Comments Off

Shanahan secures first training success

Updated: Saturday, 19 May 2012 18:55 Former jockey Pat Shanahan trained his first winner when Prince Jock landed a handicap at Wexford

Classic-winning jockey Pat Shanahan got off the mark in his new career as a trainer when Prince Jock landed the Campile Apprentice Handicap at Wexford.

The Thistle Bloodstock-owned five-year-old was given a terrific ride by Ronan Whelan, who had to overcome a bad draw in stall 14 in the extended mile event.

Prince Jock raced in second for much of the way and looked to be struggling at one point, but Whelan stuck to his task and the 4-1 favourite emerged from a four-horse line at the final elbow to stride two lengths clear.

Dermot Weld and Pat Smullen are in a rich vein of form and they picked up another prize when Voleuse De Coeurs took the Barrow Rated Race.

The three-year-old (13-8 favourite) sailed past pacesetter King’s Warrant inside the final quarter-mile and was rousted along to hold Zabana’s challenge by a length and a quarter.

Smullen went on to a double when he swept into the lead two furlongs out on James Nash’s Star Of Aragon (3-1) and held favourite Liberty Love’s late charge by three-quarters of a length in the Owenduff Handicap.

Madeira Girl (11-4) has being progressing steadily and got her head in front in a tight finish to the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Median Auction Fillies Maiden.

Christy Roche’s three-year-old tracked favourite Miss Forde all the way and tackled her off the home bend, asserting close home to score by half a length in the hands of Fran Berry.

There can’t have been a better handicapped horse in the country than Tommy Stack’s three-year-old Time Of My Life and he was heavily backed into evens favourite before careering away with the Black Point Handicap to win by 15 lengths under Wayne Lordan.

Originally posted here:
Shanahan secures first training success

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Success-Training

Comments Off

Chelmsford group helps support medical care program

Tuan Win graduated from Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire last year and hes hoping to move on to medical school. A native of Vietnam, Win came to the United States in 2000, wracked with polio and facing an uncertain future. He joined hundreds of other children from Southeast Asia who have come to America over the years, courtesy of Child Medical Connection.

Changing the lives of hundreds of Vietnamese children has been a decade-and-a-half obsession for Joe Bodanza, who has volunteered his own time and resources to support children with serious medical needs for treatment at Shriners Hospital in Springfield.

Binders and folders occupy Bodanzas bookshelves, each holding photos of Vietnamese kids once distorted by polio, warped by scoliosis, or covered with burns and tumors, all kids supported by his self-made organization, Child Medical Connection. Thanks to financial assistance from donors, including Chelmsford resident Roland Van Liew and the Van Liew Family Foundation, the agency continues to enhance lives.

At age 7 Bodanza contracted polio and so understands the diseases hardships. With no family of his own, Bodanza surrounds himself with his Vietnamese children who refer to him as Mr. Joe.

I want no money. What I have, I share with my kids. I sleep in a chair, I have coffee, thats all I need, said Bodanza. My needs are very simple. People come first. Those who dont have, come first.

It all started after Bodanza retired from the state Department of Education at age 58, and he ran a small business with his partner, a Vietnamese man, creating restaurant placemats. They traveled to Vietnam twice in 1995 where Bodanza witnessed the cultural negligence of children with disabilities. According to Bodanza, in Vietnam the handicapped are considered cursed and often shunned from society.

People in Vietnam avoid a person who is handicapped and theyre considered a bad luck person People believe bad luck is contagious so they avoid the family, the child and all the people in the house as bad luck people, said Bodanza.

Bodanza retuned with a personal mission: To bring home a youngster, Phuc (Peter) Nguyen, for polio treatment. Nguyens one-year treatment for his severe spinal curvature was $500,000.

I knew nothing, said Bodanza about the challenging process of bringing Nguyen overseas. I had more rejections for people coming here than you would believe. Kids with polio coming here were rejected.

Word spread of Bodanzas work in Vietnamese communities and on his second trip back more than 100 people appeared at his hotel room. Maxing out his credit cards, depleting his retirement income and a small $1,600 monthly state pension, Bodanza was going into debt bringing the children to America for treatment. After being advised to incorporate his work as charity, Bodanza founded the nonprofit Child Medical Connection, with the help of a pro bono lawyer. The move enabled him to receive more donations. He made three trips back to Vietnam between 1996 and 1997.

Read more:
Chelmsford group helps support medical care program

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Medical School

Comments Off

Family hangs hope for boy on unproven therapy in India

Indian clinic’s stem cell therapy real?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

For more of CNN correspondent Drew Griffin’s investigation of India’s experimental embryonic stem cell therapy, watch “CNN Presents: Selling a Miracle,” at 8 and 11 p.m. ET Sunday on CNN.

New Delhi (CNN) — Cash Burnaman, a 6-year-old South Carolina boy, has traveled with his parents to India seeking treatment for a rare genetic condition that has left him developmentally disabled. You might think this was a hopeful mission until you learn that an overwhelming number of medical experts insist the treatment will have zero effect.

Cash is mute. He walks with the aid of braces. To battle his incurable condition, which is so rare it doesn’t have a name, Cash has had to take an artificial growth hormone for most of his life.

His divorced parents, Josh Burnaman and Stephanie Krolick, are so driven by their hope and desperation to help Cash they’ve journeyed to the other side of the globe and paid tens of thousands of dollars to have Cash undergo experimental injections of human embryonic stem cells.

The family is among a growing number of Americans seeking the treatment in India — some at a clinic in the heart of New Delhi called NuTech Mediworld run by Dr. Geeta Shroff, a retired obstetrician and self-taught embryonic stem cell practitioner.

Shroff first treated Cash — who presents symptoms similar to Down Syndrome — in 2010. “I am helping improve their quality of life,” Shroff told CNN.

After five weeks of treatment, Cash and his parents returned home to the U.S.

That’s when Cash began walking with the aid of braces for the first time.

Read more here:
Family hangs hope for boy on unproven therapy in India

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Stem Cell Therapy

Comments Off

Medical success or boondoggle?

Indian clinic’s stem cell therapy real?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

For more of CNN correspondent Drew Griffin’s investigation of India’s experimental embryonic stem cell therapy, watch “CNN Presents: Selling a Miracle,” at 8 and 11 p.m. ET Sunday on CNN.

New Delhi (CNN) — Cash Burnaman, a 6-year-old South Carolina boy, has traveled with his parents to India seeking treatment for a rare genetic condition that has left him developmentally disabled. You might think this was a hopeful mission until you learn that an overwhelming number of medical experts insist the treatment will have zero effect.

Cash is mute. He walks with the aid of braces. To battle his incurable condition, which is so rare it doesn’t have a name, Cash has had to take an artificial growth hormone for most of his life.

His divorced parents, Josh Burnaman and Stephanie Krolick, are so driven by their hope and desperation to help Cash they’ve journeyed to the other side of the globe and paid tens of thousands of dollars to have Cash undergo experimental injections of human embryonic stem cells.

The family is among a growing number of Americans seeking the treatment in India — some at a clinic in the heart of New Delhi called NuTech Mediworld run by Dr. Geeta Shroff, a retired obstetrician and self-taught embryonic stem cell practitioner.

Shroff first treated Cash — who presents symptoms similar to Down Syndrome — in 2010. “I am helping improve their quality of life,” Shroff told CNN.

After five weeks of treatment, Cash and his parents returned home to the U.S.

That’s when Cash began walking with the aid of braces for the first time.

See the original post here:
Medical success or boondoggle?

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Stem Cell Therapy

Comments Off

Kelly Frazier: Hip Hop Pioneers Public Enemy Headline Detroit's Movement Electronic Music Festival

In the world of hip-hop, the name Public Enemy has strong relevance to the foundation and evolution as both an art form and a culture since their 1987 debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Through their politically charged front man Chuck D along with the wild antics of one of the most colorful hype-man ever in Flava Flav, Public Enemy brought a strong, many times controversial yet entertaining urgency to the music industry about topics such as race, politics, and inner city life, among many other things. Public Enemy is currently celebrating 25 years in hip-hop, and in hip-hop years, that’s more than a lifetime. With two albums set for this year and a major tour, Public Enemy is set to headline Detroit’s annual Movement Electronic Music Festival this Memorial Day weekend at Hart Plaza.

While Public Enemy gets to get hype on one of the best sound systems in the world at Movement this year and pack in all sorts of their natural energy on stage, Detroit is in the blood of Chuck D. Growing up in the early 1960s, his first conscious exposure of music was all the Motown his family played in the house. However, as he grew up, and learned more about his own history and race relations in this country, some things about Detroit stood out.

Back in the 1940s, Chuck D’s grandfather drove trucks for Ford, and the fruits of his labor would afford him a Cadillac in the 1950s. As a result, police on 7 Mile Road in Detroit regularly stopped his grandfather. It was one of many bold lessons about Detroit and the world that Chuck D got to learn.

When Chuck D hit it big with Public Enemy, Joe Louis Arena was their haven for many classic performances. “When I went on stage in 1989 in front of 20,000 people at Joe Louis Arena,” says Chuck D in a recent phone interview. “I told them that my fight fighting racism for his [grandfather] sake has not been in vain. For a city being so close to another country like Canada, there is no excuse for people in Detroit not to be broad-minded about the possibilities of attaching the United States with the rest of the world.” It was just an example that how some things have gotten better but there are still many injustices that exist, even some that have gotten worse.

Public Enemy has been around for a quarter of a century now, and has seen the topsy-turvy world as new generations come, and how they handle the ideas they have expressed in their music from the beginning. There’s always the argument if race relations in America have gotten better or just mutated into new forms. “They have gone into different forms,” says Chuck D. “With the last two generations, maybe some of the urgency isn’t there and there is some complacency as far as knowing the necessity of knowing your history. Just to understand where to go in your day-to-day lives. At the end of he day, if you don’t know yourself and someone knows you better than you know yourself, or if someone defines you from the outside, then you have a new sort of racism.”

Along with the upcoming headlining performance at the Movement Festival here in Detroit on Sunday, May 27, Public Enemy is planning a big tour spanning around 24 cities where they are looking to bring on other classic hip-hop acts for each city. Also, they have a pair of albums set to drop this year, one in June and another in September. “These two projects are statements in the digital age that would have been impossible years ago.” explains Chuck D. “I’m glad the music is able to make a statement now.”

Public Enemy headlines the main stage at the Movement Electronic Music Festival at Hart Plaza in Detroit on Sunday, May 27 at 11:00 p.m. For more information on the Movement Festival, the full lineup and schedule, or to purchase tickets, visit movement.us.

Follow Kelly Frazier on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rensoul

Read more here:
Kelly Frazier: Hip Hop Pioneers Public Enemy Headline Detroit's Movement Electronic Music Festival

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Conscious Evolution

Comments Off

Film Review: American Animal

For movie details, please click here.

As it happens, there’s not a lot of truth in this single-set film, nor well-developed characters, nor much of anything except the late-night grad-student ramblings of an actual rich kid whose dad, Bill D’Eliaexecutive producer of “Ally McBeal,” “Boston Legal,” “Harry’s Law” and other TV shows and telefilms, and a busy director as wellserved as his executive producer. It doesn’t help that Jimmy’s philosophical ravings are based on a cloistered worldview taken almost exclusively from movies, which get talked about and referenced at length, rather than life as we know it.

It also doesn’t help that none of the other characterswell-acted though they areare anything approaching real human beings. James is simply the sounding board who raises the normal, predictable objections to Jimmy’s beliefs and behavior, and the two young womenmisogynistically identified in the credits as Blonde Angela (Mircea Monroe of Showtime’s “Episodes”) and Not Blonde Angela (Twilight’s Angela Sarafyan)are simply Penthouse-letter fantasies who drop in to spend the day at the guys’ Bohemian-cool loft getting high, playing games and each having sex with Jimmy. It’s not hard to tell who the writer-director-producer-star is in this scenario.

They’ve vapid people, but not in a way that comments on any perceived vapidity in modern society. They’re just spoiled and uninteresting. If the women have any careers or ambitions, they don’t get mentioned. Jimmy calls James “a conformist sadsterin your little cubicle.” That would have been cutting-edge social commentary in the 1950s.

D’Elia has said in interviews that the idea for the film came when he moved from New York City, where he was an NYU film-school grad, to Los Angeles and became severely, seriously ill for months. In the film, his character Jimmy claims he has a terminal diseasethough given every other fantasy in which Jimmy indulges, that may or may not be true and the movie never establishes that as a fact. Yeah, so he spits up bloodgo to WebMD; that could be anything.

Strategically repetitive dialogue and the use of baby talk and made-up language are the stuff of 1950s and 1960s experimental theatre, where they were done to better effect and to achieve some insightful point. And while deliberately static shots throughout the movie and the self-conscious jump-cuts early on yell “film school,” nothing here yells “real life.”

Visit link:
Film Review: American Animal

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Conscious Evolution

Comments Off

Silver Jeans Co. Expands Brand Into US Retail Roll Out

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ –Silver Jeans Co., the Canadian-based company that has gained a reputation for high quality and well-fitting jeans in the mid luxury denim market, is pleased to announce the expansion of Silver Jeans Co. branded stores in the United States. The announcementmarks the start of a global retail strategy for the brand and the creation of a new retail division within the Silver Jeans Co. corporate structure.

“At Silver Jeans Co., we feel the time is appropriate for us to finally act on our original retail strategy,” says Michael Silver, President, Silver Jeans Co. “Our brand is more than ready from a product selection and market position to expand significantly into retail. We are very excited to be at this evolution of our brand and to be able to invite consumers into the Silver Jeans Co. world.”

Silver Jeans Co. will focus on a multi door plan in the US with the first new store project to open in early 2013. Currently, Silver Jeans Co.’s only branded retail store is located in Denver, Colorado which opened in 2008 at Park Meadows Mall.

Silver Jeans Co. is also pleased to announce Denise Norkus, as vice president of the new retail division. Most recently Ms. Norkus held the position of vice president of retail at Betsey Johnson,a privately-held women’s specialty apparel clothing company known for its designs based on the iconic works of its namesake. At Betsey Johnson, Ms. Norkus’ responsibilities included influencing design, creation of standards, visual merchandising and product assortment. Effective immediately, Ms. Norkus will report jointly to Michael Silver, President of Silver Jeans Co.

Joining Ms. Norkus as senior director of operations, retail is Darren James. Mr. Jamescomes to Silver Jeans Co. having spent 16 years with Disney Stores North America where he held numerous field and operations roles with increasing levels of responsibility.

About Silver Jeans Co.

Silver Jeans Co.is a division of Western Glove Works, a family-owned business that has produced quality denim products for 90 years.In 1991, Michael Silver parlayed the family’s vast denim experience into its own branded label and createdSilver Jeans Co.. Over the past 20 years,Silver Jeans Co.has become known by its devotees as the must-have brand for those who demand a perfect fit from their jeans. Currently headed by Allen Kemp, and designed by Janice Marks, the brand is a time-tested collection that blends modern and vintage details with intricate washes and creative designs.Silver Jeans Co.gives its fashion-savvy but cost-conscious customer the latest styles and best quality at a price that he or she can afford. Today the collection has grown to an international lifestyle brand offering men’s, women’s and extended size denim and denim-related sportswear to markets worldwide.Silver Jeans Co.products are sold in the US at independent retailers such as M. Fredric, specialty chains such as Buckle and major department stores such as Nordstrom, Macy’s and Dillard’s. Suggested retail price forSilver Jeans Co.jeans range from $80-100, $39-79 for tops and $89-119 for outerwear.

Read more:
Silver Jeans Co. Expands Brand Into US Retail Roll Out

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Conscious Evolution

Comments Off

Newly Released ‘Unlocking Bible Secrets to Happiness Program’ Gets Boost from University Study that Suggests Happy …

A new self-help program designed to help people lead happier lives, received an unexpected boost from a published University of Pennsylvania Study suggesting that happy people live up to 9 years longer.San Diego, CA (PRWEB) May 18, 2012 A popular, new self-help program called Dr. …

Excerpt from:
Newly Released ‘Unlocking Bible Secrets to Happiness Program’ Gets Boost from University Study that Suggests Happy …

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Self-Help

Comments Off

Another Week, Another Movie Based on a Self-Help Book

What to Expect When You’re Expecting could expect box-office success, based on its lineage.

Lionsgate

The history of films adapted from advice books is both fascinating and sparse, as Scott Meslow wrote recently for The Atlantic. The genre got its start in 1964 with Sex and the Single Girl, a romantic comedy inspired by Helen Gurley Brown’s dating guide of the same name. After that, there was one 1972 Woody Allen film and three decades of virtual silence for guidebook-to-silver-screen transformations. Then Tina Fey’s brilliant 2004 hit Mean Girls came along and revived the trope.

Story continues below

The answer was to barely adapt the book at all. The alley-cat cultural force that was Sex and the Single Girl got declawed: screenwriter Joseph Heller (considerably more famous for his novel Catch-22) transformed Gurley Brown’s provocative treatise into a conventional romantic comedy, starring a Natalie Wood as a fictionalized version of Helen Gurley Brown, who uses her Sex and the Single Girl tricks to land Tony Curtis by the film’s end. Viewed today, it’s an occasionally charming, wholly bland adaptation that retains none of the actual Gurley Brown’s pilgrim spirit. (Curious readers can view the entire film for free on Youtube.) It took decades before a more faithful “adaptation” of Sex and the Single Girl emerged in the form of the HBO series Sex and the City, which can trace both its title and its DNA to Gurley Brown.

For anyone who sees advice-book adaptations as the last frontier for a movie industry bereft of ideas, Sex and the Single Girl stands as evidence that the movie industry has been this way for a while. And another film this weekend shows, there still other wells of strange source material for Hollywood screenwriters to tap. What, after all, has less of a narrative than a Hasbro board game?

Continued here:
Another Week, Another Movie Based on a Self-Help Book

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Self-Help

Comments Off

'What to Expect When You're Expecting': Pregnancy comedy doesn't deliver

Pregnancy can be a tedious process full of doubt and discomfort, its brief moments of joy bracketed by long periods when it seems as if the whole thing’s never, ever going to end. So is this movie.

Yes, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” is — like “Think Like a Man,” like “He’s Just Not That Into You” — another Hollywood romantic comedy based solely on the title of a self-help book.

And at least, for once, it’s not based on a self-help book where a man tells women how they’re getting everything wrong.

In fact, the original “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” — in case you’re not one of the millions of parents who ever had it parked on your nightstand — was calming, upbeat, even joyful. Not so this picture.

Instead, it’s a fairly standard, over-stuffed rom-com with a bunch of disparate couples going through their own version of the nine-month miracle. And, as in most films like this, some of the stories — and stars — come off far better than others.

Cameron Diaz is terrific, for example, as a TV fitness guru who’s gotten pregnant unexpectedly — and is too used to being the Alpha dog to realize she can’t control everything that’s about to happen. Elizabeth Banks, meanwhile, goes for even broader comedy — and probably will garner the most appreciative laughs as a woman who always has idealized the process, and gets a rude awakening. They’re both fine, and work very hard.

But the development of their stories is still only so-so. (Diaz, in particular, doesn’t have a lot to work with, besides her incredibly trim figure.) And they’re the standouts in the picture.

Far less successful is Jennifer Lopez, trying for tears as a woman hoping to conceive (but never quite selling that poignancy, thanks to her forever petulant, baby-girl voice). And plucky Anna Kendrick is wasted in a story about a less-planned pregnancy.

As for the fathers — well, they’re little more than clueless sperm donors here. Although Dennis Quaid gets a few smiles as a sugar-daddy-in-his-dotage, a long subplot about a male support group is literally mirthless — even with Chris Rock working his hardest.

Perhaps, once all these actors were hired, there wasn’t any money left for decent filmmakers. Perhaps, like many star-driven properties, signing up malleable filmmakers who’d simply ensure everyone got nice closeups and yummy catering was always the point.

See original here:
'What to Expect When You're Expecting': Pregnancy comedy doesn't deliver

admin, May 19th 2012

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Self-Help
« Older Posts



Subscribe to RSS feed