June 30, 2008, 8:50 am
The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating
Maybe you should be eating more beets, left, or chopped cabbage. (Credit: Evan Sung for The New York Times, left
Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.
Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.
Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.How to eat: Just drink it.
Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with cancer-fighting antioxidants.How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.
Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.'’ They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,'’ it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.
Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.
You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year.
In my own house, I only have two of these items — pumpkin seeds, which I often roast and put on salads, and frozen blueberries, which I mix with milk, yogurt and other fruits for morning smoothies. How about you? Have any of these foods found their way into your shopping cart?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Recommended Original Cast Albums
   |
Not Your Mother’s Original-Cast Albums
Correction Appended
A surge of oxygen pours through the original cast albums of “In the Heights” and “Passing Strange,” two musicals that have shown Broadway how to revitalize a somnolent form this season.
You can also feel that breeze in the cast album of the Off Broadway show “Adding Machine” and a faint puff of fresh air in the quiet cast album of “A Catered Affair.” There are no plans for a “Cry-Baby” recording, but its witty rock ’n’ roll parody lyrics give the last twist of the knife to “Grease”-era nostalgia; it is now irredeemably camp.
An album of the revival of “Gypsy,” with a performance by Patti LuPone for which there is only one word — volcanic — is due in August. It will include several never-before-recorded songs that were cut from the original production, with new orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.
Until recently I imagined the Broadway musical locked inside a museum, at which a superannuated curator in a seersucker suit, bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses politely welcomed guests to the tea party. But not anymore. Once that curator extended a trembling hand to eager new faces, fresh air wafted in; the tea and cucumber sandwiches were supplanted by beer and pizza, and the music blasted all night.
That doesn’t mean that patriarchs like Rodgers and Hammerstein, haughtily gazing down from the museum walls, no longer speak to us. You can’t listen to the cast album of the Lincoln Center revival of “South Pacific” without becoming misty-eyed for an era of cockeyed postwar optimism when all America sang Rodgers and Hammerstein hits and absorbed the moral instruction in their songs.
Cockeyed optimism may not describe today’s climate. But the giddy euphoria that has always been a hallmark of Broadway musicals explodes on the two-disc cast album of “In the Heights.” Although expressed in a different musical vocabulary, this bilingual show (more English than Spanish) is as secure as “South Pacific” in its faith that a better future lies ahead.
This show’s true believers are not white, middle-class sailors and nurses fighting a just war in the Pacific. They are economically struggling Dominican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and African-American residents of Washington Heights, the melting pot idealized in the show. For “In the Heights,” which just won a Tony Award for best musical, embodies a compelling argument that immigration is the lifeblood of America.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the blazingly talented 28-year-old who wrote the music and lyrics and stars as the Dominican storekeeper Usnavi, respects popular music traditions. Early in the show he interpolates quotations from Duke Ellington (“Take the ‘A’ Train”) and Cole Porter (“Too Darn Hot”) into the partly rapped title song, an ensemble number that introduces most of the characters. Throughout, the score echoes (but doesn’t quote outright) “West Side Story,” especially “America” and the great mambo dance sequence.
But for all its nods to old-school Broadway “In the Heights” is truly an uptown musical. The score is a fluid, authentic mix of salsa, rap and reggaetón. For a show set in a heavily Dominican neighborhood with a Dominican character as its official greeter, the absence of merengue is puzzling. But as a broadly sketched overview of Latin musical cultures that collide and merge in the melting pot, the score is still wildly exhilarating.
The rap lyrics, however sanitized for Broadway, carry pungent streetwise inflections, and Mr. Miranda delivers them with an aggressive swagger that illustrates the power of rap as a storytelling medium.
The influence of rap is the underlying story of the past Broadway musical season. Words, either rapped or sung in variations of the traditional patter song, are loosening the grip of traditional melody on Broadway. Lament it if you will, but stand-alone songs have a way of interrupting the narrative. Even in musicals without hip-hop, recitative and songs flow into each other more smoothly nowadays; the story is the thing, and language the vehicle.
Mr. Manuel and his orchestrators Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman twirl various styles of Latin music into a fabric that is continually changing color and pace. The sprawling ensemble numbers, “96,000,” “Blackout” and “Carnaval del Barrio,” in particular, portray a whole community of disparate voices, speaking as one and at the same time as individuals. Words that go by too quickly to be picked up in the theater can be studied while listening to the cast album with the booklet at hand. These virtuosic numbers suggest denser elaborations of the pre-rumble “Tonight” sequence from “West Side Story.”
A binding ingredient of Mr. Miranda’s score is tuneful Broadway pop that coalesces into a plaintive 11 o’clock number, “Everything I Know,” in the second act. Though not a great song, it serves effectively as the show’s emotional grounding wire.
Because “Passing Strange” has no sugar coating, in some ways it is almost anti-Broadway. The songs, with music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald (he plays guitar, and she plays bass onstage) and lyrics by Stew, describe the personal odyssey of a rebellious middle-class African-American musician who goes from Los Angeles to Europe in a search for his identity.
The galumphing rock score in which a song can suddenly change character without warning reflects the character’s uncertainty about who he is. The Narrator (the grown-up Stew) observes the life of his younger self, Youth (Daniel Breaker), with an affectionately critical eye. When Stew riffs on electric guitar and declaims his lyrics in a gruff holler, you hear echoes of Jimi Hendrix. Later on he morphs into a punk rocker. There is a broad, sarcastic parody of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” when the young Stew ingests psychedelics.
The young man’s naïve infatuation with Europe, where he dives into a bohemian paradise of sex and drugs, inspires an amusing rock parody of “A Man and a Woman” and a sarcastic Kander and Ebb spoof, “The Black One,” which is a scathing response to his being fetishized as an angry black militant by a group of German cultural revolutionaries:
“Who lends the club that speak-easy air?/The black one, the black one!/Who dances like a god and has ‘wunderbar’ hair?/Der Schwarze.” In conclusion he wonders if he is “the postmodern lawn jockey sculpture.”
The term postmodern indicates the intellectual seriousness of the show. As the character matures and becomes bored with easy pleasure, his search carries him into a philosophic realm rarely visited by the Broadway musical. “What’s Inside Is Just a Lie/And Now I’m Ready to Explode” describes a psychic earthquake in which Youth decides “our feelings and our dreams have actually been put there by a system.” In desperation he determines to turn his life into a work of art, that work being “Passing Strange.”
The show’s final song, “Love Like That,” offers the closest thing to a comfortable answer to his questions: “Cuz the Real is a construct.../It’s the raw nerve’s private zone/It’s a personal sunset .../You drive off into alone.” “Passing Strange” is too true to its own vision to culminate in an explosion of joyful affirmation. It ends with a sigh.
Joshua Schmidt’s score for “Adding Machine” is just as harsh and darkly funny. The protagonist of this musical adaptation of Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionistic play is a repressed number-crunching boor, Mr. Zero (Joel Hatch), who hates his job and his shrewish wife.
Mr. Schmidt’s music is percussive, mechanistic and frequently discordant as characters robotically chant lists of numbers, the monotony broken by bursts of rage and frustration. The score, at once hypnotic and corrosive, goes beyond Brecht-Weill in evoking a dystopic world. The one catchy tune, “I’d Rather Watch You,” sung by Daisy (Amy Warren), Zero’s office mate who has a secret crush on him, is a slowed-up 1920s-style barroom waltz.
The fiendish cosmic joke occurs when Zero, executed for the murder of his boss, lands in Elysian fields, where he discovers that freedom in the afterlife is unbearable because there is no morality. A mocking chorus sings, “And we must each/Believe, believe/Our lives will all/Add up to something in the end.”
Although wistfulness and anger crop up in John Bucchino’s music and lyrics for “A Catered Affair,” the kind of nihilism trumpeted by “Adding Machine” is nowhere to be found. The main characters, Aggie (Faith Prince) and her husband, Tom (Tom Wopat), are softened, realistic descendants of the careworn working people in “Adding Machine” and they’re observed tenderly instead of harshly.
“A Catered Affair” is a delicate, 1950s kitchen-sink chamber piece. Mr. Bucchino’s score, his first for Broadway, is true to the mood of the show, which has finely shaded performances by Ms. Prince and Mr. Wopat and an irritatingly outsize one by Harvey Fierstein, who can barely sing. Ms. Prince’s touching big number, “Married,” is delivered with appropriate Shirley Booth-meets-Edith Bunker plainness. The score’s one moment of high drama, Mr. Wopat’s “I Stayed,” is an eloquent swatch of narrative songwriting that breaks the mood of weary resignation at exactly the right moment. It is a modest, touching male answer to “Rose’s Turn” in “Gypsy,” a perfect moment.
The biggest impediment to falling in love with the new cast album of “South Pacific” is the memory of the 1949 original with Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. The orchestra for this Lincoln Center Theater production, even beefed up, sounds smaller. That 1949 recording begins with a thunderous overture that sweeps into “Bali Hai” like a tidal wave. The supercharged sense of inevitability that permeates the original is only fleetingly captured in the Lincoln Center production.
Paulo Szot, who looks like a younger Pinza, sings wonderfully but without the same rock-bottom authority. Kelli O’Hara’s Nellie Forbush is irresistible to watch, but less so to hear on the album, because her voice lacks the personality of either a Mary Martin or a Reba McEntire, who sang the role in concert with Brian Stokes Mitchell. Ms. O’Hara is perfectly fine but not definitive.
The wonder is how fresh the score still sounds. “South Pacific” caught a wave of American history at Broadway’s high tide, like no other show has since. The museum that opened it doors to Stew and Mr. Miranda was built around musicals like it.
Correction: June 28, 2008
Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about cast albums of current Broadway musicals misidentified an award won by
Friday, June 27, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
How we read online.
Lazy Bastards
How we read online.By Michael Agger
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008, at 1:00 PM ET
You're probably going to read this.
It's a short paragraph at the top of the page. It's surrounded by white space. It's in small type.
To really get your attention, I should write like this:
Bulleted list
Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming
Short sentence fragments
Explanatory subheads
No puns
Did I mention lists?
What Is This Article About?For the past month, I've been away from the computer screen. Now I'm back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?
It's a Jungle Out ThereThat's Jakob Nielsen's theory. He's a usability expert who writes an influential biweekly column on such topics as eye-tracking research, Web design errors, and banner blindness. (Links, btw, give a text more authority, making you more likely to stick around.)
Nielsen champions the idea of information foraging. Humans are informavores. On the Internet, we hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, we tended to stay in one place and dig. Now we assess a site quickly, looking for an "information scent." We move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around.
Sorry about the long paragraph. (Eye-tracking studies show that online readers tend to skip large blocks of text.)
Also, I'm probably forcing you to scroll at this point. Losing some incredible percentage of readers. Bye. Have fun on Facebook.
Screens vs. PaperWhat about the physical process of reading on a screen? How does that compare to paper?
When you look at early research, it's fascinating to see that even in the days of green phosphorus monitors, studies found that there wasn't a huge difference in speed and comprehension between reading on-screen and reading on paper. Paper was the clear winner only when test subjects were asked to skim the text.
The studies are not definitive, however, given all the factors that can affect online reading, such as scrolling, font size, user expertise, etc. Nielsen holds that on-screen reading is 25 percent slower than reading on paper. Even so, experts agree on what you can do to make screen reading more comfortable:
Choose a default font designed for screen reading; e.g., Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia.
Rest your eyes for 10 minutes every 30 minutes.
Get a good monitor. Don't make it too bright or have it too close to your eyes.
Minimize reflections.
Skip long lines of text, which promote fatigue.
Avoid MySpace.
Back to the JungleNielsen's apt description of the online reader: "[U]sers are selfish, lazy, and ruthless." You, my dear user, pluck the low-hanging fruit. When you arrive on a page, you don't actually deign to read it. You scan. If you don't see what you need, you're gone.
And it's not you who has to change. It's me, the writer:
One idea per paragraph
Half the word count of "conventional writing"! (Ouch!)
Other stuff along these lines
Nielsen often sounds like a cross between E.B. White and the Terminator. Here's his advice in a column titled "Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy": "A good editor should be able to cut 40 percent of the word count while removing only 30 percent of an article's value. After all, the cuts should target the least valuable information."
[Ed. Note: Fascinating asides about the writer's voice, idiosyncrasies, and fragile ego were cut here.]
He's RightI kid about Nielsen, but he's very sensible. We're active participants on the Web, looking for information and diversion. It's natural that people prefer short articles. As Nielsen states, motivated readers who want to know everything about a subject (i.e., parents trying to get their kid into a New York preschool) will read long treatises with semicolons, but the rest of us are snacking. His advice: Embrace hypertext. Keep things short for the masses, but offer links for the Type A's.
No Blogs, ThoughNielsen may be ruthless about brevity, but he doesn't advocate blogging. Here's his logic: "Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easier to write. But they don't build sustainable value."
That's a debatable point. My experience has been that a thoughtful blogger who tags his posts can cover a subject well. But Nielsen's idea is that people will read (and maybe even pay) for expertise that they can't find anywhere else. If you want to beat the Internet, you're not going to do it by blogging (since even OK thinkers occasionally write a great blog post) but by offering a comprehensive take on a subject (thus saving the reader time from searching many sites) and supplying original thinking (offering trusted insight that cannot be easily duplicated by the nonexpert).
Like a lot of what Nielsen says, this is both obvious and thoughtful.
Ludic ReadingNielsen focuses on how to hold people's attention to convey information. He's not overly concerned with pleasure reading.
Pleasure reading is also known as "ludic reading." Victor Nell has studied pleasure reading (PDF). Two fascinating notions:
When we like a text, we read more slowly.
When we're really engaged in a text, it's like being in an effortless trance.
Ludic reading can be achieved on the Web, but the environment works against you. Read a nice sentence, get dinged by IM, never return to the story again.
I suppose ludic readers would be the little sloths hiding in the jungle while everyone else is out rampaging around for fresh meat.
Final Unnecessary ThoughtWe'll do more and more reading on screens, but they won't replace paper—never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you. Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind. It's contained, offline, tactile. William Powers writes about this elegantly in his essay "Hamlet's BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal." He describes the white stuff as "a still point, an anchor for the consciousness."
Moby Dick has become a spa.
Slate is Grand Central Station.
OK, you may leave now.Michael Agger is a Slate senior editor. You can reach him at slate.browser@gmail.com
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2193552/
How we read online.By Michael Agger
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008, at 1:00 PM ET
You're probably going to read this.
It's a short paragraph at the top of the page. It's surrounded by white space. It's in small type.
To really get your attention, I should write like this:
Bulleted list
Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming
Short sentence fragments
Explanatory subheads
No puns
Did I mention lists?
What Is This Article About?For the past month, I've been away from the computer screen. Now I'm back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?
It's a Jungle Out ThereThat's Jakob Nielsen's theory. He's a usability expert who writes an influential biweekly column on such topics as eye-tracking research, Web design errors, and banner blindness. (Links, btw, give a text more authority, making you more likely to stick around.)
Nielsen champions the idea of information foraging. Humans are informavores. On the Internet, we hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, we tended to stay in one place and dig. Now we assess a site quickly, looking for an "information scent." We move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around.
Sorry about the long paragraph. (Eye-tracking studies show that online readers tend to skip large blocks of text.)
Also, I'm probably forcing you to scroll at this point. Losing some incredible percentage of readers. Bye. Have fun on Facebook.
Screens vs. PaperWhat about the physical process of reading on a screen? How does that compare to paper?
When you look at early research, it's fascinating to see that even in the days of green phosphorus monitors, studies found that there wasn't a huge difference in speed and comprehension between reading on-screen and reading on paper. Paper was the clear winner only when test subjects were asked to skim the text.
The studies are not definitive, however, given all the factors that can affect online reading, such as scrolling, font size, user expertise, etc. Nielsen holds that on-screen reading is 25 percent slower than reading on paper. Even so, experts agree on what you can do to make screen reading more comfortable:
Choose a default font designed for screen reading; e.g., Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia.
Rest your eyes for 10 minutes every 30 minutes.
Get a good monitor. Don't make it too bright or have it too close to your eyes.
Minimize reflections.
Skip long lines of text, which promote fatigue.
Avoid MySpace.
Back to the JungleNielsen's apt description of the online reader: "[U]sers are selfish, lazy, and ruthless." You, my dear user, pluck the low-hanging fruit. When you arrive on a page, you don't actually deign to read it. You scan. If you don't see what you need, you're gone.
And it's not you who has to change. It's me, the writer:
One idea per paragraph
Half the word count of "conventional writing"! (Ouch!)
Other stuff along these lines
Nielsen often sounds like a cross between E.B. White and the Terminator. Here's his advice in a column titled "Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy": "A good editor should be able to cut 40 percent of the word count while removing only 30 percent of an article's value. After all, the cuts should target the least valuable information."
[Ed. Note: Fascinating asides about the writer's voice, idiosyncrasies, and fragile ego were cut here.]
He's RightI kid about Nielsen, but he's very sensible. We're active participants on the Web, looking for information and diversion. It's natural that people prefer short articles. As Nielsen states, motivated readers who want to know everything about a subject (i.e., parents trying to get their kid into a New York preschool) will read long treatises with semicolons, but the rest of us are snacking. His advice: Embrace hypertext. Keep things short for the masses, but offer links for the Type A's.
No Blogs, ThoughNielsen may be ruthless about brevity, but he doesn't advocate blogging. Here's his logic: "Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easier to write. But they don't build sustainable value."
That's a debatable point. My experience has been that a thoughtful blogger who tags his posts can cover a subject well. But Nielsen's idea is that people will read (and maybe even pay) for expertise that they can't find anywhere else. If you want to beat the Internet, you're not going to do it by blogging (since even OK thinkers occasionally write a great blog post) but by offering a comprehensive take on a subject (thus saving the reader time from searching many sites) and supplying original thinking (offering trusted insight that cannot be easily duplicated by the nonexpert).
Like a lot of what Nielsen says, this is both obvious and thoughtful.
Ludic ReadingNielsen focuses on how to hold people's attention to convey information. He's not overly concerned with pleasure reading.
Pleasure reading is also known as "ludic reading." Victor Nell has studied pleasure reading (PDF). Two fascinating notions:
When we like a text, we read more slowly.
When we're really engaged in a text, it's like being in an effortless trance.
Ludic reading can be achieved on the Web, but the environment works against you. Read a nice sentence, get dinged by IM, never return to the story again.
I suppose ludic readers would be the little sloths hiding in the jungle while everyone else is out rampaging around for fresh meat.
Final Unnecessary ThoughtWe'll do more and more reading on screens, but they won't replace paper—never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you. Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind. It's contained, offline, tactile. William Powers writes about this elegantly in his essay "Hamlet's BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal." He describes the white stuff as "a still point, an anchor for the consciousness."
Moby Dick has become a spa.
Slate is Grand Central Station.
OK, you may leave now.Michael Agger is a Slate senior editor. You can reach him at slate.browser@gmail.com
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2193552/
2008 Tony Award Winners
June 16, 2008
This Year’s Tonys Spread the Broadway Glory Around
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Reflecting an eclectic Broadway season, the 62nd Annual Tony Awards crowned a salsa-flavored musical written by a theater novice, a nostalgic glamorous revival, a sweeping melodrama from a writer making his Broadway debut, and the revival of a ’60s sex farce.
For best musical, the top award of the night went to “In the Heights,” a show about Latino families in way uptown Manhattan created by 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is not only making his Broadway debut but his professional theater debut with this show as well. The show also won awards for score, orchestrations and choreography.
Mr. Miranda, who has been known to rap in public presentations from time to time, did not disappoint when he won for his salsa, rap, hip-hop and reggaetón-flavored score for “In the Heights,” a show he created in college.
“I used to dream about this moment, now I’m in it,” he rapped. “Tell the conductor to hold the baton a minute.” (Mr. Miranda did, in fact, give a shout-out to Broadway royalty, quoting Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics from “Sunday in the Park With George”: “Look, Mr. Sondheim, I made a hat where there never was a hat and it’s a Latin hat at that.”)
But in a year when the new musical awards were spread around, “Heights” won fewer awards — four — than did the best play of the year. Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County,” a sprawling, knock-down family melodrama which won the Pulitzer, marched through the play awards, winning five: for scenic design, featured actress, actress, director and play .
“Writing is better than acting,” said Mr. Letts, a sometime actor himself who was making his Broadway writing debut. “You get to use your words, you don’t have to be there eight times a week and I can guarantee you that this moment beats the hell out of auditioning for ‘JAG.’ ”
Two of the winners for “August,” Deanna Dunagan (actress) and Rondi Reed (featured actress) have played their last performances and will not rejoin the show on Tuesday. When the show first was transferring to Broadway from the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, where it originated, some in the cast were not even sure they wanted to make the trip. And now, well:
“After 34 years in regional theater I never even thought about it,” Ms. Dunagan, who plays a drug-addled monster of a mother, said of her prospects of winning a Tony. “I watched it on TV like everyone else.”
For all the newcomers, quite a few of the musical categories were split in a head-to-head battle between two old-fashioned revivals: “Gypsy” and Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of “South Pacific.”
“Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific,” the most successful show of the night with seven wins, took best revival and best actor — for the lead, Paulo Szot — in addition to four design awards and an award for best director, Bartlett Sher. This is the second year in a row that a production from the nonprofit Lincoln Center put in such a showing at the ceremony; its production of “The Coast of Utopia” last year won the most Tonys ever for a play.
Mr. Sher paid homage to the show’s composer (Richard Rodgers), its lyricist and book writer (Oscar Hammerstein), its director and co-writer of the book (Joshua Logan) and the man who wrote the novel on which the show was based (James Michener). “They were kind of incredible men because they seem to teach me particularly that, in a way, I wasn’t only an artist but I was also a citizen,” Mr. Sher said. “And the works that we do in these musicals or in any of these plays is not only important in terms of entertaining people, but that our country is really a pretty great place, and that perhaps it could be a little better, and perhaps, in fact, we could change."
Like “Coast,” the production of “South Pacific” swept the musical design categories, winning for scenic design, sound design, costumes and lighting. A special posthumous award was even given to Robert Russell Bennett, who orchestrated the original 1949 production of “South Pacific.”
But Patti LuPone, who played Mama Rose in “Gypsy,” took home the leading actress in a musical award with Boyd Gaines (winning his fourth Tony) and Laura Benanti taking featured actor and actress awards.
“It’s such a wonderful gift to be an actor making her living working on the Broadway stage and then every 30 years or so pick up one of these,” said Ms. LuPone, a previous Tony winner and multiple Tony nominee. “I was afraid to write a speech because I’d written a couple before and they never made it out of my purse, so I’m going to use one of the old ones and add a few names.”
An emotional Ms. Benanti singled out her director, Arthur Laurents, who also wrote the show’s book, directed it twice before and, incidentally, is 90 years old. “Oh my gosh, hi Arthur, you’re standing!” Ms. Benanti shouted at Mr. Laurents, who was on his feet when her win was announced.
Stephen Sondheim, two of whose shows —“Gypsy” and “Sunday in the Park With George”— were competing for best musical revival this year, received a lifetime achievement award.
But aside from the triumphs of big brassy shows like “Gypsy” and “South Pacific” (and the orchestral interludes, which mainly stuck to Broadway’s greatest hits), the rest of the evening was decidedly less reverential.
In winning best revival of a play, “Boeing-Boeing,” a ’60s sex farce about a playboy frantically trying to juggle a trio of flight attendants, beat out more earnest contenders like “Macbeth,” “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” and Harold Pinter’s “Homecoming.”
The lead actor of “Boeing-Boeing,” Mark Rylance, playing a bashful but libidinous American tourist, won the top acting award over, among others, Patrick Stewart, playing Macbeth, and Laurence Fishburne, playing Thurgood Marshall.
“Passing Strange,” a rock concert/musical/cabaret that was the main competition for “Heights” and that won the award for book of a musical, was also created by someone who had no previous professional theatrical experience.
Stew, the single-named artist who wrote the book (the non-singing part) of “Passing Strange” with his partner Heidi Rodewald, accepted the award at a prebroadcast ceremony. He wore sunglasses and sneakers, and, as usual, played the class cut-up.
“I don’t know what to say, because I didn’t know we were going to do this right now,” he said. “I thought this was going to happen in an hour or something. I was looking for some M & M’s in my pocket.” (Later that night he wore a Groucho Marx disguise when the camera panned to him before the best actor award.)
Ms. Reed, who won the award for featured actress in a play, for her performance as the belittling Mattie Fae Aiken in “August: Osage County,” dedicated it in part to Dennis Letts, the father of the playwright and a member of the cast, who died in February.
In the best featured actor in a play category, Jim Norton won for his alternately hilarious and touching portrayal of an old drunk in Conor McPherson’s supernatural play “The Seafarer.” His co-star Conleth Hill was also nominated in the category; Mr. Norton said he wanted to share the moment with his fellow actors in the play.
The design categories were a little more varied on the play side than the musical side, with awards for “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” (costumes), “August: Osage County” (scenic design) and “The 39 Steps,” the quirky, bare-bones version of the 1935 Hitchcock movie, which won for lighting and sound design.
The ceremony before the broadcast, which, in previous years, was usually limited to awards for design and orchestrations, was expanded this year to include awards for choreography, play revival and book of a musical. This was to make room for a greater number of performances during the main event, which offer producers a network opportunity to display their shows to potential ticket-buyers.
Traditionally, only shows nominated for a Tony have the chance to perform at the ceremony; in an attempt to goose ratings this year, numbers were scheduled to be performed from “The Lion King,” which just turned 10, and “Rent,” which is nearing its closing date, as well as the three new musicals from this season that were not nominated: “A Catered Affair,” “The Little Mermaid” and “Young Frankenstein.” That those last two shows, brought to you by Disney and Mel Brooks respectively, were not nominated underscores the particular challenge of drumming up excitement in a season when none of the shows competing for best musical could be described as big hits or were based on widely familiar material.
Ratings have been fairly dismal for the ceremony, and last year, when it was up against the final episode of “The Sopranos” on HBO, they were at a record low. This year the ceremony was up against its old nemesis: the NBA finals. Whoopi Goldberg was brought in to host, a return to a format that was rejected in the last two years in favor of a rotating cast of presenters.
While Broadway continued to report high grosses and attendance figures (down slightly from last year due in part to a 19-day stagehands strike in November), much of that was based on the continued success of blockbusters like “Wicked,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King.”
The Tony Awards are voted on by 796 producers, journalists, union officials and other industry professionals, and are presented jointly by the Broadway League, an industry trade group, and the American Theater Wing, a nonprofit service organization that created the Tonys in 1947.
The Chicago Shakespeare Theater was recognized for regional theater excellence, an annual award presented at the prebroadcast ceremony.
June 15, 2008
2008 Tony Award Winners
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
A complete list of winners of 2008 Tony Awards (denoted with a *), with links to the original New York Times reviews. The list will be updated during the evening as the awards are announced.
BEST MUSICAL
Cry-Baby
* In the Heights
Passing Strange
Xanadu
BEST PLAY
* August: Osage County
Rock 'n' Roll
The Seafarer
The 39 Steps
BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL
Grease
Gypsy
* South Pacific
Sunday in the Park With George
BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY
* Boeing-Boeing
The Homecoming
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Macbeth
BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL
Cry-Baby, Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan
In the Heights, Quiara Alegría Hudes
* Passing Strange, Stew
Xanadu, Douglas Carter Beane
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC AND/OR LYRICS) WRITTEN FOR THE THEATER
Cry-Baby, Music & Lyrics: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger
* In the Heights, Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Little Mermaid, Music: Alan Menken; Lyrics: Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater
Passing Strange, Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald; Lyrics: Stew
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY
Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood
* Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing
Rufus Sewell, Rock 'n' Roll
Patrick Stewart, Macbeth
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Eve Best, The Homecoming
* Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
Kate Fleetwood, Macbeth
S. Epatha Merkerson, Come Back, Little Sheba
Amy Morton, August: Osage County
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park With George
Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights
Stew, Passing Strange
* Paulo Szot, South Pacific
Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Kerry Butler, Xanadu
* Patti LuPone, Gypsy
Kelli O'Hara, South Pacific
Faith Prince, A Catered Affair
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park With George
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY
Bobby Cannavale, Mauritius
Raul Esparza, The Homecoming
Conleth Hill, The Seafarer
* Jim Norton, The Seafarer
David Pittu, Is He Dead?
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Sinead Cusack, Rock 'n' Roll
Mary McCormack, Boeing-Boeing
Laurie Metcalf, November
Martha Plimpton, Top Girls
* Rondi Reed, August: Osage County
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Danny Burstein, South Pacific
Robin De Jesus, In the Heights
Christopher Fitzgerald, Young Frankenstein
* Boyd Gaines, Gypsy
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
de'Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
* Laura Benanti, Gypsy
Andrea Martin, Young Frankenstein
Olga Merediz, In the Heights
Loretta Ables Sayre, South Pacific
BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY
Maria Aitken, The 39 Steps
Conor McPherson, The Seaferer
* Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County
Matthew Warchus, Boeing-Boeing
BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL
Sam Buntrock, Sunday in the Park With George
Thomas Kail, In the Heights
Arthur Laurents, Gypsy
* Bartlett Sher, South Pacific
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Rob Ashford, Cry-Baby
* Andy Blankenbuehler, In the Heights
Christopher Gattelli, South Pacific
Dan Knechtges, Xanadu
BEST ORCHESTRATIONS
Jason Carr, Sunday in the Park With George
* Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman, In the Heights
Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange
Jonathan Tunick, A Catered Affair
BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
Scott Pask, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
* Todd Rosenthal, August: Osage County
Anthony Ward, Macbeth
BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
David Farley and Timothy Bird & The Knifedge Creative Network, Sunday in the Park With Geroge
Anna Louizos, In the Heights
Robin Wagner, Young Frankenstein
* Micheal Yeargan, South Pacific
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY
Gregory Gale, Cyrano de Bergerac
Rob Howell, Boeing-Boeing
* Katrina Lindsay, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
David Farley, Sunday in the Park With George
Martin Pakledinaz, Gypsy
Paul Tazewell, In the Heights
* Catherine Zuber, South Pacific
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A PLAY
* Kevin Adams, The 39 Steps
Howard Harrison, Macbeth
Donald Holder, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Ann G. Wrightson, August: Osage County
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Ken Billington, Sunday in the Park With George
Howell Binkley, In the Heights
* Donald Holder, South Pacific
Natasha Katz, The Little Mermaid
BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A PLAY
Simon Baker, Boeing-Boeing
Adam Cork, Macbeth
Ian Dickson, Rock 'n' Roll
* Mic Pool, The 39 Steps
BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Acme Sound Partners, In the Heights
Sebastian Frost, Sunday in the Park With George
* Scott Lehrer, South Pacific
Dan Moses Schreier, Gypsy
SPECIAL TONY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE THEATER
Stephen Sondheim
REGIONAL THEATER TONY AWARD
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
SPECIAL TONY AWARD
Robert Russell Bennett
This Year’s Tonys Spread the Broadway Glory Around
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Reflecting an eclectic Broadway season, the 62nd Annual Tony Awards crowned a salsa-flavored musical written by a theater novice, a nostalgic glamorous revival, a sweeping melodrama from a writer making his Broadway debut, and the revival of a ’60s sex farce.
For best musical, the top award of the night went to “In the Heights,” a show about Latino families in way uptown Manhattan created by 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is not only making his Broadway debut but his professional theater debut with this show as well. The show also won awards for score, orchestrations and choreography.
Mr. Miranda, who has been known to rap in public presentations from time to time, did not disappoint when he won for his salsa, rap, hip-hop and reggaetón-flavored score for “In the Heights,” a show he created in college.
“I used to dream about this moment, now I’m in it,” he rapped. “Tell the conductor to hold the baton a minute.” (Mr. Miranda did, in fact, give a shout-out to Broadway royalty, quoting Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics from “Sunday in the Park With George”: “Look, Mr. Sondheim, I made a hat where there never was a hat and it’s a Latin hat at that.”)
But in a year when the new musical awards were spread around, “Heights” won fewer awards — four — than did the best play of the year. Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County,” a sprawling, knock-down family melodrama which won the Pulitzer, marched through the play awards, winning five: for scenic design, featured actress, actress, director and play .
“Writing is better than acting,” said Mr. Letts, a sometime actor himself who was making his Broadway writing debut. “You get to use your words, you don’t have to be there eight times a week and I can guarantee you that this moment beats the hell out of auditioning for ‘JAG.’ ”
Two of the winners for “August,” Deanna Dunagan (actress) and Rondi Reed (featured actress) have played their last performances and will not rejoin the show on Tuesday. When the show first was transferring to Broadway from the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, where it originated, some in the cast were not even sure they wanted to make the trip. And now, well:
“After 34 years in regional theater I never even thought about it,” Ms. Dunagan, who plays a drug-addled monster of a mother, said of her prospects of winning a Tony. “I watched it on TV like everyone else.”
For all the newcomers, quite a few of the musical categories were split in a head-to-head battle between two old-fashioned revivals: “Gypsy” and Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of “South Pacific.”
“Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific,” the most successful show of the night with seven wins, took best revival and best actor — for the lead, Paulo Szot — in addition to four design awards and an award for best director, Bartlett Sher. This is the second year in a row that a production from the nonprofit Lincoln Center put in such a showing at the ceremony; its production of “The Coast of Utopia” last year won the most Tonys ever for a play.
Mr. Sher paid homage to the show’s composer (Richard Rodgers), its lyricist and book writer (Oscar Hammerstein), its director and co-writer of the book (Joshua Logan) and the man who wrote the novel on which the show was based (James Michener). “They were kind of incredible men because they seem to teach me particularly that, in a way, I wasn’t only an artist but I was also a citizen,” Mr. Sher said. “And the works that we do in these musicals or in any of these plays is not only important in terms of entertaining people, but that our country is really a pretty great place, and that perhaps it could be a little better, and perhaps, in fact, we could change."
Like “Coast,” the production of “South Pacific” swept the musical design categories, winning for scenic design, sound design, costumes and lighting. A special posthumous award was even given to Robert Russell Bennett, who orchestrated the original 1949 production of “South Pacific.”
But Patti LuPone, who played Mama Rose in “Gypsy,” took home the leading actress in a musical award with Boyd Gaines (winning his fourth Tony) and Laura Benanti taking featured actor and actress awards.
“It’s such a wonderful gift to be an actor making her living working on the Broadway stage and then every 30 years or so pick up one of these,” said Ms. LuPone, a previous Tony winner and multiple Tony nominee. “I was afraid to write a speech because I’d written a couple before and they never made it out of my purse, so I’m going to use one of the old ones and add a few names.”
An emotional Ms. Benanti singled out her director, Arthur Laurents, who also wrote the show’s book, directed it twice before and, incidentally, is 90 years old. “Oh my gosh, hi Arthur, you’re standing!” Ms. Benanti shouted at Mr. Laurents, who was on his feet when her win was announced.
Stephen Sondheim, two of whose shows —“Gypsy” and “Sunday in the Park With George”— were competing for best musical revival this year, received a lifetime achievement award.
But aside from the triumphs of big brassy shows like “Gypsy” and “South Pacific” (and the orchestral interludes, which mainly stuck to Broadway’s greatest hits), the rest of the evening was decidedly less reverential.
In winning best revival of a play, “Boeing-Boeing,” a ’60s sex farce about a playboy frantically trying to juggle a trio of flight attendants, beat out more earnest contenders like “Macbeth,” “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” and Harold Pinter’s “Homecoming.”
The lead actor of “Boeing-Boeing,” Mark Rylance, playing a bashful but libidinous American tourist, won the top acting award over, among others, Patrick Stewart, playing Macbeth, and Laurence Fishburne, playing Thurgood Marshall.
“Passing Strange,” a rock concert/musical/cabaret that was the main competition for “Heights” and that won the award for book of a musical, was also created by someone who had no previous professional theatrical experience.
Stew, the single-named artist who wrote the book (the non-singing part) of “Passing Strange” with his partner Heidi Rodewald, accepted the award at a prebroadcast ceremony. He wore sunglasses and sneakers, and, as usual, played the class cut-up.
“I don’t know what to say, because I didn’t know we were going to do this right now,” he said. “I thought this was going to happen in an hour or something. I was looking for some M & M’s in my pocket.” (Later that night he wore a Groucho Marx disguise when the camera panned to him before the best actor award.)
Ms. Reed, who won the award for featured actress in a play, for her performance as the belittling Mattie Fae Aiken in “August: Osage County,” dedicated it in part to Dennis Letts, the father of the playwright and a member of the cast, who died in February.
In the best featured actor in a play category, Jim Norton won for his alternately hilarious and touching portrayal of an old drunk in Conor McPherson’s supernatural play “The Seafarer.” His co-star Conleth Hill was also nominated in the category; Mr. Norton said he wanted to share the moment with his fellow actors in the play.
The design categories were a little more varied on the play side than the musical side, with awards for “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” (costumes), “August: Osage County” (scenic design) and “The 39 Steps,” the quirky, bare-bones version of the 1935 Hitchcock movie, which won for lighting and sound design.
The ceremony before the broadcast, which, in previous years, was usually limited to awards for design and orchestrations, was expanded this year to include awards for choreography, play revival and book of a musical. This was to make room for a greater number of performances during the main event, which offer producers a network opportunity to display their shows to potential ticket-buyers.
Traditionally, only shows nominated for a Tony have the chance to perform at the ceremony; in an attempt to goose ratings this year, numbers were scheduled to be performed from “The Lion King,” which just turned 10, and “Rent,” which is nearing its closing date, as well as the three new musicals from this season that were not nominated: “A Catered Affair,” “The Little Mermaid” and “Young Frankenstein.” That those last two shows, brought to you by Disney and Mel Brooks respectively, were not nominated underscores the particular challenge of drumming up excitement in a season when none of the shows competing for best musical could be described as big hits or were based on widely familiar material.
Ratings have been fairly dismal for the ceremony, and last year, when it was up against the final episode of “The Sopranos” on HBO, they were at a record low. This year the ceremony was up against its old nemesis: the NBA finals. Whoopi Goldberg was brought in to host, a return to a format that was rejected in the last two years in favor of a rotating cast of presenters.
While Broadway continued to report high grosses and attendance figures (down slightly from last year due in part to a 19-day stagehands strike in November), much of that was based on the continued success of blockbusters like “Wicked,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King.”
The Tony Awards are voted on by 796 producers, journalists, union officials and other industry professionals, and are presented jointly by the Broadway League, an industry trade group, and the American Theater Wing, a nonprofit service organization that created the Tonys in 1947.
The Chicago Shakespeare Theater was recognized for regional theater excellence, an annual award presented at the prebroadcast ceremony.
June 15, 2008
2008 Tony Award Winners
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
A complete list of winners of 2008 Tony Awards (denoted with a *), with links to the original New York Times reviews. The list will be updated during the evening as the awards are announced.
BEST MUSICAL
Cry-Baby
* In the Heights
Passing Strange
Xanadu
BEST PLAY
* August: Osage County
Rock 'n' Roll
The Seafarer
The 39 Steps
BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL
Grease
Gypsy
* South Pacific
Sunday in the Park With George
BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY
* Boeing-Boeing
The Homecoming
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Macbeth
BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL
Cry-Baby, Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan
In the Heights, Quiara Alegría Hudes
* Passing Strange, Stew
Xanadu, Douglas Carter Beane
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC AND/OR LYRICS) WRITTEN FOR THE THEATER
Cry-Baby, Music & Lyrics: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger
* In the Heights, Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Little Mermaid, Music: Alan Menken; Lyrics: Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater
Passing Strange, Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald; Lyrics: Stew
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY
Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood
* Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing
Rufus Sewell, Rock 'n' Roll
Patrick Stewart, Macbeth
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Eve Best, The Homecoming
* Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
Kate Fleetwood, Macbeth
S. Epatha Merkerson, Come Back, Little Sheba
Amy Morton, August: Osage County
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park With George
Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights
Stew, Passing Strange
* Paulo Szot, South Pacific
Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Kerry Butler, Xanadu
* Patti LuPone, Gypsy
Kelli O'Hara, South Pacific
Faith Prince, A Catered Affair
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park With George
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY
Bobby Cannavale, Mauritius
Raul Esparza, The Homecoming
Conleth Hill, The Seafarer
* Jim Norton, The Seafarer
David Pittu, Is He Dead?
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Sinead Cusack, Rock 'n' Roll
Mary McCormack, Boeing-Boeing
Laurie Metcalf, November
Martha Plimpton, Top Girls
* Rondi Reed, August: Osage County
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Danny Burstein, South Pacific
Robin De Jesus, In the Heights
Christopher Fitzgerald, Young Frankenstein
* Boyd Gaines, Gypsy
BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
de'Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
* Laura Benanti, Gypsy
Andrea Martin, Young Frankenstein
Olga Merediz, In the Heights
Loretta Ables Sayre, South Pacific
BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY
Maria Aitken, The 39 Steps
Conor McPherson, The Seaferer
* Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County
Matthew Warchus, Boeing-Boeing
BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL
Sam Buntrock, Sunday in the Park With George
Thomas Kail, In the Heights
Arthur Laurents, Gypsy
* Bartlett Sher, South Pacific
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Rob Ashford, Cry-Baby
* Andy Blankenbuehler, In the Heights
Christopher Gattelli, South Pacific
Dan Knechtges, Xanadu
BEST ORCHESTRATIONS
Jason Carr, Sunday in the Park With George
* Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman, In the Heights
Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange
Jonathan Tunick, A Catered Affair
BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
Scott Pask, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
* Todd Rosenthal, August: Osage County
Anthony Ward, Macbeth
BEST SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
David Farley and Timothy Bird & The Knifedge Creative Network, Sunday in the Park With Geroge
Anna Louizos, In the Heights
Robin Wagner, Young Frankenstein
* Micheal Yeargan, South Pacific
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A PLAY
Gregory Gale, Cyrano de Bergerac
Rob Howell, Boeing-Boeing
* Katrina Lindsay, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
BEST COSTUME DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
David Farley, Sunday in the Park With George
Martin Pakledinaz, Gypsy
Paul Tazewell, In the Heights
* Catherine Zuber, South Pacific
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A PLAY
* Kevin Adams, The 39 Steps
Howard Harrison, Macbeth
Donald Holder, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Ann G. Wrightson, August: Osage County
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Ken Billington, Sunday in the Park With George
Howell Binkley, In the Heights
* Donald Holder, South Pacific
Natasha Katz, The Little Mermaid
BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A PLAY
Simon Baker, Boeing-Boeing
Adam Cork, Macbeth
Ian Dickson, Rock 'n' Roll
* Mic Pool, The 39 Steps
BEST SOUND DESIGN OF A MUSICAL
Acme Sound Partners, In the Heights
Sebastian Frost, Sunday in the Park With George
* Scott Lehrer, South Pacific
Dan Moses Schreier, Gypsy
SPECIAL TONY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE THEATER
Stephen Sondheim
REGIONAL THEATER TONY AWARD
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
SPECIAL TONY AWARD
Robert Russell Bennett
Sunday, June 15, 2008
About.co: 8 DVD/ VCR Combo Recommendations
Top 8 DVD Recorder - VHS VCR Combinations
DVD recorder/VCR combos are here. For those that are both replacing a VCR and want a DVD recorder, this flexible option gives you the best of the old and the new. You can use these units to play DVDs and VHS tapes, as well as record or copy homemade recordings (such as camcorder tapes, television recordings, etc...). However, keep in mind that DVD recorder/VCR combos cannot be used to copy commercially made DVD movies to VHS or commercially made VHS movies to DVD, due to copy-protection.
1. JVC DR-MV99B DVD Recorder/VCR Combination
The JVC DR-MV99B is a DVD Recorder/VCR combo that offers both good performance and a versatile feature package. This combo records on both the DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW formats and plays back most DVD and CD formats, including MP3 and Divx files. In addition, using the VCR section, the consumer can both record directly to VHS (HiFi) or dub non-copyprotected video content from VHS to DVD or DVD to VHS. The MV99B also has a front mounted DV input (iLInk) that allows direct video and audio transfer from digital camcorders. Also, with its HDMI output the DR-MV99B can upscale to both DVD and VHS up to 1080i The MV99B is also equipped with an ATSC tuner, for the reception of digital TV signals after Feb. 17, 2009.2. Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK DVD Recorder/VCR Combo
The Panasonic DMR-EZ47VK has just about everything a user needs in a DVD recorder/VCR combo, including the ability to record most DVD formats and play back most DVD and CD formats, including Divx, MP3, and Divx files. In addition using the VCR section, the consumer can both record directly to VHS or dub non-copyprotected video content from VHS to DVD or DVD to VHS. Also, with Panasonic's enhanced 4-hour recording mode, you can record sporting events and longer movies onto DVD with the same video quality as the 2-hour recording mode. The incorporation of HDMI and video upscaling makes the EZ47VK a good partner for use with an HDTV. The 47VK also has an ATSC tuner, for the reception of digital tv signals after Feb. 17, 2009.
3. Toshiba DVR650 DVD Recorder/VCR Combination
The Toshiba DVR650 is a very flexible DVD recorder/VCR combo. Some of the practical features include the ability to record in most DVD formats and play back most DVD and CD formats, including Divx, MP3, and WMA files. In addition using the VCR section, the consumer can both record directly to VHS or dub non-copyprotected video content from VHS to DVD or DVD to VHS. The incorporation of HDMI and video upscaling to 1080i makes the DVR650 easy to use with an HDTV. This unit also has both an NTSC, ATSC, and QAM tuners, for the reception of digital tv and basic digital cable signals after Feb. 17, 2009.4. Sony RDR-VX555 DVD Recorder/VCR Combo
The Sony RDR-VX555 is a DVD Recorder/VCR combo with a twist. Unlike most other DVD recorders and DVD recorder/VCR combos, this unit has no built-in tuner. In order to record TV programs, you must connect a Cable Box, Satellite Box, or other type of Desktop Box used for receiving either analog or digital television signals. However, the VX555 certainly does not leave out other important features, such as multi-format DVD recording and playback, DVD to VHS and VHS to DVD crossdubbing, iLink DV video input for digital camcorders, CD playback, and video upscaling via HDMI output. If you are looking for a DVD recorder/VCR combo, and used a separate box for accessing television programming, check out the Sony RDR/V555.5. Samsung DV-VR357 DVD Recorder - VCR Combination
If you are confused about whether to replace that aging VCR with a DVD recorder, now may be the time with the Samsung VR357 DVD Recorder/VCR combo. The VR357 records to all five recordable formats DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-R/+RW and DVD-RAM, and has composite, S-Video, and iLink video inputs. In addition, on the DVD playback side, the VR357 can play back Divx files and has both component and HDMI video outputs and features 720p/1080i upscaling via the HDMI output. Of course the Vr357 can still record and play back VHS tapes. However, keep in mind that to record television programs, you need to use an external tuner, such as cable or satellite box. To find out more details on whether the VR357 is right for you, download the User Manual.6. Toshiba DVR-600 DVD Recorder/VCR Combo
The Toshiba DVR600 is a basic DVD recorder/VCR combo with practical featuress, including the ability to record in most DVD formats and play back most DVD and CD formats, including Divx, MP3, and WMA files. In addition, using the VCR section, the consumer can both record directly to VHS or dub non-copyprotected video content from VHS to DVD or DVD to VHS. The incorporation of HDMI and video upscaling to 1080i makes the DVR600 easy to use with an HDTV. However, keep in mind that this DVD recorder/VCR combo does not have built-in tuners. In order to record television programming, you need to connect a cable box, satellite box, or DTV converter into the audio/video line inputs of the DVR600.7. Sony RDR-VXD655 DVD recorder/VCR combo
Sony's RDR-VXD655 DVD recorder/VCR combo has the ability to record in four of the five available recordable DVD formats: DVD+R/DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW so you can make DVDs that will play in just about any DVD player. Of course, you can still record and play back in VHS. This is not only a flexible recorder but has high-end playback features, including progressive scan and video upscaling via HDMI. Add a full complement of video inputs, including a DV input, and the incorporation of both NTSC and ATSC tuners, this DVD recorder/VCR combo is ready for the analog-to-digital Television broadcast transition on February 17, 2009.8. JVC SR-DVM700US DVD/miniDV/Hard Drive Combination Recorder
If you are looking for a DVD recorder that is a cut-above the typical consumer-based unit, you might want to check out a professional unit, such as the JVC SR-DVM700US. This recorder not only features DVD-R/-RW and DVD-RAM recording capability, combined with a large 250GB hard drive, but also adds miniDV recording and playback capability. In addition, the DVM700US also has cross-dubbing and editing capability. Although the capabilities of this unit are extensive, it does not have a built-in tuner or 720p/1080i/1080p upscaling output capability, and is expensive. This is definitely a unit best suited for the more serious user or video editor. For a detailed look at the features and functions of the JVC SR-DVM700US, download the User Manual.Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Great Seduction By DAVID BROOKS
June 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Great Seduction By DAVID BROOKS
The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.
The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.
Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined. The institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened. The country's moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.
Sixty-two scholars have signed on to a report by the Institute for American Values and other think tanks called, "For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture," examining the results of all this. This may be damning with faint praise, but it's one of the most important think-tank reports you'll read this year.
The deterioration of financial mores has meant two things. First, it's meant an explosion of debt that inhibits social mobility and ruins lives. Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said.
Second, the transformation has led to a stark financial polarization. On the one hand, there is what the report calls the investor class. It has tax-deferred savings plans, as well as an army of financial advisers. On the other hand, there is the lottery class, people with little access to 401(k)'s or financial planning but plenty of access to payday lenders, credit cards and lottery agents.
The loosening of financial inhibition has meant more options for the well-educated but more temptation and chaos for the most vulnerable. Social norms, the invisible threads that guide behavior, have deteriorated. Over the past years, Americans have been more socially conscious about protecting the environment and inhaling tobacco. They have become less socially conscious about money and debt.
The agents of destruction are many. State governments have played a role. They aggressively hawk their lottery products, which some people call a tax on stupidity. Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is starkly regressive. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income. Aside from the financial toll, the moral toll is comprehensive. Here is the government, the guardian of order, telling people that they don't have to work to build for the future. They can strike it rich for nothing.
Payday lenders have also played a role. They seductively offer fast cash — at absurd interest rates — to 15 million people every month.
Credit card companies have played a role. Instead of targeting the financially astute, who pay off their debts, they've found that they can make money off the young and vulnerable. Fifty-six percent of students in their final year of college carry four or more credit cards.
Congress and the White House have played a role. The nation's leaders have always had an incentive to shove costs for current promises onto the backs of future generations. It's only now become respectable to do so.
Wall Street has played a role. Bill Gates built a socially useful product to make his fortune. But what message do the compensation packages that hedge fund managers get send across the country?
The list could go on. But the report, which is nicely summarized by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in The American Interest (available free online), also has some recommendations. First, raise public consciousness about debt the way the anti-smoking activists did with their campaign. Second, create institutions that encourage thrift.
Foundations and churches could issue short-term loans to cut into the payday lenders' business. Public and private programs could give the poor and middle class access to financial planners. Usury laws could be enforced and strengthened. Colleges could reduce credit card advertising on campus. KidSave accounts would encourage savings from a young age. The tax code should tax consumption, not income, and in the meantime, it should do more to encourage savings up and down the income ladder.
There are dozens of things that could be done. But the most important is to shift values. Franklin made it prestigious to embrace certain bourgeois virtues. Now it's socially acceptable to undermine those virtues. It's considered normal to play the debt game and imagine that decisions made today will have no consequences for the future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10brooks.html?%2334;Great%20Seduction=&sq=&st=cse&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Op-Ed Columnist
The Great Seduction By DAVID BROOKS
The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.
The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.
Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined. The institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened. The country's moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.
Sixty-two scholars have signed on to a report by the Institute for American Values and other think tanks called, "For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture," examining the results of all this. This may be damning with faint praise, but it's one of the most important think-tank reports you'll read this year.
The deterioration of financial mores has meant two things. First, it's meant an explosion of debt that inhibits social mobility and ruins lives. Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said.
Second, the transformation has led to a stark financial polarization. On the one hand, there is what the report calls the investor class. It has tax-deferred savings plans, as well as an army of financial advisers. On the other hand, there is the lottery class, people with little access to 401(k)'s or financial planning but plenty of access to payday lenders, credit cards and lottery agents.
The loosening of financial inhibition has meant more options for the well-educated but more temptation and chaos for the most vulnerable. Social norms, the invisible threads that guide behavior, have deteriorated. Over the past years, Americans have been more socially conscious about protecting the environment and inhaling tobacco. They have become less socially conscious about money and debt.
The agents of destruction are many. State governments have played a role. They aggressively hawk their lottery products, which some people call a tax on stupidity. Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is starkly regressive. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income. Aside from the financial toll, the moral toll is comprehensive. Here is the government, the guardian of order, telling people that they don't have to work to build for the future. They can strike it rich for nothing.
Payday lenders have also played a role. They seductively offer fast cash — at absurd interest rates — to 15 million people every month.
Credit card companies have played a role. Instead of targeting the financially astute, who pay off their debts, they've found that they can make money off the young and vulnerable. Fifty-six percent of students in their final year of college carry four or more credit cards.
Congress and the White House have played a role. The nation's leaders have always had an incentive to shove costs for current promises onto the backs of future generations. It's only now become respectable to do so.
Wall Street has played a role. Bill Gates built a socially useful product to make his fortune. But what message do the compensation packages that hedge fund managers get send across the country?
The list could go on. But the report, which is nicely summarized by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in The American Interest (available free online), also has some recommendations. First, raise public consciousness about debt the way the anti-smoking activists did with their campaign. Second, create institutions that encourage thrift.
Foundations and churches could issue short-term loans to cut into the payday lenders' business. Public and private programs could give the poor and middle class access to financial planners. Usury laws could be enforced and strengthened. Colleges could reduce credit card advertising on campus. KidSave accounts would encourage savings from a young age. The tax code should tax consumption, not income, and in the meantime, it should do more to encourage savings up and down the income ladder.
There are dozens of things that could be done. But the most important is to shift values. Franklin made it prestigious to embrace certain bourgeois virtues. Now it's socially acceptable to undermine those virtues. It's considered normal to play the debt game and imagine that decisions made today will have no consequences for the future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10brooks.html?%2334;Great%20Seduction=&sq=&st=cse&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Monday, June 09, 2008
Diabetes
Diabetes Overview
Diabetes is a life-long disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood.
Reference from A.D.A.M.
Back to TopCauses
Diabetes can be caused by too little insulin (a hormone produced by the pancreas to control blood sugar), resistance to insulin, or both.
To understand diabetes, it is important to first understand the normal process of food metabolism. Several things happen when food is digested:
A sugar called glucose enters the bloodstream. Glucose is a source of fuel for the body.
An organ called the pancreas makes insulin. The role of insulin is to move glucose from the bloodstream into muscle, fat, and liver cells, where it can be used as fuel.
People with diabetes have high blood sugar. This is because their pancreas does not make enough insulin or their muscle, fat, and liver cells do not respond to insulin normally, or both.
There are three major types of diabetes:
Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in childhood. The body makes little or no insulin, and daily injections of insulin are needed to sustain life.
Type 2 diabetes is far more common than type 1 and makes up most of all cases of diabetes. It usually occurs in adulthood. The pancreas does not make enough insulin to keep blood glucose levels normal, often because the body does not respond well to the insulin. Many people with type 2 diabetes do not know they have it, although it is a serious condition. Type 2 diabetes is becoming more common due to the growing number of older Americans, increasing obesity, and failure to exercise.
Gestational diabetes is high blood glucose that develops at any time during pregnancy in a woman who does not have diabetes.
Diabetes affects more than 20 million Americans. About 54 million Americans have prediabetes. There are many risk factors for diabetes, including:
A parent, brother, or sister with diabetes
Obesity
Age greater than 45 years
Some ethnic groups (particularly African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanic Americans)
Gestational diabetes or delivering a baby weighing more than 9 pounds
High blood pressure
High blood levels of triglycerides (a type of fat molecule)
High blood cholesterol level
Not getting enough exercise
The American Diabetes Association recommends that all adults over age 45 be screened for diabetes at least every 3 years. A person at high risk should be screened more often.
Back to TopSymptoms
High blood levels of glucose can cause several problems, including frequent urination, excessive thirst, hunger, fatigue, weight loss, and blurry vision. However, because type 2 diabetes develops slowly, some people with high blood sugar experience no symptoms at all.
Symptoms of type 1 diabetes:
Increased thirst
Increased urination
Weight loss in spite of increased appetite
Fatigue
Nausea
Vomiting
Patients with type 1 diabetes usually develop symptoms over a short period of time, and the condition is often diagnosed in an emergency setting.
Symptoms of type 2 diabetes:
Increased thirst
Increased urination
Increased appetite
Fatigue
Blurred vision
Slow-healing infections
Impotence in men
Back to TopSigns and Tests
A urine analysis may be used to look for glucose and ketones from the breakdown of fat. However, a urine test alone does not diagnose diabetes. The following blood glucose tests are used to diagnose diabetes:
Fasting blood glucose level -- diabetes is diagnosed if higher than 126 mg/dL on two occasions. Levels between 100 and 126 mg/dl are referred to as impaired fasting glucose or pre-diabetes. These levels are considered to be risk factors for type 2 diabetes and its complications.
Random (non-fasting) blood glucose level -- diabetes is suspected if higher than 200 mg/dL and accompanied by the classic symptoms of increased thirst, urination, and fatigue. (This test must be confirmed with a fasting blood glucose test.)
Oral glucose tolerance test -- diabetes is diagnosed if glucose level is higher than 200 mg/dL after 2 hours (This test is used more for type 2 diabetes.)
You should also ask your doctor how often to you need your hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level checked. The HbA1c is a measure of average blood glucose during the previous 2 to 3 months. It is a very helpful way to determine how well treatment is working.
Ketone testing is another test that is used in type 1 diabetes. Ketones are produced by the breakdown of fat and muscle, and they are harmful at high levels. The ketone test is done using a urine sample. High levels of blood ketones may result in a serious condition called ketoacidosis. Ketone testing is usually done at the following times:
When the blood sugar is higher than 240 mg/dL
During acute illness (for example, pneumonia, heart attack, or stroke)
When nausea or vomiting occur
During pregnancy
Back to TopTreatment
There is no cure for diabetes. Treatment involves medicines, diet, and exercise to control blood sugar and prevent symptoms and complications.
LEARN THESE SKILLS
Basic diabetes management skills will help prevent the need for emergency care. These skills include:
How to recognize and treat low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and high blood sugar (hyperglycemia)
What to eat and when
How to take insulin or oral medication
How to test and record blood glucose
How to test urine for ketones (type 1 diabetes only)
How to adjust insulin or food intake when changing exercise and eating habits
How to handle sick days
Where to buy diabetes supplies and how to store them
After you learn the basics of diabetes care, learn how the disease can cause long-term health problems and the best ways to prevent these problems. People with diabetes need to review and update their knowledge, because new research and improved ways to treat diabetes are constantly being developed.
SELF-TESTING
If you have diabetes, your doctor may tell you to regularly check your blood sugar levels at home. There are a number of devices available, and they use only a drop of blood. Self-monitoring tells you how well diet, medication, and exercise are working together to control your diabetes and can help your doctor prevent complications.
The American Diabetes Association recommends that premeal blood sugar levels fall in the range of 80 to 120 mg/dL and bedtime blood levels fall in the range of 100 to 140 mg/dL. Your doctor may adjust this depending on your circumstances.
WHAT TO EAT
You should work closely with your health care provider to learn how much fat, protein, and carbohydrates you need in your diet. A registered dietician can be very helpful in planning dietary needs.
People with type 1 diabetes should eat at about the same times each day and try to be consistent with the types of food they choose. This helps to prevent blood sugars from becoming extremely high or low.
Persons with type 2 diabetes should follow a well-balanced and low-fat diet.
HOW TO TAKE MEDICATION
Medications to treat diabetes include insulin and glucose-lowering pills called oral hypoglycemic drugs.
Persons with type 1 diabetes cannot make their own insulin, so daily insulin injections are needed. Insulin does not come in pill form. Injections that are generally needed one to four times per day. Some people use an insulin pump, which is worn at all times and delivers a steady flow of insulin throughout the day. Other people may use a new type of inhaled insulin.
Insulin preparations differ in how quickly they start to work and how long they remain active. Sometimes different types of insulin are mixed together in a single injection. The types of insulin to use, the doses needed, and the number of daily injections are chosen by a health care professional trained to provide diabetes care.
People who need insulin are taught to give themselves injections by their health care providers or diabetes educators.
Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes may respond to treatment with exercise, diet, and medicines taken by mouth. There are several types of medicines used to lower blood glucose in type 2 diabetes. They fall into one of three groups:
Medications called oral sulfonylureas that increase insulin production by the pancreas.
Medications called thiazolidinediones that help increase the cell's sensitivity (responsiveness) to insulin.
Medications that delay absorption of glucose from the gut. These include acarbose and miglitol.
There are some injectable medicines used to lower blood sugar. They include exenatide and pramlintide.
Most persons with type 2 diabetes will need more than one medication for good blood sugar control within 3 years of starting their first medication. Different groups of medications may be combined or used with insulin.
Some people with type 2 diabetes find they no longer need medication if they lose weight and increase activity, because when their ideal weight is reached, their own insulin and a careful diet can control their blood glucose levels.
It is unknown if hypoglycemic medicines taken by mouth are safe for use in pregnancy. Women who have type 2 diabetes and take these medications may be switched to insulin during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.
Gestational diabetes is treated with insulin and changes in diet.
EXERCISE
Regular exercise is especially important for people with diabetes. It helps with blood sugar control, weight loss, and high blood pressure. People with diabetes who exercise are less likely to experience a heart attack or stroke than diabetics who do not exercise regularly. You should be evaluated by your physician before starting an exercise program.
Here are some exercise considerations:
Choose an enjoyable physical activity that is appropriate for your current fitness level.
Exercise every day, and at the same time of day, if possible.
Monitor blood glucose levels before and after exercise.
Carry food that contains a fast-acting carbohydrate in case you become hypoglycemic during or after exercise.
Carry a diabetes identification card and a mobile phone or change for a payphone in case of emergency.
Drink extra fluids that do not contain sugar before, during, and after exercise.
Changes in exercise intensity or duration may need changes in diet or medication dose to keep blood sugar levels from going too high or low.
FOOT CARE
People with diabetes are prone to foot problems because of the likelihood of damage to blood vessels and nerves and a decreased ability to fight infection. Problems with blood flow and damage to nerves may cause an injury to the foot to go unnoticed until infection develops. Death of skin and other tissue can occur.
If left untreated, the affected foot may need to be amputated. Diabetes is the most common condition leading to amputations.
To prevent injury to the feet, people with diabetes should adopt a daily routine of checking and caring for the feet as follows:
Check your feet every day, and report sores or changes and signs of infection.
Wash your feet every day with lukewarm water and mild soap, and dry them thoroughly.
Soften dry skin with lotion or petroleum jelly.
Protect feet with comfortable, well-fitting shoes.
Exercise daily to promote good circulation.
See a podiatrist for foot problems or to have corns or calluses removed.
Remove shoes and socks during a visit to your health care provider and remind him or her to examine your feet.
Stop smoking, which hinders blood flow to the feet.
Back to TopSupport Groups
For additional information, see diabetes resources.
Back to TopExpectations (prognosis)
With good blood glucose and blood pressure control, many of the complications of diabetes can be prevented.
Studies have shown that strict control of blood sugar and blood pressure levels in persons with diabetes helps reduce the risk of kidney disease, eye disease, nervous system disease, heart attack, and stroke.
Back to TopComplications
Emergency complications include diabetic hyperglycemic hyperosmolar coma.
Long-term complications include:
Diabetic retinopathy
Diabetic nephropathy
Diabetic neuropathy
Peripheral vascular disease
Hyperlipidemia, hypertension, atherosclerosis, and coronary artery disease
Back to TopCalling Your Health Care Provider
Go to the emergency room or call the local emergency number (such as 911) if symptoms of ketoacidosis occur:
Increased thirst and urination
Nausea
Deep and rapid breathing
Abdominal pain
Sweet-smelling breath
Loss of consciousness
Go to the emergency room or call the local emergency number if symptoms of extremely low blood sugar (hypoglycemic coma or severe insulin reaction) occur:
Weakness
Drowsiness
Headache
Confusion
Dizziness
Double vision
Lack of coordination
Convulsions or unconsciousness
Back to TopPrevention
Maintaining an ideal body weight and an active lifestyle may prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes. Currently there is no way to prevent type 1 diabetes.
Back to TopReferences »
Standards of medical care in diabetes--2007. Diabetes Care. Jan 2007;30 Suppl 1:S4-S41.
Larsen PR, Kronberg HM, Schlomo M, et al. Williams Textbook of Endocrinology. 10th ed. St. Louis, Mo: WB Saunders; 2003:1427-1468, 1485-1504.
Armstrong C. ADA Releases Standards of Medical Care for Patients with Diabetes. Am Fam Physician. Sept 2006; 74(5); 871-874.
Caballero E. Prediabetes. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. Jan 2007; 92(1); 15A-16A.See All References »
A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org). URAC's accreditation program is an independent audit to verify that A.D.A.M. follows rigorous standards of quality and accountability. A.D.A.M. is among the first to achieve this important distinction for online health information and services. Learn more about A.D.A.M.'s editorial policy, editorial process and privacy policy. A.D.A.M. is also a founding member of Hi-Ethics and subscribes to the principles of the Health on the Net Foundation (www.hon.ch). A.D.A.M. CopyrightThe information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. © 1997- 2008 A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free
June 5, 2008
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free
By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: “These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don’t want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!”
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn’t new features — it’s the complexity added to the phones’ designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can’t believe they’re free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don’t have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone’s speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase “by cracky” may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don’t require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you’ll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it’s a business or store you’re looking up, for heaven’s sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It’s a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It’s fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. “GOOG411. What city and state?”
You: “New York, New York.”
Google: “New York, New York. What business name or category?”
You: “Empire State Building.”
Google: “Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I’ll connect you.”
And your call is connected, just as though you’d dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying “details” (meaning, “read me the phone number and address”) or “text message” (meaning, “send that info to my cellphone, so I’ll have it in writing”).
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don’t miss Google’s free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here’s another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. “What’s that German word that means, ‘pleasure from other people’s pain’?” Or “Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?” Or “What’s on the front page of today’s New York Times?” Or “How do you jump the battery in a Prius?” Or “Where’s the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?” Or “What’s the last flight to New York out of O’Hare Airport?” Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English (“Thanks for asking!”), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That’s because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They’re paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: “Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?” A: “Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side.” Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there’s no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don’t, because you’re driving, or you have no pen, or you’re away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you’re a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier’s “premium text-message block” be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to “American Idol” by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: “Who do you want to Jott?”
You: “Myself.”
Jott: “Jott yourself.”
You: “Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband’s collar and sues the detergent company.”
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people’s names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, “Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?,” or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, “Do you want a reminder?” If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it’s primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like “buy” and “meeting” and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it’s fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There’s a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it’s 1999.
So yes, it’s conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There’s no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008 The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
June 5, 2008
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: "These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don't want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!"
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn't new features — it's the complexity added to the phones' designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can't believe they're free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don't have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone's speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase "by cracky" may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don't require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you'll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it's a business or store you're looking up, for heaven's sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It's a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It's fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. "GOOG411. What city and state?"
You: "New York, New York."
Google: "New York, New York. What business name or category?"
You: "Empire State Building."
Google: "Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I'll connect you."
And your call is connected, just as though you'd dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying "details" (meaning, "read me the phone number and address") or "text message" (meaning, "send that info to my cellphone, so I'll have it in writing").
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don't miss Google's free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here's another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. "What's that German word that means, 'pleasure from other people's pain'?" Or "Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?" Or "What's on the front page of today's New York Times?" Or "How do you jump the battery in a Prius?" Or "Where's the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?" Or "What's the last flight to New York out of O'Hare Airport?" Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English ("Thanks for asking!"), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That's because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They're paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: "Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?" A: "Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side." Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there's no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don't, because you're driving, or you have no pen, or you're away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you're a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier's "premium text-message block" be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to "American Idol" by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
You: "Myself."
Jott: "Jott yourself."
You: "Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband's collar and sues the detergent company."
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people's names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, "Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?," or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, "Do you want a reminder?" If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it's primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like "buy" and "meeting" and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it's fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There's a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it's 1999.
So yes, it's conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There's no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008
The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;Cell%20Services=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
State of the Art
Cell Services Keep It Easy, and Free By DAVID POGUE
Correction Appended
You hear it all the time: "These cellphones are too complicated, by cracky! I don't want to play music or surf the Internet. I just want to make phone calls!"
It may turn out, though, that these complaints are misdirected. Maybe the real problem isn't new features — it's the complexity added to the phones' designs.
But what if there were a way to add features without changing the phone itself?
There is. Several super-simple cellular services are so sweet and satisfying, you can't believe they're free. They work by recognizing your voice, so you don't have to master anything new on the phone itself — all of the complexity is hidden from you.
Certain voice-driven freebies, in particular, have earned a permanent place on my phone's speed-dial keys. All work alike: you dial an 800 number, speak your request and get the results in seconds, usually in the form of a text message on your phone.
(Yes, the sort of person who uses the phrase "by cracky" may be unfamiliar with the glories of text messaging, and may bristle at having to pay 10 cents a text message, or $5 a month for hundreds. But remember: the services described here don't require you to master sending such messages — only receiving them, which requires no skill at all.)
800-GOOG-411. Cellphone carriers have plenty to be ashamed of. Case in point: when you dial 411 to look up a phone number, you'll be billed $1.50 or $2.
If it's a business or store you're looking up, for heaven's sake, dial 800-GOOG-411 instead. It's a voice-activated, national phone directory run by Google. It's fast and efficient, and there are no ads or charges.
A typical transcript goes like this. "GOOG411. What city and state?"
You: "New York, New York."
Google: "New York, New York. What business name or category?"
You: "Empire State Building."
Google: "Empire State Building! Searching. Top listing: Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue. I'll connect you."
And your call is connected, just as though you'd dialed yourself. Or you can interrupt by saying "details" (meaning, "read me the phone number and address") or "text message" (meaning, "send that info to my cellphone, so I'll have it in writing").
For residential listings, you can dial 800-FREE411 (not a Google service), although you have to listen to a 20-second ad. And don't miss Google's free SMS service, which offers business phone numbers, weather, sports, flight info, and more (details at tinyurl.com/ymeupk). But neither of those services compares with the spectacular speed, convenience and reliability of GOOG411.
ChaCha. Here's another voice-activated service (800-2CHACHA) — but this time, you can ask any question at all. "What's that German word that means, 'pleasure from other people's pain'?" Or "Who ran against Abraham Lincoln for president?" Or "What's on the front page of today's New York Times?" Or "How do you jump the battery in a Prius?" Or "Where's the cheapest gas in southeast Connecticut right now?" Or "What's the last flight to New York out of O'Hare Airport?" Just about anything, in fact, you could find on the Web.
After 30 seconds, you get a text message confirming that ChaCha is working on your question. A minute or two later, you get the answer, typed out in friendly English ("Thanks for asking!"), as though there were a real person on the other end.
That's because there is a real person. ChaCha employs thousands of amateur researchers across the United States to field your questions, find the answers online and shoot them back, with a link to the Web page where they found the information.
They're paid $5 to $10 an hour, which may explain the occasional unhelpful replies. (Q: "Why do British and American cars drive on opposite sides of the road?" A: "Because the British have their steering wheels on the other side." Gee, thanks.)
Even so, ChaCha does a tantalizingly good impersonation of a personal concierge who caters to your whims, and saves the day with amazing frequency. Best of all, there's no fee, no software, no signup or registration; you can dial it right this instant.
Jott. What do you do when you get an idea you want to remember? A brainstorm, a to-do item, a reminder you want to set for yourself? Writing it down is the only solution — so most of the time, you don't, because you're driving, or you have no pen, or you're away from your computer.
Meet Jott, your personal transcription service. You sign up at Jott.com by providing your cell number and e-mail address.
If you're a Verizon customer, you must also request that your carrier's "premium text-message block" be removed from your account. That safeguard is meant to protect people from racking up bills using premium texting services (which Jott is not). Votes to "American Idol" by text, for example, cost $1 a vote. (I found that out by asking ChaCha.)
From now on, Jott is your personal transcription service. Speed-dial 866-JOTT123, and the conversation goes like this:
Jott: "Who do you want to Jott?"
You: "Myself."
Jott: "Jott yourself."
You: "Great idea for Act 2! Doing the laundry, Minna finds lipstick on her husband's collar and sues the detergent company."
Five minutes later, the transcribed, typed message appears in your e-mail in-box, complete with an audio attachment of the recording — and, if you like, also on your phone as a text message.
You can also fill your Jott.com address book with other people's names, or even add them to groups. That way, you can text your spouse by saying, "Hi, honeybones — can you turn off the oven at 6:30?," or alert everyone on your team that you will be late for a meeting by placing a single phone call.
More advanced features: after you speak, the Jott lady says, "Do you want a reminder?" If you say yes, then you can speak the date and time when you want the transcript sent to your phone — a brilliant, free way to set a wake-up call, remind yourself to file quarterly taxes, buy a gift for your anniversary, whatever.
Reqall. Reqall is the same idea as Jott, but it's primarily a reminder system — it even recognizes words like "buy" and "meeting" and stores transcripts as separate lists on the Web.
You can dictate reminders by calling 888-9REQALL, or send them by instant message, e-mail, text message or Web browser plug-in. Later, Reqall tries to remind you of things at the right time, using e-mail, text message or instant message (your choice).
Alas, the accuracy of the speech recognition (which, as with Jott, is done by a combination of humans and software) leaves something to be desired.
All of these services are so good, so efficient and so free, you have a right to be suspicious. How will they make money?
GOOG411 is technically still in testing, but even once it's fully baked, Google has no intention of charging for it.
ChaCha is trying to sell its services to cell carriers and syndicate its system to other information providers, and one day intends to attach relevant ads to its text-message answers. (The company insists it will not spam or repurpose your phone number.)
As for Jott and Reqall: technically, they, too, are in beta testing. When they go live, the companies plan to charge for the advanced features, but they will always offer a free basic service.
The bottom line: There's a new Internet bubble blowing, folks, and at least in the short term, it means freebies for all. All of these companies, and more, are beginning to party like it's 1999.
So yes, it's conceivable that the free ride may end someday. But in the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts. There's no reason not to start using these life-changing freebies this very day.
E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 6, 2008
The State of the Art column on Thursday, about free cellphone information services, gave an incorrect phone number for the reQall service, which allows users to dictate reminders to themselves. It is 888-9REQALL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;Cell%20Services=&%2334;=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
null
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)