Paving Contractor in Raleigh, NC, Teams with Local Online ...

Raleigh, NC, August 03, 2012 Home and business owners in and around Raleigh, NC, who need a reliable and affordable paving or concrete contractor will soon have an easier time locating such a professional on the Web. Locally owned business Herndon & Herndon Paving, which specializes in driveway paving, parking lot paving, asphalt repair, and more, has partnered with local online marketing firm Prospect Genius in an effort to improve its Web visibility and accessibility. The goal is for area residents searching for the services that Herndon & Herndon Paving offers to quickly and easily locate the company?s Web site.

According to surveys conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, search engine use is one of the most popular online activities. As of February 2012, 73% of all Americans utilized search engines to find information?59% of those on any given day. That?s why it?s vital for a small business like Herndon & Herndon Paving to have a Web site that performs well on major search engines. In today?s digital age, having an active, informative, and easy-to-locate Web site is key in staying competitive with other local paving and concrete contractor companies.

Prospect Genius?s main marketing tactic is search engine optimization, or SEO. By incorporating industry- and location-specific keywords into Herndon & Herndon Paving?s Web site copy, Prospect Genius will help Raleigh residents encounter the business when searching for the services it offers. For instance, home- and business owners who query a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo! using keywords like ?driveway paving Wake Forest? and ?concrete stamping Chapel Hill? should be presented with Herndon & Herndon Paving among the top search engine results.

?Studies have shown that sites in the top two or three search engine results get the most traffic,? states Matt Gallo, a senior Internet marketing strategist for Prospect Genius. ?Those new site visitors can become new customers, once they see what the business has to offer. For Herndon & Herndon Paving, a search-engine optimized Web site can lead to a broader customer base in the local area.?

The concrete and paving contractors at Herndon & Herndon Paving have more than 30 years of experience in the industry. The Raleigh-based company specializes in driveway repair and resurfacing, parking lot paving, concrete pouring and stamping, and other walking and driving surface services.

Herndon & Herndon Paving
Thurman Herndon
(919) 263-0272
Contact
paving-contractor-raleigh.nc-biz.co/

Source: http://cashinonpaidsurveys.org/paving-contractor-in-raleigh-nc-teams-with-local-online-marketing-firm-to-boost-web-presence-paid-surveys/

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5 killed in Oregon tour bus crash on I-84

LA GRANDE, Ore. (AP) ? A tour bus crash crashed Sunday on an icy stretch of interstate in Oregon, killing five people and injuring about 20 others, authorities said.

Police say the bus lost control around 10:30 a.m. on the snow- and ice-covered lanes of Interstate 84 in eastern Oregon. The bus crashed through a guardrail and went down an embankment a few hundred feet.

Rescue workers were using ropes to help retrieve people from the crash scene. State police said the charter bus was carrying about 40 people, but they did not say where the vehicle was traveling to or from.

The bus crash was the second fatal accident in Oregon on Sunday morning due to icy conditions. A 69-year-old man died in a rollover accident

State police have not released information on the company that owns the bus.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-12-30-Tour%20Bus%20Crash/id-206460f24a3345d28bed1a902e99ce53

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5 kids, 1 adult die when SUV goes into creek

By The Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. -- Five young siblings and one adult died early Saturday when a sport utility vehicle went off an eastern Mississippi road and plunged into a rain-swollen creek, authorities said.

Neshoba County Sheriff Tommy Waddell said the victims appear to have drowned after their Dodge Durango left a county road 20 miles southeast of Philadelphia just after midnight Saturday.

Deputy County Coroner Marshall Prince identified the five children who died as ?Dasyanna John, 9; Duane John, 8; Bobby John, 7; Quinton John, 4; and 18-month-old Kekaimeas John. Family friend Diane Chickaway, 37, also died. The sheriff said all were members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and lived in the Pearl River community east of Philadelphia, where the tribe operates a large casino complex.

The father of the children, Dewayne John, escaped the vehicle and remains hospitalized for hypothermia and water inhalation. The children's mother, Deanna Jim, and Chickaway's husband, Dale Chickaway, also survived. The group was traveling to Conehatta, another Choctaw community, with Dewayne John driving. Waddell said he has been tested to see if he was under the influence of alcohol, though he said official results aren't in. If officials decide to file charges, Waddell said they probably wouldn't act until Wednesday.

It appears none of the nine occupants of the vehicle were wearing seat belts or were in child restraints, the sheriff said.

---

"It's always sad to hear of the death of a tribal member, but today our tribe experienced a great tragedy with the loss of six beautiful Choctaw souls. I cannot begin to imagine what the friends, relatives and loved ones are feeling," Tribal Chief Phyliss J. Anderson said in a statement. "There are no words that can express our sincere condolences to such a horrific accident. I join many of you in the outpouring display of love and support shown to the families during this difficult time. Our thoughts and prayers are with them."

The crash happened on County Road 107, in a rural area near the Neshoba-Newton county line. Heavy rains have deluged the area in recent days, raising the water level of what Waddell described as a normally small creek. The SUV ran off the left side of the road into the creek near the Kitchner community.

The sheriff said it wasn't raining and there was no ice on the road. "This accident is not weather related at all," he said.

Divers from the Philadelphia fire department had to be called to find the submerged vehicle. Prince said the vehicle was pulled from the water after 3 a.m. In addition to the 30 emergency workers, about 20 Choctaw tribal members gathered at the site, he said.

"It looked like he has just run off the road and went into the water," Prince said. "It was deep and swift. The vehicle was completely submerged."

Waddell said the bodies have been sent to Jackson for autopsies. The Mississippi Highway Patrol will reconstruct the accident starting Sunday to learn more.

Tribal spokeswoman Misty Dreifuss said funeral arrangements would likely be made Sunday. She said the children are expected to be buried together. Dreifuss said word of the deaths spread quickly through the 10,000-member tribe and that members "definitely have been hit pretty hard."

Waddell said that he can't recall a deadlier accident in the county in his 26 years of law enforcement.

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/29/16238707-5-kids-1-adult-die-when-suv-goes-off-road-into-creek?lite

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How Neuroscientists Observe Brains Watching Movies

Image: Todd Davidson/Stock Illustration Source

• 

  How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect?s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they...

  Read More??

Unless you have been deaf and blind to the world over the past decade, you know that functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (fMRI) can look inside the skull of volunteers lying still inside the claustrophobic, coffinlike confines of a loud, banging magnetic scanner. The technique relies on a fortuitous property of the blood supply to reveal regional activity. Active synapses and neurons consume power and therefore need more oxygen, which is delivered by the hemoglobin molecules inside the circulating red blood cells. When these molecules give off their oxygen to the surrounding tissue, they not only change color?from arterial red to venous blue?but also turn slightly magnetic.

Activity in neural tissue causes an increase in the volume and flow of fresh blood. This change in the blood supply, called the hemodynamic signal, is tracked by sending radio waves into the skull and carefully listening to their return echoes. FMRI does not directly measure synaptic and neuronal activity, which occurs over the course of milliseconds; instead it uses a relatively sluggish proxy?changes in the blood supply?that rises and falls in seconds. The spatial resolution of fMRI is currently limited to a volume element (voxel) the size of a pea, encompassing about one million nerve cells.

Neuroscientists routinely exploit fMRI to infer what volunteers are seeing, imagining or intending to do. It is really a primitive form of mind reading. Now a team has taken that reading to a new, startling level.

A number of groups have deduced the identity of pictures viewed by volunteers while lying in the magnet scanner from the slew of map?like representations found in primary, secondary and higher-order visual cortical regions underneath the bump on the back of the head.

Jack L. Gallant of the University of California, Berkeley, is the acknowledged master of these techniques, which proceed in two stages. First, a volunteer looks at a couple of thousand images while lying in a magnet. The response of a few hundred voxels in the visual cortex to each image is carefully registered. These data are then used to train an algorithm to predict the magnitude of the fMRI response for each voxel. Second, this procedure is inverted. That is, for a given magnitude of hemodynamic response, a probabilistic technique called Bayesian decoding infers the most likely image that gave rise to the observed response in that particular volunteer (human brains differ substantially, so it is difficult to use one brain to predict the responses of another).

The best of these techniques exploit preexisting, or prior, knowledge about pictures that could have been seen before. The number of mathematically possible images is vast, but the types of actual scenes that are encountered in a world populated by people, animals, trees, buildings and other objects encompass a tiny fraction of all possible images. Appropriately enough, the images that we usually encounter are called natural images. Using a database of six million natural images, Gallant?s group showed in 2009 how brain responses of volunteers to photographs they had not previously encountered could be reconstructed.

From Images to Movies
These reconstructions are surprisingly good, even though they are based on the smudged activity of hundreds of thousands of highly diverse nerve cells, each one firing to different aspects of the image?its local intensity, color, shading, texture, and so on. A further limitation I have already alluded to is the 1,000-fold mismatch between the celerity of neuronal signals and the sedate pace at which the fMRI signal rises and falls.

Yet Gallant?s group fearlessly pushed on and applied Bayesian reconstruction techniques to the conceptually and computationally much more demanding problem of spatiotemporal reconstruction.

Three members of the group each watched about two hours? worth of short takes from various Hollywood movies. These data were used to train a separate encoding model for each voxel. The first part of the model consisted of a bank of neural filters. These filters are based on the cumulative research that has been conducted over two decades into the way nerve cells in the visual cortex in people and monkeys respond to seeing visual stimuli with varying positions, size, motion and speed. The second part of the model coupled these neuronal filters to the blood vasculature, describing how the neuronal activity is reflected in much slower fMRI signals.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=c18a3f4e0f8a99d8a713abdd891545c2

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2 Ohio University Inventors Earn Honors

By: Associated Press | NBC4i.com
Published: December 30, 2012 Updated: December 30, 2012 - 10:56 AM

ATHENS, Ohio --

Ohio University says two of its professors have been named charter fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.

The school in southeast Ohio announced that John Kopchick and Gerardine Botte were among 98 innovators to receive the honor this year.

The Athens Messenger reports that Kopchick is a professor of microbiology. He has developed intellectual property in the field of biotechnology that has made a significant impact on human health.

Botte is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering who has developed technologies that harness commercial and residential waste products such as ammonia, and turn them into sustainable energy sources.

Botte and Kopchick will be inducted as fellows during the conference of the National Academy of Inventors on Feb. 22 in Tampa, Fla.

Source: http://www2.nbc4i.com/news/2012/dec/30/2-ohio-university-inventors-earn-honors-ar-1294703/

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Maine greets gay marriage with midnight weddings

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) ? After waiting years and seeing marriage rights nearly awarded and then retracted, gay couples in Maine's largest city didn't have to wait a moment longer than necessary to wed, with licenses issued at the stroke of midnight as the law went into effect.

Among them were Steven Bridges and Michael Snell, who held a commitment ceremony six years ago but made marriage official under state law with a simple ceremony.

"It's historic. We've waited our entire lives for this," said Bridges, a retail manager, who's been in a relationship with the Snell, a massage therapist, for nine years. Bridges, 42, and Snell, 53, wore lavender and purple carnations on black T-shirts with the words "Love is love."

With Snell's two adult daughters looking on, they exchanged vows in the city clerk's office after getting the first marriage license issued to a same-sex couple in Portland.

Voters approved gay marriage in November, making Maine and two other states the first to do so by popular vote. The law is already in effect in Washington state; Maryland's takes effect on Tuesday, the first day of 2013.

Gay marriage was already legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia, but those laws were either enacted by lawmakers or through court rulings.

The Maine Legislature had once approved same-sex marriage, but it was overturned by a statewide referendum three years ago, crushing couples who had already made wedding plans. Gay marriage supporters collected signatures to put it on the ballot again, and this time it was easily approved.

Gov. Paul LePage signed off on the certified election results on Nov. 29, so the new law was to go into effect 30 days from that date. In addition to gay marriage becoming legal, same-sex marriages in other states will now be recognized by the state of Maine.

Nobody knew exactly how many couples would be rushing to get their marriage licenses early Saturday. Falmouth joined Portland in opening at midnight. A handful of other communities including Bangor, Brunswick and Augusta planned to hold special Saturday hours.

In Portland, the mood was festive with the crowd cheering and horns sounding at midnight as Bridges and Snell began filling out paperwork in the clerk's office in Portland City Hall.

More than a dozen couples stood in line to wait their turn amid the festive atmosphere. There were free carnation boutonnieres and cupcakes, and a jazz trio played.

Outside City Hall, a couple hundred people cheered Snell and Bridges when they emerged newly married, breaking into an impromptu song, the Beatles' "All You Need is Love."

Donna Galluzzo and Lisa Gorney also planned a midnight wedding, and theirs had all the trappings. They dined Friday night with friends, and then took a limo to City Hall. They had their rings, flowers, wedding vows and a friend to perform the ceremony.

They ended up near the back of the line awaiting marriage licenses, but that didn't matter.

"We decided it's a historic day and we thought it would be awesome to be a small part of history, to say we got married on the first day it's legal," Galluzzo said.

Not everyone was getting married right away.

Suzanne Blackburn and Joanie Kunian, of Portland, were among those in line to get their license at midnight, but they didn't plan to wed immediately. One of their grandchildren wanted them to get married on Valentine's Day.

"I don't think that we dared to dream too big until we had the governor's signature," Blackburn said. "That's why it's so important, because it feels real."

___

Follow David Sharp on Twitter at http://twitter.com/David_Sharp_AP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/maine-greets-gay-marriage-midnight-weddings-054313237.html

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Heads Up: 2013 Social Media Conferences

With the overwhelming volume of material on social media, attending a conference or training session about it is one of the most practical ways to get the best ideas from thought leaders. This is a great investment you'd want to make if you're a social media fan or someone who works in the industry. Prepare as early as now for next year?s social media events.

NMX 2013 Las Vegas (http://nmxlive.com)

Event details: January 6-8, 2013 at Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas

BlogWorld New Media brings together a worldwide cast of bloggers, podcasters, web, TV, and radio broadcasters, and other New Media content creators in this momentous event. You?ll be hobnobbing with attendees from 50 countries for a 3-day educational conference that will be presided over by 175 industry leaders. Speakers include Internet Law Center founder Bennet Kelly, Girlfriend Social CEO Amanda Blain, Triberr Founder Dinno Dogan, and other equally well-established bloggers, editors, entrepreneurs, web designers, developers, and photographers. Brands that attend NMX events include Apple, Adobe, AOL, American Express, WordPress, Intel, and the Wall Street Journal. You can also choose to attend this event online.

EmMeCon San Francisco 2013 (http://wappow.com/emerging-media/san-francisco/)

Event details: January 28-31, 2013 at San Francisco, California (specific location: TBD)

The Emerging Media Conference is an event for professionals in practically any industry. ?It focuses on innovative technology aimed to inspire attendees from search marketing, digital marketing, mobile, gaming, and social media. This will not only be a great opportunity to listen to pros from small businesses, agencies, as well as large corporations; it?s also your chance to discuss, collaborate, and network with industry experts, University and college-level educators, and marketers. Among previous organization attendees are Seomoz, Bing, Yahoo, CNN, The Walt Disney Company, and Carnegie Mellon University. Wappow!, which organizes this event, promises a superior conference where you can relax, be inspired, ?and actually connect with speakers and other attendees.

The Social Media Strategies Summit 2013 (http://socialmediastrategiessummit.com/las-vegas-2013)

Event details: February 5-7, 2013 at Bally's Resort and Casino, Las Vegas

Conceptualized to fit professionals from diverse backgrounds, this summit consists of six tracks focusing on particular industries. ?However, you aren?t limited to a specific track; you can move between tracks depending on your learning objective. There will be nine interactive workshops and forty sessions grouped into the following categories: Community Engagement and Customer Service; Measurements, including ROI, tools, and analytics; Corporate Case Studies; Sales Approach, Marketing Strategies and Tactics; and Legal Risks and Strategies. ?Organizers encourage that companies send representatives for the each session, so you can maximize the learning experience. Group discounts are available. ?The Social Media Strategies Summit is now on its third year and is best for those involved in branding, strategy development, monitoring, marketing, community engagement, business development, media sales, legal, and public relations.

Social Media Tulsa Conference 2013 (http://socialmediatulsa.org/2013-social-media-tulsa-conference/)

Event details: March 21-22, 2013 at the Mayo Hotel, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Are you a blogger, business innovator, techie, marketer, content creator, or a social media fan? Do you work in local government agencies or in the hospitality and travel industry? ?Do you have the burning desire to understand or master new media and mobile technology? If you said yes to any of these, this is the conference for you. This event is organized by Social Media Tulsa, the area?s most active social media group.

4th Annual Corporate Social Media Summit (http://usefulsocialmedia.com/newyork/conference-agenda.php)

Event details: June 2013 at New York City

Listen to CEOs and CMOs discuss the various aspects of getting social in the business arena. This summit will revolve around panel discussions on upscaling your brand, collaborating cross-departmentally, engaging your community, creating a social media content strategy, content marketing, crisis communications and online reputation preservation, developing a CRM strategy, assessing your social impact, and identifying influencers and creating content for B2B and B2C businesses. Speakers will also cover strategies for engagement on the most popular social networks?Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and Pinterest.

D: Dive Into Media (http://allthingsd.com/conferences/dive-into-media/about/)

Event details: ?February 11-12, 2013 at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, California

Analyze the impact of the digital revolution and changes in media?from television and film, to music and publishing. This conference will bring together entrepreneurs, media leaders, content creators and innovators to see how these changes will impact the future of the industry. ?Best part is, All Things D promises "unrehearsed, unscripted, and unexpected" discussions and interviews free from PowerPoints and panels. The current lineup of speakers includes chief executives from Google, HBO, Sony Entertainment Inc., Hearst Magazines, Live Nation Entertainment Inc., and Facebook.

Author Bio:
Monique Jones is an Engineer who deals with telephone systems. Besides being an Engineer, she also works as a part time writer. She helps her colleagues and other people about their communication issues, giving effective solutions to address their needs.

Source: http://www.e-junkie.info/2012/12/heads-up-2013-social-media-conferences.html

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Did Shakira give birth to a baby boy?

Scott Heavey / Getty Images

Shakira and Gerard Pique.

Based on his recent Twitter feed, FC Barcelona soccer star Gerard Pique has become a dad -- which means his girlfriend, singer and "Voice" mentor Shakira has become a mom.?

But not so fast. Eagle-eyed fans will note that he made his announcement on Dec. 27 -- and Dec. 28 is a day reserved in some countries (such as Spain and Latin America) for jokes and pranks, like April Fool's Day.

Check out the two posts Pique made:

?

Initially the first tweet caused waves of interest from news outlets, but when Shakira herself failed to also tweet the good news -- and Pique went silent for the next 11 hours with no follow up -- it appeared that the news might be a bit premature. His most recent post, actually noting the "prank" day, seems to confirm that he was just joking.

Still, a baby is definitely on the way; the couple, who met while?Shakira was filming a video for the South Africa World Cup, announced via Facebook in September that they were expecting a child.

"Gerard and I are very happy awaiting the arrival of our first baby," said the 35-year-old singer and new mentor on "The Voice." "At this time, we have decided to give priority to this unique moment in our lives and postpone all the promotional activities planned over the next few days."

Looks like they'll have to extend those postponements a little longer.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/12/28/16210945-did-shakira-give-birth-to-her-baby-or-did-daddy-gerard-pique-just-prank-fans?lite

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Top 25 Best Video Games of 2012

The Top 25 best video games of 2012 have been revealed! Is your favorite game of the year part of our list of the greatest the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac, Wii U, Wii, 3DS, DS, PSP, or PS Vita platforms had to offer in 2012? The year is almost over, so we?ve compiled this list of the top-quality AAA must-own titles of the year for all platforms!

Note: Mobile is a category of its own and an area with way too many games. Since they are generally casual in nature, Mobile-exclusives have been left out of this specific list that?s based on the gaming industry review averages of new video games.

Index of Top 25 Best Games of 2012 Lists:

Is there a game that didn?t make the list, that you think deserves a spot? Leave a comment and let us know your own list!

Runners-Up:

Spelunky, Football Manager 2013, Persona 4 Arena, UFC Undisputed 3, Tribes: Ascend (PC), Dance Central 3, Assassin?s Creed III, Sine Mora, Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, and ZEN Pinball 2.

#25 ? Velocity (PSP)
#24 ? MLB 12: The Show
#23 ? La-Mulana (Wii)
#22 ? Max Payne 3
#21 ? Zero Escape: Virtue?s Last Reward
#20 ? Halo 4
#19 ? Angry Birds Star Wars
#18 ? LittleBigPlanet (PS Vita)
#17 ? Diablo III
#16 ? Torchlight II (PC)
#15 ? Thirty Flights of Loving
#14 ? Fez (Xbox 360)
#13 ? XCOM: Enemy Unknown
#12 ? NBA 2K13
#11 ? Guild Wars 2

#10 ? Trials Evolution (Xbox 360)

#9 ? FIFA Soccer 13

#8 ? Far Cry 3

#7 ? Mark of the Ninja

#6 ? Borderlands 2

The Top 25 Best Video Games of 2012 continues on Page 2 to #1!

Continue Reading on: Page 1 Page 2

Tags: Dishonored, Journey, Mass Effect 3, The Walking Dead: The Game, Xenoblade Chronicles

Categories: 3DS News, DS News, Features, Mac News, Mobile News, News, PC News, PS Vita News, PS3 News, PSP News, Videos, Wii News, Wii U News, Xbox 360 News

About the author

By Ferry Groenendijk: He is the founder and editor of Video Games Blogger. He loved gaming from the moment he got a Nintendo with Super Mario Bros. on his 8th birthday. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and at Google+.

Source: http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2012/12/27/top-25-best-video-games-of-2012.htm

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Bunkycooks ? Food Artisans and Farmers Speak Out For a Food Hero

To paraphrase Brigham Young ? A good man, is a good man, whether in church, or out of it.?

We traveled the back roads of Tennessee and North Carolina this year with the intent of writing a story about the best in regional artisans and farmers.? While their stories are inspiring and we have already written several articles, there was a much bigger story that emerged and one that was quite unexpected.

This is a story of how one individual can come along in a person?s life and make a substantial impact; cause a turning point, inspire a career, create a new path or accelerate the one they were on.? There is a backstory in the culinary world about a chef that has quietly impacted the lives of so many chefs, farmers, and artisans in the Southeast.? In today?s culinary world dominated by chefs and individuals seeking recognition for their own work, Chef John Fleer has always been the spokesperson for others.

Fleer?s original plan was to be a minister with a degree in the humanities, however, his passion for Southern foods and cooking was ignited the year he graduated from college.? The food he experienced at Magnolia Grill in Durham, North Carolina ?was fun food, interesting food, food I recognized, and I was blown away.?? This experience led him to an extreme shift in careers and to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), trading in a pulpit?s robe for a chef?s jacket.

Canyon Kitchen at Lonesome Valley ? Cashiers, NC

John Fleer was the executive chef at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee from 1992 to 2007 and has been the executive chef of Canyon Kitchen at Lonesome Valley in Cashiers, North Carolina since 2009.? Fleer joined Blackberry Farm after graduating from the CIA in 1992.? At that time, Blackberry was an upstart mountain retreat with ambition to become one of the finest destination resorts in the United States.? Owner, Sandy Beall, upon hiring Fleer, enlisted the new chef to translate his vision for the property into a culinary vision and execute it.? Fleer?s focus was on rustic, yet refined, Southern cuisine.? He developed recipes that incorporated regional ingredients sourced primarily from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and other parts of Appalachia. He called it, ?Foothills Cuisine.?

?When I graduated from culinary school and went to Blackberry Farm I had Southern sensibilities. I wanted to do Southern food and to do Southern food, you have to have Southern ingredients.? It?s that simple.? You seek them out.?? Fleer would often visit local farms and markets in search of unique and extraordinary ingredients.? ?My cooking reflects my heritage, but it also reflects some of the other things I have done in my life.?

The story of Allan Benton ? Smoky Mountain Country Hams

Benton?s Smoky Mountain Country Hams is housed in a modest building on busy Highway 411 in Madisonville, Tennessee.? Entering the retail store, you are taken back in time to the 1960?s as the establishment has changed little over the years.? The air is filled with an overwhelming smoky aroma of hams and bacon.? It is from this small building that Benton?s prized hams and bacon are smoked, aged, and shipped to chefs across the country.? It is also where locals come to shop, chat, and see friends.? Allan Benton, who has become known as ?The King of Bacon?, told us ?I can promise you that no one would have ever heard of me if John had not started using my products and you certainly would not be here today talking with me.? John singlehandedly changed my life and got my name out there to chefs.? I would not be in business without him.?

Benton?s Smoky Mountain Country Hams

Fleer shared, ?My relationship with Allan is longer than with anyone else and goes back to the beginning at Blackberry Farm.? Allan will remember that first telephone call.? When I called to talk to him about his product and place an order, he was so impressed that there were other uses for his ham besides serving it for breakfast.? He used to have a covered pick-up truck and would deliver to Cracker Barrelesqe places in Gatlinburg that were using his country ham.? Blackberry was on the way, so he could deliver.? To this day, he cures his meats and does business the old fashioned way, just as he did back then.? He continues to use his old rotary phone.? He?s one of the last true Southern gentlemen.?

Allan Benton

Allan said, ?I was trying to sell 12-month hams for the same price others were selling 80-day hams in Gatlinburg and I was literally starving.? When John started using my product and sharing it with some of the best chefs in the country visiting Blackberry Farm, these chefs would get home and my phone would be ringing and asking, ?Can you sell me this??? They are a tight community.?

Early in his tenure at Blackberry Farm, and as part of Fleer?s culinary vision for the property, Fleer invited guest chefs from around the country to cook at Blackberry Farm.? ?They were the chefs I wanted to meet and work with.?? While they were in town, they were introduced to and worked with Benton?s products, Muddy Pond Sorghum, Sunburst Trout, and Tennessee Truffles.? ?The chefs would also see the walk-in and the pantry.? We all peer into each other?s closest, so to speak, to see what tricks and products we are using.? One of the biggest things was the buttermilk from Cruze Farm.? ?You don?t use Sealtest?? What the heck is this?? they would ask.?

As a token of appreciation for their time spent at Blackberry Farm, the visiting chefs were given gift packages of local products like Benton?s Country Ham or bacon and small jugs of Muddy Pond Sorghum, taking these products far beyond the foothills of Tennessee.

Colleen Cruze ? Cruze Farm ? The story behind the buttermilk

Talk about Cruze Dairy Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee and Chef Fleer smiles.? ?Colleen is a 2nd generation farmer that truly believes in what the family has done for the last twenty years and she is taking it to the next level.? She is not a hobby farmer who wants to grow pretty vegetables.? She grew up with this and is taking the tradition further.? How many 20 year olds want to do this??? And she does it with such flair, delivering and sampling their dairy products in gussied up farm girl garb while marketing their buttermilk to the next generation of chefs in an ever expanding market in the Southeast.

Fleer?s relationship with Earl and Sheri Cruze (Colleen?s parents) also goes back to the early years at Blackberry Farm.? ?There is a buttermilk culture in this region.? The Breakfast of Champions, if you are daring, is a bowl of cornbread and raw onions with buttermilk poured over it.? The combination of buttermilk and mushy cornbread is delicious.?? Could this be regional hangover food?? Fleer says it probably wouldn?t hurt.

With Colleen Cruze at Cruze Dairy Farm in Knoxville, TN

Known as the ?King of Buttermilk? by friends and other chefs, Fleer says he uses Cruze?s buttermilk in everything and features it as much as possible.? ?They have great products and if you use the heck out of them on the menu, they continue to get bigger.?? On our recent visit to Cruze Farm, Yuki (one of the Japanese interns working on the dairy farm), saw a picture of John Fleer on the computer and shouted ?Buttermilk!?? I guess that says it all.

The Jersey Girls at Cruze Farm

?John was finding and using local ingredients before it was trendy,? Colleen said.? ?He took an interest in us and made my mother deliver to Blackberry Farm.? It was a long distance.? He kept pushing my mom to keep making it and to bring it.? He was able to get chefs and others to realize that our buttermilk is different than what you purchase in the grocery store.? He has a huge commitment to our local products.?

To understand the commitment to these artisans, consider this story from Chef Fleer.? ?Cruze had 400 extra gallons of buttermilk they had overproduced.? Colleen called and said she was headed to Charleston to sell some of it.? I told her I would make some connections in Asheville with the chefs.? The next day, I helped her deliver around town.?? Colleen told us, ?John is such a nice guy.? I told my boyfriend that he reminds me of him.? I hope that he will be that kind of husband and father one day.?

The buttermilk craze has now expanded far beyond the Appalachian region. Cruze Farm has recently been featured in publications such as Garden & Gun, The New York Times, and Southern Living, to name a few.

Mark Guenther ? Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill ? The sweet story

?I found Muddy Pond Sorghum in the same place I first discovered Cruze?s buttermilk.? Fleer said.? ?It was a Farmstand grocery store called the Horn of Plenty in Maryville.? I did not grow up with the tradition of sorghum, but then you get a little tickler of something that is important to the culture and you begin to find out how vast the story is.? So few people do it the right and the old fashioned way.?

With Mark & Sherry Guenther at Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill in Monterey, TN

Mark and Sherry Guenther of Muddy Pond Sorghum noticed sales had been increasing over a period of time.? Mark received a call from Blackberry Farm one day asking if they could buy the sorghum directly from him.? ?It opened the doors for us with a tremendous audience using our product.? I did not realize the reputation and the connections of Blackberry Farm.? Business exploded for us and then other places started to contact us and use our sorghum.?? Fleer shared, ?Mark and Sherry are smart folks.? They made small replicas of their one gallon jugs.?? These are the small bottles that went home with visiting chefs and guests at Blackberry Farm.

The Guenther family and Muddy Pond Sorghum were awarded one of the most prestigious culinary honors in the Unites States, a Made in America:?President?s America Treasures Award in July, 2012.

Tom Michaels ? Tennessee Truffles ? Growing black gold in Tennessee

Black p?rigord truffles, reminiscent of those in France, were unheard of in the United States; that is until Tom Michaels of Tennessee Truffles in Chuckey, Tennessee planted his truffi?re.? Tom had contacted Fleer at Blackberry Farm by phone several times asking him to try the truffles, but Fleer had used other domestic truffles and was disappointed.? He said, ?If they can?t get it right in Oregon, how can it possibly be done in Tennessee??? However, one day Tom requested to stop by and Fleer agreed.? That was the winter of 2004.

Tom Michaels (left) truffle hunting at Tennessee Truffles in Chuckey, TN

Tom said, ?I was just a little old farmer trying to grow these darn things (humble, but not quite so ?little? since he is really a Ph.D in plant pathology with a dissertation in truffles/mushrooms).? I really didn?t give much thinking to the culinary end of marketing them.? I had two chefs using them in Knoxville at the time.? My third sale was to John Fleer at Blackberry Farm who I thought was thinking, ?Oh yeah, he?s some hick or hayseed from the? woods growing truffles,? but then I went in with my containers.?

John recalls, ?Tom showed up one day with his little Tupperware containers filled with rice and black truffles.? He had a dozen or so and asked if he could open them and let us smell and taste them.? He opened them up and I knew, that was a truffle.?? Joseph Lenn, who trained with Fleer and is now executive chef of The Barn at Blackberry Farm, also recalls the moment.? ?When Tom opened the containers, the kitchen came to a standstill.?? The pungent aroma of black truffles consumed the kitchen and there was no denying that this Tennessee farmer had produced black gold.

Michaels and Tennessee Truffles were honored with a Made in America:?President?s America Treasures Award in July, 2011.

Sean Brock ? Husk and McCrady?s ? Charleston, SC ? The chef?s perspective

Chef Sean Brock in Charleston, SC

Many chefs in the Southeast who have worked with John Fleer over the years have also been inspired by his vision.? Sean Brock is one of them.? Winner of the James Beard Award for ?Best Chef Southeast? in 2010 and nominated for the James Beard ?Outstanding Chef? award in 2012, Brock was excited to talk about Fleer.? ?John Fleer headed up the early movement of preserving Southern traditions.? I begged him to let me work at Blackberry Farm when I was 19 or 20 years old.? I looked up to him.? He was one of my first mentors and one of the few chefs I could talk to about ingredients I grew up with (in Appalachia) like cushaws and paw paws.? He has a traditional manner of cooking, but with a modern side.? He is one of those people that can see much further into the future.? He is an unsung hero.?

Chef Fleer at a Blind Pig Supper Club dinner in Leicester, NC

Fleer, speaking of his support for these artisans said, ?I have always seen it as part of my mission to be a champion of these people and I feel like I have done a good job.? Not because I wanted to make them famous, but it was important that people knew there was something and someone behind the product.? I didn?t do anything except continue to use the products and to tell people about them.? Hopefully, I represented the products as they were intended and maybe took them to another level, while respecting the integrity of the people and the product.?

Fleer?s profound culinary contribution has been through helping others be successful, rather than trying to bring recognition to himself.? Would we have heard of these people without John Fleer?s culinary vision for Foothills Cuisine that he created twenty years ago, honoring and supporting the artisans that produce extraordinary ingredients in the Smoky Mountains and Appalachian region?? Would the legacy of Foothills Cuisine be what it is today had Fleer not developed the original recipes, sourced these products, and hired and trained the current chefs at Blackberry Farm and created the guest chef program?

Blackberry Farm has continued the tradition of using artisan products in Foothills Cuisine and has evolved the program over the years.? They have brought many artisan specialties, such as cheesemaking, truffles, charcuterie, heirloom seed preservation, and even brewing craft beers, in-house.? Blackberry Farm was also a recipient of the Made in America:?President?s America Treasures Award in July, 2012.

Prepping for the Seven Fires Dinner in Highlands, NC

Tom Michaels of Tennessee Truffles said it well,? ?John Fleer is the hidden Rasputin of the culinary world here in the Southeast.? He has formed so many ideas and brought along so many chefs and farmers.?

John Fleer became an early evangelist for promoting and preserving the legacy and integrity of our regional foods.? He has inspired the next generation of chefs to do the same.? Chefs like Sean Brock, who have taken up the cause with artisans like Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills, to focus on preserving heirloom seeds and ingredients.

While there are many chefs joining this call, it is imperative that more people in the culinary world take up the cause for these real food heroes: our farmers and artisans that produce traditional and heirloom products.? Without our support, these food traditions and products may be lost forever.? As Brock said, ?Five years ago this conversation would not have happened.? The most important thing is to preserve Southern cooking and ingredients.?? John Fleer has been at the forefront of this movement.

With Chef John Fleer

Author?s note: Chef Fleer was not aware that this article was being written about him.? I interviewed him with the intent of gaining his perspective for an article to be written about the various artisans.

Here are the articles we have published on several of these artisans and farmers:

Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill

Tennessee Truffles

Sunburst Trout Farms

The challenge of preserving our culinary heritage is not limited to the United States.? Here is another article from Bunkycooks on preserving culinary traditions and artisans in Friuli, Italy:

D?Osvaldo, Prosciutto di Corm?ns

Chef Fleer has shared a recipe for his Savory Buttermilk Panna Cotta which combines two of his best-loved ingredients, Cruze buttermilk and Benton?s 18-month aged ham.

Savory Buttermilk Panna Cotta

Print Recipe Save Recipe

Savory Buttermilk Panna Cotta

Yield: Serves 6

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

For panna cotta:

1 Package powdered gelatin
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 cup Half & Half
Freshly cracked black pepper (sift to remove any large pieces)
1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoon finely cut chives
1 cup Cruze buttermilk (substitute another good buttermilk if you do not have access to Cruze Farm's products)
2 tablespoons cr?me fraiche or sour cream

1 bunch of fresh Asparagus

Thinly sliced Benton?s 18 month Tennessee prosciutto
For Muscadine Vinaigrette:
2 cups muscadine wine
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/4 cup hazelnut oil

Directions:

For panna cotta:
1. Bloom gelatin in room temperature water.

2. Bring Half and Half, sugar, salt, and pepper to a simmer. Remove from heat and whisk in bloomed gelatin and cr?me fraiche. Whisk until gelatin is melted.

3. Whisk in buttermilk and chives. Taste for seasoning. Fill 6 3-ounce molds. Place in refrigerator over night. (Best if made a day ahead so that they may set up.)

For asparagus:
1. Cut tips off (3 inches), blanch, quarter. Peel and blanch the middle section and slice paper thin.

For vinaigrette:
1. Reduce wine to 2/3 cup and allow reduction to cool. Stir in mustard, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Whisk in oils and check seasoning.

For assembly:
1. Sprinkle thinly sliced asparagus stems on top of panna cotta. Place panna upside down in center of salad plate. Using torch, lightly heat up mold so that the panna comes out smoothly. Dress asparagus tips and juilenned country ham with muscadine vinaigrette.

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Posted by Gwen on December 27, 2012

Source: http://www.bunkycooks.com/2012/12/food-artisans-and-farmers-speak-out-for-a-food-hero/

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They?re Just People Looking From the East (Unqualified Offerings)

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Ask Single Dating Diva: Dating After Divorce

Question:

Dear Single Dating Diva,

I?ve recently divorced and I was wondering how soon is too soon to start dating after a divorce? I?m afraid of falling into a rebound relationship but I don?t want to be alone. ?What should I do?

Sincerely,

Cautiously Confused

Answer:

Dear?Cautiously Confused,

Thank you for your question! I totally know where you?re coming from. ?This question can apply to anyone coming out of any type of long term relationship. ?Being divorced myself, I?ve gone through the same thing as you and had the same trepidation. ?I think whether you?re ready or not is completely up to you. ?What I mean is that it really depends on how you feel. ?I will use myself as an example. ?My marriage ended way before it actually ended. ?By the time we were officially separated, and then divorced, it had been years. ?I checked out way before it was officially over. ?Once I was completely free, I felt ready to date again, however, it took about two years for me to be ready for another relationship.

Rebound relationships are a risk you have to take. ?The best advice I can give is to take it slow. ?Don?t rush into anything. ?I wrote about rebound relationships a while back, you can read my post The Rebound for more details, but essentially I talk about dating right after a divorce being an ego booster. ?Right after leaving a long term relationship you feel at your lowest and these liaisons help you out of your rut. ?What?s important is that you?re honest with yourself and the other person you?re dating. ?You don?t want to get too attached too fast and you don?t want them getting the wrong impression.

I?m all about getting out there and having fun and being your fabulous self, just do it the right way. ?See it as an opportunity to start fresh, to re-discover yourself and find the RIGHT person this time around. ?That?s what I did. ?I dated a lot but it helped me narrow down what makes me happy and what kind of man I want to be with.

Simply put, you know when you?ll be ready to date again. ?Just take it slow and have fun. ?You?ve been given another chance at finding happiness with someone who is better for you. ?Take advantage of this opportunity and find that person ? and remember ?It?s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone? (Marilyn Monroe).

Your Sister in Dating Bliss,

Single Dating Diva

Winner of ?Best Overall Dating Blog 2012?

Tags: dating, divorce, rebound, single

Source: http://singledatingdiva.com/2012/12/26/ask-single-dating-diva-dating-after-divorce/

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Spokesman: Nelson Mandela 'not yet fully recovered'

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela is doing well after being discharged from hospital, although he is still not fully recovered, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

"He is not yet fully recovered, but he has sufficiently moved forward so that he can be discharged," Mac Maharaj told local broadcaster eNCA.

"He is sufficiently well to be home."

The 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, ending a nearly three-week stay during which he was treated for a lung infection and had surgery to remove gallstones.

Mandela, who has been in frail health for several years, is now receiving care at his suburban Johannesburg home.

Mandela has a history of lung problems dating back to when he contracted tuberculosis while in jail as a political prisoner. He spent 27 years in prison, including 18 years on the windswept Robben Island off Cape Town.

The former president was admitted to a Pretoria hospital on December 8 and this was his longest stay in a hospital since he was released from prison in 1990.

Current President Jacob Zuma visited Mandela on Christmas Day and said the former South African leader was doing much better, making progress and in good spirits.

Mandela was also admitted to a hospital in February because of abdominal pain but released the following day after a keyhole examination showed there was nothing seriously wrong with him.

He has spent most of his time since then in another home in Qunu, his ancestral village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province.

(Reporting by David Dolan; editing by Todd Eastham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-africas-mandela-discharged-hospital-government-020549200.html

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Phil Gramm: The Multiple Distortions of Wind Subsidies (WSJ)

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GOP willing to bend on issues after election

FILE - In this Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012 file photo, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks during Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's annual birthday fundraiser in Altoona, Iowa. Rubio and other prominent Republicans are calling for a sweeping review of how to prevent tragedies like the Newtown, Conn., massacre. For years, Republicans have adhered fiercely to their bedrock conservative principles, resisting Democratic calls for tax hikes, comprehensive immigration reform and gun control. Now, seven weeks after an electoral drubbing, some party leaders and rank-and-file alike are signaling a willingness to bend on all three issues. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

FILE - In this Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012 file photo, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks during Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's annual birthday fundraiser in Altoona, Iowa. Rubio and other prominent Republicans are calling for a sweeping review of how to prevent tragedies like the Newtown, Conn., massacre. For years, Republicans have adhered fiercely to their bedrock conservative principles, resisting Democratic calls for tax hikes, comprehensive immigration reform and gun control. Now, seven weeks after an electoral drubbing, some party leaders and rank-and-file alike are signaling a willingness to bend on all three issues. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? For years, Republicans have adhered fiercely to their bedrock conservative principles, resisting Democratic calls for tax hikes, comprehensive immigration reform and gun control. Now, seven weeks after an electoral drubbing, some party leaders and rank-and-file alike are signaling a willingness to bend on all three issues.

What long has been a nonstarter for Republicans ? raising tax rates on wealthy Americans ? is now backed by GOP House Speaker John Boehner in his negotiations with President Barack Obama to avert a potential fiscal crisis. Party luminaries, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, have started calling for a wholesale shift in the GOP's approach to immigration after Hispanic voters shunned Republican candidates. And some Republicans who previously championed gun rights now are opening the door to restrictions following a schoolhouse shooting spree earlier this month.

"Put guns on the table. Also, put video games on the table. Put mental health on the table," Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said last week. Other prominent Republicans echoed him in calling for a sweeping review of how to prevent tragedies like the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Among those who were open to a re-evaluation of the nation's gun policies were Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

"You've got to take all these things into consideration," Grassley said.

And yet, the head of the National Rifle Association, silent for a week after the Newtown shootings, has proposed staffing schools with armed police, making clear the NRA, which tends to support the GOP, will continue pushing for fewer gun restrictions, not more.

Meanwhile, Boehner's attempt to get his own members on board with a deficit-reduction plan that would raise taxes on incomes of more than $1 million failed last week, exposing the reluctance of many in the Republican caucus to entertain more moderate fiscal positions.

With Republican leaders being pulled at once to the left and to the right, it's too soon to know whether the party that emerges from this identity crisis will be more or less conservative than the one that was once so confident about the 2012 elections. After all, less than two months have passed since the crushing defeat of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who moved far to the right during the primary season and, some in the party say, lost the general election as a result.

But what's increasingly clear is that the party is now engaged in an uncomfortable and very public fight over whether its tenets, still firmly held within the party's most devout ranks, conflict with the views of Americans as a whole.

Many Republicans recognize that to remain relevant with voters whose views are changing, they too must change.

"We lost the election because we were out of touch with the American people," said John Weaver, a senior adviser to past presidential candidates John McCain, the GOP nominee in 2008, and Jon Huntsman, who ran for the nomination this year.

The polling suggests as much.

While Republican candidates for years have adamantly opposed tax increases on anyone, an Associated Press-GfK poll earlier this month found roughly half of all Americans supported allowing George W. Bush-era tax cuts to expire on those earning more than $250,000 a year.

Most GOP candidates ? Romney among them ? also long have opposed allowing people in the country illegally to get an eventual path to citizenship. But exit polls from the Nov. 6 election showed most voters favored allowing people working in the U.S. illegally to stay.

And gun control has for decades been anathema to Republicans. But a Washington Post/ABC News poll published last week, following the Connecticut shooting, showed 54 percent of Americans now favor stronger restrictions.

This is the backdrop as Republicans undergo a period of soul-searching after this fall's electoral shellacking. Romney became the fifth GOP nominee in six elections to lose the national popular vote to the Democratic candidate. Republicans also shed seats in their House majority and lost ground to majority Democrats in the Senate.

Of particular concern is the margin of loss among Hispanics, a group Obama won by about 70 percent to 30 percent.

It took only hours after the loss for national GOP leaders to blame Romney for shifting to the right on immigration ? and signal that the party must change.

Jindal, a prospective 2016 presidential contender, was among the Republicans calling for a more measured approach by the GOP. And even previously hardline opponents of immigration reform ? like conservative talk show host Sean Hannity ? said the party needs to get over its immigration stance heavily favoring border security over other measures.

"What you have is agreement that we as a party need to spend a lot of time and effort on the Latino vote," veteran Republican strategist Charlie Black said.

When Congress returned to Washington after the election to start a debate over taxes and spending, a number of prominent Republicans, including Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, signaled they would be willing to abandon their pledges against raising taxes ? as long as other conditions were met ? as part of a package of proposals to avoid a catastrophic budget meltdown.

Leading the effort was Boehner, who has told Obama he would allow taxes to be increased on the wealthiest Americans, as well as on capital gains, estates and dividends, as part of a deal including spending cuts and provisions to slow the growth of entitlements. Obama, meanwhile, also has made concessions in the talks to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff by agreeing to a higher income threshold for tax rate increases, while insisting that Congress grant him the authority to raise the debt ceiling. Both sides have spent the past several weeks bickering over the terms.

While some Democrats quickly called for more stringent gun laws, most Republicans initially were silent. And their virtual absence from the debate suggested that some Republicans who champion gun rights at least may have been reconsidering their stances against firearms restrictions.

By the Monday after the Connecticut shooting, MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, called for reinstating the ban on assault-style weapons, which he had opposed. The ban expired in 2004, despite support for the ban from Republican President George W. Bush. Referring to the shooting, Scarborough said: "I knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want, that I demand, for my children."

The next day, Grassley and Kingston were among the Republicans saying they were at least willing to discuss stronger gun laws.

"The party is at a point where it wants to have those discussions in public, where people feel comfortable differing from what is perceived as the party orthodoxy," Republican consultant Dan Hazelwood said.

If silence is a signal, shifts on other issues could be coming, chief among them gay marriage, which the GOP base long has opposed. Exit polls found half of all Americans say same-sex marriage should be legally recognized.

After three states ? Washington, Maryland and Maine ? voted to legalize gay marriage last month, the Republican leadership generally has remained quiet on the issue. And there has been no effort in the House or Senate to push major legislation, only narrower proposals, such as a move in the Armed Services Committee to bar gay marriages at military facilities.

But in a sign that the fight over gay marriage also may be waning within the GOP base, Newt Gingrich said it was time for Republicans to accept shifting public opinion.

The former House speaker, who oversaw passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in Congress and helped finance state campaigns to fight gay marriage in 2010, said in a Huffington Post interview that the party should work toward acceptance of rights for gay couples, while still distinguishing them from marriage.

"The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to . accommodate and deal with reality," Gingrich said.

___

Lederman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Donna Cassata and Dennis Junius in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Thomas Beaumont on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomBeaumont

Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-12-26-Republicans-Shifting%20Stances/id-b81c962584b148e4bf298641c3d6eeaa

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One Direction Top Wonder Girls List Of Dream Collaborators

'They seem like they're really fun and goofy,' Korean pop group tells MTV News about 1D.
By Cory Midgarden

One Direction
Photo: Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1699370/one-direction-wonder-girls-dream-collaboration.jhtml

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