Santa’s milk and cookies: The surprising history behind the popular Christmas tradition – Fox News

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For decades, American children have been leaving out cookies and milk for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, but few people know how and when the holiday tradition began.

In a special Christmas episode ofFox Nation's"At Home With Paula Deen,"the celebrity chefbreaks down the fascinating history behind the sweet tradition and how it inspired countries across the globe in a new episode of a"Cookie Cutter Christmas."

"We can thank the Dutch along with other Northern Europeans for bringing cookies to America in the 17th century," Dean said. "After a change in import laws, inexpensive kitchen items like cookie cutters were finally allowed to be imported from Europe into the American market. From there, a bunch of new recipes started to appear and the cookies and traditions we knew from the Middle Ages began to evolve."

According to one theory, the milk-cookiescustom can be traced back to the1930s, during the Great Depression. During that time of economic hardship, many parents tried to teach their children that it was important to give to others and to show gratitude for the gifts they received over the holiday.

THE SURPRISING HISTORY OF THE UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER

The custom eventually stuck, serving as an inspiration to countries across the globe who embraced their own versions of the popular Christmastradition.

British and Australian children leave mince pies and a glass of sherry. Children in Denmark leave a bowl of rice pudding, while those in Ireland leave Santa a good old cup of Guinness, explained Dean.

"Hopefully one of Santa's elves are leading the sleigh after that stuff," she joked.

"In America, it's estimated that Santa eats more than 300 million cookies on Christmas Eve each year," Dean said, adding, "no wonder he's got a little punch to him."

To watch the full episode of Paula Deen's "Cookie Cutter Christmas" and for more exclusive holiday content,visit Fox Nation and join today.

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Santa's milk and cookies: The surprising history behind the popular Christmas tradition - Fox News

Boston doctor with history of allergies has severe reaction to Moderna vaccine | TheHill – The Hill

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A doctor in Boston with a history of allergies had a severe allergic reaction to Modernas coronavirus vaccine.

Hossein Sadrzadehtold CNN that after he was vaccinated at Boston Medical Center on Thursday, he felt his heart rate spike to 150 beats per minute.

Sadrzadeh also told the news outlet that within minutes he felt in my tongue and also my throat having, like, some weird sensation of tingling and numbness, the same reaction that I had before to my shellfish allergy. He alsosaid his blood pressure dropped so low a monitor couldnt detect it.

Sadrzadeh used his EpiPen and was rushed to the emergency room where he was given medications, according to a statement issued by the medical center to The Hill.

"The employee received the Moderna vaccine Thursday and as is our standard practice was being observed post vaccination by trained nurses," the statement read.

"He felt he was developing an allergic reaction and was allowed to self-administer his personal epi-pen," the statement continued. "He was taken to the Emergency Department, evaluated, treated, observed and discharged."

The Hill has reached out to Moderna, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for comment.

The incident is the first of its kind reportedafter Modernas vaccine was approved by federal health agencies and distributed and comes as theFDA investigated several reports of allergic reactions into Pfizer and BioNTechs vaccine.

Peter Marks, who leads the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said last weekend a chemical called polyethylene glycol, which is present in both vaccines, could be the culprit.

At the time, the agency advised those whove had severe reactions to any component of Modernas vaccine in the past not to get that shot.

In light of the allergic reactions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)issued guidance advising those who have severeresponses after the first dose not to get a second shot. The agency also says people who are allergic to vaccines or injectable therapies should consult their doctors before getting vaccinated.

However, the CDC notes that those who have a history of severe allergic reactions unrelated to vaccines or injectable medicines such as food, pet or environmental allergies may still get vaccinated.

More than 1.94 million people have received their first dose of either Pfizer's or Modernas coronavirus vaccine as of Saturday afternoon, according to a count from the CDC.

Updated 5:25 p.m.

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Boston doctor with history of allergies has severe reaction to Moderna vaccine | TheHill - The Hill

How 2020 Will Go Down in the History Books, According to Historians – TIME

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Its no question that 2020 has been a historic year for the U.S., but how it will affect the future remains to be seen.

In an effort to take stock of where this year fits into history so far, TIME asked historians nationwide to pick a moment in 2020 that stands out to them. We asked them what future historians willor at least shouldwrite about when they study the momentous year that is drawing to a close, and whether it signals a new chapter or turning point for America and the world.

Below is what the historians who spoke with TIME, as of early December, identified as the major milestones of 2020:

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up the front page of USA Today that displays a headline "Acquitted" as he arrives to speak at the 68th annual National Prayer Breakfast on February 6, 2020.

Nicholas Kamm/AFPGetty Images

Trumps acquittal in his impeachment trial by the Senate on Feb. 5, 2020, is a really important moment both within American history and for what it says about Trumps success at imposing an authoritarian style political culture on the Republican party. With only one contrary vote by [Utah Sen. Mitt] Romney, everyone else unanimous. You couldnt ask for a greater legitimation of his political style.

Sen. Sherrod Brown wrote a really interesting op-ed in the New York Times saying his Republican colleagues were afraid and told him that they acquitted Trump out of fear, not because they really believed he should be acquitted. If you compare it to what happened to Nixon, the difference is you have this authoritarian personality that has managed to take hold.

For historical comparison, some of the other rulers who have done this successfully created their own parties or had leadership roles within their parties for years before they became head of state. Mussolini created his own party. Berlusconi was able to do this, he created his own party. But Trumps achievement is even greater because the GOP has a very long history, and we only have two parties, and yet he was able to tame it and make it his own.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University

Medical staff members check on a patient at the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, on Nov. 8, 2020.

Go Nakamura/BloombergGetty Images

For me the critical turning point in this pandemic was its very early days, when we still didnt know whether this would turn into a full-blown pandemic. My last 20 years spent reading, writing and teaching about the history of pandemics had taught me what to expect. Since day one, when news about a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan started circulating, I was intellectually, practically and emotionally prepared to face a pandemic. That was almost a year ago. I religiously followed Johns Hopkins Universitys COVID-19 dashboard to track the number of cases and deaths worldwide, and already in late January knew we were in for a global pandemic of historic proportions.

Ironically enough, I was then teaching a course on the history of pandemics. In that class, my students and I declared COVID-19 a global pandemic long before WHO did (March 11), because we could clearly see all the signs in that direction. I prepared my students and myself for what was to come. But despite obsessive caution, I was infected as a result of travel in early March, even when there was a total of about 250 reported cases across the U.S. Premodern plague treatises, written about an unfamiliar and far deadlier disease, taught me that good food, good rest and good thoughts were critical for recovery. I was lucky to have both historical and contemporary knowledge for guidance.

That was more than eight months ago. Since then, Ive been reading, writing and teaching about this pandemic, constantly stressing the importance of historical knowledge for its modern management.

Nkhet Varlk, Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and Rutgers University-Newark.

The historic May 30, 2020, launch of the manned SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceXGetty Images

Two astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, were launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a commercially-developed spacecraft, the Crew Dragon, atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 3:22 ET. The Crew Dragon achieved earth orbit in 12 minutes, and docked less than 19 hours later at the International Space Station. The lift-off was watched by an estimated 10 million people worldwide. Although both Behnken and Hurley were veterans of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the flight was the first joint public-private crewed space mission under NASAs Commercial Crew Program. The Crew Dragon was funded and created by Elon Musks Space Exploration Technologies Company (SpaceX). It was also the first crewed American lift-off since the cancellation of the space shuttle program in 2011, and was seen as the presage of a new era of private investment and development in space flight, including commercial and passenger traffic in space.

Allen C. Guelzo, Director of the James Madison Program Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship at Princeton University

Thousands of protesters walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on "Juneteenth," June 19, 2020, as part of one of the many protests against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that have taken place in 2020.

Ira L. Black/CorbisGetty Images

When historians reflect on 2020, they will recognize it as a pivotal year for several reasons: a global pandemic, a historic presidential election and a year of protest against racial injustice.

After the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and (too) many others, people took to the streets demanding an end to police violence against African Americans. They showed up in large cities and small towns across America, with chants of Black Lives Matter or Justice for Breonna Taylor. Motivated after witnessing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin choke the life out of Floyd by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, people marched. This was a key turning point.

Just like the water hoses and police dogs of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Floyds death presented evidence of senseless violence by law enforcement. It became a record-breaking year of protest against police violence. And, COVID-19 did not stop people from marching, chanting, singing, speaking and demanding justice and reform. These events represent the largest protest movement in United States history as experts say by midsummer, 15-26 million people had marched.

Daina Ramey Berry, Chair of the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin

U.S. President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John's Church near the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2020.

Shawn Thew/EPA/BloombergGetty Images

In 2020 we witnessed protests all over the country against racism and police brutality. In Washington D.C., the White House was surrounded by crowds. A couple of days before, the Secret Service had taken the President to an underground bunker as a precaution. On June 1, 2020, the Park police and National Guard cleared the way for Trump to walk to St. Johns Church to have his picture taken while holding a Bible, as one would hold a brick to gauge its weight.

The performance was intended to send a signal to his supporters, linking religion and a strong presidential hand against forces they defined as anti-American. In fact, the Presidents authority shifted to an increasingly authoritarian and violent stance. Trump would continue during the rest of that year to encourage the use of violence against Black Lives Matter protesters. As it became clear that his followers did not control the streets, however, the rest of his presidency became one protracted attempt to build a dictatorial authority that was eventually frustrated by the elections. In historical perspective, the St. Johns Church gesture had exactly the opposite significance of its intended meaning: it represented a withdrawal from which Trump would not be able to return.

Pablo Piccato, Professor of History at Columbia University

The image of George Floyd along with the Black Lives Matter letters are projected onto the Robert E. Lee Statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, on June 10, 2020.

John McDonnell/The Washington PostGetty Images

The reclamation of the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Va., and the creative way in which the protesters associated with and led by BLM movement were protesting police brutality against Black Americans. The statues meaning was ultimately subverted because it was spray-painted, images were projected on it of George Floyd and historical figures, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass. It refocused the conversation towards the continuity of this historical struggle that Black Americans have faced both in Richmond and the commonwealth of Virginia, but also nationally as well. It became a site of black joy, almost a pilgrimage site. There were many stories about families driving hours to show their children this new location. A sterile middle-of-the-road thing that nobody ever actually used became a place of BBQs and parties and protest and civic involvement.

When monumental spaces have been reclaimed in the past, the structures have been pulled down. Theyve been destroyed. Thats not what happened here, it was repurposed, and I think that shows how monuments function as public signs of power and centers of civic responsibility. The defenders of Confederate monuments have always said theyre just part of the landscape. This shows that thats really absolutely not the case. They time travel in a way. These monuments were constructed in the past and exist in the present. They are physical manifestations of this long history, that goes back in this particular case to the early 20th century, nostalgia for the Lost Cause and the Confederacy.

I see the reclamation of the Robert E. Lee statue as a piece of what the 1619 Project has done too. Both have made us talk about American History in a very different way now.

Matthew Gabriele, Professor of Medieval Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech.

The court and benches are empty after the scheduled start of game five between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Orlando Magic in the first round of the 2020 NBA Playoffs at AdventHealth Arena at ESPN Wide World Of Sports Complex on August 26, 2020 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

Ashley Landis-PoolGetty Images

Amid an unprecedented national movement for racial justice in the summer of 2020, we witnessed one of the most important political statements in the history of American sport. On Aug. 26, three days after police in Kenosha, Wisc., shot 29-year old Jacob Blake in the back seven times in front of his three young sons, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to participate in a scheduled playoff game to draw national attention to the issue of police brutality and to push state authorities to hold officers accountable for Blakes shooting.

The NBA and the WNBA had been among the most visible and vocal public supporters of the Black Lives Matter Movement since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in late May, and soon other mens and womens teams refused to play in the playoffs, defying their collective bargaining agreements and leading to the largest wildcat strike in recent history. These protests against racism and police violence soon inspired similar actions in the majority-white Major League Baseball and National Hockey Leagues. The sports demonstrations are profound expressions of a new, multiracial coalition of Americans calling for racial justice and an end to inequality. 2020 will be remembered as one of the most challenging years in modern history, but also one when new conversations about systemic racism and new forms of collective action, arising in unexpected places, may help put the nation on the path toward meaningful change.

Elizabeth Hinton, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris takes the stage before President-elect Biden addresses the nation from the Chase Center on November 7, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Tasos KatopodisGetty Images

A century after the 19th Amendment, Kamala Harris finally broke the glass ceiling. As the first woman of African and South Asian descent to serve as vice President of the U.S., Harriss election evokes past trailblazers in womens history.

Along with Shirley Chisholmthe first African American Congresswomanwe should also remember Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color in the House of Representatives and the namesake for Title IX. Mink and Chisholm both ran for the U.S. presidency in 1972, and both women traced their family connections to islands, located off the continental mainland of the U.S. Mink was a third-generation Japanese American, born on the territory of Hawaii before the islands became the 50th state. Growing up in a plantation society, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, deeply shaped Minks commitment to advocating for worker rights, womens rights, racial equality and environmental protection, particularly against military uses of islands as test sites for nuclear and conventional weapons. Like Mink, Harriss parents originated from former colonies (Jamaica and India), which brought them together out of concern for racial justice. We should recognize Harris as a woman whose personal and political lineage stems from anti-imperial circuits of migration and activism. Along with Mink and Chisholm, Harris is a first. And as she promised, she wont be the last.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Director of the Humanities Center and Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) takes questions as he speaks during a news conference with other Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on December 15, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

Tom Brenner/PoolGetty Images

For the first time, the majority of a partys elected officials refused to accept the results of the election and some openly called for ignoring the will of the voters to maintain power. Even in 1860, secessionists acknowledged Lincoln had won the election as they tried to break the nation in two. Ever since the defeated John Adams gave up power willingly in 1800, no American President has refused to acknowledge defeat. While Trump appears to have failed in his effort to subvert democracy (whether we call it a failed coup or an autogolpe matters less than the impact), the lack of repercussions for undermining democracy is a continuation of the Republican Partys abandonment of principles and democratic norms. Trumps ignoring of norms isnt new, Senator Mitch McConnell eroded them during President Barack Obamas administration, and while perhaps the 2000 election foreshadowed, 2020, now the pretense is gone. The subtext is text; a radical acceleration of the antidemocratic impulse means power is all that matters to the GOP and there is not even lip service given to the will of the voters. With baseless claims of fraud, our democratic system has been further eroded even after the election is over. The GOP has abandoned a strategy of attracting some voters while disenfranchising others and moved to undermining democracy as a system entirely. I fear what happens as the party continues to abandon a fundamental bedrock of democracy in new and more dangerous ways. While our system appears to be stronger than some feared, it also remains far weaker than others claim.

One key question for 2021 is whether Trump and those who enabled him are held accountable for all of his corruption. If not, I fear for democracys future. As next time around, kleptocrats may feel empowered to take and hold onto power, and they might succeed.

Adam H. Domby, Assistant Professor of History at the College of Charleston

American Indians of the Navajo Nation pick up supplies at a food bank set up at the Navajo Nation town of Casamero Lake in New Mexico on May 20, 2020.

Mark Ralston/AFPGetty Images

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 represents a crucial moment in American Indian history that future historians must address. The pandemic touched off unprecedented responses in Indian Country to mitigate the deadly effects of that viral scourge. Conditions including underlying health issues, inadequate healthcare, poverty, overcrowded housing, a lack of indoor plumbing, shorter life expectancies than other Americans, high rates of uninsurance, unresolved historical grief, and reckless federal and state responses to the pandemic that left them more at risk to become ill and die than other Americans. Carrying oral histories about devastating past pandemics and rejecting COVID-19 conspiracy theories, American Indian and Native Alaskan governments started to exercise their sovereignty in significant ways in hopes of stopping the viruss spread and saving lives. Their proactive measures included blocking non-residents from entering reservation lands, shutting down non-critical services, establishing work at home initiatives, setting curfews, mandating mask wearing, closing and reopening casinos with new health protocols in place, successfully suing the Trump administration to release federal funds designated for Indian Country for COVID relief, and lobbying the federal government to uphold its trust obligations to protect Indian nations from harm.

James Riding In, Associate Professor at Arizona State University and a citizen of the Pawnee Nation

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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com.

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How 2020 Will Go Down in the History Books, According to Historians - TIME

Union Public Library with Virtual Programs on Jeopardy, Health, History, Writing and More – TAPinto.net

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UNION, NJ - Celebrate the New Year with virtual programs at Union Public Library. While the buildings remain closed, virtual programs, audio and eBooks, movies, music and magazines, and curbside book delivery are all available.

If you love Netflix & Chill, then try Library & Chill at Union Public Library. This six week reading program for all ages will be starting on Tuesday, January 19. Virtually explore all the library has to offer this winter and have a chance to win prizes. Be on the lookout for more information and registration information!

Heres Whats Happening Virtually at UPL:

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(Register for all programs by going to https://uplnj.org/events/list/)

Do You Dream of Sleep?

Wed., Jan. 6 at 2:00pm

Presented by Atlantic Health System

If you toss, turn, or snore or know someone who does this program is for you. Find out how to improve your sleep experience and understand when its time to get professional help.

Your 2021 Career: Be a Victor Not a Victim

Thur., Jan. 7 @ 4:00pm

Abby Kohut shows you how to network and become a video interview expert, inspiring you to stay motivated in your quest during the Pandemic. All attendees will receive a FREE 28-page COVID-19 Job Search Resource Guide available online. Learn more about Abby at AbsolutelyAbby.com.

Does Duct Tape Cure Warts?

Tues., Jan. 12 at 2:00pm

Presented by Dana Abbey, National Library of Medicine

Rumors about miracle cures and solutions are everywhere. Learn how to evaluate health websites, and avoid bad science found on the Internet or in the news.

Author Visit: Kathleen Rooney

Thurs., Jan. 14 @ 4:00pm

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, and of Poems While You Wait in addition to her best-selling novels Miss Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Ask her about writing, poetry, memoir, publishing, and how she came to write a book about a pigeon!

Black Women and the Long Struggle for Freedom: MLK Commemoration

Fri., Jan.15, @ 1:00pm

Presented by Dr. Hettie V. Williams

Discover how Black women in NJ were pioneers in activism before, during, and after the Civil Rights Era. Dr. Hettie V. Williams is a Professor at Monmouth University and co-author of Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union.

What is Jeopardy? Author Visit with Claire McNear

Tues., Jan. 19 @ 4:00 pm

Claire McNear, author of Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insiders Guide to Jeopardy!, dives deep behind the scenes with Alex Trebek, shares how producers put the show together, and offers tips on how to become a contestant and win. In addition McNear writes about sports and culture at The Ringer.

Mediterranean Diet: Start the New Year Right!

Wed., Jan. 20 @ 2:00 pm

Presented by Karen Ensle, Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Union County

Learn about the Mediterranean diet, share recipes, and get inspired by this livable and delicious eating plan.

Off the Shelf Book Club

Thursday, Jan. 21 @ 7:00pm

Members discuss American Duchess by Karen Harper available for free download with your Union library card on Hoopla! New members are always welcome. If you dont know about Hoopla and have a Union Library card, call 908-851-5450 x3.

Vision Board: Use the Power of Intention and Visualization to Achieve Your Dream

Friday, January 22 @ 6:30 - 8:00 pm

A Vision Board is a collage representing things you would like to manifest in your life. This workshop will help you identify specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic short-term and long-term goals to redefine your future. Supply kits will be available through curbside pickup at the Vauxhall Branch. After registering call 908-851-5451 to reserve a kit. MAX 15 patrons

Hilton Readers Book Discussion Group

Monday, January 25 @ 6:00 - 7:00 pm

Members discuss their favorite books and authors. This month is Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. New members are always welcome.

Build Your Emotional Toolbox

Tues., Jan. 26 @ 2:00 pm

Presented by Diane Lang, M.A. Counseling

Learn how to cope effectively with stress, retrain thoughts from negative to positive, deal with and manage anger, forgive and more.

Meditation

Thurs., Jan. 7, 14, 21, 28 @ 11:30 am

Join Bindu Bhatt for a virtual meditation session. No experience necessary. Bindu has practiced meditation for over 30 years and would like to share her insight with you.

Beginners Flow Yoga

Thursdays, January 7, 14, 21, 28 @ 6:00 - 6:30 pm

This class will lead you through the foundations of yoga postures, body awareness and alignment, relaxation of the mind and a connection with the breath. You will learn how to improve muscle strength, promote flexibility, and build your own yoga program specific for your mind and body.

***

Union Public Library is located at 1980 Morris Avenue, Union, NJ 07083, with a Vauxhall Branch located at 123 Hilton Avenue, Vauxhall, NJ 07088.

For additional information, see the Librarys Facebook page, website, email unionpl@uplnj.org, or call (908) 851-5450. If you are a Union resident without a library card, they can provide access to our digital resources by emailing us at the address above.

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Union Public Library with Virtual Programs on Jeopardy, Health, History, Writing and More - TAPinto.net

History of Tiki Bars and Cultural Appropriation – The New York Times

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By Sammi Katz and Olivia McGiff

It is an unquestionably difficult time for the hospitality industry. Every day, another restaurant shutters, one more bar pulls its steel gate down for good. Since its invention, one kind of watering hole has seen America through its most grueling times: the tiki bar.

Decorated with bamboo and beach-y lights, with bartenders in Aloha shirts serving up mai tais, tiki bars were a booming part of Americas hospitality industry. Put down your phone and put on this lei, say the tiki bars. Heres something delicious in a silly mug. They offer an intoxicating escape from the weight of the world.

But the roots of tiki are far from the Pacific Islands. A Maori word for the carved image of a god or ancestor, tiki became synonymous in the United States and elsewhere for gimmicky souvenirs and dcor. Now a new generation of beverage-industry professionals are shining a light on the genres history of racial inequity and cultural appropriation, which has long been ignored because it clashes with the carefree aesthetic. Lets peel back the pineapple leaves to examine the choices that created a marketing mainstay.

Ernest Gantt, better known as Donn Beach, opened Don the Beachcomber in Southern California in 1933. He became known for his Rhum Rhapsodies, the first tiki drinks. They were elaborate and theatrical, featuring fresh juices and housemade syrups and could have upward of 10 ingredients.

Donn had four Filipino bartenders, whom he called the Four Boys, making all these drinks behind the scenes.

Victor Bergeron, inspired by his visits to Don the Beachcomber, opened his own tiki restaurant in Northern California in 1937. He included a gift shop and incorporated nautical accents and shipwreck dcor. He even offered guests free food and drink in exchange for decorative items, earning his moniker and the name of his bar, Trader Vics.

Both restaurants served Chinese food, because it was considered exotic yet was identifiable to American palates. Both became chains as well. There were 25 Trader Vics in the world by the 1960s, and 16 Don the Beachcombers.

After World War II, tiki took off and joined the trend of themed restaurants that flourished in the late 1950s and early 60s. They created an idyllic setting that evoked island living, employing images of palm trees, tribal masks and topless native women in grass skirts.

Restaurants transformed religious idols into kitschy artifacts and even drinking vessels, known as tiki mugs.

By the 1990s, tiki was just about dead, as the Zombie and Painkiller gave way to the Appletini and Cosmo. But all trends eventually become retro, and soon nostalgic amateurs began to uncover relics and recipes of this midcentury phenomenon.

The craft cocktail revolution of the 2000s paved the way for the modern tiki renaissance. Americans were reintroduced to classic drinks (like gimlets and French 75s), upscale spirits and high-quality ingredients. For the better half of the decade, cocktail bars and bartenders had no tolerance for paper parasols and tiki drinks were unable to lose their bad reputation as sickly sweet slushies.

Business & Economy

Dec. 23, 2020, 8:59 a.m. ET

Around the 2008 recession, tiki bars began sprouting up all over the country and the cocktails were restored to the caliber of their Rhum Rhapsody forebears. Just like their predecessors, modern tiki bars seek to evoke a sense of escape.

But tiki bars can often reinforce the idea that Oceania is just a place to vacation, which belies Americas history with the region. In 1960 when the Mai-Kai, a tiki restaurant in Florida, sold 10,000 Mystery Drinks presented by half-dressed Mystery Girls, the U.S. military was using the Pacific Islands to test nuclear bombs. Fantasy was a far cry from reality.

At its heart, tiki is about fun, creative drinks in a transportive environment. A new wave of industry professionals is reimagining these delicious contributions to cocktail culture, looking to shed the appropriation and racism that have accompanied tiki since its inception. We spoke to a few of them about the ways theyre working to shake up the biz for the better.

I have to give it to Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic because their daring approach to mixology was over the top. I dont know if we would still have American cocktails were it not for them, Mustipher says.

In describing a new wave of tiki bars, Mustipher notes, Its not about thatch and bamboo or dancing girls. Its about the level of craft and hospitality, the attention to detail. Tiki, she adds, is a deeply considered, well-executed, high production value cocktail experience.

The region has higher rates of poverty, lack of access to essential services and more burden from climate change, Kunkel adds.

A recent movement aims to shift from the word tiki to tropical and Kunkel is on board. I just dont think its necessary to use stereotypes or appropriate cultural elements to transport folks. She says, however, that tiki can lead people to learn about the culture of Pacific Islanders.

We started working with bartenders from different backgrounds who take their culture and share it in a way that creates appreciation and exchange, which is a different power dynamic from appropriation. It involves consent and equality.

Tom also reinvests in the groups whose cultures have been historically appropriated. Theres a beautiful opportunity to use what drew people to the aesthetic to help some of these communities, Tom says. Frankly, if youve been profiting off their imagery, it really is time to give back.

To go into a bar and see mostly white guys in Hawaiian shirts presenting this fetishization of a culture, when the people of that country cant even escape whats happening to them. Thats dark, he said. But, he added, I just had a Mai Tai last night, thats a good drink!

Education is at the core of Uffres work. I think the next education that the consumer is craving is on the sociopolitical and cultural aspects of spirits.

Its not last call for tiki. But the work for those in the industry is just beginning to make these tropical oases inclusive to all, which will benefit both businesses and consumers.

If we continue to educate ourselves, itll invite more conversation, more discourse. I also think that it will bring better drinks, says Uffre. When you learn about these things and understand the complexities, you will want to make better drinks because youll want to honor what youre doing.

Sammi Katz is a writer, bartender and the founder of the site, A Girls Guide to Drinking Alone. Olivia McGiff is an interdisciplinary illustrator and designer living in Brooklyn.

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History of Tiki Bars and Cultural Appropriation - The New York Times

Coastal Carolina football will fight to cap off history-making season with first-ever bowl victory tonight – WBTW

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Posted: Dec 26, 2020 / 12:14 PM EST / Updated: Dec 26, 2020 / 03:59 PM EST

ORLANDO, FL (WBTW) Tonight is a big night for the Coastal Carolina football team as they face an opportunity to cap off their history-making season with a first bowl game victory.

Not many gave the Coastal Carolina team much of a chance to be successful in 2020, but boy did they prove all those doubters wrong by going 11-0 and making it to their first-ever bowl game.

Ninth-ranked and unbeaten Coastal Carolina faces No. 23 Liberty in the FBC Mortgage Cure Bowl in Orlando tonight at 7:30 p.m.

You know this game here, to our alumni and university, probably means more than any other game, says Head Coach Jamey Chadwell, And probably means more than the Sun Belt championship, to a lot of people, to be honest with you.

A pair of strong running offenses will be on display. Running back CJ Marable has rushed for 844 yards and 12 touchdowns for Coastal Carolina.

And the Teal Nation will rally with Sun Belt player of the week, Grayson McCall, who has taken the college football world by storm with his play.

Hes just got this presence about him that the team rallies around its an intangible piece that you want your quarterback to have and theres nothing I have seen thats ruffled his feathers as a young guy, Coach Chadwell said. He might make a mistake. but he forgets it and just moves onto the next play.

McCall has plenty of talent at the running back position, but two key receivers have made life quite easy in the passing game Isaiah Likely and Jaivon Heiligh. Those two guys specifically, Grayson McCall said, Im really close to. I have a really good relationship with them even when we are off the field.

Fans will get to watch this rivalry between the Chanticleersand Liberty Flames renewed for one more night.

The game could come down to which defense has the most success controlling the line of scrimmage. Liberty is eighth in the nation in rushing. Coastal Carolina is 15th.

Liberty features former Auburn quarterback Malik Willis, who has thrown for 2,040 yards while also gaining a team-leading 807 yards on the ground.

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Coastal Carolina football will fight to cap off history-making season with first-ever bowl victory tonight - WBTW

Ossoff has raised more money than any Senate candidate in history – Business Insider – Business Insider

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Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat embattled in the heated runoff race against Republican Sen. David Perdue, the incumbent, has become the highest-funded senatorial candidate of all time, The New York Times first reported Friday.

The news comes following the release of the latest round of fundraising data from the Federal Elections Commission, covering the period between October 15 and December 16. During that period, Ossoff raised $106.7 million. Perdue raised $68 million during the same period, according to the FEC data.

Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is also embattled in a heated Georgia runoff race against incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler raised $103.3 million during the same period, according to the data. Loeffler raised approximately$64 million during the fundraising period, according to the FEC.

In both races during the general election, neither candidate received enough of the vote to be declared the winner, triggering a runoff election scheduled for January 5. The Georgia runoff races have captured nationwide attention because the winner of the races determines which party will control the US Senate.

If Ossoff and Warnock win both of their races, the Senate majority will be split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. But, if either Perdue or Loeffler wins, the GOP will continue to hold the power in the Senate, creating a roadblock for the Democrat-controlled House and president-elect Joe Biden, also a Democrat.

Biden flipped the state of Georgia blue during the general election, which was one of the states that proved key to his victory over President Donald Trump.

Nearly half of the donations to Warnock and Ossoff were under $200, The New York Times noted. Just about 30% of donations to Perdue and Loeffler were from small donors, according to the data.

Both Ossoff and Warnock's fundraising during the quarter surpassed the previous record broken by Jaime Harrison, who raised $57 million in a single quarter in his failed campaign against South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

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Ossoff has raised more money than any Senate candidate in history - Business Insider - Business Insider

From vanilla to victorious: An oral history of Montana’s rise to winning the 1995 national championship – 406mtsports.com

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Editors note: This is the second of a three-part series looking at Montanas 1995 national championship football team for its 25th anniversary. Part one ran in Friday's paper and part three runs Sunday.

MISSOULAMike Bouchee still thinks back to Montana's 1995 national championship football game whenever he hears Kool & the Gang's song "Celebration."

The Griz linebacker and his teammates were at a banquet with Marshall, their opponent for that game 25 years ago, when the Thundering Herd's players sang that celebratory song during the karaoke portion of their two-team event. Some Marshall players wore T-shirts proclaiming themselves 1995 national champions the next day at an awards luncheon.

It didn't sit well with Montana's players, who were regularly told by coach Don Read to be "vanilla." Read's approach was all about staying humble and not giving the opponent bulletin-board material.

Montana already was eager to try to win a national title, but the disrespect added to the motivation. The Griz got the last laugh and were the ones who got to sing "celebrate good times" when they emerged on Dec. 16, 1995, with a 22-20 victory that still resonates with Montana fans.

Mick Dennehy, then-offensive coordinator: A day or two prior, we had a banquet for both teams, and our kids were so pissed. They felt like Marshall was big-timing us and there wasnt any respect. They were fighting mad. We had to escort Yohance Manzanarez out of that banquet. He was ready to kill somebody.

Yohanse Manzanarez, then-senior defensive end: These guys from Marshall were so cocky, and everything was mocking Montana, and theyre singing celebrate good times. I would have been just fine if we had the football game right there. I was OK to go to the parking lot and find out who the best team was that night. I had a hard time sleeping. If you didnt have any fire up to that point, it lit a flame.

Mike Bouchee, then-junior linebacker: In our minds, they were already celebrating their victory in the game yet to come. We felt like they were taunting us and pointing at us. We went into there with an edge and we came out of there angry and couldnt wait to play.

Dave Dickenson, then-senior quarterback: The guys were making fun of our country bumpkins and trying to sing country songs on karaoke. They were doing it in jest and trying to stereotype us. Our guys took offense to it. I felt really excited to play that game and created my own motivation.

Matt Wells, then-senior wide receiver: It definitely motivated us. They really did believe that this was going to be a walk in the park and wed gotten lucky to be there and they were going to win the game.

Blaine McElmurry, then-junior safety: We felt they were insulting us. I remember walking away from the banquet with a sour taste in my mouth. It really amped up the motivation. It was a weird experience and not vanilla by any means.

Montana had been slowly climbing the ladder of respect on the national stage under Read andwas making the program's first trip to the title game in 1995 while Marshall was there for the fourth time in five years. Read's hiring in 1986 and the opening of Washington-Grizzly Stadium that same season were pivot points in the rise of the football program, while the 1989 run to the semifinals taught them about the type of player they needed to recruit.

The Griz felt they had something special brewing by the time they suffered a 49-48 loss to Delaware in the first round of the 1993 playoffs and were bounced from the semifinals in 1994 after an injury to quarterback Dave Dickenson. The expectations were ramped up as did the potential recognized within the team, even as Read preached remaining vanilla. The Griz went into the 1995 playoffs with a 9-2 record and No. 6 seed and caught some breaks with teams being upset to give them three home games.

Dennehy: Our goal in 1993 was to win the Big Sky championship, and we did, and we got a taste of the playoffs and knew we were going to get better and we better start thinking bigger than Big Sky championship.

Bouchee: Coach Read got the whole team on the field after a practice and talked to us about what he thought our team could achieve and he pointed up at the press box and said up there the press box is empty, we have nothing written on that, weve been saving that to write national champions, I want this team to be up there.

McElmurry: It was on our radar that this is something we can do. Coach Read put it out there for us and said this is what we think we can do. The first goals were always Big Sky championship, beat the Bobcats.

Wells: 93 we were new to being good and didnt know how to handle it. 94 was an outstanding team with great players across the board, but we had injuries. 95 was really when we knew we could do it, but people didnt think we could do it because we lost some talented seniors, so that was some extra incentive.

Eric Simonson, then-senior O-lineman: We should have sealed the deal in 94. We had such a great team with some seniors who graduated, but Dave got hurt, and that hurt us. I felt we left a trophy on the table that year.

Andy Larson, then-junior kicker: I think the 94 team was extremely talented. I think our defense was better in 95. In 94, we had the talent offensively and defensively, the awesome leaders. We just had that one injury to our best player. 95 it worked out really perfectly. Our 96 team was better; we were housing everybody but ran into a team that was loaded.

McElmurry: The 96 team, we returned a lot of good players. I thought in a lot of respects we were better than 95, but that Marshall team was better too.

Brian Toone, then-junior D-lineman: I have not watched the 96 championship game again. To win a title and go 14 games untested, we were handling people and were confident and wanted a second one so bad. It kind of showed me how elusive that national title is. I think thats what resonates about 95 is they had seen sparks of magic in 93 and in 94, and it all came together in 95. We had an incredible junior class and senior class that wouldnt stop and some underclassmen who contributed huge.

Crebo, then-sophomore linebacker: We knew the senior class and juniors were going to be with us and knew we had a special team. I dont think we were overconfident that we had it in the bag, but we knew we had a good team, the guys dedicated themselves in the offseason that this is our chance and this is Daves last year. We felt we had the pieces and the team. That 95 team is just sandwiched between some really good teams.

Dickenson: We werent riding our laurels going into the playoffs because we got our butts handed to us by Idaho and had a dogfight vs. the Cats. There was nobody slacking. Nobody was overconfident. We wanted an opportunity. We got the games at Washington-Grizzly and the confidence grew.

Wayne Hogan, then-athletic director: Were at practice Thanksgiving week heading into the playoffs, and Don Read calls the whole team together and says our new AD came out to practice and I thought Id bring him over to see what he wants to say. Im all jacked up about being there, and so I get in the middle and say Ive seen great football teams at Florida State where we won a national championship in 1993 with Charlie Ward and Warrick Dunn, and Im going to tell you, Ive seen you guys play and this team looks like a national championship team. That was not what Don wanted me to say. Next time I saw him, he said thats the last time Ill ever ask you to speak to the team.

Simonson: At times, it felt like we were unbeatable because of the way things were coming together. Coach Read harped on walking up and down the stretching lines day after day preaching vanilla, vanilla, vanilla. It was his mantra.

Montana opened the playoffs with a 48-0 win over Eastern Kentucky, pitched a 45-0 shutout against Georgia Southern and blasted Stephen F. Austin, 70-14, to advance past the semifinals, the place where the 1994 season ended against Youngstown State. That sent the Griz to the title game in Huntington, West Virginia, a predetermined site that happened to be the home of the other title-game participant, Marshall.

Montana's defense rose to the occasion in the title game after not having to be relied upon in the playoffs. McElmurry had the tone-setting hit early, and the Griz held standout running back Chris Parker to 94 rushing yards.Grizzly cornerback Mike Temple picked off future NFL quarterback Chad Pennington, who was held to 246 yards passing. Pennington was called for intentional grounding in the end zone as Butte natives Brian Toone and Randy Riley combined for the safety, the margin in the 22-20 victory, which had two ties and two lead changes.

Bouchee: Losing at Youngstown in 94, we knew coming back in 95 that somehow we were going to have to pick up the pace on defense. We watched a ton of film on Youngstowns defense and watched the speed and intensity and discipline with which Youngstown played, and we knew we had to replicate that speed and intensity. By the time we got to the playoffs, we really were playing our best defense.

McElmurry: At the championship, I thought we were going to be after them. I didnt think it would be as close as it was. I was nave. That team was better than I realized. Its hard because youre watching film and the teams we played before that looked really tough too, but we had been unstoppable.

Toone: I think that toughness that our defense watched our offense perform with made the defense want to play even tougher and even harder.

Bouchee: In seven on sevens, wed be going against Dave (Dickenson) every day in skeleton period. You couldnt imagine a better training for our defense than to chase around our receivers.

Dickenson: Give (defensive coordinator) Jerome (Souers) some credit because being a spread offense, we scored quite a bit and werent shortening the clock. They found that groove on defense to turn the tides for us.

Wells: Our defense played so well, and one of the biggest turning points was when Blaine McElmurry hits that running back. In todays world, he probably would have been thrown out for targeting. Our touchdowns, safety or field goals, that was at that point as big a play as any.

Manzanarez: The McElmurry hit set the tone. I love how that encapsulated Montana. Heres your tough-nosed Montana kid who runs through their running back, and the cocky Marshall guy does a dance and gets a penalty. No showboating or swagger for us. Coach Read preached you just do your job and you do it well.

Bouchee: Blaines big hit established the tempo that we wanted to play with, that we were going to play hard, play fast and play smart. I think it let them know how we were going to be playing that day. The safety by the two Butte guys ended up being the difference in the game.

Toone: I had broken my arm in the Idaho game, so I played that game with a club on and two rods in my forearm. That was pretty awesome. Not being a young kid now, you start looking at the level of work and coaching that went into that. The safety was incredible play calling on the line to give us players the opportunity.

McElmurry: We wanted to show the rest of the country that our defense was there too and we were part of the team too. It was fun for us to step up and make plays.

After Montana blew a 19-10 lead, Dickenson and the offense rose to the occasion running Reads pass-heavy offense that featured Matt Wells, Mike Erhardt and transfer Joe Douglass. They put together a 12-play, 72-yard, game-winning drive in the waning minutes, keyed by a fourth-and-2 conversion on a slant pass to Erhardt.

Dickenson, who won the 1995 Walter Payton Award, threw for 281 yards and two touchdowns to Matt Wells in the win despite being sacked 10 times. He finished with 1,500 yards and 13 touchdowns in four playoff games, giving him 5,676 yards and 51 passing touchdowns in 15 games that season.

Simonson: The first time I became aware of our offense was when we were running the scout-team offense against the first-team defense and Dickenson and myself and some phenomenal kids on the scout-team offense would march down the field and score on the first-team defense. Dickenson would be working his magic and Souers would yell at the scout team coaches to pull us back a little bit: You cant let those guys run roughshod over us, youre ruining our defenses confidence.

Dickenson: My two biggest fourth-down throws were my first start and my last, South Dakota State and Marshall. One to (Scott) Gurnsey on fourth down and the slant to Erhardt on fourth down. I never felt any pressure being behind but felt pressure when youre ahead because you dont want to screw it up. For me, thats why I never felt any pressure on those fourth-down throws because Im going for it. Thats how Ive lived my life as well.

Simonson: One of the big hurdles was against Boise in 1994. They opened a blitz package that confounded us and they put it on us. That hurt our pride as an offense and cast doubt and were not invincible. Thats the game Dave got hurt. The following year in 95, we had Boise for homecoming, my son was born that week, and that was a paramount moment to overcome that obstacle that had cast some doubt, and it acted as a springboard for our offense.

Brent Pease, then-QBs/RBs coach: I have been fortunate to coach some good players and guys in the NFL, and I look at two guys, (Boise State quarterback) Kellen Moore and Dave Dickenson. Something they had other kids dont is the awareness, the anticipation. They know the movements of the defense and knew their assignments, but to know what the other 10 are doing, it takes a pretty football-intelligent guy. I went along on my career, and Dave set a standard of what to look for in a player. Some of that is not something you can develop. Thats something I appreciate about him.

Simonson: Coach Read was an offensive genius and wrote a book on the subject. What made everything gel was Dave and his acumen. Its hard to put a specific quality on his intangibles. The difference between Dave Dickenson and Drew Brees is 2 inches, 20 pounds and $200 million dollars. His attention to detail and ability to translate it in high-pressure situations, Ive never seen anybody else be able to do that. Not only did he have the X-factor in games but a calming effect on the offense.

Dickenson: I was always nervous for every single game. In my younger years and in the pros, Id get myself so worked up and throw up and off Id go. I had a bit of a shoulder separation, and I didnt get hit that much in the playoffs, but that game started and they were faster than any team wed played. They were on me so damn fast that it did feel like, Wow, we had played Washington State that year, but they were fast and confident and on that AstroTurf. I think we all knew this isnt going to be like the rest of the playoff games.

Dennehy: Poor ol David got the crap beat out of him. And yet he still was a tough son of a gun. He persevered. We persevered and found a way.

Wells: If you would have told us before the game we could get the ball with 4 or 5 minutes left where a score wins the game and put the ball in Daves hands, wed sign up for that. I know a lot of people like to talk about how talented Marshall was and David vs. Goliath coach Reads mantra was always vanilla, we dont give anybody any bulletin board material, but I can drop vanilla now and say we were a very good team too.

Larson put the finishing touches on the championship with a field goal after making a 48-yarder and missing a 37-yard earlier in the game. It was the ultimate conversion for the eventual four-year starter whose missed extra point in 1993 against Delaware bounced the Griz from the playoffs.

The celebration was on after Marshall missed a 63-yard field goal as time expired. The party that began on the east coast didnt prepare the players for what was to come when they returned to Missoula.

Larson: Delaware, that was a tough one my freshman year, but I got to learn from my mistakes. I missed kicks throughout my sophomore year, which was pretty rough year to be honest. The McNeese State game, which was the end of my sophomore year, I had a really up and down year, but I made a kick against McNeese State 37 yards in the mud and won the game, so that was kind of helping to heal and let me get things rolling again. It helped me hitting the game winner against Northern Arizona in 95, so I was continuing to build.

Dickenson: When its over, instead of elation, theres a feeling of relief that weve done this. I felt it was one of those where Im just exhausted. I dont think people realize how much it takes to play that many games and go to school and take care of grades and grow up and everyone still has to make time for girlfriends and family.

Crebo: I hated flying, so I wasnt looking forward do that flight back. That plane was so weighted down, its amazing we made it back. We got back late and saw the crowd at the airport and the streets lined up, it was a neat thing to be a part of it. You were sort of celebrity status for a night.

Bouchee: We landed in Missoula and didnt know what was going on back in town. There was no internet back then, so we could only imagine. When we landed, this is late at night, pitch black and just hundreds and hundreds of people to greet us at the airport. At that point, it hit us: this is really something huge for the university, the community, the state.

Manzanarez: You feel like a true rock star, and to go downtown that night and be in the environment where people still were partying, we had a hard time navigating through the bars. You go somewhere with Dave Dickenson, it was a circus. That was the mountaintop for our division, for Griz football, and to be on that mountain is pretty euphoric.

Bouchee: We had these goofy blue track suits on, so the Griz football players had a blue track suit on, and if you had one on, it was the life of the party, free drinks at the bar, pats on the back. The ride didnt really stop. We had the celebration at the fieldhouse, retired Daves number, played his call with President (Bill) Clinton. This is huge, this is major stuff.

Dickenson: I do remember the post assembly. Bill Clinton gave me a holler. Don retired my jersey; I didnt want it then. I didnt even think about it because other things were going on. When I went back in 2018 for the College Football Hall of Fame, I was able to soak it in and feel the love of the people and the fans. That was one of my top experiences in my life.

Larson: I remember Dave saying something like, 'Yeah, I set a bunch of records, but records are there to be broken. A championship is in stone and nobodys going to take that away from you.' Its pretty awesome to be the first and to always have that.

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From vanilla to victorious: An oral history of Montana's rise to winning the 1995 national championship - 406mtsports.com

Deadspin puts the biggest ‘gift’ deals in sports history under your tree (Aww, we shouldn’t have!) – Deadspin

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Herschel Walker was a stud. He won the Heisman Trophy with Georgia, and rushed for 5,562 yards in three seasons as running back for Donald Trumps New Jersey Generals. In the NFL, Walker led the league in combined yards in 1987 and had a better year in 1988, rushing for 1,514 yards and adding on another 503 yards receiving. The problem was his Dallas Cowboys were terrible. The team had new ownership in Jerry Jones and a new coach in Jimmy Johnson. They needed to rebuild.

My offensive coaches said, Sheesh, if you trade Herschel, we wont ever score a point, Johnson told the Dallas Morning News on the 30th anniversary of the trade. I said, Well, Im not really concerned with scoring points this year. Im concerned with getting good here in a couple of years.

The Minnesota Vikings felt they were just one running back away from competing. So they sent the Cowboys five players:

Jesse Solomon, Issiac Holt, RB Darrin Nelson, David Howard and Alex Stewart. None of them had much of an impact. But the Vikings also included six draft picks.

One of those picks became Emmitt Smith, who alone would have made the trade lopsided, as he became the leagues all-time rushing leader. Smith led the league in rushing four times and was named Super Bowl MVP twice.

But another pick became safety Darren Woodson, who played 12 years for the Cowboys and made five Pro Bowls. Other players drafted with those picks included multi-year starters CB Kevin Smith and DT Russell Maryland.

Walker was mediocre in Minnesota, rushing for just 2,284 yards in 42 games. They lost their only playoff game with Walker.

The Cowboys went on to win three Super Bowls in four years.

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Deadspin puts the biggest 'gift' deals in sports history under your tree (Aww, we shouldn't have!) - Deadspin

1989 Cubs Historical Heroes and Goats: Part 6 – Bleed Cubbie Blue

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Last time our trip back to 1989 found the Cubs heading to the west coast for the first time of the season. If you are a longtime Cub fan, you know very well that those trips west often turned into horror stories. But on this particular trip, the Cubs headed west having just escaped a mini-tailspin. They won three of their last four before departing. Then they went west and won five of seven.

April and May can be a seesaw in baseball. The Cubs dropped from first to fourth during that spin. Then they bounced back up into a first place tie with eight wins in 11 games. The Cubs were sitting four over .500, tied for first and opening an eight-game homestand and looking to solidify their standing in the division. Lets see how they did in what was a slow week with only five games played.

Game 31, May 9: Giants 4 at Cubs 2 (17-14)

Paul Kilgus got the start for the Cubs and continuing a run of facing pitchers who were either ex- or future Cubs, they faced Mike Krukow. The game was scoreless until the third inning when Will Clark stepped to the plate with runners on first and second and two outs. Clark laced a single to center and the Giants were on the board. In the sixth, the Giants added two more runs. The first came on a two-out RBI triple by Robby Thompson. He later scored on an error by Mitch Webster along with Kirt Manwaring who had walked.

The Cubs did put together a rally in the seventh inning with a pair of singles by Ryne Sandberg and Mark Grace. That was followed by a sacrifice fly off the bat of Damon Berryhill and then a Giants error allowed a second run to score. But another ex-Cub closed the door as Craig Lefferts pitched the final two innings for his fifth save.

Game 32, May 10: Giants 4 at Cubs 3 (17-15)

This one started out better. Mike Bielecki started for the Cubs and Scott Garrelts for the Giants. Mark Grace drove in a run in the first inning with a successful squeeze bunt. He then scored the second run in the fourth inning when he singled and eventually scored on a Damon Berryhill RBI-single. Berryhill then doubled and scored on a Shawon Dunston RBI-single in the sixth and the Cubs were up 3-0.

Robby Thompson delivered a big hit for the second straight day. This time it was a two-out, two-run double in the seventh inning. Bielecki not only allowed both of those runs, but he went back out for the eighth inning, allowing a leadoff single before departing. Mitch Williams was summoned and allowed a bunt single to Brett Butler. After a sacrifice, Will Clark singled in the tying run. Mitch WIlliams then balked in the go-ahead and eventual winning run. Craig Lefferts closed out the game for the second straight game in an unusual finish. Jerome Walton reached with two outs on an error. Then when Domingo Ramos singled, Walton was thrown out trying to reach third. That is exactly how a batter can have a hit in his only at bat and end up on one of the Goat podiums.

Game 33, May 12: Astros 3 at Cubs 1 (17-16)

After getting swept in a two-game set by the Giants, the Cubs looked to bounce back against the Astros with Rick Sutcliffe on the mound. Some of you might be familiar with his opponent that day, Jim Deshaies. On that day Jim went the distance allowing the Cubs only four hits and three walks and picked up his fifth win in seven decisions.

The damage done by the Astros was largely done in the third inning and didnt start until two were out. Then Gerald Young singled and went all of the way to third on an error. Then Billy Hatcher walked and the Astros pulled off a double steal for their first run. Bill Doran came through with a two-out RBI single and the Astros had all of the runs theyd need.

Oddly, the Cubs also executed a double steal in the sixth inning, with Darrin Jackson stealing home and Mark Grace stealing second. You dont see a lot of executions of the double steal and certainly not two in one game. Deshaies added a single for good measure in the seventh and that ultimately helped a run to score on a Gerald Young sac fly to cap the scoring.

Game 34, May 14: Astros 1, Cubs 0 (17-17)

Greg Maddux went the distance in this one, allowing only three hits, two walks and a single run. But that was enough for him to be tabbed with the loss in this one. Bob Knepper and two relievers combined on a three hit shutout despite allowing six walks. This one was actually scoreless until the eighth inning. In the eighth, Maddux allowed a leadoff double to Rafael Ramirez. He coaxed back to back ground balls out of Astros hitters. Unfortunately, only one of those resulted in an out thanks to a Vance Law error. It probably didnt matter as Ramirez scored from second on Gerald Youngs single. Future Cub Dave Smith closed out the game for his sixth save. Am I the only one who feels like every 1980s closer in the NL eventually pitched for the Cubs?

Game 34, May 15: Astros 5, Cubs 1 (17-18)

The Cubs did the unthinkable, losing five straight at home. That dropped them back under the break even mark. The Cubs actually had an early lead in this one, scoring in the first inning off of Mike Scott. That run was unearned as leadoff hitter Doug Dascenzo reached on an error. Such an old school thing that Dascenzo and his .234 on base percentage led off. Doug did eventually have a couple of less awful seasons from 1990-1992 but produced a wRC+ of 20(?!?) in 1989.

Paul Kilgus held the Astros scoreless until the fifth, but then he got roughed up a bit. Billy Hatcher led off with a single and Kevin Bass followed with a walk. Ken Caminiti then hit a two-run triple. Future Hall of Famer Craig Biggio made it 3-1 with a sac fly. A Jeff Pico error after he was summoned with the bases loaded and no outs led to another run. Bass then finished the scoring with a solo homer off of Mitch Williams in the ninth.

Some weeks are tons of fun to write up and some not so much. This wasnt a good week of baseball for the Cubs. The pitching wasnt awful, but the bats were largely dormant. Seven runs in five games just doesnt get the job done. There have been many, many instances in baseball history where a team allowed 17 runs in five games and won four or more games. But with just seven runs, the recipe for ineptitude was there.

After climbing back up into a first-place tie on the final Sunday of the road trip, this series quickly knocked the Cubs back to fourth place. That kind of movement can happen early in the year when the teams are bunched. In this instance, they fell three and a half games out of first. This wont be the last time they are that far from first, but it is the farthest they will get from the top spot. In other spoiler alerts, at one game under .500, that was the furthest they would fall below break even.

Historical Heroes and Goats Player of the Week: Mark Grace

Mark Grace is one of the most polarizing figures in recent Cub history. A Cubs draftee who spent 13 productive seasons at first and participated in two different post seasons with the team, he is beloved by many. There was always a bit of noise around Grace, most of it for off-the-field things and by the time he left he rubbed some the wrong way. Certainly, he had some problems away from the field that became public after his time in Chicago. He also had a weird stint as a third man in the booth on Marquee broadcasts this past year that were mostly unwatchable.

Were not going to talk about or get into off-the-field or even broadcasting stories here, though. Instead, well talk about the player that Mark was. A very talented and productive one. He was originally drafted in 1984 by the Twins but did not sign. A year later, the Cubs grabbed him in the 24th round and he did sign. He would then be in the Cubs organization until after the 2000 season.

Mark debuted with the Cubs in 1988 and quickly took over the regular first base job. He played in 134 games as a rookie and had 550 plate appearances with a .774 OPS. For that, he finished second in Rookie of the Year voting behind Chris Sabo. That rookie class included some great names Tim Belcher, Ron Gant and Roberto Alomar rounding out the top five.

Grace received MVP votes in four different seasons, though he never cracked the top 10. He was selected to three All-Star teams and won four gold gloves. He led the NL in at bats in 1991 (619), doubles (51) in 1995 and sacrifice flies (10) in 1999. He also led the ML in double play grounders (25) in 1993.

He wasnt much of a power hitter, notching only 173 homers in 8,065 career plate appearances. But he was a prolific doubles hitter, with 511 of them. He notched 2,445 hits and a career batting average of .303. His finest season was in 1995 when he put 16 homers with those 51 doubles and drove in 92 runs. From his debut in 1988 until his age-37 season with the Diamondbacks, he had an OPS+ over 100 every single year.

In 1989 he had a line of .314/.405/.457 with 13 homers and 79 RBI. He was one of those sneaky base stealers, stealing 14 in 21 attempts. He also drew 80 walks while striking out only 42 times. Mark was always good at putting the ball in play. He finished 14th in MVP balloting that year.

Ill ask that question again that I asked in an earlier part of this season. In our hypothetical, the Cubs are opening a Cubs Hall of Fame. You are given a vote on who should be added to that Hall. This means you get to be part of the decision. Will it be a small, elite Hall? Or an expansive one? Does Mark Grace make the cut for your Cubs Hall of Fame? There have been many great seasons at first base for the Cubs dating back to Frank Chance and Cap Anson before and through to today with Anthony Rizzo. Some of them had only a few very elite seasons and some have spent a decade or more there.

I dont think Mark can be included if you are selective. There are just too many good choices. But this is a man who is in the top 10 in Cubs history in hits, total bases, doubles, runs scored, walks, and runs batted in.

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1989 Cubs Historical Heroes and Goats: Part 6 - Bleed Cubbie Blue

Californias New Senator Will Make History. But Can He Win A Full Term In 2022? – FiveThirtyEight

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With Sen. Kamala Harris about to become Vice President Kamala Harris, California is getting a new U.S. senator for only the second time in 25 years. On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he would appoint Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla to Harriss soon-to-be vacant seat.

For months, Padilla has been seen as a logical choice for the job. Hes got plenty of experience in California politics Los Angeles city councilor (1999-2006), state senator (2006-2015) and secretary of state (2015-present). Hes a close ally of the governor, and like Newsom he is more of a technocrat than someone who identifies clearly with either the progressive or moderate wing of the party. He also brings geographical balance to the California delegation as the first senator from Southern California since John Seymour left office in 1992.

Most notably, though, the son of Mexican immigrants will be Californias first senator of Hispanic descent pretty surprising given that California has the third-highest share of Hispanic residents of any state in the country. In fact, a plurality of California residents are Hispanic (39 percent, compared with 37 percent who are non-Hispanic white, 14 percent who are Asian and 6 percent who are Black), making Padillas appointment a long overdue milestone.

Nevertheless, Newsoms decision wont please everyone. The governor has been under pressure from virtually every constituency and interest group in the Democratic Party to pick a senator who represents them. For instance, many civil-rights leaders and womens groups were pressuring Newsom to choose a Black woman, such as Rep. Karen Bass or Rep. Barbara Lee. With Harriss departure, there will be no Black women in the next Senate, and there have been only two in all of American history (there are four current senators, and five former senators, of Hispanic descent).

[Democrats And Republicans Should Argue More Not Less]

So there is potential downside here for Newsoms own political prospects as well. This is not something that I wish even on my worst enemy, because you create enemies in this process, he lamented last month. (Its also a terrible time for Newsom to alienate potential allies; hes recently been raked over the coals for attending a crowded dinner party at a posh Napa Valley restaurant in violation of his own COVID-19 protocols.) On the bright side for him (and other ambitious California politicians), though, he does have more chances to placate these groups: He will also be tasked with appointing a replacement for Padilla as secretary of state, as well as a replacement for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who has been nominated to be Joe Bidens secretary of health and human services. (There may yet be another Senate vacancy from California, too, as 87-year-old Dianne Feinstein is stepping down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some liberals have called on her to resign from the Senate entirely.) So regardless of the health of Newsoms own political career, he has the enviable and extremely rare opportunity to shape California politics for years to come.

How many years, though, is an open question. Padilla will have to face the voters in 2022, when Harriss Senate seat is up for election, and appointed incumbents do not enjoy the electoral advantage that elected incumbents do. Being a senator from California is also an extremely desirable job: Its one of the most powerful positions in the most populous state in the union, and given Californias strong Democratic lean (Biden just won it by 29 percentage points), its Democratic senators have quite a bit of job security. So Padilla can probably expect to face a stiff challenge for his seat from some of the states other ambitious Democrats. For example, many progressives would love to see Rep. Katie Porter, a protge of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, seek a promotion, and Rep. Adam Schiff has $13.7 million in his campaign bank account despite his congressional district not being even remotely competitive.

[What The Stimulus Tells Us About Compromise In D.C.]

Padilla also probably wont be helped by Californias unusual top-two primary system, whereby all candidates run on the same ballot in the primary, and the top two finishers regardless of party advance to the general election. That means a potential Democratic challenger wouldnt have to get more votes than the incumbent, as in most states; instead, he or she would simply need to get more votes than the leading Republican (or third-party) candidate. Again, given how blue California is, thats an easy scenario to imagine: Indeed, two of Californias three Senate elections since the top-two primary was implemented have gone to a Democrat-on-Democrat general election. So while Democrats probably arent in danger of losing Californias Senate seat to Republicans in 2022, it might still be a competitive election worth watching all the way until November.

Originally posted here:

Californias New Senator Will Make History. But Can He Win A Full Term In 2022? - FiveThirtyEight

New York Yankees History: On this day after Christmas one of the Happiest/Sad days of the last decade (video) – Empire Sports Media

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No New York Yankee player has had a much more impact on the Yankees success in the past two decades than Derek Jeter. In an important moment, he always seemed to rise to the occasion, even when it didnt seem likely. On the last day of his career at Yankee Stadium, it seemed that the game was choreographed for Jeter even though they would not go on to a postseason appearance in 2014. He retired with 3,464 hits and 260 home runs, and a career .816 OPS.

Not only was Derek Jeter a great hitter, but he was also an excellent defender as one of the best shortstops in baseball. But one of the strangest talents that Jeter had was the ability to accomplish a particular feat and do it unexpectedly. On the evening of Oct. 13, 2001, the seventh inning of the third game of the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Athletics, and Jeter was in the right place at the right time. With Oaklands Jason Giambi on third base. With Mike Mussina on the mound, Torrence Long hit one down the right-field line, Spencer fielded the ball but overthrew both cut off men. Jeter mysteriously appeared past the first baseline getting the ball and flipping it to Posada, who tagged out Giambi. This is an astonishing play that he has never been seen then or since.

One of Derek Jeters most stressful times was the games leading up to his 3,000th hit, a record seldom seen in baseball. In all of baseball history, only 27 players had had 3,000 hits. Jeter entered his 2011 season struggling and not used to bad press, but after a two-hit game in Cleveland lifted his average to .257, Jeter a .314 career hitter before this season acknowledged that the scrutiny of his struggles had taken some fun from the chase for 3,000.

Its kind of hard to enjoy it when theres a lot of negativity thats out there, Jeter said. Hopefully, I might be able to enjoy it the next few days.

Nevertheless, the hit watch was on among the New York Yankee faithful. Jeter was known for having his Mom and Dad in the stands for important moments in Jeters career. This was no different in the days leading up to his 3,000 hit moment. On July 9, 2011, he entered the game at Yankee Stadium just two hits short of the remarkable accomplishment. Jeter would get a hit in the game, drawing him even closer. Again referring to Jeter over accomplishing, in his second at-bat, he would launch a David Price breaking ball over the left-field fence for his 3,000th hit, a homer no one expected. With a sold-out Stadium, he would hit five for five and hit the winning hit in the game.

With so many important moments in the future Hall of Famers career, it wasnt easy to pick on a particular moment of accomplishment. But today, I have picked one of the most successful moments of his career. With his career all but over, the Yankee star played his last game at Yankee Stadium. It was one of the happiest days for Yankee fans as they celebrated his career, but at the same time is was sad for the fans to know they would never see their favorite shortstop play again.

But even with the celebration, there was a game to be played that day against the division winning Baltimore Orioles on that afternoon in 2014. There was nothing on the line, but somehow the game took on special meaning for Yankee fans. The stands were full for that last Yankee game. Like in many games, his family was in the stands. As the game progressed to a tie in the ninth inning, fans didnt know if Jeter would be taken out of the game to give him his moment in the bottom of the ninth. But the decision was made to have Jeter hit instead. He took to the plate and hit a game-winning walk-off a line drive to end his career as if it was choreographed.

That late afternoon saw a celebration of Derek Jeter that would last long after the game was over without a single fan leaving the ballpark. The celebration will be one that will be long-remembered by New York Yankee fans. Below will remind you of that game. Thank you, Derek Jeter, for an amazing career that will lead to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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New York Yankees History: On this day after Christmas one of the Happiest/Sad days of the last decade (video) - Empire Sports Media

Fabinho aiming to put Liverpool among best teams in history with second title – This Is Anfield

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Liverpool star Fabinho admits a second Premier League title would be more special than the first as it would put Jurgen Klopps side further in to football history.

The Reds ended a 30-year wait to be crowned champions of England in July with a whopping 18-point advantage over Manchester City.

Liverpool have made light of injury problems this season to hold a four-point lead over Christmas in the chase for successive titles.

This team will be remembered for how well we play, the quality of our football and for winning the title, Fabinho said in an interview with the Daily Mail.

But to fight for the second one would put us further in to football history. It would put us up there with teams in the Premier League that have won back to back titles. Teams like Manchester City.

It would put us on the higher level and put us with the best teams in the history of the league.

Taking into account everything that has happened this year, the difficulties of no fans in the stadiums and the busy run of fixtures and injuries we have had, it all adds to making the second title more special than the first one if we could do it.

It would show that we have this constant desire at the club to be winners.

Long-term injuries to Virgil Van Dijk and Joe Gomez has forced the Brazilian midfielder to drop deeper into central defence.

Yet the 27-year-old has hardly put a foot wrong since Liverpools last domestic defeat, the 7-2 horror show away to Aston Villa at the start of October.

Fabinho said that plans for him to play at the back had been in operation almost from the day he arrived at Liverpool in July 2018.

Back then the coach saw the need for someone to be available so I started working on that position, getting used to it, working with potential partners, said Fabinho, who is set to make his 100th Liverpool appearance against West Brom on Sunday.

We had three centre-backs at the time so it was all just a test for me, just to be prepared. The coach had identified that there could be a need further down the line.

So when I came in I felt good and comfortable and over time its got easier.

When Virgil got injured I expected to come in as centre-back and even the other players were joking. They were saying: Fabinho the defender is back, he is here.

Yes I was nervous at first but I think I have grown in to it.

Continued here:

Fabinho aiming to put Liverpool among best teams in history with second title - This Is Anfield

This Day in Yankees History: The Curse of the Bambino is born – Pinstripe Alley

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Welcome to the relaunched This Day in Yankees History. With the offseason well underway, the Pinstripe Alley team has decided to continue the revived program in its new format. These daily posts will highlight two or three key moments in Yankees history on a given date, as well as recognize players born on the day. Hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane with us!

This Day in Yankees History (December 26)

101 Years Ago

When researching this day in history, I entered with the assumption that nothing much of note could have happened on the day after Christmas. While MLB teams occasionally drop significant transactions on holidays, typically, they take it easy on days like Christmas just like the rest of us.

And yet, 101 years ago today, perhaps the most important move in the games history came to pass, as the Yankees agreed to send $100,000 to the Red Sox in exchange for Babe Ruth. Theres little that needs to be said about the divergent paths of these two teams after the sale of Ruth, though its certainly fun to note that Ruth posted a 209 OPS+ with the Yankees, winning four titles while Boston obviously went without a championship for 86 years.

More interesting at this point are the circumstances surrounding the Yankees and Red Sox that culminated with the momentous deal that put Ruth in the Bronx. Yet even over a century later, much of what caused the Red Sox to send the games best player to their direct rivals remains a mystery.

Reports suggest Red Sox owner Harry Frazee was under financial pressure after the 1919 season. Some say Frazee, also an owner of multiple theaters and a producer of several stage productions, needed cash to finance his theatrical projects. Also possibly coming into play was Ruths knowledge of his own worth; the star two-way player was the face of the game, and the sport was gaining popularity around the country thanks in no small part to Ruths greatness. Ruth reportedly asked for his salary to be doubled entering 1920.

The parallel has been drawn before, but the Red Sox ridding themselves of a star outfielder, sending him to a fellow big market team that quickly wins a pennant, all because said star was about to see a salary jump is just a tale that does not get old, and one that repeated itself when they traded Mookie Betts almost a year ago.

Today is Chris Chamblisss 72nd birthday. The former first baseman is probably best known for stroking the home run that won the deciding Game Five of the 1976 ALCS over the Royals. Lets relive it, shall we:

Chambliss played seven seasons with the Yankees, won two World Series, and accumulated over 15 WAR per Baseball Reference. He later served as hitting coach under Joe Torre during the 1996-2000 dynasty years.

We thank Baseball Reference and Nationalpastime.com for providing background information for these posts.

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This Day in Yankees History: The Curse of the Bambino is born - Pinstripe Alley

Seeing India, Pak history through the lens of caste – The Indian Express

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We see caste as a problem, not as an analytical category. It is the object of analysis but never its subject. Scholarship on Indias history includes caste as one element, with class and community comprising other categories. What would the history of India look like if seen through the lens of caste?

Ambedkar made this argument for ancient India, seeing the struggle between Brahminism and Buddhism, interrupted by Muslim invasions that destroyed the latter and included the former within a new order. Hinduism emerged from this conquest by adopting Buddhist practices of vegetarianism, temples, floral offerings and non-violence. Buddhists, meanwhile, converted to Islam from the low castes to which they had been reduced.

Whatever its accuracy, Ambedkars history repudiated the dualistic narrative of Hindu-Muslim conflict by including caste within it. Ambedkar claimed that by launching the movement for Pakistan, the Muslim League abandoned its history of alliances between caste and religious minorities. It came instead to an agreement with the Congress as one high-caste party with another to divide the spoils of Independence.

I want to offer a parallel account of how caste permits us to understand modern Indian history. Consider how the Bania tells us a different story about this past. The first time this caste transformed modern India was in the 18th Century, when traders supported the East India Company to make colonialism possible. They did so by switching allegiance from Kshatriya rulers, whether Hindu or Muslim.

The second time Banias changed Indias modern history was with the development of the Congress as a mass organisation under Gandhi. The Kshatriyas displaced by colonialism had by then been replaced in politics by Brahmin lawyers and administrators. The first Bania to take power from the Brahmins who dominated the party, Gandhi gained for it the support of Indias traders.

The national and religious culture promoted by Gandhi was also Bania in character, defined by bhakti, ahimsa and popular Vaishnavism. His rival Jinnah performed a similar feat in the Muslim League, which had been run by an administrative class equivalent to the Brahmins, alongside remnants of the old Kshatriya elite.

Jinnah was from the Khoja caste of traders and, like Gandhi, the first Bania to gain control of his party while bringing Muslim capitalists to support it. Khoja are mostly converts of Hindu Lohana caste. Jinnah boasted of his ability to talk to Gandhi as a Khoja would to a Bania.

If Gandhis rise to power signalled the emergence of a new national culture for Hindus, Jinnahs rise accomplished the same for Muslims. The culture of learning and honour that had characterised the Leagues Brahmin and Kshatriya elite was replaced by a Bania focus on contractual politics.

With Independence, Banias in both countries had to take a back seat. In India they were restricted by a Brahmin bureaucracy and in Pakistan excluded by a new Kshatriya elite. With Brahmins disempowered by the loss of their bases in north India, power soon came to be exercised directly by Kshatriyas through the military.

The multiplicity of power centres in post-colonial India led to a variety of alliances, in which the numerical dominance of Shudras has been divided, joined or mediated by other castes. Pakistan was dominated by a Kshatriya-Shudra grouping in the west and a Shudra-Dalit-Adivasi one in the east, with Brahmin administrators and Bania capitalists of little account in either wing.

In India, Banias played a major role for a third time during the countrys economic liberalisation in the early 1990s, which freed them to adopt a new political identity in Hindutvas Brahmin-Bania combine. Their religiosity is not the austere kind valued by Brahmin ideologues like Savarkar, however, but continues to be focused on bhakti.

In Pakistan, meanwhile, the Kshatriya-Shudra grouping became an absolute majority with the separation of Bangladesh. Even a traders party like that of Nawaz Sharif must adopt Kshatriya ideals to survive. As for Brahmins, their declining status has allowed them to emerge as ideological brokers for groups making claims to power in the name of Islam.

Religion has come to define national culture in both countries, allowing different castes to identify with each other by excluding minorities. While Hinduism provides a home for many sectarian cultures in India, Islam in Pakistan is exclusive.

Why does Islam as a national ideology have to find its enemies within the Muslim community in Pakistan, whether among Ahmadis or Shias, Deobandis or Barelvis? Because the emergence of Bangladesh eliminated Hindus as a substantial minority, with Christians, Sikhs and Parsis also too insignificant.

While Christians and Hindus are discriminated against and even persecuted in Pakistan, as Muslims and Christians sometimes are in India, they are not seen to represent any serious threat to Islam. This means that Islam comes to dominate politics in such a way as to obscure both caste and religious difference.

If the suspect religious minority in Pakistan is to be found within Islam, non-Muslim groups come to represent not religious but caste difference. A Muslim community dominated by Kshatriyas and Shudras thus attacks Christians in Punjab as Dalits, while discriminating against Hindus in Sind as Dalits, Banias and Adivasis.

Christians and Hindus also serve as repositories for the caste identities of Muslims, who escape their status by displacing it onto them. While caste differences in India are also displaced onto a religious minority, in Pakistan this displacement locates the minority within and caste outside Islam. Caste really does allow us to see history anew.

Faisal Devji is Professor of Indian History at the University of Oxford

Suraj Yengde, author of Caste Matters, curates the fortnightly Dalitality column

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Seeing India, Pak history through the lens of caste - The Indian Express

The Secret History of the First Microprocessor, the F-14, and Me – WIRED

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Was the Central Air Data Computer the first microprocessor? Well, histories are complicated. In 1998, Ray finally got clearance from the Navy to tell people about it, and The Wall Street Journal published a piece titled Yet Another 'Father' of the Microprocessor Wants Recognition From the Chip Industry. The Intel engineers who share the title told the paper that the Central Air Data Computer was bulky, it was expensive, it wasnt a general purpose device. One expert said it was not a microprocessor because of how the processing was distributed among the chips. AnotherRussell Fishsaid it was, noting, The company that had this technology could have become Intel. It could have accelerated the microprocessor industry at the time by five years." But other people around that time also wanted to claim the title of father of the microprocessor; there were some big patent fights, and not everyone even agrees on the exact definition of a microprocessor in the first place.

The discussion, says Fish, who today runs an IP licensing company called Venray, is not a technical one, it is a philosophical one. Fish at one point wrote that the 4-bit 4004 could count to 16, while the 20-bit CADC was evaluating sixth order polynomial expressions rapidly enough to move the control surfaces of a dogfighting swing-wing supersonic fighter. When I spoke to him recently, he said he had gone back and read through the documentation. What Ray Holt did was absolutely brilliant, he says. Particularly given the timeframe. Ray was generations ahead, algorithmically and computationally.

Official histories have a way of hardening, but notice the very careful language on Intels website today when it describes the 4004, that canonical first microprocessor (emphasis mine): The first general-purpose programmable processor on the market.

The device Ray and the team had invented, this noncommercial, not-on-the-market microprocessor, was a stumped branch on a family tree. It flew a plane that could go fast and slow and fire missiles with unprecedented precision, but no next thing was born from it. A brilliant and beautiful secret butterfly that didnt beget other butterflies.

Except.

Ray says he likes to find out what the kids are really interested in. For Skylar DiBenedetto that was VR and 3D printing.

What Ray is doing now is launching another set of little histories, individual ones, as he nudges hundreds of students down a different path, down a different set of logic gates. As a robotics teacher, its astronomical, really, what he does, says Skylar DiBenedetto, a former student of his. Ray and Liz helped Skylar discover VR and 3D printing, and now shes a freshman at Ole Miss, the first person in her immediate family to go to college, where she helps run the virtual reality lab.

And hes not stopping. In our last conversation, just before Thanksgiving, he describes the after-school program for public school kids he and some other collaborators want to start after the new year. He is wearing a cap commemorating the last flight of the F-14, and I note the cross on the doorframe behind him. A friend of a friend has donated a big space, and he and Liz Patin and a few others are going to talk to local leaders and teachers and set it up. Maybe down the line hell even raise enough money to execute on his idea for a Christian-based STEM high schoolthe sketches for it look amazing, with classrooms and labs arranged around a central robot-competition area. When I ask Ray if its a stretch to say that his work to connect with kids is a little bit reminiscent of the way he was able to connect with Bill when they were working on the F-14 project, he says, Not a stretch at all. Maybe they could have even started a company together. I think we probably could have made some useful products.

Ray ultimately decided to transition out of a cutthroat technology industry and shift his focus to youth sports, describing it as a way for him to keep a connection with Bill. Unless you follow your passion, he says life can get useless, boring, and without meaning.

On the weekend before this piece is due to publish, I find myself gazing idly at the bookshelf under the television and my eyes focus on a small volume called The Portable James Joyce. It looks old, and I cant remember ever actually opening it, but something scratches at my brain. I pull it out and turn to the front. Its inscribed. William B. Holt 1/6/65. I flip to the table of contents. A few stories are underlined lightly in pencil, including Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Dead. A young man, organizing his early days at university, five years before a death he could never have foreseen, reading a short story that ends with a man wondering about a boy his wife used to know, one who died.

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The Secret History of the First Microprocessor, the F-14, and Me - WIRED

Weld telling Wellsburg history through its homes, families – The Daily Times

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HOME, SWEET HOME This home at 1617 Main St. in Wellsburg is among those being profiled by West Virginia Senate Majority Whip Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, in a book he is writing about the community. (Contributed photo)

WELLSBURG West Virginia Senate Majority Whip Ryan Weld is writing a book one that depicts Wellsburgs story through its structures and the families who lived and worked in them.

The perspective of the book is telling Wellsburgs history through the stories of the families who built, lived in or had significant events in some of our more architecturally significant, or historically significant homes, explained Weld, R-Brooke.

As I got into my research, I was very surprised of just how much of Wellsburgs history and the county and the states history could be told through these homes and the people who built them and lived in them.

His interest in the project began in 2018 during a conversation with his mother, Roseanna Filberto. She and her husband Welds stepfather and retired Weir High School football coach Tony Filberto have lived in the same house at 21st and Charles streets in Wellsburg since 1986. Weld grew up there.

A couple of years ago, we were talking about the house and Mom said, Weve lived here so long, and I dont know anything about the house. Who built it? Who lived here?

Ive always been very interested in history, and local history in particular. So I started to do the research.

Weld learned the original owner of the home, William Scott, was the owner of the Scott Ice Cream Company and had two confectionaries in Wellsburg during the 1920s. But Scott died young just before the economy collapsed and the Great Depression happened in 1929.

Weld contacted the grandsons and great-grandsons of Scott, who had always believed their relative committed suicide after losing everything in the Depression.

Weld was able to show them Scotts death certificate, which showed he had actually passed away in a local hospital three months prior to the Depression. This told the family something about their history they did not know, according to Weld.

Later, they visited the area and were able to tour their familys former home that now belongs to the Filbertos.

It was very cool to make that connection, Weld said. I thought out of that, there has to be a books worth of information on other homes. So I picked two dozen or so other homes in town and started my book.

Among them were many homes near Welds own home on Pleasant Avenue in Wellsburg, where many elected officials have resided over the years.

Among them was former State Sen. John Chernenko, D-Brooke, also a former majority whip. John and Jackie Kennedy made a historic visit to Wellsburg and the Chernenko home prior to the 1960 Democratic primary election for president.

Weld also has researched homes at 22nd and Main streets, at 816 Main St. and at 1030 Franklin Ave.

He spoke to John Sperlazza about his home at 2011 Main St. just before Sperlazzas death this year. Weld said he has since given the interview to Sperlazzas family.

Weld is keeping mum on other sites he researched so as to build interest when the book is published.

He said his work has revealed that Wellsburgs former three-story city building was destroyed by fire in 1939.

And while it didnt pertain to any one structure in the city, the Cliftonville Mine Riots played quite a role in Wellsburgs history. There was a gun battle between mine workers and the sheriff and his deputies that led to the sheriff being killed. A large court trial in the county took place in July 1922, according to Weld.

Weld has conducted his research through items found at the Brooke County Courthouse, local libraries, the Library of Congress, newspapers and books.

For the most part, the research is done, so now it is just a matter of process to complete the work, according to Weld.

In addition to being a state senator, Weld is also an attorney. He works on the book on weekends.

He hopes to have it done maybe by the end of 2021.

When it is done, I hope people get as much out of it as I did writing it, heaid. I hope they learn something about their home and their town, and thats why I started to write it.

(King can be contacted at jking@theintelligencer.net)

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Weld telling Wellsburg history through its homes, families - The Daily Times

Bitcoin Rally Attracts Wave Of Private Investment As Leading Blockchain VC Raises New $120 Million Fund – Forbes

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Bitcoin in Uncharted Territory. (Photo Illustration by Nik Oiko/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ... [+] Images)

The bitcoin rally has seen the cryptocurrency climb to uncharted highs and this hasnt just been reflected in the markets. Away from the exchanges and OTC desks setting the price of BTC, private and institutional investor interest is growing at pace. Evidence of this can be seen in the growth of crypto venture capital funds, which have raised billions of dollars in 2020.

On December 23rd, Seoul-based blockchain investment group Hashed revealed that it has raised $120 million for its first crypto fund. The firm, led by CEO Simon Kim, intends to invest in disruptive blockchain startups including base layer protocols similar to Ethereum. According to Kim, the next wave of crypto networks will mark the start of the protocol economy, an era in which data and value is transmitted globally by crypto networks using a shared public ledger. He predicts strong government and institutional support for this new paradigm and has had no trouble selling out the groups first VC fund.

Accredited investors are limited in terms of the crypto assets they can trade, primarily consisting of BTC and ETH via regulated brokers and custodians. Blockchain funds provide an alternative way of gaining exposure to digital assets and the ecosystem they support. As bitcoin has broken new records, surging past $22,000, some investors are looking beyond the 12-year-old cryptocurrency to bootstrapping the next wave of blockchain networks.

Data from research group The Block shows a record $900 million was invested in blockchain startups in Q3 of 2020. Investors rushed to bootstrap decentralized finance projects in particular, including those focused on portfolio management, lending, and derivatives.

No one knows where Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto originated, with speculation placing him everywhere from London to LA. What can be said is that the movement he started, founded on blockchain technology, has become a borderless industry thats attracting major investment around the globe. In the U.S., Andreessen Horowitz subsidiary a16z was founded to seek out promising crypto startups, alongside firms like Pantera Capital and Galaxy Digital, led by veteran investor Mike Novogratz.

In Asia, meanwhile, Hashed is not alone in securing private investment to fund public blockchain networks. A number of cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance and BitMax, have their own VC arms, tasked with nurturing next generation crypto companies. The symbiotic relationship often results in the same exchanges listing the native token of the projects theyve incubated once they reach maturity.

Its not just VCs that have sought exposure to blockchain either. Family offices and hedge funds have also taken an interest in the space. Harvard Universitys investment arm is one endowment fund that has already jumped into the crypto market, joining two other investors in an $11.5 million investment in crypto company Blockstack. Yale University is also known to have made a significant cryptocurrency investment.

Bitcoin is going through the early stages of a new asset class, from suffering early bubbles to attracting scammers with their get-rich-quick schemes. The frothiness of the market has been tempered by robust products that cater to a professional audience. Crypto is significantly more mature now than in 2017 when BTC last approached the heights it is now trading at. Today, the industry supports a healthy futures market, while enhanced options and custody have all anchored bitcoin while making it palatable to institutional investors.

Elon Musks flirtation with bitcoin, which has largely consisted of tweeting crypto memes to his 41 million followers, hints at a deeper interest in the digital currency. In a typically Musk-ian exchange on December 20, the Tesla CEO was encouraged by MicroStrategys Michael Saylor to follow his lead and convert some of Teslas cash reserves to BTC.

Are such large transactions even possible? pondered Musk, to which bitcoin bull Saylor replied in the affirmative, before offering to show Musk how.

Bitcoins low correlation to traditional assets has compelled some investors to rebalance portfolios that were heavy on bonds and equities, allocating a tranche to BTC. Bolder investors, however, are looking beyond bitcoin to the possibilities afforded by new blockchain protocols, where the risk-reward is higher, but so is the potential for outsized returns.

While institutional investors have been buying bitcoin, and investing in the industry thats formed around it, companies have been trialling their own blockchain solutions. Hashed has publicly supported Kakao, responsible for developing the countrys Klatyn blockchain, and LINE blockchain, owned by Tokyos LVC Corporation. Big Four accountancy firm KPMG, meanwhile, has expanded its blockchain strategy, supporting Microsoft, Tomia, and R3 in developing a solution for 5G network, and filing its own blockchain patents.

Against this backdrop of corporate innovation and private investment in blockchain, VCs have seen crypto funds fill up fast. This digital gold rush has prompted a booming business in picks and shovels - the tools and apps for interacting with the next wave of decentralized protocols.

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Bitcoin Rally Attracts Wave Of Private Investment As Leading Blockchain VC Raises New $120 Million Fund - Forbes

Bitcoins Rally Has Already Outlasted 2017s Epic Run – The Wall Street Journal

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approached $20,000 in 2017 and finally topped the mark in 2020. What drove the rallies, and what happened in the days following the peaks, show how much the market has changed in three years.

The digital currency, which has more than tripled in price this year, hit its first record of the year 24 days ago and has continued climbing, trading as high as $24,273 on Sunday. On Wednesday, it closed at $23,299. In previous rallies, such gains have quickly reversed course.

Bitcoin bulls say the money fueling this years rally is coming from more reliable sources than past rallies. Since September, big new investors have collectively bought about half a million bitcoins, worth about $11.5 billion, according to analytics firm Chainalysis, which tracked the holdings of investors with at least 1,000 bitcoins in wallets that are less than a year old.

Notable buyers this year include billionaire investors Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller, and companies like Square Inc., Microstrategy Inc. and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.

There are more smaller buyers, too. There have been more than 38 million transfers this year of less than $1,000 of bitcoin into personal wallets, according to Chainalysis. That is nearly double the 20 million in 2017.

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Bitcoins Rally Has Already Outlasted 2017s Epic Run - The Wall Street Journal

The price of bitcoin is ‘driven by manipulation’: Nouriel Roubini – Yahoo Finance

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Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates joined Yahoo Finance to discuss his thoughts on bitcoin.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. We are joined now by Nouriel Roubini, NYU professor of economics at NYU's Stern. Nouriel, always great to have you on.

We'd like to share some breaking news that's just coming across. We're getting some headlines that President Trump has defied Congress and has vetoed the bipartisan defense policy bill. In some comments, Trump called the defense policy bill a, quote, gift to China and Russia.

And, of course, I know you're someone who does look at geopolitical events. And we are shaping up for a new administration in 2021. Your reaction to this news that's just crossing.

NOURIEL ROUBINI: Well, you know, I mean the president is becoming unhinged on everything. He's literally trying to do a military coup, following the advice of Mike Flynn and others, in order to subvert the results of the election.

He doesn't want to pass the stimulus bill. And if he doesn't, we may end up in a government shutdown. And now, he's accusing the defense bill of things that don't make any sense, you know. He has even denied that this major hack attack came from Russia. He claims that it came from China without any base. And if there is anything that actually can help us to push back against our strategic rivals, whether Russia or China or North Korea or Iran, it's going to be this defense bill.

So, literally, the guy is becoming completely unhinged across the board. It's just politics. Maybe he's trying to prepare himself to run again in 2024. Maybe he's losing his marbles. I don't know what's going on. But pretty much everything he's doing, it doesn't make any sense.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Nouriel--

JULIA LA ROCHE: Nouriel-- go ahead, Adam. You go ahead.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Go Julia. It's all you, Julia.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Well, I would like to shift the conversation, and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on that, to cryptocurrency. Of course, Bitcoin. I think the last time we had you on, you got quite a bit of attention.

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I'm just looking at Bitcoin's price now. It's above $23,500. And you put out a tweet that Bitcoin has no place in an institutional investor or retail investor's portfolio. Yet we continue to see big name institutional investors kind of flood the space. Paul Tudor Jones, for example. Even Anthony Scaramucci. And then, we're also seeing the retail investors. Why does it not deserve a place in a portfolio?

NOURIEL ROUBINI: First of all, calling it a currency is not a currency. It's not a unit of account. It's not a means of payment. It's not a single [? numerator. ?] It's not a stable store of value.

Secondly, it's not even an asset. Either an asset has both income, use, and capital gain, like bonds, like stocks, like real estate. Or like in the case of precious metals, they don't give you an income. But gold gives you industrial use, it gives you [INAUDIBLE] as jewelry, and as a capital gain. While in the case of Bitcoin, there is no income, there is no use, there is no utility.

The only thing is a speculative self-fulfilling kind of rise. And that rise is driven totally by manipulation. There's been an academic study suggesting that these pseudo stable coin Tether is being created by fiat. This year alone, the increase in the supply of Tether has been another $16 billion out of the initial 4. So, it's 20. And every time the price of Bitcoin goes down, literally overnight they issue more of this Tether that is used literally to manipulate the price of Bitcoin.

So, the price of Bitcoin is totally manipulated by a bunch of people, by a bunch of whales. It doesn't have any fundamental value. And like in 2017, when it went from 1,000 to twice that, and then in '18 it crashed from 20,000 down to 3,000, I think we are close to the point in which this hyperbolic bubble is going to go bust. And it's going to go bust because law enforcement authorities are having an investigation of Tether and of the company behind it.

And in my view, like in the case of BitMex that was the biggest scam and criminal derivative cryptocurrency house has being indicted, you can have an indictment of those who are behind Tether. When that's occurring in the next few months, there will be a crash of Bitcoin and all of the other cryptocurrencies. They're not even currencies. They are shit coins.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Nuriel, I want to break this down in several parts. Because I think a lot of investors with Bitcoin at over $23,500 today need to pay attention. Why would there be, I'll call it a contagion, if the feds crack down on that other crypto, to Bitcoin? And how do you look at the fact that central banks worldwide are looking at creating digital currencies? Are they different than what we see with the Bitcoins and the other cryptocurrency is already out there?

NOURIEL ROUBINI: Well, there are several academic studies, including one by the University of Texas, that showed that every time the Bitcoin prices are weakening, there was an issuance of this Tether. There is literally a stable coin created out of Fiat. There has been no update that these cryptocurrencies are backed by any assets. And it's just printed by fiat used to buy Bitcoin. So, it's actually total price manipulation.

There's plenty of evidence that there are other schemes of manipulating cryptocurrency. There are pump-and-dump schemes, hundreds of channels on Telegram or on WhatsApp that is frontrunning, that is wash trading. Pretty much anything that is being done for penny stock is done for crypto and Bitcoin to the power of 10. That's a totally manipulated market. It's not driven by fundamentals. It's driven by insiders, by criminals, by whales, by scammers. That's the reality and there is evidence on it. And that's why there are criminal investigations that are going to reach their climax in the next few months.

Secondly, central banks are going to introduce digital currencies. But, first of all, these digital currencies will have nothing to do with crypto or blockchain. Today, every private commercial bank has a bank account with the Fed. We, as individuals, are [? non-corporational ?] are non-financial. We don't have access to the balance sheet of the Fed.

Suppose that tomorrow we have access to the balance sheet of the Fed. That's what a central bank digital currency means. It's not digital money. Digital money already has existed for decades. We have bank accounts, we have wire transfers, we have AliPay, we have WeChat Pay, we have Venmo. We have all sorts of other digital payment system.

So, what's new is not that it's going to be digital. There are thousands of digital payment systems that work all over the world. It's that we don't have a situation where individuals like you and me have access to the balance sheet of the Fed. Once we do, we don't need to have a bank deposit for making cheap, fast, instantaneous transactions that our payment system then clears and settled instantaneously. So, once we have a central bank digital currency, not only crypto-- this junk, these shit coins that don't have any payment use. But even other digital payment systems like bank deposit or Venmo and PayPal are going to be dominated by central bank digital currency. And this scheme technologically has nothing to do with crypto, has nothing to do with blockchain. It's going to be centralized. It's going to be permissioned. It's going to be a system that is going to be private, not on a public decentralized ledger.

So, calling it crypto is not true. It's a central bank digital currency. It's going to revolutionize payment systems and is going to destroy any pseudo cryptocurrency that is not a cryptocurrency and is not a currency.

The people don't know what they're talking about when they're talking about central bank digital currency. They get excited. They say even central banks are going to crypto. Just the opposite. They don't know what they're talking about.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at NYU's Stern and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates. Always a pleasure to have you on. Wish you a happy holiday season. And thank you, again.

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The price of bitcoin is 'driven by manipulation': Nouriel Roubini - Yahoo Finance