The intense cases of self immolation amongst Tibetan monks and nuns have been successful in drawing international attention. 21 Tibetan supporters have set themselves alight to protest against the draconian Chinese regime. Why are the Tibetans desperately ending their lives by setting themselves in fire? What is the motive behind that act? Palden Choetso was only 18 when she set her ablaze. Another nun named Tenzin Choedron from the Sichuan province was 19 years old. Why are these youths so desperate to end their lives? China will have to answer the cause of this repression that has crossed humanitarian limit. The fanatical wave of self immolation has questioned the legitimacy of China’s human rights policies.
Tibet is known as the country of immense plateau. It had a peaceful history until the Chinese invasion changed everything. The Tibetan monks were no match for the overwhelming Chinese army thus in 1951, Tibet was forcefully taken. Twenty thousand soldiers had poured into Tibet for its 50,000 population. Thousands of monks lost their lives during the crusade. Despite being a peaceful community, unable to retaliate against the Chinese regime, the Tibetan Monks were subjected to rigorous torture. After the intrusion, a large chunk of Tibetans fled towards India along with their spiritual leader Dalai Lama.
In 1989, Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace prize. This was a true recognition of Tibet and the Tibetans. Protests followed as usual however the Chinese government turned deaf ears. China considers Tibet as its integral part and strictly reacts against any country advocating on behalf of Tibet. The world has witnessed China’s imperialistic policy in taking over Tibet. The only flaw that Tibet had was that it was a small country, weak and non- violent. Despite being a member of the United Nation, China has grossly violated the UN charter. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, ‘Everyone has the right to nationality; It also states that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality’.
The issue of Tibetan independence is almost a forgotten agenda today. Had it been a strong country, the political equation would have been different? During the gulf war, when Kuwait was invaded by Saddam Hussain, the world powers drove him back with instant retaliation. Due to the booming Chinese economy and its grand military power, no country dares to raise voice in favour of Tibet? The United Nations charter does not fit anywhere in the case of Tibet.
Before the onset of Beijing Olympic, new waves of protests rose all over Tibet. Tibetans dwelling in different parts of the world launched anti-Chinese demonstrations. The revolt was brutally crushed. On the 20th of March 2009, the Tibetan protestors were beaten ruthlessly for chanting Pro-Tibet slogans. Chinese Authority has been constantly denying of torture but the video footages shot during the unrest clearly refute their claim.
After the Chinese takeover, Tibet has changed a lot in terms of development. They introduced huge migration policy by allowing the Han population into Tibet. They flocked from all sides and overtook business and shops. Later the Tibetans became a minority in their own country. China was hugely criticized by the Human Rights Groups for forcibly quelling the movement and exercising cultural genocide in Tibet. Monks were beaten and tortured to death, monasteries were destroyed and religious practice halted.
This incident further exacerbated China’s Human Rights record. The insurgency that took the lives of thousands of Monks and rendered tens of thousands homeless has become an old story now. Nobody has time for Tibet today. Tibetans in exile, human rights group organize Pro-Tibet programs now and then but nothing substantial has been done to redeem the loss. Out of sheer desperation, the monks and the nuns have been actively engaged in self-immolation, a new form of protest.
The US and the European powers are passive about Tibet. The Chinese authorities have been tagging the exiled leader Dalai Lama as ‘Jackal in a monk’s robe.’ He has been accused of plotting revolt in and out of Tibet. The world knows the reality of how the small nation lost its sovereignty. China must step down from its ultra-ambitious policy and hold talks safeguarding the fundamental rights of the exiled Tibetan population. The story of Tibet questions the fundamental aspects of human rights. The reality that Tibet was a free country cannot be distorted or forgotten. In this modern age, living with repression is the worst form of torture. China must understand the true nature of their hegemony and free Tibet.
Unfortunately,the governments of the world are playing realpolitik and are passive…but the people are ovewhelmingly in favor of a free Tibet….
The Tibetan agenda has created a confusion. china will have to deal with it in a humane way.
South china tiger has been annihilated- its body parts were used in chinese medicine. South of china, Tibetans are endangered too – they are the next target. Besides “self immolation” deaths, massive refugee populations who departed and via attacks on Tibetans by china’s forces. Tibetans are minority in their own country due to chinese brought in from china. Tibet’s gold, minerals, land, timber, waters and mountains have been raided and are being sucked out by china. What Mao-dze-dung’s successors of communist red china are saying regarding ownership of Tibet is similar to what communist USSR leaders and the Tsars said about Turkestan, Armenia, Georgia etc (formerly of USSR) being under control of historic Russia. Russia backed off and freed them. The same should be done by china for Tibet.
China’s year of the tiger is a fraud and a farce because of the absent tiger, and the same will happen with Tibet and Tibetans. Tibetans and Tibetan culture are alive only because of Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees who managed to escape. Tightening control on Tibetans will continue this “annihilation”. FREE TIBET NOW!!


Sauté garlic, onion, carrot, bell pepper, chili, corned beef, and liver spread in oil.
Pour tomato sauce and water and simmer until thick.
Season with MAGGI MAGIC SARAP®, pepper, and sugar. Stir in 2 tablespoons of cheese, coconut cream, and green peas.
Boil spaghetti according to package direction. Toss in the sauce. Transfer on a serving plate; grate 2 tablespoons of cheese on top and serve.
Sauté pork in oil until golden brown.
Add garlic, onion, and Korean red pepper paste. Pour water, simmer, and season with MAGGI MAGIC SARAP®. Add sugar, sesame oil, and 2 tablespoons of cheese.
Boil pasta according to package direction. Toss in the sauce with cabbage.
Transfer on a serving plate. Top with sesame seeds, spring onion, nori, cheese, and egg.
Sauté bacon in oil until golden brown. Strain and set aside as topping.
Sauté garlic and onion in the same pan. Add shrimps and season with MAGGI MAGIC SARAP® and pepper. Pour water and Nestlé All Purpose Cream. Stir in 6 tablespoons of parmesan cheese and 1 tablespoon of parsley.
Boil spaghetti according to package direction. Toss pasta in the sauce. Transfer on a serving plate and top with bacon, cheese and parsley.
1. Sauté chicken in oil until golden brown. Add garlic, onion, bell peppers, and curry powder. Season with MAGGI MAGIC SARAP® and pepper.
2. Pour water and simmer. Stir in Nestlé All Purpose Cream and 2 tablespoons of cheese.
3. Boil spaghetti according to package direction. Toss in the sauce and transfer on a serving plate. Grate remaining cheese on top, garnish with cilantro, and serve.


With local transit authorities preparing to go forward with the Gold Line Foothill Extension to the Azusa/Glendora border, local cities still have plans to place residential and commercial developments along the line.
The intent of those developments is to prepare for future population growth while limiting increases in local traffic. The first phase of the extension is slated to be completed by 2014, adding new stops in Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale and Azusa.
But with a down economy, flat real estate market, and cities suffering from last month’s state raid of local redevelopment funds, some plans for transit-oriented developments could end up being scaled back.
A survey of several local cities shows that while some are on schedule, other projects have stalled or have been scaled back.
In Azusa, the largest planned residential development already stalled long before the city lost redevelopment funds to the state. The Rosedale housing development was planned to have 1,250 units but was put on hold in the fall of 2008 because of the national economic crisis. Only 130 units were finished.
But other developments in the area are also at risk, said Fran Delach, Azusa’s city manager. A nearby retail project meant to accompany the housing project was relying on purchasing city-owned land at a low price to go forward, Delach said.
Since Azusa had to pay almost $13million to the state from its redevelopment fund, the city can no longer afford to part with the land at below-market prices, Delach said.
“It really takes away from our ability to use redevelopment as an economic catalyst for our city,” Delach said.
In nearby Monrovia, the city is also struggling with issues stemming from the redevelopment seizure. Unlike the vast majority of cities in the state, Monrovia officials refused to pay the state the redevelopment money it demanded.
The city saved $3 million but it’s now effectively barred from future redevelopment deals.
Fortunately for Monrovia, that will not affect the currently-planned Station Square project, a huge 55-acre mixed commercial and residential project that will accompany the Monrovia Gold Line station near the intersection of West Duarte Road and South Myrtle Avenue.
Because the project already has been cleared and the developers have title to the land, it does not require further assistance from Monrovia’s redevelopment agency, said City Manager Scott Ochoa.
However, real estate market conditions could affect the size of the project, he added.
While project developers have been cleared to eventually add up to 3,500 residential units, they may well chose to scale back if the units won’t sell, he said.
The city also will be looking to aid other future developers in the area through land sales, Ochoa said.
In Arcadia, officials are looking to build commercial developments centered around a planned station just east of Santa Anita Avenue, said City Manager Don Penman.
Arcadia’s challenge will be land acquisition, Penman added.
Because Arcadia has ordinances limiting the use of eminent domain, officials there have to rely on negotiating land deals, a difficult process with limited redevelopment funds.
Cities further east will have longer to develop their plans since the next extension of Gold Line won’t be completed until 2017, and does not yet have a committed source of funds to ensure it will even get done by then.
Glendora, the first city on the line to get a station, already has plans for grouping housing and retail developments around that station.
But even there, city officials had hoped to get projects off the ground early. Currently, the city’s main planned project on the Gold Line, a mixed retail and residential proposal at the intersection of Ada and Glendora avenues, is not going forward.
That is partly because of the real estate market, and partly because the developers were expecting infrastructure upgrades in the area that the city can no longer commit to completing, said Glendora City Manager Chris Jeffers.
He said he does not know when it might get going.
“I think it will be stalled for an indefinite period of time,” Jeffers said.
Julianna Delgado, a professor of urban design at Cal Poly Pomona who sits on several Pasadena commissions, said she anticipates that ultimately, cities like the ones along the Gold Line who are trying to complete transit-oriented developments will be glad they did.


What a vile word it is, isn’t it? “FEMINISM”; F, E, M, I, N, I, S, M—eight letters of pure, unrivaled hatred and contempt. The word used by those defenders of pride to describe the veritable beast who, if you get too close, will emerge from its sepulcher and ravage you with savage claws. “Beware,” they warn the man who might travel down that path, “lest ye be taken by the monster!” You are warned to remain here, with the great warriors who would save you from that path of destruction, from which no one returns. And so many a would-be traveler are discouraged from the path and turn away. Of course, many of these warriors of the west have never seen the beast incarnate, only telling the tale like a Homeric fable; “but how?” you might ask, “if they’ve never seen it do they know it exists?” Ah, because of the beast’s worshippers—those great votaries who worship the mysteries, who talk about the beast and praise it frantically; those mystics who would declare that those who do not worship the beast are doomed to hell. And so, we have the many great defenders saving those curious ones from the bowels of the devious monster.
But, if one were to reject the advice of the warriors, and travel down the path, they would find that there is, in fact, no beast—along the way they most certainly would encounter some of its worshippers, the valentine-haired disciples; but any traveler with an able mind would soon discover that these idolizers are nothing but Pharisees, vapid spirits with empty words.
And soon, ye great traveler, you would realize that these Pharisees look strangely familiar, and you would find that they wear mirrors—at first, perhaps, they would be blinding, but you must not let this deter you, for the effect soon withers, and clarity is restored. It is then that you would notice that the mirrors do not reflect the Pharisees, or even your own image, but that of those vicious dwarves who warned that you would perish along this journey. You would then understand, and you would move on, after which you would find yourself on a sprawling expanse, on the horizon of which would lie a fabulous gate; but this gate would not be closed to you, and in fact would welcome you as though it had been expecting your company.
Inside, you would not see fire and brimstone, or treacherous pools of blood, but wisdom, truth, and—dare I say—equality. You would discover the annals of a life concealed by those Pharisees who tempted you earlier; but it would be apparent now that they and the vicious dwarves had been working together, veiling this remarkable place. But if, my dear traveler, you are not afraid of the journey, and are not frightened by the words of those great western defenders, and if you are not discouraged or, even worse, deceived, by those valentine-haired idolizers, you will find that this place, beyond the gate, is quite wonderful.
That is why I took the journey; and that is why I entered the gate: because I was not afraid. I knew those vicious dwarves were liars who had never seen the gate—let alone the beast—only telling the tales of other warriors, themselves telling third-hand tales, ad infinitum; but fables never frightened me, so I undertook the journey. And I did not drink the wine of those counterfeit Bacchoi-cultists, for their idol was far too illusory. I moved on assuredly and reached that point of wonder which comes after the long journey. Of course, you must be prepared—for whence the vicious dwarves see you once more, they will brand you an enemy! A concubine with that phantom demon! Their words, however, will be like tip-less arrows and their tongues like broken bows—if you are unafraid.
What of my friend, though? Was he a defender? Was he a sharp-tongued Praetorian against the beast? No; he was merely a discouraged traveler influenced by those dwarves, the stings of their words echoing in his ears. I was shocked by his question, perhaps more than he was by my previous statements, not because he accused me, but because he accused me—it never struck me how ubiquitous those legionnaires are. I found myself confronted with a question at that moment: what does it mean to be a feminist? I had always been sure in my conviction, but I felt it as a universal conviction; in that moment, however, I realized the devilish word meant something different for the two of us. For me, it was a definite lifestyle, a necessity for progression and de-essentialization; but for him, it was a curse, a damnation—and I was the damned. I, presupposed in my feminism, was face-to-face with someone who was ashamed-for-me, for my being a feminist, as though I had done something wrong, or perhaps, had something done wrong to-me. I realized that in his gaze, I was no longer a feminist, I was feminism, a disease, a curse causa mortis. Who I was, who I had been or would be, did not matter at that point: I became the word, and the word was all that existed. It was more than an objectification on his part—it was in a sense obliteration; an annihilation of my character in the face of that word. Of course, this wasn’t his fault—he had been indoctrinated into thinking that the word was more than it was; but truly that is all it is—a word. I realized, in his obliteration-of-me, that I was no longer a mere feminist. I had taken that word for granted for far too long, almost as an entitlement to my existence, as though I had the right to be a feminist. But I could no longer see feminism as an idle part of my life—I needed to constantly become a feminist; I needed to continually choose-to-be a feminist. This did not mean that I suddenly had the urge to proselytize feminism to everyone I saw (such pharisaical actions!); but I needed to be aware of being seen as-feminism by anyone. I no longer could hide behind an idea that only certain people were of the defenders, that only so-and-so can be anti-feminism; I had now an understanding that feminism had been taken up as a deceitful word, and that as a word it could be used by anyone. But this was not a moment where I needed to retreat or deny myself for sake of proper social grammar; this was the time, if ever there was a time, that I needed to affirm myself, that I needed to choose myself as feminist.
I understood why he was petrified by my being feminist, by my feminism incarnate. I understood the poison that had impregnated that word; but it was through this understanding that I understood myself, that I understood my choice as feminist. The words Feminism and Feminist are not beasts or monsters or Elysian idols—they are merely words.


Rolling back Obamacare will require full Republican support in the Senate. Rand Paul—and others—could defect using a familiar political play.
Watch Rand Paul to understand why Obamacare repeal is in so much trouble.
Paul faces a more agonizing dilemma than almost any other Republican senator. A libertarian ideologue and Tea Party stalwart, Paul has spoken vociferously about the imperative of repeal for years.
Yet Paul also represents a state that has done well out of the Affordable Care Act. Four hundred and forty thousand Kentuckians have gained coverage under the ACA; Kentucky’s uninsured rate tumbled from 20 percent in 2013 to 7.5 percent in 2015.
Very understandably, the version of Obamacare repeal that Senator Paul introduced in January 2017 leaves Medicaid untouched. But, of course, Paul has no such assurance about the version of reform being incubated by the House Republicans under Speaker Paul Ryan. Which may explain why Paul has emerged as the most outspoken Republican critic of Ryan’s health-care approach.
According to Paul himself, his resistance to the Ryan approach is driven by his own superior ideological purity. “I think it is Obamacare Lite. I didn’t sign on to vote for a new government program,” Paul told Fox News last week. Yet Paul must appreciate the practical consequences of his super-purist objection. The Ryan repeal plan is simultaneously under fire in the Senate from lawmakers who fear it goes too far. Senators Susan Collins and Bill Cassidy have introduced a measure that would preserve the ACA in its present form for those states that wish to participate—presumably including Cassidy’s state of Louisiana, which has signed up for the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.* ACA repeal can only happen if it is supported by all Republicans, accommodationists and purists alike. The vote tally won’t care why a Republican defects from the Ryan bill—only that he or she does.
Paul’s demand—repeal the ACA and replace it at the same time, even the same day—is obviously unworkable, even aside from the need to rally sufficient votes in the Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster. You have to imagine that he and other self-imagined purists appreciate that.
But what is workable is a more familiar play: to strike a heroic attitude of principle while in fact supporting as the least-bad option a law that you nominally oppose. Bob Dole famously advised that the safest position for a politician is to “support the bill that failed; oppose the bill that passed.” One doubts that Rand Paul will be the only Republican to recognize the advantages of denounce-and-preserve over repeal-and-replace.
* This article originally stated that Maine expanded Medicaid under the ACA. We regret the error.


The Society of Broadcast Engineers' Chapter 15 (SBE 15), which serves the New York City metro area, has announced that Conrad Trautmann, the CTO of Dial Global, will be its first recipient of the "Chapter Engineer of the Year" award.
"We are thrilled to honor Conrad with our first 'Chapter Engineer of the Year' award," said Jeff Smith, SBE 15's chapter chairman. "Within Conrad's 30 plus years of service to SBE 15, he was instrumental in reestablishing the chapter in the 1980's after declining membership and financial troubles caused the chapter to cease operations. Conrad is recognized for implementing a model that has made SBE 15 the largest and most financially stable SBE local chapter in the country."
Trautmann oversees Dial Global's broadcast engineering, program distribution, back-office IT and software development. Dial Global delivers audio content to over 8,500 radio stations and digital media companies.
Besides his work for Dial Global, Trautmann has managed and supervised the construction of studios in broadcast facilities around the country and held senior engineering positions at Westwood One, Metro Networks, Cox Radio and Chancellor Media.


RUSTENBURG, South Africa (AFP) – Around 2,000 mineworkers converged at an Anglo American Platinum mine in South Africa's restive platinum belt on Tuesday over plans by the world's top producer to cut 6,900 jobs amid unrest in the sector.
Miners gathered at the Khomanani shaft in the northern city of Rustenburg to protest the Amplats plan, announced just days after South Africa marked the first anniversary of police shooting dead 34 miners at the nearby Lonmin mine in Marikana, which sparked strikes that have roiled the sector.
Workers and unions earlier threatened to strike over the restructuring project which includes closing down three operations, cutting thousands of jobs and integrating some workers elsewhere.
"People don't want to transfer. But if you don't want to transfer, your job is finished," said Themba, a 45-year-old worker who did not give his surname.
"I've got a family. I feel very bad. People here, they've got families too," he said, unsure of his future after 23 years' service at the mine.
Workers chanted at a stadium next to the Khomanani shaft, one of those due to be closed down. Some wore the trademark green shirts of the new majority union at the mine, the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).
AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa met with the mine's management earlier and was due to speak to the workers in the afternoon.
Amplats had first proposed around 14,000 job cuts in January, but later backed down under government pressure.
Some workers said they were not consulted.
"They never discussed it with us, now it's happening," said Mike Simane, 27, a surveyor who had just finished his shift underground.
"No one wants to lose their jobs," he told AFP.
The once-dominant National Union of Mineworkers, now a minority union at the mine, said on Monday it condemned the restructuring "in the strongest words possible".
The union accused Amplats of reneging on an earlier agreement to cut only 3,000 jobs.


In most cases, we use threats to force people to recycle–witness San Francisco’s controversial new mandatory composting law that slaps a fine on anyone who fails to comply. But what if it was possible to get people to recycle by offering incentives instead? It is–and RecycleBank has been doing it for 18 months by offering residents of participating cities points that can be redeemed at stores–all for recycling regular trash. Up until now, only residents of cities partnered with RecycleBank could join in, but a new partnership with eBay means that anyone can get involved.
for simply committing to join the eBay Green Team.” Those points can then be used towards the purchase of, say, a used leather handbag on eBay–or for an item at one of the other 1,500 businesses affiliated with RecycleBank.
The partnership makes sense, since both RecycleBank and eBay specialize in preventing used items from facing the trash bin. Perhaps a partnership with Etsy is next?


LONDON, (Reuters) – Sebastian Vettel’s temperament is under the spotlight again after the Ferrari driver’s hopes of seizing back the Formula One lead disappeared in a few seconds of mayhem at the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday.
The German, his fast-starting team mate Kimi Raikkonen and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen crashed out as they raced to the first corner.
Stewards summoned all three drivers after the race but decided none was wholly or predominantly to blame.
The view was not shared by others who either pointed the finger at Verstappen, in his last race as a teenager, or accused Vettel of needless aggression at a key point in the championship.
“What we tweeted was a factual description of events. No need to speculate on this,” it added later as reaction on social media flared.
Television footage and in-car cameras showed Raikkonen making a storming getaway from fourth on the grid and around Verstappen on the outside.
Vettel, on pole, was slower off the line and steered left to squeeze Verstappen, who kept his car straight and was pincered by the Ferraris.
The Dutch teenager and Raikkonen tangled wheels, with the Finn’s car slewing sideways and into Vettel’s before again careering into the Red Bull and also collecting Fernando Alonso’s McLaren.
“I think initially Sebastian saw I was a little bit better off the line than him so he wanted to close me. So he drove to the left,” said Verstappen.
“Nice one Seb. You’re better than that. Need to watch that short fuse,” said the Briton in a blog post.
Vettel made a public apology in July after he banged into Hamilton’s Mercedes in a moment of ‘road rage’ at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix while both were following the safety car.
Retired Australian driver turned pundit Mark Webber, who had a few clashes with Vettel as Red Bull team mates, defended Verstappen.
“If you were pushed for someone to blame then it looks like Seb because he’s the one doing the biggest movement,” he said in the Times newspaper.
Retired triple world champion Niki Lauda, now the Mercedes team’s non-executive chairman, said it was an incident Vettel could have avoided.
“If he (Vettel) would not have moved (across) he could have won the race, there’s no question about it. They were unlucky really, in a big way,” said the Austrian.


The Maldives will soon be home to a $520 million floating golf course on the Indian Ocean. The design should be completed by 2015, according to The Daily Mail.
Rising sea levels are threatening many of the islands in the Indian Ocean, including the Maldives. As a result, the small island nation is looking to create floating developments to circumvent the rising sea levels.
The world's first floating golf course, which will be built on floating platforms, is one of the first major construction projects to make that transition. The golf course will have 18 holes (built on different floating platforms), an underwater clubhouse and two luxury hotels. Underwater tunnels will connect the holes and facilities together. It will all be developed by the Dutch Docklands.
The artificial islands will be built in India or the Middle East, and then towed to the Maldives.


FLAHERTY — Joan Flaherty, 83, of Pismo Beach died Sunday, May 15, 2016. Arrangements are under the direction of Marshall-Spoo Funeral Chapel of Grover Beach.
SILVA — John L. Silva, 102, of Arroyo Grande died Friday, May 13, 2016. Arrangements are under the direction of Marshall-Spoo Funeral Chapel of Grover Beach.


This 2nd Sunday welcomes a new mobile eats cart to the party- Foodslingers. All 4 carts will be by Lee's Discount Liquor in Summerlin this Sunday, starting at 11am.
If you are looking for traditional breakfast items with a twist, look no further than the Babycakes Cafe!
"You know you have to get the red-velvet pancakes," came the voice across the table at Babycakes Cafe, sounding like nothing so much as my conscience. "That's their specialty."


St George on the Green was a great success yesterday (Sunday).
The sunshine helped to bring out the crowds to the family fun day, on St Peter’s Hill Green.
Organised once again by the Grantham Carnival and Events Group, there was live music, fairground rides, traditional children’s games and dancing.
And in the afternoon, a number of scout and guide groups marched through the town centre to a service at St Wulfram’s Church, returning later in the afternoon. Scouts and guides taking part in the parade were then invited to a traditional street party in Abbey Gardens, in keeping with the 1940s theme.


If your two-lever faucet is dripping, you can stop the drip by replacing a rubber washer or some gaskets, depending on the type of valves the faucet has. If you can't turn the levers more than 90 degrees, the valve has disk valves. If you can turn them through 360 degrees, it has compression valves. Either way, you shouldn't have any trouble making the repair, but with a disk valve, there's a slight chance that one of the valves is damaged. If so, you'll have to replace it.
Turn off the shutoff valves under the sink and open both faucet handles to relieve water pressure.
Remove the handles. You should be able to see a screw on the top of each one that you can unscrew with a Phillips screwdriver. If you don't see screws, they may be hidden under decorative caps. Pry the caps off with a flat-head screwdriver and remove the screws.
Unscrew the packing nut from each handle with adjustable pliers. It's a good idea to wrap a rag around the nut before using the pliers to protect the finish of the handle. If the faucet has compression valves, you should be able to pull them out with the pliers. If it has disk cartridges, you'll probably have to unscrew some screws with a Phillips screwdriver to remove them.
Turn the compression valve stem over and unscrew the seat washer on the end. Replace it with a new one. Push the valve stem back into the housing and screw the packing nut back on. Replace the handle.
Pry out the rubber gaskets from the inlet holes inside the valve housing if your faucet has a disk valve. You can usually do this with a flat-head screwdriver. Take them to a hardware store to buy replacements. You'll need the model number of the faucet to find the correct ones.
Guide the replacement gaskets into the holes with the flat-head screwdriver and screw the disk cartridge back on. If the cartridge appears cracked or chipped, replace it with a new one; you can't repair these types of valves. Screw on the packing nut or collar and replace the handle.
Turn on the water and test the faucet.
If the placement of the screws isn't obvious, look under the lever. You may find a small hex screw. If so, unscrew it with an Allen wrench.
Be sure to turn the water off before you loosen the packing nut. If you forget, you could be scalded by an uncontrollable stream of hot water.
Deziel, Chris. "How to Fix a Dripping Two Lever Kitchen Faucet." Home Guides | SF Gate, http://homeguides.sfgate.com/fix-dripping-two-lever-kitchen-faucet-70339.html. 09 December 2018.


Pope Francis landed in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday for the first ever visit by a pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula -- the birthplace of Islam, AFP reports.
The pope touched down in Abu Dhabi for the 48-hour trip during which he will meet leading Muslim clerics and hold an open-air mass for some 135,000 Catholics.
He was greeted by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and was warmly embraced by Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's prestigious seat of learning.
The pontiff will take part in an interreligious conference on Monday with Sheikh Ahmed.
Hours before he flies back to Rome on Tuesday, he will lead mass in a stadium in Abu Dhabi -- set to be the largest gathering ever in the UAE, according to local media.
His visit comes with the UAE engaged in a long-running military campaign in Yemen and embroiled in a diplomatic spat with nearby Qatar.
Before heading to the Gulf, the pontiff urged warring parties in Yemen, where the UAE backs the government against Huthi rebels, to respect a truce agreement.
"I appeal to all parties concerned and to the international community to allow the urgent respect of established accords to ensure the distribution of food," he said.
"The population is exhausted by the lengthy conflict and a great many children are suffering from hunger, but cannot access food depots.
"The cry of these children and their parents rises up to God."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hailed the pope's arrival in the UAE as "an historic moment for religious freedom".
"The first Holy Mass by a pope in the Arabian Peninsula promotes peace and understanding between two of the world’s great religions," Pompeo tweeted.
Nearly one million Catholic migrants reside in the UAE, mostly hailing from the Philippines and India. Around 135,000 have secured precious tickets to Tuesday's mass at Zayed Sports City Stadium.
On Sunday morning, hundreds of Catholics queued in drizzling rain outside St. Joseph's Cathedral in Abu Dhabi to get their passes.
"I think the pope coming really opens doors for conversations about tolerance that the whole world needs to hear," said Collins Cochet Ryan, a 39-year-old expectant mother from the US.
For Indian Doris D'Souza, who lives in Goa, Pope Francis's trip to the UAE was not to be missed.
"Since I came to know about the pope's visit to Abu Dhabi, we jumped (at) the opportunity to be witness."
The UAE capital's main streets and those leading to St. Joseph's Cathedral -- which the pope is set to visit on Tuesday -- were lined with Vatican City flags and banners of the interreligious meeting.
UAE minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash extended an official welcome to Pope Francis on Sunday.
"It is a visit that carries great humanitarian value, and the UAE adds a new (chapter) in the history of fraternity and tolerance," he tweeted.
He took an apparent jab at Qatar, which hosts Islamist cleric Youssef al-Qardawi and is engaged in a bitter standoff with its Gulf rivals.
Gargash pointed out the difference "between those hosting a cleric of violence and terrorism... and those who host the pope and the Al-Azhar sheikh for a dialogue of love and communication".
The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, cut all ties with Doha in June 2017 over allegations it supports extremists.
The UAE prides itself on its religious tolerance and cultural diversity.
It has eight Catholic churches. Oman, Kuwait and Yemen each have four.
Qatar and Bahrain have one each, while ultra-conservative Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia bans all non-Muslim places of worship.
The UAE has however been criticised by rights groups for its involvement in a bloody Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, where an estimated 10,000 people have been killed in four years of war.
Millions of Yemenis face imminent starvation, according to the UN.
Rights groups have also slammed the Gulf state for upholding a 10-year prison term against activist Ahmed Mansoor on December 31 -- two weeks after the UAE declared 2019 the "Year of Tolerance".
"Despite its assertions about tolerance, the UAE government has demonstrated no real interest in improving its human rights record," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said Sunday.
"But the UAE has shown how sensitive it is to its image on the global stage, and Pope Francis should use his visit to press UAE leaders to meet their human rights obligations at home and abroad."


'Game of Thrones' actor Aisling Franciosi and Sam Claflin star in the period survival drama.
IFC Films has set an Aug. 2 release for Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale.
The period feature follows Clare, played by Game of Thrones actor Aisling Franciosi, a 21-year-old Irish convict in 1820s Tasmania, who, having served her seven-year sentence, is desperate to be free of her abusive master, Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), who refuses to release her from his charge. Clare’s husband, Aidan, retaliates and she becomes the victim of a harrowing crime at the hands of the lieutenant and his cronies.
Unable to secure justice from the British authorities, Clare decides to pursue Hawkins, who leaves his post suddenly to secure a captaincy up north. She is forced to enlist the help of a young Aboriginal tracker, Billy (newcomer Baykali Ganambarr), who grudgingly guides her through the rugged wilderness to track down Hawkins.
The Nightingale premiered at the Venice Film Festival and had its North American debut at this year's Sundance.
Also opening on Aug. 2 will be the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, as well as Paramount's Dora the Explorer live-action movie.


The MAHB Fall 2016 Newsletter asks, "What isn't being talked about?"
November 24, 2015 | In the World Economic Forum’s recently released 2015 global risk assessment, the threat identified as having the greatest potential impact was “water crises”.
July 27, 2015 | New research has revealed abrupt warming, that closely resembles the rapid man-made warming occurring today, has repeatedly played a key role in mass extinction events of large animals, the megafauna, in Earth’s past.
May 26, 2015 | Professor Bronwyn Gillanders from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute was interviewed by Sarah Martin on Radio Adelaide’s The Sound of Science program about her thoughts on protecting the ecology of the Spencer Gulf.
Professor Grutzner recently shared his enthusiasm and vast knowledge about monotremes in an interview with Sarah Martin from Radio Adelaide.
In the May 2015 eScience magazine, PhD student Heidi Alleway and her supervisor Professor Sean Connell highlight the importance of oyster reefs in maintaining a healthy marine environment.


Food fraud: How do we fight a problem we don't yet understand?
Amanda M. Naaum, Postdoctoral Fellow University of Guelph Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, demonstrates the process for subsampling tissue commercially bought fish for DNA testing on July 11 2016.
A few years ago, federal food inspectors were walking around the warehouses of the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto – the nerve centre where much of the province's fresh produce is bought, re-packaged and sold – when they noticed something unusual.
In the "farmer's market" area, where only Ontario-grown produce is meant to be sold, the inspectors saw large cartons of greenhouse peppers with conflicting labels. The outside of the boxes had "Product of Canada" stickers, next to visible signs of damage on the cardboard – bits of paper and glue, as if another sticker had been peeled off. And stickers on the inside of the box read "Product of Mexico."
That discovery in January, 2012, led the Canadian Food Inspection Agency into a three-year investigation of the company behind the peppers, Mucci Farms – the largest such probe in the agency's history.
After executing three search warrants at the company's headquarters in Kingsville, Ont., and poring over its computer records and internal e-mails, CFIA investigators pieced together evidence that, between late 2011 and early 2013, Mucci had been selling imported products as Canadian – putting hundreds of shipments of mislabelled produce worth more than $1.4-million onto Ontario grocery store shelves.
In one e-mail described in a court document and obtained by The Globe and Mail, one of the company's directors, Danny Mucci, responded to a message from an employee about a shortage of Canadian mini cucumbers by telling the worker: "you know what to do to fill…it's only 30 cases."
Mucci International Marketing Inc., Mucci Pac Ltd. and two of its directors (Mr. Mucci and Joseph Spano) pleaded guilty in June of this year to eight regulatory offences – including one count against the company for selling food in a "false, misleading or deceptive" manner – and were fined $1.5-million.
Mucci's lawyer, Patrick Ducharme, said in an interview that the mislabelling was not intentional, and that, given the volume of Mucci's 1,200-employee operation, the transactions made up "a very small part of what they do." He also emphasized that they pleaded guilty to regulatory offences, not criminal ones. Criminal charges against Mucci International and Mucci Pac and the two directors of defrauding the public, and defrauding Costco, Loblaw and Sobeys – to whom Mucci sold the produce – were withdrawn.
The case sent shockwaves through the country's agriculture industry, and the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers called it a "unique" precedent. "My hope is that it's an isolated case," the marketing board's manager, Rick Seguin, said in an interview.
By almost all accounts, it is not. Although just how widespread it is remains unclear.
For years, experts have been sounding the alarm on mislabelling and food fraud. Increasingly, they say, criminal organizations around the world are targeting the food system, intercepting supply chains and deliberately misrepresenting or adulterating products – and costing the food industry between $10-billion and $15-billion (U.S.) each year, according to the U.S.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association.
And, according to conversations with experts in the Canadian food industry, scientists and regulators, the problem is widespread within our own borders.
But even the CFIA does not seem to know just how widespread it is. Individual cases provide an incomplete picture. And the 74 cases of non-compliance with labelling laws from the past year published on the CFIA website – a number the agency say has held steady over the past five years – present only a portion of incidents where the agency has found companies breaking the rules. It includes only the cases in which the products were actually seized and detained or disposed of, but also includes technical infractions, like language or font size on packaging.
When asked how prevalent the problem is in Canada, the agency cited U.S. data that show fraud affects about 10 per cent of all food products globally. It also acknowledged it has not yet conducted a widespread survey of its own to understand its full impact within Canada.
Which raises the question: How do you fight a problem you don't yet understand?
The Centre for Biodiversity Genomics operates a lab where they’ve created a system of “barcoding” different species of fish. This gives scientists and regulators like the Canadian Food Inspection Agency a way of more easily determining what fish is being sold at grocery stores or restaurants are and for investigating possible cases of fraud.
In his years as a lawyer representing companies in intellectual property and anti-counterfeiting cases in Canada, Lorne Lipkus has seen cases of food fraud ranging from counterfeit basmati rice (knockoffs of a high-end brand) to fake ginseng.
"You'd think: 'How expensive is it to grow a bag of rice,'" he said. "But if someone's making something and making a profit out of it, somebody's counterfeiting it."
The term "food fraud" can include simple mislabelling (inaccurate country of origin, a modified expiration date or false claims like "organic"), product substitutions (selling a cheaper species of meat or fish as a more expensive one), or counterfeits of brands. And, because food often goes through several hands and countries to reach grocery stores in Canada, retailers sometimes have no idea it is mislabelled.
Mr. Lipkus' interest is the counterfeits of brand-name products. And he said the response he has seen in Canada has lagged behind those of other countries.
"Everything we do in Canada is reactive," he said. "We have very poor laws, compared to other countries. And we haven't had any government involved in the longest time – I'm talking decades – willing to provide the resources to law enforcement to do anything about counterfeiting."
In EU countries, border officials have the authority to seize and destroy goods they believe are counterfeit. In Canada, customs officials can detain a product, but it is then incumbent on the complainant to undertake court action and to pay for the goods to remain in detention until the case is heard – which can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Most alarming, he said, is that the scope of the problem is not understood because no agency is specifically looking for fraud.
On the issue of mislabelling, experts also point to policy initiatives abroad – such as a U.S. proposal to require companies to have food fraud prevention programs – as evidence others seem to take the issue more seriously.
Although the CFIA has not conducted a full survey of the issue in Canada, James Crawford, acting associate vice-president of operations with the federal agency, said CFIA receives about 40 complaints a year about possible food misrepresentation.
In an interview, Mr. Crawford said the agency takes food fraud seriously. He also said Canadians are generally safe from adulterated food – pointing to a Conference Board of Canada study in 2014 that ranked the country's food system as the safest of 17 OECD countries surveyed. On fraud, he said, "we're proactive and reactive."
He said CFIA staff conduct regular inspections of imported and domestic food – including daily inspections at meat processing plants. Still, he was not able to say what percentage of products undergoes such scrutiny for labelling.
"We can't inspect every … import or domestically produced food in Canada. It's impossible. That's why we have a risk-based plan. And it allows us to focus on where we think the high risks are." Some of the things the agency takes into account in prioritizing inspections include food type and likelihood for illness, and each company's track record of compliance.
Even countries with the most aggressive approaches faced the reality that food fraud is not easily confined by borders.
In March, Interpol and Europol announced the largest-ever seizure of fraudulent food.
The investigation, dubbed Operation Opson V, found almost nine tonnes of sugar laced with fertilizer in Sudan (counterfeit of a well-known brand), more than 85 tonnes of olives in Italy "painted" with a copper sulphate solution to enhance the colour, three factories in Greece each producing thousands of bottles of counterfeit brand-name alcohol, and in Zambia, "modified" expiration dates on cartons of diet powder drinks.
Read Tu Thanh Ha's look into a Canadian link established in Europe’s horse-meat scandal.
Since the tainted-milk scandal in 2008 in China that killed six babies, and the 2013 horse meat scandal in Europe, regulators and law enforcement agencies – particularly in Europe and the United States – have stepped up enforcement. Interpol is in its fifth year of working with Europol to co-ordinate such crackdowns, which have increased from just 10 countries in 2011 to nearly 60 this year.
To date, Canada has not participated in Opson (named for a category of food in Greek). And, unlike countries such as the U.K., Canada does not have a dedicated food crimes unit, through either the RCMP or CFIA.
"How is a consumer in Canada affected? They're affected like everyone else – by the globalization of this type of fraud," Michael Ellis, head of Interpol's Trafficking in Illicit Goods and Counterfeiting unit, said in an interview. As food supply chains become increasingly opaque and globalized, the risk of fraud increases.
"Once you look under the stone, you realize the food fraud is not – as with many of the crimes we deal with – they're not single-country issues," Mr. Ellis said.
One of the worst examples he has seen involved baby food being mixed with cement and chalk dust.
In Canada, much of the action on the issue has been industry-led. Large retailers in Canada like Loblaw or Costco have programs to safeguard against adulterations, requiring suppliers to subscribe to standardized food safety programs, and undergo annual audits.
Andrew Clarke, the director of food services at SGS Canada Inc. – which conducts audits for Costco – said his company provides this service for hundreds of firms in Canada, and that fraud is an area of growing concern for clients.
These programs are first and foremost focused on the safety of food products, he said, but increasingly look at quality. SGS, for example, will test the purity of olive oil on behalf of clients to make sure it is actually olive oil and not just green dye in some other type of oil.
"There's a lot more rigour and integrity checks going into food safety audits than ever before, and the demands are higher than ever before," he said.
In the meantime, Mr. Clarke said, consumers should educate themselves on which products are most frequently subject of fraud – foods like olive oil or manuka honey – and ask questions when buying them.
"I won't point the finger at certain products and say 'That's a risk, that's a risk,' Mr. Clarke said. "I'm saying you can consume it, but it might not be what you paid for."
Dr. Amanda Naaum, who is part of a team of researchers at Guelph University, uses tweezers to place pieces of a fish fillet into a tube to test the DNA and help identify the fish species.
On the second floor of the University of Guelph's Centre for Biodiversity Genomics building, behind a door marked "lab for cryptic diversity," researchers are working to help ensure that people do get what they paid for.
One recent afternoon, Amanda Naaum wielded tweezers with one hand, and tiny scissors with the other. She carefully cut pieces of flesh about the size of a pencil tip off a fish fillet and placed them in clear plastic tubes.
Dr. Naaum is part of a team at Guelph of experts on DNA barcoding – an innovation developed in 2003 at the university to allow researchers to use DNA to identify species. Using the fish sample, Dr. Naaum will extract DNA, "read" its sequence and compare it to an existing database to determine what it is.
In recent years, researchers like Dr. Naaum have used the technology on seafood and other foods, like ground meat, in hopes of giving regulators and the food industry a powerful new tool against food fraud.
Robert Hanner, who runs Guelph's DNA barcoding program for fish, landed on the issue of fraud mostly by accident. Between 2006 and 2007, he was testing the DNA barcoding technology on dozens of filets of fish from restaurants and grocery stores in Toronto and New York, and finding almost one-quarter of the samples were mislabelled.
Over the next 10 years, Dr. Hanner performed similar tests with up to hundreds of samples of fish from across Canada, finding between 25 per cent and about 40 per cent mislabelled.
Among the most common substitutions were tilapia sold as red snapper, basa (a type of catfish) as cod, and farmed Atlantic salmon as wild Pacific. Such mislabelling can pose health risks, like when escolar (which can cause an orange, oily diarrhea if eaten in more than small quantities) is sold as white tuna. In the United States, people have been hospitalized after eating what they thought was monkfish, but turned out to be the toxic pufferfish.
Dr. Hanner said that if the substitutions were accidental, "once in a while we'd get the expensive stuff instead of the cheaper stuff," he said. "But the fact is, the overwhelming majority of the data are always in the other direction, suggesting it is economically motivated fraud."
In Europe, he said, regulators have had success combining stricter enforcement and consumer education. They have also made it mandatory for products to have their scientific names on the package to reduce confusion in cases where the same common name is used for more than one species (such as "sole," which can refer to 20-odd kinds of fish in Canada). All of this, he said, has reduced the rate of fraud for certain species from more than 20 per cent to just five.
In January, the CFIA announced a partnership with Guelph to invest more than $300,000 to help Dr. Hanner and his group develop tools that make it quicker and cheaper to identify species – the DNA sequencing currently takes several days and costs hundreds of dollars per sample.
As for Mucci, it is on a three-year probation during which CFIA inspectors will have free access to its premises and computer records. Mr. Ducharme says the company is doing everything it can to ensure accuracy of its labelling, including appointing a compliance officer and reviewing all of its processes.
He believes the CFIA targeted Mucci in part to set an example. "I don't think it's insignificant that the place that was targeted for the big investigation was the biggest in the industry," he said. "They know Mucci's the biggest. The best."
Millennials distrustful of Canada’s food system, survey finds Research by the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity finds that millennials have a lower level of trust in the traditional food system.
Inspectors believe understaffing poses risk to food safety: union survey Union representing federal food inspectors have been sounding the alarm on staffing levels, saying ongoing budget cuts have led to less oversight.


Since the enactment of Title IX in 1972 by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, academic institutions have increasingly set forth efforts and policies to promote gender equality for all students, staff and faculty who participate in academic programs and activities.
In recent years, increased attention and scrutiny has been placed on Title IX in respect to collegiate athletics on the grounds of gender equality, specifically the lack of resources and opportunities for female athletes as compared to those available to their male counterparts.
NYU is an affirmative action and equal opportunity institution that heavily enforces Title IX. The university’s Office of Equal Opportunity provides members of the NYU community with resources to understand the policy and assists in the filing and resolution of sexual misconduct and discrimination complaints.
The OEO serves to “promote and support the university’s commitment to creating and fostering an inclusive and diverse community of faculty, administrators, staff and students” through a “consistent and uniform procedure for responding to and resolving internal discrimination complaints,” according to the office’s mission statement.
Beyond the legislation of Title IX, progress made in the professional ranks by female athletes and organizations has sparked a top-down movement to lessen the inequality that exists between the treatment of male and female athletes.
The U.S. Women’s Hockey Team has been a seminal leader in the fight for equality. In the spring of 2017 the team ended a 15-month negotiation with USA Hockey over compensation disputes. The two sides were able to come to an agreement after the team threatened to boycott the World Hockey Championship.
Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, a forward on the U.S. national hockey team, highlighted the greater influence the team’s win will have on younger female athletes in regards to equal opportunities that make the sport more accessible.
The trickle-down effect projected by Lamoureux-Davidson has been evident at the collegiate level over the past year as numerous athletic programs, most notably Michigan State University and the Larry Nassar case, have increased efforts to ensure Title IX compliance by their athletic programs.
CAS freshman and goaltender on the NYU hockey team Aidan Levi-Minzi thinks NYU is adequately upholding the values of Title IX.
Those looking to further educate themselves on Title IX policies at NYU should visit the OEO website for office hours, location and contact information.


After* trekking across the globe for fashion, Vanity Fair’s *__Michael Carl__knows how to fly in style. Now what does that entail? Always carry on, dress like a Mad Mencharacter, and never, ever use a neck pillow, walk around in your socks, or take too much Ambien. For more Carl’s Crush, watch the video above and share your flying tips with us using the hashtag #VFfashionableflying.


A new fight in Connecticut shows that passing legislation to require employers to set worker schedules two weeks in advance and end the practice of “on-call” will be an uphill battle–but one that will hugely benefit workers.
In the summer of 2015, Marilyn Moore took a seasonal job at a local Target in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She told her new employer that she wanted to work at least 20 hours per week. Though she tried to use her previous experience in retail sales to negotiate for higher than $9.50 per hour, she was rebuked. Her first week on the job, she worked just eight hours. Talking with fellow new employees, she learned that none of them were offered even the minimum number of shifts they requested. At that rate, Moore realized, she would need at least two more jobs to pay her bills.
This is a common story among part-time shift workers. In Connecticut, for instance, 88% of service-sector workers are offered fewer than 40 hours a week at their job. Fifty-eight percent of those workers would like to work more hours. Around 66% of service-sector workers have to keep their schedules open for the possibility that they might work, only to never get a call from their employers, or see shifts disappear from their calendars if their bosses decide they’re not needed at the last minute. This creates instability, and hampers workers’ abilities to plan their days and arrange secondary employment to fill the holes created by their first job. While these numbers testify specifically to the situation in Connecticut, they gesture toward the reality of workers in all states.
Moore swiftly realized the reality of her new employment: In her first two weeks, she took home just $128.50. In order to adequately provide for a family of four, she would need to be earning $2,587.20 in that same time frame, but she never secured enough hours to come close to that total, nor was her schedule regular enough to allow her to look for a second job. But Moore, ultimately, was not dependent on this work for a living: She was actually one year into her first term as a Democratic state senator for Bridgeport, and wanted to gain an in-depth and empathetic understanding for what service workers endure in order to advocate more effectively on their behalf.
Part of Moore’s efforts have centered on calling for the passage of a fair workweek bill, which would outlaw on-call scheduling, the practice of employers keeping workers on the line for a potential shift without any guarantee of work, and frequently canceling shifts at the last minute with no compensation. A previous Fair Workweek bill failed to pass in 2015, but undeterred, she resurrected it and fought for it again this year.
The Fair Workweek bill was ultimately shot down in the Senate again on May 1, as the legislative session drew to a close. But the Connecticut Working Families Organization, which was pushing for the bill’s passage, will continue to do so next year following precedent sent by Oregon, which passed statewide fair workweek legislation last year, and a handful of cities including San Francisco and Seattle. As Connecticut was the first state to pass paid sick leave, a once-fringe measure that is now fairly ubiquitous, advocates are hopeful that the successful passage of fair workweek legislation in the state will signal a country-wide movement.
The practice of on-call scheduling came about in the 1990s, as companies largely shifted from paying their workers a fixed annual wage to paying them by the hour, and with lessening regularity. As companies gain access to software that predicts up-to-the-minute business-flow predictors, like traffic and weather, they can adjust their staffing needs to cut costs, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes. It’s common practice for employers to assign workers tentative shifts, then shoot a text to someone just minutes before they’re supposed to come in to say they’re not needed.
Companies often claim that abiding by fair scheduling principles will cost them both financially and logistically–it’s much easier to shuffle workers around shift schedules as if they were pieces on a chessboard, rather than to consider the actual implications of those moves. They often bristle at the requirement that they compensate hastily canceled shifts with some portion of the workers’ expected wages, and at the idea of fines for failing to provide their workers steady and predictable shifts.
Furthermore, research shows companies that implement fair scheduling practices see benefits to their bottom line. In 2015, the Gap rolled out a pilot program with 19 stores across the San Francisco and Chicago metro areas to test the effects of finalizing schedules two weeks in advance, and eliminating on-call scheduling. The stores that implemented these practices saw a 5% increase in labor productivity and a 7% increase in median sales over the study period–significant for an industry that considers increases of 1-2% progress. Over the 35-week period, the stores increased overall revenue for the Gap by $290,000. Gap has subsequently extended the policy to all its stores, and other major chain retailers, including Disney and PacSun, have done the same.
The findings from the Gap study testify to how fair scheduling practices could help companies by improving workforce morale, and commitment, and driving down time spent on last-minute scheduling changes. But these tactics also produce more intangible benefits for the local economies in which they’re implemented. “It’s Econ 101,” Campbell says. “Working people are the backbone of the economy, and there’s no flow of money if people can’t afford things.” Furthermore, workers are more likely to have to lean on services like SNAP and subsidized housing, which puts more pressure on government resources. These arguments mirror those used to support the $15 minimum wage, which will expand to 18 states this year. Working Families and other labor activist groups maintain that fair scheduling laws are necessary to support the achievements of a higher minimum wage, because even $15 an hour won’t do much when the hours are still well below regular.
Even though an estimated 17% of the working U.S. population faces unstable schedules, “people who aren’t directly affected by this issue often don’t see it,” Campbell says. Upon hearing stories from people like Lexii Evans, who lives in Hartford and has often been held overtime long enough at her shift job at a Nordstrom’s in West Hartford to miss her bus home, legislators often claim the stories are anecdotal and don’t represent a pervasive reality.
In response, researchers at U.C. Berkeley have undertaken a national research study aiming to quantify the extent of workplace practices like on-call scheduling and failure to compensate canceled shifts. The entire project, called Shift, will be released in the future, but the research team pre-published the Connecticut data when they recognized the momentum around the issue. The data will be helpful in advancing Fair Workweek legislation in the state. The numbers prove unequivocally that this is not an anecdotal issue: Over 80% of workers in the state report unstable scheduling, and the vast majority say it interferes with their ability to provide for their families financially and emotionally. Numbers like these will likely emerge from other states as the Berkeley researchers publish the data.
The Shift project will be crucial to informing the fair workweek fight going forward. “In a lot of states, there’s interest in this type of legislation, but they’re looking to other places to do it first,” Campbell says. If Connecticut can successfully translate this data into meaningful policy to correct it, other states might be encouraged to examine their own scheduling practices to do the same.
The real hope, Campbell says, is for this to become a federal issue–like the minimum wage, it’s certainly pervasive enough to merit a national solution. “We’re not in the right climate for that at the moment, though,” he says. But states, he adds, can continue to leverage the issue, and more companies should look to the example of the Gap and understand that this policy that helps their workers can ultimately help them.


All eyes of economists looking at the meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting committee will be on the dot plot, the chart that shows the committee’s projections of the path of interest rates through 2016.
But the dot plot is an odd duck (it doesn’t distinguish between voters and non-voters) and won’t answer all the questions Fed watchers want answers about from the central bank. Here are five of the questions that might be answered by the statement, the forecasts or Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s press conference. The statement and forecasts come Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, followed by the Yellen press conference at 2:30 p.m.
Any new worries about inflation?
Inflation has been stirring. Just before the start of the Fed meeting on Tuesday morning, the Labor Department reported U.S. consumer prices rose sharply in May for the second straight month and the rate of inflation over the past year reached 2.1%, its highest level since late 2012. After worrying about low inflation last year, has there been any change in attitude about higher prices from Fed officials?
Any less optimism over the economy?
In April and March, Fed officials knew that the first quarter was going to be weak but they had no idea it was going to be this weak. Economists have now penciled in a 2% drop in GDP in the first three months of the year. Beyond causing the Fed to lower its growth projections for 2014 (currently, 2.8% to 3%), has the data made the Fed more worried about the outlook? In the last two Fed meetings, officials were pretty sure confident the economy would bounce back to a sustained period of strong growth.
How much slack in the economy?
Was there any progress bridging a key divide among hawks and doves about how much slack there is in the economy, specifically the labor market? The U.S. created 217,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in May and the unemployment rate held steady at 6.3%. Doves argue that several indicators like the number of workers employed part-time even though they want full time jobs suggest there is more slack than the unemployment rate alone suggests. Other Fed officials think the labor market is as tight as the unemployment rate suggests.
Which way is the exit?
For a few years, the Fed has said that it would start shrinking its balance sheet before it hiked short-term interest rates. But in a speech last month, New York Fed President William Dudley said the Fed might hike rates first before tackling the$4.3 trillion balance sheet.
Is the Fed itself a big headwind?
In the same speech last month, Dudley suggested that the higher capital standards for banks might be one reason why the economy is straining to grow about 2%. This is not something that other Fed officials have talked much about, at least in public. Is this a factor in why the Fed thinks that it expects to keep short-term interest rates below normal even after it has reached its goals of 2% inflation and low unemployment?


Red Hat has a choice to make: focus on its profitable but dull Linux business or disrupt the industry through JBoss and applications.
Red Hat has announced its 2009 Innovation Awards, with some impressive finalists making the list. From Whole Foods to Harvard Business School Publishing, major organizations are doing impressive things with Red Hat technology. Interestingly, however, the real "innovation" revealed by these awards is just how much more money Red Hat makes in its JBoss deals than in its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) deals.
I reported earlier this year that Red Hat's JBoss business is growing at twice the rate of its RHEL business. This isn't surprising: JBoss is still relatively small change compared to RHEL, growing from a smaller base.
But that's not the whole story. JBoss drives $10 in services revenue for every $1 in subscription revenue, which makes JBoss much more interesting to Red Hat's channel partners than RHEL. JBoss and the solutions that run on it are also much more interesting to CIOs, who tactically choose RHEL to save money but strategically choose JBoss to help make money.
RHEL is effectively just a commodity business, which means the best way to juice the business is to grow the volume of transactions through the channel, because it's difficult to grow the size of those transactions.
RHEL is all about "selling boxes" (i.e., servers), in other words. It's tactical, not deeply strategic.
If you look at Red Hat's Innovation Awards finalists, the RHEL innovation leaders are those that are saving money on the operating system but still spending plenty on applications like SAP, because applications drive their business value. At Whole Foods Markets, for example, "innovation" means "use of Red Hat Satellite to manage its Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems that resulted in reduced costs, reallocated resources and the ability of the Whole Foods IT department to focus on strategic business initiatives."
Moving to RHEL, in short, was tactical: it allowed Whole Foods to innovate ("focus on strategic business initiatives") elsewhere. RHEL wasn't the innovation. It enabled the innovation.
JBoss is different. JBoss enables the Red Hat sales team to focus on the strategic initiatives within enterprises, because JBoss gets Red Hat closer to the applications that power these companies. An operating system lays the foundation for innovation. An application server and, critically, the applications that run on it, serves up the innovation itself, and makes Red Hat much more interesting to CIOs.
Red Hat has a decision to make moving forward. It can move up the software stack and sell JBoss-based solutions that get it a seat at the CIO's table with Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and others. Or it can continue its tactical push by focusing on increased volume of RHEL-based servers into the market.
There is plenty of value (and money) in either the tactical (RHEL) or strategic (JBoss) approach, but Red Hat becomes a truly disruptive, game-changing company through enhanced focus on middleware and applications. As a (mostly) Linux vendor, Red Hat can make plenty of money but will never make waves.
Today, Red Hat is a big (but little) company. Big in its sales as it approaches $1 billion in revenues. But little in its ambition to disrupt the industry through open source by giving CIOs a true choice in the area that matters most to their businesses: applications.


Aging populations on Japan's northeast coast are struggling to recover from last month's devastating earthquake and tsunami, and health officials fear they could be hit by a potentially deadly new wave of disease, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Hospitals serving the region said they are seeing a surge in elderly patients with pneumonia, which doctors attribute largely to living conditions in crowded emergency shelters that now house tens of thousands of displaced people.
Public health officials also said they are worried about flu outbreaks, respiratory illnesses caused by dust-borne pathogens and a high incidence of blood clots in the legs of now less-active older residents.
About 20 percent of Japan's population is over 65 years old; that proportion is even higher in parts of the disaster-stricken northeast, a fact that stands to complicate recovery efforts and pose unexpected challenges for public health authorities.
In Ishinomaki, a fishing port city about 210 miles north of Tokyo, the Red Cross Hospital has been treating pneumonia patients at roughly five times the normal rate since the March 11 disaster, said Dr. Masaru Yanai, head of respiratory medicine.
Of the roughly 150 patients with tsunami-related pneumonia admitted to the hospital, Yanai said, 80 percent are elderly and two-thirds had been living in shelters in school gymnasiums and other public buildings.
For older people with weakened immune systems, the stress of temporary housing arrangements, along with often poor nutrition in the shelters, can make them more prone to illness, Yanai said.
Many patients have "aspiration pneumonia," a lung infection that starts when people breathe in bacteria-laced saliva -- a situation exacerbated by poor oral hygiene because of shortages of water and supplies in shelters, he said.
Up the coast in the city of Ofunato, the main hospital is also experiencing an increase in pneumonia cases to between five and 10 times the average before the tsunami.
In response, public health officials have been encouraging people in shelters to brush their teeth more often and rinse their mouths. In nearby Rikuzentakata, dentists have set up shop in one of the main evacuation centers to help.
Click here to read more on this story from the Walls Street Journal.


BBC Blogs - TV blog - What happened when this claustrophobic presenter went caving for Secret Britain?
What happened when this claustrophobic presenter went caving for Secret Britain?
I found out I was being sent caving for Secret Britain after a Q&A session in the Countryfile tent at our summer special. Someone asked what I would hate to do. I said anything in tight spaces. My executive producer then came up to me chuckling about story ideas for Secret Britain.
So the proposal was that I squeeze my way into Britain’s deepest cave – Ogof Ffynnon Ddu in the Brecon Beacons – to witness a remarkable secret, the beautiful stalactites deep below ground. When these kinds of challenges come up, I’m usually asked weeks beforehand when the reality of it seems a long time away. I’m then in a rational state of mind so I reason with myself that it is the BBC, with risk assessments and insurances. And I also take the view that I’m being paid to do the work so I should bloody well do the work.
It was a challenging day in many ways. Mostly logistically. We were on site at 8am and by the time we had finished faffing with kit, it was nearly lunchtime and we still hadn’t gone down the cave. Although I was horribly nervous about going underground, it’s not really possible for our bodies physiologically to maintain a state of great anxiety for hours on end. After such a long time preparing, I just wanted to get on with it and get down the cave.
The sound of water flowing overhead was not especially soothing! The reality of metres and metres of rock above one’s head wasn’t a pleasant thought for me so it’s a good job I am quite adept at imagining it is something quite different. I remember jumping out of a plane once and pretending I was jumping into water in order to do it.
If I needed a wee once I was in the caving suit, it had to be in the darkness when the crew were a long way past. But what a faff getting caving suits, radio mics and battery packs off and not letting any of them fall in the cave stream. On nearly every shoot I go on, I subconsciously stop drinking because the opportunity even for wild wees are really limited. We end up most Fridays with crashing headaches and UTIs!
I never thought I would pull out - not after the massive effort in getting there. Hours and hours of prepping, 15 bags of kit, extra caving hands to carry all that kit. That would have been terrible sportsmanship to pull out then.
The day was hard all round. For safety - and for filming - we had to double the amount of bags that we ended up needing, including a scaffolding pole which wasn’t used (but was still carried to the end of the cave system and back again). The journey was incredibly slow going and we weren’t able to film the hardest part: straddling waterways and balancing on beams, just to get to the spots where we could film. We were hours and hours later than we should have been, probably using up all our goodwill with the caving team. Peanuts and chocolate fingers were our underground diet because they have the highest calorie to weight ratio.
Has the experience helped me with my claustrophobia? Nope! It’s something you have or don’t have I think. I still get claustrophobia in the back seat of a car if my feet get caught under the driver’s chair.
Ellie Harrison presents Secret Britain alongside Adam Henson.
Secret Britain starts on Wednesday 8 April at 9pm on BBC One. Each episode will be available in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV.


Watch Katie Couric'c interview with Chelsea Handler, with Couric's notes and reactions and viewer tweets.
$223,789: Amount of money Mel Gibson's controversial movie "The Passion of the Christ" made in its opening weekend. The movie was released Feb. 25, 2004.
Feb. 25, 1870: Hiram Rhoades Revels is sworn in and becomes the first African-American member of Congress.


Royal sisters-in-law Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton were spotted together at the Wimbledon tennis match Saturday.
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (born Catherine Elizabeth Middleton on 9 January 1982; popularly known as "Kate") is the wife of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. William is second in line to the thrones of the sixteen Commonwealth realms, and if he becomes king, she would become queen consort. Catherine grew up in Chapel Row at Bucklebury, a village near Newbury, Berkshire, England. She studied in Scotland at the University of St Andrews, where she met William in 2001. They started a romantic relationship that continued until a break-up lasting for several months in 2007. However, they continued to be friends and rekindled their relationship later that year.
Prior to the wedding, Catherine attended many high-profile royal events. Once their relationship became public, Catherine received widespread media attention and there was much speculation that she and William would eventually marry. Their engagement was announced on 16 November 2010, and they married on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kate Middleton."


Serb defiance likely to exacerbate tensions with Kosovo Albanian majority.
Marko Jaksic, a Serb leader, said: "The assembly is the foundation of the Serb protection of Kosovo. We will not allow the formation of another Albanian state in this part of Europe."
Fatmir Sejdiu, Kosovo's president, said that the Kosovo Serb leaders are trying to destabilise the new country by creating a separate assembly, adding that a proposed self-proclaimed parliament is part of their "illegal structures".
Creation of the new assembly is likely to further raise tensions between the Kosovo Albanians, 90 per cent of Kosovo's two million people, and the Serb minority. Their rivalry has brought the fledgling state to the verge of partition.
The Serb representatives met as they marked Vidovdan, or St Vitus Daym, the anniversary of the 1389 battle in which a Christian army led by Lazar, a Serbian prince, was defeated in Kosovo by invading Ottoman forces.
The battle came to symbolise Serbs' historic resolve not to give up Kosovo, the heartland of their statehood and religion.
Kosovo police have strengthened security and diverted traffic away from Serb enclaves throughout Kosovo to prevent clashes with ethnic Albanians as Serb pilgrims visited the site of the battle.
However, Serbia and Russia have declared Kosovo's move towards indepenence as illegal under international law, although the new state had won recognitiion from the US and most EU nations.Kosovo's constitution came into force on June 15, granting broad autonomy to the Serb minority in Kosovo.


When game designer Nicky Case built a Choose Your Own Adventure tale for the Nar8 hackathon last month, he chose a real-world, if no less difficult, journey as his subject. The Coming Out Simulator is the story of Case’s announcement to his parents and its complicated aftermath. As a player, you’ll meet Case (portrayed as a blank-faced, hipster-haired cartoon) in a present-day coffee shop. He’ll invite you to enter a fictionalized version of his life–the night of his coming out–but with the caveat that you can help direct the story. At each turn, you are offered three options for what Case, his boyfriend, and his parents say or do. One is true to Case’s actual biography. One is completely fictional. And one is a semi-true version of what really happened.
He decided to deliver the dialogue via text message as a narrative metaphor. “Texting is full of miscommunication. It’s impersonal and hard to connect–just like the coming out conversation that I had with my parents.” The game–which is more like an interactive comic–is at turns harrowing and humorous, but ultimately, the Coming Out Simulator isn’t a downer. No matter which choices you make along the way, Nicky truly does come out okay in the end.


This year’s Fishtoft Cup final will be between Spilsby Town and Swineshead Institute.
Spilsby beat Railway Athletic 2-1 thanks to goals from Liam Papworth and Jordon Turner.
In the other semi-final, Swineshead beat Pointon 3-2.
Fulbeck United were held at home by the Workforce Unlimited Premier League’s bottom club Benington as the played out a 2-2 draw.
Fulbeck had to come from behind to get their point, their goals coming from Paul Crampton and Steve Marshall.
Skegness Town Reserves, who themselves are just finding their form, beat Coningsby 5-2.
Coningsby’s goals were both scored by Shaun Boothby.
Division One leaders Fishtoft were well beaten 3-0 by Old Doningtonians while Horncastle Town Reserves kept up their title chase by beating Freiston 5-0.
Friskney had a good win away at Pointon Reserves, winning the game 6-2, while Boston College beat Fosdyke 5-2 and Woodhall Spa United beat Park United 5-1.
At the bottom of division, Billinghay Athletic beat Swineshead Institute Reserves 5-1.
Division Two’s table toppers Eagle United travelled to Spalding Harriers where the game finished 3-3.
Eagle’s goals came from Tom Bates and Louis Holland, who netted a brace, while Daniel Goddard and Rafel Marczewski (two) replied for Harriers.
Skegness Town A moved into second place with a 4-0 home victory against Holbeach Bank.
Skegness’s goals came from Josh Whittam (two), Owen Howland and a own goal.
There were goals galore in the game at JFC Seniors and Caythorpe, where they played out a 6-6 draw.
Colsterworth beat FC Wrangle 5-0 and, in the other game, Boston Athletic beat Coningsby Reserves 7-2.
In Division Three, Northgate were the big winners in the division, beating Park United Reserves 8-0.
Benington Reserves and Digby shared the points in a 1-1 scoreline, the Benington goal coming from Chris Lawson.
Woodhall Spa Reserves beat Wyberton A 1-0 in a very tight game 1-0.
Fosdyke Reserves entertained bottom-of-the-league Mareham, the hosts winning the game 5-2.
Workforce Unlimited Premier Division: Coningsby 2 Skegness Town Res 5, Fulbeck United 2 Benington 2.
Workforce Unlimited Division One: Billinghay Athletic 5 Swineshead Institute Res 1, Boston College 5 Fosdyke 2, Fishtoft 0 Old Doningtonians 3, Horncastle Town Res 5 Freiston 0, Pointon Res 2 Friskney 6, Woodhall Spa United 5 Park United 1.
Workforce Unlimited Division Two: Boston Athletic 7 Coningsby Res 2, Colsterworth 5 FC Wrangle 0, JFC Seniors 6 Caythorpe 6, Skegness Town A 4 Holbeach Bank 0, Spalding Harriers 3 Eagle United 3.
Workforce Unlimited Division Three: Benington Res 1 Digby 1, Fosdyke Res 5 Mareham United 2, Park United Res 0 Northgate Olympic 8, Woodhall Spa United Res 1 Wyberton A 0.
SHS Allium Fishtoft Shield, semi-finals: Swineshead Institute 3 Pointon 2, Spilsby Town 2 Railway Athletic 1.


While the news in the American publishing industry concerns its lofty goals of responding with flags flying to the terrorism war, it's nice to know there's still time for a good old-fashioned catfight.
The Missing Years of the Kennedy Years"
The fur has settled a bit between novelist Jonathan Franzen and TV's Oprah Winfrey who had a falling-out over his reservations about appearing as her author of the month in October.
Unless you've been in germ-free isolation recently, you know that Winfrey canceled Franzen's appearance after he announced that he felt "uncomfortable" with the prospect that his best seller, "The Corrections," would have an Oprah Book Club sticker slapped on it.
"I see this as my book, my creation, and I didn't want that logo of corporate ownership on it," he said last month. Franzen added that most of Winfrey's other selections were not in the same "high-art literary tradition" as his books.
Anyone who had read Franzen's searching and revealing 1996 essay, "Perchance to Dream," in Harper's would not be surprised by his comments. Apparently, the large staff behind Winfrey's book club failed to do so. If they had, I believe they would have told their boss to avoid this guy.
At the time he wrote the essay, Franzen had published two novels which, despite favorable reviews, did not sell well. He became depressed and used the essay to explain both the cause of his malaise and its cure.
He faced the question: Was it a sickness of his soul or a sickness in society that caused literary fiction to seem irrelevant?
Anticipating the attention that Oprah would bring him five years later, Franzen wrote that for authors today, "money, hype, a limo ride to the Vogue [photo] shoot were the main prize, the consolation for no longer mattering to the culture."
In this 19-page article, Franzen raises several key issues that are still true today, but the point that bears on the Oprah situation is the place of a serious artist in a culture that most values financial success and celebrity.
A spot on Oprah Winfrey's show contains elements of both. The author becomes a well-recognized name and makes a lot of money after an appearance. In return, the writer virtually becomes the property of Harpo Productions, Oprah's company, in the month or so leading up to the appearance.
A young novelist whose life was changed overnight by her Oprah selection described the experience to me as "being taken over by Oprah's people" while the various segments were being taped.
I wasn't able to contact her at her home or through her publisher during this time. We talked later and, while she was both flattered and grateful for the attention, she found the experience a little eerie.
"I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. Everything had to go through Oprah's people."
It's obvious from Franzen's essay that he would have rebelled at that kind of control.
"No matter how attractively subversive self-promotion may seem in the short run," he wrote, "the artist who's really serious about resisting a culture of inauthentic mass-marketed image must resist becoming an image himself even at the price of certain obscurity."
It's clear that Franzen has had a change of heart, a change that he recognized in the 1996 essay when he realized that he needed the "community of readers" in order to reconnect to society.
He freely participated in the publicity campaign his publisher Farrar, Straus &Giroux conducted for "The Corrections." The book became the most-talked about novel of the summer, and critical praise supported the hype.
Franzen was a best seller at last, but he could not go that extra step. The reservations about giving up his art for a month to Oprah in favor of promotion -- "I could not imagine not owning what I had written" -- proved too strong.
The publishing pundits have largely sided with Oprah over Franzen's reservations. Oprah has "elevated" the "execrable" taste of the American mass market." She has made reading "respectable again" as though it somehow has recently become an objectionable activity. She respects her viewers enough to give them books other than cheap romances, and Franzen is just an ungrateful snob.
But Franzen didn't ask to be on Oprah. "You just don't do that," said Pete Miller, spokesman for FS&G.
In fact, unlike other novelists who became best sellers after their TV appearance, he was already on the Top 10 list.
Did he need Oprah, or did she need him and his best seller? Maybe she felt it was time for something other than "middlebrow" on her show.
His objections -- a temporary loss of independence and the fear that his fine book would be seen in a lesser light -- were valid ones, and Oprah refused to address them.
If you don't play by her rules, you don't play.


Fancy up your apartment for cheap.
These are done with this foil, which is just $10.65 for 10 feet. Get the tutorial here.
See how she did this to an Ikea Billy bookcase here.
Learn how to get the look in just an afternoon here.
If you're wanting to go even cheaper, you could skip the metallic seats on the chairs and paint them to match the rest of the wood (and use less expensive wrapping paper). Get the tutorial here.
Get the instructions here. The blogger sells buttons that match the Ikea sofa she owns, but you can also pick out fabric covered buttons that work for your own furniture (or grab an inexpensive kit and fabric to make your own).
You can use whatever combination of spray paint and contact paper your heart desires. See how to do it here.
They made this for only $32! Get the how-to here.
This tutorial calls for chalk paint, but you can use any outdoor safe paint that you'd like. Get the tutorial here.
You can do black for a ~classy~ redo, or go colorful in the kid's room. Get the tutorial here.
Find a thrift store chair and some affordable cotton fabric, and ta-da! Instant custom piece. Learn how to make it here.
This one takes some time and effort (and a staple gun), but is insanely gorgeous at the end. Get the how-to here.
The tutorial includes instructions for cutting the trim yourself, but you can also take careful measurements and ask your hardware store to cut it for you. See how to make it happen here.
See how they did it here.
Bonus tip: the Ikea Vittsjö laptop table and laptop stand make perfect nesting tables. From here.
The big brass drawer pulls that serve as the handles of this cart are a little pricey, but you can skip those if you prefer. Learn how to make this happen here.
(You'll have to top it with a circle of wood, of course). Get the tutorial here.
(These chairs were also painted, but the trim is the coolest part here). See the surprisingly simple step-by-step tutorial here.
Or any patterned paper you like. See how here.
See how to do this here. You can get crates like this at Ikea, Michael's, and Target (and of course many other places).
See how here. This tutorial uses Wallternatives reusable wallpaper, but here are ten other removable wallpaper shops to check out.
You could also apply the peel-and-stick wood strips to a sheet of MDF board, or (if you're not renting your place), directly to your wall. Get the tutorial here.
They also painted this desk, obviously. See how to make the handles happen here.
Using an Ikea table, of course. Read the tutorial here.
You can also stain the other half, if you like. See how she did it (plus several other Ikea hacks) here.
You can stain them, or not. See more of this beautiful home here.
You can also paint it, of course. (This is a recurring theme in furniture makeovers for very obvious reasons). Get the how-to here.
Or anything else, like vintage salt and pepper shakers. See the tutorial here.


By the time the decade of the 1960s had begun, sportswriters around the nation had developed a keen interest and curiosity in the Iron Bowl staged each year in Birmingham's Legion Field. When the decade began, Auburn held the unique distinction of being the only Southeastern Conference team that held a lead over Alabama in its series of games. The Tigers' 13-10-1 advantage was to become a 18-15-1 Tide advantage by the time the 1969 Iron Bowl was history.
Television also began developing an interest in the Alabama-Auburn rivalry and first beamed the classic rivalry to the rest of the nation on Nov. 26, 1964. Coach Jordan's Tigers came into the game with a 6-3 record and with consecutive wins over Mississippi State and Georgia. Bryant's Crimson Tide, led by Joe Willie Namath, was undefeated (9-0) and, in fact, had not lost since Auburn upset the Tide 10-8 in the Iron Bowl the year before.
Auburn football coach Ralph "Shug" Jordan in 1964.
Legion Field was absolutely electric with excitement. Thousands roamed the stadium outside hoping somehow to get into the game and apparently ignoring the fact that it was on national television.
Of course, the tickets were split for the game with half of the throng of 68,000 screaming for the Tide and the other half for the Tigers. The two bands went through the pregame ritual of coming onto the field together, playing the fight song for each school, the alma mater for each school and then combining to play the national anthem. Later in the decade, a state legislator attempted to mandate that the state song and "Dixie" be played prior to the big game.
At any rate, on this day the tension became almost unbearable by the time the final strains of "The Star Spangled Banner" had floated across the stadium and it was as if the world stood still for this football game. For the first time a national TV audience observed the Alabama backyard brawl and it had all the ingredients to keep fans interested. With Shug and Bear on the sidelines, bowl representatives in the press box and pride at stake, it was war.
The two teams battled back and forth with both sides giving their all. All-America fullback Tucker Frederickson could not be stopped by the tough Tide defense but the Tigers could not contain Namath. Alabama finally won, 21-14. Fans were absolutely exhausted and drained from the tension and, for the first time, the rest of college football had a better idea of what the Iron Bowl was all about.
The Tide won the national championship and went on to the Orange Bowl where Texas upset Bama, 21-17. Perhaps it was the non-sports events going on in the state that caused so much importance to be placed on this game. George Wallace was governor and he was defying the federal government at every turn.
A year earlier, he had tried to block two black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama. Marches and demonstrations were the order of the day in Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham and fans seem to take refuge in college football in order to escape the media microscope focused on the state's racial problems.
Jordan and Bryant became joint celebrities as after-dinner speakers told and re-told jokes about the two coaches. They would appear on television spots together pushing community causes. It was true glory years for Alabama with the Crimson Tide winning three national titles and going to a bowl game each year including three Sugar Bowls, three Orange Bowls, one Cotton Bowl, one Gator Bowl, one Liberty Bowl and one Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl.
Auburn was also gaining national recognition for appearances in the Orange, Liberty, Sun and Astro-Bluebonnet bowls and the Tigers finished regularly in the nation's top 20. Jordan continued to be effective during the decade in recruiting top players at Auburn and Bryant continued to attract winners at Alabama. For the Tide, it was the decade of great quarterbacks with Namath, Kenny Stabler, Steve Sloan and Scott Hunter, to name a few.
Perhaps the greatest performance at quarterback came from Pat Trammell, who directed the Tide to the 1961 national championship. While he did not possess the arm of a Namath or Stabler, he always knew the position of the team on the field and how much it took to make a first down and keep a drive going.
"He was the smartest quarterback of them all," vowed one sportswriter. Coach Bryant said he could not run, pass nor kick. "All he can do is beat you."
Trammell seemed to typify the players that Bryant attracted to Alabama during the era ... people with little talent but great heart. Across the state, Shug was able to instill the great love he had for Auburn in his players and produced his share of outstanding stars during the 1960s. Pat Sullivan, whom he recruited, went on to be the first player from the state to win the Heisman Trophy.