Wedding Belles: Bridal Fashions from the Marjorie Merriweather Post Family, 1874-1958
American weddings have traditionally been emblematic of social status, wealth, and personality. "For Marjorie Merriweather Post, they also reflected her progression from young bride to fully-emancipated American businesswoman, collector, philanthropist, and every bit an embodiment of the American dream. And what dream doesn’t include a great love story or two?”
National Weather Service Alerts By State; Just What is a Post-Tropical Cyclone?
Hurricanes can create storm surges along the coast and cause extensive damage from heavy rainfall. Floods and flying debris from the excessive winds are often the deadly and destructive results of these weather events. Slow moving hurricanes traveling into mountainous regions tend to produce especially heavy rain. Excessive rain can trigger landslides or mud slides. Flash flooding can occur due to intense rainfall.
Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House and Ceramicist Grete Marks
The Iveagh Bequest is a collection of masterpieces that includes paintings by seventeenth-century Dutch artists such as Rembrandt, Anthony van Dyck, and Albert Cuyp, and those inspired by them — Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. Also at the Milwaukee Art Museum the work of Grete Marks: When Modern Was Degenerate, a ceramicist whose art was derided in Nazi Germany.
Blink: Your Digital Health Care is Now
Preventice’s Body Guardian is designed for the remote management of individuals with cardiac arrhythmias. KnowMyMed’s supports team-based medication management and medication reconciliation for high-risk people and provides automated medication. Avado’s Patient Relationship Management System allows doctors and patients to securely track, share, and manage medical information with each other and coordinate health issues outside the doctor’s office.
Culture and Political Watch, The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It
Jill Norgren writes: "The authors explain this failure of representatives to work together as fallout from the permanence of campaigning in modern American politics. Successful campaigning selects for men and women who present themselves as tenaciously principled agents. These candidates appeal to voters with take-no-prisoner policy positions (refined for local predilections)."
Elaine Soloway's Rookie Caregiver Series: Take Care of Yourself
It’s 8:45 in the morning and I’m at the living room window watching my husband enter the passenger side of a car that is not mine. The driver is an attractive young woman. In some other scenario, I’d be the jealous wife, tearful at Tommy’s choice of a new companion. But since this is my life, and the driver is my aide, my feelings are of relief, not wrath.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Take Care of Yourself
It’s 8:45 in the morning and I’m at the living room window watching my husband enter the passenger side of a car that is not mine. The driver is an a…
Downton Abbey, Season Three: Will 'Matthew' Not Re-sign for Season Four and Is There A Controversy Afoot?
The Great War is over and a long-awaited engagement is on, but all is not tranquil at Downton Abbey as wrenching social changes, romantic intrigues, and personal crises grip the majestic English country estate for a third thrilling season. With the retu…
Lifelong Pursuits: Hooked on Bridge
Joan L. Cannon writes: If I don’t play once a week, I miss it. If it happens that I play three times, I don’t even mind the apparent waste of time. I learn something every time I sit down at a card table. The trouble is, I can’t retain it all, so there’s always a sense of renewal and salubrious reminders of proper humility. I’ve seen Life Masters make mistakes, and that’s an encouragement.
CultureWatch Books: The Hemlock Cup and Train Dreams
Bettany Hughes' The Hemlock Cup transcends a mere factual recounting of what we know about Socrates; the book makes the fifth century BC as accessible as possible to a modern reader. Train Dreams protagonist represents a tradition of American men in the as-yet-undeveloped great West who struggled through to their unnoticed deaths after surviving the first World War.
The Real Women Behind the 'Binders': MassGAP
Prior to the 2002 election, women comprised approximately 30 percent of appointed senior-level positions in Massachusetts government. By 2004, 42 percent of the new appointments made by the Romney administration were women. Subsequently, however, from 2004-2006 the percentage of newly-appointed women in these senior appointed positions dropped to 25 percent
Can Women Save Japan? Needed more career positions & better support for working mothers. Sound familiar?
Raising womens' participation could provide an important boost to growth, but they face two hurdles in participating in the workforce in Japan. First, few working women start out in career-track positions, and second, many women drop out of the workforce following childbirth.
Summary: Japan's potential growth rate is steadily falling with the aging of its population. This paper explores the extent to which raising female labor participation can help slow this t…
New Insights Into How Genetic Differences Among Individuals Influence Breast Cancer Risk from Low-Dose Radiation
"This raises the possibility that we can use gene expression profiles to develop simple tests that screen for women who may be sensitive to low-dose radiation versus women who are resistant.”
Eleanor Roosevelt's Fight for Labor Rights Lives On
Brigid O'Farrell writes: Eleanor Roosevelt warned that when fear and prejudice are running high, “We may wake up to find that in trying to remedy certain wrongs, we have shorn ourselves of certain very precious freedoms.” In 1958, Mrs. Roosevelt called the right-to-work effort a “predatory and misleading campaign”.
Ferida Wolff's Backyard: Many Mushrooms and Squash, a Fruit and a Vegetable?
Wild mushrooms can be dangerous to eat. Some have toxins that can cause digestive or respiratory problems that are uncomfortable, while others are downright life-threatening. But the right kind of mushroom is delicious. As to squash, botanically speaking, it is a fruit! Like a tomato, it has seeds, the telltale marking. Yet, in the culinary sense, the way we prepare and eat it, it is a vegetable. So it is both. And what does that mean?
Argo, the Movie and Wired Magazine: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran By Joshuah Bearman
"The mob quickly fanned across the 27-acre [American Embassy] compound, waving posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. They took the ambassador’s residence, then set upon the chancery, the citadel of the embassy where most of the staff was stationed." The magazine article that provides a basis for the new movie, Argo, details the true story of the five who escaped in the Iranian hostage crisis.
Fall Musings: An On30 scale conversion, cat antics and a Vegas-like bedroom
Roberta McReynolds writes: Mike decided that it is time to redo his model railroad. The ‘deconstruction’ phase is messy; I need to vacuum hourly to keep up. We've discovered the fact that most cats don’t appreciate vacuum cleaners to varying degrees but now we have one who has learned how to silence the vacuum.
Do Objects Surrounding Us Influence Gender Perceptions?
When people view objects highly associated with one gender, like high heels for women or electric shavers for men, for a short period of time and are then asked to identify the gender of an androgynous face, they are more likely to identify it as being of the gender opposite to that associated with the stimuli.
John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine
The Nobel Prize recognizes two scientists who discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop. John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialisation of cells is reversible. Shinya Yamanaka discovered more than 40 years later, in 2006, how intact mature cells in mice could be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells.
Our Saddest NPR Moment: The Retirement of the Magliozzi Brothers of Car Talk Fame
In the late '90s, we called NPR's Car Talk for Time Magazine's Notebook section to ask Tom and Ray which 'retired' car would they like to see revived. Their producer, Dougie Berman, asked and they replied. But Car Talk was a fixture of our lives, an eagerly-looked- forward-to bright spot on the Saturday morning routine. It still is — but in edited past versions. Sigh.
A Subject for the Next Debate? A New CBO Report on Social Security's Funding Gap
In calendar year 2010, for the first time since the enactment of the Social Security Amendments of 1983, spending for the program exceeded its dedicated tax revenues. In 2011, spending exceeded dedicated tax revenues by 4 percent, and that gap is growing. CBO projects that over the next decade, spending will exceed dedicated tax revenues, on average, by about 10 percent.
Dietary Supplements: Claims Fail To Meet Federal Requirements
Manufacturers must have competent and reliable scientific evidence to show that [Dietary Supplement} claims are truthful and not misleading, but they do not have to submit the substantiation to FDA, and FDA has only voluntary standards for it... a product label must include that the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
If You Think You'd Miss Big Bird, How About Downton Abbey, Mystery!, Antiques Roadshow and The Nutcracker? NPR? PRI?
It's easy enough to identify the Public Broadcasting Company as an elimination for government funding, but those monies represent 15% of their entire funding, enough to cripple the organization's ability to not only produce new award-winning programs but to purchase others from producers and networks here and abroad.
The Debates: Are the Candidates 'Artfully Dodging"?
Artful Dodgers: Responding But Not Answering Often Undetected
Seeing questions can help voters detect dodges and be better informed, new study says
WASHINGTON—How can some people respond to a question without answering the question, yet satisfy th…
Transfigured by the Magic of Light and Shade: Impressionism and Fashion
The Paris exhibition, a display of around fifty dresses and accessories, including ten hats, presents an overview of women’s fashion at the time of the Impressionists, a fashion that was mainly characterized by the gradual abandonment of the crinoline in favour of the bustle.
First Stroke: Gender, Health Ambiguity and Depression
The level to which survivors are uncertain about the outcome of their illness is strongly linked to depression. The relationship is more pronounced for men than for women. “Male stroke survivors in the US who subscribe to traditional health-related beliefs may be accustomed to, and value highly, being in control of their health.
