Leave Our Awesome Dinosaur Stampedes Alone

For years, people were perfectly happy believing that the series of fossilized footprints in Australia's Lark Quarry was all that remained of an epic dinosaur stampede. Then Science happened. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/fuyPE4ctGHY/leave-our-awesome-dinosaur-stampedes-alone

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UBS Risk Management Fiasco Illustrates Hidden Big Bank IT Time ...

Yves here. One of the sources of risk in big and even moderately big banks that does not get the attention it deserves is information systems. Having mission critical systems function smoothly, or at least adequately, is crucial to a major trading operation. Huge volumes of transactions flow through these firms, and the various levels of reporting (customer exposures, funds flows, risk levels, transaction and reconciliation failures) need to be highly reliable or things get ugly fast. Witness MF Global, where the firm was unable to cope with the transaction volume of its final days and literally did not know where money was at various points in time during the day.

Now one would think that in the wake of a super duper financial crisis, that big banks would up their game on the risk management/IT front. My guess is the reverse. First, regulators haven?t thought much about operational risks; that?s only recently been considered something worth thinking about. Second, even though I suspect that over time trading managers have gotten better at managing IT, that likely means they have gone from terrible (as in too preoccupied with the press of business to do an adequate job of specing projects or being willing to try approaches like Extreme Programming) to merely garden variety not very good (as in pretty much no one in corporate-land is willing to spend the extra 20% or so to have developers document their work in sufficient detail that a completely new person could understand what was done). And banks have a monster legacy system problem. Multihundred million dollar programs to tidy up and integrate systems into the One System to Rule (Big Parts of Them) All have this funny way of being cashiered after running up monstrous bills and not getting very far.

One window into the severity of this problem: the OCC (yes, our overly bank friendly OCC) graded the 19 biggest banks as failing on a whole slough of operational measures, which included IT. And remember, the list consists mainly of traditional banks (admittedly some really big traditional banks like Wells Fargo), not firms that derive a major portion of their profits from more operationally-demanding trading activities. From American Banker in December (hat tip Richard Smith):

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently graded the 19 largest national banks on five factors designed to gauge how well they are being run.

The results are startling.

Not a single bank met the OCC?s requirements for internal auditing, risk management or succession planning. Only two of the 19 banks met the regulator?s requirements for defining the company?s appetite for risk-taking and communicating it across the company. Only two banks were judged to have boards of directors willing to stand up to their CEOs?

Among the five governance areas being targeted, risk management and audit are getting the harshest eye. ?We determined that for these 19 banks, their audit and risk management functions had to be elevated from wherever they were to meet our definition of ?strong,? ? Brosnan says.

None of the banks have met that standard for audit; 10 banks are within a year of meeting it while the nine remaining banks will need up to two more years, according to the materials the OCC disseminated at the conference. (The OCC did not identify any of the banks by name.)

None of the banks have met the risk management standards either. Four are within a year and 15 of the banks are going to need up to two years to pull their systems up to snuff, the OCC says.

My admittedly dated experience on IT (with two firms that were considered to be extremely good at it) is that the OCC will need to double its estimates on how long it will take. Independent of the fact that it alway take longer than anyone estimates, with major elements of Dodd Frank being hashed out and Basel III both in play and being delayed, a lot of IT projects will be pushed off until those are finalized.

But this UBS vignette is one of those peeks behind the curtain to see how bad things often are. Remember that UBS wa sone of the banks recognized to be most at risk in 2008. The Swiss National Bank was caught flat footed when UBS needed a monster bailout and was alone among central banks in making UBS hire an outside party to ascertain exactly what led to the meltdown (an undersupervised CDO team was a major culprit) and publish the findings. The Swiss have also imposed capital requirements of 19% on their banks, a level regarded elsewhere as draconian, and which is forcing UBS and Credit Suisse to downsize considerably.

Yet this story published originally in German by Lukas H?ssig reveals that even under a tough central bank, a lot of IT messes and deficiencies remain at the big financial firms (although it is also possible that the Swiss set capital levels at 19% precisely because they knew what a mess their charges were). And, quelle surprise, no one responsible has been fired or even demoted. Once you reach a certain level in banking, you only fail upward.

By Lukas H?ssig, an independent financial journalist in Zurich, who has written two books about the crash of UBS and the end of Swiss banking secrecy. He has operated the internet financial newspaper Inside Paradeplatz with daily news about Swiss banks since 2011. You can contact him at mail_at_lukashaessig.ch. Translation by the author

UBS loses hundreds of millions in a failed risk management project

After the ?A-Risk? project failed, UBS risk control aggregates risks using an excel patchwork. Recently, the investment bank has been inadvertently running open risks stemming from unhedged trading positions with CHF 500m loss potential.

UBS?s top management has being grilled by the British parliamentary commission for constantly failing to get risks under control, as demonstrated by several catastrophic and reputation-wrecking scandals: the gigantic $40 billion suprime loss, the tax-evasion scheme perpetrated in the USA, the Adoboli fraud and the Libor manipulation.

The line of defense of the UBS managers is always based on the same answer: ?we did not know?. In reality, UBS?s top management has always been aware of the deficiencies in risk control. For instance, Walter Stuerzinger and Philip Lofts, the former and the current Chief Risk Officer, were already warned in 2002 by two risk specialists (?The crisis at the heart of UBS?, published in ?The Sunday Telegraph? on 6 July 2008) of the Zurich head office with extensive experience at main trading centers that the bank was building-up an unacceptably large risk concentration in the US structured credit sector (including subprime) and that the risk management approach was flawed and incapable to capture and hence adequately measure the true loss potential of these exposures.

After the subprime losses UBS declared that it had changed its approach and had become particularly risk-averse. However the reality was different: as history shows, UBS did never turn the corner and has remained one of the most aggressive investment banks.

The recent failure of the ?A Risk? project is further evidence for this statement and it also shows that the integrity and the solidity of the risk control infrastructure is still not a top priority of top management. The ?A Risk? initiative was supposed to deliver a state-of-the art and innovative risk monitoring infrastructure and it should have allowed top management to have a global view of all the risks of the bank.

After 5 years development and the spending of several hundred million Swiss Francs, ?A Risk? does not run as expected and, according to an insider source, is in a ?catastrophic status? and has failed to deliver: the various trading desks of the bank still run on different IT infrastructures and the various risks have to be collected from ?different databases? and aggregated using Excel spreadsheets with several manual interventions. These are clearly very prone to operational errors.

Not very surprisingly, given UBS track record in dealing with risk control failures, the people directly responsible for this failure are still employed by UBS and hold highly paid positions. Among these are teh above mentioned Walter Stuerzinger and Philip Lofts, the former and the current Chief Risk Officer. But also at the next hierarchical level no major consequences seem to have been taken:

? Galo Guerra, who graduated at the Sloan School of Management of MIT and was leading the ?A Risk? project is still on the payroll of UBS;

? Pieter Klaassen, also graduated at the same school, according to the insider source has been removed from his position as ?Head of firm-wide risk aggregation? apparently because of his lacking leadership skills. However, on LinkedIn he appears to still hold the same position;

? Darryll Hendricks, who holds a PhD from Harvard, was in charge of the ?Risk Methodology? function of the investment bank and was therefore at least partly responsible for the correct representation of the risks. He is still with the bank and has the position of ?Head of Strategy? of the investment bank;

? Tom Daula, who was till the crash of 2008 the Chief Risk Officer of the investment bank and had good prospects of becoming Chief Risk Officer of the bank, changed internally and is now apparently the head of global research and analytics.

While highly paid top shots have succeeded to stay on board, many employees in the back office function are being axed due to the fact that the bank has decided to reduce the investment banking activities.

However, good specialists in this area are urgently needed. According to the insider source, in late summer 2011 the Swiss investment banking unit in Opfikon executed a very large transaction in Korean Won. However, the Treasury department that is in charge of managing the balance sheet and hedging the positions forgot to execute the hedge. As a result, the position bearing a 500 million loss potential remained open for several months. As this failure was discovered, UBS started an investigation in which also Finma (Swiss regulator) was involved. However, no consequences at personnel level have been taken. A UBS press spokesman refused to comment this event.

Source: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/ubs-risk-management-fiasco-illustrates-hidden-big-bank-it-time-bombs.html

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Adamsville employees receive letter saying health insurance was ...

ADAMSVILLE, Alabama -- This week city employees in Adamsville?received?letters from the Alabama State Employees Insurance Board informing them that their insurance had been cancelled for the last three months retroactively, but a city official says that the letter was the result of a mistake.?

According to the letter, the city failed to make its payments into the state employee insurance program for October, November and December. As a result, city employees might have to pay for any?incurred?health care costs out of their own pockets.?

On Thursday morning, City Clerk Susan Gilmore confirmed that the letter had gone out to city employees, but she said that a subsequent memo from the city told employees that the matter had been resolved and that their health insurance benefits were safe.?

When asked, Gilmore said that she would email a copy of the memo to the Birmingham News and AL.com, but late Thursday she had not sent that email. When approached at Adamsville City Hall, Gilmore refused to provide a copy of the memo and said it would be sent by email later.?

When asked why she couldn't provide a copy then, she suggested getting a copy from the Adamsville Police Department across the street from city hall.?

An administrative assistant at the police department said she could not release the document without permission.?

Under Alabama's Public Records Act, any citizen of the state is entitled to a inspect a public record upon request and is entitled to a copy subject to paying a reasonable fee to cover copy costs.?

Last month the city disclosed that it was being sued by the Forestdale Fire District for failure to pay fire dues. In that city council meeting, city officials said that it did not owe the money to the Forestdale Fire District.?

Messages left with Adamsville Mayor Pam Palmer on Thursday were not returned.?

City councilman Anthony Brooklere said Thursday night that the city was in good financial shape and that he had not heard about the letter from the Alabama State Employees Insurance Board.?

Email tips to kwhitmire@al.com

Source: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/01/adamsville_employees_receive_l.html

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Budweiser, Pepsi Join Forces For Super Bowl 2013: Report

Budweiser and Pepsi have reportedly set their sights on a common enemy: Coca-Cola. According to an internal email obtained by Ad Age, parent companies Anheuser-Busch InBev and PepsiCo have teamed up against the rival brand on joint promotions and in-store marketing ahead of this year's Super Bowl.

Together, the two Super Bowl sponsors will tout Bud Light, Pepsi and Doritos -- also owned by PepsiCo -- in campaigns leading up to the big game, such as "Super Bowl. Super Team. Super Party." However, the alliance will not extend to in-game coverage, Paul Chibe, InBev's vice president for U.S. marketing, told Ad Age.

Despite their co-branded partnership, Budweiser and Pepsi will air separate commercials during the game. The average price of a 30-second Super Bowl spot is estimated to cost $4 million.

In an internal memo sent by InBev to distributors, the beer company called the partnership with Pepsi a "National Big Bet" and noted that the three brands are "trying to work together to have flawless execution at retail," Ad Age reports.

Beverage Digest's editor and publisher John Sicher believes the combination of the three brands has the potential to be "very powerful." After speaking to Pepsi bottlers, he told Ad Age: "they believe this could have strong competitive potential."

As Business Insider notes, Pepsi has the most to gain from the Super Bowl deal, since its cola lags behind Coca-Cola's Coke (No. 1) and Diet Coke (No. 2) in the U.S.

This is not the first time, Budweiser and Pepsi have joined forces. In 2009, the two teamed up to cut costs on material purchases, and, in 2010, the companies made a pact to pool their media budgets. However, as Brand Channel points out, this will be the first campaign in which the two companies pair their beverage brands together.

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/budweiser-pepsi-super-bowl-2013_n_2451085.html

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Visits to Great Smokies up 7.5 per cent in 2012, over 2011, helped by mild weather

GATLINBURG, Tenn. - A half-million more visitors toured the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2012 than during the preceding year.

Figures released by the National Park Service showed nearly 9,686,000 people entered the park during last year. That compares with just below 9,009,000 the year before.

Park officials said a mild winter and spring during 2012 helped boost tourism in the nation's most-visited national park. There were nearly 2 per cent more visitors in December than in the last month of 2011.

For the year, visits to the Smokies were up 7.5 per cent from 2011.

The year with the largest number of visitors in this century was 2000, when 10.1 million people came to the Smokies.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/visits-great-smokies-7-5-per-cent-2012-090050160.html

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Anti- Inflammatory Foods That Help Arthritis - Sue's Nutrition Buzz

Foods that help arthritis ! Arthritis?hits 1 in every? 5 grown ups !? Can foods cure arthritis ? Unfortunately not, but there are some foods that can make the condition less painful.?Knowing what these foods? are and making small changes in the diet can yield BIG rewards and improve quality of life. ?It can also prevent the condition from progressing further. To know what these foods are hop on over to DC Ladies and read my guest post entitled ?? Ease Arthritis With These Super Foods? !

I am pleased to be guest posting over at the DC Ladies ! If you live in the DC metro area, make sure you?follow them?for the latest in DC news. From Fashion to Food, they got it all covered. Even if you don?t live in the DC metro area you can follow them :) ! ?Now to get a list of foods that soothe and ease arthritis click here and read my post ? Ease Arthritis With These Super foods?

Source: http://www.suesnutritionbuzz.com/2013/01/09/anti-inflammatory-foods-that-help-arthritis/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anti-inflammatory-foods-that-help-arthritis

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Baseball Hall of Fame members happy with recent vote

Nobody was happier about the Hall of Fame shutout than many of the Hall of Famers themselves. Dennis Eckersley, Goose Gossage, Al Kaline, and others are in no rush to open the door to Cooperstown for anyone linked to steroids, such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa. ??Wow! Baseball writers make a statement,?? wrote former Red Sox pitcher Eckersley on Twitter Thursday. ??Feels right.?? Former Yankees reliever Gossage was even more adamant. ??If they let these guys in ever ? at any point ? it?s a big black eye for the Hall and for baseball,?? he said. ??It?s like telling our kids you can cheat, you can do whatever you want, and it?s not going to matter.?? And former Tigers great Kaline said: ??I'm kind of glad that nobody got in this year. I feel honored to be in the Hall of Fame. And I would've felt a little uneasy sitting up there on the stage, listening to some of these new guys talk about how great they were.?? .?.?. Free agent lefthander Francisco Liriano injured his right arm over the holidays and his deal with the Pirates is on hold. Liriano reached an agreement on a two-year deal worth around $14 million late last month, pending a physical .?.?. Diamondbacks outfielder Justin Upton has vetoed a trade to the Mariners, a person with knowledge of the situation said. Upton?s contract gave him the power to turn down the trade .?.?. Infielder Luis Valbuena agreed to a $930,000, one-year contract with the Cubs.

Grinnell record-setter breaks wrist

Grinnell guard Jack Taylor, who set the NCAA scoring record with 138 points in a game in November, is out for the season after breaking his wrist. Taylor fractured the radius on his shooting arm during a 119-117 win over rival Cornell (Iowa). He will likely have surgery within a week and be out 2-3 months, costing the sensational sophomore the rest of the season. He was averaging 36.3 points per game for the Division 3 Pioneers (9-3) .?.?. Lehigh guard and preseason All-American C.J. McCollum may not return this season from a left foot injury if it means risking a potentially lucrative future in the NBA .?.?. LSU?s list of underclassmen entering the NFL draft reached 11 when offensive tackle Chris Faulk decided to forgo his senior season. Other players making the same decision Thursday were Georgia nose tackle Kwame Geathers, Oklahoma State running back Joseph Randle, and Texas wide receiver Mike Davis .?.?. Bill Young will step down after four seasons as Oklahoma State?s defensive coordinator and be replaced by linebackers coach Glenn Spencer.

Langley (62) surges to lead in Hawaii

Rookie Scott Langley shot an 8-under-par 62 in his PGA Tour debut to take a one-shot lead over Russell Henley after the first round of the Sony Open in Honolulu. Langley, a former NCAA champion from Illinois, played bogey-free and made a couple of long putts ? including a 55-footer for eagle on No. 9. Scott Piercy and Tim Clark were at 66 .?.?. Thongchai Jaidee shot a 7-under 65 to take a three-stroke lead on the opening day of the Volvo Champions in Durban, South Africa. Jaidee birdied six of his first 10 holes to end the day three shots ahead of Ernie Els and Louis Oosthuizen. Retief Goosen, who lost in a playoff a year ago, shot a par 72.

Azarenka, Serena in same Open draw

Defending champion Victoria Azarenka and 2012 Wimbledon and US Open champ Serena Williams are in the same half of the draw at the Australian Open, meaning they could meet in the semifinals. Novak Djokovic?s bid for a third consecutive Australian men?s title got a boost when No. 2-ranked Roger Federer and US Open champion Andy Murray both landed in the other half .?.?. The NHL Players? Association began voting Thursday night on ratification of the new CBA that would end the four-month lockout. Electronic voting will continue through Saturday morning .?.?. Blue Jackets defenseman Ryan Murray, the second overall pick in the draft last summer, underwent surgery on his left shoulder and faces a six-month recovery .?.?. Former No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Greg Oden, who has suffered debilitating knee injuries during his career, said he intends to return to the court, and several NBA teams have already expressed interest, according to a report on ESPN .?.?. Former world boxing champ Vinny Paz, 50, was charged with two misdemeanors Wednesday after smashing a pair of bar stools and refusing to pay his tab at the Grid Iron Ale House & Grill in Warwick, R.I., according to a report in the Providence Journal. end of story marker

Source: http://feeds.boston.com/click.phdo?i=b297f0cbf2d35a541f62f185e3afcbd3

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Living in the Shadows

"Our world is a special one. Full of prestige and scandal--all hidden in the shadows. We're all dealt a hand of cards, some lucky, some not so much. It's all a big game, you see. Where do you stand?

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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Living in the Shadows?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

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--> Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.

Hey! I've just put in a very very very rough character sheet! Ill fix it ASAP! :)

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Is 2013 the Year of Digital Health? | Social Marketing exChange

Jan 10

Is 2013 the year of digital health? John Nosta from Forbes.com thinks so. In a piece earlier this month, he argues that 2013 will be turning point for using digital technologies to manage diseases and wellness. Resulting from a convergence of diverse factors?including new technologies being applied health (e.g., gaming), the rise of the quantified self, pressures created by the Affordable Care Act, the amount of data coming out of electronic health records, and growing patient-caregiver connectivity?digital health will finally hit the mainstream this year.

I happen to agree. In 2011 and 2012, we saw the increasing application of technologies to the health space. ?These applications tested the waters to see in what ways people will use technologies to track and monitor their health. In 2013, we?ll see the lessons from these years being applied to new technologies. I also think we?ll see some of the more niche tools created in 2012 converge with each other, so that consumers can manage more aspects of their health in an integrated way. 2013 is going to be a big year, and I can?t wait to see what?s in store.

The growth of digital health was evidenced right here on the Social Marketing ExChange. Here?s a list of posts from the last year that discuss digital health:

  1. Make Mobile Technologies for Behavior Change a Priority in 2013 Nadia Dawson on why mobile technologies should be part of any health behavior change program.
  2. Doctor prescribed technology? Pediatricians connect with patients on their technology level Ashley Wolos explains how health care professionals?are incorporating technology into patient care to go beyond traditional paper materials.
  3. The Disconnect between Patient Expectations and Physician Actions I explain how digital health can help fill the gap between patient expectations for care, and the care they actually receive.
  4. Making mHealth a Reality A look at how mobile health offers a potential solution to connect patients with the health care system.
  5. ?Gamifying? Weight Loss and Behavior Change Former Ogilvy staffer Lauren Belisle examines how gaming theory is being applied to weight loss.
  6. SXSW Interactive: Innovating Health Cait Douglas discusses the health track at SXSW 2012, and why we still have a long way to go to innovating health care.
  7. Quantified Self: Is self-tracking the future of behavior change? An interview with Ernesto Ramirez of the Center for Wireless and Population Health System on what quantified self means and how it can lead to behavior change.
  8. The Impact of Social Media in Healthcare A discussion of the trends in social media use for health care.


**Image: Endomondo is just one example of a fitness app that allows users to track their workouts, cheer their friends on, and compete for prizes.**

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2013 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: http://smexchange.ogilvypr.com/2013/01/is-2013-the-year-of-digital-health/

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30 Problem Words and Phrases - Daily Writing Tips

by Mark Nichol

Tried-and-true words and phrases are convenient, but they are also truly trying ? as with clich?s, when a writer relies too heavily on stock usage, the resulting prose is tired and uninspired. Watch out for the following deadly usages.

1. After having: ?After looking around, I chose a seat? is fine, and so is ?Having looked around, I chose a seat,? but ?After having looked around, I chose a seat? is redundant. ?Having? means that the action has already been performed, so the context is clear that the writer is writing after the fact.

2. Aged: Identifying the age or age range of a person or a group with this word puts the subject(s) in a category with cheese or wine. Write ?50 years old,? for example, instead of ?aged 50 years,? or ?ages 21?34? rather than ?aged 21?34.?

3. Aggravate: To aggravate is to make something worse, not to bother, annoy, or irritate.

4. And also: And and also are redundant; use one or the other.

5. Anticipate: To anticipate is to foresee (and perhaps act on that foresight), not to expect.

6. Anxious: To be anxious is to feel distressed or worried, not eager.

7. Approximately: How about using about instead? Save three syllables. For scientific or technical references, approximately is fine, but it?s a bit much in most other contexts.

8. As to whether: ?As to? is extraneous; use whether only.

9. At this point in time: Omit this meaningless filler.

10. Basically, essentially, totally: Basically, these words are essentially nonessential, and you can totally dispense with them.

11. Being as/being that: Replace these phrases with because.

12. Considered to be: ?To be? is extraneous; write considered only, or consider deleting it as well.

13. Could care less: No, you couldn?t. You want to convey that it?s not possible for you to care
less, so you couldn?t care less.

14. Due to the fact that: Replace this phrase with because.

15. Each and every: Write ?Each item is unique,? or ?Every item is unique,? but not ?Each and every item is unique.?

16. Equally as: As is superfluous; write equally only.

17. Was a factor, is a factor, will be a factor: If your writing includes one of these phrases, its presence is a sign that you?re not done revising yet; rewrite ?The vehicle?s condition is a factor in performance,? for example, to ?The vehicle?s condition affects its performance.?

18. Had ought: Had is redundant; use ought only.

19. Have got: Got is suitable for informal writing only; if you?re referring to necessity, consider must rather than ?have got,? and if the reference is to simple possession, delete got from the phrase ?have got.?

20. In many cases/it has often been the case: Reduce the word count in statements containing these verbose phrases by replacing ?in many cases? with often, for example.

21. In the process of: This extraneous phrasing is acceptable in extemporaneous speaking but unnecessarily verbose in prepared oration and in writing.

22. Is a . . . which/who: If you find yourself writing a phrase like this, step back and determine how to write it more succinctly; ?Smith is a man who knows how to haggle,? for example, can be abbreviated to ?Smith knows how to haggle.?

23. Kind of/sort of: In formal writing, if you must qualify a statement, use a more stately qualifier such as rather, slightly, or somewhat.

24. Lots/lots of: In formal writing, employ many or much in place of one of these colloquialisms.

25. Of a . . . character: If you use character as a synonym for quality, make the reference concise. ?The wine has a musty character? is better rendered ?The wine tasted musty, and ?He was a man with a refined character? can be revised to the more concise statement ?The man was refined,? but better yet, describe how the man is refined.

26. Of a . . . nature: Just as with character, when you use nature as a synonym for quality, pare the phrasing down: Reduce ?She had a philosophical nature,? for example, to ?She was philosophical.?

27. Oftentimes: An outdated, unnecessary complication of often.

28. On account of: Replace this awkward phrase with because.

29. Renown: Renown is the noun (as well as a rarely used verb); renowned is the adjective. Avoid the like of ?the renown statesman.?

30. Thankfully: In formal usage, this word is not considered a synonym for fortunately.

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