own lopsided, grabby skin.
I write this column about wisdom and navigating the shit of life every week, and guess what? I'm still a grabby, pushy know-it-all some of the time. I'm not being self-deprecating; I'm just stating the facts. If I didn't enjoy the fucked up nature of my personality, and accept it, and work very hard to model that kind of peace and self-acceptance for my kids, in my opinion I'd be a shitty writer, a shitty mother, a shitty friend, and a shitty wife. Even if the core features of my personality sprang from a toxic fermented brew of my parents' good and bad choices, muddled along with my own weak nature, this is what I have to work with, and I choose to see it as a gift because when I see it that way, IT FEELS LIKE A GIFT AND ACTS LIKE A GIFT.
I have tried to change and I can't change that much. Mostly I try to accept who I am. That sounds lazy, but it's at the center of all growth. When I accept myself, I'm also less selfish and reckless and unfair to other people. But my competitive spirit hasn't gone away. When you're naturally very competitive and you were raised in an absurdly competitive home, your competitive spirit springs up like a weed growing in the cracks in the sidewalk. You can't beat it back. God bless the people who just don't compete, authentically, truly. But I do, motherfucker. I just DO. What's strange is, the more I let myself be a rapacious animal in my interior life, the less competitive and comparison-focused I am in my real life.
You have to exit this paranoid, ego-driven lockdown and resolve to be your own scrappy uneven, inconsistent invention. You have to learn to look in the mirror and say to yourself: I am okay when I'm ugly and confused. It's okay to be lumpy and lost. I can stand right here, feeling broken, and I am still lovable. I deserve love. I deserve honest, loyal friends. I know I can be that kind of a friend, too. But I can also dress up and show off and look great and take up a lot of space, and guess what? That's who I am, too. I am a complex human and I need some room to grow right now. I need friends who get it.
Once you stop looking for image-conscious friends who match your ego-prison vision quest, you'll find the best friendships of your life. That's what happened for me. I started to notice that I love conflicted people who are open about their feelings and ideas AND their flaws. I love weirdo artist types who figure out what works for them and confidently assert their rights, no matter who's around. I like people who are angry but have made peace with that, for the most part. I like people who broke out of ego prison and are now doing exactly what the fuck they want to do.
Ironically, those are also the people who seem to seek understanding the most, instead of telling you how you should be. I don't think your friends really wanted to understand you, even when you were doing the hard work of trying to understand them. Go find friends who care, who listen, who love you for who you are. That's what you deserve. You've worked hard for it.
Polly's evil twin Molly has a newsletter; sign up here. Order Heather Havrilesky's new book, What If This Were Enough?, here. Her advice column will appear here every Wednesday.
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All letters to askpolly@nymag.com become the property of Ask Polly and New York Media LLC and will be edited for length, clarity, and grammatical correctness.
'I Give Up!'
'No One Likes the Real Me!'
'Am I Too Obsessed With My Nemesis?'
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Ask Polly: 'I'm Defective as a Human Being!'


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Smithsonian Museum Opens
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Henry, Joseph 1797-1878
Smithsonian Institution Building (Washington, D.C.)
United States National Museum
United States Exploring Expedition (USEE)
United States Patent Office
Chronology of Smithsonian History
Woodcut engraving of the Museum in the Great Hall of the Smithsonian Castle was first printed in the 1857 guidebook by William J. Rhees, "An Account of the Smithsonian Institution." Smithsonian Institution Archives, negative number 75-12247.
Washington Star, November 13, 1858 (p. 3, col. 1) and December 29, 1858 (p. 3, col. 1).
The museum in the Smithsonian Institution Building or Castle, later known as the U.S. National Museum, opens to the public. In 1857, the United States Exploring Expedition or Wilkes Expedition collections had been transferred from the Patent Office to the Smithsonian.
Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 600 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024-2520, SIHistory@si.edu
Smithsonian Archives - History Div
siris_sic_12556

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The main character in this book is Carl Lee Hailey, whose ten-year-old daughter was beaten and raped by two men, Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard. Since Jake, a lawyer, had won a black murder trial for Carl Lee's brother, Carl Lee hired him and thought about killing Cobb and Willard. Jake had been a lawyer for three previous black murder trials and had won all of them. Carl Lee, having a lot of confidence in Jake, decided to kill Cobb and Willard and leave the rest up to Jake. One day as the two men were leaving the courtroom, Carl Lee shot and killed them both. Carl Lee was charged with the murders of Cobb and Willard and was set to go to trial.
Carl Lee and his family lived in a small rural town without many blacks. He was on trial with a white judge, a white prosecutor, and a white jury. The jury consisted of ten women and two men, all white. Jake asked to move the trial to a different city but the judge denied his request. Carl Lee's chances of being set free were not too good. Jake went to work trying to free Carl Lee, while everyone thought it would not be possible. Read the book to find out if Carl Lee is set free!


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Pat Patterson, WWE legend and trailblazer, dead at 79 | Page Six Celebrity News
WWE legend Pat Patterson is dead at the age of 79.
Patterson, born Pierre Clermont, had long been battling cancer before his death. He was known as WWE's first gay superstar.
"WWE is saddened to learn that Pat Patterson has passed away at the age of 79," WWE said in a statement. "A true trailblazer of the industry, Patterson was linked to many 'firsts' in sports-entertainment throughout his storied career, including the first-ever Intercontinental Title reign and the creation of the Royal Rumble Match."
#PatPatterson
Kim Kardashian's Company SKIMS Now Valued At $3.2 Billion


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Teide National Park
A Geological Park
Teide Volcano
Teide and Science
Inicio > Teide National Park > Teide and Science
It is a little known fact that Teide played an important role in solving different issues raised by the first naturalists who studied ancient continental volcanic areas. At the time of the first scientific expeditions to the Canary Islands, geologists debated several hypotheses in order to establish the most fundamental concepts.
Humboldt's trip to Tenerife, when he climbed Mount Teide, was fundamental both for him and to promote volcanoes among scientists. One such scientist, Leopold Von Buch heard Humboldt talk about and defend the pluton thesis. In 1815 he carried out a thorough exploration of Teide and Las Cañadas escarpment. Previous interpretations did not endorse the evidence of his observations.
These scientists were followed by Charles Lyell, who contributed decisive phenomena and arguments from his findings at Las Cañadas, in his "Elements of Geology", one of the most influential books written for the advancement of Geology.
Knowledge learnt on Teide has continued to be a global benchmark, culminating in it being granted World Heritage site status in 2007. In addition to offering an outstanding selection of geomorphological formations, Teide has an indisputable quality that is unique in the world, and a prerequisite for achieving the UNESCO recognition.
It shows the complete evolution of volcanism pertaining to intraplate oceanic islands (The crust of the Earth, like the "skin" of a ball, is divided into a series of large irregular pieces called plates. Plate movements and the phenomena that occur in the Earth's interior cause earthquakes and volcanism, with very different consequences for the boundaries of the plates and their interiors. In this respect, the Canary Islands and Teide are emblematic examples of an intraplate archipelago or volcano because they are located in the middle of the African plate, far away from its boundaries), and in fact, to find structures that are similar to these huge, frequent viscous lava channels, you would have to go, for example, as far as the volcanoes in the Andes, which have a completely different origin and volcanism process from this oceanic island volcanism.
Today, Teide still represents a magnificent laboratory for volcanologists and geologists as well as being a unique place for watching the stars. Teide Observatory, also known as Izaña Observatory, is located on the Izaña massif, at a height of 2,400 metres. The international scientific community acknowledges that it is one of the world's most important observatories.
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Las Cañadas del Teide, a source of Guanche legends and vital resources
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This website does not organise or sell combined trips.
Complaint forms are available to Customers in our offices located in Calle San Francisco No. 5, 4th Floor, CP 38002, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 8am to 4pm..


New to IKEA's line of doors is a creative concept that melds art, entertainment and function…..the UDDEVALLA!
UDDEVALLA's blackboard finish adds flair to your space, great for play rooms, kitchens and mud rooms.
The use of recycled materials for the front, the matte black finish, and the chalk board surface allow you to write notes, draw pictures, and dream together . What an exciting Cabinet!
The UDDEVALLLA is an amazing addition to any space and keeps a light hearted feel! We are excited to bring this innovative door style to your kitchen!


Driving distance between Edgar, NE and Bay Pines, FL is 1,538.87 miles (or 2,476.58 kilometers). If you drove an average car (using about 3.6 gallons of gas per mile), the gas would cost you around $, since you would need about gallons of fuel.
Leaving from Edgar, NE you would reach Bay Pines, FL in about 23 hours 32 mins if you keep an average speed of miles per hour, assuming you don't make any breaks or get stuck in traffic.
This is a map overview of the best driving route from Edgar, NE to Bay Pines, FL in which you can see the origin and destination points marked with A (Edgar) and B (Bay Pines) respectively as well as blue line along the road route you can take. You can zoom in to see more details, including road numbers and even street names both in Edgar, NE and Bay Pines, FL as well as every other town you may pass by on your way.
To cover the 1,538.87 mi that separate Bay Pines from Edgar you are going to need between of fuel, considering you drive an average car (30 mpg) and , if you drive an SUV or a heavy car (20 mpg). If you drive a fuel efficient car (45 mpg), your consumption will only be .
Depending on the fuel efficiency level of your car, driving from Edgar to Bay Pines will cost you between and . An average car would make the trip for . We calculate the route cost using real time average gas prices for the US and other costs such as tolls are not included in this calculation.
To help you plan your trip from Edgar to Bay Pines, we offer a detailed map together with full, turn by turn, driving directions from Edgar, NE to Bay Pines, FL.
The flying distance represent the straight distance from Edgar to Bay Pines, the length of an hypothetical flight trip between the geographic center of Edgar, NE and the geographic center of Bay Pines, FL. We also offer nearby airports to both Edgar to Bay Pines and a flight ticket price comparison form, in case you want to make that hypothetical flight real :).


First time using a Pet sitter & was quite anxious about this, Leaving my 2 Shih Tzus for 24 hours was a massive thing for us but Andrea was amazing!
She talked me through everything I needed to know. Invited myself and the 2 dogs over for a meet and greet. Gave advice to settle girls in properly.
Both my girls had a lovely time, Andrea sent photos to reassure me. She promptly replied to my messages checking on the girls.
Was a lovely experience and has reassured me that i can go on holiday with my mind at ease in future.
Andrea even kissed both girls Goodbye, Honestly you can tell this isn't for profit, its purely for a passion of pets!
Andrea was fantastic, she dealt with my two dogs, updated me to let me know everything was ok and even sent pictures of them. I will use her again in the future.
Walks - long and short - usually based on a 60 and 30 min walk to suit your requirements, however bigger dogs that require more exercise can be walked for longer periods if you wish, as I like to do 3-6 mile hikes with my partner in the Countryside sometimes.
Live-in Pet sitting at your home - I regulary cat and dog sit for some clients who wish for their pets to stay at their own home.
Boarding at my home - once I've met with the dog. I can arrange to collect and/or drop off to suit your needs. This can be discussed at a Meet & Greet. I only board one dog at a time.
Chauffeuring to appointments at the Vets or Groomers if you don't have transport or cannot take them yourself.
Skype sessions can be arranged with owners if they'd like to see their pets whenever they are away on holiday.
I will gladly provide references from my current clients outside of Pawshake.
Fully Insured and Licenced through Redditch Borough Council.


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Home The Barrio Chef Chef Ben Diaz Is Excited About Latin Food Fest!
Chef Ben Diaz Is Excited About Latin Food Fest!
For Chef Ben Diaz, chasing his culinary dreams may have never happened if he wasn't chasing someone else. "It's actually a funny story. I wanted to be a pharmacist but I was young and dumb and I had a crush on this girl and she was going to culinary school and I thought I'll go too. Long story short, fast forward 17 years and here I am," said Diaz.
Chef Ben Diaz Is One of the Amazing Chefs Participating in the Latin Food Fest 2018
In case you're wondering, that relationship didn't workout but fortunately for all of us the cooking career did. "Everyone wants to know if I ended up dating her but I didn't. But I'm so glad she got me to go to culinary school," said Diaz with a laugh.
Chef Ben graduated from the California School of Culinary Arts. He will be one of the amazing chefs participating in the Latin Food Fest 2018.
Diaz says the best part is meeting so many great food minds. "It's amazing to a part of such an amazing event. It's much more than just burritos and tacos. You have people from Venezuela, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Chile' and Paraguay. You have so much different talent out there. It's always great to see these amazing chefs and to see what they come up with," said Diaz.
The Latin Food Fest is heading into its sixth year and looks better than ever in 2018. Chef Diaz has been a part of every single one and plans on always being a part of the festivities. "It's just an incredible event and I can't believe I've been a part of it for so many years. I hope we see a lot of people out there this year. It's a great way to learn from the best Latin chefs in the world," said Diaz.
Diaz is currently the Executive Chef at the Luxe City Center Hotel in downtown Los Angeles where he oversees culinary operations for the Nixo Patio Lounge and Stafford + Mathis restaurants. Diaz also runs his own consulting company called CBD Cuisine that helps restaurants perfect their menu and business models. "It's a non-stop environment. I'm constantly on the go." says Diaz.
Ben has also developed his own spice line called Epices de la Vie that includes gourmet spices and custom blend salts. "We've created an amazing blend that you need to check out," says Diaz.
Chef Diaz is a blend himself. His Mexican and Guatemalan heritage has had an incredible influence on the way he cooks. "I do a lot of different blends with spices, fried chilies-I use a lot of ingredients you don't see in more practical cuisine and I blend that with my classical French cuisine training. Those small influences can change the whole dish," says Diaz.
Chef Diaz says he has some advice for people who want to get into the culinary industry. " You can't be afraid to be different. Be a trendsetter. Be something unique and someone you love," says Diaz.
One things for sure is you're going to love meeting Chef Ben Diaz at this year's Latin Food Fest!
Chef Ben Diaz
Culinary School
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News and features - Page 81
St George's knight's retirement honoured
Leading obstetrics and gynaecology experts have honoured SGUL's Professor Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran on his retirement after almost 40 years at the forefront of O&G clinical practice and 28 years in academia. Sir Arul's retirement was marked by a valedictory scientific meeting hosted at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
Colleagues from St George's – both the university and the hospital – and national and international obstetrics and gynaecology experts came together for the event last month, where they discussed the latest advances in the field.
Support from social workers crucial as austerity bites
Britain's current economic woes are putting vulnerable children and families under growing pressure and social workers have a crucial role to play in helping them cope, according to a senior academic from Kingston University and St George's, University of London.
Professor Hilary Tompsett, a professor at the Kingston and St George's Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education, was speaking after joining the governing board of the new College of Social Work. A registered social worker with more than 25 years' experience working in children and families, mental health and older care as both a practitioner and educator, Professor Tompsett was one of four new board members chosen by the college in its first elections in February.
Learning disability end-of-life researcher joins Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education
An expert in the palliative care of people with learning disabilities has taken up a new role at Kingston University and St George's, University of London.
Dr Irene Tuffrey-Wijne has been appointed a senior research fellow at the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education, run jointly by Kingston and St George's.
Fully funded postgraduate course available to NHS professionals interested in clinical research
Eighteen fully funded studentships in London are being offered to NHS healthcare professionals this year to equip them for careers in clinical research.
The Master of Research in Clinical Practice (MResCP) is aimed at nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, to give them the skills to manage and deliver research in a clinical setting. It is being run by Kingston University and St George's, University of London, and is now recruiting for September 2013 entry. Applications must be received by Friday 17 May.
Dogma among researchers exaggerates threat of resistance to best anti-malarial drugs, says expert on World Malaria Day 2013 (25 April)
Exaggeration over the extent of the malaria parasite's resistance to the 'wonder drugs' artemisinins could jeopardise the fight against the disease, according to a leading expert.
In an opinion article published on World Malaria Day today (25 April 2013) – online in the journal Trends in Parasitology – Professor Sanjeev Krishna of St George's, University of London argues that much of the evidence of the malaria parasite's resistance to artemisinins has been misinterpreted. He says this has led to the extent of artemisinin resistance being overstated, and that fears of its demise as an effective treatment are premature.


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In mid-2010, I left my lawyer job for an administrative assistant position. The dismal job market combined with the JD (read: scarlet letter) on my resume left me with limited career options. I took the plunge and went through some, ahem, challenges. These days, my future looks a lot brighter, but feel free to be entertained by the various humiliations I experienced immediately post-law. The way I see it, I suffered...so you don't have to.


IBM Watson is a multi-talented cognitive computer, so multi-skilled it's even the kind to help you make dinner... yup. I know. For the first time ever IBM Watson went consumer facing (that's big!) with the beta launch of ChefWatson, the cooking app. IBM asked Ogilvy to help with the announcement, which they were making in collaboration with Bon Appétit. What's special about using Watson to cook is that it with it's supercomputer brain it can suggest food combinations you'd never think of.
To get people inspired and excited to try the app, I figured wacky cuisine called for some wacky inspiring imagery. With a color palette selected to tie well with the app, we commissioned the lovely Leta Sobierajski to create the set design. The imagery and animated GIFs ran across the IBM social media accounts.


In her article, "When Animals Mourn," in this month's Scientific American, anthropologist Barbara J. King discusses her own experience in studying animal emotion, as well as developments in the scientific community's perception of it.
Though science has traditionally shunned the anthropomorphizing of animal behavior, pioneers like Jane Goodall and Cynthia Moss helped revive the scientific study of animal emotion. King admits to sharing the traditional school-of-thought regarding emotion in animals, but after spending two years researching her book, How Animals Grieve, her views have dramatically changed.
But what is the biological benefit of grief—how could it help us and other animals survive and thrive? What could the evolutionary benefit of grief be, when, as seen in many of King's examples, the mourning behavior of the grieving animals (separation from the pack, cessation of eating, etc.) puts them at greater risk of illness, injury, and/or death? King says that the adaptive element may not be grief itself, but "instead, the strong positive emotions experienced before grief comes into the picture, shared by two or more living animals whose level of cooperation in nurturing or resource-acquisition is enhanced by these feelings." In other words, the grief is a symptom of the real evolutionary benefit at work: love. King cites behaviorist Marc Bekoff, who proposes in his book, Animals Matter, that animals experience love as well as grief. That animal grief "results from love lost," much in the same way it does for human grief.
In fact, the study of animal emotion doesn't just give us insight to the myriad of other creatures with which we (often poorly) share this planet; it also deepens our understanding of human grief and emotion, and that of our prehistoric ancestors. Furthermore, the impact of animal emotion research could change the way we live.
Temple Grandin has already used research in animal emotion to revolutionize the slaughter process in 90% of the beef industry. As the scientific study of animal emotion advances, how will it transform the ways we interact with them? Will knowing that animals experience love and grief alter how we treat pets or livestock, or the ways in which we produce and consume animal products? Will it modify the handling and care of lab animals, service animals, and those that live in zoos, circuses, or on nature preserves?
Though much of animal emotion is still a mystery, with the work of researchers like King, soon we could know much more about what and how animals feel. Whether or not we're ready to know is another story.
Nancy Lambert still sobs when Charlotte dies, but is doubtful spiders in her apartment would fare any better if they could read and write. When she doesn't have her nose buried in a book, Nancy is busy writing, cutting down restless draugrs in Skyrim, or putzing around online.


1. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / Gyimah-Boadi, E.
1. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
2. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
3. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
4. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
5. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
6. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
7. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
8. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
9. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
10. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
11. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
12. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / E. Gyimah-Boadi, editor.
13. Democratic reform in Africa : the quality of progress / edited by E. Gyimah-Boadi.
Your query was: ISBN: 1588262464.


Motorists are being advised to avoid the Mosquito Creek as water levels have reached as high as the sea wall.
Flood waters began rising on the Creek on Friday night.
A Facebook page dedicated to monitoring the situation in the area showed videos and pictures of the flood.
Cars were seen driving through and there have been reports of some vehicles getting stuck.
Rising tides have also exacerbated the situation.
The Met Office said on Friday that buoy data, as well as reports reaching the Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service, indicate that sea conditions around Trinidad and Tobago were currently moderate to rough with wave heights reaching up to 3.0 metres in open waters and near 1.0 metre (but choppy) in sheltered areas.
"General wave heights along the exposed coastlines of Trinidad and Tobago, especially North and East coasts are forecast to maintain near 3.0 metres but individual waves may peak in excess of 3.0 metres at times. Additionally, in sheltered areas, conditions may be exacerbated during high tide," the Met Office said.
Wave heights were expected to gradually decrease around Trinidad from late last night and around Tobago after midday today.


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Latest trends: shirtless, height, wedding speech, Princess Mette-Marit, wedding, ski race
The latest news and pictures of Prince Haakon of Norway. Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway is the heir to the throne of Norway and the son of the current King, Harald V.
Haakon married Princess Mette-Marit on 25 August 2001 in Oslo. They have two children together.
To read more about Haakon, click here:Prince Haakon Biography
Queen Maxima and King Willem-Alexander remember Prince Friso at memorial ceremony
Queen Maxima, King Willem-Alexander and other members of the Dutch royal family gathered to remember Prince Johan Friso at a memorial ceremony on…
Prince Haakon and his wife Princess Mette-Marit of Norway welcomed Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his family in Kristiansand, the south of Norway,…
Prince Haakon of Norway celebrates his 40th birthday with festival themed party
Prince Haakon of Norway has been celebrating his 40th birthday in style. The prince, who turned 40 on Saturday, arrived at Skaugum Palace by…
Princess Mette-Marit and Prince Haakon to host lavish 40th birthday party
Princess Mette-Marit and her husband Prince Haakon of Norway are preparing to celebrate their 40th birthdays in style. The royal couple, who will…
The Norwegian royals have released the latest of their family albums featuring their pet Milly Kakao and her nine adorable puppies.Clearly huge…
Tender moments as Prince Haakon and Mette-Marit celebrate 40th birthdays with family photos
This summer there will be big celebrations in Norway's royal household, as both Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit celebrate their…
Princess Mette-Marit takes to Twitter to show off cute new puppies
Princess Mette-Marit of Norway took to her Twitter account on Saturday to announce that the family's pet dog Milly had given birth to puppies."And…
Scandinavian royals confirm attendance at Dutch inauguration as full guest list is revealed
On Tuesday, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands will make her abdication official and hand the reins of the Dutch monarchy to her son Crown Prince…
Norwegian royals Haakon and Mette-Marit enjoy family fun on the ski slopes
Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and his wife Mette-Marit treated their family to some fun in the snow this weekend. Haakon, 39, was seen pushing the…
Princess Mette-Marit keeps her son warm at ski festival
It's a touching scene as Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit wraps her young son Sverre Magnus, seven, up in a big hug to protect him from the biting…
Europe's royal heirs gather in The Netherlands
Europe's royal heirs have posed for a rare photograph together. The charming image shows the blue-blooded group dressed in casual clothes, standing…
Mary and Maxima will join their friend Victoria in celebrating her baby's christening
The last time they gathered in such numbers in Sweden was for Crown Princess Victoria's lavish wedding to Daniel Westling. Now, Europe's young…
Excitement as young European royals begin school
The first day of school is a big occasion in every child's life and it normally comes with tears and tantrums.Even for parents, the experience can be…
Smile back on Princess Mette-Marit's face following Norway tragedy
Judging by Princess Mette-Marit's expression it seems the royal has put behind her a very tough month. The Norwegian princess was smiling and looking…
Scandinavian royals come together to honour Norwegian attack victims
It was an emotional weekend of remembrance in Norway as the country came together to honour the 77 people who died in a murderous rampage exactly a…
Cute new family snaps show birthday girl Princess Ingrid's love of animals
In honour of Princess Ingrid Alexandra's seventh birthday, royal fans got the chance for a glimpse into the family's recent private trip to India.…
Norway's future queen raring to go on her first day at local state school
There were no tears or even a hint of anxiety at the school gates.In fact, six-year-old Princess Ingrid of Norway was positively skipping with…
Norway's Princess Mette-Marit goes sledging with young asylum seekers
There may have been snow outside, but it was definitely spring in the heart of Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit on Sunday. The kind-hearted wife…
Haakon and Mette-Marit launch official Norwegian royal YouTube channel
Many of Europe's royal families are reaching out through social networking sites, and Norway's Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit are…
Mette-Marit has her crowning moment and gets royal seal of approval from husband
As the Norwegian crown princess, Mette-Marit already possesses a beautiful selection of regal jewels. But perhaps none has as much personal value as…
Prince Harry and Meghan
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Archie Harrison


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Filesize: 0.0 MB / 2018-11-15 / Publisher : Electronic Arts	/ Platform : PC	/ Genre : Action
Battlefield V sees the series return to a World War II setting for the first time in nearly a decade.
DICE aims to take the series back to its roots and deliver the World War II experience they had always envisioned.
Cooperative Missions
Cooperative mode returns in the form of "Combined Arms." Four players can team up to fight against AI targets and achieve mission goals as a cohesive unit.
While the traditional feel of Battlefield is mostly retained, a few concepts are back and a few have been added:
Shooting while sliding
Lying face up (and shooting)
In previous Battlefield entries, if the player was injured and managed to escape further injury for a period of time, they could recover to full health.
In this entry, the health system is staggered with multiple levels. The player, on their own, can only recover up to a maximum of the current level of health they're in, enhancing the importance of the Medic class and their med-packs.
A completely new feature to the Battlefield series is an added responsibility to build fortifications at predetermined locations around the map. The types of fortifications include military assets and structures that can be built on every map. These include sandbags, barbed wire, fox holes, trenches, tank stoppers, machine gun nests, and reinforced destroyed buildings.
All classes have the ability to build the basic items, however the Support class is the sole option to build offensive fortifications, such as machine guns and field canons. Additionally, the Support class has a far superior build speed in comparison to other classes.
Grand Operations
Returning from Battlefield 1 is the Operations mode, but modified to take place over the course of four fictional days. The results of each day affect following days, and it is possible to be unable to complete all four days.
A system that allows players to create stables of customized characters, which includes class selection, load outs, vehicle options, and character model customizations.
Tides of War
The game's version of live events takes place over the course of several months each.
DICE officially announced that a Premium Pass would be not be part of Battlefield V. All maps and future content will be free, and there will be no divide in the player base as a result.
22.5 GB | Pc Games
A Story About My Uncle
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock


Hire a paddle board from WASUP and discover the beautiful waters of Rockingham Beach!
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Although April has barely arrived, nesting season has begun. Birds of prey take a long time to fledge young so their breeding season starts early. For example, Great Horned Owls incubate their eggs for five weeks and the young do not take their first flight for another seven or eight weeks. Owls are courting now, accomplished mostly by vocalizations. Now is a great time of go owling.
Let's consider the three most common owls in the state. We'll cover their distinctive calls as well as their morphology, diet and habitat preferences.
Barred Owls are common residents of woodlands, particularly around lakeshores and swamps. These birds are gray with distinctive vertical black and white lines on the underside. Barred Owls have large, brown eyes; all the other owls in the state have yellow eyes.
Barred Owls are active at night and at twilight. They are heard far more often than they are seen. The booming call of the Barred Owl has been described as "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?". Once you have heard the call, it becomes instantly recognizable.
Barred Owls have a fairly broad diet. Small mammals like mice, voles and squirrels compose much of their diet although birds up to the size of Belted Kingfishers, turtles and even insects may be taken.
Great Horned Owls are perhaps nearly as common as Barred Owls in Maine. Unlike a Barred Owl, a Great Horned Owl has two tufts of feathers on the top of its head that form the "horns". With a wingspread up to five feet, these owls are impressive birds. The plumage is generally brown with some white feathers on the throat and cross-barred markings on the breast.
Capable of flying on silent wings and equipped with massive talons, Great Horned Owls are efficient predators. Like the Barred Owl, Great Horned Owls hunt mainly at night and at dawn and dusk. These birds can kill birds as large as pheasants, Red-tailed Hawks and Barred Owls and mammals as large as mink and domestic cats.
The call of the Great Horned Owl is a five- or six-note call, consisting of resounding hoots in the following cadence: hoot hoot-hoot hoot hoot.
The last of our common owls is the small Northern Saw-whet Owl. Only eight inches long, Saw-whet Owls are endearing little predators. They feed primarily on mice as well as young squirrels, chipmunks and small songbirds.
The common name of this owl presumably comes from one of its calls that can be likened to the sound that is made when a mill saw is sharpened or whetted. The typical call is a series of monotonous whistles that seem to go on forever.
Saw-whet Owls are birds of dense forests, especially coniferous forests. These owls are strictly nocturnal.
An owl prowl may well yield all three of these owls by aural identification. All of these owls will respond to imitations of their calls. You might enjoy driving some back roads after dark, stopping periodically to listen for the sounds of owl courtship.
The Eastern Screech-Owl is a common bird throughout the eastern United States to our south but is quite rare in Maine. The Maine Bird Records Committee currently recognizes only four records for the state, all from the central part of the state.
Eastern Screech-Owls give two distinctive calls. One is a long, tremulous trill and the second is a whinny, a string of descending notes. Evan Glynn, Josh Fecteau, Andy Aldrich and Kevin Couture heard an Eastern Screech-Owl in York, Maine on March 22. They were able to get a recording to confirm the record. A very nice discovery!
To prepare yourself in advance of an owl prowl, I recommend visiting the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's website, http://allaboutbirds.org You can search for any species of North American bird. The information will include several sound recordings.
The Common Eider is a common species of sea duck in northern coastal regions of North America, Europe and eastern Siberia. A common breeder in Maine, Common Eiders nest as far south as Massachusetts in New England. Common Eiders are important members of arctic breeding bird communities well to the north of us as well.
Common Eiders withdraw from their more northerly breeding areas after nesting and winter in coastal flocks. Winter aggregations may number in the thousands. In Maine, this species is present year-round.
Common Eiders are distinctive birds, often recognizable merely by their silhouette. The combination of a long, sloping bill (think ski jump), long neck and peaked head give them a distinctive look. At a length of two feet, Common Eiders are among our biggest ducks.
Adult drakes are subtly beautiful birds. The crown is black but the cheeks, neck and dorsal body are mostly white. A close look in favorable light reveals a light green wash on the posterior side of the face and nape. The mostly black wings contrast with the white sides when an eider is on the water. The bill is a dull yellow.
Like most ducks, the adult females are much less brightly marked. The body is barred with irregular dark and light brown stripes. The head is mostly brown.
First-year males are highly variable with brown heads like females but with splotches of white and brown on the dorsal surface. The breast is white.
Common Eider females make a nest on rocky islands, not far above the high tide mark. A female plucks down from her breast to line the nest. The down used to create soft, warm pillows, coats and sleeping bags often comes from eider down.
Harvesting eider down is typically done after the nesting season. A down collector simply gathers the down from the nest once the young eiders have hatched. However, synthetic insulating materials have been developed with comparable insulating properties to eider down. These synthetic products are relatively cheap to produce so an eider down-filled vest or coat will cost you a pretty penny compared to a product made from a synthetic material.
By the way, some down used for insulation comes from geese. That down has to be plucked directly from the geese. Goose down is inferior to eider down in insulating properties.
A hen eider may lay up to 14 eggs. When the ducklings hatch, they are covered with a down coat and leave the nest soon after hatching.
Once the ducklings have hatched, they aggregate into crèches of 100 birds or more. These eiders are watched over by the moms as well as non-breeding females.
The ducklings start to form their contour feathers in their second week and complete feather growth by seven weeks after hatching. They take their first flight nine or ten weeks after hatching.
Common Eiders dive in search of invertebrate food from the sea bottom. Mussels are one of the most common prey items taken although crabs and sea urchins are important components of their diet as well. An eider swallows a mussel whole, crushing the shell of the mussel in its powerful gizzard. For a crab, an eider removes the legs first and then swallows the de-legged crab for crushing in the gizzard.
The fondness of Common Eiders for mussels poses a challenge for mussel mariculture. Not surprisingly, the dense aggregation of mussels attracts eiders. Nets seem to be the only practical way to protect the mussels from the eiders and other sea ducks.
Common Eiders are doing well now with an estimated population of two million birds in North America and Europe. Our New England population was nearly decimated by market hunters by the end of the 19th century. Fortunately, the eiders have recovered.
Hybridization is the process of crossing individuals from genetically distinctive groups. In most cases, those distinctive groups are considered separate species.
Hybridization occurs widely in the natural world and birds are no exception. Some authors claim that at least 10% of the world's 11,000 species form hybrids with other closely related species.
In Maine, Mallards frequently mate with American Black Ducks. In fact, wildlife biologists are worried that the frequency of hybrids may eliminate the American Black Duck as we know it. Mallards are much more common than American Black Ducks. Hybrid pairings represent only a small fraction of all Mallard matings but a more significant fraction for the rare American Black Duck. This process, called genetic introgression, means that American Black Ducks are accumulating Mallard genetic material as time goes on.
Mallard-black duck hybrids are hardly the only duck hybrids. Ducks are notorious for hybridization, sometimes producing baffling individuals whose provenance is unclear. Hybrids I have had the pleasure to see in the wild include Barrow's Goldeneye x Common Goldeneye, Greater Scaup x Tufted Duck, American Wigeon x Eurasian Wigeon and Mallard x Northern Pintail.
Some bird hybrids occur frequently enough that they have been given names. For some of these named hybrids, early ornithologists thought they were separate species and described them as such. Later work indicated they were actually hybrids of two related species. Thus, we have Brewster's Warbler, a hybrid between a Blue-winged Warbler and Golden-winged Warbler along with the rarer Lawrence's Warbler (one parent is usually a Brewster's Warbler!).
Nelson's Gull was originally described in 1884 as a new species. We now know that it is actually a hybrid between a Glaucous Gull and a Herring Gull.
Viable hybrids represent flies in the ointment as we try to understand species limits. Many biologists (and most members of the American Ornithologists Union Check-list Committee, the arbiter of the North American species list) subscribe to the biological species concept, first developed by Ernst Mayr in 1951. Mayr defined a species as a group of interbreeding individuals that are reproductively isolated from all other groups. In birds, reproductive isolation can occur by differences in plumage, differences in vocalization or differences in courtship behavior.
If Mallard and American Black Ducks can interbreed to produce fertile offspring, should they not be considered a single species? It's a thorny issue but the upshot is that occasional hybridization is tolerated before two hybridizing species are considered one.
A recent paper by Jennifer Walsh and colleagues in the Auk explores an intriguing hybrid zone in salt marshes in Maine. Field guides from 20 years ago or older had an entry for the Sharp-tailed Sparrow with a breeding range along the eastern seaboard from Virginia to Nova Scotia. In 1995, this species was split into two species: the more southerly Salt Marsh Sparrow and the more northerly Nelson's Sparrow. The two species can be distinguished morphologically. The Salt Marsh Sparrow has more distinct dark streaking on the breast and flanks and has a bright orange cheek patch. The Salt Marsh Sparrow is slightly bigger with a longer, thinner bill.
One of the birding attractions of Scarborough Marsh is that both of these sparrow species nest together. We also know that hybrids of the two species occur here.
Walsh and colleagues sampled sparrows in 34 marshes from the North Shore of Massachusetts to Washington County, Maine. At each site, they captured sparrows, took various measurements and drew a blood sample for DNA analysis.
Most of the Massachusetts marshes had only Salt Marsh Sparrows and the Penobscot Bay to Washington County sites had only Nelson's Sparrows. In between however, hybrids occurred. DNA comparisons showed that 52% of individuals in the hybrid zone had mixed ancestry. However, because of the complicated crossing and backcrossing of individuals, pure and hybrid birds cannot be distinguished on the basis of morphology. Hybrids are rampant but can only be discerned by genetic analysis.
Spring migration is winding down. The arrival of Blackpoll Warblers, Black-billed Cuckoos, Saltmarsh Sparrow and Nelson's Sparrow signifies the end of the spring spectacle.
Having returned to Maine from the south, male birds are setting up territories and trying to attract a mate with songs and displays. We have a tendency to project an idyllic image of a happy bird couple raising a family. That image is often inaccurate.
For starters, not every bird will be able to find a mate. Some of the best evidence for this statement comes from an experiment that was done in Maine over 50 years ago. The methodology of the study will be reprehensible to some. Nevertheless, we learned much from this experiment.
The researchers mapped out a 40-acre forest plot. In early June, they determined that 154 territorial birds (males) were present. Then the removals began. The researchers shot as many of the singing males as they could. Within two weeks, the density of male birds was reduced to 21% and kept at that level until July 11. By July 11, 528 adult birds had been killed. That's 3.5 times the original density of birds!
This removal experiment tells us there are lots of unmated males that are lurking around, hoping for a chance to acquire a territory and a mate. These non-territorial birds are called satellite males in the ornithological literature. The experiment shows that there must be many satellite males waiting for an opportunity.
As in mammals, birds show a 50:50 proportion of females:males. With so many satellite males, there must be unmated females present as well who never come into the vicinity of an unmated male. The failure of some birds to find a mate challenges our fanciful notion of wedded bliss in birds.
An even greater challenge to that notion lies in the fact that avian social life has soap opera aspects. Cheating on a mate occurs frequently. Thanks to the development of DNA fingerprinting techniques, we can determine the paternity of nestlings. Although 90% of bird species are classified as monogamous, 30% of nestlings are sired by a male other than the female's mate.
It's a two-way street. Females seek multiple partners to fertilize their eggs and males seek as many female partners outside of the pair-bond as they can find. These dalliances are referred to as extra-pair copulations and their importance in the field is indicated by the fact that every ornithologist knows the initialized version, EPC, of this behavior.
The male incentive for EPCs is clear: to father as many baby birds as possible. What's the advantage for a female who can produce only a few eggs? The best argument is that the female is seeking to increase the variability of her nestlings. The environment is always changing and having greater variation in her offspring increases the chances that one or two of those offspring will better fit the demands of the environment in the future.
The reproductive life of a territorial male is pretty good. He fathers at least some of the eggs laid by his mate and perhaps has some EPCs with females on neighboring territories. But what about those unmated satellite males? Do they get to reproduce at all? Satellite males do not have a territory because they are outcompeted by the stronger males who can defend a territory. Weaker males are usually younger as well.
Some males engage in a type of trickery called delayed plumage maturation. In the second year of their life, their plumage resembles that of a female. This disguise allows them to slip into the territory of a male (he's got cheating on his mind) and sneak a quick mating with the resident female. Check your field guide to see the second-year plumage of American Redstarts, Baltimore Orioles and Red-winged Blackbirds.
In today's column, I'll provide a summary of some recent scientific articles on birds that occur in Maine. All of these articles appeared in the most recent issue of the Wilson Journal of Ornithology.
Christina Masco describes research she did in Maine on Appledore Island on interactions among nesting Great-blacked Gulls. These gulls nest at high density and a pair aggressively defends its small territory (about 350 square feet) throughout the breeding season. Real estate on Appledore is hard to find so most territories abut several other territories.
If an intruding gull enters the territory of a gull, aggressive interactions ensue. But some of these fights are avoided by the use of threat displays, warning another gull that it should leave or prepare for a fight.
One of these threat displays is a distinctive vocalization that sounds like "yeow". This call tells an adjacent bird that an attack is imminent. Masco used play-back experiments to determine if Great Black-backed Gulls can recognize individuals based on their "yeow" calls. She found that a territorial gull will hold alert postures longer in response to unfamiliar "yeows" compared to the "yeow" given by a mate or neighbor.
This finding is an example of the dear enemy phenomenon. Animals get used to adjacent enemies and tend to respond less vigorously to them than to strangers. In other words, it is better to deal with the devil you do know rather than the devil you don't know.
The Eastern Wood-Pewee is a fairly common breeding bird throughout our state. Felicity Newell and colleagues wrote an article describing surprising reproductive traits of this species in Ohio.
Before this research, ornithologists had presumed that Eastern Wood-Pewees were monogamous, with a pair-bond cementing one male and one female together. Newell and colleagues present research that challenges this assumption of mate fidelity. They color-banded 79 pewees with unique color combinations. Much to their surprise, they found one male that was simultaneous feeding young at two different nests. The same male was polygynous (mated to more than one female) the following year as well.
Polygyny is advantageous for a male because he can father twice as many young as a monogamous male. Polygyny can be disadvantageous for females because their presumed faithful mate is devoting half of his time to a different family.
Aside from habitat destruction, bird mortality from bird-window collisions represent the greatest human-associated source of bird deaths. Bird deaths from window collisions number in the billions.
Dan Klem of Muhlenberg College has been studying bird-window collisions for over 30 years. Klem and Peter Saenger wrote an article in which they evaluate the effectiveness of selected visual signals to deter bird-window collisions.
Their work was based on a carefully controlled experiment where they placed wood-framed picture windows in an area of mowed pasture in Pennsylvania. They placed a platform feeder 10 meters from each window.
Experimental treatments included using clear glass, reflective (mirrored) glass, ORNILUX Mikado glass, and Acopian bird savers (vertically hung parachute cords spaced three or four inches apart). The ORNILUX glass reflects more ultraviolet light than other types of glass as well as the Acopian bird savers. Unlike humans, birds can see a portion of the ultraviolet spectrum.
Klem and Saenger recorded the number of bird collisions (some of which were fatal) with the picture windows equipped with the three different types of glass. They also tested the effectiveness of the Acopian bird savers.
In one experiment testing the three types of glass, no difference in total collisions was found. However, fatalities were lowest at clear glass (10%) and highest at the ORNILUX glass (58%). The ultraviolet-reflecting glass had the opposite effect expected.
A second experiment showed that parachute cords were very effective in preventing collisions, hung outside of either clear or reflecting glass.
Visit http://www.birdsavers.com/ to learn more about Acopian bird savers.


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Steal Cara Delevingne's Burberry Front Row Style, 'Cause I Know You're Drooling Over Those Knee High Boots
By Rosie Narasaki
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
OK, so Cara Delevingne was at Burberry Prorsum, just not walking the runway the way I was hoping she would. Instead, she looked pretty darn fabulous in the front row (where she was sandwiched between Sam Smith and Jourdan Dunn — with Kate Moss, Mario Testino and Naomi Campbell sitting mere feet away, by the way). She came to the show early (unlike Naomi) and posed fabulously in — what else? — Burberry looks from the latest line.
Delevingne's always had some seriously covetable style (remember when she showed us how to do a night on the town right in a fringed mini dress, black tights, crazy-high platforms, and a trendy blazer?) — and she's managed to do it again for the Burberry show. Armed with a super-trendy shearling jacket, a burgundy lacy (very) mini dress, and some patchwork suede thigh-high boots, she was seriously dressed to kill.
And guess what? Even though all the pieces put together cost more than my car, it's not too difficult to steal her look — or, at least an approximation of it. After all, it's a relatively simple outfit (with some statement pieces, of course) so it's very wearable — whether you're headed to the Burberry front row or not! Let's take a look:
And a long shot, for the shoes:
Okay, so how to get the look? Let's break it down:
First, you're going to want to start off with a slightly boho, oxblood lace dress. This one's more of a skater silhouette than the bodycon shift Cara's sporting, but it'll work quite well for the look (besides, her friend Taylor Swift's a major fan of this brand, so it's kind of a win-win if you're into celeb fashion).
Floral Mesh Lace Dress, $128, Free People
The Jacket
Up the unexpected cool factor another notch by adding a shearling jacket (preferably one with moto jacket-style detailing) on top of your lace dress.
Barney's Original Melton Wool Coat with Shearling Collar, $56.86, ASOS
Turns out, patchwork suede over-the-knee boots are quite hard to find... but these non-patchwork boots should do the trick. After all, they have that badass, superhero vibe (and newly-minted Suicide Squad villain Cara should approve of that).
Kate, $200, Sam Edelman
Here's hoping for more awesome Cara Delevingne outfits before we see the end of London, Paris, and Milan fashion weeks!


Cap sure seems lost in thought.
"Hey, Cap! What do you think we should do about Norman? Cap?"
New Avengers #50 (April 2009).
Ultimate Destiny is a long-lost, brilliant pre-code horror tale with a classic shock ending by the prolific Golden Age comic book creator Jay Disbrow. Included as the final story of the otherwise dull anti-crime comic book Crime Detector #5, this September 1954 tale must have been a giddy shock to the minds of young readers who flipped, bored, through the typical law and order morality tales that comprised the majority of the content of the book. Discovering this story must have been like unearthing a buried treasure and finding a gold coin among leaden slugs. I imagine this book was hidden from parents and surreptitiously shared, like some sordid photo magazine found in their Father's closet, with friends in alleys, forts and tree houses all over the America of the 1950s. This story has served as the inspiration for a number of teleplays and comic book stories over the years.
This is one of the few times I've seen this story in color. I've only previously seen this story as photocopied pages with poor register in an old comic book anthology or two from the 1970s.
Nice panel by Joe Kubert from 3D Comics #2 (October 1953).
Fatty's Got The Sleeping Sickness in 3D!
Break out the red and cyan glasses, kids! I found a free Anaglyph program on the web that turns photos into 3D images and I'm testing it with various pictures. Bright color comic book panels don't come out that great but it was a fun experiment anyways.
Freakin' awesome panels from Jungle Comics #6 (June 1940).
Being married to a Korean woman of traditional ways I eat a lot of Korean cuisine. Since I can't really exercise anymore because of the lower back, the high-veggie ingredients of my Korean-style meals are what I credit for my waistline going from a 46 to a 42. By the time the next San Diego Comic-Con rolls around I should look less like a stereotypical fanboy and instead more like a superhero. I don't mean Herbie, either.
I particularly enjoy Bibimbap. It is awesome. At most restaurants it comes in a huge bowl with a couple of pounds of condiments (including Kimchi) on the side. Like many of the items on the menu it has a high veggie to meat ratio. Vegetarianism is dull and boring. I couldn't face life if I had to eat carrots for every meal. A few days of that and I'd kill a cow with my bare hands and eat it raw. What would you rather eat, a plate of steamed veggies or a big, hot stone bowl of Bibimbap? You can be totally Vegan and not want to kill yourself out of boredom three times a day just by eating Korean food. It is true.
On Convoy street in San Diego are a few nice Korean restaurants that serve good meals. The favorite of the wife and I is one with the name of her home town in the title. The lunch specials are great and are a popular destination for the people who work in the area. We go there about once a week. The price is small and the portions are large.
One aspect of the place I dislike in principle is the information about the dishes in the framed printouts that line the walls. While the photos and descriptions serve to educate those guests not familiar with Korean cuisine they are also filled with paragraphs touting the health benefits of the food. But none of the descriptions contain much in the way of facts and instead make woo-woo claims similar to those found in books, articles and websites about homeopathy. It should be enough to state the benefits of real food over chemically-saturated and processed junk. Instead nigh-magical properties are attributed to the ingredients that 'clean the blood', 'improve the spirit' and ' such blah blah blah. The mystical, magical and junk-science claims are not necessary, but I am very aware they appeal to a certain type of person.
Not that one culture is particularly apt to take advantage of their own over another, but I am often angered by what I see as an incredibly predatory attitude among members of their own community. Magic cures, quack medical procedures and junk science abounds. Like an evangelical preacher will use religion to make a buck, these grifters exploit the cultural traditions regarding age, respect and ingrained social politeness as pry bars to open the wallets and purses of their marks.
One of the items a market near the Convoy area sells are six inch strips of neoprene cut from wetsuit material. This rubber is nothing short of magic and supposedly cures an amazing list of deadly ailments. By the way, the rubber is cut into trapezoid shapes, ensuring that every other piece leaves a smaller triangle-shaped scrap that is sold for around $300. Nothing is wasted, there. The product purportedly works through ions and magnets and other made up blather. My assertion would be any material that does what it claims doesn't need a large piece to work as the application of even the smallest piece should be equally effective.
That store and nearly every other in the area is full of quack items like that and is one of the reasons I don't let my wife shop alone when she is in the area. Many people of her background have shown themselves susceptible to the high-pressure tactics by salesmen who seek to take advantage of cultural predilections. Some of the salesmen, and I witnessed a lot of this tactic in Maryland, would find a family and prey upon them like a telemarketer with a sucker list. They used cultural and familial pressures to make a sale for some ridiculous device, juice or magic pill. Once a sale is made the word gets out and the vultures descend in a mighty flock.
In Maryland I was often asked by members of my family and the community who had questions about a product to check out the claims. I printed out evidence from the FDA, warnings about scams from the BBB and other sources, pointed out the miracle health pills being pushed on them for $175 a bottle was in fact powdered baby formula. I even once held a presentation for a group revealing that the test for "bad" tap water a salesman was performing in selling $2500 water filters was a scam the government has been warning people about for over 40 years. I often wondered why I bothered to help because in nearly every instance the salesman was able to babble some nonsense and I would be dismissed. On one occasion I'm aware of the product representative asked why anyone would believe a "Westerner" over a fellow countryman.
Just before I left Maryland a member of a small local church asked me to look into the claims of a company pushing miracle Amazonian berry juice. Someone was aggressively contacting the entire congregation. Product aside, it turned out to be an up-sell scam using high-pressure in-house visits to sell a customer a case of very expensive juice on a recurring bank withdrawal or debit card. On the basis of the sales tactic alone I advised against it. Many people signed up anyways and bought nearly $1000 worth of Acacia juice any organic market sells for far cheaper. The funny part was when one of the customers discovered the added protein ingredient in the juice was from shellfish, shrimp casings to be precise. The consumption of shellfish was against one of the tenets of their religion. Massive soul-cleanings then resulted along with the usual problems associated with canceling an account with a company that doesn't have public email address and won't return telephone calls.
Sadly, against all evidence and common sense most of the time people would shell out the cash. Not because they were stupid but because the grifter was working several fronts at once and had already ingratiated themselves to an elder member of the family. If anyone failed to accept the dubious claims of the salesman, they usually withered under the generational influence of an elder who berated them into purchasing the magical, magnetic, ion-saturated vitamins or device. The alarming fact is that for most people, even when the product or service turns out to be useless, they just go on and accept a different incredible pitch.
I have little reason to doubt that many similar scams are being worked here, also. I have never really witnessed a hard sell like I did in Maryland, but considering the claims some of these products make I'm surprised someone hasn't shut them down for fraud or questionable sales tactics. Salesmen in certain stores communicating with my wife step quickly away when they notice me approaching. I doubt I'm scaring them as I usually appear neutral if not jovial. It must be due to awareness that the husband, especially one of another culture, is a greater influence on the wife than they will be in the short time allotted. Unfortunately the desire or need to purchase products and items that can otherwise only be found in Korea leads us into certain stores like the one that sells the magical healing rubber.
But woo-woo claims aside, Bibimbap is the shizznit.
While shopping the other day found a big old moth floating in a jug of filtered water.
No reason to get upset. Stuff happens. The moth could have gotten into the jug anywhere and anytime prior to the container being sealed, even as far back as the manufacturing, storing and shipping of the empty jug to the bottling plant. It isn't like this plant has leaking roofs covered with bird feces that drained down into the food processing area.
I don't drink bottled water anyways if I can help it. The quality isn't any better than what comes out of my tap, and no insect ever made it through the filter on my faucet.
Like olden fairy tales, comic books were often used as a way of teaching children to stay on the path of righteousness, fear strangers and obey authority. Comic book stories were also similar to folk tales in that that horrible retribution will result for any child that fails to learn the lesson of the story, like this cautionary tale of sportsmanship from from Circus of Fun #3 (December 1947). The moral? Learn to get along with others or face the prospect of horrible, maiming torture at the hands of an angry mob.
This has been done before somewhere, right? I was eating lunch at work and goofing on my laptop yesterday and thought this up. Seems an inevitable image. I had intended to put a tiny Darth Vader under the tree waving and change the slogan to something in Yoda-speak, but I lost interest. Huge SF fan and this is about all the enthusiasm I can muster for Star Wars. Plus, my sandwich needed attention.
You probably can't drive down any highway or freeway and not see the scars and cosmetic damage caused by out of control cars striking and scraping the concrete retaining walls placed between the opposing lanes of traffic.
I wonder how many high-speed head-on collisions a day never occur because of the barriers. A common-sense safety measure that I would lay good odds no one ever thinks twice about. But every mark on those walls represents a potential horrible accident where the results or complications from accidents were at the least minimized.
A good number of employees called out today with what I have come to call the "Red Flu". The Red Flu is an ailment that typically lasts 24-48 hours. The symptoms usually express themselves as headache, nausea, cramps, chest pains and can be diagnosed as Red Flu Type A or Type B.
Red Flu Type A and B both are contagious annually on or about February 14th. Type A is largely psychosomatic as the illness subsides once the employee has successfully called out sick from work. Any discomfort vanishes completely by the time they step out for a party that promises plenty of hot, drunken babes or the dinner reservations are confirmed with that special someone.
Red Flu Type B is initially similar in the way it affects the employee, with the exception of the added symptom of uncontrollable sobbing, as the employee becomes truly ill once they come to the sick realization they are alone and unloved.
This week a customer in his early 20s comes through my line and makes a purchase using his EBT card.
For those who do not know what that is, an EBT card is basically a debit card connected to a Food Stamp account. People in need are allotted by the State a certain amount of funds so they can eat and pay bills. Many EBT accounts allow the user to receive cash back from their purchase so they can pay for things they couldn't otherwise by debit card, like the rent. There is nothing inherently wrong with needing a hand every now and then. As I am fully aware, things happen. I was almost there myself back during The Bad Times.
The purchase? A pack of cigarettes and cash back of $100. The employees and customers who witnessed this were not amused.
But wait, there's more! A few minutes later the same customer comes back through the line with a cart full of beer and party supplies. He pays for it using the cash I gave him as change from his previous purchase.
1) Our tax dollars are being used so some kid can buy cigarettes and booze. A system set up to aid people in dire straights is underwriting a party.
2) In my opinion, anyone on food stamps should not be shopping in this community. It's a free country, but the prices are on average higher at stores located in affluent areas. Less than four miles away are many grocery stores with prices much lower than this one for the same products. If I was given a limited amount of funds each month to feed and house my family I'd want to stretch those dollars as far as I could. The customer also declined to use his store discount card, which would serve to drop the prices by an order of magnitude on the alcohol. It is likely the guy didn't want an electronic trail of his monetary purchases generated and wanted to remain anonymous in the event he was audited.
3) My California state tax return this year will be in the form of an I.O.U. because the government is supposedly broke. Yet somehow California can afford to issue people EBT cards that have little or no accountability in regards to their purchases.
4) I mean, seriously. WTF?
If by 'wonderful' you mean 'disgraceful'.
Brides in Love #12 (April 1959).
Rock N' Roll Comics #17 featuring Madonna (November 1990).
DC 100-Page Super Spectacular #5 (1971).
Use "Comment Moderation" or I'll be back.
It isn't like this person is totally anonymous. A-holes always advertise, don't they? Usually what happens is these types get exposed and scurry away like roaches when the spotlight gets switched on. The accounts they use to spam and threaten get closed, their ISP bounces them and sometimes, if the emails originated from a workplace, they get unemployed for being wacky on company time.
I don't like comment moderation because it slows the pace of the fun. Like playing chess by mail.
It's this or the chair, doll!
Sam Hill, Private Eye #1 (1950).
A bit less subtle than a sledgehammer message of morality for young impressionable comic book readers of a bygone era.
My Own Romance #31 (September 1953).
Featuring John Blake and Mrs. Blake.
From The Farmer's Wife magazine (October 1932).
"I've got lots more special comics just like that in my cave. Let's go and read them together." Said Petey the Wolf.
Ow. Contemplate the amount of detail erased from that Tales of Asgard panel penciled by Jack Kirby. Well, at least it got published. If anyone else had tried to ink the high amount of news rack-flooding titles of early Marvel's output the company would probably have failed long ago.
While I agree with many that Vince Colletta could be the creative kiss of death for any comic book he worked on, he deserves more industry and fan respect than he usually receives. The man rarely missed a deadline, if ever. If Vinnie had been given an estimated percentage of all the money he routinely saved a publisher by having them avoid the high cost of of idle printing presses due to missing a publishing date he would have been a very wealthy man.
Tru Dat © is a publicly-accessible information gathering and data retrieval service that is part and parcel of every activity, large or small. Once implemented, Tru Dat © caused a paradigm shift in the way politicians did business, it was a boon to law enforcement and the bane of corrupt businesses and those who labored to distort the truth. Privacy is a nearly out-dated concept. Transparency and accountability are a way of life. With Tru Dat ©, the most obscure fact about nearly anything or anyone was readily available via a lightning-fast download to anyone who cared to browse the database.
After a minor mechanical failure of his car causes average guy James Wassanna to be tagged by Tru Dat © with reckless endangerment his life begins to spiral out of control. Neighbors are angry, his fiance is about to leave him, the police are about to arrest him, revenue collection agencies are hounding him and a bored, sensation-hungry public is following his every move. As circumstantial evidence gathered by Tru Dat © repeatedly ties James into increasingly serious crimes he has no choice but to rebel!
"It's like GATTACA meets The Manchurian Candidate!" - Jackie Lancer, Boston Review.
"A wake-up call for the Information Age!" - Tech Quarterly OnLine.
"Frankenstein's creation is a Girl Scout compared to Harman's benevolent monster." - A-Z Book Review.