View allAll Photos Tagged foolproof
I captured this at the duck pond Alton Baker Park in Eugene Oregon. I used some action in Photoshop acquired for free from F64 Academy. On Youtube he has a video called Foolproof 4 step Black and White Photos. I tried TK Luminosity Mask but this technique gives me more control.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - Douglas Adams
2015 04 09 103626 Cyprus Pafos Archeological Site
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Have you ever wondered how to make waterfall photos with that smooth silky water? Are you dreaming about seeing stars and light trails in your images? Join Jean Wibbens and Robert Miller at Lynchburg Photoworks in Forest for a series of 4 classes on Long Exposure Photography. Classes will be on July 24th through August 14th. The first and last class will be at the shop and start at 6:30. The second and third class will be on location for hands on learning and will start at 7:30. The price for all 4 classes is $110.00 Contact Lynchburg Photoworks at 434-385-8110. Hope to see you there!
Trying to be creative with a wide-angle lens in Genoa proved to be disastrous for myself since the camera didn't feel like focusing on the train today, so a two hour wait was effectively for nothing. Not wanting my Sunday to be a complete waste, I raced the train back to Elgin where I had to figure out how to get to the Tower B-35 switch with no map (luckily it wasn't that hard, only one U-turn required) and then figure out a shot that none of the other six or so people there were going to get. I decided to go with the foolproof low-level wedge just to say that I did get the duo of KCS Belle ES44s on record. I'm still kicking myself for not doing more, but hey, it's only a hobby.
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/01/08/things-you-need/
As a Public Service and a personal means of making mischief, I'm presenting to you a range of products which will undoubtedly enhance your enjoyment of life, make you healthier, more attractive and possibly bring you a little good luck. As you may have heretofore been unaware of these necessities, I've kindly left the web site addresses of the advertisers plainly visible so that you may, if you so choose, purchase them from their esteemed vendors.
These items were carefully culled from "The Emporium" pages of The Atlantic, a notoriously leftist rag which I study studiously each month. And now, I present the crème de la crème of the lot.
Let's begin with a light dinner: You may be tempted by this, but I have multiple objections, one being sudden death by Anaphylactic shock. My allergy to shellfish toxin would do me in withing the hour. I have another nagging fear here. Is this stuff delivered to your door packed in dry ice? Contact the company for more information. Suggest to them that they send me a commission cheque.
I find this one particularly amusing, since my exhaustive research has uncovered no convincing evidence that human pheromones even exist, let alone that they provide any useful advantages in the love game: I have two further comments on Dr. Cutler's magic potion. The first is, if you used this product, would you be willing to admit it? Could it go something like this:
MAN: Honey, I have something I need to tell you. I've been using human pheromones to attract you to me.
WOMAN: Well, that explains a lot, you [EXPLETIVE DELETED] !
I direct my second comment to Lee of WA. Lee, I am very sad for you. You have my deepest condolences.
Okay, okay, I have to admit that this one looks like fun: However, my dignity suffers sufficiently from the big stogie sticking out of my mouth. Hey, remember, Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
For the waistline challenged I present: Is it just me or does that thing look dangerous. Would you let your children play with it? Of course this begs the question whether you are ignorant enough to believe that four minutes of exercise a day is going to do anything but give you a sudden violent heart attack the next time you try to tango with your sweetie. Seriously, folks. I'm going to make a million with MadDog's Foolproof Weight Loss Diet at US100 a pop. It will consist of a postcard delivered to the client's house with one sentence written on the back. - "Stop stuffing food into your gob all day!"
You know, I'd actually buy this (bit of a hat fetish here) if I actually believed that I could roll it up and it would look okay after I unroll it:
But, US$75 bucks? Hey, I didn't come in on a load of pumpkins! It's made in Ecuador, for pity's sake. Those people get paid in bananas. No way I'm going to enrich the capitalist exploiters of the sweaty masses. On the other hand, if you want to send me one for testing purposes . . .
Well, this indeed is the perfect holiday gift. Too bad the holidays are over: HELLO! . . . anybody out there ever hear of a supermarket?
Hey, something just popped into the little round space in my head that I use for a mind. What if the people who buy this stuff are simply lonely? Isn't that sad? Maybe the UPS guy is their only contact with normal humans. We could be dealing with some very disconcerting stuff here. Somebody should write a chick-flick screen play. Hey, maybe I will. Any producers out there sniffing around for a hot property?
I'm actually grateful for the enlightenment by which I was enlightened by the simple reading of this ad: I had no idea that the US Library of Congress had thiry official, registered, supremely pompous, gloriously elegant and powerful yet dignified Eagle designs just sitting there waiting for somebody to come along and commercialise. Wonders do exist! Who knows what other wonders lie neglected on dusty shelves which can be converted into ready cash. And, it so patriotic! Still, I'll pass.
You know, I've been thinking green a lot lately. I've discovered that being poor is a marvelous way of reducing my carbon footprint. I'm seriously considering becoming destitute. Maybe my footprint will become so small that I'll simply float up into the air and live in the clouds. And, today I discovered another essential device to hasten the day when I'll be flat broke and wondering how all my precious moolah went up in smoke:
I particularly appreciate the "self extinguishing brass base". Until now, I laboured under the delusion that brass doesn't burn, except, of course, under the most intense heat - and I'm not sure about that. Furthermore this device is very chummy with the environment, having raped only the bees for their abodes, won't poison me or give me cancer and, thank you so much, doesn't drip. Man I hate those candle drips! It takes hours to pick them all off and feed them back into the little puddle of molten paraffin.
Manufacturers of the world, we implore you. Please, in the name of Mercy, give us more useless crap!
After a week or so of practice I've discovered a pretty foolproof setup for this sort of shot.
I placed a wok in my sink, filled that with water then left the tap on a constant drip. With the drops in the same place each time focussing was a lot easier, and with them being consistent spaced I could time my shots a lot easier so from a total of maybe 200 shots I had 40 "interesting" ones of which 7 got uploaded. Quite happy with that!
Created by a participant at the "Wuthering Hacks : re-using library data" hackathon at Newcastle City Library on 9 April 2016.
The participant used Raw (app.raw.densitydesign.org) to do visualisations using the "top 5 most borrowed titles in Newcastle Libraries in March 2016" data. The idea was to see how data could be turned from a raw format into an aesthetically pleasing item.
The "top 5" titles included:
Top 5 most borrowed titles for adult fiction in March 2016
1) NYPD Red / James Patterson
2) A spool of blue thread / Anne Tyler
3) Kate Mosse / The taxidermist’s daughter
4) Thin air / Ann Cleeves
5) Peppercorn street / Anna Jacobs
Top 5 most borrowed titles for adult non-fiction in March 2016
1) The eternally packed suitcase / Lisa Matthews - MISSING from spreadsheet
2) The tearaway / Dean Williams
3) Foolproof cooking / Mary Berry
4) Life after you / Lucie Brownlee
5) Narrow dog to Wigan Pier / Terry Darlington
Top 5 most borrowed titles for junior fiction in March 2016
1) Ten in the bed / Penny Dale
2) Walking with witches / Lynn Huggins-Cooper
3) I love you, Blue Kangaroo! / Emma Chichester-Clark
4) This is the bear / Sarah Hayes - MISSING from spreadsheet
5) Dogger / Shirley Hughes
Letter on reverse dated 26.12.14 and stamped / cancelled at Irmelshausen (Bavaria) and addressed to "Familie Nehf" in Reinsbronn. Photo taken in Würzburg.
Nothing remarkable about this fellow's kit, M1910 tunic, M1909 ammunition pouches and Gew 98 rifle. The photographer's small chalk board can be seen beside out man's left toe. Undoubtedly after this shot was taken, someone walked into the same spot and the number advanced by one. An unsophisticated and foolproof system of recording names to pictures - in theory.
www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-panel-recommends-p...
CDC panel recommends people not get J&J vaccine if Pfizer, Moderna are available
The advisory committee voted in favor of language that says the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are the "preferred" options over Johnson & Johnson's.
People shouldn’t get the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine when the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots are available, an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, convened following an update from the Food and Drug Administration on the risk of rare but potentially life-threatening blood clots linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
At least 54 people in the U.S., most of them women, have been hospitalized by the blood clots, and nine people have died.
The panel voted unanimously to declare the mRNA vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, the "preferred" options for adults, ultimately concluding that the mRNA vaccines provided greater protection and fewer risks than Johnson & Johnson’s. The recommendation wouldn't prohibit use of the Johnson & Johnson shot but instead make it clear that the other options are better choices if they are available.
"I really cannot recommend a vaccine that has been associated with a condition that may lead to death," said a committee member, Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a pediatrician at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio.
The CDC's director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, will need to sign off on the recommendation.
Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is linked to a blood clotting condition known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS. The AstraZeneca vaccine has also been associated with the blood clot issue.
Both the Johnson & Johnson and the AstraZeneca vaccines use an adenovirus technology to train the immune system to fight the coronavirus. The shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna use a different approach, mRNA, to train the immune system, and they haven't been linked to the clots.
The advisory committee met after the FDA announced Tuesday that had it added a contraindication to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, saying people who had previously developed TTS after having gotten one dose of the vaccine shouldn't get second doses. The FDA also said the highest reporting rate of the blood clot issue — about 1 case per 100,000 doses administered — has been in women ages 30 to 49. About 15 percent of the cases have been fatal.
Dr. Sara Oliver, an epidemic intelligence service officer for the CDC, said in a presentation to the committee that data show that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine prevents more hospitalizations and deaths from Covid than the TTS it can cause. Still, she said, the vaccine prevents fewer hospitalizations and deaths than two doses of an mRNA vaccine.
Dr. Penny Heaton, the global head of research and development at Johnson & Johnson's vaccine division, defended the shot at the meeting, saying it offers high levels of protection against Covid, requires only one dose and is easier to store and transport than the mRNA vaccines, which must be stored at cold temperatures.
But committee members noted that there is increasing evidence to suggest that one dose of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine isn't sufficient. In October, federal health officials said all Johnson & Johnson recipients should get booster shots if it has been two months since their initial vaccinations. The vast majority of initial Johnson & Johnson recipients have opted for a Pfizer or a Moderna booster.
After the vote, the committee's chair, Dr. Grace Lee, acknowledged that some members want to make the language recommending the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines over Johnson & Johnson's even stronger, saying they wouldn't recommend the shot to their family members, while others stressed the importance of having an alternative vaccine to the mRNA shots.
The Biden administration is urging all eligible people in the U.S. to get boosters against the threat of the omicron variant. Initial data suggest that three shots of the mRNA vaccines provide adequate protection against the new strain.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are readily available in the U.S. More than 570 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been delivered to providers; only 28 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been delivered.
The link between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and blood clots first emerged in April after six cases were reported in women. Federal health officials paused the use of the vaccine at that time to investigate the cases and resumed administration 10 days later, adding a warning that the vaccine could be linked to the clots, particularly among women ages 18 to 49.
A total of 54 cases of TTS after Johnson & Johnson vaccination were identified through late August, Dr. Isaac See, a scientist in the CDC's emerging infectious diseases unit, said Thursday in a presentation to the committee. All the patients were hospitalized, including 36 who were admitted to intensive care.
Most cases occurred in women, and symptoms usually occurred within nine days of vaccination with the first dose, he said. No cases of the rare clot issue have occurred in pregnant women. Risk factors for the clot issue include obesity, hypertension and diabetes.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine initially held promise, because it could be given as a single dose, rather than the two doses required for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. But clinical trials found that its effectiveness was much lower than that of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The effectiveness fell further with the emergence of the delta variant, leading health officials to recommend boosters.
More than 16 million people in the U.S. have had single shots of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to the CDC. More than 470 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been administered.
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/america-omicro...
America Is Not Ready for Omicron
The new variant poses a far graver threat at the collective level than the individual one—the kind of test that the U.S. has repeatedly failed.
America was not prepared for COVID-19 when it arrived. It was not prepared for last winter’s surge. It was not prepared for Delta’s arrival in the summer or its current winter assault. More than 1,000 Americans are still dying of COVID every day, and more have died this year than last. Hospitalizations are rising in 42 states. The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which entered the pandemic as arguably the best-prepared hospital in the country, recently went from 70 COVID patients to 110 in four days, leaving its staff “grasping for resolve,” the virologist John Lowe told me. And now comes Omicron.
Will the new and rapidly spreading variant overwhelm the U.S. health-care system? The question is moot because the system is already overwhelmed, in a way that is affecting all patients, COVID or otherwise. “The level of care that we’ve come to expect in our hospitals no longer exists,” Lowe said.
The real unknown is what an Omicron cross will do when it follows a Delta hook. Given what scientists have learned in the three weeks since Omicron’s discovery, “some of the absolute worst-case scenarios that were possible when we saw its genome are off the table, but so are some of the most hopeful scenarios,” Dylan Morris, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, told me. In any case, America is not prepared for Omicron. The variant’s threat is far greater at the societal level than at the personal one, and policy makers have already cut themselves off from the tools needed to protect the populations they serve. Like the variants that preceded it, Omicron requires individuals to think and act for the collective good—which is to say, it poses a heightened version of the same challenge that the U.S. has failed for two straight years, in bipartisan fashion.
The coronavirus is a microscopic ball studded with specially shaped spikes that it uses to recognize and infect our cells. Antibodies can thwart such infections by glomming onto the spikes, like gum messing up a key. But Omicron has a crucial advantage: 30-plus mutations that change the shape of its spike and disable many antibodies that would have stuck to other variants. One early study suggests that antibodies in vaccinated people are about 40 times worse at neutralizing Omicron than the original virus, and the experts I talked with expect that, as more data arrive, that number will stay in the same range. The implications of that decline are still uncertain, but three simple principles should likely hold.
First, the bad news: In terms of catching the virus, everyone should assume that they are less protected than they were two months ago. As a crude shorthand, assume that Omicron negates one previous immunizing event—either an infection or a vaccine dose. Someone who considered themselves fully vaccinated in September would be just partially vaccinated now (and the official definition may change imminently). But someone who’s been boosted has the same ballpark level of protection against Omicron infection as a vaccinated-but-unboosted person did against Delta. The extra dose not only raises a recipient’s level of antibodies but also broadens their range, giving them better odds of recognizing the shape of even Omicron’s altered spike. In a small British study, a booster effectively doubled the level of protection that two Pfizer doses provided against Omicron infection.
Second, some worse news: Boosting isn’t a foolproof shield against Omicron. In South Africa, the variant managed to infect a cluster of seven people who were all boosted. And according to a CDC report, boosted Americans made up a third of the first known Omicron cases in the U.S. “People who thought that they wouldn’t have to worry about infection this winter if they had their booster do still have to worry about infection with Omicron,” Trevor Bedford, a virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told me. “I’ve been going to restaurants and movies, and now with Omicron, that will change.”
Third, some better news: Even if Omicron has an easier time infecting vaccinated individuals, it should still have more trouble causing severe disease. The vaccines were always intended to disconnect infection from dangerous illness, turning a life-threatening event into something closer to a cold. Whether they’ll fulfill that promise for Omicron is a major uncertainty, but we can reasonably expect that they will. The variant might sneak past the initial antibody blockade, but slower-acting branches of the immune system (such as T cells) should eventually mobilize to clear it before it wreaks too much havoc.
To see how these principles play out in practice, Dylan Morris suggests watching highly boosted places, such as Israel, and countries where severe epidemics and successful vaccination campaigns have given people layers of immunity, such as Brazil and Chile. In the meantime, it’s reasonable to treat Omicron as a setback but not a catastrophe for most vaccinated people. It will evade some of our hard-won immune defenses, without obliterating them entirely. “It was better than I expected, given the mutational profile,” Alex Sigal of the Africa Health Research Institute, who led the South African antibody study, told me. “It’s not going to be a common cold, but neither do I think it will be a tremendous monster.”
That’s for individuals, though. At a societal level, the outlook is bleaker.
Omicron’s main threat is its shocking speed, as my colleague Sarah Zhang has reported. In South Africa, every infected person has been passing the virus on to 3–3.5 other people—at least twice the pace at which Delta spread in the summer. Similarly, British data suggest that Omicron is twice as good at spreading within households as Delta. That might be because the new variant is inherently more transmissible than its predecessors, or because it is specifically better at moving through vaccinated populations. Either way, it has already overtaken Delta as the dominant variant in South Africa. Soon, it will likely do the same in Scotland and Denmark. Even the U.S., which has much poorer genomic surveillance than those other countries, has detected Omicron in 35 states. “I think that a large Omicron wave is baked in,” Bedford told me. “That’s going to happen.”
More positively, Omicron cases have thus far been relatively mild. This pattern has fueled the widespread claim that the variant might be less severe, or even that its rapid spread could be a welcome development. “People are saying ‘Let it rip’ and ‘It’ll help us build more immunity,’ that this is the exit wave and everything’s going to be fine and rosy after,” Richard Lessells, an infectious-disease physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, told me. “I have no confidence in that.”
To begin with, as he and others told me, that argument overlooks a key dynamic: Omicron might not actually be intrinsically milder. In South Africa and the United Kingdom, it has mostly infected younger people, whose bouts of COVID-19 tend to be less severe. And in places with lots of prior immunity, it might have caused few hospitalizations or deaths simply because it has mostly infected hosts with some protection, as Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University, explained in a Twitter thread. That pattern could change once it reaches more vulnerable communities. (The widespread notion that viruses naturally evolve to become less virulent is mistaken, as the virologist Andrew Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University clarified in The New York Times.) Also, deaths and hospitalizations are not the only fates that matter. Supposedly “mild” bouts of COVID-19 have led to cases of long COVID, in which people struggle with debilitating symptoms for months (or even years), while struggling to get care or disability benefits.
And even if Omicron is milder, greater transmissibility will likely trump that reduced virulence. Omicron is spreading so quickly that a small proportion of severe cases could still flood hospitals. To avert that scenario, the variant would need to be substantially milder than Delta—especially because hospitals are already at a breaking point. Two years of trauma have pushed droves of health-care workers, including many of the most experienced and committed, to quit their job. The remaining staff is ever more exhausted and demoralized, and “exceptionally high numbers” can’t work because they got breakthrough Delta infections and had to be separated from vulnerable patients, John Lowe told me. This pattern will only worsen as Omicron spreads, if the large clusters among South African health-care workers are any indication. “In the West, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner because most countries have huge Delta waves and most of them are stretched to the limit of their health-care systems,” Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, told me. “What happens if those waves get even bigger with Omicron?”
The Omicron wave won’t completely topple America’s wall of immunity but will seep into its many cracks and weaknesses. It will find the 39 percent of Americans who are still not fully vaccinated (including 28 percent of adults and 13 percent of over-65s). It will find other biologically vulnerable people, including elderly and immunocompromised individuals whose immune systems weren’t sufficiently girded by the vaccines. It will find the socially vulnerable people who face repeated exposures, either because their “essential” jobs leave them with no choice or because they live in epidemic-prone settings, such as prisons and nursing homes. Omicron is poised to speedily recap all the inequities that the U.S. has experienced in the pandemic thus far.
Here, then, is the problem: People who are unlikely to be hospitalized by Omicron might still feel reasonably protected, but they can spread the virus to those who are more vulnerable, quickly enough to seriously batter an already collapsing health-care system that will then struggle to care for anyone—vaccinated, boosted, or otherwise. The collective threat is substantially greater than the individual one. And the U.S. is ill-poised to meet it.
America’s policy choices have left it with few tangible options for averting an Omicron wave. Boosters can still offer decent protection against infection, but just 17 percent of Americans have had those shots. Many are now struggling to make appointments, and people from rural, low-income, and minority communities will likely experience the greatest delays, “mirroring the inequities we saw with the first two shots,” Arrianna Marie Planey, a medical geographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told me. With a little time, the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna could be updated, but “my suspicion is that once we have an Omicron-specific booster, the wave will be past,” Trevor Bedford, the virologist, said.
Two antiviral drugs now exist that could effectively keep people out of the hospital, but neither has been authorized and both are expensive. Both must also be administered within five days of the first symptoms, which means that people need to realize they’re sick and swiftly confirm as much with a test. But instead of distributing rapid tests en masse, the Biden administration opted to merely make them reimbursable through health insurance. “That doesn’t address the need where it is greatest,” Planey told me. Low-wage workers, who face high risk of infection, “are the least able to afford tests up front and the least likely to have insurance,” she said. And testing, rapid or otherwise, is about to get harder, as Omicron’s global spread strains both the supply of reagents and the capacity of laboratories.
Omicron may also be especially difficult to catch before it spreads to others, because its incubation period—the window between infection and symptoms—seems to be very short. At an Oslo Christmas party, almost three-quarters of attendees were infected even though all reported a negative test result one to three days before. That will make Omicron “harder to contain,” Lowe told me. “It’s really going to put a lot of pressure on the prevention measures that are still in place—or rather, the complete lack of prevention that’s still in place.”
The various measures that controlled the spread of other variants—masks, better ventilation, contact tracing, quarantine, and restrictions on gatherings—should all theoretically work for Omicron too. But the U.S. has either failed to invest in these tools or has actively made it harder to use them. Republican legislators in at least 26 states have passed laws that curtail the very possibility of quarantines and mask mandates. In September, Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University told me that when the next variant comes, such measures could create “the worst of all worlds” by “removing emergency actions, without the preventive care that would allow people to protect their own health.” Omicron will test her prediction in the coming weeks.
The longer-term future is uncertain. After Delta’s emergence, it became clear that the coronavirus was too transmissible to fully eradicate. Omicron could potentially shunt us more quickly toward a different endgame—endemicity, the point when humanity has gained enough immunity to hold the virus in a tenuous stalemate—albeit at significant cost. But more complicated futures are also plausible. For example, if Omicron and Delta are so different that each can escape the immunity that the other induces, the two variants could co-circulate. (That’s what happened with the viruses behind polio and influenza B.)
Omicron also reminds us that more variants can still arise—and stranger ones than we might expect. Most scientists I talked with figured the next one to emerge would be a descendant of Delta, featuring a few more mutational bells and whistles. Omicron, however, is “dramatically different,” Shane Crotty, from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told me. “It showed a lot more evolutionary potential than I or others had hoped for.” It evolved not from Delta but from older lineages of SARS-CoV-2, and seems to have acquired its smorgasbord of mutations in some hidden setting: perhaps a part of the world that does very little sequencing, or an animal species that was infected by humans and then transmitted the virus back to us, or the body of an immunocompromised patient who was chronically infected with the virus. All of these options are possible, but the people I spoke with felt that the third—the chronically ill patient—was most likely. And if that’s the case, with millions of immunocompromised people in the U.S. alone, many of whom feel overlooked in the vaccine era, will more weird variants keep arising? Omicron “doesn’t look like the end of it,” Crotty told me. One cause for concern: For all the mutations in Omicron’s spike, it actually has fewer mutations in the rest of its proteins than Delta did. The virus might still have many new forms to take.
Vaccinating the world can curtail those possibilities, and is now an even greater matter of moral urgency, given Omicron’s speed. And yet, people in rich countries are getting their booster six times faster than those in low-income countries are getting their first shot. Unless the former seriously commits to vaccinating the world—not just donating doses, but allowing other countries to manufacture and disseminate their own supplies—“it’s going to be a very expensive wild-goose chase until the next variant,” Planey said.
Vaccines can’t be the only strategy, either. The rest of the pandemic playbook remains unchanged and necessary: paid sick leave and other policies that protect essential workers, better masks, improved ventilation, rapid tests, places where sick people can easily isolate, social distancing, a stronger public-health system, and ways of retaining the frayed health-care workforce. The U.S. has consistently dropped the ball on many of these, betting that vaccines alone could get us out of the pandemic. Rather than trying to beat the coronavirus one booster at a time, the country needs to do what it has always needed to do—build systems and enact policies that protect the health of entire communities, especially the most vulnerable ones. Individualism couldn’t beat Delta, it won’t beat Omicron, and it won’t beat the rest of the Greek alphabet to come. Self-interest is self-defeating, and as long as its hosts ignore that lesson, the virus will keep teaching it.
[image: Inline image 1]
Nymi:
The buzz today was all about yet another new way to provide security for
your accounts and devices. We are truly moving toward life beyond the
password.
The idea of the Nymi is to use your ECG/EKG as the password. Oh. What a
novel idea! Several of my geekier pals around campus are talking about
ordering one. Here is a video showing what folk are so excited about.
Nymi by Bionym:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUO7Qnmc8vE
Now, I tweeted this, and that turned into a very interesting conversation
about what might not work with this idea. The conversation was centered
around Jay Ackroyd of Virtually Speaking, a well known Blogradio show and
Second Life phenomena, with occasional comments from others. The gist of
it was (1) there is no single authentication method that will work
consistently for everyone, (2) what about security versus convenience
tradeoffs, and (3) how does this new approach to security connect to the
privacy / transparency debates.
I'm not sure if these embeds will work as I send this blogpost by email, so
this is an experiment. We'll see.
RT @pfanderson: bracelet replace[s] yr
passwords, yr car keys, & even yr fingerprints http://t.co/lE7pEZoBx8 |if not this,something
like it— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@pfanderson EKG key device
impressive but what happens if you have an arrhythmia or an infarction? #Stressful—
Christian Kendrick (@cskendrick) September 4,
2013
@pfanderson Nothing works!
Gotta check into a garage, or, I guess, a hospital. IAC, something like
this. LOCAL authentication— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@JayAckroyd That's what I
was worrying about myself. I have arrhythmia. Varies considerably, amuses
nurses.— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@JayAckroyd Would be bad to be
locked out of my phone right when my heart is seizing up with pain and I
can barely move— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@pfanderson The principle is
fascinating; difficult to spoof being in two places at once. But sudden
change of EKG would be oops— Christian Kendrick (@cskendrick) September
4, 2013
@cskendrick Sounds like you
should get a free alpha version.— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September
4, 2013
@pfanderson Inventor's
point other mechs like prints or retinas can be copied isn't really
relevant if you authenticate locally.— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd)
4, 2013
@pfanderson Biometric should
never be stored anywhere except a local authentication device.—
JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick Now that would be
fun. :) Then test how it works when I go for a long walk uphill in high
heat/humidity ...— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick There is always a
way around everything. If this takes out, someone will figure out how to
trick the device.— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick This issue always
arises. People without hands. People without eyeballs.Even DNA doesn't
work for ident twins.— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick IMPORTANT! RT
"Biometric should never be stored anywhere except a local
authentication device."— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September
4, 2013
@JayAckroyd Sometimes I want
to log my son onto one device, and me onto another. Not sure I want
single-point authentication— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September
4, 2013
@cskendrick Essential! And yet
you see NatID proposals with prints on datastores. I'm for a national
ID. But a GOOD one.— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick You mean you want
to be able to use insecure devices. Sure. No reason not to.Except in the
event you won't.— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick There can never be
just one solution. Never. (And I rarely say that 'N'
word)— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick Take that back.
You'll wanna pay for hookers and blow through insecure
systems.— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@pfanderson @cskendrick There is no 100% foolproof
auth method. only several in tandem will cover all users— Atiyaah
A. Miu (@AtiyaahDollfie) September
4, 2013
@cskendrick Another example.
Rt now, GMail allows me to check locations currently logged in: office CPU,
laptop, phone, tablet.— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick It's useful to
be logged in multiple locations at same time. I OFTEN use more than one
device at a time.— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick LOL!. Well, not me
personally, but perhaps the generic "you" who currently pay for
hookers.— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@AtiyaahDollfie @JayAckroyd @cskendrick Good insight,
Atiyaah— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick Right, and
that's way insecure. Convenience and security conflict. But you CHOOSE
to trust a public WAN,— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@JayAckroyd @cskendrick my dad taught me a few
things about security when I was a wee girl.— Atiyaah A. Miu
(@AtiyaahDollfie) September
4, 2013
@cskendrick Any illicit
activity. Or licit but embarassing (Dear? Licorice? Again? I thought
you'd given that up.)— JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick This all connects
back to David Brin on Transparent Society. But you know that well, Jay
:)— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick LOL! Or the Bronys
:)— P. F. Anderson (@pfanderson) September 4,
2013
@cskendrick Indeed. @Davidbrin is in the subtext.—
JayAckroyd (@JayAckroyd) September 4,
2013
I create a rough draft of my photo stories using the Comic Life software which I then use as a guide when snapping the photos.
Having a draft version with the dialog balloons helps me compose the photos to allow adequate space for the dialog.
It's not a foolproof method, and I still end up coming up short on space... because my stories are too verbose... but this method works better than storyboards on paper.
Baby's got an atom bomb
Twenty two megaton
Baby got a poison gas
Baby got a heart attacks
Baby got a pain on tap
Baby gimme some of that
Baby got a nobel prize
Given for the perfect crime
Baby got an alibi
Baby got eight more lives
Baby got a satellite
Baby got second sight
Baby got a masterplan
A foolproof master plan
Baby got purple hair
Baby got a secret lair
Baby got an army there
I ain't ever seen baby scared
(Gimme some of that)
(Gimme some of that)
Baby got a crystal ball
Baby doesn't care at all
Baby's having too much fun
Baby got an atom bomb
Baby got a fleet at sea
And a submarine called Emergency
She got a motorcade
She got a monorail
Going coast to coast on a campain trail
Playing deck of cards in an armoured car
She got a kung fu star as a bodyguard
She got a juju charm
She got a magic spell
She got a genie all three is working well
She got a tv show
She got a shopping mall
She got a miracle, she doesn't want at all
She got a monument at a great expense
She got a head of state and a president
She got destiny, she got supremecy
She got everything from A - Z
She got it all down tight, she got nothing wrong
She got the whole wide world singing baby's song
~Fluke
After a week or so of practice I've discovered a pretty foolproof setup for this sort of shot.
I placed a wok in my sink, filled that with water then left the tap on a constant drip. With the drops in the same place each time focussing was a lot easier, and with them being consistent spaced I could time my shots a lot easier so from a total of maybe 200 shots I had 40 "interesting" ones of which 7 got uploaded. Quite happy with that!
you spot him yet?
yeah, he's down there, all right.
what's he doing?
he's opening the package.
good. he alone?
no. joey's there with him.
too bad for joey. now what's happening?
he's got it open. shit! he spotted it!
what!?
yeah. he found the device. shit! he disabled it!
dammit, purvis! you told me it was foolproof!
we better get outta here. boss is gonna be slightly peeved.
right behind you.
Our system of using templates makes carving the exquisite spoon-blade shape an easy and foolproof process. Templates illustrated are slightly different than what are currently in our plans. The first step is to mark a curve across the blade.
Sex offenders try to hide
Victims' families enraged by laws that allow criminals to change their names
By Suzanne Fournier December 7, 2008
Linda Hamilton and Tom May with a photo of their daughter Genoa, who was murdered in 1985. Photograph by : Duane Burnett
www.theprovince.com/offenders+hide/1043832/story.html
Tom May will never forget the anguish of December 1985 when his three-year-old daughter was snatched from her bed and found a day later, raped and murdered, on a remote Sunshine Coast road.
Nor will he forget the face of Darren Andrew Kelly, then 20, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the sex slaying and was sentenced in 1986 to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
May has discovered to his horror, however, that Kelly, diagnosed as a "dangerous psychopath," almost succeeded in erasing his notoriety by taking advantage of laws that allow even violent sex offenders to change their names.
"I wanted to find out what 'life in prison' meant so I called up after 20 years had gone by to ask about the status of Darren Kelly and I was told, 'Sorry, there's no one in the prison system by that name,"' said May, now 53. "I figured they'd let him go without even telling us and to say I was very upset is an understatement."
The Province has learned that there are at least 121 federal inmates, most of them violent or sexual offenders, who have legally changed their names in prison. There are 29 prisoners in the Pacific region -- B.C. and the Yukon Territory -- living in prison under new names.
That doesn't include inmates who changed their names in jail and are now paroled with a new identity. As far as The Province was able to establish, no record is kept of how many ex-prisoners are living in the community under new names.
Kelly, described by a psychiatrist as "one of the most dangerous psychopaths I've ever encountered," snatched Genoa Jean May from her bed at 5 a.m. and then raped and murdered her before dumping her body.
Parole Board officials admit they can't explain why they lost track of Kelly when May first phoned four years ago for information. Nor can they explain why the same thing happened -- twice -- when The Province requested information about Kelly and was told both times he didn't exist.
In 2004, May paid a research fee and found Kelly had changed his name to Ryan Scott Brady.
May obtained a 1992 Province article that revealed Kelly's name change. It also linked him to the murder of Aaron Kaplan, aged two, who was taken from his bed in a Vancouver home and found dead on his family's front lawn.
The little boy had been murdered while Kelly lived nearby, about six months before Gennie was killed.
Armed with evidence of Kelly's new name, corrections officials confirmed that Kelly, now Brady, is in Mountain Prison in Agassiz.
"Kelly's name, and the information on Gennie's murder, didn't come up on prison files until I told them," said May.
Corrections Canada spokesman Brandon Banks said that "when an inmate changes his or her name, a New Offender Admission Sheet is filled out and that is theoretically linked in all our records to the inmate's original name."
Banks said that "anyone has the authority to change their name, and that includes inmates -- if you or I changed our name there is no one we have to ask permission from.
"Only the registered victims of offenders would receive notification of the name change."
May is now registered as a victim.
"When an inmate changes his name, we require that it be done legally and all the paperwork filed," said National Parole Board spokesman Patrick Storey, who provided "soft" numbers of name changes, admitting it could be larger.
"We have a notification system that is supposed to be pretty foolproof, but you never know," said Storey.
When The Province inquired on two occasions about Kelly's parole status, parole officials failed to link Kelly's name and the murder of Gennie to the killer's new identity, until told of Kelly's name change. Parole Board spokeswoman Jaswinder Frenette said: "We are going to discuss and try to resolve this problem."
Retired MP Randy White, an advocate for victims' rights, is outraged by what happened to Tom May and scoffs at the prison officials' "tired old excuses."
"They can't keep track of violent offenders and pedophiles whose names they already know, whether they're in prison or out in the community," said White, who tried in 2001 to introduce a private member's bill that would have made it illegal for violent offenders to legally change their names while in jail. sfournier@theprovince.com
Other offenders who have switched IDs
Not only does a name change conceal a person's criminal past from new neighbours once the inmate is released, it appears that the prison system has in some cases actually lost track of offenders, both in and out of jail.
The Correctional Service of Canada says it can't do anything to stop the practice because violent sexual offenders have human rights.
The offender's new name is supposed to be linked to his original record, but news files are rife with stories of spotty prison and parole records.
Tom May, whose daughter was murdered by a man now serving time under a different name, says: "Privacy laws should not outweigh the rights of victims' families. It should be illegal for violent killers to change their names."
Robert Noyes
Child molester Noyes is a teacher who moved from school to school in B.C. in the 1970s and early '80s. Arrested in '85, Noyes pleaded guilty to 19 assaults on kids aged six to 15. He is believed to have molested hundreds of kids.
Granted full parole in 2003, Noyes is believed to be living outside Ottawa with his second wife.
Said ex-MP Randy White: "I got a call from a parole board person who said that Noyes had changed his name. I was told that I could not get his name. I even phoned the prison and was told that Noyes' new name was private. What's to prevent him from applying to be a substitute teacher under his new ID?"
David Shearing
For Tom May and his wife Michelle, who have been supporting her childhood friend, Shelley Boden, their case eerily echoes that of Shearing, another notorious killer who murdered six of Boden's relatives.
Shearing was convicted in 1982 of the murders of the Bentley and Johnson families, including two young girls he sexually assaulted. Shearing changed his name to Ennis.
Robert Gordon Stevens
Stevens is a convicted sex offender. He was married in prison to a man who was also a sex offender and had changed his surname to Oatway. Stevens then took the surname Oatway and became Bobby Gordon Oatway. When he was released from prison, one of his victims recognized him as Stevens; others did not. Both men have been paroled in B.C. but their whereabouts are unknown to the public.
Karla Homolka
Notorious sex-slayer Homolka, who adopted the name Karla Teale in homage to a fictitious serial killer, tried to change her name after she was paroled in 2003 to Emily Tremblay, but was refused permission.
In 2005, a Quebec judge struck down all 14 court-ordered parole conditions on Homolka, including the need to notify authorities of any subsequent name changes or her current whereabouts, which are unknown.
Austin John Gallienne
Gallienne, a choirmaster, was serving time for a sex offence when he changed his name to Austin John Mitchell. In 1994, he changed his name again to John David Gallant. He is believed to be in B.C.
William Rosik
Rosik was convicted of murdering Ontario police officer Bob Carrick in 1969. He legally changed his name to William Dave Jameson while in jail and is believed to be living in Burnaby.
© Copyright (c) The Province
Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie with Foolproof Pie Dough
Came out really good except for some reason I had to bake it for an hour (maybe my oven sucks ass). The crust was AWESOME. Definitely try it. Worth buying the vodka for, even if you have no other use for it..(I'm not gonna drink it!)...
This foolproof recipe is perfect for the holidays. The drippings from the turkey and shallots make amazing gravy.
www.cookincanuck.com/2011/11/roasted-turkey-with-herb-but...
I've been trying forever to get a decent potato roll recipe and after so many duds I decided to make my own recipe. I used my foolproof pizza dough recipe as the base and worked from there. They make wonderfully tender rolls puff well and aren't at all cake-y like some potato recipes. There also isn't a ton of sugar like some recipes.
This is a very wet dough (it will seem almost frighteningly so, but with a dusting of flour and moving fast it's quite manageable and very similar to making Ciabatta. I use sweet potato for this recipe. It gives it a lovely golden-peach color and it's a healthier starch than the white potato.
Sweet Potato Rolls
1 c mashed sweet or white potato
2 1/2 c warm potato water
2 Tbsp active dry yeast
2 Tbsp white or raw sugar
6 Tbsp olive or any vegetable oil
2 tsp salt
6 c all purpose flour
6 Tbsp wheat gluten
Peel and cut enough potato to make one cup mashed, boil until very tender. Do not discard the water. You will be saving this for the recipe. Yeast loves potato water. Mash or rice the potato without adding butter or milk. If you find it very dry, just use a little bit of your cooking water.
In mixing bowl put your reserved potato water, adding warm water if you don't have enough to make the full 2 1/2 cups. Add sugar and yeast and let it sit until frothy (5-10 min).
Throw everything else in but the salt. Start the mixer with your bread hook and when it's almost come together add the salt. mix on medium for 3-4 minutes scraping the sides and making sure there's no pockets of dry flour. Again, it will be a very wet dough. Don't panic and don't add more flour unless it's soupy.
Let rise until double (1-2+ hours) Dust the counter or a tea towel with flour, scrape out the dough, dust it with more flour on top. Us a pastry scraper to divide the recipe into roll sized pieces. You should get at least 20 hamburger sized rolls out of the batch. Shape them and place on parchment paper lined baking trays. Let rise until double. (30min-1hr).
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spritz the rolls and inside of oven just before putting rolls in to bake. Bake for 20-30 mins until puffed, golden and the bottoms are golden as well. Done!
Notes: I don't use the pizza stone for this. I find it pulls out too much moisture for these tender rolls - they come out very crispy and sort of flat. Still good, but not like it ought to. I use my airbake pans and cook on the middle shelf for this and it works very well.
If you've got bread flour, just use 6c and 6T. I just didn't have any on hand so I use the wheat gluten.
Leave the boiled potato whole until it's just about to go in. This way it doesn't suck up a lot of excess liquid and it doesn't create lumps in the dough.
I've never made these using potato flakes but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I just suggest replacing the milk the box calls for with more water.
If you like making your breads with a Poolish, the night before boil your potato, let it cool a bit then mash it into 1c warm potato water, 1c of the flour and 1/2 T of the yeast in a large bowl. This will froth up quite a bit. The next morning prepare the remaining ingredients like normal, scraping in the poolish after the sugar, remaining yeast and water has frothed. Using a poolish is not necessary, it's just the way I like to do it since I have to cook the potato ahead of time anyway.
Rabbit stories from Deer-Credible Story From Snow Field chronicles.
Read the full story: Sunday afternoon I went for a hunt, but these shots haven’t hurt a single animal! For the first time, I had to settle for one single deer from behind, but for the second time, I got a foolproof tip. In the first thirty minutes, I haven’t me a single soul, then suddenly I caught a glimpse of a herd of 30-40 deer and I couldn’t believe my eyes! They were on their way fast, as you can see on the photo below.
Then I decided to go around the fishpond, so we can meet halfway, since the herd went towards the pond. However, soon I had a big surprise once more, as I found another group of 20-30 individuals.
I was planning to get closer to them and luckily, my clothes seemed suitable, since I was wearing a light gray jacket with a hoodie and a pair of jeans, and my patience proved to be effective. I’ve spent about three hours in the -4°C weather in the wilderness and I enjoyed every single moment of it, so much so, that I didn’t have time to feel the cold, if anything, I was feeling warm because I had to do one fourth of the trip squat walking. So yeah, hello, muscle soreness, but who cares after an amazing experience like this?!
When one group got scared and ran away, I started to approach the other, and yes, first I had to sneak and stealth in the snow-white field, then, as I was getting closer to the herd, I switched back once again to the beloved squat walk. After that I was trying to reduce the distance between us, meter by meter.
The real miracle happened when I was squatting and one of the deer started to gallop towards me. I couldn’t even dream of something like this, that instead of receding from the lenses of the camera, one curious individual would come closer in a rush. I was squatting in an ideal position, totally still, waiting for what will happen next as I was already seeing the headlines in front of me: „deer attacked a Hungarian photographer”. Only my clicking finger was moving – it was a truly incredible moment!
In this moment, the deer could be about twenty meters from me, but it is hard for me to remember the exact details, as I became quite emotional because of its honorific visit. After a couple seconds, it perceived the possible danger, stroke a pose from the side as well, and then, in a flash, turned its back on me and ran away.
While I was switching between the herds, I saw something on the field that looked like a tussock, but turned out to be a rabbit, a beautiful hare, to be exact. Obviously, it hasn’t hesitated for long, and went down the rabbit hole.
I found a spot on the field where the undergrowth was a bit higher and provided a perfect cover for me, even though we are talking about a 30-40-centimeter long grass, but it allowed me, for yet another time, to get incredibly close to the herd.
Thank you for your attention and for the opportunity. I apologize for the quality of certain photos, but my equipment was nowhere near a wildlife photography one – more experienced photographers simply called me determined. If you liked to pictures, please follow Gabor Matesz Photos on Facebook where I offer a diverse scale of nature photos.
Enjoy the photos! Thanks for all visits, comments and Favs.
Copyright © Gabor Matesz Photos. All rights reserved. Please don't use without my permission.
In the summer I love taking photos of flowers, especially really close up, but it is rare for me to get a good clear shot of a butterfly or bee in action.
Faced with that knowledge, and the fact that it isn't even spring yet really, I decided to create my own foolproof butterfly shot - I knitted my own! This one isn't going to fly off just as I manage to focus my camera! Armed with flowers bought from the local florist, I headed out in my garden and used my barely alive lavender plant to position my flower.
The butterfly is actually orange, but when the photo was in full colour it looked too flat, and the grey lavender in the background wasn't right. So I used the selective saturation option to make the red flower pop. Adding a matte border just softened it enough too.
After a week or so of practice I've discovered a pretty foolproof setup for this sort of shot.
I placed a wok in my sink, filled that with water then left the tap on a constant drip. With the drops in the same place each time focussing was a lot easier, and with them being consistent spaced I could time my shots a lot easier so from a total of maybe 200 shots I had 40 "interesting" ones of which 7 got uploaded. Quite happy with that!
Possibly one of the best shots I've taken yet. Or it's the colors that are so awesome that it was a foolproof shot. Either way, bask in the pretty. ;) I need like every colorway this yarn comes in because it's my all-time favorite.
I've fallen in love with moth orchids. Thanks, Sue ... I think! (She gave me my first one ... and now I'm completely addicted.)
The flower pictured here is Dtps. I-Hsin Spot Leopard 'Lee 62'. (Yes, the naming nomenclature can produce some real tongue-twisters, but it's worth sorting through in order to enjoy these flowers). This one is simply stunning!
Dtps. stands for Doritaenopsis. I'm no pro, but if I understand correctly, both Phalaenopsis and Doritaenopsis fall under the moth orchid umbrella. That info could come in handy if you're searching for these plants online.
A combination of qualities sold me on them:
If you're prone to forget to water your plants, they are very forgiving. In fact, it's better to err on the side of too little rather than too much when it comes to watering these beauties because their roots need to breathe. That's why most homeowners pot them up in a free-draining bark mixture.
Many of them bloom in the winter, and they bloom for months. I mean, individual flowers can last that long. I never saw anything like it. It's really cool! The amaryllis that I potted up for indoor blooms this past fall did their thing around Christmas, and all they're adding to my home decor now is some long, floppy, green leaves, but three of these orchids are blooming like crazy in my living room. I'm more than impressed. They are blooming machines!
I could go on about color choices, flower shapes and ease of care, but you get the point. This is a dream of a houseplant. Now, they're not foolproof. It's extremely important to learn what their few needs are and to provide for them, but that's not a difficult task.
I uploaded this photo as a 4-up simply because I couldn't decide which background I liked best. I got carried away trying possibilities one evening, and this is the result. Um ... yes ... there are more. :0)
I'm open to feedback about which one should get an upload of its own. If there's a clear favorite, I'll upload it at full size.
I can't recommend these plants highly enough. There's just one problem ... it's hard to enjoy just one. When one orchid enthusiast learned that I live in a 600 square foot house, he jokingly said, "You will soon be shaking your fist at Sue."
Well, that hasn't happened. She and I are childhood buddies, and over forty years later, we're still great friends, and I'm very grateful that she gave me my first orchid ... I think. :0)
In your comments, please identify your favorite by background color: 1) pink, 2) green, 3) blue or 4) burgundy.
Happy Gardening!
~s
It is unbelievably easy to prepare lemon curd at home. This is my 100% foolproof recipe:
You will need (for a small jar):
2 eggs - room temperature
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar
60g butter, cut into small cubes
Mix the eggs, lemon juice and sugar in a small pot and cook - always whisking - over low heat until the mixture thickens. Don't allow the mixture to come to a boil or it can curdle
Remove it from heat and add the butter cubes, one at a time, whisking well until creamy. It will look a bit runny but it will thicken when cold. Keep in the fridge.
Looking in through the film gate from the back, with the lens fully extended. At the top you can make out the spring that pushes the shutter button back up. The shutter button in turn actuates a lever that is connected to a shaft in the lens barrel, which fires the shutter. The shutter is a thin piece of metal with a cut-out. It allows exposure times of ca, 1/30s and B. The design of the actuator ensures that firing the shutter is impossible if the lens barrel is not fully extended, because then the lever would not meet the shutter button. It's a simple, foolproof design that works.
The flange at the back of the lens barrel fits into a groove in the camera body. Both camera body and lens are made of bakelite. I had observed light leaks at varying places in the shots from the first test roll. I don't think that the light leaks in through the bottom of the lens barrel. It doesn't look worn. I rather suppose that the light leak comes from the rims of the back door which may warp as the camera body is handled.
Shot with:
Canon EOS600D
Leica Bellows R (16860)
Leica 100mm f/4 Macro Elmar-R, bellows version (11230)
Here we have another dish using asparagus, fresh and local from the co-op, and a pork chop- also fresh and local from the co-op.
There's nothing too hard here- gratins are pretty foolproof, and flexible too- broken into steps you'll see for yourself how any combination of sturdy vegetables can be built into one of your very own. For me, the hard part was the meat- I generally only have it once a week. Knowing the Pig died for me I try and do a proper job cooking it!
You can hop online and adapt a recipe, or just do what I did- either way plan on about 10-15 minutes of prep, an hour of cooking time, and a ten minute rest after to let the gratin cool a bit and the meat to reabsorb some of it's juices. Do plan on having your pork chop out and defrosted before you start- an hour spent at room temperature won't hurt it and in fact it will cook better- and try and get it cut about and inch to an inch and a half thick- it's actually a little less fussy to cook that way. This recipe will produce just enough potatoes for two friendly people (provided you cook two chops). Scale it up or down as you wish, again, don't be afraid to adapt any recipe you Google© up.
Béchamel:
Crush a couple cloves of garlic into a paste with a pinch of salt, add it to about a couple tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add a tablespoon of flour and whisk until it's incorporated and let it cook (keep that whisk moving) a couple minutes and then start adding about a cup, cup and a half, of milk in small increments. When the flour/butter mixure absorbs the milk, add a little more. Add a pinch of crushed red pepper, black pepper, and nutmeg. The idea is to cook it until it's roughly the consistency of thin batter, so add more milk if you have to. Whisk in a tablespoon of ricotta and take it off the heat. This will be the cooking and binding agent for your vegetables.
Pre-heat that oven (400º), and lightly oil the inside of a 6 inch crock. Stick a little panko bread crumbs to the bottom and sides, holding a tablespoon of crumbs for later.
Veggies:
Get about 4-5 "b" sized red potatoes and slice them thin on a mandoline and set them aside. Get 5-6 trimmed spears of asparagus, and cut them thin on the mandolin as well, but save the last couple inches of the pointy ends because they will decorate the top of the assembly. Chop about a half cup of parsley (I like curly, use what you prefer) and add it to the disks of asparagus, and toss them with a pinch of salt.
Layer half the potato slices in the bottom of the crock, and spoon about a third of the béchamel over it. Add the asparagus/parsley mixture and spoon another third of the béchamel on that. Add the last of the potatoes and gently dab them down, and spread the last of the béchamel over that. Cut those asparagus ends in half (the long way) and arrange them on top in a pleasing pattern. Sprinkle the last of the crumbs in the interstices, and add a good grind of pepper and paprika, put it in the oven, and set your timer for one hour.
Chops:
When about 15-20 minutes are left, get ready to start your chop(s). Pat them dry and sprinkle salt, black pepper, and paprika all over them. Get a heavy pan (preferably cast iron) heating at no more than medium or a touch less, and when the oil you added is just shimmering, add the meat. Plan on about 5-7 minutes per side. When it's time to turn it, crisp the edges first, holding it with your tongs. Once it's on the other side, start practicing the finger test. You're going for medium or a touch more. You're shooting for a chop with white flesh and just a tinge of pink.
About this time you hour will be up- pull the Gratin out of the oven and lay your chop(s) on a plate and let them both rest for 10 minutes before service.
Any recipe or technique can be broken down into steps (and modified to suit your own tastes), so don't be afraid to mess around with it. The cooking and eating process was a lot quicker and easier than having to write all this down!
You know when newsreaders step out from behind their desks and they look a bit strange standing up? It's a bit like that with management teams.
Weathervane Playhouse in Akron, Ohio, presents " Don't Dress for Dinner" -- a comedy by Marc Camoleti and adapted by Robin Hawdon
Directed by Marc Moritz
See it live on stage May 1 to 18, 2014
For more information, visit www.weathervaneplayhouse.com/dont-dress-for-dinner-2014-0...
ABOUT THE SHOW
Bernard is planning a romantic weekend with his chic Parisian mistress in his charming converted French farmhouse, whilst his wife, Jacqueline, is away. He has arranged for a cordon bleu cook to prepare gourmet delights, and has invited his best friend, Robert, along, too, to provide the alibi. It's foolproof! What could possibly go wrong? Well…suppose Robert turns up not realizing quite why he has been invited? Suppose Robert and Jacqueline are secret lovers, and consequently determine that Jacqueline will NOT leave for the weekend? Suppose the cook has to pretend to be the mistress and the mistress is unable to cook? Suppose everyone's alibi gets confused with everyone else's? In this hilarious farce, an evening of hilarious confusion ensues as Bernard and Robert find that they must improvise at a break-neck speed!
THE CAST
RICHARD WORSWICK
Bernard
SCOTT DAVIS
Robert
MITCH MANTHEY
George
BERNADETTE HISEY
Jacqueline
DEDE KLEIN
Suzanne
ASHLEY BOSSARD
Suzette
(All photos in this Flickr set were shot for Weathervane Playhouse on April 30, 2014, by Scott Diese.)
Leslie Fountain and Giles Colborne clutch their Prosecco and white wine as they co-host a panel discussing UX careers at the UK UXPA Careers event at the Thomson Reuters building in Canary Wharf. Andy Budd is off-camera, being earnestly entertaining.
UK UXPA, Thonson Reuters, Canary Wharf
En partant pour le Parc ce matin-là, le ciel était comme j'aime trés trés bleu. J'avais un plan infaillible pour pouvoir faire de jolis clichés du palais sans la foule habituelle: attendre le moment de la Parade...
Hélas, le beau temps n'a pas duré, mais au final je trouve que le temps orageux ajoute une touche de mystère au Château, et j'aime assez le résultat!
♥
As I walked through the Park this morning, the sky was exactly like I love it: totally blue. I had a foolproof plan to shoot the Castle without the usual crowd: I planed to wait until the beginning of the Parade...
Unfortunately, the perfect weather did not last, but now, looking at this picture, I find that the grey and cloudy sky adds a touch of mystery to the Castle, and I must admit I really like the result!
Looking Your Best.. (Read - Foolproof Ways to Lose Weight) - Amy Ozols style !!
Step 1: Avoid what psychologists refer to as “emotional eating.” This is hard, because many people have a tendency to experience emotions. To solve this problem, consume increasing dosages of psychotropic medications until you cease to feel emotions of any kind.
Step 2: Visualize yourself as a thin person. This is very important, because the body often takes its signals from the brain. Each time you take a bite of food, imagine that you are a thin person taking a bite of food, chewing the food, then spitting the food into a napkin, then tucking the napkin into your backpack or purse. After you’re done visualizing these things, start doing them.
Step 3: Get rid of your “fat clothes.” Keeping your closet stocked with unflattering garments will only distract you from your quest for a slender body. To complete this step, shred or burn everything in your closet, including any hangers or shelving that a fat person may have touched. Refrain from donating anything to charity, as this could cause underprivileged people to become obese, which would be unsavory and possibly even illegal.
Step 4: Refrain from consuming food.
Step 5: Surround yourself with thin people. This will naturally encourage you to emulate their healthy habits. Weigh your friends on a regular basis, then weigh yourself. Do you have a friend who weighs less than you? If so, consider gastric bypass surgery.
Step 6: Drink plenty of water. As you’ve probably heard, water functions as a natural lubricant in the body, flushing toxins and fat cells from the digestive tract. Water is also a delicious replacement for higher-fat liquids, such as milk. Try pouring water on your cereal or in your coffee. If you’re a baby, try pouring water into your mother’s breasts.
Step 7: Buy a pet. Having a pet will force you to take walks, which are a form of exercise. This is true unless you make the mistake that I made, which was buying an iguana. Iguanas walk very slowly and smell strongly of turds. I really cannot dissuade you strongly enough from buying an iguana.
Step 8: Vigorous sexual intercourse burns up to two hundred calories per hour. Therefore, if you are not currently promiscuous, it is essential that you begin “boning” immediately. Start by having sex with every person you know. Then have sex with numerous people you have never met. Continue doing this until you are thin.
Step 9: Self-confidence is the most attractive trait a person can have. For this reason, strive to love yourself and accept yourself exactly as you are. This will be difficult if you are overweight, on account of your loathsome physical appearance and compromised value system, but do your best.
AND, if the going gets tough, remind yourself: every person is beautiful on the inside, provided that they are also extremely attractive on the outside.
So which is YOUR favorite Step out of the ones above ?!?