Against the backdrop of a cold Minnesota winter, lottery players hold their collective breath at the thought of winning big on Christmas Day. The jackpot has run up to a red-hot $750 million, the world's richest prize. A bungled convenience store heist triggers a happenstance theft of winning lottery tickets and trips up an insider's scheme to rig the results.Agent Kirchner, an old-school cop reluctantly teams up with a young tech-savvy analyst on an investigation that propels them into the world of numerical probability, conspiratorial politics, international ticket scalpers, counterfeiters, disgruntled players, and illegal immigrants looking to grab the brass ring. Caught in the crosscurrents of those in deadly pursuit of the winning ticket, the investigators are buffeted by unsolved murders, a bomb blast-and the curious giveaway of winning lottery tickets: acts of charity or criminal subterfuge? The whereabouts and redemption of the $750 million jackpot lottery ticket remains a mystery throughout, stirring anger and resentment among the lottery-playing public. The winning ticket, finally, surfaces but before the prize can be claimed a Faustian bargain puts the Kirchner's job on the line.
Drawing on unpublished documents and oral histories, an illustrated examination of an iconic artwork of an artist who has made a lifework of tactical evasion. One wintry day in 1983, alongside other street sellers in the East Village, David Hammons peddled snowballs of various sizes. He had neatly laid them out in graduated rows and spent the day acting as obliging salesman. He called the evanescent and unannounced street action Bliz-aard Ball Sale, thus inscribing it into a body of work that, from the late 1960s to the present, has used a lexicon of ephemeral actions and self-consciously “black" materials to comment on the nature of the artwork, the art world, and race in America. And although Bliz-aard Ball Sale has been frequently cited and is increasingly influential, it has long been known only through a mix of eyewitness rumors and a handful of photographs. Its details were as elusive as the artist himself; even its exact date was unrecorded. Like so much of the artist's work, it was conceived, it seems, to slip between our fingers—to trouble the grasp of the market, as much as of history and knowability. In this engaging study, Elena Filipovic collects a vast oral history of the ephemeral action, uncovering rare images and documents, and giving us singular insight into an artist who made an art of making himself difficult to find. And through it, she reveals Bliz-aard Ball Sale to be the backbone of a radical artistic oeuvre that transforms such notions as “art,” “commodity,” “performance,” and even “race” into categories that shift and dissolve, much like slowly melting snowballs.
A journey through the days of growing up in rural Mississippi in the 1950's. A look at the sad, the happy, the cruel, and the joy of living in a not so perfect world. A mixture of folklore, reality, and the fantasy side of life as seen through the eyes of a child. A look at relationships between family, races, and communities at a time when nothing was perfect. A look at what it took to survive when survival was not promised to anyone. A look at life in a time and place that will never again be.
The Blizzard is a quarterly football publication, put together by a cooperative of journalists and authors, its main aim to provide a platform for top-class writers from across the globe to enjoy the space and the freedom to write what they like about the football stories that matter to them. Issue Seventeen Contents:---------------- Beyond the Game ---------------- * The Player of the People, by Igor Rabiner - The death of Igor Cherenkov last year prompted an astonishing outpouring of grief from Spartak fans * The Man who Sacked Himself, Philippe Auclair - Gabriel Hanot was a player, a coach, a journalist and a pioneer who remains oddly neglected in France * Looking Forward, by Brian Oliver - How the former Chelsea defender John Dempsey left football behind to work in a care home * The Complicated Symbol, by Shaul Adar - Bnei Sakhnin's journey to establish themselves as an Arab team in Israel's top flight * Namesakes, by James Corbett - Everton have had two Alex Youngs: one's the subject of a Ken Loach film, the other killed his brother ---------------- Interview ---------------- Paul Breitner, by Miguel Delaney - How a Bayern Munich defeat paved the way for West Germany's 1974 World Cup triumph ---------------- Belfast ---------------- * A Patchwork City, by Lefkos Kyriacou - Mapping the fan-bases of the major club's in Northern Ireland's capital * Requiem for a Stand, by Keith Bailie - A history in seven key moments of the short life of the Kop at Windsor Park * Before the Shopping Centre, by Conor Heffernan - How crowd violence brought an end to the existence of Belfast Celtic ---------------- Theory ---------------- * The Man who Built White Ships, by Alex Holiga - Stanko Poklepovic, the oldest coach in Europe, and the importance of spiral impostations * The Whisky Option, by Simon Curtis - Malcolm Allison's time at Sporting was brief but fans remember him fondly * Messi and the Machine, by Richard Fitzpatrick - Could playing video games be shaping the present generation of footballers? * Not at All Costs, by George Caulkin - Paul Tisdale has not only revolutionised how Exeter City play, but how they think * Wrestling with the All-Blacks, by Charlie Eccleshare - How Declan Edge is trying to make New Zealand take football seriously ---------------- Polemic ---------------- * Against Sanitised Football, by Alexander Shea - Can fans fight back against clubs who seek to ignore their history for bland branding? * The Trials of Baghdad Bob, by Paul Brown - Can Roberto Martinez restore his reputation after a season of wilful blinkeredness? ---------------- Fiction ---------------- * The Tackle, by David Ashton - John Brodie, the former winger turned detective, returns to hunt down some stolen medals ---------------- Greatest Games ---------------- * Scotland 3 England 1, by Paul Brown - Home International, Hampden Park, Glasgow, 17 April 1937 ---------------- * Eight Bells ---------------- * Unexpected Relegations, by Michael Yokhin - A selection of giants who have unexpectedly lost their place in the top tier ----------------
Writing about the economic collapse and social unrest of her 1970s childhood in Buffalo, New York, Laura Pedersen was struck by how things were finally improving in her beloved hometown. As 2008 began, Buffalo was poised to become the thriving metropolis it had been a hundred years earlier—only instead of grain and steel, the booming industries now included healthcare and banking, education and technology. Folks who'd moved away due to lack of opportunity in the 1980s talked excitedly about returning home. They mised the small-town friendliness and it wasn't nostalgia for a past that no longer existed—Buffalo has long held the well-deserved nickname the City of Good Neighbors. The diaspora has ended. Preservationists are winning out over demolition crews. The lights are back on in a city that's usually associated with blizzards and blight rather than its treasure trove of art, architecture, and culture.
There's a running joke among radiologists: finding a tumor in a mammogram is akin to finding a snowball in a blizzard. A bit of medical gallows humor, this simile illustrates the difficulties of finding signals (the snowball) against a background of noise (the blizzard). Doctors are faced with similar difficulties every day when sifting through piles of data from blood tests to X-rays to endless lists of patient symptoms. Diagnoses are often just educated guesses, and prognoses less certain still. There is a significant amount of uncertainty in the daily practice of medicine, resulting in confusion and potentially deadly complications. Dr. Steven Hatch argues that instead of ignoring this uncertainty, we should embrace it. By digging deeply into a number of rancorous controversies, from breast cancer screening to blood pressure management, Hatch shows us how medicine can fail-sometimes spectacularly-when patients and doctors alike place too much faith in modern medical technology. The key to good health might lie in the ability to recognize the hype created by so many medical reports, sense when to push a physician for more testing, or resist a physician's enthusiasm when unnecessary tests or treatments are being offered. Both humbling and empowering, Snowball in a Blizzard lays bare the inescapable murkiness that permeates the theory and practice of modern medicine. Essential reading for physicians and patients alike, this book shows how, by recognizing rather than denying that uncertainty, we can all make better health decisions.
THE BLIZZARD'S SECRET, by Allan Young Albia is a typical mid-western county seat town of four thousand people -- minus one. It is located near Iowa's biggest lake, and surrounded by other beautiful lakes and rivers, including the three small fish-filled ponds called Cottonwood Pits. When an early blizzard finally relinquishes what the ponds are hiding, the area will never be the same again. The snow-covered secret not only rewrites the community's history, but determines its future as well -- and all the residents are affected. Zacharias Popek drives in to visit his favorite clergyman, only to find him in the hospital, and stumbles into a series of events which takes all of his deduction capabilities, plus his physical abilities, to solve the mysteries-while staying alive.
For more than a hundred years, Buffalo was one of the world''s great industrial cities. Its grand office buildings and stately mansions overlooked a metropolis that was the eleventh largest industrial center in the United States, the third largest producer of steel, and the largest inland port. Its diverse ethnic heritage, represented by sizable enclaves of Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Germans, and African-Americans, gave the city a vibrant sense of community.But by the early 1970''s, all of that had changed. Unrest in the inner city had led to riots; student protests had shut down the city''s largest university; and the economy in Buffalo, as in all the "Rust Belt" cities, was crumbling as the nation entered the postindustrial age. The population was dropping, too, dramatically altering the streets and neighborhoods where the people of this aging metropolis had lived for generations. Like the Jerusalem of Jeremiah''s Lamentations, Buffalo was a dying city whose gates were desolate and whose people were embittered.It is here that Mark Goldman''s City on the Lake takes up its story. Goldman analyzes the factors that contributed to the city''s decline and describes the efforts of its leaders and citizens to restore Buffalo to its former vitality. Goldman presents the facts - like the immigration patterns in Old Buffalo and the intricate details of the city''s 1976 desegregation case - but he also introduces us to the people of Buffalo and puts the city''s history into context by interweaving it with the colorful ethnic patchwork of its day-to-day life.By the end of this careful analysis, Goldman''s narrative is one of hope. The 1980s witnessed the slow but sure calming of ethnic strife, a new mandate for quality education, and the revitalization of downtown. Goldman believes that the grandeur of Buffalo''s past will be recaptured and that Buffalonians are dedicated to building "new gates for the old city."
