08/24/2013 archive

Welcome to the Health and Fitness NewsWelcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

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Four of this week’s recipes are for small, four-egg frittatas for two, all cooked in an 8-inch, heavy nonstick omelet pan. If you want to double or triple the recipes for a larger crowd, use a 10-inch pan for six to eight eggs and a 12-inch pan for more than eight eggs. You will need to finish the large ones under the broiler for a minute or two to set the top.

The last recipe is more time consuming, but well worth the effort. It’s a traditional Provençal terrine of stacked omelets, called a crespéu. Years ago, when I was working on my cookbook “Provençal Light,” I researched and wrote a recipe for the dish but never saw it in restaurants or shops. But in the last five years it has become fashionable in Provençal charcuteries, and I see it everywhere. I experimented with a couple of techniques for making it this week, and was so happy to have the results on hand in my kitchen.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

At Spa if it’s not raining it’s getting ready to rain.

Qualifying is tape delayed and I know how it came out even if you don’t because I read the funny papers. Two hundred ninety nine cases of undisputed, self-reported, illegal NSA intercepts- isn’t that funny?  I can hardly stop laughing myself.  They didn’t make it a round 300 because that would be too pat and unbelievable like a $2.99 burger actually costing $3.06 with sales tax.  It sounds so icky that way that you can barely choke down your cholesterol grease disk and still have room for the fries you want.

But it’s all about the money and the Gasoline Circus is visiting the Bulge in the place you go to get rid of those unsightly muffin tops.

The good news is that the 3 practice blow outs were due to track debris, NOT a design flaw.  The bad news is that Michelin is still sniffing around Pirelli’s vacant 2014 contract despite their last snub with vast chunks of cash burning a hole in their pocket when it could just as well be in Bernie’s better insulated one.  Alas for the fans of the Stay-Puff Marshmallow, Michelin has publicly said it has no interest at all in developing the timed degradation tires that represent the only excitement in the “race”.

On offer this week will be the Hards and Mediums.  Not that it means much since the likelihood of at least one lap on the Inters is high to certain so for the purposes of speculation teams may be considered to have an unlimited supply of whichever they favor and any requirement to run  two compounds satisfied.

With Webber retiring from Red Bull many teams are looking at how much money a driver can pay for a ride which is far more important than whether they can actually race or not.  It’s now generally acknowledged that Alonso is worth .5 seconds a lap regardless of what piece of crap you strap him into, but that doesn’t mean he’ll jump to the Bulls since Vettel is not interested in rivals, he wants servants.

Kind of quashes any rumors about Raikkonen also.  Too Damn Good.  So they’ll probably pick someone like Ricciardo, you know, a loser.

The two week August vacation is strictly enforced, not that they needed much this year.  McLaren has given up and will do no more development after wasting their time on a 2013 chassis that is not only slow, but one which they’ll have to scratch in 2014 when the blown 6s make their debut.  Everyone else is doing the same thing, they just did it earlier and are not talking about it.

That said, there is still room for some surprises in the second half of the season.  Tonight at 7 pm we have Louis Vuitton Cup racing for those of you who prefer tearing up even larger piles of money in a shower.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan: Manning Wronged AND Miranda’s Rights

“There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people,” wrote the late historian Howard Zinn, author of “A People’s History of the United States.”

These words were included in a statement by Pfc. Bradley Manning, read by his defense attorney David Coombs, at a press conference following Manning’s sentencing to 35 years in military prison for releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. The statement accompanies Manning’s request to President Barack Obama for a presidential pardon.

Across the Atlantic, David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained under Britain’s terrorism laws at London’s Heathrow Airport, his electronic equipment was confiscated, and he was interrogated and threatened with prison.

Both events have heightened the already intense level of scrutiny on the expanding, seemingly unchecked reach of the U.S. government. Miranda is rattled, but free. Manning will soon head, shackled, to begin serving his sentence. NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden remains in temporary political asylum somewhere in Russia, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continues his residence in exile, not far from Heathrow, in the cramped Ecuadorean Embassy in London. What is remarkable is that this patchwork of individuals has set this brave, new world of global war and surveillance reeling.

Charles M. Blow: 50 Years Later

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, I have a gnawing in my gut, an uneasy sense of society and its racial reality.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech keeps ringing in my head, an aching, idyllic, rhetorical masterpiece that envisions a future free of discrimination and filled with harmony and equality. But I wonder whether the day he imagined will ever come and whether many Americans have quietly abandoned King’s dream as a vision that can’t – or shouldn’t – exist in reality.

One week out from the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – and just days away from a major march this Saturday commemorating the event – we spend the hour looking at much of its forgotten history. More than a quarter-million people came to the nation’s capital on August 28, 1963, to protest discrimination, joblessness and economic inequality faced by African Americans. Many now consider the march to be a key turning point in the civil rights movement.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 24 is the 236th day of the year (237th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 129 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius erupted burying the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in nearly thirty feet of ash and pumice. The toxic gases killed at least 2200 people who remained in Pompeii after the evacuation.

After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.

At noon on August 24, 79 A.D., this pleasure and prosperity came to an end when the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city’s occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.

A westerly wind protected Herculaneum from the initial stage of the eruption, but then a giant cloud of hot ash and gas surged down the western flank of Vesuvius, engulfing the city and burning or asphyxiating all who remained. This lethal cloud was followed by a flood of volcanic mud and rock, burying the city.

The people who remained in Pompeii were killed on the morning of August 25 when a cloud of toxic gas poured into the city, suffocating all that remained. A flow of rock and ash followed, collapsing roofs and walls and burying the dead.

Plaster Citizens of Pompeii

Those that did not flee the city of Pompeii in August of 79 AD were doomed. Buried for 1700 years under 30 feet of mud and ash and reduced by the centuries to skeletons, they remained entombed until excavations in the early 1800s.

As excavators continued to uncovered human remains, they noticed that the skeletons were surrounded by voids in the compacted ash. By carefully pouring plaster of Paris into the spaces, the final poses, clothing, and faces of the last residents of Pompeii came to life.

n the only known eye witness account to the eruption, Pliny the Younger reported on his uncle’s ill-fated foray into the thick of the ash from Misenum, on the north end of the bay:

“. . .the buildings were now shaking with violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying to and fro as if they were torn from their foundations. Outside, on the other hand, there was the danger of failing pumice stones, even though these were light and porous; however, after comparing the risks they chose the latter. In my uncle’s case one reason outweighed the other, but for the others it was a choice of fears. As a protection against falling objects they put pillows on their heads tied down with cloths. ”

And then:

“You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.”