University of Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon was asked how the university monitors social media among its 900 student athletes to avert incidents such as the one in October in which an Ohio State University athlete posted on Twitter that going to class was pointless because he was only there to play football.  He told the audience that in addition to having all its coaches, staff members, and administrators connected to student-athlete and coaching social media accounts, UM’s athletic department employs two outside consulting firms to monitor its student-athletes’ online activities.  Consultants monitor the Michigan athletes’ social media activity because online actions could inadvertently damage the university’s brand and by extension, the university itself, Mr. Brandon said.  One of the two consulting groups — which David Ablauf, Michigan associate athletic director, told Crain’s Detroit Business was 180 Communications Inc. of Tallahassee — utilized a young, attractive woman to go online and contact student-athletes.  “We took this really beautiful picture of her and she went out and baited some of our student-athletes, some of the guys into having an online relationship,” Mr. Brandon said.  “Baited them into doing all kinds of things and saying all kinds of things.”  The unidentified woman turned over to athletic department officials posts and comments that were made, and the names of student-athletes.  During a presentation on social media awareness, online responses the athletes had given the woman were put up on a big screen and the athletic department introduced the woman to the student-athletes.  “You can just see the guys who bit the hook slide into their chairs,” Mr. Brandon said.  “She proceeded to put on the screen the responses they had given to her on the Internet.  It was painful, but the lesson for these kids was, this stuff doesn’t go away.  And you never know who’s on the other end of one of your little messages.  You thought this was confidential … but you saw this in front of your peers.”  Lee Gordon, vice president of corporate communications for 180 Communications, said his firm has worked with students from 15 to 20 college athletic programs, including Michigan and the University of Toledo.  Mr. Gordon said his company’s employees send friend requests on Facebook to student-athletes or follow them on their Twitter accounts.  When they present to each group, they reveal what they have found on those social media accounts.  Rachel Lenzi and Jon Chavez  http://www.toledoblade.com/Michigan/2013/02/02/Coach-employs-firm-to-monitor-Michigan-athletes-social-media-activities.html

From Jeremiah's Vanishing New York  (Many thanks, Paul.)

Finding Nighthawks  Part 1  In Hopper expert Gail Levin's book Hopper's Places and her Hopper biography, she writes that the painter himself claimed that Nighthawks "was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet."  Those streets, adds Levin, were "Eleventh Street and Seventh Avenue."  She goes on to say that the diner "was surely on the empty triangular lot" in that spot.  But there is ample evidence to the contrary. Nighthawks Forever points to a cities data file that has no record of a diner ever being on the spot.  http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/06/finding-nighthawks-part-1.html

Finding Nighthawks  Part 2  On the microfilm, I look at every corner where Hopper’s diner might have stood.  In addition to those noted above, I check the wedge where Waverly meets 7th, but it was a grocery store.  I double-check the West Village Florist spot (Block 606, Lot 30M), but the photo is too dark to see if it was still a newsstand in 1941.  I begin to wonder if the Nighthawks diner ever existed, if Hopper dreamed it up out of the ether.  And then I see it.  In small print, in a 1950s Land Book, a new clue.  See many pictures at: 
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/06/finding-nighthawks-part-2.html
Finding Nighthawks Part 3  The Land Book from the 1930s makes no mention of a diner anywhere at Mulry Square.  But the updated 1950s Land Book shows a new addition.  In Block 613, Lot 62, on the corner where 7th Avenue South hits Perry Street, the 1950s mapmaker has drawn a rectangle and written the word DINER.   Could the Nighthawks inspiration have been the mystery diner at Block 613, Lot 62 behind the Esso gas station?  Possibly.  If the diner was built in time, Hopper might have decided to paint it in 1942 because it was new.  He may have been attracted to the novelty of it.  After my trip to the Archives, I go online and search for images of that corner.  I come up empty, but I do find a Certificate of Occupancy from 1942.  It states that a one-story commercial building went up in this spot, Block 613, Lot 62, also known as 173 7th Ave. So. The date of completion was February 26, 1942, the year Nighthawks is dated.  But was it the Hopper diner?  Could the Nighthawks diner have been in the narrow wedge that is today's West Village Florist?  Could it also have been that little vanished slice behind the Loew's Sheridan theater?   In the charcoal studies for Nighthawks, you can see that the background is quite vague, messy pencil scribbles with details that appear and disappear from sketch to sketch.  As Teri Tynes noted in an email to me, "Some people think Hopper essentially spliced in his Sunday Morning painting for the background."  We know that the woman in the diner is Hopper's wife, Jo.  The brick buildings in back probably came from another painting.  Maybe the diner, too, is a composite. 

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/06/finding-nighthawks-part-3.html

Nighthawks Coda  Two Boots Pizza has a glassy curve, but it was a bakery back then.  Wait a minute--I'm thinking "diner" when the descriptive term is "coffee stand."  Could a bakery be referred to as a coffee stand?  In the print-out of the tax photo, Two Boots was the Hanscom Bake Shop.  Wouldn't they have served coffee?  And maybe all night?  It's very possible.  But then it could just as likely be the prow-shaped luncheonette, that surely also served coffee, behind the Loew's Sheridan theater, which Hopper was known to frequent as an avid movie fan.  I circle Empire Szechuan, hoping to find some remains of that diner.  I don't know what I'm looking for--a rusted footing that once held a signpost, the ghosted outline of a curved glass front?  Something.  Then the oddly placed wedge of the entrance rings a bell.  And I suddenly see it.  From the Perry Street side, I see the old diner--the single story of bricks that still stands, holding up the addition of the second story.  It was not demolished, only expanded.  I want the Nighthawks diner to be buried in these bricks, because they are still here.  Or if not these bricks, then let it be the bakery that became Two Boots, because I can still put my hand on that curve of glass, because the soul of that lonely coffee shop remains in its blunt, solid particulars.  But the ultimate truth remains bitterly out of reach.  http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/06/finding-nighthawks-coda.html   

The blog of Jeremiah Moss began in 2007.  Some years there are more postings than there are days in the year.   

 

Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) is vegetable oil that has had atoms of the element bromine bonded to it.  Brominated vegetable oil is used to stabilize citrus-flavored soft drinks.  Its high density helps the droplets of natural fat-soluble citrus flavors stay suspended in the drink.  BVO has been used by the soft drink industry since 1931, generally at a level of about 8 ppm.  Careful control of the type of oil used allows bromination of it to produce BVO with a specific density (1.33 g/mL).  As a result, it can be mixed with less-dense flavoring agents such as citrus flavor oil to produce a resulting oil whose density matches that of water or other products.  A possible replacement is sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB), which as of January 25, 2013 was slated to replace BVO in Gatorade.  Gatorade currently uses the stabilizer Glycerol ester of wood rosin (E445) in Europe.  An online petition started by Sarah Kavanagh of Hattiesburg Mississippi, at Change.org asking PepsiCo to stop adding BVO to Gatorade and other products had collected over 200,000 signatures by January 2013.  The petition points out that since Gatorade is sold in countries where BVO is not approved, there is already an existing formulation without this ingredient.  PepsiCo announced on January 25, 2013 that it would no longer use BVO in Gatorade but had no plans to remove it from Mountain Dew.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brominated_vegetable_oil

Jan. 18, 2013  A federal district court in Ohio refused to dismiss a hospital employee’s complaint of religious discrimination after the employee was fired for refusing to get the flu vaccine.  The refusal was based on the employee’s veganism.  The court concluded that the plaintiff’s beliefs were sincerely held and, therefore, might merit protection under the law.  Sakile Chenzira, a confirmed vegan, was employed by Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center (CCMC) as a customer-service representative for more than 10 years.  A vegan does not ingest any animal or animal byproducts.  Until 2010, Chenzira was allowed to forgo a flu vaccine, which included animal byproducts, without disciplinary action being taken against her.  In 2010, when Chenzira refused the mandatory vaccine, she was fired.  In response, she filed a charge of religious discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and, ultimately, filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging religious discrimination, along with a related state claim for violation of public policy.  CCMC filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, arguing that veganism is not a religion.  That motion was denied (although the hospital’s motion to dismiss the state-law public-policy claim was granted).  The court found that in the context of a motion to dismiss, Chenzira set forth a “plausible” claim that she ascribes to veganism with a sincerity equating to that of traditional religious views.  In addition, the fact that Chinzira previously was exempted from the vaccine—along with the EEOC regulations that make it clear that “it is not necessary that a religious group espouse a belief before it can qualify as religious”—helped support the court’s decision that it was inappropriate to dismiss her claims of religious discrimination under Federal Rule 12(b)6).  Chenzira v. Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center, S.D. Ohio, No. 1:11-cv-00917 (Dec. 27, 2012).  Professional Pointer:  In this case the court simply ruled on the sufficiency of the religious-discrimination claim filed by Chinzera, finding that she alleged beliefs that may deserve legal protection.  The decision is not a determination on the merits of the claims or the defenses.  Maria Greco Danaher  http://www.shrm.org/LegalIssues/FederalResources/Pages/Vegan-Employee-Sincerely-Held-Belief-Religious-Discrimination.aspx