Marathon training latest: First injury, then triumph
Before we begin, a quick note:
This will be my last post for 2013. Like a lot of people, I tend to go into hibernation during the last few weeks of the year, partly because I am all but paralyzed by overconsumption of food and drink, but partly because I am reflecting on the previous year and considering what I would like to accomplish with the upcoming year. One of the tasks I’ve undertaken as part of this process is to lay out a list of goals for my creative, personal and athletic lives, and to figure out concrete steps I can take to make those goals happen. This blog figures heavily in those goals. I don’t want to go into details because I’ve found that nothing deflates my excitement for a project like talking about it, but I do hope that 2014 is the year when I can make…
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#grrrrrr!
what can one say – wild
Khalil Gibran on Lebanon

“You have your Lebanon and its dilemma. I have my Lebanon and its beauty. Your Lebanon is an arena for men from the West and men from the East. My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadow and rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards.
You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people. Yours are those whose souls were born in the hospitals of the West; they are as ship without rudder or sail upon a raging sea…. They are strong and eloquent among themselves but weak and dumb among Europeans.
They are brave, the liberators and the reformers, but only in their own area. But they are cowards, always led backwards by the Europeans. They are those who croak like frogs boasting that they have rid themselves of…
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Love Is
Let’s #KeepSGClean!
If you feel that living in a clean environment is important, join the Keep Singapore Clean Movement community via this Facebook app – www.keepsgclean.sg.
Organised by the Public Hygiene Council, Singapore Kindness Movement, Keep Singapore Beautiful Movement, and supported by National Environment Agency, the Keep Singapore Clean Movement encourages Singapore residents to keep the country litter-free, toilets clean and dry, and be mindful not to spread germs when ill. Organisers are aspiring for Singapore to have a high standard of hygiene, like what is seen in Japan and South Korea, and Scandinavia.
Here is a video featuring the wonderful work that Waterways Watch Society does, in keeping Singapore’s waterways as free of litter as possible.
If you wish to make a difference and keep Singapore a clean and highly liveable city, join a litter-picking activity, or better yet, organise one! For more information, please visit http://www.publichygienecouncil.sg/, or get in touch…
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Healcrest Winter Retreat
Happy Winter Holidays everyone out there! Its been a snowy December so far and we are busy bees right now at Healcrest filling holiday orders, taking care of our little hens and keeping our little corner of the world in order over the winter months.

If you havent heard, Healcrest successfully entered an incubator program this November! The Idea Foundry Intersector Program will provide us with 3-4 months of business development support and we are utilizing that time to build new internal structures for farm and product management! We look for 2014 to be a great year for getting Teapops, Teas and a few other choice quality herb-based edibles into your lives! We believe strongly in the quality of our products coming out of Healcrest and are excited to get them into the world. If you have a store, a cafe or somewhere special you would like to…
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Chinese Immigrants Will Soon Outnumber Dominicans In NYC: Gothamist
A surging number of immigrants from China will soon surpass immigrants from the Dominican Republic in New York City, according to a report from the City Planning Department. It\’s 235 pages, and you can curl up with it by popping open this pdf, but the short version is that NYC\’s immigrant population is at a record high, and the leading demographic is Chinese. Some fun facts to scare your xenophobic uncle with:
The largest numeric growth in immigration took place in the Bronx, while Staten Island saw the largest percentage increase.
The largest immigrant group is from the Dominican Republic, with 380,200 residents. China follows with 350,200 residents.
But immigrants from China are surging, having grown by 34 percent since 1990.
Dominicans have increased by just 3 percent.
China gave NYC more legal immigrants than any other nation between 2002 and 2011.
Mexicans are now in third place, with 186,300 residents, but that immigrant group increased a whopping 52 percent over the last decade.
Jamaicans (169,200) and Guyanese (139,900) are in third and fourth place, respectively.
Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, India, and Russia round out the top ten groups.
Many of Brooklyn’s immigrants settled along a “horseshoe” formed by the B, Q and N train lines.
Most Queens immigrants are along the 7 line.
Immigrants comprise 47 percent of all employed residents across all major industries.
According to the report, New York now \”boasts the most diverse population of any major city in the world because of the flow of immigrants from across the globe.\” The city is so diverse, there is currently no single dominate ethnic group in New York City. If you\’re curious to see which ethnic groups live where, check out the neat interactive map on the Department of City Planning website.
via Chinese Immigrants Will Soon Outnumber Dominicans In NYC: Gothamist.
The Gun Report: December 18, 2013 – NYTimes.com
Clockwise from left: Damien Fields, Janee Hadan, Alisha Waters, ”Tonika.”
* Damien Fields, 39, who was shot six times in the chest and killed on a Jersey City, N.J., street Friday evening, was remembered by his sister-in-law as the family’s peacemaker. Which was quite a feat, as he was one of 18 children.
“He’s a calm person,” Melissa Goodwin said, still speaking of him in the present tense. “You could go to him for anything.”
Fields was sitting on the steps of a three-story home when a man opened fire with a handgun. Goodwin said Fields would not have been killed if he’d had a job, and linked his death to the area’s poverty. “Everybody out here complains about how we live our life, but by the same token, they never came to us and said ‘How may I help you with your life?’” she said. “They don’t know what people in the ghetto go through.”
* Janee Hadan, 24, a preschool teacher, was shot and killed outside a nightclub in Omaha, Neb., early Sunday. She had gone to the Passion Lounge with two girlfriends for a rare night out. Hadan was walking ahead of her friends when someone in a car started shooting, and she was struck while trying to run away. She leaves behind a 3-year-old son.
“Janee just walking into a room made you feel good,” said Jane Happe, executive director of the Educare Center of Omaha. “She had an infectious smile, and she was really committed to her kids.” A candlelight vigil was held at Educare on Monday night. Attendees were encouraged to donate school supplies.
* A woman shot twice in the back in a road rage incident on the Florida Turnpike in Fort Lauderdale last month is afraid to drive because her attacker is still out there. One of the bullets exited through her arm and another through her stomach. “It was just so random,” said the woman, who would only identify herself as Tonika. “I don’t know who it is, what the purpose was.”
Tonika was headed to a party when someone in a black car entered a toll plaza behind her and opened fire. She thinks it was because she was going slowly through the plaza so she wouldn’t lose her friend in a nearby lane, who was following her to the party.
“It’s a shame that you’re just driving down an interstate—even if you have some sort of a traffic altercation—and people resort to gunfire to solve problems,” Sergeant Mark Wysocky said.
* Alisha Waters was shot five times by her estranged husband, who then killed himself, in Florence, Ky., on Aug. 6. One of the bullets severed her spinal cord, rendering her a quadriplegic. Alisha had just arrived at work when her estranged husband, Dennis Mathis, came out of hiding with a gun in his hand.
He had called Waters repeatedly and texted her 186 times in two weeks, prompting her to file an emergency protection order. But a judge refused because cyberstalking is not grounds for a domestic violence order in Kentucky. If the order had been granted, Dennis Mathis would have been prevented from buying a gun.
Alisha and her parents are hoping to create the Alisha Waters Law, which would change domestic violence laws to include cyberstalking. “God gave me a reason to stay,” Waters said, “and I’m going to prove to others that I will start my life over.”
Here is today’s report.
—Jennifer Mascia
If You Shopped at Target Since Thanksgiving, Your Credit Card Was Probably Stolen: SFist
The data from some 40 million transactions at Target stores nationwide was stolen by cybercriminals in the last couple of weeks. As this security blogger first reported, the investigation is underway but it looks like the complete credit card information from every transaction between November 27 and December 15 had been collected by an outside party, via the company\’s point-of-sale systems.
The breach appears to have been a case of malware either unknowingly installed by a Target employee, or knowingly put there by an accomplice on the inside.
via If You Shopped at Target Since Thanksgiving, Your Credit Card Was Probably Stolen: SFist.



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