The Memphis Grizzlies have earned their fair share of accolades and admiration over the past 2+ years, both as a team and individually. However, the frequency of both has certainly increased this season, and rightfully so. From a Coach of the Month honor for Taylor Jenkins to back-to-back Player of the Week Honors and a likely All-Star nod (potentially as a starter) for Ja Morant, the level of attention continues to reach new heights.

And, like the the Grizzlies, that ascension is far from its peak.

This assessment from fellow GBBer Brandon Abraham is absolutely spot on. And there is not even enough room to recognize both Jenkins and Zach Kleiman for Coach and Executive of the year. Kleiman, Jenkins, and Morant deserve all of the recognition that is coming their way. Desmond Banes play is more than deserving to be in the Most Improved Player conversation. While Jaren Jackson Jr. is certainly being talked about plenty for his overall improvements this year, especially on defense, the time has come to change to a perspective that truly recognizes the impact he is making.

Jackson Jr. is not just one of the most improved defenders or best young defenders in the league. He is one of the most impactful defenders in the league period, and is putting together a resume that should put him in the conversation for All-Defensive honors. With the numbers he is putting up, especially in terms of defensive activity, history is on his side.

If Jaren Jackson Jr. were to reach 50 steals by Wednesday (he is at 48 currently) against the Spurs, Jackson Jr. would become the first player other than Anthony Davis to have at least 100 blocks and 50 steals in a season through his teams first 50 games since Josh Smith did it during the 2012-2013 season. Since 2000, an NBA player has accomplished this feat 27 different times in a single season. In 16 of those 27 occurrences, the player earned All-Defensive First or Second Team honors (injuries prevented the number from being higher.) Even if Jaren does not reach 50 steals, its clear recent NBA history frequently recognizes those players who have shown his level of defensive activity.

Of course, while it is important to know where Jackson Jr. is now when it comes to his All-Defensive resume, its also important to know where he needs to wind up. With a third of the season left, Jackson Jr. needs 46 more blocks and 27 over 33 games more steals to produce 150 blocks and 75 steals in a season. Since 2000, this standard has been reached 35 different times. Out of those 35 occurrences, a player has received all defensive honors 22 times and Defensive Player of the Year honors eight times. The only players to reach this plateau over the past decade are Davis, DeAndre Jordan, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Dwight Howard. The company that Jackson Jr. could potentially become a part of this season may be even more impressive than his numbers themselves (especially considering his age).

Without a doubt, the entire body of work is what matters most when it comes to an All-Defensive Award. However, not all bodies of works are created equal. The peak performance of some campaigns certainly standout compared to others.

Not only has Jaren Jackson Jr.s defensive activity been impressive the entire season, it continues to improve, as Keith Parrish of Fastbreak Breakfast and Grind City Media shows above. As impressive as this six game stretch from earlier in January was, Jackson Jr.s production for the entire month may be even more stunning. In December, Jackson Jr. averaged 1.5 blocks and 1.2 steals per game. In January, Jackson Jr. has averaged 3.5 blocks and 1.1 steals per game (as of Sunday morning.)

Even if Jackson Jr.s per game numbers regress a bit, he only needs seven blocks and two steals over his next four games to reach 45 blocks and 15 steals in January. Over the past decade, only Anthony Davis, Larry Sanders, and Javale McGee have accomplished that. Since 2000, a player has produced at least 45 blocks and 15 steals 35 times in a calendar month. In 25 of these 35 cases, the player would go on to be make either the All-Defensive First or Second Team in that season. Beyond Jackson Jr.s body of work as a whole, the peak of his campaign also certainly correlates well with recent history in terms of being worthy of All-Defensive Honors.

Of course, Jackson Jr.s production in terms of counting statistics could be a result of quantity just as much as it is quality. However, a closer look at his production in terms of per possession and advanced rates also suggests Jackson Jr.s defensive activity is consistently reaching a rare level of quality. Since 2000, only five players have produced these per possession and advanced production rates while playing at least 1750 minutes in a single season:

3.5 Blocks per 100 possessions

1.5 Steals per 100 possessions

6.5% or better Block Rate

1.5% or better Steal Rate

For comparison, here are Jaren Jackson Jr.s numbers in those same categories through 1,294 minutes played this season as of Sunday morning:

3.9 Blocks per 100 possessions

1.8 Steals per 100 possessions

7.3% Block Rate

1.8% Steal Rate

The five aforementioned players who have achieved this level of production a total of seven times since 2000 are Ben Wallace, Marcus Camby, Anthony Davis, Rudy Gobert and Andrei Kirilenko. Each of these five players could easily be considered among the best 10-15 defenders in the NBA over the past quarter century. They have also combined to earn 21 All-Defensive team honors and eight Defensive Player of the Year awards since 2000. Jaren Jackson Jr. joining this elite company may be his biggest source of support to earn some level of All-Defensive recognition.

As can be seen on many different levels, Jaren Jackson Jr.s consistent level of defensive activity highly correlates with being worthy of All-Defensive honors compared to recent NBA History. Moreover, if the statistical support above seems to overlap or be a bit redundant, it is intentional. The reason being is that no matter what perspective you choose, Jackson Jr. is having a historical season. Whether it be where he is now vs. where he projects to be, the whole body of work vs. its peak, or counting stats vs. per possession/advanced metrics, Jackson Jr. lands among elite company and is a more than worthy candidate for All-Defensive honors.

Of course, with every new season, the criteria for All-Defensive honors continues to evolve. A big part of the equation remains defensive activity numbers. However, overall impact in many areas and reputation also factor into the equation. In terms of activity and impact, Jackson Jr.s resume speaks for itself. In terms of reputation, Jackson Jr.s candidacy naturally remains a work in progress since he is at the beginning of his career. This likely makes All-Defensive team honors much more of a reality for Jackson Jr. than NBA Defensive Player of the Year this season.

Even though that may be true, if Jackson Jr.s production remains at this level, the end result should be Jackson Jr. earning All-Defensive team honors and establishing himself as one of the NBAs premier defenders now and moving forward. The fact that Jackson Jr. is doing this at 22 years of age is one of the most important developments this season for the Grizzlies present and future.

For more Grizzlies talk, subscribe to the Grizzly Bear Blues podcast network on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and IHeart. Follow Grizzly Bear Blues on Twitter and Instagram.

Go here to read the rest:

History is on the side of Jaren Jackson Jr. - Grizzly Bear Blues

Rep. Pramila Jayapal has called it the biggest threat to Medicare youve never even heard of. Its known as Direct Contracting (DC), a program concocted by the Trump administration and not yet ended by the Biden administration to fully privatize Medicare.

DC is patterned after Medicare Advantage, the publicly financed, privately owned, hugely profitable version of Medicare now enrolling 26 million people at an annual cost of $343 billion. Simply put, DC is Medicare Advantage (MA) on steroids.

The growth of Medicare Advantage is a 35-year-long saga of a program conceived as a cheaper, better Medicare transformed into a behemoth that has not saved one cent nor produced better outcomes. Yet MA has beaten back every attempt to make it accountable for its cost and care. Like the Hydra, each victory adds more heft.

The politics of MA are complicated, not merely because, like the oil and gas industry, it generates enough money for large insurance companies to convert $150 million of profits into campaign contributions. By design, Medicare Advantage covers the costs of health care that are not covered at all or only partially paid by Medicare. Its 26 million enrollees are a silent majority, potentially available to threaten any elected official brave enough to challenge the program. But that leaves the public with worse health coverage and a model of privatization that could prove disastrous.

Medicares sole purpose in 1965 was to extend health coverage to the elderly by paying their doctor and hospital bills. In a Faustian bargain, Congress sacrificed Medicares regulatory role in return for the support of the hospital-operated Blue Cross Association and physician-owned Blue Shield plans, which set payment policies. The only constraint, medical necessity, was defined as any treatment ordered by a licensed doctor.

The actuary to the House Ways and Means Committee had confidently predicted an initial $2.2 billion price tag, increasing over 25 years to $12.4 billion in 1990. Instead, the initial price doubled by 1969 and reached $12.4 billion in 1973, just four years later.

In 1970, pediatrician Paul Ellwood, the apostle of managed care, presented a solution to reduce health care spending that he dubbed a health maintenance organization (HMO). Elwood was no fan of Medicare, famously calling it a crappy insurance policy. He believed private, prepaid, integrated physician practices could be incentivized to provide better care at less cost. At the time, nonprofit HMOs like Kaiser and Group Health had an admirable record of lower cost and better outcomes than traditional fee-for-service health care.

Then-President Nixon shared Ellwoods enthusiasm, but with a different agenda. Heres a transcript of a taped conversation between Nixon and John Ehrlichman, his chief domestic-policy adviser.

Ehrlichman: Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit the reason he can do it I had Edgar Kaiser come in talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: the less care they give them, the more money they make.

President Nixon: Fine.

Nixon was later presented with a plan, which became the HMO Act of 1973, to reduce federal spending in a manner that promised to be undetectable to participants. The alternatives to HMOs as a cost-containment strategy were politically unpalatableeither reducing benefits or reimposing price controls. The HMO program promised no blowback from beneficiaries or providers, at a time when the administration was struggling to gain leverage over inflation. HMOs fell out of favor due to narrow provider networks and instances of denied care. But it led to a subtler alternative: Medicare Advantage.

Unlike the Defense Departments TRICARE and the Veterans Health Administration, Medicare is not a public health care system. It is public financing that relies on a joint public-private insurance arrangement. The rules are set by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Congress, and the claims processed by insurance companies under contract to the federal government. Money from the Medicare Trust Fund, taxes, and beneficiary premiums secure services from the private U.S. health care system.

Medicare Advantage changes one critical element: the intermediary between the money and the services. Medicare still pays, but with MA it turns over all parts of the insurance function, including enforcing the rules for medical necessity and deciding how much to pay providers, to private companies. Retirees can choose from 3,834 plans offered by nine different companies in 2022. Four in ten Medicare beneficiaries have joined. Humana and UnitedHealthcare own half the MA plans.

Traditional Medicare leaves lots of holes that retirees must otherwise fill out of their own pockets. It does not cover vision, hearing, dental, or long-term care. Beneficiaries are responsible for monthly premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance (known as cost-sharing). And unlike commercial insurance, it has no cap on out-of-pocket spending. The extra cost added up to $6,509 per person in 2018, according to an AARP-commissioned study.

Twenty-six million people find MA a deal they cannot refuse. They gave up their hard-earned red, white, and blue Medicare card for one supplied by Humana, UnitedHealth, Anthem, Aetna, Kaiser, or another company. Like HMOs, the plans offer less freedom of choice, with limited provider networks and prior-approval requirements in exchange for sharply reduced and capped out-of-pocket expenses, and additional benefits like gym memberships.

Most recent retirees do not find the restrictions new or particularly burdensome. Anyone previously insured through an employer health plan dealt with very similar constraints.

The MA profit-making formula is simple: get a large sum of money from the Feds, spend less than traditional Medicare, give some of the excess to beneficiaries, and pocket the difference. Over the last 12 years (20092021), Medicare paid the MA plans $140 billion more than would have been spent if the same people stayed in Medicare. Put another way, Medicare during these years would have saved enough to pay for the enhanced Child Tax Credit in 2022, and then some.

MA plans follow the design of commercial insurance, with the beneficiary choosing between either an HMO, with a closed provider panel, or a PPO, which rewards participants who stay in its provider network. Either way, the insurance company constructs reimbursements and utilization checks to spend less than traditional Medicare.

MA companies have perfected the art of denying claims by requiring preauthorization of many services, especially expensive ones. For example, doctors treating UAW retirees for orthopedic injuries, a frequent legacy of assembly line work, must get MA prior approval for 246 specific procedures, or else the plan does not guarantee payment. MA plans deny 4 percent of claims for prior authorization and 8 percent for post-service payment requests. Very few people appeal. When they do, the HHS Office of Inspector General found that denials were reversed more than three-quarters of the time.

Just to see how it would fall out, Aaron Schwartz and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania reprocessed 6.5 million traditional Medicare Part B claims as if they were subject to MA prior authorization. Approximately one million might have been denied, accounting for 25 percent of Part B spending.

Our study found that health care spending for enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans is 10 to 25 percent lower than for comparable enrollees in traditional Medicare, said Amy Finkelstein, an MIT economist and one of the authors of an influential 2017 paper. Insurance companies earned gross margins of $2,256 per enrollee in 2020, more than double what they made in the group market.

Spending less would make perfect sense if MA enrollees were healthier. They are not. Medicare Advantage enrollees do not differ significantly from beneficiaries in traditional Medicare, the Commonwealth Fund reported in October, in terms of their age, race, income, chronic conditions, satisfaction with care, or access to care. Health outcomes are similarly no better or worse.

Over the past 30 years, laws were passed and regulations issued to contain costs and protect MA beneficiary access to care. Managed-care sponsors found ways around the rules.

Assuming HMOs to be more efficient, in 1985 the government set the payment rate at 95 percent of what would otherwise have been spent in Medicare. The plans needed to match traditional Medicare benefits but could make their own arrangements with hospitals, doctors, and labs, and keep the difference.

With the freedom to choose how much they paid out and where and whom they enrolled, the companies scammed the program by finding healthier retirees living in counties where rates were high. No plan operating in any U.S. county enrolled a sicker-than-average group of elderly people, according to a comprehensive Mathematica study commissioned by the Reagan administration. Despite this, expenditures for MA were approximately 5.7 percent higher than they would have been for traditional Medicare, despite getting 5 percent less from the feds.

The Clinton administration tried again to save money with HMOs. We think that payment rates that are 90 percent, rather than the current 95 percent, of community fee-for-service rates are appropriate, said Bruce Vladeck, Clintons head of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). He wasnt able to go that far, but significant cutbacks were made in 1997s Balanced Budget Act (BBA).

The BBA established a national growth cap and, under threat of penalty, forced the HMOs to stop cherry-picking. Since health care costs were increasing faster than the cap, and the plans had less ability to exploit healthier enrollees, the BBA effectively cut HMO margins. But the howl from the private plans was so loud that Congress subsequently loosened the buckle in 1999 and 2000. Even with the changes, BBA managed care did not save Medicare money. Plans were still outpacing traditional Medicare costs by 2 percent.

George W. Bushs Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) removed the BBA caps and increased funding, adding millions to MA payments. The price tag for excess spending during the first decade of the 21st century was $150 billion.

We, right now, give $15 billion every year as subsidies to private insurers under the Medicare system. Doesnt work any better through the private insurers, Sen. Barack Obama said in 2008, during the first presidential debate with Sen. John McCain. They just skim off $15 billion. That was a giveaway and part of the reason is because lobbyists are able to shape how Medicare works. Candidate Obama pledged to make MA no more costly than traditional Medicare.

By tweaking some elements, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to the Congressional Budget Office, would reset MA spending to no more than 101 percent of traditional Medicare. The result was to be an estimated $136 billion saved over ten years.

Just two years later, the plans got it all back. The insurance industry chalked up one of its greatest political victories in recent memory on Monday, Politico reported on April 3, 2013, as the Obama administration reversed course on a proposal to cut Medicare Advantage rates. With a sleight of hand so obvious that CMSs actuary publicly repudiated the move (conflicts with the Offices professional judgment), CMS increased MA rates by 3.3 percent, rather than cutting them by 2.3 percent.

In March 2021, MedPAC, an independent Medicare monitor that reports to Congress, reviewed the impact of the ACA. It found that aggregate plan payments under the ACA were similar to [traditional Medicare] levels for only one year before rising above.

No one even mentions MA as a cost-containment strategy anymore. The larger and richer the plans have become, the less leverage the feds have to regulate the industry. While the funding still comes from the U.S. Treasury, dispersed under the aegis of Congress, most of the power has passed to the companies.

Insurance companies have consistently found innovative ways to protect their bottom lines. A major one involves claiming MA enrollees are sick, even if they arent.

Doctors and hospitals in MA networks are frequently offered extra payments simply to record every ailment, whether treating it or not (a practice known as risk coding). In an 8,000-word article in respected health policy journal Health Affairs, Drs. Don Berwick and Richard Gilfillan detail how upcoding affords almost unlimited opportunities to manipulate the system to make money. They present the hypothetical case of Ms. Jones, a 72-year-old MA enrollee being treated for type 2 diabetes and congestive heart failure. With a risk adjustment score of 1.029, the annual payment for her is $9,000. Her physicians are paid extra to code all her ailments. Now her scorecard adds morbid obesity, major depression, COPD, and a pressure ulcer on her right heel. With no additional medical care or cost, the MA company is now paid $32,000, because Ms. Joness risk score totals 3.633.

As a result of this upcoding, Medicare gave MA plans $9 billion more in 2019 than it would have if the same beneficiaries had enrolled in traditional Medicare.

Another way MA reaps more funds is through star bonus payments. CMS began publishing evaluations of MA plans in 2009 to assist beneficiaries in plan selection. Numerical values were assigned to variables measuring care processes, outcome, patient experience, and access. The numbers are summarized on a scale of five stars.

In the original star publication, 1 in 7 plans scored four or 4.5 stars, and none were awarded five. For the 2022 plan year, 7 out of 10 received four-plus stars and 16 percent of plans were given fives. Is there improved quality, or teaching to the test?

MA companies began paying more attention to the star variables after the ACA anointed the system as a quality control mechanism and authorized bonuses based on stars. Critically, bonus payments are not budget-neutral. The more plans that qualify, the more the feds spend. MedPAC estimates that bonus payouts added about $6 billion to the 2019 MA bill.

Do bonus payments result in better care? The answer is no. Under the headline The Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Program Has Not Improved Plan Quality, University of Michigan researchers compared four million MA claims to the same number of commercial insurance claims. [T]hese results suggest that the quality bonus program did not produce the intended improvement in overall quality performance of MA plans.

A lot of the new capital is moving into setting up new Medicare Advantage plans because theyre growing rapidly, and the future is bright, Peter Orszag, CEO of Financial Advisory at investment firm Lazard and former Obama OMB administrator, told Business Insider. The possibility for payouts like the one for Ms. Jones has lured hedge funds and venture capitalists to invest in data mining companies and care aggregators, which are developing new ways to maximize MAs profitable deals. Berwick and Gilfillan found investors spent $50 billion to buy into MA-focused firms in a recent 18 months.

Direct contracting would privatize the remainder of traditional Medicare. Drawing on the MA experience, Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs) would serve as intermediaries between traditional Medicare beneficiaries and their medical-care providers. The DCE would receive an MA-like monthly payment for a specific population. It would make deals with networks of providers, manage beneficiary care and costs, and pay the bills, while keeping the difference. Medicares only role would be as banker.

In December 2021, CMS reiterated its invitation to organizations that currently operate in Medicare Advantage to become DCEs, targeting the very MA insurers and investor-controlled provider firms that are driving MA overpayments. One such firm, Oak Street, a for-profit organizer of MA providers, labeled MA as its core market and direct contracting as its opportunity in a November 2021 corporate presentation.

While the Biden administration put a halt to the most extreme form of direct contracting, it has moved ahead with two others. Fifty-three bidders have been designated in the first class of DCEs. They include 28 investor-controlled plans including Oak Street, six insurers, and 19 health care providerowned companies. The investor and insurer DCEs will be operating in 38 states and have access to 84 percent of all beneficiaries.

Many on Wall Street are licking their chops. Clover, a 50,000-member, San Franciscobased MA plan, expects to harvest a direct-contracting bonanza large enough to justify its $1.2 billion IPO. HHS senior official Liz Fowler (an architect of the Affordable Care Act) projects the transition of all traditional Medicare to DC to be complete by 2030.

According to the Biden administration, Direct Contracting will facilitate the next evolution of risk-sharing arrangements to produce value and high-quality health care. Berwick and Gilfillan believe that the Direct Contracting model seems to have ignored the lessons learned from the experience of MA.

One of the principal lessons learned by private MA is how managing care is so easily morphed into managing costs, and how much excess revenue that produces. The private Medicare companies have succeeded in getting the feds to turn over more and more to them while obliterating the notion that HMOs would save money or improve care. Their power to extend their reach to all $880 billion in Medicare spending is embedded in the program itself. The more money and beneficiaries they control, the more juice they have to control more.

Last fall, 13 U.S. senators (eight Democrats and five Republicans) sent a letter promising to stand ready to protect MA from payments cuts. The letter was part of a long stream of such letters ritualistically issued by lawmakers at the urging of the industry, every time anyone announces consideration of MA cost control. This latest version of the pledge was precipitated by a draft of the Build Back Better Act that would include hearing, vision, and dental benefits in the regular Medicare menu for the first time, threatening one of the main selling points of MA.

The campaign against the new benefits was intense and a little weird. AHIP, the insurance industry lobbying group, stated that adding these services could negatively affect the benefits available to MA recipients, because it might lead to a cut in the payments made to MA plans. AHIPs press release stated it would be bad for all seniors, even though all seniors are not in MA plans. Politico quoted an industry insider describing a recent $2.6 million ad campaign against the new Medicare benefits. We know members are already telling leadership: We cant take attack ads saying were cutting Medicare. They know the public isnt going to distinguish between the private and public pieces of it.

What the senators and lobbyists understand is that MA depends on the threat of an uprising of unhappy seniors. Its a potent terror. Some electeds are swayed by campaign contributions. But these would matter very little without the potential mobilization of 64 million beneficiaries, their concerned children, and grandchildren.

The experts have proposed sophisticated technical fixes to remedy MAs overpayments. It might work, as the Balanced Budget Act and the ACA did, for a while. The Department of Justice has filed cases against such large MA providers as Kaiser, United, and Anthem for submitting false risk adjustment claims. The Justice Department has even opened an inquiry into Oak Streets practices.

But neither more regulation nor billion-dollar fines will suffice. The history of the MA dance shows that by the time the music ends, the private partner has swept the public one off her feet. Hes taken control over every step.

To put a stop to MAs distortions and its systematic theft would require a campaign to make Medicare a more public health insurer. From the start, it ceded significant financial authority to private hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies. The more beneficiaries and money handed over to MA, the greater its power to resist. The ascendency of DC is the latest and most serious warning sign that the private profit-maximizers are close to victory. Nothing short of full public control can keep that from happening.

Protection of public Medicare requires that its beneficiaries be offered a better way to get affordable health care. I feel guilty that my enrollment in a UnitedHealthcare MA plan contributes to that companys money and power. Yet I am on MA because without it, Medicare is a very risky proposition. I could be impoverished trying to pay for my health care. MA is the only plan I can afford.

History shows that the federal governments attempt to harness the perceived benefits of managed care to Medicare by attempting to separate for-profit entities from profit-maximizing behavior has failed. Instead of throwing more money at MA to reform it, trying to cut MA payments, or regulating, perhaps the solution is starving the beast. With reduced cost-sharing and service expansion, people would have less incentive to enroll in MA. The fewer beneficiaries, the less money paid out, the less power.

A campaign to improve Medicare might be the only political avenue open to those who want to save it.

Continue reading here:

The Dark History of Medicare Privatization - The American Prospect

Weve lost count of how many times weve (proverbially) dunked on the Los Angeles Lakers this season. We called them the best 2012 basketball team of all time after acquiring Carmelo Anthony. We dubbed the Russell Westbrook experiment a failure after just a few hours. Weve covered their airballs with glee and mishandles with gusto. Theyre an easy target to be surean aging and underachieving superteam lacking everything but humility. Still, it seems a little unfair. Mean-spirited even. We thought about laying off The Lakeshow and finding some new NBA target to pick on but then we saw this. One more time can't hurt, right?

Thats the opening possession from Sunday nights 113-107 loss to the Miami Heat, which dropped the Lakers below .500 with the All-Star break looming. Thankfully for the Lakers, no one saw it because, you know, FOOTBALL, but we feel perfectly comfortable calling this the most embarrassing possession in NBA history. Seriously, WTF is going on here?

Jordan would never. From there we get a seven sideways passes at the top of the key, a missed dunk, and Trevor Ariza airmailing the ball into the seats like hes Ryan Tannehill or something. LeBron and co. clearly wanted to come out loose and start having fun with basketball again. Instead they came out playing like third graders impersonating the Harlem Globetrotters at recess. Weve searched up and down the thesaurus for an adjective to describe this and embarrassing really is the only one that does it justice.

Making matters even worse is the fact the Lakers get the Nets and Sixers on the road in their next two. Needless to say, they better cut it out with this schoolyard crap or were going to be dishing out atomic wedgies again in 48 hours time. No one wants that. Not even us.

Originally posted here:

Hey kids, want to see the most embarrassing possession in NBA history? - GolfDigest.com

Join University of Miami Libraries to celebrate the creation and launch of a new online portal that features thousands of Pan American World Airways materials digitized from various collections.

Although it has been decades since Pan American World Airways ruled the skies, its legacy is still alive around the world. From being the airline to fly the Beatles to the United States to airlifting the first Cuban refugees to Miami, the iconic carrier has cemented itself into different parts of history.

People across the globe will now have the opportunity to learn more about the impact the airline made through the launch of a new online portal. The Cleared for Takeoff: Explore Commercial Aviation documentation features Pan Am materials digitized from collections at the University of Miami, HistoryMiami Museum, and Duke University, alongside commercial aviation resources from the Digital Public Library of Americas (DPLA) partner network.

Pan Am was such an integral part of not just aviation history, but history in general, locally, nationally, and internationally,'' explained Gabriella Williams, digital projects librarian. Digitizing these materials means that anyone anywhere can access them at any time, increasing opportunities for discovery and analysis of the records.

This project was made possible by a 2018 Digitizing Hidden Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As part of this collaborative grant project, the University of Miami and other grant partners digitized archival records from the Pan American World Airways, Inc. Records.

The University of Miami Libraries Pan Am collection features a wealth of materials including annual reports, periodicals, timetables, directories, manuals, press releases, speeches, and flight/route information.

The Pan American World Airways archive is the largest and most varied of our collections, and it is certainly one of the most used, said Cristina Favretto, librarian professor and head of Special Collections. It has attracted researchers from around the world, working on an astonishing array of projectsfrom the evolution of airline meals to connections with Amanda Earharts disappearance. It is also heavily used by our own faculty and students, many of whom have family connections with the airline, she pointed out. Mentioning Pan Am to someone is like giving them a taste of Prousts madeleine: it sparks memories and elicits stories. And the various partnerships that have helped make this important collection such an important research tool to a worldwide audience provide an excellent model of cross-institutional collaborations.

According to Williams, who played an integral role in the digitization, With the completion of the CLIR grant project, our Pan Am digital collection now includes 230,666 images and is one of UMLs most expansive digital collection to date, she said.

She also noted that she believes the vast collection offers something for everyone.

I think people will find that theres something in the collections that will interest anyone in some way or be useful to their research, said Williams. Some of the overarching themes that can be extracted from the recordssuch as international relations and globalization, feminism and gender roles, labor rights, and environmentalismare all things were still grappling with today.

The aviation portal aims to enable students, teachers, scholars, and other researchers to easily discover and build connections across aviation collections nationwide. It includes an interactive Pan Am timeline exhibition, as well as a primary source set and a classroom lesson plan for instructors.

It feels incredible to finally put all of our Pan Am collections together alongside dozens of other institutions aviation materials from across the nation, including power players such as the National Archives and the National Air & Space Museum, said Williams. Our goal was to create a one-stop shop for researchers investigating commercial aviation history and weve accomplished that. This helps put UML and our grant partners at the forefront of innovation, and that feels very exciting.

Williams explained that she drew a lot of inspiration for this project from some of Pan Ams historical flights. Pan Am was the first commercial airline to fly across the Pacific Ocean in 1935.

In the early days, there were no direct flightsyou had to do it in segments and all of that took a lot of careful preparation, planning, and coordination among many people, she reported. In the same vein, this grant project was very similar. How do you build a subject-based research tool that never existed before? It couldnt be done all at once. There were a lot of moving parts and we had to assemble it piece by piece.

University of Miami Libraries and its grant partners will host an online presentation on Wednesday, Jan. 26, at 3 p.m. Participate in the webinar to learn more about the newly launched website.

Read the original post:

'Cleared for takeoff': New website takes an inside look into the history of Pan Am - University of Miami

Every 3 months, or whenever we get around to it, those of us with diabetes find ourselves getting that all-important A1C lab test that gauges how were managing our blood sugar levels over time. This can be a lot of pressure, especially when weve put in a whole bunch of work in hopes of seeing some improvement.

The American Diabetes Association generally recommends aiming for an A1C of 7 percent or less for both adults and children with type 1 diabetes (T1D). But recent research shows that only a minority of patients reach those goals.

Because, frankly, diabetes can be maddeningly unpredictable so most of us struggle along in pursuit of lowering our A1C, with constant worry about not hitting the mark.

Have you ever wondered what the highest A1C in history might be? Who would even hold this dubious record, and how high is it possible to go without falling into a coma with any type of diabetes?

DiabetesMine investigated this issue because inquiring minds like to know.

We began by looking in the Guinness Book of World Records, of course. Oddly, the Guinness staff dont seem to have any listings related to A1Cs. They do, however, report that Michael Patrick Buonocore survived a blood glucose (BG) level of 2,656 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) upon admittance to the ER in March 2008 in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Buonocore was just a kid at the time, and that record-high sugar level led his parents to eventually launch a nonprofit called Michaels Miracles that provides financial assistance to families with T1D in need.

So does Buonocore also hold the record for highest A1C?

No, he doesnt. Thats because while hes living proof that its possible to survive stratospheric blood sugar levels, a skyscraping A1C requires both altitude and time. Remember that A1Cs provide a 3-month average of our blood sugars. Individual high BG readings, even crazy-high ones, dont alter the test as much as youd think if they last only a short time. Because T1D presents in children so quickly, Buonocores actual A1C level at diagnosis would probably have been rather middle of the road. It takes a long, slow burn to make an A1C boil.

But just to be sure, I reached out to his parents, who told me that his A1C was 11.9 percent at diagnosis. Higher than we expected but not too high given the four-digit BG reading.

The highest A1C turns out to be a tricky piece of data to ferret out. If you try Google, you find a gazillion people talking about their own personal highest A1Cs and comparing notes with others.

Most A1C point-of-care machines cap out at a certain number, including those at-home testing A1C kits you can buy online.

At the federal clinic where Id worked for over a decade, our A1C results capped out at 14 percent. If the A1C is higher than that particularly at T2D diagnosis time the machine just reads >14%. How much higher is anyoneguess. It could be 14.1 percent, or it could 20 percent.

If you do the math, clocking a 14 percent means youre possibly experiencing a 24-7-90 (24 hours a day, 7 days per week, for 90 days) blood sugar average of 355 mg/dL.

Of course, labs can calculate higher A1Cs. Personally, the highest Ive ever seen is an A1C result in the low 20s. If your A1C was, say 21 percent, it would take a 3-month average blood sugar of 556 mg/dL.

How is that possible? If your blood sugar were in the 500s, wouldnt you go into a coma long before the 3 months were up? Those with T1D would, but those with T2D do not generally go into comas because they have insulin in their bodies all the time, even if they cant process it well enough to keep their BG at safe levels.

Now, coma-free does not mean problem-free. Blood sugar levels this high are toxic. People diagnosed with sky-high A1Cs are generally also diagnosed with complications right out of the gate most commonly retinopathy and sometimes kidney and nerve damage, as well.

But that doesnt answer the question of the unfortunate individual who holds the record for highest A1C ever.

Someone I know mentioned theyd once seen a 27 percent A1C, but thats hard to believe without any documentation to back it up. In asking my own healthcare colleagues, I posed this question online to a group of endocrinologists: Whats the highest A1C youve ever seen, or whats the highest youve ever heard a colleague talk about?

I had my money on 35 percent. That would be a 3-month blood sugar average of 1,000 mg/dL. But the answers I got were surprising, as none of my esteemed colleagues had ever seen or heard of A1Cs as high as I had commonly seen in my clinic in New Mexico.

Dr. Silvio Inzucchi at the Yale School of Medicine is a diabetes guru who wrote a go-to e-book for clinical facts, Diabetes Facts and Guidelines. He told DiabetesMine, The highest we usually see is in the 12-14 percent range, though I think Ive seen an 18 percent a long time ago.

In the same ballpark is Donna Tomky, a New Mexico nurse practitioner and diabetes educator who has been past president of the American Association of Diabetes Educators (now the Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists).

Over the years, Ive seen an A1C as high as 19 percent in a type 1 individual who purposely omitted insulin and was admitted for DKA, she said.

In terms of youth and children, Dr. Shara Bialo, a pediatric endocrinologist and fellow T1D in New Jersey, told DiabetesMine that her clinic uses the same point-of-care A1C test that only goes as high as 14 percent. But when one of her patients lands in the hospital, a serum draw is done to determine that persons A1C.

The highest I have seen personally is a 17 percent, but my colleague had a patient with a 19 percent, she said, noting both were teenagers with established T1D and one of whom just found out she was pregnant.

Dr. David Hite, a diabetes education consultant based in California, reports: I had a patient in the clinic with a 17 percent. Thats rare. I usually see new diabetics in the clinic under 14 percent. They come in because they feel like crap and cant tolerate conditions needed to get it lower.

Well-known USC Keck School of Medicine endocrinologist Dr. Francine Kaufman (who now serves as chief medical officer of Senseonics, Inc.) took the top prize in my straw poll with her one-word answer: 22 percent. Repeat after me: Wow!

If youre wondering why the results arent generally higher, that may be because endos and diabetes specialty clinics usually see those with T1D, people who cant survive long in the high-octane environment needed to clock those dangerously high A1C scores. That honor has to go to our T2D cousins, who are typically seen by general practitioners and primary care doctors.

Often, surveys of those physicians show initial high A1C results at the time of T2D diagnosis, with those results lowering dramatically after the T2D patient begins to be treated.

The American Association of Clinical Chemistry is the leading authority on these diagnostic lab tests, and Dr. Darci Block is one of the big wigs whos been a part of the Mayo Clinics Clinical Core Laboratory Services Division. While some lab tests can show higher results than a clinics point-of-care method, she wonders why it would matter just how high a particular result is above 14 percent. To her, anything over 14 is so poor that it becomes not clinically important given the already-urgent need to address the diabetes management, Block says.

Then again, other experts do believe that lowering an A1C of 22 percent at diagnosis to 17 percent could be clinically important. Its certainly an indication that the patient is on the right path.

But Block also points out that crazy-high A1C test results likely have a significant error range. For what its worth, she says shes personally never seen readings higher than 17 percent in her career.

Dr. David Goldstein, the University of Missouri Health Sciences Center Diabetes Diagnostic Laboratory, said he didnt know of any group or company that keeps track of high A1Cs. But he personally has seen an 18 percent result, reflecting a plasma glucose of roughly 400 mg/dL. In newly diagnosed T1D children, the average A1C is about 10 to 12 percent, he said similar to what was recorded in Buonocore, the boy who marked the highest single BG reading in history in the Guinness Book of World Records.

But Goldstein went on to point out an interesting fact that no one else did.

There is a practical limit to how high the A1C can get because the kidneys filter out and excrete glucose from the blood when the plasma glucose level gets over 180 to 200 mg/dL, he said. This is called the renal threshold for glucose, and it differs among people. Only in people with kidney failure or with a high renal threshold can the plasma glucose level be sustained at a high enough level to result in a very high A1C.

That means while we may not be able to conclusively figure out the highest A1C ever, the experts make it clear that whoever holds that dubious honor also has ruined kidneys. This brings us back to Blocks assertion that too high is just too high, and the specific digits dont really matter.

Maybe shes right there. Renowned diabetes educator and author Gary Scheiner of Integrated Diabetes Services in Pennsylvania put it more colorfully. About any A1C above 12 percent, he said: At that high, theres no way the patient could possibly be thinking clearly. A little bird should pop up and just start humming Purple Haze.'

Read the original post:

In Search of the Highest Diabetes A1C Result in History - Healthline

On Aug. 16, 2020, Californias Death Valley reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit, according to an automated measuring system there, representing one of thehighest temperatures ever recorded on the planet. The world record, also recorded at Death Valley, was 134 degrees in July 1913.

More than 210 degrees Fahrenheitseparates the highest and the lowest temperatures on record in the United States, the third-largest country in the world. As some states are infamous for having blistering hot summers, others become inundated by winter storms and frigid cold. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that thesummer of 2020 was the hottest on recordin the Northern Hemisphere and the second-hottest summer globally.

Stackerconsulted 2019 data from theNOAAs State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC)to create this slideshow illustrating the hottest and coldest temperatures ever recorded in each state. Each slide also reveals the all-time highest 24-hour precipitation record and all-time highest 24-hour snowfall.

Check out data from each New England state below:

Massachusetts

- All-time highest temperature: 107 F (Chester 2 on Aug. 2, 1975)

- All-time lowest temperature: -35 F (Coldbrook on Feb.15, 1943)

- All-time highest 24-hour precipitation: 18.15 inches (Westfield on Aug. 1819, 1955)

- All-time highest 24-hour snowfall: 29 inches (Natick on April 1, 1997)

Westfield, Massachusetts, suffered from heavy flooding and rainfall in the middle of August 1955, making it the wettest day for the state.The Great Flood of 1955affected both Connecticut and Massachusetts, resulting from Hurricanes Connie and then a week later, Hurricane Diane.

Connecticut

- All-time highest temperature: 106 F (Torrington on Aug. 23, 1916)

- All-time lowest temperature: -32 F (Falls Village on Feb. 16, 1943)

- All-time highest 24-hour precipitation: 12.77 inches (Burlington on Aug. 19, 1955)

- All-time highest 24-hour snowfall: 36 inches (Ansonia 1 NE on Feb. 89, 2013)

On Aug. 19, 1955,The Great Flood of 1955occurred in Burlington. The last time Connecticut had witnessed such heavy rainfalls was during colonial times. Fast forward to 64 years later to October 2019 when strong winds and heavy rains left thousands of residents without electricity in Wilton, Connecticut. Following that, coastal flooding warnings were also issued to New Haven and Fairfield counties.

Maine

- All-time highest temperature: 105 F (North Bridgton on July 10, 1911)

- All-time lowest temperature: -50 F (Big Black River (near Saint Pamphile, Pq) on Jan. 16, 2009)

- All-time highest 24-hour precipitation: 13.32 inches (Portland Jetport on Oct. 2021, 1996)

- All-time highest 24-hour snowfall: 40 inches (Orono on Dec. 30, 1962)

The flood of Southern Maine in 1996 resulted in the states highest rainfall or precipitation levels on Oct. 2021, 1996, that was recorded at the Portland Jetport. According to theU.S. Geological Survey, the severe flooding resulted in one death and damaged more than 2,100 homes and businesses. Most recently, on April 21, 2019, huge amounts of snow that had accumulated across Maine resulted in several minor and major floods.

New Hampshire

- All-time highest temperature: 106 F (Nashua 2 Nnw on July 4, 1911)

- All-time lowest temperature: -50 F (Mount Washington on Jan. 22, 1885)

- All-time highest 24-hour precipitation: 11.07 inches (Mount Washington on Oct.2021, 1996)

- All-time highest 24-hour snowfall: 49.3 inches (Mount Washington on Feb. 25, 1969)

New Hampshires 100-Hour Snowstorm of February 1969produced record snowfall for New Hampshire. Even the neighboring states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont were affected by the massive snowstorm.

Rhode Island

- All-time highest temperature: 104 F (Providence on Aug. 2, 1975)

- All-time lowest temperature: -28 F (Wood River Junction on Jan. 11, 1942)

- All-time highest 24-hour precipitation: 12.13 inches (Westerly 1 W on Sept. 1617, 1932)

- All-time highest 24-hour snowfall: 30 inches (Woonsocket on Feb. 7, 1978)

Theblizzard of 1978in Rhode Island turned a seemingly normal Monday into a historical record of the highest snowfall the state had ever experienced. The snowfall began at 10 a.m. Monday and didnt stop for 36 hours. It was believed that around 55 inches of snow accumulated in different parts of the state.

Vermont

- All-time highest temperature: 107 F (Vernon on July 7, 1912)

- All-time lowest temperature: -50 F (Bloomfield on Dec. 30, 1933)

- All-time highest 24-hour precipitation: 9.92 inches (Mount Mansfield on Sept.17, 1999)

- All-time highest 24-hour snowfall: 42 inches (Jay Peak on Feb.5, 1995)

Bloomfield, a town with a tiny population of 221 people (as of the 2010 census), recorded the states most unbearably cold temperature in 1933. Normally, the average temperature during winter in the state ranges between 2 degreesto 12 degrees.

View original post here:

These are the most extreme temperatures in the history of Massachusetts and other New England states - MassLive.com

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) Tensions continue to rise in Ukraine as an estimated 127,000 Russian soldiers are in position near its eastern border.

President Biden and other world leaders have warned the Russian government not to invade, even taking steps toward a possible military response. The Pentagon put 8,500 troops on heightened alert to possibly be deployed to Europe.

The State Department is asking diplomats families, non-essential embassy personnel and U.S. citizens to evacuate Ukraine.

With questions of remaining, a military and Russian history expert are weighing in on the impact this could have here at home.

Theres been a number of opening gambits that have opened in the past couple of weeks then things have just escalated from there, University of Alabama Professor of Russian History Dr. Margaret Peacock said putting American troops in Ukraine is like Russia putting troops in Mexico.

They see Ukraine as a critical part of what it means to be Russian or a critical part of the Russian self, Peacock said. Theres no simple sending in American troops to solve a problem in Ukraine.

Any time tensions are high, the 117th Air Refueling Wing in Birmingham is standing by, ready to do whats needed.

Theyre prepared to respond to the orders of governor and president at moments notice, Retired U.S. Airforce Colonel Scott Grant said.

Grant said units there are ready to aid in a refueling process so military planes can fly for hours overseas without landing.

The air refueling aspect of that allows us to project that force globally and at a moments notice, Grant said.

According to Peacock, America needs to be careful about what the cost of escalation is. She says its a terrible idea for American troops to invade in Ukraine because that could create an even larger global problem.

It may be possible that delaying the conversation about Ukrainian entrance into NATO is in fact the price of peace, Peacock said.

In the long run, Grant said we may be focusing on Ukraine, but countries like China and North Korea are watching our response.

The sovereignty of the U.S. depends in the long game on how we project power and how we project deterrence, Grant said.

Both Peacock and Grant said the messaging the U.S. projects is tied to global stability. They said if the U.S. starts to cut trade relationships, it could do more harm especially with the supply chain issues we face right now due to the pandemic.

Read more from the original source:

University of Alabama Russian history professor and retired colonel weigh in on Ukraine tensions - WIAT - CBS42.com

SASABE, Ariz. (KGUN) It might just be the most historically significant ranch in the state of Arizona. Rancho de la Osa is located an hour and a half southwest of Tucson, but a world away from civilization.

On an average day at Rancho de la Osa you will find manager Lynne Knox and her husband Ross Knox on horseback, cutting cattle, just like it has been done on this ranch for well over 300 years.

Pat Parris

"Ross and I feel very privileged to be here," said Lynne Knox. "Not just for the history of the ranch, but the folks that we get to meet."

Guests come from all over the world for the scenic beauty and the horseback riding.

They leave with an appreciation for the rich history of Rancho de la Osa. A history that actually began in 1699, when Padre Kino came to the Tohono O'odham village on this site.

"He came to the village and brought a heard of cattle and sheep to the villagers," Rancho de la Osa Proprietor Paul Bear explained. "He came through the pass over here, Presumido Pass, down the pass and to the ranch. He worked out a deal to build a mission outpost here."

Jesuit priests then ran the ranchero, constructing a building that same year. You can still see part of it today.

"It's the foundation of the original building from 1699," said Bear.

He says in 1722, Jesuit priests used the foundation for a new mission outpost.

Today, the building is home to the La Osa Cantina. What a story it could tell.

At age 300, it's the oldest continually used building in Arizona.

Pat Parris

U.S. Presidents, Supreme Court Justices and Hollywood stars have all stayed at Rancho de la Osa and spent time in the cantina.

A quick tour through the historic and beautiful Hacienda gives you a sense of the famous people who also once stayed here.

"This one up here's Lady Bird Johnson, out front of the cantina," Bear said pointing to a black and white photo on the wall.

Lady Bird's husband, Lyndon Johnson, loved the ranch so much, he had his own horses brought in from Texas so he could ride in the Sonoran Desert.

Rancho de la Osa

When the ranch first opened to guests in 1924, early Western film star Tom Mix was a regular. By the 1960s, so was legendary actor John Wayne.

"He did stay here maybe even more than a lot of the ranches," said Know. "They filmed several of those films here. That's really cool to people and we do know there's a room that he did enjoy. So, it's really nice to say that that room John Wayne did stay in."

Many guests request room 10, where John Wayne stayed.

The author of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, was also a frequent guest.

Fast forward to today, and they still call guests and ranch hands the same way when it's time to eat, by ringing the bell.

Meals are still served family style.

The only thing that's changed, the backdrop of the border wall on the hillside adjacent to the ranch.

"Everyone was concerned about the wall making a big difference, it's just the opposite," Knox said. "People are fascinated. They want to come down, the want to figure out what's going on here, what's it like on the border."

Despite the pandemic, Rancho de la Osa is doing well. Occupancy is up, with visitors still managing to come from all around the world.

Pat Parris

After nearly 325 years, Paul Bear says the future is bright for this hidden gem in the desert.

"There's a lot of history here and I'm proud to be a caretaker of it."

Osa is bear in spanish. Paul Bear, and his partners, bought the ranch at auction in 2016. They soon reopened it as a guest ranch after being closed for six years.

-Pat Parris is an anchor and reporter for KGUN 9. He is a graduate of Sabino High School where he was the 1982 high school state track champion in the 800 meters. While in high school and college, he worked part-time in the KGUN 9 newsroom. His father, Jack Parris, is a former general manager of the station. Share your story ideas and important issues with Pat by emailing pat.parris@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Read more:

History and a long list of famous guests are just part of the fascination of Rancho de la Osa - KGUN

If you're a numbers person, it's hard not to compare what the Lady Vols are doing now to that final four team..

On April 8th, 2008, the Tennessee women's basketball team ended the season just as they started it -- as national champions.

The Lady Vols clinched their unprecedented 8th national title as they defeated Stanford.

It was a revenge game for Tennessee, who fell to Stanford in overtime during the regular season.

On January 24th, 2008, exactly 14 years ago today, the Lady Vols sat at 17-1, with 8 top 25 wins, riding a 7 game win streak.

Now, fast forward, 14 years later, the Lady Vols sit at 18-1. Its their best start since the 2007-08 season.

Tennessee's only loss is to, you guessed it, Stanford.

The Lady Vols have 5 top 25 wins so far this season and are currently riding a nine game win streak.

If you're a numbers person, it's hard not to compare what the Lady Vols are doing now to that final four team.

The question becomes 'is history repeating itself?'

Well, sort-of, but these two teams are winning in completely different ways.

In 2008, Tennessee had arguably the best player in program history - a name that speaks for itself, Candance Parker. The first overall pick in the WNBA Draft.

But the star-studded roster was deeper than that. Alexis Hornbuckle was also a first round pick... Shannon Bobbitt and Nicky Anosike were taken in the second round and Alberta Auguste was a third round selection.

This year's team is younger and less flashy. They are led by junior guard Jordan Horston.

This team is gritty, securing huge wins by committee. That was evident against No. 13 Georgia on Sunday. The Lady Vols won on the road, despite committing 15 first half turnovers, playing without starting guard Tess Darby, and limiting Tamari Key late in the game because of foul trouble.

On Monday, the Lady Vols moved up one spot to No. 4 on the AP Top 25 Poll.Tennessee leads the nation in field-goal percentage defense, allowing just 54 points per game. UT is also ranked number one nationally in defensive rebounds.

The characteristics are uncanny to the 2008 national title team, but are the Lady Vols final four material?

The rest is here:

'History repeating itself': Is Tennessee women's basketball team on the same path as the 2007-08 national championship team? - WBIR.com

Ads to Go

Would you like to receive our ads to go? Sign Up Today!

Would you like to receive our breaking news? Sign up today!

Want to receive notice about our circulation promotions and contests? Sign Up Today!

Get the latest local and national news.

Would you like to receive our daily headlines? Sign Up Today!

Would you like to receive our lifestyle headlines about food and wine, Olean living, local history and more? Sign Up Today!

Get our expert short-term forecast, summary of the weather details and news of any severe weather.

Would you like to receive our latest obituaries?Sign Up Today!

Would you like to receive our sports news? Sign Up Today!

The rest is here:

The House of Dior's history on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum - Olean Times Herald

The U.S. Olympic team of 222 athletes for the Beijing Games includes 108 women, set to be the most women competing for any nation in the history of the Winter Olympics.

It will mark the 11th consecutive Games that the U.S. will tie or break the record for most women competing at a Winter Olympics for a single nation, a streak that began in 1984, according to Olympedia.org.

In 1984, it had 30 women, then tying the record it set in 1976. In 1992, the U.S. became the first nation with 50 female competitors at a Winter Olympics. It had 100 in 2014 and 101 in 2018.

MORE: Team USA athlete roster for 2022 Winter Olympics

At the first Winter Olympics in 1924, there were 312 athletes: 299 men and 13 women, according to Olympedia.

Now, every Winter Olympic sport has female participation except Nordic combined, which may have a womens event come the 2026 Games.

Last year, the U.S. shattered the record for most women competing at a Summer Games with 336, upping the mark of 291 that the U.S. set at the 2016 Rio Games.

The Opening Ceremony is Feb. 4.

ON HER TURF: Why isnt there greater gender balance at the Olympics?

OlympicTalk is on Apple News. Favorite us!

Read this article:

U.S. Olympic team has most female athletes in Winter Games history - Home of the Olympic Channel

The phrase history is written by the victors has ricocheted off the halls of history for as long as there have been victors. This saying implies that those who win or come out on top get to write how it all went down and, more importantly, how we remember it. While revisionist history has made a comeback through avenues like Broadways Hamiltonand Malcolm Gladwells appropriately titled podcast Revisionist History, this is still largely true. This saying shines a light on how we perceive the past, what we remember, and why.

Even guitar history is susceptible to this dynamic. The first half of the 1960s was an explosive time for music and the innovation that fueled it, and the Maestro Fuzz-Tone was at the center of that explosion. Although many credit the Fuzz-Tone with single-handedly starting the fuzz craze, thats a major oversimplification. True, it helped transform the electric guitar from the adolescent, clean, jangly sound of Peggy Sue and I Want To Hold Your Hand into the full-on nuclear assault of songs like Purple Hazeand Communication Breakdown, but the Fuzz-Tone didnt do it alone.

The Fuzz-Tone was the first fuzz pedal (and guitar pedal in general) to be produced for mass consumption, but it was not the first device to create such a sound. Up until now in this series, youve mostly heard the winners stories, but between that accidental malfunction of Glen Snoddys tube mixer channel during the Nashville recording session of Dont Worry and Keith Richards mid-sleep epiphany of Satisfactionfour years later in 1964, a lot happened behind the scenes.

So, before we tackle the Tone Bender and commit to moving our narrative fully into 1965, I want to cover these easily overlooked moments from the first half of the 1960s. You can think of these as the guitars deleted scenes from the greatest decade in rock history.

As the worlds first guitar pedal, the Fuzz-Tone would set the template for every pedal that came after it

Our first stop is Phoenix, Arizona. Producer and songwriter Lee Hazlewood was known as a pioneer in the recording booth, and in 1960 he commissioned a Phoenix radio station technician to create a fuzz box that would allow him to produce the sound of fuzzed-out distortion on demand. Sadly, the technicians name is lost to history, which only underscores my earlier point: important moments (and people!) are often obscured by the bigger headlines.

Session guitarist Al Casey was the first musician to use this fuzz box in a recording, specifically in Sanford Clarks Go On Home. In an interview, Casey explained that he and Clark wanted a good, nice, clean sound but that Hazlewood pushed for something more distorted. Hazlewood got his way in the end, and as a result Go On Homewas released in March 1960 featuring gritty, distorted fuzz. Listen to the track and you will hear this fantastic fuzz sound used in tandem with what seems to be the tremolo tone from his amplifier. The sound is fat and warm and the tremolo adds the perfect movement to the track. Its like a beautifully broken Spaghetti Western soundtrack.

This is one of the first, if not the first recorded use of an electronic circuit specifically built to create a distorted fuzz tone on a guitar. Note that this is not the first recorded use of fuzz, as many other methods of producing fuzzy, distorted guitar tones had been used prior to this (even as far back as 1946 with the Bob Wills Boogie), but this was likely the first use of a solid-state electronic device to produce the sound. Now, heres where the timeline gets a little confusing. That same year, Dont Worry was recorded and the infamous broken mixer channel created a very similar fuzz tone on Grady Martins six-string bass. The difference? Dont Worryachieved its fuzz sound purely by accident, an electronic malfunction due to a blown transformer, whereas Hazlewood had built a device specifically to create this fuzz sound.

If youve been following this column, you already know that Glen Snoddy liked the fuzz effect in Dont Worry so much that he collaborated with radio technician Revis Hobbs to create a circuit that replicated that broken mixers sound. This collaboration in return created the first mass-produced guitar pedal, the Maestro Fuzz-Tone. What most people do not realize is that the fuzz box that Hazlewood commissioned in 1960 and used on Sanford Clarks Go On Home predates the Maestro Fuzz-Tones design by at leasta year (Revis designed that circuit sometime in 1961).

Does this devalue Hobbs and Snoddys monumental accomplishment in creating the Fuzz-Tone? Not at all. But Hazlewoods unnamed fuzz box also represents a (largely unknown) landmark moment in guitar history. This comparison also highlights how much a good idea is usually dependent on great marketing. Both Hazlewood and Snoddy made a groundbreaking device, but because Snoddy successfully pitched his device to Gibson/Maestro, he and Hobbs were the victors. In turn, this partnership allowed the Maestro Fuzz-Tone to make its way from the humble beginnings of Revis Hobbs home workbench into the hands of such guitarists as Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Keith Richards.

Lee Hazelwood. Image: C Brandon / Redferns

Our next stop is California, 1961, the same year that Revis Hobbs designed the Maestro Fuzz-Tone with Glen, but a full year before it would hit the market. A pedal steel guitarist and electronics technician named Orville Red Rhodes tried his hand at making a fuzz circuit he could use in the recording studio and he succeeded. He produced the Rhodes fuzz in a small metal box, a simple device with a distortion level knob and a bypass switch. The Rhodes fuzz box worked so well that he ended up making several to sell to his fellow musicians (including Nokie Edwards of the Ventures and Billy Strange of the Wrecking Crew).

The best-known use of the Rhodes fuzz was in the Ventures 1962 hit The 2000 Pound Bee. This single is generally accepted as the first recorded use of fuzz in a rock n roll song. I dont know about you, but I find it deliciously ironic that country music popularized fuzz first, not rock n roll. Nokie Edwards played guitar on the track and also used the Rhodes fuzz on albums like Walk Dont Run(1964) and Live in Japan(1965).

Some historians speculate that the Rhodes fuzz was created in 1962 and inspired by Dont Worry, but this theory has major issues. For one thing, both Billy Strange and Ann-Margret Olsson used the Rhodes fuzz on separate recordings in 1961. For another, Nokie Edwards was seen using the Rhodes fuzz while performing in Hawaii in December 1961. Unless time travel was in play in the early 1960s, we have a problem. Theres even evidence to suggest that Rhodes may have made this fuzz circuit as early as 1960 which means it could possibly predate the Hazlewood fuzz box andthe Maestro Fuzz-Tone.

Basically, this isnt a well-documented period of history, so it can be challenging to know for certain who did what first. But recordings like The 2000 Pound Bee, Go On Home, and Dont Worrydefinitely prove one thing: circa 1962, fuzzed-out electric guitar was already on the rise.

Fuzzy Rhodes

The United Kingdom may be the birthplace of modern rock, but in 1962 (two years before the British Invasion) fuzz was still finding its feet. The same year that Gibson released the Maestro Fuzz-Tone, Dick Denney (who designed the Vox AC15 and AC30 amps) claims to have made his own prototype clone of the FZ-1 more than three years before he assisted in developing the Vox V816 Distortion Booster, encasing the simple prototype circuit in a truly DIY OXO Cube tin.

The reason this first pedal never made it to the production line, Denney argues, is that the Fuzz-Tone was still selling poorly (this was three years before The Rolling Stones would rocket it to popularity with Satisfaction), so Vox wasnt willing to risk financial loss by producing their own version. Moreover, Tom Jennings absolutely hated the sound of distortion and didnt want anything to do with a fuzz box. Curiosity pushed Denney to make his prototype anyway and Denney claims that a rogue employee working for Vox stole this design and started selling fuzz boxes himself (though its anyones guess who this employee could have been, I have my hunches). Nearly 60 years later, Denneys prototype still hasnt resurfaced, so we have to file this pedals existence under rumor rather than fact.

But another Fuzz-Tone clone may have been created in 1964. Guitarist Jimmy Page allegedly approached electronics guru Roger Mayer (you may know Roger better as the guy who later designed the Octavia Fuzz and pitched it to Jimi Hendrix after a gig in 1967) and Jimmy asked him to build a device that would replicate the Ventures distorted guitar sound in The 2000 Pound Bee. Although the FZ-1 had been on the market for two years at this point, it was still considered a flop and wouldnt have been easily available in London. So how could Roger Mayer have made a clone of it? A touring musician might have brought the FZ-1 back from the United States and sold it to Roger Mayer. More likely, the design of the FZ-1 circuit was so simple that it was easy for another engineer to recreate it or get darn close using transistor cookbooks available at the time.

For his part, Mayer claims that he had never seen an FZ-1 when he created this pedal, so the facts are a little murky on this, too.

In any case, the pedal that Roger Mayer produced for Jimmy Page was a clone or approximation of the FZ-1 with a few major differences:

It was rumored (but not confirmed) that Page used this pedal both in the recording studio and while touring with the Yardbirds. With almost 60 years between us and this story, we may never know for sure.

Image: LarissaVanDerVyver

Full disclosure: I debated whether to include this story. Its not exactly a deleted scene (honestly, its a story that weve all heard in one form or another), but its important to the timeline of fuzz, so Im rolling with it.

To understand this story well, you have to understand that there are myths that are so ingrained in the guitar community that we dont really care if theyre true or not. This is one of those stories. Whats funny is that we know what happened. Its a certified fact. What we dont know is howit happened.

The Davies brothers, founding members of the Kinks, recorded arguably their most iconic song in 1964 You Really Got Me. This song basically trail-blazed the use of power chords as we know them, and its cited as the birthplace of the metal genre (its no coincidence that Van Halen covered the song in 1978). The heart of the song is, naturally enough, a fuzzed-out electric guitar. But the real question is howthat fuzz effect made it onto the track.

Dave and Ray Davies both claim to have taken a razor blade, box cutter or knitting needle to an Elpico amp nicknamed Little Green. Reports vary as to what weapon was used or who wielded it, for that matter but the end result was an utterly destroyed speaker that produced a distorted, fuzzed-out sound.

Dave attempted to set the record straight in a 2015 Facebook post, in which he clarified: My brother [Ray] is lying. I dont know why he does this but it was my Elpico amp that I bought and out of frustration I cut the speaker cone up with a razor blade I played the riff on my guitar with MY new sound. I ALONE CREATED THIS SOUND. But this still raises more questions than it answers: why would a frustrated Dave take a knife to his own amp? Was the amp not working? Was he frustrated with the direction the band was going? Did he just lose to his brother in a particularly competitive game of rock, paper, scissors? We dont know, but this brotherly feud has gone down in history as one of the greats, right alongside the Gallagher brothers and Cain and Abel.

Coincidentally, this specific sound was so coveted that Electro-Harmonix released a distortion pedal in 2021 called the Ripped Speaker Fuzz. In the end, life imitated art.

Image: Electro-Harmonix

This next story comes courtesy of fellow pedal historian Nick Sternberg, a dude who has devoted countless hours to the study of guitar pedals and may actually have me beat in terms of sheer nerdiness. He is also British, which automatically makes him more interesting than me, a boring Midwest American. His website fuzzboxes.org and his generous time answering my insane questions were a huge help in putting this article together, but Id be remiss if I didnt include his most recent discovery: the Harmonic Generator.

The story starts in the early 1960s, with a gear company called GP Electronics, founded by inventor Gerry Pope. During the 60s and 60s, GP produced a pretty wide variety of gear, including amps, PAs, treble and bass boosters and one guitar pedal: The Harmonic Generator distortion.

According to Nick, the Harmonic Generator was allegedly conceived in 1964, after somebody referred Pope to an American recording of a fuzz sound. This would have been a year too early for The Stones Satisfaction, so its likely that the American recording in question was either The 2000 Pound Bee, Dont Worry or Grady Martins The Fuzz. Nick adds that strong anecdotal evidence confirms that the Harmonic Generator was already available to the general public between late 1965 and early 1966. Again, this is where the dates get a little dicey. Depending on just how late in 1965 PG Electronics released the Harmonic Generator, it could pre-date the Sola Sound Tone Bender. Regardless, the timeline shows that Pope had the foresight to develop a fuzz pedal before Satisfactionrocketed the effect to fame in 1965, which reflects impressive intuition.

The Harmonic Generator allegedly made its way into the hands of guitarists like Martin & Glen Turner (later of Wishbone Ash), The Shadows (in Bombay Duck & Tennessee Waltz) and the New Vaudeville Band (in Winchester Cathedral).

This all basically boils down to two questions. Have most people heard of the Harmonic Generator? No. Did it still change guitar history? Yes.

In closing out this chapter of forgotten guitar effects, it is important that we take the time to dig a little deeper. Invention is more of a gradual evolutionary process than a sudden epiphany. Nothing just appears from thin air. Everything we love about guitar comes from a collective of ideas that have been accumulated, shared and improved upon, and every guitar effect has its roots in another device or inventor. Some ideas make huge splashes while others are resigned to a ripple, but that doesnt mean one is more important than the other.

It just means that, for better or for worse, history is written by the victors.

Join Josh for more effects adventures at thejhsshow.com.

See the article here:

Josh Scott: The deleted scenes of guitar history - Guitar.com

Jan. 21WATERTOWN A man who has a history of damaging apartments and painting biblical quotes on the walls was arrested again on Friday after allegedly causing more than $40,000 in damage.

Mark R. Stewart, 61, of 521 Jefferson St., was charged by city police with second-degree criminal mischief. He was arrested Friday morning and appeared for an arraignment hearing in the afternoon, after which he was held in jail without bail.

In July 2021, Mr. Stewart was renting an apartment from Cardmen Gee at 310 S. Massey St. when he allegedly caused extensive damage to the unit, as well as painting all over the walls. The estimated repair cost is $40,866.16, according to city police.

Mr. Stewart had rented Mr. Gee's apartment for roughly nine months, the landlord said in September when a criminal investigation into Mr. Stewart was getting started. The fully furnished apartment which Mr. Gee offers to soldiers was turned into what looked like a mangled construction site. A plastic tarp was hung in a hallway. The door to the refrigerator was ripped off. A smiley face made of charcoal medallions was left on the floor. The bathtub was broken, as well as the chimney.

The paintings mainly consisted of what appear to be posters for Jimmy Swaggart's ministries, with phone numbers and addresses at the bottom. Mr. Swaggart was a pastor in Baton Rouge, La., whose ministry TV show was popular in the 1970s before he was defrocked by the Assemblies of God for a sex scandal involving prostitutes in 1988.

Mr. Stewart pleaded guilty in 2014 to a felony attempted criminal mischief count, admitting he caused more than $5,000 in damage to an apartment on Washington Street. He was sentenced in that matter to five years of probation and ordered to pay $500 to the property owner and $26,177 to the property owner's insurance carrier in the form of a civil judgment.

In 2009, Mr. Stewart was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $5,800 in restitution after damaging an apartment on LeRay Street. In 2013, Mr. Stewart was arrested in Baton Rouge and charged with entering and remaining at Mr. Swaggart's ministry campus after having been banned from the property.

Excerpt from:

Watertown tenant with history of painting biblical quotes arrested Friday for allegedly causing over $40k in damage to apartment - Yahoo News

McDonald's (MCD) - Get McDonald's Corporation Report wants customers who care about healthy eating, and it wants options for its existing customers when they want a meal that's healthier than a Big Mac or a 10-piece Chicken McNuggets.

The business logic for this makes sense -- some people want to eat healthy food -- but the reality has never proven that anyone wants healthy choices from McDonald's. McPlant might be different, but the fast-food giant has gone down this road before and the ending has always been the same.

McDonald's/TheStreet

McDonald's dropped all of its salads during the pandemic. That happened as part of an effort to streamline the company's menu -- which made sense during the time when the chain's dining rooms were closed and all orders were delivery or drive-through -- but they have not returned to its menu even though operations have returned to (somewhat) normal.

The reality is that people looking to eat healthy don't choose McDonald's. Salads might be attractive to adults who take their kids to the fast-food chain, but that's a very limited audience.

"According to food research firm Technomic, 47% of Americans say they want healthier restaurant options, but only about 23% actually order them. So Wendy's, Burger King and McDonald's can offer all the apple slices and plain baked potatoes and yogurt parfaits they want, but despite what customers say, these items aren't selling," Huffpost reported.

That same article also noted that salads only accounted for 3% of the chain's sales before they were discontinued.

TheStreet Recommends:3 Trends Shaping the Future of Farming, Agriculture, and Land Use

Adding a plant-based burger brings McDonald's good publicity. The chain, however, has been very careful in how it has rolled out the Beyond Meat (BYND) - Get Beyond Meat, Inc. Report sandwich option. It started the test in a handful of stores and plans to bring it to 600 locations in mid-February.

McDonald's has about 14,000 locations in the U.S.

Chains often test new products in a small number of stores then increase availability. That's sort of what's happening here, but McDonald's has also taken every chance to tout its efforts because offering a plant-based burger option brings good publicity while quietly dropping it when nobody wants it -- as Dunkin' did with its Beyond Meat sausage sandwich -- barely gets noticed,

"The McPlant includes a plant-based patty co-developed with Beyond Meat thats exclusive to McDonalds and made from plant-based ingredients like peas, rice, and potatoes. The patty is served on a sesame seed bun with tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, and a slice of American cheese," the company touted in a press release.

In addition, it's important to note that the McPlant won't appeal to many people who don't eat meat for a reason the chain probably can't correct.

"Its also cooked on the same grill as meat-based products and eggs," the company shared.

That makes the McPlant a plant-based sandwich for non-vegetarians. (It's already not a vegan-friendly product as it comes with cheese and mayonnaise, though it can be ordered without those). That's a very small audience -- probably fewer people than might have eaten a McSalad -- and it makes McPlant a product that's not likely to succeed if you base success on sales, not media attention.

TheStreet Recommends:Why Investors Should Care About the Resource Transition

Read more:

McDonald's Has a New Sandwich; History Says Nobody Will Buy It - TheStreet

Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in whats now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the students errors (10 times 45, for example, is definitely not 270). The work is a reminder that no matter how elegant or infallible mathematics may seem, its still a human endeavor.

Thats one lesson I took from History of Mathematics, an online exhibit developed by the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City and Wolfram Research, a computational technology company. Bringing together the Sumerian tablet and more than 70 other artifacts, the exhibit demonstrates how math has been a universal language across cultures and throughout time.

Divided into nine galleries, the exhibit sums up the development of key topics related to mathematics, including counting, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and prime numbers. Each gallery has a short timeline and features a handful of artifacts that serve as entry points to explore some milestones in more depth.

Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox

Thank you for signing up!

There was a problem signing you up.

Among the highlights: The oldest known surviving calculating device, the Salamis Tablet, is a marble counting board from the Greek island of Salamis dating to 300 B.C. Its a precursor to the abacus. By moving pebbles across the board, a person could perform calculations. An early documented instance of using a symbol for zero as a placeholder (to, say, distinguish 1 from 10, 100 or 1,000) appears in the Bakhshali Manuscript, an Indian text dating to perhaps as early as A.D. 300. The manuscripts black dots eventually morphed into the open circles we know today as zeros. Also on display is Al-Jabr. Written in around 820 by Persian polymath Muammad ibn Ms al-Khwrizm, the book established the field of algebra and gave the discipline its name. In 1557, the Whetstone of Witte, an English algebra text, introduced the modern equal symbol.

But the exhibit is more than just a collection of fun facts. As the galleries explain, humans relationship with numbers goes back deep into prehistory. Modern math, however, stems from the rise of cities, with the need to keep track of people and supplies, and to undertake ever more complex construction projects.

Some mathematical principles must have been so vital to civilizations success that they appeared in many ancient cultures. Take the Pythagorean theorem. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C., famously related the side lengths of a right triangle in the equation a2 + b2 = c2. But a clay tablet reveals that people in Mesopotamia had worked out the relationship more than 1,000 years earlier. Ancient Chinese and Indian scholars were also familiar with the relationship.

Other math problems have had multiple solutions. The history of counting is littered with an array of methods for keeping track of numbers, from various forms of finger counting to the stringed recording devices called quipus, or khipus, used in the Inca Empire in the 1400s and 1500s. The placement and types of knots along a quipus strings indicate different numerical values, though researchers today are still trying to understand exactly how to interpret the data recorded on these devices (SN: 7/6/19 & 7/20/19, p. 12).

Parts of the exhibit assume a high level of mathematical knowledge, such as some of the interactive features that give technical explanations behind some artifacts mathematical principles. But a section of learning journeys aimed at kids and others provides materials that fill in some of the missing details from the main galleries and will appeal to adults whose memories of high school or college math are fuzzy.

History of Mathematics is a fascinating starting point for anyone interested in learning about the origins of the mathematical concepts that so many of us use every day but often take for granted.

See the original post here:

Take an online journey through the history of math - Science News Magazine

Braves Franchise History

1973 - Warren Spahn becomes just the sixth player to be elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Spahn received 316 of 380 votes to gain admission.

2008 - The Braves avoided arbitration with reliever Rafael Soriano by signing him to a two-year, $9 million deal.

2013 - The Braves acquire outfielder Justin Upton and third baseman Chris Johnson from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for Randall Delgado, Zeke Spruill, Martin Prada, Nick Ahmed and Brandon Drury.

2018 - Chipper Jones is elected to the Hall of Fame in his first attempt along with Jim Thome, Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero.

MLB History

1939 - Eddie Collins, Willie Keeler and George Sisler are elected to the Hall of Fame. Sisler set a major league record with 257 hits in 1920 and hit .420 in 1922. Collins hit .333 for his career and stole 744 bases while winning the World Series four different times. Keeler hit .341 for his career while amassing 2,932 hits.

1950 - Jackie Robinson signs a contract for $35,000 reportedly making him the highest-paid player in Brooklyn Dodgers history.

2012 - The Detroit Tigers sign Prince Fielder to a nine-year, $214 million contract. The Giants also agreed to a two-year, $40.5 million deal with Tim Lincecum avoiding what would have likely been a record pay out through arbitration.

Talking Chop Archives

2021 - The Braves signed Pablo Sandoval to a minor league contract and invited him to spring training. They would later deal Sandoval at the deadline to Cleveland in exchange for Eddie Rosario who would play a huge part in their run to the World Series title.

2018 - Mentioned above but here is Demetrius write up of Chipper Jones being elected to the Hall of Fame on his first ballot.

2013 - The Justin Upton trade is completed. Scott took a closer look at Chris Johnson whom the Braves also acquired in the deal.

2007 - A fun series completes with John Smoltz landing in the top spot in the list of the 29 most important Braves during their run of division titles.

Information for this article was found via Baseball Reference, Nationalpastime.com and Today in Baseball History.

Read the original post:

This Day in Braves History: Chipper Jones elected to Hall of Fame, Justin Upton trade and more - Talking Chop