A network of pitchmen have used the internet and fear of a failing economy to play the ultimate long con

This is why we have the playoffs, a long series of object lessons in all the somethings that can beat skill. We watch, night after night, looking not just for expressions of talent but for all the other stuff, the moments of serendipity, the extraordinary seconds of tenacity and desperation and need that would mean nothing on the long scale of the season but could be the whole of everything in the postseason. We watch to see average players get rewarded for all the tremendous work they’ve put in over long decades just to become average in the NHL. We watch for the chances that might make some small, simple, solid little play by some small, simple, solid little player into a heart-stopping miracle. We watch because that’s us, and that’s what we hope for ourselves, that someday, maybe, if the stars align, if we’re ready, we could summon up one great play from the depths of our averageness that might break life wide open.

Banadir is a place I've been wanting to try for quite awhile, but I could never seem to work out someone to go with me in pre-LTH days. Most places, I would go by myself, but I got into a long conversation with a Somali cab driver and learned that it's considered very odd and practically tragic for a person to eat alone in Somali culture. If you are alone it is because you have no friends or family at all and you are regarded with great pity.

I finally got around to trying Barwaqo Kabab and was very very happy I did. The name is a bit misleading. As I suspected, this isn't a kabab/sandwich joint, though that may be available occasionally. Instead, in true Somali fashion, a daily smattering of stewed meat dishes is available as well as exquisitely spiced rice and some vegetable stews on the side.

Like the Google Map, this page offers a comprehensive list of all currently operating and awarded LTHForum Great Neighborhood Restaurants/Resources. This thread breaks them out by cuisine.

According to Kim Walker, Public Relations Manager for Adventure Aquarium, the personalities of the African penguins will be matched with that of a Flyer. The penguin showing the most leadership skills will become "Giroux", said Walker. That must make the oldest one "Jagr".

For Sexton, the word 'God' evokes "the sense that there's meaning in our lives. There's meaning that goes beyond us." Sexton explains that such a complicated concept cannot always be approached directly, and the strange route may be the most effective: "In a way that no course I taught when I was teaching religion as a formal discipline did, it forces them to develop their own understanding of what religion is — and I don't care whether they decide whether baseball is or is not for the characters. [...] In the process, they — in their papers — have to give their definition of religion. And they come more deeply into contact with this element of humans' existence."

Viewers can peruse the reading list for "Baseball as a Road To God" below.

Baseball As a Road to God aims to link literature about our national pastime with the study of philosophy and theology. This seminar aims to blend ideas contained in classic baseball novels such as Coover's Universal Baseball Association , Kinsella's Iowa Baseball Confederation , and Malamud's The Natural with those found in such philosophical/theological works as Eliade's Sacred and Profane , Heschel's God in Search of Man , and James' Varieties of Religious Experience . It discusses such themes as the metaphysics of sports, baseball as a civil religion, the nature of sacred time and space, and the ineffability of the divine. Not for the faint-hearted, this course requires students to read over two dozen works of varying lengths in addition to supplemental readings as they might arise. The course also requires weekly papers. As with any serious commitment of one's time, the rewards of taking a seminar such as this can be great.

You hear these things, you sigh, you feel remorse, you forget … and then you go back to looking forward to the next football season. Gregg Williams crossed the line; he won't be there. I just wish someone would decide, once and for all, where that line really is.

"A broadside on doctors in Rome and their protective clothing against the plague; with an engraving after an Italian broadside showing a figure dressed with along coat, gloves, mask and hat, holding in the right hand a stick with a winged hourglass, in the left background the same figure and children running away, in the R background a view of an Italian city.

About Doctor Schnabel's costume, the attempt to treat people ill with plague and the remedies they used:

► A wide-brimmed black hat worn close to the head. At the time, a wide-brimmed black hat would have identified a person as a doctor, much the same as how a hat may identify chefs, soldiers and workers nowadays. The wide-brimmed hat might have also been used as partial shielding from infection.

► A primitive gas mask in the shape of a bird's beak. A common belief at the time was that the plague was spread by birds. It was thought that by dressing in a bird-like mask, the wearer could draw the plague away from the patient and onto the garment the plague doctor wore. The mask also included red glass eyepieces, which were thought to make the wearer impervious to evil. The beak of the mask was often filled with strongly aromatic herbs and spices to overpower the miasmas or "bad air" which was also thought to carry the plague. At the very least, it may have served a dual purpose, also dulling the smell of unburied corpses, sputum, and ruptured bouboules in plague victims.

► A long black overcoat. The overcoat worn by the plague doctor was tucked in behind the beak mask at the neckline to minimize skin exposure. It extended to the feet, and was often coated head to toe in suet or wax. A coating of suet may have been used with the thought that the plague could be drawn away from the flesh of the infected victim and either trapped by the suet, or repelled by the wax. The coating of wax likely served as protection against respiratory droplet contamination eventhough it was not known at the time if coughing carried the plague. It is likely that the overcoat was waxed to simply prevent sputum or other bodily fluids from clinging to it.

► A wooden cane. The cane was used to both direct family members to move the patient and other individuals nearby, and possibly to examine the patient with directly. Its precise purpose with relation to the plague victim isn't known.

► Leather breeches. Similar to waders worn by fishermen, leather breeches were worn beneath the cloak to protect the legs and groin from infection. Since the plague often tended to manifest itself first in the lymph nodes, particular attention was paid to protecting the armpits, neck, and groin.

The plague doctors' clothing also had a secondary use: to intentionally frighten and warn onlookers. The bedside manner common to doctors of today did not exist at the time; part of the appearance of the plague doctor's clothing was meant to frighten onlookers, and to communicate that something very, very wrong was nearby, and that they too might become infected. It is unknown how often or widespread plague doctors were, or how effective they were in treatment of the disease. It's likely that while offering some protection to the wearer, they may have actually contributed more to the spreading of the disease than its treatment, by unknowingly serving as vectors for infected fleas to move from host to host."

young russ & rosie!

Rose-Marie Whitelaw and her husband, Russell Piekarski, turned her 10-by-20-foot Park Slope deck into a haven for her cats using pipes, chicken wire and deer fencing. They have a picnic table where they eat meals among the cats in nice weather.

Rumpus: I’m here talking to you in large part because the film’s journaling theme resonated with me. Have you been hearing that from a lot of viewers?

Haigh: It does seem like a lot of people do those sorts of things. That just sums up how unsure we all are about what we want in the world. That’s why we write. We’re trying to work through it. You can talk to people all you want, but sometimes it just needs to be you, alone, struggling, trying to work out what to do. I tried to make it so the film was very distinctly about these two people and their issues. Strip away the fact that they’re gay and you’ll realize that it’s universal.

SPORTS CLUB STATS
Your team’s chances of making the playoffs

Oh boy. This Lady would like to put forth the opinion that, with some reasonable exceptions (see below), socializing as an adult is about compromise — that is, giving up on the idea that you can somehow engineer your social calendar to be free from Awkward People, Slightly Racist People, People Who Don’t Pay Their Fair Share of the Check, People with Body Odor, People Who Stay Too Long after Dinner*, Couples with Annoying Children, Couples Without Children Who are Too Proud of Their Childlessness, Loud Talkers, Open Mouth Chewers, The Guy Who Always Needs a Ride, and Tim’s Republican Girlfriend.

Sports is not a series of storylines, or an Olympic clash of athletes at their peak, or some sort of allegory for how we should all live our lives, a set of role models representing the best our world has to offer. It's about a bunch of dumb guys traveling from town to town and punching each other for our amusement and diversion. It's a sideshow, a carnival, and one that, at the end of the day, has enough sentiment attached that some rich owner can write it off as a tax break and it all goes away. It is product, pure and simple. There are many great sports movies—Bull Durham remains the best—but Slap Shot is the only one that has ever understood that essential fact: This is an ugly, stupid business.

After Clement, Solicitor General Don Verrilli was back for his third day of arguments this week. Much as the liberal Justices had pushed Paul Clement to specify the point at which conditions become coercion, during the second half of the argument members of the Court’s more conservative wing urged Verrilli to agree with them that there are some limits on the strings that the federal government can place on its funding, and to identify those limits. Otherwise, the Chief Justice reasoned, the limits that the Constitution imposes on what the federal government can ask the states to do are “largely meaningless.”

“The ability to manipulate politics, the ability to pull strings, and the ability to do so without an ounce of public scrutiny -- that is your typical major sports owner.”

The event in New England is called a sugar on snow party, and the soft candy is traditionally served with yeast-risen donuts, sour dill pickles, and coffee. The pickles and coffee serve to counter the intense sweetness of the candy.

But I think it just sort of reminded me of the kind of bond that sports creates in people. People — for all our differences politically, regionally, economically — most folks understand sports. Probably because it’s one of the few places where it’s a true meritocracy. There’s not a lot of BS. Ultimately, who’s winning, who’s losing, who’s performing, who’s not — it’s all laid out there.

This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

The music these younger artists are producing thus far, however, bears few of the pointy, manifesto-ish edges of their forebears. Downtown NYC's seminal pieces often bore the pressurized marks of the politicized time in which they were made, a contentious moment in which nearly every composition also made an implicit argument for what kind of music was OK to write. But the biggest distinguishing mark of the indie-classical scene is its lack of distinguishing marks. This is music that does not have to argue for its very right to exist, which means its free to drift into dreamy cul-de-sacs, to explore drift and texture, to smear the borders of form. These artists can record albums without having to pause to consider the implications.

When he and his older brother Ossie started their careers, no blacks played in the N.H.L. Conn Smythe, the Maple Leafs’ owner, watched Carnegie skate and, the story goes, said, “I’ll give $10,000 to anyone who can turn Herb Carnegie white.”

While recognizing and respecting the daunting task faced by gay athletes, I echo the recent comments made by linebacker Scott Fujita: “I hope to God that no one waits until everyone is ready.”

Hockey players are accustomed to protecting their own, to sticking up for their teammates regardless of who may have started it, deserved it, or asked for it in the first place. But since he wishes to blaze this trail, I stand beside him with an axe! The best "glue guys" and enforcers do their bruising jobs with a shrug: They're just doing things, they say, the way they're supposed to be done. What Brendan Burke did, what Brian and Patrick Burke and the rest of their family continue to be doing, and what so many NHL athletes now hope to help do, is to tap into the very instincts that already make for the best type of hockey player — loyalty, bravery, teamwork, the willingness to go out there and kick that mouthy punk's ass — and use them to create an environment in which anyone, anyone, can become one.

Try to understand, everything said about Jeremy Lin, whether glowing, dismissive, or bigoted, doubles as a referendum on where we, as a people, stand. This, by definition, is absurd. But when there's almost no other public representation of your people in the mainstream media, Hollywood, or in politics, you hawk, fervently, over whatever comes your way.

Weltschmerz (from the German, meaning world-pain or world-weariness, pronounced [ˈvɛltʃmɛɐ̯ts]) is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind.

Male privilege has been with us for — how long? Ten thousand years? A hundred thousand? Contraception, in the mere blink of an eye in historical terms, toppled the core rationale that justified that entire system. And now, every aspect of human society is frantically racing to catch up with that stunning fact. Everything will have to change in response to this — families, business, religion, politics, economics…everything.

In a month or so, the 2010 census will most likely confirm a record high in the city’s foreign-born population. American Community Survey data released last month revealed a striking metamorphosis during the last decade. Traditional ethnic enclaves sprawled amoeba-like into adjacent communities. Once monolithic tracts of white and black and native-born residents have become bespeckled with newcomers.

So sometimes you're at a ballgame and it's a really good pitchers' duel, so you start to wonder "Is this the best pitchers' duel I have seen this year?" or "Is this the best pitchers' duel the Rockies have had this year?" or "Is this the best pitchers' duel in the majors this year?" or, if you are Ken Burns or have a Napoleonic complex, "is this the Greatest Pitchers' Duel in Major League History?" There is, of course, no way to know, and that's where I come in.

REACQUAINT YOURSELF WITH THE PLEASURES OF A HAND-SHARPENED PENCIL. In New York's Hudson River Valley, craftsman David Rees still practices the age-old art of manual pencil sharpening. His artisanal service is perfect for artists, writers, and standardized test takers. Shipped with their shavings and a "certificate of sharpening," these extra-sharp pencils make wonderful gifts.

Champis the bunny doesn't only hop — he also knows how to herd his masters' flock of sheep, possibly having picked up the skill after watching trained dogs do the job.

In what the federal authorities on Thursday called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy.

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting "creativity". The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites-- they just have to convince a judge that the site is "dedicated to copyright infringement."

Yeah I don't know, we definitely aren't particularly influenced by other current punk scene happenings or whatever, just doing our own thing with the encouragement of other locals. I'm more likely to borrow an idea from Vybz Kartel, Chet Baker or Haus Arafna than whatever bands we're sharing bills with. Being in Allentown we really didn't have to worry much about the rest of the world watching, just our friends and their cats, which is a pretty decent creative environment. I would like to be the Debbie Harry of our generation though.

Yellow Green Red is a music site that offers music reviews and artist interviews on a monthly basis. Reviews run around the first of every month, interviews around the 15th. The majority of the music reviewed here consists of records I bought myself and considered interesting enough to critique.

Anyone who’s seen the band’s live show can attest that Pissed Jeans—formerly of Allentown, now mostly relocated to Philly—is a grumbling, grooving mess of a thing, full of fluid and volume, purveying over that wondrous stretch of sound between “irritating noise wank” and “streamlined pop-rock” that makes twentysomethings embrace a boozy, put-your-shirt-back-on abandon and makes nebbish fortysomethings invoke their obscure record collections. The band’s live appeal is due in no small part to singer Matt Korvette, who is one of those rare, precious weirdos who truly lives up to the frontman tag.

A hit by Mark Recchi on Darius Kasparaitis started a breakout by Eric Lindros, who flew down the right wing on a 2-on-1 with Legion of Doom linemate John LeClair on his left. Lindros slipped the puck to LeClair, who beat Vanbriesbrouck to make it 1-0 at 9:25.

Selected best new map in North America for 2010 by the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS)

This object—painstakingly sculpted by a lone, impractical fellow—is a triumph of indie over corporate. Of analog over digital. Of quirk and caprice over templates and algorithms. It is delightful to look at. Edifying to study. And it may be the last important paper map ever to depict our country.

"I talked to Homer (Flyers GM Paul Holmgren) a lot and John Paddock (assistant GM)," said Emery. "Even when I came back, I was hoping to get a chance to come back with these guys (but) it ended up being Anaheim. I really appreciated them keeping tabs on me and seeing how I was doing and encouraging me any chance they got."

Its plan, weather permitting, is to be done by Feb. 14, to make way for 15 months of construction that city officials hope will have the arena open in time for the 2013-14 hockey season.

Flyers owner Ed Snider loves hockey, loves giving and loves his team.

$59/year; backup, not storage.

50 gb = $6/month
125 gb = $10/month

“There was a cartoon in Pravda that showed a giant guy with a Flyer logo with a big club beating up on the little Russians, and I thought to myself, My god, do I love that,” Snider said. “It was the height of the cold war, and they have this cartoon in Pravda. I have it framed in my office.” // “Since we started in ’67 the Flyers have had pretty much the same image and philosophy — we’ve always been an entertaining, tough team with a personality,” Clarke said. “If you’re not easy to hate, then what are you?

For 11 years, the final image of Eric Lindros in a Philadelphia Flyers uniform has been him curled in a fetal position, knocked cold after a brutal shoulder-to-jaw check on the open ice from New Jersey's Scott Stevens. Two teammates escorted Lindros off the ice, then gingerly handed off his limp body to the training staff. The "Lindros 88" jersey faded into the darkness of the tunnel leading toward the locker room.

“At the World Championships I played against top guys and I didn’t do bad,” Jagr said. “The whole question was, could I play at that level for a full season? I believed in myself that I could do it. That’s why I came back. There were probably a lot of doubters, but they didn’t see me play… I knew I could play third or fourth line but I believed inside that I could play first or second line still. I didn’t want to tell anybody that (publicly) but I believed I could do it.”

Fill out this form to find the cables you need to connect your MacBook to your TV

In October, Nowinski attended a Bruins game in Boston. There was a fight, and he watched quietly as thousands of people stood and cheered while the players fought.

“They are trading money for brain cells,” he said.

“I never fought mad. Because it’s a job, right? I never took it personally. Lot of times when guys fight, you just ask the other guy politely. Because the job is hard enough. Why make it harder by having to insult anyone? We know what the job is.”

— GEORGES LARAQUE,
former N.H.L. enforcer

Boogaard rarely complained about the toll — the crumpled and broken hands, the aching back and the concussions that nobody cared to count. But those who believe Boogaard loved to fight have it wrong. He loved what it brought: a continuation of an unlikely hockey career. And he loved what it meant: vengeance against a lifetime of perceived doubters and the gratitude of teammates glad that he would do a job they could not imagine.

He did not acknowledge the damage to his brain, the changes in his personality, even the addictions that ultimately killed him in the prime of his career. If he did recognize the toll, he dismissed it as the mere cost of getting everything he ever wanted.

Does your cat look like Adolf Hitler? Do you wake up in a cold sweat every night wondering if he's going to up and invade Poland? Does he keep putting his right paw in the air while making a noise that sounds suspiciously like "Sieg Miaow"?

A lolcat (pronounced /ˈlɒlkæt/ lol-kat) is an image combining a photograph of a cat with text intended to contribute humour. The text is often idiosyncratic and grammatically incorrect, and its use in this way is known as "lolspeak" or "kitty pidgin".

The Truth About Nursing is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to increase public understanding of the central, front-line role nurses play in modern health care. Our focus is to promote more accurate, balanced and frequent media portrayals of nurses and increase the media's use of nurses as expert sources. The Truth About Nursing's ultimate goal is to foster growth in the size and diversity of the nursing profession at a time of critical shortage, strengthen nursing practice, teaching and research, and improve the health care system.

But unless you spend a lot of time at Belmont or Aqueduct (and we sort of hope you don’t), Luck was a bit difficult to follow. (It is a David Milch production after all.) We suspect you spent much of last night’s premiere saying, “Huh?” Watch it again and consult our Vulture guide to the questions you probably asked about Luck, in chronological order.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (Khmer: សារមន្ទីរឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្មប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ទួលស្លែង) is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge communist regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979. Tuol Sleng (Khmer [tuəl slaeŋ]) means "Hill of the Poisonous Trees" or "Strychnine Hill".

The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម – “Khmer Krahom” in Khmer) literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. Democratic Kampuchea was the name of the state as controlled by the government of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979.

In a first-ever comprehensive survey of football's long-term effects on an entire NFL roster, SI polled the former members of the 1986 Bengals, whose physical and psychological conditions a quarter century later range from near complete normalcy to near total disability. But no matter their current hardships, the vast majority say they have no regrets

...But he doesn't complain. In fact, for 10 years Martin spent his days teaching teenage boys how to play the game that has left him sore and battered, with aches that will get only worse. "I knew going into this business there'd be consequences," he says, "and now I'm dealing with 'em."

Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."

In order to gain popularity in the U.S. culinary landscape, Besa says chefs of Filipino food must first establish the cuisine’s defining flavor and entrée. The flavor is pre-colonial: sourness. Filipinos have maintained their indigenous palate over centuries of invaders by using vinegar and lime-like calamansi as daily souring agents for everything from fish to noodles.

Paying for prescription birth control will soon be a thing of the past.

Starting in August 2012, women will also be able to get emergency contraceptives like the morning-after pill; mammograms; pap smears; and other preventative services free of charge, according to new guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Nancy Lin, 30, and her family own and run Lok Hin, a Chinese takeout restaurant on Brook Avenue in the Mott Haven of the Bronx. Just recently, in August, Nancy’s younger sister, Lynn, was assaulted on a delivery. She was screaming on the streets while two men punched her and stole her food. The men were about to get her money, too, but she was saved when someone in the neighborhood opened their door and got her inside. The same thing almost happened again to Lynn even more recently, but her brother showed up and scared her attackers off.

The restaurant is a short ride away from Manhattan on the PATH train (only $2!), and attained by walking three blocks north from the Journal Square station. An added bonus -- if you've never been there -- is enjoying the hurly-burly of Newark Avenue, a five-block stretch of Indian businesses where you can also get cheap groceries, flamboyantly colored clothes, English-language cookbooks, bargain cookware, and various other items imported from India.

First of all, forgive me for saying this, but turkey, even when done the best it can be, is just not that good. I'm not saying you should replace your holiday turkey with lobes of foie gras or porterhouse steaks, but I'd just like everyone to be honest and lower the bar a little. Admitting that what you’re really attempting is to channel all the glory of American history and elevate a humble, relatively bland beast to the heights of culinary excellence is the first step towards sanity.

When you think about Thanksgiving and you think about various elements of the Thanksgiving meal, it seems like you're just waiting through the big meal to get to the pie. I really believe this, which is why I always fantasized about an all-pie Thanksgiving.

After beating the Texas Rangers on Sept. 3, the Boston Red Sox were 84-54. Although half a game behind the Yankees in the American League East, the Red Sox had a nine-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the wild card and roughly a 99.6 percent chance of making the playoffs.

The official, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, listed five reasons for what he described as the “extremely high level of waste.” They are overtreatment of patients, the failure to coordinate care, the administrative complexity of the health care system, burdensome rules and fraud.

The upside to secular thinking is that — in theory — your skepticism will prove correct. Your rightness might be emotionally unsatisfying, but it confirms a stable understanding of the universe. Sports fans who love statistics fall into this camp. People who reject cognitive dissonance build this camp and find the firewood. But Tebow wrecks all that, because he makes blind faith a viable option. His faith in God, his followers' faith in him — it all defies modernity. This is why people care so much. He is making people wonder if they should try to believe things they don't actually believe.

One year after a breakout season in which he earned his first all-star spot, the 23-year-old Giroux is a legitimate MVP candidate. The award has been won by just two Flyers - Bobby Clarke (three times) and Eric Lindros in 1994-95.

Initiated in 1973, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows program seeks exceptional mid-career health professionals and behavioral and social scientists with an interest in health and health care who:

possess the skills and commitment to use the fellowship experience to provide leadership in improving health, health care and health policy at the national, state or local level;
bring a depth of expertise and knowledge about health and health care to the policy-making process; and
can offer an informed perspective on important and complex challenges facing health policy-makers.

LIFE is a Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). This model of care is centered around the belief that it is better for older adults and for their families if their chronic care needs are provided in the community whenever possible. This is an innovative program in that it provides services to those who would otherwise need nursing home care while they remain in the community in their own home or the home of loved ones.

In 1994, Ruth Watson Lubic, an experienced nurse-midwife and health care reform advocate, began an exploration of working with existing community agencies in the District of Columbia to establish a freestanding birth center in a low-income area with high rates of infant and maternal mortality. Dr. Lubic, recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant, donated her award monies to the project and worked tirelessly to acquire other sources of initial support.

Welcome to the National Nursing Centers Consortium - Advancing nurse-led health care through policy, consultation, programs and applied research to reduce health disparities and meet people’s primary care and wellness needs.

Berwick and Tavenner have taken markedly different paths to the same job. Berwick spent decades writing, thinking and speaking about overhauling America’s health care system. His sweeping policy ideas, celebrated by many, also became a major political liability. In blocking his confirmation, Republicans seized onto Berwick’s comments about the British National Health Service as a possible “example” for the United States.

I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John ­McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration. But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.

Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president. They can be happy with the idea of a Democratic president—indeed, dancing-in-the-streets delirious—but not with the real thing. The various theories of disconsolate liberals all suffer from a failure to compare Obama with any plausible baseline. Instead they compare Obama with an imaginary president—either an imaginary Obama or a fantasy version of a past president.

Satellite broadcast provider DirecTV has been inundated with new subscribers following Monday's introduction of NHL ShutOut, a special new sports entertainment package that allows customers to miss 100 percent of National Hockey League programming.

looks like me but isn't.

Knee injuries, wrist and shoulder problems, at least 8 concussions, and every minor injury you can think of. Let’s walk through Lindros’ (many) injuries, with a special stop at the one that almost killed him.