"I was on the edge of my seat."
"The trick of American Animals is that the film creates powerfully gripping drama, even as we inwardly beg for the lads to call a halt."
"American Animals is sharp, smart, often bravura filmmaking, a terrifically entertaining mix of fast facts and pulp fiction. But beneath the flash is a sad story of teens who feel their lives simply aren't good enough."
"The movie reaches strange and savage heights...not just because it seems to be engaging with huge philosophical questions about the nature of identity in the modern world. It's more focused than that, because the context is specifically American."
"It's really the style and performances, more than the pseudo-experimental structure Layton has chosen, that keep the film grabby."


identify qualities that define a philanthropist and match them with local citizens who are contributing to the common good.
use journalistic terms to describe the structure of a newspaper article.
produce and publish a newspaper article highlighting a philanthropist from the community.
Stories of acts of philanthropy done by people in the community collected in advance by the teacher from the local newspaper.
Students will discuss Handout One: Qualities of a Philanthropist Rubric with their family's and ask for their suggestions in choosing a local philanthropist.
Rusnak, Stephanie M. "Writing a Newspaper Article." [http:www.media-awareness.ca] (24 June 04).
Day One: Focus on the qualities on the board and facilitate a classroom discussion or debate on whether these qualities exemplify a philanthropist. Erase qualities that don't fit the description or are duplicates, and keep the qualities that do fit the description. Discuss whether these qualities contribute to the common good of the community.Focus on the qualities on the board and facilitate a classroom discussion or debate on whether these qualities exemplify a philanthropist. Erase qualities that don't fit the description or are duplicates, and keep the qualities that do fit the description. Discuss whether these qualities contribute to the common good of the community.
Conduct a quick vote on ten (more or less) qualities that learners will use as a qualifier for "finding" a philanthropist in their community.
Teacher Note: The teacher can choose to do the following activity with students in teams of three or as individuals. Distribute Qualities of a Philanthropist Rubric (Handout One). (Individuals or teams may need more than one copy of the handout as they decide on a philanthropist to write about.) Have the learners fill in the ten qualities that the class selected in the appropriate spaces on their rubric handout. Explain that they will be using the characteristics to choose a local philanthropist to write about in a newspaper article. Five out of the ten qualities must be met when choosing a philanthropist, including a brief statement of how the philanthropist demonstrates those five or more expectations.
Share with the class the stories of local philanthropists collected from the local newspaper as examples. Discuss what characteristics are evident for each philanthropist in the newspaper stories.
For homework, the students take home Handout One and discuss with their family's who in the community might be a philanthropist (someone who demonstrates at least five of the ten characteristics.) Remind the students that this person does not have to be "famous." It can be a family member, neighbor, peer, youth group or religious leader. Teacher Note: Be sure the students understand that they will be asked to interview the philanthropist selected. Therefore, they should choose one who they think will be accessible for an interview.
Ask the students to gather as much information as possible about the person they choose, completing the worksheet, and writing additional facts about the philanthropist on the back of the sheet.
Day Two: Check that each student or group has identified a philanthropist and has some information about that person on Handout One.
Draw an inverted pyramid on the board and ask students, "What does this figure have to do with a newspaper article?" After students have had an opportunity to offer possible answers, explain that a newspaper story begins with the broad basic facts and then gets to the specifics of the story. Distribute The Newspaper Article (Handout Two). Have the learners complete the handout as the teacher guides them through it, explaining the order of a newspaper article and the criteria involved in writing an article.
Explain that the learners will practice their writing techniques by creating a newspaper article about the community philanthropist they have selected and researched. Distribute The Interview (Handout Three). Read through the handout, making sure learners understand what is expected of them.
5 W's in first paragraph = 5 pts.
Details included in first paragraph = 1 pt.
At least one quote from philanthropist = 1 pt.
Summary in first paragraph = 1 pt.
Catchy ending = 2 pts.
Evidence of peer editing in rough draft = 1 pt.
Written in third person point of view = 1 pt.
Relatively error free = 1 pt.
Over the next several weeks, learners should conduct interviews (by phone, in person, or by e-mail) with local philanthropists, write newspaper articles highlighting those philanthropists, peer edit the articles and create final copies (this work can be done in class or as homework).
Presented clearly = 1 pt.
Eye contact maintained = 1 pt.
Presented creatively = 1 pt.
Content interesting = 1 pt.
Informative presentation = 1 pt.
The articles can be collected into a class newspaper, or submitted to the schol or local newspaper for publication.
At the end of the unit, distribute Reflection Piece Writing Assignment (Handout Four). Ask the learners to reflect on their learning about philanthropy from this unit.
Instructor observation of the qualities brainstormed by the students. Learner responses about philanthropist's qualities. Instructor observation of student arguments/reasoning during voting/selection process of qualities. Reflection pieces submitted in written form. Learner notes from the interview will be collected but not graded. Learner reflection pieces on the interview and experience.
Learners will interview a philanthropist from the community, write a newspaper article to be printed in a local community newspaper recognizing the community's philanthropist, and orally present their article to their peers.


We know that government employees, military personnel and students will face unique and unpredictable crises and challenges while they're abroad. Here are some real-life ways that Cigna was able to help their government clients with flexible health care plans and personalized service.
This is an example used for illustrative purposes only and is based on an actual customer experience. Certain circumstances have been changed to protect privacy. Individual customer results will vary.
The 26-year-old son of a government employee abroad was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer. His doctor required frequent scans to monitor the spread of the disease and to track treatment progress; however, these were often subject to delay because of the prior authorization we require for CT scans.
The family's case worker flagged the issue to Cigna's management. We instantly recognized the time-sensitive nature of this young man's treatment and pre-approved whatever radiology service would be required for the next year.
A Cigna member working for his government abroad was seeking medical help for infertility. Though fertility treatment was not included in his health care package, we worked with our underwriting team to incorporate it into his benefit plan. We then moved swiftly to find a conveniently-located provider but as they weren't a member of the Cigna medical network, they expected our client to pay 100% of the billed charges up front.
We've established direct billing within our network of medical professionals and facilities. Cigna's senior executive officer negotiated directly with the out-of-network provider to charge for only 20% of the treatment and accept our guarantee of payment for the other 80%.
A 20-year-old foreign military student was paralyzed from the waist down after a motorcycle accident. It was a devastating time for the young man, made even more confusing by having to manage his medical care in a foreign language and in a different country's health care system.
We don't let a language barrier get in the way of good and compassionate care. Cigna assigned two Arabic-speaking staff members to the young man's case, one an account manager and the other a clinical manager. The two collaborated to assist him in the paperwork required and to discuss his treatment options so that he could move forward, both administratively and medically.
A senior government member abroad required medical tests and was directed to one of our in-network facilities. He underwent a series of tests with the radiology department; however they didn't obtain Cigna's authorization for testing, and insisted that our client sign a waiver declaring personal responsibility for $12K of charges in the event that his insurance didn't pay.
We expect our network of medical providers to follow a protocol that will give our members professional and hassle-free service, but when things don't go according to plan, we'll move quickly to resolve any issues. Our Cigna client advocate immediately opened the lines of communication between Cigna and the radiology facility and within three days, had provided retro-authorization and payment in full for our client's claim.


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Dedicated, multi-skilled 2D animator and storyboard artist passionate about storytelling. With just over four years of experience and a good eye for detail, Fiona is well-versed in 2D animation, digital and hand-drawn, as well as a diverse range of work and styles. Work includes children's TV series, animated documentary, animated shorts, title sequences and logos.
Past clients include Plan International, King's College London, University of London, Avon, CBeebies and BBC World Service, BBC Worldwide, Macmillan Cancer Support, Kingston University, Imperial College London, Royal College of Nursing, Pen Underwriting, Insight Network, Tapi Carpets, Marimo Mag, Jelly Penguin Productions Ltd, Outcast Studios, Clarkson & Woods Ltd. in association with Bath City Council and the Lord Ashcroft International Business School.
Founding member, Director and Animator of the Weird Eye Collective.
Storyboarding, including beatboards and presentation boards
2D Animation: hand-drawn, digital and mixed-media
Idea generation and story development
Illustration and design
Directing animation and working in teams
Background research and gathering reference materials
Stop-motion animation and knowledge of CGI
Toon Boom Harmony
TV Paint
Animate CC/Flash
Premiere
The artist is French Irish and grew up travelling internationally surrounded by a large collection of comics and bandes dessinées. Fiona pursued her passion for story-telling and animation at the University for the Creative Arts (Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, Visual Communication), Cambridge School of Art (BA Illustration and Animation) and the University of West England (MA Animation), despite the weather.
Fiona is bilingual in English and French and flipflops between the UK and the South of France. She loves texture, light and colour, noticing all the weird and wonderful details of the world and telling fantastic stories.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Robert King, land agent with AlaLandCo, is one of our most popular LANDTHINK Contributors that uses his knowledge of real estate, his education in Ag Business and Economics, and his knowledge of the area to cover a broad range of land topics that keep buyers and sellers abreast of current land issues.
Robert, who was born and raised in Clay County, Alabama, has lived there his entire life. In 2003, he joined the team at AlaLandCo, while finishing his education at Auburn University. He has accumulated over 10 years of experience in selling and marketing land for sale and has seen his business and contacts continually expand, as AlaLandCo has grown into one of the area's premier land brokerage firms. AlaLandCo is consistently one of the Top 10 most viewed brokerage firms on LANDFLIP. Their team of land agents are dedicated to top-notch customer service and leverage their land industry connections, marketing and social media to maximize results for clients.
Robert has traveled to the LANDTHINK Summit in Atlanta for the past two years to network with industry professionals and was recently named the 2011 LANDTHINK Contributor of the Year.
Staying true to his deep Alabama roots, Robert lives on and operates his family's cattle operation, King Cattle Farm. In his spare time, he enjoys hunting, canoeing, fishing and hiking. He and his wife, Melanie, have two sons, Austin and Kobe.
Thank you, Robert, for your ongoing contributions to LANDTHINK and for choosing to advertise your land for sale on LANDFLIP. AlaLandCo specializes in all types of rural land, including farmland, hunting/ recreational tracts, and timberland.
If you're interested in buying or selling Alabama land, contact Robert King and view his current listings on LANDFLIP.
For more information on becoming a LANDFLIP advertiser, click here.


What happens when you cross together a tire and a wheel? You get Tweel–an airless tire created by Michelin. Designed so you'll "never ever get a flat tire again," this innovative technology will be available for all utility vehicles very soon.
This concept tire has been in the works for ten years, and is now ready to take over utility vehicles soon. It's airless and held up with rubber spokes that can adjust to surface terrain. This makes driving over logs, muds, and rocks as easy as batting an eyelash.
What's more, the unique energy transfer it generates between the spokes and tires offer two to three times the wear life compared to normal, rubber tires.
Initially, the Tweel was first developed for light-tactical vehicles for the military. It was then offered commercially for farmers and construction workers as skid steer loaders. Soon afterwards, they became useful to anyone who just wanted to drive in the wild without worrying if their tires will get stuck in the mud somewhere.
The 26-inch tweels can be fitted to not more than 2,860-pound gross vehicle weight. But here's one thing you should know: They're quite heavy, much heavier than normal tires. So if you aspire to have your utility vehicle drive you around like you're in a race car circuit, then you'll be sorely disappointed–these tires aren't meant to go faster than 60 kph.
Still, why go faster when you can look cooler? And besides, you don't need to bring in any tools to fix any of those irritating flat or punctured tires. This means you'll have more space to put in all your camping gear for some fun outdoors.
I would like to be a distributor in Nigeria this is the new technology we need now.


A young boy and his father were driving down a country road on a beautiful spring day when a bumblebee flew in the car window. The boy was deathly allergic to bees and so, began to panic. Knowing his allergy, the father quickly reaches out, grabs the bee, squeezes it in his hand and then releases it. Seeing the insect angrily buzzing around the car again, the boy became frantic again.
Seeing his son's fear, the father reached out his hand saying, "Look here." There, stuck in his palm was the stinger of the bee. "You see?" You don't need to be afraid anymore. I've taken the sting for you." I've taken the sting for you.
We often desire to express that sentiment to someone in pain? When tragedy strikes, we reach out a hand to help. When a family member or friend is afraid we say to them, "I wish I could do something. I wish I could take your place". Some have even prayed, God, take their pain and give it to me.
We can feel that way because that is how God is with us. Seeing our brokenness and fear and the power death held over us, Jesus entered into our life and then into death, taking it on himself to remove the sting.
During Lent we journeyed back to God seeking to understand that we are the beloved of God and not even death can separate us from God. In the power of God's grace, in and through the cross and Resurrection, we belong to God.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to witness to God's promise of life over death and joy over suffering. In the power of the Resurrection of Jesus our lives are transformed and rebuilt.
Where we had been broken, Christ heals us. Where we had been scattered, Christ unites us. Where we had fallen, we are raised with Christ. Where we had been dead, Christ brings new life.


Advani's emphasis on the protection of independence, integrity, fairness and robustness of all democratic institutions, including the media, comes as a thinly-veiled warning to the present government, which is coming under increasing attack from the opposition for undermining the institutions. It is deplorable that 'anti-national' has become the defining phrase of the present dispensation and a core element of its political strategy. It is very much on display in the ongoing election campaign. Just a day before Advani's blog post, Modi dubbed both the Congress' manifesto and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee as 'anti-national'. The only other time when this phrase was wielded against political adversaries was during Indira Gandhi's regime, particularly during the Emergency period. Advani's criticism of the tendency to brand political rivals as anti-nationals doesn't cut much ice among today's hyper-nationalist uber-BJP supporters who may find such nuances tiresome and signs of weakness. At the same time, it must be pointed out that the Ayodhya movement, spearheaded by Advani, sowed the seeds of communal disharmony, disregarded the institutions like courts and changed India's polity and society forever.


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🎬 #20 The Thrill Ride of Cinema.
I'm not going to lie, I had different ideas for this week's newsletter and I thought I'd settled on one but that all changed when I went to the IMAX earlier this week. I think every film deserves to be seen in the cinema, it's one of the last spaces where people congregate together, away from devices and experience the same thing at the same time with no distractions. This venue has the power to literally transport you somewhere. Experiencing a film communally heightens everything you see and feel somehow. There is a tangible sense of emotional highs and lows that you feel from the tension, joy, sadness emitted from everyone surrounding you, not just what you're seeing unfold in the story writ large in front of you. This can be true of a small, charming independent film, a comedy, or an action epic.
But there is a special, rare feeling that some films give you. You've all felt it before, when you walk out of the cinema feeling charged up by what you just saw. It's more than feeling an emotion the filmmakers wanted you to or being satisfied by the film you just saw - it's a type of cinema euphoria. You're back out into real life, almost high from the experience. A few recent examples stick out to me - seeing the Matrix for the first time in cinemas, the tantalising end of Inception, feeling the scale of Dune or the mythical thump of 2001. There are films that literally impact you through the big screen experience. And I saw one this week that made me feel the same. This time, I'm recommending going out to the biggest screen near you and getting carried away by the power of cinema.
Happy viewing,
FILM: TOP GUN: MAVERICK
2022 Dir Joseph Kosinski
Best read while listening to this.
When I was at uni a lot of my classmates looked down on what you might consider quintessential Hollywood popcorn films but I always saw the great ones as just as important to cinema as the more high brow Criterion selection. And the original Top Gun directed by Tony Scott is one of those films.
The original has a special place in my heart - my Mum loved it and I remember watching it a lot growing up. Plus me and my brother were obsessed with the soundtrack. I also vividly remember one of my great friends Sean perfectly describing the theme [by Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Stevens] as 'the American flag playing the electric guitar.'
But you don't have to feel the same way as I do, like being stirred by the inclusion of the full Don Simpson / Jerry Bruckheimer logo in the opening credits, to enjoy the follow-up. It's the kind of film you give in to, you get on board and let it take you with it.
Cruise, Kosinski, McQuarrie and team have managed to make a perfect sequel. Looking back at great sequels the general recipe seems to be 'the same but different,' playing on the strengths of the original but never feeling weighed down by it. What's amazing about this follow-up is that it has so much iconic imagery to play with, so many memorable lines and moments from the original that are imbued with a collective cinematic nostalgia, but smartly, it doesn't pander, pastiche or play them for laughs. There's no winking to the audience because the audience already knows. The film knows what it is and what it is, along with being incredibly exciting and nerve-wrecking to watch, is surprisingly moving. I shouldn't really say surprisingly, as the original's central relationship between Maverick and Goose and it's touching [spoiler] portrayal of Goose's death had a warmth and tenderness that young me couldn't handle.
Cruise, who's often referred to as the last true movie star, has a dedication to cinema that feels sadly more rare these days. You can feel that dedication in every second of this film as he takes the role of Maverick into new territory. Sure he still has the 'maverick' attitude, and the love for speed, but he portrays a character who's struggling with the fact that not just his career, but the very thing he defines himself as, a fighter pilot, is potentially coming to an end. This vulnerability [particularly in one scene which may be Cruises' best performance since Magnolia] mixed with heart-stoppingly high stakes action is a joyous thing to behold.
There is also something brilliantly simple about the film. Instead of the whole world being at stake, or Armageddon being around the corner, there is one single mission to achieve and the training it's going to take to achieve it. This is a flawless interplay and reflection on the original while building on top of those big foundations. Kosinski and team had a big challenge to surmount and they didn't disappoint in the slightest. The film wrapped almost 4 years ago and after delays and a huge weight of expectation - it might even have surpassed the original.
Joseph Kosinski along with this editing team have paced the film perfectly so that it doesn't feel like a series of set-pieces with other scenes in between. While he and his cinematographer Claudio Miranda, render the film in the same nostalgic hues as the original. There is the same impressive hardware and even greater lengths have gone into shooting the aerial sequences for real with the cast in the cockpit. There's no arguing that doing it for real as much as possible takes the emotional stakes to a whole new level. The iconic music is used perfectly and from frame one you know what you're in for, but then as I said before, you might just be surprised by what it really delivers. Go see it and soar out of the cinema ✈.
TL;DR why should I spend 2 hrs 11 mins of my precious life watching this? Not just another sequel. Cruise and team deliver an exhilarating, miraculous follow-up that plays as a perfect tribute to Tony Scott's original, while also becoming something more.
*Available in cinemas now.
Fact: Christopher McQuarrie, one of the credited screenwriters and frequent Cruise collaborator, won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for The Usual Suspects.
Sean Mulvaney
Writes Sean's Substack
Aug 13, 2022Liked by Video Shop
Brilliant sequel! I love that they used practically the same footage for the opening as the original. I felt like I'd been transported back to the 80's and was 'optimally primed'🤭 to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the ride.


Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s strategy of offering deep discounts over the holiday season helped the world's largest retailer perk up its revenue, but profit for its fiscal fourth quarter was down compared with a year earlier.
The chain had sales of $122.3 billion in the quarter that ended Jan. 31, up 5.8% from $115.6 billion the year before.
But Wal-Mart's profit slipped 13% to $5.4 billion, or $1.50 a share, compared with $6.2 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year earlier.
In same store sales, the chain reported a 1.5% year-over-year boost in the quarter — its second such increase after nine straight declines. Chief Executive Michael T. Duke credited lower prices, more in-store inventory and layaway programs for customers who "remain cautious about their finances."
"Our price leadership is making a difference across the United States, as many families are settling into a new normal," he said in a conference call with investors, promising still more discounts this year.
For the full year, Wal-Mart sales hit $443.9 billion, a 5.9% increase from $419 billion the previous year. Profit for the year was $16.4 billion, down 3.6% from $17 billion.
The Bentonville, Ark. discounter was cautious about the future, with William S. Simon, head of Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, telling analysts that "a challenging economy and rising gas prices will continue to drive customers to seek value," potentially leading customers to limit their shopping trips.
Wal-Mart released its earnings before the market opened Tuesday. Its stock fell $2.41, or 3.9%, to $60.07.
Other retailers also reported earnings Tuesday.
Home Depot Inc. got a boost from warm weather, which encouraged customers to tackle home improvement projects during its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Jan. 29.
Sales hit $16 billion for the quarter, up 5.9% from $15.1 billion a year earlier.
Profit jumped nearly 32% to $774 million, or 50 cents a share, from $587 million, or 36 cents a share, a year earlier as the company worked to control costs. It was the chain's ninth straight quarter of double-digit profit growth.
Same-store sales in the U.S. improved 6.2%, and overall revenue rose 6% to $16 billion.
Home Depot's stock closed up 21 cents, or 0.5%, to $46.92 — a high for the last decade.
Macy's Inc., the largest department store company in the U.S., also had a strong fourth quarter. Profit was up nearly 12% to $745 million, or $1.74 a share, compared with $667 million, or $1.55 a share, a year earlier. Revenue jumped 5.5% to $8.7 billion, and same-store sales were up 5.2% year over year.
The company, which also owns Bloomingdale's, said it had a stellar holiday season. Online sales at macys.com and bloomingdales.com soared 40% in the quarter, which ended Jan. 28, and nearly the same percentage over the full fiscal year.
Macy's stock rose 44 cents, or 1.2%, to $36.69 on Tuesday.
But bookstore chain Barnes & Noble Inc.'s third-quarter results were less rosy. Profit fell 14% to $52 million, or 71 cents a share, compared with $60.6 million, or $1 a share, a year earlier as the company struggled with high costs.
The bookseller's stock slumped 57 cents, or 4.4%, to $12.54 on Tuesday.
Sales, however, were strong. Barnes & Noble's revenue increased 5% to $2.4 billion, with same-store sales rising 2.8%. Sales of physical books were up 4%, and digital content sales soared 85%. The company's Nook e-reader was also a strong performer, with a 64% sales surge.
On Tuesday, Barnes & Noble unveiled a $199 Nook, designed to compete with Amazon.com's same-priced Kindle Fire e-reader.


My Rants: I've had enough of them.
This is a rare post. Today I'm going to talk about my so-called family. What joy.
and then I asked him why and he said that my sister uses the internet on her phone when her laptop goes off (he set this stupid family safety parent control thing so it logs off at 10) so he won't put wifi on either on our phones.
On my 13th or 14th birthday, my sister made a stupid promise that she'd take me out to wherever after she came back from her friends house. My mum had even bought a cake that we were going to cut as soon as she got home. So there I was, waiting… waiting… Soon it was 6 o'clock, then 7 o'clock. 8, 9, 10, 11… Eventually she arrive near midnight so it was obvious that I wasn't going anywhere. There was a big argument between her and my parents. They kept interrogating her- asking her where she really went. She kept insisting that she went to her friend's house. Then, after the argument, my mum was snooping around in her bag and found a ticket to this really far place and a packet of cigarettes and from that moment on, my birthday was completely ruined and even my dad had a go at me the next day. My sister has never apologised for ruining my birthday and I know she never will- not even on my death bed.
She got into a argument with my dad not that long ago because my dad asked her to tidy her room and she said she had no time and then she started watching stuff on the internet. I'm not really sure what else happened, since I had already left for school, but apparently she was rude, said horrible stuff to my mum saying that she wasn't her mum and the usual stuff blah blah blah and then I came home to find that my computer time (by this point my dad had already shortened my computer time to go on at 9am and off at 10pm) had been shorten even further so that now it goes on at 1pm and off at 9pm and when I told my dad that it wasn't fair that I need the time, he told me that if I spoke again, he'd shorten it even more. And this happened all because of my sister.
Why my dad punishes me when my sister does something wrong, I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a good girl and I follow their ridiculous rule and the rest. Why must I suffer? What have I done wrong?
Now that I'm only allowed 8 hours (actually 4 because it takes me a while to get back from school) and I have no wifi on my phone, I am seriously pissed off. Every single time, my parents are bloody restricting me! I'm not allowed to do this, I'm not allowed to do that. I have to sleep by this time. I have to whatever. They aren't doing what's best for me! They just want to punish me, like everyone else does! Even my sister who causes all of this, just told me a few minutes ago 'I'll break your charger.' It's my charger, she doesn't have to use it. She doesn't even have the right to. She was the one who wanted to swap chargers in the first place and then she broke my original charger and now she wants to take mine. She the most horrible human being I have ever met- even worse than that girl who swore at me for picking up someone's pen! Sometimes I just wish she'd leave the house. I'm seriously counting down the days till she leaves for Uni, if she makes it that far, that is, because she doesn't take her education seriously at all. No, she'd rather drink and smoke with some random strangers she probably met off the internet. Honestly, I'm better of without her.
And don't even get me started on my parents. They are just so old-fashioned and believe that children don't have a choice. Even though I'm in my finally in high school, I can't even do the things that year sevens do. You know- go to other people's houses, after school or whenever, weekends I'm not allowed to step out of the house unless I want to accompany them while they're shopping and apparently, holidays are meant to be spent indoor. One thing I don't get is that my so-called sister goes out every weekend. I swear, it's favouritism. Maybe I should start behaving badly then and maybe I might get the slightest bit of attention.
Oh, here's another fun story. One time, when I was in primary school and my sister was in high school, we all went out roller skating (well, at least, I did. My parents didn't have skates and my sister… no comment) and at one point I found myself going down a hill and I couldn't stop otherwise I'd fly forward and break my nose. I yelled for help but when I looked back, I saw my sister suddenly fall after standing still in one place and my parents where bending over to help her and whatever . It was clear that I wasn't going to get any help so I just kept going downhill till I saw stone floor below. I panicked, wondering how to survive this. In the end, I skated towards the side where there was a tiny patch of grass and fell onto my stomach without taking to much damage. As I trudged back up, no one even said a word or even wondered where I'd went.
Even though I'm a good girl and I don't cause problems for them, they always find a way to restrict me. For one thing, I hardly make plans to go out anyway so I mostly spend a lot of time indoor, on my computer, but for some reason, they don't want me on the computer, they want me to talk to human beings when they stop me from going out in the first place. Thanks to them, I can't have a life outside my house and I can't have a life inside my house. Where else am I supposed to have a life? No, no, for them it's study, study study, even from primary school when nothing really mattered.
I just can't stand them or my sister or anyone else and they're all driving me crazy and I feel like I'm going to fall into that depressive state again. I was already like that this morning an right now I've got a pretty bad headache. Usually, in order to manage that 'state', I read manga or watch anime in the night to get my mind of things. Of course, that'll never happen now and I'm definitely going to go over all this and some other painful stuff that I'm not in the mood to share tonight and I'm going to stay up late anyway. It doesn't make a bloody difference.
I've vented for too long so I'm going to end the post now before I right something I'll regret later.


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Dona llegint és una pintura de Henri Matisse realitzada el 1894. Forma part de la col·lecció del Museu d'Art Modern de París.

Quadres d'Henri Matisse
Obres pictòriques del 1894

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Home Education DeVos: Media 'use my name as clickbait'
General Politics
DeVos: Media 'use my name as clickbait'
Robin Bravender
Betsy DeVos at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference | Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons
Updated 2:49 p.m.
Betsy DeVos would prefer not to be in the headlines.
The U.S. Education Secretary, a West Michigan native, spoke Monday to an association of education writers at a seminar in Baltimore.
"I never imagined I'd be a focus of your coverage. I don't enjoy the publicity that comes with my position. I don't love being up on stage or on any kind of platform. I'm an introvert," she told them.
Many in the media, DeVos added, "use my name as clickbait" or "try to make it all about me."
But education is "not about Betsy DeVos nor any other individual," she said. "It's about students."
DeVos has been one of the most controversial cabinet secretaries since the start of the Trump administration. She's a favorite target for Democrats in Michigan and elsewhere across the country.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who's running for president, has called DeVos "the worst secretary of Education this country has ever seen — by a large margin."
Asked during the seminar about teachers striking for higher pay and smaller classrooms, DeVos accused some educators of hurting children by doing so.
"I think it's important that adults have adult disagreements on adult time and that they not ultimately hurt kids in the process, and I think too often they're doing so by walking out of classrooms and having their arguments in the way that they are."
Oakland Unified School District students, teachers and parents gather at Oakland City Hall in California | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
DeVos also snubbed Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a prominent critic of DeVos' policies.
"Great teachers, great teachers perhaps should be making at least half of what Randi Weingarten does at a half-million dollars a year," DeVos said.
Weingarten earned $510,398 in compensation between July 2016 and June 2017, according to publicly available tax information.
Weingarten said today in a statement, "I'd be delighted to get all teachers up to $200k, which is what they deserve — this is certainly the first I've heard about Secretary DeVos being open to that, instead of a tax cut for rich people."*
DeVos' net worth is $1.3 billion, according to a 2018 Forbes story.
This story was updated to add comment from Randi Weingarten.
Michigan native Robin Bravender is the DC Bureau Chief for the Newsroom, a consortium of 10 nonprofit news publications, including the Michigan Advance. Previously, Robin was a reporter for Politico, E&E News and Thomson Reuters.
Education advocates grapple with 'disturbing' higher ed budget
Randy Buist May 6, 2019 at 1:25 pm
The DeVos family has chosen to hang their 'clickbait' all over Grand Rapids, West Michigan, and a few of their chosen universities… Betsy's father, Ed Prince, chose not to hang his name on anything even though he gave huge sums of money to organizations of his choice while he was alive. His family, after his death, has chosen to make their family name 'clickbait' as well. Betsy's lack of insight is mind-numbing and is simply lacking.


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Evacuee Quarantined At Texas Air Base Tests Positive For Coronavirus
February 14, 2020 February 14, 2020 adminComment(0)
A person quarantined in Texas after being evacuated from China has tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. to 15.
The individual is among a group of people placed under a federal quarantine at the Air Force's Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland following their U.S. arrival on Feb. 7 on a State Department-chartered flight, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
None of the other people in the group have shown symptoms or tested positive for the virus, also known as COVID-19, though health officials aren't ruling more cases out.
A person quarantined at this Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, after evacuated from China has tested positive for the coronavirus, health officials said.
"There may be additional cases we identify. I do want to prepare you for that," said Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC's division of high consequence pathogens and pathology, at a press conference.
The person with the confirmed case is isolated and receiving medical care at a local hospital, Texas health officials said.
Cases have been previously confirmed in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, and Wisconsin.
"There will likely be additional cases in the coming days and weeks, including among other people recently returned from Wuhan," the CDC said in a statement. Wuhan is the capital city for the province where the virus was first detected,
Globally, the World Health Organization has reported 46,997 laboratory-confirmed cases, while China's National Health Commission said it has received 59,804 reports of confirmed cases and 1,367 deaths linked to the virus.
Coronavirus Infections In China Surge As Officials Add New Testing Methods To Tally
China's Coronavirus Cases Fall Again, Deaths Now Exceed 1,100
Trump's Budget Would Gut Global Health Programs
Trump Says Coronavirus Will Subside In Spring, But Doctors Aren't So Sure
Tagged Base, coronavirus, Evacuee, positive, Quarantined, tests, Texas
The Adizero Adios Pro Is Adidas's Fastest Ever Marathon Racing Shoe
June 27, 2020 June 27, 2020 admin
In a bold and somewhat confusing move, Adidas has followed up the announcement of the Adizero Pro earlier this year – which goes on sale Monday 29th June at 11am – by revealing another carbon-boosted long-distance racing shoe: the Adizero Adios Pro. Looking at the specs on the Adios Pro, however, it looks to be […]
A status report on healthcare's adoption of digital documents [Sponsored]
A new survey from Foxit Software on the shift to paperless medical documents and processes reveals that the Covid-19 pandemic has given a new sense of urgency for healthcare organizations to shift parts of their business that rely on paper-based documents to digital documents. About 46% of respondents replied "significant" or "urgent", in response to […]
CVS drug buyers say pharmacy overcharged them $100M as trial opens
Six years after initially filing suit against CVS, insured customers of the pharmacy giant are finally getting their day in court. On Tuesday, plaintiffs from six states accused the company of knowingly overcharging insured consumers, their pharmaceutical benefit managers, and their health insurers by misrepresenting the "usual and customary" prices of roughly 400 generic drugs. […]
12 Famous Sibling Rivalries Throughout History
Backcountry Winter Clearance Sale 2020: Patagonia, The North Face, and More


dc.description.abstract Customers can contribute to the success of new product development based on their characteristics such as their potential attractiveness as a customer and intangibles such as their willingness to adopt new products and supplier business relationship. This paper reports a study that examines to what extent the intangible relationship value and customers' characteristics influence the eventual success of new product development. The results indicate that some customer characteristics and the human dimensions of the relationship with the seller better predict NPD success. The findings of this study show managers the types of customer characteristics that need be better understood and which intangible aspects of the business relationship are better to focus on.


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Get Ready for iOi 2023
iOi 2023 will be held in Miami, FL, Tuesday, Aug. 29, and Wednesday, Aug. 30 at Fontainebleau Miami Beach. Sign-up to receive event updates such as speakers, Pitch Battle announcements, and more. See you in 2023!
From the fourth annual iOi (Innovation. Opportunity. Investment.) Summit! Re-watch the 2022 trailer to learn about this PropTech event, including the ultimate startup throwdown, the 2022 Pitch Battle.
Identify, invest in, and profit from new real estate innovation.
At the fourth annual iOi (Innovation. Opportunity. Investment.) Summit, approximately 600 PropTech leaders and futurists, investors, and forward-thinking real estate professionals are coming together to fuel the future of the industry. iOi is the synergistic setting where real estate investors and innovators converge to catalyze, cultivate, and champion the most impactful ideas that will disrupt the status quo, advance industry trends, boost business, and address the "what if" of the future.
You won't want to miss the top real estate conference of 2022.
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Over the past decade, Futurist Thomas Frey has built an enormous following based on his ability to develop accurate visions of the future and describe the opportunities ahead. Having started seventeen businesses himself and assisting on the development of hundreds more, the understanding Thomas brings is a rare blend of reality-based thinking coupled with a clear-headed visualization of the world ahead.
iOi PITCH BATTLE
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iOi is a great event. Everyone was approachable, friendly, and willing to talk, which was great. I heard this mentioned by others who have attended but it was great to experience. I left iOi feeling inspired on so many levels and topics.
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Seeking superpowers in the real estate space
NAR is an innovation powerhouse that focuses on advancing the industry by propping up innovators to share their success with investors, technologists, and real estate professionals.
NAR is transforming the real estate industry through REACH and Second Century Ventures – at iOi, NAR aims to share that success with investors and technologists by researching and uncovering future-focused companies.
NAR identifies opportunities to address the challenges of real estate by it now, seeking out the emerging tech best positioned to tackle critical issues in our rapidly changing world.


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Dr Mukund Rajan Shares Why Indian Companies will be forced to Adopt Environment, Social and Governance Ideology
Hint: Climate change is real
Image credit: Jombay
Vanita D'souza
Senior Correspondent, Entrepreneur India
With the increasing focus on issues such as climate change and its impact on the entire planet, has pressured global stakeholders including companies to integrate environment, social and governance to their core process.
In order to support similarly listed entities in the small and mid-cap space, former TATA Executives Dr Mukund Rajan, Govind Sankaranarayanan and Alan Roslin have collaborated with Ajit Dayal-led Quantum Advisors to launch a $ 1 billion fund.
The proposed JV will be chaired by Rajan. In an exclusive conversation with Entrepreneur India, Rajan shared the ideology of the fund and why Indian companies will have to adopt ESG.
In the international market especially in the European Union, policymakers are looking to come up with regulations wherein all assets managers will integrate ESG consideration in their investing protocols.
They will also be asked to disclose the ESG performance of the investee companies while creating awareness about ESG criteria in the retail market.
On asking him whether he sees Indian companies adopting the thought process, the chairperson promptly said they will be forced to.
During the sidelines of Jombay's Leading from Behind Summit, Rajan added, "What's driving a lot of this is a huge impact on climate change and I think everybody is nervous because of it happening way faster than we expected. Therefore corporates have to take the responsibility to adopt ESG much faster to tackle these kinds of issues."
With this fund, the promoters are trying to create awareness around the subject and incentivize the companies that integrate it. While a lot of us often assume the impact investing is a synonym to ESG investment, the case is otherwise.
Clearing the air around the subject, Rajan commented "Unlike impact investment, where some of the investment will not necessarily generate a large return, this fund will very much focus on returns for investors. Just like in the other countries, we are aiming to demonstrate ESG companies can deliver better returns for the investors even in India."
The Strategy
As mentioned earlier, $1 billion funds will mainly focus on listed small and mid-cap companies. The promoters will deploy at least $30-50 million to each company and during the tenure of the fund – it aims to touch base with more than three dozen such entities.
Elaborating on why the funds in focused on publicly listed companies, Rajan shares that it is the promoters' long desire to create some change in the corporate environment and public equity space to start with.
Additionally, the thought process will take exit load from the table and create pressure among other companies
"PEs has found difficulty in achieving an exit from unlisted companies. So, that problem gets resolved because you are investing the public market where one can exit anytime without any issues or obstacles," he pointed out while adding, "This will also help us create peer pressure in the larger Indian corporate community - simply because publicly listed companies are putting out quarterly disclosures and make their process transparent to explain what are they trying to do - unlike the PE space, where what you do remains between you and the company."
Additionally, the promoters are looking to develop this JV as a platform to with world-class ESG research. Rajan notes that this first offering from the platform and with time, they would launch a PE fund, distress fund, etc to expand their horizon.
Presently, the fund is awaiting Securities and Exchange Board of India's (SEBI) nod to operate, which would take another two-three month. Having said that, considering the general election are a few months away, the funds would be deployed post polls.
"It is a brilliant time because we will actually be deploying the capital after the election. So, we will know which government is in power, what policies are in priority and hence, I think the timing is just right," the senior executive said.
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The innovation brought to Paris by French designer Philippe Model in the Eighties met up, in 2008, with the eclectic and visionary talent of Paolo Gambato, the designer who became the brand's creative director. Since then, the classic tradition has been enhanced by Italian craftsmanship in the concept of the iconic and sophisticated Elastique line and in the famous daytime footwear bearing the hand-stitched shield as its hallmark of quality and "sartorial" luxury.
"Every model is the fruit of instinct and unconventional content," explains the Italian designer Philippe Model.
The raised fussbett and handmade sole are just two of the stylistic changes and technological innovations that give the footwear a bespoke feel whilst guaranteeing top performance.


Here's a look at Undefeated Technical Goods collection for Spring 2015, via this lookbook.
Shot by celebrated photographer Kenneth Cappello in Los Angeles, the new collection makes use of performance-oriented fabrics and textiles, while maintaining the military aesthetic Undefeated is known for. Some key pieces include a range of compression apparel, sweats and face masks.
The Undefeated Spring 2015 Technical Goods will drop soon at the brand's online store.


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Q: How to execute logic on query? With transactions, we can put our business logic in the transaction processors. Very simple access control logic can be put in the ACL file. But how can we use more complex logic to guard (or extend) queries?
I'm working on a case where I'd like to restrict read access to an asset by checking if another asset exists and has a certain property.
Example:
asset PersonalDetails identified by id {
  o String id
  o String dateOfBirth
  o String firstName
  o String lastName
  --> Participant owner
}

asset AccessRequest identified by id {
  o String id
  o String property
  o Boolean allowed
  --> PersonalDetails personalDetails
}

When a participant requests PersonalDetails, an AccessRequest has to exist and to have allowed === true. The owner of the personal details is the one who can grant access. Ideally the AccessRequest has a field 'property' to allow more fine grained access control.
So my initial thought was:
transaction GetInfo identified by transactionId {
  o String transactionId
  --> AccessRequest accessRequest
}

/**
 * Sample transaction
 * @param {org.example.GetInfo} tx
 * @transaction
 */
function getInfo(tx) {
    if (!tx.accessRequest.allowed) {
        throw 'Access denied.';
    }
    return Promise.resolve(tx.accessRequest.personalDetails[tx.accessRequest.property]);
}

But I don't think Composer supports returning values from a transaction (right?). So, in general how can we use logic in or before queries and more specifically, what would be the 'composer way' to solve my case?

A: I'm in the process of committing a new sample network that illustrates how to do this. You can follow the pull request here:
https://github.com/hyperledger/composer-sample-networks/pull/66/commits/6bb0d757a0248046da60b013cfddbd7d549686b6

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


A while back I got sent some TeaPigs popcorn tea as part of the Matcha Tea review package. I took them to work and they got buried in a draw.
As the colder weather has drawn in I have found myself upping the tea rations and exploring all the things I had. This sat undrank until I felt just the right kind of adventurous today.
I'd previously had some Genmaicha tea which is very similar to this and not really enjoyed it. I think it's dark earthy taste contrasted too starkly with the sweet chinese meal and drink if had next to it causing this bias.
Today I was careful to not make it too strong as a first attempt, but also not to add sugar so I could get the full flavour. To my surprise I quite liked it, the brown rice that gives it the distinctive earthy flavour was still the dominant flavour but it was more balanced than if expected. I think that this tea would be a favourite for coffee drinkers or smokers who prefer dark flavours, as it doesn't really taste like a tea at all.
I'd much prefer to have a nice delicate cup of jasmine green tea or similar to this on 90% of occasions but I think that as a warming winter drink this works well. As the original version of this tea I tried was bottled and therefore cold I think this is best enjoyed for me after a long walk in the snow or rain. It may be one therefore to look out for in cafes after walks.
I won't struggle to make it through all the teabags, but any that don't get used this winter will likely be kept til the next one.


I was born the youngest of 3 daughters. My upbringing was very typical of a middleclass Canadian family. Hard working parents, extracurricular driven children and nightly family dinners worked into our daily routines. I struggled for a very long time to fit in with my older sisters. Our differences physically, mentally and emotionally struck a huge barrier on the enjoyment of each other's company in the young, influential years in my life. In my childhood I grew jealous of my sister's deep and connected relationship with one another. I often created a lot of negative attention at home trying to fit in, and my interactions with them would result in a fight and tears. When my voice wasn't being heard or taken seriously, I would feel the fire building inside of me to express every emotion that I was feeling at that very moment. For someone who is driven by passion, heat and excitement, expressing myself in a calm manor was never an option. My sisters knew how to get a rise out of me, which forced me to avoid them on a personal level and not allow myself to be vulnerable to their judgments.
In many areas of my life I felt I had to prove myself – athletics, coaches, family, academics and above all responsible life choices.The one area I never had to prove myself was with bringing groups of friends and family together to celebrate and enjoy the lighter moments in life. No judgments, no arguing, no competition. Celebrating what matters most in love and life and breaking down barriers by connecting people with people and memorable experiences.
Flocking to large groups of friends who valued my talents and didn't try to pick out my flaws was an easy environment to thrive in. I always had a lot of friends and I strived to be a leader, the center of attention and someone they looked up to.
As I grew older, the place where I found my happiness with my family was around the dinner table. I was given an opportunity to voice my opinions, and give feedback on the food we were eating. Every meal we shared had a story or an experience tied to it. We ate to tell stories, create memories and preserve traditions. Food shapes my family and to this day connects us all on equal, common ground.
These influences have shaped my destiny to connect people on a deeper level of understanding and appreciation. Food allows us to open up and be heard with equal opportunity. It allows the need as humans to connect, share and feel a part of something special. My focus is to touch as many hearts as possible with my food. My passion, heat and fire has been refocused to see opportunity in my differences to create a unique and special food entertainment experience. Design to Dine allows me to build relationships with my clients to highlight their stories and create memories and connections with the people they love and cherish.
All throughout my childhood I was very soft spoken and content with keeping to myself. I was not a confident speaker and often had troubles expressing myself and was concerned with what others would think if I opened up to them. I was comfortable being unexpressive and showing few emotions.
At school most people knew of me and I knew of them, but I never fully integrated myself socially or connected with peers on a personal level to grow long lasting relationships. I never found myself invited or taking the opportunity to attend large social gatherings. I became complacent and comfortable not meeting new people. At home my personality would come across to my family as "not caring". This was unintentional and understandably misread because I was quiet which lead to frequent arguments with my mom and sister.
I spent a lot of time with my dad growing up and looked up to him greatly. His work ethic, creativity and knowledge inspired me. Much of the personal time we spent together was often in silence. We had each other's company but vocally we were not very expressive. In an accident at a very young age my dad lost his father and spent many of his teenage years growing up without a dad. My dad related to and supported me the best he knew how.
Meeting Alison in 2008 was the best thing that ever happened to me. She was the outgoing, expressive, emotional and personable half of me that I was missing. She has taught me the value of relationships and being relatable.
It is with Design to Dine that I am passionate about expressing myself, connecting with new people and trying new things daily. I am no longer shy and quiet, instead I enjoy connecting with new people on a personal level. Providing food entertainment services at events makes me feel as though I am an important part of the parties that I was never invited to as a child. I love hearing the stories of others and their visions for their events to understand how important these social moments are in their lives. I take great pride in ensuring clients are treated to being guests at their own events and they can fully enjoy themselves amongst their company. It is these events that define who our clients are and it is important that they are enjoying them without stress or worry.


On May 8th, 2018 grateful families prepared breakfast and lunch as part of our Teacher Appreciation Day. The lobbies at both campuses were overflowing with delicious food and drink!
The faculty and staff at Shu Ren would like to thank all our wonderful parents and students for the time and effort they spent preparing this amazing spread. The show of appreciation was tremendous and we feel privileged to have such a strong and supportive parent community.
Thank you for helping to celebrate so beautifully our teachers continued dedication and love for your children!


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Annals of Medicine
May 13, 2013 Issue
Every Disease on Earth
Elmhurst Hospital's medical melting pot.
By Rivka Galchen
Dr. Joseph Lieber, a diagnostician and clinical educator, has worked almost every day for the past twenty-five years at the Queens hospital, treating what may be the most diverse patient population in the world.Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair / VII
Get off the No. 7 train at the Seventy fourth Street-Broadway stop, in Queens, walk past La Abundancia Bakery, the Bollywood Beauty Salon, the New Hae Woon Dae Korean restaurant, the offices of Vishwanath Puttaswamygowda, M.D., and then past the New York Seventh-Day Adventist Chinese church (advertising free conversational-English classes), and you will find yourself at Elmhurst Hospital Center, in Elmhurst, the most diverse neighborhood in New York City and maybe in the world. The hospital serves 1.7 million patients a year, and offers translation services in a hundred and fifty-three languages. The Colombians, Bangladeshis, Koreans, Belarussians, Burmese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Croatians, Mexicans, and other immigrants who live nearby use Elmhurst for their care, and their communities back home often know about the hospital as well. It is not unusual for the exotically sick to fly to LaGuardia or J.F.K. from overseas to check in to Elmhurst. Diseases rare enough to merit special-case-study attention in The New England Journal of Medicine are, at Elmhurst, relatively common. If a young Southeast Asian is brought to the emergency room one morning because he is suddenly unable to move, even a junior physician knows to list familial periodic paralysis—an obscure disease that is considerably more common in the Philippines—as a possible diagnosis. An ambitious pedagogue of medicine couldn't dream up a more diverse patient population for physicians-in-training.
The hospital was started on Roosevelt Island (then known as Blackwell's Island), in the early nineteenth century, as a public institution that cared for prisoners and the poor; it went on to tend to soldiers in the Civil War and both World Wars. In 1950, the hospital, preparing for a postwar population boom in Queens, moved to Broadway between Seventy-seventh and Eightieth Streets, where it inhabits the kind of unremarkable complex of brick buildings in which filings for building-code exceptions might be processed. In the early nineteen-sixties, when the city could no longer afford to staff its public hospitals (of which Elmhurst is the second largest, after Bellevue), Elmhurst entered into an arrangement with Mount Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine, a private institution on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Today, most physicians practicing at Elmhurst are interns, residents, and faculty professors at Mount Sinai. Elmhurst gets inexpensive staff; Sinai gets a unique training center. "It is pretty much universally residents' favorite place to rotate," Dr. David Muller, the dean for medical education at Mount Sinai, told me. If you want to learn not to be misled by the glittering chest X-ray of a Korean patient—in Korean acupuncture, the tips of the needles break off and remain lodged under the skin—go to Elmhurst.
Doctors also like to train at Elmhurst because of Dr. Joseph Lieber, a diagnostician and clinical educator who has been at Elmhurst, working from 4 A.M. until late at night, almost every day for the past twenty-five years. Practicing medicine at Elmhurst entails a daunting workload—at times, the hospital runs at a-hundred-and-forty-per-cent capacity—and the pay is not competitive with that of a private hospital or office. Yet an unusual number of doctors who train at Elmhurst choose to return to work there full time; they invariably cite Lieber as one of their main reasons for returning. His office is cluttered with tchotchkes from all over the world—a peaceful alpaca, a monkey in a toboggan, a miniature Taj Mahal—but, when I asked him about his travels, he said, "Maybe twice a month, I travel over to Sinai for teaching. Also, on Sundays, it's true, I tend to go home earlier."
Lieber, who grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, has never left North America; the souvenirs are gifts from residents and patients. Ellena Linden, an Elmhurst physician who also did her training there, said, "Dr. Lieber basically is Elmhurst. He's first in and last out. We all have his pager memorized, because we call him with every kind of question." Lieber is a kidney specialist (cardiologists are considered cowboys; renal doctors are considered nerds), but he covers general medical wards. As I shadowed him one day, he received two consult calls (one on dermatology, one on gynecology) while visiting a post-kidney-transplant patient—a Dominican man who was trying to get his medications covered by Medicare. "We cite Lieber as a final authority, regardless of medical specialty," Linden said. "And, besides medicine, he also happens to know everything about military history, though that doesn't come up as often."
I first met Lieber more than ten years ago, when I was a misguided and miserable medical student training at Elmhurst. Though a crowded public hospital with patients from all over the world is potentially a great place to learn, that is not a given. Initially, I focussed on the fact that Elmhurst had three varieties of security (corrections officers, hospital police, and N.Y.P.D. officers), an unrelenting paint scheme of beige and sickly green, and, in the basement, instead of a hospital cafeteria, an all-night McDonald's. (The McDonald's has since been replaced by an Au Bon Pain.) During overnight shifts, young doctors napped in geriatric restraint chairs or on stretchers borrowed from the emergency room. The patients were interesting, of course, but there were just so many of them, and they weren't all complex medical mysteries like the ones on "House."
I remember following around a patient in the E.R. who had acute alcohol intoxication, and who kept disrobing and trying to leave the hospital, naked and attached to his I.V. drip. During the anthrax scare, a woman came in complaining of shortness of breath and holding a Ziploc bag containing a powdered-sugar doughnut missing one bite. She was worried that the powder was anthrax. The attending physician carefully opened the Ziploc bag with his gloved hand, removed the doughnut, took a bite out of it, and said that it seemed fine to him. Another time, a Japanese woman who spoke no English came in with small flat red spots all over her body, the classic presentation of a highly lethal cancer of the platelets, which is what it proved to be.
Amid the extraordinary bodily ruin and beeping hospital machinery, I felt as if I were moving through the world of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." I knew that I was learning something about life, but I did wonder, at times, if I was learning much about medicine. (Add to this the problem of my being in medical school for a very bad reason—simple chronic failure to disappoint parental hopes.)
"Yours may be bigger, but it's a baguette."
Then I came under Dr. Lieber's tutelage, and cheerlessly fluorescent Elmhurst seemed suddenly transformed into the Athenaeum. Which is odd, because, in appearance, voice, and choice of digressions, Lieber resembles a nineteen-fifties Catskills comedian. Asked how he manages to work so many hours, he likes to quip that his wife doesn't want him at home. He is fifty-six years old, short, freckled, and plagued by allergies that leave his eyes red and irritated, and he wears what I know how to describe only as a little Hitler mustache. His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father ran a Kosher butcher shop. ("But eventually meat went out of style," he says.) He calls his co-workers "boss" in the singular and "troops" in the plural, and there is something benignly martial about him. His office shelves display dozens of model tanks, many of them made by an enthusiast who works in the hospital's boiler room.
Clinical medical education occurs throughout the cycle of a hospital day. As patient cases are discussed, the more senior physicians on a team ask questions for the benefit of the less experienced. This apprenticeship model is supplemented by topical lectures and discussions led by faculty and trainees: noon conferences, morbidity and mortality reports, detailed presentations of unusual cases. In theory, this teaching schedule and method is orderly. But a beeper is always going off. A phone is ringing. A tuberculosis patient who is supposed to be in isolation has wandered into the hallway and needs to be talked back into quarantine. The residents and interns are chronically short of sleep, the senior physicians are under pressure to be somewhere else, and each year of medical progress, with its new diagnostic tests and revised insurance paperwork, brings more data to sift through and less time in which to do so.
Recently, I was with Lieber during morning report, when patient conditions from the previous night are shared with the incoming medical team. The dozen or so physicians listened to the overnight interns and resident, who told them about a twenty-four-year-old newlywed Indian woman who had been in the U.S. for five days and had developed unexplained joint pain; a morbidly obese woman admitted with chest pain; a sixty-four-year-old male polysubstance abuser with opioid withdrawal and aggression; a young man on crystal meth; a twenty-eight-year-old Mexican with encephalitis; a ninety-six-year-old man who had signed multiple do-not-resuscitate orders; and a Tibetan woman (who had been living in India) with XDR (extensively drug-resistant) tuberculosis and H.I.V. Morning report is usually quick, but Lieber, an incurable teacher, also discussed the unusual epidemiology of crystal meth and the cost-benefit analysis of whether to order a test for a rare marker of bone cancer, and told a memorable anecdote about well-intentioned soldiers who gave Hershey bars to concentration-camp survivors and unknowingly hastened deaths among the starving. The chocolate produced an insulin rush, precipitating a lethal set of metabolic disturbances known as "re-feeding syndrome." "We had learned from our mistakes by the time we went into Somalia under Clinton, in 1991," he said. "At least, our mistakes about re-feeding."
Shortly afterward, Lieber was stopped in the hall by a resident and an intern—Dr. Samaan and Dr. Gandhi—and two medical students. They wanted to discuss the I.V. antibiotics being given to the Tibetan patient with tuberculosis. The patient had just been transferred from a ward for the less acutely ill, because she was not improving. She was now in a negative-pressure isolation room (double doors and a ventilation system that keeps air from circulating out into the hallway); the physicians put on yellow gowns, blue gloves, and face masks before they went in to examine her.
"When we treat these tuberculoses, it's like we're going back to the nineteen-fifties," Lieber explained. "We're stuck returning to antibiotics we abandoned decades ago, because of their side-effect profiles." The patient had been on the antibiotic cycloserine. Serious depression is a common side effect, and she had told her children that she just wanted to be left to die. Owing to her H.I.V. status, Lieber suggested different antibiotics, ones that cover a number of other infectious diseases.
Much of what one really remembers from a medical residency happens in these in-between moments of the day. A few minutes later, near the elevator, a specialist in infectious disease stopped Lieber; he'd just seen the Tibetan woman's CT scan, which showed lesions in the basal ganglia. Lieber included the medical students: "What do we worry about with basal-ganglia lesions?" The bodily jeremiad now also included a likely toxoplasmosis infection to the brain.
The field of medicine has advanced through measuring: weight, blood pressure, dosage, cost, days until discharge, years until death. American health has also benefitted tremendously from the abandonment of superstition—nineteenth-century American physicians left infected wounds festering and undrained, because they believed in "noble pus"—and the move toward evidence-based decision-making. But sometimes the medical field makes the mistake of valuing most what is most easily measured. Lieber attended public high school in Forest Hills and then went to Queens College. Afterward, he applied to seventy-two medical schools, and was accepted by none. "It's an old story—you have a defeat, you come back stronger," he told me. "If you go through the cookie-cutter mold, do A, B, C, D, you, well—what is the word—you lose interest in being."
Lieber ended up attending medical school at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. Foreign medical schools don't command much respect in the United States. Gary Wisner, who is now an orthopedic surgeon in northern California, was a classmate of Lieber's in Guadalajara. "To be honest, most of us were meatheads," he said. "We knew why we were stuck in Guadalajara. But we were quickly, like, 'What is he doing here?' People float the word 'genius' too much, but, I'm telling you, he was a flaming genius. I went back to New York one time with him in large part because I was literally on a genetic investigation to find out where in the hell this kid was from."
In Guadalajara, Lieber fell into the role of informal teacher. "A lot of us owe our careers to him," Wisner said. "If you were having trouble passing neuroanatomy, he was going to sit there alongside you for several all-nighters. He really saved us. When we would get down, Joe would tell us that there wasn't anything that could be taught at Harvard or Yale that we couldn't learn just as well in our little room in Guadalajara."
"Guadalajara was nice," Lieber told me. "I had an apartment for fifty dollars a month, with maid service six days a week. I remember once when I was in a car accident down there, in my friend's VW Rabbit, no seat belt. I was hit by a truck. I lost five units of blood and had a ruptured spleen. So I missed an exam, but they were very kind, and they rescheduled it for me."
"Maybe we should just go ahead and have a kid."
After decades of practice as a diagnostician and an educator, Lieber is an associate professor at Mount Sinai, and is paid less than the majority of doctors in New York. In most fields, talent and professional standing do not coincide, but such inefficiencies of pay and recognition are symptomatic of the medical system's effective values. Eric Krieger, a cardiologist at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital, who, like Dean Muller, trained and taught as a chief resident under Lieber, said, "You can't advance professionally just by being an amazing clinician and teacher." Many of the physicians I spoke to agreed. "Lieber's an absolutely incredible physician in a way that's now completely obsolete in the field of medicine," Krieger continued. "And let me be clear what I mean by 'obsolete': that's a flaw in how medicine is evaluated and rewarded, not a flaw in what he does. He's the best diagnostician and teacher I've known."
In the nineteenth century, the education of American doctors typically consisted of two sixteen-week semesters of lectures—often the same lectures both semesters—and no time in a hospital or a laboratory. The entrance requirement for medical schools was little more than the ability to pay the fees. In 1871, a Harvard medical-school professor was pressed to give students written examinations as a graduation requirement; he said that it would never work, because fewer than half his students could write. In "Learning to Heal," a 1985 history of the medical-education system, Kenneth Ludmerer, examining the Civil War era, writes, "Delusions of an erudite medical profession were shattered by the results of the written examinations of the military medical boards." They concluded that "the typical physician expressed 'vague and confused' ideas in 'barbarous English' that was 'at defiance with all rules of grammar.' " More than twice as many soldiers in the Civil War died from disease as from combat. (By the Second World War, less than one per cent of American soldier deaths were from disease.) When a Union surgeon general banned the use of two popular but toxic emetics, he was court-martialled for misconduct, and condemned by the American Medical Association. As Ludmerer notes, "The training and skills of the average doctor were hopelessly inadequate, even based on existing standards of the day."
After the Civil War, medical-school graduates who had the means began to go to Europe for postgraduate training, and especially to Germany, where medical schools were incorporated into universities and included experimental and clinical work, and where the scientific method was the norm. But physicians who returned to America hoping to find research and teaching jobs like those they had seen in Germany found instead only skepticism. Then, in 1909, the educator Abraham Flexner, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, began visiting all hundred and fifty-five medical schools in the U.S. and Canada. Flexner, who later conceived of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, found that some schools were not even offering the courses they claimed to teach. Many provided only classroom lessons, which, unconnected to clinical or laboratory experience, Flexner considered "utterly worthless." After his report was issued, nearly half the medical schools in the country closed down. The German model completed its voyage across the Atlantic. Ludmerer told me, "Flexner insisted on one type of medical school—a university school, with full-time faculty and a research enterprise."
Today's medical schools are supported primarily by two revenue streams: research and clinical care. Research brings in grants that fund the salaries of physicians, and clinical care brings in revenue as fees for service. This puts physicians under pressure to produce more research and to see more patients per hour, leaving teaching as a sort of loss leader. "I really like to teach," Kaidi Fullerton, the medical director of the pediatric-emergency department of Inova Fairfax Hospital, in Virginia, said to me. "But I also get paid based on how many patients I see in an hour. And that's also how the hospital gets paid. Having a student slows me down; I essentially have to spend money in order to teach. I do it, but it's a pure give."
Teaching at medical schools pays poorly, when it pays at all. In recent years, a number of schools have tried to devote more financial resources to teaching—including the Mayo Clinic, which started a program to add up to twenty per cent to faculty salaries—but the problem is exacerbated by the fact that teaching rarely figures into promotions. In 2009, Johns Hopkins established the Institute for Excellence in Education, which offers a number of teaching awards and is pursuing the seemingly modest goal of tracking how much time physicians devote to teaching. However, physicians have been resistant to taking the time to do the documentation.
When I asked Lieber why he thought that educators weren't much valued in medicine, he shrugged. "Oh, people are always giving teachers a hard time," he said. "Look at the way they write about the public-school teachers in the Post." I have never heard Lieber complain about any aspect of his work, not even paperwork. "It's true that it's research that gets the kudos," he said. "You have to love what you do." The word "pedagogy" comes from the Greek term for the slave who escorted a child to school.
Yet, even as medical schools across the country have taken note of the problem, it remains difficult to develop great clinical education and to reward it financially. "We're making progress in quantitative assessments of teaching," Jorie Colbert-Getz, the senior director of medical education at the University of Utah, told me. "But we still aren't sure how to do the qualitative assessment. Should we use evaluations from students? Evaluations from peers?" A medication's effect on blood pressure can be measured, but there's no sphygmomanometer for clinical teaching. "We want our young physicians to become lifelong self-directed learners," Colbert-Getz said. "That's what great teaching should lead to."
Lieber would not likely attend seminars on teaching—he has no time—or keep track of the hours he devotes to teaching, or apply for an award that could then bulk up his résumé for promotion. He is a model only on the individual level. "I always wanted to be like him," Tanya Page, a family practitioner in Portland, Oregon, who now works mostly with homeless youths and adults, told me. "Dr. Lieber's work struck me as much more glamorous and exciting than the G.I. physician I worked with on my primary-care rotation, who scoped rich patients all day in a fancy Upper East Side office, and went home at 4 P.M., and wore a watch worth more than all my belongings."
On Lieber's bookshelf, there are two photographs. One is of him with his wife and two daughters. The other is of a statue of a man on a horse, situated in a town square. "That's General Zhukov," Lieber explained. A colleague had recently gone to Russia. "Dr. Masci took that photo for me, because he knows Zhukov is one of my favorites." Zhukov was the greatest of Soviet generals and the hero of Stalingrad. After the war, Life wrote a hagiographic profile of Zhukov, crediting him with the use of underwater bridges, built just a foot or so below the surface of the water: tanks could cross the bridges, but enemy bombers flying overhead could not see them. It wasn't true, yet I found the idea analogous to the problem of developing good clinical education: it's difficult to see and thus difficult to target for rewards. But maybe it's more that teaching's being so difficult to see may be what best protects it.
"The women on these dating sites don't seem to believe I'm a prince.""
Shortly before teaching rounds at Elmhurst one afternoon, a young Indian woman named Anita, from the billing department, came into the medical team's tiny conference room asking "for just five minutes of everyone's time," to give a presentation about "clinically precise documentation." There were about fifteen doctors and doctors-in-training crowded into a five-by-ten-foot space, with four computers, and takeout menus for empanadas and Chinese food taped on the wall, along with a sign that read, "If you put your belongings on the air conditioner, it will get hot and stinky in here." Anita began, "Please don't write 'poorly controlled diabetes' in the patients' charts if, in fact, the diabetes is uncontrolled. Write 'uncontrolled,' because we can't bill for 'poorly controlled.' " She passed out multicolored laminated note cards detailing how to document various conditions so that treatment could be properly accounted; these laminated cards were among the most luxurious items I saw at Elmhurst.
"If you write 'renal insufficiency,' " Anita continued, "it won't get coded, and then we won't get paid. You need to write 'C.K.D.' "—chronic kidney disease—"and you need to specify the stage." Again, she directed the doctors to the laminated cards for billably precise definitions of the stages. "And this one is easy to forget. If your patient has a B.M.I. of thirty or over, please document 'obesity.' This is a medical condition, as you know. If they have a B.M.I. of over forty, please document 'morbid obesity.' This will really help us out. Thank you."
Dr. Lieber thanked Anita. Then teaching rounds began. That day, two patients on the ward had elevated sodium levels, a condition known as hypernatremia. "This comes up so often," Lieber said. "The question is whether to treat, and with what." Imagine if a sunset were not obviously notable in any way and yet you had to teach people why the sunset looks the way it does: the refraction of light, the spectrum, the atmosphere. You were trying to show people how magnificent and illuminating and useful the concepts that explain sunsets are, but you had to do it without the beautiful prompt of the setting sun. Instead, the prompt is a number on a piece of paper and a tired and sick person lying in a bed complaining of something unrelated to his sodium level. That's why hypernatremia is an enormous teaching challenge—it appears at first to be really boring. And yet learning about it is essential, because good medical care is more often about the everyday work of diagnosing and managing multiple familiar things than it is about feats of Holmesian deduction.
"Did anyone read about the case of the man who tried to commit suicide by drinking twenty jars of soy sauce?" Lieber said.
The students debated whether the man should have been rehydrated with normal saline solution or with something more diluted.
"What about the cases back in the nineteen-eighties, when the baby-food manufacturer accidentally put sodium instead of carbohydrates into a batch of the product?" Lieber asked. How did those babies likely present to the hospital? What kind of treatment should they have received? He gently steered the conversation. The cases he brought up were extreme, but instructive, and though the conversation wandered among arcana, there were two practical points that Lieber wanted everyone to remember. Even I remember them: hypernatremic patients should almost always be rehydrated with the usual one-half-normal saline solution, even though it contains sodium; and this is mainly because hypernatremia will almost always be a case of dehydration, not of high sodium intake.
And yet most of the cases discussed were of high intake; they were the rare exceptions rather than the bread-and-butter norms. Lieber's method for handling more information was to teach from the extremes, where the interest is obvious. It reminded me of the best English teacher I ever had, Dr. Elizabeth Ballard, of Norman High School, in Oklahoma, who, though she had us read the straightforwardly appealing novel "Tom Jones" on our own, knew that we had no kinship with Chaucer, and so had us read the tales aloud to each other, in nearly incomprehensible Middle English; the experience stayed in our heads decades later, as a memory of speaking strange.
On another afternoon, during intern report, it was Lieber's diagnostic acumen that was on display. Hearing that someone is a great diagnostician is sort of like hearing that someone is really funny; it is not evident in every encounter. But the cases chosen for presentation at intern and resident reports are usually either complicated or obscure; only the presenter knows the case outcome, which lends a Poirot-like drama to events. The presenting intern or resident begins by saying something like "I am a twenty-seven-year-old Pakistani female presenting to the emergency room complaining of dizziness." Such beginnings can go almost anywhere—from minor flu to psychosis or cancer. The other interns and residents ask the presenter about her medical history, then move on to a physical exam, and, finally, to laboratory and imaging results. An invited attending physician, who also does not know the diagnostic outcome, tries to draw out teaching points.
I had heard several stories of Lieber's extraordinary diagnostic exploits in that role. In one, a resident report had been scheduled to run an extra thirty minutes, because of the obscurity and mysteriousness of the case, which had remained a diagnostic puzzle for years. POEMS is a very rare syndrome that can look like a blood problem or a skin problem or a nervous-system problem, or like none or all of those, and can be lethal if undiagnosed. About five minutes into the presentation, Lieber had said, "Oh, and we should put POEMS on the differential diagnosis, right?"
"It was like watching a guy juggle fifty flaming torches on a unicycle," one physician said. "A lot of people in medicine are smart enough, and know a lot of esoterica, but when they bring it up they're generally just wrong. Someone will come in with a rash and an attending physician will say, 'Oh, this could be arsenic poisoning,' and then bloviate for a while about it, and, of course, it's never actually arsenic poisoning. It's just a chance to show off. But if Lieber brings up something arcane it's because it's relevant." At another resident report, Lieber had called a case of MAGIC, a syndrome involving multiple inflammatory disorders that is so rare that it usually doesn't appear in textbooks.
This day's intern report took place in another small, run-down conference room, where the phone kept ringing. Takeout Chinese food and Diet Coke cans crowded the table, and the window blinds were broken. The room was populated by a crowd of young doctors and Lieber, the attending physician.
It begins simply: a young Asian woman doctor says, "I am a thirty-two-year-old male presenting to the E.R., complaining of abdominal pain and diarrhea." This complaint is so common that it has probably happened even to you. We obtain a history of mild fevers and weight loss. We learn that the patient is originally from Colombia, that he came to the United States at eighteen, then lived in Spain, with a boyfriend, until about four years ago, when he came back, on his own, to New York. Lieber interjects, "We should think, Is place going to tell us something in this case?" Most of the doctors are probably running through a category list in their mind, thinking, Is this infectious? Is this endocrinal? They are thinking through the various systems of the body. One doctor mentions a type of cancer of the blood; another suggests MENS (multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome). Lieber encourages the questioning but adds, "What is the key separating question, guys?" He is pushing everyone to think of what fact will make certain diagnoses dramatically more likely, and the rest dramatically less. "What is going to split the path of the differential diagnosis?"
We all suddenly recognize that the patient's H.I.V. status is crucial. This is when a sad novelistic inevitability, separate from lab tests, enters the room. The patient reports a negative test from four years earlier, when his relationship with the boyfriend ended. He reports that he has not been tested since, because he has been in a long-term monogamous relationship. His current boyfriend works on Wall Street. The patient works as a waiter at a high-end restaurant.
The crowd of physicians is stuck. Or very into their Chinese food. The presenter who has been acting as the patient starts to seem again like a young Asian physician-in-training. "Do you guys want to keep davening?" Lieber says. "Or shall we order labs and do a physical exam? And, remember, we're charging everything to your MasterCard, so think about what you really want to get." Lieber reminds the physicians not to forget about tuberculosis, which often appears in the guise of other diseases. It is known in medicine as the great mimic. The group thinks that tuberculosis is unlikely, but dutifully includes it in the accumulating differential diagnosis. Something endocrinal or a cancer seems more likely.
Lots of other data are obtained: a small amount of blood in the stool, a slightly low potassium level, the sedimentation rate of the red blood cells—on and on, a pileup of exams and labs. The data seem to push us backward rather than draw us toward a conclusion.
"Does anyone know what was seen in Spain in the early AIDS epidemic?" Lieber asks. The question feels like an interesting but irrelevant digression. "We see less and less of opportunistic infections these days, but in the early days of H.I.V., before antiretrovirals, we would see these opportunistic diseases that would pick up where people were from. In Spain, we would see histoplasmosis, though it's usually from where? . . . That's right, from the Ohio River Valley." Histoplasmosis generally appears to be a respiratory problem; it is caused by a fungus found mostly in caves and around bird and bat droppings. No one is taking histoplasmosis seriously in his differential. More lab tests come in. The patient turns out to be positive for H.I.V.
A CT scan of the abdomen suggests Crohn's disease, which is not consistent with other things we know about the patient; however, a Crohn's-appearing CT is consistent with tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, we recall, is the great mimic. "And what do they say about histoplasmosis?" Lieber goads. Histoplasmosis is an even greater mimic. "Everything that TB does, histo can do better."
The patient doesn't have Crohn's, and he doesn't have TB. The room finds out thirty minutes later that he has histoplasmosis, which is also known by the distressingly resonant moniker of Darling's disease, after its discoverer, Samuel Taylor Darling. Lieber had said at the beginning, What role will place have in this case?
After the report, the room comes back into view. Several of the physicians line up to ask Lieber questions. I notice the smell of takeout noodles. I'm suddenly tired; it feels like a hospital again.
"She did such a good job with that case," Dr. Lieber said to me of the presenting intern as we left, walking back to the ward he was covering. He didn't say what the rest of us were thinking: Lieber nailed it. He called each fork in the differential-diagnostic road exactly right, in an undemanding, haunting way. That haunting is, I think, why Lieber's teaching stays with a person, like a story that you understand enough but not quite everything about, and so it remains in your mind, to be turned over and reëxamined.
On a recent afternoon, I asked Lieber how he thought things would likely go for the XDR-tuberculosis patient. "To be honest, it doesn't look so good," he said. A young, very dark-skinned patient from a different ward was jogging lightly up and down the hall. His brain appeared to be herniating out of his skull and, indeed, it was, because he had had a portion of his skull removed, with the goal of safely accommodating brain swelling. "It sounds surprising, I know, but that usually works out pretty well," Lieber said. The swelling goes down; the piece of skull bone, having been stored in the patient's thigh, is eventually returned to its proper location. It was ghastly and inspiring at the same time, like the defense of Stalingrad.
The hero of Stalingrad, General Zhukov, was a great trainer of soldiers, but he was also notoriously brutal. A neurologist friend of mine, Jessica Robinson, of Mount Sinai, said, in confessing a difficulty of teaching, "Sometimes it feels like Sartre's 'No Exit': you find yourself saying the same things over and over again; you have to remind yourself that it's a new group of students, that they're not just the same people renewing their ignorance to torture you." Teaching is like being a battle-hardened soldier placed again and again among the greens.
As a student, I spent only about two months under the supervision of Dr. Lieber. A year later, I became an M.D., then immediately left the field of medicine. I took with me little more than an aversion to medical knowledge and a suspicious and fearful demeanor as a patient. The other day, I couldn't even remember the generic name for Tylenol, and I felt kind of happy about that. But I have always remembered Lieber, because we always remember our great teachers, and wonder how they did it, and at what cost. "Really the most distinctive thing about Dr. Lieber," Dr. Linden said to me one day, "is that he is always nice. It's a mystery how he does it." ♦
Published in the print edition of the May 13, 2013, issue.
Rivka Galchen is the author of four books. Her latest, the children's novel "Rat Rule 79," was published last year.
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