Anne Bouey

"The battle between Malibu beachfront homeowners and a less privileged public who want to share the stunning coastline has been fought with padlocks, gates, menacing signs, security guards, lawsuits and bulldozers. There seems little question who is winning: 20 of the 27 miles of Malibu coastline in Los Angeles County are inaccessible to the public. Yet this month, the homeowners - including some of the wealthiest and most famous people in the country, but also a hearty colony of surfers, stoners and old-fashioned beach lovers - are confronting what may be the biggest threat to their privacy yet: the smartphone. Jenny Price, an environmental writer who has pressed the battle to open hidden beaches, has developed an iPhone app offering a beach-by-beach battle plan for anyone wishing to explore what are, by design, some of the most secluded beaches around. It has maps to often hidden entry gates, house-by-house descriptions showing public property boundaries and spine-stiffening advice... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

I wonder which part of "California beaches are public property" was confusing to the homebuyers. - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

"It’s here! After teasing by pundits and even President Barack Obama himself about his infamously Lew-py signature, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has reconfigured his official John Hancock and submitted it for printing on U.S. currency, and the new version was unveiled via Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. The signature will begin appearing on bills this fall, the Treasury Department said, and will start with the $5 note. It takes about 18 weeks to implement the series change for each denomination, which includes manufacturing engraving plates with Mr. Lew’s new signature. New series happen whenever a note is redesigned or there is a change in signature by the Treasury secretary or U.S. Treasurer and the current process began as soon as Mr. Lew was confirmed. So, how’d he do? The initials are legible, with particular care apparently given to the second “J” and “L,” as well as his last name, according to a photograph the Treasury released on its blog and Twitter page. But the specific... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"After weeks of sometimes violent confrontation with police, protesters in Turkey have found what could be a more potent form of resistance: standing still. The trend was launched by performance artist Erdem Gunduz, who stood silently for hours in Istanbul's central Taksim Square on Monday night, in passive defiance of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's violent crackdown on environmental protesters at a park adjacent to Taksim. The square has been sealed off from protesters since police cleared it over the weekend, though pedestrians can still enter. As Gunduz stood there, others gradually began to join him — and later to replicate his protest in other cities in a wave of imitation driven by social media. Gunduz apparently made no announcement before he paused Monday evening in the square and didn't move. He stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at an image of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose admiration is rooted in his success in imposing secular values... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"Redditor Tokyomaneater69, U.S. Marine, found four baby bunnies in a hole next to a dead rabbit. He took them and decided to give them a second chance at life. He bottle fed them four times a day for two months. Their names are Steven, Raymond, Vaughn and James…(After Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughn, of course!)" - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

:) - Steven Perez

"Summer brings an annual invasion, in nearly every line of work, of shiny new interns. They're eager to fill out résumés and make contacts. That’s what they get instead of money—and so they save their employers about $600 million every year, according to Ross Perlin in his book Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. That’s why the free intern bonanza continues despite plenty of complaints that it frequently means breaking the law. Last week, in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures, a federal judge in New York broke up the party. Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that interns on two film production crews, including one from the Academy Award winning Black Swan, were employees entitled to payment with actual money. By not paying the interns, their employers violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. Judge Pauley got it right. Much too often interns do work that people ought to earn money doing. The benefits of the intern economy don’t outweigh the... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Yeah I guess unless you're looking specifically for students and you've worked out a way to give them school credit for their work, you should just say "volunteer opportunity." ETA: Good, I see someone addressed this in the comments on the OP. In that case yeah, unpaid internships are fine if you're doing them for credit but otherwise they should be paid. - Jessie

"For those times when you have a few – or agonizingly many -- hours between flights and you just want the world to go away, one airport invites you to go to bed right there in the middle of the terminal. Abu Dhabi International has just unveiled sleeping pods – chairs that convert into flat beds, complete with sliding shades that can fully enclose the slumbering travelers inside and isolate them from noise, light and curious fellow passengers. Still in the launch phase, the pods will ultimately feature Internet access, storage for luggage and charging stations for electronic gadgets. All those creature comforts and amenities come at a price, of course. Fliers can rent the chairs for about $12 an hour using a credit card. The airport says it’s the first in the world to use the Finnish-designed “GoSleep” pods. “(It’s) the very latest passenger experience that embraces the latest technology,” said Mohammed Al Bulooki, chief commercial officer of the Abu Dhabi Airports Company, in a statement. Ten pods are already in place in two of the airport’s terminals, with 35 more to be added later this year." - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

I need one of those at work. - imabonehead

"Don't expect to find a good night's sleep at the bottom of a beer bottle or wine glass. A drink - or a few - before bed will help you fall asleep, but it won't be a satisfying snooze, according to new research. And the more you drink, the worse you'll sleep - alcohol will cause you to wake up during the night and spend less time in the deepest stage of slumber, researchers said. British and Canadian researchers reviewed 20 studies that examined alcohol's effects on sleep. The studies involved more than 500 volunteers, mostly young adults, who drank various amounts of alcohol before bed. One to two drinks was defined as a low dose of alcohol, moderate was three to four drinks, and drinking more than four drinks was considered high - no pun intended. Fifteen to 30 minutes after their last drink, subjects went to bed in a sleep laboratory. At all doses, alcohol caused the subjects to fall asleep faster than they normally would, and, for the first two to four hours of the night, they... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

I saw that, Future C. - Louis Gray

"Are we ready to raise our girls to support a husband and children someday? That's the question raised by a report released recently by the Pew Research Center, which finds that mothers are now the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of households. Most of those are single moms, but there are now more than 5 million married mothers who make more money than their husbands, dramatically more than in the past. Pew surveyed 1,003 Americans to see how they felt about the shift - and found that the public is, predictably, confused. Can we resolve our collective confusion and, in doing so, bring up our daughters and sons to thrive in the 21st century economy? On one hand, more and more men and women are coming to see full-time working mothers as necessary and even desirable, a trend accelerated by the recession, according to Pew. Economic instability has meant that couples can't afford specialists anymore - one person who makes money, another who makes dinner. And so they're moving... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"But in a country where more than 5 million women are supporting families, is self-sufficiency too narrow an ideal? Family life is full of zigs and zags. What happens when a spouse loses the ability, temporarily or permanently, to be an equal financial partner? What happens if a child develops special needs or if the family grows to a point where it demands a full-time parent? The... more... - Anne Bouey

"The Pew report also raises questions about how we're raising boys for an economy they must share with women. While half of respondents to the Pew survey say kids are better off if Mom stays home, just 8 percent felt that way about Dad. That won't work: If we're going to accept mothers in the workplace, we must accept fathers at home. I don't believe it's enough to get rid of gender... more... - Anne Bouey

"For more than a year, students at Sun Valley Elementary in San Rafael held onto their used-up Crayola markers, accumulating 33 pounds of plastic coloring pens. The students didn't want the nonrecyclable pens to end up in the landfill, but there was nowhere else to send them. So, in April 2012, as part of their school Green Team efforts, they asked Crayola corporate officials to create a recycling program for the markers. When that didn't work, they went online, collecting more than 90,000 signatures and gathering support from politicians, celebrities and other school kids and national attention through Change.org. That worked. This week, the students are boxing up their markers to send to Crayola's new ColorCycle program, which will convert the plastic into a liquid fuel source. While Crayola announced the program in April, the students didn't declare victory until this week, after they had a chance to review the details of the program to make sure it was as environmentally sound as... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"Despite the well-known advantages to breast milk and vigorous campaigns around the world championing breast as best, Mexican mothers say the bottle is better. In a dramatic decline over the past six years, today only one in seven mothers in Mexico breast-feeds exclusively in the first six months, the standard recommended by the World Health Organization. That leaves Mexico with nearly the lowest level of breast-feeding in Latin America. Experts call it a public health crisis for a country where millions still live in extreme poverty, dirty water threatens the health of many families and education is poor. Mother's milk is richer in nutrients and antibodies that protect newborns from infections. Mexico has the highest infant mortality rate among the world's 40 largest economies. Between 2005 and 2010, breast cancer deaths increased twice as fast as Mexico's female population, with some experts blaming declining rates of breast-feeding; studies show it cuts a woman's risk of cancer by... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"With little government promotion of breast-feeding, myths proliferate: sagging breasts do not provide healthy milk, or that nursing babies will spoil them. Pediatricians also hear women say that they want to stop breast-feeding so they won't lose their perky breasts. "In Mexico, breast-feeding is not a normative behavior," said Chessa Lutter, the Pan American Health Organization's... more... - Anne Bouey

This is so sad! La Leche is so popular here in CA. Too bad it's not caught on more there. - Yvonne from FFHound!

"In South Korea, small penguin-shaped robots teach English to kindergarten students. Called Engkey (English jockey), these robots are operated remotely by teachers in the Philippines. They allow South Korean classrooms to import the teaching without the teacher, to pay the teacher at the much lower local wage, and to downplay the fact that the English teacher is Asian. Developers first tried to operate Engkey without the tele-presence of human teachers, relying instead on interactive scripted programming. This proved too rigid in classroom interactions and the remote-controlled robot option prevailed. Robot teachers in public schools may sound far-fetched and sci-fi futuristic and yet the future is now. The National Council of Teachers of English, an American professional organization of English teachers, has just publicly renounced the use of robots to grade student essays. Computer "teachers" also are being considered as a writing assessment tool for the new Common Core K-12 Content... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

What? A way to reduce the number of classroom teacher AND lower their wages? (Wisconsin) Governor Scott Walker must be orgasmic when he dreams about implementing this in Wisconsin. - Jkram|ɯɐɹʞſ

"Nikola Tesla's name inspired Elon Musk's electric cars. It's a measurement unit for a magnetic field and even adorns a rock band. Yet many still consider him an underappreciated inventor, not only because of the long shadow of Thomas Edison but also because he often eschewed financial glory for creativity, making him a compelling role model for today's Silicon Valley. Now Dorrian Porter, a Menlo Park entrepreneur, wants to erect a statue of Tesla in downtown Palo Alto to remind everyone that today's digital connectivity would not be possible without the Serbian American inventor. The statue would also be a free Wi-Fi hotspot. "I think every chance someone has to look him up and learn about him they will be surprised they didn't learn too much about him in high school," Porter says. He's launched a Kickstarter campaign with accompanying videos to muster support and financing. But the project has bigger goals than just a tribute to one of science's great minds. Porter hopes that when... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Must admit, when I was working there, it never struck me that Silicon Valley was all about the greenbacks. For some of the folks, yes, but there's a lot of love of innovation there. - Walt Crawford

"Invisalign, a San Jose company, uses 3-D printing to make each mouthful of customized, transparent braces. Mackenzies Chocolates, a confectioner in Santa Cruz, uses a 3-D printer to pump out chocolate molds. And earlier this year, Cornell University researchers used a 3-D printer, along with injections of a special collagen gel, to create a human-shaped ear. Once a science-fiction fantasy, three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere from the desks of home hobbyists to Air Force drone research centers. The machines, generally the size of a microwave oven and costing $400 to more than $500,000, extrude layer upon layer of plastics or other materials, including metal, to create 3-D objects with moving parts. Users are able to make just about anything they like: iPad stands, guitars, jewelry, even guns. But experts warn this cool innovation could soon turn controversial — because of safety concerns but also the potential for the technology to alter economies that rely on... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"On ground, sea or air, when parts break, new ones can be made on the spot, and even the tools to install them can be made, eliminating the need for staging parts in warehouses around the world, said Jeff DeGrange, vice president of Direct Digital Manufacturing at Stratasys Inc., currently the industry leader in a field of about 50 3-D printer companies. "We're going to see innovation... more... - Anne Bouey

*giggles at "human-shaped" ear* - Meg V. Meg

"A simple vinegar test slashed cervical cancer death rates by one-third in a remarkable study of 150,000 women in the slums of India, where the disease is the top cancer killer of women. Doctors reported the results Sunday at a cancer conference in Chicago. Experts called the outcome "amazing" and said the quick, cheap test could save tens of thousands of lives each year in developing countries by spotting early signs of cancer, allowing treatment before it's too late. Pap smears and tests for HPV, a virus that causes most cervical cancers, have slashed cases and deaths in the United States. But poor countries can't afford those screening tools. The study tried a test that costs very little and can be done by local people with just two weeks of training and no fancy lab equipment. They swab the cervix with diluted vinegar, which can make abnormal cells briefly change color. The low-tech visual exam cut the cervical cancer death rate by 31 percent, the study found. It could prevent... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

wow - SteVe C

This is fantastic. - Janet:#TeamMonique

"The Atlantic puffin population is at risk in the United States, and there are signs the seabirds are in distress in other parts of the world. In the Gulf of Maine, the comical-looking seabirds have been dying of starvation and losing body weight, possibly because of shifting fish populations as ocean temperatures rise, according to scientists. The survival rates of fledglings on Maine's two largest puffin colonies plunged last summer, and puffins are in declining health at the largest puffin colony in the Gulf, on a Canadian island about 10 miles off eastern Maine. Dozens of emaciated birds were found washed ashore in Massachusetts and Bermuda this past winter, likely victims of starvation. Whether dead puffins will continue washing up on shore and puffin chick survival rates will stay low remains to be seen. But there are enough signals suggesting that puffins and other seabirds could be in trouble, said Rebecca Holberton, a professor at the University of Maine who has studied... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"With its colorful striped beak, pear-shaped body and amusing waddle, the Atlantic puffin is sometimes called the clown of the sea. It's also held up as a poster child for successful seabird restoration. An estimated 6 to 8 million puffins live across the North Atlantic, from Maine to northern Russia. But they almost disappeared from Maine after settlers hunted them in the late 1800s... more... - Anne Bouey

"Eating a bug might not be just a part of the Truth or Dare game anymore - not if people in the United States and other western countries take a new United Nations report to heart. The report, out this month, argues that insects are a healthy, cheap, sustainable alternative to poultry, meat and fish, and if more Westerners were willing to eat them, it could alleviate many of the world's environmental and nutritional problems. Not convinced? It turns out that Americans have been eating bugs all along, or at least bits of them. Insect parts, rodent hairs, larvae and other unappetizing - but not harmful - things can be found in both grown and processed foods we eat daily, because it's nearly impossible to remove all of them without using large amounts of harsh chemicals. As a result, the FDA has set thresholds for "unavoidable defects" in many of our everyday foods. The agency points out that the bits and pieces in most foods fall well below these legal cutoffs. Here are the numbers: 60... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Keepin' a low profile, tryin' to stay everyone's friend, as usual, Uli :) - Eivind

"A Romanian village has unfurled what is the largest flag ever made, according to Guinness World Records. It took 200 people several hours to roll out the flag, which measured about 349 x 227 metres (1,145 x 744.5ft) , about three times the size of a football field, according to Jack Brockbank, an adjudicator for Guinness World Records who measured the flag before pronouncing it the biggest flag in the world. "It gives me great pleasure to recognize a new Guinness World Record title," he said after measuring the flag. "Congratulations Romania!" He said Romania's red, yellow and blue flag covers an area of about 79,290 sq metres (853,478 sq ft), beating Lebanon, which had held the previous record. The five-ton flag was displayed in Clinceni, 22 miles (35km) south-east of Bucharest. Workers struggled to keep it firmly planted on the ground because of windy conditions and had to use small sandbags to weigh it down. Adrian Dragomir, manager of the Flags Factory, which created the flag,... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Thanks, Anika. That sounds entirely appropriate. :) - Anne Bouey

"Before Cpl. Thomas (Cotton) Jones was killed by a Japanese sniper in the Central Pacific in 1944, he wrote what he called his "last life request" to anyone who might find his diary: Please give it to Laura Mae Davis, the girl he loved. Davis did get to read the diary - but not until nearly 70 years later, when she saw it in a display case at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. "I didn't have any idea there was a diary in there," said the 90-year-old woman from Mooresville, Ind. She said it brought tears to her eyes. Laura Mae Davis Burlingame - she married an Army Air Corps man in 1945 - had gone to the New Orleans museum on April 24 looking for a display commemorating the young Marine who had been her high-school sweetheart. "I figured I'd see pictures of him and the fellows he'd served with and articles about where he served," she said. She was stunned to find the diary of the 22-year-old machine-gunner. Curator Eric Rivet (rih-VET) let her take a closer look, using... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day. It's the latest advance from the booming field of regenerative medicine, making body parts in the lab. In the case of Kaiba (KEYE'-buh) Gionfriddo, doctors didn't have a moment to spare. Because of a birth defect, the little Ohio boy's airway kept collapsing, causing his breathing to stop and often his heart, too. Doctors in Michigan had been researching artificial airway splints but had not implanted one in a patient yet. In a single day, they "printed out" 100 tiny tubes, using computer-guided lasers to stack and fuse thin layers of plastic instead of paper and ink to form various shapes and sizes. The next day, with special permission from the Food and Drug Administration, they implanted one of these tubes in Kaiba, the first time this has been done. Suddenly, a baby that doctors had said would probably... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"Kaiba had the operation on Feb. 9, 2012. The splint was placed around his defective bronchus, which was stitched to the splint to keep it from collapsing. The splint has a slit along its length so it can expand and grow as the child does — something a permanent, artificial implant could not do. The plastic is designed to degrade and gradually be absorbed by the body over three years, as healthy tissue forms to replace it, said the biomedical engineer who led the work, Scott Hollister." - Anne Bouey

"A rare and tiny island fox is on the verge of making a comeback from near-extinction in the Channel Islands, a rugged and wind-swept chain off Southern California, officials said Monday. The population of the fox dropped to an all-time low of just 70 animals on Santa Cruz Island in 2000 before rebounding to 1,300 foxes now, said Yvonne Menard, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service. Santa Cruz is the largest island. Populations on nearby San Miguel and Santa Rosa islands have also bounced back into the hundreds after dropping in 1999 to just 15 of the cat-sized animals on each island. The island fox is only found on six of the Channel Islands, a chain of eight islands, five of which form a national park. Each of the six islands has its own unique fox subspecies because of generations of genetic isolation. In a five-year period in the 1990s, fox populations plummeted more than 90 percent on the rugged and mountainous islands due to an influx of golden eagles, which preyed on... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Fantastic news! - Kelli H. from Android

"Thomas Sohmers, 17, of Hudson, Mass., has been working at a research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13, developing projects ranging from augmented reality eyewear to laser communications systems. This spring, his mom, Penny Mills, let him drop out of 11th grade. She says she "could see how much of the work he was doing at school wasn't relevant to what he wanted to learn." On Monday, Thomas and his mom learned that he is in esteemed company as a high-school dropout with a knack for computers: David Karp, 26, sold Tumblr, the online blogging forum he created, to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. Examples of tech geniuses who lack college degrees are well-known — Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg among them. But Karp left high school after his freshman year, with his mother's blessing, at the tender age of 14. Critics say dropping out of school to pursue a dream is a terrible idea. Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford Law School who teaches and advises... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

I feel like I'm missing something - didn't he homeschool for two years before fully "dropping out?" Apparently self-guided, but responsible for proving learning, was just as limiting as his elite high school. There are always going to be some people who chafe against requirements, and it isn't a mark for or against genius. - Jennifer Dittrich

"As the guitarist strums and softly sings a lullaby in Spanish, tiny Augustin Morales stops squirming in his hospital crib and closes his eyes. This is therapy in a newborn intensive care unit, and research suggests that music may help those born way too soon adapt to life outside the womb. Some tiny preemies are too small and fragile to be held and comforted by human touch, and many are often fussy and show other signs of stress. Other common complications include immature lungs, eye disease, problems with sucking, and sleeping and alertness difficulties. Recent studies and anecdotal reports suggest the vibrations and soothing rhythms of music, especially performed live in the hospital, might benefit preemies and other sick babies. Many insurers won't pay for music therapy because of doubts that it results in any lasting medical improvement. Some doctors say the music works best at relieving babies' stress and helping parents bond with infants too sick to go home. But amid beeping... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

So, what we need is a huge playlist of appropriate songs and a whole lot of musicians willing to volunteer some of their time and talents to play in newborn intensive care units, till the insurance companies get a clue. - April Russo

"Finals week was dangerous for Thomas Saenz. The Navy lieutenant needed armed guards and an armored car to get to an exam site, in Kabul, Afghanistan. A deadly bomb attack also caused him to his miss classes — transmitted live via the Internet — but he persevered and earned a master's degree in engineering from the University of Southern California while commanding a top security team. His class graduated on Friday, as he joins a growing number of service members earning college degrees while deployed in a war zone. "Not only was he out there living on the edge, but he had to get his homework done," USC professor Frank Alvidrez said. The Obama administration is pushing universities to find creative ways to help service members complete their degrees as it tracks the success of its post 9/11 GI Bill, which is designed to be the most comprehensive education benefit for veterans since World War II. Enrollments for the new GI Bill number more than 480,000, according to the Veteran's... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

THAT is fortitude. - Micah

"When the school year ends a few weeks from now, millions of kids will head off to sleepaway camp for a summer filled with color wars, kayaking and bunk life. Most will have a great time, some will make friends for life, and many will look back on the experience fondly. But amid these happy campers is another group of veterans who recall sleepaway camp quite differently. These were the kids who cried every day and sent letters home begging to be picked up. They were lonesome, miserable, bullied; hated the bugs, hated the pool. Many refused to ever go back, and decades later, they can recall their suffering in visceral detail — from poison ivy to wretched food. "Oh did I hate overnight camp," recalled Lauren Russ, 43, who lives in Chicago. "I cried every day and wrote two letters home a day asking my parents to come get me." Russ' mom and dad saved those notes and even read some of them aloud at her wedding shower 10 years ago. "I got another letter from you," reads one of the... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

That's what I meant to add when I linked to the LA Times adult camps. There are a lot of people who have super-fond memories of camp but not every camp experience is great. If you're the type who got bullied or ostracized in school, camp was just a place to have it happen 24 hrs a day instead of merely 8. This isn't to put down the concept of camps. I think they can be wonderful for a... more... - Spidra Webster

"CHICAGO -- In the new psychiatric manual of mental disorders, grief soon after a loved one's death can be considered major depression. Extreme childhood temper tantrums get a fancy name. And certain "senior moments" are called "mild neurocognitive disorder." Those changes are just some of the reasons prominent critics say the American Psychiatric Association is out of control, turning common human problems into mental illnesses in a trend they say will just make the "pop-a-pill" culture worse. Says a former leader of the group: "Normal needs to be saved from powerful forces trying to convince us that we are all sick." At issue is the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, widely known as the DSM-5. The DSM has long been considered the authoritative source for diagnosing mental problems. The psychiatric association formally introduces the nearly 1,000-page revised version this weekend in San Francisco. It's the manual's first major update in nearly 20 years, and a backlash has taken shape in recent weeks:" - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Yeah... - Stephen Mack #TeamMomo

"This short video is at once quiet, profound, powerful, true, simple -- and so supremely human. It was produced by the Cleveland Clinic, as an example of their regard for empathy. It's a profound reminder: we ALL have our story. Others have theirs. We NEVER know. And to treat others with the benefit of the doubt, with courtesy, with compassion, with respect." - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

My husband sent me this video a few weeks ago. Very powerful! Currently our hospital is making us attend the "Heart, Head, Heart" webinars to outline much of what this video says with much less fanfare. - Janet:#TeamMonique

"Everyone matters" <3 - ᏓᏰ #team Monique from iPhone

"Giving a little bit of formula - the equivalent of a single bottle over several days - to a newborn who's losing too much weight after birth might actually increase the likelihood that the baby will be breast-feeding three months later, according to a small Bay Area study. In a climate of aggressive public health policy trying to cut down on formula use and encourage new moms to give infants only breast milk, the study results are likely to be controversial, and they may seem counterintuitive, the authors said. But for a select group of new mothers who are eager to breast-feed, small doses of formula, given for a short and carefully monitored time, may alleviate some of the stress associated with breast-feeding and, in turn, give them confidence to stick with it, said Dr. Valerie Flaherman, lead author of the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. "This study does not mean that all babies should get formula or that formula is better than breast-feeding. It's my strong... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

I agree with you Victor. Lots of my friends have had children here in the Bay Area and lost of them have had huge amount of pressure put on them to breastfeed only. Some pushed themselves too hard when signs of problems (cracking, mastitis, etc) showed and tried to power through, only making the problems worse. If they had done a little of both they may have been able to treat the... more... - Rachel Lea Fox

In honor of today, just watch this when you miss me. :) - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"Talk about high expectations for a newborn: King and Messiah are among the fastest-rising baby names for American boys. They're just a little behind Major, the boy's name that jumped the most spots on the Social Security Administration's annual list of popular baby names. Jacob is the most popular for boys — again — and Sophia is the top name for girls, according to the list released Thursday. It was Jacob's 14th straight year at the top. Next were Mason, Ethan, Noah and William. Liam cracked the top 10 for the first time, coming in at No. 6. Daniel slipped out of the top 10 for the first time since 1998, to No. 11. It was Sophia's second year in a row at the top for girls. Next were Emma, Isabella, Olivia and Ava. But what about those rising boys' names? Typically, says Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard" and founder of Babynamewizard.com, "You don't get a lot of Messiahs. You can have a lot more Majors." "I have no doubt Major's rising popularity as a boy's name is... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

Names will date you :) Seriously, I can guess your age range based on your first name, a game my co-worker and I play. Though we have an 83 year old patient with the name Pierce who always throws us. We finally asked him about his name. He was named for a family friend! So we calculate the family friend held the name Pierce for about 125 years. - Janet:#TeamMonique

"Muneera al-Shatti has loved playing basketball since she was a child but it wasn't until Thursday that she had chance to show off her skills at a public arena in Kuwait. As part of a new initiative launching sports leagues for women, al-Shatti and her teammates from Salwa Al-Sabah club downed Qadsiya club 63-13 in a game that attracted several hundred men and female fans. The initiative to launch basketball, table tennis and athletic leagues for the first time in Kuwait illustrates how the landscape for women athletes is improving across the Persian Gulf where hard-liners have long opposed women playing sports. Several of the players, in deference to the conservative Muslim culture that is common across the Persian Gulf, wore leggings and covered their heads with hijab. Others, however, wore shorts and T-shirts. "A competition like this should have happened a long time ago," said al-Shatti, who has played in tournaments overseas and only heard about the league in her home country... more... - Anne Bouey from Bookmarklet

"Saudi Arabia's decision is part of a wider package of reforms targeting women with the aim of ending discriminatory practices that have contributed to a host of health problems, including obesity and diabetes. The private schools' announcement also follows a decision last year in the kingdom to allow two female athletes to compete in the London Olympic Games following months of intense... more... - Anne Bouey